Private COVID vaccine?

[HorseyintheHouse14]

Normally I wouldn't be bothered by this at all, but DSIS lives in New Zealand and is getting married next Christmas. This has been planned for a few years now and we were/are planning on going. However I have a feeling we won't be allowed in unless we are vaccinated against COVID. DH is a key worker so likely will have had the vaccine - me and DD probably won't have, so was wondering if anyone knew if some vaccines will be made available privately? If it wasn't for this I would wait our turn but I really wouldn't want to miss this.

I think people are massively underestimating the task that lies ahead in distributing BILLIONS of vaccine doses worldwide.

It is the logistical, technical, engineering and scientific (not to mention diplomatic) task of our age.

It is the equivalent of going to the moon in terms of complexity and challenge.

Nacreous

Brilliant thank you! May have to read it again in the morning to get my head around it!

In the US the CDC states that vaccines will be made available to everyone when supply permits. Other than the cost I can't imagine why you would want to limit it to people over 50.

It’s a huge endeavour worldwide everythingthelighttouches, and enormously challenging in developing nations, but for countries like the US and UK it’s not that much more difficult than flu jabs, which the UK doles out routinely to about 15 million people every year, in a different formulation every year, over the period of a few weeks, without bringing in the army or interfering with normal GP operations. Covid vaccination is a bigger job, but it’s completely doable.

Covid vaccination is a bigger job, but it’s completely doable.

I agree, at least for the US. In an effort to get season flu vaccination rates up pharmacists were allowed to do them and the big chain drugstores (chemists) are all geared up to do it with cold chain logistics, training for staff, tracking software, etc. The logistics are not going to be a problem once supply becomes available.

I am also hoping rich people won't be able to queue jump by paying mega bucks for s shot of vaccine. It must be given out in priority.of medical need. I am very pleased to see the Oxford group won't be making a profit on their vaccine. I hope people in less economically developed countries will get the vaccine too.

If, as is possible, the Pfizer vaccine does not prevent you from being infectious (makes the illness mild/survivable) then the 'rich' buying the jab means there will be less from the total number of shots supplied to the UK to vaccinate the vulnerable.

If the vulnerable are not covered, then restrictions cannot be ended safely, and the numbers in hospital will not ebb as far as hoped, because the risk to NHS will not have been sufficiently ameliorated.

We need about 14 million doses to cover as far as the CEV on the current roll out plan. I think it would be wildly unfair and just plain wrong to take shots from the supply chain for the 'rich' until at least that category has been covered, and ideally not until after the next category, the clinically vulnerable.

Like others, I hope that the vaccine will not be available privately. It would be immoral.

@Nacreous

So viruses work by essentially hijacking your cells workings, so they make your cell make copies of the viruses DNA, and then also copies of the proteins needed for the virus itself. So then the copies of the virus form inside your cell and make the cell burst, killing it, and allowing the virus to escape and make more copies of itself.

Some viruses (HIV) work slightly different, but that's the basic set up.

What they are proposing here is injecting the mRNA for a single protein into you. So your cells will make lots of the single protein, but they won't be being instructed to make lots of copies of the whole virus. So it won't be able to infect you and you won't be able to infect anyone else. mRNA is used in your cells as a translator, to translate the instructions in DNA into something that the ribosomes (which assemble proteins) can read. So in this case the cells aren't getting the original instructions, just the translation. So they can't make copies of the original, just copies of the output.

So there's no interference with your DNA - and as you say, we don't generally worry about the fact that our cells copy viral mRNA and DNA every time we are infected with a virus.

Thank you for this explanation.

So in theory there should not be a worry for people of child bearing age? I'm guessing both men and women who would be either vulnerable or work in a sector that will vaccinate as part of your job

@MissMarplesGlove

Like others, I hope that the vaccine will not be available privately. It would be immoral.

Why immoral?

Not everyone will be given it, just like the flu job. Those that don’t qualify but would like it should have the option to get it privately like any other medical treatment.

I don’t see why it shouldn’t be made available.

I arranged private Men B vaccinations for my DD the first week they became available in the UK. I also privately vaccinated DD for chickenpox. It’s my responsibility to look after my child and that will always be my priority.

I don’t think the private demand for COVID-19 vaccinations will be that high as I think not many people who can afford the probably high cost will want them - certainly not until they have been in use for a few years. I also don’t think that there will be the same imperative to have them, as isolation/ time-off work will not be an issue for these people.

@MissConductUS

In the US the CDC states that vaccines will be made available to everyone when supply permits. Other than the cost I can't imagine why you would want to limit it to people over 50.

