Coronavirus

[duncs500]

My question is, if we open up and the infection rate spikes but the mortality / serious illness rate doesn't (due to the vaccines). Does that mean another lockdown or not?

[Simon]

It's all about the hospitals, so if infections go up but hospitalisations don't then I doubt they'd lock down again.

[Beany]

Indeed, there'd be a knock on economic effect from people not being able to work while fever'd up (but not requiring hospitalisation), but I'd expect that'd be swallowed up by about ten minutes of the country being, you know, open for business otherwise.

[Rich B]

If the vaccine is proved to remove the severity of the illness, that would be great. If C19 doesn't kill / cause long term damage to people then it's not a problem once enough are vaccinated.

[Mark_bt52]

With the way that infections have been declining recently then it's no surprise that hospitals are not as busy.

Yeah, but I'm talking about 4 or 5 weeks ago...

I'm not implying anything, just saying how it was, but I can't help feeling that we are not getting a particularly representative presentation of things in the media, particularly the BBC, and that anyone daring to disagree with the presented viewpoint gets vilified for it.

[ZedLeg]

Where do you live Mark, middle of London or somewhere a bit more rural?

[Mark_bt52]

High Wycombe (We were in the sudden tier4 zone pre-Xmas)

[Foz]

If the vaccine doesn’t work, to put it bluntly we are completely fucked.

[Explosive Newt]

Where I work
- We normally have 56 adult intensive care beds and the cardiothoracic hospital next door has 32 intensive care beds
- We converted two wards and a theatre recovery unit to additional intensive care capacity (total 104 beds) and next door took over two recovery areas (total 58). All were in use at the peak in early Jan.
- We also converted five wards which had been surgical wards into covid wards. I'm a bit more vague on the details as this isn't my area.
- At time of writing, we have converted three of those surgical wards back to surgery and two of the intensive care areas back to normal wards. ICU capacity is currently 77 (I think), of which 27 (I think) are covid patients.

So it's been funny. Some bits of the hospital are basically a ghost town and trying to stay operational where they can. E.g. if your surgery needs an overnight stay, fat chance right now but if you're a day case operation then there is extra capacity for that (because the overnight stuff isn't on) and they are cracking through it. A&E attendances have shown a dip as people are a bit afeared of coming to hospital and catching the 'rona, although not as much of a dip as last year.

Right now we are in a transition whereby we are starting to open things back up and get back on with the operations that need an overnight stay etc, but it takes a bit of time to switch gears in the NHS.

It has been sodding busy, just behind closed doors and many staff have moved from the quiet bits to help in the busy. We had all sorts acting as health care assistants or nurses in ICU - from outpatient nurses who found their clinics all being done by telephone right through to a consultant surgeon who answered the call to work as an HCA because he wasn't getting any operating in right now (I must say he did a grand job on a night shift).

Addendum - I can only speak first hand about my neck of the woods. But hopefully that gives you an idea of what it's like behind closed doors.

[Explosive Newt]

My question is, if we open up and the infection rate spikes but the mortality / serious illness rate doesn't (due to the vaccines). Does that mean another lockdown or not?

The problem with allowing virus transmission to ramp back up is that every time a virus transmits, there is a chance of it mutating. So more transmissions mean more mutations and a greater risk of creating a virus which is more virulent, more deadly or more resistant to vaccines. Natural selection will make the more transmissible viruses the dominant strain.

Our only real hope in the long run relies on the vaccines not just reducing severe illness but also reducing transmissibility of infection. They should do this (and there is some observational evidence with the Oxford-AZ vaccine) but no guarantees as yet. But this is why vaccinating as much of the population as possible becomes important.

[Rich B]

Cheers Monsieur Newt - good to hear it from someone who knows what they're talking about.

[McSwede]

Cheers Monsieur Newt - good to hear it from someone who knows what they're talking about.

Stop it. That'll never catch on.

