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!

@BusyLizzie61 this is a more up to date version of that.

There are still many under 50’s un vaccinated and who haven’t had covid so no immunity. Surely that’s a lot of dry tinder with the possibility of going up?

I really hope we never see lockdown again but I will believe it when I see it.

Hospitalizations and deaths may be down but many many people who were never ill enough to need hospitalization have been left with long covid. Many of these people are young in their thirties and forties. My 21 year old Ds had it months ago and is still really fatigued and has no sense of smell. The effect on people lives is enormous. I have ex colleagues ( NHS ) who have had to take early retirement due to long covid. They have been off sick for months.

@RosesAndHellebores I think it’s about just drawing a line in the sand. I agree with your logic but people will bend the rules any way they can. So the rules have to be as simple to understand as poss, with very little wiggle room.

I live abroad and our schools have remained open since May last year. Overall the rules on households mixing and going out haven’t been as strict as in the UK, and our numbers seem to have been more controlled when closing non-essential shops.

Things opened up here early March and we’re seeing big increases again. Couple that with a slow vaccine roll out and I think it’s far from “over”.

Like a pp said, looking at it on a national level is irrelevant if global travel is still allowed and it’s still rife in many many other countries. God knows I miss my holidays, but until everywhere gets it under control, it’s definitely not over.

I don’t think we can say the vaccine roll out is slow @GuessWho57. If anything it’s been incredibly fast.

Global travel will open up but vaccine passports will be the answer to controlling the spread from other countries. If you can control where visitors go it will limit the impact.

@NaToth

I hear what you say, but cases are going up again in my area.

Who cares about cases?

We have vaccines now, less people hospitalized and deaths.

@1dayatatime
The UK has recorded 127k deaths of people that have died from whatever cause but have had a positive Covid test within the past 28 days. How many of those would have died anyway is impossible to prove. But if you look at the number of Covid deaths in the UK with no underlying health conditions then the figure is around 800.

I don't understand why people are still saying this when it's widely known that death certificate stats put covid deaths at higher than 28 day stats (around 150,000 last time I looked) - obviously a more accurate measure, unless like some you argue that doctors are faking death certificates for some utterly baffling reason. Covid is on death certificates if it is one of the main causes of death, not if it is simply present, so we can be sure that it has killed this number of people - even if it's a secondary cause, we wouldn't say someone died of cancer if they were hit by a car and happened to have cancer, would we?

As for the underlying conditions thing, it's been widely discussed on here and everywhere. Underlying conditions encapsulate everything from terminal conditions through to broken arms, psoriasis and cataracts, so yeah, obviously all those people were going to die anyway so don't matter.

The reason that number is low is because most people who have died have some kind of condition, but that doesn't mean they have a life limiting one. The kind of thing you are saying is ableist and offensive and I've seen too much of it over the past year.

We have vaccines now, less people hospitalized and deaths

Less isn’t none. Our hospitals were overwhelmed with only a few million officially found cases.

Vaccines are great but they need to be in peoples arms before we get too complacent.

@Bluntness100 I was talking about the vaccine roll out where I live. It’s not been as fast as the UK.

My point was that the situation might feel better than it was in the UK, but until it’s better everywhere globally it’s definitely not “over”. And vaccine passports or not - who wants to travel to an area where it’s rife? how confident are we in the vaccines?

My point was that the situation might feel better than it was in the UK, but until it’s better everywhere globally it’s definitely not “over”. And vaccine passports or not - who wants to travel to an area where it’s rife? how confident are we in the vaccines?

Agree it’s not over until the world has it over snd also agree few people want to go where it’s rife. I don’t think we are even permitted though. Vaccine passports will help mitigate the spread from travellers and I think confidence in the vaccine is huge as the data is already backing up its efficacy.

Exactly... where I live, tourists are not allowed, only citizens and residents.

Things might feel over on a local level but I think that’ll be a false sense of normality and will not be extrapolated to a global level, hence reminding us that it’s still not quite normal.

To be fair, that’s how it was here all last summer. From May to end of Oct, it was a bit of hand washing and some mask wearing but other than that everything locally was ok.

National bubbles I guess.