Utopia Talk / Politics / Vaccine news 5

Seb rank	Fri Jan 22 19:28:36 2021 Seems the new variant is possibly more lethal too. Yay. This is why we ought to have pursued elimination globally. Creating a long term systemic risk because "what about quarter 4 GDP figures?" is a frankly shitty RoI.
Sam Adams rank	Fri Jan 22 19:34:27 2021 "This is why we ought to have pursued elimination globally." Zero fucking chance. That had even lower odds of success than your track and trace bullshit. It had spread to every major country before we even knew it was spreading and we couldnt test in mass until summer when at least 100 million cases had already occured. Doctors and especially bureaucrats didnt have the first fucking clue what was going on. You might as well try to fight the grand fleet at jutland with a rowboat and a spear.
Sam Adams rank	Fri Jan 22 19:36:39 2021 Why would you even suggest something so blatantly contradicted by an entire mountain of evidence?
Seb rank	Fri Jan 22 19:54:44 2021 Sam, there's so much wrong and stupid with what you have said, I honestly can't be bothered because I know where this will go - your normal idiotic pretending to not understand nuance or complexity. Think what you wish, I have more important things to do than engage with you right now. The sensible people will be along shortly.
Sam Adams rank	Fri Jan 22 20:03:46 2021 Sebs screaming at the broken #4 core at chernobyl. Why did you explode!!! Thats impossible!!!! "This is why we ought to have pursued elimination globally." Rofl
Dakyron rank	Fri Jan 22 20:30:31 2021 "War kills so many people that maybe we should pursue world peace" - Seb on his foreign policy ideas.
Seb rank	Fri Jan 22 23:10:28 2021 Sam, Dakyron: screaming at a burning rector that it's impossible is kinda your thing though.
Sam Adams rank	Fri Jan 22 23:23:11 2021 Seb, standing outside the destroyed number 4 core, carrying a fire extinguisher and a roll of scotch tape: "we should put it back together".
Forwyn rank	Fri Jan 22 23:28:11 2021 Sebs screaming at the Hindenburg fireball: "We should be eliminating the scourge of hydrogen!"
Sam Adams rank	Fri Jan 22 23:28:48 2021 "This is why we ought to have pursued elimination globally." "We can dam the amazon with popsical sticks" "I can jump to the moon if i work out enough" "If my hair grows any longer it will stretch to the sun" British bureaucrats are as intelligent as first graders.
Seb rank	Sat Jan 23 01:05:30 2021 Look at Asia. An elimination strategy would have kept numbers far far lower.
Sam Adams rank	Sat Jan 23 03:54:50 2021 "Look at Asia." Yes seb. Unfortunately for you, westerners are not asian, and follow fewer rules. Furthermore, rules that come from incompetent government functionaries get ignored outright. A lifetime of incompetence from you and your government friends has taught everyone in the western world not to listen to you... and a virus that kills 1 in 10,000 healthy people is definitely not where you are going to start rebuilding trust. Especially when you lie about masks in order to keep them for yourselves, and then tell people to do one thing while doing the opposite yourself. No one was ever going to listen to you.
jergul rank	Sat Jan 23 15:39:08 2021 Look like the new variant kills 1.5% of infected 60 year olds.
Rugian rank	Sat Jan 23 16:36:39 2021 Seb just explicitly endorsed having the government forcibly seal you up in your own home for weeks at a time. He literally wants to give the government that power. And let's not forget that he's a EU fan boy. Which means he wants unelected bureaucrats in Brussels to have the power to make that call. Seb, you may live in the UK, but you are not a Westerner.
Seb rank	Sat Jan 23 17:04:38 2021 Sam: "Westerners are too dumb to do sensible things, let's got even try". Rugian: When you're founding fathers instituted a strict quarantine and curfew - were they also not Western?
Seb rank	Sat Jan 23 17:07:00 2021 Elimination strategy means an intent to eliminate the disease, not to simply suppress it. It doesn't necessarily mean nailing people into their houses. I find it utterly bizzare that Rugian and Sam are explicitly arguing that we should learn to coexist with a dangerous virus while they both regularly exhort far more costly and illiberal measures because they don't want to coexist with other people. Literally a death cult.
Seb rank	Sat Jan 23 17:07:36 2021 Jergul: Yikes. I suppose greater infection means higher initial vital load
jergul rank	Sat Jan 23 17:09:02 2021 Ruggy Governments have that power. But emergency powers are overkill. Its appropriate to detach curfews to enact outside of a martial law framework. You should remember that covid19 is a dress rehersal for something truly hideous that will prop up sooner or later. Nevermind saving a few 100k lives here and there. Oh, and fuck you for going apeshit over 9-11. Now that we realize exactly the value you place on an American life.
