Naturally, the announcement prior to Christmas that the Pfizer BioNTech and Moderna Covid vaccines were good to go came as a great relief to people who at last could see an end to the “new normal.” However, as Gary Kavanagh pointed out on this platform here, the initial optimism has been tempered, with many questioning […]
For about a year now, Governments and pharmaceutical companies have been working around the clock to develop a vaccine for the original SARS-Cov 2 virus, and that’s just been released, as you know, in the UK and the USA. The problem is that the new strain of Covid which has driven the UK into a […]
A publicity event to assure the public about the efficacy and safety of the Pfizer-BioNTech Covid-19 vaccine did not go to plan when a head nurse at a hospital in Chattanooga, Tennessee fainted shortly after receiving the jab. Fainting is a common side effect of many vaccines, and is not considered harmful. In fact, the US centre for disease control recommends […]
Some of the outgoing President’s supporters have already taken to calling the various Covid vaccines the “Trump Vaccine”, so happy are they to associate his name with success. In fact, here’s White House Press Secretary Kayleigh McEnany calling it that, just yesterday: "It's the Trump vaccine" pic.twitter.com/MTFff7sQfk — Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) December 2, 2020 Regardless […]
To be honest, it’s hard to understand where the present panic in some quarters about mandatory vaccinations for Covid 19 has come from. No elected Government, facing into an election at some point in the next five years, is going to want images on the television of policemen dragging four year old girls from their […]
The United Kingdom will become the first country in the world to start a programme of mass coronavirus vaccination, with 800,000 doses to be available from next week, Health Secretary Matt Hancock has announced: The Pfizer/BioNTech jab is the fastest vaccine to go from concept to reality, taking only 10 months to follow the same […]
Well, this will cause a ruckus: #BREAKING: QANTAS CEO confirms that proof that you've been vaccinated for COVID-19 will be compulsory for international air travel onboard his aircraft. #9ACA pic.twitter.com/dhk3Hsnxn9 — A Current Affair (@ACurrentAffair9) November 23, 2020 QANTAS is just one airline, of course, and there’s no guarantee that others will follow – but […]
When the oddly timed news broke last week that Pfizer was on the cusp of rolling out an effective vaccine for Covid-19, you could almost hear the great global cry of relief. At long last an end was in sight to the catastrophic health threats, stultifying boredom and economic paralysis that have plagued the world […]
To be fair, they didn’t say the first bit. But it’s hard to argue that politics didn’t influence the timing, for reasons we’ll come to shortly. But first, the news: As I type these words, stock markets are surging globally. And why wouldn’t they? A 90% effective Coronavirus vaccine means, well, the end of the […]
The entire basis of most of the western approach to Coronavirus has been to use lockdowns and protective measures to pin the disease in place until such time as an effective vaccine can be developed that will render the virus harmless. Unfortunately, it is increasingly looking as if Coronavirus will have the last laugh. From […]
The British Prime Minister has warned that the speedy development of a covid-19 vaccine cannot be taken for granted. Boris Johnson told the British parliament on Monday that while there were “hopeful signs” that a vaccine would be developed, he warned that it could not be taken for granted. “There are some very hopeful signs not least […]
The good news is that several potential coronavirus vaccines are at the “widespread human trial” stage. The bad news is that in the case of at least one of them, that trial is running into some trouble: Experts have been particularly concerned about AstraZeneca’s vaccine trials, which began in April in Britain, because of the […]