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A General Practitioner is the English term for what in other countries is called a Family Doctor. She rang us up last week to offer us vaccinations, asking three questions: are you fit and well; have you had a flu vaccination in the last week; have you had allergic reactions to anything? Then we were offered the vaccination appointment, which we accepted. We asked one question: which sort? and the answer was: Pfizer.
Several days later we received official invitation-to-be-vaccinated letters. Redundant, because we had immediately after the phone call received confirmatory text messages, but reassuring anyway. This morning we went to the clinic. As we came down the London street and approached the door, one of the three masked attendants standing outside came towards us, saying our surname out loud, and that he had guessed it was us, since we were due at that time, and were coming to be vaccinated together. After a very brief chat about whether our neoprene masks steam up our glasses (no) we were motioned inside. There we were met by another three masked attendants. One of them took our temperatures, another asked if we were feeling well, while the third, seated at a computer recorded our details and printed cards for us. We had to disinfect our hands. We were given a card each with name, date of birth, National Health Service number, and date and time of second vaccination appointment 70 days later.
In the next room were patients, all masked, seated at separate chairs, waiting to be allowed out after observation. We were beckoned forward by a further attendant, and at the end of the corridor by another, and finally yet another who asked us to stand together at an appointed and marked spot, 2 metres from the other person waiting. Every attendant wore a mask, and gave cheerful greetings. This area had two or three attendants.
Soon we went into a room where two chairs were provided. There we met what appeared to be the Vaccinator in Person, with her attendant on a computer. The vaccinator gave an excellent, clear explanation of the procedure, and the likely side effects, and the pain killers which could be taken in the case of pain or headache. To my great satisfaction, she said that the protective effect would be pretty good by two weeks and would continue increasing thereafter, and that the second vaccination would be up to 10 weeks later and would add to the protective effect. I should have recorded her, but at least I commended her afterwards. We were given a detailed document about the vaccination we had received.
Then the vaccination itself, quick and painless, afterwards taken to a waiting room with one other patient, and monitored for a while. The time of vaccination had been written on sticky labels stuck on the back of our hands. It felt like about 7-10 minutes, but we were checked by attendants twice during the period, whatever it was, and there was time to use mobile phones, scan the explanatory document and put jackets back on. A last an attendant opened the exit door to let us out of a side entrance (the whole thing was one-way flow) warning us the rain had made the wooden ramp a bit slippery, and that was it.
It ran well, was welcoming, and even had a holiday feel to it, as if we were there for vacation, not vaccination. The explanations were particularly good. In the context of a raging European Union argument about whether the United Kingdom, having signed contracts with AstraZeneca at least three months ago and paid in advance, should nonetheless divert UK production of vaccines to Europe, so that despite having been late to strike a deal, and only now being willing to approve the vaccine, Europe could get its fair, moral and reasonable share, it was hard not to feel pride that Britain, however much it may have screwed up the management of Covid (valuing freedom over public health controls) had at least redeemed itself by being ahead of the curve with securing vaccines for its people.
Indeed, most major European Union countries are so far behind Britain that even normally long-suffering Europeans are wondering quite how their governments screwed up a simple matter of procurement. Britain’s total vaccinated exceeds the European Union total.
Those to be vaccinated this morning were elderly British, mostly singletons, more women than men. The attendants were middle aged. There was at least one cheerful Australian, but these things cannot be helped.
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Thank you. Your narrative is quite consoling, as I am having my vaccination next week.
On the other hand, it was announced this week that Britain’s COVID deaths have now exceeded 100,000. In terms of deaths-per-million that puts us top of the league internationally. Or do I mean bottom of the league?
Brussels wants Britons to die so that Europeans should live.
So saith the Blessed Ambrose Evans-Pritchard in this morning’s Telegraph. Rather a good summary, I thought. I don’t suppose anyone in Britain feels glee that many Continentals may well die because the EU is an incompetent mess. I’m sure, though, that some of the older ones will think “Oh Lord, are the Germans going to try to kill lots of us again?”
