Paul O Mahoney
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Well the Astrazeneca vaccine isn't " useless " it does give protection to people getting " seriously ill" it's efficiency versus low and medium symptoms of the SA variant is lower, but the study of 2000 people isn't peer reviewed yet, and Astrazeneca are adamant it does give protection.Vaccination roll out is a shambles IMO. Now the AZ vaccine of which a supply of 21000 doses having arrived to much fanfare by the minister is probably of no use against the SA variant. It must be tweaked and Autumn is said to be the expected date of arrival. We have children being deprived of their education despite them not being responsible for the surge over xmas. Most days I checked the stats there were zero covid positive children in paediatric hospitals. Therefore children dont get ill with covid. Best to admit closing schools was a bad decision totally OTT. So much elective healthcare has postponed indefinitely when it should have gone ahead plus many people delaying attending hospitals because of fear. Vaccination is not the way out of this. The virus mutated too rapidly and by autumn you can bet there will be other variants out there. A good treatment repurposed or new is what's required IMO. The swedish approach to developing some level of herd immunity might not be such a bad approach after all. We cant live like this economically or socially much longer. A zero covid approach is utter fantasy in my view. We cannot hermetically seal our borders. Wouldn't work.
All vaccine makers are working on new vaccines to cover present and future variants and mutations.
It's highly likely that we will need boosters and get vaccinated annually, an article in Bloomberg over the weekend said it might be 7 years before we have sufficient vaccines and treatment to control the virus's again it was a view of some immunologist in the US.
Children don't get sick like adults but they do get it and spread it, and a 3 year old has died from it after 3 days of being diagnosed, no reasons/ details were given on her overall health.
Schools did do very well but the UK variant is very transmissionable and this is a concern.
I know of a very young mother who was fighting cancer and attending treatment in one Dublin hospital (only place she went) she got covid and sadly died last Tuesday leaving 2 boys behind and a heartbroken husband.So people are right to be weary and most healthcare workers are engaged in Covid work.
Sweden hasn't developed "herd immunity " and are now doing what the rest of the world are doing.
This is very difficult for all of us but we need to be very careful on what we wish for and yes the vaccine rollout is slow but the biggest obstacle now is supply and delivery due to a host of reasons.