Generic Virus Thread

[HanoiVillan]

31 minutes ago, blandy said:

It depends what you mean by "didn't work"

Pretty much the purpose of any of the measures taken by the guvmint is not to "completely stop" the virus arriving in the UK  - they'd have to ban all inbound travel to do that. It's to slow down/minimise the spread of the virus. The fewer people with it that enter the country, the slower the overall rate of spread - 2 people seeding it will be less bad than thousands seeding it, in terms of buying time.

I agree that the measures do not and cannot completely stop the arrival of the virus, but what seems to be the case is that this strain is already present in the community, though there will need to be more research on that I guess. Given that there are a comparatively small number of passenger flights from the specified countries, that non-passenger flights were still going to continue, and that flights from other countries that have recorded instances of the strain had not been banned, the impact was always going to be minimal at best.

On a slightly different note, there's one thing keeping me from complete pessimism about this strain, which is that as far as I can see, the South Africans discovered it pretty much entirely through sequencing of the virus, and not say through a massive surge in hospital admissions. Maybe that is coming down the pipe shortly, but for now I'm holding on to the *possibility* that this strain might be more virulent without being (much?) more damaging to health.

9 minutes ago, blandy said:

I think that's right. I'd add though that another driver (IMO) is that it's a message about "the danger hasn't gone away" - it's like, I dunno, a reminder to people to not be reckless (as many are). Kind of like (some) elements of airport security - pretty pointless in some regards, but kind of a conditioner for people, if that makes sense?

I think you're right that that's probably a motivator for the government, but I can't see how it can be expected to make any real difference. Viral transmission is only partially about caution, and what we know of the settings this virus tends to be transmitted - homes, restaurants, poorly-ventilated workplaces - are not locations where a little bit more caution are likely to make much difference as far as I can see. I mean I'm not planning to throw open the windows in this howling gale!

[HanoiVillan]

6 minutes ago, Xela said:

I can live with wearing a mask in the supermarket if I have to. I just don't want any lockdowns and closing down of shops/pubs/hotels etc. 

From a personal preference perspective, I feel exactly the same way, but when I previously tried to find an example of somebody about whom it could be said with confidence that they caught the virus in the supermarket, I came up blank. Supermarkets tend to be about the best-ventilated indoor spaces that normal people ever go to.

[StefanAVFC]

The world is literally never getting back to normal is it?

[chrisp65]

9 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

I'd like to hear more of that, but I suyspect it's viewed as politically dangerous to admit to not being fully in control.

It was Sturgeon.

It can’t be a coincidence it was said by probably one of the ‘safest’ politicians at present. 

[Davkaus]

2 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

The world is literally never getting back to normal is it?

Between this and climate change, I think we're probably part of the last generation to experience what was considered normality.

[chrisp65]

I think I’d probably prefer this to what I’d have had 200 years ago, or as a poor Victorian, or WWI, or WWII.

We used to have TV adverts telling us to duck and cover and hide under the stairs if there was a nuclear bomb flash. This was about the same time we kept candles for the power cuts.

 

[Genie]

We are due to go away to celebrate me hitting the big 4 - 0 and return on the 23rd December.

PCR tests obviously extra cost but having to do it within 2 days and then isolate until the results come back pretty much mean not seeing anybody over Christmas.

Might be the end of that particular dream that has been keeping us going all year. 

[blandy]

14 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

homes, restaurants, poorly-ventilated workplaces - are not locations where a little bit more caution are likely to make much difference

That's probably true, but I don't know if I expressed what I'm trying to get across very well - it's that I think the masks thing will (in the eyes of the guvmint) hopefully engender people (generally) with more caution over the fungus. That they'll maybe both go to those places less often, and perhaps behave a bit more responsibly if/when they do.

[Davkaus]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I think I’d probably prefer this to what I’d have had 200 years ago, or as a poor Victorian, or WWI, or WWII.

We used to have TV adverts telling us to duck and cover and hide under the stairs if there was a nuclear bomb flash. This was about the same time we kept candles for the power cuts.

 

You're replying to a point I didn't make, to be fair. I'm not saying we're going to have it worse than any generation before us, but worse than the boomers and gen X? Almost certainly, it's downhill from here. 

When hundreds of millions are displaced from their homes by floods and heatwaves, the west isn't going to know what the **** has hit it

[StefanAVFC]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

I think I’d probably prefer this to what I’d have had 200 years ago, or as a poor Victorian, or WWI, or WWII.

We used to have TV adverts telling us to duck and cover and hide under the stairs if there was a nuclear bomb flash. This was about the same time we kept candles for the power cuts.

 

More than a whiff of 'we can't complain about what we eat because of starving kids in Africa' to this tbh.

[chrisp65]

3 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

You're replying to a point I didn't make, to be fair. I'm not saying we're going to have it worse than any generation before us, but worse than the boomers and gen X? Almost certainly, it's downhill from here. 

When hundreds of millions are displaced from their homes by floods and heatwaves, the west isn't going to know what the **** has hit it

I didn’t quote you!

 

It was Stef’s idea of ‘normal’ that I was referencing.

During my lifetime normal has included the threat of nuclear destruction, the winter of discontent, Thatcher’s psycho reign of hate, a handful of Iraq wars, 9/11, 13% mortgage rates and a few other things that we all worried about at the time. 

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, StefanAVFC said:

More than a whiff of 'we can't complain about what we eat because of starving kids in Africa' to this tbh.

I don’t understand what that means?

 

[sidcow]

54 minutes ago, Xela said:

i'll be honest and thought face coverings were still mandatory on public transport anyway!

I can live with wearing a mask in the supermarket if I have to. I just don't want any lockdowns and closing down of shops/pubs/hotels etc. 

