We should probably keep the general limiting measures in place till everyone has had one shot of a vaccine. We don't want this Saffer variant becoming dominant.
1. Lockdown until about July 2. About five minutes of freedom 3. Disease rips through all the AZ recipients, tsunami of sickness, hospitals stuffed with gasping bodies, NHS overwhelmed panic, lockdown until Spring 2022
Bloody great.
I think you enjoy making up these domesday scenarios.
Are you related to SeanT ?
Relax.
There's ups and downs in everything but things are going much better than we hoped for only a month ago.
Still gives protection from severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death. I think that's fine and part of why we've got the CureVac deal is as a long term way to beat variants.
Possibly. For about the next five seconds, until the next mutant form cricket bats us around the head.
And the Brazilian strain? And the Bristol? And the Liverpool?
Haven't thousands of variants been detected ?
And doubtless many more exist which haven't been detected whether or not they have subsequently died out.
More evidence that the best strategy is stop international travel until covid has been crushed throughout the world.
Yes. I don't fucking care if Brits are stuck abroad. Fuck em for travelling in the first place. They can come back when there's room in the quarantine centres to accommodate them, as the Australians have done. And the cost of halting business travel is certainly minuscule compared with that of spending years and years and years in fucking lockdown.
We should cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, as thoroughly and completely as possible. Raise the drawbridge, and keep it raised.
I wouldn't worry too much, aiui they are using pretty cutting edge modelling to predict likely mutations so we stay ahead of the game and we pre-jab people before the mutations arise.
Countries like the UK will hopefully always be one step ahead in the future and over time it will naturally become less deadly as people build up a wide range of neutralising antibodies against various mutations.
The light at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train, at least not because of this.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
For starters, I would settle for actually doing something about arrivals rather than just talking about plans to do something for weeks on end. Once again we're behind the curve.
No-one in the group for 1,000 who got the AZ vaccine suffered a severe case and/or was hospitalised or died, although they haven't yet reached conclusions yet on just how effective it is in preventing such severe cases.
I'll settle for being protected against anything worse than a severe case of the flu.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
No-one in the group for 1,000 who got the AZ vaccine suffered a severe case and/or was hospitalised or died, although they haven't yet reached conclusions yet on just how effective it is in preventing such severe cases.
I'll settle for being protected against anything worse than a severe case of the flu.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
For starters, I would settle for actually doing something about arrivals rather than just talking about plans to do something for weeks on end. Once again we're behind the curve.
I almost suspect that Shapps tries to delay things long enough that he can claim "its too late now".
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
We should probably keep the general limiting measures in place till everyone has had one shot of a vaccine. We don't want this Saffer variant becoming dominant.
1. Lockdown until about July 2. About five minutes of freedom 3. Disease rips through all the AZ recipients, tsunami of sickness, hospitals stuffed with gasping bodies, NHS overwhelmed panic, lockdown until Spring 2022
Bloody great.
I think you enjoy making up these domesday scenarios.
Are you related to SeanT ?
Relax.
There's ups and downs in everything but things are going much better than we hoped for only a month ago.
I don't enjoy it, it's absolutely bloody awful.
As I was saying for months before I allowed myself to be fooled into a false sense of optimism by the mood music around the vaccination drive, never assume that things can't get any worse, because they can and they always will.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
No-one in the group for 1,000 who got the AZ vaccine suffered a severe case and/or was hospitalised or died, although they haven't yet reached conclusions yet on just how effective it is in preventing such severe cases.
I'll settle for being protected against anything worse than a severe case of the flu.
No-one in the group for 1,000 who got the AZ vaccine suffered a severe case and/or was hospitalised or died, although they haven't yet reached conclusions yet on just how effective it is in preventing such severe cases.
I'll settle for being protected against anything worse than a severe case of the flu.
Still no win since 1983 in front of a crowd (without which "home" and "away" fixtures have less meaning, as the EPL has shown with more away than home wins this season.)
And still no win ever when there hasn't been a Tory PM.
We should probably keep the general limiting measures in place till everyone has had one shot of a vaccine. We don't want this Saffer variant becoming dominant.
1. Lockdown until about July 2. About five minutes of freedom 3. Disease rips through all the AZ recipients, tsunami of sickness, hospitals stuffed with gasping bodies, NHS overwhelmed panic, lockdown until Spring 2022
Bloody great.
I think you enjoy making up these domesday scenarios.
Are you related to SeanT ?
Relax.
There's ups and downs in everything but things are going much better than we hoped for only a month ago.
I don't enjoy it, it's absolutely bloody awful.
