New coronavirus variants forever?

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AIBU?!

There may already be a thread on this, but if there is not, am I correct in thinking there will always be new variants?

Sounds like you are saying a new variant, and we are effectivey back at square one, as current vaccines no help at all?

I don't think we will be back at square one as the vaccne is approved, the factories are rolling, testing infrastructure is in place etc. Even is a brand new coronavirus from another animal species came about (please, no!!) I think we are better prepared.

I think though the government should be being more careful to bank the gains we have made.

The BBC did a Horizon programme which I thought explained where we are very well. It is on iplayer.

I don't mind explaining but I am not a virologist or anything so I only can only repeat what I have read. I am also regularly referred to as a 'doom monger'

I think the government is doing a fantastic job in the sequencing snd catching mutations quickly to be cautious, I think the media is doing an awful job in how they report it

Really? its not the MSM job to back up the govt (though they usually do)
The latest brazillian variant has been in the country since early february, the govt doesn't know where the person who tested positive is and had the govt introduced quarantining far earlier and more comprehensively, then this might not have been the case.

Sequencing has nothing to do with it, the Manus variant has been known about for months.

If you mean the vaccine roll out then yes, a brilliant response but we (and i mean the uk & 10 countries who have hoarded the vaccine supply) need to be giving some vaccine to other countries as well, UN is suggesting just 10%.

New variants were always likely, whilst the vaccine will offer protection we don't know to what extent. The U.K. hasn't adopted a zero tolerance to the virus we need to live the virus and accept this

I suspect covid will become another flu. We get a flu jab each year as the virus changes and covid will be much the same.

The trouble with 'live with the virus' as an approach is we are saying we will tolerate rising cases and hope for the best.

That seems pretty backwards to me.

There is a lot the government could do to manage covid that has nothing at all to do with locking down. Lockdown is when you have failed to succesfully:

• Test - currently working OK but moving to a less reliable method and closing labs
• Trace - not working well in UK, little backwards tracing
• Isolate - really very poor in the UK, many won't test as can't afford to isolate

I don't know about the name 'zero covid' but I favour covid control.

OP, you aren’t convinced if it’s a race we can win - that really depends what victory looks like to you. Victory to me means that we can come out of lockdown with cases low enough to test, track and monitor for variants. Vaccine coverage is high and we have a good base of immunity in the population. Hospitals do not become overwhelmed and when we go into winter, yes there are cases but there are not widespread outbreaks. We don’t need to close schools or take drastic measures though masks, some level of distancing perhaps and hand washing remain. We might not have international travel this year but by next summer it’s back on the agenda as cases are steadily kept low and vaccine boosters become routine. Life becomes much more normal quite quickly from now but some restrictions are slower to phase out. All of that would be victory to me. Someone else might define victory as zero covid, someone else might think it’s abandoning all measures immediately.

If cases are low enough to use TTI you would hope to keep r below 1, therefore cases are declining (however slowly).

Sadly the government is willing to tolerate rising cases. If we have rising cases, we are not winning.

Think of it a bit like a lottery. There is a small chance every time the virus copies itself and spreads that it will make an error - mutation - that happens to be one that means the vaccines won't recognise it, and perhaps also combined with something that makes it spread more. It's random chance if this will happen or not. If the virus is 'lucky', it only takes one winning ticket to achieve that, and that could potentially happen even with one ticket. But the chances are very small. On the other hand, if it has millions of tickets, the chances of it getting a 'good' one are much higher. It still might not - we could have millions of mutations, and by chance, all of them are fine, or don't spread, or whatever. But we'd have to be quite lucky, if the virus had so many chances against us.

So the lower we can keep transmission, not just here but around the world, the longer time we have before a bad mutation starts to spread. And in that time, we can be continuing to vaccinate people to reduce the chances of the virus getting lucky, and also developing new vaccines.

The dangerous situation is when there is a lot of spread but new vaccines aren't ready, or there are still a lot of unvaccinated people, because then the bad mutations are able to spread and not be traced or noticed as easily.

So it's possible to win - but it takes both luck, and people being sensible about not letting transmission get out of control or thinking that case numbers don't matter. That buys us time - the vaccines will eventually reduce transmission a lot, which will help, and there will also be new vaccines. But the dangerous time is while that is happening.

The U.K. could have adopted a zero tolerance to the virus as many Asian countries and New Zealand and Australia have done. Instead it went for flattening the curve. Regardless of the rights or wrongs about the policy then it now is clearly the case that zero tolerance is not the policy the government has chosen to follow . Given that we need to live with the virus just as we live with colds, flu and other ailments, these all mutate . I wish the virus didn't exist, I wish we didn't have to have experienced what has happened over the last year both in terms of the deaths and suffering the virus has brought and the lockdown impact but we have.
We can't keep on living like we are， we need like to get back to normal ,we need people to mix and be free from that's controls

I think by winning the race, I meant the world getting rid of covid completely. Or at least good enough that only a small amount of cases, which the world can contain one way or another.

I think I think that the Uk has such a high number of cases, that it is too high, currently at least, for track and trace to be totally meaningful, and we are always chasing our tails.

And the Heathrow and airports and transport situation appears to be such a farce that it all requires a world effort not just the UK. Again, not sure we can win that one either, the way the UK is doing it.
But also, we cant control what the world is doing. And to be fair, they on the whole are faring better than the UK anyway.

Feels a bit to me, that especially during winter months, we are between a rock and a hard place.

I will watch the Horizon programme at some point.

We definitely can't get rid of covid globally is my guess.

We could control it here, the UK government has opted to tolerate it instead. Time will tell what the deaths will be this winter.