Vaccine Hesitancy or Lack of Covid Suppression Strategy?

keepingquiet

Media storm winding everyone up as usual. As if there isn't enough going on in this world...

So you think the spikes should be ignored?

Why do you want to know the % of people who have refused vaccination? Anyone who refuses vaccination other than if they have a medical reason not to have the jab, is anti social in my opinion. I don’t think it matters whether it’s 10% or 90%, they are anti social because in order to eventually be free of the threat of this disease we need a very high % of the population to be vaccinated. Arrogant/antisocial people act selfishly by refusing the vaccine and rely on others to have it to achieve the necessary % of population to get herd immunity.
I saw on the news that the majority of people in hospital with the Indian variant Covid were not vaccinated even though they had been eligible for a vaccination, and/or they had had only one vaccination very recently. That was in a town in the north west.
Are we discussing the Indian variant and lack of vaccination or are we just on this thread to have another go at the government? I’ve already agreed the government acted too slowly. They should have locked down our borders at the beginning last year, but they didn’t, and they were far too later to introduce hotel quarantine/red list with India. However if people make an antisocial decision not to get vaccinated, then that responsibility lies with the people concerned.

Well said maddyone absolutely agree. Yes the government were certainly slow to put India on the ‘red list’ but there is no excuse for people not being vaccinated when offered other than medical reasons . The government have done very well re the vaccination roll out and I was amazed to hear that the MP for Bolton instead of encouraging constituents to come forward and be vaccinated was blaming the government. This is irresponsible and every means possible should be used to get people vaccinated.

Before anybody "blames" people for not being vaccinated, it's worth looking at a couple of facts:

Bolton’s vaccination rate was in line with the national average, with 88.9% of the 40+ population receiving their first dose compared with 89.8% England-wide. However, there are variations in vaccination rates within the local authority. In Lever Edge, 84.7% of those aged 40 and over are vaccinated. The area with the second highest case rate, Rumworth South, reported a vaccination rate of 79.4%.

But some parts of Bolton with higher-than-average vaccination rates are also experiencing a high caseload: more than 91% of over-40s in Lostock and Ladybridge and Over Hulton have been vaccinated, yet the case rates there stood at 557 and 521 per 100,000 respectively.

Dr Deepti Gurdasani, a clinical epidemiologist and senior lecturer at Queen Mary University, said the evidence also shows that the rises in cases are most prominent among school-age children and those under 30, who are not yet eligible for vaccination.

If anyone chooses not to be vaccinated as opposed to unable due to medical reasons then they have to take responsibility for their well-being, maybe stay in lockdown.

I do not think that the they should be a reason to jeopardise the U.K. (or any other Country) opening up and returning to pre-Covid times.

Gwyneth

Well said maddyone absolutely agree. Yes the government were certainly slow to put India on the ‘red list’ but there is no excuse for people not being vaccinated when offered other than medical reasons . The government have done very well re the vaccination roll out and I was amazed to hear that the MP for Bolton instead of encouraging constituents to come forward and be vaccinated was blaming the government. This is irresponsible and every means possible should be used to get people vaccinated.

Constituents in Bolton are coming forward to be vaccinated.

GrannyGravy13

If anyone chooses not to be vaccinated as opposed to unable due to medical reasons then they have to take responsibility for their well-being, maybe stay in lockdown.

I do not think that the they should be a reason to jeopardise the U.K. (or any other Country) opening up and returning to pre-Covid times.

But people in Bolton haven't chosen not to be vaccinated anymore than anywhere else.

growstuff obviously the extra vaccination buses and pop-ups are beginning to reach more of the population. If they were not needed why would they have been deployed in these areas?

People of any age can put their name down on clinics stand-by lists.
This system works well to avoid any wastage of vaccines, I am aware of many under 30’s having their first vaccine including my DD.

You beat me to it, I was just about to post the same information growstuff!

This is an interesting article from Nick Triggle of the BBC, who doesn't seem to have fallen for the catchy headlines the rest of the MSM use: www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57150871

Interesting comment from the article:

There have been plenty of experts questioning whether Monday's unlocking was worth the risk, including members of Independent Sage and the British Medical Association.