I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised that GP surgeries that do a fine job with the flu jab should do a fine job with the Covid jab. But given the notorious uselessness of the senior ranks of the NHS it’s always good to be reminded that little pockets of it can cope well.
Late news: my wife tells me that the German Ministry of Rubbing People Up The Wrong Way has announced that the AstraZeneca jab isn’t much cop anyway so Yah, boo, sucks to you.
You might almost wonder whether they have an election approaching.
With different vaccines available what’s going to happen when they become required for travel? I hear Russia recognises only its own vaccines.
Belgium and Slovenia worse.
If you would kindly, please return and tell us if the vaccine killed you.
If we don’t see any articles by a “James Thompson” in the future, we know that you succumbed to that which you so eagerly lined up for.
I am grateful to James Thompson and all the other guinea pigs for committing to what is likely to be an annual vaccination with an inadequately tested experimental vaccine.
Being a statistician he probably worked out some probability. Perhaps that the likelihood of the vaccine killing him is less than that of being run over by a bus on his way to the surgery.
Congratulations on becoming a genetically modified organism.
In terms of deaths-per-million that puts us top of the league internationally
In cumulative deaths you may well be right, but Portugal (where I live) has now moved to the very top of the league tables in daily deaths and number of cases (per million population):
Deaths
Portugal 28.73
Monaco 25.48
United Kingdom 25.42
Daily cases (countries having at least 3 million population)
Portugal 1,478.22
Spain 861.62
…
United Kingdom 373.70
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?tab=table&zoomToSelection=true&country=~PRT®ion=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=daily&hideControls=true&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc
This lie again? Please explain how the fundamental paradigm of molecular genetics, DNA->mRNA->proteins gets reversed with mRNA vaccines. For extra credit, think about how every live virus vaccine is a means to an end of generating mRNA to then make one or more viral proteins. For even more credit, explain how mRNA vaccines are uniquely capable of changing your DNA compared to getting a wild type virus infection.
You fucking Anglo Saxon hypocrites ordered and stockpiled 3-5 times the amount of vaccines you needed for your population- to the extent that poor brown countries -like Brazil and Turkey don’t have any.
There is no vaccine for my family cuz you fuckers took it.
Thank god the rest of the world can rely on China.
We even gave the vaccine to the countries who are most in need of it before our own people. We have the virus under country.
The unbearable hypocrisy is that the West still have the audacity to find every angle to attack China’s vaccine.
You white people are so shameless. So evil. I hope all you people get The UK Virus ver 2 and found out the vaccine don’t work!
Burn in hell, you motherfuckers.
Pride? hard not to feel anything *BUT PRIDE* ? Tell me how does your government *REDEEM* itself when the *UK VIRUS* is ravaging the world because your government covered it up for a fucking three month and let it spread!
To blatantly jump the queue before those who are most vulnerable and then to flaunt that despicable act! Hard not to feel anything BUT PRIDE?
To sow doubt around the world about China’s vaccine so other countries wouldn’t use it and then stockpile the “good” vaccine for yourself. Hard to feel anything BUT PRIDE?
SHAME on you, James Thompson! I hope you DIE from the vaccine…or the *UK VIRUS *!
“screwed up the management of Covid (valuing freedom over public health controls)”
Can you clarify what you mean here? Did the British government restrict the people’s freedoms too much, in your opinion, or not enough?
Can’t argue with that.
Be thankful. The great irony is that all those poor bastards, whether they realise it or not, are being injected with patented experimental poisons, which is highly likely to result in their “unexpected” demise in about 12 months time. Quite a horrible death, in fact.
Here’s what one actual expert has to say on the subject (don’t expect to hear about any of this through official channels)…
Meanwhile, you are quite correct about China’s generosity in providing actual vaccines (not experimental poisons) to the many countries crying out for it. I have to say, even though I wouldn’t consent to being injected with anything, that the Russian and Chinese products at least have the benefit of decades of knowledge and expertise behind them.
