"We don't have this under control at the moment".

[Suff]

WM, that is a "Realistic" expectation based on Flu like vaccination schedules. It is not based on an emergency crash program to immunise hundreds of thousands, or millions, of people per day.

Yes there are logistics, the vaccines have to get to the centres, people have to be contacted and requested to attend, staff have to be available to present the vaccine and then it will, also, take 56 days and two doses before anyone vaccinated is guaranteed to have developed the right levels of resistance.

There are ~8,000 doctors surgeries in the UK. At 250 people per day that is 2 million people per day. 2 or 3 shifts should do it. There are 1,257 hospitals in the UK. 3 shifts should be able to clear an average of 2,500 people per day; there is enough space and with correct staffing over 24 hours at three shifts should be perfectly possible. That is another 2.5 million people per day.

1 week to first vaccination.

28 days to organise the documentation, shift the new serum and do it again.

Barcoding and simple database recording simplifies the process and gives immediate notification of who has had the vaccine or not. It is not a difficult process to send each person an individual barcode which can be scanned during immunisation.

This is what is called emergency mobilisation. It is possible, it has been done before. It is only people who think that only normal processes will be used that think it will take up to a year to vaccinate the 30m people. It is frustrating in the extreme. Experts, thinking inside the box. Lovely!

If you look up the fights between the unions and the company owners in the courts, you find that the "experts" had allocated how many calories a Stevedore required for a full days' work. The Unions produced the plate of food that those calories represented. The unions won.

I'm all for experts who are pragmatic, understand the challenge, rise to the challenge and think outside the box. I have no time for "experts" who say "well if we just send people to surgeries, then it will take all year".

Especially when not vaccinating is killing the economy and, quite literally, thousands of people.

[Workingman]

WM, that is a "Realistic" expectation based on Flu like vaccination schedules.

Absolute rubbish! Go look and read. I have it downloaded and it is a long one.

SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Development & Implementation; Scenarios, Options, Key Decisions
Oct 1, 2020 • The DELVE Initiative

This paper has drawn on evidence available up to 25th September 2020. Further evidence on this topic is constantly published and DELVE will continue to develop this report as it becomes available. This independent overview of the science has been provided in good faith by subject experts. DELVE and the Royal Society accept no legal liability for decisions made based on this evidence.

Summary
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has led to a global effort to develop, test, manufacture and distribute effective vaccines at unprecedented speed. There are currently over 200 vaccine candidates in development and the results of initial large-scale trials are expected soon; however, to deliver a successful vaccination programme, many challenges remain. This report discusses the key issues involved in developing, evaluating, manufacturing and distributing a vaccine for COVID-19, the impact of those challenges and future strategies to mitigate their effects.
Cite as: The DELVE Initiative (2020), SARS-CoV-2 Vaccine Development & Implementation; Scenarios, Options, Key Decisions. DELVE Report No. 6. Published 01 October 2020. Available from http://rs-

[Suff]

So I read it. If, but, maybe, we don't know, we don't know, we don't know. 7.8bn people..... 2000l tanks take 30 days to produce vaccine, 100m to 150m per year capacity, blah, blah, blah, 7.8bn people, transport around the world, oh me oh my it is so difficult.

Let us ignore the fact that Astrazenica has scaled the production from the UK to 2bn doses, that the doses for the UK are already produced, that we don't need to fly UK doses around the world with 747's.

Let us ignore that the serum institute of India has licenced and ramped up production facilities for over 1bn doses for India alone.

Let us talk in generalities and what if's and maybe's.

Let us cast doubt on the efficiency of the vaccine even though it is a MERS covid vaccine modified to target Covid-19. Let us ignore the unequivocal trial data from more than 10,000 patients that show 70% antibody and T cell reaction on one vaccination and evidence from the hundreds of tests that a second dose has a 100% success rate in producing the same.

Let us cast doubt on the effectiveness of the vaccine itself, let us obscure the fact that there are already 10 vaccines in stage 3 testing with 5 having strong reactions which are medically proven to give a resistance to the disease.

No, no, let us talk about hundreds of vaccines and how impossible it will be to bring them all to the 7.8 billion people in the world.

Because if you say all that, when the few thousand who do not respond to the vaccine become sick and the few hundred die, there will be no blame.

Of course you could also read other documented reports by other "experts", over time, which state that you only need 50% of the population vaccinated to halt the spread and give you time to vaccinate the remainder.

You could read the reports from the pharma companies who have reported on just how many 2000l bioreactors they intend to bring online to create the doses. You could even read about the certification bodies around the world who are tracking and monitoring the progress of the phase 3 tests to bring these vaccines to certification for use as fast as possible. It is not the whole world holding up testing so that Trump cannot use it politically.

