A potential vaccine? What does that mean initially for those who aren't eligible for it?

[3littlewords]

Encouraging news today that a vaccine has been found that's 90% effective. However as initially it will be rolled out to those front line workers, the over 80s and those CEV , what does that mean for everyone else?

Will the virus just left to run through the rest of society as they will most likely not need any NHS support? Will 14 day isolating for close contacts still take place? Will school bubbles still close for 14 days ?

Given children will probably be the last people to be vaccinated (if at all), how will this affect education? Will they still be required to test and isolate every time they show any symptoms? Will there continue to be a disruption to teaching?

When will it be acceptable to reduce the need for SD and masks? When everyone has been vaccinated? When the NHS is no longer overwhelmed? When the number of deaths reduce? When?
What does the news of a vaccine mean for the majority that won't be eligible (initially anyway)?

Even if we do still have to isolate, if some people are vaccinated and (hopefully) less people are getting it, then testing might be quicker. At the moment we have a situation where people can be isolating for a week to wait for a negative test ...when they might have felt ok to work on day 3.

The study was carried out in June and July, guess what, when schools were not open. Testing the antibodies of teachers and pupils, that were in school during the first lockdown, when there was LOADS more space between pupils, and a secondary school could have around 25 kids attending out of 1500. Very reliable study that was.

study here: www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54025708

@Badbadbunny

I don't see the need for teachers to be vaccinated or for classes/bubbles to isolate etc. We don't do that for flu in a normal year. Don't the statistics show that covid is no more of a threat/risk to healthy/young as other viral diseases like flu or norovirus?

Once the vulnerable and elderly have been vaccinated, we really should be back to "normal", i.e. people should stay off work/school if they are ill. Hopefully, we should have all heeded the necessity of basic hygiene such as hand washing, catching coughs, etc.

We don't vaccinate everyone against flu - only the vulnerable and elderly. Not sure why covid should be any different. The vaccination should eventually be available for younger people if they want it, like the flu vaccine.

I agree with this, but convincing people that this is 'ok' will take a huge, huge effort. Convincing people to lockdown, isolate, change their lives, etc took a huge and largely successful campaign to persuade them that Covid was a unique and terrible threat: that it was a threat to us all not just the vulnerable, that even if you didn't die there was a risk of long Covid and so you couldn't be complacent, etc - all of which was true, but also true of many other diseases that we don't react like that to. The actual truth - that it was a unique threat but because of the possibility and consequences of mass infection at once, not the disease itself - was, I guess, not deemed compelling enough to persuade people to take action as radical as that needed.

The difficulty with this is that vaccination of the vulnerable is a solution to the actual situation, but not to everyone who fears dying of Covid despite actually being in a low-risk group. If we want people to accept that the Covid vaccine will be distributed and run as for 'normal' diseases - and that it'll mitigate deaths but not eliminate them - we need first to persuade them that it is a normal disease, which isn't the current public perception.

Excellent point hardbackwriter

More discussion of ‘long Covid’ is needed too. Is it a significant threat? It’s very hard to tell based on data so far. It was wheeled out to make younger people more scared, so making out like it’s nothing now probably won’t work. What is very obvious is that it’s not a priority for the NHS.

@Badbadbunny

I don't see the need for teachers to be vaccinated or for classes/bubbles to isolate etc. We don't do that for flu in a normal year. Don't the statistics show that covid is no more of a threat/risk to healthy/young as other viral diseases like flu or norovirus?

Once the vulnerable and elderly have been vaccinated, we really should be back to "normal", i.e. people should stay off work/school if they are ill. Hopefully, we should have all heeded the necessity of basic hygiene such as hand washing, catching coughs, etc.

We don't vaccinate everyone against flu - only the vulnerable and elderly. Not sure why covid should be any different. The vaccination should eventually be available for younger people if they want it, like the flu vaccine.

