Covid Vaccine Poll

[Alex Gaskin]

I had my first dose on Saturday (21 years old), and the whole process was outstanding (Apart from the doctor nearly swiping the tray with the needle in off of the table!).

I haven't had a single symptom of Covid throughout the whole pandemic, and even now after having the jab I feel as good as ever, my arm doesn't hurt one bit!

A few of my friends have also had the vaccine over the last couple of days, and they've all been without issues. Although, we've all been getting Pfizer; a few friends had AZ a few months back and they were bed bound for a day or two.

[Blatman]

9 hours ago, AdamR said:

I said right from the start that the measures put in place would end up with worse effects than the disease itself, I still believe that will be the case - more and more the longer this farce is kept up.

 

America's Covid death rate is 2%. Theyhave (what seems to me) to be a significant proportion of non-compliance, certainly greater than ours.

If we did NOTHING then the death and serious illness rate would be far greater. The "farce" of lockdowns against a backdrop of zero action is for me, an untenable position. 

[Steve (sdh2903)]

I would strongly suspect the US figures are skewed due to their healthcare system and not having free access. 

 

39 minutes ago, Blatman said:

If we did NOTHING then the death and serious illness rate would be far greater. The "farce" of lockdowns against a backdrop of zero action is for me, an untenable position. 

 

But were we not kicking the can down the road though? During lockdown 2 a good friend found a lump on her breast. Her doctor referred her but warned it would be 4 or 5 weeks to be seen. She ended up putting the family thousands of pounds in debt to go private within 3 days as she couldn't the stress for over a month. During the same period I very nearly lost my mum due to issues around her heart illness. Issues that would have been picked up well before her collapse had her regular blood tests and consultation not been repeatedly cancelled (openly admitted by a very embarrassed cardiologist) 

 

Granted these are numbers that won't be visible for many years to come but how many lives are to be lost due to delayed treatments and procedures? How many peoples mental health has been harmed? What about our kids who've had 2 academic years of disrupted education with no real plans in place to catch up. How many livelihoods have been ruined due to unemployment? How many more will when furlough ends?

[jim_l]

About 1 in 5 of the population have had Covid, 127,000 have died, nearly 400,000 have long Covid.  Let us assume we didn’t lock down, those numbers become 500,000 deaths, and one or two million people spend months in hospital and go home with a debilitating illness.

 

When you look at the harms of lockdown it is only fair to compare those with the potential harms of not locking down.  Millions suffer the mental health consequences of losing siblings, parents and grandparents early in horrible circumstances.  A million or two left with a debilitating illness that will shorten their lives and make them extremely unpleasant, nothing quite like struggling for breath!

 

The other consequence of those numbers, letting it run its course, you get what we saw in Delhi recently. People that could have survived it don’t, there is no care available. Families witness their loved ones dying untreated in their beds, in taxis, in hospital car parks.

 

Don’t underestimate what would have happened with no lockdowns, just because it didn't happen! 

[Richard (OldStager)]

i am with jim here, yes there are and will be losers and those who suffer and worse during lockdowns, an old aunt of mine threw herself into the manchester ship canel during lockdown 1, she never survived. my own mental health has gone backwards as some here will know already, but the lives saved so far with lockdowns is far far more than those negatively affected. as much as we all hated it it had to be done, the gov initial plan was for herd immunity, i am so so glad this plan was scrapped until vaccines had been developed, tested and released. i hope we never have another one as well - lockdown that is.

[Steve (sdh2903)]

I should have been clearer I wasn't saying that lockdown mk1 or even possibly mk2 were the wrong thing to do under the circumstances. However they aren't all good and that was my point. Yes they save the lives of some but also probably had the opposite effects on others and possibly more than covid in the long term. 

 

However there seems to be a massive fixation on covid and all the other issues are getting far less focus. Which in my opinion is very wrong. 

 

However regards the current restrictions I am vehemently against them. We have a 'world beating' vaccination programme. Our vulnerable are fully protected. Whilst our cases are skyrocketing the hospital cases are crawling up and deaths remain flat. In fact the key metric according to Chris whitty is excess deaths, and they are 3 to 5% Less than the 5 year average. This proves the value and effectiveness of the vaccines Yet we are still causing untold damage to people, businesses, industries etc by keeping restrictions in place. 

