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.
Look, I like a nice bit of doom porn as much as anyone. But that is *slightly* histrionic
Very few people get Long Covid as bad as THAT. Most recover fully, or almost completely, within a few months
Also, this closed borders thing. Is it really do-able? We’d have to hermetically seal the island of Britain. Which also means shutting out Ireland and Ulster. Tourism would be abolished. All airports would close except for freight. For how long? Years?
London would collapse. Universities too.
We’d wipe off 30% of GDP. And of course similar crises would be raging all over the world. It is beyond dystopian.
Whilst closing all the borders has a certain degree of dystopia, I personally think that 1) At this point, with a viable route out of this crisis visible and available in the next 6 weeks or so, we shouldn't be taking any risks. Currently we have too strict a national lockdown, and far too weak an international lockdown, given that the major threat isn't another wave now with the most vulnerable all nearly jabbed, but vaccine resistance from abroad.
2) I'd happily close the borders for a year for every extra month where I can just go round to any friend's house, play with their kids, drink a beer with them, hug my mum, play in a band with my mates, sing at church. If the media, politicians, celbs etc want to go abroad fine. They just don't get to come back till this is over globally (can't see we'd miss any of them anyway).
Now is the perfect time to close the borders: our virus incidence is lower than surrounding places and the gap is about to become bigger.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
If a vaccine evading form of the virus arises elsewhere in the world then how do we know that existing vaccines will be any better at controlling transmission of such a variant than they are at preventing illness?
In at least one important respect the WHO is right: this disease isn't beaten anywhere until it's beaten everywhere. It needs to be crushed into submission all over the world. Even if it can't be eradicated, which may be unrealistic, then it needs to be given as little chance as possible to mutate, which will maximise our ability to suppress it going forward with a combination of regular inoculation and improved treatments.
We risk throwing everything away if we do manage to crush it in Britain and get the bulk of the population jabbed, only to let it back in a new and more dangerous form from some other part of the world where Covid remains rampant.
We should raise our defences and keep them up until it makes sense to lower them. It is better by far to chuck the affected segments of the economy on the bonfire than the whole thing and our society along with it. Nothing is more important than getting rid of lockdown, whether cyclical or continuous.
I agree we should raise our defences.
But let's watch Israel shall we, as they'll be fully vaccinated in two months.
Let's look at the big picture here. The reality is that we - in a day - built a vaccine using new technology that was 95% effective.
That is the most incredibly thing. It's genuinely (and positively) world altering.
Any mutation that comes along, we can do it again. Because these mutations are, by their nature small.
We now know mRNA vaccines are safe. We now know how to make them.
Shall we have a bet? I bet you £10 that Israel will be able to return to normality from the beginning of May (at the latest) and won't endure another lockdown or other serious CV19 related restrictions in 2021 (that being a pretty good measure of normality).
A little reminder: (1) there is plenty of evidence that Moderna and Pfizer are pretty effective against the SA variant; (2) J&J is also reasonable effective; (3) CureVac and Valneva will almost certainly have been tweaked against SA Covid before they are released.
Both most importantly of all: the big issue in this whole thing is capacity to produce mRNA vaccines, which can be tweaked incredibly quickly to deal with new mutations and strains. Remember, the Pfizer vaccine was designed in a day, a year ago.
The challenges were proving safety of an entirely new form of vaccine (check, done), and ramping up the ability to produce mRNA vaccine at scale (still a work in progress, but definitely heading in the right direction).
I agree with that but it doesn't offer much comfort to those of us that have been given the Astrazeneca vaccine.
Don't get me wrong, I am immensely grateful to all concerned that we have been vaccinated so quickly but I do have a growing feeling that those of us that are over 70 and had AZ drew the short straw. I sincerely hope that those countries that are not approving AZ for the over 65s are not proved to have been correct.
If the virus has partially worked its way around the current version of AZ then that has no age-specific implications. It will simply wallop any susceptible person who's had that vaccine - up to a point. Hopefully it will still stop people kicking the bucket but the worse the disease the more Long Covid cases it will probably end up precipitating.
The way you talk, it's almost like you think it would be better if the AZ vaccine hadn't come along.
The best vaccine is what you have on hand. Better to give people some protection now.
