Vaccine spacing

[Madwife123]

Considering the sudden rise in cases and numerous reports of fully vaccinated people catching covid, does anyone think maybe the governments gamble to administer the vaccine against the manufacturer recommendation hasn’t paid off?

Other countries don’t seem to have a rise as high as ours right now and it makes me wonder what they are doing differently.

What gamble against the manufacturer?

Can you link a source to that statement as that is not what I have read in the, admittingly small sample, of released research. I only concentrate on AZ as that is the vaccine we had.

Nothing has indicated a "gamble against the manufacturer" from their data.

So yeah a link would be most welcome if you could.

Sorry I’m meaning Pfizer. The manufacturer strongly suggested a 3 week gap and the U.K. decided to go with a 12 week gap. That was a gamble.

They are now saying 8 weeks is the best gap between the 2 but my small sample of anecdotal data shows that many of my colleagues (NHS) who had Pfizer 12 - 14 weeks apart as I did are now catching covid as vaccines are wearing off.

Quite a bit of further research on the extended gap for Pfizer as well after a very quick Google search.

Looks like many people with access to data have asked the same questions, I mean of course they do it's their job.

Basically it wasn't that much of a gamble, even at the time there were very clever informed people, it was in the press briefings, it was a very educated "gamble" that "paid off" because it was being balanced against a much greater number of people with some protection rather than a small number fully protected. Amongst other things.

This was all explained at the time there will be a record of all this.

As for other countries, the ones faring better might have fewer selfish individuals than the UK and don't whinge and whine about wearing a masks or showing a vaccine passport for certain settings (even France and they love a good kick off). So you need to look at everything rather than specific items in isolation.

Plus they have a better health service. Or at least more beds per heads of population.

It's very complicated.

I agree it’s complicated just makes me wonder if it has some bearing.

I had AZ 6 months ago and actually had my booster today. But, I caught Covid a month ago. No way of telling if it's because my vaccine was wearing off or if it would have happened anyway.

What I do know is that I caught Covid at work. I work in an office and spacing between desks was removed in the UK office when Covid restrictions were relaxed. Within days I had Covid (there was an outbreak at work). However, other European offices in my organisation are maintaining distancing between desks so no surprise that their Covid rates are lower.

@HundredMilesAnHour We all got it from school. A child in the class had a sibling who was positive and in line with the new rules they were still in school. Now there are 11 children in that class with it after that child later tested positive. 1 being my daughter. She then spread it around the rest of my home. But again according to the new rules if mg test was negative I could have gone into work with no need to isolate despite 4 people in my home testing positive in my home. I feel the government have reverted back to their herd immunity plan with the new rules but who knows.

@Madwife123 I totally agree about the herd immunity plan. It certainly feels like it. Despite outbreaks at work (which have been covered up), there are no plans to change anything so everyone in the office is still at risk on an ongoing basis.

Surely, if anything, the longer spacing helped, because it means people were fully vaccinated more recently than would otherwise have been the case, so not needing boosters quite so soon. The slow roll out of the booster jabs, and delayed decision making on whether or not to vaccinate schoolchildren or do anything else whatsoever to slow down spread of the virus as we come into winter and vaccine waning season, is what is affecting our case rates, not the decision months ago to have a longer gap between doses.

Don't they still argue the longer gap we went for has given us better immunity as we had this debate when Israel numbers shot up although think most other counties have 3 week gap with pfizer.

I don't agree with school kids only having 1 vaccine

@3asAbird They are saying 8 week gap has shown the best immunity and that’s now what we are doing. But myself and all the other NHS staff had 12-14 week gaps as was the advice back then.

@Walkaround Who knows if the vaccines would be wearing off so quickly if they were administered in the most effective way. 8 week gap has now been shown to give more immunity than the 12-14 week gap they initially went with.

@Madwife123 - well, a short gap was clearly not effective at maintaining long term immunity, judging by Israel’s experience. I am extremely doubtful about the extent of any serious evidence that 8 weeks is a sweet spot and that there is a serious issue with larger gaps than that. The glaringly obvious differences that will with the utmost certainty have an effect on case rates and illness are the UK’s treatment of immunisations for younger people, it’s higher use of AZ than the countries you appear to be comparing it to, its rejection of almost all mitigations outside of immunisation, and the speed of the rollout of its booster programmes. I don’t see an 8-12-week gap (especially as the gap was in any event narrowed to 8-weeks for vast numbers of people in the UK anyway….) as being a significant cause of higher UK case rates - not with the huge host of more obvious contenders.