We need to be given an end date

[Billie18]

Vaccinations being rolled out and there will be a date when the elderly and/or vulnerable will have been vaccinated. It should be possible to announce a date now when this will have happened. On this date all restrictions should be lifted. Why has no date been given?

ah they give a date and then they miss it, because of a multitude of reasons ....

I guess what you are really saying is that you need a rough idea of when this pandemic will go away.... who knows - this year/next/for other poorer countries without vaccinations or where a low up take of the vaccine .... never?

It’s not going to end over night. It’s not a case of Monday we’re still in lockdown, the NHS is struggling to cope but the last group of vulnerable people is due to get their second vaccinations. Wake up on Tuesday and concerts are back on, mask wearing is done with, the NHS is suddenly fine.

The timeline is that they hope to have the four most vulnerable groups vaccinated by mid February. If they achieve this and numbers in hospitals drop, the will likely move back to a tiered system. Then as they move through the vaccination groups, you would hope to see a gradual reducing of restrictions. So for example, as they vaccinate the over 50s group, we may go back to the rule of 6. Then as the over 40s group are vaccinated perhaps you can socialise inside with 2 other households. Then the over 30s and you can go back to socialising at a distance but masks aren’t still mandatory. Then maybe over 20s we can get rid of masks. But this is assuming we don’t need to re-administer the vaccine to other groups as a booster.

Also, we have approved and ordered the vaccines. They are just on the shelf ready to go. Millions of doses still need to be made and every country wants them.

[quote Calmandmeasured1]**@Billie18

We need an end date!
Stop using the royal 'we'. You only speak for yourself.[/quote]
It is a big problem that some people don't want an end date. They may have many personal reasons for wanting restrictions to continue but it would be helpful for them to know that they can't go on past a particular date so they can prepare. If restrictions persist past the date when the the elderly and/or vulnerable it will be responsible for killing more healthy non vulnerable people than coronavirus.

I won't be joining you for a collective push for an unrealistic and pointless deadline.

According to the head of the NHS one third of patients in hospital currently are under age 55. It doesn't say what percentage of them are 50-55 or with underlying health conditions which make them eligible for a vaccine in priority groups 1-9 or ECV but unless a significant proportion of them are restrictions might be needed until vaccination is extended to all adults. This might not be the case if covid cases were low but if they are high then hospital admissions could still be very high until everyone has been vaccinated. They don't know what will happen to the case rate at the moment, hence why they can't say when restrictions will be eased.

OP some people here would be happy if we got to 2030 and still didn’t have an end date for some reason they relish in having their lives restricted.

I and a lot of people I speak to in real life agree with you. There should be an end date, a target for the government to hit, if you view the vaccine roll out as a project which it is, most projects would have a deadline (that in exceptional circumstances may move) but you don’t usually start working on something without knowing when it needs to be done by. I think if they keep hitting the daily targets they will be able to give us one soon and I agree that people are not complying at the moment as they have no idea when it will end. An exit strategy and planned phases of reopening needs to be published and not just reverting back to the tier system either!

@Ineedalargeone

ah they give a date and then they miss it, because of a multitude of reasons ....

I guess what you are really saying is that you need a rough idea of when this pandemic will go away.... who knows - this year/next/for other poorer countries without vaccinations or where a low up take of the vaccine .... never?

As a guide Australia have said that they expect to quarantine visitors from countries like the UK until mid 2022.

‘ l wish they’d give an end date to Boris Johnson though’ 😂👍🏻👍🏻

@InTheNightWeWillWish

It’s not going to end over night. It’s not a case of Monday we’re still in lockdown, the NHS is struggling to cope but the last group of vulnerable people is due to get their second vaccinations. Wake up on Tuesday and concerts are back on, mask wearing is done with, the NHS is suddenly fine.

The timeline is that they hope to have the four most vulnerable groups vaccinated by mid February. If they achieve this and numbers in hospitals drop, the will likely move back to a tiered system. Then as they move through the vaccination groups, you would hope to see a gradual reducing of restrictions. So for example, as they vaccinate the over 50s group, we may go back to the rule of 6. Then as the over 40s group are vaccinated perhaps you can socialise inside with 2 other households. Then the over 30s and you can go back to socialising at a distance but masks aren’t still mandatory. Then maybe over 20s we can get rid of masks. But this is assuming we don’t need to re-administer the vaccine to other groups as a booster.

Also, we have approved and ordered the vaccines. They are just on the shelf ready to go. Millions of doses still need to be made and every country wants them.

Why can't it end over night? Why do healthy non vunerable people have to stick to any damaging restrictions when the elderly and/or vunerable have been vaccinated. What is the point of lifting restrictions gradually? We should be given a freedom date.

Pointless it’s not possible

Better to end it on the date it should end not stick to some arbitrary guess. You might be waiting longer than you could be if they choose too far away

• Can I ask a really stupid question about this?

Once a vaccine has been formulated and approved by one of the pharmaceutical companies (say the AstraZeneca), why can’t they share the information with other companies so that manufacture and supply can be really ramped up to the max? I know how simplistic that must sound but I’ve been pondering it. Is it because the creator of the vaccine has some kind of patent and wants all the profit?*

The Oxford vaccine has been shared - apart from AZ here, also with the biggest vaccine manufacturer in the world which is in India, it's making huge quantities which I think are just about ready to be rolled out around now. I think they've put everything in the public domain.

