COVID vaccinations! Have you gotten yours?

[The Larch]

Romanians are not slavs. 

[Admiral Yi]

Really?  I know they speak a Romance language, but not ethnically Slavic?

[The Larch]

Really?  I know they speak a Romance language, but not ethnically Slavic?

Nope. From wiki:

Two theories account for the origin of the Romanian people. One, known as the Daco-Roman continuity theory, posits that they are descendants of Romans and Romanized indigenous peoples living in the Roman Province of Dacia, while the other posits that the Romanians are descendants of Romans and Romanized indigenous populations of the former Roman provinces of Illyricum, Moesia, Thracia, and Macedonia, and the ancestors of Romanians later migrated from these Roman provinces south of the Danube into the area which they inhabit today.

[Valmy]

Really?  I know they speak a Romance language, but not ethnically Slavic?

Well I mean probably everybody is mixed up together by now but the Vlachs and the other Eastern Romance speakers have always been considered distinct from the Slavs I think.

I think, it is not like I have closely researched the topic.

[Valmy]

So from that map it seems pretty likely Romanians and Greeks all have some Slavic ancestry there, except maybe the ones on islands or deep in the Romanian interior or something. But from a cultural perspective they are distinct.

[garbon]

I am trying to find if you are still expected to wait 8 weeks for your second Pfizer shot (for my wife) or you can walk in for one after 4.

I think I was 4 1/2. About a month between them for sure.

I see the guardian now has coverage about how JCVI is getting angry that GPS and vaccination centres are giving jabs at minimum approved interval rather than 12 weeks. They are also saying latest evidence is that 12 weeks is best though only thing I see is that Birmingham study that looked at 175 people who were 80 years and older.

Per the guardians description of young people using twitter to find out vaccination centres they believe will give them vaccine earlier / that they turned out in droves last weekend, I'm clinging on to being a young person.

[Sheilbh]

I also feel like it's slightly burying the lede because surely this is the bigger story

Evidence is emerging that under-18s in some parts of London have already starting receiving their first doses even though the NHS has not yet given the green light for that age group to be jabbed. Teenagers aged 17 and in some cases 16 have been getting jabs in the boroughs of Enfield, Hounslow and Brent despite not having an underlying condition or living with someone who does.

Incredibly tightly controlled, well-managed vaccine roll-out for six months and now everyone's like we'll just jab anyone

But if it avoids doses going to waste - jab away.

Edit: Also - map of covid vaccinations which is fascinating
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/interactive-map/vaccinations

Edit: Couple of things that stand out immediately is the impact of age - among the least vaccinated areas are big university towns: Exeter, Cambridge, Oxford, Nottingham. London is also fairly low - but again it's significantly younger than the rest of the country. But also it looks like the least vaccinated areas are incredibly posh/expensive bits of Central London - Fitzrovia etc - which I assume is because they didn't do it through the NHS.

[viper37]

I wonder if there is a virus going around turning people into anti-vaxxers, much like toxoplasmosis makes mice like cats.  That would be the most incredible evolutionary adaptation of viruses to human countermeasures ever discovered.

I saw one study positing that covid-19 put some people in a state of, sort-of "euphoria" that made them forget they were sick, and that was what led to asymptomatic carriers. They called it a zombie disease, like a few others. Haven't seen this theory floated anywhere else.

[viper37]

I see the guardian now has coverage about how JCVI is getting angry that GPS and vaccination centres are giving jabs at minimum approved interval rather than 12 weeks. They are also saying latest evidence is that 12 weeks is best though only thing I see is that Birmingham study that looked at 175 people who were 80 years and older.

I thought the longer delay was better only for the AZ vaccine and it made no diff (so far) for mRNA ones?

[Sheilbh]

They're at 30%. I can't believe they've run out of people who want to get the vaccine

I can.

I asked my favorite sex cam worker if she had been vaccinated and she said no.  She's Russian, but you know, Slavs.

It turns out you're absolutely right

Eastern Europe Is Racing to Use Covid Shots Before They Expire
By Andra Timu and Slav Okov
1 July 2021, 05:00 BST


A nurse carries a box of Pfizer BioNTech vaccines near Hunedoara in western Romania.
Photographer: DANIEL MIHAILESCU/AFP/Getty Images

In the eastern corner of the European Union, two countries are desperately trying to avoid wasting a precious commodity: Covid-19 vaccines.

