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

We need to be getting everyone vaccinated ASAP so the availability of hosts is hopefully reduced and the opportunity for mutations to develop is reduced. I believe we've ordered more than we need so we need to get the excess sent to the poorer countries. I think it's a bit like the putting your own oxygen mask on on the depressurised plane before helping others though. We need to sort ourselves out first

We might have ordered more than we need, but we haven’t actually got all these surplus vaccines. They are only ordered

The UK have pledged £548 million to covax.
That's significantly more than most countries. And that's not included in the aid budget-it's extra money.

As a comparison, the EU has pledged 500 million euros.
We've already said that we will give the excess vaccines away (after we've vaccinated our own population)

Layla Moran is wrong.

I agree we need to vaccinate our own population. It would be good to have a considered plan what to do with any stock we don't need and also to make sure we don't have any vaccine going out of date.

I do also wonder about children going back to school especially in secondary, where they are nearly adults and it is very crowded. We may need to think about vaccinating children at some point (after the adults, who are more at risk). That would protect more vulnerable children and also help to stop new variants developing or spreading in schools with all the risks that go with that.

I think it's a bit like the putting your own oxygen mask on on the depressurised plane before helping others though. We need to sort ourselves out first

great analogy.

If we don't do more to prevent airborne transmission in schools and we open them up too soon we could very well be fucked because that's the ideal environment for new variants to spread. And it's not just schools - other workplaces are flouting the rules and pressuring employees to come in sick or not isolate and facing no consequences.

The Lib Dems would do better to address that and lobby government to spend money to make schools safer and improve the money available for isolation, improve pressure on industry to be covid safe - but no, let's talk about anything other than the very big problem in our midst.

Incidentally, in crowded workplaces and schools - ideal environment for new variants - a large proportion if not all of the people there will be under 50 so vaccinating down to 50 won't do a lot to help that problem.

And the thing is, if a new vaccine-evading variant is given a free run of it in crowded schools or workplaces, it doesn't just affect us, it affects the rest of the world too.

Given the government seems ideologically opposed to investing in schools to make them safer, or requiring employers to care for their employees and the wider community, then vaccination is our only way out and needs to happen before everything is opened up fully.

The Opposition seem to be adamant to suggest anything that will sabotage the government's efforts.

In this case their poor advice should be ignored TBH

I think there’s a discussion to be had about the ethics and morality of a country like the U.K. knowingly over ordering vaccines in times of global crisis and then trying to bullshit people into believing we are the great benefactors again when Matt Hancock does a press conference about how we will distribute the leftover vaccines to countries in need.

However, I think the reality is that the U.K. is on its knees because of the poor management of the pandemic by the people in charge. Boris Johnson et al may not want to admit, but the U.K. is one of those vulnerable countries. It’s not the image they want so they’ll spin it, but they fucked it up so badly that they had to put all their eggs in one basket and cross their fingers that at least one vaccine worked.

I am in my 40s and would like a vaccination that I have paid for with my tax pound as soon as my turn comes up. My work is saying that if we don’t get vaccinated we won’t be allowed back to the office. I will be more than a bit miffed if that dose then goes elsewhere.

@Blessex I don't know how big your employer is but I'd hope businesses would be vocal to the government about this. It's good they seem to care for their employees at least (so many businesses seemingly don't these days).

Business taxes have also gone to fund buying vaccines. They are suffering as long as the pandemic is out of control in this country and I would imagine a large number of any workforce is below 50.

From an economic idea, it's a shit idea to only vaccinate the less economically active part of the population and allow infection to continue in the more economically active portion. It certainly seems that there is no such thing as long term immunity if you catch covid - and no-one knows what repeated infections will look like in terms of health costs. We already know there is a high number of people with long covid, whose ability to work is potentially compromised.

@IloveJKRowling it’s a big global employer that is wanting all its workforce and families vaccinated. It is not going as far as mandating it but it will not make it comfortable if not vaccinated. In poorer countries for every 2 vaccines it buys for its employees it is giving one back to the country. And yep this virus is not nice even if you recover from it. Being in my 40s I am hanging on for mine. So the people saying that we will give vaccines away before we are vaccinated - well they can go away. Very interested to understand if these same people fall into the ‘vulnerable’ group so will be vaccinated themselves.

From an economic idea, it's a shit idea to only vaccinate the less economically active part of the population and allow infection to continue in the more economically active portion.

In some ways we are not vacinating the people who have to go out, but vacinating the ones who can stay at home.

It makes sense to vaccinate the most vulnerable first, to ease pressure on the NHS, it does not make sense (economically, in terms of variants or in any other way) to stop there.

I think you could argue that actually it is fairer to countries less affected to vaccinate our entire population before sharing - we're the one that caused the Kent variant, now causing havoc worldwide. Since we seem intent on not bothering to mask up properly, as a country, or try and get to zero covid, if we don't vaccinate all adults (at least) then we're going to be a breeding ground for variants and be lurching from lockdown to lockdown for some time.

