Vaccine Megathread - See OP for threadbans

Level 42

This is utter madness restricting it to 50 plus.who does this butler think she is

banana republic

Is it likely 49 year olds will be vaccinated with Pfizer long before many in their 50s with "inferior jab in some people's eyes". This is a nightmare for hse. Do they shoehorn all people in their 50s with jandj and get on with vaccinating 40s.

lucernarian

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

Ah I don't agree with you there. Very difficult to overrule medical advice like this. If NIAC's advice is more openly worded e.g. preference to use J&J for over 50s but safe at all ages, then the government would have a free hand. Let's see what the advice actually says when published, but their advice on AZ left very little wriggle room.

Are they considering potential for future lawsuits by an unlucky few who end up seriously injured by a blood clot, or what? It's hard to make sense of NIAC's rationale given Janssen seems to have a better safety profile than AZ to begin with...

Cork2021

Will the wider needs of the public be taken on board? No they won’t, as we’ve seen since last February!
Due to an abundance of caution our hospitality and tourism industry will go to the wall!
Who would’ve imagined a more restrictive summer in 2021 compared to 2020, even with vaccines!
It’s a joke!
The motto should be jab jab jab and move on!
Feeling this roadmap that’ll be published Friday will be pessimistic at best and will cost us!
Just look at the front page of the examiner today! Troika level cuts coming!
We can avoid some of this!!

marno21

We will now be in a bizarre situation where in June we'll be giving the most effective vaccines to healthy 18 year olds and less effective vaccines to people in their 50s for a disease where the number one risk factor is increase in age.

There is a very very poor understanding of risk management being applied here.

hmmm

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

Ah I don't agree with you there. Very difficult to overrule medical advice like this. If NIAC's advice is more openly worded e.g. preference to use J&J for over 50s but safe at all ages, then the government would have a free hand. Let's see what the advice actually says when published, but their advice on AZ left very little wriggle room.

Agreed on the wriggle room. There's no magic cutoff at 50, the advice from the CMO has to have a flexibility in it (and if there isn't you have to ask about the quality of the advice).

For example, why are men under 50 excluded and based on what data was this decision made? If the government even said that group could be included it would avoid any risk of unused vaccines.

Stark

Strazdas wrote: »

Yes but there is also the issue of trying to get that age cohort done before moving on to the 40s and 30s. It's hard to imagine a scenario where healthy people in their 30s would be getting vaccinated whilst those in their fifties hadn't even received their first dose yet.

is_that_so wrote: »

I'm not so sure about that. I think most of the J&J is coming in June and they will want to be down to the 30s at that point. I am so glad I don't have to plan this!

It's funny, Denmark has no issue with vaccinating under-30s before 35 - 54 years olds on the basis that they're responsible for the bulk of transmission so it means being able to drive case numbers down sooner and open up sooner. Totally different political landscape though. Donnelly merely asking the question of whether it makes sense to do the same here meant outrage dialled up to 11.

PropJoe10

If this J&J decision delays our vaccination program then someone should be forced to answer for it. What information does the Irish authority have that neither the EMA nor the US agency have?

You've about a 1 in 6000 chance of developing a blood clot on a long haul flight. Yet, we're now limiting this vaccine due to a 1 in around 1 million chance (reported) of getting a blood clot. Madness.

AdamD

hmmm wrote: »

It's Professor Butler. I don't blame NIAC here, they do what they do and recommend. The Government ultimately makes the decision, and it needs to consider the wider needs of the country.

But we know they won't do that because they'll be utterly lynched by the media for going against the medical advice.

We now have two medical bodies preaching absolute caution, but actually conflicting eachother because of it. One body will continue to make recommendations to keep large sections of society closed until we reach herd immunity, the other body is saying the virus isn't dangerous enough to young people to justify taking these 2 vaccines.

Its absolutely nuts and looks like they're just out to save their own backs

Level 42

absolute sh1t show the whole vaccine roll out

KrustyUCC

AdamD wrote: »

But we know they won't do that because they'll be utterly lynched by the media for going against the medical advice.

We now have two medical bodies preaching absolute caution, but actually conflicting eachother because of it. One body will continue to make recommendations to keep large sections of society closed until we reach herd immunity, the other body is saying the virus isn't dangerous enough to young people to justify taking these 2 vaccines.

