Unless I’m wrong here, the idea of the vaccine was that it would slow the spread and reduce the serious symptoms / deaths. It did little for the former but brilliantly at the latter.
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It has pretty clearly slowed the spread - the unvaccinated here have at least 6x the probability of contracting the disease. But quite right about the serious/ICU/deaths effect.
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Nervous?
Suddenly @Klopptimist is booking his booster… 
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You noted I was replying to the post about Canadian wildlife having it 
If they’d have been Welsh animals. @Noo_Noo would now be a little miffed at me
This is getting really weird, quirky stuff or what. 
How will it play in Bavaria, he wonders?
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I’d be wondering which English b****er had been round the sheep without a mask.
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It’s the reaction in Saxony and other former DDR states that is more of a concern.
It’s probably the right decision, but many will not see it that way.
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I do wonder how many of them will take the shot. Just seems globally about a third are recalcitrant. Here in the U.S. we have a major election every two years. The next one looks pretty dodgy for Democrats, so…
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Germany has taken a very different approach to the US right from the start. These approaches reflect cultural and political differences at a fundamental level between the countries. Only time will tell which one is correct.
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Again I am not sure where the idea of vaccine for prevention of transmission is from. The information that has been told to me again and again that vaccine is mainly for prevention of serious disease and not transmission even if there is a slight effect on that. To me diverting the focus wrongly on vaccine vs transmission is a strategy for those who don’t believe in the vaccine to say “there I told you”, almost like gloating. The 2 best ways to prevent transmission still at this moment is to continue with sanitation routines like hand washing and mask wearing but this is obviously too much for human freedom.
Different countries have different approaches.
The message in New Zealand is very much it’s not about protecting you, it’s about protecting your family and those around you.
It’s difficult to evaluate the effectiveness as the rules and virus keeps changing. But most studies show that the reduction is in the 40-60% range. That’s significant as your basically half as likely to infect someone.
It’s the basis for herd immunity. If enough people are unlikely to pass it on, virus spread will eventually be limited.
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The messaging may have been the prevention of severe disease and death initially, but it would be a pretty hard sell to get people in their teens, 20’s, 30’s, even 40’s if there wasn’t the side benefit of reducing your chance to pass it on.
What if the vaccines had very minimal ability to reduce transmission? Would countries be still rolling it out to younger adults? Maybe not. But then protection from severe disease and reduction is transmission naturally will go hand in hand anyway due to the way our immune system works.
As ISMF said, even a 50% reduction in transmission is a very significant benefit. Unfortunately those that want to speak ill of the vaccine will only accept 100% protection. You know, like they accept from every other medication in existence. 
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Don’t get me wrong, we have been told here that while vaccine have a certain efficacy against transmission, it is only useful if you enforce it with other measures like masks and sanitation routines. And the one single biggest benefit of vaccine that has been proven to a very large extent is its way higher level of protection against serious disease compared to its Level of protection against of transmission. So vaccines can never be promoted as a big benefit against transmission.
And I believe young people would eventually be asked to vaccinate just like our speed of vaccination was soed up because we saw a higher rate of transmission amongst young people and knowing that it’s impossible to keep young people at home indefinitely and we do not know how mutations of the virus can make sicknesses in young people worse, vaccine is the only way so far to ensure the Healthcare system don’t get overwhelmed.
Vaccines have shown a level of protection of transmission but from mutation to Delta it has shown that protection reduced significantly so it shouldn’t have been a main benefit of vaccines at least not at this stage.
But yes I am more exasperated by people who just use this higher transmission now to cast shades on the vaccine, with my own friends who are anti Vax telling, see what I told you, it’s almost like they are really happy to be validated, albeit only in their own twisted mind.
I’m coming across this increasingly. Sad really. Combine that with the UK’s U turn on mask wearing and there’s been some resistance.
Biggest issue apart from having Boris in charge is the mixed messaging. It’s incredibly incoherent, changes daily, and easily misconstrued to mean something else entirely. And then the cherry is that while there are rules and guidance in place our own PM seems to think they dont apply to him.
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No it’s not that he thinks that. He knows that. That’s why he’s never punished. Neither by those who are in charge of auditing him, nor by the public that give him a larger and larger majority.
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yep. I’m watching with interest now on whether the police will investigate the No. 10 parties last Christmas. It’s put the head of the Met Police in a rather awkward position.
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Where were the parties? I’ve got a feeling there are jurisdictional issues if they took part on the Parliamentary estate?
In No. 10 itself. There were 2 by current accounts
The legal side I couldn’t say
In that case I think that’s within the Met’s jurisdiction. It ought to be acknowledged that the Police have rarely taken action against anyone breaking lockdown rules, particularly historical breaches and particularly since they were accused of being heavy handed early on. I doubt anything will come of this, but that won’t be unusual even if it will be spun as establishment corruption and one rule for the government and another for everyone else.
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