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#COVID19

Strett said:
Interesting take from the top man at AZ, as to why we are doing better than Western Europe, at the moment...

AstraZeneca jab could be the reason Britain is faring better than Europe, says vaccine boss
'In the UK, this vaccine was used for older people. Whereas in Europe initially people thought the vaccine doesn't work in older people'

The AstraZeneca jab could be the reason why Britain is faring better than Europe when it comes to Covid, the vaccine company's boss has said.

As countries in the EU - including Germany, the Netherlands and Austria begin to reimpose lockdown restrictions, the UK appears to be coping with the return to relative normality.

Pascal Soirot, chief executive of AstraZeneca, believes this could be due to the fact that so many older people were given the Oxford vaccine in Britain, whereas members of the EU banned the jab for its elderly populations.

The EU's medical regulator approved the use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine for all age groups in January.

But the rollout stalled in France, Germany and Italy when they recommended that it should not be used for people over 65, citing insufficient data on its efficacy for older people.

By March, they had U-turned on the policy, by which time the UK's rollout had far surpassed their European counterparts with millions of doses of AstraZeneca going into people of all ages.

This delay, according to Mr Soirot, could be the reason why restrictions are being tightened and hospitalisations are going up in Europe.


He told the BBC's Radio 4 Today programme: "You have two dimensions to this immune response... one is the antibody response and two is the so called T-cell response.

"And the antibody response is what drives the immediate reaction or defence of the body when when you're attacked by the virus.

"And the T-cell response takes a little longer to come in. But it's actually more durable. It lasts longer.

"And the body remembers that longer. So you see on to everybody's focused on antibodies, but antibodies you see them decline over time."

On Monday, Germany saw the second biggest number of daily cases in the world with 49,467, with the UK third with 41,365.

There were 204 Covid deaths reported on Monday compared to the UK's 45 and on Nov 14, there were 3,020 in intensive care with coronavirus compared to the UK's 923.

In March, the number in Germany was 200, and 1,813 in the UK, emphasising how mainland Europe is once again in the grip of another Covid storm.


Mr Soirot said: "What remains and is very important is this T-cell response.

"And as soon as the virus attacks you, they wake up and they come to the rescue and the defend you and but it takes them a little while so you may be infected, but then they come to the rescue and you don't get hospitalised and it's really interesting when you look at the UK, the there was a big peak of infections, but not so many hospitalisations relative to Europe.

"In the UK, this vaccine was used to vaccinate older people. Whereas in Europe initially people thought the vaccine doesn't work in older people."

Emmanuel Macron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel both publicly suggested the AstraZeneca jab was of no use to older people, with the French President calling it "quasi-ineffective".

Asked if that was a mistake by Europe, Mr Soirot said: "I'm not saying there was any mistake done by anybody. I'm just saying that there's a lot of data that still need to be made available that we don't have."

And pressed on the BBC if there could be a link between hospitalisation rates and the fact that AstraZeneca wasn't used in older people meaning the T-cell response isn't there, he said: What I'm saying is T-cells do matters, and in particular as it relates to the durability of the response, especially in older people, and this vaccine has been shown to stimulate T-cells to a higher degree in older people.

"And so we haven't seen many hospitalisations in the UK, a lot of infections, for sure, everybody talking about those.

"But what matters is are you severely ill or not are you hospitalised or not? And we haven't seen so many of these hospitalisations.

"There's no proof of anything. We don't know [if because AstraZeneca was used among older people in the UK instead of Pfizer or Moderna] but we need more data to analyse this and get the answer."

Germany is debating the possibility of introducing a general vaccine mandate next year amid warnings that it is facing a fifth wave of Covid cases.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...uld-reason-britain-faring-better-europe-says/
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A lot to talk about in this. No data to show the relative risk of serious infection or death wrt which jab you got. AZ chap thinks AZ is good. Ok.
However infection risk against delta has always been worse with AZ than Pfizer. The good news is that the booster seems to be essentially magic. This is being REALLY underplayed by the government and media. If the symptomatic infection risk drops this much we would be in a marvellous place if everyone took their boosters - at least for a while. I think the longest boostered people have only had their shots for about five months but it seems to be quite long lasting. Get your jabs, folks.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1460313047529103365
 
in_the_top_one said:
A lot to talk about in this. No data to show the relative risk of serious infection or death wrt which jab you got. AZ chap thinks AZ is good. Ok.
However infection risk against delta has always been worse with AZ than Pfizer. The good news is that the booster seems to be essentially magic. This is being REALLY underplayed by the government and media. If the symptomatic infection risk drops this much we would be in a marvellous place if everyone took their boosters - at least for a while. I think the longest boostered people have only had their shots for about five months but it seems to be quite long lasting. Get your jabs, folks.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1460313047529103365
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Had mine on Monday.
I now have a 'rona cocktail of natural infection, 2 x AZ and a Pfizer booster, coursing through my veins.
 
in_the_top_one said:
A lot to talk about in this. No data to show the relative risk of serious infection or death wrt which jab you got. AZ chap thinks AZ is good. Ok.
However infection risk against delta has always been worse with AZ than Pfizer. The good news is that the booster seems to be essentially magic. This is being REALLY underplayed by the government and media. If the symptomatic infection risk drops this much we would be in a marvellous place if everyone took their boosters - at least for a while. I think the longest boostered people have only had their shots for about five months but it seems to be quite long lasting. Get your jabs, folks.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1460313047529103365
Click to expand...


