I don’t understand why infections are rising so sharply

[MissChanandlerBong22]

Just looking at the stats for my area. 60% of adults double jabbed. 80% have had one jab. Yet cases aren’t much lower than they were during the height of the pandemic in January.

I appreciate that hospital admissions and deaths are much lower of course. But I’m struggling to understand why cases are still so high. Is the virus spreading wildly among the 20% of unvaccinated adults? Or among the 20% of unvaccinated adults and the 20% of single jabbed adults? Or is it still circulating around everyone, but people who’ve been jabbed generally aren’t developing symptoms?

*There are 33,000 children in the UK suffering from Long Covid,

What's the source for that please?*

It was on BBC news the other day

@chamberofhorrors

So what do you suggest?

Restrictions

Which restrictions?

Non essential retail again,
Or pubs/restaurants,
Or schools?
Or foreign travel?

We'll all have our own reasoning why we want different restrictions - usually we want restrictions on things that affect others, not us!

guardian, Polmuggle

@JustMeAndWheatley

Lots of indoor and outdoor mixing, lack of social distancing.

I went on a tram yesterday that was jam-packed with teenagers (going to school) standing in every possible space. By my reckoning 25% weren’t wearing masks.

Well considering they'll be not wearing masks in school, sitting together in classrooms all day without social distancing, and mixing freely at breaks, etc., I really don't think them not wearing masks on a tram for a much shorter period of time will make much difference to whether they catch covid or not!

Seems to be lots of cases in children here.

Also I think less and less people are 'following the rules', not that I blame them, but that could be contributing perhaps.

It's not just the unvaxed that can get the virus and spread. Your chances of dying or seriously ill is reduced. It's no surprising that figures are rising because people think that's it, I'm safe, I'm vaccinated so I don't need to bother doing x,y and z.

Also doesn't help when children are automatically covered by their parents antibodies from the vaccine, and the natural antibodies are mentioned as an afterthought.

Because everyone is testing.

I'm not sure how this has helped the nhs either.
We've had access to health care almost suspended other than Covid and in the meantime has people's health is deteriorating which will put more pressure on the nhs. Never mind all the extra people who need help from the already over stretched mental health services.

Thanks for your responses everyone. Yes I appreciate there are differences between January and now in terms of risk and hospitalisations and deaths and so on. I was just so surprised at the high number of infections in the middle of summer when 80% of the adult population have had at least one jab!

But as posters have said, the vaccine doesn’t stop you from catching and spreading it, the delta variant is highly transmissible, and 20% of the adult population and all the under-18s is actually not a small group of people at all. But it must be absolutely rife in those groups for infections to be only slightly less than they were across the whole population in January!

More people getting tested, more people mixing, more contagious strains......

The effects of the new variant are milder. That coupled with the number of vaccinations makes our world safer.

I've had one vaccination so far with appointment for the second, AstraZeneca, so living in hope.

Were we ever told that if you're vaccinated you won't catch it?

We're going that way with Covid. It's becoming harmless

Is it? Is it really?

1. More testing, so more cases (even asymptomatic) are being found. People are now being encouraged to do regular lateral flow tests and the categories of people who can get an nhs PCR are wider (ie. not just people with symptoms). If you test more people then it's almost certain you'll find more cases.
2. Under 18s are all unvaccinated and many younger adults are not fully vaccinated. In my area covid is spreading very quickly in these age groups.
3. Most people are being less cautious that they were earlier in the pandemic eg. having more visitors, not always wearing masks indoors with other people, attending bigger events etc

Children are protected by their immune systems and reality.

Possibly the most oblique and irrational statement ever made on MN.

The effects of the new variant are milder

No it is not, the scientists said it was more likely to put you in hospital

@amicissimma

Have a look at the heatmap on the gov dashboard. For your LA it will show you which age groups are the majority testing positive.

In mine it's overwhelmingly the 15-29 age group, with the most (2-4x) in the 24-29 group. This group has the highest percentage unvaccinated and a stroll around town on a Friday or Saturday evening shows that they are mixing freely and very closely, with lots of singing and shouting close together.

People who've had the jab can still pick up Covid - they don't get a force field round them to keep it away. The idea is that their immune system, being primed, will deal with it before they get very ill. Some work quicker than others and hardly feel unwell at all, others a little slower and have a period of mild/moderate illness. And, of course, a minority are very unlucky and have no response to the vaccine. All these, if tested when the virus is in their nose/throat, even while the body is neutralising it, will produce a positive test.

But, in my area at least, these are the fewest. (Rate for older people is about 4% of what it is for the 24-29s.)

Looking in my area, cases are high in 15-29 age range (highest in 20-24) but it's also clearly gotten into at least one care home as cases are sky high in the 90+ category too.

Were we ever told that if you're vaccinated you won't catch it?

I don’t know, but I do remember a lot of discussion about how when a certain proportion of the population (often estimated at 70-90%) had antibodies, either through vaccination or natural infection, we’d see a drop in transmission. That doesn’t seem to be happening.

But really why wouldn’t it rise sharply? As you can still get it vaccinated.

Look at Aus right now and what Sydney is dealing with.

It is highly transmissible. The big factor is most at risk are double vaccinated and soon every adult will be, well nearly all.

Deaths are slowly but clearly rising - 50 recorded in today's most recent statistics.

But I guess we are nowhere near vaccinating 70-90% of the overall population because as other posters have pointed out under-18s are a huge group.

Well considering they'll be not wearing masks in school, sitting together in classrooms all day without social distancing, and mixing freely at breaks, etc., I really don't think them not wearing masks on a tram for a much shorter period of time will make much difference to whether they catch covid or not!

The masks are to prevent you spreading it, not catching it.

The jab does not prevent you from getting covid. The vaccinations are there to help your body manage the virus better when you do catch it, they are trying to control the amount of severities and deaths because they know the idea of stopping it all together is fruitless. Covid will still exist. That might make you understand why the numbers are high but the hospital admissions will be lower than when it was in its peak

A couple of people I know have had covid again recently. So the variants look like they are re-infecting people.