Is it actually going to be all over on the 19th?!

[Rainydays55]

The press seemed to have really changed its tone the last few days and the message seems to be clear that after the 19th we will just live with it even if cases are 30/40k a day by then.
I get it, especially if hospitalisations and deaths remain low, it just seems different to what other counties are doing with bringing in more restrictions if they are seeing an increase. I know our vaccine programme has been more successful but do you think this will really be the end of it from next month?! No going backwards in the autumn? Would be great to think it is but I can’t quite believe it!

It was inevitable that this would happen due to the vaccine. As the vaccine program has been rolled out restrictions have been slowly lifted.

Like kazzy I never wanted a lock down to protect me. I learned a long time ago the only person responsible for my health is me. Occasionally get caught out and once recovered enjoy myself.
I have various degenerative conditions along with life reducing stuff and the time I have left I want to enjoy myself not stuck isolation just because. It's hard as it triggers so many painful memories of being in actual isolation and the only people allowed in wearing proper ppe not some manky face mask that hasn't been washed/replaced.

The chances of school getting proper ventilation will not happen. The government is only prepared I hand over just over a billion . Sounds a lot however it really is a drop in the ocean for what is needed to bring schools up to any standard beyond what they currently are.

I think people would be utterly shocked with how bad school buildings are

There is no air con, no proper ventilation, often no opening windows, cramped corridors

Our schools are not fit for purpose to keep out illness

Massive, chronic under investment for decades

@LaurieFairyCake @Canigooutyet I agree it is appalling, decades of cuts and austerity and no end in sight. Imagine if a fraction of £37 billion spent on track and trace (that doesn't work) and dodgy contracts given to mates of the Torys went on mitigation measures in schools and also bolstering resources for hospitals and care homes.

Letting case numbers of the most highly transmissible variant to date run rampant is a recipe for disaster. It would be providing the perfect breeding ground for a delta variant with the vaccine escape capabilities of the South African variant (or worse). We're probably setting ourselves up in a race against time to get everyone who's had AZ revaccinated with Pfizer come Autumn.

The whole point of restrictions was to protect the NHS… but even though deaths and hospitalisations are really really low, the MPs still prevent the lifting of all restrictions. All clinically vulnerable people have been offered a vaccine. There is no good reason to not go back to our normal way of living.

At the minute it's the need to isolate which is putting health and social care services under immense pressure- not the severity of illness. We could cope with covid if 50% of our staff weren't off work.

I think it would cost our local MAT £10m to just bring their school buildings up to scratch. This wouldn’t include fancy ventilation systems. Unfortunately they don’t get anything like that sort of money from the Government.

I'm interested that if things can "go back to normal" compleyely including gyms, theatres, concert venue etc that includes all the nearest testing/vaccination centres to me.
Not everyone will be vaccinated by then, and there us talk of booster vaccinations. Where will they do those? AFAIK a lot being done in theatres etc were done by volunteers but could GPs and nurses manage the volume of vaccinations without those volunteers and without (further) compromising other services? And how long are the volunteers available for?? So many questions! (Without even thinking is it the best thing to do...)

Personally I think the boosters will be similar to the flu vaccine, free to those who are vulnerable and the rest will have to pay. As realistically the nhs cannot afford booster indefinitely for nearly the whole country.

I think given that producing a variant that is WORSE than the ones we have is POSSIBLE we need to make vaccinations FREE for the whole world

If we don't and in winter it runs rife we could end up with a vaccine avoidant strain

I used to say I was happy to pay for it along with the flu shot I pay for - I don't think that now - we need EVERYONE to be vaccinated as far as possible to stop something really bad happening

Only a tiny percentage get the flu shot - it's less than 10% of population I think

I think most of us are just going to end up catching covid sooner or later, unless we choose to completely stay in our homes for the next several years. Hopefully for most it will be an unpleasant but not in any way life threatening illness after we're fully vaccinated and at least after a week or two of misery, we'll have better antibodies to fight off future infection. Some will be unlucky and suffer from long covid.

There's no point in talking about "personal responsibility" when case numbers are high and going up. It's a virus we catch from other people so unless you never go anywhere - which is not possible for most people who work, have kids at school, need to attend appointments, use public transport etc. - we'll end up in situations where there are people with covid around to infect us and no measures in place to protect anyone if masks and social distancing/capacity limits are scrapped.

We just have to hope vaccine take up remains high and most of those who have so far refused will eventually accept the vaccine, as otherwise there will still be a significant amount of people vulnerable and at risk of ending up in hospital (for example older black people have not taken up the vaccine in the same numbers as white people in their age groups). NHS staff is going to have a hell of a year or two ahead of them though with the enormous backlog of other treatments that have been delayed, covid, possibly a bad flu year (due to lack of immunity from last year)...

