How long before the UK become India

[Dandylioness1]

The scenes coming from India right now are petrifying.

Takes me back to the scenes from Italy last year.

My question, how long do you think we have until we are seeing similar scenes here.
Do we need to be prepared for this?

Of course it wasn't like that over Christmas. Why do people need to exaggerate?

m.timesofindia.com/india/covishield-may-protect-against-double-mutant-ccmb-report/amp_articleshow/82206892.cms

They are actually hopeful that AZ is working against the double mutation. It’s just they’ve only vaccinated a tiny amount of their population..

We are at herd immunity already by percentage of population, and well on the way to true herd immunity.

The vaccination scheme is the one thing we've got right, and it's making an amazing positive impact now

The Indian mutations news has been overblown - they are very similar to mutations already around and our vaccines still do really well against them with the ability to make any boosters needed quickly

We're doing great, and I'm feeling very positive that it's going to stay that way. We'll certainly never be like India.

This is the situation that the lockdowns avoided (and later, the lockdown plus speedy vaccinations)

Perhaps the OP hasn’t come back due to the amount of awful things some posters have called her! A twat, low IQ, some real awful replies! @UmbilicusProfundus

There are ways of answering concerns (which might actually be real) without belittling someone!

Between those posts there are some really great informative replies, so I hope if the OP does have genuine concerns she (or he) scrolls through the rest.

@UmbilicusProfundus

People are always going to be critical of an OP who writes an (accidentally or not) inflammatory post, doesn’t reflect on any of the responses in their second post, and then disappears. Of course people are concerned or seeking reassurance, so why don’t you come back OP and tell us your thoughts now.

Why would OP come back?

OP has been called a twat, idiot, iq of a cucumber, can't read....etc etc etc.

Happens on all MNs threads if someone posts anything that isn't the mainstream view (in MN world)

Cross post @KatChocolate

Some opinions deserve to be belittled, particularly when they are deliberately setting out to scare and worry people.

There is no comparison between India and the UK. Indications from India are that AZ is effective against their variant. Many of the cases there are “our” Kent variant anyway. We have a wealthier population, far less poverty and better living conditions and health service. We have been living under lockdown measures that have been very successful and if there was even a suggestion of the NHS being overwhelmed I’m sure we’d be locked back down. As a country we can do that without a proportion of the population starving to death.

So no, it’s extremely difficult to see a scenario when we would experience anything remotely like what’s happening in parts of India right now and it’s really minimising their experience to suggest we would or have. It’s arrogant in the extreme to take a heartbreaking situation on the other side of the world and turn it into faux concern for the UK.

This is what our lockdowns prevented. We were able to avoid our healthcare system being completely overwhelmed.

With the success and excellent uptake of the vaccine roll out and the capability and skills of our healthcare system, I don't believe we are at risk of the situation in India happening here.

Without our lockdowns, there could have been situations like this, but thankfully action was taken in time.

This is what our lockdowns prevented. We were able to avoid our healthcare system being completely overwhelmed

err.... what do you call an NHS that now has 5m people waiting for treatment and for most of the last 14 months has predominately treated only CV and emergency patients?
The s/w took ICU patients from London too.

You might swallow the line the NHS wasn't overwhelmed but i don't, i had an extremely painful and limiting condition, told 2 to 4 years wait on NHS or until it becomes an emergency procedure.

I can afford private, millions cannot.

@jasjas1973 it would have been a lot worse without lockdown

I can see your worries OP.

We're not India with the huge overcrowding and poverty. Our health system is better. We have vaccinated a much bigger percentage of our population.

However, this Indian variation does concern me. Look how quickly we went from falling cases to stupidly high cases with the NHS almost being overvrun. I'm (more than a little) afraid of the same thing happening again if I'm honest.

I can only hope the Kent variant kicks it's arse and the vaccines hold against it.

Thousands of people arrived in the UK from India this week, how many of them had the virus and passed it on both on the plane and since arrival. I don't understand why 4 days notice was given. Surely if a country needs to be put on the red list it needs to be put on it straight away

It’s arrogant in the extreme to take a heartbreaking situation on the other side of the world and turn it into faux concern for the UK.

Excellent point.

[quote LemonCake79]@MRex, I just wanted to say you are always the voice of reason on these threads. I wonder how you still have the patience a year in. Hats off to you.

I've donated to the link you provided as a thank you for the useful and well sourced information you share on here. [/quote]
Hear hear!

