Covid

[alec]

leftieliberal - one fear of Sage's (and mine) is that of 'antigenic original sin'. My understanding of this (weak, I'll accept) is that the human immune system becomes conditioned by vaccination to a certain type of response. If antigenic drift (viral mutation) then occurs, the immune system can get stuck in a rut, triggered by any subsequent similar but different variants to produce the same antibody response as it did previously. This has happened with some other vaccine treatments, and is the cataclysmic scenario, where we have a mutating virus matched up against an immune response that can no longer adapt.

I've seen some suggestion on Omicron that this is happening, others say not, but this is the main argument against relying solely on vaccines (and specific antiviral treatments post infection, which would suffer the same probelm potentially) rather than a combined vaccine + public health response.

We've never vaccinated ourselves out of any pandemic before, and I amd personally deeply concerned that we have leaders and a willing public prepared to believe that we can do it this time. Viruses are the most flexible and adaptable organisms on the planet, and are brilliant survivors. I really feel we are underestimating covid, and continuing to make the same mistakes over and over.

[Deleted]

Dec 5, 2021 22:13:34 GMT leftieliberal said:

 We have a degree of reassurance in that all the vaccines (which induce the body to create its own antibodies) are based on the original Wuhan strain yet seem to be effective against the variants before omicron.

Certainly from what I've read (and I'm not claiming to be an expert) then the various vaccines and drugs will likely have decent effectiveness against severe disease (ie significantly reduced risk of hospitalisation) and death even with the newer variants. New variants will likely be more transmissible (survival of the fittest) which will make lockdowns less effective at suppressing spread and with behavioural fatigue likely to get worse[1] then shutting nightclubs and pubs might just lead to illegal raves, house parties and rioting (as we've seen in some countries). Still too early to be sure if Omicron is less severe but if it is and the vaccines and drugs are fairly effective then you get to the conclusion of this chap:

Omicron variant could be a ‘Christmas gift’, says German health expert

www.standard.co.uk/news/world/covid-omicron-variant-christmas-gift-south-africa-expert-b968960.html

Certainly a wide range of opinion even amongst the actual experts - although most prefer the 'cover my arse' (extreme caution) approach! I'll keep my fingers crossed and hope Boris-Saj don't follow the 'populist' (see most polling) desire to put us back in lockdown and can hold off to wait for more info. Risky of course as we can only be sure with hindsight but then 'Freedom Day' was supposed to be 'reckless' but looks to have been the right call given we've probably built up fairly high immunity compared to those who didn't use Summer to reopen. Although being in opposition then folks will likely forget Starmer-Ashworth comments. Being in power then will folks 'reward' Boris-Saj for opening faster and (hopefully) avoiding new lockdowns[2]? Vaccine boost helped CON VI polling in Spring but I doubt folks are following the new lockdowns elsewhere.

[1] Be nice if folks could post more polling. Opinium used to occasionally ask this kind of question so might be a tracker around? Anyway in this YG one then majority are 'Not taking it (the pandemic) seriously' but that is likely biased by the 'holier than thou' we saw when Opinium asked questions to split out individual's view of their own behaviour v their view of gen.pub.

However, most other polling tends to still show folks more stricter measures (hence the 'populist' comment)

[2] Indirect benefit in that the economy and tax receipts will continue to grow which is certainly something the RoC types like to see. The 'Magic Money Tree' was shaken very hard in 2020-early'21. TINA at the time but 'new normal' hopefully won't need extreme measures.  

[alec]

@tw - "New variants will likely be more transmissible (survival of the fittest) which will make lockdowns less effective at suppressing spread and with behavioural fatigue likely to get worse..."

I agree with your point on public acceptance, which is I think, valid (for now at least - may not be if cases surge) but the logic in the above sentence is wrong. Higher transissibility means lockdowns would have a greater impact on spread.

[Danny]

Dec 6, 2021 8:19:53 GMT alec said:

@tw - "New variants will likely be more transmissible (survival of the fittest) which will make lockdowns less effective at suppressing spread and with behavioural fatigue likely to get worse..."

I agree with your point on public acceptance, which is I think, valid (for now at least - may not be if cases surge) but the logic in the above sentence is wrong. Higher transissibility means lockdowns would have a greater impact on spread.

