Cases soar in Israel despite high vaccine uptake

[Shanghaisprize]

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9951117/Israel-worlds-Covid-hotspot-0-2-population-catching-yesterday.html

Apologies for the source, but this looks a bit worrying - cases are soaring in Israel despite very high vaccine uptake. Serious Illness and deaths are down from the second wave, bit apparently rising sharply. Waning immunity is thought to a reason for this, yet in the UK we seem to be dithering around whether to introduce boosters.

With the already high number of cases, imminent back to school situation in England and lack of any mitigation measures, I'm worried. Anyone else?

Please bear in mind I have a PhD in biochemistry, have several years experience in DNA vaccine research and currently am a lead scientist working in the pharma industry for a company working on several Covid treatments

Do you usually find being this patronising is helpful if your aim is to educate people?

Agree that the fees for nursing degrees need to be scrapped

Why? Fees are not a barrier to nursing degrees. There are far more students than places. The limiting factor is placements, which requires staffing levels further up the tree in order to supervise the trainees. Catch 22.

Fees are not a barrier to nursing degrees

I disagree, I know a lot of people who would have made good nurses put off doing the degree once fees were introduced.

The limiting factor is placements, which requires staffing levels further up the tree

I don't get what you mean by this?

How many vaccines are 100% effective?

Asking for a scientist...

@CuriousaboutSamphire fair point.

I still think that there has been an expectation that hasn’t been met about how much the vaccines we have currently would reduce transmission and that policies haven’t kept up with that (in the UK at least). I presume that’s largely to do with delta (and almost certainly other and future variants). Delta may be harder to control but that doesn’t mean that it’s uncontrollable. I feel quite strongly that there should be some restrictions in place other than only isolating a sick individual. There is still a significant number of patients presenting to hospital and a low steady number requiring IC which is impacting on other provision. If this is the level we’re looking to maintain we need a long term expansion of NHS resource which is a weirdly quiet area of debate right now.

@Shanghaisprize

Please bear in mind I have a PhD in biochemistry, have several years experience in DNA vaccine research and currently am a lead scientist working in the pharma industry for a company working on several Covid treatments

Do you usually find being this patronising is helpful if your aim is to educate people?

I assume that the answer is yes when posters are typing up semi scientific twaddle that they may only have the slightest understanding of.

In many cases a bit of misunderstanding is fine, but where it skirts with misinformation and scaremongering it needs to be challenged!

@CuriousaboutSamphire

Of all the stuff posted here you want to query the word restrictions?

Really?

Yes So you tell me what it means please.

Well, unless you live in New Zealand or Australia, I would imagine you have lived with a variety of restrictions over the last 18 months and are now living with far fewer.

So you and @TheKeatingFive are saying, that[and this is the elephant in the room bit], that if somehow, the more a country vaccinates, the more cases of covid it gets, is all ok by you two, because less personal restrictions and less hospitalisations?

Howabout instead, the oldest and most vulnerable get vaccinations if they want them, and the rest of the population dont get vaccinations, and hey presto, less covid cases, instead of more. Still with less restrictions and same amount of hospitalisations, which would reduce over time because less covid cases happening.

It just doesnt add up that the country which is top in vaccinations is also the top in covid cases.
I dont see how that statistic can be ignored. And worse, the "cure" by some, is even more vaccinations!!
It is like people are not seeing that 2 plus 2 may make 4.

It is something that should at least be thought about and discussed.

@lightand

So you and *@TheKeatingFive* are saying, that[and this is the elephant in the room bit], that if somehow, the more a country vaccinates, the more cases of covid it gets, is all ok by you two, because less personal restrictions and less hospitalisations?

Howabout instead, the oldest and most vulnerable get vaccinations if they want them, and the rest of the population dont get vaccinations, and hey presto, less covid cases, instead of more. Still with less restrictions and same amount of hospitalisations, which would reduce over time because less covid cases happening.

It just doesnt add up that the country which is top in vaccinations is also the top in covid cases.
I dont see how that statistic can be ignored. And worse, the "cure" by some, is even more vaccinations!!
It is like people are not seeing that 2 plus 2 may make 4.

It is something that should at least be thought about and discussed.

No idea how you got there!

I was challenging the weird science. Haven't said anything about what I think.

Israel is always shown as an example but this website suggests it’s not the most vaccinated population; www.statista.com/statistics/1202074/share-of-population-vaccinated-covid-19-by-county-worldwide/

Well there’s about 74 major leaps there. Nice one.

My point was simply that it’s not surprising that cases are surging in countries with high vaccination rates as they’ll be relatively open compared to other countries.

However, cases are not particularly important now, post vaccine. Hospitalisation are.

@TheKeatingFive

Well there’s about 74 major leaps there. Nice one.

My point was simply that it’s not surprising that cases are surging in countries with high vaccination rates as they’ll be relatively open compared to other countries.

However, cases are not particularly important now, post vaccine. Hospitalisation are.

