no it's not stories they do keep in touch by following us as on social media about at the top they are. going to talk about her that means different things to different people depending on where you live what here you live what school you went to that word inflation. welcome to the alex simon show from scotland where we tell them once again to the dominating issue of the day the vaccination program is no underway but the new

video corona virus is a rampant particularly in the south of england but across the ford nations of the united kingdom today we talked to our panel of key express to us them about this race between the vaccine and divisiveness dr chris smith of cambridge university those are all just who told us over a year ago in this program that we faced the greatest public health challenge of our lifetime we ask him can we win that race and they don't a lot of comedy often acts to you the best tells us from has to be done know the temps of public health measures to stop that and that chest being overwhelmed the full of the vaccine arrives the 1st the subpoena which your comments on last week show and it's fun so actually last week teaching 7th keep on going to africa quickly tell platt says vince and i at the same sunny summer i think i met him in the big 1960 s. before he became famous we were near neighbors i've always find a. hard to disagree with

a few of his views i have disagreed with they are still reasonably expressed such talents are a tremendous asset to a politician is not so up to mystic about the liberal democrats future electoral success and phase one m.p. for the lib dems is there a prospect it is once too large weekly's prediction that support for welsh independents will grow if they can't have a utopian future within the united kingdom matthew says didn't will fall for breaks it is well sure you can see that if it was scottish or northern irish independence you are talking about but this is about wales which also voted for brics that logically of course went on in his interview to say that he thought scotland would indeed ditch westminster rule and he anticipated the reunification of ireland to which bob says i really hope boris says he can't do it anymore and he has to drop scotland to northern ireland to look after themselves and finally learn their shot says just like clockwork the alex salmond sure gives us constant in these waiting

times thank you both says lorna now almost a year ago when president trunk was making fun of the vitus and prime minister boris johnson wasn't even attending quick briefing meetings dining straight on this show got to christmas predicted there was going to be equal pandemic what you've potentially got is something which while it's less lethal than sols is much more infectious than sols and about as lethal as the 1918 flu pandemic everyone susceptible to this like they were for the 1918 spanish flu pandemic so if this were allowed to escape and go to its logical conclusion one possibility one worst case scenario is it could be as bad as 1918 today alex takes forward that discussion about the race between the vaccine and the virus got a christmas welcome back to the public some i'm sure it's a pleasure thanks for having me back and happy new year. you were one of the 1st people to a dent to fire the scale of the public health challenge that was faced with this

virus almost a year ago on this show no initiate a 2021 are we sure that the vaccine kabul is going to come over the hill on the still dangerous to come. i think there are still some twists turns and handbrake turns on the part of corona virus yet to play out but we have our best fighting chance now of seeing the back of this thing in 2021 because we're attacking it on multiple fronts now we've got public health measures that we know work but they're extremely costly in many ways but we do have treatments we do have drugs that have been proven to make a very substantial difference to people with severe disease and now the real cavalry arriving to a rescue of these vaccines are not one not 2 but 3 have come along all at once rather predictably like london buses but that's really great because what it means is that we can bottleneck supply chains and we also have a range of different options not all vaccines are going to be suitable for all

people in all geographies and this is a world problem so these vaccines have got to work in all territories the fact that we now have 3 of them approved and they're going into lots of people a 1000000 scale with an ambitious plan to get them into millions more very quickly this is brilliant news the doctor spoke when we last spoke at the shore just before christmas the u.k. deft or had just passed 60 though it's 80000 and rising why is that the virus been saw this subject over the last month is it because of the new variant because of noncompliance or of the public health measures not been strong enough across europe the world health organization has pointed to the fact that many countries more than half are struggling with severe resurgence is of coronavirus now that points to the fact that it's not just new variants that are causing this to happen because the new variant is largely not exclusively confined to the u.k. at the moment and although it has been exported overseas and almost certainly will

gain traction there therefore can't account for the big surges in cases that we're seeing in other countries germany for example held up often as a paragon of pandemic preparedness and control have suffered similar rates of mortality that we're seeing here. in the u.k. at the moment so what is accounting for it well a range of factors ahead of christmas jonathan van tam the deputy chief medical officer in england said that we face a headwind with winter and is absolutely right because the vast majority of infectious diseases do spread much better in the wintertime and speaks for itself it's pretty obvious why when it's freezing cold we keep the doors close we keep the windows closed and we seek enjoyment entertainment and company inside not outside and these infectious diseases prey on the fact that we do that it has been christmas and there has been more festivity and more gatherings going on although in a limited way and i think that may have played a part but equally i think there's a degree of lock down for tea and leaking us on the part of lockdowns and another