But you know what. Let's imagine that AZ turns out to be completely ineffective*. Well, then we'll end up revaccinating everyone in three months with Pfizer or Moderna or CureVac.
In that scenario, we'll have had to endure a few more months of restrictions than we would have liked.
That is - literally - the worst case scenario.
* Which it won't be.
Or more likely Novavax which we know has 60% efficacy and we're getting from April.
There's way too much doom and gloom on here.
It's also gloom from people who were pessimistic (and wrong) about a vaccine being discovered. It's gloom from people who were pessimistic about the ability to make and distribute it.
It's basically gloom from people who were wrong before, and are wrong again.
A little reminder: (1) there is plenty of evidence that Moderna and Pfizer are pretty effective against the SA variant; (2) J&J is also reasonable effective; (3) CureVac and Valneva will almost certainly have been tweaked against SA Covid before they are released.
Both most importantly of all: the big issue in this whole thing is capacity to produce mRNA vaccines, which can be tweaked incredibly quickly to deal with new mutations and strains. Remember, the Pfizer vaccine was designed in a day, a year ago.
The challenges were proving safety of an entirely new form of vaccine (check, done), and ramping up the ability to produce mRNA vaccine at scale (still a work in progress, but definitely heading in the right direction).
I agree with that but it doesn't offer much comfort to those of us that have been given the Astrazeneca vaccine.
Don't get me wrong, I am immensely grateful to all concerned that we have been vaccinated so quickly but I do have a growing feeling that those of us that are over 70 and had AZ drew the short straw. I sincerely hope that those countries that are not approving AZ for the over 65s are not proved to have been correct.
If the virus has partially worked its way around the current version of AZ then that has no age-specific implications. It will simply wallop any susceptible person who's had that vaccine - up to a point. Hopefully it will still stop people kicking the bucket but the worse the disease the more Long Covid cases it will probably end up precipitating.
The way you talk, it's almost like you think it would be better if the AZ vaccine hadn't come along.
The best vaccine is what you have on hand. Better to give people some protection now.
But you know what. Let's imagine that AZ turns out to be completely ineffective*. Well, then we'll end up revaccinating everyone in three months with Pfizer or Moderna or CureVac.
In that scenario, we'll have had to endure a few more months of restrictions than we would have liked.
That is - literally - the worst case scenario.
* Which it won't be.
I agree entirely re: AZ. Even if its effectiveness is reduced by the dreaded Saffer Plague it is still vastly better than nothing. My overriding concern (beyond Long Covid, of course) is that this might also be a step along the road towards vaccine escape. Hence the fact that I've moved on quickly from that problem to support (even more strongly than I did before) the closure of the borders.
We are not at all safe from more new forms of Covid, and the havoc wrought by sealing ourselves off will always be preferable to lockdown, because the effects of the latter are so widespread and devastating.
Again, it's all well and good having the ability to tweak the vaccines if you're doing that as part of an annual jab campaign as with seasonal flu, but it's a very different matter if you're having to constantly firefight new forms of the disease with restrictions whilst you rush to keep giving tens of millions of people booster shots over and over again, because they are hitting us and ripping through the country faster than we can cope with.
Husband has the New Zealand cricket on the telly right now. This is a fantasy land with no bloody masks, or social distancing, or restrictions of any kind, EXCEPT that they've locked the rest of the world out. I used to consider that impractical because of the road haulage going to and from the continent, but frankly we'll have to learn to manage without it, even if it causes a lot of business failures and shortages of some goods. Once again, the disruption that this would cause will be serious, but it's still preferable to lockdown. Almost anything is.
A little reminder: (1) there is plenty of evidence that Moderna and Pfizer are pretty effective against the SA variant; (2) J&J is also reasonable effective; (3) CureVac and Valneva will almost certainly have been tweaked against SA Covid before they are released.
Both most importantly of all: the big issue in this whole thing is capacity to produce mRNA vaccines, which can be tweaked incredibly quickly to deal with new mutations and strains. Remember, the Pfizer vaccine was designed in a day, a year ago.
The challenges were proving safety of an entirely new form of vaccine (check, done), and ramping up the ability to produce mRNA vaccine at scale (still a work in progress, but definitely heading in the right direction).
I agree with that but it doesn't offer much comfort to those of us that have been given the Astrazeneca vaccine.
