StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
All four adults in my household have now had their first jabs (I was the last) but we are still being exceptionally careful, and will be for some time to come ! whatever BJ says for his roadmap.
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
- Thread starter Sasaferrato
- Start date
All four adults in my household have now had their first jabs (I was the last) but we are still being exceptionally careful, and will be for some time to come ! whatever BJ says for his roadmap.
Welcome, surprisingly well-informed new poster.
You know it's possible to read threads without registering right?
Sorry, the suspicion of which your post was most recent example, is just silly.
We're mostly just solving for different problems I think. And probably strawmanning each other quite a bit.
You see limiting load on the NHS as being the most important thing there is, which I agree with in the short to medium term. We can argue over the details of how to accomplish that, whether we need full house arrest or just limiting larger gatherings or something in-between, but ultimately this is a response that is buying us time, not a sustainable solution. I'd say that describes all of last year and the first months of this year.
I think that where we diverge is that long term I don't support it. After vaccinations, if the NHS is still overwhelmed, that's just how the world works now, it becomes your turn to come up with a plan that doesn't result in us being permanently reduced to digital beings.
What's the point of being able to get a broken leg treated if the only way I can see my mum is through a screen? Social distancing forever doesn't make sense to me.
But as I say above, I don't think that anyone is suggesting social distancing forever, neither am I suggesting we should just allow raves to start up again. Those are both strawman positions. The reality is somewhere in the middle.
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2hats
Dust.
You jest, but...
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two sheds
Least noticed poster 2007
This is very true, and it's also often overlooked that the proponents of lockdown (for want of a better expression) don't tend to advocate for lockdown as "the" measure, but always also ask for improvements to other pieces of the puzzle that could well and easily be achieved with some political will and some money (and quite possibly a lot less money than is currently being spent).
Examples being: advocating for supporting people to be able to isolate properly when tested positive (at the very least not having to go outside the home or possibly better still to support people in crowded housing to isolate away from their family). Or, quite the opposite from wanting to put more burden on individuals to keep to an ever stricter lockdown, advocating for better oversight of workplace measures, more WFH and short-term pausing of non-essential work and production. Or, better recognition and information on covid symptoms outside of the big three cough, fever and loss of smell, such as headaches, sore throat, nausea and fatigue.
All of which could aid in reducing transmission more quickly during lockdown periods and keeping rates down, and all issues which have been highlighted for months and months.
Another point on the NHS: I think I saw it linked to elsewhere on the boards, Rachel Clarke, the palliative care doctor who has been a rare prominent voice reporting from the "frontline", spoke at the Independent Sage meeting last Friday. She made a very powerful point. Not only about the terrible and traumatic conditions for staff AND patients in hospital currently, but about the ability of staff to care for patients with the whole range of health needs now and in the short- and medium-term future (see for example the massive backlog of operations).
That point has imo not had anywhere near enough recognition. Very rarely do you hear it talked about that the NHS "not being overwhelmed" has actually meant vastly expanding ICU capacity at the expense of other care, and indeed quadrupling the case load of ICU personnel. Rather than looking at how many current critical care beds are occupied with covid patients as an isolated measure, surely the question that needs to be asked is "how many covid patients can there be in hospital at all so that all other healthcare can be provided, and with a humane workload for NHS staff".
I think this is so crucial and also a point that the public could get behind, and one that could possibly bridge the potential rift in the discussion around this tricky period when a lot of older and more vulnerable people have been vaccinated. It won't be any good for the people now protected from severe cases of covid either, if cases in the under 50s should be so high that still most healthcare resources have to go towards treating covid cases, rather than other less life-threatening, but potentially still life-shortening or limiting conditions.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I know that it's possible to read Urban without registering, and that there might be nothing suspicious about the extent of their knowledge, it still rings a few dubious bells when two turn up, almost simultaneously. Not to mention the business of berating posters for their style of posting, so soon after arriving.
Time will tell. It usually does.
I think it's mostly out of a sense of not having their argument taken seriously.
Obviously we should expand support to those who need to isolate. We don't even need to limit it to testing, if you want to stay inside, here's the funding for it, no questions asked. I personally think that even means testing it would be absurd - it's not the state's role to decide who's "vulnerable" based on some arbitrary measures. If your partner is vulnerable, and you are 100% healthy but live alone, then you should be able to isolate in order that you can support each other.
I don't think the debate is really about that though (aside from a few trolls and hard-line right wing nutjobs), it's about the restrictions.
I think everyone agrees that the Government aren't doing enough on the support side, that's what they do, they're Tories innit.
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strung out
💩 🤣 🍆 💦 🧐 👻 🐝 🐈⬛
I agree. I'm all for outing new posters who are obviously a specific returning or banned poster, but comments like existentialist's are just a bit shitty and not very welcoming, especially on a publically accessible thread like this, which is clearly of interest to people outside of the Urban bubble.