As for the very idea that we all “need” vaccination to protect us from Corona Chan, it’s funny how the entire Western world literally banned the use of simple, cheap and effective medicines to cure the Corona Chan bug.
Right at the outset, China publicised their own investigations which demonstrated a raft of different medicines and nutritional supplements which very quickly knock Corona Chan on the head. Of course, Western officialdom meticulously debunked and ignored all of this.
Western medical “experts” even went to the length of publishing fake scientific studies to scare the public away from proven Corona Chan cures (the Lancet in particular had to retract and apologise for a blatantly false “study” which claimed HCQ had no benefit in treating Corona Chan).
Now, belatedly, the truth is starting to seep out from under the lying Western media and medical establishment, eg:
Yes, folks, it’s true, a great many of those poor old codgers who kicked the bucket with Corona Chan didn’t need to, if only our medical and political fuhrers had allowed us to use the cheap medicines that we already had available but were instead rubbished and banned.
So who’s going to pay the piper?
Pray tell, what exactly would a ‘genetically un-modified organism’ be?
Right-O! Capital! Drop like flies and carry on! When the indeterminate percentage of experimental subjects goes tits-up in a couple of weeks because they were incubating or convalescing,
https://childrenshealthdefense.org/defender/surgeon-warns-fda-pfizer-immunological-danger-covid-vaccines-convalescent-asymptomatic-carriers/?itm_term=home
Little Britain will be just a bit littler and easier to handle for the London station chief.
If the NHS weren’t in the tank for Big Pharma, they would also ask, have you had it?
https://www.medpagetoday.com/infectiousdisease/covid19/90894?xid=nl_mpt_DHE_2021-01-27&eun=g1469515d0r&utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Daily%20Headlines%20Top%20Cat%20HeC%20%202021-01-27&utm_term=NL_Daily_DHE_dual-gmail-definition
We have stuff stockpiled? The last I heard the vaccine companies were having trouble meeting production targets.
Explain how ‘we’ took your vaccine? Where do you live? did the Chinese order the UK made vaccine? If so its the first I have heard about it.
So your government prioritised other countries populations rather than your own, OK but how is that anyone else’s fault? Is the Chinese government supplying it gratis or are they paying for it? (I assume you meant to say that you have the virus under control)
I agree with you entirely on that score, sadly commercial interests completely control the UK.
Yeah, play the race hate card, everyone else does, I feel more sympathetic to your point of view already.
Look here old chap, you can say whatever you like about our shitty Zionist-banker controlled government and its hypocrisy ( in most cases I would agree with you) but if you are going to play the ‘die whitey die’ card then you can just go fuck yourself, got it?
It often dithered, coming in just too late, so that restrictions had to be made tougher and last for longer, when a much sooner start, with sharper restrictions to begin with would very probably had a better effect. In dealing with a pandemic, the timing of decisions becomes crucial a few days makes a big difference.
My I please offer my asides regarding china flu deaths and vaccines? Thank you.
It’s all fucking bullshit.
People are not dying from covid-19 but they are possibly dying and at some point had something (flu) that was called covid 19 according to the face pcr tests.
People are dying with FLU or the flu’s that have been killing people for decades. But now common flu is called covid-19.
And about the vax, they are genetically modifying human beings. You will be told to get more and more vaccines by bill gates (mass murderer) as he makes billions of dollars. The vaccines will make you sick, or eventually kill you. You have no idea what will happen to you by adding synthetic genetic strands to you DNA.
Nope. The vaccines were paid for but remain undelivered. After the UK population has been vaccinated, it is likely that the surplus vaccines, when delivered, will be sold or given away to other countries. After that, the developed world will pay for the rest of the world to be vaccinated too.
