When will this shit end?

[MrBarry465]

3 minutes ago, Rex2 said:

It states that there is hope for meeting a couple of friends outdoors in a park. There were less restrictions last summer without a vaccine. As previously stated. Pessimistic rubbish

Yes and look at what having less restrictions last summer then led to?

They will not take any gambles now that the vaccine is here, the government won't risk fucking this up. I will guarentee the move back to normality will be much slower this year. There is no chance festivals, nightclubs or any packed spaces will be up and running this year.

[duke88]

1 minute ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Although having fewer restrictions last summer did lead to loads and loads of death.

We were in single figures of deaths a day for some of the summer though. And that was with pubs etc open. Wasn’t it more a failure to tighten up quickly enough once we got to September that led to all the deaths?

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, MrBarry465 said:

Yes and look at what having less restrictions last summer then led to?

They will not take any gambles now that the vaccine is here, the government won't risk fucking this up. I will guarentee the move back to normality will be much slower this year. There is no chance festivals, nightclubs or any packed spaces will be up and running this year.

well, we just don't know where we'll be by the summer, maybe doomster scientists will be urging caution...but all those freedom loving tories will be saying bollocks to that, let's go outside, in the sunshine....

[stuartbert two hats]

1 minute ago, duke88 said:

We were in single figures of deaths a day for some of the summer though. And that was with pubs etc open. Wasn’t it more a failure to tighten up quickly enough once we got to September that led to all the deaths?

I pretty much agree, although the signs were there a couple of weeks earlier than September.  Hopefully this time they'll understand exponential growth and that it's preferable to restrict cases when they're lower, rather than to restrict them when people are already dying - and additional growth(and deaths) are already baked in.

[Rex2]

1 minute ago, MrBarry465 said:

Yes and look at what having less restrictions last summer then led to?

They will not take any gambles now that the vaccine is here, the government won't risk fucking this up. I will guarentee the move back to normality will be much slower this year. There is no chance festivals, nightclubs or any packed spaces will be up and running this year

But they've consistently fucked up throughout. Vaccines will massively reduce hospital admissions which is only more likely to make them push for normality. If you don't open this summer you won't next summer either as there won't be any difference. 

[steviewevie]

 

[MrBarry465]

1 minute ago, Rex2 said:

But they've consistently fucked up throughout. Vaccines will massively reduce hospital admissions which is only more likely to make them push for normality. If you don't open this summer you won't next summer either as there won't be any difference. 

Things will ease this year, but large scale events and packed nightclubs will not be on the agenda. 

[steviewevie]

3 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

I pretty much agree, although the signs were there a couple of weeks earlier than September.  Hopefully this time they'll understand exponential growth and that it's preferable to restrict cases when they're lower, rather than to restrict them when people are already dying - and additional growth(and deaths) are already baked in.

yeah, last summer was a massive wasted opportunity....there were plenty of warnings about a winter 2nd wave, but they weren't taken seriously enough.

[Rex2]

1 minute ago, MrBarry465 said:

Things will ease this year, but large scale events and packed nightclubs will not be on the agenda. 

I think there will be a push for 'some' larger scale events that will suit the tories. I can see some crowds at euros for example. We'll definitely be able to do more than meet a couple of friends in a park at the height of summer as suggested by the article though 

[steviewevie]

this been posted?

 

[MrBarry465]

Just now, Rex2 said:

I think there will be a push for 'some' larger scale events that will suit the tories. I can see some crowds at euros for example. We'll definitely be able to do more than meet a couple of friends in a park at the height of summer as suggested by the article though 

I agree you will be able to do more than that, but reading between the lines the government are likely to approach this with caution. If they can get the population vaccinated without any major fuck ups, they will see this as the path to reelection. That will likely keep a lot of the backbencers quite. 

[stuartbert two hats]

I know it's normally true to say "X won't completely fix things you know", but vaccines really are amazing. If we get hospitalisations down to summer 2020 levels and all adults have had their second dose, then maybe we're going to be ok. Why wouldn't we?

[Toilet Duck]

22 minutes ago, efcfanwirral said:

So @Toilet Duck I have a question about this paragraph (basically a summary of a quote above it in the article):

"So for the avoidance of doubt, by vaccinating the population, and with immunity being created in those who've had the virus, we are creating the very conditions that encourage the virus to mutate, to change, because if it doesn't change it dies. And almost as a matter of logic, these mutations will displace the Kent mutation when it is under control."

Well two questions really 

1) are we playing with natural evolution of the virus here? As in, could we actually make it worse by forcing it to keep changing? 

2) Could these specific mutations be down to the vaccine tests? It discusses "creating the very conditions...", but actually haven't we already done this with tens/hundreds of thousands of vaccines given in certain countries (coincidentally South Africa, Brazil and the UK)?

I'm concerned in our haste to "solve a problem" that we're perhaps in danger of making it worse...

So, we’re getting into the evolution of virulence here, which is fairly complex stuff! (As well as being difficult to predict)...However, this class has been running for nearly a year, so let’s go! 😁

There are opposing pressures that select for viruses that acquire different properties. Ease of finding a new host and what happens inside the host are two kind of contradictory pressures. On the one hand, the harder it is for a virus to find a new host, the better it needs to treat the one it has (or else it dies with the host). On the other hand, if finding new hosts is easy, then the immune systems of the host put a different pressure on the virus (and rapid spread allows changes to occur at a faster rate, so variants that evade immune destruction will start to emerge). So, on the surface it would seem that suppressing the spread of the virus by reducing contacts or vaccination has two opposing pressures, one that selects for a more benign virus, the other that selects for an immune evading one.

But, as with everything in biology, it’s not that simple. For example, we all have some underlying immunity to other coronavirus, but we still get infected with them (and as far as the virus is concerned, this state of affairs is just fine). There’s also documented examples where difficulty finding new hosts drives more virulence in an attempt to become super-infectious. Looking at the biology of CoVs and how well the vaccines are predicted to block transmission, there are other possible outcomes in terms of virulence. Generally the symptoms caused by an infectious agent reflect the way it spreads (airborne ones make you cough, water borne ones make you evacuate your insides top and bottom, insect borne ones make you listless and so on).  This virus spreads through talking and breathing, so there’s no need for it to evolve to cause more severe symptoms. The middle ground in terms of where we end up post-vaccinating everyone in addition to naturally acquired immunity is that the virus still spreads, our immune systems prevent more severe disease, but the virus remains successful as it can still find new hosts and continue to replicate. The virus will continue to mutate, but with suppression through herd immunity it will be slower than unmitigated spread (which is my main gripe with the quote provided, the virus only has to evade the immediate immune response to survive since asymptomatic spread is a feature of this virus, so it doesn’t die out if our immune systems kill it a bit later). Surveillance when pneumonia cases turn up in hospital (like we do for flu) will identify if variants are getting a foothold in an “immune” population and would allow for updated vaccines to be used. But I don’t think we are going to select for a super-SARS-CoV2 by vaccinating everyone. Of course, nobody knows for sure either way! 

For the second question, rapid spreading and vast amounts of replication is a much bigger driver of change than anything else really, so failing to control the virus rather than trialling vaccines is what has caused the emergence of new variants (way more people got infected naturally than were on any of the trials). The coincidence is that you pick places where the virus is out of control to run the trials as they will be completed faster. 

[Zoo Music Girl]

3 hours ago, PM87 said:

 

It's funny because on my first shift, a man turned down the vaccine because it was the Pfizer and he wanted the 'British vaccine.'  

It's literally the luck of the draw at the centre I'm based. I've worked 5 shifts now and it's been a mixture, 3 days were the Pfizer and 2 days were Ox. I think that's part of the reason why NHS trusts are differing in how they deal with giving 2nd appointment dates. My centre is allocating everyone a date on their vaccine card but it says that it's tentative, presumably because they don't know which vaccine they will have on a particular date and may have to move appointments around to ensure people are given the same vaccine as their first. 

