Tony Blair this morning

[LaLoose]

Did Tony Blair's four-step plan - explained on the Today Programme this morning - make clinical sense, does anyone know? And, if so, why the FLIP aren't we / all European countries doing it NOW???

[giletrouge]

Thanks OP just listened, yes it sounds like he's got the measure of it to me and I agree it's fucking useless to harp on about the past if he's on the ball for now. Drop it people.
Give it a listen - he's really put thought into this.
By the way pt 4 was data collection and Nov being month of organisation was the overall strategy, not point 4 itself.
Then there was some back and forth which I haven't listened to yet.

[mamakoukla]

1.if the vaccine is only 40 % effective as written up top, then you can’t really reopen as normal

1. Consider the expense of rolling out an ineffective vaccine- the vaccine, plastics, man hours etc. You’d get slated for wasting money by rushing ahead

[LaLoose]

He isn't advocating reopening as normal. If it is 40 per cent effective, then that is still a lot of lives saved.

[ThirteenOClock]

Finally! Our saviour the war criminal has spoken!

[MarshaBradyo]

@Fantasisa

1. Accelerate vaccine use - roll out the Astra Zeneca/Oxford vaccine now to key groups as it is proven to be safe. It doesn't matter how effective it is 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good'. Even if it is only 40 per cent effective we should take that in a heartbeat. It is probably up to 70 % effective - but anything will help now. No reason to wait.

1. Therapeutic drugs - as long as they are safe - accelerate deployment of them before Christmas. Extend Recovery trial to more people - enrol as many people as possible on it to get more data back. Likelihood is that they are effective - we are holding them back from people now, nothing to lose by rolling them out. Would allow hot spot areas to be dealt with much more effectively.
2. Appoint a Minister and Gov team to do nothing other than making sure every uni is testing every student and school pupil before they return to school.
3. November should be the month of organisation and preparation.

Then in December we could open up again.

If we don't do this, we are damaging the economy. This needs to be the last lockdown. We need to get out of this.

From the programme. I agree with him.

These are objectives now aren’t they?

Maybe not Recovery trial but why not? There may be practical issues

They must have to at least unblind vaccine trial first, review then go. Or would people prefer it wasn’t unblinded

Taking Blair out of it but just what’s he’s saying, it sounds good but where are we not really doing this

[TheKeatingFive]

Sounds sensible to me

[Fantasisa]

The vaccine is already being mass produced so it will either be used or dumped. It has been proven to be safe. The efficacy is what data is being gathered on now. He didn't say reopen as normal, he said roll out the vaccine now as part of widespread measures to contain the virus.

Interesting that he didn't mention track and trace at all.

[Qasd]

He didn’t suggest cancelling the lockdown but using the time effectively to avoid the need for it to be extended or repeated.

Lockdown is an ineffective long term strategy and we all know this because it repressed the virus only for the lockdown period and then it rises again, it has risen in every European country so it is not just “stupid brits” but a virus that cannot be controlled this way so we need to think about the other strategies and put them in place during November those strategies all relate to the science.

• I don’t agree with the vaccine roll out one (we don’t know it’s safe in the groups it needs to be safe in (the elderly) only younger people where included in phase 2
  
• I totally agree with expanding discovery honestly it’s the only good bit of the U.K. response, we are the first country in the world to identify a drug that can reduce the risk of death from covid, the discovery trail gave us that (and helped rule out some other drugs) indeed let’s expand it!
  
• totally agree re testing, some of the innovative approaches uni’s such as Cambridge are using could be rolled out more effectively.
  

On the whole I thought it was reasonably sensible and worth considering despite Iraq which actually isn’t that relevant in this context.

[SuperbGorgonzola]

I agree that if we have a vaccine that renders covid less deadly, despite making it no less infectious then we need it as soon as possible. Cases being sky high would be irrelevant if hospital admissions were very low.

[wewillmeetagain]

He's one to talk about saving lives 🙄!!!! Maybe lots of lives could have been saved if he hadn't been partly responsible for the shit show that's happened there!

[BertieBloopsMum]

Well again I will ask - which of his points isn't currently being done?

