The UK may have got it right

[VioletRiemelt]

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-57911032

Australians back in lockdown, while our restrictions are gone. Our exit wave could be over by September.

Sorry that comment was for @LemonRoses -maybe go and watch the documentary

sashagabadon

I totally agree we stuffed up 2020 but as this thing will still be ongoing in 2022 and maybe longer, my view is that it’ll be “over” for us quicker. I honestly thing Aus and NZ the will still be in the Covid midst for most of 2022 if not into 2023. There media right now looks like us in April 2020. All the same discussions we had then.
We are also sliding down the death rate table whereas other countries are rising.
Valance said at the start of this it would be 2 years plus before we could really see how strategy’s worked and I think that’s right.
A lot of the countries mentioned have not created vaccines. Why aren’t they being criticised for their lack of R and D in developing them. They’ve essentially crossed their fingers and hoped other countries come up with the solution. Luckily for them other countries have including us here in the U.K..
the ideal scenario seems to be a combination of elimination and then huge efforts in R&D and vaccine / manufacture and roll out.
Countries that have done well pre vaccine have struggled in a post vaccine world and vice versa.

Speaking a lot of sense there @sashagabadon

Why is it all these countries who have done so well according to some on MN (Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand) have no vaccination production and are sitting waiting for others? But they are the ones eulogised. And yet as @sashagabadon says let’s wait now to see how this plays out. My colleagues and friends are locked down in Australia for the foreseeable and nobody wants to take the AZ vaccine because the media has scared them about it. And they are in their 40s. So now they have to wait for Pfizer. Let’s see how this all pans out.

@DottyHarmer

That’s a really good point about New Zealand. All here posters saying “why aren’t we NZ?” Well, if we had been them we’d be sitting here with no vaccine, just waiting for someone else to provide one.

They are ok to wait, they're not in desperate need of one. The UK is going to have to deliver urgent boosters this autumn as the antibodies are waning in the most vulnerable.

All this trying to find the negatives for NZ reminds me of those people who didn't buy a house ten years ago because 'prices were going to fall' and now all they can do is keep hoping for a crash.

UK is fucked right now, NZ is not fucked right now.

Covid is a global problem & we need to look at it as one. If we don't it is more likely of a nasty variant arising in the developing world.

Well it's not really up to individual countries to decide to put getting vaccinated on th back burner as the whole world needs to be vaccinated to get even the smallest handle on covid

I’m trying to think of a country that can genuinely say it’s got both pre and post vaccine right. I’m thinking Germany maybe?
Pretty good 2020 response and also home to Biontech too plus a vaccine manufacturing nation.
I think what has slowed them down from being A star, is being a part of the EU roll out and not just doing their own. But that was for commendable justifiable reasons so shouldn’t count against them.
Just my opinion and it’s fine if others disagree

Agree Sasha although they are a richer nation than us which helps a bit.

@VaccineSticker

I agree with the above. Everything in the Uk has been a shit show apart from the vaccination program. Everything.

Furlough was imperfect but it did help keep employees in jobs and companies from folding so that was also a useful measure.

This list of errors is too long to go into but a few of the most memorable- £23billion on the disastorous test and trace app, not using local knowledge in tracing to begin with, moving Covid positive patients into care homes, 'saving christmas' and sending primary schools back for a day, exams fiasco, lack of PPE at the beginning resolved by procurement through friends and family. Boris trying to dodge isolation this week while expecting us plebs to suck it up.

Johnson has pinned everything on vaccinations alone getting us through this current wave, removing any other measures that previously helped and is personally willing to 'let the bodies pile high'

Sunshinegirl82 That was not about funding the research and development (although some was UK publicly funded, it wasn't the majority).

What the UK did was accelerate the already established approval process and buy supplies of AZ.

The success of the procurement process is because the U.K. contract was written in English law, which judged whether both parties delivered the goods based on the exact wording of the contract. The EU contract was written in Belgian law, which focuses on whether both parties tried their best to deliver the goods and acted in good faith. It is the detail of wording that gave the U.K. more leverage to ensure its contract was delivered effectively.

@Winnona

Covid is a global problem & we need to look at it as one. If we don't it is more likely of a nasty variant arising in the developing world.

Exactly and we are creating perfect conditions for that to happen, sadly. Then it won't just be the poorer nations that are affected. We really do need to stop looking at this as a national issue.

@LemonRoses

Sunshinegirl82 That was not about funding the research and development (although some was UK publicly funded, it wasn't the majority).

What the UK did was accelerate the already established approval process and buy supplies of AZ.

The success of the procurement process is because the U.K. contract was written in English law, which judged whether both parties delivered the goods based on the exact wording of the contract. The EU contract was written in Belgian law, which focuses on whether both parties tried their best to deliver the goods and acted in good faith. It is the detail of wording that gave the U.K. more leverage to ensure its contract was delivered effectively.

