What would the plan be now if vaccine developments had failed?

[StealthPolarBear]

The vaccine development and rollout has been amazing. I am utterly imprrssed.
Last year there was a lot of doom and gloom (understandably) that there would never be a vaccine. If we'd got to this stage with no vaccine at all, what would the plan be? Just reopen over summer and plans for online school learning for the forseeable future? Lockdowns September to April?

@ThePricklySheep don’t confuse CFR (case fatality rate) with IFR (infection fatality rate).

CFR is the number of deaths as a percentage of confirmed cases - at the moment in the UK that’s running at 2.9%

IFR is the number of deaths as a percentage of those infected. Only if every single case is tested for and confirmed would they be the same.

We are not detecting all cases. We clearly weren’t in the first wave because there wasn’t the testing capacity. We aren’t now, because in many cases asymptomatic people will have no reason to be tested, and some symptomatic people will avoid it.

In the early days, some estimates were that we were detecting between 5 and 10% of cases. Now, it might be half, two thirds, one third, who knows. So this means that IFR is lower than CFR, probably less than 1%.

[quote PuzzledObserver]@ThePricklySheep don’t confuse CFR (case fatality rate) with IFR (infection fatality rate).

CFR is the number of deaths as a percentage of confirmed cases - at the moment in the UK that’s running at 2.9%

IFR is the number of deaths as a percentage of those infected. Only if every single case is tested for and confirmed would they be the same.

We are not detecting all cases. We clearly weren’t in the first wave because there wasn’t the testing capacity. We aren’t now, because in many cases asymptomatic people will have no reason to be tested, and some symptomatic people will avoid it.

In the early days, some estimates were that we were detecting between 5 and 10% of cases. Now, it might be half, two thirds, one third, who knows. So this means that IFR is lower than CFR, probably less than 1%.[/quote]
I’m not confused, I’m just quoting the 2-3% that most recent research papers are finding.

Prickly As PPs have said, the IFR in developed countries is estimated to be around 1%
I think you are talking about the CFR

www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-34-ifr/

@ThePricklySheep I said in my first post that the CFR is below 1% for the majority of people Which is why we won’t all die from it as the PP said.

Yes, Bumbly and I were both talking about CFR!

The “we’ll all die was a joke”.

I was just wondering about the CFR Bumbly was quoting as I’d seen higher.

Never mind plague and cholera, etc., lots of children died of measles, whooping cough and diphtheria.

It can be terribly sad and salutary to look in some old churchyards and see 3 or more children from the same family buried within a couple of weeks of each other.

I suppose most people then at least had the consolation of believing that their children had gone to heaven and they’d be reunited one day. (As long as they didn’t go to the Other Place 😈)

And thanks to the anti-vaxxers, measles is on the rise again.

Thank god for science.

I’ve been educating myself a lot on AIDS recently after It’s A Sin & frankly, it’s PHENOMENAL the treatments they’ve come up with. One pill & it it makes HIV undetectable in your body, you cannot pass it on. And there’s a drug that prevents anyone from actually catching it as well. Incredible. It could be completely irradiated in our lifetime. Learning about AIDS & the 1980’s is harrowing. Far worse than Covid. A very different virus in terms of transmission but the impact & the treatment of those affected was appalling. And the stigma is still there.

But what an incredible achievement of science. There is always hope for the future when you realise just what has already been achieved!

Don’t dwell on what might of been, thankfully the future is brighter!