This message has been fed to the general public for some months but people still aren’t getting it, are they?! Cases alone - when they don’t require medical care - will not overwhelm the NHS.

@Shanghaisprize

If hospitalisations remain low, that’s the main thing

I just can't see how they will though if immunity is waning, which it does appear to be. Especially as we are also predicted a significant flu season this year.

I mean - as covid is now endemic, and hospitalisations for covid still significant, where are the plans to increase critical care capacity and staff within the NHS?

Yes, this is the winter where we find out what "living with the virus" looks like.

The hospital figures are not low.

The number in ventilated beds is similar to early November 2020 and the number being admitted every day and the number in hospital with covid are very similar to late October 2020 numbers.

All have more or less doubled twice in the last 9 -10 weeks.

On June 20th 206 people were admitted to hospital. On August 29th: 848.

On June 24th there were 259 people in ventilated beds. September 1st: 1030.

On June 30th there were 1821 people in hospital with covid. September 1st 7596.

If they double twice again then that would be January peak numbers

Two doublings from the January peak is not low.

How is the immunity of the people who did vaccine trials ?

I mean - as covid is now endemic, and hospitalisations for covid still significant, where are the plans to increase critical care capacity and staff within the NHS

There likely arent any. We will be expected to accept that the NHS will be a barrier to family life every Christmas/winter.

The limiting factor is placements, which requires staffing levels further up the tree

They mean experienced nurses who can manage and mentor the students on a placement.

@IncessantNameChanger

NHS staff take years to train up. Cutting uni fees for hpcs should be a priority. If you could do a nursing degree or a maths degree and the both cost 27k what would you invest your future in?

Yes, and they could have made that decision for the 2020 intake and didn't. Saying that recruitment isn't a problem and there's a limited number of places due to training capacity. The hospitals have to have enough staff to mentor students in placement which is the sticking point. The govt need to focus on retention.

Oh sorry, someone beat me to that point. 😁

This message has been fed to the general public for some months but people still aren’t getting it, are they?! Cases alone - when they don’t require medical care - will not overwhelm the NHS

But cases do still require hospital medical care and there is still a significant demand on intensive care. We’ve seen a massive reduction which is great but it’s still a demand that didn’t exist pre-2020.

Even if things remained stable at today’s level we would need either an expansion of resources permanently or a reduction in infections. Operations are still being cancelled because ICU’s don’t have enough beds due to covid patients.

It’s practically a certainty that demand will increase in the winter, last winters figures for underlying causes in covid deaths showed a significant number with flu/non-covid pneumonia as an underlying cause. There’s no reason to think this won’t be true proportionally this winter as well.

I disagree, I know a lot of people who would have made good nurses put off doing the degree once fees were introduced.

I'm sure that's true but overall it does not stop the courses being filled. And oddly the Pandemic has increased demand, the unis are turning good applicants away as they can't train them all.

They mean experienced nurses who can manage and mentor the students on a placement

I wouldn't be so sure. The nmc have scrapped the old mentor course and replaced it with a 2hr student supervisor course which is now expected to be delivered to final year students so they're ready to supervise students on their first day as qualified staff! Hopefully most hospitals will let them find their feet first otherwise that isn't going to help stress levels, burn out and staff quitting.

@MercyBooth

I mean - as covid is now endemic, and hospitalisations for covid still significant, where are the plans to increase critical care capacity and staff within the NHS

There likely arent any. We will be expected to accept that the NHS will be a barrier to family life every Christmas/winter.

… or that we will all have to adjust our expectations of healthcare availability. That’s the message I’m getting right now. A lot more people will languish on waiting lists until their cases are urgent.

@bumbleymummy

No, not worried. We left a longer interval between doses which seems to have worked better irt immunity. The vaccines are also doing a good job of reducing serious illness death in the most vulnerable groups - and those groups are going to be offered boosters soon too. It does make a total joke out of the whole ‘vaccine passport’ idea though.

We had a 5 week longer gap between jabs than those in Israel. That just means we are 5 weeks behind potentially seeing the figures in the UK that they are seeing now in Israel

@Shanghaisprize

Please bear in mind I have a PhD in biochemistry, have several years experience in DNA vaccine research and currently am a lead scientist working in the pharma industry for a company working on several Covid treatments

Do you usually find being this patronising is helpful if your aim is to educate people?

Plus from many years on here I tend to find those that claim to be something are usually not.

Yes I concerned about Israel, Israel is concerned about it from the FT

Salman Zarka, the government’s coronavirus tsar. Israel was at “a critical point for our health, for our lives and for our economy”, he said.

If they are considering imposing restrictions we all should be at least slightly concerned.

How many vaccines are 100% effective?

Asking for a scientist...

The fault here lies with the government, in the language they used and the message they told. In addition vaccines have appeared to be 100% in this country, we vaccinate against childhood diseases and our children don't get them (I'm not saying they are 100% just how they appear to be)

Aside, the smallpox vaccination must be very close to 100% as the WHO announced it was eradicated.