First off to TW, survival of the fittest only happens if there is a cull. That does happen with viruses, but only when they are running out of new victims. So only when we are all immune. Which seems to have happened for both the original and kent strains. Though strictly both are probably bubbling along quietly somewhere at very low levels.  Had no new stains arisen, then probably what would have happened naturally (or even post vaccination at a defined date) is they would stay very low until that immunity faded enough for a comeback. Which would have far lower death rate.  Typically this sees to take 1-2 years, but its influenced by the weather cycle.

However on your other claim-its simply wrong.

The number of people who catch it depends on how much immunity there is at the start. If 50% are already immune, then thats 50% who will not catch it. This is the parameter defining the total number of cases, for whom a proportion become seriously ill. That smaller proportion can in principle be influenced by engineering what sort of people catch a disease fastest. So if the young people catch it fast, it will end sooner infecting a smaller proportion of older high risk people  but more younger, before it does. We have always had the ability to shift the disease to safe people and thereby reduce deaths. We chose to do the exact opposite.

The total number who catch it is not affected by the speed at which they do so.  If you think otherwise, pehaps you could explain the reasoning here?  Also restrictions dont reduce number of cases, becase even if they do suppress spread while they are in force, as soon as they are removed the disease will bounce back.  Its an excellent way to throw away money keeping everyone under house arrest indefinitielly, because if lockdown works the risk ever ends. I suppose then we are lucky it doesnt work very well to suppress spread so the disease did work through the population and end naturally anyway after taking its  share of  deaths boosted by the restrictons preventing young safe people catching it so forcng more cases into the old.

[Danny]

Dec 5, 2021 23:40:46 GMT @tw said:

[
 'Freedom Day' was supposed to be 'reckless' but looks to have been the right call given we've probably built up fairly high immunity compared to those who didn't use Summer to reopen.

Shame then we didnt reopen in summer 2020. And very much a shame we closed schools for the summer term 2020. All those unnecessary autumn/winter deaths which could have been prevented.

[Deleted]

I note the 'Zero Covid' fanatics are still in denial:

A piece from FT that focussed on Delta and highlighted that: The bottom line is that Covid elimination is simply not possible

www.ft.com/content/4b34e1a4-8e67-40f4-b042-4fc304b46f50

I'll quote a longer section:

..the emergence of the more infectious Delta variant means only extreme lockdowns can eliminate the disease[1].. (but) No matter how many times a country eliminates the disease, it will come back and keep coming back. At this stage, therefore, border closures and draconian lockdowns simply postpone the moment when Covid-19 will inevitably become endemic in a population while limiting citizen’s freedom.

The only realistic 'exit' is to move from pandemic to endemic (ie 'live with C19'). 

[1] So if Omicron is even more transmissible than Delta then "Zero Covid' is a fool's errand (and IMO always was, just even more so now we have vaccines and drugs that can significantly reduce the risk of severe disease (ie overwhelming NHS) and death 'FROM' C19). I'd support making vaccines mandatory and banning the refusenik unvaccinated from society (their choice) but we can't keep destroying the socio-economy to achieve nothing more than delaying the inevitable (ie C19 becoming endemic). 

[Danny]

Dec 6, 2021 14:07:05 GMT James E said:

I don't know if anyone else has been following Dr John Campbell's YouTube videos during the pandemic, but think his latest one is particularly interesting. There's no doubt in his mind that Omicron will sweep around the world in 6-8 weeks time, bu the data that he's got from S Africa suggests that the known cases are far more common in unvaccinated people, and the symptoms do appear to be milder than in previous waves.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Paq17X6ucQ

To me, the most encouraging stat he provides is one of the last. The average length of hospital stay per Covid patient had been 8.5 days in the previous wave, but in the new wave, it is so far just 2.8 days.

He also says that most people in hospital with covid are there for reasons other than covid. He mentioned a number of cases may be becase of their high incidence of HIV, which I presume means poor immune system.

Their testing of covid in sewers has shot off the scale. Implying a masive outbreak which is largely going unnoticed ie without serious illness. (very reminiscent of outbreaks in 2019 in Europe, where it was retrospectively identified from sewer samples. The actual illness went unnoticed.)

So in fact this outreak is starting to look like very good news because it means loads of people will catch covid and therefore boost their immunity with very few getting seriously ill.

He said that those in hospital actually because they are ill with the disease are not needing oxygen. Rather  they are being given steroids to suppress the bodies excessive immune response which happens after it has already beaten covid. So they are all more advanced in the stages of the disease before they got to hospital. It gets worse as it goes along, but the point is  it has to have proceeded further before they get ill enough to be in hospital. Average three days in hospital, instead of 8 previously. This is a new, milder,  outcome from the disease.

