Is anyone like me getting so sick of the whole vaccine thing, England doing amazing but Scotland needs the BRITISH Army to sort out it’s mess, real moral booster for health staff all over Scotland eh. Wall to wall vaccine on the BBC and pretty much all other news shows, if I see one more person getting a vaccine I’ll scream, I know what a vaccine is, I know what a needle is, I don’t have to see every bloody person in Scotland and England getting one but I suppose in Scotland we will soon get wall to wall Army giving the vaccine because SNHS staff are incompetent and not capable to deliver this service, you gotta love the UK.
What I have found more interesting is the lack of coverage on the story about poorer countries not being able to access a single dose of vaccine,
“International solidarity needs to grow,” Martha Delgado, the Mexican official in charge of negotiating the country’s vaccine contracts, told BuzzFeed News. Echoing concerns across the developing world, she warned that there will be no end to the global pandemic until everyone has access to the vaccine. She wants the US and other Western countries to think outside their own borders and their immediate needs. “No one will be safe until everyone is vaccinated,” she said.
Canada, for example, has preordered at least four times the amount it needs to vaccinate its 38 million citizens. The UK has secured enough to cover nearly three times its population. The European Union and the US could immunize almost all of their inhabitants twice with the number of vaccine doses they have reserved. Meanwhile, almost a quarter of the global population won’t have access to a vaccine until at least 2022, according to the BMJ, a medical journal.
So far, some of the poorer countries that have been hardest hit by the virus only have preorders to cover a small fraction of their population. Peru, where a dramatic oxygen shortage left the country on edge earlier this year, and El Salvador, where more than 1 in 4 people fall below the poverty line, have preordered doses for less than half their population, according to a New York Times analysis.
I really hope the Scottish Government give any spare vaccine to poorer countries free of charge, this is not a time to look inwards it is a time where we need to look out for everyone in my opinion, it’s time for all of us to demand fairness and help the poorer nations get the protection they need but does anyone think the Tory Government in England will do that, nope, no way will they help dirty foreigners get protection and won’t even think that the best way to protect people in the UK is to protect people all over the world and do our bit to help.
grumpyscottishman.wordpress.com 
Absolutely right Bruce. Meantime we’re all supposed to celebrate cos the Queen got vaccinated.
This topsy turvy world.
Brian
There is no reason why it can’t be done fairly and larger countries supporting the less well off ones. We have wasted billions on enriching Tory scumbags think how many vaccines we could have bought for Peru or Kenya etc. The news we get fed, and it has always been this way, is the news the wealthy and established want us to have. I can’t think of any time in my lifetime anymore where we have had proper journalism, now they just look like they work for hello magazine. We have to search for truth on buzzfeed etc, the UK is just a disgusting horrible little place. Shown again this weekend when Kuenssberg of the BBC saying that Universal Credit was generous, no impartiality no evidence just opinion and we don’t pay for her opinion on things like that without evidence.
Thanks for commenting and please stay safe. Bruce
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interesting as the Scot Gov actually gave a PRIVATE COMPANY the job of delivering the vaccines to where they need to be. Not mentioned. I wonder why? Does not fit your nationalist agenda perhaps. If UK Government did that (which they have not) you would be all over it.
Army being used in England to vaccinate, not mentioned wonder why again? Makes total sense to use the army to get this done quickly and efficiently.
Anon
Not aware that a private company has delivery contract for vaccines, will have a wee look. I actually have no issue with the Army supporting vaccination, none issue at all, I have an issue with how it is being reported in the unionist media in a way that implies that SNHS staff are incompetent and need the British Army but in England the army are just there to help the NHS, it’s the double standards I can’t stand.
Thanks for commenting and please stay safe.
Bruce
Sent from my iPhone
Shelf life is what caused this and why there may not be any leftover doses. Some of them spoil faster than milk. That quantity of “over-ordering” is probably the anticipated wastage.
There’ll be a great deal of wastage before it’s over, which the tabloids will no doubt complain about. The reality is, even places with great infrastructure, will consume more than three doses per person. Places with poor infrastructure will consume something more like ten doses per person.
