Vaccine Megathread - See OP for threadbans

revelman

Lucas Hood wrote: »

17,226 vaccines done Monday.

1,174,292 now have a first dose. This is 30% of the population over 16 with a first dose. If my back-of-the-envelope calculations are correct, we will reach 34% this coming weekend.

is_that_so

ginoginelli wrote: »

Kids are ultimately going to have to be vaccinated if we want to end the pandemic globally. I understand the hesitancy with young children, but the vaccine will be administered in age increments, and with trials of each group first.

By the time it get to to under 10s in ireland there will be a significant amount of real world data on efficacy and safety which hopefully will put concerned parents at ease.

So far there have only been completed trials for the 12-15 age groups. It may be a good while longer before we get data on the very small ones.

1huge1

Just got my vaccine from my local GP, I'm 31 and in Cohort 7 (I think). Absolutely delighted. Very well run as well I have to say.

The relief is unbelievable.

JDD

Lumen wrote: »

This isn't a choice you have to make now, since the vaccines aren't yet approved for children, in fact AFAIK the trials haven't even taken place yet.

Are you saying that you've made a decision in advance of any trials or approval process? That whatever the outcome, you're not interested?

If so, what specific deficits are there in the approval process?

To date the regulators have been ridiculously conservative even for adults for whom COVID poses a significantly higher risk. Does that not give you confidence in the process?

FWIW, if these vaccines are approved for children, I'll be vaccinating mine.

I don't know how I'd feel once the vaccines are approved.

The biggest drawback, I suppose, is if they started trialling the vaccine's on children now, and tracked them for 6 months, and found that both the vaccines were effective and there were no significant side effects for those six months, then that is what it is - i.e. for a period of six months after taking the vaccine there is no serious side effects
What about after a year? Or when they hit puberty? No trial is going to track them for that long.

I completely understand that every massive unforeseen side effect from a vaccine has shown up fairly early doors in the past. So there's a tiny chance that an unforeseen side effect would show up 2/3/4 years after having the shot. But children's bodies are changing constantly - I can't shake the feeling that if there was going to be a more medium/long term side effect it is more likely to be in kids.

That, coupled with the fact that - unlike measles or hepatitis or polio - they are so unlikely to suffer badly with covid makes me hesitant.

It's different for me. I am also unlikely to suffer badly from covid, but I'll take the vaccine for the good of the nation, as it were. And to protect myself against the small chance of suffering badly.

I can't in all good conscience put my children forward for vaccination for the good of the nation. If I choose for them to take a medicine, or a vaccine, it must be because the risk of the disease is greater than the risk of the vaccine. And that's a difficult thing for me to weigh up right now.

ACitizenErased

daydorunrun wrote: »

Call it Conditional marketing authorisation or emergency authorisation, they both mean the same thing.

No they don’t. EU member states can issue emergency authorisation on anything. The EMA issued full authorisation. Big difference.

Beanybabog

Can vaccines in general cause unknown long term side effects? I don’t mean reactions that cause long term issues (ie the clots). My understanding was many side effects show up quick enough. Fair enough we may not link very rare ones to the vaccine for a period of time and they may not show up in clinical trials due to being rare, but that’s not quite the same as side effects not showing up for years. Is it actually realistic for people to get vaccines and have zero side effects until years later? Do vaccines in general have that risk?

Lumen

JDD wrote: »

I don't know how I'd feel once the vaccines are approved.

The biggest drawback, I suppose, is if they started trialling the vaccine's on children now, and tracked them for 6 months, and found that both the vaccines were effective and there were no significant side effects for those six months, then that is what it is - i.e. for a period of six months after taking the vaccine there is no serious side effects
What about after a year? Or when they hit puberty? No trial is going to track them for that long.

I completely understand that every massive unforeseen side effect from a vaccine has shown up fairly early doors in the past. So there's a tiny chance that an unforeseen side effect would show up 2/3/4 years after having the shot. But children's bodies are changing constantly - I can't shake the feeling that if there was going to be a more medium/long term side effect it is more likely to be in kids.