Rugian rank	Sat Jan 23 17:33:30 2021 Seb I am highly skeptical the Founding Fathers ever ordered a lockdown over a flu that had a 1%-2% mortality rate. Jergul No, governments do not have that power, tyrants do. At least in this country. Our system of government was founded on the principle that tyrants are bad and ought to be avoided. This in turn was based on 17th-18th English principles regarding the necessities of limitations on the power of governments and the fundamental rights of men (now abandoned by the English, but still in effect here). Maybe Norway's centuries of being subjugated by foreign rulers has left you with a societal tolerance for government being able to act arbitrarily and capriciously, but that is not the case for the land of liberty.
Rugian rank	Sat Jan 23 17:35:51 2021 I do agree that Covid is a dress rehearsal though. Covid-19 is the vehicle for making populace accustomed to having the government assume absolute powers and tell everyone how they can live their lives. Covid-24 will be the vehicle for making those absolute powers the norm.
Rugian rank	Sat Jan 23 17:38:57 2021 Seb "I find it utterly bizzare that Rugian and Sam are explicitly arguing that we should learn to coexist with a dangerous virus while they both regularly exhort far more costly and illiberal measures because they don't want to coexist with other people." Care to name one of those "costly and illiberal" measures i supposedly exhort? Its clear that despite our many years on here, you have no idea what my political positions actually are. Bums me out a bit, tbh.
jergul rank	Sat Jan 23 17:44:12 2021 Ruggy Oh, give me a break. We are not the ones where a single leader can rule by decree through executive orders. A lot of your troubles relate to electing a monarch with tyranical powers every four years. A failure of imagination on the part of your founding fathers. Constitutions passed later turned the role of head of state into a purely ceremonial role. Curfews are sometimes appropriate for a limited time, but need to be anchored in appropriate legislation.
Rugian rank	Sat Jan 23 20:49:00 2021 Jergul Methinks you don't know what monarchial power is. The fact is that presidents are subject to substantial institutional checks. We have spent the last four years watching Trump's agenda constantly being sabotaged by those checks. Though I do agree that EOs have gradually been transformed into a tool that grants an excessive amount of power to the presidency. That's just one of the many legacies of that piece of shit FDR and the 1930s international consensus that authoritarian rule and big government was the way of the future. A consensus, incidentally, that originated in Europe. Which is no surprise as the majority of the world's bad ideas come out of that godawful place.
Seb rank	Sat Jan 23 21:17:21 2021 Rugian: I'm really not interested in anything you have to say on this topic if you are going to keep insisting this is "the flu". It is far worse than flu and you are missing the fundamental point here - failing to properly clamp down on this disease because it isn't lethal enough had resulted in the establishment of an endemic virus that is extremely well adapted to rapidly spreading globally. It just needs now for a mutant strain with much higher lethality to emerge. The bigger the reservoir of the virus say any given time, the more likely that becomes. It adds greatly to the total risk of global catastrophe. The fact you keep reducing this to a conversation on absolute principles as though any measures to control our eliminate the virus are indistinguishable from endorsing fascism as an organising principle for govt is beyond infantile. Grow the fuck up.
Seb rank	Sat Jan 23 21:18:51 2021 It's just another form of the shitty dishonest denialism we hear from idiots like you.
Habebe rank	Sat Jan 23 22:12:04 2021 Yes FDR radically altwres the position. However in more recent times the job of potus started to grow under GWB, but took a massive spike under Obama and continued to grow steady under Trump, probably not asich as under Obama under the guose of " republican obstructionism & safety"
Sam Adams rank	Sun Jan 24 03:51:22 2021 Seb, your plans are detached from reality. No one is going to try what obviously cannot work.
Seb rank	Sun Jan 24 12:33:12 2021 "Trains cannot go at 100m/h, peoples lungs will collapse" -Sam "Westerners are inferior to Asians, this can't work here, let's not try" -Sam
Dukhat rank	Sun Jan 24 12:54:13 2021 It's hilarious how all the cuckservatives internalized Trump's incompetency. "It had spread to every major country before we even knew it was spreading and we couldnt test in mass until summer when at least 100 million cases had already occured." And the reason we didn't have mass testing was because of fucking Trump not only bungling the rollout of mass testing but actively suppressing it. This could've been way less worse in the UK and US but incompetent conservative leaders and their fucktard followers (seen in this thread) all fell in line with bullshit. It was a heavy lift just to get them to wear fucking masks. Cuckservative morons have the memory of a gnat.
Dukhat rank	Sun Jan 24 12:56:18 2021 I really don't understand why Seb even bothers. These fucking incel retards are so beyond the pale in their stupidity. Trump created a whole generation of incels. Literally no unbrainwashed woman would put up with such stupidity at this point.
Dukhat rank	Sun Jan 24 12:58:17 2021 100% of what they say is to justify something they already believe or to not have to change the way they behave at all. It's like arguing with an insolent child. There are no interesting discussions that involve these shitheads and this has basically been true since Dubya's presidency.
