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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

I'm sorry, not caught up on all the pages since yesterday's tv show but i have a question:

Johnson said that the new lockdown will be in force for 6 weeks (to mid feb) and then - then we'll see? Maybe a return to local tiers? That's the impression he gave.

But Jeremy Hunt yesterday was clearly saying 3 months, so exactly double. I have no clue if this is related to the second dose of vaccines or what.
Screenshot 2021-01-05 at 06.03.08.png

My assumption now is that Johnosn was doing his usual mix of lying / wishful thinking, and wanting to avoid saying things people don't want to hear.

So I want to know if it's better to think it will be end of March before something like normal life might resume?
Would like to have an idea and not fall for Johnsons crap.
 
bimble said:
I'm sorry, not caught up on all the pages since yesterday's tv show but i have a question:

Johnson said that the new lockdown will be in force for 6 weeks (to mid feb) and then - then we'll see? Maybe a return to local tiers? That's the impression he gave.

But Jeremy Hunt yesterday was clearly saying 3 months, so exactly double. I have no clue if this is related to the second dose of vaccines or what.
View attachment 247158

My assumption now is that Johnosn was doing his usual mix of lying / wishful thinking, and wanting to avoid saying things people don't want to hear.

So I want to know if it's better to think it will be end of March before something like normal life might resume?
Would like to have an idea and not fall for Johnsons crap.
Click to expand...
'something like normal life' by March still sounds very optimistic to me, no matter on what ends Johnson will wing it as he goes along....
 
I expect it will end on the 22nd of March so that the lockdown period was less than a year. :facepalm:
 
elbows said:
Scenarios involving the virus escaping from immune responses tend to mean forgetting about concepts such as herd immunity and a maximum number of deaths too, those concepts lose their basis.

Even without specific fears to focus on in that regard, the whole herd immunity rhetoric never seemed like a good match for reality. We dont expect to achieve long-lasting herd immunity against common cold viruses or influenza viruses, so why should it be any different with this coronavirus? The numbers dont add up either, because enough of the population catching it would involve the number of hospitalisations being many times more than the system could cope with, unless everything is stretched out over a much longer period of time. And when you stretch it out that much, by the time enough of the population have had it, so much time has passed that people who had it earliers immunity has started to wane, or the virus has had enough time to mutate sufficiently to cause problems on that front.

A vaccination programme that was aiming for herd immunity would be an attempt to fiddle with that equation, and get the population immunity levels up to a very large percentage without requiring as much hospitalisation to achieve it. But we arent at a stage of such plans in our vaccination programme, the first priority is to do with protecting chunks of the population rather than attempting to reach herd immunity thresholds. And theres a pretty mainstream expectation that the likes of Whitty dont mind stating publicly that things are more likely to end up as an ongoing seasonal thing, with vaccination programmes to tackle the virus likely to become an ongoing feature. This is not the only possible future, but there are various reasons why many are inclined to find it the most likely one. I dont know, I said since the early days of the pandemic that I was expecting a few twists in the tale at some point, but to be honest so far things have tended to progress in the way that was always seemed most likely. There have been blindspots that ended up being costly but contrary to some excuses most of these were not only possible to ascertain with the benefit of hindsight, some could be seen from a mile off, there havent actually been many genuine surprises in this pandemic.
Click to expand...

I suspect there will be a very limited number of ways in which this virus will be able to escape vaccines and remain so infectious. I don’t see this being like influenza A because that’s really quite exceptional in the way different strains of it can recombine so easily.

I don’t think flu comparisons are realistic. I think it’s much more likely that once we have vaccinated against the “easy” mutations of this, then it’s going to become a niche thing that we can move on from. Whether that takes one year or ten years time will tell.
 
bimble said:
I'm sorry, not caught up on all the pages since yesterday's tv show but i have a question:

Johnson said that the new lockdown will be in force for 6 weeks (to mid feb) and then - then we'll see? Maybe a return to local tiers? That's the impression he gave.

But Jeremy Hunt yesterday was clearly saying 3 months, so exactly double. I have no clue if this is related to the second dose of vaccines or what.
View attachment 247158

My assumption now is that Johnosn was doing his usual mix of lying / wishful thinking, and wanting to avoid saying things people don't want to hear.

So I want to know if it's better to think it will be end of March before something like normal life might resume?
Would like to have an idea and not fall for Johnsons crap.
Click to expand...

This government just can’t help themselves. Over and over again.
To deflect away from the current abject failure, constantly shouting “Look everyone, shiny new thing in the future”

how about doing the job? Let’s remind ourselves how shit they have been

Didn’t close the borders for ages, we’re an island.
Didn’t lockdown early.
Didn’t set up COVID testing for ages, repeatedly lied
Ordered loads of ventilators (30000 at £600 million) without understanding they need skilled operators.
Don’t use any of the eventual lockdowns to get test and trace working, still not working
Ordered “game changing” antibody tests, they didn’t work
Ordered lots of ppe that wasn’t fit for purpose
Said the app would be a “game changer”. It’s not
Said test and trace was world beating. Really?
Opened the country too early.
Spent money on a government scheme that contributed to the second wave
Set up a tiered system that never got the virus under control.

:facepalm:
 
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I've just been out for my daily exercise, nipping to a local convenience store on the way home, and I'm depressed and worried. Even at 7am there were plenty of cars on the road and passengers on some of the buses, and now it looks like any other morning out there. The shop long has abandoned the limits on numbers it had earlier in the year and hasn't reimposed them, and there's no attempt to enforce social distancing. I went early on the assumption it'd be quiet, and sure enough there was only a handful of other customers, but these included one old twat who stood right behind me at the checkout and then pulled his mask down to speak to the cashier, and another not wearing a mask at all. Fat chance of their being challenged, since although most staff do wear masks some of the security guards never do. I've half a mind to email their head office and complain.
 
It’s odd that people are talking about masks, I live in Hackney and it’s decent compliance around here.

I suspect the new variant has made them next to useless now. For indoor spaces, ceiling fans would have been a better solution.
 
Roadkill said:
I've just been out for my daily exercise, nipping to a local convenience store on the way home, and I'm depressed and worried. Even at 7am there were plenty of cars on the road and passengers on some of the buses, and now it looks like any other morning out there. The shop long has abandoned the limits on numbers it had earlier in the year and hasn't reimposed them, and there's no attempt to enforce social distancing. I went early on the assumption it'd be quiet, and sure enough there was only a handful of other customers, but these included one old twat who stood right behind me at the checkout and then pulled his mask down to speak to the cashier, and another not wearing a mask at all. Fat chance of their being challenged, since although most staff do wear masks some of the security guards never do. I've half a mind to email their head office and complain.
Click to expand...

the main difference between this and march is the fact that non-essential non-public-facing work is carrying on - i was trying to work out roughly how many people this means are working that probably shouldn’t be, surely in the tens of millions?
 
Not only is there much less compliance with lockdown measures compared to March, they are also much less stringent in lots of ways, from allowing visitors on maternity wards through public worship, 20 people at funerals, meeting someone else for exercise, dentists and public toilets being open etc etc
 
elbows said:
Scenarios involving the virus escaping from immune responses tend to mean forgetting about concepts such as herd immunity and a maximum number of deaths too, those concepts lose their basis.

Even without specific fears to focus on in that regard, the whole herd immunity rhetoric never seemed like a good match for reality. We dont expect to achieve long-lasting herd immunity against common cold viruses or influenza viruses, so why should it be any different with this coronavirus? The numbers dont add up either, because enough of the population catching it would involve the number of hospitalisations being many times more than the system could cope with, unless everything is stretched out over a much longer period of time. And when you stretch it out that much, by the time enough of the population have had it, so much time has passed that people who had it earliers immunity has started to wane, or the virus has had enough time to mutate sufficiently to cause problems on that front.
Click to expand...
...so even worse than my doomsday scenario
And our inept governments bumble on with seemingly no awareness of the abyss that is opening up in front of us
Im livid tbh - this is (potentially) getting next level scary now
 
Artaxerxes said:
MSM can fuck off and it's as useful as farts in a jacuzzi.

It can barely report on politics correctly, it's even fucking worse at science.
Click to expand...
I'd love to agree with that...but the BBC (R4) reporting from South Africa talking about knowing within a couple of weeks whether or not the current vaccines are any use against the new protein spikes...left me thinking dark thoughts.
Hope I'm just being overly pessimistic...but...

e2a: and that after ITN News at Ten let Tom Clark express similar concerns...hmmm :(
 
brogdale said:
I'd love to agree with that...but the BBC (R4) reporting from South Africa talking about knowing within a couple of weeks whether or not the current vaccines are any use against the new protein spikes...left me thinking dark thoughts.
Hope I'm just being overly pessimistic...but...
Click to expand...
yes me too
my understanding of this will be even weaker than R4 but seems that
the potential is there
as are future mutations
the more cases the more likely future vaccine-defying mutations
and cases are currently vertical
....not really worth talking about it anymore - time to pray and wait and see
 
nagapie said:
Maybe if they gave SA some bloody vaccines they could find out. They're in the shit and still not due their supplies before April despite having assisted with trials.
Click to expand...
Sounded like they'd got 'test supplies' to work on the bloods...
 
