Wuhan virus 2020

[Jimbuna]

[Jimbuna]

Levels of the virus are showing clear signs of coming down throughout most of the UK, ONS figures show.

The UK's reproduction or R number is estimated to be between 0.7 and 1

A further 1,014 people have died within 28 days of a positive coronavirus test in the UK, Friday's figures show.

Another 19,114 cases were reported, plus another 480,560 first vaccine jabs.

All adults aged 50 and over should receive a coronavirus vaccine by May, Downing Street says.

Vaccines being used in the UK are extremely safe, with mild expected side-effects, the drugs regulator says.

Thousands of hotel rooms are being block-booked by the UK government to support new Covid quarantine rules for travellers returning from 33 countries from 15 February.

Labour says the move is "too little, too late" as it will come into force more than 50 days after the South African variant was found.

The UK government should avoid "setting dates" for when to lift lockdown and instead react to changing circumstances, a top scientist says.

[Jimbuna]

The head of the European branch of the World Health Organization Hans Kluge has urged pharmaceutical companies and Europe to work together to “join efforts to drastically increase production capacity" after a slow start to vaccination campaigns across the EU. Drug deliveries across the EU have been hit by delays. Mr Kluge is also worried about the impact of Covid variants on vaccine efficacy.

European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen has admitted that the EU could have acted faster in procuring vaccines for the 27 member states in the bloc. She’s given a newspaper interview in which she says “we should have been thinking more about mass production and the challenges it poses”.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban says it may start using the Russian Sputnik V vaccine next week after Hungary’s health authority gave it the go-ahead.

The South Tyrol province in Northern Italy will go into a “hard lockdown” for three weeks from Monday because of a surge in cases. Shops will shut, schools will go online and there will be a ban on moving between towns.

Case numbers are falling slowly in Germany and Health Minister Jens Spahn says coronavirus restrictions could be lifted before spring. "We can't stay in this hard lockdown all winter. We would not tolerate that well as a society.”

French Prime Minister Jean Castex has warned people not to lower their guard but he’s said there’s no need to go into full lockdown at the moment. Cases have stabilised at around 20,000 a day. With winter holidays starting in much of France today, non-essential travel outside the EU is banned but there’s no restriction on travel within France. Find outhere how cross-country skiing is taking off as ski-lifts at French resorts are shut.

[Jimbuna]

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by mapuc

Are you telling us, that if EU was a person, s/he was to be taken to a lunatic farm ?

Markus

The EU is, as you called it, a lunatic farm. And the EU commission is the high security ward for the absolutely dangerous and hopeless cases.

[Skybird]

FOCUS, which beside Der Spiegel is the German equivalent to Newsweek and Time Magazine, had a nice headline title today:

Das Trottel-Problem: Diese Regierung verlangt selbst nach ihrer Ablösung

The idiot problem: this government is demanding its replacement itself.

Well, "Trottel" must be translated as "idiot", there is no other translation in English, but in German "Trottel" is a description even more aggressive and offensive than "idiot".


Mind you, its not just some local minor province paper.

[Jimbuna]

The UK needs to get Covid transmission levels down low enough to pursue a thorough contact tracing system, says Jeremy Hunt.

The former health secretary warns against easing lockdown measures too early.

New chair of the UK Vaccines Taskforce Dr Clive Dix says he is “very optimistic” all adults aged 50 and over will be offered a vaccine by May.

Small businesses are to get more time to repay state-backed loans taken out to help survive the lockdown.

The move is to give companies "breathing space to get back on their feet", Chancellor Rishi Sunak says.

UK PM Boris Johnson and French President Emmanuel Macron have discussed co-operation in the global fight against Covid-19

Boris Johnson is planning to reverse controversial reforms of the NHS in England, a leaked document reveals.

[Jimbuna]

"A country can be a speedboat, the EU is more like a tanker," said European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, after a week of hefty criticism for the slow rollout of the vaccine in Europe.

It was the first time she had admitted the European Union had made mistakes.

More focus should have been put on production and delivery, not just on developing the vaccine, she told German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung on Friday.

In Ursula von der Leyen's home country many are asking why a vaccine invented by a German company - the Pfizer-BioNTech jab - is being rolled out successfully in the UK and the US, but not quickly enough in Europe.



So far in Germany about three million vaccine doses have been injected, compared with almost 11 million in the UK; 400 mass vaccination centres have been built around Germany, but many are still standing empty waiting for enough vaccine doses to be delivered.

But international headlines of anti-EU outrage in Germany are exaggerated. Much of the German criticism of Ursula von der Leyen has come from long-standing left-wing adversaries or right-wing rivals.

