Boosterism

Fjell

Well-known member
I walked down and got my booster yesterday from our ever-keen GP. Can?t fault them for being on the job over the last year or so, first-class effort on all fronts.

But it seems the message isn?t out there on jabs. Here?s one chap from ICU who should be put on TV in the middle of Strictly:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/nov/21/icu-is-full-of-the-unvaccinated-my-patience-with-them-is-wearing-thin
 

2xw

Active member
The walks in are pretty good, I was in and out within 25 minutes the other day (including my 15 minute wait).

I'm interested in the logistics with the upcoming flu, Lyme, HIV and cancer vaccines tho, I wonder if they can give them all at once!
 

Laurie

Active member
My doctor's only treating 80 years plus at the moment due to lack of supplies. Reckons it'll be after Christmas before he gets round to me. I'm 78. I've booked elsewhere to have mine next week.
 

alanw

Well-known member
I walked down to the city centre two days ago. Four "pods" and a continuous stream of people being vaccinated. No significant delays, just 5 minutes sitting waiting for the timer to ring afterwards. Slight tenderness in my arm, but nothing that stopped me going digging yesterday.

Re the Guardian article, I wonder what would go on the death certificate if one of the unvaccinated died before making it to hospital and seeing a doctor and there had to be an inquest? Misadventure? From the Wikipedia article: "occurred due to a risk that was taken voluntarily".
 

Eds

New member
Ingleton community center are quick and efficient. I had my booster there the other week then went for a walk onto lead mines moss (Ingleborough) afterwards.
They are doing Sundays for the next few weeks.
 

Pegasus

Administrator
Staff member
Tim and I are booked in for early Dec, when our 6 months since 2nd jab are up. Laurie, you could gladly have my appt if you live near Ingleton xx

Thank you NHS, thank you clever scientists for the vaccines, top job! 
 

Speleofish

Active member
It's worth making repeated visits to the NHS website - there are some big vaccine centres which run most days, though you may have to travel. However, there seem to be a number of pop-up centres with limited capacity which can appear and disappear quickly. My wife and I went online 30 minutes apart and she found several more places than I did.

The important thing is that the booster programme is run by NHS England and is NOT run by GPs.

I'd re-iterate the comments made in the Guardian article. In most parts of the UK, severe Covid is now mainly a disease of the unvaccinated (though there are some unfortunate people who have poor immunity or who are extremely frail who remain vulnerable)
 

pwhole

Well-known member
But it seems the message isn?t out there on jabs. Here?s one chap from ICU who should be put on TV in the middle of Strictly

As I pointed out in June when my appendix burst, there's a good chance that I wouldn't have got seen in time had there been a Covid peak at the time, and I would likely have died in an ambulance or on a trolley, waiting to be seen by an A&E team - as people are dying now of other ailments than Covid.

Last week I had a brief episode which I thought may be a complication, with massive pain on the same site, and 111 advised me to go go to A&E for a check-up - at 8.30am. I was meant to be working at 8, but my colleague told me hospital was much more important, and drove me straight there, and then waited in the van outside in case we could get back to work. I was processed immediately, but was then put in a queue to be seen, and by 10.30 I had to send my mate home, as he'd now waited two hours - for which I was immensely grateful. However, I didn't actually get to leave until 13.00, with an all-clear, and a diagnosis of a probable twisted intestine causing a massive back-up.

But from the time I arrived, there must have been a hundred more people turned up with various ailments (not including obesity, which was more than 50% of the attendees), and it was non-stop chaos - the brief chats I had with the team convinced me that that they were running on almost empty, and by the time I left I would have hugged them all if I could have, I was so grateful that they saw me at all.

But this is the point that I keep trying to make - it's not necessarily the Covid that's the problem, it's the impact Covid has on everything else. They can factor in car crashes, pub assaults, lightning strikes and, yes, burst appendices, but only if they're not clogged up dealing with unvaccinated chumps. I have a family relative who can't be jabbed due to auto-immune issues, and I'd really like to meet up with them soon due to their parent recently dying, and the only way I can do that is by not getting infected myself in the interim. Our club recently had a social event where a large number of visitors caught 'the cold' that's currently going around, despite me opening every bloody door in the building every ten minutes due to the numbers present. Good job I did at least that, it seems, or there would probably have been even more.
 

ChrisJC

Well-known member
I find all of the faux outrage at the various health service professionals who have just lost their job because they wouldn't have the vaccine.
I didn't see anybody just asking the bloody idiots why they couldn't just go and get it, like the rest of us who have a functional brain.

Chris.
 

Fjell

Well-known member
Speleofish said:
It's worth making repeated visits to the NHS website - there are some big vaccine centres which run most days, though you may have to travel. However, there seem to be a number of pop-up centres with limited capacity which can appear and disappear quickly. My wife and I went online 30 minutes apart and she found several more places than I did.

The important thing is that the booster programme is run by NHS England and is NOT run by GPs.

I'd re-iterate the comments made in the Guardian article. In most parts of the UK, severe Covid is now mainly a disease of the unvaccinated (though there are some unfortunate people who have poor immunity or who are extremely frail who remain vulnerable)

Obviously the NHS supply it, but our GP practice rings up every person registered with them when they are due based on the tiers etc. Last Dec they had the over 80?s done by the end of the month. I get the feeling this is not universal.

