Vaccine Megathread - See OP for threadbans

is_that_so

sd1999 wrote: »

For what it’s worth, I’m 21 and Cohort 4 and got my first Pfizer dose last week at my GP. They were just finishing up first doses for Cohort 4 and were starting with older Cohort 7s the same day.

TBH these levels of anxiety have emerged every time we approach new group, first it was the over 80s, then the over 70s, group 4 and so on. What we do know is that the HSE will only contact GPs and others if they have a supply actually available to distribute. The rapid speed of the MVCs is focusing attention on what's happening in the much slower GP side of things.

Scuid Mhór

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Me and you have agreed on absolutely fcuk all on here in the last year, but I absolutely hope you get vaccinated in Cohort 7 somehow

If memory serves you're quite young, so if you don't get one in Cohort 7 you'll be one of the last in the queue

And no one with asthma should be that far down the queue

I’m in the same situation as ACE and inclined to agree with you. The country will reopen and cohort 7 will be left in the dust as case numbers rise, it’s madness and very depressing.

eeepaulo

Do people get symptoms (headache, achy, hangover type feelings) after the second jab or is it only the first?

Scuid Mhór

AdamD wrote: »

I'm probably being naive here but would it not be logistically easier for GPs to just refer anyone who possibly comes into group 7, instead of fully investigating each case and then pulling out of the system to due to it being too time constraining? Having too many people bunched into group 7 would surely have minimal negative impact on the rollout versus too few..

Supply issues.

is_that_so

Scuid Mhór wrote: »

I’m in the same situation as ACE and inclined to agree with you. The country will reopen and cohort 7 will be left in the dust as case numbers rise, it’s madness and very depressing.

OK, there will be another 2m of us in the dust with you, never mind all the half-dosed Pfizer and Moderna people

bodhrandude

eeepaulo wrote: »

Do people get symptoms (headache, achy, hangover type feelings) after the second jab or is it only the first?

I think in some cases people get symptoms from the first shot of AZ whilst folk who get Pfizer get symptoms from the second shot.

sd1999

is_that_so wrote: »

TBH these levels of anxiety have emerged every time we approach new group, first it was the over 80s, then the over 70s, group 4 and so on. What we do know is that the HSE will only contact GPs and others if they have a supply actually available to distribute. The rapid speed of the MVCs is focusing attention on what's happening in the much slower GP side of things.

The GP side of things is going to be much slower anyway as they can only spend so long doing vaccinations, they still need to do regular appointments. My clinic sets aside a couple of days a week where there are no appointments and they get through as many vaccines as possible.

There is always going to be overlap between groups because some locations are more efficient etc. than others. Cohort 4 hasn't finished first doses yet so I don't imagine there will be significant Cohort 7 numbers until 4 is nearly done. As I said, my clinic are doing pretty well and they just started Cohort 7 last weekend but that is made easier by the fact that they have a digital database and four GPs in the one clinic, it was much easier to find who qualified for each cohort. GPs who've been doing everything on paper (which there has been evidence of in this thread) are going to take much longer and more people are going to fall through the cracks.

freshpopcorn

sd1999 wrote: »

You don’t know if the people in their 20s-50s aren’t more vulnerable. If by people who are more vulnerable you mean those 50 - 69, they’re being done in MVCs.

I’ve spoken to a nice few of them, even related to them and they were all shocked to get the phone call. Some haven’t being to the Dr in years nearly.
One even said when they were waiting in the queue they were having a chat and they couldn’t figure it out.

ACitizenErased

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Me and you have agreed on absolutely fcuk all on here in the last year, but I absolutely hope you get vaccinated in Cohort 7 somehow

If memory serves you're quite young, so if you don't get one in Cohort 7 you'll be one of the last in the queue

And no one with asthma should be that far down the queue

Appreciate it, very frustrating

podgeandrodge

crossman47 wrote: »

You are defeating your own argument. A few weeks delay in administering vaccines (any vaccine) is more likely to cause some deaths than any effect of AZ. Its a question of risk assessment.

Do we know that though? And it might save a lot more serious life changing clotting issues that don't result in death?

I asked on other thread, at some point we're going to have shítloads of Pfizer presumably, and also too much AZ. Some are keen to get vaccinated as soon as possible, others who perhaps are not mixing much, may prefer to wait.

If we were told by Govt. that we would delay the return to normality by 1 month if we avoided AZ (that was the delay in Denmark, don't know what it would be here), and that this action would save potentially 2 lives, (or as someone else pointed out, avoid a greater number of clotting issues which don't cause death, but are pretty serious at the same time) what would people say?