The most ferocious critics of her and of the EU's vaccine strategy have come from the UK and the US.

[Skybird]

The article with that title I mentioned above is too good as if you want to miss it.

If there was a price for warning in time, Angela Merkel would win it. The Chancellor was always right with her prognoses. The big question is, why didn't she respond appropriately?

We're ruled by fools. I never thought that I would write such a sentence one day. As a columnist, I hate to scold or rumble. I prefer to leave indignation to others. But I am afraid it is the only accurate description of the situation.

Imagine you signed a new contract of employment. At the end of the first month, a look at the account: The salary is missing. You ask in the payroll department. "Sorry," they say, "but take a look at your employment contract."

You look. There it says: “We will try to pay Mr / Ms Ypsilon a gross salary of 4,300 euros.” You had overlooked that. You call the payroll department again. "We tried hard," they explain to you. “Unfortunately, we haven't been as successful in paying salaries this month as we'd planned. We hope it looks better next month. "

Either immune or already dead
Sounds funny, but that's what the contracts they have signed with Astra-Zeneca in Europe read . In the EU Commission they naturally see it differently. It says there are clear agreements. I would say the same if I had to find out that I was not careful when signing the contract. We don't need a vaccine until the lawyers sort it out. Then we are either immune or already dead.

Do you still think the word “idiot” is too harsh? Four weeks ago in Berlin they came up with the idea of ​​alleviating the shortage of vaccine by allowing medical staff to draw not five, but six doses of vaccine from an ampoule of the Biontech miracle drug. At the Ministry of Health, they were delighted. 20 percent more vaccine in one fell swoop. Great!

The approval guidelines were quickly changed - with the result that there are now not 20 percent more vaccinations, as hoped, but significantly fewer. How, you will ask yourself. Well, unfortunately, they neglected to look at the contract they signed with Pfizer before making the switch. There, under the item delivery quantity, it says “vaccination doses”, not “ampoules”. So the group delivers fewer glasses accordingly. Pfizer says: in accordance with the contract.

Something like that is called an own goal

This would bring you back to the status before the change in approval. Theoretically. However, it takes some skill to draw six instead of five syringes from an ampoule, so every drop counts. Many doctors are overwhelmed with it. You also need special needles, but they are scarce. Therefore, in some places, up to 17 percent less vaccine is available than at the beginning of January. That's what you call an own goal - when you're friendly.

Wherever you look at the moment: Nothing works, nothing goes together. What has been promised comes too late or at some point or not at all. The only Corona curve that clearly points downwards is the vaccination curve. Unfortunately this is the wrong one.

Nobody has judged the coalition as harshly as Merkel

What does the Chancellor say about all of this? They did everything humanly possible in a difficult situation. I would say no one has judged the current coalition so harshly. If what we see is the maximum that this government is capable of, then a lot of people are saying to themselves: It's really time we got a new government.

It is also irrelevant how much vaccine you have ordered, the Chancellor said. I don't want to be unfair, but maybe that's how it was in the GDR. It didn't matter whether you ordered something or not. There was just nothing. It is generally different in capitalism. The following applies: Whoever orders first will also be the first to be delivered.


What happened to Angela Merkel?

What happened to Angela Merkel ? It is a mystery to me. I met her a couple of times in Berlin. It is always said that the Chancellor has wit and an extraordinary faculty of understanding. I can confirm that. I know few politicians who dig into a subject that interests them like Angela Merkel. No information that it misses, no detail that is too small for it.

It is also not as if the Chancellor did not know what to expect in winter. If there was a price for warning in time, she would easily win it. So it is in every comment and every portrait: Angela Merkel has always been right with her prognoses during the crisis.

You are not chosen for your predictive ability

When she explained what exponential growth means in the fall, the newspapers were full of praise: Ah, how good that we have a woman who understands math at the top and not such a dumb fool as Trump. Unfortunately, as a head of government, you are not elected for your forecasting ability, but rather for acting according to the forecasts.

Can you be too intelligent for political business? Maybe. Trump started securing vaccine back in May, while our options were first looked at. Simply appoint a four-star general who will then carry out the task assigned to him with military precision? That smells way too much of toxic masculinity! No, you need an inclusive approach that takes everyone with you. The approach is also toxic, as it turns out now, but it sounds good.

Not enough vaccine? Just one of the problems

None of this explains the strange lethargy in the Chancellery. The fact that we don't have enough vaccine is just one of the problems that plagues us. If one were to finally keep the virus out of the nursing homes, the number of infections would be up to two thirds lower, as the “Frankfurter Allgemeine” has calculated using the example of Hesse.

