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Wanderers Ways. Neil Thompson 1961-2021

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21 minutes ago, birch-chorley said:

@farelli seemed to be saying that herd immunity is ‘pie in the sky’ because people will lose their immunity 

Which is probably true but I think they would maintain immunity long enough to bridge us through to a vaccine 

Your now sharing the numbers based on our strategy of lockdown / running from the virus, what would those numbers have been had we let it run? Much higher no doubt given the exponential growth, but that would have meant we would likely have had herd immunity now and through Winter until a vaccine was hopefully available in Spring 

The questions would be...

1) how many would have died in Spring getting us to ‘herd immunity’ 

2) could we have shielded many of the vulnerable in Spring whilst we were getting to herd immunity 

Normally although I disagree with most of your points of view I do appreciate the point you are making. I am lost here. 
We need 40m plus people to have had virus for herd immunity based on the estimations used here we have had 4m. Are you suggesting we just let it run rife ? 
A vaccine is part of developing herd immunity. So if we could vaccinate 10m people all of a sudden we have 14m people who are ‘safe’. 
The idea that we can get to herd immunity as a short term measure until we have a vaccine is flawed. 
You seem to saying identify the vulnerable , lock them away , everyone else carry on as normal. 

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2 minutes ago, Farrelli said:

I've referenced a major study on the antibody levels measured in 365k random people by Imperial College London this year.  They conclude that herd immunity is a long way off and certainly not likely on the evidence seen.  They acknowledge there are admittedly lots of unknowns and other variables. It's up to you if you believe this research is relevant or not, but I think it is. 

Please explain how you think we could maintain immunity through to a vaccine when we don't know how long this period will be and certainly don't know what level of the population have been infected ?  

Of course herd immunity is a long way off, we have followed a different strategy completely 

The question was, can it work in principle, of course it can 

The unknown is how many bodies would you be left with and can you reduce that by shielding the at risk groups 

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2 minutes ago, birch-chorley said:

Of course herd immunity is a long way off, we have followed a different strategy completely 

The question was, can it work in principle, of course it can 

The unknown is how many bodies would you be left with and can you reduce that by shielding the at risk groups 

Ok well in that case I could never back that method as a way of achieving herd immunity as it disproportionately harms the lives of many old and vulnerable members of our population and would cause many more deaths than the present controls.  

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3 hours ago, Farrelli said:

There is strong evidence you can get it more than once so herd immunity is pie in the sky.

@AniI was questioning this post 

It seems clear that the point being made is that herd immunity is simply not an option as you can get the virus twice or more 

My point was, you have immunity for long enough for a ‘herd immunity’ strategy to have been viable 

Wind the clocks back to March, had we let it continue to grow exponentially (doubling every week) then we would have reached levels required for herd immunity in late Spring. Most of the people who caught it in March would have still had immunity now and we wouldn’t have been facing a second spike in the Winter because of ‘herd immunity’ 

Question is, is it still a viable option? If a vaccine is coming next month or very early next year then it seems senseless to let it run its course now. However if a vaccine is 6, 12 or even 18 months away then I’d suggest we shield the vulnerable for the next 3/4 months whilst letting the majority who aren’t vulnerable get the virus. We would then have herd immunity for long enough to bridge us through until a vaccine was available and could go about our lives as normal (as could the vulnerable groups as they would only need to shield long enough for herd immunity to be reached, not wait for the vaccine) 

 

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10 minutes ago, Farrelli said:

Ok well in that case I could never back that method as a way of achieving herd immunity as it disproportionately harms the lives of many old and vulnerable members of our population and would cause many more deaths than the present controls.  

I guess it’s down to opinions 

Had we shielded the vulnerable through spring whilst the rest of the population went on as normal then we would have likely seen more deaths than the 40k that were registered, how many more who knows, worst case scenario was 500k but that didn’t include any shielding for the vulnerable groups 

Lets say we’d have lost 150k shielding the vulnerable groups, it’s not that much more more than the 50k excess deaths from Winter flu in 2017 / 2018 when they got the vaccine wrong 

Edited by birch-chorley
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6 minutes ago, birch-chorley said:

@AniI was questioning this post 

It seems clear that the point being made is that herd immunity is simply not an option as you can get the virus twice or more 

My point was, you have immunity for long enough for a ‘herd immunity’ strategy to have been viable 

Wind the clocks back to March, had we let it continue to grow exponentially (doubling every week) then we would have reached levels required for herd immunity in late Spring. Most of the people who caught it in March would have still had immunity now and we wouldn’t have been facing a second spike in the Winter because of ‘herd immunity’ 

Question is, is it still a viable option? If a vaccine is coming next month or very early next year then it seems senseless to let it run its course now. However if a vaccine is 6, 12 or even 18 months away then I’d suggest we shield the vulnerable for the next 3/4 months whilst letting the majority who aren’t vulnerable get the virus. We would then have herd immunity for long enough to bridge us through until a vaccine was available and could go about our lives as normal (as could the vulnerable groups as they would only need to shield long enough for herd immunity to be reached, not wait for the vaccine) 

 

Ok. Where I think we are on different paths is that you see it is herd immunity then a vaccine. 
I see a vaccine as part of herd immunity. 

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Just now, Escobarp said:

The only way old and vulnerable people will catch it is if they go out and or don’t shield away from people. They cannot catch it sat in the house. 

