The Student Room Group

Oxford vaccine - why was the MHRA coy about the efficacy

Watching the briefing on the tv yesterday about the vaccine they were asked about the efficacy of the vaccine. They were no open and one of them stated something like the exact figures not yet disclosed was my grasp of it. Previous new items from Astra/Oford indicated a 90%+ efficacy when a full and a half dose administered. It was compared with the Pfizer re efficacy. However, the MHRA has approved two FULL doses and the efficacy of that is about 75% at best. So when are they going to be open about this? The number of jabs our government promised us a few months ago was in the multi millions by the end of the year and more recently it was " four million" but yesterday they aid 530k. Another point, where is the data to support the gov/MHRA stance of spreading the Pfizer vaccine over 12 weeks rather than the 3 weeks? Even Pfizer stated yesterday there is no data to support this.

Three points = Efficacy of the Oxford vaccine - is it at best 75% for us or are we getting the 90% plus via the one and half jabs??

Pfizer vaccine - where is the data to support MHRA's 12 week gap between jabs?

How many vaccines will we have by the first week of Jan 2021?

==========

Are you aware that Israel has vaccinated close to 8% of their people a few days ago as opposed to less tha
Personally I will be having the vaccine when I can, anyone who is an anti vaxxer hopefully you don't end up in hospital
Reply 2
Original post by Wolfbangenoff
Watching the briefing on the tv yesterday about the vaccine they were asked about the efficacy of the vaccine. They were no open and one of them stated something like the exact figures not yet disclosed was my grasp of it. Previous new items from Astra/Oford indicated a 90%+ efficacy when a full and a half dose administered. It was compared with the Pfizer re efficacy. However, the MHRA has approved two FULL doses and the efficacy of that is about 75% at best. So when are they going to be open about this? The number of jabs our government promised us a few months ago was in the multi millions by the end of the year and more recently it was " four million" but yesterday they aid 530k. Another point, where is the data to support the gov/MHRA stance of spreading the Pfizer vaccine over 12 weeks rather than the 3 weeks? Even Pfizer stated yesterday there is no data to support this.

Three points = Efficacy of the Oxford vaccine - is it at best 75% for us or are we getting the 90% plus via the one and half jabs??

Pfizer vaccine - where is the data to support MHRA's 12 week gap between jabs?

How many vaccines will we have by the first week of Jan 2021?

==========

Are you aware that Israel has vaccinated close to 8% of their people a few days ago as opposed to less tha

We’ve vaccinated about 1% of our population but that’s to be expected given Israel is a tad smaller.

The news did suggest an Oxford efficacy near 80% to be fair after the 2 jabs.
Original post by username5573512
Personally I will be having the vaccine when I can, anyone who is an anti vaxxer hopefully you don't end up in hospital

Exactly. IMHO, the anti vaxers must tell the NHS they want their names removed from the vacs programme.
Original post by Rakas21
We’ve vaccinated about 1% of our population but that’s to be expected given Israel is a tad smaller.

The news did suggest an Oxford efficacy near 80% to be fair after the 2 jabs.

True that Israel is a tad smaller - FYI it has a population of 8 mill approx vs us in the uk approx 65 million.
Israel is vaxing 100k person daily, 24/7 - we are barely managing 200k daily and not 24/7.

The pressing question and I know nothing will happen as if picked up by the news outlets, IE why was the government not prepared for the shortage of vials and our gov claims this is a "world wide shortage" but the clowns knew that in March!! For sure, the vaccines may have never materialised and not a lot we can do about that but not to spend a few million quid on a new factory set up to produce millions of vials per week would have been easy remembering that the fiasco of PPE has resulted in many people becoming very , very rich and a few mand more than a billion quid each. In the scheme of thing no big deal to build new factory. Could have been set up in an existing building within a couple of weeks.

So why is Mr Handcock bleating on about a shortage of vials when this should not be the case.
Why are we not vaxing 24/7?
Why are they not telling us how many vacs we are getting every week, etc

We need to know the data behing the 12 week gap for the Phfizer vacs - but there is none as the gov made this up
Reply 5
Original post by Wolfbangenoff
True that Israel is a tad smaller - FYI it has a population of 8 mill approx vs us in the uk approx 65 million.
Israel is vaxing 100k person daily, 24/7 - we are barely managing 200k daily and not 24/7.

