The coronabrexit thread. I mean, coronavirus thread

[Gone]

5 minutes ago, RoyMac5 said:

Lol! So there's a fair few at risk folk! ?

Just a few 

[Wolfie]

2 hours ago, TexasRam said:

 Light at the end of the tunnel irrespective of variants and media scaremongering. 

 

Have you guys had any of the newer variants? (UK-Kent / Brazil / South Africa / India)?

Just wondering.

[Gone]

23 minutes ago, Wolfie said:

Have you guys had any of the newer variants? (UK-Kent / Brazil / South Africa / India)?

Just wondering.

Just to be transparent I live in Bramcote ? I lived in Texas for a few years so still have friends there and follow the place on social. I’m not sure, I think they have but can’t be sure. The other point to make about that being lucky enough to work with people living in numerous countries, they don’t seem to bother about variants like we do. Maybe their media don’t spout it on about it like ours. 

[MrPlinkett]

23 minutes ago, TexasRam said:

Just to be transparent I live in Bramcote ? I lived in Texas for a few years so still have friends there and follow the place on social. I’m not sure, I think they have but can’t be sure. The other point to make about that being lucky enough to work with people living in numerous countries, they don’t seem to bother about variants like we do. Maybe their media don’t spout it on about it like ours. 

Its certainly hard work with the media,  just flicking through one well known tabloids website and met with such different headlines, one saying end to lockdown will be delayed, another saying it won't as the vaccine works. 

I guess a lot depends if you are a glass half full or empty type of person and you notice negative headlines more than positive. 

I don't mean you btw,  I mean you as in the population. 

Edited May 17, 2021 by MrPlinkett

[DarkFruitsRam7]

Genuine question, without agenda:

What's the reasoning for continuing restrictions once the vulnerable have been double vaccinated?

[angieram]

2 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

Genuine question, without agenda:

What's the reasoning for continuing restrictions once the vulnerable have been double vaccinated?

a) Because there are a percentage of vulnerable people who have chosen not to be vaccinated or are unaware how important it is;

b) Because there are a smaller but still significant number of immuno compromised people for whom the vaccine is not suitable or doesn't work properly.

The question should be how much we are collectively responsible as a society for the wellbeing of these people? 

Firstly I say sod the ones who choose not to have it, let them take their chances.

Secondly we must continue to raise awareness in communities with lower take up.

But the others I think we will have to keep on protecting as much as possible. That may be a joint effort between us and them. And that's also why you young people should have your jabs when you can, please, help with the latter.

[Wolfie]

7 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

Genuine question, without agenda:

What's the reasoning for continuing restrictions once the vulnerable have been double vaccinated?

I don't think they will - after 21st June.

There's currently a load of coverage about the Indian variant but clearly we need to wait & just see what, if any, effect it has on hospitalisations, deaths and crucially, the vaccine effectiveness.

IMO it's perfectly reasonable to try to manage expectations now & wait until they have more data. That's the whole point of having 5 weeks between phases of re-opening - the latest of which was only yesterday.

I expect they'll still say we can open up in June & maybe just have a few restrictions like masks on public transport

[RoyMac5]

21 minutes ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

Genuine question, without agenda:

What's the reasoning for continuing restrictions once the vulnerable have been double vaccinated?

The Govt. are choosing to be ultra cautious, at least until enough economic or public pressure is brought to bear against them, imo.

Indian variant: Why is UK taking a risk with the variant? - BBC News

"...At the Sage meeting they were presented with a paper by the government's modelling committee, that made alarming reading.

There was, the document said, a "realistic possibility" that the Indian variant was 50% more transmissible than the UK variant which had been responsible for the deadly winter wave...

Dig beneath the headlines and a more complex picture emerges than the 50% figure which grabbed headlines. The term "realistic possibility" is actually a defined phrase, one of several on a sliding scale used by these committees.

It means there is basically a 50:50 chance the modellers are right about the variant being as much as 50% more infectious.

Along with the modelling presented on Thursday, several other pieces of evidence were looked at. Public Health England (PHE) had been gathering data on what had been happening on the ground as part of the test-and-trace programme. It cast doubt on the 50% figure.

A number of things did not add up to its analysts.

Some of the data on "secondary attack rates" - the chances of an infected individual passing the virus on to someone - suggested the variant may be much less infectious than feared.

And it did not seem to be behaving in the same way in every region. A significant cluster has been found in London, but that had not risen at the same speed as it had in Bolton.

The degree of extra transmissibility makes a big difference. A variant that is 20% more transmissible has a much smaller impact on hospital cases.

Indeed, some at the meeting believe these models are too pessimistic - believing the vaccination programme will stem the rise in infections or at least limit the cases of serious illness more than the modellers set out...

