As some of you might know, now that I am semi retired and gave up law, I now do a few days a week as a community bus driver (16 seat 5 tonner MGW with lifting ramps for wheelchairs) helping the elderly, disabled and such like to get out and about to appointments or wheatever
Anyway, yesterday I had to collect a lady from home and take her to a community centre/village hall for her first covid vaccine.
She is a lovely old lady, has all her marbles and for someone in her mid 80’s pretty mobile as well, but she (sensibly) no longer drives and and relies on us for her transport needs.
Anyway, on Thursday, she had a phone call from the NHS telling her that she had to be at said community centre at 3pm the following day for her first shot.
She explained that she did not drive and had no family and she did not know whether she would be able to book a community bus at such short notice.
Whoever called her said that was not their concern, but suffice to say that if she did not attend then she would go to the bottom of the pile and have to wait her turn which could be several weeks, but in any case she could always get a Taxi. She lives about 15 miles from the community centre, and so a 30 mile round trip in a taxi was not going to be cheap.
Fortunately, we were able to get her tho her appointment along with several others, but my lasting thought was “What an attitude?”
NHS are going to lose even more supporters with that attitude!!!
The vaccination is actually being done by the NHS, but it is being organised and run by the Department of Health and Social Care so an incompetent government is running it:
I do wonder what the efficacy of the Russian one is. I do hope it’s great (ok I have a vested interest ) but mainly to shut that twat Williamson’s stupid right wing rants that we are a better country.
I mean Russia developed the vaccine themselves and are administering it. All we did was say it’s ok to use… A vaccine made by a German company, in Belgium…
The problem with the Russian vaccine is it based upon a human Adenovirus and the problem with that is a significant proportion of the population are immune to it, this results in the vaccine having no effect for those individuals.
It does sound a bit shit but there’s also the possibility of them just being overwhelmed. Imagine if they have hundreds of people they have to vaccinate and most of them can’t get to the centres. They probably don’t have tens of buses/vans and drivers just waiting to be called.
Aye, I’m sure they would if they could. That is their mandate. We are in the midst of an ongoing national medical emergency that’s outstripping capacity at an ever increasing rate. The fact that they’re only targeting the vulnerable means they’re already triaging, so this shouldn’t really come as a surprise, no matter how unfortunate it is.
Given the storage requirements of the Pfizer vaccine I would imagine it also gives little room for flexibility with setting appointments.
Once it is removed from the freezer the vaccine can last five days in a fridge, or two hours if thawed at room temperature. After that it has to be diluted for injection and will only last for six hours.
) but mainly to shut that twat Williamson’s stupid right wing rants that we are a better country.