Its absolutely nuts and looks like they're just out to save their own backs

Plus Karina Butler of NIAC is a part of NPHET

MerlinSouthDub

hmmm wrote: »

Agreed on the wriggle room. There's no magic cutoff at 50, the advice from the CMO has to have a flexibility in it (and if there isn't you have to ask about the quality of the advice).

For example, why are men under 50 excluded and based on what data was this decision made? If the government even said that group could be included it would avoid any risk of unused vaccines.

Yes hopefully the CMO inserts some wriggle room. If i were the government, I'd jump on any wriggle room available!

Another issue that concerns me is that we are going to end up using a lot of J&J and AZ in the 50-70 age group, and very little Pfizer. While I think all of the vaccines are very good, it would surprise me greatly if one dose J&J and AZ end up being as good as Pfizer, particularly on the new variants. At a minimum, it would be better if we had more diversity of vaccines used in the age group, rather than mostly AZ in 60 - 69 and possibly mostly J&J in the 50-59 age group.

Valhallapt

If the allow J&J to the whole population maybe one person will die from a blood clot. If they restrict it, lockdown will continue for an additional 6-8 weeks, I fear the death rate from mental health issues would be much higher.

KrustyUCC

There should be no more Pfizer used in those age groups bar dose 2s and those with medical needs

AZ needs to be used for all 60-69 year olds and J&J 50-59 now that NIAC have limited their use to those age groups

marno21

PropJoe10 wrote: »

If this J&J decision delays our vaccination program then someone should be forced to answer for it. What information does the Irish authority have that neither the EMA nor the US agency have?

You've about a 1 in 6000 chance of developing a blood clot on a long haul flight. Yet, we're now limiting this vaccine due to a 1 in around 1 million chance (reported) of getting a blood clot. Madness.

In fairness, the blood clots on a flight are different to the blood clots given by the adenovirus viral vector vaccines. This type of blood clot from the vaccine is much rarer (CVST).

That said, with the J&J vaccine, the risk is utterly minimal. If we give out 600k vaccines in Q2, there is a 60% chance that one person will suffer fatal side effects from the vaccine. 60% of one person out of 600k.

It's downright awful risk management.

Strazdas

Woody79 wrote: »

Is it likely 49 year olds will be vaccinated with Pfizer long before many in their 50s with "inferior jab in some people's eyes". This is a nightmare for hse. Do they shoehorn all people in their 50s with jandj and get on with vaccinating 40s.

I'm not sure why people think that people in their 50s won't be given Pfizer and Moderna. If the aim is to work progressively down through the cohorts, then the logical thing to do would be to give all three vaccines to people in their fifties (i.e. whatever is available at that moment). Simply giving them J & J only and leaving hundreds of thousands of them to wait for many weeks until more J & J doses become available makes absolutely no sense.

Miike

The J&J decision has left me baffled anyway!

MerlinSouthDub

Strazdas wrote: »

I'm not sure why people think that people in their 50s won't be given Pfizer and Moderna. If the aim is to work progressively down through the cohorts, then the logical thing to do would be to give all three vaccines to people in their fifties (i.e. whatever is available at that moment). Simply giving them J & J only and leaving hundreds of thousands of them to wait for many weeks until more J & J doses become available makes absolutely no sense.

But, with your approach, we end up with hundreds of thousands of unused J&J vaccines.

Turtwig

PropJoe10 wrote: »

You've about a 1 in 6000 chance of developing a blood clot on a long haul flight. Yet, we're now limiting this vaccine due to a 1 in around 1 million chance (reported) of getting a blood clot. Madness.

One is a treatable clotting condition. The other is a severe clotting disorder where currently about 40% of cases are fatal.

Current incident rate for J&J is still being narrowed down.
Incident rate for AZ is around 1 in 125k.

Your comparison not like for like. The incidence rate you use of 1 in a million will very likely end being higher as the stats and reporting are still in flux.

