Menu Sign In Contact FAQ
Banner
Welcome to our forums

Corona / Covid-19 Virus - General Discussion (politics go to the Off Topic / Politics thread)

I believe there are people (eg with allergies?) who are unable to have the Covid vaccines despite wanting to. Should we allow discrimination against them, ban them from shops, holidays, etc?

White Waltham EGLM, United Kingdom

Any certificate scheme, whether pushed by govts of residence or by govts of destination, needs to allow for (a) kids not having it and (b) people who can’t have it for medical reasons.

In reality both these groups would end up with a certificate: one saying they are not required to have it.

Then the destination country can decide whether to accept them.

If it was done as a QR code, and referencing a database, all this could be done. In time for summer 2021? I doubt it.

Administrator
Shoreham EGKA, United Kingdom

In reality, and such scheme won’t last long. By the end of summer enough people will be vaccinated that covid won’t be an issue anymore. Herd immunity will be kicking in.

And in any case, there is no scheme of immunity passports agreed yet. So some people will be going with a nice looking plastic card, others will a letter from their hospital, others with a note from a GP, some in English, some in Germany and some in Greek. How is an officer on the Greek border able to tell which is genuine and which is fake, or even be able to read all the different languages.

It’s taken a year to plan the vaccine rollout, and they didn’t have time to agree and organise a nice common standard for vaccine passports. So it’s not going to happen in the next 4 months. And after that, it won’t really be needed anymore as herd immunity kicks in.

Maybe in a year’s time there will be some nice standard agreed for people entering from outside the EU, but not for intra EU travel.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

dublinpilot wrote:

It’s taken a year to plan the vaccine rollout, and they didn’t have time to agree and organise a nice common standard for vaccine passports.

Excuse me but that is imho wrong. There is an official internationally reckognized vaccination document which lots of people already carry. All that is necessary is to register the vaccination in there. Who doesn’t have one can get one from their GP. If I remember right it is ever free.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Certificate_of_Vaccination_or_Prophylaxis

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

Graham wrote:

My point is that all those activities/injuries/diseases/costs are completely avoidable if people just made different choices, but we still pay for them.

I can see your point of view and also agree with it to an extent.

I think the big game changer with Covid was that unlike with HIV and unlike with activities you mention, it is not primarily the individual choice which prevents infection, but on the pandemic level, you can be as dilligent as you wish, in the end the risk of infection is not in your hands but in those around you. If they do not follow the rules or misbehave, then you may well be completely compliant to all measures but are still at risk.

Therefore, I have to agree with Malibuflyer on most part: Covid has proven that the selfishness and short-sightedness of a minority can dictate the measures imposed on a majority of people who are willing to and DO their utmost to avoid infection.

With HIV for one example often quoted, the story is quite different as the way of infection is much harder. If HIV would be transmissable as Covid is, via aerosol and droplets, I think we would have had this situation already 40 years ago. Yet, also with HIV you see those who simply ignore it, who still behave irresponsibly and who will therefore put others at risk. And also in this case, rightfully, laws and punishments exist for knowingly expose people to such bodily harm.

LSZH(work) LSZF (GA base), Switzerland

dublinpilot wrote:

Herd immunity will be kicking in.

It will be interesting to see what that looks like in practice.

Let’s say that eventually 90% of the population are vaccinated with 80% efficacy in preventing infection/transmission. In a country like Ireland (5m population) that means 1.4m (10% plus 20% of the other 90%) remain as viable hosts for the virus.

Viewing the country in isolation, it will be a question of whether those viable hosts are spaced far enough apart for R to stay below 1 and the virus eventually die out. This might take quite some time?

Of course the country is not in isolation, and if the virus does die out then you only need one imported case and the whole thing can (but not necessarily will) start again. Then the question will be whether R ever gets above 1 to start a new spread, or whether that first case is more likely to fight off the virus before passing it on to one of the other viable hosts, and even then it might well die off at the ‘second generation’, or third….