As I was saying for months before I allowed myself to be fooled into a false sense of optimism by the mood music around the vaccination drive, never assume that things can't get any worse, because they can and they always will.
We'll beat the virus and we'll beat the variants. You shouldn't worry so much, our vaccine portfolio has got Q4 delivery Valneva, J&J options and CureVac which are going to be designed to beat the variants. Our international allies and friends will benefit from our investments in this.
We should probably keep the general limiting measures in place till everyone has had one shot of a vaccine. We don't want this Saffer variant becoming dominant.
1. Lockdown until about July 2. About five minutes of freedom 3. Disease rips through all the AZ recipients, tsunami of sickness, hospitals stuffed with gasping bodies, NHS overwhelmed panic, lockdown until Spring 2022
Bloody great.
I think you enjoy making up these domesday scenarios.
Are you related to SeanT ?
Relax.
There's ups and downs in everything but things are going much better than we hoped for only a month ago.
I don't enjoy it, it's absolutely bloody awful.
As I was saying for months before I allowed myself to be fooled into a false sense of optimism by the mood music around the vaccination drive, never assume that things can't get any worse, because they can and they always will.
No-one in the group for 1,000 who got the AZ vaccine suffered a severe case and/or was hospitalised or died, although they haven't yet reached conclusions yet on just how effective it is in preventing such severe cases.
I'll settle for being protected against anything worse than a severe case of the flu.
Meanwhile in the red wall, the rugby season hasn't started yet.
Rugby league isn't proper rugby, no poncey fifth tackle rule in Union.
Honestly rugby league is as much proper rugby as American football is.
There was me making a politically insightful comment on the sporting interests of working class northern voters, and you think I'm having a go at Union.
That was merely the subtext.
The working class Northern voters love soccer more, I know this as I speak as a working class Northerner.
Proper northern w/c certainly don't call it 'soccer' - 'soccer' is reserved for posh privately educated southern boys, as in "oh I say chaps, shall we have a game of soccer to pretend we're not posh, and then retire to the club house for afternoon tea?".
Depends where you are from. We called it soccer. "Football" was Rugby League.
Fair enough. Growing up in Leeds, I never heard it called soccer outside the public schools. Football or footie, nothing else.
Public schoolboys tend to play rugby and cricket more and the former is officially rugby football thus soccer is the more appropriate term, while state school boys tend to play football more and do not need to distinguish soccer from rugby football, probably explains the distinction
You've obviously never met a Scottish Borderer such as a Teri or a Gutterbluid.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
No-one in the group for 1,000 who got the AZ vaccine suffered a severe case and/or was hospitalised or died, although they haven't yet reached conclusions yet on just how effective it is in preventing such severe cases.
I'll settle for being protected against anything worse than a severe case of the flu.
Would be useful to know what "moderate" means.
I think the sample of 1,000 was probably too small to enable conclusions to be drawn about severe disease. It is quite likely that if the vaccine is less effective against mild disease, it will be less effective against severe disease too.
It is noticeable that the South East England strain of the virus has quickly gone around the world, with many cases in Portugal for example. By comparison, the SA strain of the virus does not yet seem to have become established in Europe yet. It may not be as infectious as the South East England variant.
Consequently, there may still be time to develop and roll out modified versions of the vaccines later this year to control the SA and Brazilian strains, before they become fully established. The whole point of the new variant is to evade existing immunity so I think this development is not really a surprise. Plans should be made to develop the new vaccines quickly in case they are needed.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
As things stand, the Pfizer vaccine looks like it's good enough against SA SuperCovid, at least after the second shot. In which case, the worst case timeline looks like this
1 The current lockdown keeps doing its job, halving infections every fortnight or so. At some point in March, the daily case rate is in the low thousands, the daily death rate is in the tens, and the weather is nice enough to be outside.
2 We stay careful through the spring and summer. Not normal, but far from lockdown. Just don't do anything silly- like July/August 2020. Meanwhile we keep jabbing people with the more effective vaccines. It'll be slower than some of the more excitable extrapolators would have liked, but not that slow.
3 By September, we'll be done enough to not have the autumn 2020 climb that led to the November lockdown.
The light is still there at the end of the tunnel. It's just that the tunnel is a bit bumpier than we hoped.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
I think what all this has showed is that we'll contemplate shutting down the economy for a lot less than we might originally have thought.
In the thread it does seem that this was a two dose regime (I vaguely remember it being 6 weeks in the SA arm) and the last sentence in the clip is a bit odd.
