Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[Spadge Vernacular]

That's efficacy in terms of stopping infection. The very next paragraph details the T-cell response which is strong.

As said, variants will evade vaccine efficacy, but there's no evidence it evades the immunogenic response.

The current studies that are causing alarm are exactly because of the South African mutation in its features (spike protein) that our immune response targets. There is now evidence of reducing the immune response, even confirmed reinfections.

As wonderful as it is that it appears that the vaccines are having a positive impact on serious infection, any infected or reinfected host is a reservoir for further mutation. The initial findings of the studies mentioned, though not conclusive at this point have raised real concerns due to the possibility of a running battle in which we are playing catch up with vaccination/boosters and potentially more dangerous mutations.

We should have suppressed and controlled the virus to give the vaccination programme its best shot but we didn't. We still can though if the will is there.

 

[Spadge Vernacular]

Fast-spreading COVID variant can elude immune responses

Evidence that a variant of the coronavirus identified in South Africa might compromise immunity sparks concerns about vaccine effectiveness.

www.nature.com

 

[Neiler]

Agree, am trying to find the preprint it is based on

edit link was in the article

An error has occurred

Research Square is a preprint platform that makes research communication faster, fairer, and more useful.

www.researchsquare.com

Thanks mate!

How are you fixed mate, did you get the vaccine yet?

Hope all’s good out the Bay Area!

 

[LinekersLegs]

Thanks mate!

How are you fixed mate, did you get the vaccine yet?

Hope all’s good out the Bay Area!

Thanks! Not yet got the vaccine although more and more of our friends have so it is working its way through the population.

We’re low risk (healthy, able to work from home, can order online groceries etc) and not going too stir crazy so will probably hold back a bit before we get it.

 

[tsubaki]

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.

I was not saying that we should lockdown just because a new variant emerges, just that we need a way to detect and contain new variants before they spread and make a lockdown more likely to happen.

Allowing it to spread is daft.

 

[jinkyali]

I'm a human. I dont like hundred's of my fellow species dying as a result of some Tory scum regime failing to lockdown early or hard enough or re-opening the economy prematurely when the fight against a killer virus is ongoing.

I'm a human. I don't like seeing kids go without proper education, mental health go through the roof, living turning into existing, families losing income and there home...

Your vision is an ideal not reality and never will be.

 

[grandjoeblue]

I'm a human. I dont like hundred's of my fellow species dying as a result of some Tory scum regime failing to lockdown early or hard enough or re-opening the economy prematurely when the fight against a killer virus is ongoing.

But you are saying you're happy to see possibly over a million jobs disappear?

@tsubaki mentioned the 80s, if we lockdown forever and allow businesses to fail some towns and cities will be absolutely ruined. There are plenty of places that have never recovered over 30 years later. The simple fact is you can't just allow the economy to fail or you end up destroying livelihoods for generations to come.

Like Whitty said a while ago, at some point a decision has to be made on deaths. Obviously 100,000+ is far too much but if the vaccine drops the number by 99% then things should reopen. You have to remember roughly 600,000 people die a year in the UK. You can't stop death, its the one guarantee of life.

 

[NilSatisOptimum]

Salient fact and reality is is beginning to take hold... People will always be better prepared if they are informed of what they need to hear rather than what they want to hear...

COVID-19: Some restrictions should last until all adults have been vaccinated, senior health official says

The PHE official admits it's "difficult to say" if restrictions this summer will be tougher than they were last year.

news.sky.com

 

[BlueToff]

Victoria going into 5-day lockdown now, because of 13 cases of the uk variant. And there'll be more cases soon enough as the virus settles and mutates again now Aus is into its autumn.

 

[tsubaki]

But you are saying you're happy to see possibly over a million jobs disappear?

@tsubaki mentioned the 80s, if we lockdown forever and allow businesses to fail some towns and cities will be absolutely ruined. There are plenty of places that have never recovered over 30 years later. The simple fact is you can't just allow the economy to fail or you end up destroying livelihoods for generations to come.

Like Whitty said a while ago, at some point a decision has to be made on deaths. Obviously 100,000+ is far too much but if the vaccine drops the number by 99% then things should reopen. You have to remember roughly 600,000 people die a year in the UK. You can't stop death, its the one guarantee of life.

