Ireland’s plan

[cromwell]

But never mind, we are old and economically inactive oxygen thieves and wasters of rations - expendable. I have actually read comments to that effect.

That's just horrible.

I am not against the gradual easing of the lockdown, far from it, I look forward to it, but there had better be strong measures put in place to protect the vulnerable amongst us. We already put ourselves at risk by simply catching a bus, and you can bet your house on us not being a priority for any vaccines that come along.

Dead right there. A vaccine might not come along at all but improvements in treating covid surely will.
I did read an Israeli doctor who postulates that covid is a "seventy day" virus. That it peaks at forty days and dwindles after seventy. Fingers crossed he's right.
One thing that does strike me is that as we are behind Italy, France and Spain, different parts of the UK will be behind London and the cities and will peak after London's peak.
Thenext two years are going to be interesting. There is already talk of relaxing the 2m rule to 1m.

[TheOstrich]

When the restrictions are lifted we will only go out when we feel it is safe to go.

We had already thought the same, Cruiser. I doubt we'll be resuming "life" as it was before the virus for a very long time, if at all, I'm sorry to say.

Workingman wrote:
But never mind, we are old and economically inactive oxygen thieves and wasters of rations - expendable. I have actually read comments to that effect.

That's just horrible.

It is, and tells you all you need to know about some segments of society today.

[miasmum]

I'm not getting involved in the debate on this, but one thing I will say is what on earth makes you think the elderly and vulnerable will be last in the queue for vaccines? Who is first in the queue for the flu vaccine, who is first in the queue for the pneumonia vaccine, who is first in the queue for the shingles vaccines???? The elderly and the vulnerable, us fit and healthy bods that go to work every day and are still going to work every day don't get a look in.

The other co-hort that are first in the queue for the flu vaccine are those working as carer's and for the NHS and yes they will also be first in the queue for the vaccine and I dare say as with the flu vaccine those that can afford to may be able to buy a Covid-19, so yes in that way money will talk.

[jenniren]

I agree shell, there is no reason to suppose the distribution of a vaccine will be done any differently to how they prioritise the flu jab. In fact Matt Hancock has said exactly that. Apart from any other consideration, it's the sensible thing to do if we're to keep hospital admissions down.

[Suff]

I think, mm, that the vaccine will be first administered to carers, then the working population. The reason for this is that it is vital, for the health of the country at large, that we get back to work and have a function on health system.

It is no good having an economy in shambles and the workers not able to work. That is not good fiscal management and, once we have a choice, that will be stressed very strongly.

Shelter in place is a viable solution for those who do not have to work and will be the solution of choice until sufficient vaccene is produced. Those who have to work and travel to work, cannot shelter in place.

So I expect the government to do the sensible thing. Which is to get the country moving. Also, the more workers that get the vaccene, the less risk there is for the general population at large as they will not spread it.

I expect children to get it before the old as well. But probably not before the workers but you can never tell with politicians. Protecting the children sounds very good to a politician, something they can sell at an election. So this may change the trajectory.

As for grandparents hoping to get to touch their grandchildren again as soon as the lock down is eased? I only have one thing to say about that. The clearest message that came from Italy was that the vast majority of infected children were undetectable without a test. So they became incubators of the virus and, quite literally, killed their grandparents when they went to visit. If you are a grandparent and have young grandchildren, having them visit in the weeks after the lock down is like playing Russian roulette with half rhe gun full of cartridges. The only safe time will be one visit immediately the lock down lifts and only direct from home to home.

But, in my view, people should be entitled to take whatever risks they want with their own life, just not with the lives of others.

Whether they recognise the risk or not? There was a time when humans migrated seasonally to follow the food. Those who could not keep up did not make it. Only the strongest, fittest and most astute survived. Over the last two centuries we have derailed evolution. For both good and bad. Every now and again the world provides a reminder as to why evolution works.

