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We are back in April 2020 in terms of restrictions and the number of people in hospital. Back then, restrictions weren't eased until July 2020, therefore 3 months or so.
In broad terms, I don't see why this lockdown won't be the same again, i.e. at least 3 months long. The parameters are all the same. Yes, we have the vaccine which will ultimately stop hospital admissions and deaths, but it won't stop transmission (according to a bloke on the news I assume was qualified to say so). So, unless all of the most vulnerable are vaccinated within less than 3 months, it's going 3 months?
i wont be surprised.
prepare for teh worst and hope for teh best!
Mid March at the earliest but wouldn't be surprised if it goes to Easter.
If only so they can release a lot more for Easter and the tourism industry to make some money
I suspect longer than three months, May+ ...
Over promised and under delivered vaccine schedule
Weather in spring 2020 lockdown was way above average
Less businesses voluntarily closing during this lockdown
Businesses getting more lax about safety and prioritising profit in a bid to not go under
More people not conforming to social distancing rules at a time when new strains spread more easily
Positive test results and 1000+ daily deaths will take a lot longer to get under any sort of control compared to spring 2020
Boris will release restrictions too quickly
Etc.
as long as it takes. They shouldn't have stopped the previous lockdown so early.
Poah nails it, the great missed opportunity to stop it in its tracks last year.
Our NHS clients are expecting it to run until after Easter maybe May.
There is real panic in the NHS its the first time i have seen it in 20 years.
The situation is worse than Boris and the boys are telling the public.
Whilst the vaccine won’t fix everything, it should make a difference. Every million elderly/vulnerable people jabbed means a smaller pool of likely ICU inhabitants.
Granted we are starting from a dreadful place, but the end of the tunnel is closer than last time.
Who knows at this point, I don't think we can infer too much from the March lockdown. We are dealing with a new varient that's 70% more transmissible which could mean a much longer lockdown, or even a shorter one if it infects much of the population and [temporary] immunity causes a steeper but shorter infection curve.
Vaccines will make a difference for sure but I feel it will be very minor compared to everything else given the small percentage innoculated, lack of effect on transmissibility (?) and the time lag on immunity. If only the vaccine(s) had come a couple of months earlier they might have made a real difference but I guess we should count our blessings that we have them at all.
Realistically until enough people are vaccinated for herd immunity to work, so over to Boris to break with tradition, and deliver something effective in a timely manner
Using last year's lockdown as a guide and accounting for our much higher starting position I'm fully expecting large restrictions to be in force until the end of April with a partial easing for the summer. They may decide to do a small lifting of them for Easter but that could push infections back up and ruin the summer.
The key to all of this is how well (or more likely how not-crap) the vaccine rollout goes and how well the NHS survives the next few weeks. We won't really find out until either we get to April/May without any major disasters or the NHS is overwhelmed and the news is full of corridors and halls of people dying. Either way I think 2021 is going to be another write-off in general.
I’d say April/May as well.
A combination of fatigue and mid winter will likely extend this one longer than the previous.
mid march - mid april.
once they've vaccinated enough to ease pressure on the ICU wards, the rest of us <50 are getting thrown under the bus I reckon.
The government quietly extended furlough until the end of April a while back
That tells you everything you need to know. They're not expecting us to be out of it before then.
I just hope they learned the lesson from last time. They opened up everywhere at the same time when they should have left some places locked down for a bit longer.
I think Andy Burnham was right when he said they ended lockdown because the infection rates were dropping in London and the South East and our 'good times' PM wanted to open it up, so he opened up everywhere when he should have left the north locked down for another month or so as that was how long we were lagging behind London.
It would have saved us all an awful lot of bother. We were back in some form of lockdown 3 weeks later and we've never come out of it.
Do I think the government will have learned its lesson?
Of course not! They're ****ing idiots who'll do exactly the same again
once they’ve vaccinated enough to ease pressure on the ICU wards, the rest of us <50 are getting thrown under the bus I reckon.
