Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[2hats]

An estimation of the length of covid related hospital stay (in England) for Apr-Jun based on an analysis of such admissions during Nov-Apr, when compared to recorded stays would suggest that the duration of admissions in the new (current) wave is around 25% shorter than those during the previous wave (and that percentage appears to be gradually increasing). Whilst evolution of treatment and patient management has contributed to this, likely the main drivers are vaccinations protecting the elderly and a higher proportion of cases in younger cohorts.

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[SpookyFrank]

Did I say I was going on holiday?

A member of my wife's family has passed and we want to visit the family she has left (for the first time in years).

We'd all like to visit people. Without getting into who has the right to travel and who doesn't, those who are travelling should understand that whatever measures are in place are there so that as many people as possible are still alive to visit and be visited this time next year.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

If you want something to get angry about, how about the government's plans to let thousands of people in without isolating for the football?

It is possible to be angry about multiple things at once.

 

[elbows]

An estimation of the length of covid related hospital stay (in England) for Apr-Jun based on an analysis of such admissions during Nov-Apr, when compared to recorded stays would suggest that the duration of admissions in the new (current) wave is around 25% shorter than those during the previous wave (and that percentage appears to be gradually increasing). Whilst evolution of treatment and patient management has contributed to this, likely the main drivers are vaccinations protecting the elderly and a higher proportion of cases in younger cohorts.

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On a related note I remain interested in the ratio of hospitalised to mechanical ventilator cases in a couple of the NHS Trust areas that are furthest along.

eg Bolton: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/det...nhsTrust&areaName=Bolton NHS Foundation Trust

and East Lancashire: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/det...&areaName=East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust

 

[elbows]

Sturgeon knows how to deal with Burnham it seems:

But Nicola Sturgeon said the decision was a public health measure, based on Covid levels in the area.

"I have always got on well with Andy Burnham. If he wants a grown-up conversation he only has to pick up the phone," she said.

"But if, as I suspect might be the case, this is more about getting a spat with me as part of a some positioning in a Labour leadership contest of the future, then I am not interested."

The first minister said she was "confused" by Mr Burnham's position.

"Back in May we imposed travel restrictions on Bolton for exactly the same reasons we are now doing it on Manchester," she said.

"Andy Burnham is mayor of Bolton as well and he did not raise any of these issues then."

Covid in Scotland: Nicola Sturgeon defends Manchester travel ban

Scotland's first minister says she is "confused" by the criticism from Greater Manchester's mayor.

www.bbc.co.uk

Elsewhere in the article Dundees case rates are compared to the likes of Manchester and I would certainly agree that its stupid to impose restrictions on travel to one but not the other.

 

[elbows]

Burnham always manages to be shitter than I give him credit for.

I find that insulting, not for me, but for people here who are directly affected by what she announced. It’s not just the direct impact on Greater Manchester, it’s on our reputation as a city.

If the first minister of a country stands up at a press conference and announces that the UK’s second city is going under a travel ban, it has an impact. People elsewhere in Europe, around the world, hear that. So it’s not like it’s just a sort of more localised thing between us and Scotland, it has an impact on our city region.

Fucking reputation management during a public health crisis. Fuck off with that, thats the sort of thing that leads regimes to sacrifice lives in order to protect their image or the image of certain institutions. Reputation managements role in all manner of scandals, including historical sexual abuse, is well known. It is the classic justification for cover-up, weasel words and inaction.

Fuck you Burnham, your shit attitude in this pandemic is the only thing that has damaged Manchesters reputation as far as I'm concerned.

I reckon Sturgeons Bolton comment got to him as well, because elsewhere in his response he repeatedly brings up Bolton without acknowledging what she said about him not seeming bothered with Scotlands earlier Bolton travel ban. So now he is overcompensating. Pathetic.

Why is Bolton under a travel ban today, when it has a case rate that is quite a lot lower than Dundee? How is that fair?

