Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

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Chris O'Connor said:
Macron relies on bashing the English to shore up his re-election prospects and is more than ready to weigh in on any company with even a hint of a connection with England.
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You only need to remember what he said when the queues and queues of freight lorries were piling up in Dover on New Years Eve. He was using Covid as an excuse to create the problem, then stepped this up by saying something like “This is what it will be like for you when you leave the EU tonight”.

The guy is a total idiot.
 
BlueToff said:
Well, if you're looking at people who possibly died with it before we knew it was a thing, then yeah (we had a similar amount of deaths due to respiratory illnesses in Oct-Dec 2020 as we did in Oct-Dec 2019 - but that was a big leap from the year previous).

Then again, can factor that off against the number of people who have had this but won't have been counted among the official figures due to not being able to get a test at the time (last spring for example) or being asymptomatic etc etc

All cancels each other out really.
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You confuse death statistics and positive cases here.
The key factor which points to massive overstatement of number of deaths is that for inclusion in the death statistics requires only that an individual passed away within 28 days of having tested positive regardless of the actual cause of death.
 
Chris O'Connor said:
Austria and Denmark the two latest countries to try and buy vaccines on their own without reference to the European Union procurement scheme. This amidst widespread criticism of it's procurement and approval procedures, the painfully slow take up and scepticism fanned by it's leading figures (notably 'Professor' Macron), the muddled and unnecessary campaign against Astra-Zeneca and general negativity of its leaders.

The smaller nations of Slovakia, Poland and Hungary have already taken steps to procure their own supplies with one EU official bemoaning the centralist approach whose aim were purportedly to secure supplies for smaller nations. The smaller nations are now copying the UK, Israel and the US and apparently happier procuring their own independent supplies regardless of what the EU does.
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Believe it or not AZ has been a problem for many EU countries and they have been caught with their pants down.

The nature of the EU deal is that everyone is entitled to buy an equal share of vaccines depending on their population. Each country had/have many multiples of their populations vaccines bought.

However not all countries ordered the same vaccines. For example many countries decided to buy large quantities of AZ as it was cheaper and declined to take up their full allocation of the more expensive MRNA‘S. These countries having difficulty at the mo are the ones who backed AZ to heavily, not that AZ isn’t a decent vaccine they just bet to heavily on the one horse and the horse can’t meet the demand at the mo. Countries are entitled to buy extra vaccines if they wish, outside their EU collective, if they can, that’s a private matter for the country, Germany and France both have, Ireland have made orders of 8 mill for vaccines for next winter.

The vaccine race is a long one, I’d be cautious at making judgements at the moment on success and failure just yet, probably just the end of the beginning and could be a few important variables that could see the grid change.
 
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Billy Dean said:
I think Austria and Denmark are looking more long term no? They want their own production and research capacity for future generations of vaccines for mutant strains. Interesting that Kurz took a shot at the EMA and not the EU (or VDL)
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The Czech government has said similarly. It won't be coming on stream any time soon though.
 
SussexToffee said:
You only need to remember what he said when the queues and queues of freight lorries were piling up in Dover on New Years Eve. He was using Covid as an excuse to create the problem, then stepped this up by saying something like “This is what it will be like for you when you leave the EU tonight”.

The guy is a total idiot.
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Remember when he was acting the Billy Big with Trump like the spotty teen trying to impress his birds dad.

Embarassing.
 
Neiler said:
Believe it or not AZ has been a problem for for many EU countries and they have been caught with their pants down.

The nature of the EU deal is that everyone is entitled to buy an equal share of vaccines depending on their population. Each country had/have many multiples of their vaccines bought.

However not all countries ordered the same vaccines. For example many countries decided to buy large quantities of AZ as it was cheaper and declined to take up their full allocation of the more expensive MRNA‘S. These countries having difficulty at the mo are the ones who backed AZ to heavily, not that AZ isn’t a decent vaccine they just bet to heavily on the one horse and the horse can’t meet the demand at the mo. Countries are entitled to buy extra vaccines if they wish, outside their EU collective, if they can, that’s a private matter for the country, Germany and France both have, Ireland have made orders of 8 mill for vaccines for next winter.

