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National League bites the bullet

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Presumably it's easy to do that when there's no TV money involved.

For the prem, champo, ECL and EuroVase though cancelling would mean large amounts of sovs to be negotiated with the telly people and the sponsors... potentially involving billions that the clubs have already "spent".

For them, behind closed doors is the only answer, and ASAP to get something back on telly fast.
 
No other sensible approach really.... Still messy but you're damned if you do and damned if you don't!
 
Chris Whitty appeared to say on tonight's briefing that there would be social isolating for the next calendar year, so not looking good for any kind of football.
 
Chris Whitty appeared to say on tonight's briefing that there would be social isolating for the next calendar year, so not looking good for any kind of football.
Yep that's the truth of it.

There are only 2 ways out of it:

1) Having a vaccine and a mass immunization program or drugs to limit its impact once infected. From where we are to getting it out to the masses is going to take us well into 2021.
2) Let it spread throughout the population as fast as possible, knowing health agencies can't cope and that it's basically pot luck as to who lives and who dies. It will kill a load more people, but we'll be out of it far quicker (assuming that the theories around immunity once you've had it stand up)

Option 2 is not only political suicide, it's also something that I couldn't see any sane political leader ever doing simply on moral grounds.

Anything else we do until that point is simply a stocking plaster.
 
I don't suppose the Governing Bodies have much choice but to focus on the conclusion of the existing season, but the reality and absurdity of it, is that the 20-21 season is deeply threatened. There is no crystal ball, but if there were, it wouldn't be showing us what we want to see
 
Yep that's the truth of it.

There are only 2 ways out of it:

1) Having a vaccine and a mass immunization program or drugs to limit its impact once infected. From where we are to getting it out to the masses is going to take us well into 2021.
2) Let it spread throughout the population as fast as possible, knowing health agencies can't cope and that it's basically pot luck as to who lives and who dies. It will kill a load more people, but we'll be out of it far quicker (assuming that the theories around immunity once you've had it stand up)

Option 2 is not only political suicide, it's also something that I couldn't see any sane political leader ever doing simply on moral grounds.

Anything else we do until that point is simply a stocking plaster.

Yep.

Once again, thank you China.
 
Tell us professor @Big Cat what would you do!
Matt Hancock refers to easing the Lockdown when the risk of a second wave is zero
'Zero' is not a term I'd use if I was in his shoes
Given that a vaccine is a long way off, I can see one way out of this only. That is the acceptance of controlled risk by society as a whole, to gently ease the population 60% towards the end of the rainbow without exceeding NHS capacity along the way. Hence continuous restrictions for a year or more with a balance between saving the world as we know it, whilst individually and collectively accepting that we might be one of the six in ten
 
Matt Hancock refers to easing the Lockdown when the risk of a second wave is zero
'Zero' is not a term I'd use if I was in his shoes
Given that a vaccine is a long way off, I can see one way out of this only. That is the acceptance of controlled risk by society as a whole, to gently ease the population 60% towards the end of the rainbow without exceeding NHS capacity along the way. Hence continuous restrictions for a year or more with a balance between saving the world as we know it, whilst individually and collectively accepting that we might be one of the six in ten
Indeed, we will have to learn to live with this disease for the foreseeable future......little chance of a fully effective vaccine, more opportunity with drugs to counteract the virus imo.
This may be hard to stomach but I can foresee the deaths of a large proportion of the elderly and those with underlying conditions, not just in the immediate future but longer term too....... Three score years and ten is our traditional allowance....perhaps nature has found out?
 
little chance of a fully effective vaccine, more opportunity with drugs to counteract the virus imo.
Why do you think that? As far as I can tell, there is a good chance of getting a safe and effective vaccine, especially considering the amount of effort being put into it. There were, last time I checked, 115 different vaccine development efforts underway. Two have already started Phase 1 human clinical trials. On average, only around 6% of vaccine development efforts come to fruition but because of the sheer number of them already ongoing, then statistically at least one of them should prove fruitful.

The only reason we didn't get vaccines for previous coronaviruses like MERS and SARS is because they both subsided to a level where they were not seen as a global threat anymore so funding dried up and vaccine development more or less ground to a halt. There were good candidate vaccines for both viruses but none of them got to the stage of human trials again basically because of a lack of funding. However the development that had been done has served as the basis for some of the most promising vaccine candidates currently under study. For instance the Oxford University vaccine development team being led by Professor Sarah Gilbert, and who just started Phase 1 human trials, is basing their work on their previous efforts in developing a vaccine for MERS.
 
