Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
As much as some pretend we can go back to 2019 the “work from home” workforce aren’t going back to offices en masse with waves every 3-4 months. That creates sub-optimal economic outcomes that aren’t sustainable for us, but nobody wants to wake up to the reality. This drags out the pain because actually “living with the virus” is more than a buzz phrase used by politicians.
|
We are pretty much "back to 2019" and about as close as we probably will be. We have no restrictions on things opening, no restrictions forcing people to stay at home, wear a mask, be a distance from others, limits in group size, etc etc.
Instead people are advised to stay at home if they think they might have covid. Only a few select groups are advised to test and only in their case if they have symptoms. Everyone else is encouraged not to test.
Working from home is a matter for employers and their staff to decide. A lot of employers are also in favour of some working from home and have reduced office space to account for this (and in the winter months especially this is presumably less heating, lighting costs etc). It's a fallacy to generalise that working from home is less productive and there are some cases where people work better without office distractions and prefer it like there are others who would spend half an hour watching TV instead of working whilst in working hours. Some people may spend some of the time they would have spent travelling to the office and back to work extra hours. But this doesn't need blanket policy and the Government have said people are free to do what they like and there's no reason to restrict going into the office for covid mitigation.
Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
As ever Old Boy you are entirely incorrect. As I say read the basis upon which the vaccines were approved in the United States, European Union or the United Kingdom. Every one referenced - sometimes dubious but now outdated - efficacy against infection. Therefore it's impossible for me to be "unfair" to say they missed stated objectives nor that "herd immunity" has not - indeed will not - be achieved through mass infection nor the present generation of vaccines.
https://www.pfizer.com/news/press-re...didate-against
https://www.astrazeneca.com/media-ce...ii-trials.html
Herd immunity palpably doesn't work hence "waves" of infection.
I bet the Chinese are laughing at us. |
Quote:
Originally Posted by jfman
At the point originally coined - and throughout it’s continued use - it was indeed that sufficient immunity existed within the population that the vast, vast majority of people would be immune from infection at a later point therefore the population as a whole is protected by a collective immunity that prevented significant outbreaks.
The existing immunity meant that small outbreaks would happen, however would fizzle out, because they’d hit the “wall of immunity” in the population at large.
A bit like monkeypox pre-2022.
|
These basically have the same answer.
Ultimately this depends on what your vaccines do and were designed to do.
All three main vaccines were fundamentally based on the same idea. That you could inject the code to an original-strain spike protein into someone, their body would replicate it, and then their immune system create a response. The immune response then means if the body is exposed to the protein again, e.g. via infection, then it will recognise what it is and have antibodies ready or can produce them again.
Presumably this is still the case.
However the spike protein of the virus currently circulating is similar enough to be recognised but only partially. This is due to various mutations which have occurred with other variants too but more markedly with omicron. But the response which is there from either vaccination or previous infection is there still but just not as effective, it's a bit like you saw someone when they were 20 but then not until they were 50, it's the same person but you just take a bit of time to remember who they are because they now have grey hair, wear glasses, and are about 10 stone heavier because of spending middle age in a beer garden after work.
The other specific issue to omicron is that it is more transmissible and in all likelihood requires fewer virus to get infected than previous strains and emits more virus from someone who has it, which is why mitigations such as face coverings have been less effective.
So more virus entering is more the immune system has to cope with at a time when the vaccine memory is a bit suspect because the virus has mutated so the response isn't recognisable.
Vaccines don't usually prevent infection. They just cause an immune response which means that the immune system usually recognises the virus before the body gets taken over by it and you get ill.
It's just in this case we aren't dealing with the same virus as we have been vaccinated against, but a very similar one. This means the body can't respond in time to prevent a milder infection. But the vaccines still cause enough of a response to prevent a more severe one.
Ideally we need a booster with more omicron specificity, which I note Pfizer and Moderna now have, even though that itself is probably for original omicron not BA4/5 which are circulating now. Rolling this out ahead of a potential winter resurgence (even if this is a different omicron as it seems to be) is probably a good idea, rolling out original vaccines is probably less useful.
As for the approval point and preventing disease and transmission, this was probably indeed largely the case on original and alpha, it was only when we started seeing the variants with more vaccine escape mutations such as delta and omicron we started seeing some infection in those who were vaccinated. If the virus hadn't changed we probably wouldn't be talking about that.