Peter wrote:
Israel also managed to get way more than was expected, by doing some sort of clever “joint research linked to getting the vaccine later” Now, that Israel did something clever does not surprise me at all.
As I understand it, what Israel did was buy earlier and pay more.
dublinpilot wrote:
As I understand it, what Israel did was buy earlier and pay more.
Usually this gives results it’s like that even when I order food from local farms.
This summarises the current reaction.
The Israel study is also being challenged and has not yet been peer reviewed it would seem.
Never the less it clearly is grabbing some attention at the moment.
skydriller wrote:
but did you actually read that link?
What do you think ?
No, I did not. It was a reference from a local media here, with a different headline, it was all kind of funny. I said it was a bit tongue in cheek, but who cares The point still stands. Not taking the bull by the horns, is a choice of convenience only. And let’s not forget: The UK IS the epicenter for this disease in Europe during the last 6 months at least. Not only in numbers, but also when it comes to spreading (to other countries) and mutating it.
Mutations are statistical – but – a larger number of viruses that are allowed to breed freely causes more mutations, a simple linear relations. This is well known, and is the real cause of this pandemic. Mutations are closely monitored, and have so from the very beginning. We don’t know exactly how “the mother” mutation happened in China, but somehow its ancestor virus was left alone to breed freely in the wet markets over a longer period of time. It could be among bats or some other animal. But it could also be among the humans working there, or a combination. The thing is though, we know exactly how it happened in the UK, caused by unwillingness/ignorance in doing anything at all. It was handled as an inconvenience, best left alone to kill itself off by “herd immunity”. Meaning, best left alone be ignored, except doing token “lock downs”, but not before death rates started to soar, which is 3-4 weeks too late anyway.
Statistically this mutation could happen everywhere, but it didn’t. It happened at the statistically most likely place, the UK. This is a fact.
skydriller wrote:
Im all for bashing the UK, France, China
Indeed I must say, you should only know how much “corona bashing” (warranted and unwarranted) your analphabetism in foreign languages shields you from. And no, you will find very little of that in the PC media, other than possibly some hints here and there. Still, up here in the cold north, we love the UK. Football, pubs, London, the countryside, and let’s not forget British television series. Just too bad (in all respects, and for everyone) that the UK has messed up so monumentally with Covid 19.
You seem to be forgetting / unaware that Britain sequences vastly more than most other countries and according to the article I read Britain had sequenced about as much alone as the rest of the world combined.
The talks about variants is rather mis-placed, it tends to belong to few genome experts and anyway there will be zillions of them in all various human DNAs and random RNA tweaks
Talking about managing infection rates and crisis is far more relevant, I don’t think the UK did well, somehow half-way between Brazil & USA…U.K. government failed to act on scientific advice twice in September & December and before July was camping in the moon…
Rt depends on RNA/DNA mutations and lockdown policy, other countries could have more transmissible variants (including “Kent virus”) but 1/ it’s not a heath issue with proper lockdown policy and 2/ it’s not a press issue if you don’t sequence it
LeSving wrote:
And let’s not forget: The UK IS the epicenter for this disease in Europe during the last 6 months at least.
Huh? They might have gotten off to a bad start, but I’m not sure that label sticks.
Italy was the start in Europe, and had their hospitals overrun. Spain wasn’t far behind.
It seemed to spread out of the ski slopes in Austria to the rest of Europe.
Ireland had the highest new infection rates in the world 2 weeks ago.
So how is the UK the epicentre?
As for the new variants, that’s quite likely to be because the UK was the only country doing serious amounts of test looking for new variants. When they announced it, all the other countries, when asked if it was there, just did a type of shrugging of their shoulders saying, we’ll need to check!
I don’t think the UK handled it very well, but your initial post seems well wide of the mark.
LeSving wrote:
Not taking the bull by the horns, is a choice of convenience only. And let’s not forget: The UK IS the epicenter for this disease in Europe during the last 6 months at least. Not only in numbers, but also when it comes to spreading (to other countries) and mutating it.
Not quite convenience, more a political choice. The UK has an extremely strong tradition of individual freedom, and neither the population nor our political leaders wish to compromise it in such an overt way. The lockdowns here are enacted with the greatest reluctance, with full (although unspoken) knowledge that they will be poorly observed, and are largely impossible to enforce because the police (apart from isolated little tyrants) don’t want to do it and couldn’t anyway.
Much of mainland Europe on the other hand has, within living memory, experience of a police state where you must answer for your movements, the authorities rule with an iron fist, and your life is at risk if you break the rules or speak out. It is no coincidence that lockdowns and restrictions on movement in these countries come with much less controversy. Because we have no experience of this, our reaction to an over-zealous policeman is usually “whatever, mate”. We are not, by nature, a compliant and obedient people. At the other extreme end of the scale you have Asian countries that locked down hard, harder than anywhere in Europe could even dream of, and these are places where the people are used to what you might describe as a ‘government crackdown’.
Regarding spreading, any country is free to close their borders to arrivals from the UK. Some have done so. Economic motivations usually win out though!
We will probably discover in the post-event analysis that the UK’s poor outcomes with Covid-19 (high hospitalisation and death rates) was indicative of two things: 1) our incredibly unhealthy population, and 2) the NHS being nowhere near as good as some of us like to pretend it is.
LeSving wrote:
Just too bad (in all respects, and for everyone) that the UK has messed up so monumentally with Covid 19.
So no Oxford / AZ vaccine is required in Norway?
dublinpilot wrote:
Huh? They might have gotten off to a bad start, but I’m not sure that label sticks.
No, nor me.
In the course of time, I think questions will need to be asked as to exactly why the mortality rate in the UK is so high. There are various possible explanations and they dont in themselves lead to culpable Government action.
Inevitably, questions will also need to be asked about other aspects of the general management.
However, I dont think the UK has done especially worse than anywhere else at the momement, with the possible exception of Oz and NZ, who had there own approach, and which arguably was impossible in the UK.
I am increasingly of the view that whatever approach you take in hindsight it will be very difficult to prove one was better than another, so while lessons will be learnt (maybe), the blame game will not be very productive.
At the moment I am far more cncerned that the vaccine will not slow the progression either as quickly or as effectively as is being heralded. This is obvioulsy the only light at the end of the tunnel and therefore everyone is understandably focused on the light, and there is a danger it gets overplayed, or we become so desperate to get there it is rushed in various ways.
Fuji_Abound wrote:
At the moment I am far more cncerned that the vaccine will not slow the progression either as quickly or as effectively as is being heralded.
I would give it more time. Reports of its failings are not only greatly exaggerated but quite obviously premature.
My belief is that it will not be until 6 weeks after a sufficient critical mass of people are vaccinated (so in the UK, perhaps 6-8 weeks from about now) that you will start to see an effect. Because we are starting with the old and vulnerable the first effect will be on deaths, then on hospitalisations, and any effect on infections will lag a fair way behind.