ACitizenErased

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

But, with your approach, we end up with hundreds of thousands of unused J&J vaccines.

this point is constantly constantly missed on here

Sweet.Science

KrustyUCC wrote: »

There should be no more Pfizer used in those age groups bar dose 2s and those with medical needs

AZ needs to be used for all 60-69 year olds and J&J 50-59 now that NIAC have limited their use to those age groups

Then younger people will be vaccinated before older people due to supply

It's a farce . Typical really but no surprising

ACitizenErased

Turtwig wrote: »

One is a treatable clotting condition. The other is a severe clotting disorder where currently about 40% of cases are fatal.

Current incident rate for J&J is still being narrowed down.
Incident rate for AZ is around 1 in 125k.

Your comparison not like for like. The incidence rate you use of 1 in a million will very likely end being higher than as the stats and reporting are still in flux.

Both are treatable clotting conditions*. FDA J&J pause was for the exact reason of summarising treatments.

Flange/Flanders

Cork2021 wrote: »

Will the wider needs of the public be taken on board? No they won’t, as we’ve seen since last February!
Due to an abundance of caution our hospitality and tourism industry will go to the wall!
Who would’ve imagined a more restrictive summer in 2021 compared to 2020, even with vaccines!
It’s a joke!
The motto should be jab jab jab and move on!
Feeling this roadmap that’ll be published Friday will be pessimistic at best and will cost us!
Just look at the front page of the examiner today! Troika level cuts coming!
We can avoid some of this!!

I agree, the country wont take much more sustained periods of lockdown, especially if the hospital numbers keep falling. I cant understand NIACs precaution, are they afraid of some lawsuits that may arise out of the vaccines?! The risks of clots is much higher in Covid so I cant understand why they're being so cautious. Maybe it's because they feel that Pfizer will be readily available but that wouldnt be right either, it should be analysed independent of other vaccines and leave it up to the govt to decide which one is best. Noone would have thought that Boris Johnson actually appears somewhat competent but that's all due to the vaccine roll out! Unless they start planning for opening up, people are just going to go up the north!!

KrustyUCC

Sweet.Science wrote: »

Then younger people will be vaccinated before older people due to supply

It's a farce . Typical really but no surprising

True but like Merlin said then you end up with unused vaccines if you give the older groups Pfizer or Moderna when younger groups can't take AZ or J&J

Farce is right

I'd love to know what NIAC were discussing for three days and yet they came up with this crap decision

Miike

Do we have expected numbers form J&J deliveries over the coming months?

Edit: 605,000 by end of June, supposedly.

Turtwig

Miike wrote: »

The J&J decision has left me baffled anyway!

I was fearful they'd go with 60 and not allow any exceptions for the various community groups. It goes to show how low my expectations were that I was actually, sort of, pleasantly surprised they went with 50 and made provision for the various minority groups that HIQA wanted the vaccine reserved for.

Strazdas

MerlinSouthDub wrote: »

But, with your approach, we end up with hundreds of thousands of unused J&J vaccines.

We would deal with that when we come to it. As some have said, reserving the best vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna for healthy young people in their 20s and 30s wouldn't make much sense either. There is a strong logic to people in their 50s getting them (alongside J & J).

Strazdas

Strazdas wrote: »

I'm not sure why people think that people in their 50s won't be given Pfizer and Moderna. If the aim is to work progressively down through the cohorts, then the logical thing to do would be to give all three vaccines to people in their fifties (i.e. whatever is available at that moment). Simply giving them J & J only and leaving hundreds of thousands of them to wait for many weeks until more J & J doses become available makes absolutely no sense.

HSE has to implement this operationally.

If they do what you suggested hundreds of thousands of jandj go wasted in June and overall rollout slows.

To keep rollout fast 50s may be the sacrificial lambs unfortunately.

Don't blame me blame NIAC.

NIAC have dumped this on hse.

Turtwig

ACitizenErased wrote: »

Both are treatable clotting conditions*. FDA J&J pause was for the exact reason of summarising treatments.

The treatment, prognosis and timeliness of intervention required for one is markedly different to the other.

is_that_so

Miike wrote: »

Do we have expected numbers form J&J deliveries over the coming months?

Edit: 605,000 by end of June, supposedly.

Which is about the size of 50-59 age group. To paraphrase Varadkar we will have 4 vaccines for the over 50s but only 2 (really only one) for the under 50s!