There is no evidence that unvaccinated people had worse disease.  Though there were disproportionately more people admitted who had not been vaccinated, particularly 30-39 age group rather than previously typical older people.

Compared to past waves of covid, cases are rising fast but instead of deaths already being rising as in previous waves at this stage, they are falling.

Although this is spreading faster, so there are more cases at once, on these figures it seems unlikely this will be enough cases to overwhelm hospitals.

He said it will be all round the world in 6-8 weeks regardless of what we do, but actually that might be rather good news not bad if its milder as seems to be the case. This might be the last wave with any significant serious ilness.  It might be a very good idea to spread it fast so as to supplant other more dangerouus stains.

[Danny]

Dec 6, 2021 18:02:44 GMT @tw said:

I'd support making vaccines mandatory and banning the refusenik unvaccinated from society (their choice) but we can't keep destroying the socio-economy to achieve nothing more than delaying the inevitable (ie C19 becoming endemic)

. Why?

The information thus far says this is a much milder disease hghly preferable to catch than other circulating strains. That suggest we should encourage its spread to supplant the old strains! Since its outcome is milder than prevous ones, the risk from them was always small for younger people, so this is even smaller. The numbers in no way would justify compulsory vaccination. We dont do that to people for their own good, and it isnt going to benefit others.

The current Zoe and React data says uncaccinaed people in the Uk are no more likey to catch covid than vaccinated ones. As per the SA information, some of the unvaccinated in the UK are clearly going on to get worse disease, but as a group overall the risk is no greater. I expect this reflects the fact people are making sensible choices about their vaccination status, so for example if they have already had covid, dont see any reason to be vaccinated. There will be a number of people who have good medical reasons not to be vaccinated and they might indeed now comprise most of the serious unvaccinated covid cases.

[Danny]

Dec 6, 2021 14:07:05 GMT James E said:

I don't know if anyone else has been following Dr John Campbell's YouTube videos during the pandemic, but think his latest one is particularly interesting. There's no doubt in his mind that Omicron will sweep around the world in 6-8 weeks time, bu the data that he's got from S Africa suggests that the known cases are far more common in unvaccinated people, and the symptoms do appear to be milder than in previous waves.

Campbell is now of the view he will most likely be exposed to omicron by christmas. As will we all, its here already. www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTxAGb1Lv7k

I looked at another of his videos which discussed the side effect from the AZ vaccine over blood clotting. He argued it is because of imperfect technique during vaccination and accidentlly injecting into blood vessels. He cited a paper back last April about adenoviruses causing clotting if they are injected into the bloodstream.  But in the most recent bulletin he mentioned again that vaccinators are still not being trained to do this properly and check they havnt hit a vein.

On the brighter side he didnt go into this but he quoted a paper explaining the mechanism for this and it being mediated by von willebrand factor in the blood. I gather there is a form of mild haemophillia caused by heridtary shortage of this factor which tends to manifest as a propensity for nosebleeds in childhood. So if you happen to be one of those people, you might be safe against duff adenovirus vaccination! In his April article he went on about the US needing to improve their vaccination technique, but they have solved the problem by not using adenovirus vaccinations at all. As indeed have we now.

It strikes me the booster vaccination program is already too late to stop an outbreak of omicron here. It would only do so if the disease arrived in the 3 month (maybe better 1 month) window starting maybe a fortnight after vaccination where response is high. After that it isnt going to stop spread. So what is most likely to happen now is there are plenty of people for the infection to start in , and by the time it is starting to fade naturally in a couple of months, those who had their boosters first will be becoming susceptible again and get infected. So the booster campaign will probaby keep the whole thing going all winter, but not int he end save any lives. Maybe indeed make matters worse because of keepingnnit going.  It looks likely this is precisely what has happend with delta variant, that vaccinatiion is responsible for this wave going on for so long.

[Deleted]

A glimpse of the damage lockdown did (and would do again) to children:

'nearly all children in England have suffered as a result of restrictions and repeated lockdowns'

www.gov.uk/government/news/ofsted-annual-report-we-must-do-all-we-can-to-make-sure-this-generation-is-not-denied-its-opportunities?

[Danny]

Government announces renewed restrictions...yet simultaneously claims vaccination has been a great success.

Does no one spot the contradiction?

