I agree. The article has also been posted on this thread.
Let’s hope its optimism is justified.
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Hi John - As believes every Brit who voted against leaving - it can’t be undone so time to move on - the comments I made are not all mine ( mine is the financial one) - looking for opinions on AstraZenica not Brexit
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As you know, what Macron said was factually incorrect. He said the vaccine was “quasi-ineffective” in the over 65’s.
What he should have said is it was not proven, and this is very, very different. No-body else made this mistake.
Hard to believe that a man known for his sharp intelligence would make this seriously misleading error innocently.
It is of course now fully proven in older adults
@rogerspencer It very much depends on which sheet of toilet paper you read down in the shed at the bottom of the garden…
I’m not at all convinced that the reporting about what M. Macron apparently said which appeared in mainly the British arse wipe versions is factually correct and a complete, honest representation.
I’d have otherwise said “chip wrapper” but since newspapers are no longer regarded as sufficiently sanitary for such purposes, committing it to torn sheets for the crapper seems more appropriate 
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I’ve been posting much the same for weeks.
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I agree we should be careful of what we read. This was all over the news at the time, (I don’t read the Daily Mail) and I am happy to believe it. Come to think of it I heard it repeated on the Beeb news recently, and we have to believe somebody 
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I do not go for the tub thumping that some of the UK press spin onto the vaccine situation in the EU , but I do think the EU once they realised the mess they had made of the start to their program, used targeting the AstraZenica vaccine and the UK to deflect all the criticizem of themselves, so politics did play a part there.
It no longer really matters who said what and when and can be chewed and dissected later on for years to come no doubt, but all that matters is getting vaccines into arms safely and quickly to get life back to some normality as soon as possible, there are too many contradictory conflicting reports flying around causing great uncertainty and the politics and points scoring needs to stop now on both sides to get rid of all the uncertainty and fear on this.
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I wonder what happened to the nasal spray tests?
There has been previous discussion (possibly in another thread) of Macron’s ‘quasi-ineffective’ statement. It has been indefensibly lifted out of context in the anglo-saxon press. What he was actually talking about was the lack of elderly people in the original clinical trials, and what he said was heavily qualified: at the moment he was talking it appeared it might not be effective for older people, but that everybody should wait for the EMA’s verdict. This was perfectly sensible at the time, and very different from the way it was reported in the anglo-saxon press (which always tends to be anti-French anyway).
There is also a fundamental misunderstanding of the ‘odds of dying’ figures. It is plain wrong to take the overall population figures and apply them to individuals. Age is an important factor here: if you are elderly your chances of dying after a covid infection are around 9,000 times greater than if you are a teenager. If you are young, without comorbidities, in the countryside, and taking sensible precautions, your chances of catching and dying from covid are probably vanishingly small - maybe no higher than being killed by the AZ vaccine. This is I think the main reason (but there are others) why medical bodies around the world (not just in the EU) are now not recommending the AZ vaccine for the young.
This is sensible - it is indeed plain common sense - just as it was sensible not to recommend it for the old when the original fault in the clinical trials was discovered.
More questionable, I think, is why agencies in the UK have been slow to act (though they seem to be doing so now).
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So not France then - I have heard it referred to only as Astra Zeneca both here (France) and in Germany.
I haven’t actually heard anyone even mentioning Brexit or the UK at all for any reason, apart from a couple of my pupils (of the 1000 odd people I see every day) who happen to have British parents and worry about granny etc. We’re all too busy in the here and now.
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Yes, we can all only relate our own anecdotes. My sister-in-law’s excellent visiting carer certainly knows the Oxford-AZ vaccine as British and warns against.
My experience is you are wrong about Brexit being water under the bridge for Europeans. For instance -
Our cosmopolitan village has a very nice Christmas tradition, giving a small parcel of goodies to each of the over 70’s, such as small tins of foie gras and other pates produced by a local canner. All very nice.
Except that this Christmas for the first time the council decided that they would give the parcels to the French, Danish, Germans, etc., but NOT to the British. Brexit was explicitly given as the reason.
Unbelievable. The British secretary on the council was beside herself.
She would not agree with you.
I understand what you are saying and Ithink we all know what we are talking about so does it really matter?
Are you absolutely certain about that?
It goes against the French motto Liberté, égalité, fraternité and if true, would be a matter for the préfet to consider. I’d certainly be reporting it (but our maire is made of stronger stuff so unlikely to happen here in 16260)
I think the point at issue was that in the UK the AZ vaccine has been misrepresented as ‘British’, and for seemingly nationalistic reasons is often referred to as the ‘Oxford’ vaccine. This misrepresentation has perhaps played a part in the cautious approach to safety in other countries also being misrepresented as ‘picking on’ the UK, and thus related to brexit tensions.
The fact that nobody outside the UK thinks the AZ vaccine is British, or calls it ‘Oxford’, is good evidence against any link between reservations about the vaccine and brexit, or any anti-British feeling.
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In many communes these Christmas gifts this year replaced the “repas des anciens” which is commonly restricted to those anciens who are on the electoral roll. And of course the British can no longer be on this. So Brits will no longer get invited routinely.
In other communes gifts happen every year as well as the meal, but only for those inscribed to the local community centre, or to those the Mairie knows are of limited means.
Unless you were actually present at this conversation or have read it in the official minutes I would not be convinced that this is correct. You may have missed the second half of the sentence as in because of Brexit “they are no longer on the electoral list”
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I see no problem with calling it Oxford Astra Zenica as it was formulated and developed in Oxford at the Jenner Institute and with the cooperation of Vaccitech , an Oxford research agency. Astra Zenica are the producers not the originators. What do you find so wrong about being proud about their achievements?
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Clémént Beaune explained that the EU funded the Jenner Institute. « Les Britanniques disent que ce vaccin est à eux. Ce vaccin vient d’#Oxford, il a été financé jusqu’au 31 décembre 2020 par l’Europe ! Ce vaccin est britannique, mais il est aussi européen. »
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Semantics Roger, and probably lost in translation OR maybe, given the animosity there is towards him in the British rightwing press, deliberately so. IMO he’s been unfairly singled out.
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