The reason I refer to your four nations in agreement tactic is that I have always seen it as nothing more than a dullard appeal to believe in the wisdom of authorities not based on the merits of their stance, but on the notion of consensus between authorities. Authorities which have demonstrated their limitations many times in this pandemic already. Authorities which often have complex relationships with each other and where publicly giving the impression of being on the same page is part of the landscape that doesnt necessarily reflect the real situation behind the scenes at all.
If the dose timing stuff its a gamble then its worth discussing without some trying to make it sound like a no-brainer that is unworthy of discussion and worthy of cheap smears.
Anyway here is my transcription of the bit from the 22nd January press conference that I mentioned earlier.
Tim Ross, Bloomberg:
Question to you, Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty. SAGE minutes from a meeting on January 7th say that theres an unquantifiable but likely small probability of the delayed second dose generating a vaccine-resistant mutation. In layman's terms, does that mean that the decision to delay the second dose actually risks making the virus itself more dangerous, and if so what are you doing about that?
Vallance:
The most risky thing in terms of new mutations is to have very high prevalence. The more the virus is replicating and transmitting between people, the likely, the more the chance that it will get a mutation and alter. And thats whats happening around the world and thats why were seeing the same mutations pop up everywhere. So these mutations have not come about because of vaccine pressure or anything else, they seem to be mutations that the virus accumulates naturally during replication as it wants to get more efficient at transmitting. And so I think thats the biggest risk. Theres always some risk if you start to have partial immunity but theres also a benefit which is that partial immunity can also stop the infection quicker, and so I think that was a statement from the immunologists and an appropriately cautious one but I dont think its the biggest risk.
Whitty:
All of medicine is about balance of risk. And it is important we consider the risks on both sides and we dont try and, you know, just only look at the positive sides in a course of action, we look at both sides, thats what SAGE was doing, thats what we try to do in all the decisions we've taken. Our overall view was the balance of risk was firmly in favour, at this stage of the epidemic in the UK, of having many more people vaccinated, but that does mean the delay. But I think most people would agree that the risk that was identified, that particular risk, was a relatively much smaller risk than the risk of not having people vaccinated, which essentially was the alternative.
have told me a fair bit about this.