One of the benefits of the virus is that it spreads so quickly 

With a herd immunity strategy your realistically only going to need to ask the vulnerable to shield for 4 to 6 months. By which point the virus should have worked its way through the rest of the population pretty quickly 

Hard to change strategy now though, I appreciate that 

Certainly think it would have been a better play back in Spring (with the benefit of hindsight) 

It would have been business as usual now for everyone. The vulnerable would also have been back to normal as community transmission would have been extremely low at this point 

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On Saturday, loads of figures were presented that were estimates

Official estimates at that, though I'm not sure what makes one guess any more valid than another

Well, my guess fwiw

There'll be another virus like this along quite soon, be it covid 20, 21 or 22

My other guess, we won't deal with that one like we have dealt with this one

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3 minutes ago, birch-chorley said:

One of the benefits of the virus is that it spreads so quickly 

With a herd immunity strategy your realistically only going to need to ask the vulnerable to shield for 4 to 6 months. By which point the virus should have worked its way through the rest of the population pretty quickly 

Hard to change strategy now though, I appreciate that 

Certainly think it would have been a better play back in Spring (with the benefit of hindsight) 

It would have been business as usual now for everyone. The vulnerable would also have been back to normal as community transmission would have been extremely low at this point 

I agree with hindsight we should have gone for that. But we didn’t know what we know now so it would have been a far too big a risk 

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1 minute ago, mickbrown said:

Herd immunity has only ever been achieved by using a vaccine

Depends on how pedantic you want to be about the definition of herd immunity 

If 70% of us had caught it in Spring, then a second spike of Covid this Winter would have been of little or no concern 

Next year as more antibodies wear off, maybe it would be of greater concern again, but by that stage we would have hopefully had a vaccine to give full immunity to the population 

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12 minutes ago, birch-chorley said:

Depends on how pedantic you want to be about the definition of herd immunity 

If 70% of us had caught it in Spring, then a second spike of Covid this Winter would have been of little or no concern 

Next year as more antibodies wear off, maybe it would be of greater concern again, but by that stage we would have hopefully had a vaccine to give full immunity to the population 

Wasn't the point that if we'd just let it rip in the Spring, then the NHS would have been overwhelmed. I think we were initially going for a herd immunity strategy weren't we, and then we soon rowed back when it was realised that upwards of 250K people might have died, which is why we changed the position.

I'm not sure when it initially arrived, and we knew so little about it, that any Government anywhere would have been brave enough to just try and let it rip, and actively encourage people to catch it

Edited by Sweep
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I'm not sure why this is being discussed at such length, given that 0 countries on earth (all with their various scientific and medical advisors) have gone for herd immunity in this way.

But the idea that we could have persuaded the tens of millions of people who are vulnerable or live with the vulnerable, to shield for six months is fantasy. You're not talking lockdown for those people - you're saying they literally couldn't leave the house as everyone else is trying to infect themselves.

Not to mention what that would've done to the economy anyway, or whether everyone else would've just happily cracked on and willingly caught a virus that had no treatment and nobody really knew anything about.

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2 minutes ago, Sweep said:

Wasn't the point that if we'd just let it rip in the Spring, then the NHS would have been overwhelmed. I think we were initially going for a herd immunity strategy weren't we, and then we soon rowed back when it was realised that upwards of 250K people might have died, which is why we changed the position.

I'm not sure when it initially arrived, and we knew so little about it, that any Government anywhere would have been brace enough to just try and let it rip, and actively encourage people to catch it

I thought the worst case scenario was 500k dead, that report was responsible for the change of direction 

However the 500k was letting it go with everything else staying the same. Not shielding the vulnerable 

As I say, the vulnerable would have only had to shield for 4 to 6 months whilst the virus worked its way through the rest of us 

How many of the worst case 500k would have died with a proper shielding strategy for the vulnerable, who knows! Likely to be 150k to 250k based on a total guess 

 

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1 minute ago, birch-chorley said:

 

How many of the worst case 500k would have died with a proper shielding strategy for the vulnerable, who knows! Likely to be 150k to 250k based on a total guess 

 

We'll never know, but I'd imagine it would be quite a few more than are already dead. I suppose, and I'm not sure they knew much about it at the time (and still don't), but you'd have to factor in the affects of long-Covid as well on a large portion of the population.

Either way, that's all hindsight, presumably the Government know how far away a vaccine is, and have half a clue what they're doing........if not, as Mounts often points out, we can get rid of them in 4 years time  😀

 

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3 minutes ago, Tombwfc said:

I'm not sure why this is being discussed at such length, given that 0 countries on earth (all with their various scientific and medical advisors) have gone for herd immunity in this way.

But the idea that we could have persuaded the tens of millions of people who are vulnerable or live with the vulnerable, to shield for six months is fantasy. You're not talking lockdown for those people - you're saying they literally couldn't leave the house as everyone else is trying to infect themselves.

Not to mention what that would've done to the economy anyway, or whether everyone else would've just happily cracked on and willingly caught a virus that had no treatment and nobody really knew anything about.

To be fair this is the first time in the history of viruses (going back thousands of years) that herd immunity hasn’t been the primary strategy. When they got the Winter flu vaccine wrong in 2017 / 2018 80k died, 50k more than normal, not a single person lost their job. Had we lockdown it’s likely those 50k lives would have been saved 

So it’s certainly makes herd immunity worthy of discussion IMO 

 

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33 minutes ago, birch-chorley said:

Ok then 

Let’s say a vaccine is 18 months away, what’s the plan from now until then? 

 

I do not think it is 18 months away. We will have something q1 IMO. 
So we lock down fully now and enforce it. That will last in some form till early New Year. 
The big difference now is that we are entering flu season so need to put up the shutters. 
We have 3-6 months of this shit and then we can move on properly. 
 

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