The next 4 weeks are about preparing us for ‘living with covid’

[solarlights]

There’s been so much scaremongering and manipulation so far during this pandemic - rightly or wrongly. But now I get the distinct impression that the tide is about to turn and over the next 4 weeks we are going to be braced for living with coronavirus and everything that entails including the fact there will still be significant numbers of deaths and some people will get long covid. I think we’ll be told having the vaccination is our only protection and after that we need to get on with it and accept the risk. Social distancing is not a viable option long term and neither is 10 days of isolation. Be interesting to see what unravels in the media over the next month.

Whether you like it or not the country cannot afford to lockdown continuously

This is a false equivalence fallacy.

You're taking the cost of lockdown on the one hand, and assuming zero or low cost on the other without any reasoning/explanation to do so.

Yes, restrictions cost some parts of the economy money, but what does covid cost the economy?

Until I've seen someone assemble a reasoned and evidence based reply that includes that, I'm afraid I can only view those who argue "we just have to live with it" as rather limited thinkers.

We will avoid cost of lockdown by accepting a level of risk - Whitty talks well on this.

He talks about it as a reasonable aim. Which is good to hear from him.

@User1234123

I really do think the narrative is starting to shift, I don't personally mind the delay because this time there's a very firm exit.

I say this because once all adults are double jabbed....what else can they realistically do, and how can you expect people to accept further restrictions?

We must wait until all children are jabbed We ust wait until all vulnerable and elderly have boosters We must wait until all other adults have boosters We must wait until all children have boosters

... ad infinitum

^We must wait until all children are jabbed
We ust wait until all vulnerable and elderly have boosters
We must wait until all other adults have boosters
We must wait until all children have boosters^

... ad infinitum

No won't happen. We have crossed the Rubicon.

As for goal posts shifting its been reflective of a changing crisis.

If your house is on fire, the fire brigade say the plan is to put your fire out. If your neighbours house is on fire the goal posts change. The fire brigade don't say 'well we are going to stick to the plan and only put out the fire at the first house'.

My point is we are exiting the crisis stage and entering the long term management stage.

I think you are right @solarlights. Covid isn't going away we have to live with it without sending home all close contacts from a school class numerous times whether they have it or not and despite having a negative LFT and a negative PCR - it's ridiculous. Some schools are 'rules is rules' - off to isolate for an entire class despite negative results - stupidity.

However, meanwhile in Cornwall I see they have numerous outbreaks of covid - Falmouth, St Ives, Newquay following the G7 hoards of private security, extra police, newspapers, reporters and the huge entourage . It's spreading again and we have to get used to it. Cannot isolate or lock down forever. Any vulnerable without the vaccine will have to either vaccinate or shield.

The four week delay was inevitable as soon as the up-tick started to appear on the national statistics.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases

The rate of cases per 100,000 in 7-day period is running away. Again.

For those that say that hospital admissions aren't increasing, it's still the lag phase. Look at hotspots like Bolton and the hospitalizations and mechanical ventilation figures there. These have only started to reduce after a massive localized effort was made. And it's looking like that effort is holding the disease, not pushing it back. That sort of effort can't be made at a national level, so at least four more weeks of the current relatively minor precautions are needed. Masks and social distancing, that's what's being asked. Life's going on. This ask isn't the end of the world.

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare?areaType=nhstrust&areaName=Bolton%20NHS%20Foundation%20Trust

The alternative is to open up and let things run rampant. I can't see how this would be beneficial to anyone.

@MarshaBradyo

We will avoid cost of lockdown by accepting a level of risk - Whitty talks well on this.

He talks about it as a reasonable aim. Which is good to hear from him.

Yes reasonable aim is for a high percentage of the vulnerable to vaccinate - turn it down their problem.

Aim to vaccine children that are vulnerable too if they want it.

Back to normal and if people are ill treat like other illnesses now. The hospital rate determines and while that is low then fine.

I think with all the propaganda of 'getting jabs into arms' (are we children?) it has been forgotten that these 'vaccinations' were given emergency licence as no 'other' treatments were approved and their remit was to prevent severe illness and death in the known vulnerable to prevent overload of the health service in the face of the original virus.

The remit was never to develop a vaccine that had sterilising immunity, worked in the asymptomatic, blocked transmission and worked for potential variants and could not be evaded.

How does 'vaccinating' those not at risk of severe illness and death and therefore overwhelming the health service fit into this?

Given that vaccination actually increases risk of mild or asymptomatic illness and has at best 50:50 impact on transmission very little.

Especially if we factor in new variants the theoretical gains are hugely outweighed by real factors of increased transmission and increased severity/hospitalisation.