[John Chanin]

If the new South African variant turns out to be less virulent, given that it now seems to be more infectious, that is on the longer perspective nothing but a good thing. But - in the short term it can still lead to pressures on the health service and an increase in hospitalizations and deaths, as the increased infectiousness coupled with some vaccine evasion outweighs the generally lesser seriousness.

As always much comment is far too binary. Some attempt to slow the progress of the new variant seems logical, and vaccines will be reformulated in due course to address it.

And of course “zero covid” is nonsense. Some unfortunates will continue to suffer serious disease and die, as they do for other diseases which are generally under control.

Since vaccines are the main way, whatever the variant, to ensure that disease is kept to a minimum, I have no problem in making life difficult for those who refuse to be vaccinated. While they mainly put themselves at risk, by definition they also increase the risk for others, both directly, and indirectly by using resources better employed elsewhere.

[Danny]

You couldnt make it up. R4 said Whistleblower who said he went home instead of going to the party resigns. Which is in fact what Stratton said too.

The crime for which you are punished is to admit there was a party, not to have gone to it.

[leftieliberal]

A useful summary of the omicron variant on the BBC web site: www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59580290

[Danny]

Dec 8, 2021 20:13:54 GMT John Chanin said:

If the new South African variant turns out to be less virulent, given that it now seems to be more infectious, that is on the longer perspective nothing but a good thing. But - in the short term it can still lead to pressures on the health service and an increase in hospitalizations and deaths, as the increased infectiousness coupled with some vaccine evasion outweighs the generally lesser seriousness.

As always much comment is far too binary. Some attempt to slow the progress of the new variant seems logical, and vaccines will be reformulated in due course to address it.

Not necessarily. John Campbell's latest report from SA says that omicron replaced the delta strain very quickly. They didnt coexist, it totally supplanted it.  If it can do that in the UK too, then it would replace one strain with a higher mortality with another with a lower mortality. That would save lives. So introducing it as fast as possible might save lives overall.  www.youtube.com/watch?v=5r0AA41dgLU

He aso describes a company party in Norway, where 1 infected person then infected 70 others from the party of 120 plus 50 incidental guests in the same hotel. Thats a very high infection rate. It suggests practically everyone was susceptible to the disease, whereas in the past I doubt this was true.

Putting those together it suggests that in any public situation where someone might have been exposed to both strains, omicron got in there first and so deprived delta of potential victims. Thats probably only possible because it is so transmissable.

If this is correct and omicron has milder outcomes, then once again it suggests the best outcome will be achieved by introducing omicron as fast as possble into any region were delta is currently active, so as to end the delta epidemic fast and minimise deaths. Anyone suppressing omicron and deliberately slowing its spread will be costing lives.

This begs another question. It isnt clear to what extent omicron is random chance, or in fact is optimised for best spread amongst humans. If thats true and best spread is achieved by lowest mortality, then all attempts to prevent mutation and evolution of the virus have been misguided and counter productive in terms of human survival. All we have done is delay the time this would all have ended naturally and safely. Had we not interfered with the natural course of the disease, then we might have arrived at the inevitable safe endpoint much quicker with fewer deaths.

Following from this Politically, lab, SNP and I expect Welsh governments are about to cancel christmas so as to prevent spread of omnicron and will thereby kill more people. Leaving con MPs as the ones who opposed this folly. The dangers of erring on the side of safety- sometimes it isnt. News this morning just challenged the Welsh government over the curious coincidence that after imposing stiffer restrictions than in Engand, their total of cases was higher not lower.

[Danny]

had a look at the FT covid cases date page for comparing countries. From it I see S Africa has had rather fewer total cases than the UK. Looking at the rate of rise of various outbreaks in different countries, I see for example that the rate of rise currently in SA is much the same as in France in the start of the wave they are experiencing of delta now. Netherlands had similar fast rise in July, whatever strain that was. The outbreak in the Uk last december had some similar fast rise phases. The Check republic had fast rising outbreaks this october and last. ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=gbr&areas=fra&areas=aut&areas=nld&areas=cze&areas=zaf&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usla&areasRegional=usnd&areasRegional=usak&areasRegional=usfl&areasRegional=ustn&cumulative=0&logScale=0&per100K=1&startDate=2020-04-08&values=cases

Theres no evidence of fast rise by this strain any greater than previous ones at the right moment optimising spread.