That, coupled with the fact that - unlike measles or hepatitis or polio - they are so unlikely to suffer badly with covid makes me hesitant.

It's different for me. I am also unlikely to suffer badly from covid, but I'll take the vaccine for the good of the nation, as it were. And to protect myself against the small chance of suffering badly.

I can't in all good conscience put my children forward for vaccination for the good of the nation. If I choose for them to take a medicine, or a vaccine, it must be because the risk of the disease is greater than the risk of the vaccine. And that's a difficult thing for me to weigh up right now.

You're counting one set of unknowns, the risk of newly approved vaccines, but discounting another, the risk of nasty variants developing which DO cause significant harm to children. This latter risk is well understood, apparently the UK variant arose in an immunocompromised adult who was sick for weeks.

The fewer susceptible people we have in the population, the fewer bodies for the variants to arise in.

This applies both in Ireland and globally, and whilst that global part does suggest we distribute vaccines globally by risk, that's a separate argument from whether it's a good idea to vaccinate children.

I want to vaccinate my children so that they can't be the index case that triggers the next pandemic. More importantly, I also don't want them to transmit the virus directly or indirectly to someone unvaccinated or immunocompromised who becomes that index case.

There's a good chance we can crush this thing over the next few years if as many people as possible play their part.

bladespin

Lumen wrote: »

I want to vaccinate my children so that they can't be the index case that triggers the next pandemic.

There's a good chance we can crush this thing over the next few years if as many people as possible play their part.

The next pandemic won't be Covid so the vaccine will be useless against that, it would also be pretty incredible if we could get rid of it altogether but here's hoping.

Still won't be having my kids vaccinated until there's some more knowledge on the subject - not swayed either way just yet and they're very low risk and vaccination doesn't stop you spreading anyway (or so they tell us?).

astrofool

daydorunrun wrote: »

Call it Conditional marketing authorisation or emergency authorisation, they both mean the same thing.

No they don't, the EMA site has a big long page listing the differences, go read it, explain the differences and then you can maybe say if you don't think the differences change your mindset, but calling an apple the same as an orange is a very lazy response.

PhilOssophy

Yeah, the kids debate is an interesting one and I'm undecided for now.
To me, I fully get the logic behind vaccinating vulnerable kids with an underlying condition.
I get the variants debate but I think that one will be a "wait and see" job - if the overall adult population is largely vaccinated, and herd immunity reached, is there still sufficient vectors to transmission? I'm asking as I don't know the answer. If most kids immune systems can kill it off naturally, or can build up immunity to it, should we be vaccinating against it?
(Note - I am 100% pro-vaccination as people on here are probably bored listening to me about taking these vaccines!!! I'm just in the "decide based on data" category for everything connect to vaccination - be that who to give which vaccine to, and whether to vaccinate kids or not).

stephenjmcd

bladespin wrote: »

vaccination doesn't stop you spreading anyway (or so they tell us?).

That was the unknown at the start as the goal was to prevent severe illness and death, however more and more data coming out all the time and a broad agreement now that vaccines are highly effective at reducing transmission

SJFly

Just had some fantastic news. Husbad getting vaccinated this afternoon. He's category 4, and was put on a list by his consultant weeks ago, but then nothing happened after the AZ restrictions. Finally got a call from gp this morning. He's been quite unwell this year and I have been stressing about what covid would do to him.
Parents also got there second jab today so a great day all round. I'm very grateful and relieved.

bladespin

stephenjmcd wrote: »

That was the unknown at the start as the goal was to prevent severe illness and death, however more and more data coming out all the time and a broad agreement now that vaccines are highly effective at reducing transmission

Are we still not really just at the start though? Numbers have fallen before only to jump again, still so much unknowns just now.

daydorunrun

astrofool wrote: »

No they don't, the EMA site has a big long page listing the differences, go read it, explain the differences and then you can maybe say if you don't think the differences change your mindset, but calling an apple the same as an orange is a very lazy response.

