Carlton Supporters Club

I read an article discussing boosters that said the moderna booster worked better than pfizer or astra but the Novavax as a booster smashed them both especially after two shots of astra.

The fact that the majority of eligible folks in the country are now double vaccinated means that most of the ongoing transmission will come from vaccinated folks.

Johnson’s announcement came hours after the government raised the country’s official coronavirus threat level, warning the rapid spread of the omicron variant had pushed the U.K. into risky territory.

The chief medical officers of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland said the 1of the highly transmissible new strain “adds additional and rapidly increasing risk to the public and health care services” at a time when COVID-19 is already widespread. They recommended raising the alert level from 3 to 4 on a 5-point scale. The top level, 5, indicates authorities think the health care system is about to be overwhelmed.

The doctors said early evidence shows omicron is spreading much faster than the currently dominant delta variant, and that vaccines offer less protection against it. British officials say omicron is likely to replace delta as the dominant strain in the U.K. within days.

“Data on severity will become clearer over the coming weeks but hospitalizations from omicron are already occurring and these are likely to increase rapidly,” they said.

Concerns about the new variant led Johnson’s Conservative government to reintroduce restrictions that were lifted almost six months ago. Masks must be worn in most indoor settings, COVID-19 certificates must be shown to enter nightclubs and people are being urged to work from home if possible.

Many scientists say that’s unlikely to be enough, however, and are calling for tougher measures, which the government so far has resisted.

I read an article discussing boosters that said the moderna booster worked better than pfizer or astra but the Novavax as a booster smashed them both especially after two shots of astra.

@Lods  That might not be correct, viral load and shedding determines how infectious someone might be, while there may be more vaccinated people roaming around it still appears that they shed less virus, have lower viral loads and remain less likely to transmit by about an order of magnitude. Based on uptake that probably means if you get Sars-CoV-2 it's still more likely you get it from someone unvaccinated.

I can get my head around the fact that you're a lot less likely to get it from a vaccinated person due to the lesser impact of the  virus on their system and the load they carry but surely that's countered by the number of folks vaccinated and still passing it on.

It's nonsense to try to aggregate the risk of vaccinated people passing on Covid in order to say unvaccinated people are no longer a problem.

Forget about aggregation. If the average unvaccinated person is more likely to catch and infect others with Covid than the average vaccinated person (and yes, a lot of work has to be done in assessing those risks), that's a reasonable basis to impose mandates and the like.

The CDC reports that only 28% of fatal accidents in the US involve alcohol impairment. As sober drivers are 3 times more likely to be involved in fatal accidents, does that mean we shouldn't try to keep drunk drivers off the road? Maybe it would be better to concentrate on the increased risk of an alcohol-affected driver being involved in a collision compared to a sober driver rather than the aggregate statistics. 

"There is no evidence to suggest, at the moment, that an earlier booster does of the current covid-19 vaccines, will augment the protection against the omicron variant," Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly said on December 3.

But much more has been learned about the Omicron variant since then, including its transmissibility, and the advice has now been changed.

It's to do with the level of viral load and viral shedding relative to what level of virus you have to take up to have a good chance of being infected.

Can I offer some simplistic numbers to explain the chance/risk concept because I do not know the real figures, if so read on?

Let's say you need to take on a viral load of 1,000 to have a chance of being infected, but a vaccinated person might only be shedding a load of 100, they are giving you 1/10th of a chance of being infected. This is per unit time/exposure. An unvaccinated person might be shedding 100,000, you still only need 1,000 to have a chance but now that one contact is giving you 100 chances to get infected. In ratio that makes you 1000x more likely to get the virus off the person shedding 100,000 versus the person shedding 100, from the same level of exposure.

btw., How much virus and bacteria can you shed? When I asked this of an associate in the field they mentioned that a healthy person sheds about 50,000 virus or bacteria particles with every deep breath, while simply coughing and/or sneezing can shed 10x to 50x more!

Now think about these figures and how the vaccine providers might calculate efficacy, where does that 95% or 97% efficacy figure come from, knowing that shedding is part of the calculation it clear how these ratios can relate to deliver vastly different outcomes!

PS; I want to be clear about this because naysayers will latch onto the figures, I do not know the real numbers. I've used powers of 10 to simplify the explanation, it may be that the real world numbers are 3, 30 and 3000 or 15, 150 and 15000, whatever they are isn't important it's the relationship between them. The ratios may even be non-linear requiring the use of exponents, roots and complex numbers (The reason why I used the term simplistic rather than imaginary!) Also the term "a chance" might be 50/50, or 60/40, or 40/60, etc., etc..

Let's for a minute say we go with your figures.
What happens when a mutated variant comes into play for which a vaccine does not offer the same protection?
If the Omicron takes off it is liable to displace the currently dominant Delta.
As I said we can only go with the best current advice (that's my own personal position) but it seems to me the covid is staying one step ahead.

But at the moment the game remains as stated, and the vaccines still have efficacy.

...and that's kind of at the root of what troubles me.
Are we playing last week's game when the real worry is the game ahead?

Comparing someone who doesn't want to get vaccinated to someone getting sloshed and getting behind the wheel is beyond reaching.