I think Mr Smithson is running out of things to say. But let's be honest... if Scotland find a few more good South African players then they will be a dangerous team.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
Presumably the aim is more to get it to a flu vaccination type programme. Yes, you have to keep vaccinating against each new variant, but only for the most vulnerable, rather than the whole adult population.
Everyone else will just have to suck up the possibility of getting it, feeling like shit for a bit, and then getting better.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
The virus seems as if it may well run out of viable mutations after the next round or so. Having a few setbacks doesn't stop you winning in the end.
A double Merseyside win this weekend would throw it wide open. Can't see it though. City look the best side. As they have done since the end of 2019 tbf.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
The virus seems as if it may well run out of viable mutations after the next round or so. Having a few setbacks doesn't stop you winning in the end.
Why can’t we just shut the effing borders! BA, Simon Calder and that moaning twerp from Edinburgh Airport seem acceptable collateral damage to me. And why can’t we all drink proper British real ale made with proper British fuggles and golding hops, and Scotch whisky from Scottish barley, instead of foreign wines. And Somerset produces perfectly acceptable brie! 😎
Speaking of football, who do PBers think will win the Superbowl tomorrow - Patrick Mahomes & the Kansas City Chiefs OR Tom Brady & the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?
In other words, will it be youth & vigor? Or old age and treachery (or longevity)?
Speaking of football, who do PBers think will win the Superbowl tomorrow - Patrick Mahomes & the Kansas City Chiefs OR Tom Brady & the Tampa Bay Buccaneers?
In other words, will it be youth & vigor? Or old age and treachery (or longevity)?
Why can’t we just shut the effing borders! BA, Simon Calder and that moaning twerp from Edinburgh Airport seem acceptable collateral damage to me. And why can’t we all drink proper British real ale made with proper British fuggles and golding hops, and Scotch whisky from Scottish barley, instead of foreign wines. And Somerset produces perfectly acceptable brie! 😎
Because:
Politicians like international travel and the government doesn't want to upset them. Media types like international travel and the government doesn't want to upset them. Holiday obsessives like international travel and the government doesn't want to upset them.
Meanwhile in the red wall, the rugby season hasn't started yet.
Rugby league isn't proper rugby, no poncey fifth tackle rule in Union.
Honestly rugby league is as much proper rugby as American football is.
There was me making a politically insightful comment on the sporting interests of working class northern voters, and you think I'm having a go at Union.
That was merely the subtext.
The working class Northern voters love soccer more, I know this as I speak as a working class Northerner.
Proper northern w/c certainly don't call it 'soccer' - 'soccer' is reserved for posh privately educated southern boys, as in "oh I say chaps, shall we have a game of soccer to pretend we're not posh, and then retire to the club house for afternoon tea?".
Depends where you are from. We called it soccer. "Football" was Rugby League.
Fair enough. Growing up in Leeds, I never heard it called soccer outside the public schools. Football or footie, nothing else.
In the thread it does seem that this was a two dose regime (I vaguely remember it being 6 weeks in the SA arm) and the last sentence in the clip is a bit odd.
Something doesn't quite add up here. The sample is way too small and the cohort too young. It somewhat contradicts the P3 trial data, assuming that many/most of the SA cases would have been the SA variant.
We should a) wait for the paper, b) wait for peer review or at least expert comment, c) wait for replication. In the meantime, the government need to understand what strict border controls actually mean and stop dithering about it.
With this unwelcome news about AZN and Saffers COVID, its a good job the government have completely closed the border.....gulp.
On the upside, all the vaccine makers are already busy working on adapting their vaccines. Hopefully by the summer we have updated ones going in people's arms.
What this news probably does do is totally kibosh any ideas about travel for the rest of the year. And probably means we carry on with a lot of restrictions for longer. I can't for instance see gigs becoming a thing again this year.
We need to try and keep Saffers COVID cases as low as possible for as long as possible.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
Presumably the aim is more to get it to a flu vaccination type programme. Yes, you have to keep vaccinating against each new variant, but only for the most vulnerable, rather than the whole adult population.
Everyone else will just have to suck up the possibility of getting it, feeling like shit for a bit, and then getting better.
Flu already kills a certain number of non-vulnerable persons each year, and I think by now we've established that Covid is substantially more deadly than flu.
But anyway, that's not the main point. If we get to the stage where the disease can be more-or-less tamed by vaccinating everyone each year then that is doable. The problem lies in how many iterations of these mutant forms we have to go through before it reaches the point where it is stable enough to be dealt with in the same fashion as the flu, rather than having repeated cycles of re-infections, death waves and lockdowns.
Whatever that period is, that is the length of time for which international travel should be cut almost to nothing. But the Government won't do it, so we're defenceless.
