Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Billy Jean King]

Although again, if it still protects against hospitalisation and death, and offers a reduction in transmission, then what's the problem.

You may feel a bit shit for a couple of days. So what.

On a case by case basis yes that's right but folk seem to be ignoring that we now have been told the strains circulating currently have a natural R number of 4. Removing restrictions totally even in a population vaccinated with vaccines giving a reduction against transmission of up to 1 against R will still see cases way beyond any numbers we have seen. That will ultimately filter through to considerable rates of serious illness and death due to efficacy deficiency and a fair % of folk not vaccinated. It's not hard to see where the concerns about lifting all restrictions are coming from. It should be fine in summer months but it will be difficult come Autumn and winter again.

My main gripe in all this is that the powers that be must have known this from the day the vaccine peer reviews were published yet we have been swept along on a tidal wave of relief with media widely portraying it as the silver bullet.

[Billy Jean King]

'The goalposts aren't shifting!'

It's more like the goalposts were planted firmly in the wrong place to start with by a media fuelled by euphoria. As I just posted they knew natural R without mitigation yet chose to ignore that. It's not really difficult to see where this sort of stuff is coming from. Cases with R between 3 and 4 will be wildly beyond anything seen before. Look at numbers now with lockdown and an R barely above 1 ! Come Autumn we could see very high hospital and death numbers again.

The one upside of an R that high is that herd immunity would be reached far faster assuming it can't be caught twice.

[Ron Aldo]

It's more like the goalposts were planted firmly in the wrong place to start with by a media fuelled by euphoria. As I just posted they knew natural R without mitigation yet chose to ignore that. It's not really difficult to see where this sort of stuff is coming from. Cases with R between 3 and 4 will be wildly beyond anything seen before. Look at numbers now with lockdown and an R barely above 1 ! Come Autumn we could see very high hospital and death numbers again.

The one upside of an R that high is that herd immunity would be reached far faster assuming it can't be caught twice.

At what point during all of this have the media been fueled by euphoria? I must have missed that.

[Caledonian1]

8 hours ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

Priti Patel is to award every immigrant who signs up a one way plane ticket to Jamaica.

This is the English and Welsh version of the paper.  I notice the Scottish front page refers to "All Scots Will Have Vaccine in Summer"....Migrants and Scots - really playing to their audience and attacking their usual targets for hatred.

Incidentally, why do most Scottish papers use the word Jab in headlines when pretty much everyone in Scotland says Jag?

[Caledonian1]

7 hours ago, Marshmallo said:

This is pretty scary. Haven't they heard of Variants?

 

Right that's it I'm going to go to the garage for a couple gallons of 2 stroke and going to fill up the Jet Ski

[Michael W]

You already know that this unwelcome development with the South African varient and AZ is going to be used to have us all under lock and key longer. 

There thankfully don't seem to be many cases of the varient in the country. In that respect, have anyone that's been in South Africa in the last 28 days barred from entering or, in the case that person is a resident, mandatory 14 day quarantine at their own expense on arrival. Sure, no one really wants to do this, but I will not be accepting of continued restrictions due to a varient several thousand miles away and where its domestic impact is limited. 

J&J wasn't that effective against it either and I think NovaVax had issues too. Pfizer and Moderna said it worked but slightly less effectively although I have not seen any data. Clearly then it is an issue but again I'll say it:  if no one became seriously ill, it doesn't seem like a massive problem. There are ways to mitigate this without going OTT. 

[Monkey Tennis]

8 hours ago, NotThePars said:

Now I’m not saying that this country’s horrible attitude to immigrants that birthed the Hostile Environment potentially leading to a significant group of residents on this island not being vaccinated and potentially killing more old predominately Brexit voting racists would be a good thing but it would prove that God has a tremendous sense of humour and ability to wrap up a long-building narrative.

Hmmmm, God hasn't really got his virus to discriminate in quite that way thus far, has he.

I do enjoy these anti-right wing posts that wish death on entire groups of people.

 

Quite a staple on here.

[Burnieman]

1 hour ago, Billy Jean King said:

On a case by case basis yes that's right but folk seem to be ignoring that we now have been told the strains circulating currently have a natural R number of 4. Removing restrictions totally even in a population vaccinated with vaccines giving a reduction against transmission of up to 1 against R will still see cases way beyond any numbers we have seen. That will ultimately filter through to considerable rates of serious illness and death due to efficacy deficiency and a fair % of folk not vaccinated. It's not hard to see where the concerns about lifting all restrictions are coming from. It should be fine in summer months but it will be difficult come Autumn and winter again.

My main gripe in all this is that the powers that be must have known this from the day the vaccine peer reviews were published yet we have been swept along on a tidal wave of relief with media widely portraying it as the silver bullet.

So just like Infleunza then whick kills 15k on average in the UK?  As I keep saying, people need to get their heads round the fact this ain't going away and it will still kill people, and quite possibly in significant numbers now and again.  Once everyone is vaccinated (who want it) we must get on with life, and that is what will happen regardless of negative soundbites from politicians. Votes count.

[Mark Connolly]

38 minutes ago, Caledonian1 said:

 

Incidentally, why do most Scottish papers use the word Jab in headlines when pretty much everyone in Scotland says Jag?

4 Nations approach?

[gav-ffc]

8 hours ago, Marshmallo said:

This is pretty scary. Haven't they heard of Variants?

 

 

[Bairnardo]

So just like Infleunza then whick kills 15k on average in the UK?  As I keep saying, people need to get their heads round the fact this ain't going away and it will still kill people, and quite possibly in significant numbers now and again.  Once everyone is vaccinated (who want it) we must get on with life, and that is what will happen regardless of negative soundbites from politicians. Votes count.

