Coronavirus

[Orraloon]

28 minutes ago, killiefaetheferry said:

Is it still the case that it's mainly older people who are dying? 🤔🧐

50% of yesterday's deaths ( i.e. 1 out of two) was in the 22-44 age group. But, mostly it's still older people.

[phart]

7 deaths last 7 days

3 in 85+

2 in 75-84

1 in 65-74

1 55-64

not counting today.

[phart]

1 hour ago, Diamond Scot said:

I think the problem now is that governments know that increasingly high numbers just wont adhere to any type of lockdown should it be reinposed. So basically they would be shutting down the economy for zero public health benefit.

Older people are fully vacinated, most adults have had 1 dose and were at lower risk anyway.

Not enough time has elapsed with delta variant to be able to say too much about how it will go. We know folk with only 1 injection has considerable vaccine escape with it. It also has increased hospitalisation as well.

We're also seeing folk who have had pfizier vaccine after 3 months and also as they get older having less neutralisation effect from delta variant too.

Hopefully the vaccine line holds.

[Diamond Scot]

1 hour ago, Lamia said:

That is simply not accurate. There are still significant numbers in the top 9 JVCI categories who have still to be fully vaccinated 

Anybody in the most at risk categories have been offered the vaccine.

In any event the public are past the point when they will accept any more lockdowns.

[Diamond Scot]

47 minutes ago, phart said:

Not enough time has elapsed with delta variant to be able to say too much about how it will go. We know folk with only 1 injection has considerable vaccine escape with it. It also has increased hospitalisation as well.

We're also seeing folk who have had pfizier vaccine after 3 months and also as they get older having less neutralisation effect from delta variant too.

Hopefully the vaccine line holds.

I think theres a difference between what the data says and what the public think. 

Ive noticed a massive shift in attitude over the last couple of months.

[Squirrelhumper]

29 minutes ago, Diamond Scot said:

Anybody in the most at risk categories have been offered the vaccine.

In any event the public are past the point when they will accept any more lockdowns.

Agreed. 

[phart]

It's 3 weeks past 2nd jag which is counted as being protected.

I don't think the vaccination programme has hit that stage.

Obviously folk are going to have their opinions but those will be ill-informed.

[Squirrelhumper]

For the record, I agree with Diamond. 

The horse has bolted with lockdowns. Folk simply are scunnered with them. That and government incompetence. 

Plenty folk refusing vaccines so this talk of eliminating covid is pie in the sky.

Governments know folk arent sticking to rules now, 15 months living with severe restrictions will do that to folk. Especially young folk. Sat in school all week fine and dandy but dont dare meet the same mates at the weekend.

 

[Squirrelhumper]

5 minutes ago, phart said:

It's 3 weeks past 2nd jag which is counted as being protected.

I don't think the vaccination programme has hit that stage.

Obviously folk are going to have their opinions but those will be ill-informed.

Scotland is worst for first and second jags in mainland uk. Thats not the public's fault.

[phart]

Just now, Squirrelhumper said:

For the record, I agree with Diamond. 

The horse has bolted with lockdowns. Folk simply are scunnered with them. That and government incompetence. 

Plenty folk refusing vaccines so this talk of eliminating covid is pie in the sky.

Governments know folk arent sticking to rules now, 15 months living with severe restrictions will do that to folk. Especially young folk. Sat in school all week fine and dandy but dont dare meet the same mates at the weekend.

 

Who's not meeting their mates at the weekend? That's not against the rules. In fact i See large groups of kids every night.

 

[phart]

Just now, Squirrelhumper said:

Scotland is worst for first and second jags in mainland uk. Thats not the public's fault.

No one is making that argument on this thread.

[Squirrelhumper]

47 minutes ago, phart said:

Who's not meeting their mates at the weekend? That's not against the rules. In fact i See large groups of kids every night.

 

Pishing of rain for the past week there.

Where within the rules in Glasgow can you meet mates? A shopping centre?

[Lamia]

2 hours ago, Diamond Scot said:

Anybody in the most at risk categories have been offered the vaccine.

In any event the public are past the point when they will accept any more lockdowns.

Not correct. They have been offered a first dose and are in the process of being offered and getting a second. My point stands large numbers of vulnerable people are not vaccinated.

As phart points out there is considerable vaccine escape after only one dose with the Delta variant and it is two weeks after the second to get full protection. We are some way off having protected all of the vulnerable

Edited June 4, 2021 by Lamia

[Lamia]

1 hour ago, Squirrelhumper said:

For the record, I agree with Diamond. 

The horse has bolted with lockdowns. Folk simply are scunnered with them. That and government incompetence. 

