Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[roydo]

I may be getting ahead of myself but these vaccine results are stunning.
Thank you to the scientists who have given us a chance.

Even they seem amazed.

Many many months ago, a senior Doctor in an ICU told me that for the last 10 days, they had been battling to keep Mrs R alive. Now, he said, we are preparing her for recovery.

Feels very very similar this.

Will take ages, and not a straight line. But.

 

[tsubaki]

What Whitty said (about the vaccines doing the heavy lifting) was very concerning - it sounded a lot like like they aren't going to do anything substantial to try and prevent this thing spreading (hence R now being an irrelevance in terms of whether these measures are working) , just rely on the vaccine preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

That would work domestically for only as long as the protections from this set of vaccines last, and could easily lead to ongoing problems with foreign travel further down the line (especially to countries who have got systems to control outbreaks). It also guarantees that, in the event of a completely different pandemic happening (or this pandemic mutates into one that the vaccine doesn't prevent hospitalizations and deaths), that we'll be faced with the situation we were in March 2020 again.

 

[tsubaki]

Lets hope they look at setting up a proper track and trace system this time.

it seems not

 

[ToffeeTim]

I feel pretty positive about this for the first time in months

 

[roydo]

What Whitty said (about the vaccines doing the heavy lifting) was very concerning - it sounded a lot like like they aren't going to do anything substantial to try and prevent this thing spreading (hence R now being an irrelevance in terms of whether these measures are working) , just rely on the vaccine preventing hospitalizations and deaths.

That would work domestically for only as long as the protections from this set of vaccines last, and could easily lead to ongoing problems with foreign travel further down the line (especially to countries who have got systems to control outbreaks). It also guarantees that, in the event of a completely different pandemic happening (or this pandemic mutates into one that the vaccine doesn't prevent hospitalizations and deaths), that we'll be faced with the situation we were in March 2020 again.

My take was that the R number is only that important if it leads to serious illness and death.

What is the R number for the common cold?

 

[peteblue]

I feel pretty positive about this for the first time in months

Then stop reading this thread immediately ........

 

[ForeverBlue92]

My take was that the R number is only that important if it leads to serious illness and death.

What is the R number for the common cold?

Also lets be honest the average Joe on the street isnt going to cancel attending a Cup Semi Final at Wembley or their best mates stag do because they have a cough after everyone's been vaccinated rightly or wrongly.

Apart from a very small minority lockdown/social distancing ends once that 1st jab has been given to everyone wanting one barring some unforeseen disaster.

 

[anxiouswarrior]

indeed so if the flu kills more why the big drama rein

 

[anxiouswarrior]

then

 

[tsubaki]

My take was that the R number is only that important if it leads to serious illness and death.

What is the R number for the common cold?

Probably loads, but then again the common cold is very rarely fatal - this is much more likely to be fatal, as we all know now.

If the plan is to protect the UK population with vaccines that mean the disease is still endemic but the vaccinated infected probably won't get seriously ill, what happens when UK citizens want to go abroad to countries that haven't vaccinated most of the population?

 

[anxiouswarrior]

flu rates down in autumn to around 1 thousand

 

[anxiouswarrior]

most flu were counted as covid

 

[anxiouswarrior]

indeed covid 19 as not been isolated as a separate strain , basically its just in the family of the common cold

 

[anxiouswarrior]

the tests including cannot even confirm covid 19

 

[toffee82]

My take was that the R number is only that important if it leads to serious illness and death.

What is the R number for the common cold?

Also with regards to flu and common cold there is some immunity in the community. You get it, you get better and you won't get it again for a while.

Covid was novel. Zero immunity in the population initially. We have had 4 million confirmed cases. 10 million as a total is probably an underestimate. That coupled with the vaccine roll out puts us in a good position going forward.

Cases and hospital capacity is still dropping rapidly. In two weeks schools go back. Virtually nothing else happening for another month after that. Most of the over 50s will be vaccinated along with health care and vulnerable.