Unsurprisingly the media is coming out with the usual simplistic old dross.
Much is being said of the fact that it will take a long time for sufficient of the population to be vaccinated for any kind of herd immunity to be achieved and so lock down blah blah blah must be maintained.
There are two [main] problems with COVID-19.
1) Catching it
2) Dying from it
The vaccination program should quickly make in-roads into 2) since it will be tackling those most likely to die.
Even though the fatality rate is pretty low anyway, one would still expect it to fall quite significantly in fairly short order.
Apparently the vast majority of deaths are in the >75yrs age group. There are 5 million people over 75 in the UK. Roughly the amount that the Government says it will have vaccinated by mid January. Many more, more quickly if the Astra-Zeneca vaccine becomes available.
Maximum immunity being achieved 28 days after the second jab, but significant immunity being achieved after the first.
Back of a beer mat maths suggests that the death rate should halve by mid Jan and drop to around 5% of it's current levels by mid Feb. (it's 1% now so it should drop to .005%)
How long to stop people catching the disease who are virtually entirely at no risk of dying from it anyway is a much less important timeframe.
Surely the restrictions can be removed very soon and even before that should be focussed on separating the vulnerable, not crippling the entire country?
We've been on the edge of over-reaction for some time, but surely we are really into that arena now.
Last edited by: No FM2R on Wed 9 Dec 20 at 14:12
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