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I chose my comment very carefully.
I can't really tell what most of this waffle is about - is there a suggestion that I'm a previously banned member returning? The owner of these boards I think can probably clear that up?
I joined because I'm a local resident and recently found out about this place. I find it interesting because the majority opinion here is quite different to that in my social circle, and I'd rather not spend all of my time in an echochamber. Something I prefer about oldschool forums as opposed to the algorithmic nonsense that just surrounds you with people who are copies of yourself.
I should definitely take more time to post in other sections though, point taken.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
aye, you just like to throw your weight about as a self-appointed gatekeeper
strung out
💩 🤣 🍆 💦 🧐 👻 🐝 🐈⬛
Says a lot.
Cid
Proper break this time
You can't just argue that excessive load on the healthcare system is an acceptable trade-off. It quite clearly isn't remotely sustainable... Even leaving aside the whole people dying/long term health issues thing. We have examples of how to return to normal; hard lockdown followed by comprehensive test and trace, quarantine for travel.
Of course long-term we have to look to vaccines, even if we could eliminate it here, that obviously isn't going to happen globally. And I'm pretty sure we all hope that the current effort to do that works out... But if your scenario of continuing high load on the NHS continued post-vaccine, then we'd have to go back to stricter measures.
Maybe we are talking at cross purposes; tbh I don't really understand what point you are making, i.e. how you envisage things could or should be, in terms of balancing lesser restrictions/covid spread/healthcare. [ETA I think you just expanded a bit on your post higher up, unless I didn't read it properly before].
I don't think the "if the NHS is still overwhelmed, so be it" argument really holds, and people would probably have got quite a lot to say about it if they were left in the street with their broken legs- but it seems that you are sketching a bit of an extreme position out of frustration.
I do share that frustration, and I agree that things should never have been allowed to get to the point (multiple times over), where there have to be such strict limits on household mixing for such a long time; it's obscene and it does feel brutal.
And all the thoughts that I have posted upthread are precisely born out of my wish to make it possible, at the soonest opportunity and sustainably, for people to meet with at least a small number of loved ones, relatively safely.
I don't know if that's what you are saying, but if you feel that there could have possibly been a different approach, putting the possibility of at least a small amount of social interactions front and centre of any measures, for example offsetting against even stricter workplace controls, again I would agree. (But I might be putting words in your mouth here?)
Sorry, yeah, I did edit it to add more details, I'll try to avoid hitting the post button prematurely in the future.
I think part of the issue is that we're discussing "the people" as some sort of homogeneous blob.
It's perfectly possible that (numbers pulled out of my bum, don't pay too much heed) 80% of people would disagree with my stance, and 20% agree with it.
The question then is what do we do with that 20%?
At the moment we seem to be handling it by having restrictions that are ignorable - e.g. yes, it's illegal to do X and Y, but the punishment is pretty small, and the enforcement nonexistent.
Thankfully, even with defection, we can still bring R below 1 at the moment so it's a bit of a moot point.
But if those numbers start to increase slightly, what's the plan? Locking people up is probably too expensive to be sustainable as well?
On your latter point;
Personally I don't feel that banning people sitting outside on park benches, or meeting up one on one inside, is such a significant driver of infection that it's worth restricting it at all. I don't buy "we need to do X and Y so that we can" type argumentation on this; I think we could just make it legal because people are doing it anyway.
I think that once this sort of thing became normalized, it killed off a lot of the "blitz spirit" and pushed people who were on the fence into just tuning out. I am seeing a lot of people converting to this "sod it all" mindset, which is really awful, and something we desperately need to address. "I don't know what the rules are any more" isn't just a meme, it has actual consequences.
elbows
Well-Known Member
That complaint reached its peak during the phases before the current lockdown, and hasnt been heard much since. One of the largest differences with this lockdown in contrast to what came before is that previously they had an approach that involved changing the rules all the time, bringing in lockdown measures in phases etc. This time has been a total change on that front, they seem to have very deliberately chosen not to keep changing things during this one, as reflected by the number of press conferences this time where there were no rule changes to announce. Any changes that have happened have largely been restricted to the international travel front, most notably the hotel quarantine thing.
Agree with the latter, though not the former. I still hear it a lot, though less than during the tier madness.
That doesn't mean it's not just tongue in cheek, though. In my experience it's used synonymously with "just testing my eyesight" or "bending the rules... in a very specific and limited way".
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Add in an airlock at your front door and I think you've solved corona.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Yeah it doesnt work, its not an option. Because a certain level of healthcare is part of the foundations of this sort of society and economy. If that is allowed to collapse perpetually then the whole game changes. Including regimes shitting themselves that they've lost their authority and are open to being overthrown. And even without that, the whole 'economic confidence' equation still gets mangled. Societies could actually adapt to very changed circumstances on this front, but it would take many years and it would involve more disruption, systemic collapse and altered politics than anything these lockdowns have brought.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Actually what happened the first time is that the establishments preferred approach was to get the bulk of infections out of the way in the first wave in order to reduce the chance of subsequent waves including winter waves. The approach that came to be known for the herd immunity aspect. Which they used to justify not closing schools. Featuring much talk of 'pushing down on the peak' to spread the wave out over a longer period of time, keeping peak levels within a range that hospitals etc could cope with.
