Archer-181 wrote:
Could the lower hospitalisation be due to the fact that the Delta variant is a much less worse version of the Virus?
Some might believe that vaccination works in protecting those who chose to get it 
Archer-181 wrote:
Most people seem to be getting symptoms like a Cold these days
Followed I’d imagine by further enhanced immunity.
Could the lower hospitalisation be due to the fact that the Delta variant is a much less worse version of the Virus?
I have not seen evidence suggesting that. The mortality is reported as 2% i.e. 2x more than previous variants. The very low hospital numbers and even (much) lower death numbers are probably due to the 60+ having got a very high vacc coverage – in the 95-99% area. And among the younger people, those who are smart, and those who are medically vulnerable, have also mostly been vacced, regardless of age. Which leaves… exactly which groups? You won’t find the answer on the BBC website because it would be massively non-PC
This is because unvaccinated people are more likely to have symptoms and, as a result, they are more likely to stay at home then spread the virus?
For sure a lot of people are still pretty scared. I’ve been to Alderney last week. Alderney had lived since March 2020 in blissful isolation from the rest of the universe (along with Guernsey, to a slightly smaller extent) and I saw loads of people walking around with masks, in wide open outdoor spaces, showing that a lot of people have no clue whatsoever. One sees some on the mainland too. Some even drive with masks on. If these are not mixing, that will also help.
Archer-181 wrote:
ould the lower hospitalisation be due to the fact that the Delta variant is a much less worse version of the Virus?
What the experts said in our news is that the low hospitalisation is due to the higher share of people who are fully vaccinated and who are protected against the Delta Virus in the sense that while they still get it, it will not cause severe illness.
Amongst the unvaccinated, the Delta variant is classified to be a lot worse than the previous ones: much higher infection rate and about a double as high risk of severe illness and death. They also said incubation time is shorter. Hence there are concerns in some countries that it may yet again put a high load on the hospitals.
The Covid Taskforce in Switzerland has suggested to take harsh measures against the Delta variant, including re-introducing quarantine and PCR testing for everyone returning from affected places, including all vaccinated people. Politicians however do not want to go that way, as they say it would further undermine the motivation to get vaccinated.
Preremark:
It will take significantly more time until we get reliable data on transmissibility of the different Covid variants – if we get it at all. The key challenge is, that we can not measure transmissibility but only observe transmission. At least for the UK-variant (alpha), the South Africa variant (Beta) and the Indian variant (delta) the phase of hyper spread did coincide with a very significant change of behavior of people in the respective regions. Coincidentally these variants all came up exactly at a point where the public lockdown type measures were significantly reduced (legally but even more factually). Therefore it is hard to clean up the data between the transmission of Beta under lockdown in Europe and Delta while some countries are admitting ten thousands to individual football matches,
Archer-181 wrote:
The delta variant is clearly more transmissible as it has out competed the others. Could the lower hospitalisation be due to the fact that the Delta variant is a much less worse version of the Virus?
As we have very high Cross immunization between the variants (i.e. if you have one you are highly unlikely to get the other and there are no known cases of patients with two variants at the same time) the fact that today the majority of cases is Delta does not prove higher transmissibility. It can actually be very small differences that can lead to the fact that one variant is stronger than another. If we have indications for higher transmissibility it is the emerging next wave – but as said above, a significant part of that wave is behavior driven.
It’s unlikely that delta is much worse. The fact that we have less hospitalizations is also driven by other factors:
- Many of the people most at risk of hospitalization have had it and are immune now or have already died from it.
- About half of the population is vaccinated by now. We know that vaccination does not only prevent the infection itself, but if infected it also reduces the symptoms of the acute phase. Therefore in that half of the population vaccinated you would expect significantly lower hospitalizations
- Esp. compared to the first wave, we now have better understood early treatment and therefore are much better at keeping people out of the hospital who have acute symptoms
Archer-181 wrote:
Alternatively, if the above is not true, as we know that vaccinated people are equally likely (at present in the UK) to be carrying the virus, so perhaps they are more dangerous?
This point is being discussed. Theoretically this is indeed an option. If the vaccination would be completely ineffective against transmission but totally effective against symptoms, it would be obviously true.
However, there is no data that this is the case. Actually it looks like a) the vaccination is really effective against infection and b) there is little data that indicates it is actually effective against symptoms in case of infection. What we see is rather, that it helps to prevent severe symptoms but not light ones.