And off we go again. I should've known. It's the hope that kills you (if Covid doesn't do it first.) That's another year of lockdown to add on (six months whilst they dick around modifying the vaccine, followed by another Winter) and by the time that's done the bastard fucker will have changed again.
This is never going to end, is it?
“Does not offer protection again mild and moderate symptoms”
=
“Offers protection against hospitalisation and death”
I’ll take that.
Fucking catastrophising journalists scaring people for a story
With this unwelcome news about AZN and Saffers COVID, its a good job the government have completely closed the border.....gulp.
On the upside, all the vaccine makers are already busy working on adapting their vaccines. Hopefully by the summer we have updated ones going in people's arms.
What this news probably does do is totally kibosh any ideas about travel for the rest of the year. And probably means we carry on with a lot of restrictions for longer. I can't for instance see gigs becoming a thing again this year.
We need to try and keep Saffers COVID cases as low as possible for as long as possible.
With the updated versions, does that mean a faster approval process as the original version has approval and minor variations are likely to be as safe?
With this unwelcome news about AZN and Saffers COVID, its a good job the government have completely closed the border.....gulp.
On the upside, all the vaccine makers are already busy working on adapting their vaccines. Hopefully by the summer we have updated ones going in people's arms.
What this news probably does do is totally kibosh any ideas about travel for the rest of the year. And probably means we carry on with a lot of restrictions for longer. I can't for instance see gigs becoming a thing again this year.
We need to try and keep Saffers COVID cases as low as possible for as long as possible.
With the updated versions, does that mean a faster approval process as the original version has approval and minor variations are likely to be as safe?
With this unwelcome news about AZN and Saffers COVID, its a good job the government have completely closed the border.....gulp.
On the upside, all the vaccine makers are already busy working on adapting their vaccines. Hopefully by the summer we have updated ones going in people's arms.
What this news probably does do is totally kibosh any ideas about travel for the rest of the year. And probably means we carry on with a lot of restrictions for longer. I can't for instance see gigs becoming a thing again this year.
We need to try and keep Saffers COVID cases as low as possible for as long as possible.
With the updated versions, does that mean a faster approval process as the original version has approval and minor variations are likely to be as safe?
Yes, faster approval. Probably need safety studies (I think) but not large scale trials.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
If that was the situation - which I don’t expect - you’d expand capacity in the healthcare system
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
If that was the situation - which I don’t expect - you’d expand capacity in the healthcare system
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
If that was the situation - which I don’t expect - you’d expand capacity in the healthcare system
And off we go again. I should've known. It's the hope that kills you (if Covid doesn't do it first.) That's another year of lockdown to add on (six months whilst they dick around modifying the vaccine, followed by another Winter) and by the time that's done the bastard fucker will have changed again.
This is never going to end, is it?
“Does not offer protection again mild and moderate symptoms”
=
“Offers protection against hospitalisation and death”
I’ll take that.
Fucking catastrophising journalists scaring people for a story
And off we go again. I should've known. It's the hope that kills you (if Covid doesn't do it first.) That's another year of lockdown to add on (six months whilst they dick around modifying the vaccine, followed by another Winter) and by the time that's done the bastard fucker will have changed again.
This is never going to end, is it?
“Does not offer protection again mild and moderate symptoms”
=
“Offers protection against hospitalisation and death”
I’ll take that.
Fucking catastrophising journalists scaring people for a story
Problem is we don't know the age profile of the study results.
Moderate symptoms for a 40 year old are probably fairly likely to result in death for a 80 year old.
And off we go again. I should've known. It's the hope that kills you (if Covid doesn't do it first.) That's another year of lockdown to add on (six months whilst they dick around modifying the vaccine, followed by another Winter) and by the time that's done the bastard fucker will have changed again.
This is never going to end, is it?
“Does not offer protection again mild and moderate symptoms”
=
“Offers protection against hospitalisation and death”
I’ll take that.
Fucking catastrophising journalists scaring people for a story
Correct. Mr Rook seems determined to make a name for himself. And real world tests are showing that the Oxford jab IS effective for the over 65s
And off we go again. I should've known. It's the hope that kills you (if Covid doesn't do it first.) That's another year of lockdown to add on (six months whilst they dick around modifying the vaccine, followed by another Winter) and by the time that's done the bastard fucker will have changed again.
This is never going to end, is it?
“Does not offer protection again mild and moderate symptoms”
=
“Offers protection against hospitalisation and death”
I’ll take that.
Fucking catastrophising journalists scaring people for a story
Who cares if they get mild symptoms?
