Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Orang Utan]

This is fantastic news. Waves of relief

in what way is it good news?

 

[kalidarkone]

There's been lots on how masks will still be compulsory in healthcare settings.

Good!

 

[Orang Utan]

There's been lots on how masks will still be compulsory in healthcare settings.

i wish this could be extended to any public-facing role

 

[Teaboy]

It does feel like we are all participants in some grand experiment.

 

[Teaboy]

in what way is it good news?

The poster who said that has consistently been against lockdowns and pretty much any measures taken to prevent the spread of the virus.

Personally I suspect the announcement today makes another full lockdown more likely.

 

[andysays]

Folk from USDAW/Unite on R4 earlier sounding very unhappy about it. Who knows if that'll end up being anything more concrete though.

More here

Unions warn workers at risk if face masks rules dropped

It really does seem that it's time for those of us who are in a position to take a collective stand through our unions etc to do so now, and start discussing and organising for what we're going to do on 19th July.

 

[Supine]

Sounds like irreversibly has been dropped and contingency measures are the new thing. That’s a further lockdown being prepared for.

 

[Teaboy]

Sounds like irreversibly has been dropped and contingency measures are the new thing. That’s a further lockdown being prepared for.

Yes I got that impression as well. Some interesting choice of words being used.

 

[wtfftw]

I'm getting the impression we're getting a summer holiday from restrictions and then back to reintroducing them later.

 

[LDC]

Let’s meet back here in a month or so and see where we are. If deaths are above what would normally by associated with the approaching winter season I’ll admit I was wrong. When I’m right I’ll still be nice to youse

I hope with all my heart I’m right

September 2020 post from them. Any admission that you don't know what you're talking about yet Mr Retro?

 

[sheothebudworths]

I'm getting the impression we're getting a summer holiday from restrictions and then back to reintroducing them later.

Same as last summer, then - and no support available in the meantime for anyone who 'takes personal responsibility', despite being encouraged to but also not to.

 

[Leighsw2]

Ironically enough, Loose meat 's initial engagement on urban75 was to argue against road changes in South London that are aimed at improving road safety for pedestrians and cyclists.

Every. Single. Time.

 

[Wilf]

I'm getting the impression we're getting a summer holiday from restrictions and then back to reintroducing them later.

Yeah, 'people have to start dying in large numbers before we change our policy', seems to be the policy.

 

[LDC]

And those people will be poor, vulnerable, and key workers mostly, again.

 

[glitch hiker]

Sounds like irreversibly has been dropped and contingency measures are the new thing. That’s a further lockdown being prepared for.

With the public to blame when that happens

Again

 

[belboid]

And those people will be poor, vulnerable, and key workers mostly, again.

as Jonathan Ashworth has actually pointed out!

In a response to the government’s announcement, the shadow health secretary, Jonathan Ashworth, asked Javid what does the phrase he used “learning to life with Covid” mean, how many deaths are acceptable, how many cases of long Covid are acceptable? What risk assessment has he done of new variant emerging, why is the government collapsing all mitigations completely?

Ashworth said that “masks don’t restrict freedoms in a pandemic, they ensure those that go to the shops or who take public transport can do so safely because it protects others”.

Ashworth added: “Who suffers when masks are removed, it’s those who work in shops, those who drive buses, drive taxis, those who work in hospitality, low paid workers without access to decent sick pay, who live in overcrowded accommodation, who have been savagely disproportionately impacted from the virus since day one.”

 

[Espresso]

I trust* that on 19th July, every single MP will be in the House of Commons, cheek by jowl with each other, arguing the toss over whatever is on the cards for that date, because working from home will be over.

*Where trust = do not believe at all

 

[prunus]

I can’t understand how

“If it does not open up now, it might be worse opening up later, when the autumn is getting closer.”

can possibly make any sense? Can anyone help?

 

[elbows]

Sounds like irreversibly has been dropped and contingency measures are the new thing. That’s a further lockdown being prepared for.

In some ways the press conference was hilarious with its awkward juxtapositions, and went as predicted in so many ways.

It wasnt exactly a freedom day parade. Whittys bit about wearing masks was quite good.

"If we dont open up now then when will we ever open up?" as a new justification for acting now was something to behold. One that invites a few different answers that are all more sensible than the governments own.

As expected they resisted going into exact details about what hospital and death numbers modelling lead them to expect, but they were more graphic than expected about doubling times and Johnson even had an illustration of the sort of number of cases we might be seeing by the 19th written into his remarks.

