We're all doomed! Doomed I say- the Corona virus thread for panicking in!

[Lancebloke]

The herd immunity thing had not been thoroughly tried anywhere. Sweden weren't particularly tough on restrictions and they paid the price, as you would expect with a new disease. They were nowhere near herd immunity at any point. 

Herd immunity is the answer but it requires the vaccine to help it along so we don't need the problem of hospitalisation and death. Either way, once the vaccines are done, if there is another big surge I don't think we can afford another lockdown situation. We will just need to get on with it.

[Mrs Figg]

If we just get on with it, it will run out of control again. The new Delta plus variant is so infectious you only have to walk near someone without a mask to catch it. They need to at least keep the mask and social distancing laws indoors, and vaccinate all kids. Then they might be able to avoid another terrible Winter by avoiding the flu season again. They saw that masks work for flu, lowest rates on record, they should encourage people to continue the good work. Asians wear masks we should get used to it too. its just common sense.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ I think the marker for lockdowns is hospitalizations and deaths. The NHS cant go on as it is delaying other procedures and surgery because its overwhelmed with covid cases. If a new variant sees a sizeable increase in folk needing hopsital treatment then we'd have to go into lockdown again just to stop the sytem collapsing.
But whilst cases are rising but hospitalizations and deaths are not rising significianlty (obvously its very significant if it youre one of those people) then I think we can avoid lockdowns (though I think there is a case for smaller localised lockdowns in hotspots of cases).
But Im with Figg on continuing to mandate for mask wearing on public transport and in shops and to continue to drive home the social distancing around strangers and hand washing messages. Wearing a mask in certain locations is hardly a great hardship afterall. }}

[David H]

David - Possibly. But you just gave me the thought of an accidentally ingested virus in a human body not lnow what to do with itself but then getting smashed by an immune response.

I am not sure how much that kind of thing happens all the time, an unexpected visitor getting the treatment even though it wouldn't have done anything. Do they survive that long?

Yeah, that happens all the time from all kinds of animals, and they can get things from us too. Remember bird flu?
The word vaccine literally just means "cow".

As the 18th century was winding to a close, an English physician named Edward Jenner set about to determine whether there was any truth to an urban legend of his day: milkmaids who got cowpox (a disease that causes ulcers on cows' teats and can be spread to humans at the site of a scratch or abrasion) didn't get smallpox. This was a big deal, because a case of cowpox would typically leave a person with a self-contained and localized ulcer or two, usually on a hand, while a case of smallpox would likely cause disfiguring scars at best and full-on death at worst.

In a process that likely would not get FDA approval today, Jenner inoculated an eight-year-old boy (one James Phipps) with material taken from a milkmaid's cowpox sores. (We warned you.) After the boy contracted and recovered from cowpox, Jenner went on to inoculate him with smallpox. The boy was, to our great relief, immune, and did not contract the disease. Jenner repeated this process with 22 more lucky folks and published his documentation of it all in 1798, in a slender volume called An Inquiry into the Causes and Effects of the Variolae Vaccinae, using the Latin term that charmingly translates as "cow pustules."

Due to, we must assume, the significant deficit variolae ("pustules") scored on the lexical charm scales, vaccinae ("cow") had the lasting lexical effect. From Jenner's book title came the use of the terms vaccine matter and vaccine virus for the cowpox inoculum (the virus-containing material used in inoculations), and vaccinations as a name for the inoculation procedure. French authors writing about Jenner’s work soon after his book's publication used the word vaccine alone as a term for cowpox, and vaccin (a masculine derivative of vaccine) as a term for the cowpox inoculum. Vaccine quickly came to be applied in English to the cowpox inoculum, and then broadened semantically to cover other kinds of inocula as well.

Because of Jenner's work, the horrific scourge that was smallpox was eventually eradicated. It goes to show that science doesn’t have to be pretty to be pretty awesome, and neither does etymology.

[halfwise]

That seems a little colloquial for Merriam-Webster.

[David H]

That seems a little colloquial for Merriam-Webster.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/words-at-play/vaccine-the-words-history-aint-pretty

[halfwise]

Oh, that's right. Now they show ads, so it's all about clicks. Not our childhood reference book anymore.

[Lancebloke]

You can't just catch the delta variant by walking close to somebody, especially if outdoors.

And the masks didn't work on the flu, lockdown did. But now we have a lot of people who haven't had flu for 2 years and when they get it next, it is likely to be worse. This could also be the case for newborns as I mentioned earlier.

