Coronavirus

[Kandi1977]

This is a great explanation of the UK government's approach

and has been shared by some health officials

Works great in theory, but i'm afraid this will fail spectacularly. Why? because that experiment has a lot of preconditions that are not controllable. You don't have any control whatsover of the rate the population get infected. By doing virtually nothing now, the rate of infections will rise rapidly and uncontrollable, which is the exact opposite of what that experiment shows.

 

[Glenda's Legs]

Does herd immunity work without a vaccine?
I thought the idea was you vaccinated the many so that the few who could not have a vaccine for medical reasons would be protected by the vaccinated ‘herd’.
Is it known that getting this once gives immunity? Or is it an assumption? (Following from afar so not totally up on all the news/latest thinking).

 

[SpurMeUp]

Works great in theory, but i'm afraid this will fail spectacularly. Why? because that experiment has a lot of preconditions that are not controllable. You don't have any control whatsover of the rate the population get infected. By doing virtually nothing now, the rate of infections will rise rapidly and uncontrollable, which is the exact opposite of what that experiment shows.

Are there essentially 2 options?

1. you try and cut the virus off. Lockdown the nation, and deal with the fallout which will include severe effects on the economy. Business failure or just a slow down equals less money for the government to spend on the NHS. You also have the issue of supporting business. What if they are going bust? Should the government pay to support businesses while they pay people's wages?

At the 'end' of this lockdown phase, will you have eradicated the virus? No. Highly unlikely. That ship has sailed. Global travel won't cease, so even if you could stop the virus in one nation (difficult in itself) was lockdown worth it? Furthermore, indications are that the fatality rate is not nearly as bad as the WHO initially publicised.


2. The other option is you try to manage the situation. Isolated those at most risk, and accept that to some degree this virus is not going to disappear. In essence that is the approach this government seems to be taking, using scientific advice. You could argue about how it should achieve the best management. It is possible that to slow rates of people needing ICU beds, complete lockdown is required for a short time.

 

[a spur from swansea]

Was at a Stereophonics concert last night,5,000 tucked into a large conference room.......what virus lol.....

 

[scaramanga]

Does herd immunity work without a vaccine?
I thought the idea was you vaccinated the many so that the few who could not have a vaccine for medical reasons would be protected by the vaccinated ‘herd’.
Is it known that getting this once gives immunity? Or is it an assumption? (Following from afar so not totally up on all the news/latest thinking).

Immunity is immunity AFAIK. Vaccine replicates having the virus

 

[monkeybarry]

He doesn't appear to have an answer for what we do when the inevitable happens and the entire world doesn't eradicate COVID-19, leading to another outbreak.

What do we do then, just shut everything down and quarantine again?

That's not an acceptable way of life, no matter what the cost of the alternative is.

I think the reality is, irrespective of who takes what measure, it will be a few cycles of CV19 until a vaccine is produced.
At which point the western world and communist states will vaccinate (that in itself will take a hell of a long time). During which time we'll travel to the poorer parts of the world who are slower/not able to vaccinate, spreading the disease again and killing those in poorer areas/with less health care access.

It seems the herd immunity angle isn't a starter, so yeah it'll be quarantine to reduce spread and minimise casualties. Lift quarantine, spread will increase again, quarantine again.

Repeat until large scale vaccination takes place - which brings up it's own issues depending on where you are in the queue.
End of 2021 at best?

 

[elyid]

Immunity is immunity AFAIK. Vaccine replicates having the virus

Herd Immunity usually means trying to *avoid* farm animals catching a disease by use of a vaccine.

The Gov plan is more akin to locking old bessie in the top field, while letting all the other cows get sick and potentially die.

 

[elyid]

It seems the herd immunity angle isn't a starter, so yeah it'll be quarantine to reduce spread and minimise casualties. Lift quarantine, spread will increase again, quarantine again.

According to the Chinese this is pretty much what they are doing, but when they lift quarantine everything is very controlled, so that if it flairs up they can track / isolate people.

So rather than just declare an all clear, it's more that they are in 99% quarantine, then 98% and slowly reopen stuff.

Presumably airports / borders will be last to reopen.

If *every* country did this I can see it being quite effective.

 

[scaramanga]

According to the Chinese this is pretty much what they are doing, but when they lift quarantine everything is very controlled, so that if it flairs up they can track / isolate people.

So rather than just declare an all clear, it's more that they are in 99% quarantine, then 98% and slowly reopen stuff.

Presumably airports / borders will be last to reopen.

If *every* country did this I can see it being quite effective.

So everyone stays under quarantine until a vaccine has been produced and disseminated (probably years)?

fudge that.

 

[Parklaner81]

According to the Chinese this is pretty much what they are doing, but when they lift quarantine everything is very controlled, so that if it flairs up they can track / isolate people.

So rather than just declare an all clear, it's more that they are in 99% quarantine, then 98% and slowly reopen stuff.

Presumably airports / borders will be last to reopen.

If *every* country did this I can see it being quite effective.

One difficulty with this is prevailing cultures. For example, and in spite of the numbers involved, I'd imagine the Chinese government would have a far easier time getting such a regime to stick than the British government...

 

[scaramanga]

I think the reality is, irrespective of who takes what measure, it will be a few cycles of CV19 until a vaccine is produced.
At which point the western world and communist states will vaccinate (that in itself will take a hell of a long time). During which time we'll travel to the poorer parts of the world who are slower/not able to vaccinate, spreading the disease again and killing those in poorer areas/with less health care access.

