My understanding is that you can leave your place of isolation to receive your vaccine.

Thanks yes I was going to call but it won't be until May when hopefully supplies are better again.

I remember the "acceptability" question was included in a major US polling exercise last summer. The poll was inevitably coloured by the upcoming election.

Well over half of republican respondents supported the notion that the (then) current death toll was OK; while only a very much lower proportion of the others polled, possibly under 10%, agreed with the proposition. The outcome was clearly swayed in both directions by election-fuelled polarisation and support/contempt for Trump. Indeed, any poll at that time would distill into approval/disapproval of Trump policies.

I don't know if the complex notion of a trade off between deaths and lockdowns was addressed by the poll. But, clearly, the results lent themselves to interpretation beyond those sustained by the mechanics of the poll and the environment in which it was conducted.

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But that was the US. Here I think it's fair to say fundamental freedoms don't resonate within the population to the extent they do in the US.

Thanks, did not realise that.

Agree with all of this. The politicization of the COVID response, masks, etc. in the US was pretty terrible in 2020 and is barely any better today (though mask compliance at least any urban, suburban, or resort area I have been in since last summer in the US is infinitely better than the UK). But your conclusion hits on the fundamental point - when it comes to fundamental freedoms - actual expectations are really quite different between the two countries. I think the UK likes to think of itself as more free than Europe and closer to America while in reality (from my vantage point) the UK is far closer to Europe than America. Conversely, I have certainly had conversations with Democrats (those who would have voted in the 90% saying no way should 1K deaths a day be a trade off for freedoms) that say things like "I am so sorry for you. I can't believe what you are having to go through with strict lockdowns over there." In other words, they may say they would agree to additional restrictions to save lives but the reality even amongst left-leaning voters in the US is in many cases different.

I have had 21 such LFDs delivered to me today in 3 different packages. so yes. And this is for someone who has had both vaccine doses and with antibodies (accepting that this isn't the be all and end all). I am sure LFDs will be part of the solution, not just because the market is going to flood, but also because you can't really argue that LFD is OK for school teachers but insufficient for going to Gibraltar.

You should stop being so logic.

I went yesterday to pick up the LFDs for my wife at the Stamford Brook testing area, as she's going to need them when she's back from a trip tomorrow (and between HMG, BA & HAL they haven't surmised the necessary willpower to make them available at the airport).

First I was told I couldn't pick them up myself and that she had to come. I polited noted that getting people who'd just gotten plane to wander around town isn't necessarily super smart, considering that HMG is calling for self-isolation for travellers. That seemed to do the trick until a man with a clipboard noted that yesterday was April 5th, and the testing regime for crew is meant to start on April 6th, so they couldn't give me any (mind you they had boxes and boxes of the things).

I then asked the same man if I could get some for my (non existing) kids... and I got 2 boxes, 14 tests. Same man in NHS garb, honest. Good thing I had my mask on because keeping a straight face was beyond my capabilities.

Sometimes I think that getting an Iranian visa on arrival at Isfahan was the most Kafkesque thing I'd ever done but then Britain proves me wrong.

The EU does not have experience in vaccine (or more generally medicines) procurement or administration of health systems but pharmaceutical regulation is certainly something in which it has oodles of experience. EU regulation of pharmaceuticals dates back to the beginning of the modern era of pharmaceutical regulation, viz. the post-Thalidomide scandal of the late 50s and early 60s. The EMA (nee EMEA) and the centralised procedure for licensing of pharmaceuticals at EU level was established over 25 years ago. So, that is not something in which the EU does not have experience.

There is no fudge. There are just different roles. EMA decides whether a medicine should be licensed. National authorities decide whether it should be used and under what conditions. What you describe as a problem of confused messages "within the EU" are not in themselves related to the existence or absence of EMA and the EU. Take EMA out of the equation and have a purely national system of marketing authorisation rather than a central one and you would have exactly the same problem, namely that there are different sensitivities and different approaches, different levels and forms of vaccine hesitancy in different European states and the existence of the EU and of EMA changes nothing to that. In fact, the differences of approaches are not aligned alongside EU lines. The most reticent health authorities in relation to AZ have been Norway and Iceland, which are outside the EU.

So the clue here is that they might be ok for Green countries but not Amber maybe. BJ saying today he wants to make travel as easy and as flexible as possible in response to comments by Easyjet boss who said tests shouldn't cost more than the air fare.

Indeed, and I don't deny the EMA has such experience, my point was specifically about procurement which is different as you note.

Based on the EMA's experience, I am not clear why there is now a two tier overlapping system where you have the EMA saying there is no problem keep jabbing, and at the same time several national authorities suspending vaccines despite many of them not even observing significant problems within their country. It would seem more sensible to empower the EMA to be the agency of final authority for such issues.

If that was the case and there was no overlap, I am not clear why the EMA continued to make statements about the national suspensions, and also why the EMA reviewed the data themselves after the suspensions and pronounced that suspension was not justified.

Yes, I agree a system of purely national regulators would still have that problem, but there is an alternative which I have suggested would avoid that by having a central agency like the EMA and national agencies which are there to monitor but not empowered to act. They would feed information to the EMA, and the EMA would make decisions on approvals, suspensions, and alterations of MAs. It is my view that having both the EMA and national regulators which have overlapping powers in this area, and have over the last few months issued contradictory messages about suspensions, has not helped ease vaccine hesitancy across the continent.

If you like, I am actually suggesting more integration and centralisation in this area where the EMA is the lead regulator, and national regulators are subordinate to it. I suspect we may see more health policy being conducted at an EU level anyway in the future tbh.

Norway and Iceland are outside the EU, but are subject to the EMA, so MAs issued by the EMA have the same effect in those countries as an EU member state.

Norway and Iceland have been more reticent towards AZ because those two countries are following a zero-covid strategy (successfully in Iceland, less so in Norway but way better than most of Europe) and thus the benefit/ratio risks is different for them than for, let's say France, where the benefit of vaccinating now outweights the risk.
A uniformed approach to drugs would need a uniformed approach to the pandemic.

This makes it even more perplexing that other countries not having the same zero covid strategy followed suit.

Agreed.

Sadly a bit difficult in this day of over-information. Headlines say Norway suspends AZ vaccine over safety concerns, and then imagine Sweden or Denmark not doing the same. The UK was a bit different because there was a vaccine war about the AZ jab, public opinion was already sold to the cause. But the rest of Europe had to pause to (at least pretend to) investigate.

Boris on the cost of tests. We'll see.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-56647119