Coronavirus

[Gutter Boy]

Epidemic equilibrium, new phrase.

So the new London School of Tropical Medicine modelling is specifically saying Plan A will see us hit epidemic equilibrium, whereas introducing Plan B would prevent that and cause an extra winter wave (Jan-may) instead

 

[Lilbaz]

Thanks for the links an interesting read. Firstly I work in public health not immunology. Sorry I should have been clearer in my statement earlier, I have edited “usually” to “can be.” Those articles tell us what we already know, that some children elicit a stronger response to covid (not all btw there are multiple hypotheses as to why kids don’t get hit as hard including fewer ace 2 receptors in the lower respiratory system for the covid spike protein to bind to) . However, what they do not detail (because no one knows) is the degree of lasting immunity. We now know that both vaccine and post infection immunity wanes, hence the booster program so herd immunity is probably not possible to achieve especially with Delta. So even though kids are not affected by coronavirus in the same way as adults it does not mean they cannot contract it and pass it on. My 7 year old passed covid onto my wife and I know of other similar cases of that happening. If they can contract it once and covid belongs to the group of coronaviruses that mutate and evade immunity then they can catch it again and transmit. Therefore talk about herd immunity is wide of the mark.

We know vaccine immunity wanes somewhat, in that antibodies fall off. Do we know immunity from infection does? You will probably know more about this than me. I know there are models that predict it. But there are also studies that showed people that had sars covid 1, still had immunity from sars covid 2, 17 years later. T cells being much longer lasting.

I don't think we will get to herd immunity. But the virus will become far less lethal as immunity grows.

 

[Lilbaz]

So the new London School of Tropical Medicine modelling is specifically saying Plan A will see us hit epidemic equilibrium, whereas introducing Plan B would prevent that and cause and extra winter wave (Jan-may) instead

Obviously not the only model. But hope it's right.

 

[Gutter Boy]

Obviously not the only model. But hope it's right.

It's also been the plan. Back in spring/early summer Sage were saying they wanted an autumn exit wave rather than a winter one, so hence went with the big bang reopening.

 

[Lilbaz]

It's also been the plan. Back in spring/early summer Sage were saying they wanted an autumn exit wave rather than a winter one, so hence went with the big bang reopening.

Yes but they were expecting 100-200k a day. Which didn't happen.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

We know vaccine immunity wanes somewhat, in that antibodies fall off. Do we know immunity from infection does? You will probably know more about this than me. I know there are models that predict it. But there are also studies that showed people that had sars covid 1, still had immunity from sars covid 2, 17 years later. T cells being much longer lasting.

I don't think we will get to herd immunity. But the virus will become far less lethal as immunity grows.

I think that's right. Due to the timeframe we simply don't know (or haven't begun to move focus to) the level of T cell B cell response. To know this would really help with predictions of where we are heading and the schedule of continuing vaccination programs.

Tcell testing is costly though (although with the money the government have spent (blown) in other areas I wouldn't think it's an issue) but a valuable piece of the jigsaw, including revealing any differences in tcell legacy from natural infection versus vaccine dose.

Plus are we keeping any data on reinfections?

 

[Gutter Boy]

I think that's right. Due to the timeframe we simply don't know (or haven't begun to move focus to) the level of T cell B cell response. To know this would really help with predictions of where we are heading and the schedule of continuing vaccination programs.

Tcell testing is costly though (although with the money the government have spent (blown) in other areas I wouldn't think it's an issue) but a valuable piece of the jigsaw, including revealing any differences in tcell legacy from natural infection versus vaccine dose.

Plus are we keeping any data on reinfections?

Reinfections are below 1% of cases, so they are still at negligible levels for most analysis.

 

[Grays_1890]

Question Time: If by some miracle we reached the goal of getting the majority of society vaccinated and boosted and we went back about our business, looking at the numbers it is likely we would still see People hospitalised and dying so what would people view as the next step? Do you envisage additional.meassure or do you think we will reach a point where governments determine that we are just going to accept a number of casualties annually if say that figure was stabilised to say under 100,000k a year,?

 

[Gutter Boy]

Question Time: If by some miracle we reached the goal of getting the majority of society vaccinated and boosted and we went back about our business, looking at the numbers it is likely we would still see People hospitalised and dying so what would people view as the next step? Do you envisage additional.meassure or do you think we will reach a point where governments determine that we are just going to accept a number of casualties annually if say that figure was stabilised to say under 100,000k a year,?

