WHO urges Britain to pause covid jabs after treating the vulnerable

[Jay2020]

Link

www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/30/who-urges-britain-to-pause-covid-jabs-after-treating-vulnerable

I am beyond broken if this means we can't get to any kind of normality.

It was me who mentioned others’ priority lists. Just how are you going to stop Hungary vaccinating athletes, Poland it’s celebrities, or Germany its bureaucrats before ecv?

The WHO are saying the UK should be sharing out vaccines because of the Trump-like behaviour of the EU in the past few days.

Absolutely the UK should be helping other countries. But not the likes of Germany, France and Italy. They are wealthy countries with the ability to look after themselves- it's not the UK's fault the EU's response was so piss poor and that other rich countries weren't as well set up to deal with this, despite having the resources to do so. We should be helping LMICs who do not have the same resources and abilities but whether we should do that until we have vaccinated our population isn't clear, given our horrendous virus rates.

We have recently cut our ODA spending from 0.7 to 0.5% of GNI which is a double cut due to the obvious reduction in GNI. This is going to hit some of the poorest people in the world incredibly hard. I wish as many people were bothered about that as giving vaccines to the EU.

I dare say the EU have asked them to ‘say something’.

The WHO have pandered to China, and I dare say they see fit to pander to the EU, too.

Nope, we need to put our country first - once we are done then we can help out. We have already donated tons of money to help the poor countries with vaccinations anyway

Could we not have a group of experts and professionals to make these kind of decisions? Why is it down to someone on mumsnet (me) to work out a perfect and complete response to make it a valid idea/opinion?

Well you were calling everyone who disagreed including me selfish etc. You don't need a complete or perfect response just a suggestion or two.

I can't see how it could possibly work because every country will have different criteria & a different strategy.

But it's always easier to criticise rather than solve a problem. There's that pesky human nature again!

Of course we should slow vaccination rates once we have done the vulnerable and allow other countries to catch up with their vulnerable.

i don't want a vaccine ahead of my elderly in laws, they are getting theirs next week, mine is many months away.

There is at present, a finite supply of vaccine, its immoral to say we got it first, we are keeping it for ourselves.

If we do, when this is over, these countries wont forget how we intentionally let them die.

@Shelovesamystery
"Pp's have raised the point about other countries priority lists being different to ours and that is something that I wasn't aware of."
Maybe you should read up on Covid before posting then? Just a thought.

Just how are you going to stop Hungary vaccinating athletes, Poland it’s celebrities, or Germany its bureaucrats before ecv?

You can't

I know two children who've now lost a dad in his 40s.
I don't want this to be my children.

@StrawberryLipstickStateOfMind, if Germany, France and Italy had been free to look after themselves as regards vaccines, I dare say they wouldn’t be short now. But the lumbering bureaucratic monolith of the EU insisted on handling it for the entire EU, which why they’re in the shit now.

Also, presumably they were relying on the French Sanofi vaccine, which failed, so that’s an additional reason for Macron in particular to be mightily pissed off and rubbish the AZ vaccine, while admitting that he did not know the scientific facts.

@meditrina

Just Britain? Rest of the world can just crack on?

Not, the WHO did not single out Britain - it was talking about all the countries which are making fast progress

Maybe Britain is making fast progress but it's also got one of the worst rates. There should be no delaying or stopping the vaccination programme whatsover.

But you're not asking for a strategy, you're asking for my opinion so you can argue with it. Simply, my answer would be those who are statistically most likely to be killed by the disease. I would have thought that is quite common sense.

It's not necessarily the selfishness I take umbridge with (and again, no it's not human nature) it's the fact that it's a selfish and unscientific view. If we want the best for us in the long run we need to do the best for everyone.

@FTMF30

Why do you think it means we won't go back to normal? The aim was always to vaccinate the vulnerable to allow restrictions to be lifted. It's not such a deadly disease to those who aren't vulnerable.

That is what I thought.

However.... Brother's friend {Has to be very fit for his job} is young, not in any risk group and is seriously ill in ICU with Covid.

Another person , middle age, no ''Risk'' group, slim, also was in ICU and it was ''Touch and go'' a couple of times.

It is a virus that is starting to slam the younger ones, hard.

And when i say it isn't human nature what I more accurately mean is that we don't know what 'human nature' is because it's impossible to seperate nature from nurture, so it's a redundant argument.

@Bookriddle

My wife has witnessed enough under 45s with no underlying health conditions die in the last few weeks!

I'm 28 I want my vaccine, asking as there is a risk I want it

Wow, she must be very unlucky to be seeing so many under 45s with no health conditions die in the last few weeks considering there’s only been about 400 die in these circumstances during the whole pandemic....

On planes the emergency protocol is that you put your own oxygen mask on first, then you can help others.

