Way out without vaccine

[Dolciedolly]

Just interested what people think would have been the exit strategy if we didn't get a vaccine ?

Covid only got into Britain just over 12m ago. If after 12m only ... 20% of UK citizens have been infected? And many of them higher risk for exposure because of occupation / residence/etc. In spite of or maybe because of all the social contact controls.

Seems to me like 5 yrs to get to even 60% with infection history in that situation. So that's why I'm thinking 5-6 yrs was plausible period for all the social distancing measures to continue -- if no effective vaccine found in that time.

If we weren't so lucky to get a vaccine so quickly -- would 5-6 years have been reasonable price to pay? Seems to me like govt was always heavily supported to stay on that path & pay that price if required. I wonder if the death toll would have reached 300k or so by then.

So the real question is,
if another covid-like germ comes along,
Do we bet on vaccine becoming available next time again,

or do we say "too risky & have to let nature sort it out'

I presume the bet will all be on vaccine again.

Let's hope it's the "Science Wins" outcome next time, then, too.

I think you always bet on science. But I hope there’s lots of study in to the damaging, long term effects of multiple lockdowns.

You’d hope we’d learn from this and take some learnings from how other countries who have more experience at dealing with pandemics handled it:

Have the PPE ready. Invest in the health care system. Act quickly and decisively.

I love the scientists who quietly got on with it and came up with a solution to this
History might remember pound shop Churchill Boris Johnson etc but it'll be the scientists I'll remember !

The only option would’ve been to build as much capacity into the NHS as possible, continue with the most effective but least socially damaging restrictions (e.g. masks), open up the rest and accept that life is more fragile than it was before.

They did build the Nightingale hospitals , but they were not used I believe?
Without enough staff you can't do much I suppose.

The vaccination science has taken a giant leap as a result of this pandemic. It will lead to many more applications that were light years away just 12 mnths ago. Bespoke cancer treatments being one of them, which has been in its infancy.
Medics I know are incredibly excited about the implications of the Pfizer/Moderna science.

@Dolciedolly

Just interested what people think would have been the exit strategy if we didn't get a vaccine ?

Ivermectin, vitamin D, plus many other treatments. Alas they bring no profit to the pharmaceutical industry, because they are tried, tested, and work. Too cheap to bring in revenue. Look it up - they have been blocked because there is no money to be made, it's off the shelf. Look at India- the packs given out and the death rate.

It was on the news about a lack of vit D about three years ago. You can pick up these vitamins very cheaply. A strong immune system is so important , but I doubt it would have been enough on its own. Happy to be corrected though!
( I know I need to lose weight too)

Vit D is great and I'm taking it. But I thought the parasite meds had lots of Benadryl side effects.

What side effects? Serious, that's what

@ragged

Covid only got into Britain just over 12m ago. If after 12m only ... 20% of UK citizens have been infected? And many of them higher risk for exposure because of occupation / residence/etc. In spite of or maybe because of all the social contact controls.

Seems to me like 5 yrs to get to even 60% with infection history in that situation. So that's why I'm thinking 5-6 yrs was plausible period for all the social distancing measures to continue -- if no effective vaccine found in that time.

If we weren't so lucky to get a vaccine so quickly -- would 5-6 years have been reasonable price to pay? Seems to me like govt was always heavily supported to stay on that path & pay that price if required. I wonder if the death toll would have reached 300k or so by then.

It’s much higher than 20%.

Probably more like 40-50% have contracted covid in the last 12 months.

I think it would have to have been trying for a zero covid approach, through the measures that the have worked elsewhere. It would probably have needed a strong lockdown to get the numbers down really low first, but once that was done and all the measures were in place then there could be a kind of return to normal (at least temporarily!).

Probably more like 40-50% have contracted covid in the last 12 months.

Where did you get your doctorate in epidemiology?

Do we bet on vaccine becoming available next time again,

or do we say "too risky & have to let nature sort it out'

What do you mean?

@MrsTerryPratchett

Probably more like 40-50% have contracted covid in the last 12 months.

Where did you get your doctorate in epidemiology?

I’m not, yet I didn’t see anyone questioning the PP credentials when they quoted 20% unsourced.

Let’s take England’s data for ease.

3.6m confirmed cases (albeit this doesn’t necessarily mean individuals).

So if you took this number: 6% (55m total pop).

