[jfman]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

”effective against” and “provides protection” are sort of weasel words.

Is that protection from infection? I don’t think so.
Protection from transmission? The big question.
Protection from serious illness? Yes as the stats show.

Precisely.

This isn’t what Pierre is portraying with his unsubstantiated 90% efficacy claim - even AstraZeneca’s own papers to the FDA put the efficacy against infection figure lower based on the original variants. More infections = more hospitalisations = more deaths even if efficacy against those is higher. You are still dealing with a proportion of a much larger number on the latter two as a result of the first. Less than before but there’s enough in there for a bad winter ahead if we arbitrarily abandon all mitigations.


---------- Post added at 10:09 ---------- Previous post was at 10:07 ----------

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Pathetic! I’m not debating this with you anymore. You are completely paranoid. 19 July looms. Bolt your doors immediately!

In fairness OB you’ve not been debating since the start. You’ve only been clutching at straws.

---------- Post added at 10:20 ---------- Previous post was at 10:09 ----------

Originally Posted by heero_yuy

Nobody is stopping the terminally paranoid from staying in the cupboard under the stairs for the rest of their lives. The rest of us will be glad to get back to some form of normality and get rid of those horrible masks.

Unfortunately masks is the easy one. Costs nothing.

Distancing does reduce capacity at venues having an economic impact. Masks don’t. What the Government does have is this carefully crafted “legal requirements” which allows them to keep masks in guidance but not regulations.

If people don’t want these things to creep back in later they need to continue with them for now. If we are asking people to exercise “good judgement” then my point above about the numbers of infections is key. Good judgement when there’s a few hundred cases a day and you’re extremely unlikely to encounter anyone with the virus is different from where statistically the chances of encountering someone are much higher. A commuter train is now statistically likely to have a number of active cases on it on average. In an air conditioned tin can. A rational commuter wouldn’t commute given the choice.