Demand for inoculations has plunged in Romania and Bulgaria, leaving stockpiles of shots that officials need to use fast before their expiry dates. The alternative would be to destroy them, which would be a depressing outcome given the shortage of shots elsewhere, such as in poorer African nations.

With spares doses piling up, shots are being sold or donated to other countries, governments want deliveries delayed, and Bulgaria's hotel industry is pushing to have free vaccinations given to foreign visitors. Demand in Romania has dropped to such an extent that members of Argentina's national rugby team were able to get their shots in Bucharest this month ahead of a match.

Hesitancy in the two countries stems from a long-standing distrust in the authorities, as well as skepticism about some vaccines, particularly after the AstraZeneca Plc safety concerns. In Romania, just 24% of the population is fully vaccinated, and Bulgaria's figure is half that.

Romania's situation is more pressing, with 35,000 of its Astra doses expired as of Wednesday. (Manufacturers are testing to see if shelf life can be extended.)

Bulgaria has about 20,000 with an end-July deadline, though it hopes to use many as second doses before then. But both want to delay more deliveries to avoid oversupply; in Romania's case, 4.4 million due in the next two months.

The low vaccination rates are a risk for the EU's efforts to get past the pandemic. The bloc is already contending with the threat of the virus's delta strain, which is spreading from the U.K as public-health restrictions are loosened and people embark on summer holidays.

"The recent sales or donations won't impact the availability of the vaccine for our citizens," Andrei Baciu, Romania's deputy health minister, said in a phone interview. "But we need to find a balance for the vaccine flows so that we maximize the benefits for everyone."

With demand dropping in Bulgaria, the government plans to donate 150,000 doses -- mostly Astra -- to neighboring countries in the Balkans. The country's tourism lobby wants foreign visitors to get jabs for free.

"Since Bulgaria and all of us have paid for those doses with our taxes, we suggest they're used to stimulate vaccine tourism instead of throwing them in the bin," Polina Karastoyanova, managing director of the National Board of Tourism, said last week.

In Romania, the government is shifting its focus from cities to rural areas in a bid to rescue its faltering inoculation campaign. It's counting on local doctors who have close ties with local communities to help convince people of the benefits.

But it's facing an uphill battle to shift attitudes.

"I'm still skeptical about vaccines because I have doubts about their safety and long-term side effects," said 37-year-old Cristina Florescu from the north-eastern town of Suceava. "I already have side effects from having had Covid and I don't want to expose myself to other substances."

The government also doesn't appear to have high hopes that its initiatives will yield quick success. It agreed this week to sell almost 1.2 million of its Pfizer Inc. shots to Denmark.

"We receive daily requests," Prime Minister Florin Citu said. "We're selling to Denmark and we're going to sell to more countries."

— With assistance by Irina Vilcu

I have no idea how you fix those issues. Possibly an EU led public health messaging? Is Europe trusted more than local authorities? And I sympathise with post-Warsaw Pact countries being suspicious of the state but

[The Brain]

Free tracksuit with the vaccine?

[Admiral Yi]

Let them die.  As long as enough people have been vaccinated so that hospital ICUs are not overwhelmed.

[Sheilbh]

Not sure about that article's figures but according to the ECDC Bulgaria's on 16% one dose/14% both doses, Romania on 30% one dose/28% both doses. And neither's moved much for a month or two which I think is very unlikely to be enough to stop health systems being overwhelmed - especially as the delta variant will arrive there.

[DGuller]

Let them die.  As long as enough people have been vaccinated so that hospital ICUs are not overwhelmed.

Problem is that they're going to be a great incubator for the epsilon variant, which may be the one that overcomes vaccines.

[Sheilbh]

I don't subscribe to the Times so I can't link to the story but there were reports the UK was going to buy up to a million doses of Pfizer vaccine from Israel. For some reason the deals fallen through and these doses are not going to be used in Israel because they're kind of done but will expire at the end of the month - which would be an absolute shame while people are still dying unvaccinated.

But it feels like this is going to be an increasing problem as more countries finish their vaccination programs. Personally I'd like them all donated to poorer countries and used up ASAP, but failing that I wonder if it'd be worth richer countries sort of setting up a fund for GAVI/Covax to buy vaccines like this that are going unused and close to expiry so they can distribute them to wherever can use them quickest?