Thanks everybody for all your kind thoughts. Apologies for high-jacking the thread, please get back to the virus.
please log in to view this image Dr David Keatley @DaveKeatley While everyone is so keen for a vaccine: I have some snake oil to sell. It is about 90% effective, but most of you wouldn't know as you're 99.9% unlikely to need it. Note: if it causes any side effects (including death) you can't sue me. So, who wants some?
While I’m pretty likely to be in the 99.9% or whatever it is that wouldn’t die if I got Covid, assuming I haven’t already, I’d be more concerned for any long term effect decades down the line. I get people being reluctant to be first in line for a new vaccine in case it goes horribly wrong but anyone refusing it because they think it’s the next step towards Bill Gates controlling their **** life can frankly get in the sea.
I was pissed off yesterday as all the news was moaning on about who would get the vaccine, why isn’t it tomorrow, will it be dangerous, how GPs would manage, the problems with cold chain storage etc etc rather than focussing on the light at the end of the tunnel. This morning I remembered exactly who we are relying on to roll this out in an orderly, fast high volume way, and I felt a little less irritated at yesterday’s negativity. Well done Pfizer and especially the amazing people at Biontech who took a massive gamble in repurposing technology aimed at oncology and potentially creating a revolution in vaccine development in the process, and hopefully all the other companies pursuing other vaccines. Let’s hope that developing effective vaccines and manufacturing these at scale and quickly really are the most difficult elements of this. One thing we don’t need is a ****ing Tsar related to a Tory minister to ‘lead’ the roll out. Tell Simon Stevens to earn his ****ing money and get it done.
NHS England has said that GPs will have to scale back services in 2021 to deliver Covid vaccines. Firstly, in my experience they could hardly scale back any further than they have already, but secondly, why should this be left to GPs? Surely they could set up large-scale vaccination centres - with the necessary deep-freeze storage facilities - to deliver this. The army could run them.
I wouldn’t trust my GP surgery to get this right (I am sure that others are much better). Such is their reluctance to see patients, even by video, that I assume they will be using crossbows to stay safe while they vaccinate us. The GPs have access to the medical records which will show which of their patients should get the jab when. Although there have been initiatives for decades for us to have a single, shared medical record, so that if I live in London but have an accident in Aberdeen it’s easy to access my info, but I don’t think these have got anywhere. So the GPs (who should have already done this for shielding lists etc) will have to share which of their patients should get the jabs in priority order. Some of them might struggle to get to centralised vaccination centres, especially the very elderly but still living independently. But overall I’d prefer a unit in Tesco’s car park to be doing this.
There's already been talk of expanding testing centres to facilitate giving vaccines and also having the military involved as well as pharmacies which give flu jabs. As Stan says GPs are in hiding at present and their stock has never been lower, mine rang me a month after I'd had my flu jab at the pharmacy asking if I could make an appointment with the practice nurse for one...
good to see the nhs hiring people to help with the vaccines how much does a nurse earn please log in to view this image