Covid variant found in India may delay lifting of England restrictions, minister admits

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Children are currently a Petre dish, a hotbed for brewing up new variants, even as they are only mildly affected by the virus. As long as the government avoids vaccinating children, schools will be awash with infections. Not worried about home grown variants, @Bruce Stephens ?
 
mikeyB said:
As long as the government avoids vaccinating children, schools will be awash with infections.
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I'm fine with vaccinating children (though the government and advisors seem against it at present). My hunch is that as we vaccinate adults and get into summer, case numbers will fall in all ages including children. But there are a lot of children so perhaps I'm wrong and they'll provide a large enough population to keep infections going for months yet.

I presume modellers are looking at possible strategies (including vaccinating children in order (mostly) to protect adults).

It might depend on vaccine availability as much as anything. And as other countries start vaccinating children perhaps that'll push us to too.
 
Whatever the government does, it will be weeks too late if previous decisions are anything to rely on. The only strategy at the moment is how far loosening of lockdown can go before too many bodies pile up. Won’t matter to this government if they only pile up possible Labour voters or immigrants.
 
Amity Island said:
Also PM133,

Vaccines don't stop people catching sarscov2, vaccines only work at reducing covid19. So, why (as the government are proposing in Bolton) would a surge in vaccinations have any impact on reducing case/infection numbers? Vaccinated or not, people are going to catch sarscov2 no matter what the strain.
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Forgive me if I’m being ignorant here - I thought sarscov2 was covid-19, what’s the difference please?

Also, does anyone know how the lateral flow tests work? My daughter’s friend spilled a drink on the test strip, having not put her sample on it yet, and got a positive result! What’s it testing for, if it can find it in orange juice?!
Makes me wonder if it’s really worth all the effort of doing the darn things twice a week...
 
Sally71 said:
Forgive me if I’m being ignorant here - I thought sarscov2 was covid-19, what’s the difference please?
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I thought the same. I even googled it, and found that the two terms were used interchangeably.
 
Bruce Stephens said:
They are used somewhat interchangeably, but SARS-CoV-2 is the virus and COVID-19 is the disease caused by it.

(Something like HIV and AIDS.)
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Thank you. So I assume @Amity Island is saying that you will encounter the actual microbes whether you are vaccinated or not, but you won’t develop the disease if you’ve been vaccinated (or are less likely to). I would assume, though, that if you have been vaccinated, if you do meet up with an infected person, the viral load you will then carry will be negligible because your body will kill it off before it replicates too much, so you are much less likely to pass it on.
 
Robin said:
I thought the same. I even googled it, and found that the two terms were used interchangeably.
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Robin,

We've got millions of people worldwide thinking people are getting tested for covid19 (at these "covid19" test centres) when this is just not the case.

There is no test for covid19.

It's fine when lay people get mixed up between the two (as @Bruce Stephens said they are used interchangeably), but when medical people, governments and doctors are missunderstanding the fundamental difference and basing entire public awareness campaigns and testing on the wrong terms you have to question what is happening?

There is rarely any mention of the clear distinction between the virus and the disease.

Many people catch sarscov2 but that doesn't automatically mean you will develop covid19, it doesn't necessarily cause covid19.

The pcr tests themselves are hardly much use. They don't tell you if you are infectious, currently have it or had it, they don't tell you if you are ill. They are known to give false positives, even more so when mass testing those with no symptoms, false negatives and as @Sally71 said, many people have reported getting positve results from all sorts of other substances they have swabbed like drinks, fruit etc
 
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This is a good watch. Some good questions raised on why the variant arrived in Britain. Seems the answer is because we have adopted the strategy that many people are vaccinated so no need to stop incoming flights from India.

Also interesting point about how the laws were lifted on the 17th May, now the red, amber green light system is just guidance.

 
On the other hand, it’s general that we talk about getting the measles vaccine, and catching measles, and suffering from measles in the same breath.
 
Robin said:
On the other hand, it’s general that we talk about getting the measles vaccine, and catching measles, and suffering from measles in the same breath.
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Yes, but you have to admit, all those people waiting for a "covid19" test don't know that there isn't a covid19 test. I think this is an important point, particularly when medically speaking about viruses etc by your own admission, you weren't aware of the difference.
 
Amity Island said:
Yes, but you have to admit, all those people waiting for a "covid19" test don't know that there isn't a covid19 test. I think this is an important point, particularly when medically speaking about viruses etc by your own admission, you weren't aware of the difference.
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I think you’re splitting hairs on a question of semantics, and I'm not sure people need to know the difference. I am perfectly aware that if you are exposed to a virus, you may or may not develop the disease. If my children had been in contact with someone with chickenpox, I knew they might come out in spots, or not. I didn’t think, Oh dear, they have been exposed to the varicella-zoster virus, I wonder if they will develop chicken pox.
Having a 'covid test' tells you that if you’ve incubated enough of the virus for the test to pick it up, you may pass it on. Having a 'sarscov2' test is meaningless, because the test isn’t sensitive enough to pick up very low levels of the virus, so it doesn’t tell you if you have a small amount of sarscov2 virus in your system that your body is dealing with (whether by natural or vaccine acquired immunity). No test is accurate enough to tell you if you can definitively pass it on or not, but population wide, it picks up more concentrated levels in the body and gives as good an indication as we can get.( I agree, the lateral flow seems less reliable).
 
