If the vaccines do not work and lockdown isn't working

[RosieLemonade]

What happens now?
Will this actually be my child's life? Nothing but walks outside the house? I feel emotional but is this truly it now?

They do and it is.

Op the vaccines will probably reduce transmission

@ILookAtTheFloor

The bloody React study has sent me into a doom-spiral this morning, with one BBC writer saying tougher measures maybe needed.

I think the OP asks an important question.

Argh BBC so damaging

They haven’t interpreted study properly!

I'm another who is confused by the latest news about cases rising....when we can see the confirmed cases falling in the daily graphs. I genuinely don't understand.

The vaccine efficacy rate - well, I don't understand why anyone, including our government, are surprised by this. The trials were always based on TWO jabs. Everybody knew that the efficacy would be a fair bit lower after one dose, so again, I don't understand.

I thought it was working and was positive. A bit down but muddling through. The daily reports looked like it was dropping but the reports in the papers today say it isn't.

@Malbecky

I'm another who is confused by the latest news about cases rising....when we can see the confirmed cases falling in the daily graphs. I genuinely don't understand.

The vaccine efficacy rate - well, I don't understand why anyone, including our government, are surprised by this. The trials were always based on TWO jabs. Everybody knew that the efficacy would be a fair bit lower after one dose, so again, I don't understand.

Because the trial did report quite high efficacy after only one dose

I’m finding the latest from Israel mixed with positive reporting on illness. Anyone know how far into second dose they are? With numbers

Please take a massive pinch of salt with the poor reporting on the REACT study today, which makes it sound like infection rates are going up.

What they’ve failed to make crystal clear is THAT STUDY HAS MISSED OUT THE WHOLE OF DECEMBER.

So it’s like taking the levels in November and drawing a straight line between those and the levels now in January and saying “oh look, the levels have gone up, lockdown can’t be working”.

Since lockdown started at the beginning of January, rates have come down significantly compared to December. If anything, slightly better than we were hoping for.

It’s not the scientists’ fault, their study only takes information every so often and the points happened to lie either side of December. The problem is the way it had been reported this morning.

Sorry for the capital letters.

"I'm not a virologist, but surely the more we lockdown, the longer we draw out the pandemic?"

No, the more we lockdown (and the harder we lockdown) then the shorter the pandemic.
If one person gets it, and immediately isolates - or isn't surrounded by other people, then the virus inside the ill person has nowhere to go. As they fight it off, it just dies. (Or if they die without passing it on it also dies). It needs people nearby to infect, and if most of them are at home, then it can't do that.

If we just let it keep infecting more and more people, every time it goes into a new body, it has the chance to mutate into another version, so then it can drag out the pandemic.
Plus you're looking at millions of people dying, and even more millions of people with long Covid if you let everyone get it. And that's without even counting others affected by hospitals being overrun.

The vaccines do work, if the government properly buys and distributes them, and they work on various versions of it so far, which is great. And there are vaccines going out globally, so hopefully we can beat this thing with as few lives lost as possible. But until the vaccines can be rolled out to cover more than a certain percentage - is it 70-80% of the population? then we need to stop it spreading.
I wish we would have a proper, hard lockdown to get numbers down much quicker - but the government doesn't seem to want to fund that.

@MarshaBradyo, but I don't believe it was much higher than the 33% was it? Or am I completely wrong?

Oh sod off OP, people are truly sick of scaremongering posts dressed up as people claiming they want "reassurance"

I don’t think this will be our lives forever, but what we need is for the government to start being PROactive instead of hopelessly REactive. This could be the time for real, good change. Think about restructuring schools - how about 2-3 days on site and 2-3 days blended learning for primary? Maybe some sort of universal income so people can isolate if they need to and be around to be at home with the children until mid secondary.

Flexible working enshrined by law, safe working conditions.

We have the chance to really implement proper change to improve everyone’s lives and react properly to another pandemic that could come along.

