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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Talked to a neighbour (1/2 mile away but there aren't many of us) that I've not spoken to for a while. He (and wife) aren't getting vaccine because he's got a really good immune system, works out in the open in all weathers. He's generally healthy I have to say, but his son isn't - has fairly bad asthma and is 16, has had one (possibly two) shots. I generally get on well with him although we view each others' political opinions with suspicion. His wife works in a shop so comes across a lot of people.

I just nodded because I don't want to come across as preachy, will keep distance when we do meet, not really sure how else to deal with it.
 
One week to go until the next stage of unlocking, groups of up to 30 will be able to meet outdoors, 2 households or 6 people will be able to meet indoors, changes to social distancing guidelines between friends and family, including hugging.

Plus, subject to 'covid secure guidelines', pubs & restaurants will reopen indoors, together with cinemas, theatres, children’s play areas, the rest of the accommodation sector, some larger performances and sporting events in indoor & outdoor venues will be allowed subject to limits on capacity.

Full details in the Downing Street press conference today at 5 pm, with Johnson.

We've got away with the unlocking so far, with cases, hospital admissions and deaths continuing to fall, but this is a much larger relaxation of restrictions, hopefully thanks to the vaccination programme* will can get away with it.

* Around 70% of adults will have had their first jab and over 35% both jabs by next Monday.

For me, it does seem to be the right time for this to be happening, it's been a long & hard lockdown, we can't stay in lockdown forever, we need to be able to start getting back to normal life, the only fear I have is of new variants, but I am cautiously optimistic for now.

How do others feel?
 
cupid_stunt said:
One week to go until the next stage of unlocking, groups of up to 30 will be able to meet outdoors, 2 households or 6 people will be able to meet indoors, changes to social distancing guidelines between friends and family, including hugging.

Plus, subject to 'covid secure guidelines', pubs & restaurants will reopen indoors, together with cinemas, theatres, children’s play areas, the rest of the accommodation sector, some larger performances and sporting events in indoor & outdoor venues will be allowed subject to limits on capacity.

Full details in the Downing Street press conference today at 5 pm, with Johnson.

We've got away with the unlocking so far, with cases, hospital admissions and deaths continuing to fall, but this is a much larger relaxation of restrictions, hopefully thanks to the vaccination programme* will can get away with it.

* Around 70% of adults will have had their first jab and over 35% both jabs by next Monday.

For me, it does seem to be the right time for this to be happening, it's been a long & hard lockdown, we can't stay in lockdown forever, we need to be able to start getting back to normal life, the only fear I have is of new variants, but I am cautiously optimistic for now.

How do others feel?
Click to expand...
Cautious. The facts seem promising, but it's hard to get away from the other facts - that the Government's response so far has been consistently poor, so it's hard not to wonder how they might screw it up again.
 
cupid_stunt said:
One week to go until the next stage of unlocking, groups of up to 30 will be able to meet outdoors, 2 households or 6 people will be able to meet indoors, changes to social distancing guidelines between friends and family, including hugging.

Plus, subject to 'covid secure guidelines', pubs & restaurants will reopen indoors, together with cinemas, theatres, children’s play areas, the rest of the accommodation sector, some larger performances and sporting events in indoor & outdoor venues will be allowed subject to limits on capacity.

Full details in the Downing Street press conference today at 5 pm, with Johnson.

We've got away with the unlocking so far, with cases, hospital admissions and deaths continuing to fall, but this is a much larger relaxation of restrictions, hopefully thanks to the vaccination programme* will can get away with it.

* Around 70% of adults will have had their first jab and over 35% both jabs by next Monday.

For me, it does seem to be the right time for this to be happening, it's been a long & hard lockdown, we can't stay in lockdown forever, we need to be able to start getting back to normal life, the only fear I have is of new variants, but I am cautiously optimistic for now.

How do others feel?
Click to expand...

Mixed, but generally cautiously optimistic.

Cases are low enough, and combining that with the vaccination rates, and the reality that people are already relaxing anyway due to those things and general weariness of the whole thing, I think loosening restrictions is right to go ahead with now.

I am also slightly cautious that people think it's all over, don't quite understand the risks even if vaccinated, and also the possibilities of new variants fucking things up later this year.