Yep, no change for me.

I wear my mask on the train. 

I wear my mask in the shop.

These rules don't change me one bit other than the word removed sitting next to me on the train may now also have to wear a mask. 

Edited November 27, 2021 by sidcow

[Rugeley Villa]

The human race has to adapt , it’s as simple as that . There’s always a new norm . 

[HanoiVillan]

26 minutes ago, blandy said:

That's probably true, but I don't know if I expressed what I'm trying to get across very well - it's that I think the masks thing will (in the eyes of the guvmint) hopefully engender people (generally) with more caution over the fungus. That they'll maybe both go to those places less often, and perhaps behave a bit more responsibly if/when they do.

I think we're talking past each other a bit - I agree with you that that's probably something the government are hoping!

I just feel very skeptical it will actually happen, or make much difference.

[Davkaus]

4 minutes ago, sidcow said:

These rules don't change me one but other than the word removed sitting next to me on the train may now also have to wear a mask. 

I fear the one actual change is that  a bunch of service workers are about to get loads of aggro again from people who refuse

[sidcow]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

I fear the one actual change is that  a bunch of service workers are about to get loads of aggro again from people who refuse

Yeah, that had crossed my mind.  It must be a nightmare trying to get some potentially highly aggressive people to comply. 

[blandy]

4 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I think we're talking past each other a bit - I agree with you that that's probably something the government are hoping!

I just feel very skeptical it will actually happen, or make much difference.

Yeah, me too. I hope it will, but am a bit doubtful.  I had to go to B&Q, Halfords and the supermarket today and almost no-one was wearing masks or acting in any way like there is the fungus still about. A few shop workers and the odd more elderly person, but that was about it.

Where I live had a really high rate of fungus a month ago, (700/100k) but it's dropped right down to much lower (197/100k) than most other places recently, so maybe that's part of the reason why people round here are not doing much, if anything, precaution-wise.

[snowychap]

Normal rules apply with regard to Prime Ministerial announcements at press conferences.

 

[HanoiVillan]

48 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

The world is literally never getting back to normal is it?

It's an interesting question. A couple of thoughts, which are not really answers to the question, but just sparked by it:

One thing I think about a lot is how we as a society deal with the amount of knowledge that we have. If we think about what happened over the last couple of days - a scientific institute in South Africa finished conducting analyses of the genetic makeup of a virus, to a level of detail that would have been almost unthinkable even a decade ago. They put out a press release warning about it. Half the world away, British and European governments immediately reacted by limiting travel and mandating clothing to wear in shops and trains. Just in the UK alone, nearly £100bn was wiped off the value of FTSE 350 companies yesterday. This happened over a period in time when at first we had 0 confirmed cases of this strain, and then up to 2. It's not clear at this stage whether either of those people are even particularly ill, nor is it fully clear at this stage that this strain is more virulent, more vaccine-resistant, or that it leads to more severe illness. All we know right now is that it's genetic profile suggests it has a higher probability of one or more of those features.

I say this not to diminish the risk, but to reflect that there is absolutely no way any of this could have been known in even the very recent past, and it is not clear to me that we as a society are fully able to react appropriately to the levels of risk we are identifying. I'm not really sure where to go with this thought, other than that maybe either our medical interventions need to get a lot better to match this level of information, or that maybe we just need to under-react a lot more to it.

The other thing I think about is an article I read earlier, which said:

The hunt for a coronavirus super shot

'As global vaccination campaigns race to stay ahead of new Covid-19 variants, pioneering scientists have set out to ease fears of another pandemic by developing a single shot to protect against coronaviruses past, present and future.

Melanie Saville, director of vaccine research and development at the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, is among those leading the charge, having issued a call for the creation of a vaccine that would be broadly protective against all betacoronaviruses and potentially any new strain “that might hop from animals to humans in the future”.

“[The] strategy moving forward is around two key questions,” she told the Financial Times. “What do we need to do to end this pandemic and then what do we need to do to prevent the next pandemic?”

Sars-Cov-2, which has killed almost 4m people in the past 18 months, is at least the third so-called betacoronavirus that has spread among humans in the past 20 years. The family of viruses, common in bats and rodents, also includes Sars-Cov-1, which killed more than 700 people in 2003, mainly in China and Hong Kong, and Mers-Cov, which was first identified in Saudi Arabia and has resulted in more than 850 deaths since 2012.

Given that Covid-19 is unlikely to be the last coronavirus to infect humans, the development of a jab capable of protecting against all such diseases has become a central focus for some scientists. And as Covid-19 has continued to mutate faster than originally expected — most recently with the rapid spread of the Delta variant, first identified in India — interest in their work has increased.

Within five years “polyvalent vaccines” that protect against different varieties of coronaviruses “will hold the line to a very large degree against even new variants,” Professor Chris Whitty, England’s chief medical officer, told UK healthcare staff this month.

But the road to a so-called polyvalent or multivalent vaccine is fraught with challenges. Researchers have spent decades unsuccessfully seeking a vaccine for HIV — a disease that frequently throws up new strains — and the flu jab still needs to be updated annually.'

from: https://www.ft.com/content/7e96fa85-2392-467c-8960-0c9444180030

The thing that strikes me is that maybe this is what is required, I don't know, but if it takes 5 years to develop a covid super-shot, plus then another 2 years to distribute it around the world (assuming it's possible, and that enough people would be prepared to take the vaccine), we are potentially talking about another 7 or so northern hemisphere winters when maybe there's pressure to shut everything down or suddenly change the rules or whatever, and that feels like that would be a very long time to 'normality' and I don't know how resilient our society is to the pressures of public opinion that might create by that time.