When will this end?

[Onthegrapevine]

When the pandemic began I thought a vaccine would be developed and that would be the end of it. Back in March 2020 nobody in my life believe’d we’d have one by now and we do, but I feel we are stuck and will never get out what with these variants. Months ago there was talk of a vaccine that could tackle all variants but I haven’t heard anything since.

People talk about how gruesome a covid death is, and every single one of us will one day be “vulnerable” to it l, be it from a new diagnosis or simply old age. Is this the way life is going to be?

I am scared that as time goes on it will mutate to something even more dangerous, especially to kids (I have a toddler, my first born in March 2020) though experts state this is unlikely as a virus needs to keep its hosts alive to be able to spread etc, but death does not appear to be the only concern with Covid.

I felt relief when my elderly father received his 2nd AZ dose last month but now I am scared for him yet again with talk of reduced efficacy, at 77 he really cannot afford that. I have some family who are not getting vaccinated, they live 5 minutes away from him and see him daily.

I thought this summer would be different. I feel so sad and worried about the future. For myself, my child, my dad, the world.

Most of my family live abroad so they haven’t even met my child, and it doesn’t look like they will until he’s almost two.

Just having a moan I suppose. Really feeling it today.

In a bad year we get 20,000 deaths from flu - mostly elderly

It will be the same from Covid

All we can do is get our flu and Covid shots every year - it will be mostly elderly and unvaccinated who die

My personal hope is that the doctors/nurses find a way to ease death better - like continuous morphine/coma drugs so people don't die horribly, gasping for their last breath and aware they are And that people can be with them just like they can be with flu/pneumonia etc - so they don't die alone

I think ultimately there has to become a time when you stop worrying about it. Do you worry about your loved ones dying in a car crash, or from cancer? (I mean, of course we all do but not to the extent that it’s in our daily lives).
I was concerned for my parents pre-vaccination but now they’re double vaccinated I’m no more concerned than I am for the other multitude of illnesses that people die from. In fact, I know more people who have died this year from non-Covid deaths than Covid.
There are so many horrible childhood illnesses and bugs. I honestly wouldn’t waste your time worrying over a virus that at the moment has almost no effect on children.

And like Chris Witty says, it’s not going away, we will have to live with it for the rest of our lives. I predict they’ll release us back into normality later on this summer and we’ll just have to accept that some people will catch it and die, like we do for the flu and lots of other illnesses.

But unless we close our borders and noone leaves it's not just about what is happening in the UK. It won't stop impacting us until the whole world is vaccinated.

Polio isn’t an issue, we haven’t just learn to live with that. We’ve almost eradicated it in the western world at least. Why are we going to have t “learn to live with” covid?

Because.

We cant eradicate every illness.

We can try. We can throw money at it, but there may never be a 100% answer to covid. Not in our lifetime, and maybe not in anyone else's either.

I keep wondering how long Australia is going to lock it's citizens up for?
And how many years are they prepared to live that way?

@Onthegrapevine it took centuries to eradicate Polio. We probably will get rid of Covid eventually, but not in our lifetimes. So we will have to learn to live with it, otherwise spend our days worrying about it! For 99% of people it’s not a serious illness. The vulnerable have been vaccinated against it which will prevent the mass hospitalisations. Life has to get back to normal now.

@TuesdayRuby It took centuries but they didn’t know what they were dealing with for a long time and obviously things have advanced somewhat since then. Ordinarily we wouldn’t have seen a vaccine available as quickly as we have with covid but with all the money and man power poured in to it, we have. Wishful thinking, perhaps, but I really hope this isn’t life now.

@Onthegrapevine

Polio isn’t an issue, we haven’t just learn to live with that. We’ve almost eradicated it in the western world at least. Why are we going to have t “learn to live with” covid?

It took over 60 years from introduction of the vaccine to the last recorded case of Polio... I don't know about you, but I'd rather get on with life than wait for that to happen with COVID...

Covid was so bad because it was completely new, we had absolutely no natural immunity to it. This is no longer the case - it will become another virus, like flu, that is a mild illness for most, will sadly cause serious illness and death in a small number of people each year. We will vaccinate those most vulnerable to it each year.

