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.

That's interesting bluetongue , I assume you're in Australia? Back at the beginning it seemed very much like Australia had their shit together with closing borders, unlike here, but makes you wonder if its just given a false sense of security. I wonder how long it's sustainable for?

But likewise, restrictions across the board will do more harm than good. We need restrictions to be tailored/customised and to the circumstances and proportional to the risks.

I think we should be headed towards a more "risk assessed" approach that takes account of the people involved. We need to protect the people at most risk - how we do that will depend on the individual circumstances. As I said above, a young doubled jabbed teacher has an entirely different "risk" to an older or ECV teacher and we therefore need to consider how to "protect" the latter. Workplaces already make "reasonable adjustments" for disabled staff (and students), so perhaps an elevated risk of covid needs to be included with such risk assessments and reasonable steps taken for their protection?

In, say, a shop, perhaps a vulnerable shop worker should be put on the tills behind a perspex screen rather than shelf stacking on the shop floor?

We really do have to find new ways of dealing with covid. We really can't just continue to impose social distancing for any longer. It's a very blunt instrument.

@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.

Exactly. Viruses mutate. Even in the UK.

The vaccines are working great against all variants. Like flu, there will likely be annual boosters to tackle new variants as it mutates further. Now we have vaccines and effective drugs to treat it, it really is no different to any other respiratory illness. Like all other respiratory illnesses, it will always be here and it will cause some hospitalisations and deaths every winter. Like flu etc. So basically, there is nowhere else for this to go now.

Therefore, in answer to your original question, around 19th July I imagine.

Quite aside from the multiple social, psychological, economic implications of lockdown / social distancing, we’re also starting to see medical implications in the form of reduced immunity build up for things like flu. That creates its own set of problems.

We are moving into the next stage of dealing with Covid. Vaccines will reduce the impact very significantly. However, we’ll have to accept that there’s yet another thing out there that can kill us. These deaths will be concentrated amongst the elderly for whom the vaccine isn’t foolproof for.

The next stage will be about bolstering healthcare capacity and hopefully finding therapeutics. And presumably also improving the vaccines we already have.

I have heard 3-5 years for it to be back to pre pandemic travel from medical experts.

@Treezan82

The vaccines are working great against all variants. Like flu, there will likely be annual boosters to tackle new variants as it mutates further. Now we have vaccines and effective drugs to treat it, it really is no different to any other respiratory illness. Like all other respiratory illnesses, it will always be here and it will cause some hospitalisations and deaths every winter. Like flu etc. So basically, there is nowhere else for this to go now.

Therefore, in answer to your original question, around 19th July I imagine.

Are they working great against all the variants? How do we know this? Double vaccinated people are still getting ill and that’s just over a month of growth from Delta.

Yes the numbers are low so far but we’re in the ideal position of its summer so people socialise outdoors more, we’re starting from a very low base level of infections after the winter wave and we have restrictions in place to mitigate spread.

Can we be certain the same results will be seen once autumn and winter are here? I’m not so sure, and judging from your rather vague expectation of ‘some deaths and hospitalisations’ neither are you.

That is from Jan 2020

We will learn to live with covid; treatments and vaccines will improve, nobody has stopped researching these just because we have the vaccines we’re using.

Things will continue to get better/back to a more recognisable form. The will and demand is there to make things work, that’s not saying there won’t be some changes but generally I believe they will be as low-key/unobtrusive as possible.

These events happen and we absorb them into our history, this is just the latest in a long line and perfectly survivable - Covid is not an extinction event.

From the perspective of history, in the west, we’ve lived in a pretty golden age as far as communicable diseases go. It’s only one or two generations ago (depending on your age) the threat of a severe communicable illness was always lingering in the background. It was great but this isn’t unexpected. I’ve been listening to a podcast on the Black Death and before it struck Europe they had a short period before it that was considered a golden age with technological advances, economic stability and good health before a mini ice age, plague and political instability all went a bit bonkers.

It will be okay.

[quote Onthegrapevine]@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.[/quote]
Forgive me if I has misunderstood you but you seem keen to look for reasons to be scared and anxious. Perhaps stop trying to imagine “how it must feel “ for others and focus on your own life. It seems pointless to worry in this way.

*have

@Nonmaquillee compassion and empathy about CEV children is not looking for a reason to be scared and anxious, what a shameful response suggesting it’s pointless to worry that way.

We know that rates of infection are increasing rapidly and have been for about a month. At the same time deaths and hospitalisations are remaining very low. Therefore, evidence suggests that vaccines are doing their job. Of course we don't know what will happen in the future, yes hospitalisations could increase to a point where we need to lockdown again. That might happen. Can't see any actual evidence to suggest it is likely though. So like everyone else on this thread, I answer OP's original question with my best guess. Which remains 19th July.

Sorry that was in reply to @Thewiseoneincognito

[quote Thewiseoneincognito]@Nonmaquillee compassion and empathy about CEV children is not looking for a reason to be scared and anxious, what a shameful response suggesting it’s pointless to worry that way.[/quote]
No, my post is not shameful. My point is: why spend time worrying about a situation that you aren’t in yourself? We could all drive ourselves demented with worry over everything negative about this world whether Covid-related or not. Sometimes it’s helpful for our own mental health to take a step back from this and focus on our own lives.