control measures we had a very profound lockdown when all this began in march and april of 2020 people were very compliant and it was unequivocal what the rules were and people went along with them then things eased up when levels of the virus disappeared and dropped down in july and as a result of that i think people got used to being a bit more normal again and so when those freedoms were snatched away again in the autumn but they weren't snatched away all at once it took a while for people to really appreciate the gravity of the situation and as a result while they were paying lip service to some of the rules i don't think the compliance was really there in the same way i think the sobering numbers that we're now seeing with 50 percent more people in hospital at the moment as we speak than at the peak of the march april 1st wave of the virus a death toll beyond 80000 as you quite rightly rightly point to just in the u.k. these sorts of numbers are focusing minds and i think people are realizing that we

face a serious challenge at the moment of the new variant we lore more than fictious why don't we lot if they are more or less deadly given the number of people who have been infected thus far why isn't that a clear answer to that question. for the moment we don't think that the new variants are more deadly because what we haven't seen is a big rise in the case faith tallaght rate in other words you can monitor how many people are catching the virus and how many people are dying of it and you can calculate therefore what the mortality rate attached to that infection is if the new variant were contributing to a big surge in cases which we think it is and if it were more lethal than we thought it was before then we should see that reflected in an increase in the fatality rate that we haven't seen we're just seeing an increase in numbers because more people are catching the virus and that's translating into more severe cases

and ultimately more mortalities and also even more critically they don't appear to be making the virus able to sidestep the protection conferred by the current generation of vaccines that we're putting into patients the doctors for many people watching this program will be eagerly awaiting the vaccination if you are vaccinated and protected do we know if you're still infectious to other people and if you had called that when you were being vaccinated the dust chains the protection that the vaccine office. well that's also the 1st bit of that after the 2nd question you asked which is well what happens if i've got coded right now and i'm going to get vaccinated now there are circumstances when we sometimes use vaccines to prevent people getting an infection because in the case of an infection with a very long incubation period sometimes the vaccine can give your immune system a head start and you never then develop the clinical syndrome that's not the case with this new coronavirus the vaccines don't confer protection soon enough to ward

off infection so there will inevitably be people turning up for vaccination who have caught this thing and they could be incubating at that time this is not a worry it's not a concern and it won't do people any harm it might not actually help them to fight off the infection but it certainly won't do any harm there will also be people who have in the past had coronavirus and they're getting vaccinated again will that cause a problem again we don't think that's a problem because if you have fought off the corona virus in the past then you have some immunity and this vaccination this immunization will effectively behave a bit like a booster it will remind your immune system what it's learned to fight off and it will consolidate it will strengthen that immune response so again we don't think that that is a major challenge for people who actually are encountering the infection and the really critical element as to whether or not a person who has been vaccinated and can catch the infection or not we don't know

the answer to this yet the trials that have been done have assessed whether a person when they're vaccinated is protected from kovi and code it is the disease caused by corona virus they have an appraised thora the it whether it can prevent you still catching corona virus infection now the reason for this subtle difference in this nuance is that in studies that were done during the development of at least one of the vaccines on monkeys they found that the animals were prevented from getting severe disease if they were vaccinated. it but they could nevertheless still catch the infection if you can catch the infection albeit in a mild way without even having any symptoms you could still be shedding the infection in other words spreading the infection so this is an open question at the moment scientists are actively pursuing this to find out the answer and only time is going to tell because we don't have a time machine or a crystal ball yet but we will find out very quickly especially given the scale of the infection running through the population at the moment and the scale at which

vaccination is progressing across the u.k. does that mean that all october strictures of some kind will have to stay in place until everyone is protected top everyone has been vaccinated well if you think about the situation we were in last summer in 2020 we got the level of circulating virus down to a very low level which enabled us to relax many of the measures that were holding it in check at the moment the measures that have been put in place aren't to stop people catching the virus so much as to protect an overwhelming surge in demand for health services at the moment we have 50 percent to 100 percent more people seeking health care because of coronavirus than we did back in march and april of 2020 allowed to continue unchecked we would very quickly start to see more people succumbing for more other conditions that we couldn't treat because we didn't have the resources available so at the moment the vaccine rollout is all about targeting people who if they catch coronavirus they are going to develop severe disease

sufficiently bad to potentially lead to their loss of life so we're trying to cut mortality by vaccinating those priority groups as well as those people who who work for the health service or provide care for those vulnerable individuals we need to protect those as well to keep the services running but once we're beyond that we should also begin to see levels of the virus lower and drop a because there's been a lockdown but b. because the weather is going to improve spring will come there will be more vaccinated individuals in society which will make it harder for the virus to spread and therefore anticipate there will be. some easing of measures and then as we progress with the vaccination program we'll drive down the level of circulation of the virus going hand in hand with better weather in the summer so we'll be back to the position we were in last year but hopefully we won't then see an all time resurgence like we did last year and then have to got the country down again join us after the break we're alex will continue his discussion with dr smith i will also be joined by talk to pocket. see that.

