Urban75 Home About Offline BrixtonBuzz Contact

Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

LynnDoyleCooper said:
I appreciate the reasons people give for wanting clear guidelines about exciting or loosening restrictions, but I find it really hard to imagine a way of doing them that isn't massively over-complicated and confusing in the situation we're in now, and then it also creates the predictable, "You said this, but..." when the situation changes. (With a much lower incidence of infection then I can see it working much better.)

Would you give infection rates as an indicator? In all age groups? Regionally or nationally? Or hospitalisations, or deaths? Or some mix of them and vaccination rates? Or something else? It's just a massive topic, and with people saying messaging is important and needs to be clear I can't see how this would do anything but create more confusion and anger when something changes (another variant for example) which means the route out has to change anyway.
Click to expand...
All true, but a well-run organisation with an entire year to do it would by now have identified their key metrics, trigger points, risk tolerances and decision and escalation criteria. The communication of these would no doubt need to be done with caution but I don’t even get the impression that the government have anything in the first place to communicate.
 
kabbes said:
All true, but a well-run organisation with an entire year to do it would by now have identified their key metrics, trigger points, risk tolerances and decision and escalation criteria. The communication of these would no doubt need to be done with caution but I don’t even get the impression that the government have anything in the first place to communicate.
Click to expand...

SAGE etc have talked of trigger points since the earliest days. eg levels of intensive care admissions that should be used to trigger a new phase of the response. Some are probably still referenced behind the scenes, but the government clearly doesnt like being bound by consistent triggers, they reserve the right to completely ignore all that stuff (eg what happened in September) and I dont even think they like the idea of the public being equipped with tools that enable them to predict government decisions and action.

I did manage to identify one indicator, but it wasnt a trigger point, it was Nick Triggle. As in when we are at stages where the BBCs Nick Triggle talks shit about the future and makes it sound like measures would be an overreaction or that modelling is overly gloomy, then we may assume that strong measures are needed but that deadly cunts within government are trying to resist. This was a reliable indicator in March and September, but hasnt been a factor since then as even Triggle could not avoid the gravity of the situation that followed. I would not rule out a further repeat of this phenomenon in future if thats where we find ourselves.
 
brogdale said:
innit?
:mad:

View attachment 251469
Click to expand...

Covid: UK virus deaths exceed 100,000 since pandemic began

The last paragraph of that article (which discusses the impact in different countries) is spectacularly disingenuous. Check this out:


With deaths rising since then in many countries and vaccination programmes only getting up and running, there is still a long way to go before we will know who has had the toughest second wave.
Click to expand...


“Who had the toughest second wave”. Fuck me. Like none of it was our fault, we just got hit hard with this thing. Other countries just had it easier than us. Nothing at all to do with being run by devil-may-care misanthropes.
 
Dogsauce said:
Covid: UK virus deaths exceed 100,000 since pandemic began

The last paragraph of that article (which discusses the impact in different countries) is spectacularly disingenuous. Check this out:
Click to expand...

Plus this disgusting claim:

And some countries that missed the first wave entirely - such as Poland (shown above) or Germany - have seen significant spikes in deaths in recent months.
Click to expand...

Germany is having a much worse time in the second wave, with many tens of thousands of deaths. But they didnt 'miss the first wave entirely', they had over 9000 deaths in the first wave. When looking at excess death figures only it may be possible to make that claim, but all that really means is that the first wave Covid19 deaths were at a level that could be completely offset by a reduction in non-Covid deaths at that time.
 
Regarding trigger points etc, the governemnt will still come out with language that involves such concepts, but they wont share the precise detail that would enable us to judge.

The following is about school standards minister Nick Gibb, as covered in the 13:57 entry of the BBC live updates page.


He says there are "clear criteria" on the course of the pandemic that must be met before schools can reopen.

These include the number of people being admitted to hospital, death and vaccination rates and meeting the challenge of new variants.

He recognises the time head teachers, teachers, parents and pupils will need to prepare to return to the classroom, he says.

"We will give two weeks notice... we will be making announcements in the next few days," he says. The time-frame is a pledge already made by Education Secretary Gavin Williamson.
Click to expand...
 
