Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
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cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
Kent variant could be associated with higher deaths.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
That's a bit hard to believe tbh. Had mine, and I know a few people who've had theirs (all of us at different places) and we've all had that kind of stuff explained to us. I'm also about to start giving them at a GP hub and we have lots of info (paper and to tell) for people. Also not sure that's anything to do with the government, it'd be a local failure by the people giving the vaccine. It could happen though... tired HCP, run out of leaflets, end of the day, etc etc.
Best discuss this on vaccine thread though.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Tory backbenchers: open the pubs!
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
That's relatively reassuring; thanks.
danny la rouge
More like *fanny* la rouge!
I don’t subscribe to a particular newspaper. I just read my newsfeeds (Apple News and Feedly) in the knowledge that news corporations all have an agenda. The trick is to make allowances for that.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Last bit = only good news today...but, if true, that's really good news.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Except the concern over SA and Brazil variants with the vaccine.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Good question Tracy
And good answer by Whitty, the vaccine schedule makes sense.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
---->
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
But without numbers.
two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
Well there are so many different factors with so many different countries that it's just not possible to compare them. All we can really say with certainty is that we have the best vaccine performance in the world and world beating treatment.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Ugh, yes, I understand not wanting to set a particular date for coming out of lockdown into stone - but some kind of cornerstones of what sort of incidence is the goal, what sort of a strategy how then to keep it controlled...anything..? Ah, thought not.
TBH I think we're nowhere near in a position to start thinking about that in any more details than we have already.
E2A: Plan seems to be lockdown, vaccinate the fuck out of the country, and then see how we go.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
There are always some shit questions but I thought that a bunch of the questions today were the right ones to ask and made things suitably awkward for Johnson, Whitty and Vallance.
I also thought this press conference was illuminating in the way that the bad news about the increased risk of death fromt he new variant rubbed awkwardly against the fact that Johnson had nothing new to say, no new measures to announce, and would try to get through this perio with little more than the ongoing vaccination campaign and the new mantra that we dont want more rules and laws, we want better enforcement of the existing one. With that largely being a blatant attempt to completely dodge the question of too many people going to work in this lockdown.
If this sort of line of questioning continues in future, the government must be pressed on work issues, and related matters such as the numbrr of children still attending school, nurseries still being open etc. Back in the first lockdown the daily nature of the briefings gave a certain rhythm and flow to this side of things, but I dont have the same sense of continuity this time so I dont know what pressures may mount as a result of todays press conference being a display of weakness and unwillingness to go further or even sterongly hint at going further in future.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yes the usual tricks, stay away from the percentages that are unhelpful to the government stance. Whitty and Vallance both did this today, with Vallance trying to mutate a question into one of which was the biggest risk, just so he could say that the thing they decided to do with vaccine dose scheduling wasnt the biggest risk.
Whitty is right to say that medicine etc is all about balance of risks. The problem is we get those balancing acts wrong a lot, and this pandemic offered a more intense glimpse of this phenomenon many times already, and those that make those decisions have reasons to fear certain angles of scrutiny.
Plus Whitty would no doubt use the same sort of risk balancing stuff when going on about 'the dangers of acting too early', and I will never in a million years give him a free pass on that stuff despite the obvious logic involved. But I dont think I need to properly repeat my rant about those who hide behind the dangers of going too early again now, given we are in the midst of dealing yet again with the dangers of going much too late.
Another awkward portion of todays press conference was near the end when Johnson was describing why we shouldnt relax measures too quickly. He was describing all sorts of dangerous bounce-backs that we have seen in the past, and how keen he is to avoid them, despite the most recent obvious example being what happened after the weak and short November lockdown was replaced by shit tiers that were so obviously shit that even Labour had the sense not to vote for them in parliament.
Anyway I do hope it isnt just me that thought the awkward juxtaposition of more deadly variant with fuck all new measures was quite the sight to behold, propelling todays press conference in to my list of pandemic press conferences to make note of and refer to in future.
Tune in next week when they decide that in order that the public judge the governments pandemic performance more fairly over time, current rate of daily deaths is to be divided by 1.3 in order to remove the impact of the new variant that isnt their fault. Never mind that one of Vallances answers which was defending the vaccine dose strategy relied on mentioning the fact that allowing really high levels of prevalence of the virus increases the risk of mutants.
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On the contrary, I think that should be at the forefront of any considerations: Where do we (does the country) want to/need to get to?, and then how do we get there?
It's the question of the missing strategy again. Of course, case numbers are insanely high right now and we are nowhere near actually releasing anything - but not thinking about it and communicating some kind of road map, especially now that there is actual grudging acknowledment by Johnson that vaccinating the top priority groups does not equal immediate unlockening?
There has been this creep from "back to normal in summer/Christmas/spring" to "well, looks like it's going to take another whole year". And while the former was of course always insanely overoptimistic and nonsense, I do think that the dawning realisation of how careful any loosening of restrictions will need to be for months and months to come, does require a rethink of the whole "strategy".
I don't see any details other than wait and see, and the vaccination goals? I suppose some of this "wait and see" will actually yield some valuable data on effect of vaccination on transmission etc., which might inform future steps.
Sigh. I guess, ultimately, I would just like to see a near-zero covid strategy. I keep getting my hopes up to the contrary of all evidence, and keep ending up frustrated.
souljacker
innit
I had a conf call with some people out in Cupertino today who were telling me all about the Californian variant. We had a laugh about the US feeling left out without a variant of it's own.
But, it's out there New California Variant May Be Driving Virus Surge There, Study Suggests
But, it's out there New California Variant May Be Driving Virus Surge There, Study Suggests
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