I think your situation has already been the case for the last 4-6 months. Outside a few fringe zero covid activists, most people have gone back to life and largely forgotten about it.

Death rates will never be that high. People reckon the levels are high now, and even now that's looking at less than 10,000k. The problem with a novel coronavirus is the novel bit. Once everyone has had exposure to it (naturally and/or vaccine), like pretty much now, it's no longer novel/dangerous.

To me, within a year or two it will just become like glandular fever or ME. Something you don't particularly want to get, but is so rarely serious enough to worry or do anything about.

 

[Lilbaz]

Question Time: If by some miracle we reached the goal of getting the majority of society vaccinated and boosted and we went back about our business, looking at the numbers it is likely we would still see People hospitalised and dying so what would people view as the next step? Do you envisage additional.meassure or do you think we will reach a point where governments determine that we are just going to accept a number of casualties annually if say that figure was stabilised to say under 100,000k a year,?

Not sure what you mean by miracle. The majority of the population have been vaccinated. Over 4 million have been given a booster.

This is like flu now. Problem is we're still not that sure how long immunity lasts. People who have been vaccinated and been exposed to the virus you have better immunity. So we let the virus run through the population. Hoping that the peak in hospitalisations came before winter (when the nhs is traditionally under most strain). Problem was that casesdidn't get as high as the modellers predicted (100-200k a day) and winter is almost here. Hospitalisations have gone up a bit and will continue for the next week or two. After that nobodys sure. Some models predict cases will start dropping dramatically in the next couple of weeks some predict them rising.

If they rise in the next few weeks we will go to plan b. If they don't we won't do anything.

 

[ricky2tricky4city]

I think your situation has already been the case for the last 4-6 months. Outside a few fringe zero covid activists, most people have gone back to life and largely forgotten about it.

Death rates will never be that high. People reckon the levels are high now, and even now that's looking at less than 10,000k. The problem with a novel coronavirus is the novel bit. Once everyone has had exposure to it (naturally and/or vaccine), like pretty much now, it's no longer novel/dangerous.

To me, within a year or two it will just become like glandular fever or ME. Something you don't particularly want to get, but is so rarely serious enough to worry or do anything about.

Judging by a day out to the Olympic stadium on Sunday... no-one looks to be giving the virus much thought.

I think the government are still trying to achieve their original goal (By stealth or otherwise). The death numbers have been horrific BUT we are past that now, and if there is a silver lining to that it is the shear number of people that have been pushed thru (from poor management) the natural infection envelope.

I know we test more than nearly every other country but even then it can't be a 'catch all' result. If first cases were say Feb 2020 we've had 20 months of infections, with limited testing for the first few months. Add in asymptomatic cases that never got tested and kids testing only ramping up later...I'm sure it way surpasses the 8/9m positive cases officially recorded.

And with the antibody study reflecting presence in 93% (ish) of the population, it leads you to ponder, what are we trying to achieve (protect) by future interventions. Vaccine immunity and natural immunity is doing it's thing, they are our biggest weapons. We waited for one of those weapons to come along and everyone has been given the opportunity to arm themselves with it.

If T/B cell protection is good (hopefully from vaccines as well, otherwise it might be a case of protect yourself from serious illness with a vaccine but you then would be better protected in the long run getting naturally infected as well ), then beyond a game changing mutation we should have the foundation in place to wind this f.ucker down.

(Long covid is a curve ball in the 'not so bad to get infected' approach though)

 

[Lilbaz]

Judging by a day out to the Olympic stadium on Sunday... no-one looks to be giving the virus much thought.

I think the government are still trying to achieve their original goal (By stealth or otherwise). The death numbers have been horrific BUT we are past that now, and if there is a silver lining to that it is the shear number of people that have been pushed thru (from poor management) the natural infection envelope.

I know we test more than nearly every other country but even then it can't be a 'catch all' result. If first cases were say Feb 2020 we've had 20 months of infections, with limited testing for the first few months. Add in asymptomatic cases that never got tested and kids testing only ramping up later...I'm sure it way surpasses the 8/9m positive cases officially recorded.

And with the antibody study reflecting presence in 93% (ish) of the population, it leads you to ponder, what are we trying to achieve (protect) by future interventions. Vaccine immunity and natural immunity is doing it's thing, they are our biggest weapons. We waited for one of those weapons to come along and everyone has been given the opportunity to arm themselves with it.

