Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[ForeverBlue92]

Not the end of the world really, England has now come to its senses and come in line with the rest of the UK.

The passports should give a big poke to younger people to get vaccinated so that's a massive positive, just a bit stupid to leave it until now - it should have been implemented in July and perhaps we wouldn't be in the position we're in now, every man and his dog knew variants were a thing.

Think they should get away from "booster" and call it "third vaccine shot" as its now integral part of fighting this virus. Although the vaccine has been vastly overplayed as being the game changer.

A double jabbed 20 year old doesn't need a booster jab ffs.

COVID has absolutely brainwashed some people.

 

[BlueToff]

'masks in all indoor settings except when eating or drinking or exercising'. Surely that includes restaurants and bars?

Having to wear a mask in cinema but not in a nightclub is definitely following the science?

Eating, drinking, exercising or singing... was the exact quote.

I don't think it includes restaurants and bars as there was no specific reference to the hospitality industry. It might be discretional, I don't know. Will have to wait for the full list to come out.

They won't get people following it anyway, and that's on the government.

 

[BlueToff]

Look, I know it's the huge story, but it'd be nice for these jobbers at the presser to actually ask some other questions into the restrictions themself.

Why bother when all you get on the party is waffle/lies anyway.

 

[LinekersLegs]

If anyone you know who is in a vulnerable category gets a positive PCR would be worth considering enrolling in this study,

News: Ground-breaking COVID-19 antiviral treatment trial opens to recruitment | NIHR

A first-of-its-kind clinical trial to investigate the effectiveness of new COVID-19 oral antiviral treatments - which can be safely taken at home - has begun enrolling participants today.

www.nihr.ac.uk

A first-of-its-kind clinical trial to investigate the effectiveness of new COVID-19 oral antiviral treatments - which can be safely taken at home - has begun enrolling participants today.

The NIHR-funded and supported, nationwide platform trial will rapidly assess the effectiveness of a range of novel, purpose-designed COVID-19 antivirals. These new orally administered treatments are intended for use in the very early stages of infection, by people in the community with COVID-19 who are at higher risk of complications from the disease.

The Platform Adaptive trial of NOvel antiviRals for eArly treatMent of COVID-19 In the Community (PANORAMIC) is now open to participants from right across the UK.

People can join the study if they have a positive COVID-19 test, are within five days from the onset of symptoms - and are aged 50 and over, or between 18 to 49 years with underlying health conditions that make them clinically more vulnerable. All participants should have recorded a positive PCR test within the past seven days.

The researchers will enrol 10,600 volunteers in total for each arm of the study. To enable the benefit of the treatment to be compared against standard care - half of the participants will be randomly allocated to receive the antiviral treatment plus standard care, while the other half will receive standard care alone. The results from the national study will provide a clearer understanding on how antivirals work in the UK population - which has a high vaccination rate - enabling the NHS to better plan how to make COVID-19 antivirals available for those who would benefit from them the most.

 

[Tubey]

playing devil's advocate, is it not better to not take the risk for the sake of a few weeks?

I'm not a fan of any restrictions at all but, this isn't a lockdown and these new restrictions aren't really even changing that much? Most offices will be on an Xmas shutdown anyway, so maybe there's a week of WFH that people would actually be going in?

They've not said mandatory masks or rule of 6 in hospitality etc (though it's obviously loads of waffle so who knows what they end up doing with this). Is anything changing from what it is right now? I don't know if that's pointless or not.

No, as a good proportion of the population has had three vaccines, a very good T-cell response now as a result, so you'd be doing this constantly, people losing jobs due to a loss of economic confidence, massive mental health pressures etc. etc.

If Omicron was rampaging in South Africa and killing people, then fine, it'd mean the vaccines had failed. Hell, even if hospitalisations had gone up considerably. But they haven't. So these measures are being done solely because of Omicron's transmissability.

The problem with that is COVID will get more and more transmissable as it evolves, and the likelihood is it'll get less and less lethal as the human immune system adapts to fight it.

So we'll be locking down public life for a virus that is no longer an emergency danger. Because that's the pattern we've now established.

It really is amazing that we're taking away liberties from people based on a viral variant that has killed quite literally no one. That's how conditioned people have become.

 

[Seanjd]

Please don’t ignore restrictions because of Johnson’s ineptitude, arrogance and lack of morals. It’s exactly what he wants.

This government does not want to ‘control’ the population and it certainly hasn’t got your best interest at heart. Plan B is the absolute minimum they could put in place at this moment in time given the rate at which Omnicron is spreading. At the very least, follow the scientists advice.

