Vaccine Stuff

I was going to hold off on commenting in detail about the vaccine stuff I was doing quotes for an article for yesterday, but this morning it all changed, MHRA approved the Pfizer vaccine and everything was suddenly live, but the document I was picking apart yesterday wasn't the one they released. I half suspect they're both valid and that yesterday's is the appropriate draft chapter of the 'Green Book' (some sort of vaccination bible), while today's is the press release / precis to go with it.

But they say different things.

Today's less detailed version did actually explain why they were doing stuff, which yesterday's didn't.

Clinically Extremely Vulnerable people have moved up to priority 4 along with the 70yos, because BAME comorbidity shoves the mortality stats up about the same as being 15 years older, and CEV was just after the 65yos, so adding 15 years takes them to 70.

Clinically Vulnerable people have a similar increase in mortality, but it isn't enough to take them past the 65yos, so they stay where they are.

That makes sense, and makes half the stuff I wrote last night redundant.

OTOH, last night's Green Book chapter talked about needing to cover care homes other than just for the elderly, and even remembered working age disabled people do get put in elderly care homes when the care system falls apart.

Today's version completely forgets about that, and even explictly says "older adults" in a major heading, but does at least say "adults" in the actual priority list.

OTGH it makes a big thing about maybe needing to vaccinate high risk neurologically disabled kids, but they'll largely be in those care homes it doesn't mention any more.

And there's a "We don't think we should vaccinate clinically extremely vulnerable kids (except the neurologically disabled ones) because we think its risky," but there's absolutely no evidence given.

Last night's version of that point made for an interesting contradiction:

We don't think we should vaccinate kids because we have no evidence its safe.

But

We don't have any evidence it's safe, but if someone misses their second dose we should totally vaccinate them with whichever vaccine we have lying about, even if it's a different one!

Yeah, not volunteering for that one.

And there was a nice little Catch 22 where an under-18 working in care was explicitly stated to need the vaccine, but the clinically extremely vulnerable under 18 they might be caring for wasn't on the list at all.