My point is that these are not normal times and some of the vaccines are new and never before used- manufacturers have full indemnity because of the emergency during a pandemic. People have the right to be sceptical when it comes to kids and making sure the vaccines go through normal and vigorous testing for kids rather than the set of circumstances that has allowed their use in adults , which are not standard, I won’t use the emergency word again as it is this term which seems to trigger people, probably why it isn’t used by the EMA I guess.

Just as a disclaimer- I will be taking up my opinion to be vaccinated whenever I can. My concern is that we look out for kids long term best interests.

ACitizenErased

bladespin wrote: »

Are we still not really just at the start though? Numbers have fallen before only to jump again, still so much unknowns just now.

Israel has proved it, and now LA County in the US has proved it too. Also look at nursing home infections here. To name just a few examples.

stephenjmcd

PhilOssophy wrote: »

Yeah, the kids debate is an interesting one and I'm undecided for now.
To me, I fully get the logic behind vaccinating vulnerable kids with an underlying condition.
I get the variants debate but I think that one will be a "wait and see" job - if the overall adult population is largely vaccinated, and herd immunity reached, is there still sufficient vectors to transmission? I'm asking as I don't know the answer. If most kids immune systems can kill it off naturally, or can build up immunity to it, should we be vaccinating against it?
(Note - I am 100% pro-vaccination as people on here are probably bored listening to me about taking these vaccines!!! I'm just in the "decide based on data" category for everything connect to vaccination - be that who to give which vaccine to, and whether to vaccinate kids or not).

As long as a large number of the population are unvaccinated there's sufficient vectors for transmission & the possibility of variants popping up because of this can't be discarded, now the chances are highly reduced because of the adult population being vaccinated but the possibility is there regardless.

We have one of if not the largest u16 population in Europe, in the mid 20% range I believe. Population heard immunity can't be reached without including u16 in vaccination campaigns.

Now I'm not saying people shouldn't wait and look at the data and information, they should, but we're a good bit away yet from even getting to u16 and by the time that comes around we'll have even more data from trials and real world use than we have now.

stephenjmcd

bladespin wrote: »

Are we still not really just at the start though? Numbers have fallen before only to jump again, still so much unknowns just now.

No not really. There's very real world examples of where vaccination has & is preventing infection and transmission.

In Ireland, nursing homes and hospitals are one example.

Israel is the country to look to and now the USA & UK also.

PhilOssophy

stephenjmcd I completely agree, I am open minded to it but I'm very much in the "I'll see what happens" group.

snotboogie

Updated EU table excluding those using Russian and Chinese vaccines.

Points to note:

(i) Germany, Spain and Italy are all absolutely trucking it now, at 7 day averages between 0.7 and 0.8 shots per 100 per day. The rest of the EU is struggling to keep pace at an average of about 0.6 shots per 100. Ireland is middle of the pack in terms of daily shots at 0.6 but had an awful month in April which has left us lagging behind the rest of Western Europe.

(ii) I have left Serbia and Hungary out of the table because of their use of Sputnik and Sinopharm but unlike a lot of the Middle Eastern and South American countries with a similar vaccine mix on the surface, both Serbia and Hungary are doing extraordinary on case numbers. It seems that at least Hungary is using Pfizer on older citizens and Sputnik and Sinopharm on younger which is yielding fantastic results. On the 1st of April Hungary had 863 cases per million and 30 shots per 100 administered. Today they have 180 cases per million and 65 shots per 100. I don't have a breakdown on what amount of each vaccine Hungary are using vs the UAE or Chile but whatever they are doing it is giving much better results.

