Vaccine roll out news this morning

[outofthemoon]

Quite shocking. Only half the population listed. Over 80s before NHS staff. Nothing for under 50s. No mention of teachers, bus drivers... Entire focus on very elderly.
So all this suffering, destruction of economy and young people's futures has been to protect the boomer generation and those even older?

What would you have done with the vaccine OP?

There's a big difference between a rushed job and working round the clock to get results out.

The process to test the vaccines is still going through all the required steps, only a lot more effort is put on it.
I'll take it when available, and when I'm offered.

So all this suffering, destruction of economy and young people's futures has been to protect the boomer generation and those even older?

er, yeah, how did you not notice until now?

That sounds very sensible. I am in my 40s - fit, healthy, quite likely that I have already been exposed to the virus. I don’t feel I need the vaccine - sure, I might consider it in the future (I usually get the flu vaccine) but other people need it more.

They can't just mass produce the vaccine for everyone in one go. So they gave to have a risk factor. How would you do it op?

OP

I think maybe your point is slightly different? There’s something in this priority list that admits that ‘keeping people over 80 alive’ is the main priority to our government.

So it follows that we have destroyed our economy to ‘keep people over 80 alive.’ Whereas we were told is was so that we ‘didn’t overwhelm the NHS.’

I can understand why people experience a myriad of emotions around this. I’m not really happy to have destroyed people’s lives to keep people over 80 alive. It doesn’t seem proportionate. That doesn’t mean I don’t think the lives of the elderly have value, it’s just not proportionate.

Where do we draw the line? Would we shaft the economy to keep ‘people over 90’ alive? What about 100?

I don't think it's keeping over 80s or so alive, it's about the resources that treating them would require. If you keep the difficult decisions out by vaccinatimg them then the resources can fix far more easy cases.

Has anyone got a list of the order please?

Im 36, Extremely Clincally vulnerable and been indoors for 7 months.

Im not saying for a 2nd that i deserve it more but my consultant has suggested i stay shielding for now

The cost of treatment in an ICU bed for a severely ill Covid patient must be far higher than the cost of a vaccine shot, so it makes sense, financially, to give the vaccine to the elderly and/or vulnerable groups first, as they are more at risk of becoming seriously ill and needing hospital treatment. So, vaccinating the elderly, along with NHS and carers, seems pretty reasonable to me, on ethical and cost grounds. I'm happy to wait a few more months.

I've seen many people in their teens/20s milling around in large groups, no masks, no social distancing, acting like they're invincible, because the virus rarely affects their age group badly. I wonder how they will react to the news that they will be the last ones to receive the vaccine? They'll probably all go on protest marches, waving placards saying "Young Lives Matter", while not wearing masks.

@Notcontent

That sounds very sensible. I am in my 40s - fit, healthy, quite likely that I have already been exposed to the virus. I don’t feel I need the vaccine - sure, I might consider it in the future (I usually get the flu vaccine) but other people need it more.

Not everyone in their 40s is as fortunate as you. SAGE has noted the risk starts at 45, not 50. This is evident in the data from around the world.

Poverty plays a major role in the risks.
An middle-class 40 or 50 something living in an affluent shire will be at much lower risk than a poorer 40 or 50 something, ground down by years of poverty, living in high density housing in a large deprived urban area.
This should be taken into account when it comes to vaccine access.

That's just the risk of death. The risk of Long Covid starts younger.

@HotToCold
It's still early days and they haven't yet made a firm order of prioritisation. The initial plan is to first vaccinate the very elderly particularly those in care homes (where the environment makes spread of a virus so easy). Also care home staff, I think. Then healthcare workers and next will be over 65s and extremely clinical vulnerable (like yourself).

@HotToCold

Has anyone got a list of the order please?

Im 36, Extremely Clincally vulnerable and been indoors for 7 months.

Im not saying for a 2nd that i deserve it more but my consultant has suggested i stay shielding for now

This is from the Daily Mail www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8805587/Less-HALF-Britons-coronavirus-vaccine-saved-vulnerable.html

Updated guidance from the Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation states vaccines will be rolled out in the following order:

older adults' resident in a care home and care home workers
all those 80 years of age and over and health and social care workers
all those 75 years of age and over
all those 70 years of age and over
all those 65 years of age and over
high-risk adults under 65 years of age with underlying health woes
moderate-risk adults under 65 years of age with underlying health woes
all those 60 years of age and over
all those 55 years of age and over
all those 50 years of age and over
rest of the population (priority to be determined)

We certainly can't ever again tell people to quit smoking 'because it shortens your life'
Not when, having lived longer, people are then told you've had their time toodle pip.

Goodness. If people think the elderly (and younger people with health conditions) are expendable, at least give them the kinder way out with the Dignitas drugs.

