Just to demonstrate how far away from the clusterfuck of Winter we are though is to look at current COVID bed occupancy across the UK. Currently we are at 1,600 occupied beds increasing 60 a day in hospitals. At the peak of the second wave the UK hit 34,000 occupied beds (18th Jan). Its worth putting into perspective just how much better a position the vaccination rollout has put us in, but its also worth being cautious and not getting ahead of ourselves, because things can change quickly.
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Is further mutation a risk with the high case numbers and increased relaxation of rules (along with the natural ignoring of them)?
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Yes however vaccination is a strong mitigating factor (at least should be).
The bigger danger is still from outside, India, Brazil etc (assuming you mean domestic rules rather than entry and exit rules which don’t seem to be of any use anyway).
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Knowing very little about this stuff it seems logical to me that if you give a virus a free run at a population that has been partially vaccinated then the next step for that virus is to become resistant to the vaccine.
I think I heard something along those lines from some virologists etc. as well.
I think its really difficult to gauge the exposure to the virus that vaccinated people are receiving. Not just the vaccine break-through cases. We know the majority of cases right now are young adults. But if the virus is around the vaccinated enough it can find a way to penetrate the defences.
Terrible analogy maybe but show a locked vault full of gold bullion to one person and they almost certainly wont find a way in. Show it to 1,000,000 and there is likely someone smart enough to break in. And that person can then share their secret to break into every other vault.
I don’t know if its how the scientists see it but I really don’t like the idea of allowing so much community transmission to be taking place while rolling out the vaccine. I would have much rather been in the position where there was low cases and high vaccine rollout as i think every case adds additional risk of a vaccine-breaking variant.
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Thanks, similar thoughts to me uneducated thinking on the matter. Far better to have a low case load while people are getting vaccinated. But I suppose Boris wanted to shout from the roof tops the amazing benefits of a trade deal with India.
Worth noting that the UK is on a parallel footing with Israel with regard to vaccination (percentage wise). Israel has just re- introduced mask wearing indoors. UK looking to remove that necessity.
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I’m going to try and stay on subjet, I have a big problem with this use of resistant and how it’s thrown around. I do understand what is being implied however the meaning has been so perverted.
The thing is is that a non dominant variant that is not ‘covered’ by the vaccine can hold a small pocket. The vaccination then suppresses the dominant strains leaving the path clear for the non dominant variant which then has greater capacity to mutate (keeping the vaccine ‘resistant’ aspect). This creates a cycle.
As we have no natural immunity to this virus the whole world is it’s pool until we are vaccinated. Reducing the size of that pool is the answer so vaccination however the vaccinations are going to have to follow the virus (we could end up having 2, 3 or 4 vaccination campaigns) all depends what mutations are out there and how those variants mutate themselves. The vaccines we have seem to be very good in the sense they have reasonable to good efficacity against most known variants.
This is the main reason why my major concern over all this is international travel.
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The vaccines will act on pretty much all covid19 variants, even ones that have not yet been identified, providing any mutation isn’t really significant. So far there have been many hundreds of mutations and the approved vaccines are acting against all of them.
The Guardian article draws attention to the very real problem that with an increase in the number of infections (which will be the natural consequence of lifting all restrictions), comes the increased probability of more virulent variants of the virus developing.
And who can say if any of these variants might not be more vaccine resistant, and as a consequence will lead to an increase in hospitalisations and deaths.
I believe that the government policy, of lifting mandatory restrictions in favour of making them (e.g. wearing face masks) a matter of personal choice, is simply a means of passing the buck if/when it all goes pear shaped.
Obviously, it won’t be their fault, it will be ours because we didn’t act responsibly.
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I’m now double-Moderna’d.
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Wonder when someone will do a nice graphic comparing vaccination rates/hesitancy in German regions and corresponding AfD votes. I’m seeing yet another pattern there.
That’s well established I think, like with the Trumpists. Mind you, I met an ‘Impfverweigerer’ recently who said he was just following his Shaman, so there’s the New Age crowd too 
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There’s a long link/history between certain type of esoteric new age types, anti-vaxxers and Nazism in Germany btw. I used to get weird looks when I mentioned that…since the pandemic not as much anymore.
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The UK government seems to have set its course
Mr Johnson said the ability to end a vast majority of legal restrictions in England was thanks to the success of the vaccine rollout in breaking the link between cases and deaths.
But he warned cases were predicted to rise to 50,000 a day later this month and that “we must reconcile ourselves, sadly, to more deaths from Covid”.
It comes to something when 50,000 new cases of Covid a day, and consequently more deaths, is viewed as a success.
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I find that line “breaking the link between cases and deaths” odd tbh. There’s obviously still going to be a link, just less deaths in comparison to before (vaccinations).
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I can understand why we might want to loosen some restrictions, but I can’t understand why we’d want to abandon the idea of wearing masks indoors and on transport. It seems willfully perverse. It’s an absolute nothing. It has a completely negligible impact on anyone’s ‘freedom’.
Saying that we will have more deaths at the same time as removing to requirement to wear a mask is effectively saying that individual cosmetic choices are more important than other people’s lives.
I’ll be continuing to wear a mask, not for my sake, but for other people.
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2nd Moderna so far no bother at all. Less achy arm than last time but otherwise all good. Hopefully I won’t have to revise this situation in the morning!