Habebe rank	Sun Jan 24 14:28:41 2021 Dukhat, In all fairness, I dont think anyone on here comes here expecting to change hearts and minds.
Seb rank	Sun Jan 24 21:00:45 2021 Dukhat: Sam is the price of doing business to talk to other people. But the slide of Dakyron, and Rugian and others into total insanity is a terrifying vista of radicalisation in action.
Sam Adams rank	Sun Jan 24 22:57:04 2021 "And the reason we didn't have mass testing was because of fucking Trump" Imagine being this retarded. Imagine thinking trump is the reason why pretty much every other country on earth didnt have enough testing too. Look, trump sucks and hobbled the US response, but the underlying inferiority of modern medical technology and bureaucrats in general was not going to let any western nation have a good response. Democrats ordering their people to lock down while videoconferencing from resorts in Cabo did just as much damage as trump did. Meanwhile seb is confused about what is possible and what is not possible. He actually thinks this ensemble of slow-as-fuck medical science and utterly incompetent bureaucrats could have eliminated the virus. In reality, seb and his far-left bureaucrats did the opposite. While the virus spread and spread, sebs spent their time yelling that travel restrictions were racist. You never had the slightest chance seb. Your initial reaction was indeed the opposite of what you wanted.
Dakyron rank	Tue Jan 26 17:28:15 2021 Seb - In China they would literally install cameras INSIDE the home of COVID patients to make sure they were not inviting people over or leaving the house. If you did violate quarantine you were disappeared. Are you suggesting that we do the same? http://science.sciencemag.org/content/367/6482/1061
Dakyron rank	Tue Jan 26 17:34:14 2021 They used mobile phone tracking to enforce quarantine and had neighborhood "leaders" tracking your movements. And they forcibly swab your anus because its "more accurate". http://www...te-says-chinese-expert-1564381
habebe rank	Tue Jan 26 17:43:27 2021 "Anal swabs have been in use since last year, including in the major port city of Shanghai, but the method is so far reserved for individuals in potential COVID-19 hotspots, according to an infectious disease expert quoted by China's state broadcaster CCTV on Saturday." I wasn't sute if Dakyron was joking about the anal swab, he was not.... If my choices are Chinese anal swabs and gps trackers, Id rather some weak and sickly people just stay home and disinfect shit.
Seb rank	Tue Jan 26 18:03:56 2021 Yes Dakyron - there is only one country in Asia, and I think we should send covid infected to giant relocation camps like they do the Xuigers.
Seb rank	Tue Jan 26 18:06:34 2021 Habebe: "I would rather imprison diabetics than stick Q-tip up my but".
Sam Adams rank	Tue Jan 26 23:25:43 2021 The EU is extremely butthurt that the UK is prioritizing itself after brexit, and although the AZ vaccine is inferior, the UK is still well ahead of the EU in vax distribution. Rofl.
Seb rank	Wed Jan 27 02:12:17 2021 Sam Adams: Fake news. AZ has manufacturing plants in Europe and UK that supply each. The UK contacts were signed 3 months earlier so they had time to get the yields high from the UK based plants. The EU plants were put in place later and still haven't quite got the same yields, and the contract with the EU is based on best endeavours not guaranteed supply accordingly. The idea that are diverting supply is silly: all sales are at cost during the pandemic as per agreement with Oxford, so no incentive to divert supply. And if they are secretly breaching the terms of the deal with Oxford they lose rights to the vaccine. Do you fucking research for once Sam.
Y2A rank	Wed Jan 27 02:15:26 2021 Parents just got vaccinated. Went with them, feels like a medical DMV.
Sam Adams rank	Wed Jan 27 19:20:45 2021 "Do you fucking research for once Sam." That coming from the guy that took 8 months to figure out what the mean income of his own country was. Lol.
Sam Adams rank	Wed Jan 27 19:51:12 2021 http://apn...107e05dec2653f91555ff88033ade9 Tensions rise as AstraZeneca, EU spar over vaccine delays Lol@seb
Seb rank	Wed Jan 27 20:11:31 2021 Sam: None of which involves the UK. The EU are annoyed that the EU based plants and partners of AZ can't meet requirements. UK source is from UK based plants. UK plants have to meet UK contractual requirements first.
Sam Adams rank	Wed Jan 27 20:18:01 2021 How racist, unequitable, capitalist and nationalistic of you. Lol.
Seb rank	Wed Jan 27 23:15:41 2021 Capitalist, yes, but only wing nuts ever think I'm not. Nationalistic, no. I'm fine with exporting to the EU. The point is there is a clear contract in the UK for the production capacity of the plants in the UK. It's not like we are in a situation where the UK was arguing they got the capacity simply because of the location. Racist? How? Unequitable? I think any equity case would look at relative need.
jergul rank	Wed Jan 27 23:22:33 2021 oh, you have a copy of the contract? You should call the EU, they want to see it.
