Lib Dems: UK Must Give Away Vaccine once Vulnerable are Done

[FizzyPepsi]

I see the Lib Dems are now arguing that the UK should start giving away its vaccine stock to other countries as soon as the top 4 vulnerable groups are done this month.

Is this the approach we should be taking as a country?

Or should we be doing everything possible to get as many of our own citizens vaccinated so we can protect them and start removing restrictions?

twitter.com/laylamoran/status/1357358428805595137?s=21

No Layla Moran is saying that.

Ed Davey is trying to ensure that unpaid carers are included in group 6.

Should add that Ed Davey is currently an unpaid carer and has been one for various relations through out his life.

Not that I needed another reason not to vote Lib Dem but..... it's lovely they're putting all the citizens of countries that have managed this pandemic better than our government with lower death rates (we have the highest death rate) ahead of the many, many citizens who probably do have underlying conditions but due to the crapness of this government and underfunding of the NHS don't know yet, because they haven't been able to have a hospital appointment.

Also, other countries aren't sending teachers back to work without PPE or ventilation, or smaller class sizes, or blended learning. They are actually doing something to protect these frontline workers whereas here the vaccination is the only thing that's being offered at all (and in fact only to SEN teachers at the moment I think).

If we had covid secure working conditions across the uk and if our death rate and infection rate was comparable then maybe but whilst we're still the lurgy island of death with the NHS on its knees I don't really see why this is reasonable.

Ffs! I agree fully with @IloveJKRowling

Getting cracking with the vaccines is one of the very few things this country has actually got right. We’re finally making some progress after having one of the worst (THE worst?) death rates per capita in the world. We’ve got variants popping up right left and centre and the last thing we want to do is abandon our vaccination program leaving more than half the country unvaccinated, allowing the virus to once again take hold.

Also, people outside the vulnerable groups may be lower risk but they’re not zero risk. Do we really want to risk a large chunk of younger ‘healthy’ people dying / becoming seriously ill or suffering long covid?

I appreciate we need to help others who are way behind in getting their citizens vaccinated at some point, but now is not the time surely? We’re constantly told what a precarious position we’re still in and given how much of a toll this is all having on everyone in the country I really don’t think it’s a good idea

How do you judge vulnerability though? Yes, the oldest are the ones most likely to require hospitalisation and have the most deaths, but there are cases of young apparently healthy people becoming severely ill from covid, and long covid will affect our health services and economy.
From a purely selfish standpoint I'd quite like my adult children in their thirties protected too, one has to travel lots for work, so what would happen in countries requiring vaccination certificates?

No, the government should crack on until everybody (who wants to be) is vaccinated and then consider distributing vaccines elsewhere.

No the government's first responsibility is to its own citizens.

We need to get people vaccinated so we can open back up, as otherwise we might not be able to afford to help these other countries out in future.

I think we should crack on with vaccinating as many of our own citizens as can be done (and then be generous with our supplies if we have them left over)

I don't necessarily agree with her (although some rich countries getting the vast majority of vaccines way ahead of most poorer countries is certainly an issue worthy of debate) but I did read an article saying that Norway are doing this already:
www.telegraph.co.uk/global-health/science-and-disease/norway-share-covid-19-vaccine-poorer-countries-time-protecting/

LibDems, especially Layla Moran, are divorced from reality.

@Againstmachine

No the government's first responsibility is to its own citizens.

We need to get people vaccinated so we can open back up, as otherwise we might not be able to afford to help these other countries out in future.

This. Has the woman not noticed that shops and schools are closed and the risk of maybe not death but certainly illness, hospitalisation and long term health effects would potentially decimate our non-vaccinated workforce? I hope Lib Dems distance themselves from her.

No. Crack on with vaccinating everyone in this country first, for the many very good reasons that PPs have already said.

The vaccination programme is the only thing we’ve got right so far!

She can fuck off

Is this is why the Lib dems remain an electoral irrelevance. Remember their "This your next Prime Minister Jo Swinson!"

The thing is that many 'poorer' countries have infection rates massively lower - 100x lower - than ours

So their population is far less likely to catch covid than people in this country.

Vaccinating people in this country - where rates are super high - is the best way to prevent the greatest number of deaths. Surely that's what we should be aiming for?

