Vaccine Megathread - See OP for threadbans

is_that_so

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 ...

It's 80% offered and the date was chosen to match the rest of the EU. If we have as many vaccines as claimed we'll be doing 450K vaccinations a week (double what we are doing now) by then so whoever still needs to be offered one will be done by the end of July. August would probably see the start of the "back of the queue" people.

We don't need everyone. 80% should be OK, but it may turn out to be lower. Even the extremely contagious measles only needs to be over 90%.

Lumen

revelman wrote: »

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+.

That would make no logical sense since our case rates are higher here than in the UK, and so the risks of any delays more strongly weigh against very rare side effects.

revelman

I completely agree with you from a logical point of view. I’m thinking about the realpolitik and the narrative that will be in the background. I think it will be very difficult for us to “relax” our restrictions on AZ when the U.K. are tightening theirs. Just my opinion.

Russman

hmmm wrote: »

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.

Its not trivial, but I don't think delaying (if that's what was deemed appropriate by the experts) the younger groups by a few weeks would impact our reopening. Most of those at serious risk of death will be vaccinated by then. There arguably needn't be much of a delay at all if they did cohorts in parallel anyway, but they're scared of the reaction of the 50s cohort.

No easy answers or solutions obviously, but personally I think lashing out a potentially risky vaccine into the groups deemed most at risk from it, might not be ideal, when there are alternatives. While accepting of course that the risk is still very, very small.

Apogee

Bubbaclaus wrote: »

16 week gap between doses of AZ.

Cohort 1 would be mostly mRNA?

is_that_so

Apogee wrote: »

Cohort 1 would be mostly mRNA?

All mRNA.

Bubbaclaus

is_that_so wrote: »

All mRNA.

Really? I would presume the 70k odd healthcare workers in that group would have some AZ in them.

hmmm

revelman wrote: »

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+.

Based on the published data I'm scratching my head as to why J&J is not allowed for all males over 18, and females over 50. Maybe there is more unpublished data, but what we have seen so far shows that the risk is very much skewed towards one part of the population.

Van.Bosch

Bubbaclaus wrote: »

Really? I would presume the 70k odd healthcare workers in that group would have some AZ in them.

Yeah - I think that’s why the dose 2 has stalled, not due yet.

is_that_so

Bubbaclaus wrote: »

Really? I would presume the 70k odd healthcare workers in that group would have some AZ in them.

Group 1 was care homes, so residents for sure, likely all because of the 4 week dosing regime for mRNA. Group 2 has a mixture for sure.

revelman

hmmm wrote: »

Based on the published data I'm scratching my head as to why J&J is not allowed for all males over 18, and females over 50. Maybe there is more unpublished data, but what we have seen so far shows that the risk is very much skewed towards one part of the population.

I’m guessing that they remain unsure whether this is a “young female only” issue. If it is a similar problem to AZ, then it shouldn’t be, though the AZ issue does seem to be skewing slightly more towards females. I read this a few weeks ago. It is interesting: https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2021/04/jj-pause-women/618627/

One thing that has concerned me for some time is that reporting of side effects might not be as good in the USA as it is in Germany or Norway, for example. There might be all sorts of reasons for this, including socio-economic.

Tony H

Got my jab 30 minutes ago ( AZ) I'm 60 and registered on the 23rd April , easiest shot ever , other half getting hers tomorrow ,
quite an emotional experience if I'm honest , the relief I'm feeling is unreal .

revelman

Tony H wrote: »

Got my jab 30 minutes ago ( AZ) I'm 60 and registered on the 23rd April , easiest shot ever , other half getting hers tomorrow ,
quite an emotional experience if I'm honest , the relief I'm feeling is unreal .

Down to 60 already. Up Cork!

Bubbaclaus

is_that_so wrote: »

Group 1 was care homes, so residents for sure, likely all because of the 4 week dosing regime for mRNA. Group 2 has a mixture for sure.

There's only around 25-30k nursing home residents in Ireland. The remainder of that group 1 are the staff and many of them would have got AZ, hence why there is around 20k or so still waiting on a 2nd dose.

Turtwig

hmmm wrote: »

what we have seen so far shows that the risk is very much skewed towards one part of the population.

We have never seen this. The earliest identified cases were majority female that is not the same thing as the incident being more prevalent in females.

is_that_so

Bubbaclaus wrote: »

There's only around 25-30k nursing home residents in Ireland. The remainder of that group 1 are the staff and many of them would have got AZ, hence why there is around 20k or so still waiting on a 2nd dose.

Some care homes were not done for quite some time after they started on them on account of outbreaks so I doubt the explanation is as simple as you claim here. There was also the issue of HCW objections to AZ as Pfizer had been in use before that.

seamus

zebastein wrote: »

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.

The numbers who will refuse are dropping, while the numbers who will take it are increasing;
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/about-85-of-people-willing-to-get-covid-19-vaccine-survey-finds-1.4547738

Back in October, the number willing to take a vaccine was something like 55%. Now it's 85%.

This is typical and was generally expected; as more and more people get the vaccine, see no issues and talk positively about it, then hesitancy amongst the unvaccinated reduces.

I expect as we get to the under-40 cohort, they'll start driving the encouragement forward; ads asking people to register, etc.

In that latest poll, when you exclude the "unknowns", the number willing to take a vaccine is 94%

Bubbaclaus

is_that_so wrote: »

Some care homes were not done for quite some time after they started on them on account of outbreaks so I doubt the explanation is as simple as you claim here.

