Indian variant - why the panic?

[Doireallyneedaname]

Multiple news stories over the last 24 hours stating that the vaccines are effective against it; as well as lab studies last week showing the same, yet the panic continues. Why?

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57134181

There are those who panic about everything and believe the government/ media and those who don't give a fuck and everyone else in between.

Do you remember how scared we all were of covid at the start? A lot of people have learned to live with the risk and try not to ruin their lives over it. Some poor people are still terrified and variants feed into this narrative of fear.

'Because many have not been vaccinated and a huge number have only had one vaccine. It’s really that simple.'

Yes and many have no intention of getting vaccinated either. An older guest on gmb said she wasn't having it and had been hugging people throughout. It baffles me how reckless some people are, proud of it too 🙄.

They're aiming to sequence as many hospital cases and cases where the person had been vaccinated as possible.

Because the government buries it head in the sand and tells everyone they are safe until the evidence to the contrary whacks them round the head......

Because noone wants to not do what they want to do, especially when we thought it was all coming to an end

@JaniieJones I saw her! Think it was ingrid tarrant - she came across as thick as mince

@Whyarewehardofthinking Isn't your immunity compromised with Crohn's Disease? That is exactly why as many people as possible need to be vaxed to give people whose immunity is compromised more chance of avoiding getting the disease -
Local to us - 25 children/teaching staff at a local school have tested positive as well as positives in a local company - we are not near any of the at risk areas mentioned yet regarding this mutation but this is a very sudden new outbreak in our area
How can anyone know if their immunity is compromised & the vax hasn't taken well

Firstly because "lab studies" CANNOT prove a vaccine is effective. They can only suggest it is.

The likelihood IS that they WILL have SOME effect, but we don't know how much - it's unlikely to be as good as the %'s reported currently, but quite how much less is a complete unknown.

See for example the AZ vaccine against the SA variant - efficacy against stopping symptomatic illness fell from 65% to almost nothing, despite the same type of lab studies showing it was "effective".

We don't yet know the efficacy against severe illness with any of these variants, it's not likely to have been affected as much, but it will have fallen. So for healthy vaccinated individuals, these variants present only a tiny increase in risk to themselves.....

But the most important factor with the Indian variant is transmittability. A small fall in efficacy could strip away almost all of the vaccines' ability to limit onward transmission (vs the ~80% reduction we've seen after one dose with the Kent variant).

We've been able to come out of restrictions so far this year because the vaccination program has resulted in R being reduced, more than balancing the increase in R from fewer restrictions. Take away THAT vaccine effect AND introduce a more infectious variant, and R will suddenly be quite high and infections will quickly soar.

I got chatting to two women in a pub garden yesterday. Both late 50s/early 60s. Both nurses, one in a cancer unit. Told me they wouldn't be having jabs and they'd been hugging family and friends throughout. I was pretty shocked. I don't know anyone who has refused the vaccine.

We've been able to come out of restrictions so far this year because the vaccination program has resulted in R being reduced

Or because of lockdown - I don’t think the vaccine has been fully tested in ‘real life’ yet in this country. That’s what is about to happen.

I saw that Singapore has closed all schools because they think the variant affects children more. So some countries are changing restrictions because of it. www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3133695/coronavirus-singapore-close-schools-wednesday-amid

The panic would be over the fact that we don't how much the vaccine is effective against this variant. It looks like it's far more transmissible, and while a high proportion of those over 75 will have been fully vaccinated, younger people have not and some of them will be vulnerable. The deaths could be very high amongst those between 50 and 70, and all ages with underlying conditions.

The problem is when cases get very high, the small proportion of people who become seriously ill with covid suddenly becomes a large number of people. SAGE minutes show they are concerned about a spike in hospitalisations due to this variant likely being so much more transmissible.

A huge number of people aren’t vaccinated even once because they aren’t old enough. I agree that we seem to be just chucking all the hard work away right at the end for the sake of a couple more weeks of sticking to the same restrictions.

@AgnesNaismith

We've been able to come out of restrictions so far this year because the vaccination program has resulted in R being reduced

Or because of lockdown - I don’t think the vaccine has been fully tested in ‘real life’ yet in this country. That’s what is about to happen.

Err you argument doesn't actually make sense.