financial. aid i'm on if you. like. as a live some of my life from the future trucker watch kaiser. welcome back alex not continued his discussion with dr chris smith managing editor of the naked scientist look. dr chris murphy you once told me that you envisage that corona virus would move from being a pandemic to being endemic is a case of this virus in some way and some variant there's going to be with the human population for a long time to come the current consensus medically is that that is absolutely the case we think that this new coronavirus is going to join the ranks of the existing

for other human common coronaviruses that circulated to be in with us for hundreds to thousands of years they come every winter time and they cause coughs and colds and a handful of people they come for a few percent of the seasonal infections that we get every winter this new one we anticipate because it's so infectious because it's so well adapted to people it will continue to spread almost certainly in at least for a appreciable period of time the good news is of course that while it will behave a bit like the flu and keep coming back we have at least now got vaccines that we can also update fairly easily in a fairly and jar way like we can with the flu and since we already have a template for mass vaccination seasonally for things like the flu it should be relatively easy going forward once we understand how long the immunity conferred by the vaccines is and also what the likelihood of the virus being up to mutate and change in such a way that might require updating the vaccine will be other fair the coronavirus

vaccination program in alongside the flu vaccination program because really the people who need a flu jab every year and the same people who are at risk if they catch corona virus and so therefore we could actually use piggyback on one system on the other to achieve an efficient and fairly streamlined service the english health marchand court says he's working on a timetable to vaccinate every adult by the autumn and the other countries of the u.k. are a symbol of shared joy as indeed other countries around the world it but the state of israel plans to vaccinate their adult population by this spring under criticism for not vaccinating the west bank but they are on a much sharper timescale how come is that one country could get up much quicker vaccination program and other countries can't. i gather from speaking to colleagues at the j.c. the either the joint committee on vaccination and immunization that in fact the bottleneck isn't that we're unwilling it isn't that we don't have enough pairs of

hands laid on the pumps it's that the bottleneck is in supplies of the vaccine at the moment now inevitably that's going to change because we have not one not 2 but 3 vaccines on tap now that have been approved by regulators and so hopefully that bottleneck will be eased and in the meantime there's a big scale up going on to get more people through training and prepared ready to run mass vaccination once that bottleneck eases so i gather that the problem isn't so much one of unwillingness but of a lack of supply of vaccines at the moment the english program of vaccination seems to be concentrating on some super centers to vaccinate well other countries in the u.k. we seem to be having a much more local lead based vaccination program if you only feel in terms of your own experience at least matters as to do what's right what's best orders that a market of horses for courses. to a certain extent the 2 it's been down to what works for the vaccine we've been

unfortunately in thrall to the fragility of the vaccine rather than the vaccine being our slaves and the reason for this is that the pfizer vaccine that was approved 1st began to be rolled out is particularly brittle and fragile as vaccines go it has to be kept at a very low temperature until just before you need it it comes in a certain number of doses and in a batch and you have to use all of those at once because as jonathan van turned up to chief medical officer said you can't treat this like a yogurt and just get some out of the fridge use a bit push it back so for that reason there were logistical headaches around distribution there aren't many care homes for example with 975 people that you can just line up and vaccinate the good news is that with the approval of the astra zeneca vaccine this is much more robust and is capable of being treated a bit more one like a joint one of john 2 than tom's yorkers and in that respect he makes it much easier to deliver this to places like care homes to people who are housebound and smaller settings like primary care and so on and so forth that will be aided and

improved enormously by the astra zeneca vaccine dr 1st both of cambridge university thank you once again for joining me on the alexander sure it's a pleasure thanks for having me dr pettit 10 conny are of extra university is one of the leading lights speaking out and if public health might be alex ask him what the public can do to maximize their 50 at this really difficult and stressful tang . but clearly our welcome back to the alex salmon sure thank you. you know what in this position we have the virus as the subject. other additional public health measures which would help meet the scraper situation well what we should do is do what we were supposed to do in the 1st instance and if you look at what the far eastern countries have achieved by just the 3 cs you would get very far the 3 cs are awarded getting close to other people awarded crowded places

especially india was an award closed indoor places with poor ventilation so if you follow those 3 c's and for example you were in your mosque and you wear it properly and you continue to do all those infection control measures we would be in a better place but a kind of why is the virus saw a subject and is that noncompliance is that the new variant or wherever public health just not tough enough in the 1st place so it is a combination of all of those factors and it is disingenuous of our leaders to say it's all because of the new variant that is more infectious even if it were more infectious we've got to realize that until you get infected the virus is just there be it the original version or the new version so what we have not been doing properly and we just are reluctant to do it which is restrict and reduce our