You seemed to be claiming there are 105k nursing home residents?

You can go back over the daily figures from the time if you like. There would have been quite a few Cohort 1 workers (circa 20k+) given AZ which is readily visible from the daily data.

SusanC10

Any update on giving AZ and/or J&J to people under 50 ?

I had read that Donnelly was consulting with NIAC/NPHET again.

Turtwig

SusanC10 wrote: »

Any update on giving AZ and/or J&J to people under 50 ?

I had read that Donnelly was consulting with NIAC/NPHET again.

At the presser today Tony Holohan said NIAC would respond to their query in the coming week. Although he didn't specify the query asked of NIAC he did say the context was in relation to once all over 50s are done what way should the available vaccines be used and prioritised.

moonage

Ted_YNWA wrote: »

Mod

Anti-vax posts deleted.

Pro-vaxx posts only permitted here.

Nothing negative about the glorious vaccines allowed.

Bubbaclaus

Bubbaclaus wrote: »

You seemed to be claiming there are 105k nursing home residents?

You can go back over the daily figures from the time if you like. There would have been quite a few Cohort 1 workers (circa 20k+) given AZ which is readily visible from the daily data.

To add to my post - there were 107k in Cohort 1 with a first dose a month ago. 84k with a second dose as per the up to date data today.

So the 2 possible conclusions are:
1. They have missed the 4 week dosing interval for 23k cases with an mRNA vaccine.
2. They are AZ doses, which we know was being given to frontline healthcare workers in February.

I know which option is most likely to be correct, and it ain't the first one.

Strazdas

SusanC10 wrote: »

Any update on giving AZ and/or J&J to people under 50 ?

I had read that Donnelly was consulting with NIAC/NPHET again.

Paul Reid of the HSE seemed to hint yesterday that leaving vaccines unopened at a time when they were needed would be unthinkable to him i.e. if necessary, they would sooner go outside NIAC's advice than not use the available vaccine doses.

Tim Robbins

iamwhoiam wrote: »

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

I've been jumping in and out of this thread. I am Cohort 7. Got a PFO from my GP who is claiming they can't provide a normal GP service and are ending vaccination after Cohort 4. Really annoyed and frustrated. I have rung the HSE twice. Emailed Leo, Donnelly, Nphet, the IMO and the asthma society. Nothing from any of them.

I can only guess it is so much easier to administer if you base it on age and if some GPs are well organised enough they can also help with and follow the cohort guidelines. The GP thing is a bonus, if you live in a busy suburb with lots of parent bringing their kids to the Doctor on freebies it's impossible for the GP to provide a vaccination program.

Other than that, it's just tough luck hold our for another few weeks for the Cohort 4 and 7.

What really annoys me, is the lack of an apology. I'd could take this if the government said, listen sorry this way is quicker and better for the country but its tough on you. Instead, they are milking it saying they are protecting the most vulnerable. Which is utter BS.

moonage

revelman wrote: »

People read this forum for reassurance ahead of getting vaccinated.

Oh, sorry. I didn't know that was the purpose of this thread.

Let's keep it all positive folks!

Necro

moonage wrote: »

Oh, sorry. I didn't know that was the purpose of this thread.

Let's keep it all positive folks!

Seriously? First you drag up a mod post from this morning to have a dig and now a post from two days ago? Don't post here again

ixoy

seamus wrote: »

The numbers who will refuse are dropping, while the numbers who will take it are increasing;
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/health/about-85-of-people-willing-to-get-covid-19-vaccine-survey-finds-1.4547738

Back in October, the number willing to take a vaccine was something like 55%. Now it's 85%.

It might be in that article (full content isn't available) but I believe Ireland's willingness on vaccinations is the highest of those surveyed in the EU. Uptake in Ireland won't be an issue - it's other countries that will be more problematic.

duffman13

AZ gets an awful lot of criticism from arm chair critics. They've had huge production issues but managed to create a very effacious vaccine and are offering it to middle and low income countries at cost. At the end of the day, if it was the only show in town the clotting issue wouldn't be an issue however given we have alternatives then it's fair enough to restrict the use of it.

My issue is the constant abuse of AZ which is a bit harsh. Like every major pharmaceutical company, they looked for a vaccine, theirs worked and is suitable to be used far more widely than mRNA vaccines. They arent a company known for industrial scale production of vaccines so it was always going to be a challenge. If Sanofi had discovered it then we would probably have 20 times more supply of AZ. AZ will play a huge part in the worldwide vaccination programme

duffman13

Was chatting to a neighbour when the other one pulled up and said he'd just gone into get his first dose. Which one did ya get was the first question from my neighbour. "The First one" he says extremely seriously Gas stuff

volchitsa

revelman wrote: »

I find it really concerning that someone comes on here quoting the MHRA and linking vaccines to deaths. People read this forum for reassurance ahead of getting vaccinated. This should not be a place for misinformation. When you provide statistics, you also need to provide context. Here is the needed context from the MHRA website:

Madness that some people are busy scaremongering, in a pandemic. When you see what's going on in India and Brazil, people should be eternally grateful to have access to vaccines.

In March I got my first Astra Zeneca jab, like most of my family in NI and England (a few got Pfizer but mostly AZ) and I haven't heard of anyone with a serious effect from it. I'm impatient for my second. If I'd had the choice, I suppose maybe I'd have preferred Pfizer or Moderna as they seem to be a bit more effective, but I'm truly thankful to have had any at all.