How do you explain countries with very high vaccination rates which are having "record outbreaks"?
It’s fairly easy to explain why we have 600-800 a day even though it’s not “record outbreaks”.
Part of it is the 72% and who the 20% something that can still get vaccinated are (children), part of it is delta being capable of infecting vaccinated people as well as people who have already had covid, but the biggest reason is that we’ve opened society again with no restrictions.
We are capable of doing this because of the 72%, because even though we have 600-800 new cases a day, which while it’s not record numbers is still significantly higher than what we had when we first locked down, almost nobody ends up with severe cases. Which means our hospitals are empty by comparison to the first lockdown.
You can argue about the morality of opening society with just 72% instead of waiting until we’re near 90% but that’s a different discussion.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/30/israel-doubles-down-on-covid...
The virus is going to be around forever. There's no need for restrictions, we just need to accept the risk and move on.
For example here in Iceland (84% >12yo are fully vaccinated) we've increased restrictions but not nearly as much as we did for prior outbreaks and have substantially more tourists coming through the country. But at the same times as we've had many more infections we've had considerably fewer hospitalisations. Right now we're having kids go back to school and that's causing a spike in unvaccinated infections.
The problem with looking just at headline numbers is you miss all the context.
It's important to note that while outbreaks are definitely happening, hospitalisations and deaths are way down compared to previous waves.
In a highly vaccinated population going forward, the number of cases is utterly irrelevant. The only thing that actually matter is the number of hospitalizations and deaths.
Remember - long term, literally everyone is going to get covid. That is the only possible future. The goal is hopefully to have everyone double vaccinated before they catch it so their symptoms are mild when they do.
Should we stop bullying others to get vaccinated then?
Similarly, people who are vaccinated are far, far less likely to require medical care. That reduces the load on the medical system — think about all of the complications we're seeing now because people with non-COVID problems are unable to get attention promptly — and a significant percentage of the money for treating more serious COVID cases will be paid by people other than the patients through some combination of taxes, insurance, and overhead costs (e.g. American ERs aren't allowed to refuse care since Reagan socialized them which means those expenses are added to everyone else's bill).
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
Vaccinated people who get infected are probably contagious for a shorter period. However that only marginally reduces the risk of contagion for any individual interaction. Over an extended period of time everyone will be exposed.
Think of it like a soccer goalie defending against an endless series of penalty kicks. He might block the first few but eventually a ball will get through.
That's fine and understandable, but it suggests different communication. If the problem is resource management / availability then instead of talking about how many people per capita are infected and rates of infection, talk about the resource usage, and rate of availability. I think I did see one interview with a hospital manager nearly in tears about potentially having to make lethal resource based decisions, but it's far from a daily talking point like the simple case rate is.
Instead of a simple comparison to hand washing, you're saying people should "look at the odds" and somehow make a judgement call. Well, that's a much different request, and is open to a lot of variation, uncertainty, personal bias, etc. It really isn't as simple as "it's just like washing your hands".
The uncertainty and personal bias is what you're trying to inject into a very clear cut decision when you conflate the extremely rare possible side-effects from vaccination with the far more common effects of contracting COVID. If you look at a large population, yes, there are a few people who will have a significant negative reaction to a vaccine but for each of them there are many thousands of people who will have worse outcomes from the actual disease.
I'm not going to. I'll stick with natural immunity, thanks.
Natural immunity acquired by recovering from an infection provides more effective protection than vaccination.
https://www.science.org/content/article/having-sars-cov-2-on...
For patients who were previously infected, vaccination cuts the risk of reinfection in half. However it's unclear how long that additional protection lasts.
Very much not true.
Literally many people will die if they get COVID (f.e. the extremely young, or the many people that are immuno-compromised) so there's lots of other people that are keen to get populations as widely vaccinated as possible, to reduce the effective R0 as much as possible, to make sure they don't die.
https://www.businessinsider.com/delta-variant-made-herd-immu...
