Northern Europe during Pandemic -- Summers 2020 & 2021 & onwards

[Pelagic]

Originally Posted by Greg K

The real question is whether the production of B and T immune cells recovers at some point post vaccination.

Could be serious implications for health amongst the vaccinated worldwide if that is not the case.

Greg, this was recently explained to me by a South African doctor who suffers from an imbalance of overproduction in his own immune cells and has been medicated for it for a long time .

He will not get vaccinated because of his condition and warns about us becoming complacent about continuing with booster shots of the Pfizer type.

I am following this very closely

[goboatingnow]

Sent to me from a friend in Ireland

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Sent to me from a friend in Ireland

Attachment 248541

Yup.

We're seeing the same thing all over Europe, in the reasonably well vaccinated countries. Thank God indeed.

[boatman61]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

Yup.

We're seeing the same thing all over Europe, in the reasonably well vaccinated countries. Thank God indeed.

I'm wondering if it was tounge in cheek sarcasm as so called 'Breakthrough Infections' keep rising..

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/heal...ated-1.4670229

[goboatingnow]

Oh it’s a joke. But a sad one as the data is true. Why is one of the most successfully vaccinated countries in Western Europe seeing enormous break through infections , increasing hospital attendance and rising ICU admittance. Sure people are not dying but outside nursing homes initially very very few people died in Ireland anyway.

Right now it has people getting scared and policy makers considering restrictions

It’s not about deaths. It’s about hospital capacity , right now Ireland is again turning away and cancelling elective hospital procedures fir non Covid patients. This isn’t acceptable , hence the pressure to Re introduce restrictions on gatherings ( actually few restrictions were removed in reality )

[goboatingnow]

The fact is if cases continue to rise lockdown is inevitable as the rate of hospital admission has to be slowed.

[goboatingnow]

I see the lockdowns have begun again ( or will ) ( Austria ) it looks like a 2020/2021 rerun to me.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

I think the UK is in a very good position at the moment.

But I think the UK paid dearly for it, having endured several really brutal waves of infection and death PLUS months of brutal restrictions.

A really good question is whether the brutal restrictions were ever worth it.

I don't know the answer to that question. With 1687 excess deaths per million, the UK has a better outcome than the mean among European countries. Could it be, that without the brutal restrictions, the UK could have ended up with 5220 excess deaths per million like Bulgaria, or 3110 like Poland, or 2246 like Italy? I don't know. Maybe.

On the other hand, Bulgaria, Poland and Italy all had brutal restrictions of their own, so you can't account for the worse outcomes in those countries, with less strict measures. And with much less strict measures, Germany has 574 deaths per million -- three times less, Sweden has 818 deaths per million -- half as many, Netherlands has 1138, not to speak of Denmark, Norway, and Finland.

Correlation doesn't prove causation so the lessons from this are not obvious. I don't know and I don't think anyone knows yet, but we need to know the answer to this in order to figure out a better pandemic response next time this happens to the world.

We were in England over the winter and I can't say I found the restrictions brutal.

[Greg K]

Originally Posted by Paul L

OKm I'll give you the references to the vaccine. The paper implies possible negative consequences that you could get from catching Covid19, with or without symptoms, or from the mRna vaccine. Since without (and possibly with) a vaccine, the Delta virus will get almost all of us, there's not much actionable here.

Not quite, Paul. There is another crucial piece you missed. This paper also states that only the full length spike protein "strongly" inhibited the DNA repair, and the vaccine immune response produces ONLY full length spike proteins while during covid infection the furin protease cleaves the original long protein into S1 and S2 subunits which do not seem to inhibit DNA repair.

In other words, covid infection itself does not deplete B and T immune cells to the degree that the current vaccines do. This is evidenced by the fact that those with natural immunity from previous infection have robust B and T immune cell counts.

"...Spike protein contains two major subunits, S1 and S2, as well as several functional domains or repeats [22] (Figure 2A). In the native state, spike proteins exist as inactive full–length proteins. During viral infection, host cell proteases such as furin protease activate the S protein by cleaving it into S1 and S2 subunits, which is necessary for viral entry into the target cell [23]. We further explored different subunits of the spike protein to elucidate the functional features required for DNA repair inhibition. Only the full–length spike protein strongly inhibited both NHEJ and HR repair..."

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by boatman61

I'm wondering if it was tounge in cheek sarcasm as so called 'Breakthrough Infections' keep rising..

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/heal...ated-1.4670229

Not "tongue in cheek" -- death rates continue to be low in all well-vaccinated countries, despite high infection rates in some of them.


See here:





You can clearly see the difference in death rates between relatively poorly vaccinated countries (Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia) and relatively well vaccinated countries (all the rest).


Despite the high death rate countries having less infections than many of the low death rate countries:





A well-vaccinated country has far less death than a poorly vaccinated country, even with a high infection rate.


Breakthrough infections happen, but vaccinated people get infected much less than unvaccinated people. So although a vaccinated person with a breakthrough infection is just as contagious as un unvaccinated person, there are fewer infected vaccinated people so less contagion. Besides that, vaccinated people who DO get breakthrough infections, are far less likely to end up in the hospital or dead.


Therefore, vaccinating a lot of people in the population has a huge effect on the rates of hospitalization and death, which you can also see in the actual numbers.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by Anders

We were in England over the winter and I can't say I found the restrictions brutal.

England's restrictions were put on and off; you were probably there when they were off. During long periods, people in England were not allowed to leave their homes, shops and businesses were closed on a mass level, it was impossible to leave the country and come back without lengthy mandatory quarantine, schools were closed. People in England went through a really tough time, which has had massive costs, including, just to name one small example, a significant death toll from people who failed to get medical treatment for other conditions.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

I see the lockdowns have begun again ( Austria ) it looks like a 2020/2021 rerun to me.

My guess as of this moment is that Austria will be the exception rather than the rule.


However, I agree with you that if hospital capacity starts to get strained anywhere, all bets are off. However much I may be against unnecessary restrictions -- and I suspect that very many of the restrictions used so far were unnecessary -- I do agree that restrictions necessary to protect hospital capacity ARE necessary. That was the original aim of the restrictions, and the idea in my opinion is sound.


In our part of the world, although we have soaring infections in Denmark and a significant outbreak in Norway, hospitals are still pretty much empty:





Ireland is much higher but doesn't look ALL that bad to me. Germany is worrying, however.


But we shall see, won't we? Stay tuned.

[Greg K]

Originally Posted by goboatingnow

Sent to me from a friend in Ireland

So can we now finally stop blaming the unvaccinated and admit that the vaccines are failing?

[Greg K]

Originally Posted by boatman61

I'm wondering if it was tounge in cheek sarcasm as so called 'Breakthrough Infections' keep rising..

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/heal...ated-1.4670229

Without doubt. No other explanation considering the stark difference in pre and post vax.

Still, I expect there are those here who will suggest that locking down the remainder 7% of the Irish who remain unvaccinated in their homes would resolve the situation in two weeks.

[laird]

Originally Posted by Greg K

So can we now finally stop blaming the unvaccinated and admit that the vaccines are failing?

The vaccines are not failing , I'm front line NHS staff and I've watched this entire thing roll out from being in the Philippines when it was all starting to returning to my job here in the UK , if I compare last year to this year going on personal experience and what I have witnessed , it's a no brainer

The vaccines are working ,last year we were pulling old hospitals out of moth balls ,we were converting kitchens into covid rehab rooms ,this year we are putting it all back to the way that it was

As for Anti vaxers , some of them were gluing razor blades to the back of anti vaxing posters in a blatent attempt to injure staff