Dr John's "Important Announcement" - we are all going to get it.

[vera99]

I've been following 'Dr' John since the start and always found him to be informative and useful. In his latest video, he has changed his tone somewhat.

If he's right, and the consensus is now that herd immunity is impossible, because the vaccine can't prevent transmission, then that's obviously very significant in terms of what the policy will be from now on.

This presumably also assumes that it's not going to be possible to 'tweak' the vaccine such that it can prevent onwards transmission.

He doesn't really talk about what happens if we get to a point where the health service can't deal with hospitalisation numbers.

Bring on the boosters, please.

Seems like the meaning of hospitals being overwhelmed has not sunken into people’s heads. I say it again : what this doctor suggests is true , yes we all get it, but it is not that black and white, if too many get ill at the same time, we won’t be able to get medical help we need. I’m talking about being able to.get basic support like going on oxygen if we are struggling to breath. Oh never mind ICU beds. The gravity of this is too alien to most people. Ventilation in classrooms, masking and distancing measures should have been kept in place to lessen the school disruption, and keep a lid on infection numbers nationally, and keep us enjoying the freedoms we got back.

@UserNameNameNameUser

Thank you, yes, that's the issue, that if the chance of catching it is now 100% then the risk is much higher than it was! The risk of dying from it no longer needs to be multiplied by the risk of catching it!

If my risk of dying if I caught it was, say, 1 in 20, that might have been improved by the vaccine to maybe 1 in 200, which is so much better but still worrying. But if you go back to when cases were really low last year, my chance of catching it might have been, say, 1 in 1000, which would mean 1 in 20,000 chance of dying from it overall.

That means my chance of dying from it, unvaccinated, last summer, was much less than my chance of dying it from it, vaccinated, this winter and over the next year or so, if the chance of catching it is 100%. (Even if there was only a 1 in 5, or 1 in 10, or 1 in 99 chance of catching it).

That's what I mean about the news being bad particularly for those who are vulnerable (who are probably all vulnerable to flu too!). We are at very much more risk than we would have been had herd immunity been possible and the risk of catching it had been extremely low (which is where I thought we might be by now, if the vaccinations had done what we'd hoped!).

Why do some people not understand what immunity means? If natural immunity wasn’t a thing, illnesses like the plague and Spanish flu would have kept sweeping round until most people were dead, the whole reason they faded into the background was due to immunity.

Of course the vast majority of people aren’t immune when these illnesses first appear!

[quote NCBlossom]@Marguerite2000
So what do you think happened in the thousands of years before vaccines were developed then?
er… smallpox which killed millions
The Plague - which killed millions
The Spanish flu - which killed millions
Whenever a nation ‘conquered’ another nation - introducing a novel virus - such as in South America - the resulting deaths from illness wiped out more people than any fighting over gold or territory.

Etc etc etc there are so many examples.

So yes novel viruses which caused pandemics before vaccines…
Basically killed millions. Natural ‘immunity’ did not prevent those deaths.[/quote]
But eventually it did. Anyone who recovered acquired immunity and eventually there was enough to stop the pandemic.

As has already been said though, this would have resulted in too many deaths so, given that we can now develop vaccines, we decided not to take that approach. It does not mean that natural immunity can not stop pandemics though (which I think was your original claim).

Ventilation in classrooms, masking and distancing measures should have been kept in place to lessen the school disruption, and keep a lid on infection numbers nationally, and keep us enjoying the freedoms we got back.

Why should children be the ones to pay the price? Adults don't need to wear masks all day sitting at their desks.
I'm in Scotland and our secondary kids are still in masks and I really feel for them. Everywhere else is opening up yet they are still restricted.

The way we have treated children throughout this pandemic has been shocking. History won’t look back on us favourably. So yes why should they be the ones to continue to wear masks for hours every day when adults don’t have to? Especially when Covid is, on the whole, not a serious illness for them.

The problem with these half-hearted middle of the road ‘mitigations’ are that they don’t work and they are very damaging. That’s why we’ve got rid of them all.