Playing with the buttons on the page and looking at deaths...in SA currently they are negligible. Total number of cases surrently is very small. So all in all, there is as yet no evidence of any new strain which has demonstrated either an ability to overcome existing immunity on any scale, or to cause significant death.

Ok, I appreciate the warnings are predictions of what could possibly happen. But actually they havnt.

Daily Zoe report R=1.0 England. Wales 1.1.

Overall same as ever, old people cases continue down, young slightly up. Which is actually excellent news all in all. Although it is disturbing how long this current delta wave has lasted and how many cases there have been. The total of cases at 1.1 million currently is a record high since the original spring 2020 surge. Deaths of course is way, way, down. While vaccines seem to have reduced the death rate, what has simulaneously happened is the total number of cases has sharply increased, including repeat infections.

Events reported from SA seem in line with this finding, which indicates we have already moved most of the way to normalising covid as a minor nuisance.

So why is that munchkin imposing restrictions again? Is it his idea or is he once again fronting for the cabinet? Or does the whole cabinet agree with him the extra measures are quite pointless (as the whole administration apparently already thought last christmas). Is he simply parroting SAGE because thats his best defence against the criticism which will come that lockdown was useless. Or are we now in end game where con are tempting labour into becoming the party of lockdown by supporting in parliament restrictions which more and more conservative MPs are opposing? And indeed very openly opposing in public pronouncements.

Con think its time to blame labour for lockdown.

[Danny]

Dec 9, 2021 16:15:50 GMT steamdrivenandy said:

For Danny  covid.joinzoe.com/post/covid-infection-antibodies-protection

Thank you SDA yes I have read it but others mght like to. Zoe produce a number of reports and published papers about their findings. Its about the levels of antibody they found in people after a covid infection. They found this varied from person to person.

Zoe use a Roche pass/fail test for presence of antibody. Score above 1 you pass, below you fail. However below 1 doesnt mean you have no antibodies and certainly doesn't mean you have no immunity. One of the big problems all along has been assuming a pass/fail mentality to immunity, which isn't justified. This test gives a huge range of results from something like 0.001 to 1000. Something I read argues a score of 0.125 or above on this test means the person concerned has probably had covid. What lower scores means is decreasing likelihood or decreasing protection. Roche absolutely do not market this as a graduated scale and dont seem to make any comments on interpretation of scores beyond pass/fail. However, others use the numerical value to claim protection or not, and how strong. Zoe seem to be making calculations based solely on pass/fail and the numbers in each group. Thats one way to do it and the one validated by Roche, but it throws away much of the potential information.

They are probably testing people quite soon after an infection. The general course of antibody is it continues to rise after an infection is over, then falls away with time. Just as happens after vaccination, because its the same process, more or less. Measuring antibody level is only an approximate guide to whether someone is actually protected, notwithsanding the faith being placed in it. It depends on the quality of the antibody against a real whole virus, and the speed at which new can be created if needed. A positive >1 doesnt tell you either of those things, it just notes at that time you had enough to neutralise a statistical majority of infections, at least of their test antigen.

Fundamentally there is a problem that any amount of antibody in your blood cannot intervene if a virus lands on the wall of your airway and directly enters the cell it lands on. It can then spread again directly from cell to adjacent cell.  There have been some attempts to introduce inhaled vaccines with a goal of creating antibody in the fluids on the air side of the airway walls which have a different set of antibodies created in different places. But then they wouldnt create immunity within the boodstream, where it can protect against spread systemically within the body and so is arguaby better placed to protect against severe disease....which was the point of it, to prevent deaths. Preventing spread was a secondary goal which has failed.

Zoe argue people scoting less than 1 have lower immunity, I'd expect they are probably right. But everyone they test survived a covid infection, so in fact had enough antibody to neutralise all the covid they were infected with. Whatever the test says about comparative strength of antibody, they had as much as they needed. Calibration of the test is only done on a statistical basis after looking at typical levels in people who fought off a disease (and not necessarily covid either, just a sample disease).  I would suggest the final score depends on how severe their particular infection was, so how high they had to push their antibody to defeat it. A low score might indicate someone who defeated covid with ease.

I read another study which used antibody tests quantitatively to analyses the level of antibody produced by vaccination. i dont recall now which vaccine it was or who did it, but they concluded responses fell into three identifiable bands, high, medium and low. It wasnt an even random spread of antibody response but clearly fell into three distinguisable bands.  That sounds quite similar to what zoe found in response to exposure. I dont remember if they speculated on reasons but an obvious possibity would be any person who had had a covid infection prior to vaccination would in effect have had a vaccine booster on top of their infection immunity so might be expected to score higher.   Situatons like this complicate analysis of how effective a vaccine is, because overall post infection immunity is considered by Zoe to be as good and longer lasting than vaccine.

