Erm....Boris WTF are you talking about?!

the vaccine doesn't mean the end of covid though.....doesnt it just lesson effects? and with no guarantee regarding new strains

Admittedly I didn't watch it all ,but from what I saw he said we are at the stage we were at at the end of last September ,and we could easily have a third wave if we we take our eyes off the ball etc ,not that we will .

He didn't even say that did he ? He is being cautious!

If everyone stops following the rules from today, there will be another wave. That's why we have a roadmap with 5 week gaps, to monitor the situation and proceed accordingly.

I thought this was the third wave. I have lost the plot

You probably want to rewatch a video of the briefing. You have misunderstood what he said.

A scientist friend said a few weeks ago that there is very strong evidence to suggest that we will see a new wave over the summer if everyone relaxes the rules too quickly (which is highly likely given how fed up everyone is)..

I heard him trying to stress the fact that we're not out of the woods quite yet and need to continue being cautious.

All true.

I missed it today.

I didn't see the briefing so don't know what he said but could it mean a third wave in terms of cases only? Given the success of our vaccination programme, cases will hopefully not lead to many hospitalisations.

We still have a lot of unvaccinated people. Even the people who have been vaccinated only had one dose.

The 1 dose does make it very unlikely that people will be hospitalised and we are hoping that deaths will be very unlikely. Someone posted the other day that there were no deaths in the vaccine trials of people who have had a vaccine.

However, if we just went back to normal life right at this point, we would get exponential growth of cases again; we would see hospitalisations rise again; and there would be a risk of people dying.

I didn't see the briefing, I will read the transcript in due course if I can find it.

I’ve been missing these lately

I haven't seen the briefing

But what you were expecting! I'm still stunned by people's view on this.

If there is to be another wave/lockdown, just about all the elderly that I know will be very surprised!
They all[and I think it is all amongst the ones I know] think things are A ok now, now they have had even the 1 vaccine.
I go to open my mouth to speak, and think better of it.

OP Most people haven't any vaccine yet, about 31% have had 1 and about 1% are as well protected as possible with both.

But that's still not 100% protection fir anybody.

The vaccines are amazing and they will help tremendously, but not that much at the moment when most people haven't had one.

The Israelis seem to think the protection of the herd immunity threshold will be achieved at 90% fully vaccinated.

We have 1% fully vaccinated and 31% with their first dose.

There is a long way to go and some of us question the wisdom of opening up this early in the vaccine programme.

Season what do you think?

I missed it

I didn't see the briefing.

However, it would be good of Mr Johnson to set an example, by wearing a face covering until he arrives at the podium, and not taking trips out of London which seem to be for PR purposes more than essential work trips.

The vaccine rollout has been super hyped as the answer to all our problems.

You barely hear a peep about the 60,000 British people who have died of covid since we began vaccinating.

So I don't blame anyone who thinks the vaccines are a magic bullet. They've been led along that garden path to divert attention from all the death.

We'll hit 150,000 covid deaths in the next 8 days. Possibly even tomorrow. I bet we don't hear a peep about it.

It’s not hard to see a third wave being a possibility in reality.

Large group gatherings start again today, many of the parents and staff won’t be vaccinated and we know many cases the child is the index case.

Add to that all those that aren’t bothering following the rules as claim they have had enough, see no point when schools are open etc and the virus has the chance and opportunity to spread again.

Vaccines help stop severe cases but there are still many many millions unvaccinated.

Just checked the dashboard and deaths are 124,566 do no idea where you are getting that info from PrincesNutNuts?