See opening the pubs and golf last year before schools...

@Delatron

See opening the pubs and golf last year before schools...

And garden centres before playgrounds.

The problem with these half-hearted middle of the road ‘mitigations’ are that they don’t work and they are very damaging. That’s why we’ve got rid of them all

I wish Scotland would follow suit. Its horrible that we are into a third year of disruption in schools.

@Tupla yes, you have summed it up very well

That means my chance of dying from it, unvaccinated, last summer, was much less than my chance of dying it from it, vaccinated, this winter and over the next year or so, if the chance of catching it is 100%. (Even if there was only a 1 in 5, or 1 in 10, or 1 in 99 chance of catching it).

I am very lucky not to be vulnerable (although in the early days it was thought that I was). But I really feel for anyone particularly with combinations of vulnerability and low immune response to vaccine.

It’s a big disparity particularly if, as that link implies, for most people it really is just the same risk level as flu now.

@bumbleymummy no not quite right again. It wasn’t ‘immunity’ which stopped small pox it bubbled around in the population for hundreds of years killing a lot of people. It that it ripped through populations and killed all the weakest. It wasn’t got rid of.

The virus itself can mutate over time so many of the flu and cold bugs have been around for centuries and sometimes settle into a less dangerous form.

I think you are confusing ‘immunity’ with herd immunity. The plague for example also did not stop with immunity. It is still around. But we are much better at public health measures.

Cholera for example was reduced through cleaner water practices.

Many other viruses were reduced through hygiene measures particularly in hospitals. These are the main strategies that were used through centuries - isolating patients, clean and hygiene practices.

What public health specialists know is that herd immunity in order to get rid of the virus is not possible without vaccinations. Herd immunity is vaccines and isn’t a term used outside of vaccination.

‘Natural immunity’ is very complex and only really talked about for individuals. People who get chicken pox for example still get shingles as adults.

So be to clear - natural immunity is not a strategy to reduce or eliminate a virus and never has been.

@Lockdownbear

Ventilation in classrooms, masking and distancing measures should have been kept in place to lessen the school disruption, and keep a lid on infection numbers nationally, and keep us enjoying the freedoms we got back.

Why should children be the ones to pay the price? Adults don't need to wear masks all day sitting at their desks.
I'm in Scotland and our secondary kids are still in masks and I really feel for them. Everywhere else is opening up yet they are still restricted.

The other quite strong argument is that why would we willingly expose children to a novel virus with possible long term effects for them?

When there are simple effective strategies such as mask wearing (that the vast majority of kids have no problem with), ventilation and putting HEPA filters in their classroom.

@NCBlossom

The use of the term ‘herd immunity’ was actually originally used irt cattle iirc. It can come from natural immunity and vaccine induced immunity.

www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/herd-immunity

@bumbleymummy yes VACCINE is the operative word there - used in cattle - which is also the other operative word! Having no vaccines even in cattle is not considered a good strategy to save the herd - natural immunity because it is so complex and often not long lasting.

If a farmer had no vaccines he would isolate any sick animals immediately and in some very sad cases like foot and mouth - animals would be culled in order to halt the spread.

It’s the way immunity has been used quite wrongly during the pandemic - which honestly I don’t think is the publics fault as senior medics even used the term ‘herd immunity’ for people without vaccines. Most of the scientific and medical community were absolutely up in horror about the misuse of this word.

Natural immunity is never a ‘strategy’ - it is just another way of saying we will just let the virus wipe ‘weaker’ or unlucky people out.

That is the point I am making. Natural immunity on it’s own without vaccines is not and never has been a good strategy to manage a pandemic or a novel virus.

The public have been grossly mislead about this early on and the idea has kind of ‘stuck’ as if it’s an ‘OPTION’. It’s not option - it’s doing nothing.

Natural immunity on it’s own without vaccines is not and never has been a good strategy to manage a pandemic or a novel virus.

Well it’s not a good strategy if you’ve got an alternative like vaccines. It is not better than vaccines. I don’t think anyone’s claiming that here, and they’re wrong if they are. But it was the only ‘strategy’ for most of history, and it does eventually result in enough immunity that the pandemic isn’t a pandemic any more.