Have you been given a start date to volunteer yet? I've really enjoyed it so far and have been impressed with what I've seen. Though wrap up warm in case you're based outside 🙂

Thanks for all the info, really helpful! I've signed up via St John Ambulance and have nearly completed the online training (there was loads!) and have my face-to-face training scheduled weekend after this one. So hopefully after that! I'm hoping to do a few a month.

[MrBarry465]

10 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

I know it's normally true to say "X won't completely fix things you know", but vaccines really are amazing. If we get hospitalisations down to summer 2020 levels and all adults have had their second dose, then maybe we're going to be ok. Why wouldn't we?

I think that will happen, I just don't think that will happen until Septmber/October.

[tigger123]

41 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

I know it's normally true to say "X won't completely fix things you know", but vaccines really are amazing. If we get hospitalisations down to summer 2020 levels and all adults have had their second dose, then maybe we're going to be ok. Why wouldn't we?

I agree, if we can't go almost back to normal, in the UK at least, with everyone vaccinated, then how do we ever get out of this? No one in trials has been hospitalised, let alone die once having had a vaccine and the size of this sample is in the tens of thousands so this should hold true for the vast majority of people. Consensus also seems to be that the vaccines will prevent hospitalisations and death even for the new variants. Given that treatments are also improving, I don't see how the tory backbenchers and also the public at large will continue to support lockdowns, let alone comply as well as they are currently. Life has to go back to something verging on normal at some point and if it can't go back to 'normal' once the whole country is vaccinated then I don't know what we're waiting for. The virus to disappear? We know that won't happen, so I don't really see any alternative to us going back to almost normal. The reason I say almost normal, is I think while we wait for the rest of the world to catch up with vaccinating their populations, we will have quarantine rules and travel restrictions at the borders, to allow us more normality here in the UK.

Yes Covid will probably still hospitalise and kill some, but let's not forget lockdowns and recessions also kill people, so we need to ensure we're not just looking at the health impact Covid has, but also at what impact the lockdowns and recessions cause too. These arguments will become stronger once the vast majority of the population is protected from Covid via vaccination.

Edited February 2, 2021 by tigger123

[MrBarry465]

5 minutes ago, tigger123 said:

I agree, if we can't go almost back to normal, in the UK at least, with everyone vaccinated, then how do we ever get out of this? No one in trials has been hospitalised, let alone die once having had a vaccine and the size of this sample is in the tens of thousands so this should hold true for the vast majority of people. Consensus also seems to be that the vaccines will prevent hospitalisations and death even for the new variants. Given that treatments are also improving, I don't see how the tory backbenchers and also the public at large will continue to support lockdowns, let alone comply as well as they are currently. Life has to go back to something verging on normal at some point and if it can't go back to 'normal' once the whole country is vaccinated then I don't know what we're waiting for. The virus to disappear? We know that won't happen, so I don't really see any alternative to us going back to almost normal. The reason I say almost normal, is I think while we wait for the rest of the world to catch up with vaccinating their populations, we will have quarantine rules and travel restrictions at the borders, to allow us more normality here in the UK.

Yes Covid will probably still hospitalise and kill some, but let's not forget lockdowns and recessions also kill people, so we need to ensure we're not just looking at the health impact Covid has, but also at what the impact lockdowns and recessions cause too. These arguments will become stronger once the vast majority of the population is protected from Covid via vaccination.

I dont disagree, I just think normal will occur when much more of the population have been vaccinated, which will be September/October at the earliest. 

[stuartbert two hats]

8 minutes ago, MrBarry465 said:

I think that will happen, I just don't think that will happen until Septmber/October.

Yeah, we might be looking at the back end of this year, but mass events will be this year.

[parsonjack]

6 hours ago, Toilet Duck said:

Howdy,

Both Moderna and BioNTech have said they are in the process of incorporating the new sequence changes in their vaccines. I have one of the leads from the Oxford team giving a talk for us in a few weeks, so I'll ask him what they are doing! (I presume they have already made it and are doing the pre-clinical testing in the lab). 

Ooh great....eFestivals snags a talk from a world leading epidemiologist!  What a coup!