We have enormous pressure on the NHS to pick up other things including people that have been putting off check ups for far more dangerous diseases than covid. Poor Gunther from Friends has stage 4 cancer but had to put off check ups because of covid. I wonder how many of those there are. We risk the system collapsing because of covid? Has it not possibly done that already, you just can't see it because people die of leukemia more slowly.

We have a generation of unsolcialised kids who have missed out on 12-18 months of key development plus all those others that have missed out on key education. 

We have industries on their knees and massive government debt that will have to be paid back by future generations.

We have a potential mental health crisis going on that we probably won't see the extent of quickly.

Doesn't anyone else see all of that as a worse problem? We cannot keep locking down. If vaccines don't work then we have to get on with life, the same as humans have done throughout their entire history. We are lucky to have the benefit of vaccines now, most didn't.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ Masks help, against covid and flu. Last I checked the numbers was about 30% protection if you are wearing one, and if others you encounter are too that goes as high as 70%. They are the simplest least intrusive defence against this type of virus and at this point I see no reason why the wearing of masks should not continue.

I wouldnt wory too much about kids missing a bit of time, they might not have been in school but it hasnt stopped socialising among them, certainly not round my way where all thats happened from a kids perspective is a great big holiday and theyve been out playing in the gardens, or on the beach or up the hills together as kids will. And an entire generation missed years of schooling during the two world wars and they did ok. Hell I missed just over a year of schooling as a kid simply because of industrial action and teachers being on strike. Kids are resiliant.

Problem with just saying if vaccines dont work we have to just get on with it is that the NHS, which you say needs to get on with other things, wont be able to do so as once again it will be full of covid patients, intensive care will be overwhelmed again, supplies of crucial equipment and medicines strecthed and money taken from other budgets to pay for it. One of the primary aims of having lockdowns was to prevent the NHS being completely overwhelmed in cases.

Debt is another thing I dont think matters in the slightest, rack it up may as well be monopoloy money for all the difference it makes. When Obama was in power he racked up US debt to 11.9 TRILLION, and every president since has just added even more debt so that currently it stands at 28 trillion. Has US infrastructure and economy collapsed as a result of those ludicrous figures of debt? It hasnt made the slightest difference. In fact the US government is currently proposing spending a further 2 trillion on upgrading and improving its existing infrastucture. Its just games governments play, it means absolutely nothing in reality.

Im not too worried about big industry either. If they go to the wall thats harsh for those running them and those who work for them. But when things do eventually resolve there will be new businesses and companies who will step in to replace them for so long as there is still demand for what is being sold. Post WW2 a mass of companies had gone out of business, some literally bombed out of existence but many, many more driven out by the economic circumstances. We had rationing until 1954. Those businesses, big and small that the war destroyed were gone, but new ones eventually replaced them eventually giving us a massive post-war boom period. Same will happen again.

And we've always had a mental health crisis, probably throughout human history, we just usually fail to recognise it. I dont think the mental anxiety of this is any worse than during previous pandemics or wars. }}

[Bluebottle]

The Norwegian health authorities are seriously considering a ZeroCovid-approach for future pandemics. That would consist in shutting down society completely (beyond essential services) for about 5-6 weeks to get the level of the virus down to zero. Calls to open up more has been raised repeatedly throughout the pandemic for whatever laudable reason fits, but all it has led to so far is a new heavier round of virus outbreaks and new more contagious variants. Still, we keep shutting down partly and opening up because it is necessary for whatever laudable reason expecting a different result. There are several points in time where these outbreaks probably could have been stopped, not by opening up, not by our current middle way, but by short term harsher measures. We failed to stop the virus spreading from China by comparatively very few people. We failed to shut down properly the first time, living in a dreamland of things like heard-immunity. We failed to stop the spread of the English/Alfa variant early, and we failed to stop the spread of the Indian/Delta variant.

So rather than leaving people to their chances (opening up completely) or our middle way that has led to a long dragged out struggle (Oslo had eight months of lock-down, and we are the lucky ones in Europe as far as cases and deaths go) what was needed was probably harsher shorter term measures. That has not seemed possible in our interconnected world, where the interests of the international economy seems to trump all. Add a whole lot of political mismanagement and you have a crisis that could probably have been mitigated in so many ways.

Luckily the vaccines do work very well, even against the new variants. So, get vaccinated, and the sooner the better.

