The UK has vaccinated a larger share than the US, although America is catching up. Still, US states seem to be opening up to all adults very soon, while the UK is only going to 45+. Why is that? My current theory is that the UK has much higher vaccine take up among older people.
Why is Japan doing so few vaccinations? They could afford afford it and surely have the organizational capacity. Are they so confident that they can control the virus that they don’t bother? Are kindly letting the west have the vaccine first since we clearly need it?
Are there factories out there that could be making COVID vaccine but aren’t? In theory there shouldn’t be because Pfizer, AstraZeneca, J&J and others should rationally be subcontracting to others to manufacture for them. Worldwide demand should be easily big enough to justify it. Yet I’m not sure.
Worldwide demand should be easily big enough to justify [subcontracting manufacturing]
If it was legal to sell vaccines for the market price, or anywhere near their actual value, of course. Thanks to monopsony purchasers (i.e. irrationally cheap governments), we instead see massive underproduction.
Anti-vax sentiment is much rarer in the UK than in the US (or indeed most countries). It would be very surprising if uptake in the UK were not significantly higher.
There is as yet no significant national policy response to the prospect of possible escape variants. In particular, the current plan is to use August to vaccinate children, when I think a better use of the infrastructure at that point would probably be to give Pfizer/Moderna/Novavax to people who got AZ first time round in a bid to stave off a potential Autumn wave of B.1.351, B.1.617 or some other variant (assuming AZ’s apparent underperformance against B.1.351 is real and generalizes to other similar variants, as I think likely).
The real answer is Astrazeneca. More than half of vaccinated people in the UK have been vaccinated with Astrazeneca… and they are concerned about the actual effectiveness of this vaccine, and possible variant outbreaks (there have been three instances of “surge testing” where they go door-to-door following an outbreak: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/surge-testing-for-new-coronavirus-covid-19-variants). According to Eric Topol (whose opinion is based on a few studies), Astrazeneca is not effective against B.1.3.5 (south-african variant).
Due to effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna, the US (and Israel) can afford to relax restrictions much more than their european counterparts.
I think you’re answering a different question from the one agc is asking. Unless I misunderstood, agc was asking why the UK isn’t yet vaccinating people younger than 45. Being able to relax restrictions more in the US wouldn’t explain that.
I think the actual answer is that the UK very promptly secured a pretty decent quantity of vaccines (mostly AstraZeneca), enough to vaccinate quite a lot of its population, but that while the US was slower it then got hold of more relative to population size, and now the US has more plentiful supply than the UK.
I didn’t word it very well, the original thought got lost along the way, thanks for pointing it out!
I meant to conclude that since the UK cannot afford to lift restrictions for vaccinated people then they follow the logical route of vaccinating by age cohorts: this will keep deaths as low as they can be.
However, in the US they are actually enabling vaccinated people to do stuff… which will boost the economy significantly, and they can afford to do so due to the degree mRNA vaccines seem to block transmission. So it makes sense to allow anyone that wants to be vaccinated to do that, instead of the inevitable slowdown caused by using an age restrictive criterion.
Things i have wondered about this week:
The UK has vaccinated a larger share than the US, although America is catching up. Still, US states seem to be opening up to all adults very soon, while the UK is only going to 45+. Why is that? My current theory is that the UK has much higher vaccine take up among older people.
Why is Japan doing so few vaccinations? They could afford afford it and surely have the organizational capacity. Are they so confident that they can control the virus that they don’t bother? Are kindly letting the west have the vaccine first since we clearly need it?
Are there factories out there that could be making COVID vaccine but aren’t? In theory there shouldn’t be because Pfizer, AstraZeneca, J&J and others should rationally be subcontracting to others to manufacture for them. Worldwide demand should be easily big enough to justify it. Yet I’m not sure.
If it was legal to sell vaccines for the market price, or anywhere near their actual value, of course. Thanks to monopsony purchasers (i.e. irrationally cheap governments), we instead see massive underproduction.
Anti-vax sentiment is much rarer in the UK than in the US (or indeed most countries). It would be very surprising if uptake in the UK were not significantly higher.
There is as yet no significant national policy response to the prospect of possible escape variants. In particular, the current plan is to use August to vaccinate children, when I think a better use of the infrastructure at that point would probably be to give Pfizer/Moderna/Novavax to people who got AZ first time round in a bid to stave off a potential Autumn wave of B.1.351, B.1.617 or some other variant (assuming AZ’s apparent underperformance against B.1.351 is real and generalizes to other similar variants, as I think likely).
The real answer is Astrazeneca. More than half of vaccinated people in the UK have been vaccinated with Astrazeneca… and they are concerned about the actual effectiveness of this vaccine, and possible variant outbreaks (there have been three instances of “surge testing” where they go door-to-door following an outbreak: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/surge-testing-for-new-coronavirus-covid-19-variants). According to Eric Topol (whose opinion is based on a few studies), Astrazeneca is not effective against B.1.3.5 (south-african variant).
Due to effectiveness of Pfizer and Moderna, the US (and Israel) can afford to relax restrictions much more than their european counterparts.
I think you’re answering a different question from the one agc is asking. Unless I misunderstood, agc was asking why the UK isn’t yet vaccinating people younger than 45. Being able to relax restrictions more in the US wouldn’t explain that.
I think the actual answer is that the UK very promptly secured a pretty decent quantity of vaccines (mostly AstraZeneca), enough to vaccinate quite a lot of its population, but that while the US was slower it then got hold of more relative to population size, and now the US has more plentiful supply than the UK.
I didn’t word it very well, the original thought got lost along the way, thanks for pointing it out!
I meant to conclude that since the UK cannot afford to lift restrictions for vaccinated people then they follow the logical route of vaccinating by age cohorts: this will keep deaths as low as they can be.
However, in the US they are actually enabling vaccinated people to do stuff… which will boost the economy significantly, and they can afford to do so due to the degree mRNA vaccines seem to block transmission. So it makes sense to allow anyone that wants to be vaccinated to do that, instead of the inevitable slowdown caused by using an age restrictive criterion.