What's the end game?

[UndertonesOfCake]

Lockdowns were always said to be a thing "until we have a vaccine"

Except now we have a vaccine, and most eligible people are double jabbed.

... and now there's talk of reintroducing restrictions - plan B, plan C... full lockdown again?

I'm not prepared to live in a state of perpetual restrictions - I'll take the (relatively small) risk of dying.

I don't understand how they think this is all going to end, if vaccines have been insufficient? What else are we waiting for?

Didn't you also take on board lots of noise about case numbers reducing now? Is your news viewing always this selective? There is no talk of full lockdown for heavens sake.

The booster doubles effectiveness compared to two doses (95% more protection). Also Delta is likely to be the final variant, it's the perfect form of the virus, maybe some small slightly more transmissible variants but nothing major. So it will soon burn itself out. It will be endemic as we go into 2022 and get our boosters.

I think there might be restrictions this year, but beyond that we will be restriction free.

Personally I’m worried about the poor staff in the NHS and gladly have restrictions to ease their workload.

I guess for some people the chance of dying isn't relatively small.
I don't have a solution though I am hopeful things will look better next Spring.
I think some vulnerable people will need to hunker down for the winter, but not everyone is able to.

The chance of dying in any year is always higher for some people than others. That's why we talk about co-morbidities. If it's not Covid, it would something else. The point was always to avoid excess mortality. I think we should soon stop widespread testing tbh. Life is so disrupted now. We need to restore normal human contact. As long as we test we won't do that.

I don't think there will be another full lockdown - I may be wrong of course.

It feels there's little point continuing to try and fight this

It's a pandemic.... sick/elderly/weak are meant to be killed off leaving the 'fittest'

We are killing our planet anyway, too many of us using too many resources.

Every time we find a new way to survive...isolating,vaccines,lockdowns...new variants emerge and vaccine resistance occurs.

Feels very much like a losing battle because the sick/elderly/weak are surviving and the 'fittest' are killing themselves in despair of living normally again!

Mother Nature is having non of it!

So it will soon burn itself out. It will be endemic as we go into 2022 and get our boosters.

I'm not sure people really understand what endemic means. I think some people interpret it as COVID just being like a cold. It just means that the number of infections remains at a constant level, either all the time or in a repetitive cycle.

I'm not sure it will look much different from the way things are now. We are already at 93+% of the population having antibodies. Hopefully treatments will improve and, in theory, the NHS should be able to cope better as case numbers will be predictable.

its going nowhere

What makes people think a booster will make all the difference? And how many boosters are people supposed to have? There's already plans in Israel for a forth. Our cases are double this time last year when nobody was jabbed (yes I know, delta etc) so I really don't believe the government when they say boosters are the answer, and I also don't like the threatening way we're told we might have to go back to restrictions if not enough people sign up. Vaccine passports for a vaccine that doesn't stop you catching or spreading covid, marvellous!

The end game will be when the bloody media stop scaremongering whenever there is a slow news day. Did anyone notice covid was being exclusively talked about for 3 or 4 days in the media until the tragedy with the shooting on the film set.

The end game will be when people accept that there is a new illness around that does kill people, and that these deaths will have to be factored into our everyday lives now.

I don’t think there is an endgame. They are just managing it month by month and taking action as required to try and prevent too many sick and dying overwhelming the nhs.

@FlyLight

What makes people think a booster will make all the difference? And how many boosters are people supposed to have? There's already plans in Israel for a forth. Our cases are double this time last year when nobody was jabbed (yes I know, delta etc) so I really don't believe the government when they say boosters are the answer, and I also don't like the threatening way we're told we might have to go back to restrictions if not enough people sign up. Vaccine passports for a vaccine that doesn't stop you catching or spreading covid, marvellous!

The difference between now and last year was we are currently at the peak of a wave this year, whereas this time last year we were right at the start of one.

What a weird thread. I haven't seen any mention of 'full lockdown' in the media, just talk of flattening cases and numbers dropping.

