Bit rich coming from a Welsh man , sparsely populated country with the highest rate of covid in the UK2 cases in the UK now. FFS. Ban air travel permanently.
Bit rich coming from a Welsh man , sparsely populated country with the highest rate of covid in the UK2 cases in the UK now. FFS. Ban air travel permanently.
Interesting but haven't all the variants of concern appeared either prior to vaccines being available or apparently from regions with extremely low vaccine availability/take up?
We can only work with what we've got.Evolution doesn't create the variants, it just selects the ones that get thrown up by random chance that are best adapted to the new environment. The vaccines have changed the environment, so evolution picks the variants best suited to the new normal. A variant with extra ability to evade the vaccines that arises in a low vaccinated country may not be overly successful there, but if it escapes to a high vaccinated one it can rapidly become the dominant strain.
Thats the problem, the viruses are incredibly fast moving and our defences are relatively slow. We are still jabbing people with a vaccine based on the original Wuhan strain of covid, we've already had 4 different significant strains since this whole thing started less that 2 years ago. And the last of those, Delta, has obvious ability to evade the vaccines, hence why cases are still high in highly vaccinated countries. We now face another version potentially even more infectious and better able to evade vaccines. By the time a booster based on the O variant is developed, produced and jabbed in arms to any significant degree the virus will have moved on and we'll be facing the same scenario all over again, with the Omega variant by then no doubt.
There literally is no end to this process. The virus is now endemic, like the flu virus, it will never be eliminated, thats physically impossible as it has significant infection reserves in various animals. You cannot vaccinate your way out of a coronavirus epidemic, everyone will have to get it multiple times in their life, and just like flu, it may very well kill them eventually. The best solution is not to try to prevent people getting it, its to work on cures to keep them alive once they do get it. That is the way out, not a never ending vaccination process and some sort of Twilight Zone of eternal lockdowns and other social controls.
Evolution doesn't create the variants, it just selects the ones that get thrown up by random chance that are best adapted to the new environment. The vaccines have changed the environment, so evolution picks the variants best suited to the new normal. A variant with extra ability to evade the vaccines that arises in a low vaccinated country may not be overly successful there, but if it escapes to a high vaccinated one it can rapidly become the dominant strain.
Thats the problem, the viruses are incredibly fast moving and our defences are relatively slow. We are still jabbing people with a vaccine based on the original Wuhan strain of covid, we've already had 4 different significant strains since this whole thing started less that 2 years ago. And the last of those, Delta, has obvious ability to evade the vaccines, hence why cases are still high in highly vaccinated countries. We now face another version potentially even more infectious and better able to evade vaccines. By the time a booster based on the O variant is developed, produced and jabbed in arms to any significant degree the virus will have moved on and we'll be facing the same scenario all over again, with the Omega variant by then no doubt.
There literally is no end to this process. The virus is now endemic, like the flu virus, it will never be eliminated, thats physically impossible as it has significant infection reserves in various animals. You cannot vaccinate your way out of a coronavirus epidemic, everyone will have to get it multiple times in their life, and just like flu, it may very well kill them eventually. The best solution is not to try to prevent people getting it, its to work on cures to keep them alive once they do get it. That is the way out, not a never ending vaccination process and some sort of Twilight Zone of eternal lockdowns and other social controls.
Your solution is exactly what we are doing now. Maybe more emphasis on vaccine equity is needed?
you certainly can vaccinate your way through it until such times as there is enough general background immunity in the population
I'll agree on the kids but for the reason those jabs could be better used elsewhere. The rest doesn't make sense, vaccinated or not we are still going to catch it and have to deal with it.No its not what we are doing now. The idea of vaccinating young people and children is totally contra to what needs to be done, even if you ignore the ethical issues with giving young people a vaccine that is more dangerous to them than having the illness itself. Vaccinating everyone creates an environment where everyone's immune response is the same. This is incredibly dangerous, as it makes everyone vulnerable should a very virulent variant come along that is specifically targeted at avoiding the spike protein antibodies.