Don't get me wrong, I am immensely grateful to all concerned that we have been vaccinated so quickly but I do have a growing feeling that those of us that are over 70 and had AZ drew the short straw. I sincerely hope that those countries that are not approving AZ for the over 65s are not proved to have been correct.
If the virus has partially worked its way around the current version of AZ then that has no age-specific implications. It will simply wallop any susceptible person who's had that vaccine - up to a point. Hopefully it will still stop people kicking the bucket but the worse the disease the more Long Covid cases it will probably end up precipitating.
The way you talk, it's almost like you think it would be better if the AZ vaccine hadn't come along.
The best vaccine is what you have on hand. Better to give people some protection now.
But you know what. Let's imagine that AZ turns out to be completely ineffective*. Well, then we'll end up revaccinating everyone in three months with Pfizer or Moderna or CureVac.
In that scenario, we'll have had to endure a few more months of restrictions than we would have liked.
That is - literally - the worst case scenario.
* Which it won't be.
Or more likely Novavax which we know has 60% efficacy and we're getting from April.
There's way too much doom and gloom on here.
It's also gloom from people who were pessimistic (and wrong) about a vaccine being discovered. It's gloom from people who were pessimistic about the ability to make and distribute it.
It's basically gloom from people who were wrong before, and are wrong again.
It's tempting to take the view that 'with Covid-19, always assume the worst' but it really doesn't seem to be true, even though it's been an awful time.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
That’s if the EU also closes its borders. You can still fly direct from Amsterdam to Cape Town.
Basically, global travel has to cease entirely, with strict quarantining for the very few allowed to move, if this policy is to work. I don’t see any other way. I also wonder if the Safferbug is here in numbers in Britain already and all this is pointless.
And then I look at the crash in cases in SA and I think, WTF is going on. Covid is such a mystery, still.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
One thing we REALLY need to know is whether having old fashioned Covid provides immunity against Saffer Covid. If it doesn’t, that’s a bit scary. I cannot find conclusive evidence either way. Probably we just don’t know
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
In at least one important respect the WHO is right: this disease isn't beaten anywhere until it's beaten everywhere. It needs to be crushed into submission all over the world. Even if it can't be eradicated, which may be unrealistic, then it needs to be given as little chance as possible to mutate, which will maximise our ability to suppress it going forward with a combination of regular inoculation and improved treatments.
We risk throwing everything away if we do manage to crush it in Britain and get the bulk of the population jabbed, only to let it back in a new and more dangerous form from some other part of the world where Covid remains rampant.
We should raise our defences and keep them up until it makes sense to lower them. It is better by far to chuck the affected segments of the economy on the bonfire than the whole thing and our society along with it. Nothing is more important than getting rid of lockdown, whether cyclical or continuous.
On a slightly different angle, it's unfortunate though natural that we've had a spout of vaccine nationalism, because as you say it's going to be important that the whole world gets vaccinated, and a lot of people are in a "You can't have anything from us" mood. The first countries to get really serious about exporting hundreds of millions of doses of whatever vaccione they have that works will get lasting affection from the recipients, and will deserve to. Supporting the UN effort is the right way to do it, but frankly if America or Russia or China or indeed Britain want to get brownie points from their mates by doing it directly, that's fine too - we could, for instance, make the Commonwealth much more meanignful if we set out to vaccinate every country that belonged to it.
Realistically I get that any government going to cover its own population first. But that should only be the start.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
Incidentally, I've been doing some phone polling. Quite a lot of perople have views that you don't often see here - they think the Government is doing a pretty good job on the pandemic AND they think Starmer is doing a good job as Labour leader AND none of that is affecting voting intentions either way - most people haven't actually given that any thought at all, and if pushed mostly say vaguely "I suppose I'd vote for X again like last time". Most don't see the pandemic as a political issue - either to reward or punish the government, which they generally feel is doing its best, much like any government would do.
I'm finding a few LibDems who are drifting to Labour because their perception is that the LibDems have gone very quiet - that's about the only movement from anyone to anyone.
In at least one important respect the WHO is right: this disease isn't beaten anywhere until it's beaten everywhere. It needs to be crushed into submission all over the world. Even if it can't be eradicated, which may be unrealistic, then it needs to be given as little chance as possible to mutate, which will maximise our ability to suppress it going forward with a combination of regular inoculation and improved treatments.
