kustomkarkommando posted:

As part of the new EU regulation on export controls for vaccines the EU has invoked Article 16 of the NI protocol to treat all vaccine shipments from the EU to NI as third country exports.

Didn't take long for someone to trigger that

The Perfect Element posted:

Thanks to twisto for recommending I sign up as an NHS responder. I've just got home from delivering some oximeters to people on behalf of the local hospice. Didn't expect to get a job to do so quickly Tbh!

Failed Imagineer posted:

Arlene won't like that

Niric posted:

Funny you should say that, she's literally just popped up on Channel 4 news to say the vaccine "was designed to save lives in the UK," which is quite the claim

goddamnedtwisto posted:

I don't think I've ever had to wait more than five minutes for a job and it makes me feel guilty that I can only give an afternoon a week to it (and had to abandon it this week because my trainers are leaking).

Going to see if I can get more time next week just to assuage my guilt over buying replacement trainers of Amazon.

Niric posted:

Funny you should say that, she's literally just popped up on Channel 4 news to say the vaccine "was designed to save lives in the UK," which is quite the claim

sinky posted:

*designed to save protestant lives in the UK.

Jaeluni Asjil posted:

Just watched The Big Short again.
Great film.

Kin posted:

Has anything come from that Government minister who was on GMB this morning. I only caught it briefly (i think she was the prisons minister or something), but she was getting the usual grilling until she mentioned she knew what everyone was feeling because her dad died recently and then then GMB did like a 180 and were all sympathetic to her and stuff.

However.

When they asked if he died of covid, she kinda laughed a bit nervously and didn't answer the question right away and during all of the commotion of GMB trying desperately to not come across as monsters, i caught her then correct them briefly that he died with covid not of it before promptly moving on for a few minutes before the interview ended.

I couldn't quite tell if GMB missed it or if they actually did catch it and layed the sympathy on extra thick in an attempt to catch her out at a later date.

The Financial Times posted:

Shortage of coronavirus shots heaps pressure on European leaders


Edleff Joachim should have been among the first to receive a jab when Germany launched its mass Covid-19 vaccination programme on December 27. A month on, the 84-year-old is still waiting.

“It’s just chaos,” said Mr Joachim, who lives in the town of Görlitz on the Polish border. “No one seems to know what's going on.”

His frustration bears testament to a German vaccination drive in disarray — a mess now replicated across much of the EU due to a shortage of doses. Over-80s were supposed to be inoculated first, along with care home residents, but tens of thousands of eligible Germans have yet to get the shot.

Residents of Görlitz were told a few weeks ago that they could book a slot for a vaccination online or by phone. However, when he called the telephone hotline, Mr Joachim was told no appointments were being given because there was simply not enough vaccine available.

Europe’s supply problems began to bite in earnest this week, heaping pressure on political leaders and EU officials who oversaw procurement. The shortages have fuelled an extraordinary row between the European Commission and AstraZeneca, with Brussels accusing the pharmaceuticals group of reneging on a deal to provide 100m doses of a vaccine developed with Oxford university.

Health authorities in several countries cancelled appointments, delayed first jabs or scaled back plans to ramp up vaccination rates as the UK was able to do after the first few weeks of its inoculation programme.

“The lack of available vaccines is the number one political issue in Europe at the moment,” said Guntram Wolff, director of the Bruegel think-tank in Brussels. “It affects every family. People wonder why the vaccines are not coming. The pressure is enormous.”

After being criticised for a sluggish start to their vaccination drives, health authorities across the EU quickly ramped up their capacity to administer jabs — only to run into a shortage of doses.

For example, the region of Baden-Württemberg in south-west Germany has set up 10 huge vaccination centres and 49 smaller ones, together able to inoculate 54,200 people a day. But due to the lack of vaccine, the state can offer just 585 appointments a week — a figure that includes jabs given by mobile teams to residents of local care homes. Baden-Württemberg’s ministry of social affairs said the state got 42 per cent less vaccine this week than planned and will receive 15 per cent less next week.

Three French regions covering a third of the national population ordered hospitals to delay new first-dose injections by two to four weeks in order to guarantee supply of doses for the second booster jabs.

Madrid’s regional government has also stopped almost all new first injections to prioritise second doses amid uncertainty about deliveries. A regional health official described how a consignment of the BioNTech/Pfizer vaccine to the Spanish capital 10 days ago had been half what it had been expected — 25 trays instead of 50, each containing 975 doses.

“As soon as we became aware of the EU-level agreements to buy vaccines, we were worried about their complexity, given that some of the production facilities were outside the EU and the enormous international competition for the vaccines,” she said.

Denmark, one of the best performers in the EU, will administer fewer doses of vaccine in the first half of February than it has in the second half of January. It has stopped giving first doses to healthcare workers and cannot expand its programme to new categories.