Sam Adams rank	Thu Jan 28 00:51:16 2021 "Racist? How?" Because it discriminates against turks, who make up a higher proportion of the population in the EU than the UK. Man, finding an excuse to call something racist is so fucking easy. No wonder you leftists do it all the time.
Seb rank	Thu Jan 28 08:58:33 2021 Sam: Yeah, that's not discrimination. But good on you for trying to understand. Keep going, one day you will get to high school level.
jergul rank	Thu Jan 28 09:01:43 2021 The new variants are crazy. We are tightening measures with an R of .70 in the hopes of also bringing the new variants below 1. The huge problem with the new variant taking over is of course that is checks one box (highly contagious) and just needs to check one more (increased mortality).
jergul rank	Thu Jan 28 09:04:32 2021 The EU and AstraZeneca are friends again. Probably somewhat at the expense of the UK roll-out.
Seb rank	Thu Jan 28 10:06:02 2021 Jergul: High contagion is actually worse for death toll than any plausible (short term) increase in mortality. Double mortality and deaths double. Double contagion and deaths grow expressly exponentially.
Seb rank	Thu Jan 28 10:06:27 2021 *Grow exponentially.
Seb rank	Thu Jan 28 10:08:32 2021 Jergul: "Probably somewhat at the expense of the UK roll-out." Not sure about that. Would be exceptionally painful for AZ of that were the case.
jergul rank	Thu Jan 28 10:35:21 2021 Its actually worse than that. Higher contagion infers a higher morbidity through health care degradation. It is probably marginally more deadly anyway due to increased viral load. The more virii, the more mutations.
earthpig rank	Thu Jan 28 10:36:58 2021 "It just needs now for a mutant strain with much higher lethality to emerge." It could potentially just kill itself out, like Ebola (etc) did. " The EU’s contract with AstraZeneca is confidential and can’t be released without the agreement of both sides. The EU has asked AstraZeneca for permission to release the contract, Kyriakides said. " How could it possibly claimed that AZ isn't selling for a profit, without that full unaltered contract?
jergul rank	Thu Jan 28 12:00:19 2021 Ebola R0 = 1.4 Old covid-19 RO = 3 UK covid RO = 5
Nimatzo rank	Thu Jan 28 12:26:12 2021 You know we went into this, and I was uncharacteristically optimistic in my outlook on how well the average person understood ”virus”. I found my self explaining petty things like, a virus isn’t conscious and doesn’t respond to propaganda, it will mutate and mutation increase with how many times the virus genome is copied (spread). Soon I realized oh wait, people are stupid, you know this from before. Then everything made sense again, but now you realize, because of this stupidity, if something really terrible comes, we will be forced into situations where you have to shoot people breaking quarentine rules, because they are convinced the (next real) plague is a fakenews. Like a real life zombie movie.
Seb rank	Thu Jan 28 12:35:07 2021 EArthpig: "How could it possibly claimed that AZ isn't selling for a profit, without that full unaltered contract?" Because the license deal with Oxford, that owns the IP, requires it. Profit would show up pretty easily in accounts, and if they were in breach of the contract with Oxford, then AZ would probably get sued to death by Oxford, and/or lose the right to manufacture the product. Besides, Covid will now be here forever, and if AZ can establish market share during the pandemic, once we get to endemic stage, they will make plenty of profit on the drug. It's vastly cheaper to manufacture than the other drugs on the market, and production is easier to scale, and has fewer logistics challenges. They can afford to defer profit and manufacture at cost.
Seb rank	Thu Jan 28 12:41:58 2021 It's kinda a no-brainer for AZ - they don't need to make profit because so far they will definitely win the long game. If immunity lasts say, 3 years, they have a global market of say, 0.7*7Bn/3 of 1.63 bn doses a year. Provided they are not greedy on margin, if they establish distribution and production network now using the pandemic and with zero margin, and provided no new entrant can decisively beat them at price, or provide a definitively longer immunity period, they own this market forever. And once they own it, the barrier to entry is really high: someone needs to come up with some much more valuable feature (e.g. massively lower price - doesn't look feasible; much longer immunity period - unknown but doesn't look feasible enough). And trials will get much harder and longer after the pandemic phase is over. In that context, why on earth would you chase short term profit? Pfizer needs to do that, Moderna needs to do that. AZ is the front runner for winning the market in the long term so far.
Seb rank	Thu Jan 28 16:40:07 2021 Jergul: Interesting article by David Allen Green here http://dav...neca-vaccine-supply-agreement/ Though I'm not sure I agree entirely - the EU ask right now appears to be around whether AZ should use UK production capacity to make up difference. The reasonable best endeavors includes commitments to other purchasers. Diversion of supply is a bit of a red herring in my view: this is based on supply exported over two weeks ago, but the shelf life is three weeks and the EMA approval has not yet been given, so that cannot be diversion of supply.
werewolf dictator rank	Thu Jan 28 19:29:18 2021 deaths per 100k.. israel 51.84 usa 131.19 [with blacks 40% higher rate than whites] vaccinations per 100.. israel 49.13 usa 7.11 must be that whole "equity" in vaccination priorities i keep hearing about
Sam Adams rank	Thu Jan 28 20:24:24 2021 Israel makes the best decisions of any country... not that that is saying much. Most of the west is too fucking gay and pussified to make those same choices.