interactions with fellow human beings because this is a human to human spread of infection secondly our infection control measures are half hearted what do i mean by that we wear a mask but invariably we don't wear it properly we enter into crowded places knowing full well that it's not safe to enter poorly ventilated crowded indoor places like supermarkets like shops and then we go on to public transport not wearing masks. openly and or mental ating that bus or train properly and all of those things pushed together give you a rising number of cases s. pressure easy when you've got a new variant which is releasing lots and lots and lots of virus particles so that it is easier to get infected bite but out of the u.k. figures the 4 countries of the united kingdom of a much worse international examples or isn't it the case that just about everyone

is struggling to contain this virus well unfortunately if we compare like for like with our european counterparts similar countries similar populations similar age structures then unfortunately the u.k. numbers are very high and there are very high because leading up to christmas period december onwards we had all that traditional thing that we do which is go around buying presents go around interacting on buses trains shops shopping centers etc so the seeding took place that and here in january we are paying the price for it. so are you saying that the heavy death toll was seeing no over 80000 deaths in the the countries of the united kingdom is a direct result of the easing of the lot of those before christmas unfortunately it

has a bearing on it of course unfortunately it's source silent because on the one hand we've got a variant from which it is easy to get infected by so it generates more cases more cases equals more people will end up in hospital equals more people will end up in i.t. you equals more people will die so it isn't a case of this variant is more severe disease causing it is more a case of it is easy to get infected by it because our infection control measures are not good enough and number 2 this new variant enables the infected infectious person to release a lot more viruses from their nose mount secretions which people then pick up and get infected by. lost some of that the great hope was tested and trace it would contain the virus what has gone wrong with the test of trace systems and the

countries of the united kingdom so we never set it up properly especially in england i know where else did a much better job test and trace only works when case numbers are low but when you have case numbers in excess of 810-0000 people then contact tracing and especially centralized contact tracing will fail it's not possible to contact trace a large number of contacts of a large number of cases just not possible and it would have been better if we had done localized contact tracing because then we would have kept the case numbers down and we would continue like the south koreans like the far eastern countries have achieved we could have done it we took a wrong turn very early on. look at the hopes for the vaccine rollout the u.k. government of no saying by the autumn all idols full of vaccination but in this

will the saying this is going to be done by the the spring as of earth it can be done and lessons can be leavened in order to get that vaccine into more arms more quickly somebody like myself i've been advocating for a long time we should have a quick before 7 operation and we should immunize as fast as possible as many as possible as safely as possible and you can make that 247 operation now here is the number of the problem we have why we can't do it our leaders are not saying it explicitly but the issue is we need a large enough supply of vaccines on a daily basis it's good enough to say to us i have 100000000 doses but those 100000000 doses don't translate into i have got hundreds of thousands of bottles with the vaccine in it ready to be injected into people's arms that's not the case

so if we haven't got a supply then we can't do the 20 $47.00 operation and would go one step further and i would say this no one is well unless everyone is well i would say look set up under license under royalties a manufacturing plant to make extra vaccines and my reasons are even if we don't use it we can give it to other countries and if they use it they get better we feel better we will also remain better because until everyone is immunized we will continue to get our attic of breaks from all your public health experience for the people watching this program what are the key things they should be doing to protect themselves and their families so in the midst of very high case numbers there's. only one simple advise keep away from human beings this is very important and especially if you are in the older leave group one or

a group just keep away from and the humans get somebody else to do your shopping for you except keep away from other human beings that's the best advice i can give dr about it uncanny affects the university thank you so much for joining me and they're like salmon show thank you just when we all hope that the end was in sight the viruses roared back with deadly impact the will is this more true than the 4 that ministrations of the of the u.k. where the health services closer to being overwhelmed and at any stage for this crisis the disaster in the care homes the summer holiday relaxation yto to help pubs soften the student halls of residence super spreaders the test and trace failure of the christmas folly the slow realisation of the threat of the new variant virus they represent in a litany of failures of course many countries are struggling but the united kingdom

is struggling more than most but mortality and infections know at record levels the vaccination cavalry cannot arrive quickly enough the u.k. was among the 1st of countries to license the vital vaccines but there and other countries have been left standing by the vaccination program and is still every adult is due to be protected by the spring and other countries will be lucky to be this autumn and therefore frighten populations have the the right to ask why is that some countries like new zealand and vietnam can sure how to control the virus and public health terms and again why is that a country like has ill is so far ahead in the vaccination program this is a question which requires to be answered. if i'm not going to speed on the cell phone all at the show it's goodbye for both stay safe we'll see you again next week .

let's come together impeach the president not just about impeachment anymore it's about canceling it he is a clear and present danger to the u.s. house of representatives voted to impeach president trump for the 2nd time after an impassioned debate but small many on the floor can't wait to see the back of him to say it's more about justice. vandalised then torched hundreds of rioters that have brussels police station on fire after an african immigrant dies in custody. and greece calls on the e.u.

to speed up the postoffice to get travelers moving again for tourism.