She has a complement of 1,600 when fully staffed (dirtied my hands in Wikipedia to check that) so 1,400 on board sounds very plausible. All are fully vaccinated and work under navy orders specifying social distancing, masks and track-n-trace. Those 1,400 people service a set of warplanes with armaments which you would not want to be on the receiving end of.
There are 100 COVID-19 cases so far, no deaths. I wonder if the case numbers might not have peaked yet.
This is the Diamond Princess.
She had a crew of 1045, looking after a passenger list of 2,666 whose demographic included 14 people sufficiently elderly (and I presume diabetic enough) that they died of COVID-19.
So the crew, who continued to service the passengers at some level throughout the infection period, were exposed to SARS-CoV-2 containing aerosols much of the time.
In this case 145 contracted COVID-19. None died.
Considering that the HMS Queen Elizabeth's COVID-19 count is likely to be incomplete you have to ask yourself what, exactly, has the vaccine achieved?
Then if you look at the UK, which had a decent COVID-19 wave in spring of 2020, a completion of that wave in autumn 2020 and a marked atypical spike in Jan/Feb 2021 coincident with vaccine roll-out, the two summer nadirs are indistinguishable, you could even argue that summer 2020 had a slightly lower 7 day average death rate than we have currently.
Matt Hancock oversaw massive care-home fatalities in the first wave and failed to set up any way of separating COVID-19 patients from the elderly needing hospital treatment during last winter. So many of the people who might die of COVID-19 today are already dead. Another thing which disgusts me. But if this winter turns out to be a standard influenza year, with real influenza, no doubt the vaccines will get the credit.
Finally, I'd missed Peter Doshi's BMJ letter making some pertinent points about the Pfizer initial trial (or should I call it an advertising campaign?)
Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data
I guess the real question is: Can you develop and market a massively profitable product to the whole world which doesn't actually work?
Peter Doshi: Pfizer and Moderna’s “95% effective” vaccines—we need more details and the raw data
I guess the real question is: Can you develop and market a massively profitable product to the whole world which doesn't actually work?
The pharmaceutical industry did this in slow motion with the biggest blockbuster drugs of all time.
The statins.
Are the vaccines any better? I hope so. Not looking good at the moment.
Peter
