Had we locked down earlier the second time we would have had less cases, less virus cells mutating so not only would we not have had as many deaths, and have not needed as long of a lockdown to get the cases back down to a manageable level. We would have also had a good chance the UK variant would have never had occurred and spread around the world causing many thousands of deaths. (because that first infected case might never have been infected) We wouldn't have been able to eliminate the virus in the world, or even the UK but we could have saved many lives. And its the same now, what we do earlier, as it is starting to spread, has a much greater effect than what we do later when the number of infections has peaked and its about to start going back down. Not everything is going to happen regardless of our actions.
There's still no evidence that the so called UK variant originated here is there? Think I recall there being cases of it in US at a similar time if not before. It being identified here first isn't necessarily the same thing, neither is it a surprise as we do far more genome sequencing than other nation. Think it's around half but @ChilcoSaint will know better. Don't necessarily disagree with your post other than that, my point is that I don't believe eliminating it is a realistic goal (which you appear to agree with).
We can defeat it like Smallpox, which took over 150 years to defeat so think we should probably think of how to live our lives with it in between
It only took 150 years to defeat smallpox because we didn’t have DNA sequencing technology for the whole of that time.
All the more reason to get vaccinated as with all the crap and preservatives they put in, we will live to be 150 years old and see the end of this.
Also, I suspect that if at any point from 1800-1960 you'd offered the "have a pretty miserable 18 months and then smallpox won't be a thing" bargain, you'd have gotten really high buy-in on that. I mean, you got really high buy-in on "volunteer for a treatment that will kill 1-3% of you".
Though it's probably worth considering that the world's population has increased by more than 3 billion since it was eradicated. I'd imagine international travel is much more common now than then too. And it's other nations which make me so certain that it won't be eradicated because you won't reach high levels of vaccination absolutely everywhere. Think a recent survey said only 40/50% of people in France want the vaccine. What percentages will be hit in corrupt third world countries?
It's definitely a problem. It is a question of whether that hesitancy will remain quite as high as more and more countries get back to normal, however. Polls in Europe/North America have shown increasing numbers of people willing to get vaccinated, to the point where the number of people actually vaccinated exceeds what semi-recent polling indicated: France is at 45% of the population with at least one dose, and 23% with two, and the vaccine rate isn't decelerating. We could ultimately end up with a situation similar to polio, where it's eradicated in all but a few pockets, but lacks enough hosts to really break out or mutate enough to outshoot vaccine coverage. Which isn't as good as eradicating it entirely, obviously, but we could reach a point where it's eradicated in 90%+ of the world.
My daughter tested positive yesterday at University - four days before she was due to come home. Quite a few cases at er University in the last week or so. No symptoms yet which is good. It does look as if this variant is starting to spread quickly amongst the non-vaccinated youth.
Cba to find the thread I did but anyone seen MLT's latest lunacy? Retweeting something insinuating that Eriksen collapsed due to a covid vaccine? I mean, ffs
Ffs Matty. Stop being a dick In other news, it has been suggested that Van Morrison shouldn’t be allowed to play Glastonbury because of similar Covid related dickhead statements. Which is utter bollocks imo, because I can listen to his music without listening to his opinions on the Virus.
Let him play provided he complies with all CV-19 protocols and doesn't use his performance to air his debunked views. https://variety.com/2020/music/news/van-morrison-eric-clapton-covid-19-1234843728/