Are government about to do a u-turn after vaccine rollout?

[Amity Island]

This sounds like the government are hinting at a u-turn after the roll out of the vaccines. Saying it's NOT the vaccines that control the number of cases but the lockdowns.

Does this sound like more lockdowns are coming? It would make sense given I've always said, the whole thing has been driven by the green agenda, reducing CO2 emissions, reducing travel, closing businesses, bringing about a working from home, shop from home, eat at home and the Great Reset.

COVID-19: Lockdown is main reason for drop in coronavirus cases and deaths - not vaccinations, says Boris Johnson

The PM suggests the millions of jabs given over the past few months was not key to the reduction in COVID levels.

news.sky.com

 

[Inka]

I think it’s just trying to ensure that people continue to be cautious. The vaccine roll-out is progressing fast, which is good, but we still need to be careful and social distance and wear masks, etc.

Also, the people who have been vaccinated so far are largely the more vulnerable like the older people and people like us with diabetes and other health conditions. So it’s likely these cohorts have been careful about contact anyway. That is, although the vaccines are great for those vaccinated, the people vaccinated so far are largely not the biggest spreaders of Covid. Therefore the Lockdown, which controlled the biggest spreaders, contributed more to the reduction in cases.

So no, I don’t think we’ll lockdown again for a while.

 

[Leadinglights]

That seems logical as the people who have had the vaccine are still being cautious and until the under 50 age groups get vaccinated it has been the lockdown that has restricted all those not vaccinated from mixing in at risk situations.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Saying it's NOT the vaccines that control the number of cases but the lockdowns.

No, I think it's reporting the reality but a bit oversimplified. What the PM might have said is that the fall in cases is pretty much all due to the restrictions but that there's some signs that deaths are falling faster in older people and some hints that that's also happening for cases. That's not really a soundbite, though.

I don't get the impression that experts are sure they can see the effects of vaccinations in cases just yet; probably the signal's there but it's still mostly the social restrictions. (It's also possible I'm out of date about this. I remember people a couple of weeks ago talking about possible signs of the effect of vaccinations and not being that confident about them yet.)

I think they're much more confident in Israel, but obviously there's some worry we might end up a bit more like Chile instead.

I think it's against CRG and the like who want to speed up the current roadmap. I doubt the government wants to slow it down unless something really dramatic happens. (An example would be this variant allegedly from South Africa which I assume is now widespread (though in low numbers). If it really does turn out that our vaccines work sufficiently poorly against it I could imagine them changing things a bit.)

 

[Amity Island]

No, I think it's reporting the reality but a bit oversimplified.

Now imagine they had reported that "reality" 6 months ago, told us that the vaccines are not going to have much impact on covid19, that it's really the lockdowns and restrictions that do the work, how would that have effected the vaccine roll out? How would that of convinced people to take the vaccine?

All seems counter intuitive to me, against what we all believed about the purpose of the vaccines.

They've been telling us that all the restrictions were needed to be in place UNTIL the vaccines are rolled out, now the vaccines are being rolled out, now telling us it's not the vaccines that help, but it's the lockdowns.

Somethings not right.

This whole pandemic/lockdown hasn't sat right with me from the very beginning and this latest news has done nothing to convince me otherwise.

 

[Inka]

@Amity Island What hasn’t sat right with you? You’re concerned and I’d be interested to know why and to follow your thinking.

I feel we all see things through the lens of our beliefs. You mention vaccines being put forward as the answer and now not being the answer, but to me the message has been fairly consistent - get vaccinated but we’ll still need to take precautions. Even back in Dec 2020, scientists were saying that - that vaccines wouldn’t be an end to things yet. Part of the conflicting-sounding messages is down to the government’s incompetence, I feel.

 

[Amity Island]

@Amity Island What hasn’t sat right with you? You’re concerned and I’d be interested to know why and to follow your thinking.