There have been plenty of experts questioning whether Monday's unlocking was worth the risk, including members of Independent Sage and the British Medical Association.

But it is worth noting that these are the same critics who warned against the full re-opening of schools in March, saying it would lead to a surge. They also said the January lockdown was not tough enough to bring cases of the UK variant down and objected to delaying the gap between vaccine doses to 12 weeks.

"We know if it goes wrong the critics will say 'we told you so'. But... those people criticising now have been wrong before," another of those involved in the meetings last week said."

[MrPlinkett]

1 hour ago, angieram said:

a) Because there are a percentage of vulnerable people who have chosen not to be vaccinated or are unaware how important it is;

b) Because there are a smaller but still significant number of immuno compromised people for whom the vaccine is not suitable or doesn't work properly.

The question should be how much we are collectively responsible as a society for the wellbeing of these people? 

Firstly I say sod the ones who choose not to have it, let them take their chances.

Secondly we must continue to raise awareness in communities with lower take up.

But the others I think we will have to keep on protecting as much as possible. That may be a joint effort between us and them. And that's also why you young people should have your jabs when you can, please, help with the latter.

Its a tough one and i sort of agree. Its frustrating to read that most of those hospitilised in Bolton are eligible for the vaccine but chose not to have it.

Of course we should never have a situation where we refuse treatment, but hopefully provided those people survive, and lets hope they do, they are given a stern talking to my the doctors and nurses at the hospital.

You are right on the immuno compromised too. I have had both mine but there is a good chance its not protected me aswell as others due to a health condition, so i need as many people to have the vaccine as possible which even if i have low protection will mean im better protected by default.

I am glad things are opening up though, ive even had to self isolate because have been at a pub the same time as someone who had the virus.

 

[CWC1983]

3 hours ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

Genuine question, without agenda:

What's the reasoning for continuing restrictions once the vulnerable have been double vaccinated?

There is a fear that if they let the virus carry on at high levels it might mutate and render the vaccinations useless. 

[Spanish]

4 hours ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

Genuine question, without agenda:

What's the reasoning for continuing restrictions once the vulnerable have been double vaccinated?

Nonsense really but I had read that there was a hotspot for the Indian virus variety in Blackburn where most those hospitalised  previously refused the vaccine apart from 4 hah had 1 jab but 1 had had 2

[Eddie]

14 minutes ago, Spanish said:

Nonsense really but I had read that there was a hotspot for the Indian virus variety in Blackburn where most those hospitalised  previously refused the vaccine apart from 4 hah had 1 jab but 1 had had 2

The one person who had had both doses was described as 'very elderly and frail' - for them presumably any infection would be more serious.

[Spanish]

2 minutes ago, Eddie said:

The one person who had had both doses was described as 'very elderly and frail' - for them presumably any infection would be more serious.

Thanks couldn’t find any further detail at the time but this was @DarkFruitsRam7comment, the vulnerable have all had double dose so why the restrictions

[RoyMac5]

28 minutes ago, Spanish said:

Thanks couldn’t find any further detail at the time but this was @DarkFruitsRam7comment, the vulnerable have all had double dose so why the restrictions

There was also the bit in the BBC article I quoted that said that the number of people returning infected from India may have skewed the figures for the 'hotspot transmittability rate' of the Indian variant.

Edited May 18, 2021 by RoyMac5

[Carl Sagan]

On 17/05/2021 at 15:35, RoyMac5 said:

Great news. Are they highly vaccinated?

 

On 17/05/2021 at 15:40, TexasRam said:

Not really at the time of opening up only 16% had been vaccinated with only 9% fully vaccinated. 

 

On 17/05/2021 at 16:06, RoyMac5 said:

Oh, that's interesting. Is there a theory?

 

On 17/05/2021 at 17:16, TexasRam said:

Just to be transparent I live in Bramcote ? I lived in Texas for a few years so still have friends there and follow the place on social. I’m not sure, I think they have but can’t be sure. The other point to make about that being lucky enough to work with people living in numerous countries, they don’t seem to bother about variants like we do. Maybe their media don’t spout it on about it like ours. 

Texas is a great test bed and I think just shows how little we actually know about the virus. In the UK there is a persistent narrative that "if only we'd locked down sooner lots of lives would have been saved" but there is no evidential basis for that. It's pure speculation. There's so little correlation between actions taken by different countries and death rates, and some evidence it's a lot to do with recent flu seasons and how many people died from those, meaning how many remaining people were vulnerable to a respiratory virus. We should always remember there's a marked straight-line graph between age and virus deaths. 

