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24 thoughts on “Dose Guys

  1. Charger Salmons

    In other words only 270,000 doses by the end of February.
    AstraZeneca has promised the UK two million doses a week by the middle of January and that’s on top of the one million Pfizer doses that have already been administered.
    Ireland has been badly let down by the EU’s abysmal procurement programme.

        1. ce

          Actually they are taking care of one of our largest problems, Covid in the North… we’ll pay them back with Erasmus… seems fair!

    1. Listrade

      You are right, but in the wrong way. It isn’t a failure of procurement, it’s a failure of approval. The EMA has been glacially slow in approving the available vaccines. Some of that is reasonable caution and following approval rules, but some is also lack of working on emergency mode. This means that the only approved vaccine is Pfizer and it can’t meet demand.

      Demand is causing issues of supply everywhere, hence many countries gambling on delaying a second dose in order that they give more people the first dose. Which seems against Pfizer advice (its efficacy has not been tested for a prolonged period between vaccines) and the one country, Israel, that seems to be doing it right has gone the opposite route and is holding it’s remaining stock to ensure a 2nd dose is given rather than gambling that 1 dose will do.

      The original order was based on what Pfizer could supply. Same as every other country. Doesn’t matter how much EU wanted to procure, it could only ever get a maximum amount because that’s all that Pfizer could manufacture and supply the world. It would always have need approval of other vaccines.

      So you were close, key issue is the approval process and whether the EMA are taking a reasonable time. The sooner they approve, the sooner more vaccines can be ordered. Pfizer need other vaccines approved. But there is also a mess being made here of the vaccination process with the supply we currently have.

      1. Charger Salmons

        Vaccines are being supplied on a first come,first served basis.
        In other words those countries that put their money up early on in the development process get first dibs.
        The EU has been painfully slow in this regard – I’ve put the same Bild link up several times already on here outlining their many mistakes in the process.
        Early last summer the UK decided not to be part of the EU process and were roundly criticised at the time.
        They’re reaping the reward now.

        1. Charger Salmons

          Interestingly Germany was one of the countries which intitially insisted the EU should be in charge of vaccine procurement.Merkel overruled her own health minister who had been liasing which other health ministers in France,Italy and the Netherlands on the issue.
          But last September Germany quietly made a bilateral deal with BioNTech-Pfizer for 30 million doses while the EU was refusing to make hasty purchases.
          The BOGOF Brothers in Ireland were asleep at the wheel which is why so few vaccines are heading this way.

  2. goldenbrown

    ahem….135×2 = 270k doses?

    do we not need more like approx 6 Million to do this proper??

    or am I missing something here? it is supposed to be a mass vaccination, amirite?

    1. ReproBertie

      You may be missing the fact that nobody is saying the vaccination program will be completed by the end of February.

      1. Mr .T

        If they continue to vaccinate at that rate it will take several years for the whole country to get vaccinated.

        1. ReproBertie

          Yes, if.

          And if they increase the rate as they receive more deliveries of the vaccines then it will not take several years.

          1. goldenbrown

            hm

            I don’t get it Repro, surely for success (goal: let’s get the country running again asap) the style of a deployment like this should be a Big Bang (as opposed to Drip Feed), no?

            is it a hedging strategy?….e.g. maybe it’ll be naturally petered out by 2023 so lets not get into obtaining too much inventory…. or e.g. sure maybe the yoke will prevent transmission of infection so lets not get into obtaining too much inventory, 750k will do the trick….

            is it a we don’t really have the capability to mass vaccinate strategy? i.e. not enough personnel/facilities nor even a plan for that

            whatever it is that number quoted is utterly miniscule

            at that rate of delivery and lack of ambition do you really see any pubs opening or EP’s happening this side of 2023?

          2. ReproBertie

            You don’t get that we don’t have enough doses of the vaccines to administer the vaccines to the entire population in one go?

