Boris announcement- November. Does he know something?

[Yetiyoga]

Not sure if this has been suggested. We are supposed to find out next week about how successful the Oxford vaccine has gone aren't we? Do you think Boris Johnson knows the result and that is why he thinks we could be back to normal by November / Christmas? Or am I being naive/ too optimistic?
I just can't see 'normal' by Christmas as things are currently. And I'm fairly relaxed about it all.
I have a first niece / nephew due late October so it would mean the world to be able to meet them this year.

Who else would have done better?

Ahem, several people would have. Such as Jacinda Ardern to name one.

If we'd locked down just one week earlier we'd have had literally half of the deaths we've suffered. And we had plenty of forewarning from other countries. It was pretty obvious where things were heading.

Boris is an idiot. The only the thing you can rely on him to do is to spout utter bollocks. Agree he's all about lining his mates pockets.

Even if the vaccine has been successful it still doesn't mean much. It is a coronavirus so the best you can do is vaccinate against a few strains that we have already seen. It won't make everyone who has the vaccine immune to all possible firms of covid. It will be like getting a flu shot - gives a better chance during that particular flu season, at best.

Think of the leaders of the 3 countries with the highest death tolls:

Donald Trump
Jair Bolsonaro
Boris johnson

Enough said..

He seems to be ignoring the fact that a lot of younger people are getting it which has reduced the death rate true. However a lot of people are still shielding until the end of July, so what we have no idea what will happen when these vulnerable people try to get back to normal.

A wonderful lady whose full time job is within the NHS is my friend. She’s worked throughout the COVID crisis and I trust her. She told me this week that the NHS is ready for the next wave and to prepare for autumn. I know her well enough to listen. She’s not saying this for fun. My GP also told me this week to wear a mask when shopping etc. He said don’t wait for the date when they become mandatory. and that masks will be here for some time so start using them now. Do I like this news? No. But I will follow it. These are the people I trust and believe in.

Whilst I has a lot of sympathy when Boris had Covid I can’t help wonder if he now has the attitude I’m ok what ever happens.

I wish he knew something instead of being the incompetent fool who avoids responsibility, reading reports and work in general

Johnson and Gove are journalists and bad hack ones at that. All they will ever give us is good news headlines and cliches. With a large dose of the propaganda tricks Cummings learned in his many years on Russia.

I have no faith in them

Froglette

This follows that nhs workers in my family have told me too. Thanks for sharing

Yes, of course I know it's not over. That doesn't stop me knowing that all the countries I mentioned have done better than us. My stating this doesn't preclude the possibility that BJ will miraculously change things now or that suddenly Taiwan, New Zealand and Zgermany will take leave of their senses and make a pig's ear of it. It could happen.

Don't be so utterly fatuous.

@Froglette16

A wonderful lady whose full time job is within the NHS is my friend. She’s worked throughout the COVID crisis and I trust her. She told me this week that the NHS is ready for the next wave and to prepare for autumn. I know her well enough to listen. She’s not saying this for fun. My GP also told me this week to wear a mask when shopping etc. He said don’t wait for the date when they become mandatory. and that masks will be here for some time so start using them now. Do I like this news? No. But I will follow it. These are the people I trust and believe in.

Yes of course the NHS is getting prepared for a second wave (and third/fourth/fifth/etc). That doesn’t mean they have secret information there’s going to be one. Nobody knows. Really honestly, nobody knows.

My job has been in this kind of Covid response and planning for months now, it would be a much easier job if we DID know what was going to happen! But we don’t know. So we plan for the worst and hope for the best.

The Oxford vaccine is currently in Phase III trials which means they’re checking to see if it actually works, but there is no way Boris would know how it’s going because even the scientists working on the trials won’t know yet. What’s being published next week is I think the Phase I data which should talk about the kind of immune response it produces as well as safety, which would obviously be good news if it’s positive but still won’t prove it actually works yet.

There are several companies/groups now saying that their vaccine should be ready for emergency use before the end of the year. Some of these are getting manufactured now. But again we have to wait and see if they work, then the authorities have to decide who gets priority for actually being vaccinated. But it’s not the case that Boris knows they will have results in time or that Chris Whitty knows they won’t. We just don’t know.

What I would like to hear more about is what the governments planning to do about ordering vaccines now. They definitely have orders for a lot of doses of the Oxford vaccine, presumably they’re already looking at alternatives as a safety net? Dunno though.

I do try to accept different viewpoints but people who suggest Boris is doing 'what a good leader would do' are utterly wrong.

Our government failed us. I remember the 16th March clearly for a personal reason and I discussed with people at work that we could not understand why the government were not locking down, were doing so little. If I could get it without a CMO advising me, Johnson knew and chose to delay. Or he chose not to listen and understand in the first place. Either way, he chose.

I understand that it is psychologically comforting to think 'no one could have done better' but is is absolutely not true. I believe every single other PM since WW2 could have done better - because they cared more and they would have listened to their scientific advisors who, with hindsight, were right. Johnson is NOT qualified to assess the science, which is why he has advisers. They said openly yesterday, both the PM and the advisers, that the government is no longer following the science. That is very worrying.

Those saying we must think of the economy - if we had locked down one week earlier, and deaths and infections were half - we would've in a massively better place. The economy and the health go together. A second spike will harm our economy even more. Local lockdowns will damage local businesses.

