End game

[screwcovid]

What do you think it is or we going to have this every winter ? Seems like never gonna end

@AlecTrevelyan006

The end game is digital passports and social credits. We will never be free again. The future has arrived early.

We have never been free.

War on drugs, anyone?

Goodness, for those so concerned about 'freedom', there seems to be a hell of a lot more desire to be free to spread an infectious virus that kills and disables many. Yet barely a peep about the lack of freedom to choose a drug of choice (alcohol excepted). Despite drugs (if safe legal medical grade dose) having potential to harm only the user.

Smoking ban? No freedom to smoke - for people to just 'live with' the risk of smoking in indoor public places (despite the net economic gain of smoking).

Digital passports and social credit? Well that's kind of already a reality for people, through DWP benefit applications or HMRC tax payments.

Digital freedom/privacy? Google, Apple, Microsoft, etc already know everything we do.

Unless you live completely off grid, you're not free.

I think it will be for the next 5 years. Restrictions lifted every spring/summer but every winter, the cases will skyrocket and lockdown would be an option that is explored. We will need booster vaccines and perhaps vaccine passports will apply to more venues but I don't see UK making vaccines mandatory.

Agree. I think it'll fluctuate for at least a few more years though life in summer is already pretty much normal. People may book vacations at shorter notice based on destinations with lower covid numbers. People will be more cautious with winter events or getaways. More parties or celebrations will take part outdoors and testing becomes the norm.

I think this winter is much better than the last one! And this is coming from someone living in Austria, currently in the 4th hard lockdown. The news came a bit as a shock but once people got their heads around it, it's the same old drill everyone's used to. There's almost an odd familiarity with it. People are sharing tips on their favourite lockdown outdoor walks that could be combined with nice takeout locations.

The massive difference this year is that there are vaccines and I feel much safer. I'm very grateful to live in a country where vaccine access and PCR testing is incredibly easy and free of charge. My entire family is triple vaxxed so even if I or my parents caught it, it would very unlikely become serious. If we need another booster next year then that's perfectly fine.

Vaccine passport/apps have also been a thing here for a long time. I don't find it any different to showing your boarding pass at the airport or being asked for ID at the door of a club. The only slightly annoying thing is that if you forget your phone at home or in the car then you can't get into certain places. Same for forgetting your mask. I was really looking forward to trying a new bakery on the weekend but lost my mask on the way there and couldn't go in :(

But these are ridiculous first world problems compared to the carnage covid has wreaked on other countries. I think it's an extreme privilege to even live in a country with mrna vaccines.

I personally love social distancing and that can stay for as long as it needs! God knows why it was ever normal for strangers to cough right next to your head, fucking horrific!

@screwcovid

What do you think it is or we going to have this every winter ? Seems like never gonna end

It's largely up to our governments and the policies they implement.

The more cases, the more opportunities for the virus to mutate, the more variants will be created, the more chance that we'll get some more troublesome ones, the more the pandemic will be extended, the more years of covid chaos.

It all hinges on controlling spread.

The sooner we learn that, the sooner it's over.

So removing covid protections in schools leading to massive numbers of cases in children is a bad idea.

NPIs like masks/ventilation//air filtration/ smaller classes are better.

Our social credit system:

Those who commit the 'crime' of being made redundant, getting sick, people who are poor.

They're on low 'social credit'. Very low. Many aren't allowed the dignity of choosing their own food. Instead they have to take what's given at food banks. No fresh varied diets for them.

The punishment isn't enough in growing numbers of cases. For increasing numbers, their low social credit bars them from settled housing.

Yeah. We already have a social credit system here.

@PrincessNutNuts
But the current situation in Europe shows that it’s possible to get sudden exponential spread despite all these NPIs. So what do you do when that happens? If you believe that it’s very important to control the spread you then call for lockdowns so you end up in a cycle of lockdowns and NPIs which make life completely miserable (particularly when implemented on a semi-permanent basis) and are horrendously expensive. There is no example in Europe which I can think of of NPIs being sufficient to keep covid cases at a consistent low level without very harsh periodic lockdowns. That will be even more true with omicron.

I’d much prefer that my child catch covid than that he spend his whole education in a mask in a socially distanced cold classroom with most of the enriching or fun experiences which school usually provides missing periodically missing weeks of education because someone in his class had covid.