Roll out the vaccine in the UK as planned. Some of the benefits will be (in no particular order) 1) get people back to work to boost the economy 2) get children's education fully underway again 3) enable the NHS to treat those who have had their treatment postponed due to Covid 4) Benefit the mental health of our population

When we are back to more of a normal way of life we will have more strength, money and resources which we can choose to use for the benefit of others.

AstraZeneca generously chose not to profit from its vaccine at all, so the 'greedy big pharma' trope isn't even true here.

If anyone thinks others in this country should forefeit their own vaccination, I think that's like giving a charity goat present. You're getting someone else to give something up but you claim the credit.

I agree now is a very good time to be unselfish but I think the best way is to contribute individually to charities or initiatives who are involved with getting more vaccines to those in need around the world.

@Shelovesamystery

I think it's fair enough. I'm 29, I don't need a vaccine before someone who is elderly and/or ECV, wherever in the world they live. I'm amazed at the responses on this thread tbh because I've always considered myself to be quite a selfish person and I hate the thought of getting the vaccine while people who are ECV but live in a different country aren't being vaccinated, just seems awful to me.

Yeh I thought I was pretty invincible at 29. Im late 40’s, disabled and chronically ill. I’ve had 3 major surgeries in just over 2 years. Dh and I have just been showing dd pictures of me in my early 30’s. I’m unrecognisable.

Why was it not possible for a wealthy trading bloc like the EU to procure their vaccines in a timely fashion? It appears they spent 3 months haggling over the price of a vaccine which is being sold at cost. And the other problem they have which is herding cats (27.) Not getting why the UK and Israel are the baddies.

"Overall, the pandemic has pushed the total number of people in the UK living in poverty to more than 15 million – 23% of the population – according to the institute, which uses poverty measures developed by the independent Social Metrics Commission."

"Those hardest hit by the economic crisis were young workers, those in relatively low-paid jobs and those working in sectors such as hospitality and retail. Elderly people were financially least badly hit, the analysis found."

These people may not die from Covid without the vaccine but they still matter.

Well @GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER , they know where to look to place their blame then don't they. And it's not the UK.

We aren't part of the EU any more. If a group of very rich countries cannot work together (I thought being in the EU was supposed to make things work better?!) it's not our problem to sort out.

I think we have a responsibility to help the worlds poorest. Not a group of some of the world's wealthiest countries who had the ability and resources to look after themselves and who failed miserably to do so.

They wouldn't piss on us if we were on fire and sought to punish the UK ever since we chose to leave them.

And I say this as someone who voted remain.

The line should be drawn once everybody in the UK that wants the vaccine is vaccinated!

Then we can look at helping the rest of the world!

Meanwhile, all those nations who are at the back of the queue, because they cant afford to throw the same sort of money at the solution as the UK, continue to see mutated variations of Covid spring up in their population. One of these varients could very easily be immune from the vaccines currently being rolled out (a fear we saw over the south african variant). If this were to happen it would make the vaccinations carried out so far in the UK and elsewhere completely pointless and so the whole sorry saga gets drawn out for even longer.

By diverting vaccines to countries who are behind in rolling them out enables the whole global population to be vaccinated at the same time which is what is required to stamp out mutated variants before they have the opportunity to take hold in the older, more clinically vulnerable groups across the world. The UK vaccinating the whole country first before other countries get a foot in the door isnt going to help us in the long run. Its not like international travel will be viable again until enough of the global population has immunity. Are we really going to standby and watch poorer nations get obliterated whilst they 'wait their turn' whilst we rub our hands in glee cos we can have a pint down the pub sooner than we would if we shared the vaccines about.

Do people really think that if we vaccinate the whole population we will be back to normal? As we all know this government has something against actually closing boarders so if we just vaccinate ourselves it would likely take a few months before some other variant from another country gets imported here that is resistant to the vaccines we have had. And then wave 3 is on its way. People have such short term outlooks that I am truly worried we will be stuck in this pandemic forever.

@Perfect28

For me, the fact we are doing so well at vaccinating just shows how selfish we are. We need to think of ourselves as a global community so I absolutely think that WHO are right, after the vulnerable are vaccinated the priority should be to vaccinate the vulnerable elsewhere.

No.

@pennylane83 Exactly right! I’m so happy to come across one one reasonable on this thread. Is it not obvious this is exactly how it will play out?

But you're not asking for a strategy, you're asking for my opinion so you can argue with it

No I was asking about your strategy of getting the vaccine to the most vulnerable globally?

Simply, my answer would be those who are statistically most likely to be killed by the disease. I would have thought that is quite common sense.

Who are most likely to be killed, I assumed it varied by country? On the one hand we know old white men die but then ethnicity is relevant in some countries, occupation definitely relevant

"By contrast, people working in professional and managerial jobs and who are more likely to be able to work from the comfort of their own home are at the lowest risk of dying from the disease."