“How UK PM Johnson decided to delay COVID reopening” (Reuters):
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson on Monday delayed by a month his plans to lift the last COVID-19 restrictions in England after modelling showed that thousands more people might die due unless reopening was pushed back.
The move was due to the rapid spread of the Delta coronavirus variant, which is more transmissible, associated with lower vaccine effectiveness against mild disease and could cause more hospitalisations in the unvaccinated.
Models commissioned by the government showed that without a delay to the planned June 21 reopening, in some scenarios hospitalisations could match previous peaks in cases when ministers feared the health system could be overwhelmed.
Britain has one of the fastest vaccine rollouts in the world, with over half of adults receiving both doses and more than three quarters receiving at least one, which has led some to question why restrictions need to be extended.
As Johnson announced the postponement, Public Health England published data showing shots made by Pfizer (PFE.N) and AstraZeneca (AZN.L) offer high protection against hospitalisation from the variant identified in India of 96% and 92% respectively after two doses. read more
Are we seeing the difference between the lab (the vaccines work against this variant) and the real world (the virus is smarter than humans)?
Separately, can we infer anything about our future based on the English experience? If the variant virus is overpowering the vaccinated herd in the U.K., should we expect a raging plague here by the fall (with associated lockdowns, mask orders, etc., in Church of Shutdown states)?
Related:
England is only ONE component of the United Kingdom. It is the largest, but not so big or important that it can stand for the whole without upsetting many.
Bernie: Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland have their own COVID-19 technocrats (“tyrants”?). So public health expert Dr. Boris Johnson, M.D., Ph.D. (Dr. Jill Biden, M.D.’s colleague) is empowered to order only those in England to stay home, wear masks, etc.
You are right, of course. I stand corrected!
The situation in Britain is so dire that the excess mortality rate is negative:
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1131428/excess-deaths-in-england-and-wales/
Certainly more lockdowns are needed, so people can go back to infecting each other in private parties, churches, mosques and mass wedding celebrations.
> excess mortality rate is negative
An example of “every cloud has a silver lining”? The culling of the frail in 2020 leaves the virus deprived of access to an all-you-can eat buffet of its choicest fare. A prodigious achievement of government-run health care!
We can certainly infer that we will continue to be ruled by technocrats using models of what “might” happen, which are completely incapable of predicting anything (see: Sweden, Texas, Florida etc). Ultimately we are ruled by Karens, who will demand en-masse to speak to the manager if a single person dies of anything after restrictions are relaxed.
It’ll be more difficult to blame it on the Trumpenfuhrer now but that’s going to be the go-to explanation along with the mask resisters. David Leonhardt has spoken.
As the panic over Delta rises, I expect NPR to start fingering the Trumpian Anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers as Public Enemy #1. If we see the cases rise in the US that will turn into a wall of Marshall amplifiers. It ain’t over, folks! The winners write the history, don’t forget.
It would be interesting to see the cases graph adjusted by the number of tests. It seems to me that this would give a more accurate picture of what is happening, although stats was never my strong point. The test counts are available on a separate section of the UK website, and the number of tests between June 1 and June 9 increased significantly (~ 665k -> 1 million).
The main lesson of this quasi-pandemic is that public experts are, by and large, idiots and/or charlatans.
Any actual scientist given the facts as following: quickly mutating kind of viruses, vaccine tech producing very specific immune response and incapable of conferring sterilizing immunity, widespread community transmission will immediately figure out that mass immunization creates strong selective pressure on the virus thus rapidly creating new strains which not only avoid vaccines but also re-infect people who did get the cooties before.
With these givens the correct strategy is to vaccinate only those at risk of severe illness so as to protect them while minimizing generation of new strains.
But, no, the over-educated idiots and vaccine salesmen never think about anything further than immediate results of their actions. It’s like antibiotic overuse take 2 – only faster moving. The EYIs learned nothing from the previous bouts of medically-induced pathogen evolution.
“Any actual scientist given the facts as following: quickly mutating kind of viruses, vaccine tech producing very specific immune response and incapable of conferring sterilizing immunity, widespread community transmission will immediately figure out that mass immunization creates strong selective pressure on the virus thus rapidly creating new strains which not only avoid vaccines but also re-infect people who did get the cooties before.
With these givens the correct strategy is to vaccinate only those at risk of severe illness so as to protect them while minimizing generation of new strains.”
Did you just make all of this stuff up?