Generic Virus Thread

[sidcow]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/covid-vaccine-variant-universal-nottingham-scancell-b1801966.html

Quote

A universal vaccine with the potential to be effective against all Covid-19 variants could be developed within a year, according to researchers.

The so-called second generation jab, developed by scientists at the University of Nottingham, targets the core of the virus as well as the surface spike protein.

If successful, the DNA vaccine could help protect against not only Covid-19 but also against any new strains of coronavirus that arise in the future.

It comes after AstraZeneca and the University of Oxford said their vaccine had been found to provide only limited protection against mild and moderate disease caused by the South African variant of Covid-19.

 

[HanoiVillan]

Feels like this is a bigger story than whether people are allowed to meet two friends in the park, or sit down on a bench:

From the article:

'The government’s health and safety watchdog has failed to shut down any workplaces that put employees at risk of coronavirus even though there have been over 3,500 outbreaks at work since the start of the pandemic, the Observer has discovered.

Analysis of the Health and Safety Executive’s (HSE) enforcement database reveals there have been no Covid-related prohibition notices, which allow inspectors to immediately halt activity in workplaces deemed injurious or damaging to health, since last March.

This comes after the government defended the HSE’s decision not to place Covid in its highest risk category in response to a parliamentary question from Labour’s shadow employment minster Andy McDonald.

Employment minister Mims Davies last week said Covid had been classified as “significant” rather than “serious”, as it “best supports inspectors in making sensible, proportionate regulatory decisions”. She added that effects of Covid were “non-permanent or reversible, non-progressive and any disability is temporary” for the working population as a whole.'

[Chindie]

That feels more like a case of someone looking at the situation and saying 'There's potentially a lot of blowback if we say this is serious risk. So let's not'.

[sidcow]

It's a tricky one isn't it. If it's classed as something to close for, the whole economy which is already on it's knees just completely collapses, no activity and mass unemployment, pretty much every company needing people in a workplace has to cease trading. 

When the Government relaxes shutdown rules,  no one can reopen anyway. 

It just seems to be a pragmatic response to me. 

Edited February 15, 2021 by sidcow

[HanoiVillan]

I think we can assume a fair amount of common sense on behalf of inspectors. If an employer *cannot*, for some reason, provide a covid-safe work environment but *absolutely must* remain open, then you would expect inspectors to exercise their judgement in those cases.

However, lots of employers have failed to take basic precautions to keep their staff safe, with enormous consequences. The city of Leicester was in lockdown for about three months extra to everywhere else, largely because garment factories were operating completely unsafely. Meat-packing and food processing facilities have similarly failed to adapt. The whole point of regulation is that by fining and shutting down *some* employers, you create a deterrent for others, and a reason for them to follow the rules. Instead, unscrupulous employers have continued to operate as usual, safe in the knowledge that inspectors are toothless to challenge them.

In general, we need to get away from the idea that regulation in this area costs money. Shutting down 2 or 3 garment factories would have cost a lot less money than the city of Leicester spending months at a time in a city-wide lockdown.

[sidcow]

On 05/02/2021 at 17:29, sidcow said:

The Government are openly saying that they are aiming to get all over 50s done by end of May. 

By my maths at the current rate they should be done a long way before then. 

Is there a known interruption to supply on the way or is this them just downplaying it?  

I was suprised by the end of May date, but it turns out that the 16-64 with underlying health issues category has 7.3m people in it! 

That's a big old number, so I can now see how it's going to take a lot longer than I thought.  

Still if they can get to 600,000 or so a day every day I still think they could do it earlier.  Probably depends on when Moderna comes on stream which I believe is sometime in March. 

[bickster]

25 minutes ago, sidcow said:

I was suprised by the end of May date, but it turns out that the 16-64 with underlying health issues category has 7.3m people in it! 

That's a big old number, so I can now see how it's going to take a lot longer than I thought.  

Still if they can get to 600,000 or so a day every day I still think they could do it earlier.  Probably depends on when Moderna comes on stream which I believe is sometime in March. 

Don't forget the news I got that supposedly a whole bunch of people in various professions are going to get bumped up the priority.

[darrenm]

I'm sure the dates are very conservative because they'll be wanting to 'arrive in New York on Tuesday'. As Stephen Bush says

Quote

 

Good morning. More than 15 million people in the United Kingdom have now had their first shot of the coronavirus vaccine - and, more importantly, the government has likely cleared the all-important first hurdle of offering a jab to everyone in the first four priority groups (that's residents and staff in a care home for older adults, the over-80s and frontline health and social care workers, the over-75s, the over-70s and the extremely clinically vulnerable), a major step forward in curbing the lethality of the coronavirus.

It has emboldened the government's internal critics to start cranking up their calls for a swift end to the lockdown on all fronts. You can expect an awful lot of that this week, as Westminster's eye turns to 22 February, the day the Prime Minister will announce the government's roadmap for easing the lockdown. 

Where the lockdown critics have a point is this: even allowing for the need to give everyone who has received a first dose a second dose, the government's target for vaccinating everyone under-50 is surprisingly unambitious: at current rates we could have that before the end of March, rather than the end of April as the current target suggests, particularly given the increased supply of vaccines. But it's unquestionably better if the government is planning for the unforeseen - or a situation where we judge it more important to redirect vaccines elsewhere - rather than returning to its bad old habits of making big promises it struggles to keep.

That the year-long nightmare has a clearly defined end shouldn't blind us to the real mistakes made during it, yes. But those mistakes also shouldn't prevent us from celebrating a moment of genuine good news about vaccines. 

 

from an email but also here https://go.pardot.com/webmail/509131/625479669/eb556248d6b06c09043b9271ffd616b6700d6b44363e48f25ee3987ce4ba3676

[trekka]

Even though Monday figures tend to be lower due to weekend reporting, we're now under 10,000 new cases and 15.3 million people have been vaccinated with the first jab.  Stonking. 

Edited February 15, 2021 by trekka

[sidcow]

4 minutes ago, trekka said:

Even though Monday figures tend to be lower due to weekend reporting, we're now under 10,000 new cases and 15.3 million people have been vaccinated with the first jab.  Stonking. 

I'm keeping a record of the figures.  As you say Monday is always low, but deaths for the last 3 Mondays are 406, 333, 230 so a huge improvement in 2 weeks

New cases 18,607, 14,104, 9,765 so nearly halved in 2 weeks.

All this figures will be higher again tomorrow but the downward trend is across all days.

[sidcow]

Meanwhile in other news

https://news.sky.com/story/uk-covid-news-live-updates-as-boris-johnson-reviews-lockdown-12218636

Quote

What effect is vaccine rollout having on UK deaths so far?

Yet more promising news about the impact the vaccination programme is having on the virus in the UK. 

One of the ways we'll know whether the vaccines are bearing down on deaths is by keeping an eye on the case fatality rates among different age groups. 

The CFR is simply a measure of how many people are dying for each case of the disease. Last week we reported that the CFRs for those aged over 80, in other words those who are more likely to have had the vaccine, had dropped faster than those for other age groups. 

Well, since then the gap has grown even wider. The CFR for those over 80 has now dropped by 35% since its high point in early January. By comparison, the case fatality rate for those under 80 has dropped by only 5%.

 

[Genie]

I was wondering the other day, will “did you catch Covid-19 at work?” be the new PPI compensation hack that the lawyers will be getting rich from for the next few years?

I have a feeling that a lot of people might be in line for compensation down the line. 

 

[sidcow]

22 minutes ago, Genie said:

I was wondering the other day, will “did you catch Covid-19 at work?” be the new PPI compensation hack that the lawyers will be getting rich from for the next few years?

I have a feeling that a lot of people might be in line for compensation down the line. 

 

It will be an Employers' Liability claim if it can be proved that the employer was negligent in some way and of course that they actually caught it at work.  All cases should be logged with the EL insurers as a potential claim.

It will probably take a few test cases to establish what "negligent" means in this case but employers should be taking all reasonable precautions to protect employees health.  

Some insurers have been specifically insisting that every case of Covid in the workplace needs to be notified to them, but you would have to be pretty silly not to anyway.

I think proving where you caught it is going to be the most difficult area, maybe there will some kind of scale developed.  It's not going to be a fun time working all that out and yes, I expect a few solicitors will be getting rich off it.

Edited February 15, 2021 by sidcow

[Chindie]

You'd struggle to prove where someone caught the virus so I doubt it's likely to be 'a thing'. 

[Genie]

1 hour ago, Chindie said:

You'd struggle to prove where someone caught the virus so I doubt it's likely to be 'a thing'. 

You don’t have to prove you we’re mis-sold PPI to get a payout.

Time will tell, as Sid says, of a test case or 2 go through then it’ll be open season. 

[Rds1983]

The lad and I had to go for a test this morning. Got to the test centre only to be told they've had a power blackout all day and we had to go elsewhere. Nice of them to let us know before we set off. 

[Chindie]

5 minutes ago, Genie said:

You don’t have to prove you we’re mis-sold PPI to get a payout.

Time will tell, as Sid says, of a test case or 2 go through then it’ll be open season. 

That is only because the regulator stamped down on it after it was proven to be effectively useless in many cases and sold in a manner that verged on fraud - at that point it's easier to just settle claims than attempt to contest them. They had to get to that point first... Which is unlikely to happen in a Covid-19 case - it's much, much harder to prove, if not impossible, and you wouldn't be able to get the groundswell of proven cases to develop into 'a thing'.

[mjmooney]

Jab #1 done. Come at me, covid. 

[Genie]

The wife is watching Coronation Street (not me, honest)... anyway, just before it started the voiceover guy said “the scenes in tonight’s episode were filmed after some of the actors formed a bubble to enable more close contact”.

Which of the government rules on bubbles allow this I wonder?

[mjmooney]

TBH, I'm surprised there hasn't been more moral panic and ignorant outrage about the Oxford ingredients, considering the presence of the three trigger terms 'Chimpanzee', 'genetically modified' and 'human embryro'.