“There’s quite a lot of frustration because the logistics side [of the vaccine rollout] has been working quite well,” said Camilla Noelle Rathcke, head of the Danish Medical Association. “But that’s the way it is. Nobody can do anything about it right now.”

Jens Spahn, German health minister, said it would be “at least another 10 tough weeks” before vaccine shortages ease.

Europe’s vaccination campaign has faltered against a backdrop of growing frustration — and, in The Netherlands, several nights of rioting and street violence — over prolonged lockdown measures. It has undermined the credibility of the commission, which took on the task of procuring vaccines for the whole bloc but was slower than the UK or US to sign contracts and to approve vaccines for use.

German politicians, and parts of the German media, have been particularly unforgiving.

“It's my impression that they [the commission] ordered too late, and only bet on a few companies, they agreed on a price in a typically bureaucratic EU procedure and completely underestimated the fundamental importance of the situation,” Markus Söder, the Bavarian premier and possible future chancellor, told ZDF television on Friday.

“We have a situation . . . where grandchildren in Israel are already vaccinated but the grandparents here are still waiting. That’s just completely wrong.”

Emmanuel Macron, French president, defended the EU’s vaccination strategy, saying it made sense to ensure the whole continent was protected together because of the connections between countries.

“Assume that France, Italy and Germany have a very ambitious and rapid vaccination plan — it would be doomed to failure if their neighbours did not have the same policy, because our economies are integrated,” he said.

The same applied to the UK, which is vaccinating its population much more rapidly than the EU. “What are they going to do, stop European lorries coming in? . . . There’s a total dependence on the continent. And equally, we need the British to succeed because we’re connected and we need to make progress on matters such as defence and immigration.”

Mr Wolff at the Bruegel think-tank said that while Brussels had serious questions to answer, member states also shared responsibility as they were involved in decision-making at many levels.

“Every country wants the vaccine and no country is more fit than others to receive it,” said Dr Rathcke of the Danish Medical Association. “The blame game can go on, but it can’t bring solutions.”

goddamnedtwisto posted:

So what's the actual deal with this Article 16 thing then? Is it as nakedly stupid as it appears (that the EU think that people are going to be smuggling vaccines across the border) or is it some wider political point/punishment they're trying to give out?

quote:

What are they going to do, stop European lorries coming in?

Mebh posted:

So what you're saying is I should plant turnips now because its all we're going to have to eat after we're forced to lock all the borders during lockdown 9 Christmas 2021 to avoid the European turbocorona

bustin keaton posted:

1) EU genuinely feels it has been screwed over by AZ with this shortfall thing (and to be fair to them, the contract publishing and "oh we will now deliver more than 31 million" all of a sudden shenanigans suggests they had a point here). They're feeling burned and can see issues on the horizon, which is getting them heat from nation states.

bustin keaton posted:

UK is 60 mill people from a factory.

Guavanaut posted:

This is a popular conspiracy theory, but unfounded. Most people just come out the normal way. Don't ask where Michael Gove came from, we don't know.

Jaeluni Asjil posted:

NotJustANumber99 posted:

Weird post.

Borrovan posted:

Wankers?

(I was gonna timestamp it but the whole thing's too drat good, go on, watch it, all 5 minutes)

Kin posted:

Like what's the difference between dying of covid vs dying with covid?

Kin posted:

Not so weird. Just trying to find out if her dad did die of covid or if she tried to imply it was covid related to avoid scrutiny.

Lying about a dead dad to get out of trouble at work is a pretty low loving thing to do.

Edit: here's a link to it

https://metro.co.uk/video/minister-close-tears-gmb-revealing-father-died-week-covid-2343872/

There's other versions out there that crop it before she corrected the presenters, but it just seemed like an odd distinction to try and make clear.

Like what's the difference between dying of covid vs dying with covid?

Julio Cruz posted:

"died with covid" is the kind of thing the virus sceptics say, because if you claim that covid is just one of many contributing factors in deaths rather than the actual cause you can pretend that the "real" death toll is much lower than those media sheeple keep telling everyone

NotJustANumber99 posted:

^^^ No. Died with covid is what the actual statistics around covid deaths that we quote in these threads say.


Like statistically, according to the numbers we're looking at noone has died of covid. They've all died within a certain number of days of a positive covid test, so with covid.

But I don't even really care about that, you're "just trying to find out if her dad did die of covid or if she tried to imply it was covid related to avoid scrutiny." And I find that gross. Find something else if you must. Her dad died. With Covid.

Kin posted:

I find someone potentially manipulating the death of a close family member for political gain pretty gross. I guess we just have different standards for what's acceptable.

Kin posted:

potentially manipulating

NotJustANumber99 posted:

Its her dad. Have a word with yourself.

NotJustANumber99 posted:

Its her dad. Have a word with yourself.