Can I walk into a vaccine centre in Scotland and get my booster? I feel like the messaging on this isn’t clear enough. I’m not eligible to book an appointment yet but obviously the guidance is now any adult who’s over 18 and their last jab was 3 months ago it should be possible?
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
"Both may still give..." May? That sounds a little worrisome... I prefer "would" to "may"
It looks like prior infection and/or vaccination almost certainly (is that better?) gives some protection against serious disease or omicron is less virulent. Impossible to know which and difference doesn’t really matter.
"Both may still give..." May? That sounds a little worrisome... I prefer "would" to "may"
It will be a few weeks before effectiveness against severe disease with Omicron can be estimated, however based on this experience, this is likely to be substantially higher than the estimates against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 variants of concern and variants under investigation in England Technical.
Its a lot closer to would then may.
Are they still working on new vaccines?
Or have they just stopped once they thought the current ones were enough protection wise.
Seems a while new vaccine could be needed for omnicron.
Or have they just stopped once they thought the current ones were enough protection wise.
Seems a while new vaccine could be needed for omnicron.
Already being tested. Hopefully available first half of 2022.
The MRNA vaccines can be changed super quick so that's not really an issue
Omicron wave will be most likely over before those will be in mass-production let alone distributed. But they should be useful for the next one.
@Pogue Mahone seems others have already answered your question better better than I ever probably could!
I guess though other respiratory viruses may well have ravaged through our species in the past in similar ways but difficult to know for various reasons. I wonder how many civilisational collapses were due to some unknown illness spreading through and collapsing their societies. The Americas were destroyed as much through disease that the Europeans inadvertently spread to an unready population as it was through war and conquest. We're also living on top of each other in a way we haven't done as much in the past which obviously all contribute!
I guess though other respiratory viruses may well have ravaged through our species in the past in similar ways but difficult to know for various reasons. I wonder how many civilisational collapses were due to some unknown illness spreading through and collapsing their societies. The Americas were destroyed as much through disease that the Europeans inadvertently spread to an unready population as it was through war and conquest. We're also living on top of each other in a way we haven't done as much in the past which obviously all contribute!
In relative terms compared to old vaccines, i'm still not convinced omicron is this drastic nightmare they are trying to sell in the media we will wait and see.
Yeah, the good thing about this fecker being so stupidly contagious is it will be a short, sharp shock.
You’d hope the omicron vaccine will work on the next variant. Although the worry is that delta and omicron were both early, separate branches. One didn’t evolve into the other. We kind of have to hope that the next bad one is Omicron+ and not another curve ball.
My comment has nothing to do with nightmares or what "media is selling".
I saw on twitter it was suggested the guy who did the pfizer is saying people need 4 injections.
2 are ineffective and 3 are 70% affective according to current reports
2 are ineffective and 3 are 70% affective according to current reports
How many jabs will we have to have in the end? 2 or 3 a year?
Another lockdown is completely inevitable.
Oh my god you just love lockdowns
No I hate them but the data is trending in the wrong direction right now. I'm glad I was wrong when I predicted one back in August, but I think I'll be right this time.A local Sydney pup has close to 50 cases from a single quiz night which means it must be crazily infectious as it isn't a huge pub. So we are more or less staying at home as my son has a national team training camp from the 19th to the 24th so we need to be very cautious.
Shame we can't get our booster until the end of Jan.
Please don’t say the l word, it brings out the zealot….
I keep seeing you reference your son & his training, what sport does he play?
Water polo. He has represented his country at youth and junior levels and is currently playing Div1 NCAA polo in California. He gets back home on Monday for the first time in 2 years and after 3 days of home quarantine he is attending his first traing camp after being named as part of the senior national squad. Paris is his goal so fingers crossed.
Fingers crossed here as well!
Oh give it a rest man. You all played the same school yard bullying trick last year, but then the word that brought out the candyman was Sweden, apparently now it’s “lockdown”.
Heaven forbid anyone has a different opinion on how to tackle this long term, I mean you do realise a hell of a lot of experts are also divided on it?
But hey, better this remains an echo chamber, bring out the Mourinho gif lads.
