Coronavirus (2021) thread

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So what's everyone's views on where we are up to now?
Lots of people seem to think we will get in another lockdown Sept / Oct despite the mass vaccination programme.
Too many unknowns:
  • The extent of vaccination
  • Whether we vaccinate children
  • When will the next generation of vaccines be available, and how effective will they be
  • What variants are circulating and what there characteristics are - to take off they have to be more contagious than the Delta variant, or have more escape mutations, which effectively makes them more contagious.
  • How effective are all the Chinese vaccines? Is it possible for example that the Delta variant, or the Epsilon variant which will surely follow some time is going to break China. If it does there;s 1.5 billion himan hosts in which more variants can form.
  • And linked to that last point, what do China and the USA do when they have finished their domestic vaccination? If their vaccines are effective, then huge vaccine capacity will come online. Our vaccination is held back because of supply.
I think most likely we get on top of this when we have effective boosters which I hope will be tailored to the latest variants and not just a 3rd jab of what we have had.
 
We were discussing the formation of clusters and now you're talking about national groups, and comparing Harrow to parts of Bolton/Blackburn. Chalk and cheese and there most likely is your answer.


I was comparing Indian groups with others comparable groups. You were incorrect about families of Indian background (as an ethno-national group) have high levels of deprivation. They do not in comparison to others.

Harrow has a high concentration of Indian families. Why would that be irrelevant? Why are the rates not so high there? That is the point I was making. Maybe I was too subtle. It's too simplistic to say 'where Indian families are, there are high numbers of cases'. It's factually incorrect.
 
The reason for lockdowns is to reduce transmission when cases reach the level that hospitalisations and deaths are so high that the NHS is in danger of being overwhelmed. The hope with vaccines is that the link between cases and hospitalisations/deaths has been weakened to the point where the NHS is in no danger even if infections are as high as they were before. In that scenario, there would be no real justification for a further lockdown. We will know more about how the vaccines have affected the linkage in the next few weeks but the current data looks good.
This is the Battle of the Somme with a fixed line of trenches. This is a mobile evolving virus. We don't know how effective our immunity if going to be in the Autumn. This variant is going to sweep Europe and the USA and what is it going to spin off? And at the same time there are vaccine trials under way the first of which are scheduled to complete in the Autumn. Unknowns.
 
Too many unknowns:
  • The extent of vaccination
  • Whether we vaccinate children
  • When will the next generation of vaccines be available, and how effective will they be
  • What variants are circulating and what there characteristics are - to take off they have to be more contagious than the Delta variant, or have more escape mutations, which effectively makes them more contagious.
  • How effective are all the Chinese vaccines? Is it possible for example that the Delta variant, or the Epsilon variant which will surely follow some time is going to break China. If it does there;s 1.5 billion himan hosts in which more variants can form.
  • And linked to that last point, what do China and the USA do when they have finished their domestic vaccination? If their vaccines are effective, then huge vaccine capacity will come online. Our vaccination is held back because of supply.
I think most likely we get on top of this when we have effective boosters which I hope will be tailored to the latest variants and not just a 3rd jab of what we have had.
If China is proved to be the place where this started, will damages be pursued?
Another cold war ensues?
 
I was comparing Indian groups with others comparable groups. You were incorrect about families of Indian background (as an ethno-national group) have high levels of deprivation. They do not in comparison to others.

Harrow has a high concentration of Indian families. Why would that be irrelevant? Why are the rates not so high there? That is the point I was making. Maybe I was too subtle. It's too simplistic to say 'where Indian families are, there are high numbers of cases'. It's factually incorrect.
It's not irrelevant. But deprivation matters. Forming an initial that is self-sustaining is going to depend on the nature of the community that carriers return to. Bolton and Harrow are quite different at least my perceptions of them are.

You're the poverty expert with the economics degree. We have the empirical evidence, you interpret it.

It's not factually incorrect to say that this wave was triggered by travel from the Indian sub-continent hence the argument with Government ministers about whether they shut down travel soon enough. Of course now the epidemic progresses beyond the initial clusters and its character changes.
 
This is the Battle of the Somme with a fixed line of trenches. This is a mobile evolving virus. We don't know how effective our immunity if going to be in the Autumn. This variant is going to sweep Europe and the USA and what is it going to spin off? And at the same time there are vaccine trials under way the first of which are scheduled to complete in the Autumn. Unknowns.
Which is why they are already planning for booster vaccinations in Autumn to try and deal with variants (though I have no idea which variants they target - may be a bit of educated guesswork like they do with seasonal flu vaccinations)
 
Which is why they are already planning for booster vaccinations in Autumn to try and deal with variants (though I have no idea which variants they target - may be a bit of educated guesswork like they do with seasonal flu vaccinations)
Some of the vaccines in trial are based on the SA variant. There's a mixture. Including whole virus vaccines which might be less affected by spike mutations. Moderna's variant vaccine (in trial) is based on the SA variant. I think GSK also have a vaccine candidate in trial and I think they have more than one version, one Wuhan, one SA. Hard to keep up. ANd there's not much news
 
If China is proved to be the place where this started, will damages be pursued?
Another cold war ensues?

If it was a lab leak there could be something to base claims on, other than that doubtful id say, political tensions are high as it is with the US/China trade war going on. and to be honest you could ask the same about the variants. Kent Variant took over the world and we did very little to stop it. will we be pursued for damages?
 
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