That's why we have this oxymoron of a hugely successful vaccine campaign at the same time as exponential growth. But once the vulnerable are vaccinated there are reducing returns. The same interventions for the vulnerable don't work for the non-vulnerable. The elderly and frail might benefit hugely from a Zimmer. Does that mean that everyone including children do!

Even without 'freedom day' we already have exponential growth. Delaying has not reduced the gradient.

It simply does not make sense to 'vaccinate' the young - even if this is the demographic with the highest number of cases. They were never going to become severely ill or die and the vaccine has negligible impact on mild or asymptomatic transmission (that was never its remit)

I hope you're right op. I've been prepared since last May.

I can’t see the distancing or isolations ending in four weeks.

@time4anothername

You are over complicating things. Have you actually looked at the graphs showing the steep rise in cases in the UK compared to nearly every other country in the world? UK has a "world-beating" steep curve up. If only they would have shown that in the press conference graphics . Early data looks promising for not creating severe disease and therefore not overwhelming the healthcare system but they need a few more weeks to get more vaccines in and observe effects. There's really no more complex "deprogramming" going on than that. This Delta variant is more catching and more severe than previous ones and we have no data yet on what sort of longer term problems it might entail. Once again some people need reminding that Long Covid is a real thing in younger people and it's not just a bit of a fatigue, it can have very nasty long term consequences. e.g this is from the British Medical Journal review covering people presenting with problems over 6 months of last year. "In individuals at low risk of COVID-19 mortality with ongoing symptoms, 70% have impairment in one or more organs 4 months after initial COVID-19 symptoms, with implications for healthcare and public health, which have assumed low risk in young people with no comorbidities" bmjopen.bmj.com/content/11/3/e048391 Even if you live in a world where you shrug your shoulders and say bad luck to those people, you need to understand how this on a large scale will still overwhelm the healthcare system and welfare system in years to come.

Completely agree with this. No need to spin a narrative around this. I'm no fan at all of this government, but they are responding to data and pushing things back to get more of the population vaccinated. No mystery, no project fear, no insidious control.

This is probably what we are being prepped for.

"Fascinating and terrifying chart from Imperial's paper. Bottom hump shows that it'll be the younger less protected people who'll drive the surge. Top one shows that it'll be the double vaxed over-50s who'll account for vast majority of the resulting deaths."

twitter.com/ianmulheirn/status/1404555130800906241

I have a feeling that goal posts will be moved...

When all the willing adults are double vaccinated it will then be a case of, “we can’t remove restrictions until all children are vaccinated too.”

I think the children are the (unspoken) herd immunity part of the equation which would get antibody rate up to something like 95% apparently.

@RafaIsTheKingOfClay

They don’t need to deprogrammed people who live in countries where there are no cases. What rubbish. Those simple have been living a much more normal life than we have for a year. There’s no masks, no distancing, mass events are taking place, theatres and nightclubs are open at full capacity, education hasn’t been massively disrupted. Travel and tourism tends to be an issue, but they can offer travel abroad to similarly low covid countries with much more freedom than we can here. And with vaccination picking up pace rapidly in those countries and many others the list of countries that are available for travel will be increasing.

They are very much a long way from ‘living in fear’ however much it might suit the narrative of some.

Erm not entirely true seeing as Victoria has just come out of yet another lockdown?

@Aposterhasnoname

I hope you’re right op, I really do. I’ve been the most optimistic person ever throughout this, but I’m really starting to think that the doom merchants might be right about restrictions lasting for ever.

I agree with this. I've completely lost all hope and really can't ever see a way out. Hope got me through 2020 even through all the tears and really low points. That has now gone. I've given up on things ever getting better now.

[quote bollihigh]This is probably what we are being prepped for.

"Fascinating and terrifying chart from Imperial's paper. Bottom hump shows that it'll be the younger less protected people who'll drive the surge. Top one shows that it'll be the double vaxed over-50s who'll account for vast majority of the resulting deaths."

twitter.com/ianmulheirn/status/1404555130800906241[/quote]
Well, if it's from Imperial then it must be true I guess. They have such an excellent track record here.

As it goes the figures on hospitalisations aren't showing the full picture so things are better than they may appear on the surface.

Its not been talked about much but the severity of those who are hospitalised has decreased and people are being discharged quicker. (BBC has said explicitly they are less sick and data shows quicker discharge). The number of younger people being admitted to hospital has increased but this may not tell the full story either. Its likely that at the height of the crisis these are people who probably wouldn't have been admitted to hospital in the first place because of the extreme pressure on the system. The ratio of cases to hospital admissions has actually decreased too.