Just a personal anecdotal update here from SA - I know a shit ton of people who are covid positive now. Probably more than Wuhan, Beta and Delta waves combined. Lots are re-infection after double Pfizer as well (also some with double J&J). From what I’ve seen:
- families more likely to get it now I.e. one infection in the house leads to all infected
- everyone seems to start with a sore throat. No loss of taste or smell this time around.
- this thing is much much milder than past waves. Don’t know a single person who has had to go onto oxygen or hospital (last waves I knew quite a few who went into hospital including ICU)
- families more likely to get it now I.e. one infection in the house leads to all infected
- everyone seems to start with a sore throat. No loss of taste or smell this time around.
- this thing is much much milder than past waves. Don’t know a single person who has had to go onto oxygen or hospital (last waves I knew quite a few who went into hospital including ICU)
At this stage government has to be held accountable for the lack of planning for future spikes in cases. All for the sake of saving the NHS. If that was truly the case why haven’t they built purpose made hospitals for COVID patients? This would allow normal hospitals to continue with less chance of COVID spreading. And I’m not talking about temporary structures where millionaires can pocket yet more public money in rent. Even if COVID does go away we need more hospitals anyway. My local hospital has barely increased in capacity since I was born, yet the local population has probably quadrupled in that time.
Then you see private companies charging astronomical prices for PCR tests for travel, yet the NHS is providing these for free for daily use. The NHS could of had a much needed boost in revenue if they were able to charge for those travelling PCR. They are exactly the same tests and the facilities were already in place.
Every situation just feels like a money grab on public money whilst the average Joe won’t be able to claim furlough money next. We are being told to work from home but can still have a Christmas party. My work made the decision to cancel the Christmas party as it’s clear numbers are wildly spreading again but the government can’t afford to lockdown and cover people’s wages, so are essentially doing nothing other than providing boosters. The fact half of Europe is shut down already, it’s pretty obvious the UK will follow suit.
Then you see private companies charging astronomical prices for PCR tests for travel, yet the NHS is providing these for free for daily use. The NHS could of had a much needed boost in revenue if they were able to charge for those travelling PCR. They are exactly the same tests and the facilities were already in place.
Every situation just feels like a money grab on public money whilst the average Joe won’t be able to claim furlough money next. We are being told to work from home but can still have a Christmas party. My work made the decision to cancel the Christmas party as it’s clear numbers are wildly spreading again but the government can’t afford to lockdown and cover people’s wages, so are essentially doing nothing other than providing boosters. The fact half of Europe is shut down already, it’s pretty obvious the UK will follow suit.
I asked this too, and got the response that I have no clue how long a hospital takes to build, equip and staff. My argument is that 410 billion quid (the current estimated UK cost of restrictions so far) gets a lot done, in timespans faster than anything we ever could imagine under normal circumstances. 2 year specialist training for Covid-ICU, with a 5 year super pandemic wage package gets a lot of people interested in that education etc.
It's not the fact that we haven't done it yet, it's the fact that we haven't even started. The plans have all been short term, and rightly or wrong for the first months of the pandemic that was at least understandable. Since those first months it's been as though most strategies have been based off the vaccines being the one and only answer that would get us out of this, so plans only needed to remain short term till they "saved" us.
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I know this is very lame, totally irrational and “first world problems” but this virus is a nightmare for people like myself with a phobia of injections (dating back to a bad experience when I was about 6). I had my booster yesterday, the third one I've had but I was close to walking off waiting in the queue, it was quite traumatic for me. There must be a decent amount of people who just flat out refuse to have the vaccines for this reason. Can they not create a non-injection alternative?
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As well was not understanding how long it takes to build hospitals you were also told you don’t understand how long it would take to staff them. Which the bit in bold reinforces. It takes six years basic training for each doctor. Only then can they start to to learn the skills needed to work in ICU (at least 3 or 4 years to get a specialist qualification) This can’t be fast-tracked. If it could, it would have been. Because there’s a constant need for specialists, all over the world. Trying to train up specialists from other fields is a non-starter because one of the key elements of dealing with this pandemic is doing everything possible to avoid that outcome. Taking away resources from routine medical care to deal with covid patients.
