I am also a doctor. Compared to almost every other job going, we do have cast iron job security. Short of gross negligence resulting in deaths or a consistent pattern of sexism/ racism etc, I struggle to see any real situation in which I (or most doctors) lose my/their job. This is not the case for almost any other job. If you're a consultant, a partner GP or salaried GP, you have to (generally) do something incredibly stupid or get incredibly unlucky (with a sprinkle of institutional racism) a la Bawa Garba to lose your job. Which means that for most doctors, once they've reached their mid 30s and reached what would generally be considered the end of their formal training as a GP or consultant, they pretty much have a job for life.
In Ireland 77% of our latest cases are under 25.
For a national system, I have to be honest, the variation between different areas has been shambolic imo. I have to be honest and say I feel a bit bad because, while we at one point had a huge number of patients with Covid, my trust was always in control and fully supportive of us. We were allowed to wear what PPE we felt safe in (within reason), certainly within certain departments. If you showed symptoms, you self isolated. We've been at the front of all the clinical trials and antibody testing has been rolled out to us too.
Perfect, was just trying to explain the post, didn't want to make it seem like I was attacking again or anything. I know how difficult it can be if you're getting multiple replies at the same time. Though can also be very informative if people are polite and stay polite, which I'd like to think is what's happened here.
And 15 of 24 from travel overseas.
Been open the whole time. Closing that border is pretty much unthinkable.
Must feel very nice! Think some of our shielding docs and nurses will start coming back in August apparently, I wouldn't feel particularly safe if I was them I must say. We're still in the hundreds of cases a day territory.
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The number of people from abroad that I heard of catching it here is ridiculous.
Are you in a risk group or 70+?
I am 32 with no underlying conditions.
It's an awful situation for all governments in fairness, the next year is gonna be extremely difficult for everyone to find a balance.
I was talking about eradication at a local level and worldwide eradication prior to a vaccine is functionally impossible. We perhaps all had a small window of opportunity early on in the pandemic but now we need to minimise deaths and the huge ongoing, often permanent, harm to many who don't die until vaccines are developed (and there will be quite a few vaccines).
I was talking about eradication at a local level and worldwide eradication prior to a vaccine is functionally impossible. We perhaps all had a small window of opportunity early on in the pandemic but now we need to minimise deaths and the huge ongoing, often permanent, harm to many who don't die until vaccines are developed (and there will be quite a few developed).
They were planning this last year. It's not due to covid 19, it's to do with their shit business model and overpriced crap.
Yeah blanch. We’re trying coke as a vaccine round these partsBlanch?
You sure she wasn't talking about crack cocaine?
You need to avoid the noise around the fundamentals of things and you can't get past the fact that severely reducing the R and keep it down. Many measures help e.g. social distancing and mask wearing (in some circumstances) etc. Locking down of countries, regions, suburbs and even buildings can be a response to deal with outbreaks but it is just as important in a more strategic way. Each restricted region is a cell and if you can eradicate the virus (or at least get it to a very very low rate of community transmission) from that cell you need little or no effort to keep it that way. Once there are many cells you can open them up to each other without risking the other open cells. Maybe you then get to some countries being functionally covid free which can then join up e.g. NZ and AU if we can get Victoria under control and we haven't fecked up by opening the borders too early (IMO we did by a few weeks). In the UK's case the lock down of the population was largely wasted effort because the clowns in charge freely allowing the import of covid from everywhere without even basic testing, much less a quarantine.
It should be because ultimately this is the only way out of this shit show. The chances of us not having a viable vaccine soon is now looking close to zero. So many are in production that even if some prove ineffective and others have side-effect serious enough to stop progress (quite rare with modern vaccines, as opposed to drugs) we will still almost certainly have enough options to makes this "just another (far more harmful) flu" in years to come.
It was possible but the will wasn't there. Maggie (much though I despise her) would have had the UK locked down tighter than a ducks arse and feck what anyone said or thought. Boris tied to pretend it wasn't there, nearly killed himself in the process and now just bumbles around uselessly. Countries need strong and authentic leadership at times like this and it is lacking almost everywhere. Here in Australia only some State premiers refusing to open up when told/asked to by our idiot in chief saved us all from suffering Victoria's fate (and even that may be savable even with 1-200 infections per day).
She took the only sensible step, as did Australia to a lesser degree. Unnecessary deaths are unacceptable and the early economic hit is justified especially as it allows you not to stop normal medical procedures and keep everyday life going and largely back to normal. The economic benefit later will be significant. The only way this doesn't work is if we never get a vaccine, which is unlikely, but even if that does happen it was still the right decision as morality should trump economics. That should be an absolute.
Dominic Cummings went for a drive and didn't spot anything so all must be ok.
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Again, I respectfully refer you to my initial line regarding my feelings on the futility of this particular conversation and will pretty much leave it there. I've said multiple times that I do not understand how people are so insistent on using absolutes for a situation that has little precedent.
I actually think that’s quite likely. Everyone I’ve heard/read who is an expert on Coronaviruses seems to think making a very effective, long-lasting virus is extremely difficult. All you need to do is look at what happens when you stimulate your immune system naturally.
Are they like the ones I have heard/read? Basically they don't know, they are the only ones without certitudes which is why I've been skeptical about all these announcements about vaccines or how the virus may or may not evolve. Listening to coronavirus experts, the only thing they know is that it's one of the most adaptable virus family.
that seems a realistic possibility - though I do wonder if ultimately we miht get some if not total heard immunity before that happens given the fact that the timescales are likley to be years not months and how rapidly the virus has spread to date
Herd immunity can start having a huge effect even at 30%, which is often not mentioned when people bring up this subject.
Kind of. You can catch the common cold coronavirus more than once. So they did a study where they dosed volunteers with the virus twice, 12 months apart. Almost all of them became reinfected but most of them had much less symptoms after the second dose. I think the most likely scenario - while waiting for a vaccine - is seasonal epidemics, with less of a burden on the health service each year, thanks to more and more people having either partial immunity or only very mild illness.
I didnt know it was that low - thought it was more like 50% with 75% giving very strong protection but yeah anything has to help and of course it remains to be seen if the virus mutates but if it does not then you would think that in a year or so some heard immunity protection (and better antiviral treatments / better experience) is our best bet in the very short term for at least some improvements.
given where we were a few weeks ago that seems more manageable than total indefinite lockdowns or finding a magic bullet type cure
It depends on how infections a virus is which is why that low figure is irrelevant in this case.
I was of the understanding that herd immunity is different for different diseases because of the infection rates etc. Also was of the understanding that herd immunity for coronavirus was up around 60% approximately. Hadnt heard it was as low as 30%.
Thanks...
It is. And Regulus is also probably mixing immunity rate and herd immunity, the first one is just the proportion of people that have an immunity and whatever the figure it will always have an effect on how the virus will spread, the higher the figure the more difficult it is for large community spread. Herd immunity is the point where the immunity rate is high enough that the virus has next to no chance to spread widely because the herd as whole is seroprotected. Some viruses require a vaccination rates in the 40s-50s while others are in the 90s.
Which always makes me think how insanely contagious measles is. Infection or vaccine gives complete life long immunity and there are no animal hosts, yet we still can’t maintain herd immunity after vaccination programs lasting decades.
