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?

Motheringshites pharmaceutical companies patent drugs as far as I’m aware they are businesses at the end of the day and there to make a profit.

I’m no medic but have read around the history of disease and it’s social and economic implications many years ago. Historically pandemics take about two years to burn themselves out. We as a society are attempting to curtail that length and the severity and have more advantages than ever to fight it apart from genuine fear. There isn’t enough of it really which is why people are breaking so many rules.

The two years to burn themselves out doesn’t mean they have gone away by the way, just the sort of immediate crisis with that specific outbreak.

We need to slow the flow of patients into hospital so that the NHS doesn't completely buckle under the strain. Great news that more people are now surviving with drug treatment... but these people now spend even longer in hospital.

Keeping restrictions in place will be killing people.

The NHS completely collapsing would be a total disaster and would mean, many many deaths from treatable illness.

@Calmandmeasured1

Billie18

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.
It isn't that people don't want an end date or want restrictions to continue. That is a totally stupid assumption. You really think that people don't want their lives back?

It is that a lot of people have common sense and understand it is pointless to promise something that isn't within your absolute control.

It is like you promising your boss a completion date for your work which relies on input from a lot of other departments in your company. You could give a best estimate based on current knowledge and experience, but you couldn't guarantee that date.

I'm sure most people would love to know the answer but it is not possible to give a date, given that there are so many factors that could go wrong in the production and distribution chain.

There is a current pledge to have sent out invitations in/by April for those over 50 to have their vaccines in May. However, I don't know whether this refers to 1st vaccines. (I presume it must if 2nd vaccines aren't being given until 12 weeks later).

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.
Restrictions are not killing healthy people.

Exactly.

I'm sick of this rhetoric that if you understand the need for restrictions, or that giving an end date to a virus that's new and unstudied, you just want everyone bricked up in their houses and are enjoying it, saying that is just a way to shut down discussion and deny what is happening.
I'm not enjoying 12 hour shifts in full PPE and now 3 covid tests a week, I'm not enjoying being separated from my friends and family, I'm not enjoying queuing outside in the freezing cold for my shopping or having nothing to look forward to.
I understand why it needs to happen right now though. And that doesn't mean I won't be happy until we're all bricked in our houses unable to look out the window.

Don't understand why so many ppl are jumping on the op the government should have timescales/deadlines for opening up otherwise so many places will go out of business there will be nothing left to open up anyway.

oh for fuck sake hahahh yeah you can go back to normal llife on October 7th at 3.45pm

is that what you want them to tell you?

They can’t give an end date because this is an unpredictable situation. Look what happened when ahead of time they said people could mix at Christmas. They had to back down after people had made plans and also didn’t dare cancel mixing completely even though they should have, leading to even more spread. We are in the middle of a pandemic yes it’s hard but policy has to be dictated by what’s happening and we don’t know how the virus will behave.

No one is expecting a Pacific date ffs even a bloody month we could open would be helpful.

Well now we have the vaccine we should be in a better position to give more reassurance about opening up. Last year we didn't have that.

@3rdNamechange

Wow. You should ask to speak to the manager.

🤣🤣🤣🤣

Please do this OP.

We would all love an end date, but unfortunately the virus doesn't have an inbuilt calendar and a set date on which it will simply vanish.

Vaccination is the way forward, but no vaccine is 100%. Not for this disease or any other. Quite highly effective in a large number of cases, yes. Not 100% though.

Also, we still don't know for sure how long the antibodies provoked by the vaccine last as this data can only be assimilated over time, which we haven't had yet. We still don't know at what intervals booster vaccines may be needed, although yearly is the working assumption. Viruses mutate too, so tweaks will probably be needed each year, as with the flu vaccine.

Ask yourself why there is never an end date for flu? The answer will be remarkably similar.

There will much more likely be a phased lifting of restrictions rather than a definite date set and then BANG, all back to normal.

I can tell that you are not going to listen to anyone who doesn't echo your views 100% though.

What oart of we are in a pandemic don't people understand? It's impossible to give an end date to anything at the moment.

Well even some plan for phased lifting of restrictions would be good. We keep hearing rumours of when things might be open it would be better to have some kind of clarification rather than all this hearsay. And of course if boris has to do another u turn if things don't go to plan it would hardly be the first time would it?

How can you give an end date in such uncertain circumstances?🤔

Numbers are still rising. They carnt give some kind of clarification of anything at this point in time.

This is such a ridiculous thread. No one has any idea of when there can be an end date, for a whole myriad of reasons which are well publicised.

Because there are two strands to this: the deaths and the hospitalisations.
The very vulnerable, I.e. the ones who will be vaccinated by mid February, are not the ones filling the ICUs and wards to bursting right now. Sadly many of the 80+ etc rarely make it to ICU. They are the bulk of the deaths.
The hospitalisation are the younger categories who still get very sick and can take weeks and weeks to get better, hence filling the hospitals to many many times their capacity. Because of better treatments, fewer are dying, which is good, but it also means they are in hospital for much longer than they otherwise would have been. Until all the 50 plays and some of the 40 plus have had their two doses, this will continue to be a problem.

*50 plus

@atomt

It's not as easy as that. While deaths have mostly been in the most vulnerable/over 75 groups, there are plenty of people in their 60s, 50s and even younger in hospital. This is all about protecting the NHS - if you suddenly drop all restrictions, infection rates will go up massively and more people will get ill and need hospital treatment.

Absolutely this.

I am a teacher in a priority group for the vaccine, and will personally be delighted to be back at school once I’m vaccinated.

But all the children, and most of their parents, and nearly all of my colleagues, won’t have been vaccinated. If we all go straight back to normal it will be chaos.

To which I would add, with all the clinical trials in the world, it’s impossible to say how well a vaccine is working at population level until it’s used on a very large scale in real life.

Bonkers post, I'm desperate for it to end but completely get that it's totally impossible to predict when. I feel suffocated by it but completely understand that no one can just switch off a completely invisible, ever changing, naturally occurring crisis like this no matter how much we would like to.

Humans have become so used to controlling the planet that they believe they are the masters, this situation just like climate change, shows that really we have very little power and that's scary to accept.

Op, imagine we had heavy snowfall for 10 days and distribution became difficult. Or the manufacturers had an issue. Both outside govt control so making promises is not possible.

You do realise that if the virus mutated to be resistant to the vaccine we could be back to square one?

Some of the rhetoric in this thread about how 'we will need restrictions for many years' is not only extremely naive, but also very dangerous.It is reflective of a small group on this site who are doom mongering and revel in negativity.Once the most vulnerable groups are vaccinated, we will see an fairly swift return to normality in April\May.The whole point in restrictions is minimilise the strain on the NHS, and once that is achieved then the government's job will be done and they will want to get society and in turn the economy firing on all cylinders.Yes Whitty will stand there and drum on about masks etc, but he has had his moment in the sun and the government will be more focused on moving on from the crisis.High risk groups will probably be vaccinated again in October to be on the safe side, maybe at the same time they receive their flu shot.Delusional to think that restrictions will remain for a virus that to the overwhelming majority under 50's is mild. As someone stated above, the lockdown restrictions will hammer mental and physical health big time if they remain for much longer.

There you go then OP, @BlueSky90 has spoken.

(Well, they C&Ped their post from another thread, because its so important, but you get the gist)

Blue sky, that’s not what Chris Wittey or other virologists have said.

They have said there will still be social distancing next Autumn