Plenty folk refusing vaccines so this talk of eliminating covid is pie in the sky.

Governments know folk arent sticking to rules now, 15 months living with severe restrictions will do that to folk. Especially young folk. Sat in school all week fine and dandy but dont dare meet the same mates at the weekend.

 

Well people are going to have to accept they will struggle to get hospital treatment for anything else then for a considerable time to come

[tartandon]

Zero covid was achievable and is still achievable. But the UK govt dont have the balls to shut the border and force everybody who enters, irrespective of nationality or source, to go into a quarantine hotel.

We wont be truly safe until the whole planet is fully vaccinated, and while the virus is in circulation, mutant variants are inevitable. The only way to stop them entering the country is to shut the borders. We have the benefit of living on an island.

I find it truly astonishing that the Tories were all for 'reclaiming the border' when it came to Brexit, but when it come to a global pandemic that is threatening the population, they rushed to open up foreign travel at the first opportunity.

The UK govt are still clearly following a herd immunity strategy. The difference is that they now have vaccines as a tool to increase population immunity and they are clearly happy for the virus to spread amongst the younger population. It is a very dangerous strategy when you have a new variant in the wild that is seeing infections spread at an alarming rate.

Now that she has been re-elected, Nicola Sturgeon is clearly happy to follow along with the UK government strategy. She is no longer doing daily briefings. She is no longer challenging the UK government to close the border to stop variant importation. She is no longer stating the FACTS messaging. 

I have a horrible feeling that we are going to see a vaccine resistant strain emerge overseas in the next few months, we will import it, and we'll be back to square one again. 

 

[tartandon]

It also looks like the decision to extend the gap between doses of the vaccine was a mistake. The UK were clearly trying to be clever by advising a dosing strategy of 12 weeks when the manufacturers of the vaccine said there should be a 3 week gap.

They were trying to maximise the number of people who were partially vaccinated but that is a stupid decision if one dose does not provide enough protection.

https://www.ft.com/content/c00b5648-7a3b-4ce3-9ca3-a3cf848d7f2c

[Morrisandmoo]

On 5/29/2021 at 2:25 PM, Scotty CTA said:

We were hit hard in Canada by a third wave due to the lack of available vaccine.

It's resulted in our longest lockdown, with a gradual reopening (hopefully) starting on June 14th here in Ontario.

The good news, however, is that we've been able to ramp up the inoculations lately and the wait time for second shots has been reduced from 16 weeks down to 12 weeks (or less, depending on the brand).

I imagine we will get skudded by a third wave as well. The Scottish Government have very likely made a mistake in opening up prior to adult vaccination being complete. 

[Lamia]

27 minutes ago, tartandon said:

The UK govt are still clearly following a herd immunity strategy. The difference is that they now have vaccines as a tool to increase population immunity and they are clearly happy for the virus to spread amongst the younger population. It is a very dangerous strategy when you have a new variant in the wild that is seeing infections spread at an alarming rate.

Now that she has been re-elected, Nicola Sturgeon is clearly happy to follow along with the UK government strategy. She is no longer doing daily briefings. She is no longer challenging the UK government to close the border to stop variant importation. She is no longer stating the FACTS messaging. 

 

 

Spot on.

 

I share your fear about a mutation that escapes the vaccine and it looks like it could be not far off. I noticed Nicola Sturgeon made light of it today.

I am actually starting to regret voting SNP although there was no better alternative. I feel I have been mugged by Sturgeon!

[Morrisandmoo]

On 5/29/2021 at 3:11 PM, phart said:

Is stopping long covid the primary driver in policy though or is it containing community transmission?

No one I follow talks about long-covid as a primary concern, just something that happens. It's mitigating community spread that is the main worry. Now I don't follow Johnson so maybe he is going on about it, I have no idea.

It was somebody earlier in the conversation (maybe Orraloon) who argued that we should move our focus onto driving down long-covid cases once hospitalisations are under control - because of the HUGE numbers involved (and presumably the significant impact thereof).

I was disagreeing with that proposal on the basis that the numbers aren't that huge and aren't that impactful (once you peer beyond the headline grabbing nonsense) and pale when compared to far more pressing matters that we should be dealing with instead (albeit those matters are non-covid - so frighteningly irrelevant in the public's eye).   

[Morrisandmoo]

Kids need to be exempt from all this isolating carry on. If there is anything we should be prepared to die for it's education (academic and sports).  

My kids have lost close to a month of education (each) this year alone (excluding nation-wide lockdowns) and we're only half way through the year...test, isolate, school closed...repeat. They are lucky. Because if push comes to shove, I'll just pay for them to catch up. No problem. But tens of thousands of kids don't have that chance. And that is shite. 

