Vaccine tweaking 'not achievable'?

[MackenzieT]

From Sky:

Regular tweaking of vaccines not achievable and no evidence autumn boosters are needed, Oxford scientists says (13.23 post)

Oxford professor Sir Andrew Pollard said today that regular tweaking of vaccines is not "achievable".

He told the Science and Technology Committee of MPs: "If the aim is to try and stop transmission, and to stop symptomatic infection then I think there is no doubt that a tweaked vaccine would do that.
"The problem is that if we tweaked one for example now for the Delta variant, we may well have the Omega variant or the Exelon variant, or the Kappa variant, and you would have to then potentially be tweaking the vaccines very regularly,
"And I just don't think that is going to be achievable during this period'

I thought tweaking them regularly like the flu jabs was the way out of this and was being used to reassure us about emerging variants??

I read his full comments and I think what he means is that the current vaccines are working well.. there is no need to tweak them at the moment. And that you can’t just chase every variant as variants are going to crop up really often.
He seems pretty confident that Pfizer and Oxford can cope with the variants we’ve got. I guess if they need new vaccines in the future they will do them then

@DGFB

I read his full comments and I think what he means is that the current vaccines are working well.. there is no need to tweak them at the moment. And that you can’t just chase every variant as variants are going to crop up really often. He seems pretty confident that Pfizer and Oxford can cope with the variants we’ve got. I guess if they need new vaccines in the future they will do them then

This. He also says there’s no evidence that booster jabs will be needed at all.

@DGFB

I read his full comments and I think what he means is that the current vaccines are working well.. there is no need to tweak them at the moment. And that you can’t just chase every variant as variants are going to crop up really often. He seems pretty confident that Pfizer and Oxford can cope with the variants we’ve got. I guess if they need new vaccines in the future they will do them then

That’s a more positive take

I thought Chris Whitty or Patrick Valance have said before the mutations all seem to be along the similar lines so the scientists should be able to predict how the virus will mutate and get ahead of the game, as it were? And that's why you won't need to change the vaccine for every variant because as we're already seeing, one vaccine is highly effective even with a changing virus.

The oxford/AZ vaccine isn't as easy to tweak as the mrna ones. Might be something to do with his comments.

What PP have said but also that he forgot to add 'for the UK' to his sentence.

Vaccine companies were working on tweaked vaccines. Perhaps it will turn out that we don't need them - which would be great, but it's also the case that other countries might use them but just not the UK.

We have a government deliberately confusing contain and suppress with eliminate. Almost no other government in the world is doing the UK way - letting it spread umcontained, content to condemn 100s a day to an unpleasant and avoidable death, and many more to long term disability.

There's a reason why we are on the red list for many other countries. We are a high risk country that many places understandably want to restrict entry from.

I can see this causing issues at the next election.
What if one party want to eliminate or vax kids etc..

Tories are ridiculous theyve spent a fortune but still weve
ended up with all that missed education.
Our kids are going to be expected to catch it
So long covid
Lower herd immunity
More deaths
The outbreaks will mean more school missed
Affect holidays
More isolations or tests

Elimination is probably too difficult (thanks to countries like the UK). Containment and suppression on the other hand. Almost no country in the world isn't taking measures to suppress and contain. Possibly Brazil. But personally I don't want to emulate Brazil, a country where 1,300 babies have died.

Brazil is the direction extreme right wingers like Mark Harper and Steve Baker want to take the UK in. It's a country of extremes. The rich live in gated communities protected by private security. They face risks of very violent muggings or carjacking outside their gilded cages/prisons. The rest - the poor - live in absolute deprivation.

I knew this Greek letter business would be trouble and if a parliamentary stenographer/transcriber doesn’t know that the letter is “epsilon”, I was right.