With Europe, look at the hospitalisations and deaths, not case rates.

And also, why the western centric attitude. Go East to learn how to take proper mitigations. Europe did more than the UK but that's not hard.

We would do better to learn from Asia Pacific when it comes to infection control measures.

It’s said a pandemic lasts four years. We have to get vaccine rates up across the world, especially as we are a major airline hub, my thoughts are in a couple years it will be annual boosters like flu

Then we await the next one

[quote Chessie678]@PrincessNutNuts
But the current situation in Europe shows that it’s possible to get sudden exponential spread despite all these NPIs. So what do you do when that happens? If you believe that it’s very important to control the spread you then call for lockdowns so you end up in a cycle of lockdowns and NPIs which make life completely miserable (particularly when implemented on a semi-permanent basis) and are horrendously expensive. There is no example in Europe which I can think of of NPIs being sufficient to keep covid cases at a consistent low level without very harsh periodic lockdowns. That will be even more true with omicron.

I’d much prefer that my child catch covid than that he spend his whole education in a mask in a socially distanced cold classroom with most of the enriching or fun experiences which school usually provides missing periodically missing weeks of education because someone in his class had covid.[/quote]
Most of the rises happened after NPIs were removed or reduced because of political pressure.

We need agile systems in place to calibrate NPIs to keep cases low.

Rising cases require quick action to recalibrate.

It might look like "just in case" to some, but not to anyone who remembers rapid exponential growth from previously in the pandemic.

With rapid exponential growth waiting until cases create hospitalisations and deaths is always the wrong move.

That's what gives you lockdowns.

Some countries have had no lockdowns or perhaps short ones when politics has got in the way of implementing effective NPIs

And they also have less disruption to their way of life and less covid chaos, and death.

The U.K. way is not the only way.

Your child wouldn't need to catch a potentially lab escaped virus - and therefore both new and unknown, with possible long-term effects (Long Covid) if proper mitigation measures were/are in place.

HEPA filters, masks (East Asian children manage, yet still have a very good education, and fun times too), vaccines. All help reduce the risks and limit the spread.

And I repeat. There is a light at the end of the tunnel.

Sotrovimab and other monoclonal antibodies, plus the antivirals (and more drug research is going on right now).

In the future we'll have a better arsenal. More knowledge about SARS-COV-2, vaccines (tweaked if and when necessary, same as flu). And more widely available treatments.

Then we await the next one

Or, we can hope for a miraculous case of lessons learned?

We (humans) could, if we we wanted to, prevent the next potential pandemic ever becoming a pandemic.

Next time, as soon as a new virus is known of, whole world shuts borders for two months - with real quarantine for genuinely essential travel. Cases already about quickly tracked and isolated. And Bob's your uncle. Pandemic avoided.

But sadly, it does seem true the saying - us being doomed to repeat the mistakes of history. However we can but hope.

And, yes worldwide policy agreement is almost unknown. Almost... Around the late 19th/early 20th century, the war on drugs was adopted by every single country in the world.

I think global vaccine coordination needs to become a thing.

If the whole world boosts in July, August and September every year we might avoid or ameliorate annual new variant- induced winter waves.

@Tealightsandd Next time, as soon as a new virus is known of, whole world shuts borders for two months - with real quarantine for genuinely essential travel.

Of course we know who would be a special case to who the rules wouldn't apply...

It will gradually get less dangerous and degenerate into another common cold type thing over time. There's some evidence that omicron may be a step in that direction.

In the meantime now vaccines are widely available I do think we should be getting on with our lives. If not now, then when?

I was locked down with the best of them when it was dangerous but now we're triple jabbed and it's definitely becoming the case that the rules are the problem for us not the virus.

P.s. I am in America so all children over 5 have the opportunity to be vaccinated. That might be something to hang on for in the uk.

Fuck knows. I’m giving it until Feb 2023, and if these endless cycles of hysteria and restrictions are still around, I’m finding a nice cliff or bridge to jump off. I’m far more scared of the government and lack of critical thinking amongst the general population than I am of death. So if death is the only way out, then so be it.