That’s the point. But wouldn’t sell as many papers as scaring people like poor @Black_Rook
Still gives protection from severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death. I think that's fine and part of why we've got the CureVac deal is as a long term way to beat variants.
Possibly. For about the next five seconds, until the next mutant form cricket bats us around the head.
And the Brazilian strain? And the Bristol? And the Liverpool?
Haven't thousands of variants been detected ?
And doubtless many more exist which haven't been detected whether or not they have subsequently died out.
More evidence that the best strategy is stop international travel until covid has been crushed throughout the world.
Yes. I don't fucking care if Brits are stuck abroad. Fuck em for travelling in the first place. They can come back when there's room in the quarantine centres to accommodate them, as the Australians have done. And the cost of halting business travel is certainly minuscule compared with that of spending years and years and years in fucking lockdown.
We should cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, as thoroughly and completely as possible. Raise the drawbridge, and keep it raised.
I wouldn't worry too much, aiui they are using pretty cutting edge modelling to predict likely mutations so we stay ahead of the game and we pre-jab people before the mutations arise.
Countries like the UK will hopefully always be one step ahead in the future and over time it will naturally become less deadly as people build up a wide range of neutralising antibodies against various mutations.
The light at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train, at least not because of this.
At the end of the day, humans have superior AI and biotech capability, and are far more intelligent than a virus.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
If that was the situation - which I don’t expect - you’d expand capacity in the healthcare system
An answer so good you gave it three times
Though, even if serious illness on that scale were deemed remotely tolerable, quite where we're meant to rustle up all those extra hospitals and medical staff up from in a timescale of anything less than about seven or eight years is quite beyond me.
Yep urgent curtailing of international travel into UK plus really rigorous enforcement of quarantine for any arrivals. Probably lorry cab/ driver swapping scheme needs to be looked at. If that works and we nip SA variant already in the country in the bud we should still manage internal relaxation of restrictions. Until new versions of vaccine pipeline is proven we have to try hard to restrict arrival of variants.
You forget that our useless fucking Government has got absolutely everything wrong except vaccine procurement. Once the mutant Plague gets a firm foothold, which it will, and the vaccines transpire to have, at best, limited effect against it, which it also seems that they do, then we are back more-or-less to square one. And still they'll dick about and dick about and dick about until the country is completely saturated in imported mutant death.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
I can assure you that lockdown ends this Spring/Summer and it’s never coming back.
In a way this is almost as big a statement as some of Black Rook's posts below. On balance I feel yours is the more likely position of the two but I wouldn't state either with any level of confidence.
I find it hard to believe that a variant of COVID is likely to cause enough trouble for our health service that we’d contemplate shutting down the economy.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
The problem is that, even if the South African version "only" ends up causing a tsunami of Long Covid that leaves a lot of people crippled and dependent on ongoing healthcare for months, years of possibly for the rest of their lives, then what about all the other variants that haven't even emerged yet? Practically nothing is being done to prevent their importation. It's of little comfort having the capacity to tweak vaccines to combat these issues if we have to engage in an eternal merry-go-round of jabbing the whole population to defend against each one whilst locking everybody up to stop the healthcare system from imploding. It'll end up being like that old adage about the Forth Bridge: you get to the end and then have to go back and start all over again.
If that was the situation - which I don’t expect - you’d expand capacity in the healthcare system
An answer so good you gave it three times
Though, even if serious illness on that scale were deemed remotely tolerable, quite where we're meant to rustle up all those extra hospitals and medical staff up from in a timescale of anything less than about seven or eight years is quite beyond me.
Everything in triplicate...
You set the timeframe as “an eternal merry go round”... 😉
We should probably keep the general limiting measures in place till everyone has had one shot of a vaccine. We don't want this Saffer variant becoming dominant.
1. Lockdown until about July 2. About five minutes of freedom 3. Disease rips through all the AZ recipients, tsunami of sickness, hospitals stuffed with gasping bodies, NHS overwhelmed panic, lockdown until Spring 2022
Bloody great.
I think you enjoy making up these domesday scenarios.
Are you related to SeanT ?
Relax.
There's ups and downs in everything but things are going much better than we hoped for only a month ago.
I don't enjoy it, it's absolutely bloody awful.
As I was saying for months before I allowed myself to be fooled into a false sense of optimism by the mood music around the vaccination drive, never assume that things can't get any worse, because they can and they always will.
Remember SeanT’s Rule of Covid all those many months ago?
When it comes to Covid, imagine your reasonable worst case scenario: because that is what will happen.
We should probably keep the general limiting measures in place till everyone has had one shot of a vaccine. We don't want this Saffer variant becoming dominant.