If T/B cell protection is good (hopefully from vaccines as well, otherwise it might be a case of protect yourself from serious illness with a vaccine but you then would be better protected in the long run getting naturally infected as well ), then beyond a game changing mutation we should have the foundation in place to wind this f.ucker down.

(Long covid is a curve ball in the 'not so bad to get infected' approach though)

Just a note the daily testing is not used for judging how much of the population has the virus (although the media uses it as such). We use serveilance testing for that. 150,000 people are randomly tested once a week. These are done by the ons and a university. Similar to polls. If 20% of the people tested are infected the 20% of the population are.
The daily tests are to dee who is infected and if they should isolate.

The ons also do the antibody tests, as you say it was 93% of the population. But this was a fall. Possibly due to waning immunity. Although long term immunity relies on tcells not antibodies.

Fyi more people are currently infected (uk) than at any time during the pandemic (1,162,853). According to the symptom study. The symptom study has a million people entering their information each day including if they have a test. The ons will be out on friday.

 

[Gutter Boy]

I'm not sure if you get long covid with post-vaccine infections. It's generally thought to be an overactive immune response, so once that agent your body has over-attacked is no longer foreign, would that happen the second time? I don't know.

 

[Lilbaz]

China is in a tricky position now. They just locked down a city because of an out break. Now that the virus is endemic round the world are they really going to lock down every time there is an outbreak? Their people have been vaccinated but the chinese vax isn't as efficacios as others. They're pretty much fudged. At some point they will have to let it run through, but that would be ugly. With the delta variant being far more infectious than the original strain, hospitals would be overwhelmed quite quickly.

They need a much better vaccine.

 

[Gutter Boy]

China is in a tricky position now. They just locked down a city because of an out break. Now that the virus is endemic round the world are they really going to lock down every time there is an outbreak? Their people have been vaccinated but the chinese vax isn't as efficacios as others. They're pretty much fudged. At some point they will have to let it run through, but that would be ugly. With the delta variant being far more infectious than the original strain, hospitals would be overwhelmed quite quickly.

They need a much better vaccine.

The delta variant spreads more easily than the original, but I think it might actually be quite a bit milder (that's how viruses tend to evolve too). It definitely seems to manifest more horrendous cold like, rather than the full shut down your lungs experience of the first type. I guess its a bit apples and pears pre and post vaccine of course.

 

[Lilbaz]

The delta variant spreads more easily than the original, but I think it might actually be quite a bit milder (that's how viruses tend to evolve too). It definitely seems to manifest more horrendous cold like, rather than the full shut down your lungs experience of the first type. I guess its a bit apples and pears pre and post vaccine of course.

It isn't milder. Just more of the population has immunity now. China doesn't have as much immunity.

Viruses tend to become milder because killing a host quickly means that it can't infect others easily. Mutations that don't kill as quickly will have an advantage and will become more dominant.
This isn't the case with covid. You can become infectious from the second day. Average time of death is about a month, most people that survive won't be infectious that long. So covid mutations that are less servere have no advantage than more fatal types.

Some studies suggest it might be even more likely to cause severe illness.
https://www.ucsf.edu/news/2021/08/421171/how-dangerous-delta-variant-heres-what-science-says

The old variant had an r of 3. Delta has an r of between 5 and 9.
So the old, 3 people will pass it to 3 more each and so on. 3x3x3x3x3x3
Delta 9x9x9x9x9x9

So in 6 steps the old variant would infect 729 people. Delta in 6 steps could infect 531,441 people. See the problem?

 

[Lilbaz]

Oh and now we have delta plus which is even more transmissable.

 

[markysimmo]

My old work sent an email out today saying from 1st December they are putting social distancing rules back into place at the offices
Also says about warning staff about meeting socially with groups of people
Literally fudge off you bed wetters

 

[Grays_1890]

My old work sent an email out today saying from 1st December they are putting social distancing rules back into place at the offices
Also says about warning staff about meeting socially with groups of people
Literally fudge off you bed wetters

Gone into London for a rare meeting today and noticed from last week the masks are back on so maybe the threat to Christmas is working or its Kids without diluting the look.

 

[markysimmo]

Gone into London for a rare meeting today and noticed from last week the masks are back on so maybe the threat to Christmas is working or its Kids without diluting the look.

I went on the tube yesterday for the first time for a good while I wore a mask, probably 50/50 who did I'd say
I didn't and don't on the train or walking around London