They've pretty much said as much..
Back to tiers end of Feb I think. So, a very light lifting of restrictions and they will run to Easter for sure.
Johnson I mean Peston has just announced that we'll have 2 million doses of vaccine a week in 2 weeks time.
In that case I'll be getting my first jab at start of April (age 56, no other factors) - using https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-uk
Seems to good to be true - I'm betting on 6 months but with some easing from May onwards
once they’ve vaccinated enough to ease pressure on the ICU wards, the rest of us <50 are getting thrown under the bus I reckon.
45 here, and tbh I'm accepting of being thrown under the bus if everyone over 50, all the vulnerable and all of the NHS staff have been vaccinated.
Johnson I mean Peston has just announced that we’ll have 2 million doses of vaccine a week in 2 weeks time.
In that case I’ll be getting my first jab at start of April (age 56, no other factors).
You seem to be assuming here that this government can arrange to get those 2million manufactured doses per week into 2 million people per week.
Then again, you don't specify whether you mean April 2021 or 2022. So perhaps you weren't assuming after all 😉
They've already said it will likely be March at least haven't they?
Meanwhile NZ lifted most of its restrictions months ago. It's almost as if electing a lying populist buffoon as PM wasn't such a great idea....
I was also wondering what happens to people under 55 once the at risk groups are vaccinated and places start to open up.
Is it just herd immunity time then?
I assumed initially that healthy under 55's (or maybe under 40) wouldn't get the vaccine at all but the newspapers seem to suggest the entire population will get a jab (eventually).
We are back in April 2020 in terms of restrictions and the number of people in hospital. Back then, restrictions weren’t eased until July 2020, therefore 3 months or so.
In broad terms, I don’t see why this lockdown won’t be the same again, i.e. at least 3 months long. The parameters are all the same. Yes, we have the vaccine which will ultimately stop hospital admissions and deaths, but it won’t stop transmission (according to a bloke on the news I assume was qualified to say so). So, unless all of the most vulnerable are vaccinated within less than 3 months, it’s going 3 months?
I honestly wouldn't like to guess. Personally I find STW to be very glass half-empty, so I doubt many will agree with me.
That said there are some positive and negatives that will be a factor. None of this is even close to a 'known science' just guesses really.
Negatives:
The main one, we don't really know how much the lockdown had an effect on transmission, and how much was down to the seasons changing. Last time lockdown started in March, we're in Jan. If seasonal differences are a big factor, numbers may not fall again until June/July.
Apathy also plays a part, last March the roads were empty, lots of businesses, expecting a short/sharp lockdown sent most of their staff home etc, locally at least, the roads seem busier, less people are on Furlough now, more people back working from their office/site/factory whatever. Hopefully it all just means Business has adapted and workplaces are more Corvid-compliant.
Positives:
The Obvious one, the Vaccine, even if everyone who wants a vaccine over 65 or in another high-risk cat in the UK gets it, it will reduce Hospitalisation and Deaths by around 90%. Once hospitalisation and deaths falls, the R number matters a lot less. Make no mistake, if the daily death and hospitalisation figures are 10% of what they are now, Boris will want as much of the economy open as possible, if not all of it.
Really unknown:
There's chance that the virus will start to run out of new people to infect. Now I know it's possible to catch it twice, but that's not to say you will catch it every time you're exposed to it and confirmed reinfections are incredibly rare. There have been 2.7m confirmed cases in the UK. Most of the cases in the first lock-down weren't recorded, and we still don't know how many people have actually had the Virus. The New Scientist estimated that only 14% of people with Covid in the UK have actually been reported, this is partly due to poor testing early on and partly because people with mild symptoms never took a test.