 Of course, the data on deaths and severe illness iindicates anyone in the younger half of the population without risk factors didnt need a vaccination in the first place

[Danny]

Dec 7, 2021 15:39:40 GMT colin said:

Hmmm-answered my own question.

www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-viruses-evolve-180975343/

Interesting article  about how viruses evolve when they move from species to species, and people may like to have a read.

Something they seem to miss although they allude to it, is viruses swapping repeatedly back and forth between species.   The consequence of this will be that even though they may have adapted to their current host they will still have a legacy of adaptations which work with other species. Over time this would probably evolve the best alternatives which work universally amongst all available host species. Survival will depend on the ability to swap species.

So i think they probably exaggerate the importance of a period of adaptation to a new species.  We know human covid can switch to other animals. Felines and dogs have been mentioned but other zoo and farm animals have been found infected.

It may be just as likely that a virus waits in an animal population until the human one (or other different) ceases to have immunity to it. hence it can switch back to humans. I expect covid has had a long history in the past of infecting humans again and again.  Humans had immunity to covid in the form of measurable antibodies and t cells active against covid before it ever arrived. This was most likely formed against other corona virses, but it would have acted to prevent covid reinfecting humans until a low enough point in immunty arose.

i see the article suggests the OC43 corona virus which currently circulates causing colds may have been responsible for a flu epidemic starting in 1890 which killed the heir to the british throne.  That might have been an interesting counter factual history with a very gay monarch.

It is likely the current fear of diseases moving into humans from other species is overlooking this important fact, that we have already met many times in the past. We too have evolved ready to meet them again. Covid was a case where the human immune system successfully met and defeated a threat. Only old or sick people would have died absent any intervention. A stonking success in evolutionary terms.

The fact these past successful corona viruses are deliberately kept in circulation by our immune systems (whch deliberately allow repeat infections) afford us protection not only against them but also against their cousins like covid seeking to cross back into humans.

The article also makes some errors in reasoning over evolution, because it is a game of big numbers and small advantages coming to the fore through sheer statistical certainty from a tiny edge. It dismisses the idea a tiny advantage might be important given another big one but actually every slight advantage will come to dominate the dominant strain very quickly in human timescales, though that is over many many lifetimes on a viral timescale.  Thus if there is even a slight advantage to not killing your host, that trait will come to dominate.  However, because it is a statistical thing with big numbers of trials, minor exceptions dont matter. Old or sick humans with weak immune systems are outliers to the main epidemic and will not contribute much to evolution of the main strain. So virulence will be tailored to not killing a typical human, not to not killing an already  weak and sick human.

These are two distinct groups. The way to protect the weak and sick has always been for the healthy to be infected fast and therefore drop general prevalence very low quickly, therefore  making it unlikey susceptible people will be exposed. That is how our natural immunty works to protect those weak and sick. They stay home and isolate while the mainstream get the disease over. We have always made use of this to save lives, but this time governments chose to prevent this happening. They quite deliberately forced the healthy to slow how fast they got infected, which must have pushed more cases into the vunerable group because the outbreak lasted longer. It was always the wrong strategy.

[leftieliberal]

Scotland facing covid "tsunami" www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-59610582

As I cannot see any reason why the virus should behave differently in England (or Wales) I think we all have to expect a rapid rise in cases between now and Christmas. I notice also that Mark Drakeford will henceforth be reviewing the rules weekly up to Christmas: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-59608292

[Danny]

John campbell said he expected to have omicron (or been exposed to it) by christmas. Sounds about right. The comparison to draw is probably how the first wave suddenly was found everywhere. I have wondered aloud just how efective is our own srveillance, which s supposed to be pretty good compared to most others, but it still mght be grossl inadequate really.

The story about the company dinner where 60% of attendees plus numericaly as many passers by caught it from one atendee is probably indicative. I await with interest the outcome.

I would say, either the events of the last two years mean essentially nothing happens except the Uk caches a cold, or we wasted two years pointlessly.

[birdseye]

Dec 5, 2021 22:34:54 GMT alec said:

We've never vaccinated ourselves out of any pandemic before,

Is that correct. Its my understanding that vaccination world wide is what has killed off smallpox.

