covid-19

[Aimless]

Just had my first covid vaccine

No side effects so far. Expecting some aches and a touch of fever in a few hours time, which I normally get with the flu jab (lower backache, mostly), but we'll see.

Congrats mate, if you grow a second head you must post pix

UK cases plummeting, as new national lockdown takes effect finally.

Extremely good news, and, yet, difficult not to be saddened by the knowledge that the UK could've stayed out of this particular circle of hell by making better decisions in Autumn and early Winter. Lockdowns have worked for the UK—when they've been allowed to work. Hopefully, enough people will have been vaccinated to mitigate a future surge when restrictions are lifted.

I don't think that is what anyone on this forum is saying - specifically that the decisions being made by the UK govt re: prioritising first doses and delaying second doses will lead to better or worse results.

What I gather is being said is that it is dangerous simply to make those decisions based purely on non-clinical evidence. There are too many complexities, variables, moving parts, to make any informed decisions without clinical trials, and all the scientific scrutiny and vigour therein. In that, the only reliable information we have is that provided by ASZ and Pfizer. Outside of clinical trial, and simply throwing it out there into the public to see if it works where there is nothing but complexity, variety, and said moving parts without any of the scientific scrutiny brought by controlled clinical trial, is dangerous.

If it makes things better, then that will be largely by dint of vaguely back-of-the-envelope (nod, wiggin) guesstimated luck. And in an emergency as we have, that is the worst thing to do.

Stick to what we know - ie what is proven.

It can be difficult to stick to what we know and what is proven in an incredibly urgent emergency such as the pandemic.

Somewhere back between p54 and p58 I explained that, because this is uncharted territory, and because these decisions about epidemic control strategies are so momentous, I believe they should be supported by certain kinds of data and analyses that can help us get a better idea of how risky our chosen course really is compared to the alternatives, under a wide range of plausible circumstances and assumptions. If you see that a particular strategy should be expected to result in a lower overall attack rate and death toll than other strategies, across a range of assumptions about key parameters (eg. vaccine efficacy in specific groups over time, risk of exposure and death, etc), that would be reassuring—and, if your circumstances were to go beyond that safe range, you would be able to respond quickly. It would probably improve the quality of the decision-making process, make it easier to evaluate performance (and hold people accountable ofc), facilitate course-corrections if necessary, help other countries—and, of course, increase our knowledge.

The AZN data is honestly not of very high quality if you're trying to answer these questions, but that vaccine is nevertheless somewhat easier to justify stretching in this manner in order to facilitate a breadth-first strategy (if you take off the immunology hat for a moment). I think it's interesting and useful to subject the careless reasoning about immunological concerns to scrutiny, but, pragmatically, we can focus on the epidemiological aspects of these questions. My gut feeling is that the primary benefit of a breadth-first strategy will be to mitigate the fallout from the govt's monumental fuckups in Autumn and early Winter, and to mitigate the potential negative impact of a premature easing of lockdown restrictions—but I think the overall attack rate may indeed be a little lower as well. I hope that the breadth-first strategy will also hasten the fall in case numbers to the point where the risk of exposure will be very low for any frail elderly institutionalized people that may have lost the protection conferred by the first dose of whatever vaccine they received.

Fantastic news Gogo, very glad you've got your shot.

I hate to belabour the point but Gogo as Priority Group 4 has only gotten his shot now because of the twelve week policy. Had there been only 7 million given booster shots first instead then priority group 4 wouldn't have begun yet. Gogo and millions of real people are the ones whose shot would be delayed if we stuck religiously to the 3 week rule.

Sure, or many people in priority group 4 would nevertheless have gotten their shots in a reasonable time-frame by being placed in a higher priority group.