It's over

[starfro]

From within the Government the figures they are seeing suggest that the virus is receding far far quicker than their experts predicted.

Christ Whitty has come out and said that we'll never see a lockdown again.

We could release everything now, like Israel did when they were at a similar vaccination level, and see no uptick in cases. I'm sure they are going to continue to follow the very conservative roadmap, but really there is no need, as immunity levels from both vaccination and infection are sufficient.

Great news!

Things are looking good at the moment but if all restrictions were suddenly lifted, it wouldn't take long for case rates to go up very quickly again - especially as all the data shows the virus is mostly spread by people under 50 and the majority of them haven't been vaccinated yet. And many older people have only had one dose so are not fully protected yet.

@bookworm1632

With immunity levels at around 50%, we're nowhere near close to herd immunity yet although vaccines will certainly be having an impact.

WIth R hovering just below 1 (nationally) DESPITE the vaccines, it's quite clear if restrictions were raised quickly now it would rise and cases would surge.

Antibody levels. Even if antibody levels wane, people can still have T cell immunity. There’s probably a much higher level of immunity than we think. People who recovered from infection last year may no longer have high enough antibody levels to have been counted in the ONS survey but they may still be immune.

I share your optimism op, it's all looking pretty good. But I still support the cautious re-opening; better to go carefully at this point rather than kicking ourselves, for the sake of another couple of months.

Four areas of Greater Manchester have increased to higher than the national average, but they'd dropped significantly.
Schools going back has seen a bit of an increase in our area.

There is real anger and division across the country from young people feeling they have been unfairly sacrificed

Really? Yes I imagine there has been some selfish behaviour from many generations who feel their wants come first but most young people aren’t selfish and can understand why measures are needed and want to protect their family etc.

I'm with Geoff

It’s great news. Of course cases may go up and down but overall the trend is good and it doesn’t really matter if cases go up a bit now we have the vaccines. It feels like back to normal for me, packed weekend catching up with friends and family, and my baby getting to play with her baby friends for the first time. So happy 😀.

@bumbleymummy

There was a lot of talk about T-Cell immunity mid-last year - mostly in connection with the idea we'd already reached herd-immunity, but that's largely ceased now - it was always just a hypothesis and never had any real-world evidence to support it, and one that has seemed increasingly unsupportable once the 2nd wave hit. Any lingering doubts SHOULD have been banished by what occurred in Brazil.

54.7% would also appear quite reasonable given the number of vaccines given out (By 14th March ~ 24 million) and the number of reported infections 4.3 million. The difference then is 8.4 million which one can assume is infections missed, many of which will have been in the first wave where we only tested in hospitals.

@bookworm1632 are you one of the younger group? I am and there is absolutely resentment. Resentment that a group of very low risk people have been the most affected by job cuts and furlough, and have had our lives on hold for so long. It was ok at first, but I think everyone is done now. There’s no going back from re-opening, we won’t do it again.

@bookworm1632 There have been papers published this year about T cell immunity persisting for 8+ months after recovery, even if antibody levels have reduced. The ONS survey I mentioned above also specifically said that lower levels of antibodies did not necessarily mean that some was not still immune due to T cell immunity.

Lots of us are still waiting to be vaccinated

Cases are up 20% in my area

Percentages don’t sound great when you’re working with small numbers.

‘An increase of 20%’ sounds a lot worse than ‘we went up from 5 cases last week to 6 this week’.

Vaccines break the link between 'cases' and serious illness/death.

@fudgefox

Lots of us are still waiting to be vaccinated

Yes of course, but the majority of vulnerable are vaccinated now. There’s still some of group 6 and 9 left but most are done. Everyone not in these groups are low risk.

@PleaseReferToMeAsBritneySpears

Cases are up 20% in my area

And what about hospitalisations and deaths? Are they up too?

You're wrong. I'd love it if you were right, but we aren't there yet by any means.

People are behaving like arseholes already (with the gatherings in parks etc) and lockdown isn't even properly lifted yet. I dread to think what people will be like once restrictions are finally all lifted. And cases are rising again in some areas including my own.

I wish this was over, we all do, but sadly it's not. And it's a dangerous time to be complacent.

[quote bumbleymummy]@bookworm1632 There have been papers published this year about T cell immunity persisting for 8+ months after recovery, even if antibody levels have reduced. The ONS survey I mentioned above also specifically said that lower levels of antibodies did not necessarily mean that some was not still immune due to T cell immunity.[/quote]
Of course it doesn't rule out T-Cells - it only claims what is proven.

There are two quite separate things here. T-Cells clearly exist and persist and will play a part in fighting covid in infected individuals, alongside B-cells.

But evidence for a large pool of people with only detectable T-Cells, that are nevertheless immune, is weak to non-existent. As I said above these claims were doing the rounds last summer and have vanished now, largely because the 2nd/3rd waves proved them wrong.

Of COURSE research continues on the immune response which is far more complex than just "antibodies in the blood". There's an excellent summary that's just about lay-person digestible here:
theconversation.com/covid-19-immunity-how-long-does-it-last-152849

@dementedma

Can you ask Nicola Sturgeon to release her death grip on Scotland then? Vague mutterings about office workers "maybe" starting a phased return at the end of June! FFS! Yet we can get our hair cut and see physios and go to shops. It seriously boils my piss to be still working from my bedroom after 13 months

Totally agree. Everyone on MN going on about how they can do X, Y or Z, meet people outside, go to see their parents, the Welshies can half self-catering holidays... and here in Scotland we're supposed to be grateful that they've changed the "stay at home" rules to "stay local" which means not stepping across your council boundary for a non-essential reason.

What a pile of shit, really. But @dementedma we have the perfect opportunity to give Saint Nicola of Covid the kicking she deserves in the elections in May.

Yes, I’m well aware how complex the immune response is, thanks. :)

I'm optimistic,but this virus is raging over Europe and cases and deaths are going up in America,I think the Government are right to be cautious tbh if everything opens up to soon and international travel goes back to normal etc we will be racing against time to get everyone vaccinated

How do you define "over" OP?

I still think it's too early to say that.

It looks hopeful, but if you look at the heat maps, you can already see the impact schools are having in the 10-15 age category and 15-19 (and before anyone says students, I'll point out at this time of year most 15-18s will be school not students, which is 80%) and some areas in the 5-9s too.
I've just looked at one area where the 10-15 age category is over 1000/100k.

We are still getting 4-5k a day. In July that was the amount we were getting a week. At this level, as other countries have seen, it only takes a butterfly flapping its wings in the wrong place to send it spinning off again.
I think the biggest danger now is people thinking its all over and they can ignore restrictions.

It may be that with some restrictions and the vaccinations it doesn't go into a third wave, or certainly a big one. It could also be a new variant emerges which isn't effected by any of the jabs. It could be that we find that the numbers refusing the jabs leaves us still unable to attain herd immunity even once we've done everyone.

Now is the time to pull together, to see that the end may be in sight but to not think it's over and we can ignore it.
Hopefully with common sense, and people thinking about others, we can have a summer where we have gone low and stayed low, and look forward to a future where covid is no longer something we have to keep more than a casual eye on.

Bloody hope so!

I think we’ll release as planned but I doubt there’ll be another lockdown

And thank the stars and everything else for that

@MorrisZapp

Vaccines break the link between 'cases' and serious illness/death.

Absolutely

Astor point we can move on from watching cases with so much worry