1. Lockdown until about July 2. About five minutes of freedom 3. Disease rips through all the AZ recipients, tsunami of sickness, hospitals stuffed with gasping bodies, NHS overwhelmed panic, lockdown until Spring 2022
Bloody great.
I think you enjoy making up these domesday scenarios.
Are you related to SeanT ?
Relax.
There's ups and downs in everything but things are going much better than we hoped for only a month ago.
I don't enjoy it, it's absolutely bloody awful.
As I was saying for months before I allowed myself to be fooled into a false sense of optimism by the mood music around the vaccination drive, never assume that things can't get any worse, because they can and they always will.
Remember SeanT’s Rule of Covid all those many months ago?
When it comes to Covid, imagine your reasonable worst case scenario: because that is what will happen.
Chill. It's going to be two steps forward, one step back, but that still leaves you a step forward.
And we'll get more on top of it every step we take.
Yes, the big moves made on securing domestic manufacturing of CureVac shows that the government intends to stay one step ahead of this. Having a fully domestic fast to manufacture mRNA vaccine is our long term bet and I'm really glad that the government has recognised that we as a nation needed one.
What makes me confident is that we've engaged universities and industry that specialise in predictive analysis on viral mutations. We are using the world's best available scientific research and pumping it directly into our vaccine programme.
Science and human ingenuity will beat this, I have full confidence.
She's on the list now yes. Has an unrelated appointment at the GP on Monday anyways, so it was agreed it would be quicker to take proof and sort it out then. Thanks for asking.
And off we go again. I should've known. It's the hope that kills you (if Covid doesn't do it first.) That's another year of lockdown to add on (six months whilst they dick around modifying the vaccine, followed by another Winter) and by the time that's done the bastard fucker will have changed again.
This is never going to end, is it?
“Does not offer protection again mild and moderate symptoms”
=
“Offers protection against hospitalisation and death”
I’ll take that.
Fucking catastrophising journalists scaring people for a story
With this unwelcome news about AZN and Saffers COVID, its a good job the government have completely closed the border.....gulp.
On the upside, all the vaccine makers are already busy working on adapting their vaccines. Hopefully by the summer we have updated ones going in people's arms.
What this news probably does do is totally kibosh any ideas about travel for the rest of the year. And probably means we carry on with a lot of restrictions for longer. I can't for instance see gigs becoming a thing again this year.
We need to try and keep Saffers COVID cases as low as possible for as long as possible.
With the updated versions, does that mean a faster approval process as the original version has approval and minor variations are likely to be as safe?
Yes, faster approval. Probably need safety studies (I think) but not large scale trials.
That's what I heard the head of the Oxford vaccine group saying. I think a larger delay is in producing the trial batches in the first place.
We should probably keep the general limiting measures in place till everyone has had one shot of a vaccine. We don't want this Saffer variant becoming dominant.
1. Lockdown until about July 2. About five minutes of freedom 3. Disease rips through all the AZ recipients, tsunami of sickness, hospitals stuffed with gasping bodies, NHS overwhelmed panic, lockdown until Spring 2022
Bloody great.
I think you enjoy making up these domesday scenarios.
Are you related to SeanT ?
Relax.
There's ups and downs in everything but things are going much better than we hoped for only a month ago.
I don't enjoy it, it's absolutely bloody awful.
As I was saying for months before I allowed myself to be fooled into a false sense of optimism by the mood music around the vaccination drive, never assume that things can't get any worse, because they can and they always will.
Remember SeanT’s Rule of Covid all those many months ago?
When it comes to Covid, imagine your reasonable worst case scenario: because that is what will happen.
We should probably keep the general limiting measures in place till everyone has had one shot of a vaccine. We don't want this Saffer variant becoming dominant.
1. Lockdown until about July 2. About five minutes of freedom 3. Disease rips through all the AZ recipients, tsunami of sickness, hospitals stuffed with gasping bodies, NHS overwhelmed panic, lockdown until Spring 2022
Bloody great.
I think you enjoy making up these domesday scenarios.
Are you related to SeanT ?
Relax.
There's ups and downs in everything but things are going much better than we hoped for only a month ago.
I don't enjoy it, it's absolutely bloody awful.
As I was saying for months before I allowed myself to be fooled into a false sense of optimism by the mood music around the vaccination drive, never assume that things can't get any worse, because they can and they always will.
Remember SeanT’s Rule of Covid all those many months ago?
When it comes to Covid, imagine your reasonable worst case scenario: because that is what will happen.
Hm.
I miss Sean T 😊
I don’t. A vain, boastful man, even if he was superbly funny, seriously talented and sexually well-endowed.