[dinny_g]

Aye - rare round the parts but very, very welcome

[Explosive Newt]

Cheers Monsieur Newt - good to hear it from someone who knows what they're talking about.

Tbf I know very little about cars so am just delighted to find something I can share an informed opinion on.

[KiwiDave]

So what's the end game for New Zealand in this Dave - Keep up the current measures until the whole population can be vaccinated? Vaccine Passports, tests and short term Isolation for all visitors going forward ?

I'll be perfectly honest I don't recall hearing any public statements about what the long term plan is for the country - there's been an election in the middle of this which I'm sure would have used such statements as fuel for fires.

I think what's happening is a firm intention to have zero cases in the community so that everyone except perhaps tourism can carry on with life basically as normal and as a result the economy isn't fucked. Anecdotally I'd say it's working, there's huge spending in areas where you wouldn't normally see it for example, basically people taking money they'd spend going overseas and spending it here. We had a blocked storm water drain yesterday which was threatening to flood the house so got an emergency bloke to come out - his day-to-day work redoing drains has a nine week lead time currently because so many people are sprucing up their homes and fixing stuff with the spare cash.

As to what happens after vaccinations (first happen this Saturday apparently, our border and quarantine workers are going first) are rolled out across the country, my gut would say the intent is to continue to keep the population safe, so I'd see opening up of borders done where that's the main criteria. We don't have the ability to be slammed like the UK or USA and pop out the other side and I think the government will do everything it can to prevent that. If the vaccinations work and we regain a largely safe global population I'm sure NZ will want as many people here as possible.

And as to whoever the troll was that said Australia and NZ are over reacting, I really disagree. I think we're very grateful that in general it's allowing us to live normal lives. Case in point when lockdown 3.0 started yesterday some QANON numpties protested outside Jacinda's electoral office, about 20 of them. A flat over the road just blared some death metal at them to drown them out and the country laughed and moved on with it.

[dinny_g]

Give it 5 years and you’ll all be down on the beach, waving sharpened sticks at passing ships like the North Sentinelese, you mark my words...

[KiwiDave]

Give it 5 years and you’ll all be down on the beach, waving sharpened sticks at passing ships like the North Sentinelese, you mark my words...

Genuine LOL

As I grow older and hate more and more of society and people in general, part of me finds that vaguely appealing! I suspect the ruined economy that would go with it might not be too nice though.

[duncs500]

Give it 5 years and you’ll all be down on the beach, waving sharpened sticks at passing ships like the North Sentinelese, you mark my words...

Genuine LOL

As I grow older and hate more and more of society and people in general, part of me finds that vaguely appealing! I suspect the ruined economy that would go with it might not be too nice though.

Sounds like you need to take a leaf out of @RobYob's book and become a postie for a while to rediscover your faith in your fellow man.

[jamcg]

My question is, if we open up and the infection rate spikes but the mortality / serious illness rate doesn't (due to the vaccines). Does that mean another lockdown or not?

The problem with allowing virus transmission to ramp back up is that every time a virus transmits, there is a chance of it mutating. So more transmissions mean more mutations and a greater risk of creating a virus which is more virulent, more deadly or more resistant to vaccines. Natural selection will make the more transmissible viruses the dominant strain.

Our only real hope in the long run relies on the vaccines not just reducing severe illness but also reducing transmissibility of infection. They should do this (and there is some observational evidence with the Oxford-AZ vaccine) but no guarantees as yet. But this is why vaccinating as much of the population as possible becomes important.

Good insight. My wife had an operation Wednesday last week to repair a badly torn acl which necessitated an overnight stay. This was via the NHS done in our local Nuffield hospital as our NHS hospitals are struggling through

[Broccers]

.....

Shutting out 6 percent of gdp isn't going to work for long. It's difficult with small islands I guess. The UK can't stop the virus coming in now so it'll only go on and on until people realise it's not that big a deal in the grand scheme of living life.