We risk throwing everything away if we do manage to crush it in Britain and get the bulk of the population jabbed, only to let it back in a new and more dangerous form from some other part of the world where Covid remains rampant.
We should raise our defences and keep them up until it makes sense to lower them. It is better by far to chuck the affected segments of the economy on the bonfire than the whole thing and our society along with it. Nothing is more important than getting rid of lockdown, whether cyclical or continuous.
On a slightly different angle, it's unfortunate though natural that we've had a spout of vaccine nationalism, because as you say it's going to be important that the whole world gets vaccinated, and a lot of people are in a "You can't have anything from us" mood. The first countries to get really serious about exporting hundreds of millions of doses of whatever vaccione they have that works will get lasting affection from the recipients, and will deserve to. Supporting the UN effort is the right way to do it, but frankly if America or Russia or China or indeed Britain want to get brownie points from their mates by doing it directly, that's fine too - we could, for instance, make the Commonwealth much more meanignful if we set out to vaccinate every country that belonged to it.
Realistically I get that any government going to cover its own population first. But that should only be the start.
I did suggest this the other day. Get the wealthy vaccinated countries of the Commonwealth including the UK to supply vaccine and help vaccinate the vaccine poor members. Show that the Commonwealth actually means something even today.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
Did Peston say that international travel should be stopped ?
He doesn’t really address it. His implication is that once the virus is in your country it will keep mutating to evade vaccines and avoid prior immunity. Which means we are pretty much fucked in terms of ‘returning to normal’. He also suggests a third wave is nearly inevitable when we unlockdown
Maybe he’s overdoing the gloom, I just don’t know. It’s worth reading the piece even if you disagree or dislike him
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
Did Peston say that international travel should be stopped ?
He doesn’t really address it. His implication is that once the virus is in your country it will keep mutating to evade vaccines and avoid prior immunity. Which means we are pretty much fucked in terms of ‘returning to normal’. He also suggests a third wave is nearly inevitable when we unlockdown
Maybe he’s overdoing the gloom, I just don’t know. It’s worth reading the piece even if you disagree or dislike him
Given the man doesn't even know how mirrors work, i will wait for comment from a real Professor on this...
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
Did Peston say that international travel should be stopped ?
He doesn’t really address it. His implication is that once the virus is in your country it will keep mutating to evade vaccines and avoid prior immunity. Which means we are pretty much fucked in terms of ‘returning to normal’. He also suggests a third wave is nearly inevitable when we unlockdown
Maybe he’s overdoing the gloom, I just don’t know. It’s worth reading the piece even if you disagree or dislike him
He is basically emphasising local lockdowns to control mutations even as we ease lockdown after vaccination (which would likely also require annual boosters)
'But it does mean we have to be utterly (possibly eternally) vigilant in identifying where the new strains are occurring, with comprehensive testing and gene sequencing, and then crushing the outbreaks through extreme local lockdowns.'
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
Incidentally, I've been doing some phone polling. Quite a lot of perople have views that you don't often see here - they think the Government is doing a pretty good job on the pandemic AND they think Starmer is doing a good job as Labour leader AND none of that is affecting voting intentions either way - most people haven't actually given that any thought at all, and if pushed mostly say vaguely "I suppose I'd vote for X again like last time". Most don't see the pandemic as a political issue - either to reward or punish the government, which they generally feel is doing its best, much like any government would do.
I'm finding a few LibDems who are drifting to Labour because their perception is that the LibDems have gone very quiet - that's about the only movement from anyone to anyone.
I expect Labour will make gains in May, the Tories had an 11% lead last time the county council elections were held in 2017 and Labour may also take the West Midlands Mayoralty and will comfortably hold the London Mayoralty and Assembly. They should hold on in Wales even with a swing against them and in Scotland they could retake second from the SCons
‘Health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize says that South Africa and other African countries should prepare for the impact of a possible third wave of Covid-19 infections.
In a media briefing on Thursday (4 February), Mkhize said that there is a possibility that the third wave could be even more damaging than the previous two waves which have hit the country.’
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
Did Peston say that international travel should be stopped ?