Reducing the hotspots of high infection globally is the way to prevent new vaccine evading variants and you don't really get anywhere more infected than the UK. Unless the UK is going to be cut off from the rest of the world completely vaccinating highest infection countries first would actually benefit everyone (after all we've already gifted the world the Kent variant).

Ghana (widely considered to be poorer than the UK) has approx half the population of the UK. They have covid rates of 14/100k. Is there ANYWHERE in the UK with rates that low now? Our hospitals weren't overwhelmed when we had rates that low. Some parts of the UK never had rates that low.

They've had 433 deaths. We've had 100,000. Even if you assume their rates are underreported, there is no way they could hide the levels of mortality and morbidity comparable to the UK.

graphics.reuters.com/world-coronavirus-tracker-and-maps/countries-and-territories/ghana/

It really matters what Moran's ill thought out tweet means. Even countries like Brazil who have fared far less well have lower rates of infection than us currently and have a considerably lower per capita death rate (Brazil is 1k per million, we are 1.6k per million according to the Reuters covid tracker).

Pharmaceutical companies have ethical responsibilities to provide certain proportion to poorer countries, which they are doing. Our government's first responsibility is to our country, we are not the distributor.

@IloveJKRowling I'm not disputing rates in African are significantly lower (much younger populations) but the rates and deaths figures for covid in most African countries. are likely highly inaccurate due to lack of testing etc

Haven't we contributed quite a proportionality large amount of money to the covax scheme?

And at this stage, we're certainly one of the countries most in need of vaccines.

some rich countries getting the vast majority of vaccines way ahead of most poorer countries is certainly an issue worthy of debate

Agreed. We should be doing way more to help these nations not just gloating that we got it first.

I'm not hearing people gloat about having the vaccine first. More, recognition that we made some mistakes early on which led to incredibly high infection and death rates.
We now have got it right with the vaccination programme, but oh my, we have so much 'fixing' to do through it and much that sadly can't be undone.
We still have a generous international aid programme, but are in no position to potentially decimate our workforce, our economy and health system by giving vaccinations away.

I get that we should generally redistribute things from those who have most, to those who need most. But globally we are poor at doing that. We could alleviate poverty, hunger, lack of access to medical care etc. Yet we don't do that all that much - as a country we give a pitiful amount to foreign aid. So why start now, with this, when it's having a huge impact on our lives?

If we don't continue the vaccination programme beyond group 4, we have 2 choices - stay locked down for ages or let covid rip through those under 70. For the latter option, the number of deaths and long term health impacts are not negligible. For the former, it's bleak.

If we want to save a load of lives in poorer countries, we could easily do that in different ways. We could contribute to tackling malaria or whatever. It wouldn't be exactly the same lives we save - it wouldn't be the over 70s, it might well be younger people.

I'm sure they would just love to hand them for free to the EU if they were able to.

Thankfully most people have more sense than to vote Lib Dem so they don't get to make the decisions.

I get that we should generally redistribute things from those who have most, to those who need most.

I agree. In this case, the UK is one of a few countries who needs the most - it's one of the countries with the poorest record of deaths, infections and the springing up of new variants which take over because there's piss poor control over the virus....

If we say divert our vaccine, that we were going to give to say 40-50 year olds (exactly the age group that will have secondary school children) to poorer countries, to people with a much much lower chance of infection as rates of covid 100x lower than here. Then open schools with no additional safety measures until the rates in secondary pupils are where they were in December, then we have the virus ripping through the 40-50 year old parents. Some die, some kids bereaved, but more importantly from a global pandemic viewpoint, a lot of chance for new variants to get a foothold.

In the longer term, it might actually be better for the populations of the poorer countries to wait for the vaccine and there be no opportunity in the UK for a vaccine resisting variant developing.

For countries like Brazil, it's a different story as they've been affected badly and (I assume) do not have the healthcare capacity of the UK. But just to say give the vaccine to poor countries where covid rates are low is actually not doing those countries a favour. The best thing we could do is to aim for zero covid globally, which if vaccination goes well in those countries with highest rates of infection, might be possible (maybe I'm dreaming, but I think we have a window for this)

Is it really more effective to focus vaccination on places where infection rates are lower? I read the article and this isn’t mentioned.

X post!