There are also encouraging signs in the data from Bolton and Blackburn with hopes that it has peaked in Bolton already and that Blackburn is following Bolton's lead. To put into context, the Spanish flu pandemic had a large peak for the first wave, a bigger one for the second wave and then the third wave was much smaller and after that it gradually petered out. So we could be seeing what you'd expect to happen and should happen.

My point is another wave isn't necessarily a sign that we've failed and that this is never ending. More thats its unavoidable and that we should expect it.

It poses some very difficult questions for NZ and Australia though, because if the rest of the world acknowledges that zero covid is impossible, even if the entire world is vaccinated before they reopen their borders they are still going to face a wave at some point and for a public which has expected to be fully protected the number of deaths this may involve will be a shock for them even if its relatively smaller than the rest of the world. Just because they thought they had escaped it completely. The problem is that if they achieve a vaccination rate of say 80% thats still less population immunity than another country which has had a vaccination rate of 80% and covid throughout as you have immunity amongst the unvaccinated too. (Arguably the remaining pool of particularly vulnerable for whom the vaccine won't work is larger simply because many of those people in the uk will have already died). Yes they did the right thing, but unfortunately covid will still eventually reach them and cause their own unique issues which are unavoidable.

Things can not 'go back to normal' and covid be stopped dead in its tracks. It has to work its way around the world until its effectively 'spent'.

User1234123 - I really do think the narrative is starting to shift, I don't personally mind the delay because this time there's a very firm exit. I say this because once all adults are double jabbed....what else can they realistically do, and how can you expect people to accept further restrictions?

We must wait until all children are jabbed
We ust wait until all vulnerable and elderly have boosters
We must wait until all other adults have boosters
We must wait until all children have boosters
... ad infinitum

Yep - I can see this happening.

Mind you, I went to go into a newsagents this morning after dropping my son at school and realised I had forgotten my mask. There was once a time where I wouldn’t have even considered going in and would have gone gone and either stayed there, or got my mask and go back to the shop.

It was different today though because as I was looking through the shop window there were about 4 people in there, none of them wearing masks and neither was the owner behind the till. So I just went in, bought my bits and left again.

I know it was against the rules but that ‘fear and worry’ just isn’t there anymore. Not for me and seemingly not for the others in the shop either. It seems that people have just had enough.

Do I think I put myself at risk by going into a shop for less than two minutes without wearing a mask when I’ve been doubly vaccinated? Absolutely not.

I’m guessing lots of people will say how selfish I am, how it’s ‘people like me’ that are responsible for the spreading of the variants because on one occasion I went into a shop without a mask, but like I said, people are just done with it.

I worry what’s going to happen if restrictions are not lifted next month because I really don’t think a lot people are going to sit back and take it for much longer.

So agree with your points. It seems those bellowing that Aus/NZ have got it right are also those who say that vaccines aren’t very effective, in which case their argument is defeated as in that case a closed border policy has to be for all time.

Looking at the 1918 situation, I believe that that pandemic petered out as mass movement of people ended after people stopped travelling following WW1 - obviously it took a few years to die down as the virus was spread around. But the relatively settled inter-war period helped to “keep viruses in their place”. So I think that unfortunately the days of mass travel and tourism cannot resume - at least without more stringent fit to travel monitoring - in the light of how covid was spread.

So agree with your points. It seems those bellowing that Aus/NZ have got it right are also those who say that vaccines aren’t very effective, in which case their argument is defeated as in that case a closed border policy has to be for all time

Are they the same people? Can’t say I’ve noticed either way (I don’t keep track of who said what generally) but I’ve not come across those positions in the same comment or speech that particularly comes to mind. I have to question how conclusive your statement can be.

@IGotFat

woke up in tears at it all this morning, it is just all too much now, our old way of life is gone and this is it now , so worried about my children's future

Thats just not true. This will all be a memory soon enough. Almost everything is open now. The kids seeing you cry about it all will do them more harm. Don't fixate on it. Get off here, don't watch the news and go out to the park in the sunshine.

The person saying we have to learn to accept 50,000 covid deaths a year does not understand the implications of this.
Flu deaths when the vaccine has not worked has been 22,000 deaths a year and there was alarm about this. Deaths have been as low as 600 a year. If we had 50,000 covid deaths a year, life expectancy would be reduced, hospitals would need an increase in beds and staff to cope with the extra people being ill and dying. This would mean an increase in taxes to pay for this.
Maybe people are prepared to accept this? But I do not think most people understand the consequences.

Aus and NZ can't stay locked down with their borders shut forever. They will need to open up at some stage. What will happen then?
They will also have to learn to live with it too the same as we will.

This would mean an increase in taxes to pay for this.

Sure, but that's a hell of a lot less than the cost of constantly locking down the economy