Habebe rank	Thu Jan 28 20:41:07 2021 Nimatzo, I beg to differ. Vivid-19 has been sexually harassing and assualting me on occasion for months. #metoo
jergul rank	Thu Jan 28 20:46:00 2021 Sammy Is one of the decisions to have a small population? Norway 10,35 per 100k
Sam Adams rank	Thu Jan 28 21:28:00 2021 "Is one of the decisions to have a small population?" That sure helps. Ban immigration.
jergul rank	Thu Jan 28 21:54:44 2021 Dissolution of Union would be a lot faster.
jergul rank	Fri Jan 29 09:39:16 2021 Total deaths in Norway for 2020 are 1.5% lower than normal. I suspect mainly because anti covid measures lowered flu deaths.
Dakyron rank	Fri Jan 29 17:56:33 2021 Johnson and Johnson vaccine looks shitty. 66% effectiveness, although they only use 1 dose.
Dakyron rank	Fri Jan 29 17:56:43 2021 http://www...nson-and-johnson-variants.html
Sam Adams rank	Fri Jan 29 18:08:28 2021 Ya, those are shitty results. Not quite as bad as AZ, but obviously a product that should be relegated to poor people and shitty countries.
jergul rank	Fri Jan 29 18:45:58 2021 Its more than good enough for otherwise healthy people. We also dont really know how existing vaccines work against new variants despite company platitudes.
Sam Adams rank	Fri Jan 29 19:04:08 2021 Its more than good enough for losers and government mooches. The best people deserve the best shots.
jergul rank	Fri Jan 29 19:07:33 2021 That seems rather needy. I am not sure what is best about having to do at least two shots...and you just know there will be a booster you will have to take in 6 months. But if you have the time to stand in line, then go for it.
jergul rank	Fri Jan 29 19:09:18 2021 hehe, ironic that you will lose more of your life standing in line for the shots than you will statistically lose from covid-19 :D
Sam Adams rank	Fri Jan 29 19:43:21 2021 Id have to wait in line for about 20 hours for that math to work... so not quite. But ya, covid is not the scariest of diseases. Its threat to me is approximately equal to the threat of 2 years exposure to road hazards, or the risk of climbing one moderate mountain( for example the easier routes on something like Rainier or mt Blanc.) Way less dangerous than say, cancer. Or my prefered alcohol and food consumption if im being honest.
werewolf dictator rank	Sat Jan 30 11:06:28 2021 Alleged 9/11 mastermind, Gitmo detainees to start getting COVID vaccines By Ebony Bowden, Carl Campanile and Susan EdelmanJanuary 29, 2021 | 4:14pm | Updated http://nyp...ovid-19-vaccine-in-guantanamo/ Here’s a real kick in the shin: chances are accused 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed will get the COVID vaccine before you do. Accused terror masterminds like KSM and other detainees at Guantanamo Bay will begin receiving the coronavirus vaccine, the Pentagon confirmed Friday, even as the United States continues to experience severe shortages of the miracle jab. The order was signed on Jan. 27 by Terry Adirim, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Health Affairs who was sworn in as a Biden appointee on Inauguration Day, a Pentagon spokesman confirmed.
Dukhat rank	Sat Jan 30 11:13:26 2021 Good. He should die from all the rectal bleeding from the daily anal rapes, not Covid like a little pussy.
Nimatzo rank	Sat Jan 30 11:48:54 2021 I think my unfiltered coffee drinking is a bigger hazard to me than covid. Yet I have to admit, this entire year of drama surrounding covid makes me not want to get it. I pass. Way too much negativity and numbers and news for me to not get psychologically affected by it.
Paramount rank	Sat Jan 30 12:41:37 2021 ” Alleged 9/11 mastermind” Alleged. So they are just speculating. If they had any evidence they would have charged him, but they don’t. They have not been convicted in a court of law so they are innocent, so I don’t see why they shouldn’t be offered a vaccine.
Asgard rank	Sat Jan 30 14:58:47 2021 I just got vaccinated. I got an Intel i9 5G enabled cheap now in my bloodstream. Yeah baby!
jergul rank	Sat Jan 30 15:29:12 2021 Surely not fully enabled. Don't you need the 2nd dose to upgrade the bios?
Asgard rank	Sat Jan 30 18:55:48 2021 The second dose is merely to enable overclocking
Sam Adams rank	Sat Jan 30 20:24:27 2021 "I think my unfiltered coffee drinking is a bigger hazard to me than covid." Probably. But what are we going to do? Not drink coffee?