Also we'll be a two tier society with those over 50 jetting off on holiday while those under 50 plod on with working with few worker protections against a horrible disease. That would go down with the younger working population like a cold bucket of sick.

we're the one that caused the Kent variant

There's people saying that the Kent one didn't actually originate in Kent(it being home to a huge port) but was first discovered there.

The WHO and Lib Dem’s can get bent as far as I’m concerned.

With regards to covid we have some of the worst death rates globally and no ones really talking about the numbers whose health has been affected long term. From a covid perspective we are one of the countries that need help right now - lucky for the rest of the world that we’ve had the resources and good fortune to source our own solution.

The UK has an undeniably dodgy global history as do many other western countries but we absolutely land near top of the table when it comes to foreign aid and global partnerships for working towards other humanitarian issues. We’ll get back to that once we’ve sorted out our own crisis.

we're the one that caused the Kent variant, now causing havoc worldwide

We no more ‘caused’ the Kent variant than Italy ‘caused’ the European covid outbreak. It’s a virus doing what viruses do. Language designed to assign blame isn’t particularly helpful to anyone.

Why the need for this . The government is already investing into the international vaccination scheme which will be centrally controlled to ensure vaccinations distributed fairly across the world.

@Unsure33

Why the need for this . The government is already investing into the international vaccination scheme which will be centrally controlled to ensure vaccinations distributed fairly across the world.

There is no need for it, this is just the wittering of Layla Moran of the LibDems.

@Unsure33

Why the need for this . The government is already investing into the international vaccination scheme which will be centrally controlled to ensure vaccinations distributed fairly across the world.

I’m not really trying to be inflammatory here, but our government openly states we ordered much much more than we needed. As I see it, that means that we actively deprived other people of buying a vaccine? Am I overly simplifying it?

In my head, it’s like if I went to the shop and bought all the bread, despite knowing I’d never need 60 loaves. Once I’ve eaten my 30 loaves, I then give the loaves to the people I stopped from buying the loaves I knew I bought too many of anyway and expecting them to be grateful.

In my head, it’s like if I went to the shop and bought all the bread, despite knowing I’d never need 60 loaves. Once I’ve eaten my 30 loaves, I then give the loaves to the people I stopped from buying the loaves I knew I bought too many of anyway and expecting them to be grateful

I think you are over simplifying a bit - to be more comparable, you would have needed to pre-order 60 speciality loaves before the baker knew the recipe worked. Without a pre-order, its possible that the bread wouldn't have existed in the first place.

The other issue is that at the moment the UK really needs vaccines, because of the high transmission and death rate compared to other places. Obviously it's tempting to make up arguments to not share - but that doesn't mean that there are no objective arguments for prioritising vaccinating the UK.

Laylamoran needs to go and visit a few ICU’s around the country first and speak to the relatives of younger patients (there are plenty under 60s). Let’s see what she thinks after that. If they give a way vaccines and young people continue to die or suffer long term consequences , there will be a big fallout and anger in society.
It simply isn’t true that this disease only affects people above 70 and those formally identified by GPs as vulnerable in our country. If it really were just a “cold” for others then I would agree with her but the disease is Russian roulette so we have no choice but to vaccinate everyone.

@Musicaldilemma And she is talking about long Covid all over her Twitter...

I’m not really trying to be inflammatory here, but our government openly states we ordered much much more than we needed. As I see it, that means that we actively deprived other people of buying a vaccine? Am I overly simplifying it?

The government (and others) put money into vaccine development by pre-ordering them at the point of development on the basis it was a gamble that the vaccines might be unsuccessful; when everyone was talking about huge investments in vaccine development that’s where the money came from.

Nobody expected in spring 2020 that almost twelve months later we would have so many successful vaccines and were prepared for most of them to fail their trials. Now the pressure is on the physical manufacture of the vaccine itself and logistics.

We’re not hoarding physical vaccines we’ve simply got orders waiting to be filled. As a country that’s suffered pretty badly from covid (understatement) the received vaccines are being used as quickly as they’re being delivered because we’re trying to stem the current outbreak.

I have every confidence that the vaccines we have no use for will be distributed elsewhere in the globe but at the moment we’re the ones that need them.

Apart from anything else, it is very much in our selfish interest to defeat the virus abroad too. No one is suggesting we stop vaccinating our own population but if we can do anything to help vaccinate people abroad too I am very much in favour of that.

I also like that people are discussing the Lib Dems. That's pretty niche these days :)

No one is suggesting we stop vaccinating our own population

Except that vaccinating other countries in parallel does mean slowing down vaccination here.

Nobody is suggesting that the vaccine does not need to be distributed abroad. The question is whether it is a good idea to slow down vaccination in a country that has a very high rate of infection and death now.

Norway has said they will donate vaccines, but Norway has only had 532 deaths for a country of about 5 million.

Meanwhile, the Lib Dems also want more vaccines to go to teachers.

It's not so easy when you are in power and would have the job of deciding which vaccines should be delayed.