We don't need 200 vaccines, we need 3 that work. 1 main one and 2 more for the edge cases where that vaccine doesn't produce the right response. 5 would be nice, 10 would be exceptional. 200?

Or we could write dozens of pages explaining why "it is so hard" and so impossible to get 200 vaccines all around the world.

Talk about a document designed to excuse failure. Fortunately we have other "experts" in vaccine creation, production, logistics and tracking who are out there doing it. Despite this document.

Personally I was talking about the UK. You know our vaccine which produces 100%response in 2 doses already produced and waiting for certification to be released from our UK production facilities to all our citizens in the UK.

Not about the logistics of immunising 7.8bn people all over the world.

Yes it may take till December to get that emergency certification. But I wouldn't bet on it as cases continue to stay around the thousands with deaths growing.

Yes, it will take years to understand just how long it all lasts and how totally effective it is. But that is not the point. The point is to stop the pandemic, now and to then take stock and work on eradicating it.

The more the press and media find these articles to pour doubt on our only possible chance to get back to some kind of normal, the more we need these vaccines released.

[Workingman]

You might have read the report but your review of it is more Breitbart than Lancet.

The report explains the basics of vaccines, what they are, how they work, antibodies, T-cells, their efficacy and longevity in clear language before going on to explain how they apply to the SARS- CoV-2 vaccines. That is a normal approach.

It does the same with finance, R&D, funding, and the methodologies used in progression from an idea to an approved drug or treatment. It explains why these things take so long under normal circumstances and how the new methods introduced for SARS-CoV-2 could reduce the time and costs in the future.

It of course mentions the 7 billion+. That's because there is this GLOBAL pandemic thing going on. Everywhere from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe, including the UK, is involved and they are all going to want their share of doses of any vaccine(s). The report points out the difficulties they all face with access to and procurement of the materials, production and manufacture and global logistics. Very few, if any, places will be able to do everything in-house.

From part way down section 3. the report turns its attention more to the UK and in section 5 gives four UK scenarios for implementation.

Nowhere in the report does it criticise any person, place, thing, institution, manufacturer or process; what it does do is act as an explainer in clear and simple language accessible to most of us.

Suff, your critique is little more than a rant about things outside the report. Things that you might have read elsewhere and disagree with, which is fine so long as you take them up with those parts of the press and media.

One other thing: MERS. ChAdOx1, more commonly known as the Oxford Vaccine, is not a modified MERS vaccine and it is mentioned only once in the report, here:

the potential for antibody enhanced uptake of virus can be demonstrated in the laboratory for the related MERS and SARS-CoV-1 viruses.

It stands for Chimpanzee Adenovirus Oxford 1and is a replication deficient, gene modified version of chimpanzee adenoviral vectors.

[Suff]

Suff, your critique is little more than a rant about things outside the report. Things that you might have read elsewhere and disagree with, which is fine so long as you take them up with those parts of the press and media.

No my critique is about a report which is out of date, but claims to present itself as a reasonable assessment of our ability to vaccinate the population. It is then picked up by the press and used as a reason for trumpeting that we won't "see" a vaccine before the end of 2021. Hence we have to curtail our lives, not only for 2020 but 2021 also.

This is not a correct assessment of the situation. Fortunately we only have a few more months to go before we see whether their very "moderate" assessment of the abilities of any vaccine and the ability of pharma companies and governments to deliver it is correct or not.

[Workingman]

Out of date!

It's based on evidence available up to 25th September, 2020 and was published on Oct 1st. I linked to it on the day it was published: it could not be more fresh and up to date!

You then blame this inanimate object for being picked up by a biased media which then goes on to misrepresent it for its own ends. The only thing you have right is when you say that the media used the report "as a reason for trumpeting that we won't "see" a vaccine before the end of 2021. Hence we have to curtail our lives, not only for 2020 but 2021 also." The truth is that nothing of the sort was said in the report. Those sentiments are spin / lies and come from the likes of the Mail, Express, Sun, BBC and Sky.

In fact he year 2021 is only mentioned twice in the report. The first is to refer to COVAX a global collaboration to secure vaccines for poorer countries. The second is a CEPI estimate for future vaccines.

With regards to the UK the report is actually quite positive as its Table 1 shows. The UK Government is planning to source four different vaccine types, from seven different suppliers and at the scales given between 100 – 150 million doses of drug substance can be produced annually. It already has orders for 60 million doses of two vaccines coming to the end of P3 trials from AstraZeneca and BioNTech.

BTW it is worth repeating that it was Matt Hancock who said that it was hoped for mass vaccinations to begin next year.