Sam Adams rank	Sat Jan 30 20:31:44 2021 Anyway, back to vaccines, all studies show significant reduction in effectiveness against the SA strain. Some protection is still provided. Godamn medical science moves way too slow.
Seb rank	Sun Jan 31 23:27:35 2021 https://tw...tatus/1355555354340335616?s=19 Sam, the feds should have hired us.
Dakyron rank	Mon Feb 01 00:51:24 2021 $10,000 says it was made subcontractors from India who speak so-so english and are being paid below market rates.
Dakyron rank	Mon Feb 01 00:53:11 2021 And fuck Seb. Its not that hard. http://twi...tatus/1355555354340335616?s=19 Or skip twitter and post the article: The first time Mary Ann Price logged into her employer’s system to schedule a vaccine, she found an appointment three days later at a nearby Walgreens pharmacy. She woke up the next day to an email saying it had been canceled. So she logged in again and found an opening that afternoon at the local surgical hospital. “When I showed up, they said they wouldn’t honor it—they were only doing their own staff,” Price says. But when she tried a third time to make an appointment, she was blocked from doing so: according to the system, she was already in the middle of getting a vaccine. Price is 70 and works for the West Virginia state senate, which has deemed her an essential worker. Her state has been lauded for its rollout of vaccinations—so far 10% of its citizens have been given at least one shot. Her frustration is echoed by millions of Americans who have struggled to get vaccines through various chaotic systems. But unlike others in some states, she wasn’t encountering these problems with a third-party consumer service like Eventbrite, or even through an antiquated government system. She was on the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s brand-new, $44 million website called VAMS—the Vaccine Administration Management System, built by the consulting firm Deloitte. Unless you’re in one of the few states using it, you may not have heard of VAMS. But it was supposed to be a one-stop shop where employers, state officials, clinics, and individuals could manage scheduling, inventory, and reporting for covid shots—and free for anyone to use. Instead, “VAMS has become a cuss word,” Marshall Taylor, head of South Carolina’s health department, told state lawmakers in January. He went on to describe how the system has badly hurt their immunization efforts so far. Faced with a string of problems and bugs, several states, including South Carolina, are choosing to hack together their own solutions, or pay for private systems instead. Clinic workers in Connecticut, Virginia, and other states say the system is notorious for randomly canceled appointments, unreliable registration, and problems that lock staff out of the dashboard they’re supposed to use to log records. The CDC acknowledges there are multiple flaws it’s working to fix, although it attributes some of the problems to user error. As for Price, she waited at the hospital for 45 minutes before getting an administrator to actually cancel the appointment they wouldn’t honor. “She said they keep trying to get taken off the list [of vaccine sites], but VAMS puts them back on,” she says. “We needed a way to run these clinics” The chaos of the vaccine rollout in the US has been well documented: states receiving half their expected doses; clinics canceling first shots because of unreliable supplies; people endlessly hitting “Refresh” on sign-up websites or lining up outside clinics without an appointment, hoping for a spare shot. The CDC saw this coming. “VAMS was intended to fill a need that states and jurisdictions were not equipped to do themselves,” says Noam Arzt, the president of HLN Consulting, which helps build health information systems. “It was clear we needed a way to run these clinics, to schedule people to go, and try to make sure they come back for their second dose,” he says. So early in the pandemic, the CDC outlined the need for a system that could handle a mass vaccination campaign, once shots were approved. It wanted to streamline the whole thing: sign-ups, scheduling, inventory tracking, and immunization reporting. In May, it gave the task to consulting company Deloitte, a huge federal contractor, with a $16 million no-bid contract to manage “covid-19 vaccine distribution and administration tracking.” In December, Deloitte snagged another $28 million for the project, again with no competition. The contract specifies that the award could go as high as $32 million, leaving taxpayers with a bill between $44 and $48 million. Why was Deloitte awarded the project on a no-bid basis? The contracts claim the company was the only “responsible source” to build the tool. In reality, many states are choosing to pay other vendors rather than using VAMS for free. Others are doing essentially nothing, leaving the planning up to county health departments. That’s how you get a situation like the one in Florida, where counties are desperately scheduling clinic visits on the website Eventbrite, more commonly used for concerts and conferences. “The public health agencies are under significant duress,” says Arzt. “These folks are working night and day, with the same constraints and problems—their kids are at home, people are getting sick. It’s very difficult to manage anything, let alone a campaign like this.” MIT Technology Review has yet to get a complete list of states using VAMS, despite multiple attempts. According to a CDC press officer, “The VAMS system doesn’t make this data publicly available yet.” According to a Deloitte spokesperson, however, “10 jurisdictions, three federal agencies, and one hospital system” across the whole of America are current users, and “more than 1,150,000 vaccines have been administered through VAMS.” “It really requires something flexible” Several