I think the problem with the flu shot is that they have to guess which strain(s) will cause bother over winter and then choose the vaccine accordingly. If they get it wrong, people aren't protected and hospitalisations and deaths increase.

Of course, we could end up in the same position one day with COVID but in the meantime, I agree that vaccination of the entire planet's population should be the aim, and better off countries should donate money and resources to help achieve this goal as this is probably what is needed to suppress rates down to manageable levels once and for all.

I've also noticed a BIG change in the govt's messaging this past week or so. I think Matt Hancock resigning and Sajid Javid taking over has helped with that, but I also feel like the UK is reaching that all important tipping point with its vaccination programme.

All over 18s are now eligible for the jab, millions have already had it, by 19th July every adult in the country who wants to be vaccinated will have had the opportunity to have at least one dose. And what all that means is it's time for us to learn to live with this thing.

It isn't going away, we missed the chance to go for zero Covid in March 2020, and now that we've all had the chance to get a vaccine it's now just another respiratory illness. We can all still get it and we might feel shit with it for a few days, but it won't lead to mass hospitalisations and deaths, so it's time we all stopped fixating on it, stopped agonising over how many cases we've got nationwide, and started treating it like we treat flu or norovirus or any other unpleasant virus that does the rounds.

It’s one thing I don’t understand about people not getting the jab because of health anxiety. It means they will almost certainly get Covid at some point. It’s going to be in circulation forever now…

Not 100% back to normal no. I think that there will still be some requirements to wear masks and do LFTs as well as test and trace and some requirements for isolation.

I also don't believe that travel will be opened up completely on 19th July.

I think some things will re-open or be relaxed but it won't be back to everything the same as 2019.

Data i saw the other day was looking at 112 deaths and im sure 50 of them had been double vaccinated

Those people died within 28 days of a positive Covid test, but they didn't necessarily die OF Covid. As with many of the deaths in this pandemic, many of the deaths in the Covid column actually died from cancer, heart disease, liver disease, dementia, etc.

@Devondonkey

It’s one thing I don’t understand about people not getting the jab because of health anxiety. It means they will almost certainly get Covid at some point. It’s going to be in circulation forever now…

Once it arrived it was always going to be here forever.

Regarding people dying who have been double vaccinated -this is because of our high vaccination uptake particularly in the vulnerable groups.

If 90% of people in those groups have had the vaccine say, and the vaccine is not 100% effective, and it’s even less effective in those that are vulnerable, then sadly some double vaccinated people will still die.

I would like more info from the government about what 19 July will actually bring. "Lifting all restrictions" is one thing - but they presumably still intend to keep testing and tracing? They're not suddenly saying if you wake up on 20 July with a persistent cough and a fever, crack on do what you like. So will it still be a requirement to go and get tested, and if you come back positive to isolate for ten days? Then what about your close contacts?

In some other countries like the US, if you're fully vaccinated you don't need to do anything if you've been exposed to someone who tests positive. But just this week a colleague's brother has PCR tested positive when he's been fully vaccinated since May. He's symptomatic, at home in bed feeling grotty with a bad cough. The vaccines are very effective but they're not magically 100%, and I imagine if he was coughing away in regular non-social distanced life he would have found plenty of still unvaccinated people to pass it on to. His boss who he was with all weekend including sharing a water bottle(!) is apparently just doing some lateral flow tests, doesn't see the need to isolate...

@Kazzyhoward- totally agree re infection control in NHS/care home settings. I have lived in Germany and Switzerland and their staff training and infection control in those settings is vastly superior to what we have here. Also general standards of hygiene on a population level are better. For the U.K., we are good at vaccinating people and that needs to continue. NHS staff should be offered boosters too of mRNA and stop having to self isolate. The self isolations are bringing the NHS down as we speak… it has to be reviewed urgently.
Scientists are saying there will be lots of bugs next autumn so from that perspective it is good to open up over the summer and let some immunity build. My preschooler has recently had 3 colds… - which is good for her. As regards Covid, my only fear is a home brewed vaccine resistant strain due to lots of mixing in partially vaccinated persons. Hopefully unlikely but who knows!

Chris Whitty has spoken today to support the 19th. It’s over.

Mail reporting no more isolating for double jabbed and end of school bubbles. Even Chris Whitty is reportedly saying we need to open up as much as possible over the summer.

I don't think the government expected there to be as many cases as there are now when restrictions are lifted, though, as the Delta variant changed things so much. Things were looking very different last summer. Obviously we do now have the vaccine so hopefully that will continue offering protection against the next new variants too.

Chris Whitty has said to make the most of the summer before the winter. Not sure whether that would mean some restrictions to come back then

The WHO subtly saying don’t do it, let’s see what happens over the next 2 weeks if the data starts suggesting we’re about to make a calamitous mistake.