@Aria999

It will gradually get less dangerous and degenerate into another common cold type thing over time. There's some evidence that omicron may be a step in that direction.

In the meantime now vaccines are widely available I do think we should be getting on with our lives. If not now, then when?

I was locked down with the best of them when it was dangerous but now we're triple jabbed and it's definitely becoming the case that the rules are the problem for us not the virus.

I see people say that a lot, but I don't see evidence that covid is moving that way. It's evolutionary direction so far seems to be to become more transmissible and more able to evade immunity. Virulence could go either way as far as I can tell. The virus doesn't care if you get sick or die after it's already spread.

"If not now when?"

Once enough of the population are fully vaccinated, and when there isn't an unknown new variant growing exponentially.

And as for covid not being a danger to us any more. I think there's life in the old dog yet. Let's circle back to this in a few weeks and see if you still feel the same.

@Aria999

P.s. I am in America so all children over 5 have the opportunity to be vaccinated. That might be something to hang on for in the uk.

Have you seen the Boston waste water tracking?

It's up to the same levels as a year ago, pre vaccines.

www.mwra.com/biobot/biobotdata.htm

Stage 1: Digital ID

@Chessie678

Covid for vaccinated people has a very comparable IFR to flu now.

Originally covid was thought to have an IFR of 0.5-1%.

Vaccines appear to be over 90% effective against death. Maybe they will be less effective against omicron but we don't know that yet and omicron may have a lower IFR anyway.

So with vaccines you are looking at an IFR of 0.1-0.2%. That is broadly consistent with the numbers dying against reported cases.

The IFR may be higher in unvaccinated people but these people are more likely to be young, in which case the IFR of covid is much lower anyway.

Covid is more infectious but then flu infects c.20% people per year, many of whom are asymptomatic.

So I think they are much more comparable than they were.

But that said, I couldn't begin to guess how long restrictions will go on for and how often they will come back as that's really a political and social question. The public seem to have broadly accepted these measures and I can imagine there being reasonable support for another lockdown if the government whipped up sufficient fear.

I think measures which aim to reduce transmission of such an infectious virus and, in particular lockdowns, are a completely insane, damaging, inefficient and cruel way to manage hospital capacity on an ongoing basis (we could, for example, increase hospital capacity instead and we could have started doing that 20 months ago) but they seem to be increasingly accepted as a normal "sensible" thing to do .

Trying to prevent people spreading any illnesses between each other on an ongoing basis could be very damaging. We've already seen young children's immunity affected by all these measures. If we go on with that approach indefinitely, normal illnesses like flu and colds come become much more dangerous. And then you need more restrictions to reduce transmission of these illnesses and you are stuck in a cycle of restrictions.

If omicron is actually going to infect 1m a day (and I'll believe that when I see it) there probably is an end in sight though, at least until the next variant. Alternatively, if the money really does run out and once people start to see the economic impact of spending £320bn on delaying the time at which people catch covid by a few months maybe that will be the end of it.

Nothing more to add. Great post and exactly how I feel about the whole situation.

I’m very grateful for vaccinations, will happily get boosters and think the ongoing scare mongering needs to stop.

We need more trained hospital staff. Get to it government.

@PrincessNutNuts

I am more interested in serious illnesses and death than case numbers.

Unfortunately we have a big political divide which means many people who could be vaccinated are not and will die unnecessarily but at some point I feel that has to become their own lookout.

Those same people are normally the keenest to open everything back up.

Good point, Chessie.

By the way, viruses mostly don't go endemic through "evolving to become less dangerous" per se. The process mostly happens through people gradually building up immunity through repeated exposure so that the virus is no longer novel.

Most viruses aren't lab escaped. Which SARS-CoV-2 might be. So we can't predict with absolute confidence about people building up immunity through repeated exposure.

And of course - what with it (for now) being a new virus complete with new mutations (even if it does turn out to be a natural origin), huge numbers of people won't have repeated exposure.... Because they'll be dead.

am more interested in serious illnesses and death than case numbers.

Long Covid can be a serious illness.

Case numbers are of course also very relevant because:

a) More cases = more hospitalisations, and therefore less capacity for any medical care - non Covid included (and more burnt our/ill/dead HCP)

and

b) More cases = more transmission = higher risk of mutations.