My First COVID vaccination

Clearly not, as you’ve heard of it. :-P And far too close to Lincolnshire.

Well, you found a location for a label, any sign of a village? (recently)

I’ve actually been there. Visiting deserted medieval villages is one of my more useless hobbies.

Ringstead Barrett (Parva) was depopulated by plague in the 14th century. There are a couple of farm buildings, and the ruins of a church, all from the 13th and 14th centuries. Apart from that, it is nothing more than a few lumps and bumps in the pastureland.

I have put down roots a bit further north, coastwards north of Cromer.

I have put down roots a bit further north, coastwards north of Cromer.

Doggerland?

There’s nothing north of Cromer, is there? Unless you carry on over the pole and find something on the opposite side.

My memory tells me that there’s not a lot in Cromer, let alone north of it.

I haven’t been there for over 20 years and tend to visit (pre-pandemic) only for funerals on my wife’s side of the family – she’s from North Walsham.

I have put down roots a bit further north, coastwards north of Cromer.

Because I could, I looked at RiscOSM to see where was being discussed, and was immediately struck by nearly every other road being called “Holt Road”.

Are there a lot of badgers in the area?

I actually meant south of Cromer, not north. Blame the vaccine. Holt is relatively important (for Norfolk, anyway) market town. Perhaps more important historically than today.

This morning I woke with minor joint pain and a general feeling of malaise. I had two paracetamol and went back to bed for a couple of hours, and the only lingering side effect is an urge to buy Microsoft products.

Holt is relatively important (for Norfolk, anyway) market town.

Ah – probably built on a wooded hill originally inhabited by badgers then!

the only lingering side effect is an urge to buy Microsoft products.

I must admit to never having had that side-effect from anything!

Ah – probably built on a wooded hill originally inhabited by badgers then!

A bit of googling suggests that the name comes from the Anglo-Saxon word for woodland, so you could be on to something there.

I must admit to never having had that side-effect from anything!

I believe it is one of the current conspiracy theories. Bill Gates has put a chip into all the vaccines to make it easier to track and control people. Of course, the people who spout such nonsense are usually never more than arm’s reach from their phone, and they already have a habit of using it to browse Farcebroke and believing everything they read thereon.

People, eh?

Bill Gates has put a chip into all the vaccines to make it easier to track and control people.

Why Bill Gates? I’d have thought gross invasion of privacy was more Zuckerberg’s thing.

Plus, nanobots are sci-fi. There’s no such thing, yet, as a functional tracker that can pass through a syringe and be powered from blood.
I mean, jeez, we still haven’t entirely sussed Bluetooth in the voluntary mobile tracking apps.

Plus plus, it would be really simple to detect radio emissions coming from a person, either directly or as a side effect of the processor (wave an AM radio near to a computer).

So no, it’s not a tracker we’re being injected with, it’s a guitar amplifier.

…some question to the British on that topic…several other countries are on a start/stop mode regarding allowing astrazeneca to be used or not currently…due to some unclear (?) fatal casualties…I guess there must be much more people in Great Britain by now that got that vaccine…so no unclear casualties in Great Britain !? How is that covered in the serious press (if that exists still…) in Great Britain ?

I mean, jeez, we still haven’t entirely sussed Bluetooth in the voluntary mobile tracking apps.

Am I the only person to find that the App is draining the phone battery? On a normal stay-at-home day, the battery drops to around 90% during the day. Take a 30 minute walk through a housing estate, avoiding people, and by the end of the day the battery is around 10%, or on one day, 1% charge remaining.

so no unclear casualties in Great Britain !? How is that covered in the serious press (if that exists still…) in Great Britain ?

That would be a massive story, and it’s not been mentioned by any of the press. So I would say there’ve been no casualties from the vaccines.

Oxford/AZ seems to be producing minor but annoying symptoms for a few days in some people. Pfizer seems to be almost symptom-free.

I haven’t seen any reports of this sort of reaction in the UK and, as Alan says, it would be a big story when you consider that the UK has used upwards of 15m AZ doses so far. I did see one very interesting EU stat though: AZ vaccinations given: approx 5,000,000. Blood clots reported: 30.

