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.

@marbellamarc the gov website does say that they will be prioritising based on those with high risk of exposure, I'd like to think that they will also look at other demographics when the time comes. The only thing for me that might possibly put me higher up the list is that I work in a restaurant, irrelevant now as I'm furloughed but I will be back to work by that time. But I wouldn't think it will, plenty of other jobs that are higher risk.

Either way I'm happy to wait for a vaccine as long as it takes. And I don't think that means me and others like me being stuck in lockdown, they can't just let everyone else get on with their lives and penalise those who aren't eligible for a vaccine yet, that's not realistic.

Yes i think idea in uk is to start relaxing restrictions when vulnerable are vaccinated but not sure if thats after one dose or two and only if numbers are down .
Plus it will be slow , schools will be one of the first in some way and I would imagine limited outdoor mixing in my opinion, talk if pubs etc not until may ? The reality is nobody knows just yet.
Im not realistically thinking I will be ok to go to my mums for a cup of tea until late spring.

You were unnecessarily rude to me, telling me that you and your colleagues would be fucked off with me if they had to treat me and calling me a covidiot. Then when I cleared it up for you, rather than admitting that you'd misunderstood me, you blustered over it by calling me incoherent. A fair few insults, just because you'd misunderstood me and didn't have the balls to own up to it.

I haven't misunderstood you. Hardly rude to tell someone that I'd be unhappy about treating someone who hadn't had the vaccine when they could have done. But yes you filled in the gaps eventually. Great you're going to get the vaccine as soon as you can 👍 Lucky we have that in the UK right? Hopefully we will never need to cross paths in a hospital ward then.

Possibly, we have the worst corona death rate in the world, due mainly to the combination of unhealthy diets and being easy with helping spread the virus, by not observing lock-down. So we have weak immune systems and have literally helped the virus to spread! .
Why are we not promoting, vigorously, healthy eating to build natural immunity?

Thinking of population immunity, why won't the spokesperson WHO stop stressing an already superstressed population.

spokesperson from the WHO.

NO. I’ve lost my job over this pandemic, I’ve lost my home - I’m broken. I don’t give a shit about myself, but over my dead body will some random person in a country with a death rate lower than the UK’s get the vaccine before my DC.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I almost wish Trump was still in power - at least he’d tell the WHO to fuck off.

I haven't misunderstood you called me a vaccine refuser

So you'd rather I take this hypothetical vaccine instead of the hypothetical person that is more in need of it than me (that has to be near by as they can't just send a single vaccine to someone thousands of miles away) who is more likely to end up in hospital than me in the first place?

I'll happily wait my turn, even if that means every other person on the planet who is in a more vulnerable category than me gets it first. That's pretty much all my point is. And it's not because I'm trying to be selfless, I'm not a selfless person at all . It's because, to me, it is the most logical and decent thing.

haven't misunderstood you called me a vaccine refuser

Well clearly with your new information, drip feed you're not a vaccine refuser are you. So all good.

So you'd rather I take this hypothetical vaccine instead of the hypothetical person that is more in need of it than me (that has to be near by as they can't just send a single vaccine to someone thousands of miles away) who is more likely to end up in hospital than me in the first place?

At the risk of being accused of misunderstanding you, maybe you would like to rewrite that. I don't know what it is you are trying to say. Although the vaccine isn't hypothetical.

I'll happily wait my turn, even if that means every other person on the planet who is in a more vulnerable category than me gets it first.

Well it doesn't matter does it, because as you already said, you'll be having it when it's your turn. Which will be great because then you'll be protecting yourself and other people around you who may not be able to have it in the UK.

I'm of the opinion that you put your own oxygen mask on before trying to help other people. And if our economy is down the pan with people still locked away, there's very little we will be able to do to help others.

@nonono1

NO. I’ve lost my job over this pandemic, I’ve lost my home - I’m broken. I don’t give a shit about myself, but over my dead body will some random person in a country with a death rate lower than the UK’s get the vaccine before my DC.

I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I almost wish Trump was still in power - at least he’d tell the WHO to fuck off.

Sympathies @nonono1

I get where you're coming from re Trump - he was sceptical about a lot of these global supra-national bodies, and sometimes for good reason.

I look forward to WHO asking China, which came out of lockdown months ago, to pause its vaccination programme and wait for other countries.

If the WHO were a little more transparent and dared to stand up to China and do their job conducting a thorough investigation into the origins of the virus, I would have more respect for them. Besides which, i'm sick of the EU's sanctimonious. Especially when Germany, The Netherlands, Italy etc tried to negotiate buying vaccines for their own countries, before they were finally forced to share with other EU states. If they're in the EU and yet looking out for their own interests, why shouldn't we? Besides which, it's all semantics at this stage. We're some way off vaccinating our elderly and vulnerable. By the time that they've all had a second dose there may be more vaccines in circulation.

I agree with WHO.

We should vaccinate the priority groups 1-9 then we should pause.

There's no need to wait until we have vaccinated everyone in groups 1-9 before working out whether we have doses to spare. We already know that we do because we've secured enough bilateral 'me first' contracts, for vaccines that happen to have worked out well, to vaccinate our entire population at least twice over.