They didnt have all that much to announce about changing self-isolation etc but they still pushed bits of that further than I hoped they would. Although some of that was just noise about what they plan to do with bubbles and isolation for children at some future moment, an issue they will likely sort for next term. And a noise they wanted to make to disguise the lack of movement on the self-isolation front right now. All the same, it doesnt sound like there will be long periods to wait before having to groan about the nature of further developments on that policy front. The newspapers didnt get all of what they demanded, just as Johnson did not give the Express what they wanted from todays press conference in terms of a firm and boosterish 'get back to the workplace' message, they got something but it was halfhearted.

Part of the reason I find such press conferences hilarious is how desperate they are these days to point out what a firebreaker advantage school holidays offer, in contrast to how desperate they were to downplay the positive effect of school closures on pandemic waves when they were bullshitting their way through press conferences in the first half of March 2020.

The somewhat muted tone of the press conference, 'the pandemic is far from over' and other related messaging can be interpreted in several different ways. Delta has taken some of the wind out of their sails and they arent getting to go quite as far as they would like, and are wary about what may be necessary later. But they are also being reckless with some policies, and are just trying to compensate for that by wrapping their lack of caution in cautious language. Whilst also making it sound like things will be more normal than they actually will, in order to disguise their reduced ambitions.

 

[MickiQ]

Genuinely can't tell if the last sentence is sarcasm or not.

The scariest thing is that I'm not sure it is either

 

[oryx]

"If we don't go ahead now when we've clearly done so much with the vaccination programme to break the link... when would we go ahead?" says Johnson.

How about on a day when we don't have 27,334 new cases?

 

[Mr Retro]

September 2020 post from them. Any admission that you don't know what you're talking about yet Mr Retro?

If we are going to bring up old posts I remember not 3 or 4 weeks ago reading something from you saying deaths will "easily be hundreds daily" or similar. So I could ask you the same question could I not LynnDoyleCooper?

I'm not interested in an argument. For me the relief I feel has taken me by surprise and I just needed to say it. Kids back in uninterrupted education, people able to fully run their business, choose if I want to wear an ineffective cloth covering on my face. We have achieved what was sold to us 16 months ago and "flattened the curve" now is the right time to open up society fully.

 

[quiet guy]

None of it makes sense. They are playing to their sponsors / donors demands and ignoring all the sensible data. It's the usual dog whistle politics.

 

[elbows]

I can’t understand how

“If it does not open up now, it might be worse opening up later, when the autumn is getting closer.”

can possibly make any sense? Can anyone help?

There are various modelling exercises which can show that some combinations of when and how far you go with imposing or removing restrictions can lead to a wave that has very bad timing, eg coming during a difficult winter period when there are lots of additional pressures.

And some of that came up today. But I'd be inclined to judge that sensible stuff separately from their crude new rhetoric about 'if we cant open up this summer then we'd either have to do it in winter or not till next year, and next year or winter arent options we want to go for, so now it is!'.

This sort of thing could also come up if someone comes out with the alternative 'at least wait till the adult population is vaccinated', because then they can point to that not happening till end of summer/early autumn, which is then getting into the winter danger timing zone in terms of not being when you want to start letting people relax. Although I think Johnson fucked up his precise claim today, when he said that everyone over 40 would have been double-jabbed by the 19th or whatever claim it was he made - it was the wrong claim, he was supposed to claim something different to that because things are not on track for all over 40s to be double-jabbed by then. Maybe he was supposed to say over 50s, or a different date, I havent checked.

Of course only a moderate reframing of the above is required in order to describe things more bluntly as 'we think we'll have to restrict things again in future but we still want to make use of a window of opportunity that we expected this summer to offer. And we still intend to do that even though it looks like that window of opportunity has actually been nailed shut by Delta. So we will throw a brick through the window and invite people to lean out of it this summer'.

 

[zahir]

 

[BillRiver]

There are various modelling exercises which can show that some combinations of when and how far you go with imposing or removing restrictions can lead to a wave that has very bad timing, eg coming during a difficult winter period when there are lots of additional pressures.

And some of that came up today. But I'd be inclined to judge that sensible stuff separately from their crude new rhetoric about 'if we cant open up this summer then we'd either have to do it in winter or not till next year, and next year or winter arent options we want to go for, so now it is!'.

This sort of thing could also come up if someone comes out with the alternative 'at least wait till the adult population is vaccinated', because then they can point to that not happening till end of summer/early autumn, which is then getting into the winter danger timing zone in terms of not being when you want to start letting people relax. Although I think Johnson fucked up his precise claim today, when he said that everyone over 40 would have been double-jabbed by the 19th or whatever claim it was he made - it was the wrong claim, he was supposed to claim something different to that because things are not on track for all over 40s to be double-jabbed by then. Maybe he was supposed to say over 50s, or a different date, I havent checked.

