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I for one have got enough of coronavirus malarkey.. It really needs to go... and go fast... Grrr...

True. My wife is quite worried about things this fall, as she is a High School teacher. There's an obvious problem with social distancing there, as well as wearing masks vs. being able to be heard across a classroom.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:

 Matt Swain wrote:
Dukeofstuff, first off you never met my grandfather and you don't know what he would have pointed out.

Secondly, herd immunity as far as I know never effecitvely eradicated a single disease. It may have reduced their death tolls but it took vaccinations to effectively make them non issues to the vast majority of the human race.

So I'm not waiting. I don't care if we have to "gut the military" (Which is what some people call no increasing military spending every year, let alone reducing it in any way) to finance covid vaccine research, we go with vaccine research.

I believe we should start transferring money from the military finding to covid vaccine research, and keep it up till we get it. Manhattan project levels of funding and research till we get the vaccine.

Respectfully, if you introduce a personal anecdote into a debate, you can't then take it personally if someone uses it in their counterpoint.

IF. you seem very sure that there's a vaccine out there just waiting to be found, so what's your plan when none appears? We just throw money at scientists ad infinitum?

You want to know what my plan is "when" no vaccine "appears"?

I'll tell you.

I'd keep "throwing money at it". And yes I'd pull that money from the military, so what if we have a few less desert junkyards full of multi million dollar aircraft that were build and became obsolete without being used?

I'd keep throwing money at it and I'd store every bit of data from every failed experiment, every dead end research, every attempt made that didn't pan out and I'd keep researching covid, and every time new information about it was discovered I would have some researches look thru the old experiments and research projects that hadn't been successful to see if the new data could be applied to them and possibly make them successful.

AND I'd fund research into newer, faster, cheaper and more reliable tests kits that were easy to make, store and use. AND I'd fund research into treatments to save infected people in danger.

That's what I'd do "when" no vaccine "appeared".

 Matt Swain wrote:


You want to know what my plan is "when" no vaccine "appears"?

I'll tell you.

I'd keep "throwing money at it". And yes I'd pull that money from the military, so what if we have a few less desert junkyards full of multi million dollar aircraft that were build and became obsolete without being used?

I'd keep throwing money at it and I'd store every bit of data from every failed experiment, every dead end research, every attempt made that didn't pan out and I'd keep researching covid, and every time new information about it was discovered I would have some researches look thru the old experiments and research projects that hadn't been successful to see if the new data could be applied to them and possibly make them successful.

AND I'd fund research into newer, faster, cheaper and more reliable tests kits that were easy to make, store and use. AND I'd fund research into treatments to save infected people in danger.

That's what I'd do "when" no vaccine "appeared".

Coronavirus vaccines are relatively ineffective and by the time we have a COVID-19 vaccine the disease will have burnt itself out because everybody will have caught it. Throwing money at a COVID-19 vaccine is as useless as tits on a boar because the disease will be long gone by the time a vaccine could possibly be developed.

The only worthwhile thing to throw money at is to triage those who are sick with it so we can get through this. Curing this disease is simply not possible. The only thing that can be done is to survive it. That would be better use than wasting time on a vaccine that will not come in time or actually have the effect people think it will have.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/family-dorset-beach-coronavirus-lockdown-complaints-a4444681.html

*slaps face*

Surely this is parody? Satire? Joke? SOMETHING other than entitled stupidity?

 Grey Templar wrote:
Coronavirus vaccines are relatively ineffective and by the time we have a COVID-19 vaccine the disease will have burnt itself out because everybody will have caught it. Throwing money at a COVID-19 vaccine is as useless as tits on a boar because the disease will be long gone by the time a vaccine could possibly be developed.

The only worthwhile thing to throw money at is to triage those who are sick with it so we can get through this. Curing this disease is simply not possible. The only thing that can be done is to survive it. That would be better use than wasting time on a vaccine that will not come in time or actually have the effect people think it will have.

It most likely won't burn out though, because so far we know little in the way of if and how long people are immune if they get it. It will probably be a recurring virus without a vaccine, given how far it has already spread around the world. That seems to be the prevalent opinion in the epidemiological community. Also, tits on a boar are useful, because boar are mammals and thus they get them when they have offspring that suckle milk from them?

tneva82 wrote:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/family-dorset-beach-coronavirus-lockdown-complaints-a4444681.html

*slaps face*

Surely this is parody? Satire? Joke? SOMETHING other than entitled stupidity?

That’s just one of the local beaches to where i live, they were all packed out apart from those that kept the parking closed. Masses and masses of fools. Here comes a second peak and another lock down at this rate.

 Grey Templar wrote:

Coronavirus vaccines are relatively ineffective and by the time we have a COVID-19 vaccine the disease will have burnt itself out because everybody will have caught it. Throwing money at a COVID-19 vaccine is as useless as tits on a boar because the disease will be long gone by the time a vaccine could possibly be developed.

