When will this shit end?

[steviewevie]

Long thread from everyone's favourite doomster.

 

[steviewevie]

Just now, Barry Fish said:

She needs to crack open a bottle of vino and stick on Opera...  such a worrier... 

opera? or Oprah?

[zero000]

9 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Long thread from everyone's favourite doomster.

 

What does vaccine resistant variant actually mean in this context? On a biological level?
 

I thought the current data shows that the vaccines will offer a significant degree of protection against hospitalisations and deaths, though may be poorer at preventing mild disease. Seems a smaller concern than it has been over the past months. 

Edited March 7, 2021 by zero000

[steviewevie]

3 minutes ago, zero000 said:

What does vaccine resistant variant actually mean in this context? On a biological level?
 

I thought the current data shows that the vaccines will offer a significant degree of protection against hospitalisations and deaths, though may be poorer at preventing mild disease. Seems a smaller concern than it has been over the past months. 

I guess it means a new variant that vaccine less effective against...this is a risk, but maybe a very low one, or maybe not.

[hodgey123]

14 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Long thread from everyone's favourite doomster.

 

The two issues I have with her thread are: 1) she is quantifying reliance on the vaccines as a ‘gamble’ throughout when we now KNOW that they work better than we even expected, and 2) she is exclusively focusing on cases, rather than hospitalisation and deaths, which we know will become less and less important the more people are vaccinated. 

[zahidf]

Ah fake SAGE using variants to keep us all locked down as long as possible.

[steviewevie]

4 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Ah fake SAGE using variants to keep us all locked down as long as possible.

not really.

[Ozanne]

19 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Long thread from everyone's favourite doomster.

 

Seems like reasonable analysis, I don't think she goes over the top with the worries there. She obviously knows what she's talking about and raises some really interesting points especially about other non-vaccination measures to help us get out of the pandemic. If anything it's quite an upbeat, optimistic assessment from her.

[Toilet Duck]

2 minutes ago, zero000 said:

What does vaccine resistant variant actually mean in this context? On a biological level?
 

I thought the current data shows that the vaccines will offer a significant degree of protection against hospitalisations and deaths, though may be poorer at preventing mild disease. Seems a smaller concern than it has been over the past months. 

Yep...again, remember, she’s a mathematician, not a biologist. Most biologists/virologists/immunologists I know aren’t losing much sleep over a “vax-resistant” variant given what we now know about how much the rest of our immune system protects us after vaccination or infection. We simply aren’t seeing hoards of vaccinated individuals or reinfected individuals turning up in hospital with variant infections. In biology, almost nothing is impossible, but it looks highly unlikely that it would change significantly. The same residues keep changing due to the selection pressure she talks about, the virus still has to function and can’t change utterly to evade every part of our immune response. We’ll keep an eye on variants through regular surveillance and periodically update vaccines to deal with them if needs be, but lockdown is a very blunt tool compared to vaccines! The susceptible population gets smaller every day (still too large to fling open the doors yet). Roadmap is fine, keep vaccinating and if the data supports moving some things into an earlier step, then consider it. The end is coming, be patient! 

[zero000]

13 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

I guess it means a new variant that vaccine less effective against...this is a risk, but maybe a very low one, or maybe not.

I get that, but it could be less effective in many different ways e.g. reducing transmission, preventing severe disease and hospitalisations, or preventing death. 

 

3 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

Yep...again, remember, she’s a mathematician, not a biologist. Most biologists/virologists/immunologists I know aren’t losing much sleep over a “vax-resistant” variant given what we now know about how much the rest of our immune system protects us after vaccination or infection. We simply aren’t seeing hoards of vaccinated individuals or reinfected individuals turning up in hospital with variant infections. In biology, almost nothing is impossible, but it looks highly unlikely that it would change significantly. The same residues keep changing due to the selection pressure she talks about, the virus still has to function and can’t change utterly to evade every part of our immune response. We’ll keep an eye on variants through regular surveillance and periodically update vaccines to deal with them if needs be, but lockdown is a very blunt tool compared to vaccines! The susceptible population gets smaller every day (still too large to fling open the doors yet). Roadmap is fine, keep vaccinating and if the data supports moving some things into an earlier step, then consider it. The end is coming, be patient! 

Feel the need to apologise for my rant as we’ve had this discussion before 😂. Thanks for the explanation. 

[efcfanwirral]

2 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

Lol Oprah 😜

Although a good opera would do...

This royal thing is such bollocks. I can't believe people still make such a big deal over them! 

[efcfanwirral]

Interesting question for any parents out there. These lateral flow tests, how do you register the results? Do you have to take a picture of it and send it in somewhere with the serial number on show or something? 

[zahidf]

Doh

 

[Ryan1984]

43 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

opera? or Oprah?

Everyone will be watching Oprah tonight, won’t they?

The tabloids are already sharpening their knives for Meghan.

To keep the thread on topic, good luck to any teaching staff and the kids going back to school tomorrow.

[zahidf]

 

[JoeyT]

Below 100 deaths! Let’s hope this continues. 

 

[steviewevie]

2 minutes ago, Ryan1984 said:

Everyone will be watching Oprah tonight, won’t they?

The tabloids are already sharpening their knives for Meghan.

To keep the thread on topic, good luck to any teaching staff and the kids going back to school tomorrow.

it's not in uk until tomorrow...and it's nearly 2 hours long...I'll just wait for the headlines.

