Re: Coronavirus
 

You’ve got absolutely no evidence to support your hunch that these measures are having no effect on the outcome. Indeed, we’ve the entire capitalist system betting billions that it will.

Herd immunity is just Darwinism. You’re proposing to let people die to everyone left over doesn’t have the disease. We could extend that principle to plenty of illnesses - yet don’t.

Re: Coronavirus
 

A vaccine isn't a cure. At the population scale, it is a means of artificially inducing herd immunity. Herd immunity is the only way to keep a virus from moving freely through a population.

We can't say for sure that natural herd immunity will be possible with this Coronavirus; it might be susceptible to rapid mutation, thereby bypassing our acquired immune response, or it may be of a type that only provokes a weak and not very persistent immune response in humans. If either of those turns out to be the case, then an ongoing vaccination programme will be necessary, probably going on for years until we can induce immunity to new strains almost as fast as the virus can produce them.

On the other hand, we still do not yet have sufficient data to know if those things will happen. It is quite possible that we could get herd immunity within a year or two.

In any case, neither herd immunity nor a vaccine is a cure.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Health care like the NHS will always have limits on what it can afford. Doctors will always have to make choices about who gets the limited treatment and when. COVID-19 is highlighting this but instead of "fighting" over a piece of equipment for patient A with condition X or patient B with condition Y it's lots of patients all at the same time with condition COVID-19. Individually it's terrible when patient A is "Joe Bloggs" and terrible for the individuals making the decisions.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Captain Moore is currently just short of £13 million. :clap: :clap: :clap:

More bravery and gumption in that man than in the whole of Parliament.

Re: Coronavirus
 

It's never been successfully achieved with uncontrolled spread of a live virus through a population.

Re: Coronavirus
 

People are calling for him to get a knighthood.

I agree, he's cheered the country up, and I can see it going up and up, dare I say £50 million.

---------- Post added at 13:55 ---------- Previous post was at 13:50 ----------


My mother didn't know she had it, we where making plans before lockdown and both my parents stay at home.

But other than Doctors/hospital appointments she only did the tesco shop with me.

She had no symptoms.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Herd immunity via viral infection has obviously happened though a population before, it's what happened before vaccines. It's why we don't all drop dead from all the viruses out there in the world, it's why the normal flu doesn't kill us all, it's why such viruses did kill people in the Americas when colonialists arrived.

It's why people used to have Pox Parties to give children the illnesses now that were deadlier in adults.

Remember the way our immune system works is even if there are different strains of a virus if they're similar enough to the previous one then it can adapt quicker. Most of us have immune systems that can detect a new strain of flu vaccine being similar to another as thus cope with it better. That's why we don't all need a flu vaccine.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Re: Coronavirus
 

Of course it has, throughout the entire human history.
Vaccines have only existed for a very small period of time.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Apart from Smallpox of course..

The question is how did we manage to eradicate Smallpox? This disease had the following qualities;

• Only human to human transmission (no animals involved)
• You only spread it when pretty sick and obviously had Smallpox (no asymptomatic carriers)
• The virus was very stable and didn't mutate over time
• There was a simple vaccine available in Vaccinia/Cowpox

Smallpox was one nasty disease so governments and, more importantly, the public were SUPER motivated not to have it spread so many countries had mandatory vaccination which had a very high degree of compliance (of course, this was a long time back and a simpler time when people were more likely to do what they were told)

As the WHO approached the endgame and routine vaccination was phased out, sporadic outbreaks were tackled by very tough lockdowns and 'ring vaccination' where everyone within a certain area was vaccinated to nip outbreaks in the bud.

Unfortunately, it looks like Coronavirus can be spread by the 'walking sick', there may be animal hosts and the virus may mutate over time making things a lot more challenging

Re: Coronavirus
 

That's controlled.

---------- Post added at 16:32 ---------- Previous post was at 16:31 ----------

I should have added 'deliberate' uncontrolled. In the past yes - diseases have killed enough people that those who remain are immune. I'm not sure that's a good policy outcome though...

Re: Coronavirus
 

We were warned with swine flu and bird flu; luckily they weren't as transmissible to humans but easily could have been. It was only a matter of time before something more transmissible came along.

It's natural for people to become complacent if these things come and go and they remain unaffected, but the Govt's pandemic planning is a shambles given they had the warnings from other flu outbreaks. Indeed its own flu pandemic exercise a few years ago showed the deficiencies we now have. They did diddly squat apart from hide the report findings in case we got too scared by it.

Re: Coronavirus
 

BREAKING: Wales First Minister says, Wales, Scotland, Northern Ireland and the UK Government have agreed a further three week lock down extension to continue.

UK Government is yet to announce these measures. But the Wales FM, has basically outlined what is about to be announced at the 5PM Press briefing in the next 5 Minutes, in Downing Street.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Excellent announcement.