It seems the herd immunity angle isn't a starter, so yeah it'll be quarantine to reduce spread and minimise casualties. Lift quarantine, spread will increase again, quarantine again.

Repeat until large scale vaccination takes place - which brings up it's own issues depending on where you are in the queue.
End of 2021 at best?

Why do you say that?

 

[SpurMeUp]

According to the Chinese this is pretty much what they are doing, but when they lift quarantine everything is very controlled, so that if it flairs up they can track / isolate people.

So rather than just declare an all clear, it's more that they are in 99% quarantine, then 98% and slowly reopen stuff.

Presumably airports / borders will be last to reopen.

If *every* country did this I can see it being quite effective.

Everyone would have to be tracked. With a unique identifier. But you'd still have the issue of people not showing any symptoms infecting others. Without testing everyone they are impossible to track.

 

[monkeybarry]

Why do you say that?

It's difficult to say for certain, and I'm conflicted and confused on the position - but there appears to plentiful information saying it won't work as well as saying it will. I also look at what literally everyone else is doing - to conclude we are special and different seems incredibly arrogant and naive. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my instinct and logic point the other way.
And I don't trust the Govt - I think they are just trying to not look bad.

 

[monkeybarry]

According to the Chinese this is pretty much what they are doing, but when they lift quarantine everything is very controlled, so that if it flairs up they can track / isolate people.

So rather than just declare an all clear, it's more that they are in 99% quarantine, then 98% and slowly reopen stuff.

Presumably airports / borders will be last to reopen.

If *every* country did this I can see it being quite effective.

That first point I had overlooked. That makes alot of sense. I think South Korea are doing something similar with an app.

The every country part seems important to me and why herd immunity doesn't work logically - it seems we need a matching gloabel approach.
But I'm no expert

 

[SteveAWOL]

Does herd immunity work without a vaccine?
I thought the idea was you vaccinated the many so that the few who could not have a vaccine for medical reasons would be protected by the vaccinated ‘herd’.
Is it known that getting this once gives immunity? Or is it an assumption? (Following from afar so not totally up on all the news/latest thinking).

FWIW...

https://twitter.com/x/status/1238857690996264962

 

[Glenda's Legs]

Immunity is immunity AFAIK. Vaccine replicates having the virus

A vaccine does more than just replicate the disease though, it also triggers sufficient antibodies to fight the disease without actually having the full-blown disease itself.
Take the common cold. That’s a viral infection. Albeit it relatively benign but a virus nonetheless. There’s no vaccine. Simply catching the common cold does not automatically bring immunity against it. I don’t think it even builds any level of immunity? You can catch it over and over. So is this virus different in that just catching it once builds the herd immunity that otherwise comes with a vaccination programme? Is it known or is it fingers crossed it might work?

 

[elltrev]

Are there essentially 2 options?

1. you try and cut the virus off. Lockdown the nation, and deal with the fallout which will include severe effects on the economy. Business failure or just a slow down equals less money for the government to spend on the NHS. You also have the issue of supporting business. What if they are going bust? Should the government pay to support businesses while they pay people's wages?

At the 'end' of this lockdown phase, will you have eradicated the virus? No. Highly unlikely. That ship has sailed. Global travel won't cease, so even if you could stop the virus in one nation (difficult in itself) was lockdown worth it? Furthermore, indications are that the fatality rate is not nearly as bad as the WHO initially publicised.


2. The other option is you try to manage the situation. Isolated those at most risk, and accept that to some degree this virus is not going to disappear. In essence that is the approach this government seems to be taking, using scientific advice. You could argue about how it should achieve the best management. It is possible that to slow rates of people needing ICU beds, complete lockdown is required for a short time.

It makes sense to me that those are the two options, and it makes sense to me that we want to follow the second option. But it doesn't feel to me like we really are following that second option, because our policies are still so light and our case trajectory seems fairly similar to Italy, whose hospitals are overrun by all accounts. I.e. we don't actually seem to be managing the situation at all, and seem headed towards a big peak. See below for FT graphs on deaths and cases, respectively:

Am I missing something?

(Though I have just noticed that the y-axis on those graphs is a bit all over the place, which is weird... again, am I missing something as to why?)

 

[monkeybarry]

So everyone stays under quarantine until a vaccine has been produced and disseminated (probably years)?

fudge that.

And that's just it - that level of boredom and frustration is a bigger risk to life than the virus itself.
So the China model of quarantine, reduce spread, relax quarter and seek out cases and then requarantine at a trigger point is prohibited the way fwds for the next two years.

If so, we are all at the start of a complete change of how our economy survives and how we entertain ourselves.

 

[scaramanga]

It's difficult to say for certain, and I'm conflicted and confused on the position - but there appears to plentiful information saying it won't work as well as saying it will. I also look at what literally everyone else is doing - to conclude we are special and different seems incredibly arrogant and naive. Perhaps I'm wrong, but my instinct and logic point the other way.
And I don't trust the Govt - I think they are just trying to not look bad.

If immunity doesn't exist, then a vaccine can't exist.

So we're either able to become immune and this method saves us months (years) of needless hardship, or we're not and we've lost a few extra old/unfit people.

 

[scaramanga]

And that's just it - that level of boredom and frustration is a bigger risk to life than the virus itself.
So the China model of quarantine, reduce spread, relax quarter and seek out cases and then requarantine at a trigger point is prohibited the way fwds for the next two years.

If so, we are all at the start of a complete change of how our economy survives and how we entertain ourselves.

As I've already stated, I value my liberty more than my security.

If living life comes with risk then so be it. Living under draconian rule isn't living.