He doesn’t really address it. His implication is that once the virus is in your country it will keep mutating to evade vaccines and avoid prior immunity. Which means we are pretty much fucked in terms of ‘returning to normal’. He also suggests a third wave is nearly inevitable when we unlockdown
Maybe he’s overdoing the gloom, I just don’t know. It’s worth reading the piece even if you disagree or dislike him
He doesn't address it because he doesn't want to contemplate it.
He would rather have lockdowns.
As to mutating, the less there is the less the chance of mutations.
And we've already reduced the amount of virus in the country by two thirds in under a month.
People seem to be also overlooking the significant confidence in the low cost sprays that offer high levels of protection and also similar approaches for treatment, both of which could be widely available in a few months.
They don't work by targeting the spike protein, so the current mutations won't make any difference if they work or not.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
Did Peston say that international travel should be stopped ?
He doesn’t really address it. His implication is that once the virus is in your country it will keep mutating to evade vaccines and avoid prior immunity. Which means we are pretty much fucked in terms of ‘returning to normal’. He also suggests a third wave is nearly inevitable when we unlockdown
Maybe he’s overdoing the gloom, I just don’t know. It’s worth reading the piece even if you disagree or dislike him
He doesn't address it because he doesn't want to contemplate it.
He would rather have lockdowns.
As to mutating, the less there is the less the chance of mutations.
And we've already reduced the amount of virus in the country by two thirds in under a month.
One thing going unnoticed, which he does mention - and is worrying - is how our own cockney covid has recently evolved, yet again, in the same way as the Safferbug. Convergent evolution.
Which means bad news. AZ will be much less effective against UK covid even if we can isolate and squash SA Covid. And people who thought they had immunity from prior infection possibly haven’t.
Lockdown is going to go on, and on, and on.
I would love to believe the optimism of Smithson Junior but right this minute I can’t. I fear this hideous plague will shadow us for many more months, if not years.
People seem to be also overlooking the significant confidence in the low cost sprays that offer high levels of protection and also similar approaches for treatment, both of which could be widely available in a few months.
They don't work by targeting the spike protein, so the current mutations won't make any difference if they work or not.
You mean, the, er, bleach-like stuff?
(Nitric Oxide)
Not sure you could use that all the time. Would it work in someone with established disease?
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
One thing we REALLY need to know is whether having old fashioned Covid provides immunity against Saffer Covid. If it doesn’t, that’s a bit scary. I cannot find conclusive evidence either way. Probably we just don’t know
It is part of science and statistics to be uncertain of things, and to encounter unexpected reality from time to time. The broad outlines of the COVID-19 pandemic are that it will eventually peak and fizzle out, assisted by vaccines, with or without mutations. However, predicting every detail of what will happen is impossible.
Epidemics are natural dynamic phenomena, with chaotic, stochastic, and cyclic aspects. COVID-19 will move on and a new pathogen will take its place in time. It is all part of the ecology of life on Earth. We can choose to fight it or to just go with the flow, but we are still subject to the same laws of nature that apply to every other species.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
Did Peston say that international travel should be stopped ?
He doesn’t really address it. His implication is that once the virus is in your country it will keep mutating to evade vaccines and avoid prior immunity. Which means we are pretty much fucked in terms of ‘returning to normal’. He also suggests a third wave is nearly inevitable when we unlockdown
Maybe he’s overdoing the gloom, I just don’t know. It’s worth reading the piece even if you disagree or dislike him
He doesn't address it because he doesn't want to contemplate it.
He would rather have lockdowns.
As to mutating, the less there is the less the chance of mutations.
And we've already reduced the amount of virus in the country by two thirds in under a month.
One thing going unnoticed, which he does mention - and is worrying - is how our own cockney covid has recently evolved, yet again, in the same way as the Safferbug. Convergent evolution.
Which means bad news. AZ will be much less effective against UK covid even if we can isolate and squash SA Covid. And people who thought they had immunity from prior infection possibly haven’t.
Lockdown is going to go on, and on, and on.
I would love to believe the optimism of Smithson Junior but right this minute I can’t. I fear this hideous plague will shadow us for many more months, if not years.
Lockdown is going to go only until new cases and hospitalizations drop below a certain level.
That UK covid has been dying out every day for the last month.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
Robert Peston doesn’t agree with you. Don’t know if that should worry you, or not. He is way more pessimistic, he sounds like Black Rook - he expects constant mutations and a never ending series of lockdowns, local or national. For many years to come. Cheering.
