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Coronavirus - the new strain XVIII

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As non Delta cases go down either due to death or recovery, then Delta cases will rise and this rise will be exponential. Go back to page one of this thread to read all about governments reacting too slowly to the emerging threats and also ignoring exponential growth

Ah yes, I remember that complexity now, that’ll buy the US abs EU governments some time, maybe get them through to a high rate of vaccination, it’s a shame we don’t have access to the models.
 
[Broken record mode on] Sean - it's a population numbers game. So while 92% protection sounds great, 8% of the vaccinated UK adult population being at risk (and from a much more transmissable variant) is still millions of people liable to get and pass on the virus. Add that to the 40% or so protection to millions of the single vaccinated and no protection to the (still millions of) unvaccinated and that is still enough for the delta variant to run wild and give the NHS a very hard time. [Broken record mode off]
Compounding the issue, in theory 70%~80% immunized breaks the infection chain, but the unvaccinated are not uniformly spread through the country and often meet up by culture or age (schools)
 
In other news: New Brighton pub rebranded from ‘The Three Bellends’ to ‘The Two Helmets’ (Metro).
People are demanding to know why Johnson hasn’t sacked his Health Secretary after calling him ‘plenty’ hopeless over a year ago. The answer is simple- Hancock is still providing excellent meat shield service to the Prime Minister a year later along with other Cabinet members. Johnson can always point the finger elsewhere for his own gross incompetence.
 
The part of these messages that is of more interest is Raab chairing meetings more effectively by not doing a clown act. You'd hope so if Johnson's sole contribution to anything is more of his folksy optimisim and ra-ra before leaving a meeting without questions being asked.

Essentially the same deference the media gives him all the time which allows him to avoid scrutiny, choose how and who he briefs and avoid those nasty interviewers who might actually probe for answers instead of sycophantically accept his lies and bluster.
 
Oxfam are campaigning for patents to be temporarily lifted on covid 19 vaccines in order to scale up global deployment and get more people vaccinated and predictably the Tories are standing in the way. Petition here.
 
God bless Alex Wickham, ex of far right monstrosities Guido and Breitbart, for trying to make support-to-isolate happen. Here he is yesterday:

"Big problem for No. 10 and 11

Internal govt assessment finds current self-isolation policy has "low to medium" effectiveness

It warns there are "barriers" & "disincentives" to isolating And urges ministers to do more on sick pay / financial support"
https://twitter.com/alexwickham/status/1405057805992697858?s=20


Failed to become a story yesterday: not a big problem after all.

And here he is today:

"The U.K. government suppressed access to sick pay for people isolating with coronavirus at the height of the pandemic, London Playbook first reported.

Emails between senior civil servants, seen by London Playbook, show the U.K. Treasury instructed government officials to conceal a little-known provision from the COVID-19 furlough scheme that granted sick pay to people isolating with the coronavirus. In the emails, exchanged in January and February 2021, a senior official protested that the Treasury was blocking guidance that would have explained to employers and employees how to access this money."

https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-...cheme-for-workers-isolating-with-coronavirus/

So not only did government not provide sufficient material support for sick or potentially sick workers to isolate, despite knowing that it was crucial to suppressing the virus, they actively tried to withhold what support was already in place.

It's completely scandalous - it's at the heart of past and ongoing government failures - and yet it absolutely refuses to become a story.

I'm blaming the austerity mindset of Britain's awful editors and opposition parties. They will jump on a borders story in preference to this *actual* scandal every single time, because on some level they agree with the government: they really would rather the bodies pile sky high than risk workers getting something for nothing.
 
Today's PHE surveillance report

"Overall case rates increased in week 23. Case rates increased in all age groups, ethnic groups and regions. Overall Pillar 1 and Pillar 2 positivity increased compared to the previous week, most notably in younger age groups." Reinfections are a concern and they'll now report monthly. 120 school based outbreaks, while the spread in the North West has widened considerably and, especially, South into Cheshire. The usual map is on page 14 - spot the infections in Cornwall compared with the rest of the SW...
 
Here's more on reinfection (it's probably an argument against the herd immunity policy in schools too).

“If you look at the trajectory of the immune response after infection, mostly it is still detectable six months later, but it’s highly variable between people,” said Eleanor Barnes, a professor of hepatology and experimental medicine at Oxford and a senior author on the study.

“That is quite different to vaccination. If you vaccinate you get a really robust response, but with natural infection there’s much more diversity in responses.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ay-not-offer-long-term-protection-study-finds
 
It's not a trivial decision. Vaccinating teenagers would not be for the benefit of that particular demographic.

It would benefit their education and, therefore, that demographic, if, a) vaccination reduces transmission rates in children, and b) school children and teachers have to keep isolating at home when they've had close contact with a positive case.

Unless we get to a point where positive cases can be ignored and school children and teachers continue attending school despite contact with positive cases, vaccination should reduce the number of isolating students and benefit their education. In my local school, positive cases have started going up in the last week and the number of isolating students has risen from zero to about 70 - in the space of a week.
 
More of the Whitty speech

  • He said that after five years he thought vaccines would be available that could “hold the line” against a range of variants. He said:
In terms of the medium to longer term, if I look five years out, I would expect us to have polyvalent vaccines which will hold the line to a very large degree against even new variants as they come in, and an ability to respond with vaccination to new variants.

  • But he said until then new vaccination programmes might be needed. He said:
But the period over the next two or three years, I think new variants may will lead to us having to re-vaccinate or consider at least boosting vaccination as they come through.

We have to just be aware that Covid has not thrown its last surprise at us and there will be there will be several more over the next period.


https://www.theguardian.com/politic...08bfe0ccb149a0#block-60cb52b68f08bfe0ccb149a0
 
  • Prof Dominic Harrison, director of Public Health for Blackburn with Darwen Council, told BBC Radio 4's World At One programme earlier that "we need to start vaccinating teenagers as soon as possible".

    "I am absolutely asking for the JCVI (Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation) to stop dithering about – Germany, Canada, the US and many other countries have judged the Pfizer vaccine for children age 12 and above as safe and effective," he says.

    "I think there’s absolutely no doubt we need to get on with that as soon as possible."

    He says if the UK does not vaccinate that age group, the country will see a continued surge of the Delta variant and potentially other variants too.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-...cb59edad3dd002dd899396&pinned_post_type=share
 
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