I said nothing about CEV children and I certainly don’t lack compassion for them. However, what the OP can do is perhaps feel grateful for NOT being in this position herself.

@CautiousBlonde

Of course people will die who have been vaccinated. It’s not 100% effective.

It’s a really easy mistake to make, but you are not comparing fairly.

For example, if 50 people die out 100 and they had the vaccine. And 50 die and didn’t have the vaccine. You assume, “shit! It’s only 50% effective” “I’ve got equally odds” or something else incorrect.

The important point is that of the population that resulted in 100 people dying, how many were double vaccinated, and how many were not at all.

As most deaths come from over 50s, and the double vaccination rate is something like 95%. Then if it was 50:50, actually it is 50 from 95%, and 50 from 5%. So you have a 20x fold better chance if you are DV vs no vaccine.

(These are just example figure to make the maths easier!)

@Treezan82

We know that rates of infection are increasing rapidly and have been for about a month. At the same time deaths and hospitalisations are remaining very low. Therefore, evidence suggests that vaccines are doing their job. Of course we don't know what will happen in the future, yes hospitalisations could increase to a point where we need to lockdown again. That might happen. Can't see any actual evidence to suggest it is likely though. So like everyone else on this thread, I answer OP's original question with my best guess. Which remains 19th July.

I’d say the evidence was fairly clear already. As I said, this wave has started from a low base of infection and we’re at thousands of infections per day and rising, in summer, with restrictions and masks, with very little international travel.

Yes of course the vaccines are doing their job, we just don’t know how effectively and how they would hold up in winter or with waning immunity in those jabbed earlier in the year.

Having thousands of people testing positive means a large amount of virus in the population which risks more mutations and the way of life for millions of CEV and CV people of whom the vaccines may not protect.

19th of July would be the catalyst for disaster if it is allowed to go ahead because it will impair people’s perceptions about how dangerous ‘living with Covid’ will be for many.

@Nonmaquillee thankfully that type of twisted logic is not endemic, worrying about others is a basic foundation for a harmonious society. If we didn’t do that we’d still be in the dark ages.

Hard to ‘kill off’ this type of virus within the foreseeable future. I think there will come a point fairly soon in the UK where we will learn to live with it and develop increasingly effective vaccines. It may be a cat and mouse game though as the virus constantly mutates, but at least severe illness will be largely prevented (like with the usual flu). I wonder about overseas travel though - different variants abroad, inability to vaccinate entire populations etc will that ever be the same again? Or at least within the next decade?

The difference between polio and covid (aside from the time scale to eradicate) is that advanced in sanitation helped massively. It's a different sort of virus. It's still endemic in some countries with poor sanitation and limited access to vaccine. Polio isn't airborne- better to compare to flu or the common cold. We do have to learn to live with it as we do with those.

It's unlikely to become more and more deadly - normally as viruses mutate they might become more transmissible but less serious. Anecdotally, everyone I knew who had covid in the early days became very ill, now they have mild cold symptoms or none at all. I'm not including children in that either as they are less affected anyway.

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

That's exactly how a virus or bacteria mutates. The first rule to an infection whether is viral or bacteriological is to isolate it. If it can't be isolated it will find a way to bypass medications and vaccines and mutate.

Do your own research.

It will end eventually. We just need to be patient. It won't just go away because we are all sick of it. We are in way better position now compared to before.

Polio isn’t an issue, we haven’t just learn to live with that.

Polio is a sanitation disease. Good human waste disposal = no Polio. Also it has the maximum damage potential to the young. Polio is worse than covid in human impacts while being easier to eliminate. Polio was worth more effort to try to eradicate.

We "live with" most diseases. HI-b, diptheria, whooping cough, tetanus -- which all have potential to be far worse than covid.

@cocoloco987

The difference between polio and covid (aside from the time scale to eradicate) is that advanced in sanitation helped massively. It's a different sort of virus. It's still endemic in some countries with poor sanitation and limited access to vaccine. Polio isn't airborne- better to compare to flu or the common cold. We do have to learn to live with it as we do with those.

It's unlikely to become more and more deadly - normally as viruses mutate they might become more transmissible but less serious. Anecdotally, everyone I knew who had covid in the early days became very ill, now they have mild cold symptoms or none at all. I'm not including children in that either as they are less affected anyway.

I fully agree with you that the difference between Covid and polio, or whooping cough or rubella...or so many other nasty viruses we've lived with and vaccinated agaisnt is vaccines, sanitation and health care. Where I'm not agreeing with you that variants are less likely to be more deadly.

We still know little about the virus. Originally we were told it was unlikely to mutate, well it did. We have a Delta variant that is 100% more transmisible and that results in deaths if the recipient is not vaccinated fully. With this generation vaccines transmission is only prevented 40-60% so there is still a huge number of people that are going to get the virus even fully vaccinated.

We've just seen what has happened in India, where the new very contagious variant comes from, having deaths in the thousands daily. We only need another mutation and it could bypass vaccines.

The only reason why first world is starting to share vaccines with third world countries is because the fear the virus will mutate again this time in a deadlier form.

Virus’s don’t always mutate to be less harmful. Apparently this is a belief from the 19th century.

Spanish flu became more dangerous. It just died out because people who were infected died so fast they were unable to infect others.