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?

@kirinm

To all those saying the OP is scaremongering despite the fact she is actually referring to the report issued by Imperial College and the subsequent articles / comments in papers and social media, what do you say about the report (and also, why the hell isn't the OP allowed to talk about it).

Presumably the imperial college report actually takes into account the figures reported daily rather than ignores them all as a lot of you appear to suggest is happening.

I don't understand what is being said in the imperial college report but it is a perfectly valid thing to question since it is all over the news.

You need to read the reasons why further down

The post with caps is a good one

@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.

Here

WE ALL DIE

fgs calm down

@Lauraa7

Have a look at Victoria, Australia. We had a hard lockdown and now we are living life relatively normally. And that’s without the vaccine. It felt never-ending during the lockdown, but it had given a new perspective on life and enjoying the little things.

While the lockdown in Victoria was incredibly strict (far stricter than here) I think because they reacted when numbers were relatively small, it would be far easier to contain and suppress than the huge amount of cases here.

@rwalker

WE ALL DIE

fgs calm down

assumes the virus is a sentient being “oh there’s lockdown, I’d better mutate”

This has really caught my imagination and now I can't stop seeing a little cartoon virus figure frantically replanning its mutation schedule whenever the government announces a new change to restrictions :)

I agree. I was just trying to reassure the OP that life can get back to normal 😊

Cases are coming down.
The vaccine works - there's a good article on the Israel data on the BBC website currently, already linked to above.

Also bear in mind that older people are likely to have a less good response to the vaccine than younger people. Currently the focus is on the very elderly - as we start vaccinating younger age groups and into working age, efficacy of even one dose will improve.

Lastly as mentioned in the BBC article, the flu jab is usually about 40 - 50% effective and yet prevents many cases and deaths each year.

Less doom, more positivity, please (and yes, I had my first jab this morning).

@Rosehip10

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

That's really unkind! Did you really need to say that. You may not believe that people are genuinely worried about covid but it's true. If I think too much about it I could work myself up into a right state about it! I do already have anxiety but I'm sure lots of others do too wether from before the pandemic or since and it's not something you can easily just "get over" and comments like yours are not needed and are just unkind.

ThePricklySheep

You are right about there being two separate points.

On the second point about it rising slightly in this last week.

When you look at the scatter of those points and the shaded red confidence intervals, it really should have come with a health warning.

I hope that will not be born out. That information should definitely have been handled with more care by the news outlets.

A couple of interesting points on that.

The Director of the study said this morning that as their method randomly selects people across the country (and different people each time) they may be picking up a signal which is slightly ahead of daily reported case numbers, as it is picking up people at an earlier stage in their infection while they are presymptonatic which is a really interesting and fair point.

On the other hand, there is no evidence so far that through the the pandemic, the REACT study has been leading the subsequent ONS study numbers or case rates. Doesn’t mean it won’t this time.

ONS data out tomorrow.
Not that it doesn’t have its own issues, but fingers crossed it doesn’t follow this trend.

Cases can come down, but to my mind, there was only 1 in China or where ever it started originally.
It only took 1.

it will go away in a couple of years with no real action, as per Spanish flu when they had no choice. This way we can kill fewer people.

it won't be forever, although it may feel like it at the moment.

Seriously?!

Vaccines has been tested by medical experts in clinical trials as 90ish percent effective. Yet someone feels the need to come on here and start a doom mongering thread, saying what if vaccines don’t work.

@loulouljh
Can you list which countries are doing that please?
I am interested to see what they are doing.

The vaccine doesn't stop you getting the virus. Not sure why people think it does. It just means you don't get it so badly. You can also still pass it on.

So cautionary measures will need to be in place for a long time yet.

@lightand

Cases can come down, but to my mind, there was only 1 in China or where ever it started originally. It only took 1.

Yes, but when cases are very low you can do proper contact tracing and management of outbreaks. When there are tens of thousands, that’s pretty much impossible.

The vaccines look pretty good. But, honestly if nothing actually worked, we would have to

a) put a lot of resources into treatment;
b) have to start rationing care for the very elderly to an extent;
c) accept that the average life expectancy would be permanently a bit lower.

None of which would be very nice. Thank you, Chinese Communist Party. But it would be the only long term solution because no society could carry on like this forever. I guess we'd cope. The average life expectancy used to be decades shorter than it is now...

The vaccine doesn't stop you getting the virus. Not sure why people think it does. It just means you don't get it so badly. You can also still pass it on.

No. We just don’t have enough data on the effect on transmission yet. We have to wait for that.

The vaccine doesn't stop you getting the virus. Not sure why people think it does. It just means you don't get it so badly. You can also still pass it on.

No, the trials have not yet ascertained the extent to which it blocks transmission, and scientists tend to word things very cautiously. It would be really, really surprising if it didn't stop or at least drastically lower the odds of transmission, because virtually all vaccines that we have already like this.

b) have to start rationing care for the very elderly to an extent;

What do you envisage that looking like? People in ITU aren’t “very elderly” for the most part.

@RosieLemonade

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.

I feel you op. I sometimes think nothing will ever change and we'll either have to accept ongoing millions of deaths or be trapped forever. My 5 yo who already has to ask "what did we do before the Corona virus" and my twin babies who were 4 months at Lockdown and still haven't met most people I love

Lets consider worst case scenario the vaccine fails and the virus becomes even more infectious.

We have two choices we either end the lockdown and ask all those that are vulnerable to shield, as the economy can no longer cope and we open up, or we adapt to a moderate new normal of endless testing, face coverings and small gatherings indefinitely (the middle way) or until the vaccine is successful. Or we live in a state of cyclic lockdowns.

Either one will give you some months to be outside, to enjoy socialising and all the rest. This is a decision made by society further down the line, if it happens.

[quote Ori2021]@Magnifythatpie

So say we have to have social distancing measures for the next two winters which isn’t beyond the realms of possibility. What are we going to do in that situation?

Socially distance. It's here for the long haul. It will be common practice going forward, esp. over the winter months.[/quote]
But in the UK our whole society is based on things that would be impossible or not feasible with social distancing. If social distancing continues and all the currently paused businesses can no longer run at all ever our whole uk structure breaks down.
The number of people needing to be housed, and fed cannot happen if social distancing continues for years.

@MarshaBradyo

Look at graphs thread on why React study reporting is flawed

The two time periods skip over the peak. Cases have gone up since last time period pre peak but are still falling now. Bad reporting unfortunately

I agree. I participated in the React study. I was positive and I had contracted Covid from my son who had caught it at the end of last term. It is in no way a reflection of lockdown. Most people testing positive in the week of 5th January when the study took place will have either have caught it due to Christmas mixing or from a family member before Christmas.