The fact they are advocating and pursuing some pretty despicable policies, doesn’t mean they aren’t also incompetent. Perversely, it’s a saving grace they aren’t more competent.
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He messes up his hair if he knows he’s going to be in front of a camera. This is a man who deliberately cultures a public figure of being a ‘loveable bumbling incompetent’ to cover up his true personality of narcissisic incompetence.
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Totally agree, you can see the impact of the UK vaccine strategy in the utter collapse of new deaths and the steady decline of hospitalisations. New cases seemed to hit the 2k to 2.5k a day mark and stubbornly stay there, and this was largely due to under 20s getting infected.
The UK vaccine rollout largely saved lives that would have been lost due to other mistakes that were ongoing, such as the lack of anyone in government having played Plague Inc and know to shut your damn ports.
Canada went on the follow the same strategy of getting at least 1 jab into as many arms as possible to get the virus under control, then they also followed the same 12 week delay.
They’re now pushing for 2nd doses a little harder since supply from the US has increased to really drive it home.
I’ve been in the odd position of having got my first dose in the UK (AZ) back in March and then emigrating to Canada and getting my 2nd dose (pfizer) just last week, and this is in Ontario where the virus has hit hardest because of Doug Ford. As a result of Canada following the path laid out by the UK, its new cases and deaths have also plummetted showing that taking the strain off of medical services and denting the impact of the virus has been a good strategy.
Sadly, there is also the same problem of ports being open to virus hotspots, but then Doug and Bojob have a lot of similarities.
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Let’s call it the Omega variant and be done with it. As a dual UK-US citizen with an Indian wife, I feel like I need to add a Brazilian component to my life in order to experience true, utter despair.
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Just want to add that Led By Donkeys have done some incredible work on exposing the incompetence and ineptitude of the UK government. They’re well worth a follow on social media (and a donation if you can).
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Indeed. I’m happy to shit on Johnson any day of the week, and twice on Sundays, but their vaccination rollout went extremely well (of course, at the expense of the rest of Europe’s, but the US is even worse in that regard). The single-shot route made a huge amount of scientific sense. Indeed, it’s supposed to give a stronger long-term response. The only reason we do 3-4 weeks in the US is that that’s what the trials did, and the only reason they did that was (justifiably) they wanted the trials finished 4-8 weeks before they otherwise would have been.
The rise in cases is certainly concerning, but a rise in cases decoupled from hospitalizations and deaths turns it into a disease countries can cope with.
Compared with the US:
Of course, if I were a UK neighbor with a lower vaccination rate, I certainly wouldn’t want to have open boarders with them.
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There has been some speculation that this ‘mix and match’ approach may be even more effective. I believe there are trials just started up to look into it.
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They certainly have. All power to them. However …
Unfortunately, for me, that right there is the problem. I have no intention of giving my data to or otherwise supporting Fuckbook (or its subsidiary Onanismgram), or Twatter just to see their work.
Hence I only seem to stumble across their stuff sporadically.
They don’t even put their stuff on a website for ‘asocial non-media’ people to find, Their website is merely for donation-gathering.
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I believe there have been trial results from Spain (600 person study) and, I think, Germany which show that a Pfizer second dose seems to correspond to a much stronger immune response than 2 doses of AZ.
I don’t think there has been much comparison with 2 doses of mRNA, tho.
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Yes, that is unfortunate. At least with Twatter you can view their posts without having to sign up.
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However, it has to be stressed that this was a stroke of luck. At the time they announced the decision they had some evidence that it would probably not be harmful to extend the time between shots but none that it would help. There is no doubt in my mind that the decision was taken so they could claim to be quicker with vaccinations than anyone else and had nothing to do with scientific advice beyond making sure they were covered with plausible deniability that it was science based
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I would assume their motivation was “we’re getting slammed by this new variant from Kent, we need to do something, anything about it” and stretching supplies as far as they could to get as many people with at least 1 dose in them would take the strain off and give much needed breathing room. Especially with AZ deep in the shit regarding its contracts and so supply wouldn’t be there to really push for full vaccination on the timescales they would have wanted.
It felt like old school triage to me - limited resources, huge demand for them.
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I think that’s pretty unfair. There is plenty of evidence that delaying the second dose of most vaccines results in a higher antibody response. E.g., quick cite here: “For many vaccines, a longer interval to the second dose results in higher antibody levels. High antibody levels are associated with longer duration of protection.”
There is also the fact shown from the trials of the Covid vaccines showed the efficacy at 3 weeks after a single shot to be almost exactly the same as the efficacy 2 weeks post second shot, and that was already a higher efficacy than expected.
There were many scientists and epidemiologists pushing for it, based on first-principles of how vaccines usually work, and of how herd immunity would work even if there were a slight drop in efficacy. I don’t think it’s fair to say that it was entirely political or “luck.”
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Certainly in the scientific press at the time there was a lot of discussion about the risks and benefits of stretching the period between doses. It basically came down to on the one hand pretty much every two-dose vaccine has higher efficacy with a longer gap; on the other hand the covid vaccines might be different for some unknown reason.
The JCVI (and also SAGE) is full of very competent people providing very sensible and well justified advice. The problems tend to occur when the scientific advisors are ignored (though at least they no longer try to hide behind the advice for their crappy political decisions - I guess that got untenable).
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Yeah, I’ve seen that. That and other things made me change my opinion that he isn’t a populist idiot like Trump, and he’s and educated man making a marketing decision.
Also, it’s only incompetence if the results weren’t the actual goal, even if they are against the health of much of the nation.
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If they are to be praised for gambling and getting lucky, perhaps their cheerleaders should withdraw that praise when the gamble didn’t actually pay off?
A person can be well-educated but still manage to remain an idiot.
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You can be highly educated and an idiot. Especially in the British public school system.
Edit: @Entity447B jinx!
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We did the same thing here in Finland, too. It’s worked for us so far.
He is a populist, par excellence, and he is an egomaniac (just like Trump). The quote below from Max Hastings (Editor of The Daily Telegraph when Boris was a reporter there) was made when Boris was London’s Mayor, I believe. Boris’s disorganisation verges on the idiotic and makes him do and say idiotic things.
@phuzz was right about the obsession with image management.
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