Have you watched the programme? It was really interesting, I'd recommend it.

I'm a lawyer so I followed the legal wrangling fairly closely.

Based on population comparison if my state would have performed like the UK we’d have 14000 dead, 50 of them health workers.

We’ve had a total of 7 die, one caught OS and the rest on cruise ships. It’s been a long boring slog of testing (masses of it), tracing and quarantine so it didn’t just happen.

We’ve had one major lockdown and three for a few days at a time (resulting from quarantine leaks). Otherwise, life has been pretty much normal.

20/10/20 start of the second wave 698 on ventilators - distancing, masks enforced, wfh advice in place, call for more restrictions ignored, lockdown light then full lockdown with education and healthcare disruption

20/07/21 start of third wave 618 on ventilators and this week all restrictions removed, nightclubs reopened,large events on...what will come next?

21/10/21 712 people on ventilators, 21/07/21 647 people on ventilators there are nearly as many people severely ill in hospital as at the beginning of the second wave and even with the vaccinations - if it maintains the same trajectory (and there is nothing to stop it doing so) we will have an overwhelmed health service in weeks and in person education is in jeopardy.

People panic buying, problems with supply & now apparently Tory back benchers want the army to take over food supplies - can they not see they are partly the result of their policy of 'freedom' at all costs!

I'm not a lockdown lover, far from it & the thought of homeschooling again fills me with dread - but you can see the conditions that necessitate lockdown occuring - for goodness sake, don't let it hit crisis point yet again

@RumblyMumbly Why do you keep posting this? Stop being so obtuse.

20/10/20 - No-one vaccinated.

20/07/21 - UK adults, 88% 1 dose vaccine, 69% both doses.

Stop scaremongering.

@Rosehip10 it's not scaremongering it's fact. I updated the figures from yesterday with the new figures available today. If I didn't post it, the fact would still be the same, there are more people on ventilators today and the growth trajectory is similar to the wave in October. I wish it wasn't.

It's a public board, you can't dictate what other posters say, but you can of course choose to disregard the thread or my posts.

U.K. have got it right. Vax plus natural infection is superior to vax. This is the only way out going forward.

Vax plus natural infection is superior to vax

But there’s very limited immunity from natural infection. You can be infected more than once especially with a mutation.

And there were 300 people on ventilators on 01/07/21 so it has doubled in 3weeks. To compare there were 341 on 01/10/20

By the 31/10/20 there were 1,003

All facts

By the 31/10/20 there were 1,003

Which is a problem, isn't it, when you have a completely unvaccinated population and you are weeks away from flu season and the Mexican wave of the usual winter illnesses and deaths?

Less so in July when practically all who are vulnerable and able have had a vaccine affording a much better chance of avoiding severe illness and deaths.

@VaccineSticker

I agree with the above. Everything in the Uk has been a shit show apart from the vaccination program. Everything.

Have you forgotten about the UK recovery trial? It discovered the first effective treatment therapy for Covid - dexemethasone, which has saved many lives around the world. Not what I'd call a 'shit show'

@RumblyMumbly

And there were 300 people on ventilators on 01/07/21 so it has doubled in 3weeks. To compare there were 341 on 01/10/20

By the 31/10/20 there were 1,003

All facts

The proportion of deaths to cases is important though, these graphs by @RP131 on Twitter show the difference between this wave and the last wave.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

Vax plus natural infection is superior to vax

But there’s very limited immunity from natural infection. You can be infected more than once especially with a mutation.

Incidence of reinfection is actually quite low and there are plenty of studies showing that immunity lasts for 8+ months. Ireland have just increased presumptive immunity after infection to 9months.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow
Very few people are getting reinfected versus the large amount of people getting Covid after being double jabbed!
And most of those who get COVID twice are not as poorly as someone who has never caught it before.

@Notonthestairs

So one the one hand you want to compare and on the other you absolutely can't 🙄

Don't be so ridiculous. You can only compare on the things the op wants to compare on

@Sunshinegirl82 true the death rate should never get as high again due to vaccine protection and the NHS is under less pressure in summer. However, the death rates are similar to where they were in Oct:

e.g. 9/10/21 87deaths, 10/10/21 81 deaths
21/07/21 73 deaths, 22/07/21 84 deaths

The chart above is comparing May 2021 with end Oct21 and July 21July deaths (not yet at peak) with December 2020 (peak of wave). Whereas a more accurate comparison in actual numbers on both ventilators and deaths is July 2021 with October 2020.

What I am worried about is the NHS getting overwhelmed, if there are too many Covid patients in ventilator beds then they can't do routine ops which means emergency action is required

Hopefully, this is all forecast and they know the NHS can cope (and high cases may be disruptive but not lead to complete NHS congestion) Lived experience means I have little faith in the Government knowing what's going on and acting accordingly as their fingers crossed approach to wave 1 & 2 went abysmally wrong.