You know if you’re an elderly couple from Bolton and you are both double-jabbed and you haven’t seen your grandkids for two years, and all of a sudden you can’t go to your holiday cottage this week and you’re a couple of grand out of pocket, I think they are owed an explanation by the first minister because it seems totally disproportionate to me to take that away from them.

UK Covid: Burnham tells Sturgeon to justify Scotland ban on non-essential travel to and from Manchester – as it happened

Mayor of Greater Manchester writes open letter to Scotland’s first minister about decision ban on non-essential travel to and from city

www.theguardian.com

Its fair to say that Burnham was already on my lists of threats to public health in this pandemic, so now I just have to move him higher up that list.

 

[BCBlues]

Burnham always manages to be shitter than I give him credit for.



Fucking reputation management during a public health crisis. Fuck off with that, thats the sort of thing that leads regimes to sacrifice lives in order to protect their image or the image of certain institutions. Reputation managements role in all manner of scandals, including historical sexual abuse, is well known. It is the classic justification for cover-up, weasel words and inaction.

Fuck you Burnham, your shit attitude in this pandemic is the only thing that has damaged Manchesters reputation as far as I'm concerned.

I reckon Sturgeons Bolton comment got to him as well, because elsewhere in his response he repeatedly brings up Bolton without acknowledging what she said about him not seeming bothered with Scotlands earlier Bolton travel ban. So now he is overcompensating. Pathetic.

UK Covid: Burnham tells Sturgeon to justify Scotland ban on non-essential travel to and from Manchester – as it happened

Mayor of Greater Manchester writes open letter to Scotland’s first minister about decision ban on non-essential travel to and from city

www.theguardian.com

Its fair to say that Burnham ws already on my lists of threats to public health in this pandemic, so now I just have to move him higher up that list.

Off topic but why is he referring to Manchester as the "second city" when its officially Birmingham

 

[weepiper]

Where is this 'double jabbed so I can do what the fuck I like now' attitude coming from? AFAIK there's no evidence that you can't transmit the virus after you've been vaccinated.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Where is this 'double jabbed so I can do what the fuck I like now' attitude coming from? AFAIK there's no evidence that you can't transmit the virus after you've been vaccinated.

I had that thus morning after a colleague who has been pinged by the NHS app to self isolate came in to work. "You've had both your jabs, why are you worried?"

 

[bimble]

We'd all like to visit people. Without getting into who has the right to travel and who doesn't, those who are travelling should understand that whatever measures are in place are there so that as many people as possible are still alive to visit and be visited this time next year.

The way it works currently is that if you can afford a couple of hundred quid for tests, and then can happily work from home upon your return, then you're free to go pretty much wherever you like, your reason for going is irrelevant. So it's not about anyone's rights or safety really it's just using cost as the mechanism to limit the numbers of those who can travel.

 

[William of Walworth]

If there's something that's very high up my list of things I'd really like to know, it's more (and up-to-date!) information about how much vaccinated people actually do transmit.

This possibly reveals ignorance on my part ( ), but it seems counterintuitive to me to assume that vaccinated people, particularly double-vaccinated people, are transmitting the virus just as much as before they're vaccinated

Are there many studies and figures yet, about this?

Just to reassure, I'm in no way advocating that double-vaccinated people like me shouldn't continue to be cautious -- of course we should!

 

[Chilli.s]

Manchester as the "second city" when its officially Birmingham

He thinks they're both the same

 

[Griff]

Johnson on Sky News:

"You can never exclude that there will be some new disease, some new horror that we simply haven't budgeted for or accounted for," Boris Johnson said when asked if he could discount the possibility of reimposing COVID-19 measures later this year.

 

[Griff]

If there's something that's very high up my list of things I'd really like to know, it's more (and up-to-date!) information about how much vaccinated people actually do transmit.

This possibly reveals ignorance on my part ( ), but it seems counterintuitive to me to assume that vaccinated people, particularly double-vaccinated people, are transmitting the virus just as much as before they're vaccinated

Are there many studies and figures yet, about this?

