The Delta variant

Good point. They had roughly 350k cases, and 8k deaths, so worse overall than us, but not too dissimilar. Delta is starting here alright, cases have doubled, from 100 to 200 a day, so we'll see if masks get re introduced...

you'll be over the worst of it within 7 days.

then if you're anything like me, you'll get a big sinussy (if thats a word 😀)

The best way i could describe it, is similar to a hangover from the days when smoking was allowed in the pubs.

you'll have a lingering cough, but nothing dramatic for 2-3 weeks, and personally i had headaches, on and off for about 6 weeks. Also drinking, i just couldnt do it, ok, slight exaggeration, if i had anything more than 3 cans, i had a rotten hangover. But again, that was only within 6 weeks of infection.

All perfect now thankfully. Hopefully you'll be the same

Another drop in cases in the UK. Reporting 24,950.

It's actually a phenomenal drop and no real moaning about the lack of tests either, this looks very promising

Do you thrive on bad news brickster69? Almost each and every one of your posts on here follow the same theme - selective data from a country currently experiencing a spike/increase in cases. I know this is the Delta thread, but what exactly are you trying to achieve with the constant bad news? I find it intriguing that you are not posting news stories from the UK anymore but, then again, they seem to be poistive developments..

Where's the bickering? I'm simply making an observation on that user's posting history/style. We are all entitled to express an opinion on here, and post whatever news stories we consider to be relevant. However, when one such user continually posts the same type of news, whilst seemingly ignoring other developments, the motivations should be questioned (apologies, maybe that's the role of a mod). Anyway, any one of us could easily do a quick search and find plenty of negative stories on Delta. I fail to see how randomly dropping one of these such stories into this thread every now and then, with very little commentary and/or analysis of said story, helps to foster debate.

Some good news. It appears that Pfizer is still very efficient at keeping serious infections and deaths low for those that have had both doses bases on the reports out of Israel & UK.

More good news as Ireland is about to overtake the UK on vaccines 🙌

All the variants are effectively working to speed up spread within the unvaccinated, they are having only minor impacts on those who are vaccinated.

On the vaccinating children thread, there are quite a few comments about how people are waiting a year or two to decide - I don't think they're going to get that time, it's likely that Delta (or some future variant) will burn through the unvaccinated population very quickly. I don't really see how schools avoid mass outbreaks this year, Delta appears to be a different beast entirely to what we have seen previously when it comes to the speed of indoor spread.

In the short-term it certainly affects kids a lot less, but I don't think anyone knows what the long-term impacts are of getting childhood Covid. Hopefully it's nothing, but we don't know for certain. At the same time, people are saying on that thread that they won't give their kids the vaccine "because they don't know the long-term impact". There's a mental disconnect there, and an assumption that getting Covid means sniffles for kids and not a lot more.

To me this is why this is not a simple decision, and it's one I generally am going to trust the experts on - not easy for them either, but they have a lot more experience and data to work off.

Hopefully a turnaround for Delta cases in the UK :

CDC update on Delta and mask wearing guidance.

..

Internal CDC slides on Delta were released, and there has been some good analysis. In short:

• The vaccines work
• Delta is crazy contagious
• Delta appears to cause more serious disease
• Viral loads from vaccinated who get symptomatic infection are similar to unvaccinated, but far less get infected in the first place
• Symptomatic vaccinated people had shorter duration of symptoms
• Shorter duration of detectable viral RNA in vaccinated (2.7 vs 8.9 days)
• Nursing homes represent a challenge
• Masks & other interventions are being recommended, primarily because of the % of people who are unvaccinated in the US

https://twitter.com/ashishkjha/status/1420929102253641728