China’s record is nothing to shout about. The CCP is now telling us that the virus originated in a lab – in America. No, it originated in Wuhan, because the CCP sent away the French team who had built the P4 lab, because they did not think it was necessary to learn how to operate the lab safely, and they could not wait to begin work on exciting military projects. We are damned lucky that their first project was SARS-COV-2 and not Ebola, or we would all be dead by now.
It is the CCP that is evil to the core and will burn in hell.
Sounds like wishful thinking.
There’s an abundance of evidence out there that Corona Chan was circulating in various parts of Europe and the USA long before the outbreak was detected in Wuhan which set off the Chinese like a nest of angry ants.
We’re talking about dates as early as March 2019.
There’s also reference in various articles published here on Unz.Com about the Japanese and Taiwanese university researchers who, through analysis of the various genetic strains of coronavirus circulating around the globe, independently came to the conclusion that Corona Chan almost certainly originated in North America.
No prizes for guessing which part of North America.
I guess we can safely assume there’s going to be no shortage of motherfuckers burning in Hell.
Yes, please do. You have the floor.
Well, I didn’t see that coming (but IMO you’re absolutely right).
The statistics seem more and more to be pointing in that direction, but Hell will freeze over before medical officialdom and their political enablers will ever admit it.
Too many reputations and careers involved, too much incriminating evidence and legal liability to ever allow the truth to see the light of day.
Well, the American mRNA “vaccines” are certainly in this category, and IMO are excceedingly dangerous. Various medical boffins in relevant fields also seem to agree with that view. Expect to see a large percentage of the recipients come down with all manner of permanent auto-immune diseases and God knows what else in the long run, as well as many dropping dead within a couple of weeks of being injected.
Funny how both Moderna and Pfizer have been assured total legal indemnity by our governments from any of the consequences which might result.
Unfortunately for the citizens of much of the Western world, the American “vaccines” are being shoved down out throats by our democratic governments whether we like it or not.
Much better (safer) prospects for the citizens of nations who are looking to use the Russian or Chinese vaccines, which are actually based on long-proven methods and pose little danger to the recipients.
Yep, that seems to be the plan, along with “vaccine passports” to make sure everyone is up to date with their latest “shots”. Anyone who refuses will be out of a job, unable to buy or sell or travel or socialise – basically dead meat. Mark of the Beast, anyone?
And that seems to be the plan, too. Population control for the eugenicists, blended with an unending super bonanza for Big Pharma.
It’s early days yet. Just imagine what other surprises they’re cooking up for us right now.
For the most part – current societies around the globe not having much actual experience in dealing with pandemics – such assertions are necessarily theoretical in nature.
Having said that, the Chinese experience supports the idea that swift, ruthless action to isolate the source will effectively stop an outbreak from spreading. China’s singular recovery compared to the rest of the world substantiates this.
Use of cheap, safe, readily available and highly effective nutritional supplements and medicines to treat and cure Corona Chan is another avenue to stop the spread of Corona Chan. The Chinese themselves investigated and publicised a variety of nutritional and medicinal measures that they found to be effective in treating Corona Chan.
The low incidence of Corona Chan across various African populations provides an inadvertent testament to the effectiveness of HydroxyChloroquine (as just one example) against Corona Chan, where – by pure happy coincidence – it happens to be widely used as a routine prophylactic against Malaria.
Various groups of medical professionals across the globe, even in the USA, have attempted to publicise their experiences in successfully curing Corona Chan with nutritional supplements and readily available medicines.
Unfortunately, Western governments, medical establishments and media organs have closed ranks to debunk and literally ban the use of supplements or medicines to cure Corona Chan. The unified narrative across the globe is that vaccines are our only hope.
Of course, when all the alternatives are shut out, what are the common folk to think?
Old racists like Thompson shouldn’t get the vaccine. They’ll only make life miserable for people of color once again when they no longer have to hide at home because of Corona.
You have to give him credit, he has a feisty temperament, but he’s hard not to like.