Just to reassure, I'm in no way advocating that double-vaccinated people like me shouldn't continue to be cautious -- of course we should!

According to the NHS leaflet it's not yet known how much you can transmit if you've been vaccinated.

 

[elbows]

Where is this 'double jabbed so I can do what the fuck I like now' attitude coming from? AFAIK there's no evidence that you can't transmit the virus after you've been vaccinated.

It sort of pops up naturally when people engage in binary thinking about vaccines. Amd even when they dont lurch straight to binary feelings about how much magic the vaccine has worked, a more general slide in that direction can occur. Especially from people who never wanted restrictions in the first place and are keen to jump the gun.

Eventually the UK government are likely to want to embrace such concepts as much as they dare, as part of their 'learning to live with covid' agenda. We are already seeing more stories in the press about various scenarios where they are hoping to replace self-isolation with testing, and a persons vaccination status may also end up a part of that policy mix. The extent to which they have to try to fudge the science, and the extent to which the likes of Whitty will approve, remains to be seen.

 

[elbows]

If there's something that's very high up my list of things I'd really like to know, it's more (and up-to-date!) information about how much vaccinated people actually do transmit.

This possibly reveals ignorance on my part ( ), but it seems counterintuitive to me to assume that vaccinated people, particularly double-vaccinated people, are transmitting the virus just as much as before they're vaccinated

Are there many studies and figures yet, about this?

Just to reassure, I'm in no way advocating that double-vaccinated people like me shouldn't continue to be cautious -- of course we should!

It can be tricky or take a very long time for proper medical and scientific research to determine all the answers on that front.

Some of the other stuff we have heard about in terms of the impact of vaccines so far in this country are based on deducing things from our broad data - number of cases, hospitalisations and deaths in this country over time, linked to individual cases vaccination status and/or the broader population figures for vaccination. Various maths is used to compare whats actually happened to what we'd have expected to see if there were no vaccines, or finding maths that mirrors the reality of what happens to vaccinated versus unvaccinated people at a time of rising levels of infection in this country.

As cases continue to rise here, they will certainly expect to deduce more things, its a useful situation in terms of gathering that sort of real world data.

I expect that the chllenge of repeating those sorts of exercises but with transmission rather than symptomatic illness etc as the focus is not a small challenge, it can be tricky to deduce the effects on transmission because of all the other variables that affect the size and speed of this wave. I expect they will try, but I have no expectations as to when we may hear some results of such analysis, or how wide the range of uncertainty will still be.

Probably I will take a more serious look at the evidence once we come to the stage where government are actually proposing certain policies regarding vaccinated individuals in various circumstances, eg the replacement of self-isolation with regular testing that I mentioned in my previous post. It is likely that when trying to justify such policies, they will have some specific, narrow trial data that applies directly to the policy. And on top of that what will increase their chance of pressing ahead with such policies without being thwarted, is if they've got some broader estimates of transmissive impact of vaccination in our population.

Whatever the detail turns out to be, as far as Im concerned I would tend to paint the picture as follows. Vaccination will have an impact on this side of the picture. Its just a question of how much, and whether that changes with other new variants in future. In terms of the broad government equations at the population level, there may be a large enough impact that it really affects their sums and unlocks some options. But since we know that when it comes to the level of individuals, vaccines will not save absolutely everyone from illness, hospitalisation or death, it stands to reason that some double vaccinated individuals will still be capable of passing the virus on. If the proportion of such is relatively modest then the government wont care and will press ahead, and tough luck to the individuals who end up suffering as a result. But of course there is the balance with all the suffering due to restrictions etc to consider to, a balance I am not against discussing and keeping in mind despite my relatively hard-line stance on many pandemic matters. And I do need a real sense of remaining risk in order to judge such balancing acts, so i will probably save my opinions till the policies and the evidence they use to justify them are clear. Its still relatively early days on that, its too soon for me to say whether I'll be complaining about some of the new policies or not. And if I start looking for evidence about vaccines and transmissions in the meantime, I'll probably be disappointed by how little there is, especially in relation to the Delta variant we currently face.

