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I'm pretty sure Paul Hunter is the name I keep seeing in connection with recent press talk about 'endemic equilibrium' and here we are again but with added detail:

He also says Covid-19 is approaching the "endemic equilibrium", the number of cases we should expect to see per day forever. In other coronaviruses that have been circulating for many years in humans, this is about 45,000 cases a day, Prof Hunter says.

But he says because of widespread immunity, the serious illness of Covid-19 will be "consigned to history", except for occasional cases. In most pandemics, the professor says this takes about three years.
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Thats from a BBC live updates page 14:15 entry, with the main thrust of that entry being the apparently imminent decision about booster shots: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-58391759

This is the first I've heard of the numbers to expect and the timescale. I currently lack the ability to judge whether he is right about that detail. I will try to get clued up about this more in the months ahead. I'm certainly not inclined to simply take his word for it. And the number of actual cases per day should not be confused with the number we formally identify through testing.
 
Here are more of the same quotes from him via some random local news site:

www.shropshirestar.com

Vaccine booster campaign should start ‘pretty soon’ for over-80s and vulnerable

The NHS is poised to start administering booster Covid-19 jabs within days but is yet to get final nod from vaccine experts
www.shropshirestar.com www.shropshirestar.com

The professor in medicine said that the nation will continue to see Covid infections in society, “but the issue is whether actually that’s going to cause ill health”.

He said: “We’re getting close to what’s called the endemic equilibrium, which is the sort of number of infections we can expect on average per day forever.

“Looking at the other coronaviruses it’s about 45,000 infections a day.
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“If you work it out, based on what we know about duration of immunity and the principles for Covid, it works out about 45,000 infections a day (across the UK). So that’s what we’ve got to look forward to.

“But the vast majority of those infections for the other coronaviruses asymptomatic, they don’t cause any harm. And when they do with some mild dose of the common cold.

“And that’s the way that this is going to go, absolutely no doubt about it.
Click to expand...

“We won’t see Covid ‘the disease’ any more after a few years. Typically pandemics tend to last for about three years, give or take.

“And the last big coronavirus pandemic lasted three years – that was in 1890, with the Russian flu. The virus that caused the Russian flu is still with us, and it’s still not that different probably from the virus that circulated 130 years ago, but we don’t see it causing the disease.

“Covid-19 the disease will almost certainly consigned to history except in very few occasional cases.”
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Even if I end up with no cause to question these details, I will certainly question the merits of going on about this stuff right now. Because the future scenario he describes is clearly not what we are dealing with right now, even if case numbers are similar at times. I certainly question whether similar numbers at the moment actually give any indication at all that we are 'getting close'. Surely thats not just a question of case numbers but also trends going forwards and levels of hospitalisation need to be factored in since in my book those are currently incompatible with the idea we are close to a scenario where 'the vast majority of those infections dont cause any harm'.

By the way although I have been very interested in the theory that the 1890 'Russian flu' was actually a coronavirus pandemic, I dont think its firmly established fact, although I certainly wouldnt bet against it.
 
Back to the theme that was emerging before the July peak and the August changes in mixing patterns and press coverage. I dont think this pressure significantly diminished in August, only the reporting of it.

The health service in England is experiencing "winter-like pressures", the Society of Acute Medicine is warning.

Medics from the organisation, which represents doctors working in the field of acute medicine, say doctors are treating "vast numbers" of people with non-Covid illnesses as well as many attending hospital with severe coronavirus symptoms.
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"I think it is fair to say we are currently facing an unprecedented summer workload that feels more like the worst winter pressures most of us can recall," says Dr Scriven.

"We are seeing vast numbers of patients with non-Covid illness alongside the steady admission rates of those still very poorly with Covid.

"We are also noticing frailer people who have deconditioned over lockdowns so that any illness that previously might have been fairly minor now need an extended stay in hospital with periods of rehabilitation."
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Thats from the 15:13 entry of BBC live updates page https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-58391759
 
My other half has just got a text from GP saying vaccines for 12-15 yos will now be available in one place nearby, which surprises me a bit given there's been no announcement. I know they were talking about it, but the indications seemed to be it would be a few weeks coming. He says it doesn't indicate anything about it just being CEV - anyone else heard anything like this?
 
Cloo said:
My other half has just got a text from GP saying vaccines for 12-15 yos will now be available in one place nearby, which surprises me a bit given there's been no announcement. I know they were talking about it, but the indications seemed to be it would be a few weeks coming. He says it doesn't indicate anything about it just being CEV - anyone else heard anything like this?
Click to expand...
Its not been announced but the indications are there, eg even the BBC have the following wording in some recent articles:

NHS organisations in England have been told to make preparations to jab all 12 to 15-year-olds. But a final decision is awaited.
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www.bbc.co.uk

Covid: Why are 12-15s now being double-jabbed?

All children aged 12 to 15 are being offered two doses of Covid vaccine.
www.bbc.co.uk

Currently it isnt just CEV children aged 12-15, its also children in that age group who live with CEV adults.
 
Thanks - at any rate we will discuss with daughter when she gets home, though we know she's keen to have it.
 
kabbes said:
“doesn't believe masks do anything”

Do you know where this belief comes from? If you think about it, this kind of thing is an odd thing to have “belief” about. It’s like having belief against germ theory or antibiotics.
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It sounds like a "convenient truth" that wouldn't stand up to any enquiry. I imagine that's a pretty depressing thing to see in one's own offspring...
 


