Clitheroekid wrote:I've said before that prioritising very old people, who can easily be shielded from CV, at the expense of younger people who are facing the public, and are therefore at much higher risk, is stupid and misguided.
I've now heard from the BBC that if you've already had CV it gives you 83% immunity against catching it again.
Would it not therefore be sensible to exclude everyone who's already tested positive for CV from the first round of vaccinations, so that they could be instead given to people who haven't (or more accurately haven't knowingly) already had CV?
Taking it a step further, would it not be sensible to test everyone before vaccinating them and limit the scarce vaccinations to those who test negative?
Old people shielding didn't work very well, a lot of them have social and health care visitors on a daily or at least regularly. It should work in theory but it breaks down at the weakest link in the chain. A lot of social care is provided by low paid workers who often have life styles which aren't conducive to avoiding infection. They may live in crowded accomodation or have young family, they also visit a lot of people during their working day. It's not just old people you have to shield there are other categories of very high risk people including cancer patients with suppressed immune systems.
Younger people don't generally die from covid and there are less ending up in hospital. It's the high risk groups who put pressure on the NHS and the whole point of the exercise is to avoid swamping it.
Not vaccinating people who have had covid is a reasonable suggestion. We don't know how long the immunity lasts, 5 months @ 83% is the latest figure, it may well be longer, it probably is. Is there a database of those who have tested positive with the swab test? There should be, do they take ID from those taking the tests? Someone who has had the test might enlighten us.
