[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by jfman

It’s your perpetual defeatism over lockdown/waiting for vaccines that contributes most of the negativity, Old Boy.

You claim that treating a pandemic as a health issue won’t wash when restrictions are still well supported by the public as a whole. I must have missed the referendum on it, but as I’m sure you are aware we aren’t a direct democracy in any case.

I’d hoped you’d learned not to clutch at optimistic straw after optimistic straw throughout the pandemic but evidently not. The removal of all restrictions is very unrealistic in the timeframe you propose.



As I say, your flawed idea.

A comment that shows that you still haven’t grasped what I am advocating.

---------- Post added at 14:32 ---------- Previous post was at 14:29 ----------

Originally Posted by jonbxx

It is all a bit statistical but mutations happen when the virus reproduces so the more generations of virus reproduction that occur, the more mutations will be seen. However, mutations are random (on the whole, some sites are more likely to have issues than others in the virus genome) A mutation can happen at generation 1 or generation 1 billion. Some mutations will be silent with no change whatsoever in the virus, some will render the virus inactive and some can change the virus behaviour.

Here are some numbers...

The SARS-COV-2 genome is roughly 30,000 letters long and the mutation rate is 10^-4 per letter per year so, on average, there will be 3 mutations across the whole genome in 1 year. BUT, this assumes that the disease is not infectious. If one person infects another, then you double the number of virus reproductions and so the numbers of mutations double. If they infect others, the number of reproductions increase along with this.

Because lockdowns reduces the number of infections, it reduces the number of viral reproduction cycles and will therefore reduce the numbers of mutations. If someone catches the disease and the virus develops a really nasty mutation but they don’t infect anyone due to lockdowns and isolation, that strain becomes extinct.

Hope this makes sense!

Except that they don’t. They slow the process, that is all.

---------- Post added at 14:34 ---------- Previous post was at 14:32 ----------

Originally Posted by Hugh

Really?

Even if we vaccinate at the rate of a million per week, it will take over a year to hit 70% of the population (herd immunity levels)

And the CMOs say there will be vaccine shortages for the next couple of months.

https://www.ft.com/content/d97c72c5-...c-9cc10b21f007

It won’t take anywhere near that long to vaccinate the vulnerable. That will drastically reduce hospital admissions and remove the need for restrictions.