[birdseye]

Dec 8, 2021 19:11:15 GMT Danny said:

Government announces renewed restrictions...yet simultaneously claims vaccination has been a great success.

Does no one spot the contradiction?

There is no contradiction. Vaccination has been a success in avoiding an estimated 105,000 deaths.

As for the new restriction, they come about because of what is in effect a new virus. At the rate it is multpilying we will have a million cases by end Xmas. In theory, assuming it continues to double every 3 days, that would be 32 million by mid January. It wont of course get that far simply because so many will already be infected, there will be fewr new targets for it. Its rumoured to be less severe but we dont yet have the know how to translate that into hospital beds

But its worse than that. Those with two AV vaccinations at the start of vaccination are now no longer protected because the effect has faded. With Pfizer its dropped to 30%. Only those with the booster havea 70% or more level of protection.

[alec]

birdseye - "Is that correct. Its my understanding that vaccination world wide is what has killed off smallpox."

It did, but what I am getting at is that we didn't just vaccinate. Containment was the main form of control, which worked to an extent because with smallpox, you aren't infectious until displaying symptoms. Then we developed vaccines, so containment plus vaccinating known contacts was the standard way to stop the spread.

With covid, we are allowing large scale infection of a routinely mutating virus alongside vaccination, risking the effectiveness of the vaccines.

[Danny]

Dec 11, 2021 20:59:30 GMT birdseye said:

Dec 5, 2021 22:34:54 GMT alec said:

We've never vaccinated ourselves out of any pandemic before,

Is that correct. Its my understanding that vaccination world wide is what has killed off smallpox.

We didnt vaccinate our way out of a smallpox pandemic. We may have eradicated it in the wild using vaccines, but its the only example despite now 50-100 years of trying.  I heard someone suposedly THE expert on smallpox talking about it, and he said two vaccines were needed to do the job. One which gave lasting long term protection and another which could be used to give protection very quickly in the case of new outbreaks. Vaccines have never before been attempted to be used to end an active pandemic, and we do not have a lasting vaccine anyway. The recent sars or mers or whatever it was corona virus outbreaks were proposed to be treated by vaccines, but they died out naturally anyway.

It seems medics are coming round to the idea the omicron variant may itself be useful as a vaccine against dangerous strains of covid. So the faster we get omicron to spread in the UK, the better.

[Danny]

Dec 11, 2021 22:42:23 GMT alec said:

With covid, we are allowing large scale infection of a routinely mutating virus alongside vaccination, risking the effectiveness of the vaccines.

We have no way to prevent the spread of covid.  Lockdown failed to prevent spread. Test and trace failed to prevent spread. The vaccines failed to prevent spread.

If we stayed at home sufficiently isolated to actually stop spread we would have starved to death. At least no covid, eh?

The way to minimise spread was always to isolate the hig risk but allow the younger people to catch it as fast as possible.

Omicron is looking so mild that its possible we should encourage everyone to catch it as fast as possible to protect them against more dangerous strains.  There is enough data now to demonstrate this is exactly how it has acted in SA. The only question now is whether background immunity in the Uk might be different so there would be a worse outcome. But no reason to think so so far.

If this does turn out to be true, then  we will finally have come to the end of the virus by the action of nature and not humans.

[Danny]

Dec 12, 2021 20:42:24 GMT mercian said:

Dec 12, 2021 19:55:31 GMT Danny said:

Zoe today R for England and Uk remains 1.0. Trend slightly down 50+. Slightly up under 50.

No indication there of sharp rise in cases due to omicron, and in fact this may never happen. In SA it looks like Omicron very rapidly replaced delta so there werent additional cases but replacement cases. Theres 1.1 million cases of delta in the UK currently, so thats quite a few which if supplanted by a less severe strain like omicron would immediately cut hospitalisations and deaths.

Are you saying that if someone has the Delta strain and is then exposed to Omicron that the latter will replace the former in that person?

Well yes and no. I wasnt especially saying that, but I was watching a video of some doc who did indeed argue that within a person omicron will out compete delta and supplant it at www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bWQcl8cSY8.  However I dont really think he was arguing people would be cured by giving them a shot of omicron, rather he was setting out how it would rapidly come to dominate the whole population and cut off delta from finding new targets, so it has to die out. As part of that he argued that existing immunity would tend to suppress new delta infections much more than omicron, so omicron would grow faster and become the dominant strain in that person. Probably not help them much, but when they passed it on, the would be passing on more omicron.

