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The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

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81–90 of 465 posts

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#81
post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd imagine not too long after safe and effective vaccines are authorized for children under 12. Children are at exceptionally low risk from Covid. It's time to stop with fear, uncertainty and doubt, and deal with facts. https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01897-w In the US, 340 children under 17 have died from Covid. Total. During the same period, 187 have died from the flu, and over 51,000 children have di…

> Children are at exceptionally low risk from Covid. Let's hope the die keep rolling up to that result with each succeeding variant!

This is a perfect illustration of the point. In the face of ample documented evidence of the actual risk, your response is to speculate wildly about future events that are completely inconsistent with what we know.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#82
post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starting 2 weeks from now, you won't even have to self-isolate if you test positive for COVID-19. This is a loaded question, but since covid is and will be endemic, when do we get on with our lives and start facing the mountains of other public health issues? It seems like our vaccination effort was extremely successful and had an amazing effect and there isn’t likely to be any radical new intervention for years to…

Isn’t it standard practice to set isolate if one has any highly contagious disease? Like the actual flu? Maybe it’s not a law but it sure is a sensical cultural norm and is just the polite thing to do as well.

At least where I've lived, no, the standard practice is to "work through" the illness and give it to everyone you come in contact with while talking about how it's no big deal because your immune system is strong and you aren't a pussy.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#83
post #20

This gives me hope for Canada, where I am, won't face too many issues even as we slowly start to tick up from the bottom since major reopening happened, allowing indoor dining etc. In the last week, we've passed the UK in number of fully vaccinated people, but that's going to be slowing down as we start running of people who got their first dose during the big surge in shots here. Unfortunately, at 64% of the total p…

> Starting 2 weeks from now, you won't even have to self-isolate if you test positive for COVID-19. This is a loaded question, but since covid is and will be endemic, when do we get on with our lives and start facing the mountains of other public health issues? It seems like our vaccination effort was extremely successful and had an amazing effect and there isn’t likely to be any radical new intervention for years to…

> when do we get on with our lives and start facing the mountains of other public health issues?

We (or at least, public health authorities; indiviudal citizens whose attention doesn't drop below the top story in the news are a different story)... haven't stopped facing the mountains of other public health issues.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#86
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't you think that both of these very red states are likely to have fudged the data the most out of anyone? I have seen that the numbers aren't so much worse than other places but I struggle to believe the data coming from these places. Additionally, pandemic aside, it should be clear that their policies are rooted entirely in oligarchy and have no concern for the population or its health (short- or long-term), the…

So your political prejudices are causing you to grasp at conspiracy theories? This is umpossible on the internet!

Actually, it's not really my political leanings that are causing this, it's my observation of a complete Republican disregard for any COVID measures whatsoever that is leading me to this next thought. Anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-social-distancing policies are generally Republican. Accordingly, with their complete disregard for the virus / vaccine and what I view as facts about it, I find it to be a small leap to imagine their data reporting around COVID would be similarly lackadaisical / more motivated by politic than fact.

Hopefully you understand I am not American so some ad hominems aren't so effective here.

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Starting 2 weeks from now, you won't even have to self-isolate if you test positive for COVID-19. This is a loaded question, but since covid is and will be endemic, when do we get on with our lives and start facing the mountains of other public health issues? It seems like our vaccination effort was extremely successful and had an amazing effect and there isn’t likely to be any radical new intervention for years to…

I'd imagine not too long after safe and effective vaccines are authorized for children under 12. At that point the majority of those who actively want protection will be able to get it. This is not the same as saying _all_ who want protection will get it, since no vaccine is 100% effective, and some people who would like to be vaccinated will not be able to because of health conditions or other circumstances, but I s…

What about pregnant females? Country I am in doesn't allow them to be vaccinated. Is this allowed in the US?

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#88
> thanks to widespread vaccination of the elderly, however fast this disease spreads it will ultimately inflict a much, much smaller death toll than earlier waves, because vaccination has probably eliminated 90 percent or more of the country’s total COVID-19 mortality risk.

This claim does not appear to be grounded in any factual basis: A double-blind randomized trial for an mRNA vaccine with 44k participants showed nearly identical all-cause mortality in vaccinated vs. placebo groups after six months [1]. The delta wave will almost certainly be less fatal, but there is no evidence to indicate that widespread vaccination is the primary causal factor, or even a contributing factor, for the reduced mortality.

[1] https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.07.28.21261159v...

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#89
post #13

The ONS regularly tests a random selection of people. Their results typically trail the daily infection numbers by two weeks. Notably, the most recent ONS samples demonstrated a sharp rise in cases. The suggestion is that cases are actually surging, but most are now either asymptomatic or at least very mild, and thus not reported. I guess we'll find out shortly whether that's the case.

The US CDC does this by re-using random anonymous blood samples drawn for other purposes, and by using test data from blood banks. The current data collected is for the presence of antibodies indicating people who've been infected. Not those vaccinated; they can distinguish that. This is cheap to measure, but runs about 6 weeks behind. Data here.[1] US average from late June is about 22% of the population. That's roughly how many people actually had the disease.

That data should show the Delta variant surge as the data comes in.

I still can't find a useful number for people with antibodies prevalent because either infected or vaccinated, although that is apparently tested.

[1] https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#national-lab

Re: The UK’s delta surge is collapsing

#90
Most news articles I see focus solely on the number of vaccinated people when estimating how far away countries are from herd immunity, which seems odd to me. Left out in the discussion seem to be the unvaccinated but already infected. As far as I know, prior infection confers at least some degree of immunity.

It may also be the case that those inclined to be skeptical of vaccines were also the ones who exposed themselves to infection most during the pandemic, through disdain for social distancing, mask-wearing, etc. In other words those still unvaccinated in Western countries with easy access to vaccines have a pretty good chance of having been infected by now.

Adding those two populations together would seem to indicate that most Western populations are already at herd immunity by this point, which would mean that these surges can be reasonably expected to become smaller and smaller. Unless of course some totally new variant capable of evading all existing vaccines and immunity from prior infection emerges.

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