Forget the education for a minute, it's the sports as well. In Killie there must be a hundred kids in the park on weekends...and Monday and Tuesdays and Wednesdays drinking (and singing sectarian songs....obvs). When maybe before it was 10 and the rest were at football or Judo or whatever. 

Folk that think you can catch up off your own (or the state's) back need to go away and think about it harder. It's not possible to just "catch up". These kids will just be dumber and sadder than they need to be forever. And again that is shite. And it's all our fault. And we need to come up with a better, more committed plan, pronto. 

Edited June 4, 2021 by Morrisandmoo

[Morrisandmoo]

On 6/3/2021 at 7:35 AM, phart said:

I'm not 100% sure what the ethical issues are with vaccine passports. I went to Kenya last February and wouldn't have got in without the yellow fever vaccine certficate. It didn't even register at the time as something unethical.

Because the result of a domestic vaccine passport would be the exclusion of mostly young, black and poor people from society to achieve longer life for mostly old, white and middle class people?

I'm not arguing one way or the other (yet!), although i can certainly see the ethical dilemma when I look at the inevitable result. 

[tartandon]

30 minutes ago, Lamia said:

I am actually starting to regret voting SNP although there was no better alternative. I feel I have been mugged by Sturgeon!

Same here.

I've been a single issue voter all my life and have always voted SNP. I've been an SNP member for over a decade. But I've been shocked by her handling of the pandemic since she got re-elected.

We are in an unprecedented global pandemic with all the numbers going in the wrong direction very fast. She is gambling that there wont be a massive increase in hospital numbers and deaths. Taking a more relaxed approach to a worsening situation is lunacy.

As we have already seen over the last 16 months, failure to take firm, swift action when faced with rapidly rising numbers is recipe for disaster. She is literally gambling with people's lives.

[Scotty CTA]

17 minutes ago, Morrisandmoo said:

I imagine we will get skudded by a third wave as well. The Scottish Government have very likely made a mistake in opening up prior to adult vaccination being complete. 

Funnily, we're a few weeks behind you.

We originally had the advantage of watching how other countries coped, but when it came our turn we didn't have the necessary amount of vaccine to flatten the curve as required.

We're expecting the Delta variant to be the dominant variant here in 3-4 weeks.

On the upside, we now seem to have the vaccine we need, and people are complying.

I had my first shot of AZ on April 14th.

That (supposedly) gave me 54% protection (after 2 weeks).

What they've discovered with AZ is that it's a 'slow burn' vaccine, meaning it will get stronger over time, and peak at 76% protection at 12 weeks.

Had I received my second AZ shot after (say) 3 weeks then I would have been stuck at approx. 54% protection.

(I was just fortunate that there wasn't enough AZ to go around at the time so they could discover this.)

Anyway, (I believe) that it was yesterday that Pfizer and Moderna have been approved as possible second shots for those of us that received a first AZ shot.

I now have a choice of those three vaccines once my 12 weeks as elapsed.

My girlfriend (also AZ) and I plan on getting Pfizer as our second shots.

The feedback on 'mixing' is that we will definitely feel lousy, but the benefit will be that an AZ and a Pfizer will be stronger than 2 AZ's or 2 Pfizers.

My girlfriend had her first shot 5 days before me.

We're due our second shots at the beginning of July.

I'll report back on how things went.

[phart]

2 hours ago, Squirrelhumper said:

Pishing of rain for the past week there.

Where within the rules in Glasgow can you meet mates? A shopping centre?

 

you can meet in groups of up to 6 from 6 households outdoors, in a private garden or a public place like a park or an outdoor area of a café

Not sure exactly where it was pishing down, the 23rd of May has a recorded 8mm which is significantly the most rain in the last 3 weeks. 28th of May is the last recorded date with rain. My mates in Glasgow have been in the group chats talking about how nice the weather has been.

However if 8mm of rain in 24 hours is too much for school children to bear to meet their mates then fair enough.

Everyone is going to mentally break from the restrictions when they break.

[tartandon]

3 minutes ago, Morrisandmoo said:

Because the result of a domestic vaccine passport would be the exclusion of mostly young, black and poor people from society to achieve longer life for mostly old, white and middle class people?

I'm not arguing one way or the other (yet!), although i can certainly see the ethical dilemma when I look at the inevitable result. 

Once we are at the stage when everybody has had the opportunity to be vaccinated, there needs to be a method for getting the 'hesitant' people vaccinated. The more people who dont get vaccinated, the greater chance there is for the virus to spread with an increased risk that there could be potential new variants emerging.