I don't know about the other vaccines developed by pharmaceutical companies. They're businesses which do need to look after their IP.

You do understand that the vaccine isn’t 100% effective. Covid isn’t going anywhere. Only a fool would start putting a definitive date on a release from lockdown.

The vaccination doesn't stop people from getting the virus or from passing it on. It just makes the symptoms less severe.

There will be restrictions for a very long time and we have to get used to that. The variant spreads so easily we have to be ultra careful.

It will be around for years, surely people realise that.

@Katie517

OP some people here would be happy if we got to 2030 and still didn’t have an end date for some reason they relish in having their lives restricted.

I and a lot of people I speak to in real life agree with you. There should be an end date, a target for the government to hit, if you view the vaccine roll out as a project which it is, most projects would have a deadline (that in exceptional circumstances may move) but you don’t usually start working on something without knowing when it needs to be done by. I think if they keep hitting the daily targets they will be able to give us one soon and I agree that people are not complying at the moment as they have no idea when it will end. An exit strategy and planned phases of reopening needs to be published and not just reverting back to the tier system either!

Exactly. It would be beneficial for the role out of the vaccine if there was a date they had to work to as it would lead to more effective delivery. We are in a crisis it can be done.

For one, we don't know how long the vaccines last or whether other strains might mutate that they don't cover, we also don't know to what extent vaccines prevent spread even if they prevent severe illness in the person who had it.

It's a giant experiment and not predictable. I don't see how things would be better if you were given an end date whatsoever, in fact, everyone who felt 'this would be over by Christmas and we can mix' felt cheated when we needed to lock down.

Thinking flexibly rather than in a fixed way is much better in a pandemic situation.

There's a difference between wanting this to end, which I am sure the majority of people feel and believing that we should be given an end date, which is unrealistic. Uncertainty is difficult to deal with but that's where we are at. You can't have certainty and you can't have an end date. Sorry.

@Billie18 “healthy non-vulnerable people” need to stick to it even when more vulnerable people have been vaccinated because although a small percentage of young “healthy” people have severe illness from covid if the virus is allowed to rip through this young population with no restrictions this will still result in a high number of hospitalisations and could overwhelm the health services - there are approximately 36 million under 45s in the U.K., if they were all to get covid if even 1% of them were to be admitted to hospital that would be 36000 I.e. more than hospitalised cases currently. That’s before you even consider that whilst the vaccines have very high efficacy, they are not a 100% guarantee that once vaccinated you will not catch covid - so the vulnerable may still catch and be ill with covid, just hopefully in much smaller numbers and less I’ll than if they were unvaccinated

To go back to the OPs point - the government may perhaps have learned that they can't predict what can happen when. Things were looking quite optimistic a couple of months ago and then the new variant threw all assumptions to the winds. There are still unknowns about the vaccine - things may go better or worse than current assumptions.

Well, they sent a meeting request to the virus on outlook, but it hasn’t got back to them yet.

Why can't it end over night? Why do healthy non vunerable people have to stick to any damaging restrictions when the elderly and/or vunerable have been vaccinated. What is the point of lifting restrictions gradually? We should be given a freedom date.

Not sure what to say to this
I was one of the people at the start of the pandemic full of unrealistic optimism and calling for timescales because I didn't understand what a pandemic meant. 10 months of this has taught me to STFU and get on with it. How are people still expecting to have end dates and timescales for this 10 months in? I don't get it. I really don't.

The restrictions will be lifted when hospitalisation falls but it’s hard to predict

The economic pressures are equally strong so they will be lifted, probably gradually, as soon as possible once above happens

I doubt it will be very long, a couple of months not longer (although feels onerous still)

@DecemberSun

The vaccination doesn't stop people from getting the virus or from passing it on. It just makes the symptoms less severe.

There will be restrictions for a very long time and we have to get used to that. The variant spreads so easily we have to be ultra careful.

It will be around for years, surely people realise that.

This would be incredibly dangerous. It would cause more death and destruction than any virus. It can't be allowed to happen we need to protect mental and physical health and stop the deaths that are resulting from restrictions. We need an end date so this can't be allowed to happen be default.

I wish they would too even if it was an estimated date I’d take that! I’m now pretty much on the same count down to my wedding as I was last year when this all started it’s abroad so need to book a registry office appointment for March to be able to get married in Greece legally in July and I just can’t get motivated or excited for it yet!! A rough date would help massively!!

@MarshaBradyo

The restrictions will be lifted when hospitalisation falls but it’s hard to predict

The economic pressures are equally strong so they will be lifted, probably gradually, as soon as possible once above happens

I doubt it will be very long, a couple of months not longer (although feels onerous still)

Why do you think it needs to be lifted gradually?

So would you prefer:

A) an end date that we’ll probably achieve, such as April 2022
B) an end date such as 15 Feb 2021, and then a series of revised end dates when things change
C) no specified end date?

Personally I find C easier to cope with than A or B.