Of course only a moderate reframing of the above is required in order to describe things more bluntly as 'we think we'll have to restrict things again in future but we still want to make use of a window of opportunity that we expected this summer to offer. And we still intend to do that even though it looks like that window of opportunity has actually been nailed shut by Delta. So we will throw a brick through the window and invite people to lean out of it this summer'.

Summertime restrictions (I no longer refer to lockdowns when talking about the UK because we never have fully locked down) are much easier to tolerate for most people - meeting outside is bearable when it's warm and dry. Pleasant, even.

What I fear, as well as the sickness, disability, and deaths, is that all this risk taking now could lead to another winter of restrictions.

Winter restrictions, in the dark and the cold, are tough on a whole other level, ime.

 

[elbows]

Summertime restrictions (I no longer refer to lockdowns when talking about the UK because we never have fully locked down) are much easier to tolerate for most people - meeting outside is bearable when it's warm and dry. Pleasant, even.

What I fear, as well as the sickness, disability, and deaths, is that all this risk taking now could lead to another winter of restrictions.

Winter restrictions, in the dark and the cold, are tough on a whole other level, ime.

Thats one of their excuses for letting it rip now though, with the idea that all the people catching it now wont then catch it in winter.

But they wont promise a normal winter for all because of the remaining unknowns about that picture, and because of the potential for other respiratory infections to come along at the same time and cause too much hospital pressure in total.

 

[inva]

It's absolutely blatant smear tactic. Poisoning the well. Madeley is an avowed 'lockdown sceptic', baptised by Saint Hitchens of Twat. Never mind his comedy Partridge stylings, he's a crank

He's vile, worth remembering this one from 2013 as well:

On Saturday January 12, 2013, under the heading ‘Risking a baby's life for lunch’ the Richard & Judy article asserted the ‘grotesque truth’ that ‘West Midlands Ambulance Service's finest continued to munch their lunch after a six-week-old baby boy suffered a heart attack’ and that ‘Incredibly, paramedics refused to interrupt their lunch break despite an emergency call for an ambulance to attend”.’

‘It's simply not true that this crew sat ‘feeding their faces’ knowing that a patient, in this case a baby, was suffering a life-threatening heart condition,’ said Andy Proctor, Paramedic spokesperson for College of Paramedics members in the West Midlands.

‘It's absolutely outrageous to suggest that this or, indeed, any paramedic or ambulance crew would knowingly sit eating a meal whilst a child's life is at threat. We believe that this article has totally misreported the facts in this case.’

Proctor continued to state ‘What he [Madeley] also didn't mention is that a paramedic was already at the patient's side within minutes, providing life-saving treatment.’

‘Not only has it caused worry and humiliation to the individuals concerned, it has also caused worry and concern in the local population.’

 

[elbows]

It does feel like we are all participants in some grand experiment.

One thing for sure is that the UK government hope to claim this approach has been a success, so the likes of Johnson can then claim that we have shown the rest of the world how a return to relative normality can be done.

Many are probably watching on with interest, unsure whether there is any reasonable prospect of that happening, or whether the UK will end up as a sick joke again, one thats overrepresented in the 'what not to do' column.

 

[prunus]

There are various modelling exercises which can show that some combinations of when and how far you go with imposing or removing restrictions can lead to a wave that has very bad timing, eg coming during a difficult winter period when there are lots of additional pressures.

And some of that came up today. But I'd be inclined to judge that sensible stuff separately from their crude new rhetoric about 'if we cant open up this summer then we'd either have to do it in winter or not till next year, and next year or winter arent options we want to go for, so now it is!'.

This sort of thing could also come up if someone comes out with the alternative 'at least wait till the adult population is vaccinated', because then they can point to that not happening till end of summer/early autumn, which is then getting into the winter danger timing zone in terms of not being when you want to start letting people relax. Although I think Johnson fucked up his precise claim today, when he said that everyone over 40 would have been double-jabbed by the 19th or whatever claim it was he made - it was the wrong claim, he was supposed to claim something different to that because things are not on track for all over 40s to be double-jabbed by then. Maybe he was supposed to say over 50s, or a different date, I havent checked.

Of course only a moderate reframing of the above is required in order to describe things more bluntly as 'we think we'll have to restrict things again in future but we still want to make use of a window of opportunity that we expected this summer to offer. And we still intend to do that even though it looks like that window of opportunity has actually been nailed shut by Delta. So we will throw a brick through the window and invite people to lean out of it this summer'.

Is that anything other than (partial) herd immunity? Ie it's better if the next X million people who catch it do so spread over summer rather than all at once in winter? It really is just you're all on your own now, good luck, and if you're unable to protect yourself to extent you'd like because eg you work in a shop or drive a bus, well, maybe next time you'll think about that before deciding to be poor.

Cunts the lot of them.