COVID-19

Don't be ridiculous. Nobody is desperate for one of the variants to get past the vaccine and take hold. It's precisely because we don't want that to happen that some of us think that we should still be relatively cautious.

Waiting until a variant gets past the vaccine is too late. By then it's out there, people start dying in large numbers and we are back playing catch up again. Acting too late has been the constant problem since last February.
Quote from article below;

“We shouldn’t fall into the trap of thinking that protection against transmission is only a ‘nice to have’ because every new infection increases the risk that a new variant with a troublesome characteristic will be formed.”

Of course I want to start going to gigs, festivals, music camps etc again like in normal times. I want to be able to see and hug my kids and hold my first grandchild, due in October. I want my friends in my house for meals, etc etc. I don't want everything thrown back into lockdown again because everybody decided that the whole thing is over and we can just forget about about it. One look around the world confirms that is far from the case.

Maybe it's a generational thing. I'm nearly 65 and most people I know of a similar age have a similarly cautious view, even though we've all been jabbed once, and some twice. We're still obeying the rules - meeting outside only, maintaining social distancing, being cautious about going shopping etc. If you don't think a variant is likely to harm you seriously, even if it is vaccine resistant, then I guess you aren't worried about the spread of variants. But if a variant develops that renders the vaccine useless, and spreads, then older people are back to square one again - in lockdown with their lives curtailed.
I accept there's a balance - people's livelihoods, mental health, education and young people's social needs mean we have to lift the shackles somewhat. But acting as though all significant threat has gone away when it's very clear that we are getting multiple variants with the potential to mutate further is just head in the sand stuff in my view.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/07/indian-covid-variant-is-variant-of-concern-says-public-health-england?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Otherhttps://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/07/indian-covid-variant-is-variant-of-concern-says-public-health-england?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

 

Off all the things we've disagreed about, your viewpoint on the variants is the most strange to me. It's worrying about something that we can't control and don't even know if it's dangerous.

Do you apply the same logic about preempting a dangerous version of a disease to other illnesses. When the Covid situation is over are you going to keep social distancing just in case a version of the flu turns up that gets around the vaccines or proves more deadly? That's not meant as a dig by the way? Just are you a naturally cautious person whenit comes to this stuff or is it Covid specifically?

Being preemptive means we're no longer being evidence based and that has to be a bad thing. It creates unnecessary fear of something that might just have exactly the same impact as what we've already got. I completely agree with you that IF a cariant comes out and gets around the vaccines it's an issue but the key work is IF, let's be honest if a variant appears and it does that then we would see the effects pretty quickly. As we know all viruses mutate - it's why the flu vaccine changes from year to year and incorporates several different medicines into one shot, but we don't panic about it. it's not within our control.

The scientist is quite right what he says but what's the actual alternative. Keep living apart from other people until there is no more variants?

 

Flu has been around for the whole of my life. I've had it - it didn't kill me. I know it does kill people, but mostly they are very old and have other chronic diseases. I can't think of anyone that I knew or who was known to me via others, in my entire life, who was killed by flu. And at no time in my lifetime has flu swept the globe killing millions of people in its wake.
But in just over a year I know, or know of from friends, several people who have been killed by Covid and several more, in their 20s, 30s or 40s who got long Covid and are still struggling with it a year later.

So, for me, the idea of equivalence between flu and Covid is ridiculous. Covid is enormously more deadly than flu. It kills millions of people that flu wouldn't harm, beyond a few days in bed feeling lousy.
We are still in the middle of a global pandemic. The first in a century - a once in a lifetime event - and by far the most dangerous thing that has happened in my lifetime.
So no, I don't think I'm particularly cautious generally. I used to teach risk assessment when I was a mental health lecturer and I've always tended to the view that if a thing is unlikely to occur then it's pointless worrying about it, however harmful it might be if it did happen. My caution is definitely Covid-specific. What we are going through is a unique event, with cataclysmic worldwide consequences. Pretending that it is over, or that we have managed to contain the risks to manageable proportions is premature, in my view.
We can't totally stop variants, but we can limit their spread (and hence the likelihood of more mutations that might evade vaccines) by limiting travel to and from overseas, maintaining and preferably strengthening quarantine and improving track and trace services. I know you disagree with that, but it's just common sense to me.
As a rich country we also need to do much much more to help poorer countries get vaccinated. Only once the world is mostly vaccinated will the risks of variants and inward transmission stop. Cutting overseas aid in the middle of a pandemic was an act of utter madness.

 

But that's because we have a vaccine for flu. If it wasn't a dangerous disease we wouldn't bother immunising people, I'm not saying it's equivalent - it certainly isn't - but why is the concern about variants overwhelming vaccines just particular to Covid 19? Any virus could mutate to become more deadly or evade treatment but for every other disease we wait to see if that happens but you seem to want us to assume everything is a problem and wait for the proof that it's not. Why are you not applying your risk assessment basis to Covid?

I don't particularly disagree with anything that you about the quarantine and stuff, just think it's right to be targeted and appropriate to the risks rather than across the board and overly cautious.

