Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

I can see how that will play out.

Old people with a health passport, doing as they please.

Young people who are little to no risk of dying, having to wait for months till their turn. Why would any young people bother to obey after over a year of it?
If you can't go on holiday without one, if you can not access certain pubs, restaurants, shops etc without one then people will have no choice but to obey. No health passport, no entry.

The health passport is being talked about across Europe, no doubt further afield. Whether we like it or not may not be relevant. If other countries insist on it before you can board a plane, ferry etc then you either have one or stay at home. Not sure whether it will expand to domestic areas, that may be too extravagant, but who knows? If you had said 9 months ago that we would all be wearing masks I would have laughed at you, in fact I did laugh at my Chinese contact who sent a picture of herself in one. Who's laughing now!

How quickly a scheme is rolled out, who knows? Clearly we need to vaccinate more people more quickly or as you say we will be disenfranchising chunks of the population unfairly.
 
How quickly a scheme is rolled out, who knows? Clearly we need to vaccinate more people more quickly or as you say we will be disenfranchising chunks of the population unfairly.

That would be the big one. I have no particular issues with a health passport but you cannot tell the younger part of the population who are at the bottom of the vaccine list that not only are their short term (maybe longer in some cases) lives ruined but you also cannot travel as you haven't got a passport which you have no chances of getting any time soon.
 
A virologist was talking about this on Sunday. He was quite relaxed about it incidentally, not running around screaming, hands in the air. He described the new variant as 'more sticky'. I love that phrase. Apparently it grabs onto you, your cells or whatever and is harder to shake off. Whereas a small dose of the original could be knocked off, beaten up by your system, this new one clings on and stays on you, thus increasing its chances of the infection taking hold. How much or little is needed I don't know but presumably it is less.

All normal according to this bloke, a natural evolution of the virus. He wasn't worried so oddly it made me very calm about it. The vaccine is still the answer, it is rolling out. We just have to keep sensible until more of us have been jabbed. Not different to before really.

Chris Smith from Cambridge - excellent information with zero agenda - always listen to him intently.
 
The scientists are not determining the policy, the politicians and their appointed officials are, with some scientific advice or cover.

Blair makes a lot of sense, in that one dose of vaccine confers more than half the effect, and it is likely that those who get Covid despite the vacc will have a milder course, so that helps reduce the pressure on the NHS. Therefore giving double the number one dose gets considerably faster population coverage, and that in turn protects the remainder faster.

The health passport will become necessary because airlines and foreign immigration officials will require it.

Could they go back later in the year and give the second dose after a few months when they have more supplies or does the second dose need to be after 3 weeks to be effective?
 
Right - I'm not saying that what she's doing is in any way right, or sensible. But,

Maybe, just a little maybe, after the year that she's probably had on the front line of the NHS, a Christmas get together is just about the only thing that she has had to look forward to all year and she just can't let go of the thought?

I'm married to a (semi) front line NHS Nurse and she is really struggling with it now. I'm practically picking her up off the floor most days. She hasn't seen any friends or family in months (and to make it worse, the only person she can talk to is ME!). The one thing that kept her going was the thought of spending a small amount of Christmas with her Family. Now that has been taken away (part Covid and part another reason). If this goes on much longer she's going to become ill in my opinion.

I said this last week when next door neighbour came round, she works on a Covid ward and looks absolutely knackered. I feel for them all.
If baby Jesus had not been born 2020 years ago we would all be in lockdown..
 
Right - I'm not saying that what she's doing is in any way right, or sensible. But,

Maybe, just a little maybe, after the year that she's probably had on the front line of the NHS, a Christmas get together is just about the only thing that she has had to look forward to all year and she just can't let go of the thought?

I'm married to a (semi) front line NHS Nurse and she is really struggling with it now. I'm practically picking her up off the floor most days. She hasn't seen any friends or family in months (and to make it worse, the only person she can talk to is ME!). The one thing that kept her going was the thought of spending a small amount of Christmas with her Family. Now that has been taken away (part Covid and part another reason). If this goes on much longer she's going to become ill in my opinion.

I have a friend whose daughter is front line Covid nurse, showering 5 times a day as required to stay safe apparently , and I feel for her and all front line staff.
But,at the risk of being told I am unsympathetic ( happy Xmas , Phil?), the overwhelming need is to be professional, logical and not forget that mixing with people in households is going to spread the virus. It is an inconvenient fact and as painful as it is, it is non negotiable, surely?
 
I think I was ok with the first lockdown..the weather was decent and once the golf courses opened up things were much better. There was stuff to do.
Lockdown 2 was a pain
I'd got back into the swing of work and working golf in around lessons and the weather wasn't too bad.
Lockdown 3 and I'm struggling. Not so much in a depression sense, more on focus.
Apart from golf I've got little to focus on..Xmas is going to be small and quiet so nothing to do there.
Weather is crap so things like gardening (which I hate with a passion anyway but at least its something to do) are out...
Every day just feels like a Sunday.
This morning I had no idea what day of the week it was...
 
No chicken at our large Sainsburys yesterday... got a couple of British poussin.. Trucker circus at the dock.. all seems like a full dress rehearsal for a no-deal. if we can get thru this, we can get thru everything..

Exactly right MB, and do you know what?... we will get through it. Brexit, COVID, poussin instead of chicken (?) We will overcome it all!?
 
This new Tier 4 expansion is akin to death by a thousand cuts, why don't they just do the full national lockdown and be done with it. I know they don't want to seen to invoking a second full lockdown but essentially they are by increasing the restrictions incrementally.
 
