MedEwok wrote:
Greatest Virus of All Time?
Absolutely – no virus will ever be allowed to wear the 12 – ahhh 19 – again ;-)
Excellent vaccine take-up here:
I find that hard to believe. Around here the problem is that many of the old people don’t read their mail, and don’t read SMS on their phone. The stupid “jabbers” (is that a word?) send invitations for vaccine only with (snail) mail and SMS. Many of these old people have no clue if they have gotten an invitation or not. These are people living by themselves, getting help from family and friends only every now and then I guess.
LeSving wrote:
I find that hard to believe.
I dont, the News this morning said the UK has vaccinated over 16 million people so far.
It appears most of my family in the UK has been vaccinated as they are either over 60 and happened to be around when there were “spare doses” or like my sister, BIL & step-family they are in the Medical profession. Only myself (40s) and my similar aged cousins havent been vaccinated. In contrast here in France, I still dont know anyone that has been vaccinated, and they have done just over 2 million vaccinations so far.
Regards, SD..
Peter wrote:
Excellent vaccine take-up here:
At least the way it is presented here is not “hard to believe” but rather “kind of misleading” (which is a nice form of saying fake news).
West Sussex CCG is responsible for more than 800.000 people. I have no idea what this “population” number in the screenshot is about, but it is absolutely sure not the population for which WS-CCG is responsible.
Therefore 143.767/148.241 is of course correctly calculated to equal 96.98% – but this percentage has nothing to do with the share of the population which is vaccinated…
People get letters here, through the post.
However, there are reports that once you hear on the news that age xx+ is being done, banging the vacc booking website produces a result before you get the letter.
Emails and SMS would be pretty useless, except for the young, and many of them are not on email (they use whatsapp, etc) and if they once were, their address will likely be unmonitored. Email is just not fashionable anymore. Also the local medical practices (GPs) avoid electronic comms; the fax is the nearest they get and that is used for “confidential” comms between bits of the NHS. My GP is not contactable by any electronic means (not a telephone either, other than by booking a “phone appointment”, and leaving messages with the “we are not clinically trained” staff is next to hopeless) although they have or used to have a fax machine. This is really backward but not so much when you think how unreliable email is (spam filters etc; right now several people on EuroGA have emails bouncing, but obviously I can’t contact them to tell them) and there is little buy-in from staff whose education mostly completely bypassed anything to do with computers. Plus so many cockups with CC used instead of BCC…
Behind this inept facade, designed to prevent the great unwashed from having direct access to somebody who actually knows something, the NHS works very well. Those with a bit more initiative and a bit of money go private, where the same “great unwashed countermeasures” are in place (impossible to contact a “consultant”, whoops I meant to say God, directly) but you get seen much faster.
We should get done in about 2 weeks’ time.
The “population” is the # of people over 70 in the W Sussex NHS area.
I don’t know how they have calculated their numbers, but note that quite a lot of over 70s can’t be vaccinated as many have contraindications e.g. recent Covid.
Malibuflyer wrote:
West Sussex CCG is responsible for more than 800.000 people. I have no idea what this “population” number in the screenshot is about, but it is absolutely sure not the population for which WS-CCG is responsible.
The headline says “over-70s”, so I assume that’s what the population number refers to.
I don’t know how they have calculated their numbers, but note that quite a lot of over 70s can’t be vaccinated as many have contraindications e.g. recent Covid.
I took that screenshot as meaning simply that they ran a query on their database of all people eligible (excluding contra-indicated candidates) for the vaccine in their area of responsibility and over 70, got 148241, and of those 143767 eventually turned up and had it.
I am somewhat surprised they got 96% but not all that surprised because (a) older people have the most to lose and (b) this is a part of the UK with very low poverty levels. Elsewhere, reportedly, when people have been given the choice between travelling to a vacc centre and having the vaccine now or getting it much later via their GP, many are opting for the latter. This is bizzare, but could be covering multiple reasons, one of which is that a lot of people living in cities have no car, getting somewhere on public transport is usually a big hassle, they cannot afford / don’t want to pay for a taxi, but they probably see a GP quite often.
Also W Sussex doesn’t include Brighton which I would expect to have a lot of fashionable anti-vaxxers 
Most of whom, I dare say, will get the vaccine as soon as they want to get down to partying at Mykonos – because Greece will be demanding it
Peter wrote:
People get letters here, through the post.
No, not so. Some letters, some letters and text, some just texts, and some ’phone calls. It seems mostly a mixed bag.
It is worth making sure they have your mobile contact details because when there are appointments available it is a quick way of filling them.
