The Delta variant

robinph · 24-08-2021 4:00pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117795738#Comment_117795738

It spread into the UK because the UK is well linked to the rest of the world, and specifically India. Then it spread from there because the UK is well linked with the rest of the world. Is it the UK's fault that other countries continued to let travellers in? The UK had very low case rates when Delta arrived, and high vaccination rates compared to the rest of the world. Cases have increased, but deaths have not spiked up anything like in previous waves and since the time that Delta arrived in the UK they have felt the numbers of cases/ deaths/ hospitalisations have been manageable and gone from mostly closed down to barely anything restricted and not much changed.

How is what other countries did to handle the same situation the UK's fault? They are not responsible for the new variants occurring, nobody is as it just happens. Now it could be argued that the initial arrival of Delta into the UK was the fault of Johnson, but it would be incredibly naïve to think that Johnson doing things different with the timing of travel restrictions would have stopped Delta ever arriving in other countries or the UK. It was always going to leak in somewhere, and it was always likely to be through the UK due to the nature of world travel.

Other countries had months of warning that there was a Delta variant on it's way before cases locally increased after seeing what happened in India and the UK. It's on them if they didn't do anything to prepare for that.

24-08-2021 4:49pm

Frankly,if Boris had imposed mhq for India a few weeks earlier instead of not wanting to offend the Indians during trade negotiations, we would be in way less of a mess

Not that what we are in is actually a mess

Thats whose fault the high numbers are,And the deaths

robinph · 24-08-2021 6:16pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117798186#Comment_117798186

No, we'd just be a couple of weeks behind where we currently are. There was no stopping Delta getting into the country, just might have had a few less seeding events initially, but it would still have taken off in case numbers exactly as it has. Deaths would still be the same as those dying were already vaccinated anyway so once it got into the country and spread, which it is still doing despite vaccination, those people would still have died.

Really don't see that there was anything that could have been done to stop it, and any additional restrictions being kept in place for longer doesn't seem to make much difference either to overall cases.

24-08-2021 6:44pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117798577#Comment_117798577

If it came from India, it needed an airplane to get to the UK and Europe

Of course it could have been stopped for a while

But then again it's tge fear of Delta that's driven on tge vaccine campaign,so maybe when it finally did arrive with someone slipping through the net,we'd be no better off

robinph · 24-08-2021 8:51pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117798678#Comment_117798678

There was never any suggestion of doing a total travel shutdown into the UK, just quarantine for normal people. Exemptions for "important" people would still have applied and quarantine is also very leaky, delta would still have got in. Maybe it would have arrived through a different third country to the UK, but it was always going to get there, and I doubt that even with strict travel restrictions (which are not totally secure) the travel between India and the UK is probably still the most likely route into Europe for the virus.

As for fear of delta driving vaccine take up, that is total nonsense as the UK was already well on the way to having the majority of their population at least single jabbed before there was any talk of delta variants existing. Maybe it upped the percentage of people taking vaccines in the rest of Europe through fear of the variant, but it didn't make a whole lot of difference to the UK take up which was already high and carrying on at a high pace.

You can blame Johnson for lots of things. Not a lot would have happened differently if they had shut down travel a week or two earlier though, was still going to happen.

saabsaab · 24-08-2021 9:16pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117798678#Comment_117798678

Why didn't European shut air travel from China when Wuhan started? Don't give me that hindsight nonsense many on boards could see it coming at the end of Jan 2020.

Risteard81 · 24-08-2021 9:45pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117798678#Comment_117798678

Or even an aeroplane.

24-08-2021 10:04pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117799393#Comment_117799393

Depends if it was a North American Airplane or English Aeroplane

25-08-2021 12:15am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117799264#Comment_117799264

With all due respect more than a year into this pandemic, not closing borders to India earlier was saying Delta come and get me Especially at a time we were all vaccinating

We knew roughly how much time we needed to be fully vaccinated yet led by Borris ,in we let Delta charge

A year earlier, not having a clue what was best versus wrecking Economies would have been more understandable

patnor1011 · 25-08-2021 5:37am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117799971#Comment_117799971

Nonsense. "Closing borders to India" - how does that work short of building wall and machine gun posts all around India and telling them to ride it out?

