2019 Novel Coronavirus Covid-19 Discussion

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#2707068 13-May-2021 15:55

cshwone:
My wife, and I have mentioned this a couple of times, has never been contacted despite being Group 2. She called Wairarapa DHB this morning and the response was "Oh, how about next Wednesday at ....................."

Same DHB in my case.

Rikkitic

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#2707071 13-May-2021 15:58

freitasm:

Regarding the WHO... If only we didn't have a petulant US government undermining the whole thing all the time.

And if any other movie ever shows the CDC as an organisation that comes in and fixes everything during an epidemic or pandemic...

Didn't Trump stack the CDC with flunkies? I thought it was okay up to then.

Plesse igmore amd axxept applogies in adbance fir anu typos

tdgeek

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#2707086 13-May-2021 16:30

Scott3:

My take is that the government want's to use the current supply (50 - 70k per week + 350k stockpile) to feed large mass vaccination centers, Ironing the kink's out of that means of delivery. Given the mass clinics are new, there is a lot more to go wrong that with pharmacies & GP clinics that are highly experienced with a variety of vaccinations, especially the annual flu vaccination.

Once our really large shipments from our 2nd order start landing in a couple of months time I assume the DHB's will start shipping doses to any GP's and pharmacies that are willing and big enough to not be left with waste doses... This will allow the process to scale up quickly and with minimal management from DHB's...

Inevitably it will be the GP's and Pharmacies that do the really heavy lifting in the vaccination campaign later in the year. Not involving them now means they can focus on the current flu vaccination campaign which is good.

But I get the sense that GP's are annoyed at the lack of communication (a massive vaccine roll out is something they will want to plan for, for example they may ask staff not to take leave when it is projected to be most busy... If they were told when that will be).

And of course it sucks for people for whom their GP is their source of trusted medical advise, and possibly have other medication or conditions that need to be checked for possible interaction with the covid-19 vaccination.

Should note that very recently some selected medical centers have been now been included in the roll out. News from 2 days ago:

https://www.nzdoctor.co.nz/article/waiheke-island-takes-centre-stage-aucklands-first-gp-clinic-starts-covid-19-vaccinations

I get that. I was at GP today forgot to ask. But its dependent on supply? We don't get our 10 million vaccines in one hit, so its impossible to commit to anything?

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#2707093 13-May-2021 16:34

Geektastic:
cshwone:

My wife, and I have mentioned this a couple of times, has never been contacted despite being Group 2. She called Wairarapa DHB this morning and the response was "Oh, how about next Wednesday at ....................."

Same DHB in my case.

It may be completely coincidental, but Wairarapa DHB is the second-worst performing DHB in the Covid vaccination stakes.

According to statistics published yesterday (https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/health/coronavirus/300305736/covid19-government-hits-107-per-cent-of-its-vaccine-target-120000-people-fully-vaccinated), Wairarapa DHB has reached only 78% of its target to date, the only one worse is Northland at 74% - but I can think of a lot of mitigating factors in Northland's case. The national average is 107% of target.

Edit: typo

Fred99

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#2707097 13-May-2021 16:42

Scott3: Also they were involved in spreading false information early on in the pandemic, including the below infamous tweet.

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

That's not false information from WHO, but arguably passing on false information from Chinese authorities - assuming that they should have known by then.

However that needs to be considered in context of the high probability that C-19 was already circulating undetected in (at least) France and Italy as early as November 2019, yet their first reported cases weren't until late January - months later. IOW even if the Chinese authorities had acted more openly and swiftly, it might have made little difference - we'd have still had a global pandemic.

The arguably false information from China was that they knew for certain on 7th January that the pathogen was a novel coronavirus, and that although they may not have had direct evidence of H2H transmission, they'd had plenty of cases with no clear link back to the Wuhan market. The "whistleblower" doctor who later clearly contracted C-19 from H2H transmission was threatened by Wuhan police - not central CCP authorities.

A complete and utter shambles? Sure it was, just as it was subsequently in most of the rest of the world - even when plenty of information was available as to the nature of the threat, they made terrible decisions, lied, and covered up. That scares me as much as China does when it comes to the response to the next pandemic. Many countries would have handled an outbreak worse than China did. We do need a functioning competent WHO.

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#2707100 13-May-2021 16:46

tdgeek:

I get that. I was at GP today forgot to ask. But its dependent on supply? We don't get our 10 million vaccines in one hit, so its impossible to commit to anything?

Yes, highly dependent on supply.

Currently Pfizer is filling our first order at 50 - 70k doses per week. In a month or two they will start filling our 2nd order. Sequence / schedule for our 2nd order isn't known publicy, but is expected to be started in the next month or two, and finished by the end of the year, so Will mean many times more weekly doses now, but is is possible that pfizer may load the deliveries towards the front or rear of that period. And of course there is risk of supply disruptions.