Amity Island said:
Robin,

We've got millions of people worldwide thinking people are getting tested for covid19 (at these "covid19" test centres) when this is just not the case.

There is no test for covid19.

It's fine when lay people get mixed up between the two (as @Bruce Stephens said they are used interchangeably), but when medical people, governments and doctors are missunderstanding the fundamental difference and basing entire public awareness campaigns and testing on the wrong terms you have to question what is happening?

There is rarely any mention of the clear distinction between the virus and the disease.

Many people catch sarscov2 but that doesn't automatically mean you will develop covid19, it doesn't necessarily cause covid19.

The pcr tests themselves are hardly much use. They don't tell you if you are infectious, currently have it or had it, they don't tell you if you are ill. They are known to give false positives, even more so when mass testing those with no symptoms, false negatives and as @Sally71 said, many people have reported getting positve results from all sorts of other substances they have swabbed like drinks, fruit etc
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I'm not sure this is anything more than a bit of hair-splitting and I'm not really sure what your point is.

For example, governments go on constantly about reducing "carbon emission" but of course we all understand that it is not carbon but carbon dioxide.

When you are dealing with the public, who will largely not have any scientific background at all, you keep things simple or you risk losing the core message in a fog of needless detail.

The big problem right now which is keeping restrictions in place is that we have way too many people refusing to take a vaccine because they are believing a herd of liars out there deliberately spreading utter bullshit about this thing, whether it be Bill Gates, 5G, or any of a long line of other nonsense. I already posted about someone deliberately lying about Glasgow having 5 people in ICU with the Indian variant who were already double vaccinated. There are 4 people in ICU in the entirety of Scotland right now so that story is just malicious crap and the people who engage in it should face prosecution in my opinion.
Just like AIDS and HIV, people are dying needlessly through ignorance.
 
Amity Island said:
This is a good watch. Some good questions raised on why the variant arrived in Britain. Seems the answer is because we have adopted the strategy that many people are vaccinated so no need to stop incoming flights from India.

Also interesting point about how the laws were lifted on the 17th May, now the red, amber green light system is just guidance.

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What makes you think it came directly from India?
That variant could have travelled through any number of countries before arriving here.
And that travel could easily have been a trade thing.
Sadly, we don't live in the 18th century.
The UK simply MUST trade regardless of the pandemic, if only for food, or we'd all be starving in the streets within a week or two.
 
pm133 said:
What makes you think it came directly from India?
That variant could have travelled through any number of countries before arriving here.
And that travel could easily have been a trade thing.
Sadly, we don't live in the 18th century.
The UK simply MUST trade regardless of the pandemic, if only for food, or we'd all be starving in the streets within a week or two.
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I have absolutely no idea where it came from. In the interview they seem to be pushing that idea and the answer was about not stopping flights because our country is well vaccinated.
 
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pm133 said:
I'm not sure this is anything more than a bit of hair-splitting and I'm not really sure what your point is.
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I don't think it is splitting hairs. Having covid19 (coronavirus disease) compared to just testing postive for sarsvoc2 can have two very different outcomes. Anyone who is or has suffered from covid19 will confirm.

My point is, people are queueing for something that doesn't exist.
 
India is passing a very hard time right now. Lots of people already died for Covid-19. Not sure when the pandemic is over and we all will be safe.
 
Amity Island said:
I don't think it is splitting hairs. Having covid19 (coronavirus disease) compared to just testing postive for sarsvoc2 can have two very different outcomes. Anyone who is or has suffered from covid19 will confirm.

My point is, people are queueing for something that doesn't exist.
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So people think they are being tested for one thing but it's actually another.
What of it?
I'm struggling to see the relevance to be fair.
It sounds to me like you are itching to say something but won't come out with it directly.
I think you just need to come straight out and say exactly what it is that you are thinking.
That'll save a bit of time here.
 
pm133 said:
So people think they are being tested for one thing but it's actually another.
What of it?
I'm struggling to see the relevance to be fair.
It sounds to me like you are itching to say something but won't come out with it directly.
I think you just need to come straight out and say exactly what it is that you are thinking.
That'll save a bit of time here.
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Pm133,

I have said exactly what I mean, that's about as concise as I can make it.

There is a huge difference between being tested positive for sarscov2 (a virus) and people coming away from the covid19 testing centres thinking they have covid19. If they had a bad dose of covid19 they probably wouldn't even make it to the test centre.

As I said, ask anyone who has suffered with covid19 if they think it's the same as just getting a positive pcr test result.

Anyone who works as a professional in any field will know how important it is to use the correct terminology. Specific words mean very specific things, very definite and unarguable definitions. I don't think one could argue with their peers about it, one certainly couldn't use the argument "you are just splitting hairs" as an argument for using the wrong terminology when it comes to viruses and diseases.
 
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