If a government is being criticised by its own electorate for the speed of the vaccine roll-out, it would be awfully convenient for said government to blame the delays on “an abundance of caution”.

But I’m sure that’s just me being overly cynical.

Am I the only person to find that the App is draining the phone battery?

Dunno. I refuse to run it. I’m not covered for the first three days I’m off, and there have been a few cases at work. So if I had to self-isolate for ~10 days (I think France changed it to 10 from 5, or was it the other way?) for every possible-contact, that would mean I’d have already missed a month with about half of it unpaid.

Sorry, it’s nice that politicians can “do the right thing” and voluntarily self isolate. Us little people further down the pecking order? Well, it’s simple, either cover our pay or FRO…
[of course, if I think I might have symptoms, I won’t go into work – to do so would be irresponsible; but so far (touches head) I’ve not had flu, virus, or even a cold this year – yay!]

On a normal stay-at-home day, the battery drops to around 90% during the day.

Whoo, you don’t use your phone much. Mine’s down to about 93% between waking up and getting up. I suspect that tracking lumps of flesh on the screen is quite a power hungry operation, as typing stuff into ROOL’s forum eats battery way faster than watching Netflix.

I’m at 65%, and that’s with ~20 minutes of charge on the way home. It’s about normal.

Take a 30 minute walk through a housing estate, avoiding people, and by the end of the day the battery is around 10%, or on one day, 1% charge remaining.

I think my phone shuts itself down when it goes below about 3%.

But, yes, your phone will be constantly looking for Bluetooth devices, just in case you happen to walk past a snivelling harbringer of certain doom.
All the time.
And, of course, it’s keeping the Bluetooth bleating out its identity so others can spot it.
All in all, pretty miserable if you expect to use your battery for other things.

But I’m sure that’s just me being overly cynical.

In this post-truth world, there’s no such thing as “overly cynical”. There’s only “seeing the truth beyond the bull, spin, waffle, and misdirection”.

So if I had to self-isolate for ~10 days (I think France changed it to 10 from 5, or was it the other way?)

Are you sure that’s not how many vegetable portions you should be having!

How is that covered in the serious press

The full title is Oxford/AstraZeneca; as in created in conjunction with some boffins in Oxford University.
So, given it’s the home grown offering, I’m not entirely certain I’d trust the British press to report even if there was a problem.

Now, 30 reported clots in five million people. How does that go with the usual rate of side effects? Apparently in the US, deaths from prescription drugs (adverse reactions, not overdoses) is a major risk, ranking joint 4th with strokes for fatalities. It seems that new drugs (in the US) can have a one in five chance of serious reactions (some doctors warn patients not to take a drug until it has been on the market for at least five years…hmmm, mom could have done with that advice!). Properly prescibed drugs are responsible for around 1.9 million hospitalisations per year, and 840,000 hospitalised patients are given drugs that blow up their insides, making 2.74 million serious drug reactions per year in the US, of which it is estimated that around 128,000 will have fatal reactions. The EU estimates that across the EU (population similar to the US), there are about 200,000 drug related deaths per year.

So, if 170 million people (in the US) take a drug, the 2.7 million reactions is around 1.5%. The 128K fatalities is a fraction of a percent.

So thirty cases in five million is certainly something to look into, but it doesn’t actually seem that unusual.

[source: ethics.harvard.edu/blog entry of June 27 2014 beginning “New Prescription Drugs” but it’s a long URL that I can’t be bothered to type (reading it on my phone, writing this on the tablet); GIYF…]

@Rick: The point here is: 5 million EU – 30 clots, and may be 15 million UK – 0 clots ? Does it makes sense, is the data even okay ?…may be some doses were actually not okay, or could the wrong handling be a cause…it’s kind of weird and should be investigated somehow…

Yes, it should be investigated, certainly. If for no other reason than, as you say, 30 in 5 million versus 0 in 15? That doesn’t sound right.

Is the UK covering up? Is there some sort of lifestyle or genetic difference in Europeans that is causing things to react differently to Brits? Are these people who have previously had the virus and not known it? [though, you’d have thought the UK would have had some of those too]

It might be that these 30 people all took something else within the last ‘X’ days/weeks/months and it’s an interaction with that… it’s possible…

It is kind of weird. I’m not sure it justifies halting the vaccination programme (though if it gives an opening to the use of the mRNA versions, I won’t complain!) but it does seem like something that should be looked into.

