Julia9054
Guru
- Location
- Knaresborough
Turns out this has now been amended to remove inhaled corticosteroid users from group 6 and include only those on oral steroids. Great.
COVID Vaccine !
- Thread starter kingrollo
- Start date
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lane
Veteran
Oh. Well that didn't last long. To be honest I was surprised to see it because I saw a report yesterday that asthma sufferers are under represented amoung serious covid cases. The thinking is that the steroid inhaler provided some protection from covid and they might be used as a wider community treatment. I think most oral steroid users would be CEV group 4 anyway which brings us back to the original argument.
My original link to the BBC article this morning also said broadly people who get the flu jab in group 6 which includes asthma sufferers. As well as explicitly saying inhailed steroid users.strange.
Julia9054
Guru
- Location
- Knaresborough
Nice to know one’s inhaler gives one superpowers! (Caveat, small scale study not yet peer reviewed)
Julia9054
Guru
- Location
- Knaresborough
I was rather hoping that if I was in group 6 there would be a chance I’d be vaccinated before being deposited back in the plague pit that is a large secondary school. It seems not though.
lane
Veteran
Yes I thought that was the case. Can only hope that the new testing regime helps at schools but there are a lot of question marks over that. I am leaving my job at the end of this month so won't be going back into a school myself. Various reasons but covid was one consideration. Not classroom based but not sure that makes much difference in a school. Good luck.
Rusty Nails
We remember
- Location
- Living in the slow lane
Is there much data on transmission within school settings? Between September and Christmas there were 5 confirmed cases at our girls high school, but none of them caught at the school, and none of them seemed to pass it on to anyone in the school. Similar situation in our sons primary, with no evidence of transmission within the school.
This was rather surprising to us, specially as the bubbles at the high school are enormous, round about 100 pupils in each. How has it been in other schools?
Julia9054
Guru
- Location
- Knaresborough
70 cases in my secondary school (2000 pupils) between September and December. In an area where cases in the community have been on the low side. PHE told us this was expected numbers
This is a good thread on Twitter which pulls together the evidence
View: https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1346362159446577154?s=19
lane
Veteran
The Government have various studies they quote which suggest that transmission in schools is not an issue. The studies I have seen appear flawed to me. Some for example were conducted during lockdown when schools were largely empty! Others in September when community rates were low and schools had not long opened. Others ignored children and staff who were absent from school with Covid and only looked at cases in school at the time. Sorry I don't have links this is from memory but I did not see one study that made sense to me anyway.
What I will say is I have two children one in a secondary school and one in a 6th form college. Now the one in the secondary school the measures were typical of those applied in most schools; there were quite a number of reported cases and also among staff. Another schools I know of locally had 11 teachers with covid at one time - which is about 15% to 20% of the workforce at one time (that was in addition to support staff).
Where my son goes 6th form college - they were a lot more serious about controlling covid. For a start masks worn all the time in the college including in class and teachers had to wear them as well; they were a lot more stringent on ventilation, also could only mix in small groups in break. They had noticeably fewer cases and hardly any among the staff.
Sorry a bit off topic but just answering the question that has been asked.
I’m mixed on schools, I thought our local secondary handled things better , where as others were clearly in bother. In fact one headmaster pleaded with the local community to stop having over night stays at friends houses !
I know BioNTech have said the development was never impeded by a lack of money. The technique was discovered by what turned into Curevac in Tübingen. The company was financed by Dietmar Hopp extremely rich founder of SAP, together with money from Bill Gates' Foundation, which no doubt will get conspiracy theorists going. Basically private enterprise has been at the back of it. Over the pandemic both German government and EU money has been made available.
It was Hopp incidentally who would not have allowed Trump to buy up Curevac and take the expertise to America on an 'America First' basis.
What von der Leyen got wrong was ordering too late and too little. To what extent that has held back the vaccination programme overall I don't know, but in theory it could be three months were lost. It really ought to be investigated, and her admission of mistakes was likewise too little and too late.
If comparisons have to be made, they should be between the EU and USA, as the difference there more accurately reflects the procurement policy. Trump deserves some credit for the US achievement.
What she cannot be blamed for is the enormous shortfall in the amounts promised but not delivered, both by Pfizer and AZ. The vaccine simply isn't yet being produced in sufficient quantities for a significant proportion of the EU population to be vaccinated.
There are countries from the poorer parts of the EU who are grateful for receiving any vaccine at all, they wouldn't have but for the joint approach to purchasing.
Also something that is in real danger of being forgotten is the situation in the developing countries. I was reading of an African country (I've forgotten which) with a population of millions which to date has receive 25 doses of vaccine. In all the interminable discussion programmes on this I have seen only a couple of people have brought this up. Desirable as it is to vaccinate the population of the richer West, there is a very real danger of others being left behind, and the virus and its mutations running riot across the African continent until the end of the year when the richer countries have done their populations.
dutchguylivingintheuk
Über Member
Well if you go by the tabloids we would have an all out war right now, but what i meant was the eu's very quickly withdrawn blockage of the pfizer vaccine or attempts to do so. You see if you block certain countries in this case mainly the uk because your not satified with your supplier you make it political, you directly or indirectly blame the country since the blockage was mainly aimed at the uk(Canada received assurances their supply would not be blocked) So from the eu it was the first steps of a vaccine war, ironcally they started the whole vaccine program to prevent just that. Thankfully in the meantime they came to their senses and admitted their mistake.
- Location
- Somewhere wet & hilly in NW England.
Odd situation:
Me 64, wife 57 - both with no UHC's. Wife gets invite today (booked for tomorrow) and I haven't despite being in a higher priority group.
How strange, although I am chuffed she is getting hers done.
Me 64, wife 57 - both with no UHC's. Wife gets invite today (booked for tomorrow) and I haven't despite being in a higher priority group.
How strange, although I am chuffed she is getting hers done.
Julia9054
Guru
- Location
- Knaresborough
Wow - 57! Your area is doing well. Very odd they haven’t invited you though. Where does the invitation come from? Is it from your GP or from somewhere central?