(On the risks/vaccinated thing; I was in a shop yesterday and someone queued up right behind me talking loudly on his phone with no mask on. I politely asked them to move away and they started being arsey saying they'd had the vaccine and it's fine now. Anecdote, but I've increasingly come across that view.)
 
quimcunx said:
Most train stations aren't kgx and not everyone lives in london or is travelling to Edinburgh.
Click to expand...
Yeah, though tbf when I go home, there's a train station in the town. The nearest airports are 80 miles away, one with no direct train connection to my home town (there is a bus but at weekends only or there's one that takes over three hours) and the other is two hours on the train once you've got from the airport to the city centre. So flying is a complete non-starter anyway.

I've a friend in London from Wick and he flies to Inverness as it'd take a very very long time just by train. (I'm not even sure how far up the trains even go.)
 
existentialist said:
Cautious. The facts seem promising, but it's hard to get away from the other facts - that the Government's response so far has been consistently poor, so it's hard not to wonder how they might screw it up again.
Click to expand...

I think it's pretty obvious how they'd screw things up again tbh. The same as last time, dragging their feet far too long when it's obvious things are getting out of hand. You'd think after fucking things up like that twice already they'd have learnt but Johnson is busy digging the same hole again with the 'irreversible' stuff isn't he so I think if it did come to that then they clearly would make the same mistake again, the twats.

For all that though I do think it's the right time to start relaxing the restrictions. If the vaccinations are to take the strain that needs to be tested at some point. Fingers crossed its enough.
 
cupid_stunt said:
For me, it does seem to be the right time for this to be happening, it's been a long & hard lockdown, we can't stay in lockdown forever, we need to be able to start getting back to normal life, the only fear I have is of new variants, but I am cautiously optimistic for now.

How do others feel?
Click to expand...

Agree with this. Extreme times call for extreme measures but those measures can only be justified for so long. We have to start moving on from this but at the same time being aware that things can get out of hand quickly.

It seems self-evident to me that we will get another wave of infections, the clusters they have found in schools being a good example as is the now very well established Indian variant. Hopefully a wave of infections does not mean a wave of death and serious illness. Sooner or later we are going to have to find out how good these vaccines are.
 
maomao said:
Where are you going in Scotland that takes seven hours by train and is quicker by plane? London to Edinburgh is as quick as four hours and almost always under 5. We once got very cheap tickets on the slowest train possible and that was only six hours.
Click to expand...

I just checked to remind myself. 6.5 hours. Bristol Temple Meads to Edinburgh. Longer for Inverness. The 2 places I've flown to before.
Fuck sitting on a train for that long if you don't have to.

Temple Meads station is a 15 minute walk away. I can get a bus to the air port from the stop 5 minutes away. Bus takes about 25 minutes.

Also on a plane, you're not sat near a stinking bog. (the only time I did take the train that was the case. Oh and a bus replacement service between Edinburgh and Newcastle. .)


Anyway probably enough of a diversion, but it's not like I'm anti train. Not being a driver, that'd be daft.
 
Anyway re lock down lifting significantly next week. Yep, cautious but looking forward to it. I get my first jab this morning. :)

The weather's too shit to sit outside pubs. I had a couple pints at my local last night, then got bored. Most unlike me pre pandemic.

Will avoid any where crowded. Not because I'm especially concerned about getting Covid though partly obviously, Just realised / remembered I never liked crowded loud places anyway gigs aside. But I noticed going in some last summer, which was loud and seemed busy, it was making me quietly furious. (I left.) Lock down, the last year , has done something to my tolerance.

I don't reckon there'll be a big party type vibe TBH. In fact, a lot of what was shit before will still be there for lots of people and there'll be this sort of NYE depressing is this it vibe.
 
miss direct said:
As someone who's yet to recieve a vaccination im still cautious. I havent been careful for 15 months only to get covid now. Ill be avoiding indoor venues for quite a while.
Click to expand...

Sensible, I'll not be rushing to indoor venues for now, and not until 2 or 3 weeks after my second jab, so around mid-June onwards.

I think it's right for this stage of unlocking, but I am happy for others to take part in this human experiment, with me as an observer. :D
 
I am anxious about the idea of going anywhere. That's probably due to me not having been anywhere at all since the start of this. I would presume that people who have worked throughout are used to being out and about and among people. I still find myself getting itchy when I'm watching telly and there are crowds of people in an audience or on a plane or in a market or whatever what was normal before. :facepalm:
Strikes me that the people who will be most keen to go out and mix are the ones most likely to have not been vaccinated. I think that's a bit scary. It's not like all the pubs and clubs and restaurants are going to be full of pensioners.
 