(2) Can mRNA formulations be rapidly altered to deal with mutations?
Yes
(3) Does manufacturing capacity exist to rapidly get these made?
Sort of - it's increasing massively by the day
(4) Can we get shots into people's arms?
Again, it's an "improving".
I think Pesto is suffering from recency bias. There have been lockdowns. They have gone on longer than people expected.
But it is naïve to think that vaccine efficacy goes to zero given mutations. Just as people who'd had cold coronaviruses had better outcomes when they got CV19, people who've had even the least effective vaccine will still be less affected by the SA (or other) mutations.
And then there's the big thing: mRNA vaccines are a gamechanger on a "once in a generation" scale. People will look back in 100 years time and say that they were an inflection point bigger, much bigger, than the Internet.
They allow viral diseases to be specifically targeted. Remember, BioNTech designed their vaccine in one day, a year ago. The delay between that design and now was (a) a requirement to test it, and (b) the necessity of building the specialist equipment needed to manufacture the mRNA vaccines.
The knowledge that these vaccines are safe isn't going away, nor is the equipment used to make them.
And I haven't even gotten to the good part yet. We'll be able to use mRNA vaccines to target cancer. We'll sample that lump, and then we'll produce the mRNA needed to tell your immune system to get that cancer.
I can't emphasise enough: mRNA is the big news, CV19 is - pfffff - nothing.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
Look, we'll see, but don't forget that if threw out all of our AZ, just binned it, we'd have enough mRNA based vaccines to get everyone done by the end of the Summer (and maybe earlier). And that mRNA vaccine manufacturing capacity, it doesn't go away. That's a resource we now have.
One thing we REALLY need to know is whether having old fashioned Covid provides immunity against Saffer Covid. If it doesn’t, that’s a bit scary. I cannot find conclusive evidence either way. Probably we just don’t know
It is part of science and statistics to be uncertain of things, and to encounter unexpected reality from time to time. The broad outlines of the COVID-19 pandemic are that it will eventually peak and fizzle out, assisted by vaccines, with or without mutations. However, predicting every detail of what will happen is impossible.
Epidemics are natural dynamic phenomena, with chaotic, stochastic, and cyclic aspects. COVID-19 will move on and a new pathogen will take its place in time. It is all part of the ecology of life on Earth. We can choose to fight it or to just go with the flow, but we are still subject to the same laws of nature that apply to every other species.
The Black Death went on for 18 months, and then returned, intermittently (tho never anywhere as bad)
Spanish flu was also about 18 months?
They do tend to fizzle out. If we follow the same 18 month pattern we should be largely free of it by the end of summer, perhaps after one more wave, or it will be sooner and easier because vaccines. That’s the optimistic take.
Here in New York State, Governor Cuomo has announced eligibility for vaccination will be extended next week to all adults with co-morbidities, including diabetes types 1 and 2 and obesity (BMI > 30). This will extend eligibility to a big chunk of the state’s population.
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is facing a backlash after one of his most senior frontbenchers described the Covid pandemic as a 'gift that keeps on giving' for lawyers.
But we also need to be ready to start opening them once we get a serious portion of the population vaccinated. Because vaccination is not just about making CV19 a little less unpleasant, it's about making it harder to spread. And all the evidence in the last week - from Pfizer and from AZN - is that vaccinated people are far less likely to spread the disease, irrespective of the variant.
Once we have 70-80% of the population vaccinated (and yes, we'll need to do top-ups with vaccines that cover new variants), then it's really going to be really hard for CV19 to spread. Plus, of course, the fewer people (globally) that have severe CV19, the fewer mutations there will be.
I don't think I agree here. If the AZ vaccine is comparatively ineffective against say the SA variant then it makes little difference how many people we've jabbed with the AZ vaccine - if we go back to normal life with it present, it will rip through the population and before we know it we'll be back in lockdown, and fairly close to square one again.
I think that the solution to unlocking borders will be for counties to lock down their borders hard until they have things under control via vaccination - and then to only open up travel to countries in similar positions. So once the EU gets it's act together, maybe in 9 months time we could look at reopening the EU-UK borders. Maybe the same with the US.
Obviously booster vaccines will have their place, but I don't think we can afford to be as complacent as to assume we'll be able to keep pace with variants whilst having the borders open to anywhere where the disease is out of control.