The pressing question and I know nothing will happen as if picked up by the news outlets, IE why was the government not prepared for the shortage of vials and our gov claims this is a "world wide shortage" but the clowns knew that in March!! For sure, the vaccines may have never materialised and not a lot we can do about that but not to spend a few million quid on a new factory set up to produce millions of vials per week would have been easy remembering that the fiasco of PPE has resulted in many people becoming very , very rich and a few mand more than a billion quid each. In the scheme of thing no big deal to build new factory. Could have been set up in an existing building within a couple of weeks.

So why is Mr Handcock bleating on about a shortage of vials when this should not be the case.
Why are we not vaxing 24/7?
Why are they not telling us how many vacs we are getting every week, etc

We need to know the data behing the 12 week gap for the Phfizer vacs - but there is none as the gov made this up

They are going update the figures weekly from January I believe.
Reply 6
Why have you singled out Israel's vaccination rates out of interest?
Original post by Napp
Why have you singled out Israel's vaccination rates out of interest?

Because they are at the top of the vax list in the world.
UK cam third, USA second.
I was just giving an example and if Mexico had been number 1, I'd stated that

I am hoping to make people aware that where there is a will, there is a way out of this. Rather than overstating goals and always failing to deliver, why not be honest and think about our uk population rather than putting politics first.

Are people not angered by the fact that the shortage of something simple like vials was know in March and our clowns of a gov used this excuse the other day.
Original post by Rakas21
They are going update the figures weekly from January I believe.

Thank you, but please forgive me if if I do not believe a word that comes out of our dangerously incompetent gov.
Appreciated
:smile: :smile:
Original post by Wolfbangenoff
Watching the briefing on the tv yesterday about the vaccine they were asked about the efficacy of the vaccine. They were no open and one of them stated something like the exact figures not yet disclosed was my grasp of it. Previous new items from Astra/Oford indicated a 90%+ efficacy when a full and a half dose administered. It was compared with the Pfizer re efficacy. However, the MHRA has approved two FULL doses and the efficacy of that is about 75% at best. So when are they going to be open about this? The number of jabs our government promised us a few months ago was in the multi millions by the end of the year and more recently it was " four million" but yesterday they aid 530k. Another point, where is the data to support the gov/MHRA stance of spreading the Pfizer vaccine over 12 weeks rather than the 3 weeks? Even Pfizer stated yesterday there is no data to support this.

Three points = Efficacy of the Oxford vaccine - is it at best 75% for us or are we getting the 90% plus via the one and half jabs??

Pfizer vaccine - where is the data to support MHRA's 12 week gap between jabs?

How many vaccines will we have by the first week of Jan 2021?

==========

Are you aware that Israel has vaccinated close to 8% of their people a few days ago as opposed to less tha

I think they were playing down the percentages and rightly so. If vaccine 1 is 90% effective and your vaccine is 75% effective, to a tabloid writer with his eye on circulation, your vaccine can do one. What with the anti-vax brigade in full force, it is important to get as many people vaccinated as possible and putting out simplistic messaging that gets into the wrong hands or is misinterpreted is potentially very risky.

Given that the target efficacy was 50% at the start of the process, the fact that we will shortly have a variety of different vaccines that all massively smash that target and developed and tested within 6 months is nothing short of amazing!
Original post by ByEeek
I think they were playing down the percentages and rightly so. If vaccine 1 is 90% effective and your vaccine is 75% effective, to a tabloid writer with his eye on circulation, your vaccine can do one. What with the anti-vax brigade in full force, it is important to get as many people vaccinated as possible and putting out simplistic messaging that gets into the wrong hands or is misinterpreted is potentially very risky.

Given that the target efficacy was 50% at the start of the process, the fact that we will shortly have a variety of different vaccines that all massively smash that target and developed and tested within 6 months is nothing short of amazing!

At 50% most would not have bothered.
Who are this "anti vaxers"?? Are the giving up their tights to gaet a jab??

We need honesty and openness as claimed gov and mhra but it is all lies

As I said, one of the panel was coy when asked about percentage/efficacy and we all know why. They moved the goal posts without data backup for the Pfizer jabs so when not go for one and half Oxford jabs that has ratings close to 90%???