 

ZombieCake

Well-known member
No-one seems to complain about the flu jab that happens each year.  As the covid vaccines are now available I don't understand why people should complain about them. If your job says you need a vaccine, then you probably really need one. If you don't want a vaccine get a different job.
Of course you get conspiracy theories, and while they can be rather entertaining and a laugh to talk about, are largely complete fiction. It's very sad when people are daft enough, or brain washed enough, take them seriously, especially when such recklessness costs lives.
As an example, near where I live is a household of what I guess can be described as very single minded religious nut jobs. They have all sorts of rubbish plastered outside their house, including anti-covid conspiracy rants.  Of course people can have an opinion and view (and I'm all for free speech), however, some views can be dangerous if people are persuaded to avoid a safe course of action due to unfounded dogma.
 

pwhole

Well-known member
No-one seems to complain about the multiple jabs required to go on a holiday in many parts of the world either. I'd love to hear the argument for malaria and typhoid jabs being a corporate conspiracy.
 

Fulk

Well-known member
I wonder if the anti-vaxxers ever ask themselves why polio and smallpox are no longer threats to us in this part of the world.
 
Fulk,
This sort of thing.....

Starting from a position of vaccine scepticism....
Smallpox was in decline in the 18th C before vaccination was imposed.
Smallpox wasn't actually very serious (indeed quite trivial) and most of the problems were due to medical interventions.
Jenner was a dreadful researcher / human / doctor.
The rise in smallpox at the end of 18thC was due to medical interventions which were compounded by the vaccine increasing susceptibility to smallpox.

I'll email you a photo of an example newspaper. (I'm not going to give them the fuel of publicity) I was really quite shocked to find this sort of discussion about smallpox, and makes me wonder how addressable much of this is.
 

PeteHall

Moderator
Is anyone else slightly uncomfortable that we are handing out boosters to healthy over 40's here who are at very low risk, while a huge proportion of the at-risk global population is still unvaccinated?

For example, see: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

If we actually want to end this thing, surely we're going to need to curb it across the globe, not just at home, otherwise we'll be constantly fighting off new variants that have grown elsewhere. If vaccines are the only ticket out of the current situation, as is generally accepted, it's not just benevolence to hand out vaccines to poorer countries, it's surely in our own best interests too.
 

mrodoc

Well-known member
HardenClimber3 said:
Fulk,
This sort of thing.....

Starting from a position of vaccine scepticism....
Smallpox was in decline in the 18th C before vaccination was imposed.
Smallpox wasn't actually very serious (indeed quite trivial) and most of the problems were due to medical interventions.
Jenner was a dreadful researcher / human / doctor.
The rise in smallpox at the end of 18thC was due to medical interventions which were compounded by the vaccine increasing susceptibility to smallpox.

I'll email you a photo of an example newspaper. (I'm not going to give them the fuel of publicity) I was really quite shocked to find this sort of discussion about smallpox, and makes me wonder how addressable much of this is.
I presume you are well qualified to make these statements, They don't quite tally with the lecture my cousin gave recently on Zoom. He has researched pox viruses all his life and is head of pathology at Cambridge so  I would trust him implicitly.
 
mrodoc said:
HardenClimber3 said:
Fulk,
This sort of thing.....

Starting from a position of vaccine scepticism....
Smallpox was in decline in the 18th C before vaccination was imposed.
Smallpox wasn't actually very serious (indeed quite trivial) and most of the problems were due to medical interventions.
Jenner was a dreadful researcher / human / doctor.
The rise in smallpox at the end of 18thC was due to medical interventions which were compounded by the vaccine increasing susceptibility to smallpox.

I'll email you a photo of an example newspaper. (I'm not going to give them the fuel of publicity) I was really quite shocked to find this sort of discussion about smallpox, and makes me wonder how addressable much of this is.
I presume you are well qualified to make these statements, They don't quite tally with the lecture my cousin gave recently on Zoom. He has researched pox viruses all his life and is head of pathology at Cambridge so  I would trust him implicitly.

I don't quite understand your comment...
Are you questioning my scepticism of the bizarre claims quoted? (I have a 35 years experience in Infectious Diseases work).

To be very clear I disagree strongly with the idea that smallpox was a mild illness and that vaccine increased susceptibility. I was giving an example of the extreme stance adopted by some individuals (in response to Fulk's query about how anti-vaxxers rationalised smallpox vaccination etc).  (You don't state what stance your cousin takes in either direction - something that always alarms me). 
 

mrodoc

Well-known member
It would seem you are a victim of the way you presented your commen!. It looked as though you were making the statements. Best put them in quotes in future to avoid misunderstanding.
 

pwhole

Well-known member
PeteHall said:
Is anyone else slightly uncomfortable that we are handing out boosters to healthy over 40's here who are at very low risk, while a huge proportion of the at-risk global population is still unvaccinated?

Yes, I too am very uncomfortable handing out boosters at all here, to be honest, especially if it means poorer countries having their supplies delayed, and I'm quite proactive in terms of managing the risk to me and people I'm around. We've already got more benefits than most other countries, and a double-jab and sensible behaviour should mitigate almost all the risk. We could have pretty much eradicated it twice by now, but we haven't, for all the obvious reasons. I think we're protected enough, and is up to us to manage the social detail ourselves now, and we should be exporting vast volumes of vaccines to poorer countries.

African countries are critical, both for world health, and the future economies, not least as they hold many of the resources the rich countries will need over the next ten years. If we're planning to build mine-roads over corpses we're gonna need to be tough, and will have to keep taking the anti-depressants to deal with our ever-increasing selfishness. Of course if all the local mining employees have died from Covid, it's a moot point anyway. If we can't get British strawberry-pickers, can we get them to mine Coltan in the Congo? At ?400 a day?
 
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