That’s if the EU also closes its borders. You can still fly direct from Amsterdam to Cape Town.
Basically, global travel has to cease entirely, with strict quarantining for the very few allowed to move, if this policy is to work. I don’t see any other way. I also wonder if the Safferbug is here in numbers in Britain already and all this is pointless.
And then I look at the crash in cases in SA and I think, WTF is going on. Covid is such a mystery, still.
The biggest risk is importing some new vaccine-resistant mutation, sending us back to square one.
As far as I can see, the U.K. plan needs to be to get to the ‘Australia’ position by the summer - cases back to almost nothing thanks to vaccines and current restrictions, and everything re-opened except the borders.
Let’s make the summer one big local party, with the one proviso that everyone needs to holiday in the UK or pay the price of quarantine. There’s so many lovely places in the UK, so many small businesses that desparately need the tourist revenue, and a government that needs every penny in VAT and income tax receipts that it can get its hands on!
After the summer, once the schools and universities are back and life is back to something approaching normal, *then* we can think about opening travel corridors to similarly vaccinated and covid-free nations - but with the understanding that they can be withdrawn and mandatory quarantines re-imposed, at any time and with no notice. There also needs to be a plan to deal with lorries and lorry drivers, if they become an issue.
Comments
But let's watch Israel shall we, as they'll be fully vaccinated in two months.
Let's look at the big picture here. The reality is that we - in a day - built a vaccine using new technology that was 95% effective.
That is the most incredibly thing. It's genuinely (and positively) world altering.
Any mutation that comes along, we can do it again. Because these mutations are, by their nature small.
We now know mRNA vaccines are safe. We now know how to make them.
Shall we have a bet? I bet you £10 that Israel will be able to return to normality from the beginning of May (at the latest) and won't endure another lockdown or other serious CV19 related restrictions in 2021 (that being a pretty good measure of normality).
It's basically gloom from people who were wrong before, and are wrong again.
We are not at all safe from more new forms of Covid, and the havoc wrought by sealing ourselves off will always be preferable to lockdown, because the effects of the latter are so widespread and devastating.
Again, it's all well and good having the ability to tweak the vaccines if you're doing that as part of an annual jab campaign as with seasonal flu, but it's a very different matter if you're having to constantly firefight new forms of the disease with restrictions whilst you rush to keep giving tens of millions of people booster shots over and over again, because they are hitting us and ripping through the country faster than we can cope with.
Husband has the New Zealand cricket on the telly right now. This is a fantasy land with no bloody masks, or social distancing, or restrictions of any kind, EXCEPT that they've locked the rest of the world out. I used to consider that impractical because of the road haulage going to and from the continent, but frankly we'll have to learn to manage without it, even if it causes a lot of business failures and shortages of some goods. Once again, the disruption that this would cause will be serious, but it's still preferable to lockdown. Almost anything is.
That’s if the EU also closes its borders. You can still fly direct from Amsterdam to Cape Town.
Basically, global travel has to cease entirely, with strict quarantining for the very few allowed to move, if this policy is to work. I don’t see any other way. I also wonder if the Safferbug is here in numbers in Britain already and all this is pointless.
And then I look at the crash in cases in SA and I think, WTF is going on. Covid is such a mystery, still.
https://www.itv.com/news/2021-02-02/why-it-really-matters-that-the-uk-covid-19-strain-has-already-mutated-to-resemble-the-brazil-and-sa-strains
Realistically I get that any government going to cover its own population first. But that should only be the start.
https://twitter.com/BNODesk/status/1358192437106245633
I'm finding a few LibDems who are drifting to Labour because their perception is that the LibDems have gone very quiet - that's about the only movement from anyone to anyone.
Maybe he’s overdoing the gloom, I just don’t know. It’s worth reading the piece even if you disagree or dislike him
'But it does mean we have to be utterly (possibly eternally) vigilant in identifying where the new strains are occurring, with comprehensive testing and gene sequencing, and then crushing the outbreaks through extreme local lockdowns.'
https://businesstech.co.za/news/trending/465684/south-africa-must-prepare-for-a-possible-third-covid-19-wave-mkhize/
‘Health minister Dr Zweli Mkhize says that South Africa and other African countries should prepare for the impact of a possible third wave of Covid-19 infections.
