I was wrong - the number was c10m but it still makes the latest vaccine roll out on a different scale to the annual flu jab roll out - timescales being one thing, volumes being another, the nature of the vaccine especially the Pfizer.

Vaccines usually take at least a decade to become available, so this vaccination programme is indeed a few levels above anything we've had rollout before.

most of the vaccines for covid are old tech.

the mrna ones are new, but they are not brand new, they have been a decade in construction and half a century in design.

sure the timescale has been shortened to get it to market but no trials were rushed they were just done in parallel.

You lied.
And you are still lying

Was that with your first, second or third attempt to guess the figure or, all of them ?

I used Google which gave me one figure 1.9m and then when questioned I looked further and eventually found the actual government stats which split the data down by country and age group

I am happy to admit when I have got it factually wrong - unlike some on here

Thinking is that this situation has changed forever the way we develop, test and roll out vaccines. You are correct, the Oxford vaccine was a carbon copy of their MERS vaccine, using a simian virus as a conjugate to carry the spike protein. That had been in clinical trial for a while. They had it ready in weeks - early January last year I think. It hasn't changed since then - just been tested. The mRNA vaccines are actually quite novel in that there had never been one on the market before, but you are correct, the basic tech has been in development for a long time. In vaccine world though that's like the first man on the moon. The Novavax vaccine is also an unusual format, they've been trying for 18 years to get a product to market and this is their first. They were laying people off 18 months ago and running out of money, we know those guys quite well as they are neighbours of ours in the US and they now spend a lot of money with us on serology testing. Turns out it could be the best vaccine of the lot so far. The issue with public health is that the markets are ultra conservative. You see this in medicine and in food safety testing. There is no benefit from being "first" to adopt something novel.

We are actually seeing data for the effectiveness study "live" so to speak. Effectiveness is the study of how well the vaccine actually reduces the disease in the population and includes data on limiting transmission etc -this can only really be seen once you give it to a large population. That's why early reports that "nobody knows if the vaccine will even stop the disease spreading" were accurate but misleading. The vaccines were expected to stop disease spread but the data was not available - you can't get that from a clinical trial into efficacy - just not enough people get the vaccine.
We have been lucky in one way, covid is not a difficult virus to deal with, this was recognized almost immediately. The vaccines we have are all stunningly good. Anything over 50% efficacy is considered "good", so to have 75-90% for all the vaccines is remarkable. If Covid had been like HIV then we would be in real trouble.

What the Germans have been doing makes no sense. They already have a real problem with vaccine uptake and seem to be doing all they can to make it worse. As my German buddy told me today, "We are becoming more un-German by the day". I'm currently trying to get documentation to give people in my team across Europe priority vaccination as they regularly work in customer Covid labs with covid positive samples.

I am happy to admit when I have got it factually wrong - unlike some on here'"

Also quite a few in government especially the PM from whom they take their lead. He lied yesterday whilst campaigning for the London mayoral election during the COVID press conference when he claimed how well he ran TFL. This was unfortunately not correct but I don’t remember the news mentioning this fact, I guess it is just another fib, one of many.'"

Not lies, not fibs, he just "mis-spoke" (again and again and again)
How do you judge how well he ran TFL - this stuff isn't an exact science and it isn't a matter of fact - 32m vaccinations is a fact 150k+ deaths is a fact how well Boris ran TFL is an opinion depending on what is expected from the service.

How often do you here Khan suggesting increased crime figures in London is down to police cuts - has Khan done a good or bad job of managing crime in London giving all available data?