Are we pinning our hope too much on the vaccine?

Summerlove

MerylStreep

Maybee70
I don’t know what you call a majority Would you call 60% of the population being double vaccinated a majority

www.gov.uk/government/news/3-in-5-uk-adults-receive-both-doses-of-covid-19-vaccine

3 in 5 adults. There are more people than just adults In the UK.

You need to look at total population, not just eligible for the vaccine population.

Even then, most people say you need 80% total population or more for herd immunity

The higher the transmissibility if the virus the higher the percentage of the population that needs to be vaccinated or have had the virus to achieve herd immunity If we’d’ve had more people vaccinated before the government stupidly allowed the Delta variant to take over the closer we’d be closer to herd immunity now.

varian mask wearing in Japan and SE Asia, isn't just about because of SARS and MERS, or even mainly about them. It is because the air quality in many cities in those countries is so poor that they wear them to protect themselves from being poisoned by the air they breath.

Hetty58 You do not mention vaccination. It is vaccination that is protecting us from long COVID and other variants, home grown and imported.

Vaccination rates are well above 80% for first jabs in all parts of the UK - and it is the first jab that gives most of the immunity and over 60% and growing rapidly for both jabs www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55274833.

The majority of people getting COVID currently are the unvaccinated. If you are fully vaccinated. your chances of getting COVID at all, let alone getting it badly, are very low indeed and the same applies to passing the disease on. COVID us currently less fatal than flu and more people are dying from heart attacks and cancer than are dying from COVID.

We have just got to get used to being vaccinated regulalry and treating COVID as just another infection like flu, colds and coughs.

I am glad we are not as compliant as the Japanese. Their society tends to be socially repressive and the position of women in that country, is way behind the position we have in this country. History has shown where a tradition of compliance can lead countries.

I have every intention of reverting to how we were, with the usual consideration for other people which was part of my life then and will continue to be now.

The idea of 'herd immunity' was based on the presumption that immunisation would prevent us catching, and passing on, the virus - for a reasonably long time. This hasn't been proved and doesn't seem likely.

Maybee70
surely doctors surgeries and hospitals will continue to ask people to wear a mask
I said The only time I will be wearing a mask is for my B12 injection
Where do you think I have my injection? I’ll give you a clue: a nurse administers it.

MerylStreep

Maybee70
surely doctors surgeries and hospitals will continue to ask people to wear a mask
I said The only time I will be wearing a mask is for my B12 injection
Where do you think I have my injection? I’ll give you a clue: a nurse administers it.

Sorry. I actually thought you were going to voluntarily wear a mask when you have your injection to safeguard the medical staff. Silly me.

Still interested to know your reasons for being so anti mask Merylstreep.

(I am treating viruses as sentient here…). A virus’ aim is to infect as many hosts as possible. If it kills the hosts, then , there are fewer and fewer hosts to infect. So they mutate and become milder. Yes, they may become more transmissible but if the severity of the disease and the morbidity are very low, so why not treat CV19 as we do the common cold?
The Delta variant is much more like the latter, the next ones are likely to become milder…. Vaccinations should cover any infections as they do for ‘flu.
I shall not wear a mask unless required to. I get panicked in one, but far, far more importantly, I think babies and young children are really being affected by the lack of facial expressions due to mask wearing. (Ducks to avoid blizzard of bullets).

MerylStreep

Maybee70
I don’t know what you call a majority Would you call 60% of the population being double vaccinated a majority

www.gov.uk/government/news/3-in-5-uk-adults-receive-both-doses-of-covid-19-vaccine

Herd immunity is generally considered at above 70% fully vaccinated or who have anti-bodies from catching it or indeed both.

We haven’t long to wait. I simply can’t see the sense in allowing the virus freedom to potentially mutate into something that could be really difficult to manage. Of course it might not, but why take th3 chance when we are so close to our goal?

Johnson really is like a child who is told to wait (deferred satisfaction) but just can’t.

Hetty58

The idea of 'herd immunity' was based on the presumption that immunisation would prevent us catching, and passing on, the virus - for a reasonably long time. This hasn't been proved and doesn't seem likely.

I think that the latest evidence is beginning to point to anti-bodies lasting longer than initially thought would be the case. So herd immunity seems much more likely.

grandMattie I don't understand your logic. It isn't inevitable that viruses become milder. Evolution just doesn't work like that. Viruses are dead. They don't have any "aim". Mutations are entirely random. The most transmissible ones will survive because they'll latch on to a host more readily. Some of them will be more deadly (as the delta variant is) and some not. Viruses just don't think strategically - if they kill all their hosts, so be it, but I hope we never get to that stage.

Viruses don't mutate as a result of running out of hosts. Every time a virus reproduces itself, there's a chance there will be a mutation. Some of the mutations make the virus non-viable and they disappear, but some are more serious and the more transmission there is, the more likely there will be variants which overtake vaccines.

One of the reasons that Covid-19 cannot be treated like the common cold is that colds don't usually leave people with after-effects. People might be quite ill for a while, but usually they recover fully. Covid-19 just isn't like that. Long Covid is, thank goodness, now taken seriously and the NHS has opened treatment hubs, but to date nobody knows how long the after-effects will last. A handful of people, like Derek Draper and Michael Rosen and thousands of less well-known people, have life-changing disabilities as a result of Covid.

Surely medical staff will know better than us whether a mask is needed on medical premises, so if they do not ask for it it will be presumably be safe for them and for us not to wear one.

I think there will be very few people who will refuse to wear a mask when requested.

Having had two members of my family at death's door during lockdown, for reasons unassociated with lockdown, although one illness was made serious by a GP who prescribed without seeing a patient. I find the response to not wearing a mask rather strange.