[Richard (OldStager)]

i think the gov reason, is currently not to protect life, although that will happen. the current rules are to prevent the hospitals filling up with more folks than they can deal with, which is what jim was talking about regarding india. we have really small death rates at the moment - relative of course but 5 today, but cases are relatively speaking still high 10.6k per day

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

 

with the unknown data so far with the new voc , i feel the risks are still too high. the indian variant ruined all our plans, no blame on india thats evolution for you  - sadly in this case.

 

[jim_l]

10 minutes ago, Steve (sdh2903) said:

In fact the key metric according to Chris whitty is excess deaths, and they are 3 to 5% Less than the 5 year average

Excess deaths over all is a key metric, excess deaths at a point in time  is a complete irrelevance Steve, it might  have been low before wave one killed tens of thousands of people, and was certainly low before wave two killed tens of thousands more, the 'current' figures for anything don't matter.

 

We have to predict the size and shape of a potential wave 3 , and avoid it even if that means overreacting, otherwise we end up with another wave, another lockdown, and more of the postponed treatments and mental health issues you referred to a few posts back.  

 

Remember , locking down 10 days late the first time round is considered to have cost 20,000 lives, you want to fill our nightclubs, city centres, stadia, theatres, and cross our fingers?  

 

[Steve (sdh2903)]

8 minutes ago, OldStager said:

with the unknown data so far with the new voc , i feel the risks are still too high. the indian variant ruined all our plans, no blame on india thats evolution for you  - sadly in this case.

 

Virus' mutate all the time though. Just like the flu does every winter.  We don't lockdown everytime a new flu strain appears? Also there has been no data published to say the Indian variant is any more deadly or any more harmful. Yes depending on which stat you believe its anywhere from 20 to 40% more transmissible.

 

10 minutes ago, jim_l said:

Remember , locking down 10 days late the first time round is considered to have cost 20,000 lives, you want to fill our nightclubs, city centres, stadia, theatres, and cross our fingers?  

 

Again tho that's an estimate impossible to prove. And the government see fit to fill our stadiums for the euros. Cricket. Town centres have been bustling ever since the pubs have been allowed to open. 

 

The simple fact is this virus isn't going to go away. That's a fact. Indisputable. It will also mutate. We have protected the vulnerable population and a huge chunk of everyone else. 

 

At some point people are going to have to accept that and get on with their lives and the news outlets are going to have to stop scaremongering. I even saw something today saying this winter flu is going to be even more deadly than usual due to a drop in immunity. I mean come on. 

 

EVERYTHING in life is a risk and covid is just another thing to add to the list. 

[Richard (OldStager)]

no but flu has not killed as many as covid has, i agree flu mutates as well, but its the makeup of the viruses method of attaching itself to humans and then its constant changing of its protein makeup , i also agree with having to live with this, but lets gather all the data and get everyone vaccinated before live returns to as normal as it could be. i do expect masks etc to go on for sometime, but i cant read boris's mind so not sure.

[jeff oakley]

There are lots of opinions on this and we all have our own. Have mistakes been made, of course they have, would any other leader done better, I do not think so.

There has to be a balance of health, against economic havoc and now we have got a large proportion vaccinated we can start to ease restrictions. However, the bigger issue is the world is not equal and many countries are struggling with containing this and inevitably places like India, where health care is poor for the majority, it will always be a place where the virus mutates.

All viruses do mutate and this one is no different. What is different about this is in the first stages it was killing a lot of people, many who were suffering with other issues but the death rate is up on average.

And  as others have mentioned, until we get the heath service caught up many more will die as they have not had cancer and the like picked up early enough.

 

My view is we must lift restrictions as we have too many now scared of life outside their home. We will never get back to where we were as there will always be cries to keep some restrictions and to lock down if a new virus variant emerges.

 

I am in a vulnerable category but have taken reasonable precautions had my jabs and try to get on with as normal a life as I can. We need shows and things to start to give us something to look forward to. I am not a football fan, but we should allow fans in as the risk is lower now than before.

