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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

MrSki said:
Went to the park today to read a book in the lovely sunshine. Bagged the best bench in the park for sunshine & peace. within the first hour an old lady asked to share the end of my 5ft bench & got the hump when I said no I am social distancing. Followed by two others. There were empty benches just not in the sun.
What the fuck is wrong with people. You might have been jabbed but I haven't. Get up earlier if you want the best seat in the park. There was a time when a tinny & a fag put people off wanting anything to do with you now a bit of sunshine seems to embolden them. I will stop showering to make me more antisocial. I can't believe I was actually asked let alone how upset people seemed to be when I told them to do one. :mad:
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Sit in the middle of the bench? I think sitting at one end is implicitly inviting someone to sit at the other end, so I’m slightly surprised (and heartened) to hear people actually asked.
 
prunus said:
Sit in the middle of the bench? I think sitting at one end is implicitly inviting someone to sit at the other end, so I’m slightly surprised (and heartened) to hear people actually asked.
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I like to sit at the end with the bin so I can stub me fags & toss my cans in. I did move across after the first assault but it didn't seem to matter. The sunny bench was the goal. :D
 
elbows said:
Yes thats what I'm getting at. Just chuck in a load of unknowns about seasonality, the extent to which behaviours will go back to normal, whether the government get a clue about aspects like test, trace & isolate, etc.

I spent much of the initial vaccine rollout phase feeling a bit sick about the giddy nature of much of the coverage and attitudes. It seems there are some lessons people arent going to learn unless the media bother to tell them, and unless we actually get to see the consequences unfold.

Just one example, ehre is a chart from some early Feb Uni of Warwick modelling paper that was part of SAGE discussions. I'm sort of expecting that despite knowing that vaccines arent 100% effective for everyone, people might still be surprised at what proportion of hospitalised cases were vaccinated in the following modelling results. Cautious assumptions are where they've been much more cautious than in their ventral assumptions about what effects to expect from the vaccines in practice. My point doesnt really rely on this more gloomy scenario being the one closer to reality, since the proportion of those hospitalised is what I'm getting at with this example, and that proportion is still large in the central assumption modelling.

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What's R with no social distancing etc? 3 to 6 perhaps? Probably the lower end if measures are retained in hospital and care settings. Add in 85% of the adult population being vaccinated, I'm struggling to see that modelled summer surge taking off anywhere near that steeply.
 
kabbes said:
I would imagine that a lot of people that initially declined vaccination invitations didn’t do so out of an ideological opposition to vaccines. There were probably practical or personal impediments.
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I understand that a lot of people are concerned about fertility issues. No data on this and likely no risk, it is however an emotive issue.
 
kabbes said:
I would imagine that a lot of people that initially declined vaccination invitations didn’t do so out of an ideological opposition to vaccines. There were probably practical or personal impediments.
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Badgers said:
I understand that a lot of people are concerned about fertility issues. No data on this and likely no risk, it is however an emotive issue.
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Those reasons, and no doubt some just being concerned over the speed they were developed, and if they are safe, but now knowing many millions have been jabbed, and they are not dropping dead all over the place, those concerns are reduced.
 
platinumsage said:
What's R with no social distancing etc? 3 to 6 perhaps? Probably the lower end if measures are retained in hospital and care settings. Add in 85% of the adult population being vaccinated, I'm struggling to see that modelled summer surge taking off anywhere near that steeply.
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I would agree.

There was no summer surge last summer and we pretty much opened up and encouraged people to all dine indoors too. :facepalm:
 
Badgers said:
I understand that a lot of people are concerned about fertility issues. No data on this and likely no risk, it is however an emotive issue.
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There's plenty of data from all the other vaccines, none of which affect fertility, and there's no conceivable biological mechanism whereby these vaccines could affect fertility.

So while it's true that there hasn't been a specific trial to determine whether these coronavirus vaccines affect fertility, there's also no reason to conduct one.

This fertility thing comes from an anti-vaxer conspiracy troll who posted some made up crap about it binding to the placenta.
 
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platinumsage said:
There's plenty of data from all the other vaccines, none of which affect fertility, and there's no conceivable biological mechanism whereby these vaccines could affect fertility.

So while it's true that there hasn't been a specific trial to determine whether these coronavirus vaccines affect fertility, there's also no reason to conduct one.

This fertility things comes from an anti-vaxer conspiracy troll who posted some made up crap about it binding to the placenta.
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It's partly a legacy of the unfortunate incidents with previous vaccines or experimental treatments such as thalidomide. Combined with that cunts autism research.

One of the most common issues with research is it also tended (still does?) to focus on straight white males aged 20-40 rathee than women of children and it frequently still does (remember oversized PPE issues from may?)
 
Artaxerxes said:
One of the most common issues with research is it also tended (still does?) to focus on straight white males aged 20-40 rathee than women of children and it frequently still does (remember oversized PPE issues from may?)
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This is true and a difficult problem to fix (well, not the straight white part, but the males aged 20-40 part). At least in phase 1 and 2 trials, you want to be cautious, which means not giving your potentially dangerous thing to vulnerable people, and that means giving it to the youth (who are, entirely coincidentally, also the age group more willing to put their bodies at risk for money). But you don’t want to give it to a woman aged 20-40 because she might be pregnant, and that would mess up your data be potentially dangerous to the unborn baby.
 