Talking of the elderly. I very much enjoyed the documentary earlier with Sir David Attenborough. I don't expect some of here would watch, what with him being over 80 and therefore 'past his time' and apparently not worth saving.

They need to change it to 45, if they want to go on age risk of death. It's 45, not 50.

People are getting very confused about the difference between criminal and civil liability, the nature of the indemnity being offered, and the usual process for vaccine testing.

Once again I can only marvel that so many people read not just the RCTs but also the follow-up data for every medication they’re prescribed. And, of course, are familiar both with levels of evidence and standard practice for the testing of pharmaceutical products.

At least, I assume so, as certainly nobody would have allowed ignorant hysteria to interfere with their critical thinking faculties.

It's not only the over 80s that fill up hospitals.

The Dailt Mail version is a taken from the JCVI paper which was linked a few times earlier in the thread.

Interesting to see how that have added 'health woes' to the original wording.

It's been very interesting to read this thread in juxtaposition with the 'average age at death v typical life expectancy' thread.

The readiness to shorten the lives of other people is heartless, but it appears widespread.

(And yes, I know that deaths also result from other conditions and are higher when in recession. Which is why we really need to get a handle on keeping the numbers infected at any one time low, and certainty that measures to repress it will work because people will comply when needed)

What you have to remember is they will be looking at an overall population level. No doubt there will be some in high risks groups that as individuals should be higher up but they’ll be looking at the greatest benefits as a whole. On that basis care homes and 80 plus makes complete sense to me. The group that seemed missing for me was teachers because of exposure and social impact. I’d personally put in teachers over 45 above general population of 55 plus.

I can understand why the priority list is the way it is, it makes sense to vaccinate the most at risk groups first. They’re the ones most likely to die or need intensive care if they catch Covid. Equally having care home workers and frontline NHS staff as high priority groups makes perfect sense.

The bit that worries me is the suggestion that they’re not aiming to vaccinate the whole population. I can accept being in a low priority group for getting vaccinated, and having to wait for it until all the higher priority groups are vaccinated, but I’m really struggling with the concept that I might miss out entirely because they’re not planning on getting enough vaccines for everyone.

‘So all this suffering, destruction of economy and young people's futures has been to protect the boomer generation and those even older?’

YES! That has been the whole problem with this nonsense from the start!

I can’t understand why you’re surprised OP.
The number of deaths in people under 50 is really low- less than 1000.
The at risk groups are the elderly so any vaccine will be rolled out to them first and we don’t even know how effective it will be.
People are at last waking up to the fact that there isn’t going to be a magical injection for everyone. We are going to have to live with COVID and the sooner the younger population develop natural immunity to it the better. That’s what will help protect the population.
And now we have to try and recover the economy, because if we enter a depression then deaths from other causes will go up.

the sooner the younger population develop natural immunity to it the better

Why? The current vaccines in trial seem to be producing a strong immune response which should be at least as good if not longer than natural immunity, with the bonus that you don’t have to get ill first. Plus, if we are as worried about the economy as we should be, we don’t want large chunks of the working population all off sick for a week or three at the same time, and we don’t want people avoiding places where they could spend money because they’re worried about getting ill.

Plus plus of course, the government is going to struggle to pull off encouraging younger people to go along with that. “Okay everyone, thanks for giving up your normal lives for months and losing your jobs/WFH with children 18 hours a day/losing your social lives/really struggling with the isolation, all because we hugely mishandled this in the first place then changed tack in March. Good news now, there’s a vaccine! But we’re not paying for yours, so if you could all just pop out and catch Covid now that would be lovely, thanks. WAIT NOT YET, it’s totally fine for you to get Covid next month but this month we need you to avoid seeing your family and friends at all, sure you understand...”

I wonder what people think is a "natural immune response". All immune responses are natural. They are developed by our organisms.
The difference with vaccines is that we don't risk getting ill or dead before getting that immune response. Keeping in mind that sometimes people get undesirable immune responses when in contact with the pathogens.

It's not only young people who drive the spread. Just look at socialisation within the elderly population and within families.

I just don’t get why the government aren’t aiming towards herd immunity via vaccination?
Why say the aim is to only vaccinate 30 million people - less than half the population? That’s not going to give us herd immunity.

Prioritising vaccines so the most vulnerable are vaccinated first is understandable, but I really don’t understand why they’re not aiming towards eventually vaccinating almost everybody.

Prioritizing over 80s sounds very sensible to me. 🤷🏻‍♀️

Why say the aim is to only vaccinate 30 million people - less than half the population? That’s not going to give us herd immunity.

How do you know?
Have you done the maths yourself? Do you have a good model? Have you seen a good publication with the calculations?