 

I would end furlough, open up everything and measure. What has changed is even though infections are up, hospitalisation is not in the same way and deaths are not. That may be because so many vulnerable died in the first wave but I hope it is because the medics know how to better treat those suffering.

 

I am glad I never had to make the decisions Boris has , especially surrounded by so many differing voices even those sage advisors have disagreed between themselves.

 

If another couple of weeks is what we need to have prolonged success then it is worth it

[Steve (sdh2903)]

11 minutes ago, OldStager said:

but flu has not killed as many as covid has, i agree flu mutates as well

 

Flu kills anywhere from 10000 to 30000 people every year in the uk. 

[Richard (OldStager)]

we have had and continue to have to adapt vaccines for flu, currently we are still using vaccines developed when covid was new, we still dont know how effective it is with the new voc, limited data says quite well, but its really limited since not enough time has past , hence the delays. i know where you are coming from here and i agree with lot of things, but for me the lack of evidence stops me wanting the same as you. not saying you are wrong, but we are all different. would be a boring world if we all thought the same thing.

[Blatman]

4 hours ago, Steve (sdh2903) said:

Also there has been no data published to say the Indian variant is any more deadly or any more harmful.

 

From the British Medical Journal, 1th of June:

What is different about the delta variant?

In some ways the delta variant is an “improved” version of the alpha variant, making it more easily transmissible and more of a concern.

Speaking at the Science Media Centre briefing, Wendy Barclay, professor of virology and head of infectious disease at Imperial College London, explained, “The delta variant has got two important mutations in its spike protein, or sets of mutations. One is at the furin cleavage site, which we think is quite important for the fitness of the virus in the airway. The virus that emerged in Wuhan was suboptimal in that respect, so it transmitted, but perhaps not as well as it might. The alpha variant took one step towards improving that with a certain mutation, and the delta variant has built on that and taken a second step now, a bigger step, towards improving that feature.”

Why is delta able to transmit more easily?

Barclay said that the current data indicated that the virus was “fitter in human airway cells,” meaning an increased amount of the virus in the infected person, and so they may expel more virus out into the air to pass on to the next person. This is supported by the testing data, which show that the CT value (cycle threshold)—the number of amplification cycles needed for the virus to be detected—seems to be lower in samples from delta infected people, meaning they contain more virus.

 

I'm sure a bit more searching would find a lot more empirical data to support the premise that the delta variant is both more transmissible and leads to higher viral load as suggested above. More viral load usually means more severe infections and as we see from other countries, it is now the young and un-vaccinated who are bearing the brunt of this latest wave.

 

5 hours ago, Steve (sdh2903) said:

I should have been clearer I wasn't saying that lockdown mk1 or even possibly mk2 were the wrong thing to do under the circumstances. However they aren't all good and that was my point. Yes they save the lives of some but also probably had the opposite effects on others and possibly more than covid in the long term. 

 

However there seems to be a massive fixation on covid and all the other issues are getting far less focus. Which in my opinion is very wrong. 

 

But Covid is the biggest risk to healthcare whether as a primary infection or as a consequence of patients taking up beds. Either way delays are going to happen for people who have non-Covid issues to deal with. If we accept that premise (and I think we must) then the decision is do "we" choose to save as many lives as possible and try to keep the hospitals from becoming overwhelmed, or not. I can't see how doing nothing helps anyone, irrespective of the issue that has them presenting to a doctor or hospital.

[Blatman]

https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1513

 

Are covid-19 hospital admissions increasing?

Yes. The number of new cases of covid-19 has been rising in the UK for the past few weeks, and admissions of patients to hospital are following suit. As of 9 June the number of people in hospital each day with covid-19 exceeded 1000, after having fallen to the hundreds in the middle of May after the previous wave.1

Is this because of the delta variant?

Cases were expected to rise at least a little as restrictions eased, but the new delta variant seems to have complicated matters.2 Public Health England figures show that the variant now accounts for 90% of UK cases, with the total number exceeding 42 000. Research indicates that delta is associated with an estimated 60% higher risk of household transmission than the alpha variant, which was already much more transmissible than the original version of the virus. There are also suggestions that delta could carry a much higher risk of hospital admission.