Very cool, if true

I do doubt that anyone, anywhere will avoid catching it. Repeatedly, most likely. Oddly, this has made me (in Germany - but no material difference in strategy as far as I can see) less keen on "hiding" from other people as much as possible (my strategy up to now) because it seems now to be pointless.

From:

On the grounds that I am almost certainly going to catch it at some point I think I'd rather have it whilst me vaccine immunity levels are still high and the risk of me getting very ill much lower.

I'm not eager to catch it but I'm sanguine about it.

From:

Yes. This.

From:

birguslatro

New Zealand still has an elimination strategy, although we're scratching our heads about what to do about outbreaks after we're mostly all vaccinated. I expect we'll decide then what to do. Best to make such decisions based on the latest data. (We're still getting about 20 new cases a day with the current Delta outbreak, but we're hoping we are now on top of it.)

I'm picking Taiwan is also sticking with elimination, after getting on top of their first major outbreak. (Non-Delta.) And China will of course stick with elimination, as why wouldn't they? I'm not sure about Australia though. They've had it tough with their latest outbreaks (Delta), and are probably close to giving up on elimination, if they haven't already done so.

Most impressive vaccination numbers in this region: 98% of adult Fijians have had at least their first vaccination. That's probably the number we need to aim for.

From:

I think it makes sense to stick with elimination, if you can, until everyone is at least two weeks past their second vaccination.

But can you eliminate forever, if the rest of the world is a festering disease pit?

From:

aldabra

I think there are actual sterilising nasal spray vaccines being tested. If you can stay at elimination for another couple of years you might be able to go from that to herd immunity without the widespread death phase.

From:

Sadly there's a total lack of interest in clamping down to that level.

From:

birguslatro

We could certainly do it. However, for one, it'd kill the overseas tourist market and annoy the hell out of all those who like an annual (or more often) overseas trip. It's the two weeks in managed isolation coming into the country that's the problem there.

And then there's the lockdowns for each new outbreak. We could get better at those, making them more local and starting them a lot quicker than we've been doing so far. ie. Detecting that someone in an area has the virus by widespread use of wastewater sampling. That in theory would notice someone has the virus a few days before they've noticed they're sick. I've no idea how practical that'd be, given how many samples a day they'd need to process, but it's probably possible.

We've had hundred of days between outbreaks with no virus in the country, and the economy's exceeded expectations each time that's happened. This, from a few days ago...

https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/business/451605/economy-fired-up-by-free-spending-consumers-and-strong-exports

And China's our biggest trading partner. So the economy's OK if we choose elimination, except for in a few sectors. Tourism and hospitality, mainly. Oh yes, and education. If only China hadn't gone in for a spot of genocide... :(

I doubt that's the route we'll take, but the current government knows their shit, so I don't think they'll make any real bad decisions. It's not just luck that we've only had 27 deaths from covid so far.

From:

davidcook

Australia has been doing both well and badly ... "it's complicated".

On the one hand, vaccine rollout has been slow and badly handled (Federal responsibility). We're not at 50% double-jabbed yet, and that's just counting 16+.

On the other hand, we had long stretches of 0 cases in various states, and even now, Tasmania hasn't had any local transmission for over a year, and over a month since any active cases there. NT, SA and WA have all had at least a month since any new local cases, though, and borders are staying closed or tightly restricted for now.

Unfortunately, Delta got a foothold in NSW, which was slow to lock down and didn't lock down hard enough when they did. From there, Victoria and ACT are both in outbreaks, slowly getting Reff back under 1 ... the only "good" thing about these outbreaks it that it finally lit a fire under the Federal goverment to get the vaccine rollout moving, but the NSW govt could have done a lot better. From here (Victoria) it sure seems that the NSW Liberal (right-wing/conservative party, don't let the name fool you :) ) government decided to give up on elimination as a strategy, while boasting about the effectiveness of their strategy AND the harshness of their lockdown ... and they've taken Victoria down with them, sadly.
Now we're in the much same boat as the UK, racing to vaccinate as fast as possible and hoping that hospitals aren't overwhelmed ... oh, but we're still in lockdown, so all of the opening up over there looks ABSOLUTELY INSANE from our point of view. Every now and then Andrewducker posts a chart showing cases per day in the UK or Scotland trending slightly downward and I just want to yell "WHY AREN'T YOU STILL IN HARD LOCKDOWN YOU CRAZY PEOPLE!" ... I've resisted the urge so far :)

From:

birguslatro

Thanks for the local insight! I know the numbers but am not of the attitudes in play.

