Arizona11 wrote:Looking at the daily figures on the government website, we seem to have 30 to 40 thousand positive cases every day (yes we do slip into the 20’s for the odd day, but that is not the norm!). We are one of the best countries with regards to vaccination numbers. So why is it that our daily cases don’t seem to be coming down very much, if at all, ...
Any thought please?
It's been recognised for a while now that the vaccines aren't that effective at stopping transmission of the newer variants. They still offer good protection against hospitalisation and death, but not so great against transmission.
Several months ago, experts were already accepting that herd immunity, as a result, is not likely to be achieved, even if we have 100% vaccine take up.
As another poster has mentioned, for me, what's 'surprising' (I put it in inverted commas because I've felt all along that too much hysteria and fear has been promoted) is that cases haven't sky-rocketed. I mean, we were being led to believe by some (like the Guardian) that a return to school at the beginning of september was going to lead to the end of the world.
But if you scroll down to the charts half way down this page...
https://www.theguardian.com/uk (Coronavirus Data Section)
... you'll see there are two clear spikes...
Coincidentally, the termination of the first spike was when masks were no longer compulsory... when masks were compulsory, the cases were shooting up, when masks were no longer mandated, the sharp rise stopped and reversed.
And then at the end of august/ beginning of september we see a similar pattern.... we were being led to believe that schools opening up was going to lead to a new wave of infections.... in fact, I seem to recall some arguing that the end of the spike in July was nothing to do with masks, and that it was because that was when schools broke up.
Yet when schools went back, that again resulted in a spike that was forming before, then terminating and cases going down for a few weeks.
I sincerely hope that there is a proper consideration of what this evidence means, because a lot of people who were going around demanding how others behave, seem to have been basing that demands on premises that don't seem to be borne out by the data. Both in July and September, not only have the hysterical fears of Armageddon have not come to pass, but the sharp rises prior seem to have reversed by factors that we were told should have made things worse.
But any how, in terms of cases, it's been accepted that herd immunity isn't like to happen, and that covid is going to be endemic, and that getting back to normal is now about letting the vaccine provide protection against hospitalisation and death - covid isn't going away.
We're basically now in a phase of letting those who were cowering under the sofa come to terms with the fact that they are now going to be exposed to the disease going forwards just like it were a common cold.
It's now just a wind down of all final restrictions etc ... there aren't many left. We are largely already back to normal. And I think most people already recognise that and are getting back to normal now.
And it now doesn't really matter how many cases there are ... what matters is that the vaccines are keeping the hospitalisations and deaths low. And they do seem to be achieving that.
If you look at the charts from the government data ...
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ Allowing for the lag to deaths, etc, it seems that deaths and hospitalisations have been falling, in effect, since august. (the plateau of deaths in mid September is likely due to cases contracted in August)
So even with schools and the economy opening up, hospitalisations and deaths are still going down.
With football matches now seemingly back to normal (well certainly the traffic round Old Trafford certainly is when there's a match on
) I'm not sure there is anything left now to 'open up' that could conceivably change the outlook.
Really, now the risk seems to be from now going into the winter period and getting other diseases - colds and flu - that our immune systems haven't really seen for the past couple of years. I suspect that, now, is going to be the biggest determinant of pressure on the NHS over the next few months.