And here's the link again
www.gavi.org/donate

Please share and donate if you can

@Saucery

It’s arrogant in the extreme to take a heartbreaking situation on the other side of the world and turn it into faux concern for the UK.

Excellent point.

Yes- seconded.

My thoughts, when I see the scenes are not so much 'Oh no that could be us' but 'what can I do to help/change the situation.'

Thank you also for the donation link. A suggestion, which I saw sometime back was if you are able to, consider donating the 'cost' of your covid jab, as we are able to receive it as part of the NHS.

Didn't India seem to get away with the first wave.. I remember thinking early on why wasn't COVID rampant in the slums. So all the arguments about different demographic etc didn't seem to impact them then.

I'm not saying things are not bad in India, they are. But I have a lot of friends and family there and it is not as bad everywhere as the TV shows. Some places are locked down, some are not. In addition, the (reported) death rate is low. 2000 deaths to 325000 cases is 0.06%. High numbers because there are alot of people in India but when you look at the population vs the infections vs the deaths it is different. Same as the UK in Jan and Feb--- high infection rate, comparatively lower death rate. I am heavily invested in what is happening there because I have loved-ones there so I am tracking it daily and getting their updates daily. Most of my friends and their families have had it and recovered. But the fear-levels are high there, fuelled by the media reporting it like everyone is dying.

The UK won't experience the same issues because it is very different here in terms of infrastructure, population, how we live in our families and communities, compliance with social distancing (for 8 months India has done pretty much nothing and everything has been open). And our vaccintion programme is coming along great.

@ineedaholidaynow

Didn't India seem to get away with the first wave.. I remember thinking early on why wasn't COVID rampant in the slums. So all the arguments about different demographic etc didn't seem to impact them then.

Some things that were different with India's first wave: 1) The first wave was a different variant that's less transmissible. 2) Huge efforts were made in Mumbai to do checks and remove infected people to clamp down on spread, there are lots of interesting articles from the time. 3) There was a lockdown without travel; this caused immense hardship and some died trying to get back hundreds of miles to their villages.

Given how many people from my home city ( Leicester)travel between here and India I full expect leicester to be locked down again by Autumn. We were never really out of lockdown at all last year.

Thank you for being so cheerful, Dandylioness.

We are way ahead of India when it comes to vaccinations. There are advantages to being a small nation.

The first time I went to India, I was truly overwhelmed by its size. You can't compare it to a normal country; a better equivalent would be the EU or America for distances, cities and federal structures. What is happening in (say Deli) is a world away from what could be happening in Bangalore.

The headline numbers look horrific, especially when you bear in mind that it's underreported and the true numbers are 10x that amount. However, that's still tiny by India's standards; for just 1% of the population to die from Covid, you would be looking at 10 million people. Understandably, even the best health service in the world would struggle to cope with that level of demand, all at once.

It's not going to happen here. We have measures in place to stop the spread, a widespread vaccination programme and a lot more resources to throw at it.

I don’t think you can trust the numbers coming out of India in the first wave or this one as they are not testing enough people, not all births and deaths are recorded so we will never know. I hope the south Asian community in the UK will come forward for the vaccine now or our hospitals will in certain areas be overwhelmed.

I also find it quite insulting to say “How long before the UK becomes India”

People in this country are so ungrateful, we have the NHS, 50% of our population has been vaccinated, it’s rollout is one of the best in the world, furlough system put in place, but no that’s not enough, we will soon turn into a country like India

@jasjas1973

This is what our lockdowns prevented. We were able to avoid our healthcare system being completely overwhelmed

err.... what do you call an NHS that now has 5m people waiting for treatment and for most of the last 14 months has predominately treated only CV and emergency patients?
The s/w took ICU patients from London too.

You might swallow the line the NHS wasn't overwhelmed but i don't, i had an extremely painful and limiting condition, told 2 to 4 years wait on NHS or until it becomes an emergency procedure.

I can afford private, millions cannot.

If we hadn't locked down, we still would have had that problem, though maybe some of the waiting lists woukd have been shorter. Simply because those people would be dead.

I find it fascinating that you simultaneously say are going to have another wave so we should be being much more cautious whilst also saying our waiting lists are far too long and implying that we shouldn't have locked down as hard.

@piratepee

Now, no. Twice in the UK lockdowns have stopped that from happening.

So you don't think we would lockdown again?

We shouldn't need to. It's the last resort option (March 20 and Jan 21 UK, India now).