Yeah I’m also a hypocrite really. Given my stance on this board about the necessity for international travel, I organised for my wife to travel to see her parents in France this week.
She hadn’t seen them since September when they came to the UK for a couple of days, and given we were in Australia for a year it’s practically 2 days of seeing them in a 24 month period. It’s been difficult for her, and it got to the point where I needed to make it happen.
She’s been double AZ jabbed for a few weeks and we weren’t sure whether EU were going to lock out Brits completely so we decided now. She’s staying solely at her parents place so in effect quarantining even though she doesn’t need to. Obviously the whole exercise is very expensive given ferry tickets with bumped up prices and needing 3 private tests done (France accepts the free gov tests) . But I can tell just when speaking to her how much she needed this.
Things might even get worse than previously suggested by bozo! According to the beeb this morning:
We’ve heard this morning that Health Secretary Sajid Javid will make an announcement in the Commons at about 12:30 BST on self-isolation rule changes for those who are fully vaccinated in England. Here is what we know so far.
Javid says it “makes sense” for people who have been fully vaccinated to be treated differently from those who are not
He also says daily cases “could go as high as 100,000” when restrictions are fully lifted
It simply beggars belief that the government should even contemplate lifting the restrictions.
Precisely. It might sound controversial but to me, if they are very confident that because of the vaccination status and even with more infections, but that people are less likely to die or get seriously sick, then maybe they should slowly phase out these daily numbers. Telling people that 100K people can get infected after reopening…what do they expect people to feel? Stopping the daily reporting is not about hiding information but instead focusing resources on the next phase which is to manage those who are seriously sick instead. Its really strange that they expect people to go about their normal lives and feed them with increasing negative news. It contradicts what they are trying to achieve and makes you wonder they understand what they are trying to achieve at each phase of their policies.
I don’t really think it’s that important how high cases go, if we’re going to live with covid we’ll have to accept more people will catch it. The important point is what the level of hospitalisations is and, correspondingly, deaths.
I have been really struggling with this over the last 2 weeks. How the scientists are doing these predictions over the next couple of months. Maybe its my simplistic mind but we are about to explore the COVID unknown of living with the handbrake (lockdowns) off. Without a handbrake, the virus will literally continue replicating human to human until it runs out of hosts to infect.
It seems around 75% of the population in each 5 year age cohort are getting double-vaxxed going by my calcs from NHS England and England ONS population data:
Age 0 to 24
Age 25 to 29
Age 30 to 34
Age 35 to 39
Age 40 to 44
Age 45 to 49
Age 50 to 54
Age 55 to 59
Age 60 to 64
Age 65 to 69
Age 70 to 74
Age 75 to 79
Age 80 +
Total Pop
16,802,890
3,771,500
3,824,650
3,738,210
3,476,310
3,638,640
3,875,350
3,761,780
3,196,810
2,784,300
2,814,130
2,009,990
2,855,600
Total First Dose
2,811,968
2,398,301
2,821,784
2,965,902
3,013,677
3,182,359
3,589,800
3,581,386
3,106,060
2,666,443
2,723,925
2,003,492
2,768,110
First Dose %
16.74%
63.59%
73.78%
79.34%
86.69%
87.46%
92.63%
95.20%
97.16%
95.77%
96.79%
99.68%
96.94%
Total Second Dose
866,027
841,103
1,087,099
1,307,620
1,915,701
2,465,448
3,393,463
3,435,415
3,013,605
2,607,589
2,675,157
1,960,922
2,658,688
Second Dose %
4.37%
18.96%
23.73%
29.49%
45.72%
58.95%
73.71%
75.05%
75.82%
76.81%
78.95%
77.59%
77.35%
Around 75-78% of those in the higher cohorts are going back to have their second jabs. Although the rate for first doses is good in these age groups (mid 90’s), we know the effectiveness of the vaccine is nowhere near as great from a single dose against the Delta variant.
Add those from the higher age groups that are not double vaxxed to the tens of millions of under 40 adults and children we are still talking about tens of millions of hosts here. Without a lockdown handbrake the only way to slow the virus down is vaccinations and that initially will act more like a drag race parachute rather than a handbrake, so it will take a long time to influence the cases graph. We wont be looking at a Cerro Torre style graph like in the first two waves but a sharply increasing graph which slows down but still increases. This third wave in cases is going to be huge and long (multiple months and 100,000 is under-selling it IMO) but we should all hope that hospitalisations remain manageable for NHS’s sake throughout that period.
Mester wilkored08 bought a box of face masks at the beginning of April 20…he’s still got some left, so he’s wearing 'em til he’s used 'em all…so in 2025, man sat in seats at Anfield, with mask, will be u know who???
We’ve been vaccinated twice( no probs whatsoever except headaches)…but our first one is the AZ41200…are we still covered as some countries don’t recognise this vaccine…or do we need another…wouldn’t bother me.
There are other downsides to infections than deaths. There is the impact of sick days on the economy, but the biggest thing to me is that surely the virus has less chance to mutate into a more virulent form if we’re keeping infections down. Wouldn’t more infections mean more chance of a new strain emerging?
That is precisely my concern. The greater the number of infections, the greater the chance of mutations and consequently the greater the probability of a vaccine resistant strain, or strains of the virus emerging.
And should any of these strains be more virulent than the current strains, then all bets are off and we are back where we started.
I wouldn’t say semi-lockdown. I’d be in favour of reducing some restrictions, but I still be advocating some social distancing and masks indoors. That just feels sensible.
The current R rate is 1.1 - 1.3. The rate of infection is increasing between 3-5% per day.
So my answer to when we can abandon all restriction would be when the R rate is at about 0.5, or at the very least below the 1 threshold.
Fully opening up now is simply asking for a resurgent virus by winter.
Just uphold reasonable barriers is how I see it. Masks, some sort of crowding limit … etc
Travel restrictions that have never been properly upheld anyway would be nice. When your looking at the scenario proposed that should be a minimum until the monitoring of the vaccinations indicates more security with greater clarity.
I’m not advocating perpetual lock-down. That is just a (your) straw man argument.
I’m suggesting that now (or two weeks time) isn’t the moment to remove all restrictions given that the PM stated that new infections could rise to 50k per day, only to be outdone by the Secretary of State for Health & Social Care indicating that new infections could rise to 100,000 per day.
I would suggest waiting until at least 80% of the UK population has had a second vaccination and that the scientific evidence demonstrates that the level of immunity in the community is sufficient to ensure the rate of new infections will plateau or fall despite restrictions being removed.
So not just adults then? Children would need to be double vaxed as well? From what age?
I don’t think the number of infections is a useful yardstick. It ought to be about what are reasonable/acceptable numbers of hospitalisations and deaths.