Nothing has progressed in the health authorities for months either. That the government is aiming for an incidence of 50 is not medically justified, but technical. The authorities are only able to follow up if there are 50 or more infected per 100,000 inhabitants. If they were better equipped, we could handle 100 or 200 infected people.

No wonder that some play "Candy Crush" in the prime ministerial rounds

Sure, the Chancellor is not responsible for protecting old people's homes, that is a matter for the Prime Minister. It is also not responsible for the supervision of the health authorities, which are subordinate to the respective district administrator or mayor. But shouldn't one have expected that in the long sessions in the Chancellery there would have been a detailed discussion of what could be done? Or that the law ensures that the offices are modernized if the district administrators disagree? No wonder that some play "Candy Crush" in the prime ministerial rounds. You get at least one level further.

There is now great unrest on the government tanker. The Chancellor explains in a small group that the thing has slipped. The Minister of Health invites you to the vaccination summit. This, too, is one of the puzzles that a committee of inquiry will later have to clarify: Has really nobody in the government asked themselves how many production sites for vaccines there are in Europe and whether they are sufficient to meet demand?

Let go of all hope, you who enter

That we need 14 years to build airports, for which they estimate four years elsewhere - for free. That the rifles from Heckler & Koch, which were considered the best rifles in the world for decades, buckle when fired because the barrel gets too hot - well. Nevertheless, to this day I had a basic trust in the German organizational talent and the proverbial German efficiency.

After all, we are the country where electricity and trams were still working in the spring of 1944 despite the hail of bombs, because they had everything repaired within a short time. And now? Now we don't even manage to send the data to the Robert Koch Institute on time so that you can get an overview of the pandemic. As it is said by Dante: Let those who enter, let all hope go.

[mapuc]

The Danish Prime Minister fear a Vaccine conflict.

She and some other leaders in EU has sent a letter to Von der Leyen

When reading this and why these leaders are concern I wonder what EU can do.

It's about the story that one of the vaccine is being poured into the bottle in USA.

Markus

[Rockstar]

Blame von der Leyen

Responsibility for Europe’s vaccine debacle lies with the European Commission president.

https://www.politico.eu/article/blam...ccine-debacle/

Her most critical error occurred over the summer during negotiations with pharmaceutical companies.

In contrast to the U.S., which showed up with a $10 billion checkbook, von der Leyen resolved to nickel-and-dime the drugmakers.

If ever there was a moment for the EU to throw money (and a degree of caution) out the window, this was it. Millions of lives were literally on the line. Instead, von der Leyen approached the discussion with drugmakers like a trade deal, even putting a seasoned EU trade negotiator in charge. In addition to a low price, Europe insisted that the drug companies assume legal liability for any screw-ups.

As a result, it took months to reach an agreement, putting Europe behind the U.S., the U.K. and Israel in the line for vaccines. The Commission didn’t manage to sign a deal with BioNTech/Pfizer, the first Big Pharma player to develop a vaccine, until after the German-American alliance announced its success in November.

[Jimbuna]

[ikalugin]

https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-h...-idUSKBN2A31QB

Some information on Sputnik-V.

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by Rockstar

Blame von der Leyen

Responsibility for Europe’s vaccine debacle lies with the European Commission president.

https://www.politico.eu/article/blam...ccine-debacle/

True, but also blame Merkel, and EU health commissioner Kyriakides. These three women are three desaster uniting forces to maximise damage.

Two of them also are responsible for the planned climate policy design. Everybody: if you still can run away , run. Now.

[Jimbuna]

Vaccines minister Nadhim Zahawi says the government has no plans for a "vaccine passport", saying it would be "discriminatory"

An annual booster jab, in the same way the flu vaccination is organised, is being planned for future years, he says.

The Scottish Government aims to vaccinate all adults "in the summer", the nation's health secretary Jeane Freeman says.

Early trials suggest the Oxford-AstraZeneca Covid vaccine offers limited protection against mild disease caused by the South Africa variant.

The firm said it could not yet properly establish if the jab would stop severe disease caused by the variant as most in the study were young and healthy.

A vaccine for the South African strain should be ready by the autumn, says Prof Sarah Gilbert, the Oxford vaccine lead researcher.

Workplace Covid testing is being offered to more companies in England, for staff who cannot work from home during lockdown.

Tributes are paid in China to Li Wenliang, a doctor who raised the alarm about the country's coronavirus outbreak and died a year ago today.