If we had not had vaccines - if this pandemic had happened 100 years ago, say - then it would have cut through the population, killed a lot of people, overwhelmed health care systems, but it wouldn’t have kept doing that forever. After a while, enough people would have been infected and recovered that it would have died down to become an endemic virus which wasn’t harmless but wasn’t causing pandemic levels of death and illness any more. That is what has happened with many many many many previous epidemics and pandemics, all through history.

Because we have vaccines, we have been able to dodge that worst-case short term scenario in this country. But the long term will be enough immunity, through infection and through vaccination, that it will have died down to become an endemic virus which wasn’t harmless but wasn’t causing pandemic levels of death and illness any more.

Either way, we end up with the pandemic phase passing because of high levels of immunity in the population. One way is obviously much better than the other, but both ways end in the same place: endemic virus. There isn’t a scenario where we stay in a raging pandemic forever.

How can you honestly say the vast majority of kids have no issues with wearing masks?

The majority of adults don't like them, remember all the nurse sad faces at the beginning of the pandemic 'look what these are doing to our skin', 'please made us things to save our ears'. Yet kids are just supposed to put up and shut up.

It's a virus, the vast majority of teens will get it and get over it in a few days. Teacher and other staff are vaccinated.

I don't object to open windows or extra ventilation but I strongly object to children being treated like lepers who need to be masked all day, when adult's sitting at a desk don't need to be masked.

Not really bothered. I'm done.

I think most children and teenagers are prepared to put up with inconveniences like masks in the short term, for the greater good. It seems pretty churlish to follow that up with “well they didn’t complain then so clearly they won’t mind doing it indefinitely, even when adults don’t have to.”

Natural immunity - But it was the only ‘strategy’ for most of history

No it wasn’t. It’s not a ‘strategy’ at all. It’s just what happens when you do nothing.

Through most of history isolation and hygiene has been the strategy.

Strategy is when you actively do something to affect an outcome. Some people having a short term immunity because a virus didn’t kill them isn’t an action by a population. It’s just what happens.

@NCBlossom

The other quite strong argument is that why would we willingly expose children to a novel virus with possible long term effects for them?

The problem is that "masks and ventilation" are wholly inadequate in themselves to avoid virus exposure... All they can realistically do is delay the inevitable,
probably by just a few weeks or months.

If so, there doesn't seem much point in making children wear masks all day (for what presumably be for many, many years if you're genuinely trying to avoid exposure and you want to be 100% confident about long term impacts.)

Also, pupils generally really aren't absolutely fine with wearing masks all day, every day, in the same way adults aren't. And for what... So they catch Covid in December rather than October?!

Whereas I don't have an issue with decent ventilation in principle, if we force our children and teachers to endure freezing classrooms (and being cold only lower people's Immunity) whilst mandating masks for the foreseeable future, this is mere "Covid busy-work" to help alleviate the anxiety of those who want to feel they are able to control the uncontrollable, and who haven't faced up to the unfortunate reality that Covid's not going anywhere.

I wonder do these people try to put toothpaste back in the tube too, or think they can stop the tide with a bucket & spade built dam?

[quote NCBlossom]@bumbleymummy yes VACCINE is the operative word there - used in cattle - which is also the other operative word! Having no vaccines even in cattle is not considered a good strategy to save the herd - natural immunity because it is so complex and often not long lasting.

If a farmer had no vaccines he would isolate any sick animals immediately and in some very sad cases like foot and mouth - animals would be culled in order to halt the spread.

It’s the way immunity has been used quite wrongly during the pandemic - which honestly I don’t think is the publics fault as senior medics even used the term ‘herd immunity’ for people without vaccines. Most of the scientific and medical community were absolutely up in horror about the misuse of this word.

Natural immunity is never a ‘strategy’ - it is just another way of saying we will just let the virus wipe ‘weaker’ or unlucky people out.

That is the point I am making. Natural immunity on it’s own without vaccines is not and never has been a good strategy to manage a pandemic or a novel virus.