StoneRoad said:
Those figures are very promising ...

People (in general) just need to hold their nerve and not drop their guard for that little bit longer.
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Even a while after a second dose of vaccine I do not recommend that people totally drop their guard. Vaccines will change the risk equation, they will not remove all risk, but it seems society is doomed to learn this lesson the hard way.
 
platinumsage said:
What's R with no social distancing etc? 3 to 6 perhaps? Probably the lower end if measures are retained in hospital and care settings. Add in 85% of the adult population being vaccinated, I'm struggling to see that modelled summer surge taking off anywhere near that steeply.
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I would certainly expect that weaknesses in the model include not knowing how to model the hospital<->community infection feedback loops that were likely a significant part of the dynamics in the first 2 waves. When I want to be optimistic about the future, I assume such feedback loops were a big part of the picture before, and that things wont be the same in future on that front.

I also doubt that various details about exactly how bad the new variant made things are fully understood at this point.

The various modelling that was done includes scenarios where behaviours/contacts are still running at 25% less than pre-pandemic levels, and scenarios where things have gone back to normal. And scanerios where a number of other variables are set to different rates. Plenty of unknowns, so I wouldnt take the modelling as an exact prediction. They also talk about seasonal unknowns and how those could affect the timing of the resurgence.

In my mind the full spectrum of possibilities are still in play, things could go much better than that modelling suggests, but I dont see anything surprising about their findings either. It only took a fraction of the population being infected to create the steep waves we saw so far, and even great vaccines with successful rollouts could easily still allow a similar fraction of the population to remain vulnerable to hospitalisation and death. When trying to be more optimistic, I would hope that the transmission dynamics are more significantly affected by the vaccination programme than the modelling implies, making it harder for the virus to reach the vulnerable segment of the population. Could easily go the other way though if people in age groups that were very careful in the pandemic so far do not behave like that at all in future.
 
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Badgers said:
I understand that a lot of people are concerned about fertility issues. No data on this and likely no risk, it is however an emotive issue.
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cupid_stunt said:
Those reasons, and no doubt some just being concerned over the speed they were developed, and if they are safe, but now knowing many millions have been jabbed, and they are not dropping dead all over the place, those concerns are reduced.
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Hi cupid_stunt, I don't think fertility issues would definitely have emerged yet.
 
kabbes said:
This is true and a difficult problem to fix (well, not the straight white part, but the males aged 20-40 part). At least in phase 1 and 2 trials, you want to be cautious, which means not giving your potentially dangerous thing to vulnerable people, and that means giving it to the youth (who are, entirely coincidentally, also the age group more willing to put their bodies at risk for money). But you don’t want to give it to a woman aged 20-40 because she might be pregnant, and that would mess up your data be potentially dangerous to the unborn baby.
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When the vaccines were originally approved, the approval didn't include pregnant women, because it hadn't been tested on pregnant women. I don't know if this has since changed.

This may, perhaps, be a contributing factor in concerns about it affecting fertility, even if such concerns aren't entirely logical.
 
andysays said:
When the vaccines were originally approved, the approval didn't include pregnant women, because it hadn't been tested on pregnant women. I don't know if this has since changed.

This may, perhaps, be a contributing factor in concerns about it affecting fertility, even if such concerns aren't entirely logical.
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Given that it hasn't even yet been tested on children, you can understand somebody wanting to be cautious about the effect it might have on their unborn baby. Not that this has anything to do with fertility, of course.
 
elbows said:
Even a while after a second dose of vaccine I do not recommend that people totally drop their guard. Vaccines will change the risk equation, they will not remove all risk, but it seems society is doomed to learn this lesson the hard way.
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Yep. Been saying that to people here...but many think once they get a vaccine that everything will return to normal. Indeed the signs are that people are already returning to normal ...which is not ok.
A pub owner in Dublin during the past week just decided to open. So did a hairdresser. Despite being warned she reopened a second day.
The numbers of cars on the road yesterday was crazy.

It's frightening. Because only a small % here have been vaccinated. Mostly frontline health care and over 85s.
We are very far from safe yet
 
kabbes said:
Given that it hasn't even yet been tested on children, you can understand somebody wanting to be cautious about the effect it might have on their unborn baby. Not that this has anything to do with fertility, of course.
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Pfizer is and has been tested on children.
edition.cnn.com

This 12-year-old is happy to be testing a Covid-19 vaccine

Pfizer's experimental coronavirus vaccine has been tested in its youngest group of volunteers yet -- 12-year-olds.
edition.cnn.com edition.cnn.com

AstraZeneca they are about to start
www.bbc.co.uk

Covid: Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine to be tested on children

A trial will assess whether the vaccine produces a strong immune response in six to 17-year-olds.
www.bbc.co.uk
 
Sugar Kane said:
Yep. Been saying that to people here...but many think once they get a vaccine that everything will return to normal. Indeed the signs are that people are already returning to normal ...which is not ok.
A pub owner in Dublin during the past week just decided to open. So did a hairdresser. Despite being warned she reopened a second day.
The numbers of cars on the road yesterday was crazy.

It's frightening. Because only a small % here have been vaccinated. Mostly frontline health care and over 85s.
We are very far from safe yet
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Why is this bad? I don't think you're going to catch covid-19 in your own car on your own. Possibly why there is so much traffic.
 
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