He reminds me of the City Wok guy off South Park.
dux.ie on Unz have done an amazing phylogenetic study on the origin of the virus that everyone should read.
A guy named Stephen Goldstein said the British variant has “too many mutations to have accumulated under normal evolutionary circumstances”. Those new variants were explained as being bred in “chronic Covid” cases (which they say are different from “long Covid” ones). It seems just an implausible ad hoc hypothesis to me, but in case it is correct I don’t see how the timing or duration of lockdowns would have prevented the appearance of those new variants. It’s true though that China reaped better results than the rest of the world with its stern measures (or so we are led to believe). But even China is facing a resurgence in cases, and is controlling it with the same stern measures it took in the beginning.
‘New coronavirus variants may have roots in immunocompromised patients, leading scientist says’
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-new-variant-coronavirus-uk-latest-b1787388.html
‘China Escalates Efforts to Beat Back Its Worst Covid-19 Resurgence‘
https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-escalates-efforts-to-beat-back-its-worst-covid-19-resurgence-11611142577
LOL. What a moron. A holiday, indeed. Do you realize that the vaccines will not “end the pandemic”, because, it’s not proven that they grant any immunization at all, and even if they did, it’s just for a few months. So you will have a “COVID vacation”, I mean “vaccination”, every year, for the rest of your life. And perhaps even a lockdown and masks too, as there is no sign of they relaxing it so far.
Pride in Britain becoming a police state? Freedom valued over health? What the hell are you talking about?
I mean, first they lie to you about “terrorism” and create authoritarian rules and you accept old ladies having their cavities searched before boarding planes, because “terrorism”. Now they lie to you about a “pandemic” and lock you in your home and you accept it because, “it’s a dangerous, evil virus”. Next it will be about “global warming”, and so forth, and so on.
I find it incredible that the same people that (supposedly) criticize the genocidal immigration policies of current Western governments suddenly find that the same government’s “Covid” policies are fine and dandy, and done for the “greater good”, because… Why???
Holiday atmosphere, indeed! After your country’s severe restrictions on gatherings, the only place to be among others appears to be at NHS vaccination central.
So, a doctor phones you, you get a text message, then a letter. Three attendants meet you outside, then three more inside, where you’re seated and given a card. Then two more attendants direct traffic to where you are appointed a specific spot. Then a vaccinator and assistant shoot you up, you get a sticky label, an attendant takes you to a waiting area where two or three more attendants assist, then one last attendant sees you out. Thank goodness they were cheerful!
I’m chuckling because last night rummaging through old DVDs I came across and watched Terry Gilliam’s “Time Bandits” and I’m imagining your NHS experience reenacted at the scene where John Cleese as Robinhood greets the newcomers–“Jolly good!”
How it started
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/14/coronavirus-vaccine-delays-brexit-ema-expensive
Trust the experts!
How it’s going
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/jan/29/we-had-to-go-it-alone-how-the-uk-got-ahead-in-the-covid-vaccine-race
Funny, I thought Kate Bingham’s appointment (her husband is a minister) was an example of Tory nepotism and corruption?
The “pandemic” is mostly in the mind. It is a mind virus. A panic virus. Lockdowns and other authoritarian measures kill much more than COVID. The vaccine kills too, a few dozens of people have died already. You’ll be lucky if you don’t have a reaction. (Even though I think it’s probably harmless for most, and done more for financial reasons than for supposed “population reduction” purposes)
Years ago, you accepted that you can’t bring a water bottle into a plane and that old ladies need to be thoroughly searched because “terrorism”.
Now you accept getting a “test” to prove that you’re “not sick” in order to do anything. Soon they will require a Covid vaccine to allow you to travel, work or perhaps even get out of your own home.
