Mike4 wrote:There seems to be a public opinion gaining traction that vaccination has fixed Covid now and there is nothing left to worry about, so the government should lift all the restrictions and carry on as before. Even our new Health Secretary seems to subscribe to this view. And in the meantime there is little point in paying any more than lip service to the current restrictions - follow them if convenient and ignore if not, as illustrated by your anecdote.
This is resulting in the Delta variant doubling every ten days approx (depending on who you read); I think Dr John said 26,000 new cases yesterday. But the thing is, does this actually matter? I think it does due to the risk of vaccine escape, but few people seem to grasp or understand this risk or agree with me. Not even our new Health Secretary. Or is it me getting it wrong, and such risk is fiction?
Not quite sure what you mean by vaccine 'escape'.
When it comes to the regulations, the government is (somewhat) following the science.
That science includes behavioural psychologists who will advise on the level of adherence likely from the public. So it's safe to say that the regulations and opening up plans already take into account that people will gradually disregard restrictions as the 'freedom' date draws closer, and also as people become more fatigued with the rules and regulations.
But that has all be scientifically taken into account already.
Mike4 wrote:My guess is one possible outcome is a vaccine-escaping variant will surface around October/November, Boris/Javed will refuse to cancel Christmas until the hospitals are overflowing and it will be déjà vu all over again.
What other outcomes do the more optimistic posters here imagine?
No serious scientists realistically believe that covid can be eradicated now. That possibility was pretty much lost when it escaped out of China - not having a go at China there, just a statement of fact that once it had started to spread in different geographic areas, realistically, the cat was then out of the bag.
Equally, no scientist ever believed that we would get a 100% effective vaccine. No vaccine has ever been 100.0% effective for anything.
So scientists already know covid is here to stay. What matters is that the population develops enough 'tolerance' (from vaccines and/or infection) such that it is no longer a serious disease.
I'm not going to bother going searching for the article again, but a while back I read an article on ScienceDaily.com where researchers pointed out that some strains of common cold are believed to have caused similar pandemics when they first appeared. The reason they are just a minor nuisance today, is simply because we get widespread exposure when we are young and our immune systems are developing, and that article suggested on balance of probability, probably due to the way covid is disproportionately affecting the old, that covid will follow the same pattern.
Ultimately, those who get infected when young will naturally develop tolerance. For the rest of us, we now have the vaccines to prepare our immune systems.
Another article on ScienceDaily.com suggested that if you get a covid infection, the resultant antibodies are actually quite broad acting, and confer some degree of protection against new strains not already encountered.
So I'm actually quite positive and agree with the quick opening up.
Once most people - or at least enough of the vulnerable groups - have been vaccinated, then there's potentially some benefit to allowing covid to then spread, as it will help broaden people's immunity.
There seem to be a lot of scare stories about new strains emerging, but the evidence seems to be that covid evolves slower than other viruses, and also the emergence of the same strains multiple times in different places, is also considered evidence that it doesn't have a lot of viable variations to go at from where it is.
So in my view, the risk of new strains emerging is being overhyped far too much. It's a slower evolving virus than many, the options for new variants seem quite limited compared to other viruses, and the evidence already is that infection with one strain confers some degree of immunity to others.
As things go, that's probably quite a good outcome. Probably puts us in a better position with covid than, for example, the flu.
With covid deaths still ticking along at low figures, it really doesn't matter if cases are rising. We aren't going to eradicate it. We have to live with it.
And with the vaccines preventing significant hospitalisation and death, there really is no reason why we can't relatively quickly now move to treating this like the flu. And we didn't wear masks, or enforce quarantines, close the borders, etc, for that.
Enough is enough.
The government has allowed some paranoia / panic to creep in (overseen by behavioural psychologists) to help manipulate the population into compliance.
Now the challenge is to 'unwind' from that hysteria in way that allows a return to normality - and I mean normality, not a 'new' normality.
We won't be wearing masks in a few months. The public on the whole won't tolerate it (if individuals wish to carry on doing so, then fine, but it will need to be down to individual choice - most do not want to be wearing masks).