OP this will not be forever. The research will need to be looked at - it would be utterly foolhardy not to - but it states that it could be as low as - that doesn't mean that it is, and we don't have full details of how they're measuring that. Deaths will naturally be 2-3 weeks behind cases it's just the trajectory of Covid unfortunately. One of the real failures of this pandemic has been that the public haven't been educated appropriately to be able to understand what to expect. Rules have been confusing, contradictory and based on varying principles from the NHS to the economy and everything in between. We're getting there slowly but surely

[quote Malbecky]@MarshaBradyo, but I don't believe it was much higher than the 33% was it? Or am I completely wrong?[/quote]
I admit m losing the thread if it all but this was yesterday from Vallance

‘Although he admitted that "in practice" the protection provided by one dose of a Pfizer vaccine probably wouldn't be as high as 89%, the number given by the government, he pushed back against the suggestion it could be as low as 33%, the figure coming out of Israel.’

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/covid-19-sir-patrick-vallance-makes-clear-we-wont-see-the-back-of-the-virus-any-time-soon-12193338

It's not going to be a quick fix but we're moving in the right direction, although I'd support a tighter lockdown and an all-out revised vaccination process.

Other pandemics have ended without anywhere near the scientific and technological resources we have now.

@RosieLemonade

People on here said they are only 33 per cent effective and the papers are reporting infection rates aren't falling. I understand the lag for the death rates.

Well there's your mistake.

Taking what "people on here" say as gospel. Most of them are talking out of their arses.

in answer to what stopped the Spanish flu, there's a National Geographic article comparing cities in the US and how they handled it. Basically they got numbers down through social distancing, just like now, and the places that did it late, or lifted it too early, had the highest death tolls. It did eventually mutate into normal flu, so it does still kill, but not like it used to.

www.nationalgeographic.com/history/2020/03/how-cities-flattened-curve-1918-spanish-flu-pandemic-coronavirus/

@PurpleDaisies

And where have you got the idea that vaccines don’t work?

Have you got a link to say they do work?

news.sky.com/story/uk-covid-news-live-latest-updates-one-in-four-medics-has-sought-mental-health-support-and-mexico-sees-thefts-of-oxygen-12192114

Don't dismiss people having genuine concerns as "scaremongering". This article ^^ is on the front page of the Sky news website. "Experts suggest lockdown is not working". People are allowed to discuss these things. This is the whole point of having a dedicated coronavirus topic.

@everythingthelighttouches

Please take a massive pinch of salt with the poor reporting on the REACT study today, which makes it sound like infection rates are going up.

What they’ve failed to make crystal clear is THAT STUDY HAS MISSED OUT THE WHOLE OF DECEMBER.

So it’s like taking the levels in November and drawing a straight line between those and the levels now in January and saying “oh look, the levels have gone up, lockdown can’t be working”.

Since lockdown started at the beginning of January, rates have come down significantly compared to December. If anything, slightly better than we were hoping for.

It’s not the scientists’ fault, their study only takes information every so often and the points happened to lie either side of December. The problem is the way it had been reported this morning.

Sorry for the capital letters.

But they are reporting that the numbers have possibly gone up from 6th to 15th jan, shown here. I’d hope that this is not a real increase, given the confidence intervals it might not be much or any increase, but I read it that they are making two separate points. 1) They are higher than in December. 2) They are currently increasing.

They should be spelling out that they were higher still before the 6-15th jan period, but that’s the only error in the reporting isn’t it?

The lockdown will work OP. They have worked before what do you mean?

Until a vaccine works it will be like this for a while though.

Israel vaccinations fears out of context and inaccurate.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55734257

The figure of 33% is because immunity doesn’t kick in for a few weeks. It will increase over time. I wish people would read the full articles rather than take what is written on here as gospel.

Of course this isn’t our lives forever. Pandemics end. They don’t just go on forever.

Lockdown is bringing cases down now, we see the numbers.

The vaccine works so far: Israeli hospital: 98% of staff who got 2nd shot have high-level COVID antibodies.

Vaccines can also be tweaked, like the flu vaccine is adjusted every year for new strains.

Cross post with @Aposterhasnoname

Yes there’s the evidence. Please read, educate yourself and stop scaremongering people!

We will have to get on with our lives..like other countries are managing to do.