states that have been using VAMS are backing away. Virginia, where many individual vaccination sites had already chosen to adopt alternatives, is moving from VAMS to a commercial system, PrepMod. After participating in a trial of VAMS, California also picked PrepMod but clinics there have blamed that system for delays in their vaccine reporting. To better understand the challenges facing people building these tools, I called Derrick Stone, a software development manager at UVA Health in Virginia. While the public health department is using VAMS, his organization is using VaxTrax, a tool built in house by Stone’s team two years ago to track employees’ mandatory flu vaccines. “A lot of what these systems do is trivial, but the task was undefined,” he says. “You had to try giving some shots, learn from it, and then figure out how to revise it to be more efficient. It really requires something flexible.” Indeed, a lack of flexibility has become a block for many clinics trying to use the CDC system. This has led to confusion, and difficulty in keeping patients properly informed. “When people signed up with VAMS, I couldn’t send specific instructions about the drive-through: Eat before you come, use the bathroom,” says Lorrin Pang, the district health officer in Maui, Hawaii, who’s been running a drive-in clinic at the island’s college. “Elderly guys who didn’t get the message—a lot of them had to get out of their cars and be helped to the bathroom.” Pang says he spent three weeks trying to sign into VAMS, but he constantly ended up in the dashboard for patients instead of clinic administrators. In the meantime, his staff was vaccinating hundreds of people a day and keeping track of their information on paper forms. The college set up a bank of volunteers to sit in a room and copy all the information into VAMS. Eventually, the local hospital helped him get signed into the system. The clinic used it for three days. On the last day, 20 new volunteers came in ready to work. But they’d already signed into VAMS to get their mandatory shots, and there was no way to switch them from patient accounts to staff ones. The next day, they went back to paper. “A good system is easier to use than it is not to use. If people are writing this on paper, there’s something wrong,” says Stone. “How are you going to do 100 million shots in 100 days and have someone enter it all in by hand?” “There is zero way it’ll happen without help” “VAMS is fussy. There’s days when VAMS works, and days when VAMS doesn’t work,” says Courtney Rowe, a pediatric urologist at Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, who has been volunteering to monitor people for reactions after their shots. She takes it as an opportunity to help people get set up for their second appointments. “I basically function as tech support,” she says. Online sign-ups are especially challenging for older people, perhaps the worst group to beta-test a new system. Many seniors probably lost their internet access when libraries and senior centers closed; only 59% have broadband connections at home, according to a 2019 Pew survey. While many states offer phone lines for making appointments, people around the country have complained about endless waits. “It won’t work on Internet Explorer; it only works in Chrome. The ‘Next’ button is all the way down and to the right, so if you’re on a cell phone, you literally can’t see it,” says Rowe. “In the first round, people using VAMS mostly had advanced degrees. If you’re 75 and someone asks you to log into VAMS, there is zero way it’ll happen without help.” After I spoke with Rowe, Connecticut opened up vaccinations to anyone over 70. Her prediction came true immediately. On the first day of a new vaccination clinic in Vernon, Connecticut, 204 vaccines were ready but only 52 seniors had made appointments in VAMS. “Our residents, and those from around the state that we’re serving at this clinic, are frustrated, angry, and confused by the ineffectiveness of this registration system,” town administrator Michael Purcaro said at a press conference. Elderly people aren’t the only ones who will struggle if vaccination requires online sign-up. Language barriers will become a significant problem, especially for non-native English speakers doing high-risk essential work. People in rural or poor urban areas often have limited access to the internet in the first place, a problem disproportionately affecting the same Black and Latino communities that have suffered the worst traumas of the pandemic. “There are some real equity concerns,” says Stone. “What happens when you go to a city and 20% of the population can’t get the notices?” So what went wrong? In an email, a CDC spokesperson defended the system and said that appointments are not randomly canceled, despite what many clinicians have claimed: the problem, she said, was user error. She also outlined several fixes that have been made in response to feedback. VAMS now includes warnings when administrators do something that might change patient appointments, for example. The CDC also recommends that the authorities using VAMS help those who might have trouble with the system, by staffing call center hot lines and using “third-party clinics that do not require recipients to register in advance or have an email.” To some watchdogs, VAMS is the latest example of a broken system for building government technology. Deloitte has a long history of making malfunctioning things for state and federal governments: most recently, it was in the news for charging states hundreds of millions of dollars for unemployment websites that did not work. In response to questions about the flaws with VAMS, a Deloitte spokesperson sent a statement that the company was proud to support the vaccine campaign and “help end the covid-19 pandemic so that our