 

https://inews.co.uk/news/india-covid-crisis-uk-medical-supplies-plane-support-defence-secretary-ben-wallace-972435

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-56880377

https://www.indiatoday.in/coronavirus-outbreak/story/uk-sends-first-batch-of-medical-supplies-to-india-1795410-2021-04-27

Once again the UK are one of the first to send medical aid to India.

The media were saying for families to get oxygen for their loved ones many were having to buy it on the black market, the Indian government should be doing all they can to find who these inhuman people are and lock them up and throw away the key parasites.

 

Flu doesn't just kill far fewer people because we have a vaccine. It kills far fewer because its much less deadly than Covid for all but the most elderly and seriously infirm.

I think I am applying my risk assessment basis to Covid. We have a global pandemic, unprecedented since the development of sophisticated healthcare, that has been proven to kill millions of people, even in the rich part of the world with good health systems. That pandemic is still raging right across the globe. So we are starting from a very high risk base - that's fact, not speculation.

We have been forced to endure three lockdowns to get on top of recurring outbreaks and I would much prefer that we don't have to have any more. We have had vaccines for a short time. We don't know how long they will give immunity for or whether they will resist future mutations. What we do know is that this disease kills many people, makes many others chronically ill and keeping on going back into lockdown is ruinous for livelihoods, mental health and the economy. I'm not saying that we should all stay locked up in our homes or that things shouldn't open up more. But exercising some caution, reducing international travel, improving quarantine, track & trace etc are sensible precautions to head off potentially more dangerous mutations and/or limit their spread if they do occur.
I don't want to find that, come the end of the year, I can't visit or hold my new grandchild because we all threw caution to the wind and end up in lockdown with a third wave.

 

Yes, it's good that we are starting to help. But we, and other rich countries, should be doing much more. It's not only the right thing to do, it's in our own best interests to get as much of the world vaccinated as quickly as possible. If we can spaff £30b up the wall by giving track and trace to idiots who don't know what they're doing then we can certainly afford to do more than we are.

 

Turkey added to the red list. Wonder if Champions League final will get moved now

 

You never miss a trick mate, but yes I agree we need to get the majority of the worlds population vaccinated as urgently as possible, I see countries are encouraging these pharmaceutical companies to give free manufacturing licences to increase the production and give countries a better chance to get their citizens vaccinated.

https://www.gilead.com/purpose/advancing-global-health/covid-19/voluntary-licensing-agreements-for-remdesivir

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(21)00467-0/fulltext

 

It will be interesting as I believe it said on BT Sport they were allowing 4,000 from each finalists club.

 

It is less deadly than Covid yes, no dispute about that but it is deadly. So why no concern about variants of it becoming more deadly? That's the question.

I think you're looking too big in terms of your risk assessment. There are probably less than 500 people in the UK with the Indian variant (about 0.0008% of the population) and there is no evidence that the vaccines don't give significant protection. How much smaller could the risk actually be? You're very likely to be worrying about a disease you're actually vacinated against.

100% agree about the lockdowns but the perpetual living in fear because of the prospect of a new variant - before it's proven to be an issue - is almost as bad.

 

It's encouraging that Biden has come out in support of unpatenting the vaccinations. France has said it supports this but Germany and, I believe, the UK are not in favour - no doubt getting lobbied by the big pharma companies in both countries. But unpatenting the vaccines isn't the only issue. Other countries need technical help and there are vaccine component shortages too. These things need to be seriously addressed by the world's rich governments and not left to individual companies to sort out.

 

Flu is deadly for a very much smaller section of the world population than Covid. And we've been successfully vaccinating against the worst strains for decades with proven good results. Covid, and the vaccines against it, are in their infancy - actually barely out of the womb - by comparison.

I'm not living in fear, I'm just urging a degree of caution.

 

This is a damning report, although it was printed on 18th March things might have changed with countries changing their minds and rightly so.

Despite the clear public health benefits that the monopoly waiver proposal offers, a small group of nations is rigorously hindering the start of formal negotiations at the WTO. At the same time, many of the countries blocking or delaying the proposal, including the Australia, Brazil, Canada, the EU, Japan, Norway, Switzerland, the UK and the US, have also secured the majority of available vaccines, much more than needed to vaccinate their entire populations.

https://www.msf.org/countries-obstructing-covid-19-patent-waiver-must-allow-negotiations

 

Small issue of lack of ingredients and people in these other countries not having the experience making it says to me it is risky

 

We write the Flu virus off at our peril, The Spanish version killed millions before it was controlled, God forbid we get another like it

 

Yes as you say if everything went well those countries would struggle to get their populations vaccinated I believe the present Indian population alone is 1,393,409,038 then Pakistan around 224,500,406, I posted this at the start of this pandemic and hoped I would be wrong, unfortunately it doesn't look that way.

https://bantamtalk.com/index.php?threads/corona-virus.3663/page-489#post-494755

India will become the measure with regards the pandemic, how the hell you lock down 1.3billion citizens is beyond belief but if anyone can India can, hundreds today queuing for food who have no homes to go back too to be lock down in, let's hope the comment that this virus is not as infectious with temperatures 27 degrees and over, God help those poor souls if it isn't.

 

Wouldn't that be great news, well done all concerned.