With our first lockdown, our right-wingers were all 'Australia wasn't nearly as hard as us, and they did just as well!'. Then Victoria had its terrible outbreak, which quietened them down a bit, and now they're more or less agreeing with the govt.'s policy. However, The Herald newspaper has taken it upon itself to start a 90% vaccination drive (of those eligible for vaccinations), which they're calling 'shooting for the moon'. If that was for all of NZ it'd mean half a million unvaccinated in the country, which would mostly get the virus, and it'd overwhelm out hospitals. (My opinion - not seen anything official about that, as I think they're deliberately not setting a percentage target.)

I'm real sad our trans-Tasman bubble didn't last. It was a nice idea while it lasted...

From:

nancylebov

My big hope is that they (generalized they, not just the UK) will find preventatives and cures for long COVID. I'm not sure how this is going.

From:

chess

Some evidence that vaccination actually helps with some cases of long covid, not formalised yet.

Less severe illness after vaccination does appear to be correlated with less long covid, source https://covid.joinzoe.com/post/double-covid-vaccination-halves-risk-of-long-covid

From:

nancylebov

And I also have hope that there will be further progress in knowing how to treat COVID.

From:

Do you think there is an alternative plan available to the UK now?

From:

hairyears

Emigration.

From:

I can't see all 66 million of us being welcomed in New Zealand.

From:

armiphlage

Canada is eagerly looking for immigrants (but the requirements are very strict, and we're looking for exactly the hardworking health care workers and skilled tradespeople that the UK just booted out). Our backlog in processing applications is also measured in years.

https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/services/immigrate-canada.html

From:

birguslatro

No, we're all full up here! Try Australia! Loads of space for you in the middle there. They'd hardly notice you!
https://www.ga.gov.au/__data/assets/image/0015/12534/GA6262.gif

From:

I've been to that bit of Australia, the beer was warm, the tea was cold and it's miles from the beach.

From:

Nope. Didn't think so 18 months ago either:
https://andrewducker.dreamwidth.org/3822410.html

(I was wrong about testing - testing means you can get back to work sooner, and so slow the economy down less)

But unless we were going to be able to elminiate it *worldwide* the elimination route was only ever going to be a stopgap. I'm just very cery very grateful that we got vaccines so fast.

From:

I'm not sure it's a bad enough disease to justify a world wide elimination effort when compared to some of the other diseases we don't have a world wide elimation effort active.

Unless COVID-19 in the healthy young is found to cause cancer or steriity or heart failure it's not a particularly dangerous disease in the under 40's.

I think the situation we end up with is that most people either catch it and / or have a vaccine and that confers some form of on-going immunity / reduction in severity to repeat infections. Every so often we get a variant that is nastier in one way or another. We need to keep vaccinating old people for decades.

From:

I agree that the costs of eliminating it are much much higher than the costs of living with it. And that, frankly, we were never going to get every country onboard with eliminating it, so it was never going to be a starter.

From:

I think the situation would look different in 30 years or so as developing countries continue to increase their state capacity.

From:

We may need to get agreement on board ahead of time. "If X happens then we all lock down, and here is how we will handle vaccination."

Otherwise I can see it turning into a nightmare.

From:

A pre-emptive agreement couldn't hurt but in the future when many countires in Africa have good vaccine manufacturing and distribution capabilities you'd have less of a wait until most counties had a vaccine programme up and running and they would arrive at similar times. You'd be in a better place to decide that most places were in a decent position to try for a global elimination push.

From:

I was more thinking about lockdowns. If we could lock everyone don at once then we could nip things in the bud. But there's no point us locking down if the USA won't, unless we also agree that everyone will cut off all contact with non-lockdown countries.

From:

autopope

We don't know the long-term cost of living with COVID19.

It's not just long COVID; the infection appears to cause brain damage leading to cognitive decline in a significant number of patients.

This is worst in the elderly and ICU survivors, but what are the long term consequences of shaving a couple of IQ points off everybody, regardless of age?

(NB: I know IQ is a terrible indicator, insofar as there's no one single general intelligence trait. But regardless, universal mild brain damage is not something I feel good about ...)

As a 57yo with metabolic syndrome -- type II diabetes and severe (when unmedicated) hypertension, and mild asthma, I am deeply unenthused about catching this disease, even though I'm double-jabbed. I'll consider easing up on the distancing/isolation a couple of weeks after my booster shot (which should happen in December) unless there's a change in the treatment regime/prognosis between now and then.

Edited Date: 2021-09-20 03:10 pm (UTC)

From:

This is true. And hopefully we will get vaccinations that will help us wipe it out in the future.

From:

birguslatro

The world would need to have gone for elimination from the start. Hopefully it'll have plans in place to do just that in time for the next pandemic.

From:

Undoubtedly easier to eliminate new diseases right at the begining but it must be possible to do so after they have escaped in to the general global population because we've more or less done it with a number of diseases.

