Despairing with @morningireland coverage of vaccination in children this morning until Dr Lucy Jessop came on. Uptake rates not reflective of hesitancy. They reflect the ongoing wave of COVID in this age band & the numbers infected before we upped our mask game. short 🧵 My 9 & 11 year olds will be getting the vaccine as soon as they can after they were infected in December like lots of their classmates & after-school friends. Why? #VaccinesSaveLives and viral infections, even those dubbed ‘mild’ can do serious damage.

Love this paper. Majorly jealous of the Scottish Health Informatics/Research infrastructure that enables this. A 🧵on #MedsInPregnancy TL;DR- get the vaccine, protect yourself, protect your baby. Ignore other messaging- they’re either misinformed or trying to sell you something

https://twitter.com/per_damkier/status/1482046707428954113

To place COVID vaccines in context, we now have more pregnancy outcome data for them than for a lot of other commonly used medicines. This study adds data on over 18,000 pregnancies to a constantly evolving evidence base.

Some thoughts on risk perception/risk communication in light of this week's @EMA_News statement on the possible link between the AZ #COVID19 vaccine & rare blood clots. A thread 🧵 Low probability, high consequence events are called dread risks. pure.mpg.de/rest/items/ite… There is a risk in avoiding risk. People can make decisions to avoid a rare risk that put them at a greater risk of a more common adverse outcome.

This tweet (especially the graph below-definitely a feasible outcome) is gravely concerning as we think about the 4th wave. Imagine the scenario in October where we’re looking back on this carnage & wondering where it went wrong. A few things that I think we would regret:

https://twitter.com/andrewflood/status/1362804489485512706

There was interprofessional sniping within the vaccination programme with vested interests arguing that they’re the best at vaccination instead of pooling skills and resources to maximise vaccine coverage.

It is fantastic to see the #COVID19 vaccination programme begin #VaccinesSaveLives. Some initial thoughts for now & the weeks/months ahead (personal views): 1. All hands on deck approach in hospitals led to efficient systems vaccinating large numbers in a short space of time 2. True multidisciplinary working meant that expertise to solve problems & evolve the process was on hand 3. The hospital facilities that were used for this will have ~ 2 week lull before the second dose (accepting some delayed vaccines in between)