Coronavirus (COVID-19)

These attempts to understand Covid in such extreme detail must be rubbish. It's obvious some things are more risky than others but trying to define and put exact percentages to them is probably fun for someone playing with the figures but ridiculous.

I found the "Patients in mechanical ventilation beds" chart in your link even more promising.

This is taken from the Times but I'm sure is being said elsewhere:


Protection against hospital admission in over-65s remains at about 90 per cent three months after a third jab, new analysis from the UK Health Security Agency shows.

This of course is very good news for one and all. In addition, this cohort (over 65s) will have predominantly (but not exclusively) have received Az for their first 2 jabs. This would appears to demonstrate that Az is providing an extremely strong immunity reaction baseline on which to get the 3rd / booster shot. Very good news.

I think pretty much all of us are going to get it. I'm just continuing to behave in a way that hopefully helps to put that moment off until the NHS is under less pressure and more treatments (or more of existing treatments) are available. Fingers crossed. 

Not me. I've for a long time been of that view that ultimately we will all get 'it', whatever 'it' may actually be by the time we get it. Not least because we long long ago passed a point where this would be eliminated from the species, and instead will inevitably eventually become endemic. But since the 'Big O' arrived on the scene with significantly increased infection rate, I'm been pretty sure it will be sooner rather than later. 

On the topic of stopping isolation: that time will undoubtedly arrive - although we might somewhere on that path take a step backwards if a vaccine escaping & suitably virulent variant emerges. Some steps in that direction have in effect already been taken (reduced isolation time when coupled with -ve LFT on days 6 and 7). 

But I wouldn't think the time to stop isolation is in the middle of winter and the middle of a new wave, when the pressure on the NHS is so high. Yes it might help relieve some staffing shortages in the NHS itself, but at the expense of much higher levels of community transmission and therefore increased 'input' to the NHS. The data on 'O' virulence is only really now firming up in the context of UK vaccination and booster levels. The purpose of isolation is not to stop any individual from ever getting Covid, its to stop too many getting too ill in too concentrated a timeframe (and previously, before we had decent levels of protection through vaccines and treatments).

Vaccination and in particular the effect of booster jabs ? 

Initial vaccination gave some protection against infection, and certainly against getting it too badly. It probably therefore also impacted on how infectious an individual is as well (viral load). 

Initial wave hit the long hanging fruit: those who weren't vaccinated (including younger age groups); those who were vaccinated but had immune systems where immunity levels had particularly fallen away etc.; those who had received boosters but where the necessary 2-3 weeks to get to highest level of protection hadn't elapsed. Etc. Etc. You can certainly rationalise that the wave has not so much gone through the population, as gone through that part of the population who haven't got much/any immunity. And that is a much smaller pool.