That approach was dead by mid March. Beause the public and the media werent buying it. And because although scientists do not know exactly what will happen, they have data and models that give them a pretty good guide. And the numbers didnt add up at all. This virus causes too many people to require hospitalisation in this country, and pushing down on the peak whilst still letting the wave run its course just didnt add up at all, the peak could not be pushed down low enough to hit the target range. One the government were presented with such figures, they had to change approach. Once they had changed approach, talk of not having a second wave became dishonest on several levels, because you still end up with a very large susceptible population. The only reason this wont just carry on repeating is that vaccines have come along to change the susceptibility picture, number of hospitalisations etc.
Once the first wave was done, those that had various problems with the lockdown policy were tempted to believe that the first wave peaked for non-lockdown reasons. The lockdown was late, so they argued that the peak was actually the natural peak that would have happened anyway without lockdown. A position that largely relies on a very different understanding about remaining levels of population susceptibility, compared to what scientific authorities believed. I had to keep a very slightly open mind about that because I did not have 100% proof that they were wrong. The resurgence in many countries offered proof, and the stance I have just described died on its arse.
I have not attempted to do proper calculations, but it seems quite apparent that even with lots of the most vulnerable people shielding themselves in various ways, a fraction of the population getting infected with this virus was still enough to push the NHS to its limits. Whether thats 10%, 15%, 20% or 25% of the population getting infected being enough to hit this limit I havent estimated properly, but its likely somewhere in that range, and so drastic measures were necessary. And would be necessary again in future if we didnt have vaccines to change the equation.
Questions aout why countries differ in their hospitalisation and mortality toll are very interesting and important, but are difficult to unpick due to so many potential factors being involved. Population age and levels of obesity are a reasonable starting point, but I expect there are other important factors too. Whatever the reasons, answers wont come or unlock interesting alternative options during the acute phase of the pandemic. And I cannot agree with some of the earlier claims about how various countries were not overrun with deaths. What counts as overrun? There were plenty of places where levels of death were so high they placed a strain on the death management systems, and even in (late) lockdown UK during the first wave, there were twice as many people dying as normal at the very peak. If we had locked down with better timing then we wouldnt have reached such heights, but that would have encouraged anti-lockdown fools to claim that the threat had been grossly exaggerated.
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
OK - I'll give you a plan, it's not a good one but I think it is the only alternative in the situation you outline - a failure of vaccinations to prevent NHS overload and a societal refusal to carry on with social distancing. And basically, it is that everyone over 70 or with severely life limiting preconditions does not get any treatment for Covid19. Strict triage to keep them at home to sink or swim. Age reduces further if hospitals really fill up. Thousands of people dying at home with no care.
In this situation I reckon your mum might only want to see you through a screen anyway.
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
Today's update -Today's update -
First dose vaccinations now just under 17.25m - second doses are now just under 605k.
New cases - 10,406, overall a drop of 19.2% in the last week - that percentage figure has been dropping for a few days now.
New deaths - 445, which is down 176 on last Saturday's 621, that brings the 7-day average down to around 494 a day, a drop of 28.2% in the last week, IF that figure drops by another 25% in the coming week, it will be the lowest since early Nov.
First dose vaccinations now just under 17.6m - second doses are now just over 615k.
New cases - 9.834, overall a drop of 16.2% in the last week - we were seeing drops of around 25%, so it's worrying to see that drop going down.
New deaths - 215, which is down 43 on last Sunday's 258, that brings the 7-day average down to around 488 a day, a drop of 27.4% in the last week.
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
Fuck off, and then fuck off with horse you rode in on, and then fuck off some more ...
miss direct
misfungled
Of course the announcement is on a Monday late afternoon. Figures are always artificially lower on Mondays, which helps push the narrative of "getting back to normal."
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
Hey, I don't want to see it - it's just the logical conclusion of the anti-lockdown arguments.
StoneRoad
heckling from the back!
I don't usually check the positivity rate (no of cases / no of tests, and the x100 for the %)
The odd day I checked in the week was about 2 - 2.5 % - I don't recall exactly which day or the actual % - however, today's is under 2% [1.755 rounded slightly] In the past I think that figure's been up in the 5 or 6 % if not more.
I agree, that drop off is a little concerning, with people like the CRG baying for "hospitality" and so on to open.
I'm hoping that vaccinations will kick in to bring it down further.
cupid_stunt
Merry fecking Christmas.
He's chosen Monday to announce it in the Commons, because it's the first day that Parliament is back after the recent recess.
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