The only worthwhile thing to throw money at is to triage those who are sick with it so we can get through this. Curing this disease is simply not possible. The only thing that can be done is to survive it. That would be better use than wasting time on a vaccine that will not come in time or actually have the effect people think it will have.

Catching it isn't quarantee of being immune to it forever. It's no good that everybody has caught it once it goes for 2nd route.

There's still zero evidence you gain long term immunity from catching it.

You want this lockdown to be yearly thing? If not better hope for that vaccine. Or it will be yearly killer instead(killer that already is often exceeding previous #1 daily killer in US and soon has killed more people in US than ww2 did...).

Yearly lockdown or each year losing couple hundrek thousand people in the world for this. Avoiding either of those with vaccine is decent result. Or do you really want one of those 2 things to happen? Price of vaccine is certainly peanuts compared to price of lockdowns so guess you would prefer hundreds of thousands of deaths each year to this over paying price of vaccine...Interesting priorities you have. So little value for human life.

tneva82 wrote:


Catching it isn't quarantee of being immune to it forever. It's no good that everybody has caught it once it goes for 2nd route.

There's still zero evidence you gain long term immunity from catching it.

You want this lockdown to be yearly thing? If not better hope for that vaccine. Or it will be yearly killer instead(killer that already is often exceeding previous #1 daily killer in US and soon has killed more people in US than ww2 did...).

Yearly lockdown or each year losing couple hundrek thousand people in the world for this. Avoiding either of those with vaccine is decent result. Or do you really want one of those 2 things to happen? Price of vaccine is certainly peanuts compared to price of lockdowns so guess you would prefer hundreds of thousands of deaths each year to this over paying price of vaccine...Interesting priorities you have. So little value for human life.

Long term immunity is unnecessary. It only needs to last a couple of years, which is typical of other viruses of this type. That is enough time for the virus to be destroyed via natural causes. It either wastes itself in people who are immune or it mutates itself into something irrelevant.

Remember, all flu viruses were once super deadly bugs like COVID-19. Then people became resistant and the virus was just another flu virus among the millions of boring viruses that wash about each year.

We won't have to lock down next year or the year after because everybody will have already had it. The absolute worst case scenario for the virus has it being over within 2 years. A vaccine is much further away than 2 years in any realistic sense. So since we can't get a vaccine before the disease goes away on its own then there is no point in wasting energy on it.

Most of these viruses have about a year or two worth of immunity if you get it. There are currently 4 common Coronaviruses recurring, they don't all just burn out like SARS. Not all viruses start of super deadly either. Look at Swine Flu for example, much less deadly than we know Covid-19 is so far

 xKillGorex wrote:

tneva82 wrote:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/family-dorset-beach-coronavirus-lockdown-complaints-a4444681.html

*slaps face*

Surely this is parody? Satire? Joke? SOMETHING other than entitled stupidity?

That’s just one of the local beaches to where i live, they were all packed out apart from those that kept the parking closed. Masses and masses of fools. Here comes a second peak and another lock down at this rate.

I guess we'll see in about a week.

Even if it hangs around stubbornly, its still not worth a vaccine. The death's that a vaccine might prevent over the next 5-6 years will be very small compared to what what could be saved if that $ was put towards treating the people who are sick now. Or going after other more dangerous diseases.

Jeez, be careful uttering blasphemies like that...

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Jeez, be careful uttering blasphemies like that...

Eh, I think it's good to bring to light the Social Darwinist undertone of the pro-disease side, after all people should know explicitly who's advocating for "culling the weak" who "cost society".

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if it hangs around stubbornly, its still not worth a vaccine. The death's that a vaccine might prevent over the next 5-6 years will be very small compared to what what could be saved if that $ was put towards treating the people who are sick now. Or going after other more dangerous diseases.

Its not an either/or question though. Develop a vaccine now and you might sufficiently wipe it out for it to no longer be a large problem. How much $ does that save over the next decade if its recurring? Also going after more dangerous diseases? No one was prevented from doing that before Covid-19, they just had no financial incentive. This pandemic has hit the richer countries, hence them pouring funding into this, lets not state that all this funding for Covid-19 would have gone to other disease research.

There are enough teams around the world working on vaccines to negate that argument. Clearly the experts think it's worth doing.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if it hangs around stubbornly, its still not worth a vaccine. The death's that a vaccine might prevent over the next 5-6 years will be very small compared to what what could be saved if that $ was put towards treating the people who are sick now. Or going after other more dangerous diseases.

Eh haven't you followed news at all? Haven't you seen how much these lockdowns are costing? Compared to that vaccine is PEANUTS.

