Coronavirus Thread

[Izzy]

6 minutes ago, Sly said:

I’m in the UK. 
 

My father is South African. 

 

4 minutes ago, Sly said:

I don’t know how you change it though @Izzy. I only ever log in on my phone. 

Ah, O.K.

 

On your phone, click on the three diagonal white lines top right of the screen. Click on your profile pic and it takes you to your profile. Click on the pencil icon and you can edit your profile including location 

[SpacedX]

2 minutes ago, pazzerfox said:

But the question was "does big pharma have a vested intrest in keeping "Covid relevent".  Surely big pharma would be rubbing thier hands together if people need 4 or 5 vaccines a year?

Given the unethical way that they are behaving you would have to say yes, but the failure to maximise access to the vaccines are a product of business practices as opposed to an deliberately engineered attempt to prolong the virus. 

[dsr-burnley]

1 hour ago, Line-X said:

Completely, We already have Delta - it hasn't suddenly gone away. As of today, there were 48,854 new people with a confirmed positive test result for coronavirus and 360,480 people in the last 7 days. This shows an increase of 38,438 compared to the previous 7 days. There is now a new variant taking hold that has triple the infection rate. This will create unmanageable stress upon our frontline health services, which then has a huge knock on effect.

 

I genuinely despair that the same few people still are completely incapable of comprehending this.  

Then the question becomes, which is better  - to let it go and have an unmanageable crisis for a month or so, or to suppress the immediate crisis and have lockdown for many months and restrictions for years and years while the NHS runs along close to breaking point? I really think that a policy of having another couple of years like the last is going to be worse than pretty much any other option.

 

We can ignore any guff about a delay to give the NHS time. They have had 2 years to prepare for this wave and have a capacity lower than when they started. "Lions led by donkeys " was the WW1 phrase. 

[Phil Bowman]

4 minutes ago, dsr-burnley said:

We can ignore any guff about a delay to give the NHS time

Phew! Glad you’ve saved us from believing that nonsense.

[kingfox]

18 minutes ago, reynard said:

Yes you could well be right but eventually it will be annual because we will be able to develop vaccines that deal with multi variants.

The two doses have not been useless though have they? They have prevented a great many deaths and a great many hospitalisations. They may now be becoming less efficient but that was always likely to be the case I'm afraid.

The public needs to wise up that we're far from out of the woods yet. This could be long long haul and could take another 3-5 years to resolve or, if we are lucky, the worst might be over in another 18 months. 

We just have to keep going and do what is required to combat this disease. After all it took over 200 years to eradicate smallpox.

And eventually could well be a long way off.

 

Everything throughout this pandemic only works for so long, doses one and two have worked for six months, how long will this booster last? Vaccine efficacy will wane with this one, another new variant may pop along as well, then in another couple of months time it will practically be the same message again “Sorry, the booster has now been rendered useless, come and get your fourth jab”, that never ending cycle.

 

It’s alright saying the public need to wise up, more and more people will just become sick and tired of this constant merry-go-round, it’s already happening now, mainly because of the way this shitty government have handled things, but that’s a discussion for the politics thread. 
 

If reports out of South Africa are true, then it might not take another 3-5 years to resolve, but at this moment in time we find ourselves in an uncertain stage...again.

[Sly]

29 minutes ago, Izzy said:

 

Ah, O.K.

 

On your phone, click on the three diagonal white lines top right of the screen. Click on your profile pic and it takes you to your profile. Click on the pencil icon and you can edit your profile including location 

Sorted. Thank you. 

[adam]

 

[weller54]

Thank God we spent a few Billion on setting up all those Nightingale Hospitals with a surge of cases in mind, looks like we could be needing them now!!

Thank goodness we have all those foreign workers to fill the staffing requirements!

 

[z-layrex]

2 hours ago, adam said:

 

My icu is at total breaking point as it is, Friday the hospital was on red, which means everything gets diverted, all vascular emergencies like abdominal aneurysms etc get diverted, specialist critical care services get diverted, all ambulances except in the immediate catchment area get diverted (they tried to divert immediate area too but simply not allowed). How the holy **** do you expect us to cope with another covid wave caused by this variant?

 

You have no idea what you are talking about, or maybe you don't care until it's someone you love in that ambulance, having a stroke that has sub-1 hour to be treated to potentially save their brain, and they get diverted elsewhere, or maybe the ambulance doesn't even turn up for an hour?

 

The only single way to stop people dying and/or receiving totally unacceptable healthcare for the UK is to get as many people boosted as fast as possible.

Edited 13 December 2021 by z-layrex

[Bryn]

A bigger problem that overvaccination of the young is actually that they're not cancelling elective surgery up to now because it's seen as politically disastrous, so we're still packing the elective knee replacements in whilst general medicine burns.