General consensus here seems to be happy but cautious, I'm in that group.

I wont be rushing back to pubs events etc just yet but it's a relief knowing that they are open. Shopping will be more manageable too now as you can stop off at a pub or cafe for a break/wee.

Everytime I watch the news from India Nepal etc it's a strong reminder of how swiftly this virus can cause massive devastation.
 
miss direct said:
Mainly, but all sorts of people who are younger than me seem to have also had their vaccines for various reasons.

I'm not hugely sociable or into big group events so not a massive problem for me at the moment, but there is a sort of divide between those who've been vaccinated and those who haven't (among the cautious)
Click to expand...

Should be able to book it soon though, the age ranges are getting down really quickly. It's on over 40s now.

www.nhs.uk

Book, change, or cancel a COVID-19 vaccination appointment online

Book, change or cancel a COVID-19 vaccination appointment online.
www.nhs.uk www.nhs.uk
 
I am cautiously optimistic that the vaccination rollout is working well enough that unlocking can proceed. But I would be more cautious / gradual that what seems to be on the cards.

But, I don't think that the case rate is low enough for the wide extensions being planned, it is still just above 2,000 cases / day (ignoring the weekend figures as they've always been a bit lower than in the week).
Also, there are some areas with spikes or persistently higher rates than the national rate [maybe a case for local restrictions ?].

Worryingly, the incidence of variants - like the Indian one - is still going to be a problem, now and in the near future. And, potentially, vaccine refusal will make that worse.

Anecdotally, in the past couple of months, I have been told about several more local cases of household infections where the vector had been the school aged kids or university students.
 
StoneRoad said:
But, I don't think that the case rate is low enough for the wide extensions being planned, it is still just above 2,000 cases / day (ignoring the weekend figures as they've always been a bit lower than in the week).
Click to expand...

Case numbers are around what we had in late May, which were probably a lot higher, as we didn't have mass testing*, so I am comfortable with the case rate.

* We were averaging under 100k tests a day back in May, around 1m a day now.
 
It seems to me that case numbers have effectively levelled anyway so there is no guarantee that extending lockdown would decrease them.
 
I think the case rate is likely to go up though isn't it - the fact that it hasn't already is a really positive sign but I wouldn't expect it to stick.

The question is going to be what happens to hospitalisations and deaths when it does. If they stay low because of the vaccines then the lockdown lifting will be counted as a success. I don't have a problem with that in principle but I think a lot of people are likely to struggle with it.
 
When the Kent variant was getting going, they used s-gene dropout as a proxy indicator of the new variant, since this was quicker than waiting for proper genomic analysis results to come back. That strain then became dominant, and these days they are able to do the same thing in reverse to get clues about other variants gaining traction. London is now seeing increases proportion of cases that dont have s-gene dropout, suggesting other variants are on the rise there.

Lack of quality information about what impact these other variants have on protection from vaccines means I am unable to properly consider the implications of this.
 
cupid_stunt said:
One week to go until the next stage of unlocking, groups of up to 30 will be able to meet outdoors, 2 households or 6 people will be able to meet indoors, changes to social distancing guidelines between friends and family, including hugging.

Plus, subject to 'covid secure guidelines', pubs & restaurants will reopen indoors, together with cinemas, theatres, children’s play areas, the rest of the accommodation sector, some larger performances and sporting events in indoor & outdoor venues will be allowed subject to limits on capacity.

Full details in the Downing Street press conference today at 5 pm, with Johnson.

We've got away with the unlocking so far, with cases, hospital admissions and deaths continuing to fall, but this is a much larger relaxation of restrictions, hopefully thanks to the vaccination programme* will can get away with it.

* Around 70% of adults will have had their first jab and over 35% both jabs by next Monday.

For me, it does seem to be the right time for this to be happening, it's been a long & hard lockdown, we can't stay in lockdown forever, we need to be able to start getting back to normal life, the only fear I have is of new variants, but I am cautiously optimistic for now.

How do others feel?
Click to expand...

Observing that many have already been hanging out indoors already, doing their best but once smashed outdoors and really cold at 1am everyone ends up indoors. Nothing much has happened.
Aa good a time as any really. The infection rate will go up, it's inevitable. The hospital admission rate rising sharply is the one to worry about.

This is the blue touch paper moment of the UK pandemic.
 
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