It leaves some room for growth if all restrictions are lifted immediately, which nobody could ever argue for.Yes, I agree. And that leaves plenty of room for rapid exponential growth for a virus with Ro perhaps ~4 for current variant.
Have had one dose of a two dose vaccine. And easily sufficient remain either unprotected by the vaccine or unvaccinated to allow a major further surge in hospitalisation and death if a third wave is allowed by opening up too soon.
This is exactly what Whitty and Vallance have been saying today. And what every other expert thinks.
This is not a static illness / virus. We had the wild type in tbe Uk. Now we have the Kent variant. So we have to take into account the possibility that there will be more variants that alter tbe elidemic in terms of transmission and virulence. I think we will be OK but we need to monitor growth of variants which xan partially evade the immune system. We got a more transmissible variant that took over in tbe UK. Why can't the E484K mutations take off here in the same way it has in South Africa? I think its unlikely but I think we should be being careful now rather just assume that its all done because we have a vaccineIt leaves some room for growth if all restrictions are lifted immediately, which nobody could ever argue for.
There is an increasing body of evidence that just one dose is sufficiently effective, and the maker of the AZ vaccine has said the second dose is simply intended as a booster for long-term immunity.
We can monitor mutations and update vaccines in a very short time frame.This is not a static illness / virus. We had the wild type in tbe Uk. Now we have the Kent variant. So we have to take into account the possibility that there will be more variants that alter tbe elidemic in terms of transmission and virulence. I think we will be OK but we need to monitor growth of variants which xan partially evade the immune system. We got a more transmissible variant that took over in tbe UK. Why can't the E484K mutations take off here in the same way it has in South Africa? I think its unlikely but I think we should be being careful now rather just assume that its all done because we have a vaccine
Yes, I agree. And that leaves plenty of room for rapid exponential growth for a virus with Ro perhaps ~4 for current variant.
Have had one dose of a two dose vaccine. And easily sufficient remain either unprotected by the vaccine or unvaccinated to allow a major further surge in hospitalisation and death if a third wave is allowed by opening up too soon.
This is exactly what Whitty and Vallance have been saying today. And what every other expert thinks.
Bloody great news it really is..Better news from the hospitals. Under 9000 now in hospital across UK....TV news if you are reading!
Hospital data:
As I suggested they would last night - happily - after the small Monday rise in numbers we often see things returned to their steady downward path today.
UK total:
Patients 8999 - it was 39, 248 at the peak on 18 Jan - (fall of 30, 249 in 50 days)
Ventilators 1295 - it was 4077 at the peak on 24 Jan - (fall of 2782 in 44 days)
England only:-
Patients: down 396 in day to 7451 v 10, 121 last week
Peak was 34, 336 on 18 Jan (fall 26, 885 in 50 days)
Ventilators: Down in day 49 to 1187 v 1556 last week
Peak was 3736 on 24 Jan (fall 2549 in 44 days)
Regions:
Patient // Ventilators // change in past 24 hours and v last week
East down 72 to 709 v 1032 // down 1 to 107 v 134
London down 70 to 1481 v 1932 // down 21 to 358 v 485
Midlands down 83 to 1653 v 2304 // down 9 to 257 v 328
NE & Yorks down 44 to 1221 v 1629// down 4 to 165 v 200
North West down 51 to 1167 v 1540 // down 4 to 141 v 182
South East down 46 to 937 v 1248 // down 9 to 118 v 174
South West down 30 to 283 v 436 // down 1 41 v 53
Every region down in both patients and ventilators quite consistently.
You have to also bear in mind that it's probably already hit the superspreaders though. The ones that come across people all the time, as many of those are in low paid jobs and have carried on working as per usual throughout this. There is no guarantee that it'd go through the remaining 50% of the population anywhere near as fast. I don't doubt there would be a surge, but surely those who haven't had it yet are either probably more cautious or less likely to be around people due to what they do for a living or their personal situation. Surely it's an awful lot harder for a virus to spread when most of the big spreaders have already been removed from that chain. Not saying there will be no surge, but it'll be different, cos it has to be?
It leaves some room for growth if all restrictions are lifted immediately, which nobody could ever argue for.
There is an increasing body of evidence that just one dose is sufficiently effective, and the maker of the AZ vaccine has said the second dose is simply intended as a booster for long-term immunity.
I guess we'd need to know if those deaths are among folk in Israel who actually had the vaccine. Same applies here. I guess we'll know that soon enough.Those graphs suggest there is a plateau point in cases and deaths below which - vaccines or not - we will not go. As this is in effect an endemic disease and vaccines will help but will never eradicate.
Although in truth this was alway looking like the outcome - that is still going to be a hard sell to the public who are likely perceiving them as the end game when they are really only ever going to be a way to curb the worst case outcomes as we live with a level of disease and death from Covid we will have to accept as normal.
If that proves to be where we are the debate on how and when we open up will have a different dimension.