The Delta variant

The Israeli prime Minister has said that senior citizens not getting the third shot leaves them in "mortal danger". Clearly he thinks the first two doses have completely failed in that cohort to use such strong words. I guess they will be in the same position again in another 6 months when the boosters also wane?

AZ seems to be holding up quite well. Quite good value at less than 3 euro a pop

People need to acknowledge it is a possibility first and react, or just wait for more real world data to come out and see if it is probable or not.

It is looking more obvious by the day that it is not the vaccines waning per say, just that they seem to be more durable when there was a longer gap between first and second doses. Everyone did a longer gap with AZ and looks like it is not waning. Canada & UK did longer gap between doses and have no problems with Pfizer waning.

Well the gap between AZ doses wasn't great either, as mentioned before I got AZ in early May and tested positive with most likely Delta variant (going by symptoms) in mid July, whilst waiting on 2nd dose.

I hear AZ and Johnson/ Jansen are no longer being used, presumably when the HSE offered them to younger age cohorts, they were met with a stony silence. We can see of course why the HSE wanted to use the AZ on the 60-69 age cohort and save a few bob. Likely now they'll be trying to line up the Romanian Pfizer left overs to same age cohort.... which will go down like a lead balloon.

There's no new variants at all. It's different types of coronavirus,

Interesting speculation that the cause of the Pfizer waning in Israel might be the dosing interval between dose 1 and 2. In Israel, they used 3-4 week gaps. Just like Ireland. Other countries that used 8-12 week gaps are not seeing Pfizer waning yet. Not good sign for Ireland.

We need to urgently give the third shot to the vulnerable, they need to be considered at high risk now.

Is there any evidence that boosters are going to work? For longer than a few months? Any evidence about the side effects of 3 mrna shots in less than a year?

The unintended outcome of Delta is that it is acting as a vaccine to some and a booster to many. When it burns out here we may be in a good position barring a newer variant.

Easy eh, you just need to explain everything to the idiots in charge now.

It’s all down to booster vaccines imho. They’ll be the only thing to stop new variants in their tracks. Don’t forget the Lambda variant from Peru which was a slight concern there about a month ago…

Their current rolling average is 90 deaths per day compared to Israel’s 18 which is not far out of line with the relative populations. Same goes for infection rates. The UK is doing slightly better overall, probably due to a level of natural herd immunity from having some of the highest infection rates in the world through the majority of the pandemic, not to mention the thinning out of their population of vulnerable people with well over one hundred thousand dead last year.

So when you look at the hard numbers it’s not really that the UK is doing better than Israel, it’s that Israel is taking the situation more seriously and moving to third shots to get it back under control, while the UK government is ignoring the numbers and pretending everything is fine, like they have for much of the pandemic.