Calm down.

@Oldgoat2021

The booster doubles effectiveness compared to two doses (95% more protection). Also Delta is likely to be the final variant, it's the perfect form of the virus, maybe some small slightly more transmissible variants but nothing major. So it will soon burn itself out. It will be endemic as we go into 2022 and get our boosters.

I don't believe that there will be another lockdown, but "Delta is likely to be the final variant" is very likely untrue/wishful thinking. There will almost certainly be several more variants, they will probably be imported (as was Delta, and possibly the Kent/Alpha as well), they probably will not escape the vaccines entirely, but could the vaccines could be less effective against them.

The most likely evolutionary outcome for SARS-COV2 is that it will over time becoming more transmissible and less lethal, with it becoming just a background cold virus*, similar to other Corona viruses in circulation which are also cold viruses.

*Note that I am not saying that the current version is "just a cold", but that is the evolutionary path it will likely take.

*flatlining not flattening

@DoctorSnortles

What a weird thread. I haven't seen any mention of 'full lockdown' in the media, just talk of flattening cases and numbers dropping.

Calm down.

plan b is in the news today

Plan B is not lockdown.

@DoctorSnortles

Plan B is not lockdown.

But the path to 'freeeeedoooom day' was irreversible, no one knows what will happen this winter.

The most likely evolutionary outcome for SARS-COV2 is that it will over time becoming more transmissible and less lethal, with it becoming just a background cold virus, similar to other Corona viruses in circulation which are also cold viruses.*

It's a realistic possibility in the long term but not the "most likely evolutionary outcome". There is very little evolutionary pressure on SARS-CoV-2 to become less virulent because people are infectious when they are pre-symptomatic and many people are asymptomatic or have mild symptoms. In other words, infectious diseases often evolve to be less virulent because if people feel ill, they don't go out and infect other people so a milder form will be more successful because infectious people with mild symptoms are out and about spreading the disease.

Have people not noticed the number of cases starting to nosedive?

Don't spoil it, HesterShaw

FWIW my own view on "what we're waiting for" is people to get so desperate about constantly changing messages and threatened restrictions that they won't mind so much when Boris et al cash in by selling off what remains of the NHS

First of all it’s not a game and it doesn’t end.

The vaccine uptake was encouraged by the belief that restrictions would no longer be needed once enough people had been vaccinated. Whilst we see some success from vaccination, I have a feeling this winter it will become clear we can not rely on vaccines alone to avert restrictions of some kind.

I’ve said this before but our only way to absolute freedom is a cure and total eradication of the virus, until this happens we must accept restrictions as part of managing the evolution of Covid.

The governments around the world and the WHO know all too well that we are in predicament unlike ever before, long term management of cases and spread is likely the strategy we will ultimately have to adopt if we are to avoid lockdowns.

Investment into health services that can cope with ongoing seasonal swells of cases is crucial along with the acceptance some industries and activities may not be feasible during a waves growth stage.

Isn’t endemic defined by a set number of stable cases for a prolonged period? I don’t think there’s been enough time to use that definition yet.

Aside from that the ‘end-game’ is still up for debate. It may be that cases settle at manageable level at some point (likely due to vaccines) or they don’t and capacity of healthcare has to be increased alongside a lowering of expectations regarding life expectancy and general healthcare provision.

Lockdowns are highly unlikely but other restrictions may be seen again to keep cases manageable. That’s unless the government decide to make a concerted effort to lower cases, but that seems unlikely given how precarious that position would be. It’ll be interesting to see other countries managing delta fare with vaccinations and suppression. We’re taking it as a given that it’s fairly pointless to even try with delta.

Welcome to living in a world with the threat of communicable disease. We’ve had a golden period of controlled disease in the west e.g. TB, measles, polio etc. It’s worth reading up on how we controlled those in years gone by to enjoy the life we previously had. It wasn’t gained by ignoring the diseases.

The endgame is probably when we’ve all had it and hopefully have natural resilience to it so it becomes a mild illness.