As ever, The Line brings fresh air and perspective. Thanks and, as a relatively new Canadian, I’m looking forward to your navigation through the straits ahead.
I don't believe that the Delta Variant (my name: The Modi Malady - "credit" where due) story has actually "played out" yet in the UK. After the big spike, June 20-July 20, up to 45,000 cases/day, it did drop as sharply - but the plunge seems to have halted around 26,000 cases per day, the last few days. It will probably keep finding "pockets of the unvaccinated", outbreak after outbreak, numbers going up and down, but never down to what Canada would call 'acceptable'.
26,000 cases/day is the same as Canada's population having 14,000 per day. FYI, our absolute worst days were at 9,000/day. If you want to call that Britain being stable and OK to go forward, your call.
Yet hospital rates -- which are now the key metric in a heavily vaccinated society like ours -- remained at a fraction of what they were at the UK's second wave peak, and they aren't expected to go up more than that now. Raw case rates will probably go up and drop over the next few years; but that no longer matters if the actual population impact is comparable to a seasonal flu.
Besides, what's your solution, exactly? If the vaccines don't work, then your answer is what? Close the schools/businesses down ever time the case rates start to spike? How many more years are you willing to live like this?
When cases took off in early June, 8 Britons were dying per day. There are now 88. Over 300 dead since your reply to me. That's about 1 in 500 cases from 3 weeks earlier, terminating. A wonderful improvement on 1 in 100 !
Alas, an exponential growth will simply become 5X larger and the death rate will become the same, as long as ENOUGH unvaccinated are there to kill.
My indication that the case-rate was stabilizing ,probably because of spontaneously changed behaviours from people willing to "live like that" rather than get sick - has continued for 3 more days, too. It's half the case-rate of 3 weeks ago, so the death rate will soon drop to mid-40s per day. But that's because of people NOT acting like everything is back to normal.
I'm willing to live like this for several more months, if necessary; a fair fraction of a one year. That's long enough to encourage/hector/mandate most of the remaining procrastinators (true anti-vaxxers are actually rare, under 10%), and, of course, vaccinate the kids. Which I wish we would "emergency" move forward to fall.
Your condition that "If vaccines don't work" is inaccurate; they DO work; the UK dead are mostly not vaccinated, and I can patiently await the rest of their fellows becoming frightened. Or immunized by disease. Or dead. You just want to speed up that process, and since people don't change their minds as fast as Delta can spike, your way will produce a lot more dead bodies.
I am done with those whose impulse is to take away choices in a constitutional democracy like Canada. I am even more done with the politicians and mandarins who are seemingly drunk on the power to take away choices both personal and economic. It has not been a long slide to the days of the Japanese internment camps, only today they would be called "preventive" mandatory quarantine.
As ever, The Line brings fresh air and perspective. Thanks and, as a relatively new Canadian, I’m looking forward to your navigation through the straits ahead.
I don't believe that the Delta Variant (my name: The Modi Malady - "credit" where due) story has actually "played out" yet in the UK. After the big spike, June 20-July 20, up to 45,000 cases/day, it did drop as sharply - but the plunge seems to have halted around 26,000 cases per day, the last few days. It will probably keep finding "pockets of the unvaccinated", outbreak after outbreak, numbers going up and down, but never down to what Canada would call 'acceptable'.
26,000 cases/day is the same as Canada's population having 14,000 per day. FYI, our absolute worst days were at 9,000/day. If you want to call that Britain being stable and OK to go forward, your call.
Yet hospital rates -- which are now the key metric in a heavily vaccinated society like ours -- remained at a fraction of what they were at the UK's second wave peak, and they aren't expected to go up more than that now. Raw case rates will probably go up and drop over the next few years; but that no longer matters if the actual population impact is comparable to a seasonal flu.
Besides, what's your solution, exactly? If the vaccines don't work, then your answer is what? Close the schools/businesses down ever time the case rates start to spike? How many more years are you willing to live like this?
When cases took off in early June, 8 Britons were dying per day. There are now 88. Over 300 dead since your reply to me. That's about 1 in 500 cases from 3 weeks earlier, terminating. A wonderful improvement on 1 in 100 !
Alas, an exponential growth will simply become 5X larger and the death rate will become the same, as long as ENOUGH unvaccinated are there to kill.
My indication that the case-rate was stabilizing ,probably because of spontaneously changed behaviours from people willing to "live like that" rather than get sick - has continued for 3 more days, too. It's half the case-rate of 3 weeks ago, so the death rate will soon drop to mid-40s per day. But that's because of people NOT acting like everything is back to normal.
I'm willing to live like this for several more months, if necessary; a fair fraction of a one year. That's long enough to encourage/hector/mandate most of the remaining procrastinators (true anti-vaxxers are actually rare, under 10%), and, of course, vaccinate the kids. Which I wish we would "emergency" move forward to fall.
Your condition that "If vaccines don't work" is inaccurate; they DO work; the UK dead are mostly not vaccinated, and I can patiently await the rest of their fellows becoming frightened. Or immunized by disease. Or dead. You just want to speed up that process, and since people don't change their minds as fast as Delta can spike, your way will produce a lot more dead bodies.
I am done with those whose impulse is to take away choices in a constitutional democracy like Canada. I am even more done with the politicians and mandarins who are seemingly drunk on the power to take away choices both personal and economic. It has not been a long slide to the days of the Japanese internment camps, only today they would be called "preventive" mandatory quarantine.