The public have been grossly mislead about this early on and the idea has kind of ‘stuck’ as if it’s an ‘OPTION’. It’s not option - it’s doing nothing.[/quote]
No, my point was that Herd immunity was first discussed in veterinary medicine irt cows and was to do with retaining cattle that were naturally immune to a specific disease - it wasn’t to do with vaccinating them. They just recognised that when the disease had fewer vectors of transmission, it died out.

The scientific community knows that herd immunity can come about via natural infection and vaccination (usually a combination of the two these days).

I’m not really sure what you’re trying to argue here. No one here is suggesting we should have pursued a strategy of attaining herd immunity via natural infection. We’re just pointing out that natural infection does also contribute to herd immunity.

[quote NCBlossom]@Marguerite2000
So what do you think happened in the thousands of years before vaccines were developed then?
er… smallpox which killed millions
The Plague - which killed millions
The Spanish flu - which killed millions
Whenever a nation ‘conquered’ another nation - introducing a novel virus - such as in South America - the resulting deaths from illness wiped out more people than any fighting over gold or territory.

Etc etc etc there are so many examples.

So yes novel viruses which caused pandemics before vaccines…
Basically killed millions. Natural ‘immunity’ did not prevent those deaths.[/quote]
So, how did they not go on killing millions indefinitely then?
How did the Spanish flu epidemic end without a vaccine?

No it wasn’t. It’s not a ‘strategy’ at all. It’s just what happens when you do nothing.

You'll notice the inverted commas around the word 'strategy'. It is what we did, because we did not have alternatives.

Through most of history isolation and hygiene has been the strategy.

They are things people did, sort of, and even then only to a degree. And even then it just slowed the spread. You can still see that today with covid, in areas of countries where people are living on top of each other in slums and national lockdowns aren't an option because people would starve. What do you think happened in even earlier pandemics, exactly? Ancient Romans spent the Plague of Justinian isolating by sitting at home getting click-and-collect from Tesco and holding all their meetings on Zoom?

Even in more recent history, 'hygiene' is a relatively recent invention. In the cholera pandemics of the early 19th century, people knew enough to see that cholera spread more in slums, but didn't understand that it was caused by a bacterium in the water rather than by 'miasma' and the bad habits of the poor. John Snow and the broad street pump didn't happen until the 1850s. Semmelweis was still begging surgeons to wash their hands between autopsies and treating live patients then. And both Snow and Semmelweis had an uphill fight to get people to believe them. 'Hygiene' was pretty awful for a lot of the past.

^ Spanish flu pandemic, not epidemic.
If populations were unable to develop immunity via infection them millions would have continued to die annually just from this flu strain alone, right up to development and widespread use of the first flu vaccines.

Natural immunity is never a ‘strategy’ - it is just another way of saying we will just let the virus wipe ‘weaker’ or unlucky people out.

The UK government's treatment of the disabled was condemned by the UN some years ago. There was a brief mention in the media and then the public shrugged, didn't really care, and the ill treatment carried on.

I despise Jeremy Corbyn but that doesn't mean he's always 100% wrong about everything. He agreed with the group of doctors who wrote to the BMJ in February. Social murder, they called it. The (UK) government has seen a public acceptance of 100s a day being killed and many more disabled. They have no reason to change approach.

Other countries will continue to value life and health - at least more than the UK. People on here rush to use an example of something another country is doing when it's about 'living with' a diseases that kills and disables (Other People ™). They fail to add that the other countries are almost always also taking mitigating action to avoid 'letting the bodies pile up. Be that the basic public health measures like masks in many European countries, lots of US states, and East Asia countries, or the wider use of treatments like avigan in Japan, monoclonal antibodies in the US and Australia, or immunosuppressants like sotrivimab in Australia.

Other countries are also vaccinating all 12+ AND boosters for the vulnerable. We sent some our limited supply to Australia...to vaccinate their children, whilst failing to do the same for ours and also ignoring WHO advice that boosters for the vulnerable are needed.