Based on the information we have so far, its perfectly possible that a huge wave of omicron across the Uk now would cut the number of people ending up in hospital, not incease it. And even that vaccination might impede that process.  Again, all we get from the government is proganda rather than an analysis of these issues.

On the whole I would suggest everyone who currently has delta, zoe reckon 1.1 million,  will get over it in a couple of weeks. By then there will be a much larger proportion of omicron about so fewer delta cases. Those catching omicron instead of delta will likely have better outcomes, so each new case of delta suppressed because omicron out competed it is a fractional life saved.

The idea being touted behind this is that omicron is sufficiently safe to be consideed as a vaccine candidate itself. That had it been available April 2020, we would have been running round deliberately giving it to people to protect them from the original wild strain.  I dont know how well that would have worked because all we know at the moment is omicron is very mild in the context of SA where almost everyone has more immunity now than when this all began, whether by vaccine or infection. So we have even less information how it would have behaved in the original 2020 unexposed population. i would say though, that in SA there must still be unvaccinated and unexposed people, and thus far we havnt seen a vast number of them turning up very sick in hospital. Which is suggestive it could have been helpfull right from the start. altough its possible those are precisely the few cases ending in hospit\l, relatively mild.

I dont give much credit to the idea covid escaped from genetic manipulation experiments. There seems plenty of very close neighbours in the wild to explain its appearance. But if I was a genetic researcher who understood how to make a virus mild or lethal, it sounds like omicron is just the sort of virus which might have been designed and released to automatically vaccinate the world and stop the epidemic.  I'd be pretty certain anyone who had the capability to do that would not want to announce it formally.  Its also a surprising mix of different mutations which came out of nowhere, and campbell suggested it had been created by (natural) fusion of a covid strain with a cold virus. That viruses can swap RNA is not a new idea.  Interested if more analysis turns up.

I would think however anyone catching omicron after  a vaccination would end up with better immunity than someone having a booster vaccination. Which might matter to them in the future. (because it would be to a different pattern so offering more deth of protection in the future)

[lens]

I'm interested in the complete absence of any public mention nowadays of the once much vaunted "app".....? Has anyone heard anything formal about why that is?

Anecdotally, I'm hearing that it's privately acknowledged to have been pretty much a waste of time and has been quietly airbrushed away? (Not that I expect to hear such formally announced, given how much it cost.) The crunch came when "pings" reached such a number that the isolations were causing more harm in terms of unnecessary absences than cases prevented.

It's also anecdotal, but I've heard that around August, in vaccinated individuals, as few as 1% of app pings and isolations went on to be a "real" case of infection. Again, if that is true, I wouldn't expect any official confirmation.......

[leftieliberal]

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/p0b98hzl 'More or Less' on Covid. Busting the claim that catching the disease give you better protection than vaccination.

[Danny]

Dec 13, 2021 18:26:32 GMT leftieliberal said:

www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/t differenp0b98hzl 'More or Less' on Covid. Busting the claim that catching the disease give you better protection than vaccination.

The item discusses a claim infection was x27 more effective than vaccination. They conclude this was one extreme of the range by which a study from Israel found infection to be better. But also that  different studies had different outcomes.  After considering some more reports, they concluded that protection post infection or double dose vaccination was about the same.  Which might equally be described as busting the claim vaccination gives you better protection than infection.

They also discussed the question of risks from catching covid or being vaccinated, and considered vaccination was rather less risky. However that doesnt really address the situation of people who have already had covid, so whatever the risk might have been they have already taken it. In SA it is accepted most people have already had covid, and that must apply in many other countries too. Although Sage reported most youngsters have already had covid in the Uk, it isnt clear what the proportion of the total population is.

 

[jib]

Danny

" However that doesnt really address the situation of people who have already had covid, so whatever the risk might have been they have already taken it. In SA it is accepted most people have already had covid, and that must apply in many other countries to"

sorry, do you have any actual evidence for that e.g. actual scientific evidence, not a hunch based on the mystery outbreak.

I'm still of the conventional, rational school of thought that most people haven't had Covid and it's only vaccination that's saved us from a car crash reality of endless Covid PLUS significant deaths.

The reasons COVID isn't so deadly is only because of vaccination. Death rates remain much higher in the USA where there are clear anti- Vax.