I absolutely agree that we should help the others, but let’s not delude ourselves that it’s as easy to physically supply everyone with doses. It is a gargantuan task, as the eradication of smallpox etc. showed us. The UN can barely keep track of 200 ambassadors, it’s simply not capable of organising a 7-billion-soul vaccination program.
And shamefully, there are a lot of diseases we should’ve already eradicated but haven’t. Yellow fever, typhoid, diptheria, TB, cholera, even polio.
Alan
Thanks for the greater context to how this could all work, I would still hope thought that we could do more to help smaller countries who don’t have the same resources that we enjoy to protect their people although I appreciate that is a lot easier said than done.
Thanks for commenting. Bruce
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Several issues here. I have no problem if the delivery of the vaccine is outsourced to a private company in Scotland, so long as the delivery is completed efficiently and presents good VFM. This is not something that could be said for HMG outsourcing earlier in the pandemic. The performance of the company remains to be seen but looks good so far.
Secondly the Scot Gov is following a different strategy to vaccinate than England, by vaccinating the most vulnerable first (ie care homes) which is harder than mass vaccination points. So speed and number of vaccines should not be the measure of effectiveness of the roll out program and if the army can assist – as they have been with testing – then use them! Until we are independent the British army is the Scottish army (paid for by Scottish taxes) and I think the soldiers being used are normally based in Scotland. So what is the issue here? We take for granted the ‘British’ spin on everything, this is just another example.
Finally first world countries have ordered and paid for more vaccines than their populations might require. This looks bad on the face of it but had they not paid up front for these vaccines the companies who develop them would not have had the funds to develop the vaccine nor set up the manufacturing to produce them in such vast amounts. So I have no issue with how this has evolved up to now, but I would hope excess vaccines are used responsibly in future.
Alan
Don’t disagree at all. I even read on Twitter today from a Dr that the Scottish Government were forced to remove their vaccination plan from Westminster under the guise of security but the Dr implied it was because the Scottish plan was detailed and made more sense. No doubt that won’t be reported by the Unionist media in Scotland at all. I also don’t like how everything is turned into Scotland vs England and blogged about that recently, it is a trap the Scottish Government keep allowing the unionists to pull them into and they need to just refuse to get into comparison debates.
Thanks for commenting.
Bruce
I agree this is not a Scotland v England issue. I do not really know what either country is doing but based on what I see each is following a different strategy and both are logical.
England appears to be following a speedy mass immunization policy which is to vaccinate as many fit and healthy people as possible at mass vaccination centres. The idea is to protect your working population and get ‘immunity’ to 60% of the population as quickly as possible to knock transmission on the head,. This works if you have enough stocks of vaccine but will still take months to achieve the 60% threshold and will not reduce hospitalizations markedly in the short term.
Scotland seems to be following a strategy to cherry pick immunization at a slower rate targeting vaccination of the most vulnerable first to drive down the number of hospitalizations, reduce those requiring critical care and driving down death rates. This allows the virus to continue to spread in the population for the medium term (if restrictions are removed) but will alleviate the pressure on the NHS as most people who are otherwise healthy will be asymptomatic or only mildly ill.
Of course there is an element of both strategies in each country’s approach but this is how I see it and there are pros and cons to both. Hopefully both country’s will have the resources to follow both strategies soon. This is a crisis that affects individuals, not a constitutional issue,
Alan
Thanks for the excellent summation of both strategies, I could never be so succinct. I don’t know which is best to be honest or if there is even a best. I don’t like comparisons between the nations as it is pointless and if we want to be an independent country then we act like that and take the view that we do not comment on other countries in the main unless it impacts us or is a human rights war type thing. I haven’t been that happy with how any of the four nations have dealt with the pandemic to be honest, we could have learned from the Asian nations who have been dealing with and preparing for years but nope we know best. I just hope we get over this sooner rather than later as right now it is just horrible full stop for everyone.
Thanks for commenting. Bruce
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