Originally posted by Wisbech Eagle

What's the logic here?

Surely for those of us who have been double jabbed and boosted, catching Omicron won't add anything significant to our future protection against another variant?

If the unvaccinated catch it then not only will they suffer more, and overload the NHS as a consequence, any subsequent protection will fade away after a while. We can have more booster jabs, but they won't.

Are you anticipating some kind of herd immunity will develop?

Quote Surely for those of us who have been double jabbed and boosted, catching Omicron won't add anything significant to our future protection against another variant?"

"If the unvaccinated catch it then not only will they suffer more, and overload the NHS as a consequence, any subsequent protection will fade away after a while. We can have more booster jabs, but they won't.

Originally posted by Wisbech Eagle

It's all about taking personal responsibility for the safety and welfare of others. Some understand that. Some clearly don't, as some contributions in this thread confirm.

Those whose only concerns are their own rights and fail to either recognise their responsibilities, or choose to ignore them will, I am quite sure, face a situation where they are excluded from more and more locations and activities. Mandatory vaccination may well be an illegal act, and is certainly an impractical one. Restricting the locations open to the unvaccinated isn't, though, and that's what I expect to see happening.

Sorry if that annoys people!

Originally posted by DanH

These night sweats are proper grim lads. Like waking up in a paddling pool this morning.

Originally posted by BlueJay

Some seem to believe that catching covid is 'job done' but for many more of those unvaccinated at the time in comparison to vaccinated it's more a matter of 'life done'. So yes I do see vaccination as very important in cushioning the blow.

Being vaccinated and catching covid both convey some protection. T and B immunity from vaccines do seem broad and effective (above and beyond that the initial 'gatekeeper' style antibodies) against various variants. Hopefully that will be true against Omicron too. It's specific to the spike protein though (in a very exaggerated way, hence why it likely has some advantages over natural infection), whereas catching covid is more of a blueprint of the whole virus. My thinking would be that if the spike protein aspect changes very significantly to a point that greatly impacts the vaccines (likely to happen to partial degree but probably to a point that still helps us fight it off) then having had covid in the past may offer protection from a more broad perspective. There are even studies that suggest having a common cold version of covid offers 'some' protection against serious covid. At minimum getting covid post vaccination would act as a 'booster' in and of itself.

I'm not telling people to take no precautions, I'm just saying that as the virus changes it becomes fairly likely you will catch it even if you are vaccinated (and that the vaccine should do a good job of helping to fight it off) and that it's unrealistic if anyone thinks that they won't. As long as people are careful, testing, (preferably) vaccinated and so on, if you do catch it you at least likely have a several month window where it's very unlikely you'll be able to catch it again and it might further train your immune system against covid and its variants. I don't really see what the alternative is.

We probably had 100k cases of Delta a day but with limited deaths due to the vaccination effort. If that remains true this time around and its mild (or not worse at least) and takes over it's a best case, because clearly we can't slow it down in any meaningful way and maintain a functioning society at the same time. We've essentially done all we can.

Edited by BlueJay (07 Dec 2021 12.59am)