Meanwhile...the medics are not at all happy about the unscheduled delay to their (& their elderly patients') Pfizer 2 jabs:

1609838899858.png

Dr Julia Patterson, the lead for Everydoctor, said doctors fear that delaying the second dose they need to obtain full immunity could lead to them becoming ill or infecting colleagues or patients.

Karoline Lamb, 84, said she was “absolutely fuming” that she might not be able to get the second dose of the Pfizer vaccine: “I was so elated when I had the first one. I had no side-effects and I’m booked in for the second one on 21 January, but I’m extremely worried it will be cancelled.”

Lamb, from Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire, is concerned that the first dose risks “becoming ineffective”. “If I don’t get the second one within three weeks, I’m worried the first dose could do more harm than good. Had I known the government might not let me have the second dose in time, I would not have accepted the first one.”
Click to expand...
 
ska invita said:
yes me too
my understanding of this will be even weaker than R4 but seems that
the potential is there
as are future mutations
the more cases the more likely future vaccine-defying mutations
and cases are currently vertical
....not really worth talking about it anymore - time to pray and wait and see
Click to expand...

There are certainly at least a couple of things that will emerge from data and/or studies over the next few weeks that will indicate the course of the next phase - not just antigen escape of the new mutant(s), but also whether there's any statistical significance behind the anecdotal reports of either B117 (UK) or 501.v2 (SA) causing severe disease at higher rates in young people than wild type.

(Vaguely-informed) speculation on the former follows:

The 10 501.v2 mutations are all in the parts of the virus that the vaccines target, and largely the natural immume response too (as they are the functional and/or most exposed parts). This obviously could well cause decreased efficacy of the 'lock-and-key' mechanism the induced antibodies use to target the virus. One should remember though that the spike protein is the part of the virus that has to 'lock-and-key' to our cells as well, so it doesn't have the freedom to be totally labile - it has to keep enough of its own 'key' shape to be able to infect - hopefully that also retains enough of its 'lock' shape for at least some of the wild-type/vaccine induced antibodies to work - enough to keep the damn thing under control in an infection to a) prevent serious disease and b) give the body's immune system time to make some new keys to fit these new locks. Bascially the challenge faced by the virus is to change its shape enough so that the antibody proteins can't recognise it, but the cell proteins that give it entry still can. This is not an easy thing to do.

The production methods for the main vaccine types are very fast and flexible as well - adding in the code to make the new versions of the spike protein should be able to be done very quickly (even a matter of weeks) - certainly long before most people have any chance of getting near a vaccine. I haven't heard if they're working on the new sequences yet, but I'd be very surprised if they're not doing at least some of the preliminary work already.

Because of the 'lock-and-key' element above it's likely that there's a finite number of mutations the virus can add to its spike protein in an attempt to evade immunity before it breaks it - it may well be that we have a short arms race with the bastard over the next little while, while we learn (substantially) all of its forms (yes, even its final form), and make a cocktail vaccine to cover all of them. It is unlikely to be able to do the endless polymorphism that flu does for instance. In the meantime it's reasonable to hope that imperfectly fitting immunity will have some (enough) protective effect on those who receive the vaccine early.
 
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prunus said:
There are certainly at least a couple of things that will emerge from data and/or studies over the next few weeks that will indicate the course of the next phase - not just antigen escape of the new mutant(s), but also whether there's any statistical significance behind the anecdotal reports of either B117 (UK) or 501.v2 (SA) causing severe disease at higher rates in young people than wild type.