But it is worth noting that these are the same critics who warned against the full re-opening of schools in March, saying it would lead to a surge. They also said the January lockdown was not tough enough to bring cases of the UK variant down and objected to delaying the gap between vaccine doses to 12 weeks with the BMA calling for the gap to halved.

I expect they are deploying buses etc in the target areas to scoop up the small percentage of people they didn't get the first time round.

GrannyGravy13

growstuff obviously the extra vaccination buses and pop-ups are beginning to reach more of the population. If they were not needed why would they have been deployed in these areas?

Because younger people, who weren't previously eligible, are now being vaccinated. The biggest surge in cases has been amongst those who hadn't been offered a vaccine.

Vaccinations have been brought forward in Bolton - that's why there are extra facilities.

I have started a new thread which posters to this thread may find interesting called The Science. It's not vaccine hesitancy. It's was imported by travel but it is the transmissibility that matters.

We have been told all along that vaccinating the vulnerable and then by decreasing ages brings the risk of severe illness or death by Covid down to minuscule levels.

Our hospitals are seeing minimal Covid admissions, our nearest large teaching hospital has no Covid patients. The U.K. is now well below the 5yr average ONS figures for overall deaths.

The U.K. closed down to protect the NHS, it’s now the NHS’s turn to treat all those with Cancers, heart problems, hip/knee replacements that have been put on hold and caused untold misery, pain and in some circumstances death which could have been prevented.

The world has to learn to live side-by-side with Covid as we do with many deadly viruses, which is why vaccinations are important. It is utterly ridiculous to think that the U.K. and the World can lockdown indefinitely, it will not eliminate the virus.

Look at some US States, no masks everywhere open and no spikes in infection rates.

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I wish you were right GrannyGravy13, but I’ve done some digging to find out what the situation actually is with regard to COVID patients in hospital in Bolton, and it’s clearly an increasing concern for the NHS there.
www.boltonft.nhs.uk/2020/09/increase-in-covid-patients-at-royal-bolton-hospital/

Casdon

I wish you were right GrannyGravy13, but I’ve done some digging to find out what the situation actually is with regard to COVID patients in hospital in Bolton, and it’s clearly an increasing concern for the NHS there.
www.boltonft.nhs.uk/2020/09/increase-in-covid-patients-at-royal-bolton-hospital/

I have read the link, overall Covid patients in hospital 23, not high but obviously not good for the patients concerned and their families

I thought it was high, given that the vaccination numbers by age group are comparable with the rest of the UK, the problem being now that even if everybody who is eligible comes forward they won’t be protected for another three weeks, and that the increasing numbers of positive cases now are people who won’t hit the hospital system for another week or two. Some of these might be people who have other variants, or who are still in hospital from the second wave though. We will see.

The vax programme in Bolton has been good, local nhs local authority and volunteers.
Yasmin Quereshi is MP for the area with the highest number of cases. I didn’t hear her ‘blame the government’. If she did, she wouldn’t be wrong about PPE, incidents when action has been too,little, too late. The vax bus and volunteers have been knocking on doors for some time, with good response. People who hadn’t taken up the vax offer were keen to join the local queues. Many had been unable to travel the distances to their vax centre but we’re keen to take up the local offer. Rum worth Gt Lever are areas of high deprivation. Residents who don’t have access to transport couldn’t make a 30 mile round trip for The vax

Iam64 I just found the article in the Guardian which confirms that vaccination uptake was average overall, but with hotspots. I bet every city in the whole country has similar percentages, and I think that the MP has made some very valid points about the ‘blame’ for the outbreak being allocated in the way it has been.
www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/18/vaccine-hesitancy-narrative-fuelling-divisions-in-bolton-says-mp

I don't think anybody on this thread has suggested long-term lockdown, nor do I think it's necessary or even be effective. However, only a fool would just ignore what's happening in Bolton and not be concerned.

Growstuff, genuine question, not being confrontational honest. When you say only a fool would ignore what’s happening in Bolton - can you clarify ?

Message withdrawn at poster's request.

I've managed to rebook for Monday elsewhere which was actually very straightforward, so no one worry about me and my bosted toe I suppose it s harder if you haven't got technology and an impatient nature