In China, they are experimenting with “anal swab tests” – perhaps soon to come to the West too, after all, they are “more reliable”: https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/anal-swab-china-coronavirus/2021/01/27/cc284f56-6054-11eb-a177-7765f29a9524_story.html)
This is life in 2021. Do you accept it? Is this the world you want for your children and grandchildren? An authoritarian technological dystopia? All because you’re scared of a simple flu-like disease that basically only kills old or unhealthy people?
Get a grip, boomers. Take the vaccine if you want, but don’t force your crazy dystopia on everyone else, let people live their lives.
Funny, I thought Kate Bingham’s appointment (her husband is a minister) was an example of Tory nepotism and corruption?
Yes, and her father’s a Lord and she’s an Oxford graduate. Horrible background, isn’t it?
And yet she pulled off perhaps the biggest triumph for Her Majesty’s Government since The War. It’s always cheering to see people overcome disadvantages in life, isn’t it?
There’s a perfectly decent argument to be made that lockdowns have been a mistake, that how well or badly countries (or US states) have done doesn’t seem to relate to their lockdowns, or absence of same.
More generally I think that the near-universal assumption that government action or inaction has dominated outcomes suggests a widespread lack of critical thinking.
The exception may be now, when governments are distributing vaccines. I do hope they are right to do so. We’ve gambled that they are. We’ve recommended to the younger generation of the family that they shouldn’t. Wait and see.
If you exclude a single reading of Spanish sewage from March 2019, all the rest are not long before the big outbreak in Wuhan, completely consistent with low levels of transmission in a number of places before that. This is not proof it came from there, but is also not proof it didn’t come from there.
Literally not true for the Sputnik V Russian vaccine, that style of viral vector vaccine is fairly recent, and I’m not sure anyone has ever rolled out a variety of it as a major, fully licensed vaccine. But its theory is very good, also the best of all the adenovirus viral vector vaccines. Other examples of this are the Oxford platform which had never been tested on more than 40 people at a time before 2020, and Janssen’s which has passed an European Phase III trial for an Ebola vaccine, but wasn’t the one used so successfully in the last outbreak.
The “long-proven methods” used by the Chinese have resulted in horrors like the initial 1960s inactivated virus RSV vaccine, which for its most important target audience of infants in the first trial put 80% of them in the hospital and killed two. A great deal of work in the US went into figuring out the antibody-dependent enhancement (ADE) behind that, and then preventing it for SARS type coronavirus vaccines. Anyone in the world who doesn’t take advantage of that research is risking a great deal if they’re making vaccines that include the spike protein.
While I’m at it, “long proven” also includes the Sanofi/GSK initial failure and eeeevil US Novavax, both protein plus adjuvant vaccines. And that’s it for all the vaccines that might be ready any time soon.
It’s entirely plausible, and I’ve read was a previously known mechanism for this happening. The idea is that instead of an ecological battle fought over which mutants best compete in infecting other people, it’s inside one human body. We suspect it because we don’t yet think there are strong selection pressures in human populations, but that’ll be changing soon as enough people get vaccinated.
You are of course correct about it having nothing to do with lockdowns, unless they would have prevented these mutant breeding people from getting COVID-19 in the first place. Which just doesn’t seem practical unless you get PRC/CCP serious and severe if we believe their claims of success, or do a quarantine strategy like New Zealand’s.
I suppose you are right concerning the biological plausibility of the “chronic Covid” hypothesis. I certainly know a lot less about these things than you.
The place of origin for that new variant has been located in Kent. Patrick Cockburn is even more specific: he names the town of Margate. In that Independent piece I linked to in my previous comment they make it clear that this “chronic Covid” explanation is only a hypothesis. But apparently they have located that first patient with the new variant. So, was he a “chronic Covid” patient or what? They should have made that clear to us.
Perhaps I am overthinking this. Anyway, thanks for your reply.
