Is there going to be another pandemic

[Lookingforwardtoautumnnow]

This winter?

Seen a couple of people posting about it, tbf they are conspiracy types, but I have anxiety after having covid & long covid and can’t go through all that again. Can anyone reassure me?

Its not just a Times article though is it. She wrote a book called When The Dust Settles.

Its not just a Times article though is it. She wrote a book called When The Dust Settles.

Did she? Excellent.

I would be very interested to read the article tbh and I might totally agree with everything she's written granted.

But I'm well aware that one person's opinion constitutes , well, one opinion.

@JenniferBooth I have just read it and it is excellent. It makes me shudder how such eminent people like her were ignored when her job for 20 years was pandemic planning. I am also glad that our former chief medical officer has spoken out about the damage done to a generation of young people.

sunglasses As User says LE has 20 years experience in pandemic planning. Thats more than just an opinion.

sunglasses As User says LE has 20 years experience in pandemic planning. Thats more than just an opinion.

I saw that bit. 👍🏻 what do you want me to say?

@JenniferBooth
@sunglassesonthetable

It’s not ‘fact’ it’s an opinion. I’ve also seen LE posts things on her Twitter account that have been from discredited sources.

There are similarly eminent people who think differently. Such as here :
https://royalsociety.org/-/media/policy/projects/impact-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-on-covid-19-transmission/covid-19-examining-the-effectiveness-of-non-pharmaceutical-interventions-executive-summary.pdf

I think the issue is that anti lockdowners struggle to find ‘eminent’ people who support their opinion. It tends to be the view of right wing economists - so when someone ‘trendy’ or feminist (despite any medical science type qualifications) expresses misgivings about lockdown - it’s upheld as some sort of beacon of truth.

The issue that is massively skirted around is “how do you address the issue of hospitals at the brink of collapse and the fatality rate that an out of control virus with no method of control would cause”.

sunglasses As User says LE has 20 years experience in pandemic planning. Thats more than just an opinion.

I tend to go with the consensus tbh.

@whalepolo the likes of Susan Minchie and a lot of her Independent Sage colleagues were not epidemnologists they were behaviour psychologists and statisticians.

Jesus fucking Christ they admitted to the psychological abuse in the Whatsapps that were revealed back in March.

We now seem to have been stuck in the gaslighting stage for a bloody long time.

Do you, personally, know the reason why every single one of those 5.5 billion people took the vaccine?

I didn’t take it to end lockdown. I took it because it was a rational, sensible thing to do. Firstly to protect myself, because I am clinically extremely vulnerable. And also to reduce the risk that I would pass COVID on to others, which I also think is a good thing to do if you have the opportunity.

So that only leaves 5,499,999,999 other people’s motivation for you to check.

@User2346 but beyond the UK, globally - the consensus opinion. The majority of ‘eminent’ scientists were thinking along the same lines. So I can only think that was the safest thing to do at that moment in time. I agree challenge should be there, but until the challenge has sufficient peer backing. Then that becomes the new consensus.

@WhalePolo we are going to have to agree to disagree which is absolutely fine its what makes these threads interesting. There was a lot of panic and hysteria which was justified when we didn’t know what we were dealing with but it was soon known. I can’t say I disagreed with the initial lockdown and if it had been for the 3 weeks to flatten the curve I would probably look back on it with a bit of nostalgia having that family time. It just wasn’t justified going on for so long and schools certainly should not have been closed for more than 3 weeks maximum. The big worry for me is that we could have something huge next time but the compliance won’t be there whereas we had more of a Swedish approach the first time more would be happy to comply.

*Do you, personally, know the reason why every single one of those 5.5 billion people took the vaccine?

I didn’t take it to end lockdown. I took it because it was a rational, sensible thing to do. Firstly to protect myself, because I am clinically extremely vulnerable. And also to reduce the risk that I would pass COVID on to others, which I also think is a good thing to do if you have the opportunity.

So that only leaves 5,499,999,999 other people’s motivation for you to check.*

sigh.

of course not. Why would I?

But you again didn't rebel against consensus opinion did you? You took the vaccine.

And there were those that did rebel against consensus advice and didn't have it.

Vaccines were always the way to end lockdown and reach stability. That might not have been your motivation but it was always going to be a by product.

@PuzzledObserver

News flash....................you can be anti lockdown without being anti vaccine.

However the vaccine mandate for care workers was fucking insanity

News flash....................you can be anti lockdown without being anti vaccine.

👍🏻 yes Jennifer

I took the vaccine because I wanted to go on holiday so will run for cover now 😁

But vaccines still got us out of lockdown.

If you'd wanted to 'rebel' which my original post was about you could have not had the vaccine.

@sunglassesonthetable I wanted to go on my holiday to Dubai. I was anti lockdown after the initial 3 weeks but it doesn’t mean that I am anti vaccine.

fab👍🏻

And vaccine was always going to end lockdown. So cunningly you did your bit towards ending it.

Being pro vaccine doesn't mean being pro lockdown either.

What I was rebelling against was the implication that people who had the vaccine were all the same…. an unthinking herd….. Perhaps that’s not what you meant, in which case I apologise.

No, I didn’t rebel against the official advice to have the vaccine. That’s not because I’m incapable of thinking, it’s because I have a basic grasp of statistics, and the evidence supporting vaccination were very compelling - on both the individual and population level. I mean - I had it primarily to protect myself, but I understand that by doing so I was also contributing to controlling the spread of the virus.

I think that if we hadn’t succeeded in developing a vaccine that lockdown would eventually have ended anyway. For various reasons - compliance fatigue and economic carnage among them. Eventually, people would want to get back to the activities and people they missed, and would be willing to take the risk of doing that. Plus, you know - the more people got infected, the more immunity there was, and the less dangerous COVID became.

If people wanted to rebel against lockdown, I’d have that they would be more motivated to be vaccinated rather than less. Maybe that’s too logical.

*What I was rebelling against was the implication that people who had the vaccine were all the same…. an unthinking herd….. Perhaps that’s not what you meant, in which case I apologise.

No, I didn’t rebel against the official advice to have the vaccine. That’s not because I’m incapable of thinking,*

No, I meant by taking the vaccine you were complying with the consensus medical and government view that it was the correct course of action at the time. You were not rebelling against the government line.

Which after all some did.

Not sure why you think going with the majority view means you're incapable of thinking tbh.

That does kind of perpetuate the anti vax trope of " the herd" . As if the only "thoughtful" view is an out field, extremist one.

We can only speculate where we would be without a vaccine.

Regardless if you're anti lockdown or not, by taking the vaccine you were part of its demise.

I know more people that haven't had the vaccine than have had it, those that have had it most stopped at 2, the rest that have had one booster have decided to not have anymore. Personal experience I know but I do live in a very small town with 80% over 60 and everyone knows everyone's business!