Perhaps GP's are deliberately being kept in the dark, so they can't be upset if things don't go to plan.

Still would be nice for them to be able to plan for things like not having staff on leave in the busiest part of the covid-19 vaccination program whenever that will be. Given the government is publishing public projections for vaccine dose timelines I don't think keeping GP's and pharmacies in the dark about their roll is acceptiable.

There must be some kind of contractual (or even guideline) from pfizer as to when their doses will turn up. Our current order seems to being fulfilled like clockwork. approx 60k doses per week every week, starting from prior to when they were expected. I guess that this reliable and ahead of schedule delivery was one factor for choosing to order more doses from Pfizer.

tdgeek

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#2707102 13-May-2021 16:52

Fred99:

Scott3: Also they were involved in spreading false information early on in the pandemic, including the below infamous tweet.

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152

That's not false information from WHO, but arguably passing on false information from Chinese authorities - assuming that they should have known by then.

However that needs to be considered in context of the high probability that C-19 was already circulating undetected in (at least) France and Italy as early as November 2019, yet their first reported cases weren't until late January - months later. IOW even if the Chinese authorities had acted more openly and swiftly, it might have made little difference - we'd have still had a global pandemic.

The arguably false information from China was that they knew for certain on 7th January that the pathogen was a novel coronavirus, and that although they may not have had direct evidence of H2H transmission, they'd had plenty of cases with no clear link back to the Wuhan market. The "whistleblower" doctor who later clearly contracted C-19 from H2H transmission was threatened by Wuhan police - not central CCP authorities.

A complete and utter shambles? Sure it was, just as it was subsequently in most of the rest of the world - even when plenty of information was available as to the nature of the threat, they made terrible decisions, lied, and covered up. That scares me as much as China does when it comes to the response to the next pandemic. Many countries would have handled an outbreak worse than China did. We do need a functioning competent WHO.

I suspect most countries, as well as WHO, will improve. Hindsight. NZ should seek out premises that are suitable for MIQ and that can be taken over if need be, with obviously a Govt supported assistance to whatever company own those premises. This is the future prime virus response.

As to who started the virus, maybe China, maybe Monrovia, doesnt matter, it started on the Earth, viruses don't check borders.

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#2707103 13-May-2021 16:54

Scott3:

Currently Pfizer is filling our first order at 50 - 70k doses per week. In a month or two they will start filling our 2nd order. Sequence / schedule for our 2nd order isn't known publicy, but is expected to be started in the next month or two, and finished by the end of the year, so Will mean many times more weekly doses now, but is is possible that pfizer may load the deliveries towards the front or rear of that period. And of course there is risk of supply disruptions.

It's possible Hipkins may have either misunderstood the question or didn't provide a 100% correct answer, but a few weeks ago he said that our entire vaccine supply would be by the end of Sept which is why we're planning the huge ramp up of vaccinations across Sep/Oct which is when we plan to vaccine the greatest number of people during a ~7 week timeframe.

Fred99

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#2707104 13-May-2021 16:54

Rikkitic:

Didn't Trump stack the CDC with flunkies? I thought it was okay up to then.

1st Jan

US CDC Director Robert Redfield was briefed about the severity of the virus from his Chinese counterpart George F. Gao when he was on vacation with his family – according to reports, what he heard "rattled him"

3 Jan

At a White House briefing in 20 March, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said officials had been alerted to the initial reports of the virus by discussions between CDC director Robert Redfield and Chinese CDC Director Gao on January 3. Mr. Azar also told his chief of staff to make sure that the National Security Council was aware that "this (the outbreak) is a very big deal.

Then politics got in the way - with horrific results.

tdgeek

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#2707106 13-May-2021 16:58

Scott3:

Yes, highly dependent on supply.

Currently Pfizer is filling our first order at 50 - 70k doses per week. In a month or two they will start filling our 2nd order. Sequence / schedule for our 2nd order isn't known publicy, but is expected to be started in the next month or two, and finished by the end of the year, so Will mean many times more weekly doses now, but is is possible that pfizer may load the deliveries towards the front or rear of that period. And of course there is risk of supply disruptions.

Perhaps GP's are deliberately being kept in the dark, so they can't be upset if things don't go to plan.

Still would be nice for them to be able to plan for things like not having staff on leave in the busiest part of the covid-19 vaccination program whenever that will be. Given the government is publishing public projections for vaccine dose timelines I don't think keeping GP's and pharmacies in the dark about their roll is acceptiable.

There must be some kind of contractual (or even guideline) from pfizer as to when their doses will turn up. Our current order seems to being fulfilled like clockwork. approx 60k doses per week every week, starting from prior to when they were expected. I guess that this reliable and ahead of schedule delivery was one factor for choosing to order more doses from Pfizer.

Thanks.

