How will we have a third wave?

[lebigface]

Just wondering if someone could explain this to me. I keep seeing talk in the media of scientists warning of a possible third wave. I am wondering how this would happen with the amount of people who've now had the vaccine?
If the vaccine reduces the chance of hospitalisation and death surely we can avoid it?
Is this to do with getting both doses of the vaccine?

I guess it depends how they're defining a "wave".....increase in number of cases, number of deaths, people in hospital??
According to the Scotland dashboard there's a large number of hospital admissions in the under 44 age group so the people who've mostly not even had the 3 weeks from their first vaccine let alone the second yet. So it proves that the vaccine is working for those who've had it but it's not been rolled out fast enough for those who are going to work, socialising, have kids at school etc now that we've started to release lockdown.
Also more routine testing is going to identify the people who are asymptomatic and increase the number of cases and positive test rate. It seems to be mainly local hotspots, we've got a local primary school closed at the moment after most class bubbles got wiped out and i think that's the first time in the pandemic that's happened nearby.
www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/

Less than half of adults have had both doses. There will be a 3rd wave, but if it doesn't lead to serious disease it won't be of much concern.

The word "wave" is very subjective and used to scare people into getting the jab (fully support vaccines by the way).

A tsunami is a wave (think first and second wave) next wave will likely be a small beach wave.... all are waves but with different damage limitations.

I've been wondering the same. Presumably they mean a wave of cases. Hopefully not the situation we've seen previously.

Well let's just hope if and it's a big if they get to seeing possibility if a damaging third wave the hit it on the head before it gets out of control.

A short 2 week lockdown should work if done correctly as isolation is 10 days so it should cut spread outside households in the head and keep those within households within them.

But I totally agree it's a very subjective topic. I'd be interested to know what constitutes a wave.

25% of adults still haven't even had a first jab - that's millions of people. And of course children have not been vaccinated. With restrictions on social contact lifted, and a more transmissible variant, of course infection rates are going to go up again.

Hopefully it won't look as bad as the previous waves but lots of people could still end up in hospital.

There's a new variant that has been able to arrive here, seed itself all over the country, and is making people in their 30s and 40s ill enough to go to hospital.

During lockdown restrictions

And if it can do all that during restrictions, what's it going to do when we end them?

I see Billy Bullshitter Matt Hancock is doing the rounds saying that even before we had a Covid case here, he was sorting out vaccines, yeah, I have a good memory, this is what he was interviewed saying:
www.reuters.com/article/us-china-th-britain-hancock-idUSKBN1ZN1R9

and that there was no need to restrict air travel at all

Second doses are really important.

Over 6.5 million of the JCVI priority groups haven't had their second dose yet.

Only 38.5% of the U.K. population has had two doses.

40.9% of the population has had no vaccine at all.

20.6% has had one dose.

Second doses areexpected to continue throughout September, and possibly October.

The country isn't "vaccinated".

Vaccines work best if you can reach herd immunity - and we are still several months away from that.

Interesting from Tim Spector on this.

We can have a third wave, because there are still a lot of people unprotected. Most of them are unlikely to become severely ill, though, because they are mainly younger.

No room for complacency - we need to keep on with the vaccination rollout. But no need to panic either.

I gave up on Tim Spector when he said that we were over the peak of the second wave in November because cases were falling.

We were in Lockdown!

And we all know what happened when we came out.

@PrincessNutNuts

I gave up on Tim Spector when he said that we were over the peak of the second wave in November because cases were falling.

We were in Lockdown!

And we all know what happened when we came out.

That's because every peak an artificial peak the virus doesn't just say ah I'll give them a break for a bit and come back in a few months... do you do anything but sit on here all day and be miserable...

We are currently below all predictions that sage provided including their best case scenario and I'm sure you will find something bad about that aswell.

We all knew and were told countless times that cases would rise. I would even go as far as to say they are not rising as fast as they thought they would even with the super scary variant.

A third wave doesn’t need to be high numbers. If you look at flu statistics, we have a wave every winter (2020/2021 more or less excluded) and that’s not only expected but we manage without the need to have restrictions (just an annual vaccination to the vulnerable and others who choose to).

Honestly @PrincessNutNuts you are obsessed.

Not really sure why PrincessNutNut is constantly being called "obsessed" on here but no one calls out the 33,000 posts saying we can't possibly have a third wave or increased hospitalisations/deaths because vaccines

Very easily. In fact we're already in it.

Old Covid had an R0 of approximately 3.

The Kent Variant was approximately 60% more transmissible than Old Covid, hence giving it an R0 of 3 x 1.6 = 4.8.

The Indian Variant is approximately 60% (though that may well be an underestimate) more transmissible than the Kent Variant, giving it an R0 of 4.8 x 1.6 = 7.68.

Which suggests that we need 1 - 1/7.68 = 87% of the population vaccinated to keep R below 1 and stop the Third Wave without reintroducing restrictions. We are less than half way there yet.

@Needanewhat

Not really sure why PrincessNutNut is constantly being called "obsessed" on here but no one calls out the 33,000 posts saying we can't possibly have a third wave or increased hospitalisations/deaths because vaccines

And I'm also wondering why we are the ones being called "lockdown lovers", "dementors" etc when WE are the ones who want to do everything we can to avoid another lockdown.

Literally no one loves lockdown. No one "wants" a lockdown.

Facing up to uncomfortable truths is not the same as being desperate for a lockdown. It's such a lazy, tedious argument.

If the government had followed the advice of the "lockdown lovers" last summer then we never would have needed a second lockdown.

@lebigface

Just wondering if someone could explain this to me. I keep seeing talk in the media of scientists warning of a possible third wave. I am wondering how this would happen with the amount of people who've now had the vaccine? If the vaccine reduces the chance of hospitalisation and death surely we can avoid it? Is this to do with getting both doses of the vaccine?

There are two factors here.

1. While the Kent variant was suppressed by a population who had had only one vaccine (i.e. partially vaccinated), the Indian variant isn't. Ergo we've just lost a healthy chunk of partial herd immunity at the same time as restrictions have been eased. This is why R has jumped from ~0.7 to perhaps 1.5 in certain areas where the Indian variant is now established.

2. There are a lot of people who haven't been vaccinated including among the vulnerable, and the vaccine will fail to protect a chunk of the most vulnerable anyway. Research has demonstrated very low efficacies of the vaccine in immuno-compromised patients. So in the event of a wave of infections, the virus will reach these people and many will die.

The only way to stop it, is to reimpose some restrictions until R is back at or below 1, until the vaccine drive is further on at which point having a lot more FULLY jabbed up people may be enough to keep the Indian variant from spreading, and THEN we can open back up properly.

@NannyAndJohn

If the government had followed the advice of the "lockdown lovers" last summer then we never would have needed a second lockdown.

You cannot possibly know this.

@strangeshapedpotato has summed it up perfectly for me, thank you.

do you do anything but sit on here all day and be miserable

If the government had followed the advice of the "lockdown lovers" last summer then we never would have needed a second lockdown.

You cannot possibly know this.

We’ve reached the ‘making up total shit’ part of the ‘debate’.

Didn’t take long.

second doses are really important

The numbers of non attendance of 2nd vaccine appointments at the hubs I work at are rising all the time, and those are the ones who have actively made an appt and then decided not to turn up, theres a lot declining the vaccine at appointment booking stage i can only speak of my own local area of course this may not be true across the country