In a media briefing on Thursday (4 February), Mkhize said that there is a possibility that the third wave could be even more damaging than the previous two waves which have hit the country.’
He would rather have lockdowns.
As to mutating, the less there is the less the chance of mutations.
And we've already reduced the amount of virus in the country by two thirds in under a month.
They don't work by targeting the spike protein, so the current mutations won't make any difference if they work or not.
Which means bad news. AZ will be much less effective against UK covid even if we can isolate and squash SA Covid. And people who thought they had immunity from prior infection possibly haven’t.
Lockdown is going to go on, and on, and on.
I would love to believe the optimism of Smithson Junior but right this minute I can’t. I fear this hideous plague will shadow us for many more months, if not years.
(Nitric Oxide)
Not sure you could use that all the time. Would it work in someone with established disease?
https://twitter.com/cityam/status/1358210672572702721?s=21
lol. Covid is bipolar. And it cycles in mood every 5 minutes
Epidemics are natural dynamic phenomena, with chaotic, stochastic, and cyclic aspects. COVID-19 will move on and a new pathogen will take its place in time. It is all part of the ecology of life on Earth. We can choose to fight it or to just go with the flow, but we are still subject to the same laws of nature that apply to every other species.
That UK covid has been dying out every day for the last month.
Yes
(2) Can mRNA formulations be rapidly altered to deal with mutations?
Yes
(3) Does manufacturing capacity exist to rapidly get these made?
Sort of - it's increasing massively by the day
(4) Can we get shots into people's arms?
Again, it's an "improving".
I think Pesto is suffering from recency bias. There have been lockdowns. They have gone on longer than people expected.
But it is naïve to think that vaccine efficacy goes to zero given mutations. Just as people who'd had cold coronaviruses had better outcomes when they got CV19, people who've had even the least effective vaccine will still be less affected by the SA (or other) mutations.
And then there's the big thing: mRNA vaccines are a gamechanger on a "once in a generation" scale. People will look back in 100 years time and say that they were an inflection point bigger, much bigger, than the Internet.
They allow viral diseases to be specifically targeted. Remember, BioNTech designed their vaccine in one day, a year ago. The delay between that design and now was (a) a requirement to test it, and (b) the necessity of building the specialist equipment needed to manufacture the mRNA vaccines.
The knowledge that these vaccines are safe isn't going away, nor is the equipment used to make them.
And I haven't even gotten to the good part yet. We'll be able to use mRNA vaccines to target cancer. We'll sample that lump, and then we'll produce the mRNA needed to tell your immune system to get that cancer.
I can't emphasise enough: mRNA is the big news, CV19 is - pfffff - nothing.
The Black Death went on for 18 months, and then returned, intermittently (tho never anywhere as bad)
Spanish flu was also about 18 months?
They do tend to fizzle out. If we follow the same 18 month pattern we should be largely free of it by the end of summer, perhaps after one more wave, or it will be sooner and easier because vaccines. That’s the optimistic take.
Fuck knows.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9232085/Covid-gift-keeps-giving-says-ally-Sir-Keir-Starmer.html
Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer is facing a backlash after one of his most senior frontbenchers described the Covid pandemic as a 'gift that keeps on giving' for lawyers.
England 3.1
Draw 1.5
https://www.betfair.com/exchange/plus/cricket/market/1.178000173
Glad it's not just me thinking it.
19/1
As we were saying....
Was some catch from Anderson though as you say, diving to his left.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2021/feb/06/fury-at-gove-as-exports-to-eu-slashed-by-68-since-brexit
As far as I can see, the U.K. plan needs to be to get to the ‘Australia’ position by the summer - cases back to almost nothing thanks to vaccines and current restrictions, and everything re-opened except the borders.
Let’s make the summer one big local party, with the one proviso that everyone needs to holiday in the UK or pay the price of quarantine. There’s so many lovely places in the UK, so many small businesses that desparately need the tourist revenue, and a government that needs every penny in VAT and income tax receipts that it can get its hands on!
After the summer, once the schools and universities are back and life is back to something approaching normal, *then* we can think about opening travel corridors to similarly vaccinated and covid-free nations - but with the understanding that they can be withdrawn and mandatory quarantines re-imposed, at any time and with no notice. There also needs to be a plan to deal with lorries and lorry drivers, if they become an issue.