The vaccine race is a long one, I’d be cautious at making judgements at the moment on success and failure just yet, probably just the end of the beginning and could be a few important variables that could see the grid change.
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There does appear to have been an element of luck involved as well. From what I understand the AZ trials did have very few elderly people with Covid in it, so the precautionary principle would ordinarily prompt you to hold off until the trial generates more data for that demographic, which is what the EU have done. Britain went ahead anyway, and that has largely been vindicated. I have no idea if they knew something, but the Swiss have also had cold feet over the AZ vaccine so it's not like everyone was gladly following the British example.

Similarly with the one jab policy that was against what the pharma companies recommended. That too appears to have been a good thing, but I'm not sure how much of that is foresight and how much is sheer providence.
 
Neiler said:
Believe it or not AZ has been a problem for for many EU countries and they have been caught with their pants down.

The nature of the EU deal is that everyone is entitled to buy an equal share of vaccines depending on their population. Each country had/have many multiples of their vaccines bought.

However not all countries ordered the same vaccines. For example many countries decided to buy large quantities of AZ as it was cheaper and declined to take up their full allocation of the more expensive MRNA‘S. These countries having difficulty at the mo are the ones who backed AZ to heavily, not that AZ isn’t a decent vaccine they just bet to heavily on the one horse and the horse can’t meet the demand at the mo. Countries are entitled to buy extra vaccines if they wish, outside their EU collective, if they can, that’s a private matter for the country, Germany and France both have, Ireland have made orders of 8 mill for vaccines for next winter.

The vaccine race is a long one, I’d be cautious at making judgements at the moment on success and failure just yet, probably just the end of the beginning and could be a few important variables that could see the grid change.
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Maybe also worth noting that some of the smaller nations, e.g. Hungary, are
Bruce Wayne said:
The Czech government has said similarly. It won't be coming on stream any time soon though.
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yes same as what I could gather re Austria. I just found Kurz’s criticism of the EMA a bit odd since previously it had been all about the procurement. He’s been quite vocal in his support for the Russian vaccine. Don’t know if that has anything to do with it.
 
Bruce Wayne said:
There does appear to have been an element of luck involved as well. From what I understand the AZ trials did have very few elderly people with Covid in it, so the precautionary principle would ordinarily prompt you to hold off until the trial generates more data for that demographic, which is what the EU have done. Britain went ahead anyway, and that has largely been vindicated. I have no idea if they knew something, but the Swiss have also had cold feet over the AZ vaccine so it's not like everyone was gladly following the British example.

Similarly with the one jab policy that was against what the pharma companies recommended. That too appears to have been a good thing, but I'm not sure how much of that is foresight and how much is sheer providence.
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AZ I think was always the roaring hot favourate mate, a lot of the basis of their vaccine was already being developed for something else before Covid and they amended it for Covid, so they had a head start. I always thought Oxford and J&J would be the first vaccines. I was surprised Pfizer and Moderna broke first, I think AZ were to and they rushed to the finish line. To be honest their data, trials and research were messy. To be honest in good conceince, AZ did really well to get regulation at all and I can understand the cavets in some countries, in normal circumstances AZ would be struggling. They haven’t chanced it in the US and won’t until the data is stronger.

The deals are different as well, the UK signed away the right to take legal recourse from any adverse effect of vaccines, if anyone has an adverse effect in years to come, they can’t hold the drug company culpable. You can in the EU.

I think alll these things helped the UK do things very quickly, I think things will level up in March and think the EU will get ahead in April onward for a few reasons.

Lads will have different opinions, the decisions the UK made were fool heartedly genius I think you could apply both depending on your point of view, the great thing is, it all seems like it’s going really well and any risks or breaking ranks have paid off, thankfully!
 
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Billy Dean said:
Maybe also worth noting that some of the smaller nations, e.g. Hungary, are

yes same as what I could gather re Austria. I just found Kurz’s criticism of the EMA a bit odd since previously it had been all about the procurement. He’s been quite vocal in his support for the Russian vaccine. Don’t know if that has anything to do with it.
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I'm not entirely sure what the situation is tbh. You hear of a lot of countries using minute fractions of their AZ stock thus far, and yet Czech was having vaccines donated from France and Israel last week.
 
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