@Anothermuddywalk I don’t know how I feel about it if I’m honest. My heart is genuinely sore for all the CEV children who can’t have a vaccine. If I feel like this with a healthy child, I can only imagine how parents of CEV children must feel.

I feel like a lot of people forget about that side of things.

I don’t know how correct I am but my (limited) understanding is that Covid mutates at a quicker rate than a lot of viruses. Plus you can be asymptomatic, or even if you do develop symptoms you can be contagious for a long time before symptoms present themselves. Then there are the people who do have very mild symptoms but it doesn’t register.

This all helps Covid be extremely contagious, and also why they are worried about possible variants becoming vaccine resistant.

Zero Covid is highly unlikely to work because there is the global appetite/ effort needed to make it work. So eventually the pandemic will have to come to an end. It’s just unknown right now how that ending will look. However, in time living with the virus will not look like it does now.

Behind the scenes there are many people working on vaccines and treatments. There are people studying the virus and all the data we have.

We have come a long way, we have made a lot of progress. Unfortunately, these things take time.

In the UK medically and societally I firmly believe we are in the end game now - but with the economic carnage and damage to the NHS god only knows how bad or protracted that will be.

I'm feeling the same today. Just had to go and collect my 11 year old from school due to a positive case in her bubble. Her high school transition day is this week, so that's now out of the question for them. I'm sick of it. I think we need to learn to live with it and accept that some people will die from it, just like we do with flu. The whole point of lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed, which it wasn't. Yes it was busy but the Nightingales sat practically empty.

We need to get on with living now.

It took over 60 years from introduction of the vaccine to the last recorded case of Polio..

We only started using the polio vaccine in the UK in 1956.
The last polio outbreak in the UK was in the late 70's, although isolated cases continued until 1984.

Is this the way life is going to be?

No. I don't know exactly how, and I don't know when, but this will end. After rain, sunshine comes again. After winter, spring.

It does feel a bit hopeless at the moment, though.

@lightand

I keep wondering how long Australia is going to lock it's citizens up for? And how many years are they prepared to live that way?

The media is staring to ask the hard questions here now. Our prime minister has been hopeless in all this and has no plan for the future. We have so many people here with links overseas it’s not a sustainable to lock us up forever.

You’d honestly think nobody had ever died from anything other than Covid the way things are being handled here.

I’ve had my vaccine (it’s the only way out of this) but there’s not much more I can do.

@Hallyup6 The "nightingales sat empty" due to the fact there was not enough Dr/Nurses/Many other HCP/Hospital staff to go and work in them and still keep normal hospitals running

When most of the world, at least most of the most demographic dense areas of the world are fully vaccinated.

People still don't get it. A virus will mutate endlessly to survive trying to
bypass vaccines if there are people still not vaccinated. When it mutates, we have a new variant more contagious, because the virus wants to survive. It's a living organism. We can't kill it just because the UK is 50% vaccinated, or the EU is 30%. We need the whole world to be fully vaccinated at least 75%, for the world to return to normal.

Only then it will become another virus like flue. It kills a few people every year but it's no longer a medical emergency.

@helpfulperson

But unless we close our borders and noone leaves it's not just about what is happening in the UK. It won't stop impacting us until the whole world is vaccinated.

This is what people are missing. We're living in a connected World. Everyone talks about holidays, but it's more than that. We have thousands of vehicles crossing the channel daily on the ferries and in the tunnel - that's not holidaymakers, it's essential goods including food etc. You can't just shut that off like they did in New Zealand. People have families living in different countries, you have two spouses of different nationalities sharing their time between their different home countries/families/homes etc. We need all our main trading/family countries to be vaccinated too, not just us in the UK. The UK is a major country in a Worldwide network. That's why we didn't close our borders in the first place. We're not New Zealand, we're not Isle of Man, we're not USA.

@LaurieFairyCake

In a bad year we get 20,000 deaths from flu - mostly elderly

It will be the same from Covid

All we can do is get our flu and Covid shots every year - it will be mostly elderly and unvaccinated who die

My personal hope is that the doctors/nurses find a way to ease death better - like continuous morphine/coma drugs so people don't die horribly, gasping for their last breath and aware they are And that people can be with them just like they can be with flu/pneumonia etc - so they don't die alone

I think you right about it being the elderly who mostly die from covid. The numbers at the moment show that the vaccinated are more at risk of dying sadly.