Obviously this is a huge underestimate. Firstly because wave 1 barely captured any positive cases, and secondly because so many people are symptomatic and don’t get tested, and many many more are asymptomatic and do not get tested.

Let’s tackle 1). It’s likely the first wave was comparable to the January/Feb resurgence of Wave 2. You are probably talking millions of equivalent undiagnosed cases, for example in January alone there were 1.2 confirmed covid cases, yet for the start of the pandemic up to 1st June there was 150k confirmed cases due to lack of testing etc.

So add 1m (easily more than this). 4.6m
So we are at 8.3%.

Now for 2), let’s take the most recent ONS weekly community data for England. 1 in 115, equating to approx 475k that week to 12th Feb. Positive cases recorded by positive test result from covid dashboard for 6th to 12th Feb: approx 100k.

So a 4.75 discrepancy.

8.3% x 4.75 = 39%.

If you added 1.5m to the “lost” cases for Spring. 9.2% x 4.75 = 44%

If you added 2.0m to the “lost” cases for Spring. 10.1% x 4.75 = 48%.

Sure there are I am sure many flaws this, but this is just my opinion.

Have the PPE ready.

PPE expires. We could have mountains of unused PPE, or wrong type of PPE for the type of germ we're facing, going to landfill every year if we're always pandemic-ready.

Daily Wail says ONS estimated 1/11 ppl in England had had COVID by early Dec 2020. 9%

Sky says ONS says 1/8 of Britains had covid by end Dec 2020. 12.5%

40-50% seems too high by end Feb 2021.

If all age mortality rate from covid is 0.7%, 120k died in UK, UK population = 67 million, that suggests 17 million have had it. 17/67 = 25%.

20-25% is plausible.

It must have been about this time last year that I was listening to the radio on the way to work and one of the experts said ‘there is no exit strategy’.
It was one of the most chilling things I’d ever heard! I cried the rest of the way to work

@ragged

Have the PPE ready.

PPE expires. We could have mountains of unused PPE, or wrong type of PPE for the type of germ we're facing, going to landfill every year if we're always pandemic-ready.

Daily Wail says ONS estimated 1/11 ppl in England had had COVID by early Dec 2020. 9%

Sky says ONS says 1/8 of Britains had covid by end Dec 2020. 12.5%

40-50% seems too high by end Feb 2021.

If all age mortality rate from covid is 0.7%, 120k died in UK, UK population = 67 million, that suggests 17 million have had it. 17/67 = 25%.

20-25% is plausible.

That is antibody data.

As far as I know, those tests are not super reliable, and are poor at picking up very low levels of antibody.

Just because you have no circulating antibodies doesn’t mean you were not infected months prior. Your immune system is primed, ready for reinfection, it is just waiting.

@Gardenvisits

It must have been about this time last year that I was listening to the radio on the way to work and one of the experts said ‘there is no exit strategy’. It was one of the most chilling things I’d ever heard! I cried the rest of the way to work

Ok, so if we have to live with this and maybe other variants coming along, then why can't we have an acknowledgment that the exit strategy won't work that well and just open everything up? Can you remember who said this? Maybe they just thought they wouldn't be able to make a vaccine back then?

‘there is no exit strategy’.

Ok, so if we have to live with this and maybe other variants coming along, then why can't we have an acknowledgment that the exit strategy won't work that well and just open everything up?

Because then the hospitals would be flooded.

It is hard to say if that expression meant that there was no possible exit strategy or if it was commenting on the fact that the government didn't have an exit strategy at the time.

Either way, it is clear that there was an exit from lockdown, and that it didn't mean opening everything.

Most virologists believe that COVID19 is on the way to becoming an endemic mildish early childhood infection (where we catch it as babies and toddlers, don't get very sick, and then build up immunity which largely protects us from severe symptoms). If a vaccine had not been forthcoming, the same thing would eventually happen anyway, but a lot more deaths would have had to happen before reaching that stage. Most likely, we would have concentrating on developing really good drug treatments, in order to dampen down the mortality rate in the meantime.

Horrendous

At some point we’d have to accept overwhelming NHS I reckon

I asked my neighbour who is anti vax that and she said she doesn't like going out anyway, has an acre of land she exercises on and happy with things being shut..... totally selfish towards the needs if others.

Accepting a much higher death rate.

There was a point, early on when it was feared that Covid was worse than it turned out to be, when hospitals modelled for not treating the over 65s etc.