We have donated a lot of money to covax but you can't inject people with $$$ or £££ you need to be able to actually get hold of vaccine doses and you can't do that if you're a low/middle income country, or if you're covax, and the vaccine companies have prioritised all the 'us first' bilateral deals from wealthy nations because they're more lucrative.

Everyone seems to have suddenly, collectively forgotten that huge pharmaceutical companies are intensely driven by profit. This is understandable because we are dependent on them for vaccines so we regard these huge, incredibly wealthy corporations as our best shot at any sort of normal life ever and also not dying and not losing our loved ones.

It looks a lot like trauma bonding on a global scale.

People chat a lot of shit about WHO. I think a lot of people have been taken in over the past year by Trumpian propaganda without realising.

We don't know if we have spare anything can happen to supplied and also we don't know if we will have cases at lower levels by then.
We don't have spare now and won't of done 2 doses to those groups until spring .

Everyone seems to have suddenly, collectively forgotten that huge pharmaceutical companies are intensely driven by profit.

Even when doing it at cost?

Are you ok to not vaccinate police / teacher / fire / other for a fair bit longer whilst it’s paused?

People chat a lot of shit about WHO. I think a lot of people have been taken in over the past year by Trumpian propaganda without realising.

@LangClegsInSpace what an ill-informed comment. Suggestion: go educate yourself, starting with this:

apnews.com/article/who-china-act-quicker-stop-coronavirus-c9204041b189cebbeec84559c03529f4

I don't think people just take trumps views on WHO , they did make mistakes at the beginning .
The countries who closed borders are generally those doing better, not sure when who advise this , but at the beginning they were saying not needed , also masks etc etc

Can’t see it. Surely the uk government will want the 18-49’s out and spending. Not much good if they’re all still at home unvaccinated and we’re relying on the mainly retired / non working population to rebuild the economy.

If our death numbers weren't so high I'd be sagely nodding and agreeing but our death toll is awful. I'm glad the UK is helping fund covax but I'd like to see all the adults vaccinated in this country first before sending surplus abroad.

I know record keeping is not as advanced in some other countries but the UK has a death rate worse than the whole of Africa most days, the NHS is on it's knees and the economy is f*cked. Once that hopeful 99% per cent of deaths/ hospital admissions are prevented due to vaccination.

Yes, but would you "happily" return to your normal life? I.e. work without social distancing, screens, etc? Pubs & restaurants as normal? Crowded public transport?

Yes. I'm not worried in the slightest about getting COVID-19 myself. I would rather an older or at-risk person gets the vaccine before me, whether that be someone in a different city, or country, or continent.

We can't afford (mentally and financially) to stay in lockdown or even semi-lockdown for much longer. We really have to get rid of most of the restrictions by Summer, and be back to as near normal as possible by, say, September

If the under 50's are happy to let other countries have vaccines, then they need to accept they'll have to return to pretty much the normal lives, and risk themselves getting covid

Yep, fine by me. I'm only in lockdown to protect the vulnerable, and to stop the spread enough that our health system doesn't collapse. So once the vulnerable are all vaccinated (and assuming that means the health system is no longer at risk of collapse if we remove all restrictions, which is actually a good question that I'm not sure any of us laypeople know the answer to).

I actually presumed that most/all measures would be lifted by the time everyone at-risk and 50+ had been vaccinated anyway? We're surely not going to need to wait until EVERY adult has had it, are we? So at that point, whether I wait 3 months or a year to get the vaccine doesn't really bother me.

@littleowl1

This is the kind of reporting that annoys the crap out of me.

I quote: "WHO said countries should be aiming for 2bn doses to be “fairly distributed” around the world by the end of 2021."

Yes - "by the end of 2021".

There is already discussion that the UK will divert excess vaccine stocks it has on pre-order once the UK adult population is vaccinated. The UK has a HUGE excess ordered, far in excess of what it needs.

This is just The Guardian creating a story from nothing to get readership. Its journalism that plays on peoples fears.

There is no story here.

The UK is in prime position to vaccinate the UK population AND be the biggest donor to the world supply of vaccines in 2021.

Shame on the Guardian. Shoddy reporting.

Thanks for this post.

As much as you can critique the governments handling Boris being a huge libertarian will both benefit the U.K. because he's very pro vax and willing to invest in pharma and also place us on world stage because we will donate vaccines and have donated loads to covax.
I wouldn't be surprised if our army didn't get involved in administering vaccinations in developing countries.

I started the pandemic watching via the internet to the WHO briefings. I came from a position of respect and interest in science.

Everytime I see a thread that would be appropriate to pose this question on it's always 20odd pages long and I cba to read it all so apologies if it's been asked but...

I keep seeing it said that vaccinating all countries vulnerable and not just a select few would prevent new variants. But if the vaccines don't stop transmission then couldn't it still mutate? I thought vaccine just reduced severity of symptoms.

People chat a lot of shit about WHO. I think a lot of people have been taken in over the past year by Trumpian propaganda without realising
I think it was the other way round. People were already voicing concerns before Trump waded in.

@marbellamarc

what about younger BAME people are they in a priority group?

IMO they should be.

I know there is investment in working with BAME communities and their leaders to encourage vaccine uptake.