Therefore your point is more a “psychological risk”: Patients will develop (light) symptoms, but some of them might think “I’m vaccinated so that can’t be Covid but must be a flue”. People shouldn’t party with flu either …
IO390 wrote:
I know it’s popular amongst older generations to bash young people,
IO390 wrote:
It seems that it’s people of all ages from BAME communities
Without knowing the details for the UK, in many countries it looks like that we see a comparatively low willingness to vaccinate in comparatively young and comparatively uneducated communities. I strongly believe, one can not blame these people.
In the early stages of the disease, we have told exactly these people: “We do not have enough vaccine and therefore you won’t get any now. But that is not really bad as vaccination is not really important for you. It is much more important that we give the vaccine to those (elderly, white, educated) people who get it now”.
Can we now blame these less educated people that they did not go on the street in riots claiming their share of vaccine these days but actually believed what they have been told? Can we now blame them for not instantly changing their mind after we started telling them “that was only a lie to keep you calm! Obviously vaccination is important for you too and now we have enough vaccine. Therefore now we force you to do something we prevented you to do just 6 months ago”.
The switch of narrative from “you must not” to “you must” has just been too fast esp. for the young and uneducated.
there are no known cases of patients with two variants at the same time
There have been a few reports but in the grand scheme of things statistically insignificant.
https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/12/belgian-woman-infected-with-two-covid-variants-at-the-same-time.html
IO390 wrote:
But middle aged people love to blame everything on the young :)
Because they are jealous for not being young anymore 
Malibuflyer wrote:
In the early stages of the disease, we have told exactly these people: “We do not have enough vaccine and therefore you won’t get any now. But that is not really bad as vaccination is not really important for you. It is much more important that we give the vaccine to those (elderly, white, educated) people who get it now”.
Can we now blame these less educated people that they did not go on the street in riots claiming their share of vaccine these days but actually believed what they have been told? Can we now blame them for not instantly changing their mind after we started telling them “that was only a lie to keep you calm! Obviously vaccination is important for you too and now we have enough vaccine. Therefore now we force you to do something we prevented you to do just 6 months ago”.
In which country exactly was this? I must admin that I haven’t read such statements anywhere. For me the messages at the beginning of vaccine availability were pretty clear “first we have to vaccinate health system workers and older people to prevent overloading hospitals, especially ICU units, later on with vaccine availability we’ll immunize all”. I didn’t notice change in this narrative.
I understand that any campaign for promoting vaccination has to be politically correct but that won’t prevent me calling people, who refuse vaccination because of different conspiracy theories or on religious grounds (which are the main reasons for refusing vaccination), simply stupid.
Emir wrote:
first we have to vaccinate health system workers and older people to prevent overloading hospitals, especially ICU units, later on with vaccine availability we’ll immunize all”
That is a different wording of what I wrote: We told those who have a low vaccination take up now: “Others are more important and you are not!”
Even if it is factually correct, that it is important that everybody gets vaccinated in the end: If you group people into 4 priority classes, the people in the lowest one will always understand “we are not important”. And btw: For many months we have been lucky that the majority of the population believed that because what happened if many people would have thought from day 1 “it is life critical that I get the vaccine asap”. We would have needed the military to protect vaccination centers against raids of frustrated Prio 4s.
Malibuflyer wrote:
We would have needed the military to protect vaccination centers against raids of frustrated Prio 4s.
It’s exaggeration. People are still much easily mobilzed over nationalism and religion rather than poverty or health issues. I live in highly corrupted country that’s economically at the bottom of EU and yet there haven’t been a single riot against poverty or criminal of the ruling party in complete history of Croatia (30 years). However, nationalists riots against minorities fueled by church have happened and are always possible.
Just for the record I have been double jabbed but can anybody point to any study which can show the vaccinated get less ill?
In my local area there are about 3,000 people with Covid19 at present and about 9 people in hospital. In spite of FoI requests, the health authorities refuse to release info if these people are vaccinated or not. I am not a conspiracy theorist and I understand why they wont release this data, the reason is all of the people will be vaccinated as they will be the very old or very fat people with comorbidities. If they release the data then the anti vax crowd will use this to try to prove their point.
Having said that, we seem to be a lot less than 2% as Peter mentions as they all won’t die and this is the most vulnerable group with sypmtoms. I think most studies have revised the IFR downwards massively. 99.97% people survive is often quoted. Is this really incorrect?
What is needed is a proper study which strips out age and comorbidities. Unfortunately nobody will admit the biggest health problem in the UK is people eating a bad diet and eating too much. If you look at people over 50 perhaps 90% of people are either a little or massively overweight. It seems to be accepted that people get fatter as they get older but there is no reason for this to happen.
If we want to “protect the NHS” people need to take responsibility for their actions and eat more salad! The problems caused by obesity are maybe 50-100 times worse than Covid19?
More perspective is needed.
