Our total reliance on a vaccine and putting life on hold until it's rolled out

[adc82140]

Probably but Boris will be too arrogant to notice. Too busy counting fish.

Does anyone else want to recreate the fish slapping dance from Monty Python with Boris substituting for Michael Palin?

 

[The Ham]

Do you have a source for that by any chance? I'd love to believe that the UK manages to give 60% of the population the flu vaccine but I'm struggling to. For example they talk about 25million being offered it for free on the NHS which is only 45% of the population assuming that everyone offered it takes it. I struggle to imagine that a further 15% (if not more) would voluntarily seek it out and pay for it

Typically I can't find the data again now I'm looking.

However if we rerun the maths at 45/100 and then taking out those under 18, so 45/75 in a 4 month period we'd get 60% in 4 months with single vaccine, so 60% in 8 months with two doses.

Scale that up to 12 months and it's 90% of people. That's probably higher than you'd actually get anyway.

Even at 35% you end up at 70% of people, which would probably be a fairly typical take up rate.

As such 12 months should be achievable, subject to supply.

Whilst you're right that there's likely to be quite a few who wouldn't go out and pay for the flu vaccine, it should be remembered that some companies offer it to their staff (as it's cheaper to pay for the vaccines for everyone than it is for lost days due to sickness). Which would increase the numbers quite a bit.

 

[brad465]

I wasn't sure which thread to put this in but thought I'd share one of Hugh Dennis' jokes from the Mock the Week Christmas Special just now about Chris Whitty: "...in Harry Potter terms he is an optimism Dementor".

 

[Pete_uk]

Two doctors surgeries get the vaccine near me today. That made me smile to think back to when the first local cases of Covid-19 were discovered.

 

[notlob.divad]

Interesting that this mutation with a higher R number was found going into the autumn, when respiratory viruses naturally spread more due to people moving inside.

Yes. My long term concern was getting through this winter because all sorts of infections have a better time of it when we are close together in un-ventilated areas. I was a bit surprised how early Covid-19 got going on its second wave. The 2nd lockdown slowed that down but, whatever has caused it, the curve on the graph makes the results of the 2nd lockdown look like a blip on the rising trend. I was also pleasantly surprised that we have vaccines available so soon. But not quite soon enough !.

Undoubtadly the UK health system is under more strain between October and March, however sticking religiously to this Winter - Summer thing is not helpful. How would that explain the recent significant rise (believed to be driven by this new varient) in South Africa? Believing Covid-19 would behave exactly like seasonal influenza is what got the UK into such a mess in the first place. Don't make the same mistake again.

 

[Yew]

Undoubtadly the UK health system is under more strain between October and March, however sticking religiously to this Winter - Summer thing is not helpful. How would that explain the recent significant rise (believed to be driven by this new varient) in South Africa? Believing Covid-19 would behave exactly like seasonal influenza is what got the UK into such a mess in the first place. Don't make the same mistake again.

I can't remember the name of the type of curve, but my understanding is that typically diseases follow a different pattern in the tropics (or close to them, in the case of SA) and of course the million other factors that I can't say offhand, as I've not been following SA in detail.

 

[MikeWM]

I can't remember the name of the type of curve, but my understanding is that typically diseases follow a different pattern in the tropics (or close to them, in the case of SA) and of course the million other factors that I can't say offhand, as I've not been following SA in detail.

Indeed - looking at the states of the USA is a nice way of showing this seasonality pattern - in Spring, it was the northeast and northwest that was most affected, in summer the south, in autumn the midwest. The correlation is quite strong.

 

[brad465]

The latest weekly registered deaths' report from the ONS is out, and while deaths are in excess, they're only slightly above average on the face of it, and looking at the graph below what caught my eye is that a chunk of the Covid-19 classed deaths, perhaps as much as half, are actually within the average and therefore not excess:

Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional - Office for National Statistics

Provisional counts of the number of deaths registered in England and Wales, including deaths involving the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, by age, sex and region.

www.ons.gov.uk