Fortunately the extremely young are at very low risk of death.
https://www.who.int/news/item/16-03-2021-new-research-highli...
A year ago we didn't have a vaccine, and now more than half the population of most western nations are vaccinated. The idea that we have no alternative but to 'surrender to delta' because it's inevitable that 'literally everyone will get it' is depressingly pessimistic.
We can apply the above remedies, while developing and distributing booster shots that cover delta.
Similar applies to various other VOI/VOC's on (or not yet on) the radar.
I did not watch the video on which it's based, of course, as time is finite.
GP (and to an extent, Prof Pollard) are asserting these things based on a number of assumptions -- pessimism (perhaps justified) about the callous thoughtlessness of many ersatz citizens, the current set of vaccines are all we shall have available into the future, delivery mechanisms will continue to require injections (slow, difficult, discourages some non-trivial subset of the population), and will continue to not be available to younger children.
If all those were true, then perhaps.
Happily, not all those are true.
Anyway, I was railing against the claim that 'literally everyone is going to get COVID' as an unavoidable future. I shall continue to rail.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/10/delta-variant-...
How on earth can we get out of lockdowns and get back to living our lives, unless we fully expect everyone to catch covid?
We've already proven time and time and time again you can't eradicate it with lockdowns (see Australia & NZ right now), so it will always be around. And we know vaccinated people can still pass it on to others.... so eventually everyone is going to have to have it if they want to interact with others.
I genuinely don't understand how life can go on any other way
You're painting two extremes and asserting one's not possible, and thereby concluding the other is ineluctable.
We've proven we can eliminate it (witness NZ and large parts of Australia), and assuming a policy of full vaccination and arrival / subsequent swab tests for visitors, it's quite feasible that once we've got most people in Australia vaccinated, propagation pathways can be well tracked, and propagation rates can be kept very low.
NZ too are in the middle of another outbreak and using severe lockdowns isn't making it go away.
And even still, if Australia somehow did manage to keep a lid on it - anyone that wants to leave the country is surely going to go to a place that has much higher rates, and they'll likely get it. Then they want to come back into Australia - will there be the mandatory 2 week quarantine forever? (I paid $3k a few months ago).
It's simply not a viable long term future.
Take your pick from vanilla incompetence, hubris, insouciance, or any of the various commercial or political intrigues to explain this torpid initial response that has brought us to where we are.
> NZ too are in the middle of another outbreak and using severe lockdowns isn't making it go away.
I see they've had 25 new cases today. Is this 'out of control'? It feels a long way from 'everyone is going to have to get COVID, there's no other way'.
As to your last question, yes, it's quite palatable for me that anyone who leaves the country and returns would submit to a test on arrival, quarantine at home for 2 weeks with subsequent tests at 7 and 14d.
What happens in 6, 12, 24 and 48 months?
How do you Keep covid out, forever?
Also, what about the other 99.9% of the world's population - surely they're all going to get covid sooner or later.
Hopefully the vast majority are double vaccinated before they get it, but like getting a common cold, it's essentially inevitable if we want to go back to mass sporting events, bars and clubs, mass public transport, planes, etc. etc.
The approach I described (home quarantine & testing regime for people arriving from overseas) is tenable and not too controversial - certainly much more palatable, and probably more effective, than the current (enforced hotel quarantine). Would need to be combined with proper deterrents for idiots wilfully subverting that process (we have been objectively atrocious at implementing or enforcing legal deterrents for anti-social behaviour on the COVID front).
Over the 24-48 month period you're demanding an answer for - my naive expectation is twofold. Many populations will have delta sweep through well within that period, resulting in large demographics of delta-immune people. (Note - this doesn't mean I want to live in such a place, just that it will happen.)
Second, we'll have booster & variant-specific vaccinations developed within that time, possibly with nasal delivery - meaning very fast, less contentious (higher uptake), and probably cheap.