So, and this is by no means as given, but just a theory. IF 2.7m represents 14% of People with Covid who had symptoms and took a test, there's likely as many as 16.5m people who had Covid and didn't have a test. So 19.2m people in the UK have had Covid at least once and have some level of immunity. With 50k-ish new cases a day being reported (and if the 14% figure is correct) it's likely that 350k people a day are actually catching it, so in about a month, scarily more people in the UK will have had the virus than not, which will reduce the R rate through lack of new hosts. Here in Wales the figures are much higher, we could in theory have all been exposed to it within 2 months.
Personally I find STW to be very glass half-empty, so I doubt many will agree with me.
Maybe so but the glass has actually been pretty firmly half-empty here for a while now - hopefully the optimists will be right about something eventually.
I was also wondering what happens to people under 55 once the at risk groups are vaccinated and places start to open up.
Is it just herd immunity time then?
I assumed initially that healthy under 55’s (or maybe under 40) wouldn’t get the vaccine at all but the newspapers seem to suggest the entire population will get a jab (eventually).
We're (everyone under 50 and 'Healthy' are in Phase 2 which will start as soon as Phase 1 ends, which frankly is a mystery because frankly so far, phase 1 has been a glimmer of what it was planned to be, but hey Oxford is here now.
I don't think anyone knows, but there's a chance that phase 2 will be different, firstly it won't come until Summer and by then, if the vaccines works as it should, numbers will be very low. The challenge then will be dragging the anti-vaxx/mask/science/****ing common sense people in. They may decide that speed is the greater good than social distancing and it will speed the whole show up massively because they can have a single Nurse/Doctor watch over a couple of dozen people waiting for the 1 in 100k (or whatever) have have an anaphylactic reaction.
Back to tiers end of Feb I think. So, a very light lifting of restrictions and they will run to Easter for sure.
Based on last year, I just can't see this. I naively thought that the 1st lockdown in March 2020 would cause a really sharp, almost instant drop in cases. It didn't. They just slowly rolled off Acutally they increased first then slowly rolled off, then tiers were introduced. I can't see this being any different.
Is this a bit of a rehash of the main thread?
I'm thinking full lockdown will be needed till Easter to get vaccines in and some breathing space for the NHS. Then Tier 4 till summer.
I expect the government will end lockdown after February half term, when only the over 70, Brexit voting Mail readers will have had their vaccinations, as the rest of us don't matter.
Not sure how long this ‘lockdown’ will last, but I think it’ll be June 2022 before we can stop being concerned about tiers & lockdowns etc
45 here, and tbh I’m accepting of being thrown under the bus if everyone over 50, all the vulnerable and all of the NHS staff have been vaccinated.
i'm not, unless the vaccine is available privately.
Is this a bit of a rehash of the main thread?
I wanted to specifically concentrate on what's different to March 2020 lockdown in broad sense. I don't think there's a lot. But Boris is saying Feb half-term.... based on what? It'll be different because you say so?
Personally I find STW to be very glass half-empty, so I doubt many will agree with me.
Maybe so but the glass has actually been pretty firmly half-empty here for a while now – hopefully the optimists will be right about something eventually.
This sounds like the start of an argument I don't want to have, but whilst things have been very shit for a very long time, at lot of people on the main covid thread are yet to have their worst nightmares come true.
Very few posters for example could bring themselves to hope a vaccine would be found within 2-3 years, let alone by the end of 2020.
I'm guessing late spring, early summer depending on how fast the vaccine gets put out.
Vaccination (targeted for front line and the vulnerable first,) should theoretically devestate the spread of the virus, but i've not seen much data on that, as in, you could be relativley safe after vaccination, but to what extent can you still be an asymptomatic carrier/spreader? that's the key part.
I fear a lot of people will simply stop caring, many alreay have, if they even did in the first place.
Vaccination (targeted for front line and the vulnerable first,) should theoretically devestate the spread of the virus
News guy said otherwise. The vaccine doesn't stop you spreading it. It just stops you getting serious symptoms that need hospital treatment
IF 2.7m represents 14% of People with Covid who had symptoms and took a test, there’s likely as many as 16.5m people who had Covid and didn’t have a test. So 19.2m people in the UK have had Covid at least once and have some level of immunity.
I'm with you here....
With 50k-ish new cases a day being reported (and if the 14% figure is correct) it’s likely that 350k people a day are actually catching it,
Not sure this bit necessarily holds though, given the different levels of testing between March and now? My guess is that the case numbers are a much closer reflection of the real prevalence of COVID now than they were last spring.
but to what extent can you still be an asymptomatic carrier/spreader? that’s the key part.
There some data from the Moderna trial that shows that it both reduces the spread and reduces the time that vaccinated people are contagious for, if/when enough people are vaccinated it will have an effect on the R number.
I think most experts are reasonably confident that the vaccines will reduce the spread as well as protect people who've been vaccinated, but it will be months before it can be proved.
As TiRed has pointed out, there's no evidence to support that it will limit transmission, however I'm fairly sure he mentioned that he would be surprised if it didn't - which I tend to agree with.
FDA Q&A also agrees.
They just can’t say the vaccine stops transmission because the trial wasn’t there to find that out.
but it will be months before it can be proved.
Yeah that's the issue really, people might just get lax in the meantime, causing unesseasry new infections, so ASSUMING we can roll out the vaccine faster than we already are (HA!), we'll still be seeing a rise in infection and hostpitalisation for a few weeks/months to come before we see the effect of vaccination in the statistics.
IF 2.7m represents 14% of People with Covid who had symptoms and took a test, there’s likely as many as 16.5m people who had Covid and didn’t have a test. So 19.2m people in the UK have had Covid at least once and have some level of immunity.
I’m with you here….
With 50k-ish new cases a day being reported (and if the 14% figure is correct) it’s likely that 350k people a day are actually catching it,
Not sure this bit necessarily holds though, given the different levels of testing between March and now? My guess is that the case numbers are a much closer reflection of the real prevalence of COVID now than they were last spring.
It's only a guess really, but we also have to consider how many people who get it, just don't know about it. If everyone who caught it had noticeable symptoms, self-isolation would have had a greater effect. Early in the pandemic, it was said 80% of people get no symptoms, or such mild symptoms they wouldn't notice, later that estimate grew to as high as 90%, I think it's been revised down now, but even if it's 75% of people and everyone with Symptoms is actually asking for and getting a test, it's still a quarter of a million people a day catching the virus.
They just can’t say the vaccine stops transmission because the trial wasn’t there to find that out.
Indeed, and why would it? first problems first, but of course that's the second biggest question.
so ASUMING we can roll aout the vaccine faster than we already are (HA!), we’ll still be seeing a rise in infection and hostpitalisation fore a few weeks/months to come before we see the effect of vaccination in the statistics.
It's really frustrating isn't it and no one can really agree on what the bottle neck it.
The Government are still talking about getting enough 'volunteers' to administer it. **** a duck, My Wife is seeing 2 patients a day at the moment because of Covid, give her a box of vaccines and she'll bang through 20 a day on her own, gladly, with a big smile on her face. Shitfire, with a bit of process and logistics planning I reckon I could have Nurses doing 1 every 5-10 minutes with another watching over 10-15 of them in a socially distanced post-jab waiting room.
Reading the NHS trust e-mails my Wife gets, it's all be down to supply up to now, the Pfizer requirements are hassle, the centre for NHS staff near us is massive, but most of the stations are empty because we were only getting 2000 doses a week, they could handle 10 times that now without any extra resources. I'd hope they'll be at full capacity soon.
The Government are still talking about getting enough ‘volunteers’ to administer it. **** a duck, My Wife is seeing 2 patients a day at the moment because of Covid, give her a box of vaccines and she’ll bang through 20 a day on her own, gladly, with a big smile on her face. Shitfire, with a bit of process and logistics planning I reckon I could have Nurses doing 1 every 5-10 minutes with another watching over 10-15 of them in a socially distanced post-jab waiting room.
Reading the NHS trust e-mails my Wife gets, it’s all be down to supply up to now, the Pfizer requirements are hassle, the centre for NHS staff near us is massive, but most of the stations are empty because we were only getting 2000 doses a week, they could handle 10 times that now without any extra resources. I’d hope they’ll be at full capacity soon.
Yeh it's a question of manufacture and logistics I suppose. if every GP practice had a few in the fridge, they could simply jab everyone who came into the surgery, for any unrelated reasons.
In better news, my nan, whos 95, had had her first injection, she's due the second one in a few days, so it is rolling out. She's my only surviving family member so I might dare to see her in person some time soon.
Every million elderly/vulnerable people jabbed means a smaller pool of likely ICU inhabitants.
The consultant from St Georges interviewed by BBC earlier said he had 20, 30 and 40 year old patients dying in ICU beds. It's got away from us in the second half of 2020 due to piss poor management by the Dunning-Kruger politicians. See also the idea to get one jab in everyones arm and then a second when they can (I'm not convinced they will be able to meet the 12 week target for injection 2).
Our kids are going to be paying for this for many decades to come.
Edit 1:Actually getting needles into arms will be difficult in some places as they don't have a hub. Places like West Suffolk (Hello Hatt Mancock) & Suffolk Coastal (Hello Therese Coffey) are without, as is Cambridge. There was a list on a link from a Guardian article yesterday which I'll try to find and link to later.
Edit2: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/118-areas-england-without-covid-23254368 Apparently 25% of the population do not have access to a hub!
Is transmissibility important? As long as people don't get sick enough to end up in hospital or dead, do we care?*
*as in, should we have limits imposed on businesses and personal actions?
Yes, we have the vaccine which will ultimately stop hospital admissions and deaths, but it won’t stop transmission (according to a bloke on the news I assume was qualified to say so).
I think the simple answer is nobody knows for sure if the vaccine will stop (or substantially reduce) onwards transmission. There just isn't enough data for any manufacturer to make such product claims with either one or two doses. However, there's certainly a possibility it will (and depending which expert you speak to that might be anything from "its possible but unknown" to "many other vaccines do have this effect at least in the short term"). However as the vaccine is prioritised to those most at risk, and logically those most at risk are doing their best to socially isolate they probably don't break as many transmission chains if it does prevent transmission, as if they vaccinated the socially active.
So, unless all of the most vulnerable are vaccinated within less than 3 months, it’s going 3 months?
Well depending on who you call the vulnerable - Borris was talking March, Nicola as talking May.
Sturgeon hinted at May today.
I think the reality will be a date in the middle, Sturgeon not wanting to underestimate, and Doris just being Doris.
I wouldn't be hastily booking any early summer holidays. The difference between March & April 20 to now is there are lots more people at work in "Covid safe" offices & construction etc. This seems to be the judging by how busy the roads are in my way in to work compared to lockdown 1
My hospital currently has 25 more Covid + inpatients than at the peak in April last year. Add that to less staff due to illness & isolating and those seconded to administering the vaccine and the near future looks grim.
Those people at work will hopefully be wearing masks all day this time round given the more infectious strain? Only that will make a normal summer more likely
my wife (secondary school teacher - North Kent) reckons there will be very few kids back in school before Easter.
I think the Government will lift the 'lockdown' at some point in March, with most of the country going straight into Tier 4.
I think the Tier system will be in place until May/June at the earliest and as Whitty mentioned earlier some restrictions will be needed over next winter.
I think you've got to be pretty bold to be booking a summer holiday abroad right now...
The lockdown should last a very long time.
How long the government keep it going is a different thing.
We are vaccinating the elderly and venerable - they are not the ones likely to spread it.
So it will keep spreading, the population are already lax in taking precautions. A lot also see the vaccine as being the end in sight, so will relax even further.
Hmmm I reckon you're all being pretty optimistic. We live on a very densely populated island with crap weather and an aged population. I stuck my details in one of the "when will you be vaccinated" calculators. Bear in mind I am almost 54. Current estimate is December 21-Jan 22. If I put in that I am mildly asthmatic it suggests I may be done by Oct 21. So I reckon we can expect to see a genearal improvement to the current situation in the summer of 2022.
. I stuck my details in one of the “when will you be vaccinated” calculators. Bear in mind I am almost 54. Current estimate is December 21-Jan 22.
At 51 and no health problems I was forecast June-July 2021?
That’s your first dose, second is a fair bit later.
e.g.
Given a vaccination rate of 1,000,000 a week and an uptake of 70.6%, you should expect to receive your first dose of vaccine between 21/07/2021 and 04/10/2021.
You should then get your second dose by between 13/10/2021 and 27/12/2021.
Given a vaccination rate of 1,000,000 a week and an uptake of 70.6%, you should expect to receive your first dose of vaccine between 18/05/2021 and 06/06/2021.
You should then get your second dose by between 10/08/2021 and 29/08/2021.
Aged 62 and no underlying health issues. Nicola Sturgeon today said that everyone over 50 would be vaccinated by May.
Me too, I think it was the Omni calculator but that was at least a week, maybe too ago.
.
We are vaccinating the elderly and venerable – they are not the ones likely to spread it.
Curious - are they vaccinating dementia patients in care homes? What's the criteria?
If it keeps mutating, as viruses are prone to do, will we be starting all over again by the time we’ve finished vaccinating everyone?
Like painting the Forth Rail Bridge (until they bought decent paint).
@montgomery my nan is 91 with advanced dementia in a care home. She's booked in this week at some point for a vaccination. I find it fairly bizarre tbh.....imho she's got a fairly low quality of life (unaware/unable to comprehend that just before Xmas she became a great grandma) I guess that the only real value of her getting the vaccine is that it eases the Covid pressure on the NHS?
NS is away with the faeries if she thinks that. My gran in fife is 93 and hasn't heard anything yet - so imagine how long it it will be before she gets both jabs? Parents in their 60s (also Fife) haven't heard anything. My sister is a nurse and has done all the COVID vax training (Fife again - a pattern!) and is currently sitting at home twiddling her thumbs*
*sending me vids of the kids doing robot dances.
Ah to add, my nan is in England not Scotland. Is the vaccine not broadly a UK wide roll out then? It seems to vary from town to town from what I can see mind!
That's one of my fears here. Right at the beginning I remember it being described as slippery - i.e. prone to mutating.
On a positive note I think from the limited amount I've read that the RNA type vaccine is more easily adaptable so maybe able to be changed faster to respond to mutations.
There's also the wider societal problems that go with huge swathes of the population in social isolation and financial distress for extended periods of time.
I think from the main Covid thread that there's a suggestion that long term planning for living in a Covid world is also going on in the background.
The huge challenge with this lockdown is also lockdown fatigue from parts of the population (look at some of the posts on here or any local Facebook group). A lot of people are clearly pissed off with being essentially imprisoned in their own homes and it's painfully obvious round here that compliance with the main stuff (household mixing etc.) is definitely less than it was in lockdown 1. There's only so many times you can tell the population that it'll be alright in a couple of months before they stop believing it and stop seeing any point in complying.
My wife (a nurse) says it’s here to stay, so learning to live with it is the only option. The flu jab is different each year depending on the prevelant strain(s) each year, so I guess the COVID-19 jab can be too.
this seems like a duplicate thread to me. @TiRed will fact check I hope?
Sturgeon hinted at May today.
Oh ffs. I have lots of things to do i cannot do in lockdown by may. I am going to have the mother of all tantrums!
In Scotland at least the priority is first all the vaccinators get the jab. Then all care home residents and staff. It may seem daft to give it to someone at the end of their life with a poor quality of life but think a bit more and they could become a source of infection for others in the homes who may not be in that situation.
Despite being 60 myself and working in healthcare and my parents being 80+ and vulnerable I am happy with this order for priorities.
JCVI advises the order of priority for the coronavirus vaccination is:
residents in a care home for older adults and their carers
all those 80 years of age and over and frontline health and social care workers
all those 75 years of age and over
all those 70 years of age and over and clinically extremely vulnerable individuals
all those 65 years of age and over
all individuals aged 16 years to 64 years with underlying health conditions which put them at higher risk of serious disease and mortality
all those 60 years of age and over
all those 55 years of age and over
all those 50 years of age and over
They just can’t say the vaccine stops transmission because the trial wasn’t there to find that out.
You're right, of course but the AZ/Oxford study outcome was positive nasopharyngeal swab PCR and the result was bewtween 62-90% better than the control group.
Since this is primarily an airborne transmission route, big reductions in detectable virus in the upper respiratory tract SEEM like good news in terms of transmissibility
[my trust - biggish English teaching hosp - is hoping to have all willing staff done for 1st dose within the next 2 weeks or so, maybe half that]
On mutations, don't be fooled by 'flu - that's a segmented virus genome and has bigger tendency to mutate (or really just reassemble differently). All viruses mutate and evolve as a result but not "usually" all that fast for coronaviruses. The trouble with this one is it's effectively a new virus in a new host so it is probably not that well-suited to its "task" yet and I think you could argue that this might drive quicker evolution before it calms down a bit.
@scaredypants thanks for your explanatory comments on the mutation point (I can't keep up with the volumes/full detail on the main thread having not really followed it from early enough in all this but do dip in and out of the recent bits when I have the energy) 🙂
The vaccine will stop those dying now from dying. It won’t relieve pressure on ICUs until we reach those in the next group down and then some. Hospital pressures will reduce once we get to the over 50s. That’s assuming that cross reactivity is sustained and new strains are not resistant.
Three months looks prudent for control of force of infection. It won’t be half-term.
We are vaccinating the elderly and venerable – they are not the ones likely to spread it.
So it will keep spreading, the population are already lax in taking precautions
My thinking, too...
Easy for the retired to sit at home and live of their pensions. Not so easy for those with jobs, mortgages, families to sit around. Not everyone has the luxury of having a few grand in savings/a buy to let to live off or being able to work from home.
Germany's lockdown has already been extended until the end of Jan. In sure it won't be long until that's revised.
The elderly and vulnerable are far more likely to die - and in the case of care homes act as potential points for spread.
RE: Very elderly people with dementia and vaccines.
This a very tricky subject to discuss. Early in the Pandemic I guess we'll all remember that the Government wasn't counting Care Home deaths in the official figures. The reason was probably simply because they wanted to keep the numbers as low as possible on paper of course, but there was some justification.
When the press talk about Care Home etc, they paint a picture of Old People sat in chairs having a sing-along in sheltered accom, but really, that's not the reality of it. This one of those things where I seem to be at odds with most people, I don't aim to offend, but Care Homes are often places where we put our loved ones to insolate from as many things as possible that may cause them to die of 'natural causes' to save ourselves to pain of mourning.
That said, there simply isn't time to write a procedure and make it law that says "If quality of live is below a given standard, then the vaccine won't be given". The problem being a lot of people can't accept that their loved one is dying, and if they're 'Denied' a vaccine (in Daily Mail speak) they might even try to sue.
It won't make much of a difference to the NHS, people in Care Homes rarely go to Hospital, they certainly won't see an ITU. They will have in-house Nurses to care for them.
I don't suppose there's any point in discussing the why's and how's of their vaccinations. I don't our local District Nurse teams are doing care homes this week, they might even be done by now.
If it keeps mutating, as viruses are prone to do, will we be starting all over again by the time we’ve finished vaccinating everyone?
Like painting the Forth Rail Bridge (until they bought decent paint).
I think we need it to mutate (evolve is probably a better word).
If I was going to bet on it, I guess over the nest couple of years as we're exposed to it more (either directly or because we had a vaccine) our immune systems will develop to fight it better) and the virus will evolve to be a better virus, I.E. one that doesn't kill it's host.
They won't have to start all over again, but they will need to modify the vaccines, at least in the short-term, as they do with the flu vaccine every year.
No one really knows what winter 21/22 will be like, I saw one of the gutter rags today saying we'll all need to go into lockdown again next winter, we might, or it might be a case that the vaccine will work so well we'll effectively eradicate it (seems unlikely) or we'll need continually have vaccines every 12 weeks for years, or we'll need one autumn, or just some people will need it every autumn like the flu vaccine or it'll just become another 'cold'.
but Care Homes are often places where we put our loved ones to insolate from as many things as possible that may cause them to die of ‘natural causes’ to save ourselves to pain of mourning.
A little simplistic as the homes cover a vast spectrum of people from those with degenerative brain diseases to those with severe physical impairment who require a team to maintain them. Some of these people are old some are teenagers. We're vaccinating them all as it would be inhuman to kill the younger element who have lots to offer. These tend to be the group in between the extremes that require supported living and possibly medical care while holding down a functioning place in society.
We are vaccinating the elderly and venerable
So apart from Bede who is on the list?
An interesting perspective P-Jay it sounds like you see elderly care homes more like palliative care homes, where we send the old to die quietly out of the way, just not in name...
That aside I think the fundamental problem I've noticed in the UK over the last year is a collective inability to deal with "bad news", and a generally "short-termist" attitude
We have a government who got in power by overselling and glossing over potential negatives. And a wider public who have become accustomed to that sort of public discourse and become focussed on the "how am I affected" element of every announcement, rather than considering the bigger picture.
A New year lockdown was entirely predictable back at the start of November, probably earlier. LD2 was relatively short and less restrictive than LD1, and was clearly planned to try and get the masses back out shopping and meeting up so BoJo could be our best mate and "save Christmas"...
Vaccination hasn't been proven to stop recipients from spreading CV19, so I really think the responsible thing to do would be keep restrictions in place until a majority of the population have been vaccinated, all this talk about 30m doses by mid-feb isn't actually very helpful, artificial deadlines and arbitrary numbers are intended solely to reassure, but really I reckon something more like 50-60m people vaccinated should be the point where resumption of "normality" can begin to be considered*...
(*Unqualified speculation of course)...
I appreciate these are especially difficult circumstances in which to govern/administer a country, but I don't believe the decision makers in power are at all capable, and have now repeatedly failed to learn any lessons or heed expert advice. A large proportion of the deaths and serious CV19 infections since early December were entirely avoidable...
So apart from Bede who is on the list?
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COVID-19 vaccine ingredients
The 2 approved COVID-19 vaccines do not contain any animal products or egg.
From the NHS website, made me chucckle.
restricted contact between people reduces the spread of this virus irrespective of the time of year.
there is no evidence previous infection with this virus confers immunity.
when the NHS really comes under pressure the ICUs will be filling up with those best placed to deal with the physical trauma that treatment puts the body under. the rest will be made comfortable as best they can be.
roughly 20% of the UK population (~66million) are 65 years old or over.
FWIW prior to this pandemic the life expectancy of a 65 year old male was 85, and female 87, with a 1 in 4 chance of making it to 92 and 94 respectively. sauce there are just under 300,000 over 65s resident in care homes in england and wales. or at least there were in 2011
Curious – are they vaccinating dementia patients in care homes? What’s the criteria?
Yes they are. I believe that's been part of the delay in getting vaccines rolled out in care homes. Certainly with the pfizer jag you want to do all the people at a location at once because of the transport issues, but they've had to go through the hoops of getting consent from people who aren't on site.