 

[elbows]

What really shits me up about the likes of Burnhams 'the reputation of our city' stuff is quite where that logic could so easily lead.

Would I be able to trust a man like Burnham to release data that makes for uncomfortable viewing? He invites the suppression of vital public health data with his shit. The horror!

 

[andysays]

Where is this 'double jabbed so I can do what the fuck I like now' attitude coming from? AFAIK there's no evidence that you can't transmit the virus after you've been vaccinated.

To some extent, vaccines have been promoted as allowing post vaccine individuals to do stuff they couldn't/shouldn't do pre vaccine, rather than it being more of a social/collective responsibility thing.

But in this case I think it's safe to say it's just something Burnham has pulled out of his arse and, as Sturgeon has suggested, it's about him attempting to position himself within the Labour party rather than giving much of a genuine fuck about the real risks of transmission.

 

[elbows]

This is the sort of potential policy I was on about in recent posts:

Fully vaccinated people in England may not need to isolate, Hancock says

Health secretary looking to drop 10-day ‘stay at home’ order for those in close contact with person infected with Covid

www.theguardian.com

 

[elbows]

Now when it comes to the letter Burnham has sent to Sturgeon, I believe it is fair to go for the angle he has done in regards why Scotlands internal travel restrictions dont seem to line up with their policy in regards Manchester etc. Its a shame he consistently soils himself with other ill-considered comments in this pandemic, since there is enough reasonable ammunition he can use that does not constitute a pandemic crime in my book.

 

[SpookyFrank]

The way it works currently is that if you can afford a couple of hundred quid for tests, and then can happily work from home upon your return, then you're free to go pretty much wherever you like, your reason for going is irrelevant. So it's not about anyone's rights or safety really it's just using cost as the mechanism to limit the numbers of those who can travel.

Fair point, but money has always been a factor in who can travel where. With all the 'surge pricing' on domestic holidays a lot of people won't be able to go anywhere this year. We probably won't.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

Fair point, but money has always been a factor in who can travel where. With all the 'surge pricing' on domestic holidays a lot of people won't be able to go anywhere this year. We probably won't.

I never found it cheaper to holiday in the U.K. pre-pandemic anyway. You'd think that travelling within a country would be cheaper, if you'd not been aware of the train system here for the last couple of decades.

 

[two sheds]

And fucking silly prices being charged for accomodation in Cornwall (and probably elsewhere) now I hear.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

I never found it cheaper to holiday in the U.K. pre-pandemic anyway. You'd think that travelling within a country would be cheaper, if you'd not been aware of the train system here for the last couple of decades.

If you have a car it's significantly cheaper, especially for a family. For a single person by train, not so much.

 

[two sheds]

If you have a car it's significantly cheaper, especially for a family. For a single person by train, not so much.

particularly if you all sleep in the car

 

[Elpenor]

particularly if you all sleep in the car

I am considering my next car to be one I can sleep in such as an Alphard or Berlingo.

 

[two sheds]

wise move

 

[zahir]

A thread from Christina Pagel

 

[Sunray]

And fucking silly prices being charged for accomodation in Cornwall (and probably elsewhere) now I hear.

Yes, I was looking, there just isn't capacity, everyone has been going to Spain for 40 years now. Entirely a supply and demand issue.
Even campsites are £25 quid pn and I'm bringing the accommodation!
Post august bank holiday and it's less crazy.

 

[glitch hiker]

This is the sort of potential policy I was on about in recent posts:

Fully vaccinated people in England may not need to isolate, Hancock says

Health secretary looking to drop 10-day ‘stay at home’ order for those in close contact with person infected with Covid

www.theguardian.com

how can that work? Freedom will mean being able to go out and do things, but who will provide those services when we aren't all fully vaccinated? Who will serve in the bars and pubs and restuarants to all these freedom loving double vaxxers wanting to enjoy their freedom? This is why the so called great barrington declaration was a great load of horsetwat!