Now that COVID is here permanently

[Aladdin]

But on this topic back at you, what level of death do you think is OK? 10 a day, 100 a day, a 1000 a day?

This is the question isnt it?
It's a question I asked the minister for health here... never got a reply.
Didnt expect one ..but the numbers here are going through the roof and ICU beds are being filled with covid patients. The local hospital now only had 2 ICU beds left
That's to cover 3 counties.

As long as this virus remains highly transmissable I think we will end up with serious problems in hospitals here which will lead to deaths.

 

[Edie]

It’s quite a good one though

Disagree. There are complex reasons around distrust of authority that are in play in low bame uptake of the vaccine that aren’t true of drink driving. Also, ones a crime and the other is a medical decision that’s entirely legal. There’s that too.

 

[beesonthewhatnow]

But that’s their choice right? That’s okay. People are allowed to make choices.

Our choices don’t exist in a vacuum.

 

[elbows]

Yeah its not been easy to have a sustained conversation about BAME vaccination attitudes here at any point. Some people have sporadically made high quality posts on the subject, but it never really turns into a big conversation.

Overall people here find it easier to have ongoing rants about certain specific sorts of anti-vax protesters etc. They get a disproportionate amount of attention.

And in the mainstream, the rather understandable emphasis on messages which encourage further uptake of the vaccine, does have a couple of downsides. Mostly in terms of the impressions people end up with in regards how much of the burden on healthcare systems is being caused by the unvaccinated. Someone used exactly the right word earlier when they described that burden as disproportionate. Given what small proportion of the population are unvaccinated, the big chunk of hospital pressure they cause is worth mentioning in that way. But in terms of the raw number of patients, the vaccinated who are still getting sick represent a big chunk of the burden too.

I dont think we've had a moment in the UK where the refusal of some to get vaccinated has forced a different approach to be taken to cope with a wave than would have been the case if vaccination rates had been quite a bit higher. We might have had some moments already where if the timing of vaccine roll-out to certain age groups had been a bit different, we might have got away with slightly fewer measures or different timing of measures or easings of restrictions (eg the delay to 'freedom day'). But its mostly been new variants and the concerns about them which have affected the story of the UK response to the virus in 2021. I dont know if I'll end up being able to say something different about this in 2022 or not.

 

[BigMoaner]

i think i have max about four more lockdowns in me before i finally loose it and go mad max. didn't the experts always say that we have to learn to live with an "acceptable" level of death? but to me its waiting for that moment when we can pull back on restrictions and find that level. or is it always going to be "living with an acceptable level of death and all these restrctions, measures?"

 

[Steel Icarus]

i think i have max about four more lockdowns in me before i finally loose it and go mad max. didn't the experts always say that we have to learn to live with an "acceptable" level of death? but to me its waiting for that moment when we can pull back on restrictions and find that level. or is it always going to be "living with an acceptable level of death and all these restrctions, measures?"

We've just had six months of basically fuck-all restrictions though.

 

[l'Otters]

Some of us didn’t live our lives that way tho cos it was blindingly obvious how batshit stupid July 19th was.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Some of us didn’t live our lives that way tho cos it was blindingly obvious how batshit stupid July 19th was.

Yeah, but people can't have it both ways. I've not seen my best mates since the start of Covid, have remained masked in shops and at work and have been out for dinner twice. I'm not, however, complaining I've been restricted or that there's been a lockdown for two years.

 

[elbows]

i think i have max about four more lockdowns in me before i finally loose it and go mad max. didn't the experts always say that we have to learn to live with an "acceptable" level of death? but to me its waiting for that moment when we can pull back on restrictions and find that level. or is it always going to be "living with an acceptable level of death and all these restrctions, measures?"

Its mostly about number of hospitalisations, thats what really determines which approach the authorities will take.

Have no doubt, the UK establishment, or at least most certainly the current government, wants to lead the way. They really, really want to be able to say to other countries 'look we were able to cope with the virus by asking people to follow guidance alone' (+ lots of vaccinations of course).

So far a number of new variants have caused some setbacks and some loss of confidence by authorities that the light touch was really going to be enough. And winter always comes with more concerns because it comes with conditions and behaviours the virus finds favourable, and an increase in some non-Covid healthcare pressure. Despite this, the authorities here have still managed to resist the sort of restrictions they could not resist in the first 2 waves. If they get through Omicron still being able to stick to that approach, they will consider that to be great progress and will use it as a platform to push ahead much further in 2022. We dont have too much longer to wait before really starting to see whether that will be the case or not.