And why, if it's all down to our hopeless government, are Macron and Merkle doing exactly the same thing as us for the next four weeks? In fact, France's lockdown is stricter than ours.

[wewillmeetagain]

In the Middle East!! He winds me up so much I'm ranting and missing out words lol

[TiersTiersTiers]

@Fantasisa

1. Accelerate vaccine use - roll out the Astra Zeneca/Oxford vaccine now to key groups as it is proven to be safe. It doesn't matter how effective it is 'don't let perfect be the enemy of good'. Even if it is only 40 per cent effective we should take that in a heartbeat. It is probably up to 70 % effective - but anything will help now. No reason to wait.

1. Therapeutic drugs - as long as they are safe - accelerate deployment of them before Christmas. Extend Recovery trial to more people - enrol as many people as possible on it to get more data back. Likelihood is that they are effective - we are holding them back from people now, nothing to lose by rolling them out. Would allow hot spot areas to be dealt with much more effectively.
2. Appoint a Minister and Gov team to do nothing other than making sure every uni is testing every student and school pupil before they return to school.
3. November should be the month of organisation and preparation.

Then in December we could open up again.

If we don't do this, we are damaging the economy. This needs to be the last lockdown. We need to get out of this.

From the programme. I agree with him.

Sounds a good plan - trouble is because Blair is saying that will Boris and other's ignore

Whether you like Blair or not and what he previously has or has not done as PM - the items above all make sense.

[Horehound]

This is laughable. You cannot just make small batches of vaccine and dish it out to wee groups. It has to be mass produced, stocked and THEN rolled out. So even if there is a working vaccine they can't just make a batch and immunise some people, it has to be done en masse.

I worked for GSK in a vaccine manufacturing site.

[LaLoose]

Thanks @Horehound - this was really the point of my thread, I want people who know about these things, like you, to say what is and isn't possible.

[Horehound]

And the process to release a vaccine usually takes a few years but there is a process (think it is called "acellerate" but not 100% sure on that) that means the vaccines will essentially skip the queue of medicines being released.

[blueangel19]

T Blair no thank you. We are paying the consequences of his time as PM.

[BertieBloopsMum]

[quote herethereandeverywhere]@BertieBloopsMum

He hasn't advocated cancelling lock down?
If you want to criticise Blair's proposals at least know what they are [/quote]
No, but the OP seems to think that Blair has some sacred knowledge that the rest of Europe lacks.

[LaLoose]

Erm, why are you attacking me @BertieBloopsMum? You seem very aggressive.

If you read my OP you will see that I was in fact asking for experts to give their opinion on what might work and what would not. I don't think at all that he has sacred knowledge; I was seeking to interrogate what he said.

I'm not at all interested in conflict. Could you go somewhere else if you want a fight, please? I won't be responding to any more of your posts.

[BertieBloopsMum]

Yeah, sorry. Blair just gives me the rage. As you were.

[LaLoose]

No probs.

[nibdedibble]

Blair fucked up and people died. That’s not an aside, it’s important, but also it happened not because he was too thick to deal with a crisis. We’ll presumably never get to know the whole story.

I’m no fan but when you hear him or someone like him talking, it’s hard not to lament that we’re stuck with some truly unfit leaders right now, too involved in their own schemes to care about us much.

[BawJaws]

I was too busy being shocked at his old
Man voice..... he just sounded SO OLD

[BlueStarRose]

The problem with rolling out a vaccine now is (say Astra Zeneca) now and it’s only 40 % effective. What happens when in 6 weeks Pfizer comes out and there’s is 80 %? Then we would need to establish if you could have both safely. People would be up in arms government had panicked.

[farmfreshmilk]

I thought he sounded very sensible. For one he was advocating planning the vaccine regime now, rather than waiting until the vaccine is ready and then realising you need to work out how to vaccinate the population.

Setting out a clear plan and working steadily towards it rather than lurching shouldn't be a shocking departure for government, but there you are

I'm no fan of his, not after the Iraq war, and marched And campaigned a lot during the Labour years, but he sounded a great deal more sensible and statesman like than the current government.