The @PHE_uk report today paints a grim picture - TL;DR:-delta variant has almost replaced the beta variant in much of England- 50-60% more transmissible- ~2.5x higher risk of hospitalisations- Schools appear to be a key area of spread with many large no.s of clusters 🧵— Deepti Gurdasani (@dgurdasani1) June 3, 2021
If bat contact is inevitable yeah, if it stays there for the next 10 years and gets recombined with other corona viruses, non-transmissible to humans, why would it :shrug-outta-hecks:
I mean, your initial point was virus is here to stay (?), but that’s something that can be influenced and having defeatist attitude to it is kinda meh, realistic/pessimistic maybe, but it’s changeable
The problem is there are 8 billion of us. Someone out there is going to get it again. Even in places that handled this almost perfectly like China still get outbreaks the have to squash from time to time which is why vaccination is our only way out to prevent those outbreaks from becoming epidemics.
My point is that for the rest of our lives we are going to have some level of covid death. That level depends on the rate of vaccination. The long term goal is going to be doing enough vaccination to lower the death rate to an “acceptable” place for society to function. I don’t think it’s defeatist, more just recognizing this is the world we live in and we can beat this back but it doesn’t ever go away.
My original point was that even now with this new variant and everyone misbehaving we can see that it hasn’t effected the trend line to much which is a good case for hope and anti-doomerism
See, what I get from this (if it’s true) - I will wear a mask for the rest of my life in the cities, cause I don’t want some old lady to keel over :shrug-outta-hecks:
That is actually unlikely though, as bat pools will have different mutation pressures, away from human transmissibility
Yes, but if it already crossed the big barrier. Crossing back and staying away is the rare type of mutation right now.
If bat contact is inevitable yeah, if it stays there for the next 10 years and gets recombined with other corona viruses, non-transmissible to humans, why would it :shrug-outta-hecks:
I mean, your initial point was virus is here to stay (?), but that’s something that can be influenced and having defeatist attitude to it is kinda meh, realistic/pessimistic maybe, but it’s changeable
The problem is there are 8 billion of us. Someone out there is going to get it again. Even in places that handled this almost perfectly like China still get outbreaks the have to squash from time to time which is why vaccination is our only way out to prevent those outbreaks from becoming epidemics.
My point is that for the rest of our lives we are going to have some level of covid death. That level depends on the rate of vaccination. The long term goal is going to be doing enough vaccination to lower the death rate to an “acceptable” place for society to function. I don’t think it’s defeatist, more just recognizing this is the world we live in and we can beat this back but it doesn’t ever go away.
My original point was that even now with this new variant and everyone misbehaving we can see that it hasn’t effected the trend line to much which is a good case for hope and anti-doomerism
See, what I get from this (if it’s true) - I will wear a mask for the rest of my life in the cities, cause I don’t want some old lady to keel over :shrug-outta-hecks: