Covid: Personal views

meltonblue said:
Just says subscribe to read?
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Sorry it worked for me...

UK’s chief scientific adviser defends ‘herd immunity’ strategy for coronavirus​

Patrick Vallance says 40m Britons would have to contract coronavirus to prevent future outbreaks​

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Britain’s chief scientific adviser stoked controversy on Friday when he said that about 40m people in the UK could need to catch the coronavirus to build up “herd immunity” and prevent the disease coming back in the future.


“Communities will become immune to it and that’s going to be an important part of controlling this longer term,” he said. “About 60 per cent is the sort of figure you need to get herd immunity.”

In another interview with the BBC, Sir Patrick said: “If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time.”

He added: “Our aim is to try to reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it.”
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This was when it first arrived here.
 
Ban-jani said:
Sorry it worked for me...



This was when it first arrived here.
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Right but that has never been part of a published pandemic plan was my point. The New Labour pandemic plan had nothing about herd immunity, nor did this governments one when they revised it.

Edit - aside from gaining it through deployment of a vaccine.
 
meltonblue said:
Right but that has never been part of a published pandemic plan was my point. The New Labour pandemic plan had nothing about herd immunity, nor did this governments one when they revised it.

Edit - aside from gaining it through deployment of a vaccine.
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I could have sworn someone posted it on here, the other day and it said if no vaccine and mortality rate is under 1% then herd immunity is the only approach?

I’ll bow to your superior knowledge but regarding the government’s handling of the pandemic, Johnson was clearly being advised on herd immunity in March, as above states.
 
Ban-jani said:
I could have sworn someone posted it on here, the other day and it said if no vaccine and mortality rate is under 1% then herd immunity is the only approach?

I’ll bow to your superior knowledge but regarding the government’s handling of the pandemic, Johnson was clearly being advised on herd immunity in March, as above states.
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Its never the only approach, it’s always got to be coupled with suppression measures of some extent as it’s not just about mortality - it’s what percentage of the workforce that can be off sick at the same time too for example. The New Labour plan had suppression measures proposed for an attack rate that was less than what we’ve had with Covid for example.

It’s always difficult, particularly in the first wave, as you don’t know enough about the virus to be able to get it perfectly right and if there is a lower mortality rate, then building up immunity until a vaccine becomes available is absolutely a viable option. We knew pretty quickly that it wasn’t in this case though and as much as I have some sympathy with Johnson for the first wave, I don’t with the second or some of the measures in between.

What is interesting btw is just how much covid is actually following what was predicted would happen as part of previous pandemic planning. That 2005 doc is still very relevant now.
 
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