Doloras
Boris Johnson's government have successfully sold the line that it doesn't matter if hundreds of people continue to die every week if they can keep going to packed football games. We know what happens to a country where "it doesn't matter if those people die as long as my life is normal" becomes accepted.
Boris Johnson's government have successfully sold the line that it doesn't matter if hundreds of people continue to die every week if they can keep going to packed football games. We know what happens to a country where "it doesn't matter if those people die as long as my life is normal" becomes accepted.
1 hour ago Doloras
UK has done many things wrong re Covid, but current deaths mid summer seem around 100 per day or below. Most of them unvaccinated folk. Anti vaxxers or in many cases people who want to die, eg dementia sufferers and the like whose families make the hard decision not to get them vaccinated as their quality of life is so poor, it’s for the best they pass on. Talk to anyone who works in aged/palitative care, and this later scenario is more common than you think. The number of double vaccinated people dying is tiny.
You can debate this til the cows come home but I feel elimination with the Delta strain is now a pipe dream. Last week Ashley said he hoped Oz would return to an elimination strategy, but such talk is now laughable over here in Aussie. It's all about getting vaccinated, and learning to live with the virus, hopefully at low levels in the community. NZ can hang in there and try for elimination as long as possible, which do understand in a way, but you risk then keeping your borders mostly shut for a long long time.
The good Covid vaccines (AV, Pfizer, Moderna) are proving very very effective in stopping people from dying. They are are however for the moment nowhere near as effective in stopping the disease from still transmitting. That's unlike the Measles vaccine which not only protects folk, but leads to basically nil transmission. Hence why a Covid elimination strategy is unlikely to succeed, in the short/medium term. In the longer term maybe vaccines will prove to be almost 100% effective, in stopping transmission.
You are confusing what an elimination strategy is, helped by the fact that ScoMo and Gladys are too.
Here’s Gordon Campbell reporting on what the Doherty research actually said:
‘Footnote Two : Want a really good example of how politicians twist the Covid research to serve their own ends? In Australia, modelling by the Doherty Institute showed that the number of Covid cases had to be reduced before a vaccination -based strategy could be effective. As the Australian Broadcasting Corporation noted, New South Wales governor Gladys Berejiklian chose to use the Doherty data to open up, and promote a “ learn to live with Covid” message. Using the same data, Victoria’s premier Dan Andrews said it confirmed the necessity to get the case numbers down and vaccination levels higher, before thinking of opening up any further.
https://werewolf.co.nz/2021/08/gordon-campbell-on-how-delta-has-changed-the-endgame-for-the-pandemic-2/
In other words, you can’t just mess up, have a thousand cases and then decide that it’s going to be a vaccination only strategy. The 70% number for effective vaccination only works if you don’t have an outbreak.
Elimination is different to eradication. It’s given NZ two good summers and hopefully it’s going to put NZ in the best place to transition without undue loss of life. Doing what NSW has done which is screw up and then go, there’s no alternative now reminds me of the Nix playing Toto!