Attitudes in regards how much death people consider acceptable is a factor, but not anything like as big a one as some may think. And when we try to talk about it, many are reluctant to put a number on it anyway. Its not what really guides the authorities, except that there is a link between the number of deaths and number of hospitalisations, and hospital pressure is something governments cannot fully ignore even if they want to. If political parties had a clear sense of how much daily death is unacceptable to the average voter, then it would enter into some political calculations, but its not the only factor in those calculations either.

 

[BigMoaner]

We've just had six months of basically fuck-all restrictions though.

working from home, masks, feeling terrified in crowded places, testing twice a week at work, isolating for ten days, kids off of school with positive tests, family gatherings being reduced to almost nothing (my vulnerable folks hardly see their grand kids at the moment), football games cancelled.

all of which are absoloutly necessary. and these are not restrictions per se but just affects of living in a pandemic. and i could live with these for a long time, but it would be nice to see some light at the tunnel. perhaps i win the award for most obvious post of the month.

 

[BigMoaner]

also its check privilage time. the mind is so trained to "fix" and "solve" each and every problem, it forgets that comparitavely i should be thankful for all that is good and well in life.

 

[l'Otters]

Yeah, but people can't have it both ways. I've not seen my best mates since the start of Covid, have remained masked in shops and at work and have been out for dinner twice. I'm not, however, complaining I've been restricted or that there's been a lockdown for two years.

I'll express my annoyance at how shit this has all been as much as I like...
Which isn't very much as it goes -
I don't tend to focus on it at all as that would just pointlessly piss me off, but there was no fucking need for us all to be dealing with the effects of this shit for this long, and there are a bunch of factors which have contributed to the prolonging of it, the people who are responsible for some of those factors, well, I don't find it that worthwhile to expend much energy on them but yeah they're fucking annoying. I only tend to get really fucked off when they have the brass neck to give me and others grief for being "over anxious" or "living in fear" or whatever bullshit framing they're spewing. Machismo-infused gaslighting.

Mostly I despair at the state of the effects of neoliberalism on the culture in this country and am reframing my future plans around getting the hell out.

 

[elbows]

working from home, masks, feeling terrified in crowded places, testing twice a week at work, isolating for ten days, kids off of school with positive tests, family gatherings being reduced to almost nothing (my vulnerable folks hardly see their grand kids at the moment), football games cancelled.

all of which are absoloutly necessary. and these are not restrictions per se but just affects of living in a pandemic. and i could live with these for a long time, but it would be nice to see some light at the tunnel. perhaps i win the award for most obvious post of the month.

Well to get the sort of normality people want, something has to happen to mass testing and self-isolation aspects, thats for sure.

Ideally what would happen is that we could bypass the worst of those issues by stopping getting really huge waves with very high peaks covering short timespans. 2021 did not provide many reasons to be optimistic about that, but perhaps a point will arrive where things settle down.

If we still get big waves but authorities gain confidence that the resulting healthcare burden will remain within the threshold of coping, then they'll probably still look to make changes to testing and self-isolation and how thickly they lay on the troubling mood music. There are complications to doing that in the way a typical tory might want.

If they got rid of mass testing they have other longstanding methods for estimating what is happening with the level of infection, and some newer ones such as a network of sewage analysis around the country. But there are complications when it comes to things like hospital patients and staff. Self-isolation causes bad problems with staffing levels, and that makes other measures more likely at times like these, during a big wave. But some of the most vulnerable people are there, and hospital outbreaks are a very big deal. So its another area where they somehow need to get to the point where they can take much of the heat out of this, make the consequences of such infections much less significant. Thats a challenge, one they probably dont expect to solve 100% but need to make big inroads towards. More treatments that reduce risk in a statistically significant way are part of the solution, the way the virus evolves could help, and ideally better vaccines that can do much more on the infection and transmission front could be a game-changer.

Because without progress in that area, we end up seeing stuff like this. Nosocomial infections even get a mention, and thats infections in hospital.

 

[l'Otters]

Yeah, but people can't have it both ways. I've not seen my best mates since the start of Covid, have remained masked in shops and at work and have been out for dinner twice. I'm not, however, complaining I've been restricted or that there's been a lockdown for two years.