"We've been able to come out of lockdown, because of lockdown..."

In order to maintain R below 1 - NECESSARY to reduce infections, you HAVE to replace the restrictions you're removing, with something else.
Vaccines have filled the hole - there's PLENTY of evidence of that now.

@Leonardsgirl

I got chatting to two women in a pub garden yesterday. Both late 50s/early 60s. Both nurses, one in a cancer unit. Told me they wouldn't be having jabs and they'd been hugging family and friends throughout. I was pretty shocked. I don't know anyone who has refused the vaccine.

That is really is shocking if one works in a cancer unit. She could be responsible for a lot of deaths.

No I agree we can come out of lockdown because of the vaccines - but the R is reduced because of lockdown so far, not the vaccines. Is that not the case? Same as last summer...we dropped restrictions because lockdown reduced the R number. The increase in socialising will test vaccine efficacy properly.

[quote funkythighcollector]I saw that Singapore has closed all schools because they think the variant affects children more. So some countries are changing restrictions because of it. www.scmp.com/week-asia/health-environment/article/3133695/coronavirus-singapore-close-schools-wednesday-amid[/quote]
The surge in infections does seem to be occurring in schools. I hope that children aren't more seriously affected.

@Pyewackect

I was seconded to ICU for 12 months to cover the emergency. 4 weeks ago we transferred our last Covid patient and I went back to my “day” job. I got to work this morning and we had 6 admissions of the Indian variant to ICU over the weekend. One patient arrested within 10 minutes. She didn’t make it. I have been recalled.

I'm sorry for your experience this morning. I hope the rest of your shift is a bit lighter.

I live in Bolton,in the post code of particular concern ,I'm fully Vaccinated as is my DH, ,so I'm not to concerned about getting Ill,but I'm following the news closely I'm concerned about school closures etc.

@Belladonna12 I don't mean to be arsey but how could she be responsible for any deaths by refusing the vaccine? Other than potentially her own. You can still catch and pass on covid when you have the vaccine, it just reduces your chances of becoming severely unwell. I'm open to correction as I genuinely don't keep up to date with covid news anymore.

Are you joking? Do you actually read and understand what’s going on?

It’s possibly 50% more transmissible than the Kent variant, most of the under 40s have not been vaccinated at all, and it’s really affecting 11to22 year olds in my area. Hospital cases are rising again.

Not to mention the tens of thousands of over 50s who could have had a jab by now and didn’t bother, seen the queues in Bolton?

If we want this to stop, get the jab ,follow the bloody rules and I wouldn’t be going abroad this year either

20 million people in the UK fully vaccinated means there's still over 45 million people not. Then there's the ones who are vaccinated who will still slip through.

We are nowhere near close enough to having enough herd immunity to feel confident about this yet.

@Chloemol

Are you joking? Do you actually read and understand what’s going on?

It’s possibly 50% more transmissible than the Kent variant, most of the under 40s have not been vaccinated at all, and it’s really affecting 11to22 year olds in my area. Hospital cases are rising again.

Not to mention the tens of thousands of over 50s who could have had a jab by now and didn’t bother, seen the queues in Bolton?

If we want this to stop, get the jab ,follow the bloody rules and I wouldn’t be going abroad this year either

Do you have evidence of this ? As the below link provide data that does not match what you are saying re hospitalisations

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/

Belladonna I was really quite shocked. Because I don't know anyone who isn't having the vaccine as soon as it's offered I naively assumed most people were. It's made me realise that the message about exercising caution is an important one as you really don't know who you are sitting next to and what they have been doing.

[quote eandz13]@Belladonna12 I don't mean to be arsey but how could she be responsible for any deaths by refusing the vaccine? Other than potentially her own. You can still catch and pass on covid when you have the vaccine, it just reduces your chances of becoming severely unwell. I'm open to correction as I genuinely don't keep up to date with covid news anymore. [/quote]
If you are kept up-to-date with the news you will realise that the vaccine doesn't just reduce the chances becoming severely unwell. It also reduces the chances of catching it all and transmitting it.

Where are these area where kids 11-22 are being affected and hospital cases are rising. I'm in London and cases don't appear to be rising in my area. Is it happening in areas we don't know about, rather than places like Bolton which are in the news?