Peter wrote:
I am an endangered species, heading for extinction
I am sure you will eventually make great AVGAS ;-)
Mooney_Driver wrote:
We might start to see a new form of tourism: vaccination tourism.If some countries drag their feet or insist on the usual long winded trials, people might as well start to try to get it elsewhere.
I would be very surprised if the healthcare system of any country offered to supply a Covid-19 vaccine to a foreign national travelling there for that purpose.
The whole thing may create quite an interesting supply/demand situation. Most commodities, even scarce and in-demand ones, can be bought almost immediately given sufficient ability to pay – but that may not necessarily be the case here. The minimum orders the various manufacturers will accept are likely to be in the region of 1m+ doses, perhaps more, and whilst I’m sure in the US there will be companies who will place an order and then sell each dose to the highest bidder, elsewhere it is unlikely to work like that because all ‘customers’ are likely to be healthcare systems operating under various degrees of government direction.
You might see some ultra-wealthy individuals placing the minimum order personally, taking their dose, and then selling (or for better PR giving away) the rest.
I would be interested to see if any avenue for reasonably well-off people to jump the queue emerges in Europe (this is EuroGA, after all). Not because I wish to avail of it, but because the question is interesting.
Graham wrote:
I would be interested to see if any avenue for reasonably well-off people to jump the queue emerges in Europe (this is EuroGA, after all). Not because I wish to avail of it, but because the question is interesting.
An interesting question. There will most certainly be “black market” opportunities, given how any vaccine will need to be delivered to a wide variety of locations and many of the people involved in their transport, storage and distribution will be lowly paid individuals, the less morally upstanding of which might want to earn “a little bit on the side”.
Also, injecting the vaccine will be very easy, and everyone who knows which end of a syringe is the sharp one should be able to do it.
And of course a part of that black market will be bogus products.
MedEwok wrote:
Also, injecting the vaccine will be very easy, and everyone who knows which end of a syringe is the sharp one should be able to do it.
Indeed. In fact, the NHS via the Royal Voluntary Service is asking for volunteers to be vaccinators and I have volunteered. You need post-16 academic education (2 A-levels, in UK speak), to be fit enough to do 8hr shifts on your feet and do CPR, and not be bothered by needles or blood. 2 days training, it seems. I can see how having enough stab-qualified personnel might be a limiting factor when you get to a programme of mass immunisation in football stadia, etc.
I wasn’t really getting at the black market, more the ability to pay to have it sooner – same as with a hip replacement or whatever. I guess the black market will exist too, but I do wonder because for various things (e.g. travel) it might be as much about having the supporting paperwork as it is about having the jab.
Graham wrote:
I would be very surprised if the healthcare system of any country offered to supply a Covid-19 vaccine to a foreign national travelling there for that purpose.
Probably not but don’t forget there are many people with multiple citizenships. They might well go get it where they can, while their country of residence drags its feet.
But it appears now they are mostly set to start up within a month or so. If that happens, given that you need 2 shots one month apart and then are immune 28 days later if I understand this correctly, we might start seeing the effect by April or May on a larger scale.
Given that quite a few sceptics are even now blaring loudly that they will not get the vaccine, it may well get the supply plan a tad upset, so those planned for spring might get it earlier.
Graham wrote:
Indeed. In fact, the NHS via the Royal Voluntary Service is asking for volunteers to be vaccinators and I have volunteered. You need post-16 academic education (2 A-levels, in UK speak), to be fit enough to do 8hr shifts on your feet and do CPR, and not be bothered by needles or blood. 2 days training, it seems. I can see how having enough stab-qualified personnel might be a limiting factor when you get to a programme of mass immunisation in football stadia, et
That’s a good move. In Germany they seem to want to perform the vaccination with trained medical personnel only.
Also, injecting the vaccine will be very easy, and everyone who knows which end of a syringe is the sharp one should be able to do it.
I know nothing abbot syringes! But reading the instructions it seems a little more complicated than filling from a vile and injecting.
Apparently you need to
1 invert it 10 times but don’t shake it
2 mix it with sodium chloride
3 invert it 10 times again
Maybe this is routine, I don’t know. But it’s not just load it from the vile and inject.
1 invert it 10 times but don’t shake it
That’s why you need two A levels. Normally (after the 50% of the UK should go to a university declaration) you need to count to 10 to get one A level, and 20 to get two. In 2020, due to the CV19 problems at schools, the requirement has been halved so you can get two A levels if you can count to 10. Logical! 
One interesting thing I saw today is that the vaccine trials excluded pregnant women. I imagine this is one of the “ethics” requirements (post Thalidomide perhaps). However, Prof Van Tam said that apparently some women “for some reason” (gosh, it takes a rocket scientist to work out how this could be done 
) did get pregnant while on the trial, and the babies will be accordingly tracked.
Standard procedure. I have never seen a clinical trial protocol that did not exclude pregnant women and specify that women of child-bearing age must use contraception whilst in the trial.
There is too much to lose and almost nothing to gain through testing drugs of any sort on pregnant women. Pregnancy is a temporary state – for a vaccine, just wait until they are not.
Almost no drugs get tested on pregnant women. Some are known (through historical use) to be ok. In a medical emergency you give them what they need and the long-term consequences will be what they will be – keeping the mother alive comes before birth defects, etc.