But the narrative chosen was that every death from covid is somehow worth more than any other cause. People consequently think thr one death from this is unacceptable and therefore measures are there until no one is dying. They opened a Pandoras box of hand wringing that's going to be difficult to close.

[Burnieman]

1 minute ago, Bairnardo said:

4 minutes ago, Burnieman said:

So just like Infleunza then whick kills 15k on average in the UK?  As I keep saying, people need to get their heads round the fact this ain't going away and it will still kill people, and quite possibly in significant numbers now and again.  Once everyone is vaccinated (who want it) we must get on with life, and that is what will happen regardless of negative soundbites from politicians. Votes count.

But the narrative chosen was that every death from covid is somehow worth more than any other cause. People consequently think thr one death from this is unacceptable and therefore measures are there until no one is dying. They opened a Pandoras box of hand wringing that's going to be difficult to close.

Zero Covid is unthinking fantasy.  I remember Ebola was going to wipe us all out.  We still have Ebola. It still kills people. We haven't been wiped out.

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

A lot of apparently bad news being reported this morning, which gives you the feeling that we're being pushed down one path. 

All we need now is for the WHO to say that the AstraZeneca vaccine is nothing more than snake oil. 

 

 

[Jan Vojáček]

39 minutes ago, Snafu said:

Use of language from paper to paper always amuses me. The Daily Record always refer to the police in the Americanism of cops, I simply just call them police, I rarely ever hear anyone while speaking refer to them as the cops. Mind you back when I was a teenager we used to call them 'the pigs', I have yet to find a newspaper that commonly uses that term.

That's something I clocked as soon as I started in journalism. It was "could you put a call in to the cops" - never the Police. I think it's one of those weird paper things; like Wayne Rooney being called "Roo" in headlines...despite the fact absolutely nobody on planet earth ever called him that.

Personally I actively avoid it, instead preferring old bill, the fuzz, the bobbies, the scum, the filth, the five-oh, the peelers and plod. Weirdly none of those terms ever seem to be published though. Which is most disappointing. 

Anyway. Back to the topic in hand...

3 minutes ago, Bob Mahelp said:

A lot of apparently bad news being reported this morning, which gives you the feeling that we're being pushed down one path. 

All we need now is for the WHO to say that the AstraZeneca vaccine is nothing more than snake oil. 

I don't know if it's just hyper-pessimism or what, but it does feel as if the bad news needs blown up and the good news must come with a caveat. Vaccines work, but we're immediately told that they won't solve the pandemic and we'll be living in this miserable way for eternity.

Then a South African mutation (of which there are very few cases in the country, and numbers are plummeting in South Africa) pops up, and in a study all the vaccine did was prevent people dying or being hospitalised (which is what we're trying to achieve, no?) and that gets hammed right up.

It's obviously not a welcome development, but I do feel like a bit of realism is needed here. It does feel as if we're being prepared to remain existing in this miserable way for an awful lot longer though.

[Billy Jean King]

Only if you had your mind set on zero COVID and think that the AZ was the only option as a vaccine available to us. Again the vaccine teams especially the Oxford team are updating their vaccine to deal with the SA variant if their test results aren't up to it. It shouldn't be difficult for them.
 

Forget the SA variant it's a red herring that I never once mentioned. Natural R is 4, that was confirmed last week. That is the figure quoted for the most prevalent variant currently in the UK.

[Bairnardo]

Forget the SA variant it's a red herring that I never once mentioned. Natural R is 4, that was confirmed last week. That is the figure quoted for the most prevalent variant currently in the UK.

Against which the current vaccines have proven to be effective no?

[Billy Jean King]

You might like to start the morning with a bit of fear and hyperbole, but I like to start my morning with a cup of coffee and then some mini weetabix chocolate chip, then I think about leaving the house.

Honestly I don't and I am not convinced by the argument BUT you can see the scenarios where restriction free new cases would be wildly higher than anything seen. Yes the majority will be mild to moderate but a % of a very high number in the form of those that do develop into hospital cases and death could still be an issue especially in winter.

All I'm saying is no matter how unpalatable the scenario is you can see where they are coming from and it can't just be dismissed as fear. It could happen, it's not particularly far fetched.

[Billy Jean King]

At what point during all of this have the media been fueled by euphoria? I must have missed that.

The vaccine announcements for one.

[Elixir]

1 hour ago, Billy Jean King said:

It's more like the goalposts were planted firmly in the wrong place to start with by a media fuelled by euphoria. As I just posted they knew natural R without mitigation yet chose to ignore that. It's not really difficult to see where this sort of stuff is coming from. Cases with R between 3 and 4 will be wildly beyond anything seen before. Look at numbers now with lockdown and an R barely above 1 ! Come Autumn we could see very high hospital and death numbers again.

The one upside of an R that high is that herd immunity would be reached far faster assuming it can't be caught twice.

 

3 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

1 hour ago, Snafu said:

Only if you had your mind set on zero COVID and think that the AZ was the only option as a vaccine available to us. Again the vaccine teams especially the Oxford team are updating their vaccine to deal with the SA variant if their test results aren't up to it. It shouldn't be difficult for them.
 

Forget the SA variant it's a red herring that I never once mentioned. Natural R is 4, that was confirmed last week. That is the figure quoted for the most prevalent variant currently in the UK.

 

Where are you going with this 'natural R is 4' talk?

 

[Billy Jean King]

So just like Infleunza then whick kills 15k on average in the UK?  As I keep saying, people need to get their heads round the fact this ain't going away and it will still kill people, and quite possibly in significant numbers now and again.  Once everyone is vaccinated (who want it) we must get on with life, and that is what will happen regardless of negative soundbites from politicians. Votes count.

The models suggest it could be 5 times that number, no one really knows we need to wait and see. I agree 100% at flu levels it's not an issue. I'm not in that camp at all.