The last I heard was that the numbers getting a blood clot were actually no greater then would normally be expected (regardless of the vaccine), this has been admitted by the Norwegians and I think it was the Austrians as well, but doing further background checks as an additional check but latest was so far no connection has been found, i.e. they had an undetected illness already.

Rick – interesting stats from the US. I have a friend who is a researcher at a Very Large Pharmaceutical Company (not saying which one, as his opinion is fairly damning). He has said several times that the US federal medical regulatory authority is a joke, so much so that companies use it almost as a trial ground for releasing new medication before completing the process in other markets. By contrast, the EU market is extremely strict, and the UK market is one of the strictest in the world. In the US, people are harmed by the drug, sue, get paid off, and go away. Doesn’t work like that in UK or EU.

Just spotted on the BBC website: UK has reported less than 40 clots after 17m doses. So the UK rate is 0.000002%, and the EU rate is 0.000006%. I read earlier – I can’t remember where, I was deep down a rabbit warren of science blogs and journals – a statement from either the WHO or the EU Medicines Agency to the effect that this is less than the risk of clots in the general population. Both agencies are convening meetings of their respective expert panels to review all available data, with formal statements expected to be published on Thursday. Worth noting that both agencies have also stated that there is no need to pause the vaccination programme, and this formal review is not expected to change that position.

This is exactly the same as the nonsense as spouted by Macron and Merkel last month. They can’t get hold of enough AZ because of the EUs foot dragging, so instead they make up excuses why the vaccine isn’t any good, and they wont be using it. And just as last month the scientific evidence from the UK and the EU medicines agency will dismiss this nonsense, they will again look like fools. EU citizens will still be waiting to vaccinated.

What this wont do is hurt the UK, slow down our vaccination program, or damage AZ. Oxford AZ will be the most used vaccine globally, because it is safe, effective, easy to transport and store, and unlike the others it is supplied at cost to all comers.

The only thing this will do boost the disinformation campaigns of anti-vaxer idiots, and reduce the take up of vaccinations in their own countries, particularly France.

The issue is in the same population over the same period that the vaccination has been rolled out how many people normally would be expected to develop or be diagnosed with a blood clot.

Given that the UK has vaccinated nearly 36% of the adult population and nearly all the old who are likely to been diagnosed with multiple health issues and take things like blood thinners etc then it is hardly surprising to see some reports but are they statistically relevent.

The same goes for deaths during x days of taking the vaccine as again how many would you expected to die in the same time frame naturally.

Always sensible to check but to halt the programme I am not so sure.

Some people will jump on this as proof it is unsafe but carry on smoking , drinking, driving, catching the bus/train etc all of which staistically enhance your chance of being unwell/injured/killed but hey thats OK.

I actually meant south of Cromer, not north.

Well the comments about Fen-landers refer to webbed feet, so I thought that the members of your family tree had perhaps developed gills. :)

Just spotted on the BBC website: UK has reported less than 40 clots after 17m doses. So the UK rate is 0.000002%, and the EU rate is 0.000006%.

Has anyone found any stats for the number of clots associated with other injections (for medicinal drug use, other routine vaccinations, etc)
For those, what percentage of problems are associated with experienced injectors and what percentage with part-timers or self-injectors?

So no, it’s not a tracker we’re being injected with, it’s a guitar amplifier.

Well, I have been having problems with a Supertramp ear-worm.
Being chip based – it’s The Logical Song :)

the UK rate is 0.000002%, and the EU rate is 0.000006%

I spy a factor of 100 error… 8~)

Which doesn’t affect the argument at all.

How soon after the jab are the clots occurring? Unless it’s pretty quick, what makes anyone think it’s anything to do with the jab? In 17 million people, how many would get a clot in an average day anyway, jab or no jab?

I spy a factor of 100 error… 8~)

The problem when typing a lot of zeroes is knowing precisely when to stop.

I think the figures are given for symptoms within 28 days but can’t be sure. The competent authorities in WHO and EU are meeting today, but neither expect to change their current guidance, which states that the AZ vaccine is safe for the vast majority of people.