Re: Coronavirus
 

Based on what evidence, exactly? The data available for the Indian variant is consistent with a high degree of vaccine effectiveness. You haven’t provided anything to show otherwise.

What the Indian variant does is spread extremely quickly. That isn’t the same thing as vaccine escape.

Re: Coronavirus
 

No COVID deniers on this forum I know of.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Covid-19 death stats for UK ethnic Britons, compared to white Britons.

Bangladeshi men x4.96
Bangladeshi women x4.11
Pakistani men x3.40
Pakistani women x2.84
Black African men x2.16
Indian men x1.95
Black Caribbean men x1.69
Black Caribbean women x1.69
Black African women x1.62
Indian women x1.57
Mixed race men x1.39
Mixed race women x1.36
Chinese men x1.11
Chinese women x0.92


Office for National Statistics (ONS)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Different variants are pushing down the effectiveness of the vaccine and people who have had vaccines are now being hospitalised These are statements of fact.

What we don't have is 100% vaccine escape but that's simply a matter of time really. Restrictions will be here for some time on that basis.

Re: Coronavirus
 

So vaccine escape actually isn’t here after all. Glad we agree on that.

The statistics for hospitalisation with regards to the Indian variant are nowhere near vaccine escape. 88% protection from Pfizer is excellent performance by any measure. At the outset of this pandemic nobody would have complained at a vaccine with Oxford-Astra’s 60% effectiveness either - 60% is about as effective as a flu jab ever gets.

Sure, vaccine escape is likely in time. That’s how life works. But in the meantime, you might try to sound less gleeful at the prospect.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I'm far from gleeful, but as your own figures demonstrate we are some considerable distance from the herd immunity threshold.

The same principle applies that there is no living with the virus. The Indian variant and others will be given hundreds of thousands, if not millions of opportunities to further mutate without ongoing restrictions.

Defining vaccine escape as reducing vaccine efficacy to zero is needless semantics and doesn't change the inevitability of all of this.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Well phrased... ;)

Re: Coronavirus
 

Who defined it that way?

Re: Coronavirus
 

You appear to have.

Her Majesty's Government appear to define it as reducing efficacy and have published papers around different variants of concern on that basis

Re: Coronavirus
 

No, sorry ... no matter how hard I look at that post I can’t see “vaccine escape equals zero efficacy”, or anything remotely like it.

What I can see is an assertion that efficacy in the 60s to 80s % does not represent vaccine escape. Because it doesn’t.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I think the virus did a marvelous job of mutating even with restrictions :p:

If . . IF . . we end up with lock down after lock down, or ongoing restrictions that reduce my enjoyment of life (poor wording but you get the gist), then I'd want all travel to & from the UK stopped - totally - in order to prevent another mutation coming in from elsewhere :p:

Of course, that's never going to happen is it . . so where/when do we draw the line on restrictions & lock downs?

I think most of the Country have had enough already.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I’m sorry but that’s just semantics. A mutation that reduces efficacy from “90%+” in the AstraZeneca vaccine to 60% represents a significant reduction, leaving millions more people at risk of exposure than the original road map projected.

The Government need to have an honest conversation about what restrictions will be needed and look like through the rest of 2021 until booster vaccines roll out.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Amazing how many virologists we have posting in this thread.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Let's just accept the fact that an annual covid-x vaccination is going to be as normal as the flu jab for those most at risk.

Re: Coronavirus
 

You don’t need to be a virologist to know the same decision making process that led to every lockdown to date still applies until there is sufficient (and lasting) immunity in the population.

There is no living with the virus.

---------- Post added at 16:43 ---------- Previous post was at 16:42 ----------

A certainty. The question is what to do between now and then.