I see your point, however if you are comparing with the flu then a lot of children are vaccinated against the flu even if they are not asthmatic, so that kind of gives teachers protection and if not then at least they have the choice to privately get a flu vac, but there’s no option for teachers to do that yet and neither will children be vaccinated. All I know is that there has to be a way around this as schools are where my DC pick up all the viruses from.

hardbackwriter exactly!
Despite the data, the government did nothing to discourage the narrative that anyone at anytime can die of this. That many young healthy people are in ICU and that long Covid will wreck many many lives.
People grabbed the narrative and ran with it, augmented it as necessary.
How many posters on MN have announced themselves experts on Covid, endlessly lecturing about the threat?

When the truth is most people who catch Covid will be fine, but we don’t have enough beds for the ones who won’t. Sorry.

Now of course there’ll be a backtrack by government, because they’ll need to reduce restrictions while explaining why we all don’t actually need a vaccine.

@TheKeatingFive

Excellent point hardbackwriter

More discussion of ‘long Covid’ is needed too. Is it a significant threat? It’s very hard to tell based on data so far. It was wheeled out to make younger people more scared, so making out like it’s nothing now probably won’t work. What is very obvious is that it’s not a priority for the NHS.

Absolutely. And we just don't know enough about either how long-term this is, how prevalent it is, etc. to give people informed answers on this. There is some research done that is very alarming; however, we simply don't do similar research for other diseases (if you have a nasty but non-hospitalised case of the flu no one is going to do a detailed heart scan of you three months later; if they did would they find damage like that on those with Covid? We don't really know) so giving people an idea of relative risks is impossible. We also still don't know how many people have it asymptomatically; the mass testing in universities suggests that young people have to be unlucky to get noticeable symptoms, let alone to be debilitated for months/years. But again, a lot of people see any risk as too large, and I think they have been encouraged in that.

Scare tactics were required to ensure compliance in the first lockdown. Most people will be fine, but a tiny percentage of a big number is still a big number, so hospital over-capacity is possible. The risk to an individual is very very very low.

Sadly the majority of the public are terrible at looking at risk in a rational way.

We also need to separate out Covid and the consequences of a Covid pandemic. For instance, there has been a lot spoken about how uniquely terrible a Covid death - drowning in your own lungs - is, but pneumonia could be described similarly and has long been seen as a comparatively kind death for the very elderly. When my grandmother died of pneumonia the care home nurse pointed out that it was once called 'the old man's friend'. BUT my grandmother also died with her children at her side, holding her hand, and in that regard a death from Covid would be desperately crueller in the current circumstances. But does that mean it would always be worse, in a world where the pandemic was over and so family members would be allowed to take their chances of catching it? I'm not sure it would, but again that would take a big shift in the 'Covid is the worst death' thinking that we've all been swimming in for the best part of a year now.

Please stay in so you don’t catch a disease which probably won’t make you very ill, but you might pass on to someone who will take up a hospital bed we don’t have - is not terribly catchy.

@HelloMissus

Please stay in so you don’t catch a disease which probably won’t make you very ill, but you might pass on to someone who will take up a hospital bed we don’t have - is not terribly catchy.

But if the people who are likely to take up a hospital bed are vaccinated then why does everyone else need to keep distancing etc?

Trust once we’ve protected HCPs to stop the pressure on hospital staff and the vulnerable to stop the pressure on beds, we don’t really need restrictions.
Maybe some to keep the spread at a manageable level - so we’re not all off work at the same time - but certainly not keep us all off work/indoors/not mixing.

But it’ll be hard to convince folk that they should t be too worried.

But if the people who are likely to take up a hospital bed are vaccinated then why does everyone else need to keep distancing etc?

I guess it depends on how dangerous getting Covid (incl. long Covid) is to them in reality. In a world with adequate hospital facilities and better treatments that might be barely at all. But communicating that to the masses may be very challenging.

Last report I read something like 25% of ICU patients in the U.K. were under 50. So that’s still a substantial number. If everyone throws caution to the wind hospital beds could easily fill up.