AZ are shortly going to release data showing that its jab offers long term T-cell immunity for older people, even after antibodies wane.
This may explain why we are not seeing the levels here, which they are in the EU countries who were slagging off AZ, 'cos Brexit, 10-12 months' ago.
 
Strett said:
AZ are shortly going to release data showing that its jab offers long term T-cell immunity for older people, even after antibodies wane.
This may explain why we are not seeing the levels here, which they are in the EU countries who were slagging off AZ, 'cos Brexit, 10-12 months' ago.
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Havn’t seen the data yet and not sure how much is spin but if true this could be a hammer blow for Macron. Could make him a quasi ineffective president. Could damage his bid to lead EU.
 
Polly 433 said:
Havn’t seen the data yet and not sure how much is spin but if true this could be a hammer blow for Macron. Could make him a quasi ineffective president. Could damage his bid to lead EU.
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Certainly hope so. Regardless of who is in charge of the U.K. there would be no chance of any form of reconciliation with the EU if he were in charge.
 
in_the_top_one said:
A lot to talk about in this. No data to show the relative risk of serious infection or death wrt which jab you got. AZ chap thinks AZ is good. Ok.
However infection risk against delta has always been worse with AZ than Pfizer. The good news is that the booster seems to be essentially magic. This is being REALLY underplayed by the government and media. If the symptomatic infection risk drops this much we would be in a marvellous place if everyone took their boosters - at least for a while. I think the longest boostered people have only had their shots for about five months but it seems to be quite long lasting. Get your jabs, folks.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1460313047529103365
Click to expand...

To underline this point a great thread about boosters UK-Europe and why we are not seeing the same...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1463450302212886530
 
paz1967 said:
There are other candidates that think highly of us?
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Not sure it is possible for anyone to think less of us than Macron.

Unfortunately though both us and the EU are guilty of grandstanding and aggravating the situation so much like we don’t think highly of them, they don’t think highly of us.

The sooner that is fixed the better for all concerned.
 
Strett said:
To underline this point a great thread about boosters UK-Europe and why we are not seeing the same...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1463450302212886530
Click to expand...
A characteristically very good thread from John Burn-Murdoch.
However, it doesn't invoke any need for a magical effect of AZ over other vaccines, as your other post suggested (in a combined dig at european leaders and brexit). The only data I've seen so far is that AZ basically just isn't quite as good as the others available here, although that is remedied by the third shot.

What the thread shows clearly, is that the 'let it rip' (and not care if bodies pile high) policy over the summer meant that - obviously - a lot of people got covid.
Trouble is, many died.
Had we retained some sort of light touch mitigation efforts that would have been barely noticeable, many would potentially have been saved because the population would have had time to get their second and third doses. European nations took that approach. It will be too late for some because they didn't manage to stifle spread while vaccinating people quite long enough before this current wave hit, but many deaths are likely to have been prevented from their strategy.


Anyway, we all got herd immunity several times over this year, and the pandemic was declared over with each downturn in the graph, so that's a big relief for the bereaved.
 
Basha73 said:
Not sure it is possible for anyone to think less of us than Macron.

Unfortunately though both us and the EU are guilty of grandstanding and aggravating the situation so much like we don’t think highly of them, they don’t think highly of us.

The sooner that is fixed the better for all concerned.
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The vast majority of the French really don't care about us.....if the issue is not in their locality they are not bothered.
I think much of the Macron stuff is purely for the UK media.
 
Feco said:
The vast majority of the French really don't care about us.....if the issue is not in their locality they are not bothered.
I think much of the Macron stuff is purely for the UK media.
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Wouldn’t surprise me. Nothing better for the Britain First brigade than to have a French pantomime villain.
 
in_the_top_one said:
A characteristically very good thread from John Burn-Murdoch.
However, it doesn't invoke any need for a magical effect of AZ over other vaccines, as your other post suggested (in a combined dig at european leaders and brexit). The only data I've seen so far is that AZ basically just isn't quite as good as the others available here, although that is remedied by the third shot.

What the thread shows clearly, is that the 'let it rip' (and not care if bodies pile high) policy over the summer meant that - obviously - a lot of people got covid.
Trouble is, many died.
Had we retained some sort of light touch mitigation efforts that would have been barely noticeable, many would potentially have been saved because the population would have had time to get their second and third doses. European nations took that approach. It will be too late for some because they didn't manage to stifle spread while vaccinating people quite long enough before this current wave hit, but many deaths are likely to have been prevented from their strategy.


Anyway, we all got herd immunity several times over this year, and the pandemic was declared over with each downturn in the graph, so that's a big relief for the bereaved.
Click to expand...

It wasn't a 'let it rip' and 'bodies piled high' agenda in the summer and it's disingenuous to say as such.
It was a deliberate policy to avoid another winter surge and bring the country to need another lockdown to protect the NHS [sic]

I recall the massed outrage among the media and commentariat, and on here from some earlier this year (mid July) when the UK removed most restrictions, while most of Europe remained constrained in many aspects of normal life.

I believed then that we were charting a sensible course, but it was difficult to make that case when so many eminent people, with relevant expertise, were so against it.

People will die of it/with it. It is a pandemic, that's the point of them.
Having most die in one month in winter is not desirable, amortising these over many months is.

One thing this pandemic has reminded us all is that scientists can be wrong, very wrong and common sense is very often overlooked by those with political agendas.

I hope (and I’m fairly sure) that we have turned a corner on this pandemic. We now have enough jabbed (even if the vaccines are not “perfect”), and with enough natural infection and people coming forward for boosters to maintain a level of herd immunity.
 
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