I feel we all see things through the lens of our beliefs. You mention vaccines being put forward as the answer and now not being the answer, but to me the message has been fairly consistent - get vaccinated but we’ll still need to take precautions. Even back in Dec 2020, scientists were saying that - that vaccines wouldn’t be an end to things yet. Part of the conflicting-sounding messages is down to the government’s incompetence, I feel.

Tucker Carlson might explain it better. Seems the same u-turn is happening in US. I was under the impression the lifting of restrictions came as a result of the vaccines. To me Johnson is saying more lockdowns may be coming even after the vaccine rollout.

 

[Inka]

Thanks @Amity Island I’ll watch that.

I had a quick Google and found this from early December:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/coronavirus-swiss-cheese-infection-mackay.html

There the vaccines are mentioned as being one more layer of the ‘Swiss Cheese’. That was before the vaccine roll-out.

 

[Amity Island]

Thanks @Amity Island I’ll watch that.

I had a quick Google and found this from early December:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/05/health/coronavirus-swiss-cheese-infection-mackay.html

There the vaccines are mentioned as being one more layer of the ‘Swiss Cheese’. That was before the vaccine roll-out.

Hi Inka,

I'm as certain as I can be that the majority of people in the UK and around the world believed that the vaccines would get life back to normal.

Would be interesting to do a poll on that question (Do you believe vaccine rollouts will get your life back to normal and allow the lifting of restrictions?) to put what I am saying into context.

n.b

Did anyone else on here think that was the case? Or is it literally just me and my imagination?

 

[Amity Island]

@Amity Island What hasn’t sat right with you? You’re concerned and I’d be interested to know why and to follow your thinking.

My thinking is; there is more to the lockdowns than just the virus. As I said in the post, I believe there are others things going on in the world besides the pandemic, like the 2020-2030 being the critical years to address climate change.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Now imagine they had reported that "reality" 6 months ago, told us that the vaccines are not going to have much impact on covid19, that it's really the lockdowns and restrictions that do the work, how would that have effected the vaccine roll out? How would that of convinced people to take the vaccine?

You're reading much too much into my comment. The vaccinations (so far) aren't having that much impact on case numbers, since the vaccinations so far have been in the people who (for the most part) aren't spreading the virus that much.

They are having an effect on hospitalisations and deaths. (The fall in deaths was (a couple of months after they had been vaccinated) a bit faster in people over 65 than in the rest of the population.)

That doesn't mean that vaccinations won't, in the future, be significant in reducing cases. That depends on a large enough proportion of the population (including younger people, who are generally less vulnerable) getting vaccinated.

 

[Amity Island]

You're reading much too much into my comment. The vaccinations (so far) aren't having that much impact on case numbers, since the vaccinations so far have been in the people who (for the most part) aren't spreading the virus that much.

They are having an effect on hospitalisations and deaths. (The fall in deaths was (a couple of months after they had been vaccinated) a bit faster in people over 65 than in the rest of the population.)

That doesn't mean that vaccinations won't, in the future, be significant in reducing cases. That depends on a large enough proportion of the population (including younger people, who are generally less vulnerable) getting vaccinated.

Hi Bruce,

Are you saying you've never been under the impression vaccines would get things back to normal for those who have had a vaccine and that this is how you expected things would go? I think this is where we both see things differently. I certainly was under the impression vaccines would allow people to get back to normal.

 

[Amity Island]

So now we are in the situation where the goverment are saying the vaccines aren't going to make much impact on covid19 and that it's the lockdowns that are the only way way to control the virus.

Now let me refer to this graph which I have refered to before. It's a graph from March 2020. It shows no evidence of any excess deaths before lockdown but a huge spike in deaths immediately after lockdown.

So do lockdowns work (as Johnson is saying?) If not (as graph shows) and vaccines don't do much either then where does that leave us?

 

[Bruce Stephens]

Are you saying you've never been under the impression vaccines would get things back to normal for those who have had a vaccine and that this is how you expected things would go? I think this is where we both see things differently. I certainly was under the impression vaccines would allow people to get back to normal.

That's a slightly different question. I was hoping that the government would continue to regard mere infections as a bad thing (so pay attention to cases as well as hospitalisations and deaths).