@ForBlueSkies

Last report I read something like 25% of ICU patients in the U.K. were under 50. So that’s still a substantial number. If everyone throws caution to the wind hospital beds could easily fill up.

And how many of them had underlying conditions (ie would get the vaccine earlier than a healthy 45yo)?

The thing is I don't think people are gonna take the vulnerable, who we have all been told to protect, getting vaccinated, and therefore being safe, but then being told to stay at home because oh you might get it and die. At what point do we think actually no, we saved who we got told to save and now we want our lives back.

People don't like it when the goalposts are moved.

@TheKeatingFive

But if the people who are likely to take up a hospital bed are vaccinated then why does everyone else need to keep distancing etc?

I guess it depends on how dangerous getting Covid (incl. long Covid) is to them in reality. In a world with adequate hospital facilities and better treatments that might be barely at all. But communicating that to the masses may be very challenging.

What do you mean like hard to convince people it's ok to go out and go near people again?

What do you mean like hard to convince people it's ok to go out and go near people again?

I think it'll be hard to convince a lot of people that them not being offered a vaccine (if they're young, not identified as vulnerable) might be a sensible decision rather than the government wilfully murdering its citizens.

@Hardbackwriter

What do you mean like hard to convince people it's ok to go out and go near people again?

I think it'll be hard to convince a lot of people that them not being offered a vaccine (if they're young, not identified as vulnerable) might be a sensible decision rather than the government wilfully murdering its citizens.

Ah right yeah I see. I think the government have tried and succeeded to scare everyone shitless so it will definitely be difficult to convince people otherwise now won't it.

From a member of the government’s vaccine taskforce

Prof John Bell also said that people getting vaccinated should receive that some sort of ticket that would free them up to do things not otherwise allowed. He said:

“When we give somebody a vaccine, they’re going to have to have freedom to operate because they are protected. We’re going to have to give them a ticket that says, ‘Yeah, if you want to go to the cinema, you can go to the cinema.’”

He also suggests a 90 day “freedom” period for those who have tested positive. But again, this really isn’t going to go down well if the vaccinated have complete freedom and the rest have to pay constantly for quick covid tests to do things like go to the theatre. There’s no assumption here that once the vulnerable are vaccinated we will give up all attempts to control the virus.

There’s no assumption here that once the vulnerable are vaccinated we will give up all attempts to control the virus.

So we're all going to be staying inside, further wrecking the economy etc for what reason exactly? Because it's not to protect the NHS anymore. It's not to protect the vulnerable, it's not to protect ourselves so.... Why?

@TrustTheGeneGenie

There’s no assumption here that once the vulnerable are vaccinated we will give up all attempts to control the virus.

So we're all going to be staying inside, further wrecking the economy etc for what reason exactly? Because it's not to protect the NHS anymore. It's not to protect the vulnerable, it's not to protect ourselves so.... Why?

I don’t think they’ll be asking people to stay inside any longer. But rapid mass testing will become a thing for everything from attending sports events to going to the theatre.

But why when we don't do that for anything else?

One longer term consideration is: the more you let the virus run loose, the more you risk mutations that render our current vaccines useless. The perfect place for this to happen is factory farms and industrialized facilities...of which sadly we have plenty here. The mink situation is only one example of this.

We also don’t know how different countries will plan to handle the vaccination process. There are signs that countries like Germany are aiming for herd immunity (at least 60-70% of adults vaccinated) compared to the UKs more modest goal of simply protecting the most vulnerable. So continued testing and possible quarantining would still be taking place globally.

Like TrustTheGeneGenie I don't understand why we'd do that when we don't for, say, flu?

I think the suggestion that we could give more 'freedom' to vaccinated people but not offer the vaccination to the whole population is outright dystopian as it would then in practice mean that those who could pay privately for it could buy more freedom. It's actually pretty awful even if they did offer the vaccine to all because there are always a percentage of people who can't have a vaccine for their own health reasons, so they would just become second-class citizens.