‘Scientists think they know when, where and how the new coronavirus strain started in Kent’
https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/scientists-think-know-when-how-4866103
‘The ‘Kent strain’ of COVID and the truth about claims it was imported by refugees’
https://www.kentlive.news/news/kent-news/kent-strain-covid-truth-claims-4901184
‘Government Is Using the Mutant Virus as an Alibi for Its Failures’
https://www.unz.com/pcockburn/government-is-using-the-mutant-virus-as-an-alibi-for-its-failures/
I live in Hong Kong. The damn rioters and self hating chinks here don’t believe in China’s own vaccine so we have to order the same crap that you guys are using….which is not available of course!
My mom and many of my relatives are all above 80..ok? Older and more vulnerable than “proud” fucking Briton James Thompson here, ok? You get it now?
I wouldn’t be so livid if not for the fact that this old geezer Thompson have the audacity to flaunt this theft and feel “proud” about hoarding the vaccine. It is fucking outrageous. He must be one of the idiots that hoards toilet paper and have 10 years of it in his basement.
I did generalise a bit and I should just direct my diatribe to James and the UK government of course. I have become a bit misanthropic so I don’t believe it is just whitey that should burn in hell…most of us probably deserve it.
Annual my arse.
You’ll need to be vaccinated for each new variant strain.
Or, have we forgotten about the new more deadly and communicable strain now circulating in England?
I suspect at least every 2 to 3 months you’ll need to be vaccinated to ward off all the new strains popping out of the woodwork every few months.
Remember, these vaccines are supposed to help your body produce anti-bodies against specific spike proteins that the mRNA vaccine is supposed to get your body to produce.
Of course, that’s all out the window if a new corona virus mutates the spike protein such that the old vaccine provides no protection against the newly mutated protein spike.
So, prepare to get the jab at the least 3 to 4 times a year. Pharmaceutical profits and stock prices depend upon your sheepish compliance.
The UK government has said that it will GIVE away all surplus vaccines to poor countries.
Also, the Oxford University Vaccine developers ensured that the Astra Zenaca producer would sell each dose at cost price, rather than make a profit.
Hoping that informs you.
PS Nice and warm in hell not like UK!
Profits? AstraZeneca are selling their vaccine at cost. Given the treatment they’re getting from the EUSSR they may already regret that decision – maybe even the decision to enter the vaccine biz at all.
Let no good deed go unpunished, eh?
Strangely enough, our immune systems are smarter than that, and it turns out not to be the case, at least for a lot of non-flu viruses including COVID-19. Note that is perhaps my most important COVID-19 posting ever, strongly recommend you check it out to learn how our adaptive immune system anticiaptes mutations of a pathogen it’s already thrown off.
Given that it’s not more deadly, not as such. B.1.1.7 transmits better, yes, but I haven’t even heard there’s any indication the significantly different South African B.1.351 is “more deadly,” just different and you’re more likely to get infected by it after getting a “classic COVID-19” infection or vaccine and don’t have enough time for your memory B cells to evolve to perhaps better handle it (see the above link).
TL;DR: Your hatred of “Pharmaceutical profits and stock prices” isn’t going to let you view this situation rationally.
Let’s not let little things like the EUSSR until very recently being extremely proud about how they took three months to jawbone AZ down from “$3 to $2” per dose get in the way of a Two Minute Hate against pharmaceutical companies. Don’t quote me on those prices, there rough from a general discussion of this, as well as making AZ set up four factories in the EU three months after they started production in the U.K. Thus of all of AZ’s COVID-19 vaccine factories, those in the EU have the very lowest productivity, are the furthest behind in climbing the learning curve.
The increasingly insane behavior by the EUSSR which went as far as proposing to negate the part of Brexit which allows a customs free border between the U.K. and Ireland could well have long term consequences as the political drones responsible get more and more desperate about their business as usual behavior which is right now killing thousands of their subjects. Also don’t take this to the bank, but I read they gave a trade negotiator the job of contracting with Pfizer, AZ, etc. and got exactly what they told him to do. Whereas it was said a venture capitalist was retained for the U.K., and he also got exactly the result desired by his political masters.
