Thetownend.com

If the governments prediction of having up to 30 million vaccines ready for September and assuming it will be compulsory or at least everyone encouraged to have it then surely the FA can use this to get supporters back into football grounds without worrying about social distancing etc. Each supporter would have to prove that they have had the vaccine to be allowed into the stadium.
There would be obstacles of course but maybe a little light at the end of the tunnel providing the government get the all clear from the scientist

Are you sure about that? I'm pretty sure the idea is that even if one of the vaccines being worked on could be proven to be effective in the next couple of months, there's no way it could be ready at scale until early next year at the earliest. Happy to be corrected if that can be stood up by an actual scientist (as opposed to vague handwaving in the press)

I agree it's still very unclear but aren't most of their daily briefings!

Apparently today the Deputy Chief Medical Officer tried to claim that the new quarantine restrictions on travellers had actually been in place for several weeks now. Since 30th February  :doh:

I doubt we’ll be back to ‘normal’ for a ver6 long time.

‘The Premier League has been warned current coronavirus restrictions are likely to be in place long-term, with Public Health England advising them the public health situation is unlikely to change in the next 6-12 months.

England's top flight was paused on March 9 due to the coronavirus pandemic and is making plans for a comeback in mid-June but a vast number of measures, including matches being played behind closed doors, will need to be adopted in order to minimise the risk of COVID-19 transmission.

While it is clear that fans will not be able to attend Premier League games for the remainder of the season, clubs have already started preparing for the possibility of playing the whole of next season behind closed doors.’

Who’ll be left by then?

Who’ll be left by then?

Playing next season behind closed doors would probably finish off many league 1&2clubs

A neighbour works here for 4 days the flys back to Portugal for 4 days without any restrictions at either airport or at his place of work in Swindon. Shocking!!

Can’t see how it could possibly be compulsory to take it and personally I won’t be taking a vaccine that hasn’t had any long term clinical trials as there are a fair few recent examples where vaccines have been as deadly as the disease.

That would have to be forced by the government but without any scientific data to back it up its going to be difficult to get everyone on board but unkess they do force it we're going to have uncertain times for years to come 

Personally I think you’d have to be stupid to take anything for at least a year to see if there are any longer term side effects or complications. I’ve no problem taking the normal tried and trusted vaccines but putting something unproven and rushed out in my body, nah I’d rather take the chances with the virus tbh.

I seen to recall that it was said that those numbers could be available if current trials are successful.  It is also acknowledged that we may not come up with a vaccine.

I am not sure that I will be lining up for this in the, dare I say, unlikely event that those trials are deemed a success.

I admire your optimism but even if we have a vaccine by September, it will be used for those most at risk; including healthcare and front line staff. Not for the voluntary activity of going to watch football (unfortunately for some). Although I see your reasoning - if there was of course a mass use one available.

False expectations from Messr Johnson. He's soooo keen to go down in history as Churchill-esque.

A few recent quotes from experts working on the global vaccine race...

"I don’t think we’re communicating very well at all with the public, because I keep having to tell these people, you know, even if we had a vaccine that showed some evidence of protection by September, we are so far from having a vaccine in people’s arms," Dr. Michael Osterholm, Uni of Minnesota CIDR Director

"We’ve set a goal that we’re pursuing. And the data are going to tell us to what degree that’s an easy goal or very difficult goal to meet — but it’s not going to be very easy," Dr. Philip Dormitzer, Pfizer VP & CSO

"We’re going to be making millions of doses per month in 2020, ramped to tens of millions of doses a month in 2021," Stéphane Bancel, Moderna CEO

Regarding Healthcare and frontline staff;

"I think it’s reasonable to say that this should be the first target, because as we’ve seen everywhere, including in the U.S., when you have a health system which cannot accommodate sick people, then everybody suffers," Dr. Marie-Paule Kieny, Inserm Research Director

"Health care workers will likely (be) followed by people at the highest risk — those 65 and older and people with chronic health conditions, like diabetes, that have been seen to increase the risk of dying from Covid-19...

