Goes to show you the differences between areas, I just checked my area and the figures are higher than I was expecting!

• 82.7%
  First dose
• 76.5%
  Second dose
• 51.1%
  Booster or third dose

I wonder if the mods have considered re-naming this very useful thread- “UKCovid statistics” or similar? Unfortunately the title no longer reflects the content as there are no local lockdowns. Just a thought.

It is a conversation we need to have, but it's quite nuanced and that never works well in public conversations. The problem really is that the vaccinations work fantastically at preventing serious illness, they don't seem particularly effective at preventing you getting the disease. Anecdotally, I know around 20 people who currently have, or recently have had, COVID and all were triple jabbed. Fortunately none felt particularly ill, even the 60+s amongst them. So the real conversation isn't about vaccine passports which won't do much good at preventing people getting Covid, but about stopping worrying about the disease at all. Under such a scenario, those of us who are prepared to get vaccinated will have the odd rough day, and we would stop worrying about those who haven't been vaccinated. Indeed, much like other respiratory diseases, where the elderly and the unfit are seriously at risk but most are not. The only real difference being that a) Covid is new and therefore perhaps more frightening and b) you have a choice as to vaccination. Then natural selection will simply remove some of the idiots.

True. Except perhaps in Wales where you are prevented from going to work, except in a pub.

Current Telegraph headline:

CORONAVIRUS

Covid latest news: UK reports over 100,000 daily cases for first time

I don't recall the small drop yesterday being the headline.

Ironically this is precisely one reason why the un-jabbed won’t get jabbed. Pot kettle…

Lockdown is an undefined term, but I'm asked not to go out unnecessarily. I'm asked not to mix with more than two other households. I have to work from home and I can't go to my rugby team's next 2 games because fans are not allowed.

Granted, businesses haven't been told to close their doors, and there is no legal impediment to my going out, but it's not as if there are no restrictions on daily life as we once knew it.

Thanks to you all for a sensible covid thread, I find I drift here at least twice a day to see what's what.

I also agree we need to have a conversation with the vaccine holdouts. Quite what that is, needs to be determined but we can't keep coddling them.

As long as we do keep indulging them, I don’t think it unreasonable to assert that their liberty, implicitly, matters more than ours.

No need for new Covid restrictions as omicron hospital risk two thirds lower, No 10 told Ministers and MPs tell Boris Johnson tougher measures cannot be justified as studies suggest variant is less severe than delta

Britain should not be subjected to further Covid restrictions, senior Government sources said on Wednesday night after the first UK real-world data revealed that people infected with omicron are up to two thirds less likely to end up in hospital.

The research, by Edinburgh University – submitted to government scientific advisers – suggests that the variant causes far milder illness than delta and that booster vaccines provide "substantial" extra protection against symptoms.

The findings are expected to be confirmed on Thursday by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSA), which found that Britons who fell ill with omicron were less likely to become severely sick, with more suffering a mild illness.

I find it irritating that when South African Drs say Omicron is less dangerous, its ignored and we can only rely on the data from our own health bodies.

To give a few reasons for this (and there are many more)
- The median South African is 27 years old, the median Brit is 40 years old, and in COVID terms that's a massive difference
- SA had a very different set of timing of pandemic surges
- UK had a very different exposure to Alpha and Delta compared to SA
- SA has much lower levels of vaccination and testing
- SA has very different demographic differences to the UK in terms of average income, education, employment - all key predictors of COVID and its impacts.
Just putting those factors alone together means that the immunity profile of the two countries is radically different. However medical evidence from South Africa most certainly has not been ignored, about a third of my current R&D inbox has South African content. SA is an amazing beacon of healthcare and public health research and the world is very lucky to have access to that.

I don't doubt what you're saying however, did we really need red lists, quarantine hotels and expensive new travel testing regimes? S.A. data indicated very early that Omicron was very very transmissible but also milder the delta. I'm usually a cautious person but, the red lists and hotels have already been disbanded, we're they ever really needed?

This, which is exactly what I wrote a few pages back.

I have no explanation for the explosion of cases in Germany, but I think there is evidence to say that the Green Pass is helping in vaccinating Italian doubters. The country is, or should be, at around 85% of the above-15 fully vaccinated and this is quite a thing for a nation where people can’t agree on basic things and who voted for a party like M5S just 3 years ago. Having the big stick of the green pass (and its new evolution) is quite a motivation: if you’re not vaccinated you can’t travel, enter a restaurant, work in healthcare… and if you’re not tested every 2 days you can’t work.

I know, or heard of, many people who get their news from that backed-up cesspit that is Facebook who, when faced with the sack or social pariah status, gave up and got their jabs. The time for common sense is over IMHO.