I'm on my phone but I'll try and add a graph from PHE to show this

I've tried but it won't let me , but the data is freely available on line. It's something like 62% of those which have died of the delta variant were vaccinated, so it's not looking too promising

@Alondra

When most of the world, at least most of the most demographic dense areas of the world are fully vaccinated.

People still don't get it. A virus will mutate endlessly to survive trying to
bypass vaccines if there are people still not vaccinated. When it mutates, we have a new variant more contagious, because the virus wants to survive. It's a living organism. We can't kill it just because the UK is 50% vaccinated, or the EU is 30%. We need the whole world to be fully vaccinated at least 75%, for the world to return to normal.

Only then it will become another virus like flue. It kills a few people every year but it's no longer a medical emergency.

That’s not how virus mutations work. Please do some real research before spouting this know it all cocky bullshit.

@Hallyup6

I'm feeling the same today. Just had to go and collect my 11 year old from school due to a positive case in her bubble. Her high school transition day is this week, so that's now out of the question for them. I'm sick of it. I think we need to learn to live with it and accept that some people will die from it, just like we do with flu. The whole point of lockdown was to prevent the NHS being overwhelmed, which it wasn't. Yes it was busy but the Nightingales sat practically empty.

We need to get on with living now.

Same result, i.e. cancelled transition day, if things were "normal" and the relevant teachers were in hospital or had died of covid. It's a fine balancing act. It's not all about whether the NHS can cope. A school with absent teachers (ill or dead) can't teach. We need to find a balance between having a level of testing/isolations/restrictions where things can still function. That's a tough nut to crack. Will probably have to come down to local decision making, i.e. a school will have to "risk assess" it's staff etc - how they react and what restrictions/testing is in place will depend on how many teachers are double jabbed, how many are vulnerable, how many are extremely clinically vulnerable etc. I.e. a class being taught by an ECV teacher may well have to be tested and isolate if there's a positive case, but that may not be necessary when the teacher is young, healthy and double jabbed. Who knows how things will pan out, but we can't just say "stuff it" and go back to normal with no testing, no restrictions, etc across the board.

@CautiousBlonde It's something like 62% of those which have died of the delta variant were vaccinated, so it's not looking too promising

But it's 62% of a much smaller number. It's the numbers that matter, not the percentages. The vaccination means far fewer people catch it and need hospitalisation. If that number is far smaller, then it doesn't really matter in the big scheme of things, that some of those will die, as long as the numbers are small. A big percentage of a smaller number is still a small number.

We're not trying to eliminate covid and covid deaths. We're trying to get the hospitalisations and deaths down to a small number.

Yes, heartbreaking for those who die or suffer long covid, but sadly it's a numbers game. We don't ban road transport because a couple of thousand people die on our roads each year do we? We've never locked down over Winter due to flu, however bad that year was, have we?

If the vaccinations are reducing the number of vulnerable/elderly people catching covid, then that's a success, regardless of the relatively small number who it doesn't protect.

Our first mistake will be assuming we can simply ‘live with Covid’ without any intervention on our part other than vaccines. I hope everyone here recognises what living with Covid means? It’s not quite the retro 2019 level of freedom from face masks, social distancing and unrestricted global travel that some would like to believe.

In short, we can’t live with it ‘untamed’ because the vaccines are not enough to do this. Over the coming weeks I think we will understand this more clearly as we see the effects from the Delta surge. A surge we mustn’t forget that is happening with social distancing, face masks and capacity limits STILL in place to support the vaccination campaign.

Living with Covid in the UK means accepting we maintain a level of restriction to keep the numbers manageable, otherwise we will find ourselves back at square one sooner than we would like whether that’s from a large autumn winter wave or new vaccine resistant variants, both of which are not ruled out.

So perhaps it has already ended OP. Perhaps this is our normal for now, until we better understand how to develop effective vaccines that withstand variants to be administered to all with a higher degree of efficacy and society gradually adapts and rethinks how we go about our lives with a new perception of what freedom truly means.