families and communities can recover and thrive.” He did not address specific questions. Deloitte may be representative of a broken system, but it’s certainly not alone. CGI Federal, for instance, has landed over $5.6 billion in federal IT contracts since getting fired after its disastrous development of the Healthcare.gov website. “Nobody wants to hear about it, because it sounds really complicated and boring, but the more you unpeel the onion of why all government systems suck, the more you realize it’s the procurement process,” says Hana Schank, the director of strategy for public-interest technology at the think tank New America. The explanation for how Deloitte could be the only approved source for a product like VAMS, despite having no direct experience in the field, comes down to onerous federal contracting requirements, Schank says. They often require a company to have a long history of federal contracts, which blocks smaller or newer companies that might be a better fit for the task. Those inefficiencies are magnified in the health sector. America’s heavily privatized medical system was held together by duct tape and bubble gum long before the biggest public health crisis of our lifetimes. “The health-care software industry is enormous, and it exists largely because it’s privatized, it’s not standardized,” says Stone. “There are a lot of free-market inefficiencies. And the country doesn’t have a public health infrastructure, so there isn’t any real drive to fix it.” “You think about the industries that have been transformed by technology—someone said, How do we get a pizza to your house faster? That’s a competitive advantage,” he says. “That has not happened in American health care.” To Rowe, the doctor at Connecticut Children’s, it’s frustrating to see so much innovation in making vaccines, and so little in actually getting them to people. “How much money was put into the science of making the vaccine? How much money is being put into the distribution?” she asks. “It doesn’t matter that you made it if you can’t distribute it.” To Mary Ann Price, it’s important to give credit where it’s due: when VAMS works, it works. After two failed appointments and a 45-minute wait at the hospital, her third time in the system was a success. She got a QR code that made check-in a breeze at the health department’s mass vaccination site the next day, and then immediately received her vaccination card as a PDF. But she hasn’t scheduled her second shot. “There’s no point in scheduling it three weeks out, because the state of West Virginia doesn’t know if they’ll even have any vaccines,” she says.
Sam Adams rank	Mon Feb 01 03:13:35 2021 The worlds airliners fly in almost perfect safety at 600mph on the edge of the atmosphere... and it is so routine that passengers complain that their internet is slow. Amazon sells almost a billion items from around the world every day, generally delivered to your doorstep with minimal effort and cheaply with almost perfect logistics on a continental scale. Apple and google and microsoft have created computers so advanced they would be considered black magic just 2 generations ago. ...bureaucrats cant successfully schedule vaccine appointments with a year to prepare.
Seb rank	Mon Feb 01 10:56:46 2021 Sam: "bureaucrats cant successfully schedule vaccine appointments with a year to prepare." We can. Over half a million people a day getting jabs now, invited in priority order (no Hunger Games scrum for a slot), their medical records held with their registered GPs updated mostly within 40mins, the remainder within 24hrs. And we did it all in 4 months. You know why the US screwed up, like it did with the health exchanges etc? Shit outsourcing to the private sector without enough ownership by the state bodies, because of pork barrel politics and the mantra that the govt shouldn't do things.
Sam Adams rank	Mon Feb 01 19:38:38 2021 "Over half a million people a day getting jabs now" Pathetic. If you had done your job to an acceptable level, it would be half a million per hour and corona would be over with. Also you had 10 months, not 4.
Seb rank	Mon Feb 01 21:29:05 2021 Sam: Half a million per hour, at 3 minutes an injection. A workforce of 1,500,000 vaccinators. That's the entire workforce of the NHS. Where are these people going to come from?
Seb rank	Mon Feb 01 21:30:39 2021 We had 4 months from the program being spun up. Before then, test and trace, PPE, ventilators (my firm worked on that), and the nightingales. Meanwhile you are scrambling around with first come first served stuff like a black Friday sale. What a joke.
Dakyron rank	Mon Feb 01 21:38:42 2021 "A workforce of 1,500,000 vaccinators. That's the entire workforce of the NHS. " Lots of people out of work. How hard would it have been to train them to inject a vaccine, or do the logistical work?
Sam Adams rank	Mon Feb 01 21:49:39 2021 "Half a million per hour, at 3 minutes an injection. A workforce of 1,500,000 vaccinators." Godamnit your math sucks. Thats some journalist-level math right there.
Sam Adams rank	Mon Feb 01 22:00:24 2021 Off by more than and order of magnitude. Seriously seb, fix yourself.
Seb rank	Tue Feb 02 00:09:50 2021 Dakyron: That's 1.5 million vaccinations. In our most optimised SOP you'd need 1.5 million vaccine drawers, 1.5 million admin clerks, 1.5 million clinical pre-screeners And then triple that if you want to go 24/7 because that's just a single shift.
Seb rank	Tue Feb 02 00:25:57 2021 Sigh. That will teach me not to pay attention. It's actually about 150k clinical staff. 3 clinical roles that need to be registered with a prof body (ignoring admin here), 2 shifts. But that's not the real point. Vaccine supply isn't being produced at that rate.
Sam Adams rank	Tue Feb 02 00:40:29 2021 Lol seb math
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