- Location
- Manchester
OK, we'll just have to silently take in the full import of the rhetorical question
NWR new zero tolerance covid thread
- Thread starter Tom Cannavan
- Start date
- Location
- England
Not sure about official communication but it was widely discussed at the time as I recall.
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- Manchester
If we continue to monger scare, maybe the increase will not happen in the autumn either, and it will be "mission acomplished".
I do begin to wonder what the end game will be like though. As was pointed out in the Zoe video I posted earlier today, case rates AND death rates are now soaring in Israel, possibly because they were quick off the mark with vaccination, and used too short an interval between vaccinations, so the vaccination immunity is now wearing off - nobody really knows.
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- London
It was, but only a relatively small minority will be engaged by such discussions.
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- London
... just like last year? ... given the very limited understanding of this virus, this is a pretty irresponsible strategy... a similar case could have been made to delay the current wave so that we get the low tide in Winter. Given the random mutations of the virus... purposefully elevating the number of cases in order to manage the pandemy 6 months down the lane looks like foolhardiness to me.
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- Deep South of Cambridgeshire
Surely still too early to call this? Until New Zealand opens up to the rest of the world, we still don't know if their strategy will have proven to be a good one. In a funny way, Covid could be the saviour of inept governement if in the long run it deals an equally bad blow to countries of all levels of competence.
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- UK
When we look back at this period in the future, I firmly believe we will look at the Covid reaction as an act of collective madness.
Yes, but I'm not sure you and I are thinking the same way on what the madness was.
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- UK
I’m absolutely certain we aren’t Claude! Respect your opinion on Covid but we couldn’t disagree more.
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- England
Not sure about the nobody really knows comment. Israel gained priority access to the vaccines in the first place because it agreed to share data from the program. That data is now showing pretty clearly that vaccine effectiveness drops meaningfully about 8 months post the 2nd jab. Hence, the problems in Israel compared to here since most people here still have a few months until they hit that 8 month point. That finding is what is driving western countries this week to announce booster programmes to be administered in q3/4. The UK data also released this week still showed strong protection from the vaccines vs delta which is the most important point. Net, net, if boosters maintain that level of protection we should avoid the Israeli situation.
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- London
Good news on the effectiveness.
It was for me slightly disappointing the latest data suggested the viral load and transmissibility wasn’t as we hoped.
Previous reports on the alpha / beta variants suggested 30-50% less chance of even passing it on and often with lesser viral loads.
The report suggests it makes little difference, though I’ve only briefly read headlines rather than look fully at the numbers. This is a slight blow to the ability to drive down numbers by a very highly vaccinated population.
Version 2 and 3 of the vaccines I remain hopeful for, though the last AZ tweak I saw getting tested / produced was to help counter the Beta version. I fear things have already moved on and they need to be ahead of the game.
One good bit of news I did see was a very early trial on a vaccine that should work against ANY coronavirus but let’s see how that goes.
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- Manchester
I used that phrase, because it is currently a unique situation. Obviously behaviour is also going to influence the number of cases. I agree that the scenario you describe seems to be the likely situation, but there is a lot that remains to be learned about the waning of immunity from different vaccines and vaccination intervals. We simply don't have enough experience yet, though it is beginning to emmerge.
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- Manchester
Yeah, whatever happened to the idea that we could get out vaccine tweaked for a new variant within a 2(?) weeks? I always thought is sounded optimistic, but it depends what exactly that 2 weeks covers - maybe just the research aspect? Nevertheless I had hoped that by now we would have been for some weeks putting vaccine targetted on the delta variant into people's arms.
- Location
- Deep South of Cambridgeshire
Was that mRNA vaccine, or traditional?
- Location
- Manchester
I think, both but mRNA is easier - and cannot remember the precise times that were claimed.
Vaccines recently used in the UK have in any case been mainly Pfizer
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- London
From memory they can produce a tweaked vaccine in under two weeks. Production takes time as a batch typically took around 100 days which they already have reduced to around 60 days. There was talk of creating a huge library of vaccines based on COVID variant DNA, they could pull from the shelf and ramp up production quickly. This is part of the Darlington facility and the Uk production which was due to be up and running mid - late summer.
I need to find the article and look up latest news on versions and testing.
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- Manchester
So by "produce a tweaked vaccine" you mean develop in the lab presumably? And test in the lab too? And must it undergo clinical trials?
Sorry - lots of questions - I don't expect you to answer them all. I'm just wondering to myself if the time to get a vaccine out explains why we don't have one targetted at delta. Or did we just consider that the one we had was good enough.
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- London
No clinical trials as it’s a modification not a brand new drug. So theoretically it can be done and out to manufacturing in 2 weeks.
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- Manchester
So allowing (say) a couple of months to manufacture batches, we could have been rolling out a delta-targetted vaccine by now. I think it was clear delta would be a problem before mid-June wasn't it?
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- England
Definitely worth reading...
Covid: What’s the best way to top up our immunity?
Now we have some protection, do we need to keep boosting or can nature take its course?
www.bbc.co.uk
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- Europe
It says the jury is out, covid infection may give one a broader kind of protection as it's not just focused on the spike, but that: "There is clear evidence that adults who have not had any vaccine dose will have stronger immune defences if they do get vaccinated, even if they have caught Covid before."Definitely worth reading...
Covid: What’s the best way to top up our immunity?
Now we have some protection, do we need to keep boosting or can nature take its course?www.bbc.co.uk
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- Manchester
I am not saying what weight it should be given, but in addition to the points made in the article, in a longer term cost-benefit analysis, after things have settled down a bit, we should also consider the costs of a succession of minor illnesses, both in terms of human discomfort/suffering and days off work.Definitely worth reading...
Covid: What’s the best way to top up our immunity?
Now we have some protection, do we need to keep boosting or can nature take its course?www.bbc.co.uk
Several years before I reached the age where I got a free flu vaccine, after a bout of flu that lasted a few weeks, I decided it was worth a tenner a year to help prevent reoccurrence.
With colds it would be a close-run thing for me if a vaccine were available. Most years I would get at least one cold that lasted over a week, and for a few days made me thoroughly miserable (mainly congestion in sinuses I think), causing me to work a lot less effectively.
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- Location
- London
Yes about 3 months from start to the first batch getting injected. (I believe they have very limited trials while production occurs) The latest article I saw the other day suggested that given variants move so quickly that actually by the time it was produced then rolled out we would be looking at the next variant.
I guess it’s the same as flu seasons, in that they produce the northern hemisphere vaccine based on what the Southern Hemisphere has had. The vaccines are very strain specific hence they need to monitor and change the vaccines every year.
There is research into a broader vaccine and universal vaccine but I’ve not read much at all on this area.
This leads back to COVID specific strains and the fact that previous natural infection may not work so well or protect you for a developing or future strain, just like the vaccines, though so far they are doing a good job. It could be once COVID settles then they will have yearly or biennial versions, like flu vaccinations, but I don’t know.
A universal covid vaccine may well be the next big step.
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- Manchester
In general that could well be the case, but when the strain is particularly infectious (like delta) it is likely to stay dominant - until one even more infectious comes along.
I suppose another reason for not targeting delta is that the immunity it confers to those infected by it might offer protection against the more deadly beta variant.
- Location
- London