 

[maccavennie]

No, as a good proportion of the population has had three vaccines, a very good T-cell response now as a result, so you'd be doing this constantly, people losing jobs due to a loss of economic confidence, massive mental health pressures etc. etc.

If Omicron was rampaging in South Africa and killing people, then fine, it'd mean the vaccines had failed. Hell, even if hospitalisations had gone up considerably. But they haven't. So these measures are being done solely because of Omicron's transmissability.

The problem with that is COVID will get more and more transmissable as it evolves, and the likelihood is it'll get less and less lethal as the human immune system adapts to fight it.

So we'll be locking down public life for a virus that is no longer an emergency danger. Because that's the pattern we've now established.

It really is amazing that we're taking away liberties from people based on a viral variant that has killed quite literally no one. That's how conditioned people have become.

I thought he said hospitalisation had increased by 300% in a week in SA?

I may have misheard plus they didn't say if that's vaccinated or unvaccinated.

 

[coollino]

Not much in the way of all three that have seen. Was a big UK study recently re different booster to initial ones

Mixing Pfizer, AstraZ COVID-19 shots with Moderna gives better immune response -UK study

A major British study into mixing COVID-19 vaccines has found that people had a better immune response when they received a first dose of AstraZeneca or Pfizer-BioNTech shots followed by Moderna nine weeks later, according to the results on Monday.

www.reuters.com

and Canada has quite a lot of data on 1 AZ followed by an mRNA but haven’t seen much re booster data from them but might have missed it.

NPR Cookie Consent and Choices

In general mixing seems to be beneficial which is why I got a Moderna booster for my initial JNJ vaccination.

Great, thanks for this

 

[BlueToff]

No, as a good proportion of the population has had three vaccines, a very good T-cell response now as a result, so you'd be doing this constantly, people losing jobs due to a loss of economic confidence, massive mental health pressures etc. etc.

If Omicron was rampaging in South Africa and killing people, then fine, it'd mean the vaccines had failed. Hell, even if hospitalisations had gone up considerably. But they haven't. So these measures are being done solely because of Omicron's transmissability.

The problem with that is COVID will get more and more transmissable as it evolves, and the likelihood is it'll get less and less lethal as the human immune system adapts to fight it.

So we'll be locking down public life for a virus that is no longer an emergency danger. Because that's the pattern we've now established.

It really is amazing that we're taking away liberties from people based on a viral variant that has killed quite literally no one. That's how conditioned people have become.

I agree mate.

All honesty I just wanna be able to go for a drink on Xmas eve and see some mates I haven't seen in two years now. I wfh anyway, my life isn't impacted by these new restrictions but I'm very aware of how other people's lives are. It's all ludicrous, around the world. Dictatorial politicians just loving it. i don't think that's the case with Johnson, he's just useless.

Edit: I'm just not sure these new restrictions are actually different to what was here already.

 

[BlueToff]

I thought he said hospitalisation had increased by 300% in a week in SA?

I may have misheard plus they didn't say if that's vaccinated or unvaccinated.

They made a point of saying that the data was bad yeah and then said it was hard to fully judge because of different rates of vaccination.

 

[Runub]

Look, I know it's the huge story, but it'd be nice for these jobbers at the presser to actually ask some other questions into the restrictions themself.

Why bother when all you get on the party is waffle/lies anyway.

I agree. One of the jobbers actually got suspended from Sky for breaking the rules. Seems a bit odd for them to throw their arms up in the air with this story but that is their job I guess

 

[tsubaki]

We can. We absolutely can.

These measures are a choice being made, not a necessity.

I disagree - it is a necessity in that they've got no other options when an alarm bell rings than to increase restrictions or to do nothing. Doing nothing is going to be more politically ruinous than doing this, if things go wrong.

A competent government could by now have given itself more options; made sure they were not caught out like they were last year. They've not done that; indeed as almost everyone on here agrees they've not even substantially increased NHS capacity to cope with a further wave.

I agree btw 100% that these restrictions should be unnecessary; lockdowns should not be needed. That we've found ourselves here again is entirely predictable.

 

[maccavennie]

They made a point of saying that the data was bad yeah and then said it was hard to fully judge because of different rates of vaccination.

Typical news conference isn't it where its difficult to take little snippets out of it as its never said with clarity.

 

[grandjoeblue]

I thought he said hospitalisation had increased by 300% in a week in SA?

I may have misheard plus they didn't say if that's vaccinated or unvaccinated.

Almost all of them are unvaccinated.

 

[tsubaki]

I agree. One of the jobbers actually got suspended from Sky for breaking the rules. Seems a bit odd for them to throw their arms up in the air with this story but that is their job I guess

the problem is that noone wants the omerta breach of exposing whichever journalists were there