...I don’t think that the general population will have vaccine probably until the second half of 2021. And that’s if everything works OK." Dr. Robin Robinson, BARDA Founding Director

Any company can make a pledge to produce of course (AstraZeneca in this case) but you can't produce if there is no successful candidate and that is the biggest kicker at the moment. Many candidates come up in research all the time. Finding a successful one is one of the hardest parts.

I think that the thread was created just to while away some time rather than to suggest that that this was a realistic possibility.

We're told to  trust the government each day so let's see if they deliver!

They’re talking about 30 million doses by September - that’s half the population.

They must think it's achievable as I'm sure Keir Starmer will keep reminding them

Astra Zeneca have agreed to produce that amount, problem lies in the fact that there are no vaccines yet!

Yes, they are talking about 30m but as well as what other experts, holding leading roles around the world...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aP_-P_BS6KY

It's pretty simple isn't it, we are building capacity (by signing contracts with big pharma companies) to produce a vacine if it's developed by September. 

I'm not sure you can hold any government around the world to account if no vacine is developed, if one was and we didn't have capacity thats a different matter.

That isn't what government are saying though. They're saying they'll have 30m vaccines by September, available for the UK public. Looking at comments from many other leading world experts...that figure wouldn't be possible in 3-4 months, even if a successful candidate was identified.

It is nice to see that they are bringing the Harwell facility forward. As long as this isn't a bit like the Nightingale Hospitals...a White Elephant per se, purely to make BoJo look like some kind of super organised heroic man of great stature and leadership; because he's none of that.

This isnt quite what i've read...

https://www.politicshome.com/news/article/uk-could-have-30m-doses-of-coronavirus-vaccine-by-september-claims-government

The Business Secretary Alok Sharma announced the target after a deal was struck between Oxford University and Astrazeneca.

It means if the vaccine candidate, known as Chaddox 1, works after trial then the pharmaceutical giant will pay for its commercialisation and manufacturing, before selling it at cost during the pandemic.

Mr Sharma said this agreement could lead to the delivery of 100 million doses in total, with 30 million of those available to Brits in as little as four months, well ahead of the predicted timeframe for developing a vaccine against Covid-19.

That is pretty clear for me. 

So the government shouldnt have created extra capacity in the nightingale hospitals? If the lockdown hadn't worked so well then you would be saying the complete opposite. 

Is that the oxford vaccine that everyone has been hyping up that didn’t eradicate the virus in monkeys when tested?

Scraping the barrel now, i know there is a daily quota on here of criticism that needs to be maintained (often justified) but this is a ridiculous criticism. Is was the clearly the right thing to have the extra thing capacity available should it be needed

The problem with the Nightingale Hospitals was not so much the logistic of setting them up, fairly easy to do and heavily reported in my sector (property and development) BDP who lead on it did a very good job, the white elephant was the fact that there was never ever going to be enough staff to actually use the things.

There is already a massive shortfall in NHS staffing so creating thousands of beds is actually pretty pointless without people to staff them, its been fairly well publicised that if hospitals wanted to refer patients to them, they basically had to send staff with them to look after them.

Sadly, like so much with this government (see also test kits being posted rather than tests actually being done) there is a lot of window dressing goes on to get headlines and deflect.

When you say we'll do you mean the UK or Greece, Greece seems to be making a very good job of dealing with it, but then again they appear to have a government on top of things.

I don't see how a vaccine can be declared safe for 30m people by September, even if it's declared successful in trials.

Surely we are selectively stockpiling in case it is good, so we have availability at that time -  **whenever** that is..

Buying 30m doses of something that not fully trialled would be up there with the antibody test kits and the PPE from Turkey.