If he's right, and the consensus is now that herd immunity is impossible, because the vaccine can't prevent transmission, then that's obviously very significant in terms of what the policy will be from now on.

This presumably also assumes that it's not going to be possible to 'tweak' the vaccine such that it can prevent onwards transmission.

He doesn't really talk about what happens if we get to a point where the health service can't deal with hospitalisation numbers.
 
I just watched that. It seems pretty depressing. Seems like the denialists got what they want. Especially if we aren't going to vaccinate kids. I don't know where we go from here since winter is coming, to coin a phrase. Inevitably it will rise again.
 
I was getting around to that sort of thinking - keep up with the vaccines as best we can to have a head start then taking a very low viral load through a mask to get coverage for more of the prevalent epitopes (viral proteins).
 
teuchter said:
Not sure exactly what you mean by this.
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I watched the clip this morning and it just feels like the situation has been allowed to get to this point because the people in charge (not just in Britain, tbf) still believe in the 'let it rip' mentality. They've not taken it seriously at at all.

I'm not saying Dr Campbell, or his sources, are wrong, more that we've been led to this point by a clown parade of politicians
 
glitch hiker said:
I watched the clip this morning and it just feels like the situation has been allowed to get to this point because the people in charge (not just in Britain, tbf) still believe in the 'let it rip' mentality. They've not taken it seriously at at all.

I'm not saying Dr Campbell, or his sources, are wrong, more that we've been led to this point by a clown parade of politicians
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Personally I reckon the key problem was overselling the vaccine and claiming it replaced masks and SD ... perhaps it was always the plan to ensure onward transmission ...
 
gentlegreen said:
Personally I reckon the key problem was overselling the vaccine and claiming it replaced masks and SD ... perhaps it was always the plan to ensure onward transmission ...
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Unfortunately Delta hit after the vaccination. Delta seems to be the problem. Perhaps they can devise a stronger shot.

All the more reason to maintain basic hygiene standards, but mask wearing, IME, has massively declined in the last couple of weeks. YMMV
 
glitch hiker said:
Unfortunately Delta hit after the vaccination. Delta seems to be the problem. Perhaps they can devise a stronger shot.

All the more reason to maintain basic hygiene standards, but mask wearing, IME, has massively declined in the last couple of weeks. YMMV
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No vaccine configuration will do more than deal with the infection more quickly.
The virus apparently always does plenty of replication in the URT and asymptomatic spreading before the immune system can get on top of it.
 
teuchter said:


If he's right, and the consensus is now that herd immunity is impossible, because the vaccine can't prevent transmission, then that's obviously very significant in terms of what the policy will be from now on.

This presumably also assumes that it's not going to be possible to 'tweak' the vaccine such that it can prevent onwards transmission.

He doesn't really talk about what happens if we get to a point where the health service can't deal with hospitalisation numbers.
Click to expand...

That is pretty depressing, though I guess it's not a surprise - the data has been pointing that way for a while. But I still had some hope that when young people and kids were vaccinated the spread would be significantly diminished and there might be only occasional outbreaks. But it seems more like it will just be circulating everywhere most of the time. We just have to wait and see what the long covid rate will be with that. I hope lower than the unvaccinated rate.

And yeah, I wonder how Aus and NZ are going to deal with this. Will they be forced to let it in once everyone is vaccinated? I don't see how they can stay disease-free islands forever.
 
NZ has an exit plan that involves vaccinating everyone then starting to drawn down the quarantine from low-risk countries. Still aiming for zero Covid though, as far as I'm aware
 
gentlegreen said:
No vaccine configuration will do more than deal with the infection more quickly.
The virus apparently always does plenty of replication in the URT and asymptomatic spreading before the immune system can get on top of it.
Click to expand...
Are we ready for the pandemic to move to the endemic stage though?
 
teuchter said:
Not sure exactly what you mean by this.
Click to expand...

The move to testing only clinically ill people not people more generally (contacts for example) I assume, as in no point testing and getting huge numbers when it's hospitalisations and deaths that really matter. (I don't agree 100%, but I think that's what glitch hiker was getting at?)
 
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Fruitloop said:
NZ has an exit plan that involves vaccinating everyone then starting to drawn down the quarantine from low-risk countries. Still aiming for zero Covid though, as far as I'm aware
Click to expand...
Can they really stick to zero covid if it is circulating freely in some of the world's biggest economies which they have to interact with? It would mean quarantine with UK and US forever wouldn't it?
 
quimcunx said:
And what does this mean for the countries like NZ, and those poorer countries where they have maybe done their best with public health measures but have more malnourished children etc. Seems like we've fucked them over.
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I think that it means that countries like NZ will end up with a similar situation to what we'll end up with here. The difference - assuming they wait until the population is well vaccinated before opening up - will be that they will have got to that point without losing so many lives along the way.

If it's true that vaccines can't stop Covid becoming endemic, then it looks to me that everyone ending up with endemic covid was inevitable whatever. In that sense, I'm not sure that the UK's approach will have had a major impact on where NZ ends up in the long term... unless the argument is that if everyone had kept numbers low, the delta variant would never have appeared. I don't know if that's plausible.

The idea that it would ever have been possible for the whole world to pursue and achieve "zero covid" seems a bit fantasy to me - unless it had been entirely contained right at the beginning in Wuhan.
 
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