The scientists are not determining the policy, the politicians and their appointed officials are, with some scientific advice or cover.

Blair makes a lot of sense, in that one dose of vaccine confers more than half the effect, and it is likely that those who get Covid despite the vacc will have a milder course, so that helps reduce the pressure on the NHS. Therefore giving double the number one dose gets considerably faster population coverage, and that in turn protects the remainder faster.

The health passport will become necessary because airlines and foreign immigration officials will require it.

If a chap of your understanding of vaccines sees sense in Blairs suggestion, then it begs the question, why the hell are the powers that be not adopting it.?
I ,too, as a layman, thought it a sensible suggestion, but surely there must be a medically based reason to reject it?
Thinking why it isn't being accepted and changes being made to roll it out, I thought perhaps that it was rejected because,say, if the first injection wasn't reinforced by a timely second one, then its effectiveness would be lost and a much later second injection wouldn't recover the protection? Or something similar?

But now that you have come out and inferred there isn't such a medical reason, I find it baffling why Hancock hasn't changed the roll out method.
It cannot be just plain hidebound, can it?

Boris and Hancock are up against it, now another new variant etc;surely they would grasp this suggestion if there was no downside to it?
Why is the medical profession not shouting for this change in the media?
Are we that stupid as a nation
 
If a chap of your understanding of vaccines sees sense in Blairs suggestion, then it begs the question, why the hell are the powers that be not adopting it.?
I ,too, as a layman, thought it a sensible suggestion, but surely there must be a medically based reason to reject it?
Thinking why it isn't being accepted and changes being made to roll it out, I thought perhaps that it was rejected because,say, if the first injection wasn't reinforced by a timely second one, then its effectiveness would be lost and a much later second injection wouldn't recover the protection? Or something similar?

But now that you have come out and inferred there isn't such a medical reason, I find it baffling why Hancock hasn't changed the roll out method.
It cannot be just plain hidebound, can it?

Boris and Hancock are up against it, now another new variant etc;surely they would grasp this suggestion if there was no downside to it?
Why is the medical profession not shouting for this change in the media?
Are we that stupid as a nation

If the desired strategy is to reduce overall risk in the population, one dose for everyone is a better policy because it is faster and the overall bang for your buck is better. It may not offer the same level of protection to each individual as two doses, but as well as your personal benefit, you also get some additional protection when the population risk falls because everyone else is even partially protected.

However, it hasn't been formally studied for the Pfizer/Moderna/AZ vaccine (although I think the Johnson and Johnson vaccine may be adopting this approach), but we are in uncharted territory and getting a critical mass protected is needed asafp.

That graphic from the Pfizer study, posted previously here, makes a good case for it, though.
 
Could they go back later in the year and give the second dose after a few months when they have more supplies or does the second dose need to be after 3 weeks to be effective?

Yes, and they could update that booster with the latest genetic variants, which will have changed a few more time between now and then. It is pretty easy to do that compared to reengineering the flu vaccine, more like a firmware update.
 
This new Tier 4 expansion is akin to death by a thousand cuts, why don't they just do the full national lockdown and be done with it. I know they don't want to seen to invoking a second full lockdown but essentially they are by increasing the restrictions incrementally.
I'm hearing this quite a lot at the moment. The only thing that's puzzling me is why I didn't hear it when large swathes of the North were put into (almost) full lockdown at the end of Summer and into the Autumn? ;):cool::D
 
I think I was ok with the first lockdown..the weather was decent and once the golf courses opened up things were much better. There was stuff to do.
Lockdown 2 was a pain
I'd got back into the swing of work and working golf in around lessons and the weather wasn't too bad.
Lockdown 3 and I'm struggling. Not so much in a depression sense, more on focus.
Apart from golf I've got little to focus on..Xmas is going to be small and quiet so nothing to do there.
Weather is crap so things like gardening (which I hate with a passion anyway but at least its something to do) are out...
Every day just feels like a Sunday.
This morning I had no idea what day of the week it was...

For me, when we were in the first lockdown. Everybody was in the same storm in the same boat. We were all rowing together. We all had the same loss, the same pain. The village idiots were very much in the minority.
The second lockdown was quite frankly a joke.
In between we have had different tiers, the storms and the boats are differant, some are more luxurious than others. Same town and different tiers. The village idiots have been more abundant. It has created division and arguements. This forum being typical of the UKs frustrations.
Until we are all back in the same lockdown similar to the first, Covid will take more lives than it should be doing.

Being a realist, am looking forward to me last round of golf tomorrow for at least a month. If it helps to keep me mum and dad alive and other mums and dads etc etc. It’s a small price to pay.
 
I was asking the question on how it is more transferable a few days ago. I'm finding it difficult to understand, the news articles are suggesting it may be up to 70% more transferable but not how that's possible.

I can understand that once injested it may have a higher possibility of creating infection from a smaller viral load, if this is indeed the case.
We previously saw large infection rates in the North of England where southern areas were much lower, this was more to do with social mixing than new strains of the virus.

Yes, I remembered your post, and it started me thinking on similar lines.
As far as I can remember,, I don't think you had a satisfactory answer.
( not saying you should have had, because us forummers are not the fount of all knowledge ?,) but there hasn't been anything like an explanation given on TV etc that I know of, and I would have thought someone on there would have made a point of pressing this question, just so we would know better what to do or not to do
 
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