Coronavirus - is enough being done to contain it?

I would say you have to be sure the vaccine would have to give 100% protection against the virus before the public can trust it and I think with virus expected to be around for quite some time they have to be able to develop the vaccine for any different strain of the virus, so there is continued protection. I still think we should have totally shut down our airspace and airports, and used our airspace for internal flights only, but the figure of 40,000 deaths probably is a stark statistic. The other thing, I know there are calls for the home care death tolls to be released, but the problem is many of those dead may nor be COVID related and many residents may have had other underlying issues as well as COVID.

(17-04-2020 22:30 )Charlemagne Wrote:  A cure for the corona virus was expected between 12 to 18 months. But there has been a couple of steps forward recently.
It is now being said that we are expecting the vaccine to be in production by September ...

I'd take this report with a large pinch of salt.
All the doctors, scientists, virologists, drug manufacturers, and whoever else is qualified to talk about, develop, or manufacture a vaccine, seem to be united in the opinion that a vaccine won't be available until later next year at the earliest. But this one lab in Oxford are saying yeah we'll have it knocked out and in production by september.
I just don't buy it.

Apparently our esteemed government is all over this one as well, which just smacks of a further wet fish around the face moment, much like the 3million or so test kits they have bought from china, cash up front, which don't work!
Think they bought those off alliexpress, no refunds allowed

I would not be surprised if they got them of Ebay either!! I reckon the kits they bought were ones china's government rejected but have decided to flog cheap to get rid of them and I thought it takes 10 years to get a perfect vaccine so what are the Oxford lab doing differently that makes a vaccine possible n September I wonder?

I would say the PPE situation has always been a worrying development and really do think the gowns should have been sourced better.

Apparently the plan is to ease the lockdown over May, June & July

https://www.buzzfeed.com/alexwickham/cor...-exit-plan

It would be good to see this three stage strategy work, but I have to admit that to be honest the Government has been way too guarded over what they have in mind for the last few week and the fact that the media have been pressing on the subject as well has dominated the briefings.

I would like to thinking that the three - stage approach may be best way to get things moving but I think they have to stagger which shops open so people get used to seeing sops opening up bit by bit.

I think what would be nice to see is some family visits allowed but for a shot period of time, as long as sensible physical contact is maintained.

(18-04-2020 06:48 )lovebabes56 Wrote:  I would say you have to be sure the vaccine would have to give 100% protection against the virus before the public can trust it

Don't think there is any medication or vaccine that can be classed as 100% effective, it just doesn't work like that dude. I say that as someone who has a cunt of an auto-immune disease that's very awkward to treat, no medications I'm on or have been on has guaranteed effectiveness against it but I'm in a much better position than if I wasn't on any medication at all, despite the possible harmful side effects of my current meds.

Even if you could guarantee 100% effective treatment against Covid (or other diseases) it wouldn't matter to the people who deny the scientific evidence and ignore medical experts (just look at all the nonsense over the MMR vaccine). All they want is to have their irrational beliefs validated by some muppets on the Internet ..... or some orange gobshite on a power trip.

(18-04-2020 22:15 )lovebabes56 Wrote:  It would be good to see this three stage strategy work, but I have to admit that to be honest the Government has been way too guarded over what they have in mind for the last few week and the fact that the media have been pressing on the subject as well has dominated the briefings.

I would like to thinking that the three - stage approach may be best way to get things moving but I think they have to stagger which shops open so people get used to seeing sops opening up bit by bit.

I think what would be nice to see is some family visits allowed but for a shot period of time, as long as sensible physical contact is maintained.

have always said should be a gradual reopening with say 25% of ususal capacity for pubs and restaurnats and shops for the first month then moving to 50% in 2nd if theres no rise and then so on 25%+ increase each month till back to normal

mind you how many of us would go into them if they all suddenly opened 2moro ?

I reckon if there was a theraputic drug from the ones we have now then it would be better apparently roche has an antibody test thats really close to release

The big problem with relaxing and opening up is testing.

You can't just tell everyone to go back to normal and not expect a second wave, this thing isn't going away anytime soon, it won't go away until we get an effective vaccine. So far, our testing has been absolutely woeful and inadequate. Even now, with testing for key staff being ramped up, the whole process is so hit and miss that there are currently more tests available than people coming forward to be tested, it's a pathetic situation.
The countries that have nailed testing like South Korea and Taiwan (countries close to China so more susceptible early on, but with previous experience of diseases like this with Sars and Mers) and Germany, have managed to largely contain the spread, and have far fewer deaths and infections than us. So wide scale testing needs to be ramped up for all before relaxing the lockdown is a realistic possibility without incurring a second wave.

Even the NHS app being developed requires testing to be effective. It's meant to alert you if you come into close contact with someone infected, but it will only really be effective if people have ready access to tests to know they are infected as early as possible, by the time they show symptoms to self-diagnose or be admitted to hospital, they could have already infected a bunch of people who will have infected a bunch more, and the app becomes of little use.

Alongside testing you need the ability to trace contacts of those infected to test them and isolate those also infected before they can pass it on to even more. Our capacity for contact tracing is even worse than our efforts at testing. It seems like the NHS app is a cheap shortcut for this, basically getting the public to contact trace themselves rather than do it properly and effectively. Any such shortcut method would of course be entirely reliant on people firstly installing the app, and secondly acting on it. How many will install it, get an alert "you need to self-isolate", and think screw that I need to go to work, or go to the gym, or do my shopping , or head down the pub or whatever. Look at the numpties who have ignored lockdown rules and social distancing so far.

A relaxation and some sort of return to normality is obviously something we all want, but doing it without more tragedy is going to require this government to make appropriate investment in the right areas, which it has so far been unable to do, and show a level of competence it has so far failed to show.
My confidence at this point remains low.

A Sunday Times investigation headline today: Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster

It alleges that "Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus, calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears. Failings in February may have cost thousands of lives"

Any lifting of restrictions was always going to be even more piecemeal and gradual than it was putting them into effect in the first place. The infection rates and contact rates will be watched like a hawk when it happens and if they twitch over much we will be back for another round of lockdown.

Look at Rammy's article and in particular the caveats for the "best case scenario" it presents:

Quote:The strategy will depend heavily on significant improvements in infection rate data over the next three weeks, Britain dramatically increasing its testing and contact tracing capacity, tens of millions of people downloading a new NHS app, the efficacy of antiviral drugs at reducing symptoms of COVID-19, and strict measures remaining in place for elderly and vulnerable people until a vaccine is found.

There is so much that could go wrong with that list. Who thinks the 100,000 per day anti-body testing target will he hit by the end of April? As munch has so eloquently said, who trusts in more than 80% of the British public downloading the NHS thing and using it correctly, with good intent* (those are the numbers to ensure likely efficacy on that one). I'm not even sure I want to do it myself! (Western governments seem to see tech as the magic bullet for everything. Either that or a sop for the public.) What if the anti-viral candidates don't mitigate the symptoms of suffers as they're hoping from September(ish)? (That date comes from the piece I'm linking below.) And who is going to suggest to the whole of the UK that their grandparents need to be locked away till next year if the early testing on the vaccines go south?

I know there are corners being cut in getting the latter ready (not least the fact that people are prepared to lose money by putting production lines in place to ensure quantity of supply of likely candidates before testing has shown a fully succesful result) but, as this article explains brilliantly, we'd still have to be bloody lucky to get a usable vaccine before the end of the year. A vaccine by September seems, frankly, unrealistic after reading that.