            We can’t administer what we don’t have.

          3. Cian

            why don’t we have it?

            …because every country in the (developed + many in the developing) world wants to vaccinate their population. The manufacturers can’t make it fast enough.

          4. goldenbrown

            why only 270k? it’s miniscule.

            is it that we have secured say 6 million doses and it’s just that we prefer to quote realtime numbers landed into the fridges on the island….if that’s the case how many have we actually contracted/secured for the project overall?

            or is 270k a rollup number so far of both secured/contracted + landed and we’re making it up as we go along, doing our best?

            see I smell a lack of a plan here, a best effort basis, e.g. take a quick nose at this ECDC doc, goto page 6 and the Annex, nowt entered for us.

            https://www.ecdc.europa.eu/sites/default/files/documents/Overview-of-EU_EEA-UK-vaccination-deployment-plans.pdf

            info on this aspect seems a bit sketchy and difficult to obtain. the UN are already coming out with statements about how equitable distribution of COVID-19 vaccines will represent an “acid test” for the international community

            they’re probably referring to the poorer countries there but will be interesting to see how 1st world we really are in the scheme of things

          5. Cian

            270k by the end of February.

            hopefully there will be other vaccines available and availability will increase.

          6. goldenbrown

            yea Cian I get that

            I just thought we’d see some sort of overall plan published, a plan on how we intend to beat the thing completely and including some info on the security of supply of vaccine….like Listrade pokes at there, are we even planning to mass vaccinate?

    2. Listrade

      It’s unrealistic to aim for 100% vaccination especially at this point in time. The aim has to be to vaccinate the most vulnerable, which would be around 2-5% of the population (? based on age profile). From these older stats:

      https://www.hpsc.ie/a-z/respiratory/coronavirus/novelcoronavirus/surveillance/underlyingconditionsreports/Underlying%20conditions%20summary_1.0v%2014122020.pdf

      88% of ICU cases and 94% of deaths the individual had an underlying health condition. Add to that median age of fatalities being 83 and you have a small percentage of people accounting for the largest proportion of serious risk.

      If you managed to vaccinate all those in the very high risk (the cocooning category) (circa 10% of population) that could reduce the risk (fatality/ICU use) by 70% (based on a 95% efficacy of vaccine). If you got enough for 40% of the population (over 50s) the risk would drop by over 90%. That’s going to come in close to needing 3 million doses.

      The point being, the initial batch of the vaccine allocations are based on the most vulnerable, so about 2(ish)%. Likely to be over 85s and very high risk medically. Next phase will be all over 75s, then over 65s as more doses are manufactured/vaccines approved.

      Mass vaccination doesn’t seem to be necessary given the very skewed risk to specific populations

      1. goldenbrown

        ok interesting Listrade, so by your reckoning we aren’t aiming to mass vaccinate

        I just thought that by now I’d see a plan published somewhere stating the aim and an explanation of the logic etc. feels very drip fed to me anyway

    1. Tinytim

      It is arguable that outright haste is somewhat unnecessary. Over the weekend we reached 2% of population with proven COVID cases. So by 2025 we would only be at ~12%.

      Yes there are more unidentified cases, but clearly they haven’t been a direct impact. So as this group grows it serves to also slow any spread.

  3. Brother Barnabas

    how long did it take us to distribute a pack of iodine tablets to every house? exactly ! once we get going, we’ll be done within a fortnight

  4. Dr.Fart

    so we’ll have 3.4 million done in…. FOUR YEARS. And that’s by his projection which is sure to be made-up. So even if we doubled the speed, which is v unlikely it’ll take 2 years. Oh god we’re all just guna get Covid before a vaccine. It’s long enough for mutated versions to arise and escape the vaccine. basically what’s happening is the virus is getting to go thru everyone and see how much of us it can thin out. In one way, perhaps good for the planet, in another, oh fupp. Doesn’t look good for ol’ Farty

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