In nature, with viruses like the flu, the population does not all have identical immune responses, because they all catch different variants at different times. So there is a layered immune response within the population as a whole. A flu variant might be very good at targeting people with a certain immune response, but it won't go through the entire country as there are loads of different immune responses out there, which are better at coping with it. It does a number on the vulnerable ones but the rest survive fine. This is why we have 'bad' flu years - that years variant has evolved to target a new section of society that was previous immune, often an older cohort who then die in significant numbers from it.
We are now creating a highly vulnerable society, all our eggs are in one immunity basket in effect. Thats why vaccination should have been for the elderly and the immune compromised only, their need for protection in the short term is greater than the needs of society as a whole to have a varied immune response. Everyone else should have been left to get covid naturally over time and create the layered immunity we have to flu. We should certainly stop vaccinating children. That is insanity.
But of course this is politically impossible, because if you vaccinate the over 60s (say) plus those under 60 who are immune compromised, and someone who didn't get the vaccine dies then all hell breaks loose. We do not have a process anymore that says 'You know what, you will have to take a risk for the good of the collective as whole in the long term'. Even if the number of deaths in the future could be massively higher as a result, those deaths are theoretical, while any happening now are very much real, and are politically unacceptable. Which brings me back to the political event horizon - its far too short, and cannot make decisions that are painful in the short term, but the right one in the long term. It can only deal with the here and now.
I was just passing the remark to missus Ag this afternoon that the landscape of immunity is now well and truly established
This just popped up and I thought you might find it of interest:Evolution doesn't create the variants, it just selects the ones that get thrown up by random chance that are best adapted to the new environment. The vaccines have changed the environment, so evolution picks the variants best suited to the new normal. A variant with extra ability to evade the vaccines that arises in a low vaccinated country may not be overly successful there, but if it escapes to a high vaccinated one it can rapidly become the dominant strain.
Thats the problem, the viruses are incredibly fast moving and our defences are relatively slow. We are still jabbing people with a vaccine based on the original Wuhan strain of covid, we've already had 4 different significant strains since this whole thing started less that 2 years ago. And the last of those, Delta, has obvious ability to evade the vaccines, hence why cases are still high in highly vaccinated countries. We now face another version potentially even more infectious and better able to evade vaccines. By the time a booster based on the O variant is developed, produced and jabbed in arms to any significant degree the virus will have moved on and we'll be facing the same scenario all over again, with the Omega variant by then no doubt.
There literally is no end to this process. The virus is now endemic, like the flu virus, it will never be eliminated, thats physically impossible as it has significant infection reserves in various animals. You cannot vaccinate your way out of a coronavirus epidemic, everyone will have to get it multiple times in their life, and just like flu, it may very well kill them eventually. The best solution is not to try to prevent people getting it, its to work on cures to keep them alive once they do get it. That is the way out, not a never ending vaccination process and some sort of Twilight Zone of eternal lockdowns and other social controls.
This just popped up and I thought you might find it of interest:
Another slant on an earlier postSouth African health guy, just interviewed by Tom Swarbrick on LBC Radio, saying this variant is nabbing the young and unvaccinated in RSA.
At the moment it doesn't seem to be causing serious illness requiring hospitalisation, reported from another RSA medic.
Well, they are animals not humans, and we treat animals and humans slightly differently. and we don't use vaccines on animals that have not had the full range of tests. I myself have had all the usual childhood vaccines and also typhus, hep a, hep b, rabies, anthrax, yellow fever, so far more than most UK citizens have had. All fully tested, including long term health effects.so I am in no way an anti vaccine person. But I have not, and will not have, the covid vaccines until full phase 3 trials are finished and long term effects known. I've had covid, i was OK, I have antibodies, why do I need an experimental vaccine?If vaccines are so bad why do we use them on farm animals?