Asymptomatic cases may be important here, because based on what we know so far your new patient zero has a ~30% chance of being asymptomatic and in that case (assuming they make it into the country undetected) might mix a lot more than if they knew they were infected.

Presumably the epidemiologists are busy modelling virus spreads in scenarios where 10%, 20% or whatever % of the population are viable hosts.

My own hypothesis is that it’s going to be quite hard to eradicate completely, principally because of the prevalence of asymptomatic infection and mild/unnoticed illness as a proportion of total infections. Smallpox took one hell of an effort to eradicate, and that had zero asymptomatic infection so it was really easy to track.

The most likely scenario would seem to be that it comes and goes like flu, different variants, good years and bad years, some proportion of serious illness and death each year that our health services gear up to deal with but that we don’t lock down for. Lockdowns could only ever be a temporary measure – even if we’d been unable to develop a single working vaccine we’d eventually have had to find a way to carry on and deal with the disease as a fact of life.

Last Edited by Graham at 23 Feb 22:04
EGLM & EGTN

My prediction is this – absolute stab in the dark of course.

The vaccine will prove to offer longer than a years protection. I think possibly up to five years.

It will take a few years to arrive at a vaccine that will deal with all the mutations. Repeat vaccinations will therefore be necessary in the short term, until this has been ahieved. I dont think it will behave like seasonal flu, I think the various mutation permutations will run their course and will be far fewer than flu in terms of those that disguise themselves from vaccines after a few years.

The virus will continue to circulate in the human population, if for no other reason parts of the world will provide a repository for the virus. It probably will not be driven to extinction.

Cases will occur even in countries with a widespread vaccinations, certainly in the short term, and probably in the long term.

This of course also assumes the virus doesnt throw up something totally unexpected, like a recombination with another respiratory virus, which I think is at least a possibility. In the short term that could take us back a long way.

Last Edited by Fuji_Abound at 23 Feb 22:20

When we open up the country, and remove lockdowns, the R never really went above 2.

If 70% of the population are immune, then only 30% are viable hosts. So the R of 2 drops to 0.6. You might have infected 2 people in a “naïve” population but because 70% of those are immune, you end up on average only infecting 0.6 people. At least that’s how I see it going.

We’ll probably keep up some measure of restrictions for awhile after wards. For example, hand sanitiser will be common, screens in customer facing positions such as shops, banks etc, and we’ll probably have to live with face masks for a few months. That should helps keep the R down.

If the R was 3.3 without vaccine and without any measures, and the vaccine gave 70% population immunity, then that would bring down the R to 1. So a little bit of extra measures will get it just below 1, and that should see it constantly reducing.

Add in a test and trace system that has few people to test and trace, and hopefully we’ll see if off, and any reinfection will die off naturally because it can’t find any additional hosts. At least that’s how I see it.

If on the other hand, an uncontrolled spread would have an R of 5, and people forget about any hygiene after vaccination, then 70% coverage won’t be enough, and we’re all in trouble.

I do agree that we’ll see spread inwards from outside locations. But if I’m right, they will die off quickly due to a lack of hosts.

EIWT Weston, Ireland

There is an official internationally reckognized vaccination document which lots of people already carry

I’ve never seen one of those. The only vaccine document I’ve ever seen here has been produced by our own health service.

Have those here, who have already been vaccinated, received some vaccine document confirming your vaccination status? Was it the one MD linked to?

I suspect if everyone suddenly starts to ask their gp for one they will quickly refuse or the next shortage will be printed paper versions! In fairness to gp’s they are busy enough don’t their regular work and now have vaccinations on top of that. Adding production of the vaccine paper to their work load will be overburdening

EIWT Weston, Ireland

dublinpilot wrote:

There is an official internationally reckognized vaccination document which lots of people already carry

Yes, I have one of those. Dusty yellow fold over card.

Sign in to add your message

Back to Top