It was noted claims that EU produced vaccine were sent to the U.K. were based on some raw liquid vaccine produced in the U.K. being shuttled to Belgium I think it was for bottling until a new plant was set up in the U.K.
Also note the AZ/Oxford vaccine wasn’t granted EU conditional marketing approval until literally yesterday, January 29th, 2021.
a venture capitalist was retained for the U.K., and he also got exactly the result desired by his political masters
He was a she who had a First Class degree in Biochemistry and decades of experience in bio businesses. She played a stormer and did it without pay. I hope they make her a Duchess.
O.M.
Serious domain competence and experience, of course that would be the sort of venture capitalist they’d pick. Doing it unpaid is I suspect not a great burden when you aren’t taking three months to do the work….
Good suggestion. I incline to the Duchess option because (i) it must be ages since one was awarded, and (ii) it would annoy all the right people. Anyway, so long as it’s a gong far beyond the reach of a retiring civil servant it’ll do.
How do OM and CH compare? My instinct says that the former might be better but I speak from a pretty profound ignorance about such things. (I even had to ask a friend what her new title meant. It turned out that she had become the female equivalent of a knight. I was disappointed; the knight I have talked to most recently is a twerp whom I wouldn’t trust an inch.)
Returning to the Duchess option, it could be hereditary and be inheritable by a girl. Perhaps it should be inherited by the first born irrespective of sex.
This post should be pinned at the top of any vaccine thread.
Currently 4 vacancies, so its a possibility. And only two women at present.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_Merit
I see that the OM is grander than the CH. I also see that I know, very slightly, somebody with an OM. We used to be members of the same committee. It became obvious that we had the same views on almost all the business that came before us. So it’s obviously a well merited OM, eh?
I used to know one of the CHs. That was at the level of having coffee together, having dinner at each other’s flats, going to each other’s parties. Good bloke. I’m delighted at his honour.
I suppose that neither of these links is tenuous or remote enough for my collection Tenuous or Remote Connections to Famous People. Did I ever tell you of my remote connection to a President of Germany? Some other time perhaps.
Only 24 OMs at any one time, so it’s pretty rarefied.
Yes, hence my suggestion!
One assumes it would be genetically evolved.
Of course they aren’t right to do so. They should be distributing vitamin D, vitamin C , Selenium, Zinc, Quercetin, and Hydroxyquinone. When was the last time a government did something right?
Total damage done to people by government reaction to covid is somewhere between a hundred and a thousand times that of doing almost nothing. Lives lost is terrible metric. The only sensible measure is Quality-Adjusted Life-Years lost. Hundreds of millions of lives destroyed for no reason.
News for 80 plus morons; you are going to die sometime and for most it will be quite soon. I am 80.
Missed out Ivermectin. Very effective and very safe. Safe means when taken in the correct dose. This applies to everything. Excess of most things can damage or kill.
And misspelled Hydroxychloroquine.
9 year life expectancy for an 80 year old. Try being more accurate, and kinder.
When was the last time a government did something right?
When Churchill changed The Fleet from coal-burning to oil-burning?
9 year life expectancy for an 80 year old.
But perhaps not for the poor souls who are killed by it – it picks on the very frail, does it not?
And on men – why no hullabaloo about that?
Did you really think that I didn’t know that?
My personal best guess for my present life expectancy, pre the covid insanity, is late nineties(my uncle, also a pilot, who I am very, like died last year at 97).
I would be very interested in your response to the substance of my comment especially the following excerpt
Agree quality adjusted life years is a good metric. When you say “total damage done to people” what metric are you using? Your estimate of ” hundred to a thousand times” is rather wide. How did you calculate it?
Go and catch a falling star, tell me where all past years are, or who cleft the devil’s foot. And then, for extra credit, tell me how many bottles of Dr Pierce’s elixir are needed to cure arrogance.
I would place more trust in concentrated sour cherry juice mixed with used engine all than the the latest Hakcine