On Being a Little Bit Confused By Covid

[danieldwilliam]

I think I have missed something in my understanding of how COVID works and I can't work out what.

I was chatting (virtually) with a friend and I blithely said I thought COVID was a solved problem.

By which I meant

We have a vaccine. It is pretty good. Future iterations of it will be better. Tick.

We have a vaccine programme. People are being vaccinated. Quite rapidly in the UK. Tick.

By the late summer we in the UK will have vaccinated pretty much everyone over the age of 16 who wants and can have the vaccine.

As a result of this deaths and serious illness from the original variant of the disease will be cut to very, very low numbers and as the vaccine seems to be pretty effective against other variants overall deaths and serious illness will be cut to very low numbers.

We have several technologies that will allow for the rapid and relatively cheap reformulation of a vaccine to better deal with new variants.

So, the position I thought we were going to end up in the UK by autumn was having had many months of low impact from the virus - potentially still many people infected but those people not getting very ill and the start of a second round of the vaccination programme aimed at other variants. We might also have a Track and Trace system worth a) the name and b) the £35 billion we spent on it. Life wouldn't necessarily be back to normal. We'd still have difficulty travelling abroad. There would still be local outbreaks. People would still be dying, but not in large numbers compared to heart disease.

The problem would be understood, a solution in hand and delivering results and question would be one of logistical execution of the inevitable rather than solving a problem.

(I'm paraphrasing the next bit).

"Yeah", she said, "but Chris Whitty says there's going to be a wave in autumn and he's the bomb!"

To which I responded that I was thinking more about the impact of another wave in terms of deaths, illness and precautions we'd have to take rather than the numbers of infections.

"He wouldn't have said it if he didn't think it would have an impact."

And to be honest, confronted with the sheer majesty of Christ Witty I don't have much of a come back but I still can't get my head around where the impact is coming from if the vaccine programme is working.

What have I missed? Because I feel like I've missed something.

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

Okay - that begins to make sense. I don't think I'd clocked that there would be a million people in vulnerable groups not vaccinated.

If a quarter of those people got COVID in the autumn we'd be looking at 10,000 fatalities and 50,000 hospitalisations.

I think my next question then is, if a more or less completed vaccination programme leaves 1 in 60 people when are they going to be protected?

[andrewducker]

I *think* the plan is that we let all of those people catch it, but slowly enough that they don't overwhelm the NHS.

But I could be wrong.

[danieldwilliam]

That seems less than ideal for them.

[andrewducker]

I think they've decided that a Zero Covid strategy is not possible, so vaccinating the people who can be and flattening the curve for the rest is all they've got.