Country per capita Date Reported Ireland Days Behind
Malta 78.5 May 2nd
Lithuania 38 May 4th 10
Spain 37.5 May 3rd 10
Germany 37.5 May 4th 9
Austria 36.5 May 4th 7
Denmark 36.5 May 3rd 8
Estonia 36 May 4th 6
Italy 36 May 4th 6
Belgium 34.5 May 3rd 4
Finland 34.5 May 4th 3
Portugal 34.5 May 4th 3
Sweden 34 May 4th 2
France 33.5 May 3rd 2
Luxembourg 33 May 3rd 1
Netherlands 33 May 2nd 2
Poland 32.5 May 4th -1
Ireland 32.5 May 3rd 0
Slovenia 32 May 4th -2
Czech Rep 31.5 May 4th -3
Slovakia 31 May 4th -4
Greece 31 May 4th -3
Romania 28 May 2nd -8
Cyprus 27 April 23rd -1
Croatia 22.5 May 3rd -20
Latvia 17.5 May 4th -31
Bulgaria 12 May 4th -42

munchkin_utd

In germany too the numbers now are dropping quickly, and its too soon after the "lockdown" (what passes for a lockdown in Germany is still lighter restrictions than Ireland currently!!!) so it seems to be down to the effects of the vaccine.

They are also now focusing on factories and shared living like asylum seeker accomodation which can have bigger outbreaks, and now even sending mobile vaccination crews into deprived areas (Cologne started yesterday and other cities to follow suit) as thats a massive cause of infection.
They were saying that one high rise area of Cologne has an incidence of 500per 7 days (so 1000 per fortnight, as high as ireland at christmas) yet down the road in a more affluent area its only 30. If you control those areas of high incidence, in deprived areas and factories then thats a lot of gain for relatively little vaccine

Of course ireland plans to stick rigidly to vacinating by age and medical risk only rather than being strategic with a small portion of the supplies to stop the chains of infection in obvious places like factories and shared living facilities. You couldnt make this up.

is_that_so

munchkin_utd wrote: »

Of course ireland plans to stick rigidly to vacinating by age and medical risk only rather than being strategic with a small portion of the supplies to stop the chains of infection in obvious places like factories and shared living facilities. You couldnt make this up.

And yet you did! We know about these high risk groups and have been monitoring them for most of the year. The majority of our current cases are coming from other sources. Groups 1-7 are outside the mass vaccination programme and operating their own dynamic. Strategically J&J are expected to be used for some of these groups.

bladespin

ACitizenErased wrote: »

Israel has proved it, and now LA County in the US has proved it too. Also look at nursing home infections here. To name just a few examples.

I'm not sure much at all has been proved about the vaccine just yet, how long have Israel been vaccinating?

Starting to sound anti and I'm certainly not, I'm patiently waiting on mine but really unsure about the kids (and my pregnant wife).

Caquas

Some comments after I got my AZ jab at the Aviva.

I thought I was doing fine until eight hours after the jab I began to feel flu-ish. Within an hour I was gobbling panadol and aching all over. Couldn’t sleep with the pain until I took Ibuprofen. That gave me enough relief to get to sleep after 3 am. Felt OK-ish the next morning but I don’t want to go through that again with the second jab.

I was also pissed off by the management of the Aviva centre. The staff were trying to be helpful and the inoculators were excellent but the appointment system was an utter fiasco. I got just 24 hours notice of my appointment by SMS but fortunately I was able to attend. The appointment was for 11.05 am and I’m the message said not to turn up more than 5 minutes in advance. A five minute window is extraordinarily narrow but I assumed it was to limit the numbers in the Aviva. How wrong I was!

I turned up precisely at 11.00 am to be met by friendly staff checking my ID who directed me upstairs to a bank of registration desks. There were about 25 people ahead of me but I was registered in about 10 minutes and directed to the queue for the inoculators. I could see about 20 people ahead of me in that queue but that was just the tail-end. I spent the next hour - sixty-two minutes to be precise- shuffling along in a queue that stretched three times the length of the stadium and up to the next level.

It’s not just the waste of time, it’s the imposition on all these older people, some of whom had underlying conditions. Many were clearly uncomfortable standing on their feet for such a long time.There were chairs arranged alongside the queue but that’s useless unless you were so exhausted that you preferred to give up your place in the queue. There were “contactless” water dispensers- I was the only one I saw trying to use one. No luck. Afterwards I discovered it was operated by a secret pedal to the side.