The maddening thing with this though is that without sensible measures to protect the economy from this, based on the good practice of other countries and learning from our own bad practice, we run the risk of further lockdown and further economic damage.

Saying there is a number of deaths we can live with is just going down the same road we’ve just twice gone down, with catastrophic results, and it makes it more likely we will end up where you claim you don’t want to be.

Please learn something from the past twelve months.

 

[grandjoeblue]

The maddening thing with this though is that without sensible measures to protect the economy from this, based on the good practice of other countries and learning from our own bad practice, we run the risk of further lockdown and further economic damage.

Saying there is a number of deaths we can live with is just going down the same road we’ve just twice gone down, with catastrophic results, and it makes it more likely we will end up where you claim you don’t want to be.

Please learn something from the past twelve months.

The difference between the past year and now is the vaccine. If we never had the vaccine your point would make more sense.

I assume you must have a very safe job. People with your point of view always do.

 

[tsubaki]

The difference between the past year and now is the vaccine. If we never had the vaccine your point would make more sense.

I assume you must have a very safe job. People with your point of view always do.

Are you confusing me with Dave?

For what feels like the hundredth time, I do not want us to have lockdowns. They cause economic damage and only come about after the failure of policy, and because we are facing many deaths.

The way to prevent lockdowns is to contain the virus when new outbreaks occur. What we need is a system that can do that. Vaccines are not the best way of doing that; proper surveillance and intervention is - indeed many countries were back to a form of normal months ago, before the vaccines started to appear.

If you genuinely want us to go back to normal, you’ve got to accept we need proper protection against this. That’s all I have been calling for.

 

[grandjoeblue]

Are you confusing me with Dave?

For what feels like the hundredth time, I do not want us to have lockdowns. They cause economic damage and only come about after the failure of policy, and because we are facing many deaths.

The way to prevent lockdowns is to contain the virus when new outbreaks occur. What we need is a system that can do that. Vaccines are not the best way of doing that; proper surveillance and intervention is - indeed many countries were back to a form of normal months ago, before the vaccines started to appear.

If you genuinely want us to go back to normal, you’ve got to accept we need proper protection against this. That’s all I have been calling for.

Test and Trace will hopefully be more viable in the summer months. Its impossible to trace when you have hundreds of thousands of positive cases. If the cases continue to drop significantly over the next few weeks that will help. Test and trace is a mess.

 

[Deleted member 48881]

An elite airline called Cathay Pacific just announced that they will not force Business class passengers to wear mask when in plane...Lol. This was always going to happen.

 

[Tubey]

The current studies that are causing alarm are exactly because of the South African mutation in its features (spike protein) that our immune response targets. There is now evidence of reducing the immune response, even confirmed reinfections.

As wonderful as it is that it appears that the vaccines are having a positive impact on serious infection, any infected or reinfected host is a reservoir for further mutation. The initial findings of the studies mentioned, though not conclusive at this point have raised real concerns due to the possibility of a running battle in which we are playing catch up with vaccination/boosters and potentially more dangerous mutations.

We should have suppressed and controlled the virus to give the vaccination programme its best shot but we didn't. We still can though if the will is there.

First sentence is false, or at best misleading - there's no evidence any variant reduces the effectiveness of any vaccine in preventing serious illness or death.

And that's the key. "Dangerous mutations" are only dangerous if that immunogenic response is evaded. All evidence suggests it won't be, because coronavirus is gonna coronavirus; it'll change the delivery mechanism, it'll change transmissability, but it's still, ultimately, COVID-19.

You can't shut a country down permanent on a vanishingly thin probability that COVID-19 morphs into something worse, and indeed when deaths/ICU admission are reduced we'll be tracking infections and variants through T&T passively anyway.

The "running battle" you speak of only occurs if we're in the midst of a pandemic that is causing serious illness and death; if it isn't, it's not a battle. We don't wage war on the common cold because there's an understanding that the cost of doing so isn't worth it. And that's where I think you and others in this thread have got it wrong; you have the view that we need to absolutely batter COVID into submission through community action, eradicate it, just in case it mutates into a boogie man virus that will get us again. We don't.

Also, you don't need to suppress a virus for a vaccine to be effective - it doesn't need a 'best shot'; it's either effective or it isn't. Unless I've misread it, the last sentence makes no sense.