What I'm hopeful about in the coming decades is that poor countries in e.g. Africa will be wealthy enough and organised enough to just get on with their own vaccination programmes without having to wait for a supply line from the West.

I guess I'm wondering to myself if I mean elimination or just keeping some diseases under control enough that most people are not impacted on a day to day basis by them.

From:

birguslatro

'eliminated' means the disease isn't in a certain area, while 'eradicated' means the disease no longer exists anywhere on Earth, labs excepted. That's what the experts mean by such terms.

Covid-19 will be extremely hard to eradicate, but if it turns more deadly, we might need to have a go at it. New Zealand's got its latest outbreak down to about 20 new cases a day, but it's stubbornly sticking around that number. Been there about 19 days now! See the daily graph here...
https://covid19.who.int/region/wpro/country/nz
Delta's real hard to kill off.

From:

Oh! If I was running the country I'd totally have gone the Far East approach, locked down much harder, put everyone coming into the country into quarantine in hotels, and enforced masking from much earlier.

But I don't have an alternative plan that would get through a Conservative-majority parliament.

From:

hairyears

I'm taking a more cautious approach, deferring my encounter with Covid-19 for as long as possible.

So: not taking public transport, not doing parties and pubs, and not practising Aikido at the dojo.

Double-Jabbed and vaccinated with AstraZeneca, I still have a fifty percent chance of catching Covid-19 - probably mildly, but possibly the kind of 'moderate' case that knocks you flat for a week or more.

Mild and Moderate respiratory infections are best avoided when you have mild-to-moderate asthma: 'mild' does not mean 'trivial', if you're me.

Well worth the effort of avoiding, that.

Nevertheless, the probability of a 'severe' case that would put me in hospital is, I believe, one percent or less.

The big question, though, is Long Covid.

That's got the potential to end my career: if that risk is five percent or more, I am maintaining a 'Lockdown' level of precaution.

From:

aldabra

How long do you think it will take for the UK to get to natural herd immunity?

This week's vaccine surveillance report, https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1018416/Vaccine_surveillance_report_-_week_37_v2.pdf, says,

"Based on antibody testing of blood donors, 97.7% of the adult population now have
antibodies to COVID-19 from either infection or vaccination compared to 18.9% that
have antibodies from infection alone. Over 95% of adults aged 17 or older have
antibodies from either infection or vaccination."

Although I bet blood donation excludes people with long covid and people who are still isolating.

If vaccination and natural infection both gave immunity we should be there already, and we're not, so presumably we're waiting for 80%+ of the population to have caught it and recovered? At 30,000 cases a day that's four and a half years?

From:

Over 2% of the Scottish population had it a week back. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-58515312

So I'd expect it to take under a year to get everyone, at that rate. But the rate will vary. We're flying pretty blind here, it sounds like.

From:

rmc28

Blood donation excludes a lot of people who are high risk from Covid and therefore as you say likely to be isolating. (e.g. I'm banned from donating blood because I've received blood products, and I'm considered high risk because of the blood cancer that led to that ban so I got summoned for vaccination earlier)

From:

They can tell apart if you have antibodies from vaccination or antibodies from infection? Hmmm. Interesting.

From:

rmc28

Yes. It's pretty cool.

From:

fub

This is the exact same strategy as the Dutch government has. The rules are not designed to keep you safe from catching the disease -- the rules are designed to keep the medical system from overloading. You can catch it and die for all they care.

From:

I assume they'll have a vague stab at keeping you alive.

From:

Gah. I am not getting out and about enough. I really dont want to catch (Delta or later) covid after my vaccine immunity has declined. I did go to the cinema last week (nobody wore masks in the film). But other than shopping and band practice, I dont really go out among people anyway. :-( But I NEVER get colds. and it is a cold-shaped virus. Maybe (probably) I would never know ...

From:

Get yourself along to a few gigs in tightly packed venues, that should do it!

(Or don't - a friend of mine, about a decade younger than me, doubly vaccinated - just spent several days on oxygen. It didn't sound like *any* fun )

From:

errolwi

I'm not sure herd immunity is a useful concept when re-infection is known. We know with Delta that preventing most of the population getting exposed to it over say a couple of years is not practical. How about 'maximum protection' for everyone who can in the pop being vaccinated?
NZ might get lucky over the next couple of months and eliminate it for now (80% of Auckland 12yo+ is now single-jabbed), but I don't think borders will start easing until 5yo+ is mainly jabbed - February?

From:

anna_wing

Ideally, there should be some sort of indicator on your phone that could emit a warning signal when within 2 metres of an unvaccinated person.

Failing that, I am updating and adding to my mask wardrobe on the assumption that I will need it forever, especially when travelling in foreign parts. My dressmaker has already been instructed to make a matching mask for all new outfits. We all know the optimal designs for our particular faces by now.

From: