LongTimeLurker

It's been choreographed for weeks. Meanwhile, Nicola S has Tier 4 ending the day after probable FDA approval, so Bojo has beaten her to the punch this time. The more important approval in a UK context to enable rapid mass vaccination of the entire adult population is OxfordZeneca and I have seen it claimed that could be by the weekend.

Pfizer vaccine approved just in time for lifting the lockdown in England (quelle surprise!): https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55145696 Now all we need is the Oxford AstraZeneca one to also get the nod (highly probable in the UK but they messed up their initial Phase 3 trial so it is controversial internationally) and we will be on a reasonably rapid trajectory towards Levels 1 & 0.

I can read Cyrillic and it definitely helps. A surprising amount of modern Russian is easy to follow loanwords, so once you cross that hurdle a lot starts to open up. It's not that difficult to learn the letters, so easy to get to a point where it's possible to function more or less OK in public transport terms with a few basic phrases in my experience although best to always leave yourself a bit of extra time in stations etc to get your bearings as they don't tend to make much provision for non-Russians. I always find Russians to be friendly and not like they stereotypically get portrayed. Think Americans in particular find it difficult to deal with a culture that doesn't do phoney have a nice day superficiality, so Scots maybe have an advantage in terms of easily fitting into their way of doing things.

HibeeJibee and co definitey seem to have been eager to run the SCC this season in a way that will unnecessarily complicate getting the tier 5 and 6 leagues finished in time for a promotion playoff and made a full 2020-21 SJC involving WoS clubs impossible. Broughty have floodlights so midweek for the outstanding 2019-20 game isn't mission impossible.

^^^just so this failure to comprehend what is going on doesn't derail the thread any further, most people should have grasped from the posts above that what was being responded to was the relative priority of SJC games compared to WoS league and SCC ones. Once WoS clubs start electing their own league officeholders and are deciding on changes to their rulebook by majority member votes at their AGM that could change and the WoS could essentially morph back into the west region again with prime fixture dates being allocated to the SJC. There's a reason why the hardcore pyramidistas on here wanted the WoS to be a new breakaway league with a rump west region left in the SJFA. The SFA has already forced the LL to use the 2019-20 west superleague as the basis for forming the 2020-21 WoS premier rather than having four parallel conferences. The agenda on pyramid matters is no longer being set by the LL and EoS to the extent it was previously. Hopefully common sense will prevail and the SCC and SJC will be merged into something bigger and better than either can currently provide.

You'll find that sort of stuff happening among Japanese people in any large Japanese city if you know where to look. Lived and worked in Japan for many years so I've spent plenty of time there away from the tourist trail. I'd recommend Kyoto rather than Tokyo as the place to go as a tourist. Locals are friendlier to gaijans and perhaps not coincidentally there is more of the older heritage intact as it didn't get bombed flat during WWII. Beyond that the other city I'd go to again when I have the opportunity is Moscow. The western media always has lots of negativity about Russia, but the four times I have been for professional reasons over the last 15 years I found it a really interesting city to be in and much friendlier and safer than it gets portrayed. The musuem at the Kremlin is up there with La Louvre in Paris and I find the rest of the city to be more interesting and just as easy to get around in metro terms.

So before this gets derailed by the usual tirade of ad hominens, WoS club involvement appears to be happening in 2020-21 to complete the 2019-20 SJC. Given a majority of WoS clubs retained their SJFA membership and a majority within WoS will be able to appoint league officeholders and modify league rules in the not too distant future, where things are heading with regards to the SJC remains an open question.

No, and no, WoSFL league matches take priority over every competition other than the South Challenge Cup. Burnieman should already have been aware of that given it was made crystal clear when the WoS was being launched. Where things get interesting though is what happens when the WoS selects its own officeholders and can start to change its own rulebook.

Mon the Ersatz BUs

Billions in revenue are potentially at stake so Pfizer and Moderna will view Oxford and their at cost approach as being about as welcome as the proverbial one in a spacesuit. AstraZeneca tested their test group weekly to identify asymptomatic cases cases while Pfizer and Moderna did not and only tested when symptomatic, so 70% vs 95% may be a misleading comparison.

A lot of adults sadly need things explained in simple terms. So have Rab McGlinchey in interpreting for the neds.

In a similar sort of way Boris has things arranged now so that his lockdown stops on Dec 2 the day after vaccinations will start in England with the Pfizer vaccine: with fitba crowds of up to 4000 allowed shortly thereafter in some parts of England. The momentum towards having crowds back in an EoS context will gather pace from there.

Are they not getting the army involved?

Especially in the third world. The technology to deal with the other vaccines by shipping with dry ice is very much available in developed countries, so it's more a nuisance factor on ramping things up than anything else. I suspect they will use the expensive Pfizer vaccine on only the highest risk groups and the Oxford vaccine will do the heavy lifting on overall numbers.

The reason there were very few people actually contracting the virus is because wait for it relatively few people are actually contracting the virus at the moment when viewed in percentage of the population terms. 50% in the test group receive the vaccine, while 50% receive a placebo. The hold up at the Phase 3 trial stage for the Pfizer, Moderna and Oxford vaccines has been waiting for enough cases to build up in the placebo group to have statistically valid evidence that the much lower numbers in the vaccine group prove the vaccine has been effective. Anything over 50% efficacy would be enough to justify emergency approval, so the numbers that are being found in the Phase 3 trials should be enough to trigger the emergency approvals and get vaccination programmes underway by the middle of December.

They probably are still waiting to have enough COVID cases in their Phase 3 test group to be able to make the 90% efficacy claim in a manner that is statistically valid. Releasing the data with the lower number will probably be about proceeding with emergency approval ASAP in line with Pfizer and Moderna even before they get the dosing regime sorted out that makes it even more effective. Overall this is very good news.

...is almost certainly what will happen now.

Oxford vaccine not quite as effective as Moderna and Pfizer but should still get approved OK even if only 70% effective (changing the dosing might get it up to 90% by the sounds of things): https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55040635 so should be all systems go for the UK's vaccination programme by mid-December.

Apparently one of the dosing regimes tested is about 90% efficacy: https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-oxford-vaccine-is-up-to-90-effective-in-preventing-coronavirus-tests-show-12134940

^^^consistently parrots and/or defends whatever he hears said by officialdom on the state broadcaster.

They'll probably be starting vaccinations from not long after the 11th as FDA approval for Pfizer and Moderna will almost certainly be on the 10th and the EU and UK will pretty much be in lock step with that. Once needles start hitting very wrinkled upper arms in care homes the media spin will be all about how quickly things can return to normal rather than hysteria over the latest new cases and deaths numbers and calls for harsher lockdown rules. Nicola S has Level 4 ending on Dec 11th, so it's easy for her in terms of media response to get the west central belt opened up for the Christmas retail season.

....but noone remembers your name. If they hadn't added legal force to the no travel angle it would have been difficult to see how level 3 to level 4 made enough of a difference to justify all the media fuss.

Why wouldn't they? There was no apetite to pursue this at the 2018 LL AGM after a large portion of the east region moved over to the EoS because LL clubs wanted to avoid for as long as possible undergoing a relegation that at least half of the clubs would have been fully aware that they will have pretty much zero chance of ever bouncing back from in future promotion terms.

They are clearly anticipating also having the Oxford vaccine by the end of December when they talk about 1 million vaccinated in Scotland by the end of January, and they will have a very good idea already of what the likely timeline is on that.