The variant was the reason given by the German government, i.e. to stop it spreading over here. The good thing about being over here and not on social media much is that I can have a rose-tinted view of the country. And I do see a lot of good in the UK alongside some of the less good things.
All the way through this greater Manchester has been high. Stands to reason they would be first to go up. There about 20million people not vaccinated. Be they kids or whatever. The second vaccination is much slower than the first for whatever reason and even Europe is catching up now.
People in hospital due to covid 02/06 126 01/06 154 123 110 100 132 etc Last time was over 200 was 12/04 Thats compared to about 4K in January time. If you remove the word covid from this list and apply it to any other illness would the country be in lockdown?
Well Manchester Bolton is essentially in a lockdown without it being called a lockdown. Still lots of restrictions in place. Problem is this thing is going to be around for ever just like normal flu.
TBH no. ut you can't strip context form the discussion either. Covid is an ongoing situation that is unlike regular flu. it has done utterly overwhelming in flu season even with restrictions half applied (and boris certinly only hafl applied to get people over christmas) we are now in the non flu season where flu just doesn't happen and we are talking about continued nagging case rates that wont go away. It is a virus that spreads before symptoms occur and is rife. If you could suppress it down such that it wouldn't blow up massively next flu season sure why not. Lets be clear in the worse flu season of the past 10 years https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/annual-flu-reports also https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...deathsoccurringbetween1januaryand31august2020 the numbers who die fo the strains of flu we have normally are much smaller and we tolerated this. We have to see that with MASSIVE interventions ranging for severe restrictions to social distancing etc all we have managed to do is restrict the death rate to 5-6x. our attitude is covid is not worse BECAUSE of our collective actions rather than its not deadly enough to bother doing this stuff. Its simply not normal flu. its not because it can be spread far easier due to lack of symptoms. It certainly is being made worse by travel. It was bad enough we made our own variant without importing 3 other variants
it was a very enjoyable afternoon sitting by a river , drinking proper beer and chatting absolute **** with a couple of old mates .
4 week delay to end of "restrictions" considered. Given the partying at the cricket etc I cant call it a lockdown or anything lol.
all adults can now register for a vaccination. 12-17 year old vaccinations are being urged to be approved asap. EU as of today: 196 million single doses administered. 108.7million fully vaccinated. = 300million doses administered = 54% and 30% - now in full swing. UK as of today: 42million first doses, 30.4 million fully vaccinated. = 80% and 58% respectively. - approaching saturation levels but AZ effectiveness is a major question. India: 220million people vaccinated once, about 50million fully vaccinated. It will take 3.5 years to get through that country without major improvements. Supply is no longer the restraining factor, it is now willingness to roll up a sleeve.
more bad news. India now reporting a delta plus variant is being detected. Another mutation which is even worse and appears resistant to the antiviral mediations given in hospitals. BBC reporting the usual UK response which is wait and see. Already the delta variant is dominant here but this new delta plus is apparently already here and the longer they wait to "see" the higher the chance this new mutation sweeps in as we have zero border controls. In other news the travel industry is demanding full opening so we spread this round europe. Expect from September to be back in full restrictions again. Incidentally delta plus is already in the US, japan (olympics are done for) and china. The delta plus variant has a ll the characteristics of the Delta variant but with the added extra of gaining the beta (south africa) variants resistance to some vaccines. in short if this thing takes off AZ vaccine is absolutely useless.
I think the AstraZeneca vaccine is done after two doses anyway because you develop immunity to the vaccine. It can't be tweaked like the Pfizer. After all the second doses of it are taken up, which must be soon, it likely won't be used again.
Its more about the fact that its completely ineffective even with two shots in a person for SA and delta plus. We'll all need boosters anyway sometime but the issue if we are not stopping spread at all but are making it 100 time worse for ourselves again this winter (winter no 2) cos we are insistent on letting people travel from india etc (as are other countries, its already too late) and then insistent on summer holidays in the sun. summer 1. holidays and free dinners. winter 1 massive wave of infection. summer 2. no lessons learned? winter 2. lets see. we can only hope the pfizer and moderna vaccinations will remain effective and prevent deaths. The impacts in terms of seriously illness are not even being calculated yet.