LynnDoyleCooper said:
I appreciate the reasons people give for wanting clear guidelines about exciting or loosening restrictions, but I find it really hard to imagine a way of doing them that isn't massively over-complicated and confusing in the situation we're in now, and then it also creates the predictable, "You said this, but..." when the situation changes. (With a much lower incidence of infection then I can see it working much better.)

Would you give infection rates as an indicator? In all age groups? Regionally or nationally? Or hospitalisations, or deaths? Or some mix of them and vaccination rates? Or something else? It's just a massive topic, and with people saying messaging is important and needs to be clear I can't see how this would do anything but create more confusion and anger when something changes (another variant for example) which means the route out has to change anyway.
Click to expand...

It's probably too late to change tone now, but I don't think it would be beyond people to understand that if, for example, we can get the number of people in hospital down to whatever then we can start to open up, but if cases go up again then we have to close down. That gives a clear incentive, it seems pretty simple to me and there doesn't then need to be constant changes of course. If a new variant comes along but hospital numbers don't go up then that's all good, if they do we have to lockdown again. It's driven by the data, which everyone has access to rather than at the moment where it seems driven by this weird tension between the desperation to open up for economic reasons followed by sheer panic when it goes wrong.

An open ended lockdown doesn't really offer any hope and I think that impacts on compliance. People are always going to ask when can this be over and at the moment there is a sense that's based on the whims of politicians not how we are collectively behaving. Give people the data, set actual targets, ideally localised, and then there's something to work towards. I think people would be much more motivated if local agencies at all levels including unions etc worked together to say okay let's get this town down to near zero Covid (whatever that is that's deemed safe) then we can all go to the pub but we still have to try and be careful so it doesn't start going back up again. I think that would be preferable to endless doom punctuated by reckless top down decisions made by politicians wanting to be popular that almost immediately have to be reversed and cost countless lives.
 
Last edited:
smokedout said:
It's probably too late to change tone now, but I don't think it would be beyond people to understand that if, for example, we can get the number of people in hospital down to whatever then we can start to open up, but if cases go up again then we have to close down. That gives a clear incentive, it seems pretty simple to me and there doesn't then need to be constant changes of course. If a new variant comes along but hospital numbers don't go up then that's all good, if they do we have to lockdown again. It's driven by the data, which everyone has access to rather than at the moment where it seems driven by this weird tension between the desperation to open up for economic reasons followed by sheer panic when it goes wrong.

An open ended lockdown doesn't really offer any hope and I think that impacts on compliance. People are always going to ask when can this be over and at the moment there is a sense that's based on the whims of politicians not how we are collectively behaving. Give people the data, set actual targets, ideally localised, and then there's something to work towards. I think people would be much more motivated if local agencies at all levels including unions etc worked together to say okay let's get this town down to near zero Covid (whatever that is that's deemed safe) then we can all go to the pub but we still have to try and be careful so it doesn't start going back up again. I think that would be preferable to endless doom punctuated by reckless top down decisions made by politicians wanting to be popular that almost immediately have to be reversed and cost countless lives.

it's inevitable that people will want to know when it ends, and I don't think there's anyway of getting away from those questions.
Click to expand...

Yeah I agree, although I think it's such a fucking mess now I find it hard to unpick what is best done short of a very strict lockdown, vaccine the fuck out of the country, and then see how we go... We need to be mentally prepared for another year or so of this I think.
 
smokedout said:
It's probably too late to change tone now, but I don't think it would be beyond people to understand that if, for example, we can get the number of people in hospital down to whatever then we can start to open up, but if cases go up again then we have to close down. That gives a clear incentive, it seems pretty simple to me and there doesn't then need to be constant changes of course. If a new variant comes along but hospital numbers don't go up then that's all good, if they do we have to lockdown again. It's driven by the data, which everyone has access to rather than at the moment where it seems driven by this weird tension between the desperation to open up for economic reasons followed by sheer panic when it goes wrong.