So clearly you are flatly against lockdown since you are proposing smaller amount of cash spent on vaccine than lockdown is too expensive(I presume you have at least some sense of logic...claiming vaccine is too expensive but even more expensive lockdown is totally fine use of money would be silly...). Thus we get back to you preferring hundred's of thousands of deaths each year over cost of vaccine(which btw can still be helpful for other diseases. What happens when there comes out even more deadly corona strand? Vaccine to this could give headstart or even prevent it...And seeing we don't have efficient corona vaccine right now better to come up with one now vs when even more deadly corona virus comes out).

We are at 300k death in about half a year with only ~3 months it's been spreading in europe. Hundred's of thousands of deaths per year could even be understatement if this is let to be recurring one without vaccine. Or we are down at lockdown or two per year which costs so much the vaccine cost will be elementary school kid's pocket money in comparison.

And why next 5-6 years? You think this will just dissapear on it's own without vaccine? Think next 100 year for more fun.

And it's not even binary on/off choice. Imagine that. You can create vaccine AND help people now. Isn't that weird idea. Multitasking! How weird concept. Doing more than 1 thing at a time. Such a novel idea!

tneva82 wrote:
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/family-dorset-beach-coronavirus-lockdown-complaints-a4444681.html

*slaps face*

Surely this is parody? Satire? Joke? SOMETHING other than entitled stupidity?

No, it’s the much vaunted British common sense. You know, the one that Boris said will see us through this and resulted in him and his team all getting the virus through proudly shaking hands with people.

It’s delusional to think this disease will last for more than a couple years, much less a hundred. This disease will not keep killing people at the rate it is currently. It’ll sharply drop off before the next few months are over. And yes. I am against the lockdowns continuing further or how they have been hamfistingly implemented.

 ScarletRose wrote:

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Jeez, be careful uttering blasphemies like that...

Eh, I think it's good to bring to light the Social Darwinist undertone of the pro-disease side, after all people should know explicitly who's advocating for "culling the weak" who "cost society".

Well, aside from a few lunatics who actually believe that sort of thing, I dont think many are Pro-Disease. Or are you lumping everyone with a dissenting opinion into that group?


Automatically Appended Next Post:

tneva82 wrote:

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if it hangs around stubbornly, its still not worth a vaccine. The death's that a vaccine might prevent over the next 5-6 years will be very small compared to what what could be saved if that $ was put towards treating the people who are sick now. Or going after other more dangerous diseases.

Eh haven't you followed news at all? Haven't you seen how much these lockdowns are costing? Compared to that vaccine is PEANUTS.

So clearly you are flatly against lockdown since you are proposing smaller amount of cash spent on vaccine than lockdown is too expensive(I presume you have at least some sense of logic...claiming vaccine is too expensive but even more expensive lockdown is totally fine use of money would be silly...). Thus we get back to you preferring hundred's of thousands of deaths each year over cost of vaccine(which btw can still be helpful for other diseases. What happens when there comes out even more deadly corona strand? Vaccine to this could give headstart or even prevent it...And seeing we don't have efficient corona vaccine right now better to come up with one now vs when even more deadly corona virus comes out).

We are at 300k death in about half a year with only ~3 months it's been spreading in europe. Hundred's of thousands of deaths per year could even be understatement if this is let to be recurring one without vaccine. Or we are down at lockdown or two per year which costs so much the vaccine cost will be elementary school kid's pocket money in comparison.

And why next 5-6 years? You think this will just dissapear on it's own without vaccine? Think next 100 year for more fun.

And it's not even binary on/off choice. Imagine that. You can create vaccine AND help people now. Isn't that weird idea. Multitasking! How weird concept. Doing more than 1 thing at a time. Such a novel idea!

I love these. so much. your inferences are incredible.

The death rate is dropping off because almost the entire world is doing everything it can to prevent infection. Infection rates going down is the reason the death rate is slowing, not because the virus is less deadly now.

So, Im not going back to work till the earliest in August, got put on special assignment by my work putting on a digital summercamp.
and work just mentioned that if the lockdown is lifted, only about a 3rd of employees will be working on any given day, rest will be given spent on special assignment.

 Grey Templar wrote:
It’s delusional to think this disease will last for more than a couple years, much less a hundred. This disease will not keep killing people at the rate it is currently. It’ll sharply drop off before the next few months are over. And yes. I am against the lockdowns continuing further or how they have been hamfistingly implemented.

the family of the virus has been first charachterised in the 1960s.
has birthed both mers and sars aswell.

either you know something the rest of us do not or you are talking nonsense.

Am very fortunate to be working for a company with an extremely strong H&S culture and dedicated risk analysis departments.

Even during the bungled "you should now return to work" that came late the other Sunday, followed by the retractions the next day, the message of 'work from home if at all possible' has never wavered.