[Babylon]

7 hours ago, dsr-burnley said:

Then the question becomes, which is better  - to let it go and have an unmanageable crisis for a month or so, or to suppress the immediate crisis and have lockdown for many months and restrictions for years and years while the NHS runs along close to breaking point? I really think that a policy of having another couple of years like the last is going to be worse than pretty much any other option.

Why do you think letting it rip would help in the long run. Natural immunity wanes, people can get different variants. 

[adam]

5 hours ago, z-layrex said:

My icu is at total breaking point as it is, Friday the hospital was on red, which means everything gets diverted, all vascular emergencies like abdominal aneurysms etc get diverted, specialist critical care services get diverted, all ambulances except in the immediate catchment area get diverted (they tried to divert immediate area too but simply not allowed). How the holy **** do you expect us to cope with another covid wave caused by this variant?

 

You have no idea what you are talking about, or maybe you don't care until it's someone you love in that ambulance, having a stroke that has sub-1 hour to be treated to potentially save their brain, and they get diverted elsewhere, or maybe the ambulance doesn't even turn up for an hour?

 

The only single way to stop people dying and/or receiving totally unacceptable healthcare for the UK is to get as many people boosted as fast as possible.

I didn't say the booster roll out is a bad idea. But the priorities are all wrong. Why are we rushing to give jabs to young adults and cancelling surgery?  

[st albans fox]

2 minutes ago, adam said:

I didn't say the booster roll out is a bad idea. But the priorities are all wrong. Why are we rushing to give jabs to young adults and cancelling surgery?  

Because jabbing young adults will potentially help slow the spread of the variant …… every little bit they can do to slow the spread and keep people out of hospital will be taken. 
they don’t have the data to know if boosted people will be less infectious with omicron. So they take the option that could give the best outcome. 

[SpacedX]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

they don’t have the data to know if boosted people will be less infectious with omicron. So they take the option that could give the best outcome. 

If it's repeated a further 50 times a day over another fortnight on this thread, who knows, the penny might start to drop. 

[Robo61]

10 minutes ago, Line-X said:

If it's repeated a further 50 times a day over another fortnight on this thread, who knows, the penny might start to drop. 

I like your optimism

[Zear0]

Anyone had any joy getting booked in for the booster?  Website just has me in a loop where I go through and it brings me back to the first question.

[adam]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

Because jabbing young adults will potentially help slow the spread of the variant …… every little bit they can do to slow the spread and keep people out of hospital will be taken. 
they don’t have the data to know if boosted people will be less infectious with omicron. So they take the option that could give the best outcome. 

Your booster protects you. We don't need to rush through the young adults. It's not acceptable to cancel people's appointments and surgery that some folk has been waiting months and months for. We went down this road last time and missed 50000 cancer cases. 

[Filbert_Ross]

Just now, Zear0 said:

Anyone had any joy getting booked in for the booster?  Website just has me in a loop where I go through and it brings me back to the first question.

I had the same at 5am this morning , can't imagine there was loads of people trying at that time.   

[Nalis]

1 minute ago, Zear0 said:

Anyone had any joy getting booked in for the booster?  Website just has me in a loop where I go through and it brings me back to the first question.

Came on to post the exact same thing, will try again later or chance my arm (pardon the pun) at a walk in this week.

[Spudulike]

13 hours ago, Unabomber said:

He has convinced me not to get my booster 

What? You're not getting a booster to protect your health because you think the PM is unconvincing? Face & noses 

[SpacedX]

15 minutes ago, adam said:

Your booster protects you. We don't need to rush through the young adults. It's not acceptable to cancel people's appointments and surgery that some folk has been waiting months and months for. We went down this road last time and missed 50000 cancer cases. 

Some non-essential surgeries are being cancelled and face to face appointments reduced as a result of the booster initiative.

 

You are referring to MacMillan's warning of 50,000 missed cases due to the pandemic. They define this as such: "everyone who is currently missing a cancer diagnosis, which we would ordinarily expect them to have." 

 

This is due to high demand and backlog placed upon our already beleaguered health service by Covid cases - their own words. https://www.macmillan.org.uk/about-us/what-we-do/we-make-change-happen/we-shape-policy/covid-19-impact-cancer-report.html

 

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2021/dec/07/doctors-report-13000-cancelled-operations-in-uk-over-two-months

 

We cannot afford to risk inviting a similar wave to last January. 

[Tommy G]

The issue is we don't have a NHS fit for purpose. It shouldn't be at a state of being ''overwhelmed'' constantly. What happens when the next variant comes along? Another booster? We will be in this cycle forever and ever. It's depressing. 

[SexyGammonFox]

When they say that everybody is now eligible for the booster, does that include people who had their second jab less than three months ago, or does that rule still stand? 

[CosbehFox]

Website crashed for boosters and ran out lateral flow tests to send out.

[Buce]

Just now, Cardiff_Fox said:

Website crashed for boosters and ran out lateral flow tests to send out.

 

The words, piss-up and brewery, spring to mind...