[Toilet Duck]

36 minutes ago, zero000 said:

Feel the need to apologise for my rant as we’ve had this discussion before 😂. Thanks for the explanation. 

No worries!

I’m not saying there’s absolute nothing to worry about and the virus will be eradicated in no time and we’ll all forget it was ever here (as if!)...it will still be a problem, but not on the scale we’ve had to deal with for the last year. Vaccination works if your immune system does. Unfortunately, immune function isn’t constant and especially in older, frailer individuals, infectious diseases of all kinds present a risk that’s always there (indeed, this is the case for all immuno-compromised  individuals all the time). We mitigate that by giving them some protection through vaccinating them. We also protect them by making sure there’s  a high degree of vaccination in the community and among those they are in contact with (especially important now we know how well the vaccines suppress transmission). We’ll update following surveillance if variants emerge that significantly reduce the transmission suppression of vaccines (as this puts susceptible individuals at risk again). But this will be an ongoing thing that happens in the background, not our way of life and not something we lock down to prevent while everyone gets vaccinated again. The worst case scenario with variants is that there’s a residue (or a combination of them) that can change that completely evades neutralising antibodies (hasn’t happened yet), so vaccination has little or no impact on transmission, and then those whose immune system is failing/not working are at risk again. The rest of us end up with asymptomatic/mild/moderate disease which might not be much fun, but won’t kill us or land us in hospital very often. While possible, it’s not that likely though as the virus is under the same selection pressure now and keeps coming back to the same changes, which suggests that these are the places it can change without screwing up how it works (and we know our current vaccines still work pretty well against these changes in terms of transmission, and excellently in terms of severe disease). 

There are things to worry about for next autumn/winter. But the focus among those worrying seems to be variants, with lockdown as the answer. The things I worry about are what happens when we force the virus to mainly be a disease of early childhood? What’s long Covid? How prevalent is it in kids (especially) after a mild/asymptomatic infection? (Anecdotally, vaccination seems to be alleviating it in adults, so is that the answer for kids?...need better studies on this across the board). Are we going to have a massive wave of other infections since we’ve had feck all exposure to anything this year? Will that lack of exposure harm immune development in infants/kids? There’s also the mental health and economic impacts of the last year to figure out once we get to the other side. These are all valid concerns and things I’d like to see answers for, but we don’t need to shut down society to figure them out.
 

[gizmoman]

13 minutes ago, zahidf said:

 

It seems only Coronavirus deaths matter, the actual death toll is around 1900 per day, many of them will have died before their time due to lack of diagnosis or treatment during the past year when the NHS was concentrating on Covid and some people were afraid or reluctant to seek treatment, the pressures on people who have lost their jobs or businesses will also have taken it's toll. The human cost of lockdown and the fear mongering of the government is not being noticed, Covid is the only game in town.

[efcfanwirral]

27 minutes ago, Barry Fish said:

Schools won't be checking up.  You are meant to record them on the national website - even negative just for stats.

https://www.gov.uk/report-covid19-result

There is a QR code on the test you scan.  Then you just tick positive or negative 

I guess picking up some is better than picking up none. Plenty will send their kids in anyway I'm sure! 

[BobWillis2]

5 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

It seems only Coronavirus deaths matter, the actual death toll is around 1900 per day, many of them will have died before their time due to lack of diagnosis or treatment during the past year when the NHS was concentrating on Covid and some people were afraid or reluctant to seek treatment, the pressures on people who have lost their jobs or businesses will also have taken it's toll. The human cost of lockdown and the fear mongering of the government is not being noticed, Covid is the only game in town.

Yeah far too many only see black and white. 
In their eyes saving lives from covid by having strict lockdowns does not cause deaths from other causes which would not have happened without lockdown. 

[Crazyfool01]

10 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

It seems only Coronavirus deaths matter, the actual death toll is around 1900 per day, many of them will have died before their time due to lack of diagnosis or treatment during the past year when the NHS was concentrating on Covid and some people were afraid or reluctant to seek treatment, the pressures on people who have lost their jobs or businesses will also have taken it's toll. The human cost of lockdown and the fear mongering of the government is not being noticed, Covid is the only game in town.

I’ve not seen anyone on here say it is .. it’s always been a balance of everything although whilst covid has been at the forefront other things have unfortunately had to take a lower priority ... hopefully those things now get the priority that they need as covid hopefully becomes less of an issue ... in this country at least ... 

[Fuzzy Afro]

1 hour ago, steviewevie said:

Long thread from everyone's favourite doomster.

 

Nonsense variant porn. 

[Fuzzy Afro]

25 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

It seems only Coronavirus deaths matter, the actual death toll is around 1900 per day, many of them will have died before their time due to lack of diagnosis or treatment during the past year when the NHS was concentrating on Covid and some people were afraid or reluctant to seek treatment, the pressures on people who have lost their jobs or businesses will also have taken it's toll. The human cost of lockdown and the fear mongering of the government is not being noticed, Covid is the only game in town.

The single worst policy decision we’ve taken as a nation in the last year was to prioritise covid patients over non-covid patients. Something I’m incredibly bitter about. 

[Crazyfool01]

7 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

The single worst policy decision we’ve taken as a nation in the last year was to prioritise covid patients over non-covid patients. Something I’m incredibly bitter about. 

How do you propose we managed this then with a massively stretched nhs ? And limited number of nhs staff along with some infectious disease precautions...