It must be very hard for some to process this, especially anyone who voted for him thinking he'd be 'fun' or 'a change' but we all need to stop letting them off. Britain really deserves more.

He suggested November, imo, because furlough ends in October and they need to stop people (unions, charities, opposition etc) asking what will happen to businesses with no work then.

November is another gamble. To unlock in the middle of winter makes no sense imo, especially with the evidence/fact that our track and trace is nowhere near good enough yet to snuff out infections.

Sorry for epic rant. Please find your inner strength to demand a decent standard of government, I don't care about left and right, just competent.

I don’t think it’s about people/lives, I think it’s about getting the economy back on track. I believe there will be another spike in winter, especially with everyone back to work, shops and pubs. The hustle and bustle of Christmas will be a breeding ground.

Even if the vaccine has been successful it still doesn't mean much. It is a coronavirus so the best you can do is vaccinate against a few strains that we have already seen. It won't make everyone who has the vaccine immune to all possible firms of covid.

Eh? They aren't attempting to vaccinate against all corona virus. Most are just a common cold. They are attempting to create a vaccine that prevents you catching covid-19 specifically.

He's just talking out of arse as usual! Remember the 12 week timeframe for breaking the virus? That went well...

Wow thanks all. A lot of interesting points of view. I actually wrote this thread as I thought about it before bed and it helped me sleep by writing it down. It has been really interesting reading everyone's points of view, even ones I don't agree with.

A couple of points:

1. We did do a terrible job, anyone who says otherwise must either not realise how many people died or just simply doesn't care about people's lives. I don't know how else you can say he did a good job.
2. Boris Johnson is our prime minister. He knew about this since December (or January?!) He had time to prepare. It is his (and others in government) job to protect our country in the best way possible. Yet they still let matches go ahead and Cheltenham etc...

All those children and pupils back in school after skiing in Italy where they were going through a terrible time of it. So many simple things they could have done to be on the safe side.

1. I know that I wouldn't get vaccinated initially but I'm not particularly worried about myself..but the vulnerable and frontine / elderly would be an amazing start.

@goldenomber you seem to be one of the only ones talking sense

I am a Boris fan but even I know his government have f*cked up but he did not say it would be gone by Christmas ! The speech actually gave me hope as many people are suffering mental health and suicides are double ... he always said IF not WHEN

Many of the most vulnerable cannot be vaccinated. If your immune system is wrecked by chemo then any vaccine is useless to you.

New Zealand did better because they are a densely populated country. It’s difficult to compare nations to one another.
I don’t think there will be another national lockdown, perhaps local ones?

Must have been difficult for Jacinda Ardern to protect her nation of a billion... sheep from Coronavirus. People praising her just agree with her politics and are trying to score cheap points, or make some sexist trope about how women are better leaders (they must have pretty short memories as I'm pretty sure Theresa May wouldn't have been a step up from Boris)

Excellent post @labyrinthloafer. I entirely agree with you. Our government have failed us utterly because of bad choices. This was not a comet that smashed into our shores. It is a highly contagious, often deadly novel virus that other countries reacted to and warned us a about. Meanwhile our government chose not to react quickly, at the expense of lives and likelihoods. They were too slow, too dithering, too invested in machismo and exceptionalism, too blustering, too stupid and quite possibly too corrupt to take the actions that needed to be taken.

Brexit will be the same

@commentatorz why exactly is it sexist to say that a woman who did not have tens of thousands of deaths and the economy collapse under her watch, performed better than a man who did?

You're going to have to spell that one out for me cuz I'm not getting it

I do remember the Oxford group originally talking about October this year. Below is a headline (no idea of reliability) saying on track for September.

I suspect there will be last minute delays but it is possible we will have a vaccination late this year.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.indiatvnews.com/amp/news/good-news/coronavirus-vaccine-by-september-oxford-university-trial-on-track-astrazeneca-634907

"Many of the most vulnerable cannot be vaccinated. If your immune system is wrecked by chemo then any vaccine is useless to you"

That is not necessarily true. It also depends on the nature of the vaccine, and even if some have to be delayed in the very intensive weeks of treatment, and some live vaccines can never be safely administered, dead ones can often be used.

We do not yet know if the vaccine will be live/attenuated or not. We do not know if they well want to do further testing in some groups before rolling it out to the most vulnerable (some vaccines behave differently in different groups in the population in terms of level of protective effect, and that will need establishing, though I've only ever heard of that happening in terms of age)

It is possible some groups will not be able to receive the vaccine on medical grounds - eg those with allergies to any of the ingredients - as there always are. So getting it out into the wider herd as quickly as possible, and getting frontline workers done to make essential services safer, is good not to be really important.

Boris said that there would be a wider flu jab programme this year. Wonder if that'll be a practice run on how to reach everyone?

[quote IfOnlyOurEyesSawSouls]@TheMurk "nhs underwhelmed if anything" 😂😂🙄😡

I have first hand experience of that as do my colleagues and er well thats not the case .

Many of them are burnt out , having difficulty sleeping and experiencing ptsd type symptoms as a result of the last 4 months . [/quote]
I can back this up.
I know some of my friends within the nhs and community (nursing homes etc) are worn out.
I'm at proud how we as a trust pulled together, with redeployed staff in areas they had never worked in before.
Staff worried about staff ventilated in icu .
I don't sleep.
Lost my appetite
I cry over the simplest thing.
So tired.
I had covid, an experience I never want again .