(Vaguely-informed) speculation on the former follows:

The 10 501.v2 mutations are all in the parts of the virus that the vaccines target, and largely the natural immume response too (as they are the functional and/or most exposed parts). This obviously could well cause decreased efficacy of the 'lock-and-key' mechanism the induced antibodies use to target the virus. One should remember though that the spike protein is the part of the virus that has to 'lock-and-key' to our cells as well, so it doesn't have the freedom to be totally labile - it has to keep enough of its own 'key' shape to be able to infect - hopefully that also retains enough of its 'lock' shape for at least some of the wild-tpye/vaccine induced antibodies to work - enough to keep the damn thing under control in an infection to a) prevernt serious disease and b) give the body's immune system time to make some new keys to fit these new locks. Bascially the challenge faced by the virus is to change its shape enough so that the antibody proteins can't recognise it, but the cell proteins that give it entry still can. This is not an easy thing to do.

The production methods for the main vaccine types are very fast and flexible as well - adding in the code to make the new versions of the spike protein should be able to be done very quickly (even a matter of weeks) - certainly long before most people have any chance of getting near a vaccine. I haven't heard if they're working on the new sequences yet, but I'd be very surprised if they're not doing at least some of the preliminary work already.

Because of the 'lock-and-key' element above it's likely that there's a finite number of mutations the virus can add to its spike protein in an attempt to evade immunity before it breaks it - it may well be that we have a short arms race with the bastard over the next little while, while we learn (substantially) all of its forms (yes, even its final form), and make a cocktail vaccine to cover all of them. It is unlikely to be able to do the endless polymorphism that flu does for instance. In the meantime it's reasonable to hope that imperfectly fiting immunity will have some (enough) protective effect on those who receive the vaccine early.
Click to expand...
Good post; thanks for that.
 
prunus said:
There are certainly at least a couple of things that will emerge from data and/or studies over the next few weeks that will indicate the course of the next phase - not just antigen escape of the new mutant(s), but also whether there's any statistical significance behind the anecdotal reports of either B117 (UK) or 501.v2 (SA) causing severe disease at higher rates in young people than wild type.

(Vaguely-informed) speculation on the former follows:

The 10 501.v2 mutations are all in the parts of the virus that the vaccines target, and largely the natural immume response too (as they are the functional and/or most exposed parts). This obviously could well cause decreased efficacy of the 'lock-and-key' mechanism the induced antibodies use to target the virus. One should remember though that the spike protein is the part of the virus that has to 'lock-and-key' to our cells as well, so it doesn't have the freedom to be totally labile - it has to keep enough of its own 'key' shape to be able to infect - hopefully that also retains enough of its 'lock' shape for at least some of the wild-tpye/vaccine induced antibodies to work - enough to keep the damn thing under control in an infection to a) prevernt serious disease and b) give the body's immune system time to make some new keys to fit these new locks. Bascially the challenge faced by the virus is to change its shape enough so that the antibody proteins can't recognise it, but the cell proteins that give it entry still can. This is not an easy thing to do.

The production methods for the main vaccine types are very fast and flexible as well - adding in the code to make the new versions of the spike protein should be able to be done very quickly (even a matter of weeks) - certainly long before most people have any chance of getting near a vaccine. I haven't heard if they're working on the new sequences yet, but I'd be very surprised if they're not doing at least some of the preliminary work already.

Because of the 'lock-and-key' element above it's likely that there's a finite number of mutations the virus can add to its spike protein in an attempt to evade immunity before it breaks it - it may well be that we have a short arms race with the bastard over the next little while, while we learn (substantially) all of its forms (yes, even its final form), and make a cocktail vaccine to cover all of them. It is unlikely to be able to do the endless polymorphism that flu does for instance. In the meantime it's reasonable to hope that imperfectly fiting immunity will have some (enough) protective effect on those who receive the vaccine early.
Click to expand...
thanks, that sounds positive
 
Sunray said:
It’s odd that people are talking about masks, I live in Hackney and it’s decent compliance around here.

I suspect the new variant has made them next to useless now.
Click to expand...
Only in the sense they are useless because people don't bother to wear them when in close proximity (<10m) to each other.

The physical mechanics of transmission haven't changed, simply the biodynamics at the biochemical level.
 
prunus said:
There are certainly at least a couple of things that will emerge from data and/or studies over the next few weeks that will indicate the course of the next phase - not just antigen escape of the new mutant(s), but also whether there's any statistical significance behind the anecdotal reports of either B117 (UK) or 501.v2 (SA) causing severe disease at higher rates in young people than wild type.
Click to expand...
Data thus far don't point to B.1.1.7 causing a higher rate of severe disease in younger cohorts.

It might turn out that, whilst B.1.351 may lead to more severe episodes of disease in particular, if not all, cohorts, B.1.1.7 might be more transmissible.
 
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