For instance the Oxford University vaccine development team being led by Professor Sarah Gilbert
Is this the wizard spouting 80% confidence in a vaccine by September?
I don't know if that Trump-esq claim was taken out of context, but her peers are somewhat less confident
 
Why do you think that? As far as I can tell, there is a good chance of getting a safe and effective vaccine, especially considering the amount of effort being put into it. There were, last time I checked, 115 different vaccine development efforts underway. Two have already started Phase 1 human clinical trials. On average, only around 6% of vaccine development efforts come to fruition but because of the sheer number of them already ongoing, then statistically at least one of them should prove fruitful.

The only reason we didn't get vaccines for previous coronaviruses like MERS and SARS is because they both subsided to a level where they were not seen as a global threat anymore so funding dried up and vaccine development more or less ground to a halt. There were good candidate vaccines for both viruses but none of them got to the stage of human trials again basically because of a lack of funding. However the development that had been done has served as the basis for some of the most promising vaccine candidates currently under study. For instance the Oxford University vaccine development team being led by Professor Sarah Gilbert, and who just started Phase 1 human trials, is basing their work on their previous efforts in developing a vaccine for MERS.
Because this is in effect a very nasty virulent cold virus.........where's the vaccine for any of the four other common cold Corona virus?
 
Because this is in effect a very nasty virulent cold virus.........where's the vaccine for any of the four other common cold Corona virus?
What Covid has against it, is the world's scientific community clamouring individually & collectively towards a solution with effectively unlimited budget. That said, Gilbert's confidence aside, everyone else is advocating an extremely difficult and time consuming endeavour
 
What Covid has against it, is the world's scientific community clamouring individually & collectively towards a solution with effectively unlimited budget. That said, Gilbert's confidence aside, everyone else is advocating an extremely difficult and time consuming endeavour
Developing a vaccine is one thing.

Testing that it works with no abnormal side effects, mass producing it and then delivering a mass immunization program are the challenge.
 
Because this is in effect a very nasty virulent cold virus.........where's the vaccine for any of the four other common cold Corona virus?
No, it's not "a nasty virulent cold virus" - that's like saying, "all dogs are mammals, therefore all mammals are dogs."

It's a virus from a very broad family of viruses that are grouped together because they appear similar to the human eye when looked at under a microscope. It doesn't mean the four coronaviruses that cause colds (229E, NL63, OC43, and HKU1) are that similar to SARS-CoV-2 in terms of how they work and therefore how you would go about creating a vaccine. For instance, the receptor of the most prevalent cold-causing coronaviruses is aminopeptidase N, while the receptor of SARS-CoV is ACE2 - so their methods of infection (and the means you would use to combat them) are quite, quite different.

There has never been a particularly urgent need to produce a vaccine for the common cold in general - it's a mild, self-limiting disease with extremely low mortality and so the time, money and effort required just can't be justified. When using the older, more normal vaccine platforms, it could to take up to $1 billion dollars and 5 - 15 years to develop a typical vaccine, with as I mentioned before, only a 6% chance of success, on average. And there's even less chance that the money, time and effort could be justified for each of the four different coronaviruses that cause colds, since even taken all together, they only account for around 20 to 30% of cases.

On the other hand though, vaccines have been developed for the coronaviruses that are most similar to SARS-CoV-2 (SARS and MERS) - they just haven't been fully trialled and implemented, again mainly because the financial incentive wasn't there. SARS died out by itself before a vaccine was fully tested and MERS only kills around 200 people a year in only a few countries so it isn't seen as a massive global threat. One of the more promising candidate vaccines for MERS that has gone through several stages of trials, was developed by the Oxford University and Jenner Institute team including Professor Gilbert.
Is this the wizard spouting 80% confidence in a vaccine by September?
I don't know if that Trump-esq claim was taken out of context, but her peers are somewhat less confident

I've looked up Professor Sarah Gilbert - she seems to be a world-renowned and highly respected vaccinologist with nearly 3 decades of experience in the field of vaccine development and implementation. If she is highly confident of success, it's probably because she has extensive practical knowledge of not just developing vaccines in the lab but actually testing them on people. She has been involved in the development of and clinical tests for, over 50 different vaccines for various diseases in humans. Also as mentioned, her team has already developed a MERS-CoV vaccine which has successfully progressed in all its trial phases so far. So I think if anybody is in a position to know how promising her team's candidate vaccine for SARS-CoV-2 is, then it's her.

See the clip below where she talks about viral vectored vaccines, which is the kind of vaccine that her team is developing for use against SARS-CoV-2.


If you want a further illustration of just what a comprehensive knowledge she has in the field of vaccines, here's another video where she talks about their work on developing an improved flu vaccine that would work against all strains of the flu and wouldn't need to be updated each year. It's a bit long at nearly forty minutes but it's a fascinating lecture (if you're interested in that kind of thing).

 
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....and there endeth today’s informative discussion on viruses. Wasn’t that interesting children. Come back tomorrow for next weeks subjects. Suggestions so far are include search’s... Where is IFAB, where is Stockley Park and where is the G Spot?...😂
 
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