The Corona Pandemic

What’s the fuss about?

If it is the same vaccine, just marketed in a different brand, why would they not recognize it in the first place, strange decision.

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Particularly as the SII lab producing the vaccine has been inspected and approved by the EMA.

Not recognizing the Astra Zeneca vaccine manufactured in India under the name “covishield”.

Seems like a lot of fuss for the formalities of a travel document that only affects travel within the EU.
Politics. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

Have you a link to this article?

UK government are insisting on 19.7 as the date of the lifting of restrictions.

What do people living in the UK think? Is this going to happen? I really need to know as I am planning to travel to the country at the end of July.

Here is some opinion from prominent UK scientists.

Here are the latest charts.

The infections show a nasty sharp upturn through June and into July, though deaths and hospitalisations are largely under control.

My opinion is that it’s fine to start some easing of restrictions, but I think it’s way too early to go completely free on 19th July. That feels reckless, but now the government has, yet again made a stupid promise that it shouldn’t have made, they will feel under pressure to stick to it this time.

I don’t see why masks are a big deal. They have become somewhat totemic amongst people as a symbol of ‘freedom’, but is it really that big a problem to wear a mask indoors? Really? I’m going to keep wearing a mask because I just can’t see a good reason not to. And I wear glasses, so it is a pain in the arse.

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i can not answer your questions however whatever governments decide I for one am going to continue wearing masks at least when entering enclosed spaces like shops etc. I think it will come down to choice and I don’t have a real problem with that unless ‘delta variant’ or other takes hold.
With the familly and close friends I think that masks impede the social interactions too much so once fully vacinated my guard will fall drastically here.
It really depends what you are going to be doing, no?

Some dickhead on the tech forum that I visit called mask “face diaper”. :roll_eyes:

They obviously talk shit.

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That really is a fantastic response! :+1:

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The gov are giving all the signals that they will go ahead with that easing. But if there’s one thing this government hold above all else (even above citizen’s lives) is public opinion.

If there’s even a chance that things going tits up again can be laid at their feet rather than the scientists, then they’ll look for some middle ground on this easing as well. There appears to be some scientists but not many concerned about the latest easing. So I think it will go ahead.

7 day average puts them on about 3x more than they where around 2nd June. That’s pretty significant if the trend continues imo. Ok it’s not putting the NHS under immense pressure however at the stage of the vaccination program I feel it’s a worry. After all it’s peoples lives.

Went to the Trafford Centre today. Mrs was in a shop for quite some time so I did a little counting outside. Approx 20% no masks and that’s not including the chin masks/no nose masks.

Was frucking jammed too.

UK is at about 20,000 new cases a day. Germany 500. So why should vaccinated visitors from Germany to the UK have to do a 10 day quarantine? It’s totally illogical. It makes sense on return of course.

Thanks for the responses though.

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Doing the calculations there was a 40% increase in cases and 30% increase in hospitalisations for the 7 days to 1st July. Last two weeks 1.2-1.3% of cases have resulted in hospitalisations. Fag packet calculation but if cases reach Dec-Jan levels of 60k/day which I’m certain we’ll fly past, then we’d be looking at 700-800 hospitalisations a day.

Cases may top out before hitting extreme levels, but will take a long time to tail off in a life without lockdowns, and the risk I see is of weeks and weeks of hospitalisation accumulations around the 1k hospitalisations a day. It would be interesting to know what the NHS will see as a ‘success’ for this third wave.

My biggest question is still what is the ceiling? I wonder when we add up the percentage of cases that escape the vaccine, the unvaccinated and those that are carrying antibodies what the actual ‘carrying capacity’ is in the UK population - ie. the total number of people that could be infected. ONS are extrapolating figures for UK pop that have antibodies aren’t they?

I have been posting here on how countries and government need to be cautious about re-opening too much too soon. But make no mistake, re-opening is the end game of everything that everyone is doing: vaccines, lockdowns etc. That is the end in mind, the vaccination rates, getting infections down, getting hospitalizations down, getting deaths down, all these should lead to reopening.

And the UK reopening would be looked upon with interest, with everyone hoping for success but yet in a way, looking at it like a guinea pig experiment. Unlike many other countries who had reopened, UK is in a good position to reopen in the sense that it has a very high vaccination rate. This means that it is on track to introduce herd immunity through inoculation rather than infections. So reopening is good news, no matter how you see it.

BUT. To me how you reopen is more important to me rather than when. Because the government need to in the process of reopening, not to behave like doing it with wild abandon but to reopen with plenty of mechanisms and segmented restrictions to ensure that the reopening can also be a way to learn and be easily reversed if things get worse. I am concerned when I see football fans being allowed into the stadium, even with social distancing, without differentiating vaccination status. I would be more assured for example if the government allows vaccinated people in without restrictions and for non-vaccinated persons to have a PCR test at their own cost 3 days before the match if they want to enter. This is just an example for me to show that the government is reopening with caution rather than making it like a FREEDOM DAY like some media make it out to be.

And on the Delta variant, what might be ignored in the spirit of reopening, is that in UK, it seems that most of the unvaccinated are the younger age groups, and it happens that the UK, the recent spikes happen mostly in the younger age groups, and it happens that the younger age groups are the ones most likely to go out, have fun, mixed around without restrictions etc. and It happens that the Delta variant are seeing more infections amongst younger people. And these seem to point to a perfect storm if the government is only focused on reopening without the necessary mechanisms to make it a controlled one.

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That’s more than I thought it was, and it is quite worrying.

Possibly because the 2nd June (6) happens to be as low as it’s been since last year. Take the 29th May (9) and the current (3 July most recent date on worldometer) 7 day average (17) is less than double.

This is despite the fact that the 7 day average case numbers (21 days prior) was more than 3 times higher (2,009 compared with 6,839).

As at 8 May 67.2% of all adults had received 1 jab, 33.5% of all adults two jabs.

By 12 June that was 78.9% and 56.6%.

As at 3 July it’s now 86% and 63.8%. I’ll be adding to the % of double-jabbed today.

We’re breaking the link between infections and deaths.