I know that in the US the CDC has offered advice on what vaccinated people can safely do and perhaps we should adopt something similar. The catch is that they mean people who've had both doses (of the 2-dose vaccines), and I think our government has decided it's not so valuable for us to do that because of our 12 week gap between doses (so we don't have so many fully vaccinated people).

 

[Amity Island]

I was hoping that the government would continue to regard mere infections as a bad thing (so pay attention to cases as well as hospitalisations and deaths).

That's what I thought would happen too. That provided all the deaths, hospitalisations and serious illness is prevented with the vaccines, then the number of cases would be un-important in terms of lifting restrictions, we've got to get back to living freely at some point.

 

[Bruce Stephens]

That's what I thought would happen too.

I mean the converse: I think reducing infections from this relatively new virus is sensible regardless, so we should not ignore case numbers. Regardless, the vaccines are really good but they're not perfect, so reducing infection levels will also reduce serious illness, hospitalisations, and deaths even if we had 100% of people vaccinated. (Though if we have 100% of people vaccinated then that would likely reduce infections dramatically anyway.)

 

[Robin]

Now let me refer to this graph which I have refered to before. It's a graph from March 2020. It shows no evidence of any excess deaths before lockdown but a huge spike in deaths immediately after lockdown

And I have commented to you before, that the average stay in hospital, or time lived fighting Covid is at least a month, often longer, so the rise in deaths has a time lag from the case rate surge. I have heard Jonathan Van Tam say this several times in briefings.

 

[Inka]

@Amity Island I watched all that video you posted. Although there are some sensible points eg about finding out more about the 6 women who reacted to the J&J vaccine, particularly whether they’d had Covid before, the style of the video was, to me, slightly reminiscent of all those conspiracy videos about non-Covid subjects on YouTube.

An example of that is the section which features video of Justin Trudeau. There’s the big build up about the vaccines being ineffective, not working, etc and oh look, here’s the PM of Canada saying the same thing out loud! But - he doesn’t. He just repeats what we all know - that vaccines aren’t 100% effective and that we’ll still need to maintain masks and social distancing for a while. But people won’t think that. They’ve been primed by the intro to see his reasonable comments as an admission of the vaccines not working.

Manipulation and techniques like that obscure any valid arguments being made. Maybe it’s a cultural thing.

I think we will get back to living freely. I went out this week and, apart from the masks, things were pretty normal.

 

[Amity Island]

I think we will get back to living freely. I went out this week and, apart from the masks, things were pretty normal.

I certainly hope so, but for me, what Johnson said seems to be pointing in the other direction.

 

[Inka]

Hi Inka,

I'm as certain as I can be that the majority of people in the UK and around the world believed that the vaccines would get life back to normal.

Would be interesting to do a poll on that question (Do you believe vaccine rollouts will get your life back to normal and allow the lifting of restrictions?) to put what I am saying into context.

n.b

Did anyone else on here think that was the case? Or is it literally just me and my imagination?

I think they saw it as a massive step forward towards normal - and it is. I was excited to have a vaccine too, but then when you stop to think about it, you realise that that’s more complicated than it seems eg the U.K. is doing really well with its vaccination schedule, but globally the majority of people are still unvaccinated. So, quite apart from the fact the vaccine isn’t 100% protection, unvaccinated people can spread Covid, can move around and re-establish infection where it had previously been eradicated, etc.

So we’re on the path back to normality but that path isn’t short. There’s a lot to do to vaccinate everyone, to deal with variants of the virus, to set up and maintain systems that will jump on any resurgence and extinguish it quickly.

Added to that is, of course, the issue that some people in the U.K. and elsewhere are refusing the vaccine. That’s their right, but it’s not going to make the route to normality any easier or quicker.

That means it’s a vicious circle. They watch videos like the one above, take that as a conspiracy of some kind, wonder why we can’t get back to normal now we have the vaccines, then refuse the vaccine themselves making it slower to get back to normal, then see that very slowness as proof that ‘something dodgy’ is going on. And around we go.