I never said it was not amazing as you put it but we need to be aware this gov lies, lies and lies again. It is full of BS promises and over-hypes the BS but when it comes to the goods, they fail badly but not as badly as joe public that is suffering

Btw, whats happened to the BS track and trace "world leading " of course, the BS never stops.

Then the Handcock guy and others bleated "we are the first to approve this vaccine" but where are the millions of jabs that they promised in December???
Original post by Wolfbangenoff
At 50% most would not have bothered.
Who are this "anti vaxers"?? Are the giving up their tights to gaet a jab??

We need honesty and openness as claimed gov and mhra but it is all lies

As I said, one of the panel was coy when asked about percentage/efficacy and we all know why. They moved the goal posts without data backup for the Pfizer jabs so when not go for one and half Oxford jabs that has ratings close to 90%???

I never said it was not amazing as you put it but we need to be aware this gov lies, lies and lies again. It is full of BS promises and over-hypes the BS but when it comes to the goods, they fail badly but not as badly as joe public that is suffering

Btw, whats happened to the BS track and trace "world leading " of course, the BS never stops.

Then the Handcock guy and others bleated "we are the first to approve this vaccine" but where are the millions of jabs that they promised in December???

The Anti-vax movement came to public attention in the wake of Andrew Wakefield's discredited and mal-conducted but much publicised study into the supposed links between the MMR vaccine and autism in 1998. Since then a growing number of influential people have used social media to sow doubt into the minds of people that vaccines are actually a government conspiracy used to control people. Even those who don't necessarily believe specific conspiracies have enough doubt to prevent them from taking common vaccines. This accounts in part for the recent outbreaks of measles for example.

As for 50% - why is that bad? Sure - it sounds bad, but it would seem that you have potentially fallen for the same obsession with simple numbers that the tabloid press have. 50% was the threshold over which candidates had to achieve as part of a research and development phase. It seems perfectly reasonable to me without being unobtainable. If the threshold had been 90%, if I had been a biotech company, I wouldn't have bothered - too much risk of failure.

And track and trace. Track and trace was never intended to counter mass infection. The reason track and trace works in other parts of the world is because the outbreak is generally under control. It is used to mop up the remaining dregs. But in order to work you need a population who are prepared to comply with the instructions laid down by the track and trace. And if you want people to remove themselves from daily life for 2 weeks they need to be compensated. The people who make the phone calls are only half the problem. It is the general population who ignore the advice and the government who won't compensate people who are also the problem. But regardless - track and trace is no use under the current infection rate. Wrong tool for the job.

As for the millions of jabs - I believe just before Christmas around 600,000 people had been vaccinated which is pretty good going when you think how little notice was given. My wife who works in a hospital qualifies for one and will hopefully get it in the next week or so. My mate who also works in hospital has also been vaccinated.
Original post by ByEeek
The Anti-vax movement came to public attention in the wake of Andrew Wakefield's discredited and mal-conducted but much publicised study into the supposed links between the MMR vaccine and autism in 1998. Since then a growing number of influential people have used social media to sow doubt into the minds of people that vaccines are actually a government conspiracy used to control people. Even those who don't necessarily believe specific conspiracies have enough doubt to prevent them from taking common vaccines. This accounts in part for the recent outbreaks of measles for example.

As for 50% - why is that bad? Sure - it sounds bad, but it would seem that you have potentially fallen for the same obsession with simple numbers that the tabloid press have. 50% was the threshold over which candidates had to achieve as part of a research and development phase. It seems perfectly reasonable to me without being unobtainable. If the threshold had been 90%, if I had been a biotech company, I wouldn't have bothered - too much risk of failure.

And track and trace. Track and trace was never intended to counter mass infection. The reason track and trace works in other parts of the world is because the outbreak is generally under control. It is used to mop up the remaining dregs. But in order to work you need a population who are prepared to comply with the instructions laid down by the track and trace. And if you want people to remove themselves from daily life for 2 weeks they need to be compensated. The people who make the phone calls are only half the problem. It is the general population who ignore the advice and the government who won't compensate people who are also the problem. But regardless - track and trace is no use under the current infection rate. Wrong tool for the job.

As for the millions of jabs - I believe just before Christmas around 600,000 people had been vaccinated which is pretty good going when you think how little notice was given. My wife who works in a hospital qualifies for one and will hopefully get it in the next week or so. My mate who also works in hospital has also been vaccinated.

Thank you.
IMHO you have missed the point.
That being the gov over promising/hyping and always failing to deliver.
Ask yourself this. On what basis did this dangerously incompetent gov promise to have read
"20 million" then changed that to " four million" jabs a few weeks ago then on the 30th Dec it was actual 530k!
The gov was aware of what was required to obtain the jabs so why the BS????
FYI, the gov is infamous for BS'ing and U turns and false figures to make them look good.
Why promise millions of jabs of the AS/Oxford vaccine by the end of the year and no citing
vial shortages and having "validate" the vaccines is "taking time"???? Where they not aware of
that fact???

FYI, I'm like others are please but sick and tiered in the reactive action rather than pro-active action
that is required

Re the anti-vaxers, they have a point to a small degree, ie we need to question the BS spouted by the Gov & Co
but the rest of it, the anti-vaxers are no better than these BS politicians.



HNY
:smile: :smile:
Original post by Wolfbangenoff
Thank you.
IMHO you have missed the point.
That being the gov over promising/hyping and always failing to deliver.
Ask yourself this. On what basis did this dangerously incompetent gov promise to have read
"20 million" then changed that to " four million" jabs a few weeks ago then on the 30th Dec it was actual 530k!
The gov was aware of what was required to obtain the jabs so why the BS????
FYI, the gov is infamous for BS'ing and U turns and false figures to make them look good.
Why promise millions of jabs of the AS/Oxford vaccine by the end of the year and no citing
vial shortages and having "validate" the vaccines is "taking time"???? Where they not aware of
that fact???

FYI, I'm like others are please but sick and tiered in the reactive action rather than pro-active action
that is required

Re the anti-vaxers, they have a point to a small degree, ie we need to question the BS spouted by the Gov & Co
but the rest of it, the anti-vaxers are no better than these BS politicians.



HNY
:smile: :smile:

Oh I am not a fan of the government at all. But for all the incompetence of the government, there is an army of competent people who make "stuff" happen. Regardless of the hype / spin, I think 600,000 vaccinations in 3 weeks is pretty amazing. That is just under 1% of the population. And it will only speed up as more resources come online. Remember the big who-ha about 100,000 tests a day back in April. We regularly do way more than that every day now and no one blinks an eye. Similarly, no one is fretting over PPE any more. Whilst we are arguing the toss over what may or may not have been said, real "stuff" on the ground is happening and happening in force. I think we sometimes forget that the government don't have absolute power. Boris Johnson doesn't sit behind a desk with dials and knobs and simply push the lever that says "Make more vaccines".

As for anti-vaxers. As soon as we deny they play a part we have lost the battle. My own cousin didn't vaccinate her kids with MMR following the Andrew Wakefield scandal and don't forget that idiots burned down 5G masts thinking they caused covid. In a post truth world where facts count for little, the message sent out calling on people to be vaccinated needs to be managed very carefully.
Original post by ByEeek
putting out simplistic messaging that gets into the wrong hands or is misinterpreted is potentially very risky.


Obfuscating and concealing is also potentially very risky.
Original post by ByEeek
Oh I am not a fan of the government at all. But for all the incompetence of the government, there is an army of competent people who make "stuff" happen. Regardless of the hype / spin, I think 600,000 vaccinations in 3 weeks is pretty amazing. That is just under 1% of the population. And it will only speed up as more resources come online. Remember the big who-ha about 100,000 tests a day back in April. We regularly do way more than that every day now and no one blinks an eye. Similarly, no one is fretting over PPE any more. Whilst we are arguing the toss over what may or may not have been said, real "stuff" on the ground is happening and happening in force. I think we sometimes forget that the government don't have absolute power. Boris Johnson doesn't sit behind a desk with dials and knobs and simply push the lever that says "Make more vaccines".

As for anti-vaxers. As soon as we deny they play a part we have lost the battle. My own cousin didn't vaccinate her kids with MMR following the Andrew Wakefield scandal and don't forget that idiots burned down 5G masts thinking they caused covid. In a post truth world where facts count for little, the message sent out calling on people to be vaccinated needs to be managed very carefully.

I hear you and can relate to your experience with your cousin and her kids. One of our family nearly fell for the BS but we managed to drive home the benefits of vacs vs not having them.

The incopetent gov can do a lot better and they are not helping.

The make them up rules as you go along by the fools at number 10 and MHRA do not help.

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