An open ended lockdown doesn't really offer any hope and I think that impacts on compliance. People are always going to ask when can this be over and at the moment there is a sense that's based on the whims of politicians not how we are collectively behaving. Give people the data, set actual targets, ideally localised, and then there's something to work towards. I think people would be much more motivated if local agencies at all levels including unions etc worked together to say okay let's get this town down to near zero Covid (whatever that is that's deemed safe) then we can all go to the pub but we still have to try and be careful so it doesn't start going back up again. I think that would be preferable to endless doom punctuated by reckless top down decisions made by politicians wanting to be popular that almost immediately have to be reversed and cost countless lives.
Click to expand...
I just wrote and deleted something about the underlined (not so much about targets and coming out of lockdown, but more generally). There's always a feel that the government are having a one way conversation with us as individuals/consumers/work units. If we could rewind to last May, what an opportunity there was to mobilise all kinds of aspects of community or 'civil society' (hate that term). I never feel 'part of' the response as things stand and the whole thing rolls on, exacerbating existing inequalities and isolation. Government couldn't even convince of putting part of the strategy in the hands of communities, but to be honest, neither have 'we'. Wouldn't have been easy to generate the links and actions needed for a new community response, but it might have been the start of a new politics.
:(
 
Wilf said:
I just wrote and deleted something about the underlined (not so much about targets and coming out of lockdown, but more generally). There's always a feel that the government are having a one way conversation with us as individuals/consumers/work units. If we could rewind to last May, what an opportunity there was to mobilise all kinds of aspects of community or 'civil society' (hate that term). I never feel 'part of' the response as things stand and the whole thing rolls on, exacerbating existing inequalities and isolation. Government couldn't even convince of putting part of the strategy in the hands of communities, but to be honest, neither have 'we'. Wouldn't have been easy to generate the links and actions needed for a new community response, but it might have been the start of a new politics.
:(
Click to expand...

I'd just add 'workplace and workplace response' to that, but yeah, totally agree.
 
souljacker said:
That's a Shapps job surely? You can usually tell whats coming by who's doing the Press Conf. Patel for having a go at people, Hancock for bragging about vax and the NHS, Rishi for furlough extensions and Sharma for something or other that I can't remember. Boris usually means a U-turn.
Click to expand...

Hes playing it safe tonight with Chris Witty and his slides, and Simon Stevens.
I hope someone asks him about Theresa Coffee's assumption that its fat old people to blame.
 
There's a lot more to blame than just obesity and old age, add in the poverty and population density in some areas, and how linked up everywhere is ... and that's before you start on the (poor) decisions made by this government directly to do with the pandemic plus all the ones made by previous administrations that cut the guts out of the NHS & other public services and killed the sense of community spirit [no such thing as society].
I could go on ...
I've now read this bbc piece on the subject ...
100,000 Covid deaths: Why the UK's death toll is so bad - BBC News
 
Todays 100,000 death milestone press conference is a disgusting spectacle.

Johnson pledged to remember the dead and the frontline workers, wow what a pledge. Shame he didnt prevent a lot of them dying in the first place.

Some journalists asked the right sort of questions for this moment.

Whitty was asked whether he regretted things like not trying harder to get government to do the right things in September. He simply hid behind the new variant in a blatant and appalling manner. He went on about balance. In the past, months ago when Vallance was trying to improve the publics impression of his own lockdown stance, something came out about how he said Whitty shouted at him on one occasion when Vallance was pressing for lockdown etc. I think I know where Whittys sense of balance and indeed sense of duty comes from. I dont agree with all of it and I expect that on some occasions he was part of the problem. And even if he wasnt, he is far too keen to provide cover for Johnson etc, and some of his press conference comments in recent months have come across as brown-nosing.
 
Last edited:
Supine said:
Took the walk in test at 16:59 today. Place was empty. Results back already - negative :)
Click to expand...
I did my third walk in test today, and the place has been almost empty every time.

While I understand the reasons some people might not want to get tested, I still find it a little concerning that there appears to be such a low take-up
 
Unless something has changed in the past couple of weeks; locally, we still have to book & to have some symptoms.
Despite the site / team seemingly to be the polar opposite of busy over the past four weeks, according to the reports from people passing.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

elbows
UK Inquiry Module 3: Impact on UK Healthcare Systems
2 3
Replies
72
Views
1K
elbows
elbows
elbows
UK Inquiry Module 1: Resilience and preparedness
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
165
Views
6K
elbows
elbows
elbows
UK Inquiry Module 2: Decision-making & political governance
2 3 4 5 6
Replies
173
Views
4K
elbows
elbows
frogwoman
Shanghai lockdown
2
Replies
55
Views
2K
skyscraper101
skyscraper101
editor
Professional football and coronavirus
Replies
6
Views
573
elbows
elbows
Back
Top Bottom