Panrich

Lumen wrote: »

AFAIK the official criteria for asthma in cohort 7 is still "severe asthma (continuous or repeated use of systemic corticosteroids)".

I personally know of one woman ( friend of my wife) who doesn't even use an inhaler and got the vaccine because she has very mild asthma. Meanwhile my wife who is on 6 puffs of 160mcg a day for prevention and as required besides doesn't qualify.

The criteria seems to be a mess and rife with potential for nepotism.

Hurrache

bodhrandude wrote: »

That's odd, the receptionist at my GP explained it better, Cohort 4 is cases of people with respiratory diseases that need regularly to be treated in hospitals during the year. My sister's example being she needs to use a nebuliser and attends hospital appointments once a month to get fusion treatment. Whilst I'm in Cohort 7 who requires heavy duty inhalers but I'm not required to attend hospital for treatments. So I think your GP is winding you up, you should be in 7 if you have a respiratory disease and require inhalers. Its absolutely nuts, the situation.

Regarding the text I got, the requirements for category 4 in terms of chronic respiratory disease is where a patient is on home oxygen, pre or post transplantation or with a hospital admission related to disease in the past year.

Category 7 is then other chronic respiratory disease like stable CS, severe asthma which requires continuous or repeated use of systemic corticosteroids and so on.

iamwhoiam

Panrich wrote: »

I personally know of one woman ( friend of my wife) who doesn't even use an inhaler and got the vaccine because she has very mild asthma. Meanwhile my wife who is on 6 puffs of 160mcg a day for prevention and as required besides doesn't qualify.

The criteria seems to be a mess and rife with potential for nepotism.

I know quite a few in cohort 7 including three young Type 1 diabetics .Its causing huge anxiety in that group because no one is giving them a clear answer .They are afraid they will fall between the cracks and the HSE are doing nothing at all to eleviate that anxiety .I listened to the briefing yesterday and group 4 and 7 never even got a mention .

ShineOn7

Panrich wrote: »

The criteria seems to be a mess and rife with potential for nepotism.

Massively

Have a great relationship with your GP that goes back decades? You're Cohort 7 enough

Have a strained relationship with your GP like many do? You're not Cohort 7 enough

The above will be prevalent all over the country

Apogee

The remainder of the 2nd doses for Cohort 1 seems to be slow in starting? We had ~104k first doses and ~82k second doses since end of March:




Yet we're still stuck at ~84k second doses into May?

Bubbaclaus

Apogee wrote: »

The remainder of the 2nd doses for Cohort 1 seems to be slow in starting? We had ~104k first doses and ~82k second doses since end of March:




Yet we're still stuck at ~84k second doses into May?

16 week gap between doses of AZ.

is_that_so

Bubbaclaus wrote: »

16 week gap between doses of AZ.

Only for those done before NIAC made the call on AZ.

hmmm

Russman wrote: »

Ahh come on, that's not even an apples to oranges comparison.
We can, hopefully, largely mitigate our potential deaths from the viral vector vaccines with a bit of rejigging of the scheduled rollout. A few weeks delay or some unused vaccines isn't the end of the world, its not ideal of course, and nobody anywhere wants this to go on longer than it has to, but we can't completely be fixated on speed to the detriment of safety.
I have no idea what level of risk or percentage fatalities etc with vaccines are deemed acceptable by the medical community, or what constitutes "safety", but I do think we have to trust their judgement.

It is the same comparison.

We make a tradeoff in road deaths vs the economic cost of lowering speed limits. We can reduce road deaths to zero if we wanted zero risk.

Similarly with vaccines. Someone has made a decision on the tradeoff of the speed of vaccine rollout vs the possible health risks of side-effects.

I see you mention "a few weeks delay" as being somehow trivial. I don't think it is, particularly to the businesses who will not be able to reopen and the people who will go unvaccinated in the meantime. Those of us who can WFH or are in the public sector can tolerate an extra few weeks of lockdown, but there is 25% of the population currently unemployed and they seem to me to have been largely forgotten about.

Bubbaclaus

is_that_so wrote: »

Only for those done before NIAC made the call on AZ.

Which is presumably 99% of people that poster is querying.

is_that_so

Bubbaclaus wrote: »

Which is presumably 99% of people that poster is querying.

No idea, just pointing out it's been reset to 12 weeks since we started the over 60s.