Your idea is completely irrelevant to how we deal with SARS-COV-2. It might be relevant to how we prepare for the next pandemic but that’s not an easy decision. The last major pandemic like this was in 1918. Is it really a good idea to invest billions in an army of intensivists and hundreds of ICU beds that could be basically redundant for decades?
The UK is testing 3 x more than last year, the positivity rate is lower than this time last year. The data on hospitalisation and CFR is actually quite encouraging for the moment. Certainly compared to this time last year.
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/united-kingdom#how-many-tests-are-performed-each-day
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/current-covid-patients-hospital?country=GBR
https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/country/united-kingdom#how-many-tests-are-performed-each-day
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/current-covid-patients-hospital?country=GBR
As for the bolded, as opposed to 410bn (and counting) in the UK on nothing tangible? In my opinion, yes. Hell, use them afterwards and turn them into regular wards, and decommission/sell off some the old haggered hospitals/wards/departments to property developers when the time comes.
We're not talking regular construction money here, it'd be throwing the kitchen sink at it. And we're not saying build it in 15 days like the T20 Tower, I'm saying 2 years for specialist Covid wards or Covid hospitals with almost an unlimited amount of money.
The NHS did an online course to train up non-ICU nurses to work with intensive care Covid patients, New York had something similar. Nepal trained up 11,000. We're pretty much approaching 2 years now so I'm not talking about that kind of ridiculous fast tracking. Fair enough regarding taking away resources from other fields, whilst I'm not sure it's the "non-starter" you claim it is, as well, we're having to do that constantly as it is, but yeah that's obviously a real difficult one.
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For the UK at least, it cuts deeper than just the question of doctor or ICU team training - it's the years of cutting out every element of contingency catching up. We have fewer ICU beds per capita than the rest of Europe, fewer GPs now that we did ten years ago etc etc - despite an acknowledgment that with an ageing population we actually need more healthcare provision not less. It really has been death by a thousand cuts for the NHS.
One of the complaints now from the hospitals is that they've no one and nowhere to discharge patients to. For anyone who can't go home (on their own or with care from their family only) they haven't got care home beds or visiting carers to support them. Again - death by a thousand cuts - the amount being paid per person by local authorities for those who need support has gone down and costs have gone up. The virtual disappearance of council sheltered accommodation and care homes and their replacement with profit centres (where land value can be worth more than the business) has compounded it.
None of it helped of course by Brexit which really did put the top hat on it by making life miserable for families of EU citizens working here, and effectively stopped recruitment of people who previously would have welcomed a couple of years work in the UK. Our hostile environment has done a good job of being hostile to some of people who could have helped.
We really have had two years to sort out the basics. Sure, you don't get new hospitals that fast, but there's a lot that could have been done.
Worrying reports this morning of the AZ vaccine offering little or no resistance to the omicron variant.
That’s a heck of a lot of folk!
That’s a heck of a lot of folk!
There are pills and nasal sprays being worked on. But I don't think any are even close to approval at yet. Long-term the answer is probably yes. Short-term a no.
But performance is ok once boosted. In the UK, most people who've had AZ are already in the booster eligible group.
In any case the reports about AZ looking weak are focused on stopping infection. Just because it gets past the first line of defence doesn't mean the virus then gets a straight run at causing severe disease. It's still likely that AZ (or any of the others) has prepared your immune system to fight against it.
These are all chronic problems going on for years and years. One thing a pandemic is good at is exposing all the cracks in a health service that have been papered over (or made worse) by mismanagement from the very top down. I’m just not sure there’s the expertise or political will to fix so many long term problems in time to make a meaningful difference with this pandemic. It’s certainly has no bearing on our response to omicron.
This will make me sound insensitive and a bit of a prick but the monumental effort it’s taken/taking to get any form of vaccination as quick as they have is mental enough as it is.
Im sure pills/alternatives might be developed but It’s got to make sense to focus on one form of vaccination in the short term so you’ll likely just have to grin and bare it.