Still gives protection from severe symptoms, hospitalisation and death. I think that's fine and part of why we've got the CureVac deal is as a long term way to beat variants.
Possibly. For about the next five seconds, until the next mutant form cricket bats us around the head.
And the Brazilian strain? And the Bristol? And the Liverpool?
Haven't thousands of variants been detected ?
And doubtless many more exist which haven't been detected whether or not they have subsequently died out.
More evidence that the best strategy is stop international travel until covid has been crushed throughout the world.
Yes. I don't fucking care if Brits are stuck abroad. Fuck em for travelling in the first place. They can come back when there's room in the quarantine centres to accommodate them, as the Australians have done. And the cost of halting business travel is certainly minuscule compared with that of spending years and years and years in fucking lockdown.
We should cut ourselves off from the rest of the world, as thoroughly and completely as possible. Raise the drawbridge, and keep it raised.
I wouldn't worry too much, aiui they are using pretty cutting edge modelling to predict likely mutations so we stay ahead of the game and we pre-jab people before the mutations arise.
Countries like the UK will hopefully always be one step ahead in the future and over time it will naturally become less deadly as people build up a wide range of neutralising antibodies against various mutations.
The light at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train, at least not because of this.
At the end of the day, humans have superior AI and biotech capability, and are far more intelligent than a virus.
Well.. most of us are.
Viruses are 100% anti-vaccine (from their own POV). Humans are only about 70% pro vaccine, falling to 40% in France. Which is the more intelligent?
If that was the situation - which I don’t expect - you’d expand capacity in the healthcare system
An answer so good you gave it three times
Though, even if serious illness on that scale were deemed remotely tolerable, quite where we're meant to rustle up all those extra hospitals and medical staff up from in a timescale of anything less than about seven or eight years is quite beyond me.
Everything in triplicate...
You set the timeframe as “an eternal merry go round”... 😉
A fair point, though OTOH seven or eight years might as well be forever, for the state that the pitiful survivors would be in by the time such a scenario had played out.
That’s the point. But wouldn’t sell as many papers as scaring people like poor @Black_Rook
I have been spooked by two things:
1. Indications of a substantial reduction in performance, which would be suggested if people are no longer protected from getting really rather ill, but not quite ill enough to have to be put on oxygen. If we're at that stage already then (a) how much worse will it get? and (b) what protection do we have against worse mutations? The answer to (a) is unknown and the answer to (b) is absolutely nil because our catastrophically incompetent Government will do almost nothing about the borders. And, even if enough people don't get sick enough from the SA variant to have us back in lockdown again then what about the next one, or the one after that? 2. Even if it doesn't get any worse then presumably, if all the AZ recipients are vulnerable to being bed-ridden, then they are probably also vulnerable to Long Covid? At my age and state of health, that frightens me a lot more than the quite remote possibility of actually dying from the damned thing. The idea of shambling around, possibly for the rest of my life, with half my internal organs shot really doesn't appeal.
Comments
Are you related to SeanT ?
Relax.
There's ups and downs in everything but things are going much better than we hoped for only a month ago.
Countries like the UK will hopefully always be one step ahead in the future and over time it will naturally become less deadly as people build up a wide range of neutralising antibodies against various mutations.
The light at the end of the tunnel isn't an oncoming train, at least not because of this.
Lockdown until twenty-fucking-twenty-two. You lot may be able to bear it but I can't.
As I was saying for months before I allowed myself to be fooled into a false sense of optimism by the mood music around the vaccination drive, never assume that things can't get any worse, because they can and they always will.
And still no win ever when there hasn't been a Tory PM.
Dakar is also another battle, but again not on the high seas.
Now stop the self-pity, its boring.
Obviously we’re all getting older, but I’d have thought COVID has already taken a lot of the low hanging fruit for the next few years.
It is noticeable that the South East England strain of the virus has quickly gone around the world, with many cases in Portugal for example. By comparison, the SA strain of the virus does not yet seem to have become established in Europe yet. It may not be as infectious as the South East England variant.
Consequently, there may still be time to develop and roll out modified versions of the vaccines later this year to control the SA and Brazilian strains, before they become fully established. The whole point of the new variant is to evade existing immunity so I think this development is not really a surprise. Plans should be made to develop the new vaccines quickly in case they are needed.
1 The current lockdown keeps doing its job, halving infections every fortnight or so. At some point in March, the daily case rate is in the low thousands, the daily death rate is in the tens, and the weather is nice enough to be outside.