I must assume that everyone on this thread is slim, fit, active and eats a mediterranean diet so is in little danger of having a heart attack or stroke, so that the very low risk of COVID is greater than their danger of those diseases or cancer.

At some point we are all going to have to stop hiding. I'm not pinning my hopes on the vaccine but I have made a conscious decision that I am going to live my life and trust the vaccine to do its job. Otherwise, what's the point?

I don't mind the idea of ongoing mask wearing indoors. Less risk of general illness.

You know (just as an aside) I had some sort of virus that laid me pretty low in my late 40s. I was off work for three weeks in the September. I recovered but by late November I went to the doctor because I was tired beyond imagination. He put me off work indefinitely - (8weeks in the end) I didn’t link the two at all at the time. I am now 75, and I still get periods of what I can only describe as feeling like I’m going down with flu, aches, mouth ulcers and exhaustion if I over do things.

That is what covid is doing to people and it is extremely debilitating. I’m fine dealing with it now but whilst working it was an utter nightmare at times.

You may not die from covid but equally we don’t want a work force who are so debilitated that they find it difficult to turn up every day.

Letting covid rip through is to my mind a dangerous and irresponsible thing to do.

The Chair of the BMA has said that it makes no sense to be ditching masks when infection rates are soaring, masks being proven to provide protection against infection. How is it right that it can be a choice whether you protect others or not. It's just not logical.

Yes, but. The majority of those getting COVID are unvaccinated. The majority of the population have now had both jabs and are fully vaccinated. What is stopping COVID spreading is not masks, it is vaccination, so we need to get those unvaccinated vaccinated.

Meanwhile having had both vaccinations I am highly unlikely to be catching or spreading this illness to anyone else

Vaccinated folk can still get covid, but are very likely to be asymptomatic, so they won’t be aware that they have it.

Until we’ve reached the point of full vaccination then I think it is good manners to continue to wear a mask in order to protect your fellow citizens.

Meanwhile having had both vaccinations I am highly unlikely to be catching or spreading this illness to anyone else

I quote myself, whether symptomatic or not, the above still applies.

No that isn’t quite right. Yes you are less likely to get covid and to be symptomatic, but you are more likely if you catch it to be asymptomatic, and my point is that until we reach full vaccination, it is both thoughtful and sensible to try to protect your fellow citizens.

The rules have become such a complicated, half-hearted inconsistent mish-mash that people find it hard to take them seriously, which is very dangerous as we are not out of the woods yet.

My feeling is that the restrictions should be lifted, alongside an ongoing push to vaccinate everyone, not just here but globally. However there should also be a rule that masks should be worn in crowded places: shops, public transport, surgeries, hospitals, cinemas, theatres. In other words lift the restrictions so people can meet others as and where they wish, but build in the safeguard of masks where lots of people are close together.

Mask wearing is a clear and understandable rule; deciding how many people can come to a BBQ and how far apart they must stand is vague and open to interpretation. Wearing a mask on a bus is clear.

The care minister (who she?) was interviewed on Radio 4 this morning and waffled incoherently; the interviewer had to keep reminding her that mask wearing was not to protect the wearer but those around them.

Good posts Monica.

whitewavemark2, I had a 'flu' in the 2003/2004 season in my 20s which caused me to develop bi lateral pneumonia and pleurisy, it didn't respond to antibiotics and I had to be put on a 'new drug' it was a 'if it gets any worse ring 999' job. My husband had to take time off work to look after me and the children and I was ill FOR MONTHS. I never thought about it at the time either, I just thought I was unlucky and these things happen but I wonder now whether it was one of these types of viruses.

Whitewavemark2

You know (just as an aside) I had some sort of virus that laid me pretty low in my late 40s. I was off work for three weeks in the September. I recovered but by late November I went to the doctor because I was tired beyond imagination. He put me off work indefinitely - (8weeks in the end) I didn’t link the two at all at the time. I am now 75, and I still get periods of what I can only describe as feeling like I’m going down with flu, aches, mouth ulcers and exhaustion if I over do things.

That is what covid is doing to people and it is extremely debilitating. I’m fine dealing with it now but whilst working it was an utter nightmare at times.

You may not die from covid but equally we don’t want a work force who are so debilitated that they find it difficult to turn up every day.

Letting covid rip through is to my mind a dangerous and irresponsible thing to do.

I had a friend who suffered from ME and that sounds similar to ME. He was in a support group and those people said they had very little help. Indeed ME has never been taken seriously.My friend was bedridden at times as is the author Laura Hillenbrand. It seemed to mostly affect younger people. Shingles is another virus that seems to have long term affects both physical and mental and also that virus that teenagers are prone to (name escapes me). When my children were little and were getting all the usual childhood illnesses I noticed a pattern forming in that they weren’t particularly ill with the virus but round about two weeks after recovery they would become very tired and run down and would need time off school. As for the Delta variant, there is no sign that it’s getting weaker: it’s only the vaccination programme that makes it appear to be so. We don’t want a whole world suffering from the after effects of a novel virus if we can help it.

M0nica

^Meanwhile having had both vaccinations I am highly unlikely to be catching or spreading this illness to anyone else^

I quote myself, whether symptomatic or not, the above still applies.

That's not true MOnica. Even vaccinated people catch Covid and can transmit it. It's probable that you won't catch or transmit it so easily, but the risk isn't nil. You might even be totally asymptomatic, so might never think to test yourself but could still transmit it.

The only thing which would eliminate all risk would be to isolate yourself completely. As you probably don't want to do that, a compromise would be to wear a mask, which would reduce your risk to others to negligible.

It’s glandular fever I was thinking of…..

I agree with you Luckygirl. Lift all the restrictions on meetings, etc but keep masks for indoor spaces and public transport.