What I see is a vaccine response which is dependent on supply. Easy. But the issue is the media and thus the populous have to question everything. There is a difference between supply and demand logistics, and frenzy. If I was running this, there is no way I would give any timelines, as if one failed by 83 nanoseconds, its front page news. If one metric was met, its not news. Id hate ti be running this as one way or another its a fail. That's news.

wellygary

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#2707110 13-May-2021 17:07

Scott3:

Our current order seems to being fulfilled like clockwork. approx 60k doses per week every week, starting from prior to when they were expected. I guess that this reliable and ahead of schedule delivery was one factor for choosing to order more doses from Pfizer.

That and the whole EU-AstreZeneca Barney that was playing out... and Pfizer worked and was available...

But looking back these things were moving blindingly quick,

We only announced the first Pfizer agreement on 12 October 2020, (Coverage for 750K)

we only got to national coverage when we announced Janssen on 12 November 2020, ( and even then the first deliveries weren't expected will Q3 2021.... (I understand this was on the hope that as a single shot vaccine the national campaign could be much quicker)

In December 2020 we signed up Astra Zeneca and Novavax - I am assuming the spread the risk on Janssen not passing muster...

Then on 8 March (just over 2 months ago) we went all in on Pfizer- probably as you said because they had been reliably delivering delivering an effecting vaccine around the world ...

Then the whole blood clot thing blew up

(and officials in the Ministry of Health all looked at each other and said - geee we just dodged another bullet )

cshwone

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#2707111 13-May-2021 17:12

@PolicyGuy Yes. Very aware of that I don't actually blame the DHB. More her employer who are supposed to identify staff requiring vaccinations under Gp 2 and make the arrangements. The DHB don't know who works in the total health care sector without advice from employers. Given that she works for one of the biggest aged care companies in NZ that's really quite reprehensible

Jase2985

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#2707134 13-May-2021 19:12

Geektastic:

Never. I contacted them because Group 3 are indicated for May, it’s now half way through May just about and I’d heard nothing from anyone.

GP's wont be delivering vaccinations till July

Scott3

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#2707169 13-May-2021 20:17

Fred99:

That's not false information from WHO, but arguably passing on false information from Chinese authorities - assuming that they should have known by then.

However that needs to be considered in context of the high probability that C-19 was already circulating undetected in (at least) France and Italy as early as November 2019, yet their first reported cases weren't until late January - months later. IOW even if the Chinese authorities had acted more openly and swiftly, it might have made little difference - we'd have still had a global pandemic.

The arguably false information from China was that they knew for certain on 7th January that the pathogen was a novel coronavirus, and that although they may not have had direct evidence of H2H transmission, they'd had plenty of cases with no clear link back to the Wuhan market. The "whistleblower" doctor who later clearly contracted C-19 from H2H transmission was threatened by Wuhan police - not central CCP authorities.

A complete and utter shambles? Sure it was, just as it was subsequently in most of the rest of the world - even when plenty of information was available as to the nature of the threat, they made terrible decisions, lied, and covered up. That scares me as much as China does when it comes to the response to the next pandemic. Many countries would have handled an outbreak worse than China did. We do need a functioning competent WHO.

My link doesn't seem to be working. Try:

https://twitter.com/WHO/status/1217043229427761152/

I agree that that information was not from the WHO, but by tweeting up under their Profile, the WHO did spread information that was with hindsight false.

You could be right that earlier identification of a pandemic worthy pathogen may not have stopped global spread, but it would have at least given the world a bit of a heads up, and time to start spooling up production of stuff like viral test kits.

The world got quite lucky I feel that a Chinese lab published the virus genome in January 2020 (I don't think they had authorization from the Chinese authorities to do so). If this hadn't happened the development of covid-19 tests and vaccines could have been delayed another 2 - 6 weeks.

Perhaps I am a skeptic, but I felt that continued pressure from the WHO to allow free international travel to continue actively accelerated the pandemic.

I agree with the need for a functioning, competent WHO, but the WHO in it's current form doesn't meet that description. Frankly I was surprised more countries didn't follow USA in pulling out of the WHO...

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#2707178 13-May-2021 20:31

NZ mulls a more open border with level 2.5 as new normal

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/covid-19-coronavirus-bloomfield-mulls-a-more-open-border-with-level-25-as-new-normal/KKGZATF3TPDEMAEHWTEQ3ZQN2I/

"I strongly believe that - even alongside vaccination - we may well need to lift our baseline level of public health protective behaviours as part of our move to open up to a wider group of low-risk countries - let alone beyond that," Bloomfield said.

"It may well be that we need to be more of a 2.5 level as our baseline, alongside vaccination, as part of the protections we need in place to be able to open the border.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/watch-budget-2021-prime-minister-jacinda-ardern-to-lead-business-delegation-to-australia/23DRM3YIXQE4RGHYEDPBG5EIPU/

"Will people who've been vaccinated in other countries be able to come in even if we haven't finished our vaccine roll out?," she [Ardern] asked the audience.

"The answer," she said, "is - possibly."

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