[halfwise]

We need the whole world to shut down all at once for 2 weeks. Then have rapid response tracking crews for remaining flare-ups and border crossing embargoes for countries that didn't get the memo. A short but intense period will fix things with minimal economic impact.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ Blue whilst I completely agree youd never get countries like the US to sign up to such a thing- theyd be calling it an attack on their freedoms and independence. Rest of the world cant even get America to agree on sensible climate accords that have global effects. America has no sense of wider global obligations, or of working with others save where it suits their own immediate political needs. The mentality is entriely based on individualism not cooperation and community- at least at a political and economic level its a selfish self-serving nation.
And Britain under the Tories is not much better as Brexit has indicated, Boris will happily self-harm the nation for short-term political gain. He was stil letting planes in and out from India long after the Delta variant was an obvious problem there purely for political and financial reasons and now its the dominant strain here sweeping through the nation. }}

[halfwise]

50% of new Delta variant cases in Israel are among the vaccinated, though it's not clear if those who have only one dose are considered vaccinated.  Also less severe in those who are vaccinated. Since Israel is 57% fully vaccinated, with nearly equal probabilities of being vaccinated or not these numbers mean there is not a lot of protection from infection.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/israel-says-delta-variant-infecting-110300111.html

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ The Delta variant is super dangerous. Heres Scotlands cases from the latest fgures- we had it damn near under control in the spring, then the Delta variant hit us and now look where we are. }}

[David H]

{{ Rest of the world cant even get America to agree on sensible climate accords that have global effects. }}

I can't disagree {{though I may not agree }} How can you expect us to agree with the whole world when we can't even agree among ourselves?

{{The mentality is entriely based on individualism not cooperation and community- at least at a political and economic level its a selfish self-serving nation. }}

I do disagree strongly on this though. The America I know is ALL about community and cooperation at the community level, but we're mostly defining our communities in terms of thousands, hundreds, or even dozens. This is the level where a lot of things like so called "herd immunity" can actually have value when you keep the herds small. For just one example, our little rural county is made up of many such herds/communities, and although you'd think from our politics we'd have a very low vaccination rate, we're actually at 68.5% vaccinated for those over 16, and it's all voluntary because people are choosing to get vaccinated to protect others they know on a first-name basis rather than some hypothetical nameless statistical "community". If it was all about individualism I'd bet we'd be around 25-30%.

[Pettytyrant101]

{{ Thats why I made the distinction of 'at a political and economic level' not at the level of individual communities or even individual Americans. But America has long ceased to be an outward looking country working in cooporation with others at a political and economic level. Trumps America First policy, still hugely popular it seems in the US, is an obvious outward reflection of this mentality which scorns cooperation or compromise. }}

[Mrs Figg]

China and New Zealand are the only way to solve this. They locked down hard and fast and stopped all travel, now they are reaping the benefits. The very worst was Johnson's half arsed approach which at the beginning just let it rip and focused on herd immunity, idiotic eat out to help out, coutless un-lockdowns, lax travel restrictions and 170,000 deaths later, damaged economy and third wave.

[halfwise]

Going back to David's point, I've found that in America the difference between conservative and liberal is the difference in boundaries between "Us" versus "them". Conservatives draw a smaller boundary, and are more cooperative within that boundary. Those outside the boundary get short shrift. Liberals would like to say there is no "them", but with such a large boundary the cooperative spirit can be diluted.

[Bluebottle]

Sydney is closing down hard as we speak in response to around 100 cases. I do not know if I can see the economic logic in all these false dawns (opening up too much, too quickly, closing down as little as possible), but my knowledge of economic logics might be lacking.

[halfwise]

The universal Australian approach to epidemic has been to close down hard.  I agree with closing down hard, but I part ways with the Aussies in that I think it should be only for a few weeks (though sealing the borders should be long term). They close down for months.

By comparison, the response to an American style mass shooting decades ago was to confiscate everyone's guns.  See a problem, deal with it.

[Mrs Figg]

The Delta virus is 18% here, its a race against the vaccines.

[halfwise]

We will have Republican states rampant with Delta, Democratic states with milder cases. I'm not sure if the effects of politics on belief in science is stronger in any other country. There may be stronger idealogical effects on everyday life such as Iran, North Korea or Afghanistan, but I doubt that will affect vaccine hesitancy to the same extent.

[Mrs Figg]

yep countries where the QAnon and anti-vaxx movement has rooted is probably most at risk, ironically N Korea probably wouldn't have many anti-vaxxers, them not being allowed to access the internet very much and being forced to do whatever the dictator wants. I don't think Muslim countries have had a problem with vaccine uptake but could be wrong. I think the anti-vaxxers are losing the argument in the UK when they turn up to vaccine centres they get laughed at.

[Mrs Figg]

[Amarië]

Finally my turn, I just got my first jab with Pfizer.