What a preparation for this inoculation which, as I discovered, is liable to hit you like a freight train! After the inoculation, we sat in a room for 15 minutes to make sure there was no immediate reaction to the vaccine. Forget the media narrative about people elated by getting vaccinated. No one in that room said a word to anyone else - too exhausted by the utter futility of the queue.

I can imagine that something may have gone wrong with the Aviva scheduling that day but why didn’t they simply tell people as they arrived: “we have a very long queue, if you prefer come back in an hour”? The inoculation itself took all of 3 minutes and was painless. They should be able to calculate exactly how many appointments they can handle in an hour but it seems they prefer to just pile us in and let us stew, in normal HSE practice.

Micky 32

ACitizenErased wrote: »

Israel has proved it, and now LA County in the US has proved it too. Also look at nursing home infections here. To name just a few examples.

Another example:

https://twitter.com/coronavirusgoo1/status/1389568179014340616?s=21

snotboogie

munchkin_utd wrote: »

In germany too the numbers now are dropping quickly, and its too soon after the "lockdown" (what passes for a lockdown in Germany is still lighter restrictions than Ireland currently!!!) so it seems to be down to the effects of the vaccine.

They are also now focusing on factories and shared living like asylum seeker accomodation which can have bigger outbreaks, and now even sending mobile vaccination crews into deprived areas (Cologne started yesterday and other cities to follow suit) as thats a massive cause of infection.
They were saying that one high rise area of Cologne has an incidence of 500per 7 days (so 1000 per fortnight, as high as ireland at christmas) yet down the road in a more affluent area its only 30. If you control those areas of high incidence, in deprived areas and factories then thats a lot of gain for relatively little vaccine

Of course ireland plans to stick rigidly to vacinating by age and medical risk only rather than being strategic with a small portion of the supplies to stop the chains of infection in obvious places like factories and shared living facilities. You couldnt make this up.

I have no idea how Germany are getting their hands on all these vaccines but they'll hit 40 shots per 100 citizens on Friday. Which will be a 13 day turnaround from 30 shots per 100 to 40 shots per 100.

I predict we hit 40 shots per 100 on the 15th of May. Which would be a 17 day turnaround from 30 to 40 shots per 100.

stephenjmcd

An update on my father after he got his AZ jab on Monday afternoon.

As posted yesterday morning he had a bit of a sore arm, yesterday afternoon he was feeling a bit of fatigue, would be grand for a while then feel drained again, headache every now and then, flu like symptoms in general. Took a paracetamol & seemed to in the most pass by last night.

This morning just a slight soreness around the injection site but nothing else so all good.

Micky 32

https://twitter.com/sailorrooscout/status/1389900857571938305?s=21

revelman

Caquas wrote: »

Some comments after I got my AZ jab at the Aviva.

I thought I was doing fine until eight hours after the jab I began to feel flu-ish. Within an hour I was gobbling panadol and aching all over. Couldn’t sleep with the pain until I took Ibuprofen. That gave me enough relief to get to sleep after 3 am. Felt OK-ish the next morning but I don’t want to go through that again with the second jab.

I was also pissed off by the management of the Aviva centre. The staff were trying to be helpful and the inoculators were excellent but the appointment system was an utter fiasco. I got just 24 hours notice of my appointment by SMS but fortunately I was able to attend. The appointment was for 11.05 am and I’m the message said not to turn up more than 5 minutes in advance. A five minute window is extraordinarily narrow but I assumed it was to limit the numbers in the Aviva. How wrong I was!

I turned up precisely at 11.00 am to be met by friendly staff checking my ID who directed me upstairs to a bank of registration desks. There were about 25 people ahead of me but I was registered in about 10 minutes and directed to the queue for the inoculators. I could see about 20 people ahead of me in that queue but that was just the tail-end. I spent the next hour - sixty-two minutes to be precise- shuffling along in a queue that stretched three times the length of the stadium and up to the next level.