Also, whilst am very much aware that I've been in a privileged position as far as the effects this has had on me personally, compared to many; I was partway through master's degree which has been on hold for 2 years now.
There's been other knock-on effects from the ever changing picture of what's possible, what's sensible, what's advisable etc, which have had major impacts on my life but that would be a subject more for the "personal consequences" thread tbh.

 

[l'Otters]

As to what might be nice in terms of a "return to normality" I wouldn't mind having my best friend back in good health again but long covid is what it is and the set of debilitating symptoms they've had for the past year is probably their "new normal" now.

 

[mojo pixy]

Passing on herpes, I mean. It's not even deadly. It has to be a personal choice!

 

[8ball]

Spoke to a mate who currently has Omicron earlier today (doorstep conversation with a monitored crosswind). He had delta quite badly previously. Today he was just maybe 5% more grumpy than normal. His wife was feeling much worse tbf (and his 5 year old happily oblivious and more interested in the prezzies I had brought - they were isolating anyway before developing symptoms).

Obviously this isn’t any kind of evidence that should be taken as support for anything.

I’d like to see how this variant pans out in terms of “long covid” risks before jumping to any conclusions about best practice. It’s barely been a month…

 

[scifisam]

At what cost though? We know that Omicron currently doesn't look too bad for people who've had two jabs and the booster. That's approx 30% of people round here. So that leaves 70% of people who've had none, one or two. That's pretty scary.

It's around 60% for two jabs. My daughter's not eligible for the booster yet, and she got her jab early for her age due to me. The schools have only just started doing jabs, and the stats go from age 12 up. We're a young borough. Also sometimes apparently there are big jumps in vaccination rates due to records getting updated for people who were vaccinated in other areas. Doesn't help with fears of transmission, but I don't think the low rates of vaccine uptake up just because somehow people here don't want it.

 

[8ball]

Read something wrong, ignore me.

 

[SpookyFrank]

But that’s their choice right? That’s okay. People are allowed to make choices.

OK. I choose to only be around vaccinated people. Oh shit wait, that's not one of the 'personal choices' on the menu is it? Because other people's personal choices have decided for me.

It's almost as if we lived in a society or something.

 

[LDC]

I admire your optimism.

Opps, critical word missing - never!

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Disagree. There are complex reasons around distrust of authority that are in play in low bame uptake of the vaccine that aren’t true of drink driving.

I’m fairly certain there can be complex reasons behind drinking and driving but at least you appear to be saying it doesn’t make it forgivable.

 

[weltweit]

..
It’s barely been a month…

Very true, a lot has happened.

Omicron has gone from zero to worldwide ..

Could that have been avoided, or are we doomed for the next VOC to come the same way?

 

[Puddy_Tat]

Could that have been avoided, or are we doomed for the next VOC to come the same way?

presumably it could, but probably only at the cost of stopping all international travel, which may not be entirely practical or politically acceptable...

 

[8ball]

Very true, a lot has happened.

Omicron has gone from zero to worldwide ..

Could that have been avoided, or are we doomed for the next VOC to come the same way?

I think it was seeded in a lot of places before it was discovered. With serious draconian controls I guess it could have been contained to a small degree, but I think it would be widely scattered around regardless.

 

[elbows]

And since the omicron variant rose from nowhere to dominating the world in a matter of weeks, doesn't a "let it rip" strategy, which gives the virus hundreds of millions more opportunities to mutate inside infected people, run the risk of creating a variant that is even more infectious than omicron but also more severe?

Returning to one of the questions that started this thread, I'd say that the mainstream narrative about variants is currently a broken mess and they havent formulated a new version of this yet.

If we look at the second half of 2021 in the UK, the gradual return to normal agenda was promoted via the likes of Prof Paul Hunter repeatedly going on about 'endemic equilibrium' in the press. He had to tweak this a few times to match the realities of the Delta wave here, but it remained largely intact until Omicron arrived. Now we are likely to continue to be treated to a modified version of his thoughts, dwelling on the milder nature of the current variant, the lower burden on intensive care etc.

Mainstream views about variants have not done well in the pandemic so far:

First we were told that this virus only mutates slowly, which is something I initially bought into, but then the number of variants with consequences we've actually had rather pissed on that early reassurance.

Then on the scientific research front we've now seen what happens when on paper there is a variant with the ability to dominate that has plenty of immune escape. Limitations of this stuff on paper compared to the resulting severe disease burden in practice is looking likely to be demonstrated by our Omicron wave experience. This creates some awkeard questions for the future in regards how seriously new variants should be taken by nations with a lot of prior infections and high vaccination rates.

I suppose another theme that could end up part of the next mainstream narrative about variants will be whether the virus is starting to run out of tricks, having used up a lot of the known immune-escape mutations already.

I'd guess the UK approach will be to press on with a further return to the old normal in 2022, but still including the caveat that the changes arent 100% guaranteed to be irreversible because of the unknowns about future variants, so much the same story as we had during the summer easing & Delta.

It would certainly be nice if the world could experience a longer period where no new strain emerged and came to dominate for quite some time. If we could go at least 9 months without such a thing happening then that would be a start!

Other complications to the narrative include some double-think that is necessary in order to support really simplistic messages from the likes of the WHO about getting a certain proportion of the world vaccinated in order to bring about the end of the acute phase of the pandemic. Because you are correct to detect a problem with this logic, given that current vaccines are not pushing number of infections down to very low levels, leaving opportunities for mutation heavily intact. And populations with immunity are the very thing that gives mutants that have immune escape potential their selection advantage.

 

[co-op]

I’m fairly certain there can be complex reasons behind drinking and driving but at least you appear to be saying it doesn’t make it forgivable.

Once you go down the path of saying that it's the individual's responsibility to maintain their own health in order to save hospital beds for the "deserving sick" you're opening a Pandora's Box. It's fine to make glib comparisons to drunk-driving and score a hit-and-run point but what about smoking? Obesity? Lack of exercise? Poor diet? All of these are huge contributors to poor health and take up huge amounts of the NHS budget. It's clear that the dominant neo-liberal go-to for all of these is individual responsibility and "education" and all the usual bullshit that stands in for what we actually know, i.e. that the primary determinants of health and longevity are social, i.e that they are to do with social status, aka class.

I'm not saying the vaccine question is an easy one because I think it's very hard, my personal instinctive reaction is head says mandatory, heart says no. But it's way more complex than that.

 

[Magnus McGinty]

Once you go down the path of saying that it's the individual's responsibility to maintain their own health in order to save hospital beds for the "deserving sick" you're opening a Pandora's Box. It's fine to make glib comparisons to drunk-driving and score a hit-and-run point but what about smoking? Obesity? Lack of exercise? Poor diet? All of these are huge contributors to poor health and take up huge amounts of the NHS budget. It's clear that the dominant neo-liberal go-to for all of these is individual responsibility and "education" and all the usual bullshit that stands in for what we actually know, i.e. that the primary determinants of health and longevity are social, i.e that they are to do with social status, aka class.

I'm not saying the vaccine question is an easy one because I think it's very hard, my personal instinctive reaction is head says mandatory, heart says no. But it's way more complex than that.

I wasn't really making a point about hospital beds (my fault I guess for throwing out a glib remark without caveats) more that drink driving risks the health of both the drunk driver and those they encounter whilst drunk driving which could be viewed as similar to vaccine refuseniks as it's down to choice.

 

[IC3D]

The success of Omicron and it really has been phenomenal in unseating the far more dangerous Delta is primarily its ability to break through vaccine protection and infect the entire population at unimaginable speed.
You couldn't really come up with a better solution.
Vaccines have protected lives but have little effect on removing a dangerous corona virus from society but this virus is appearing to be doing that.

 

[existentialist]

Once you go down the path of saying that it's the individual's responsibility to maintain their own health in order to save hospital beds for the "deserving sick" you're opening a Pandora's Box. It's fine to make glib comparisons to drunk-driving and score a hit-and-run point but what about smoking? Obesity? Lack of exercise? Poor diet? All of these are huge contributors to poor health and take up huge amounts of the NHS budget. It's clear that the dominant neo-liberal go-to for all of these is individual responsibility and "education" and all the usual bullshit that stands in for what we actually know, i.e. that the primary determinants of health and longevity are social, i.e that they are to do with social status, aka class.

I'm not saying the vaccine question is an easy one because I think it's very hard, my personal instinctive reaction is head says mandatory, heart says no. But it's way more complex than that.

None of obesity, smoking, poor diet, or lack of exercise are contagious in the way viruses are. OK, arguably smoking, in terms of exposing others to it, but that one's well in hand.