Scuid Mhór

ShineOn7 wrote: »

Massively

Have a great relationship with your GP that goes back decades? You're Cohort 7 enough

Have a strained relationship with your GP like many do? You're not Cohort 7 enough

The above will be prevalent all over the country

Ireland in a nutshell.

josip

bodun wrote: »

Hopefully after all this is over the HSE will get serious about a national EPR

Why do you think there is a better chance when this is over?
Most of the HSE had less to do during the past 18 months than at any other time previously.

revelman

Breaking news in German media: Germany’s Sitiko committee (equivalent to our NIAC) is to recommend that J&J be given to over 60s only. It might be possible for younger people to take it only if they get a “declaration” from a doctor.

muddypuppy

revelman wrote: »

Breaking news in German media: Germany’s Sitiko committee (equivalent to our NIAC) is to recommend that J&J be given to over 60s only. It might be possible for younger people to take it only if they get a “declaration” from a doctor.

The German government is apparently ignoring their recommendations for AZ, so I would expect the same for J&J. https://www.dw.com/en/coronavirus-germany-opens-up-astrazeneca-covid-vaccines-for-all-adults/a-57453351

bodun

josip wrote: »

Why do you think there is a better chance when this is over?
Most of the HSE had less to do during the past 18 months than at any other time previously.

What, really?


Of course there is a better chance when this is all over, you hardly think the HSE has the resources to deal with covid and all the implications of it and implement a national EPR at the same time?


And while some HSE staff have had less to do over the last 12 months what do you expect them to do, reassign a community SLT, who may not have been able to see patients face to face, to an ICT software development role?

ACitizenErased

iamwhoiam wrote: »

I know quite a few in cohort 7 including three young Type 1 diabetics .Its causing huge anxiety in that group because no one is giving them a clear answer .They are afraid they will fall between the cracks and the HSE are doing nothing at all to eleviate that anxiety .I listened to the briefing yesterday and group 4 and 7 never even got a mention .

That's a good point. They didn't mention how many of group 4 and 7 they'd be covering next week.

iamwhoiam

ACitizenErased wrote: »

That's a good point. They didn't mention how many of group 4 and 7 they'd be covering next week.

Listening today again as I speak and again no mention of group 4 and 7
Its like they are not important at the moment

zebastein

Question:
All the media and the government talk about 80% of people being proposed a vaccine before end of June, and discuss when the 20 other percents will be offered the vaccine.

These numbers are all on the hypothesis that the vaccine uptake is really high. What if there are actually only 80% of people that actually want the vaccine when it is offered to them ? There are plenty of reasons for that (Antivax, people who do not want AZ, people who want to wait, people not available...). The uptake is really high so far because vulnerable people will be more likely to take it, but when we'll reach under 40s I am not expecting people to rush to the centres.

Do you really believe that at the end of june 20% of people will not have had any opportunity to get the vaccine ? I personally believe that extra doses will be available because not used by previous cohorts, that all the cohorts will be opened in june and that almost everyone who really want the vaccine will have the opportunity to get it. There will still be 20% of people without a dose, but I think they would be people who did not register on the portal / got an appointment but refused/rescheduled it ...

revelman

The government and HSE have a difficult decision to make. Today’s announcement from the MHRA to recommend that AZ not be given to those under 40 will loom large in the background. I wonder what will happen? Following their “consultations” with NIAC, my hunch is that 50 will remain the cutoff age for AZ but J&J will be permitted for use in 40+.

revelman

zebastein wrote: »

Question:
All the media and the government talk about 80% of people being proposed a vaccine before end of June, and discuss when the 20 other percents will be offered the vaccine.

These numbers are all on the hypothesis that the vaccine uptake is really high. What if there are actually only 80% of people that actually want the vaccine when it is offered to them ? There are plenty of reasons for that (Antivax, people who do not want AZ, people who want to wait, people not available...). The uptake is really high so far because vulnerable people will be more likely to take it, but when we'll reach under 40s I am not expecting people to rush to the centres.

Do you really believe that at the end of june 20% of people will not have had any opportunity to get the vaccine ? I personally believe that extra doses will be available because not used by previous cohorts, that all the cohorts will be opened in june and that almost everyone who really want the vaccine will have the opportunity to get it. There will still be 20% of people without a dose, but I think they would be people who did not register on the portal / got an appointment but refused/rescheduled it ...

In NI, the uptake for those over 50 is 90%. I wouldn’t be surprised if it is similar here. Internationally, as you go younger, the uptake rate decreases. So I think we would be doing very well if 80% of the population or 16 choose to receive a vaccine.