I think this is exactly the case - I read that Astra Zeneca are going to start manufacturing at scale before all the normal clearances have been done, on a punt essentially, so that if and when it is approved and proven it will be available in large quantities rather than having a lag from approval and availability. The risk being of course that they end up with a warehouse full of unusable vaccine if it doesn't pass the trials. The govt are taking the financial risk by commiting to pay for the batch even if it can't be used, which in the circumstances, seems entirely reasonable. I think I read it was around the £80m mark, ordinarily a huge amount to risk on an unproven vaccine, but in the context of the billions being lost to Covid a wholly reasonable punt.

Sorry but I disagree. As I said above, the cost is IIRC somewhere in the region of £80m. If that means half the population can resume somewhere approaching normal life 3-6 months earlier than would otherwise be the case, that's a completely reasonable amount to gamble economically (bearing in mind the billions Covid is costing the economy), never mind from the health perspective.

The cynic in me wonders whether Tory donors have money tied up in AZ after the Dyson ventilators debacle where the Tory donor was contracted to make ventilators he couldn't make then compensated when it was cancelled, its happening too many times.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSMpwyo1Wzs&ref=tw_i

Maybe they do, but I still contend that in the current circumstances £80m is a reasonable use of public money if it enables a vaccine to be made more readily available months earlier than would otherwise be the case. And if the bet doesn't come off, it's a drop in the ocean compared to the billions being spent to prop up the economy. This is exactly the kind of thing government should be doing IMO. They're effectively acting as a buyer of last resort to enable companies to take a risk that they perhaps wouldn't otherwise be prepared to take. That's on the assumption of course, that AZ then also ensure that any vaccine is made available globally at a reasonable cost rather than looking to hoover up vast profits on the patent.

I don't know how the pharma trade works, but is it the case that say the US trial (as per the video I linked earlier) works they will release the recipe (being deliberately simplistic)  to allow AZ to make it, or are we tied into AZ coming up with a vaccine?

I think it's a case of whoever comes up with one first. There's about 80 vaccines in development worldwide. It's likely there will be more than one "successful" one. However, one of the issues may be if, as has happened in the past, the pharma companies try to profiteer on the patent. Which could lead to a vaccine being widely available in the developed world, but unaffordable in many poorer countries. I sincerely hope govts take action to prevent that as it would inevitably lead not just to large scale deaths in the developing world but also a resurgence in the richer nations. So if a US pharma company succeeds in developing one, Trump's America First approach may well lead him to encourage them to profiteer, hence why it's important there's more than just one available

Judging by this thread, 90% of all clubs will have gone under by the end of the year then.

At least we went out with a title I guess!

Talking about league one titles I thought the EFL were going to confirm promotion yesterday

No, after their next board meeting which is, apparently, sometime this week. The League One meeting was yesterday, if that had ended in agreement, they might have been able to confirm something, but as it didn't, who knows?

They didnt even have the meeting yesterday did they?

If you listen to the Not The Top Twenty podcast there is a good episode on this whole saga that came out yesterday

I think there is a board meeting tomorrow, although I am not sure they can ratify anything regarding D2 without some sort of idea what D1 are going to settle upon?

EFL Board meeting Weds, Clubs and EFL meet on Friday I think

It does make last fridays announcement seem a little premature and even listening to power on talksport he was talking like it was definite

Promote element of L2 is considered a formality. L2 is nowhere near as problematic except the request to stop relegation to the National League.

As far as I could make out, L1 want more clubs involved in play offs because it is so close (having just looked at the table, even Gillingham in 11th probably think they have a chance). I guess there is no harm in that, if they can play the games. Also they are possibly not happy at no relegation from L2 when 2 or 3 are expected to go down from L1

6 prem players tested positive. That wont be starting then.

The cynic in me suggests they play for clubs in danger of relegation.

Hmm that's a step too far really saying clubs are deliberately infecting players. I love a conspiracy theory but that's even beyond that.

Not saying that. Just they don’t have it at all.

Ian Woan is one of those who has tested positive (not sure whether he's in the six as backroom staff not a player)