Oh hang on......when you say 'us'.....    ☹

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

3 minutes ago, parsonjack said:

Oh hang on......when you say 'us'.....    ☹

By that, do you mean 'them'? 

[Andre91]

50 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

for anyone feeling a bit glum today .... think about what you have done over the past year for other people ..... if someone told you one year ago you would have achieved all this for the sake of fellow humans . everyone of us might have unknowingly saved a life this year ... think about that .... we have all achieved a massive amount this year .... by doing absolutely nothing you can look back and think about the lives that have been saved by that ... we now have the jab and a definite way forward ... so keep trying to put focus into that rather than unknowns .... we have come a long way and we will see light slowly but surely .....

Yeah. My friend and I were talking about how we just miss being able to walk into a pub on a whim. Not the table service, not being able to get up pubs like last autumn, but an actual pub like a pub should be. I’m not even a pub person by any great stretch but, man, it would be bloody lovely to be able to text a mate saying ‘Pub later?’ and popping down town or walking past a pub and fancying a quick beer. 
 

We also, rather depressingly, admitted that the longer this goes on, the more we see the world as it is now as normal. Pubs and gigs etc just feel like such a distant memory, not having them now seems more normal than having them. We were saying how we watch TV shows and films and think ‘God, there’s too many people in there’ or ‘They shouldn’t be that close!’. It’s horrible. 
 

I’m not sure if you followed my school updates but after initially being reluctant to go into school a couple of days a week, I am absolutely thankful for it now because it is a change of scenery in the week for a couple of days. I think we are all finding this lockdown the most challenging because of the time of year. It really is becoming tedious. 

Hopefully we see some improvement in the not too distant future. 

Edited February 2, 2021 by Andre91

[parsonjack]

4 minutes ago, Yoghurt on a Stick said:

By that, do you mean 'them'? 

Errm....yes, 'them' as in his 'us' and not our 'Us' which would or could have been his 'you' instead.

[tigger123]

5 minutes ago, Andre91 said:

Yeah. My friend and I were talking about how we just miss being able to walk into a pub on a whim. Not the table service, not being able to get up pubs like last autumn, but an actual pub like a pub should be. I’m not even a pub person by any great stretch but, man, it would be bloody lovely to be able to text a mate saying ‘Pub layer?’ and popping down town or walking past a pub and fancying a quick beer. 
 

We also, rather depressingly, admitted that the longer this goes on, the more we see the world as it is now as normal. Pubs and gigs etc just feel like such a distant memory, not having them now seems more normal than having them. We were saying how we watch TV shows and films and think ‘God, there’s too many people in there’ or ‘They shouldn’t be that close!’. It’s horrible. 
 

I’m not sure if you followed my school updates but after initially being reluctant to go into school a couple of days a week, I am absolutely thankful for it now because it is a change of scenery in the week for a couple of days. I think we are all finding this lockdown the most challenging because of the time of year. It really is becoming tedious. 

Hopefully we see some improvement in the not too distant future. 

100% this. Covid killed spontaneous plans and often the spontaneous nights out whether in a pub or someones house are always the funnest in my opinion. Yes I miss gigs and festivals, but being able to meet up with friends at any time, in any number and in any place are the things I miss most and what I'm dying to get back. Even if we can do this without gigs/festivals, then that is enough for me currently

[Crazyfool01]

22 minutes ago, Andre91 said:

We also, rather depressingly, admitted that the longer this goes on, the more we see the world as it is now as normal. Pubs and gigs etc just feel like such a distant memory, not having them now seems more normal than having them. We were saying how we watch TV shows and films and think ‘God, there’s too many people in there’ or ‘They shouldn’t be that close!’. It’s horribl

things will slowly switch back to the old way of thinking it might not be one big jump ... small groups of people / friends and family to start , you / we will adapt just like we have this strange world we live in now .....never would I thought I would be able to do what IM doing at the moment , but I am .... and I will change back to the old ... slowly 

[Ayrshire Chris]

We are having power cuts now, howling gale outside and horizontal sleet. Power came back on and seems David Luis has been sent off. At least somethings never change 😉