It’s not just the waste of time, it’s the imposition on all these people who were elderly or had underlying conditions. Many were clearly uncomfortable standing on their feet for such a long time.There were chairs arranged alongside the queue but that’s useless unless you were so exhausted that you preferred to give up your place in the queue. There were “contactless” water dispensers- I was the only one I saw trying to use one. No luck. Afterwards I discovered it was operated by a secret pedal to the side.

What a preparation for this inoculation which, as I discovered, is liable to hit you like a freight train!

I can imagine that something may have gone wrong with their scheduling that day but why didn’t they simply tell people “we have a very long queue, if you prefer come back in an hour”? The inoculation itself took all of 3 minutes and was painless. They should be able to calculate exactly how many appointments they can handle in an hour but it seems they prefer to just pile us in and let us stew, in normal HSE practice.

I’m sorry to hear about your ordeal but I think it is important to stress that only a minority of people will have side effects like yours: https://www.businessinsider.com/pfizer-astrazeneca-vaccine-side-effects-not-as-bad-as-trials-2021-4?r=US&IR=T

I’ve had 5 members of my extended family get AZ and not one of them reported a side effect.

For what it is worth, anecdotally, it seems to be the case that if you experienced side effects after the first dose, you are unlikely to get them after the second.

podgeandrodge

Caquas wrote: »

Some comments after I got my AZ jab at the Aviva.

I thought I was doing fine until eight hours after the jab I began to feel flu-ish. Within an hour I was gobbling panadol and aching all over. Couldn’t sleep with the pain until I took Ibuprofen. That gave me enough relief to get to sleep after 3 am. Felt OK-ish the next morning but I don’t want to go through that again with the second jab.

I was also pissed off by the management of the Aviva centre. The staff were trying to be helpful and the inoculators were excellent but the appointment system was an utter fiasco. I got just 24 hours notice of my appointment by SMS but fortunately I was able to attend. The appointment was for 11.05 am and I’m the message said not to turn up more than 5 minutes in advance. A five minute window is extraordinarily narrow but I assumed it was to limit the numbers in the Aviva. How wrong I was!

I turned up precisely at 11.00 am to be met by friendly staff checking my ID who directed me upstairs to a bank of registration desks. There were about 25 people ahead of me but I was registered in about 10 minutes and directed to the queue for the inoculators. I could see about 20 people ahead of me in that queue but that was just the tail-end. I spent the next hour - sixty-two minutes to be precise- shuffling along in a queue that stretched three times the length of the stadium and up to the next level.

It’s not just the waste of time, it’s the imposition on all these people who were elderly or had underlying conditions. Many were clearly uncomfortable standing on their feet for such a long time.There were chairs arranged alongside the queue but that’s useless unless you were so exhausted that you preferred to give up your place in the queue. There were “contactless” water dispensers- I was the only one I saw trying to use one. No luck. Afterwards I discovered it was operated by a secret pedal to the side.

What a preparation for this inoculation which, as I discovered, is liable to hit you like a freight train!

I can imagine that something may have gone wrong with their scheduling that day but why didn’t they simply tell people “we have a very long queue, if you prefer come back in an hour”? The inoculation itself took all of 3 minutes and was painless. They should be able to calculate exactly how many appointments they can handle in an hour but it seems they prefer to just pile us in and let us stew, in normal HSE practice.

Wow. That's so different to what I saw in Helix, which was seamless.

Micky 32

stephenjmcd wrote: »

An update on my father after he got his AZ jab on Monday afternoon.

As posted yesterday morning he had a bit of a sore arm, yesterday afternoon he was feeling a bit of fatigue, would be grand for a while then feel drained again, headache every now and then, flu like symptoms in general. Took a paracetamol & seemed to in the most pass by last night.

This morning just a slight soreness around the injection site but nothing else so all good.

Good stuff. My parents have had their second shot nearly 2 weeks now. Not one single side affect between them. They had the pfizer shot.