Spadge Vernacular
Player Valuation: £70m
Tbf, we could do with getting shut of the tree surgeons and road maintenance lot!
Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!
- Thread starter bullybeef
- Start date
- Status
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
Christ.
Lots of countries have lower flu deaths than us, Tubey. They don’t go into lockdown, shoot the ill or cancel other people’s medical treatments, or do anything impinging on actual civil liberties.
They take sensible measures that people can easily follow, and aren’t punished for doing. They make sure that they pick up strains that might pose a threat before the numbers of infected overwhelm the local health system.
The results are obvious; they do better than us.
As for we should just accept an extra 5000 dead, where those deaths are easily preventable, just because the majority might be told to wear masks on public transport or not go to work if they are ill, then that is absolutely wrong.
For a start, those 5000 dead are merely the worst effected of probably 15000 people who’ve gone through intensive care and 30000 who’ve been admitted. That’s hundreds of millions of pounds in treatment spent that could have been prevented. It’s beds and staff that could have been used to treat other patients.
No one wants another lockdown, for hospitals to be full, to further affect non-COVID treatments or to further damage the economy.
My point is that unless we sort our preventative system out urgently, with all they goes with it to make it effective, then we are at an entirely preventable risk of disaster. If we’d sorted it out during the first lockdown, chances are we wouldn’t have had this one.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
If your last paragraph is correct, expect to be back in mass death territory again next winter, because these vaccines cant keep on holding the line against variants. The rate of infections will create more and more of them and the vaccines will be rendered almost neutralised...which is why the murderer Johnson is already talking up a third vaccine, I expect.
Incredible that you cant see that if we carry on with a busted flush economic strategy at the expense of gains through lockdowns we'll see 200,000 dead in this country this time next year. Do you actually give a flying one about that?
WAKE UP FFS.
davek
Player Valuation: £150m
You're ridiculous. Have you stopped giving away that ale and started drinking it all?
Yep, and all that will happen passively through an increased awareness about communicable diseases post-COVID and the T&T system.
My point was lockdown isn't justifiable in the future once deaths/ICU capacity aren't high/threatened. That includes whether COVID is relatively high in terms of transmission - if that doesn't equate to hospitalisation/death, then a lockdown simply isn't justified. And neither is any restrictions on civil liberties - for example, masks should not be mandatory if the above scenario is what we're faced with.
The vaccines change the game moving forward.
But I agree with you that a proper system needs to be in place.
However, once the vaccine has kicked in through the population and is preventing serious illness (i.e. hospitalisation) in the vast majority of cases, there's little really that should be stressed about in terms of covid, because the damage it causes will be severely limited and then it becomes managebale in the same way that flu is managebale - especially if you throw in additional shots annually as booster vaccines which seems to be the general consenus.
If the above is happening, restrictions on crowds etc just aren't justifiable. That doesn't mean go straight back to full normality. But you start off small, steadily increase.
You're basing that on nothing, and ignoring evidence vaccines reduce transmission by around 2/3rds and the fact the flu mutates every single year yet there's still an immunogenic response from the vaccine, even if efficacy is low - the COVID vaccine does the same; regardless of mutations, COVID remains a coronavirus and therefore will generally act as a coronavirus; it isn't going to morph into an entirely different virus.
They're talking up a third vaccine because, until the whole population is vaccinated, variants pose a danger because vaccine efficacy directly correlates to transmissability, so it makes sense to adapt the vaccine every year to meet the predominant strains in circulation. Again, this happens every year with the flu - booster shots will become the norm for COVID too.
Spadge Vernacular
Player Valuation: £70m
Agreed.
If our 'leaders', globally are serious about getting rid of this you can well imagine an extended period of managed international isolation with little to no international travel. Not going to put any money on this happening though.
The pattern has been greater transmissibility with variants, not lethality. You're right that something new like COVID in a human host will play tricks, but ultimately over time viruses become less lethal, not more, until they hit a 'sweet spot'. For example, the 1918 Spanish Flu was a flu variant that was clearly more transmissable, but was more lethal mostly because of the dire social conditions of the first world war, not because the strain itself was significantly more deadly.
The SA variant simply hits efficacy; there's no evidence is hinders the immunogenic response for severe disease. It possibly creates more mild symptoms as it 'unlocks the door' quicker to the body with its delivery mechanism, but the vaccine still creates an immune response that ultimately deals with it.
And that's what people continue to miss - we can't eradicate COVID. If it infects, spreads but does little damage, then fine - we deal with that as we get it. The problem pre-vaccine was we had no bodily defence to it due to it being completely new to us; the vaccine takes that weakness away. We have a baseline response to what it can do to us.
tsubaki
Player Valuation: £90m
Sorry Tubey if I’ve misread your post but if your take on this is as it appears, after the twelve months of what we’ve just gone through, is to effectively do nothing until a new variant starts to impact more than we expect it to on hospitalisation / ICU admission rates then I honestly have no idea how to respond to you.
You’re basically just saying many people should die because we CBA to do anything, especially learn from our mistakes.
No, not "do nothing" - I'm saying the emergence of a variant alone isn't enough to justify a lockdown. When T&T detects it, then that should do as it should, track it, keep it subdued then the booster shot for it - but if its not killing people in serious numbers or hospitalising them, then a lockdown as a response isn't justifiable.
Toast
Player Valuation: £80m
I know plenty of people who are deleting track and trace App as they just can’t afford the time of work on SSP mate.
It just won’t work long term.
It won't be done by app, it'll be done by GPs, public awareness campaigns to test if have cold symptoms, random public spot tests in regions etc.
The app is just a tool in a much larger kit.
P.S. People won't be compelled to isolate in the future automatically; again that would be a tool to be used if things got out of hand in terms of hospitalisations/deaths. People are looking at the here and now and not the future - it will be very different to what we've experienced the last 12 months.
We will get a reprieve in the Spring/Summer months mate. The vaccine is super news, but essentially we are treating Covid from 6 months ago. The U.K. and SA variants have evolved, the SA variant in particular is Super Covid. The evolution has seen things that were low risk now have become lower to high risk.
Governments are keeping the population calm, they are trading of the good news of the vaccine politically at the moment. But look the evidence is there. If you want to look.
The U.K. variant spread like wildfire through Europe, it’s highly transmissible as the amino acids evolved to bind to cells better, replicate more and have a greater viral load, what we have seen is cases all across Europe surge and stubbornly refuse to come down - with previous measures that worked. The death toll average has increased massively.
The SA variant is even worse, it’s evolved more quickly then even the U.K. variant and has punched holes in our vaccines so far. It’s massively self Rep,I sting and highly transmissible again we are seeing changes in the amino acids and spike protein.
If you look around you are aware you will how worried governments are - during all this we never restricted the borders, it’s now become standard, the whole of Europe is in lockdown, the U.K. Government have had outbreaks of it already and essentially I believe the army were going to door testing for it and shutting down communities, if the SA variant becomes dominant in a country it’s a huge body blow to our defence this year. The U.K. variant has already shut down Europe for the winter.
The vaccines are great and will offer some protection, however they were not designed for the variant, like I said we are treating Covid of 6 months ago. Of course we will see a booster I suspect in the Autumn to try and nail the SA variant.
But there is no point now drinking the Kool aide and not seeing it and to a lesser extent the U.K. variant as serious problems, despite our advancement with the vaccines.
- Status