For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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#1847057
eltonioni

If you are vaccinated you are 99.999999% protected and you aren't going to drop dead from C19.


Any chance you could share your source for that claim? I just haven’t seen that certainty before.

If you are not vaccinated in the UK you are in the age group where it doesn't much matter unless you are in the vulnerable category. I'm not seeing the problem that should shut down society.


Equally I’d be interested in any data you have on the debilitating effects of ‘Long Covid’ on the young and un-vaccinated.

(Rather unhelpfully, some youngsters seem to have previously undiagnosed ‘vulnerabilities’.)

Many thanks.
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1847080
The best data on vaccination suggests that the vaccination is around 95% efficacy which is a good deal better than flu at around 70% in a typical year.

To establish a reasonable level of what some folk call "herd immunity" upwards of 80% of the population needs to be vaccinated.

We have an improving system of local test, trace, isolate but it needs more focussed support and investment and the national system, though not the app, needs to be shut down 'cos it's largely useless.

The young are not invulnerable or immortal, though many seem to think they are, and there is already evidence of debilitating long term effects dubbed "long Covid" amongst the the young.

There is a good chance that the UK can manage the hospital capacity issue now but no cause for complacency, because our capacity has not increased, indeed NHS staff are so p155ed off there is a risk that capacity will reduce partly because EU staff may go home rather go for settled status and partly because some will quit because they are done for.
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#1847097
I'd expected that most reasonable people would understand 99.999999% as a turn of phrase, not a peer-reviewed statistic.


@A4 Pacific The reality will be that a bunch of unvaccinated people will drop dead in mainly Muslim areas with multi-generational households.

AAUI the 3 strains of this "Indian mutation" are less potent but more fecund so reporters will go nuts about spikes but hospital admissions will stay stubbornly low (so @johnm will be pleased :)) and various racists will claim that the government is being racist in it's slow response to lockdown the whole nation instead of just the mainly Muslim areas with multi-generational households where it's a problem. Viruses do what viruses do, they evolve to be less potent and more fecund - as we discussed last year to much disagreement.

What will be more interesting will be how it is reported and possibly used as a tool of ongoing state oppression. I read today that various advising SPIM (?) scientists are feeling a bit sheepish about creating a totalitarian response with Project Fear and psychological manipulation of the population.
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By skydriller
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1847152
johnm wrote:The best data on vaccination suggests that the vaccination is around 95% efficacy which is a good deal better than flu at around 70% in a typical year.


Is that not the point?

We dont shut down society because people get the flu and some unfortunately even die from it, however with COVID it appears that anything other than zero cases is a reason to place restrictions upon the entire population...
By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1847157
skydriller wrote:We dont shut down society because people get the flu and some unfortunately even die from it, however with COVID it appears that anything other than zero cases is a reason to place restrictions upon the entire population...

I just don't understand how, after nearly a year and a half, with enormous amounts of perfectly good information available, this comparison is still being made.

Covid is significantly more lethal than flu; it is very much more transmissible than flu, and if it is not aggressively controlled, it overwhelms health service provision and causes extreme stress to the people providing that provision - and kills quite a lot of them, which flu does not. The more the stress on our health services, the further behind we get with treating all the other conditions, and hence the more the effect even on non-Covid patients.

Also, 'Long Flu' is not a thing, whereas Long Covid affects quite a lot of the people that it doesn't kill, and quite a lot of those are not old with comorbidities.

The vaccination programme may well create the herd immunity that we need (and FTAOD, nothing else will), and if it does, and if the vaccines provide enough immunity against new variants, then we're all good, and it will be a mildish endemic disease that we have to live with.

But we're not there yet. And a big pool of young and/or 'vaccine hesitant' people running around spreading a yet more transmissible variant, creating a pool of rapidly proliferating and hence randomly mutating virus is just what we don't need.
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By skydriller
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1847161
TopCat wrote:I just don't understand how, after nearly a year and a half, with enormous amounts of perfectly good information available, this comparison is still being made.


I might not be expressing myself very well, but I think we are agreeing... We DO live with the flu killing a significant number of people every year and hospitals do fill up with flu patients every year. If vaccination reduces the number of hospital admissions and deaths due COVID to a comparable number due the flu, doesnt that mean we can all behave normally again? For sure, It'd be great if no-one died due to flu or COVID or Cancer and a bunch of other things too, but thats life (and death). And we need to get on with it.

Regards, SD..
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By TopCat
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1847162
skydriller wrote:We DO live with the flu killing a significant number of people every year and hospitals do fill up with flu patients every year.

But this comparison creates an equivalence between flu and Covid. This is flat out wrong.

Sure, most winters, flu puts a lot of pressure on the hospitals. But it does that without bringing the rest of healthcare to a grinding halt. It doesn't stop people seeing GPs. It doesn't kill lots of healthcare workers. And it doesn't create a significant risk of dying of flu if you go in for something else.

Flu seasons are nowhere near as bad as what we had last March/April, and again this January/February.

If vaccination reduces the number of hospital admissions and deaths due COVID to a comparable number due the flu, doesnt that mean we can all behave normally again?

I'm not sure. Possibly, although it might be more accurate to say that if hospitalisations and deaths from flu and Covid combined can be reduced to what flu is now, we can all behave normally again. A much higher uptake of the flu vaccine would be a start in this regard.

If the average flu and Covid season was twice as bad as historical average flu seasons, that would have serious implications for health service investment.
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By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1847164
skydriller wrote:
johnm wrote:The best data on vaccination suggests that the vaccination is around 95% efficacy which is a good deal better than flu at around 70% in a typical year.


Is that not the point?

We dont shut down society because people get the flu and some unfortunately even die from it, however with COVID it appears that anything other than zero cases is a reason to place restrictions upon the entire population...


This is getting VERY boring Covid is MUCH more infectious than flu in confined spaces and a bigger proportion of victims end up in intensive care.

We are loosening restrictions because a big proportion of the population is now well enough vaccinated to avoid hospitalisation but variants that can beat the vaccine still have to be considered, hence the need for surge testing and local restrictions while the data is gathered and assessed.
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#1847229
TopCat wrote:
Also, 'Long Flu' is not a thing


Post viral fatigue is a thing. If you’ve had a proper case of flu rather than a bad cold, you know about it for months afterwards.

In my teenage years I had flu and was unable to play sport for 3 months due to the after effects.

I had Covid last year and it took a while to get over. However I doubt that the ban on going outside for recreation, having to be locked up at home, and seeing my income and savings disappear helped much.
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#1847234
TopCat wrote:
skydriller wrote:We DO live with the flu killing a significant number of people every year and hospitals do fill up with flu patients every year.

But this comparison creates an equivalence between flu and Covid. This is flat out wrong.

It might have been wrong a year ago, but not now, not here, not for you, me and @skydriller, thanks to vaccines.

I'm pretty certain I saw recently that flu is now a bigger killer in the UK than Covid .
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