The problem is that they know they can't even assure safety. Even with heat/fever cameras, enforced distancing, masks/gloves and a sparsely populated office the virus is so commutable and the fact that it can be carried asymptomatically means there will still be some transmission.

Current rumour is that return to places of work wholesale will not happen until a vaccine is available.

What will be interesting coming out of all of this (if and when any kind of normal life is resumed - perhaps a vaccine plus proven tracking and isolation) is how the work culture will have changed for certain job sectors. What need to spend hours of your life every week commuting through heavy traffic, hundreds of £ on travel costs and maintenance of work facilities if it has been proven that the work can largely be carried out remotely and for less cost?

IF a vaccine becomes available.

'Rambaut, too, doubts that the virus will become milder over time and spare its host. “It doesn’t work that way,” he says. As long as it can successfully infect new cells, reproduce and transmit to new ones, it doesn’t matter whether it harms the host, he says.

But others think there is a chance for a better outcome. It might give people antibodies that will offer at least partial protection, says Klaus Stöhr, who headed the World Health Organization’s SARS research and epidemiology division. Stöhr says that immunity will not be perfect — people who are reinfected will still develop minor symptoms, the way they do now from the common cold, and there will be rare examples of severe disease. But the virus’s proofreading mechanism means it will not mutate quickly, and people who were infected will retain robust protection, he says.

“By far the most likely scenario is that the virus will continue to spread and infect most of the world population in a relatively short period of time,” says Stöhr, meaning one to two years. “Afterwards, the virus will continue to spread in the human population, likely forever.” Like the four generally mild human coronaviruses, SARS-CoV-2 would then circulate constantly and cause mainly mild upper respiratory tract infections, says Stöhr. For that reason, he adds, vaccines won’t be necessary.

Some previous studies support this argument. One10 showed that when people were inoculated with the common-cold coronavirus 229E, their antibody levels peaked two weeks later and were only slightly raised after a year. That did not prevent infections a year later, but subsequent infections led to few, if any, symptoms and a shorter period of viral shedding.'

The OC43 coronavirus offers a model for where this pandemic might go. That virus also gives humans common colds, but genetic research from the University of Leuven in Belgium suggests that OC43 might have been a killer in the past11. That study indicates that OC43 spilled over to humans in around 1890 from cows, which got it from mice. The scientists suggest that OC43 was responsible for a pandemic that killed more than one million people worldwide in 1889–90 — an outbreak previously blamed on influenza. Today, OC43 continues to circulate widely and it might be that continual exposure to the virus keeps the great majority of people immune to it.


From:

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01315-7

This is what I hope will be the likely scenario.

Cambridge have said that all lectures will be online for the duration of the 2020/21 academic term. I expect now that one of the big two has made the call that other Russell Group institutions will follow suit. We (UofGlasgow) are looking at reworking courses for online delivery for at least the first semester.

Before it gets lots of news attention, however, it's worth knowing that the overwhelming majority of teaching at Cambridge is done in supervisions and seminars in small groups (generally 5 or less) and they still hope to have these. We'll see what other universities who are reliant on large groups and don't have the abundance of spacious teaching facilities that Cambridge colleges have decide to do.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52732818

Whoops a doodle! Data breach already on a Coronavirus tracking app in the U.K.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52732818

Whoops a doodle! Data breach already on a Coronavirus tracking app in the U.K.

Not the app - just someone using CC instead of BCC when emailing out to trainees.

Amateur hour.

 Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52732818

Whoops a doodle! Data breach already on a Coronavirus tracking app in the U.K.

and people wonder why we want local data saving over here and why it was such a big deal that we literally stopped working with the EU because of their insistence on saving data centrally.

 Grey Templar wrote:
Even if it hangs around stubbornly, its still not worth a vaccine. The death's that a vaccine might prevent over the next 5-6 years will be very small compared to what what could be saved if that $ was put towards treating the people who are sick now. Or going after other more dangerous diseases.

No. It’s the deaths going forward, not in a neat little time bundle.

See, you need to look at what happens when idiots listen to the like of Jenny ‘no medical qualifications at all, but she’s on the Internet so clearly knows all’ McCarthy. The sort that don’t even grasp that Andrew ‘struck off, disbarred, disgraced’ Wakefield’s dodgy paper was saying a single, very specific vaccine (combined MMR) May have a link to autism, not that all vaccines cause autism, refuse to get their kids vaccinated.

Diseases all but eradicated start coming back. Look into it, there’s (reliable, verifiable, scientific) evidence out there - and no few dead kids.

That is why a vaccine is important for any emergent disease. Because the thing with diseases? They don’t just go away on their own, like an irritating relative come to visit for the afternoon. Once they’re here, they’re here.

What’s the cost of treating the future cases where we don’t bother developing a vaccine?