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Friday 18 June 2021

Day 459 of self-isolation - Delta variant

Delta variant

First, a refresher on how vaccines work. A vaccine "looks a bit like" the virus, and your immune system works out how to deal with it, a bit like getting ready for the fight by knowing your enemy and practicing for the real event. That practice, is why you have a sore arm, or even a bit of a fever.

Then when the actual virus is in your body ... that's right. the vaccine doesn't stop you from getting infected, it just gives your immune system a head start in fighting off the virus.

You'll still get infected, but you'll probably not even notice that this happened, because your symptoms will be little or none. Of all the people dying in hostpital of Covid, none of them have been double vaccinated. Likewise, people in the ICU.

So we've had some experience now of how well the vaccine helps you against the delta variant. If you've had one jab of AstraZeneca or Pfizer, that's 33% effective. Really not much. If you've had both jabs of AstraZeneca, that's 60% effective. If you've had two shots of Pfizer (like I have) then that's 88% effective. Conclusion - get that second dose!

In the UK, about 42%  of us are double-jabbed. 

And that's why today, we saw 11 thousand new cases. Deaths are also up now, at 19.

Election

And today we had the by-election for Amersham and Chesham. In the afternoon, we had three canvassers knocking at the door - two for Libdem and one for Tory. We wound them up somewhat, of course. Then we went and voted.

We both regard the Tory government as incompetent, so we both voted Libdem, since that's that the Tory leaflet recommended.

I'm hoping we'll hear the results tomorrow. A narrow win for the Libdems would be nice.



2 comments:

  1. Oh Libdems isn't gonna stop a Fast Train running through your back garden You NIMBE !

    ReplyDelete