One of the things that appears to have been underestimated is T cell immunity to the virus built up by a lifetime's exposure to other coronaviruses (eg colds). So much effort has been put into looking at other antibody mechanisms, but not enough has considered this form of protection. A lot of early models suggested the entire population was vulnerable as this was considered a brand new disease, but that's demonstrably not been the case. Nor have they considered the clear seasonality of the virus. Whatever happens over the coming months, we will have very low cases because it's northern hemisphere summer. The big test will be as autumn ends and transitions into winter, as began last September/October. Because of the vaccination programme it's likely that things won't be too bad, but we can't know for sure because, as I said at the start, there is so much we still don't know.

Having said that, looking at the figures in Europe you might think the brilliant UK vaccination is the reason we're in such a good position, but Portugal and the UK have tracked identically in terms of declining numbers for months now, and Portugal has not had the same vaccination success as the UK - nowhere near. What is going on?

TR mentions the UK obsession with variants, which is partly because it just so happens we have excellent technology to measure these, which doesn't exist everywhere. And because we can measure it, it becomes a thing to talk about. But also, the differences in transmissability are interesting. There will always be a dominant strain of the virus at any one time, just as there are dominant flu strains each flu season. It would be useful as a way to spot if there were ever to be version that proved resistant to existing vaccines, but there's no reason to think that's something which will happen any time soon. If it ever does, we've shown we can swiftly redesign vaccines to counter it.

Because of all this, I just think we might as well follow the Texan example and open up as that reduces the deaths and myriad problems lockdown has caused. 

[Eddie]

The more people there are in close proximity indoors, the higher the transmission rate because the concentration of infected droplets is higher and stays around for longer. As we move into (what is laughably known as) summer and people spend more time outdoors, it is quite likely that we won't see any sort of sharp upturn in infection rates, and even more unlikely so see the sort of pressure the health service was placed under we witnessed in the two 'waves'. With something like 70% of the population now having had one or more jabs, the light at the end of the tunnel might not be another train.

Saying that, if there's a table outside the pub, I'll probably choose that as opposed to drinking in the bar, at least for a while.

[RoyMac5]

9 hours ago, Carl Sagan said:

One of the things that appears to have been underestimated is T cell immunity to the virus built up by a lifetime's exposure to other coronaviruses (eg colds). 

Because of all this, I just think we might as well follow the Texan example and open up as that reduces the deaths and myriad problems lockdown has caused. 

Interesting.

Yes, I think so too. There's so much mis-information in the (24 hours to fill) media lots by people not even vaguely qualified to talk about specific areas of the pandemic.

Edited May 19, 2021 by RoyMac5

[Bob The Badger]

16 hours ago, DarkFruitsRam7 said:

Genuine question, without agenda:

What's the reasoning for continuing restrictions once the vulnerable have been double vaccinated?

As @angieram said, there are people who cannot have the vaccine for medical reasons.

It would literally kill some people.

But also, what keeps getting missed/ignored is that the vaccines (like any other vaccine) are not 100% effective.

Bill Marr the US comedian and talk show host caught Covid after having both jabs and had to cancel his show last week.

He's a fit guy for his age and he didn't get sick, but some have.

And then you have the concern that with every mutation there is the risk that the vaccines will cease to work as effectively or even at all.

That's not been the case as of now (and maybe it won't ever) but as the virus continues to mutate they can't be sure.

That's the reasoning.

Whether it's the right thing to do is another matter however and I honestly don't know.

I'd rather leave the scientists to figure it out.

[DarkFruitsRam7]

22 minutes ago, Bob The Badger said:

It would literally kill some people.

I'd rather leave the scientists to figure it out.

I think those two sentences are key.

The scientists are by far the most qualified people to be tackling the virus, but you wonder whether they're factoring other things like the economy, mental health, jobs, etc, into their calculations? I'd hope so.

To take an extreme example, allowing people to do normal things like drive cars inevitably kills people because it leads to car crashes. But the view is taken that the benefits of cars massively outweigh those deaths (as brutal as that sounds), which means driving is allowed.

Those kinds of calculations will be made every day with government policy, hospital funding, etc. The fact that people's lives are reduced to numbers sounds horrific, but it's essential to making the right decisions.

I'd be interested to know if the scientists have assigned a value to things like the economy and mental health (both of also which cause deaths when going badly) and weighed that up against the deaths that reopening would inevitably cause. I presume they have.

Edited May 19, 2021 by DarkFruitsRam7

[Mucker1884]

On 17/05/2021 at 13:08, i-Ram said:

This Indian strain is a great concern. Why are Indians over here not getting the Punjab? Tragic case down here, where someone not only lost their naan, but caught the virus themselves whilst caring and is now in an induced korma. 

I'm sorry, but I have to say, that is very poor taste.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

...Try a madras next time.