[Workingman]

Shell, vaccines for shingles, pneumonia and influenza have been around for decades and are constantly in production. Some of them, like flu, are tweaked for the season. They are widely available though some at risk groups are prioritised.

SARS-cov-19 is different. It is new and there is currently no vaccine. When one or some vaccines come along they will be expensive or in limited supply or both. That is what initially happened with penicillin.

Once they do come on line the sensible thing to do would be to give them to those most at risk, doctors, nurses, care workers and others in the health care sector such as yourself. The next in line will be other key workers needed to keep the economy going, and there are ever so many within that grouping such as energy supply, the food chain, transport, logistics and so on. The line then gets longer and longer and somewhere near the end of it are those of us who are economically inactive, we must accept that.

Yes, we will treat some of the most vulnerable, if only for humanitarian reasons or to prevent the inundation of the NHS, but many of us will just have to be patient until such time as production can be ramped up to protect us all. It could be some time unless there is a breakthrough in manufacture, again, same as penicillin.

I am not complaining about that as we are where we are - it's just life.

[cromwell]

MERS and SARS broke out years since and there isn't currently a vaccine for either.
So "who gets the covid vaccine first?" could well be a rhetorical question for some time to come.

[Suff]

Crommers, neither SARS, nor MERS, have spread like Covid-19 and they infected less in total than are infected in a single day plus they killed less than are dying in a single day.

There is an order of magnitude difference between the efforts put into a regional outbreak and a global pandemic of this kind.

On top of that, since those outbreaks, we are building on top of the work done to create the Ebola treatments. Whole new biological frameworks were created for Ebola and are being used for Covid. At the beginning it was stated that the current level of skill and knowledge with Vaccenes would reduce the time to create one by about a year. This was due to the level of funding pushed in for Ebola.

Like all branches of science, they tend to move faster if the money is there and the career path looks good enough for the most brilliant.

I am fairly confident they will be able to create a vaccene within the next year. There is, quite literally, $77tn of world Gdp at risk which means the money taps are full on and considerations like whether the vaccene will do damage to humans is much lower. More people will die in a day today than will possibly be damaged in early human trials. So the normal rules don't apply.

[Workingman]

Going back to SARS, even though SARS died away to some degree we are fortunate that research into it continued. The latest news is that a team for the University of Utrecht has been going through its collection of potential antibodies to SARS and discovered one that could also block the novel coronavirus from infecting human cells.

It is not a vaccine, more a treatment, but as it is a human antibody and not from an intermediate species the research and trial time could be cut dramatically.

This news comes on the back of the plasma trial and now a protein trial at a Southampton hospital. The trial hopes to introduce the protein interferon beta into our system to boost the body's own production of it. Apparently interferon beta is our body's first line of defence in a viral attack and SARS-cov-19 does its level best to stop us producing it.

[manxie]

Hi all

Here on the Isle of Man we started relaxation of the rules Friday last week (24th) at 6 am some construction workers gardeners window cleaners were allowed to return to work observing the 2 metre rules.

Hopefully thursday this week they are to announce further relaxation.

We have had one bad cluster in a home where 18 residents all contracted covid and have died but the other 40 odd staff and residents who tested positive are getting better or are clear.

So far on island we have lost another 6 in hospital most connected in some way with the home but whilst that seems high for our population the stats show a better figure over 3,000 tests have been done here ( we have our own testing lab here now) and only 300 ish 10% tested positive and 24 deaths but subtract the home numbers and 6 deaths out of the 300+ positive is quite low by comparison, I believe we are rated about 5th in the world for testing per head of population.

And of the 300+ positives less than 70 still have covid.

The government today has allowed golf to restart also saturday fishing in resevoirs and from the beach/ piers is allowed also exercising of horses on the roads, as is exercising with none household members allowed and as long as the 2 metre distancing is observed, we are expecting more soon but as expected should there be a spike in cases retro steps may be taken, but all in all things are looking up for us.

Manxie xx