2 We stay careful through the spring and summer. Not normal, but far from lockdown. Just don't do anything silly- like July/August 2020. Meanwhile we keep jabbing people with the more effective vaccines. It'll be slower than some of the more excitable extrapolators would have liked, but not that slow.
3 By September, we'll be done enough to not have the autumn 2020 climb that led to the November lockdown.
The light is still there at the end of the tunnel. It's just that the tunnel is a bit bumpier than we hoped.
Looks like Man City.
https://twitter.com/janinegibson/status/1358153558743523342?s=19
https://twitter.com/GdnPolitics/status/1358162183310372865
But let's be honest... if Scotland find a few more good South African players then they will be a dangerous team.
Everyone else will just have to suck up the possibility of getting it, feeling like shit for a bit, and then getting better.
If we reach a point where flu is resulting in hospitalisation and death but Covid isn't, then I think we can say we're on top.
We haven't applied the inward checks yet, so haven't seen the effect on imports.
Can't see it though. City look the best side. As they have done since the end of 2019 tbf.
And we will be.
In other words, will it be youth & vigor? Or old age and treachery (or longevity)?
Politicians like international travel and the government doesn't want to upset them.
Media types like international travel and the government doesn't want to upset them.
Holiday obsessives like international travel and the government doesn't want to upset them.
We should a) wait for the paper, b) wait for peer review or at least expert comment, c) wait for replication. In the meantime, the government need to understand what strict border controls actually mean and stop dithering about it.
--AS
On the upside, all the vaccine makers are already busy working on adapting their vaccines. Hopefully by the summer we have updated ones going in people's arms.
What this news probably does do is totally kibosh any ideas about travel for the rest of the year. And probably means we carry on with a lot of restrictions for longer. I can't for instance see gigs becoming a thing again this year.
We need to try and keep Saffers COVID cases as low as possible for as long as possible.
But anyway, that's not the main point. If we get to the stage where the disease can be more-or-less tamed by vaccinating everyone each year then that is doable. The problem lies in how many iterations of these mutant forms we have to go through before it reaches the point where it is stable enough to be dealt with in the same fashion as the flu, rather than having repeated cycles of re-infections, death waves and lockdowns.
Whatever that period is, that is the length of time for which international travel should be cut almost to nothing. But the Government won't do it, so we're defenceless.
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“Offers protection against hospitalisation and death”
I’ll take that.
Fucking catastrophising journalists scaring people for a story
(Have we done that one yet?)
Mass arrests incoming (I don't think).
Problem is we don't know the age profile of the study results.
Moderate symptoms for a 40 year old are probably fairly likely to result in death for a 80 year old.
And real world tests are showing that the Oxford jab IS effective for the over 65s
And we'll get more on top of it every step we take.
@MichaelYeadon3
What will DCL's last minute equaliser do for Burnham's re-election chances?
Did your partner sort out a jab?
Well.. most of us are.
And it is not leading the news
Though, even if serious illness on that scale were deemed remotely tolerable, quite where we're meant to rustle up all those extra hospitals and medical staff up from in a timescale of anything less than about seven or eight years is quite beyond me.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9231699/Most-England-rugby-players-kneel-anti-racism-solidarity-kick-Twickenham.html
You set the timeframe as “an eternal merry go round”... 😉
When it comes to Covid, imagine your reasonable worst case scenario: because that is what will happen.
Hm.
What makes me confident is that we've engaged universities and industry that specialise in predictive analysis on viral mutations. We are using the world's best available scientific research and pumping it directly into our vaccine programme.
Science and human ingenuity will beat this, I have full confidence.
Thanks for asking.
--AS
This damn virus mutates too fucking fast. And we can’t lockdown forever as we attempt to update vaccines continuously
Hmm. At some point we may just have to build a billion hospitals, then let it burn through the population
1. Indications of a substantial reduction in performance, which would be suggested if people are no longer protected from getting really rather ill, but not quite ill enough to have to be put on oxygen. If we're at that stage already then (a) how much worse will it get? and (b) what protection do we have against worse mutations? The answer to (a) is unknown and the answer to (b) is absolutely nil because our catastrophically incompetent Government will do almost nothing about the borders. And, even if enough people don't get sick enough from the SA variant to have us back in lockdown again then what about the next one, or the one after that?
2. Even if it doesn't get any worse then presumably, if all the AZ recipients are vulnerable to being bed-ridden, then they are probably also vulnerable to Long Covid? At my age and state of health, that frightens me a lot more than the quite remote possibility of actually dying from the damned thing. The idea of shambling around, possibly for the rest of my life, with half my internal organs shot really doesn't appeal.
https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1358177303075958785?s=20