Even the most zealous zero covid countries like New Zealand or Australia do have delta even though they closed borders. Try getting small packet or large envelope there, it can take ridiculously long like months...

25-08-2021 7:56am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117800208#Comment_117800208

Its not nonsense if you only did it for 2 months

Conflating New Zealands approach for the last 18 months in the context of no vaccine and stopping an obvious threat from India for maybe 2 or 3 months to give the vaccine roll out a chance to finish when very good vaccines were being rolled out is nonsense though

It was irresponsible of Borris

He put a trade deal before health

Making as bad a mistake as not stopping big events like Cheltenham 20 basically

robinph · 25-08-2021 10:01am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117800331#Comment_117800331

So considering how many cases of delta there are daily in the UK at the moment with almost everyone who is likely to get vaccinated having been double jabbed, and that cases have not changed much since delta was in the wild in the UK... How was shutting down travel for normal people from India going to make any difference?

Cases, hospitalisations and deaths are not rising further in the UK and delta has been doing its thing for several months now.

Delta was almost certainly already in the UK before it had been identified anyway. It might have delayed the rise in cases by a week or two if they had shut travel down, but nothing would have changed significantly in that time with vaccines that would have helped things in dealing with delta as the UK was at that point the furthest along with vaccination and already had the vulnerable double jabbed. Despite being double jabbed though its still those vulnerable who are being hospitalised, so delaying by a week would have made no difference.

The biggest failing was from opposition politicians not scoring enough points against Johnson, but they have somehow failed to dislodge him throughout the last few years despite his repeated failures and own goals.

A travel ban from India would have had no impact on the current situation.

25-08-2021 10:10am

Lol

If you stopped Indian entries in time,Delta wouldn't have got in

Even when it was too late it was delayed

Its not a zero covid policy to do that, it would have been a reduce delta untill the vaccine roll out was finished

Simple

Not complicated

Boris was irresponsibly more interested in his trade mission to India at the time

No surprises there

robinph · 25-08-2021 11:37am

If you stopped Indian entries in time,Delta wouldn't have got in

So how come Delta is now worldwide, including in Australia and New Zealand? Every other country had additional warning of Delta being on the loose, why did they not shut down travel, and for those that did (Aus/ NZ) how come it's still got in?

25-08-2021 11:48am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117801111#Comment_117801111

Because flights left for London and other cities without MHQ at the other end

Come on now!

You're answering me as if I'm talking about zero covid nonsense

It was perfectly possible for Boris to have installed mhq in time for 2 or 3 months untill the UK was fully vaccinated

We would have followed suit but stopping the spread in the UK would have vastly mitigated the problem with us

This is all on Boris and his stupid Brexit trade obsession

timmyntc · 25-08-2021 11:56am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117801144#Comment_117801144

Delta is the dominant strain worldwide. it was always going to get here. Our own MHQ didnt stop it, neither would the UKs.

You clearly have a chip on your shoulder wrt the UK

25-08-2021 12:03pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117801175#Comment_117801175

Nonsense as I wasn't talking about stopping it,just delaying it which is what a timely mhq would have done

Note the word timely

brickster69 · 25-08-2021 12:10pm

You know how many generations of Indian families there are in the UK. Delta has been found to of been roaming around India since December so can you imagine the amount of people that had gone to see family and picked it up there, brought it back without even knowing even before it was officially discovered.

That is why all the early outbreaks were in towns that had a large Indian community. It is hard to stop something getting a foothold in a country if don't even know it exists.

robinph · 25-08-2021 12:47pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117801144#Comment_117801144

The UK was already vaccinated across all vulnerable groups before delta appeared on the scene.

charlie14 · 25-08-2021 12:57pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117797988#Comment_117797988

My post was not about blaming the U.K. for the Delta variant. On the contrary, it was in reply to a poster who believed we should take responsibility for it. The poster seemed to believe that the authorities here were blaming the U.K. for its spread in Ireland. I don`t believe that the authorities pointing out that the rapid spread here due to us having a land-border with our neighbours was any attempt to attach blame.

Could the U.K. authorities have done more to control the speed of spread there and given others more time to get their vaccination levels up ? Personally I believe they could have. Unlike here the U.K. had the luxury of not sharing a border with where this variant was coming from. People travelling from India were arriving by plane and were then going to communities within the U.K, where there were high levels of vaccine hesitancy. They already knew that was the situation within those communities and there were also low levels of vaccination in India yet they did very little through airport control until the variant was well established throughout the U.K.

Months ago the two variants of concern were the India Delta and the South Africa Beta. As soon as a few examples of the Beta variant were detected in France from some of their former colonies, the U.K. imposed quarantine restrictions on anyone travelling from France. Even those fully vaccinated. Perhaps that was just a result of them learning from their India experience, but then again with the present jingoistic political leadership in the U.K. who knows. India is a former U.K. colony which the U.K. is now looking to do much more business with. France, along with being a country the U.K. in general has long looked down on, is also a member of an economic bloc the U.K. now are attempting to distance themselves from as much a possible. The U.K. to me at least. is now a country where, like the U.S under Trump, practically everything is politicised.

25-08-2021 1:13pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117801397#Comment_117801397

And that's a reason not to go down hard on its source once it was known?

I certainly don't think so and to be honest have no faith in any governments acting on experience if another worse variant turns up

TonyMaloney · 25-08-2021 10:59pm

...

patnor1011 · 25-08-2021 11:04pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117801508#Comment_117801508

Go hard on what source? Many countries tried that and failed miserably. You seems to watch too many movies where hundreds of doctors and people in full hazmat descend on town where one or few people got sick.

Come on now. This kind of armchair-general-after-battle-talk is like, unreal. We go this way then I cannot wait for triple-vaxxers to be PISSED at the double-vaxxers lol

25-08-2021 11:28pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117804123#Comment_117804123

Go hard on locking out anyone connected to India at the time it was being Ravaged

Not a difficult thing to do for 2 or 3 months untill a majority were vaccinated

Notice what I'm doing here?

Stating my opinion without ad hominem or non sequitur's

Kermit.de.frog · 26-08-2021 1:50pm

Grim in Russia. 820 deaths in the last 24 hours.

https://twitter.com/AFP/status/1430855041011785731

patnor1011 · 27-08-2021 6:49pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117804201#Comment_117804201

Thing is that we did not locked up anyone and could not do so even if we wanted. Even at our first lockdown about third of workforce went about their routine as if nothing was going on. "Essential workers" needed to maintain illusion of some lockdown. They then came back home and exposed their families.

I do not know why some people think like end of the world is coming. Covid is out for nearly 2 years and with so many daily cases out of which absolute majority is non symptomatic there is good chance most of the people already had it and built up natural immunity which is by the way far superior to any current vaccine.

Latest Israel study showed that the vaccinated were ultimately 13x as likely to be infected as those who were infected previously, and 27x more likely to be symptomatic.

McGiver · 27-08-2021 7:49pm

Forget about Delta.

Lambda is the real deal...😎

SARS-CoV-2 Lambda variant exhibits higher infectivity and immune resistance | bioRxiv

amandstu · 27-08-2021 8:11pm

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117812365#Comment_117812365

Reference please

Wolf359f · 28-08-2021 12:08am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117812577#Comment_117812577

That's a month old, I'm sure you have an update on it now? Has it spread more than delta? Is it dominant in a country now? Or are you just link dumping?

Unicorn Milk Latte · 28-08-2021 12:09am

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/117812678#Comment_117812678

Don't fall for his BS, he's deliberately trying to mislead.

What he's referring to: breakthrough infections for vaccinated are extremely rare. They are even more rare for people who were infected with Covid naturally - but this only applies to natural infection with the Delta variant.

The study he's referring to states "Individuals who were both previously infected with SARS-CoV-2 and given a single dose of the vaccine gained additional protection against the Delta variant" - which is consistent with the current guidance that even people who had Covid should get vaccinated.

The Delta variant

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