[Workingman]

Aha! I think I have it.

It's the way the article is written. It puports to be an analysis of the report but is in fact a collection of the alternative opinions of others mixed in with journalistic licence. It outlines some selected extracts from the report but with hardly any quotes from it

Take the headline: "Covid: Vaccine will 'not return life to normal in spring'"

That is never said. Now take the opening paragraph: "Even an effective coronavirus vaccine will not return life to normal in spring, a group of leading scientists has warned."

The group of leading scientists were not the authors of the report, they were a group commenting on it.

A few more of the things they said.

"A vaccine offers great hope for potentially ending the pandemic, but we do know that the history of vaccine development is littered with lots of failures," said Dr Fiona Culley, from the National Heart and Lung Institute at Imperial College London.

"Even when the vaccine is available it doesn't mean within a month everybody is going to be vaccinated, we're talking about six months, nine months... a year," said Prof Nilay Shah, head of chemical engineering at Imperial College London.

"There's not a question of life suddenly returning to normal in March."

Prof Shah estimates vaccinating people would have to take place at a pace, 10 times faster than the annual flu campaign and would be a full-time job for up to 30,000 trained staff.

"I do worry, is enough thinking going into the whole system?" he says.

Prof Charles Bangham, chair of immunology of Imperial College London, said: "We simply don't know when an effective vaccine will be available, how effective it will be and of course, crucially, how quickly it can be distributed.

"Even if it is effective, it is unlikely that we will be able to get back completely to normal, so there's going to be a sliding scale, even after the introduction of a vaccine that we know to be effective.

"We will have to gradually relax some of the other interventions."

and finally....

Commenting on the study, Dr Andrew Preston from the University of Bath, said: "Clearly the vaccine has been portrayed as a silver bullet and ultimately it will be our salvation, but it may not be an immediate process."

He said there would need to be discussion of whether "vaccine passports" are needed to ensure people coming into the country are immunised.

And Dr Preston warned that vaccine hesitancy seemed to be a growing problem that had become embroiled in anti-mask, anti-lockdown ideologies.

"If cohorts of people refuse to have the vaccine, do we leave them to fend for themselves or have mandatory vaccination for children to go to schools, or for staff in care homes? There are lots of difficult questions."

The narrative "Lock yourself away for a year and live on cold tinned soup or you will die because we have no vaccine" comes not from the report but from others with some ulterior motive. Rank shoddy journalism..... but it is from the BBC we have today.

[TheOstrich]

An intriguing news item from the Birmingham Evening Mail:

https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/m ... e-19033265

A vaccine for Covid-19 could be available in Birmingham before Christmas, it has been revealed - with plans for a 'massive' immunisation exercise involving hundreds of thousands of people.
Speaking today at a city council Covid engagement board Paul Jennings, Chief Executive of Birmingham and Solihull CCG, said that a plan for vaccinations was currently being prepared.
800,000 people would be prioritised in any roll out, with over 65s deemed 'vulnerable', 50-64 year olds with a pre-existing health condition and all people from a BME background due to be first in line. It was also revealed that any vaccine is expected to be a two-stage process, with people expected to revisit their GP for their second jab around four weeks after the first.

If you can pick your way through the adverts, it goes on to discuss the delay to the "Oxford" vaccine but I have also seen elsewhere a comment they are looking at two vaccines for this exercise:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-b ... m-54375643

[Suff]

If you look at the DM article, which I did with distaste, it talks about the "army" of staff being assembled to deliver the vaccine.

Still, it takes 28 days to get the second inoculation and a further 28 days to get to 100% of the protection the vaccine gives.

Now we have moved from "end of 2021" to Easter, I'll just keep ignoring the "well meant" presentation of a business as usual approach to vaccinating for covid and just see what they come up with.

Let me assure you that they innoculate a base with 2,000 army people in a day. They get the serum, set up the desks and the queue forms. All the paperwork is done up front and you give your name, rank and number, when you are found on the list you get a tick, move to the next table, swab, inject, leave. It is hardly as if it takes more than 60 seconds for the whole thing and it is a conveyor belt.

One set of tables can easily do 450 people in a day. All the administrative work is done up front.

With two inoculations, they have a further 28 days to do the paperwork for the second round.

So once we have the authorisation to deliver it will be time to see how we'll it goes.

"experts" or not, nobody has had to immunise against a global pandemic, ever. So opinions are exaxlctly that. No matter how well informed.

[Workingman]

Today I received an email from my local councillor and the Leeds plan looks much the same as the one for Birmingham - 500,000 people, age ranges and priorities the same, one jab and a booster four weeks after, and so on. Maybe that is going to be the national plan?