Because the USA won’t get 300 vaccines straight away. The will get shares of global supply. Dished out in phased allocation.

Trump tried to do a deal to monopolise vaccine supply. He got a lesson in how Public Health works and why big pharma needs more than one customer.

Public health cannot be treated like a commodity. It’s a disaster when that happens. The mess with global PPE supply shows that.

Because the USA won’t get 300 vaccines straight away.

You must have missed the bit where I said when supply permits. And the US will get the vaccine doses the pharmaceutical companies are contractually obligated to deliver to it.

Like others, I hope that the vaccine will not be available privately. It would be immoral.

Why?

@MsWarrensProfession it takes the NHS months though to distribute the flu vaccine. All of my older relatives obtain their jabs through a pharmacy as flu season has generally started before the GP appointments come through. My DH is eligible for a flu jab this year for the first time and hasn't heard anything. I'm not saying the NHS can't do this but i expect it to be painfully slow and so I believe that private supply chains, provided these are surplus to what is guaranteed to the NHS, will be essential.

@bookish83

Exactly - there is no reason to be concerned as a person of childbearing age. This will be just as suitable for them as older adults. These aren't being proposed for children because they haven't been tested on children (or for the few that have, it may be that results take longer to come back as children are so often asymptomatic anyway) and because children really don't suffer badly with this disease. Age is the key factor in likelihood of Covid making you really ill, hence them using it to cohort in vaccine planning.

I think there is a huge misunderstanding of the economics of vaccine sales.

@HorseyintheHouse14 unless there is another effective vaccine and a consequent excess in supply, your chance of being able to buy this vaccine privately in UK is about zero. There is no business case for an enormous company like Pfizer to sell handfuls of vials to small private companies instead of brokering huge billion dollar deals with national governments. Join the queue along with the rest of us.

@Ihaveyourback

This is why I am sure why the media have made such a huge song and dance about the vaccine, and spring is going to be everyone back to normal.

MOST of us will not be vaccinated, we will still be living with the virus for years potentially indefinitely.

The old and the vulnerable will be vaccinated and that is it.
No one is talking about anyone under the age of 50 getting a vaccine.

So we will continue to deal with covid for the forseeable, and I am really trying to feel upset about it. No chance of private vaccines due to the volume of governments that need access first....

Please stop this negativity which is not even realistic. . We had people saying there would be no vaccine for 5 years just a few weeks ago!. There will be other vaccines soon. I think at least 2 in the next couple of months

I think we will have enough to vaccinate those who need it most within a year. . That is what protecting the vulnerable and allowing the rest of us to get in with it actually looks like ( as opposed to the shite spouted by people who want to do that immediately by shutting people away, which isn't even possible). With patience we can get to that point in a realistic way without sacrificing people's lives unecessarily and hopefully within 6
monthsto a year to get there

Yes some people will still get Covid for many years after that but they will be those who are at a much lower risk of getting seriously ill so it will be fine and something easily liveable with, without lots of extra precautions like masks and SD.

I know there is still Long Covid but I have faith that we can understand that better with time as well and help predict who will develop this and treat them as 'vulnerablek' to include in the vaccination programme

Eventually enough people will be vaccinated to reach herd immunity

@MissConductUS

Because the USA won’t get 300 vaccines straight away.

You must have missed the bit where I said when supply permits. And the US will get the vaccine doses the pharmaceutical companies are contractually obligated to deliver to it.

I don’t think you know a lot about vaccine supply. Or public health programmes. Impossible to do this without prioritisation. Which you think the US doesn’t need.

Not getting what you ordered is an annual problem at the best of times.

No pharma could commit to delivery dates or volumes for this vaccine. Hence the need to prioritise within a worldwide public health programme to the best effect. That delivers the biggest impact for health systems which are currently under an existential threat from this virus.

Not to do this would be criminal for any government and cause far more cost and problems for society. The Trump administration have ignored this principle in a stupid and immoral way. Thankfully Walmart and mypillow won’t be dictating things any longer.

It was noticeable this year with the flu vaccination that the NHS supplies seemed to take much longer and be in shorter supply than the private chemists and supermarkets, which all started vaccinations in September and had plentiful supplies mostly (until recently when they have run out).
So the supply chain for flu vaccination is not the same for private sector and NHS, or the NHS is inefficient in its supply chain and underbuys (no surprise there, e.g. PPE).
I wonder if it would be more efficient for the private sector to administer the Covid-19 vaccination based on this? At least once the extremely vulnerable and very elderly were vaccinated?