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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Mr Retro said:
This is simply untrue. Until we decided to copy China the advise was masks don't work:
  • World Health Organisation: ‘There is currently no evidence that wearing a mask (whether medical or other types) by healthy persons in the wider community setting, including universal community masking, can protect them from infection with respiratory viruses, including Covid-19.’
  • Mike Ryan a director at WHO: ‘There is no specific evidence to suggest that the wearing of masks by the mass population has any potential benefit. In fact, there’s some evidence to suggest the opposite in the misuse of wearing a mask properly or fitting it properly.’
  • Chris Whitty: ‘In terms of wearing a mask, our advice is clear: that wearing a mask if you don’t have an infection reduces the risk almost not at all . So we do not advise that.’
The only gold standard RCT Danmask-19 concluded since these quotes found outcomes between those wearing masks and those not was ‘not statistically significant’. So you can keep insisting masks work and I can keep saying they don't but to say the argument they work is won is simply wrong.
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You posted this nonsense last week, you had replies explaining the change in advice, and you ignored them, just like you always do, and then you just repeat the same old shite again.

Just like all the other fucking loons do.
 
they must have projections because they've said this is the "sweet spot" to stop restrictions
they must have projections because they've said they expect cases to go over 100,000 a day
id like to see what this curve looks like
 
ska invita said:
they must have projections because they've said this is the "sweet spot" to stop restrictions
they must have projections because they've said they expect cases to go over 100,000 a day
id like to see what this curve looks like
Click to expand...

Absent any meaningful restrictions, cases go down when there's nobody left to infect and not before.
 
ska invita said:
yes it looks like thats the plan
id like to see their calculation for when that will be
Click to expand...

There isnt a single projection, there are a whole bunch of modelling things and a summary document by the SAGE modelling group from slightly earlier in July.

Some of them feature an even larger number of graphs than normal because they consider the different speeds at which people might return to normal in the months ahead. There are very different sizes of peaks and some difference in timing and chances of a winter wave depending on how behaviour evolves after July 19th.

They werent asked to model new restrictions, or what would happen if people decided to behave in a more restrained way than they have been doing since the May step 3 relaxation of rules.

They do have the impact of school summer holidays baked into them on some level.

www.gov.uk

SAGE meetings, July 2021

Minutes and papers from the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) meetings held in July 2021.
www.gov.uk www.gov.uk
 
For example if I look at those graphs in particular, I'm very far from convinced that it will take as long as they imply to get to 1000 daily hospital admissions. But there are so many possibilities, including in the way the hospital admissions data will evolve in the next week or two, so I dont think I can compress things down to a simple description.

Plus changes in hospital admissions data each day changes my expectations slightly. For example yesterdays published hospital admissions/diagnoses for England number was 502 for the 11th July. Todays figure, for 12th July, was 605. And I cant tell whether it will shoot up like that again tomorrow or whether it will wobble around its current range for a little bit, or even fall a bit on the odd day.
 
Sure other people have said this but I'm sure people are dying and suffering unnecessary pain because the government has decided that the way to smash the health service is simply to undermine efforts to prevent transmission of the virus, betting that the lower death rate now won't be noticed by people. And the knock-on effect on waiting lists will make force a ton of people to go private. The doctors and academics protesting this are trying to be reasonable with people who are unreasonable.
 
Pickman's model said:
Sure other people have said this but I'm sure people are dying and suffering unnecessary pain because the government has decided that the way to smash the health service is simply to undermine efforts to prevent transmission of the virus, betting that the lower death rate now won't be noticed by people. And the knock-on effect on waiting lists will make force a ton of people to go private. The doctors and academics protesting this are trying to be reasonable with people who are unreasonable.
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They have a complex and ugly agenda for the health service but I think a lot of their piss poor pandemic policy motives at the moment are driven by other things. A lot of petty party politics for a start.

There are a bunch of ways they can break the health servie in a relatively short period which will spell utter political doom for them. They dont mind forcing it to bear an unpleasant burden, or for quality and throughput to take a hit, but if they melt big, important chunks of it before everyones eyes in this pandemic then I think they are in deep shit.

Their approach seems to involve banking on a number of things to stand a chance of them getting away with it. Including a relatively early peak or at least a peak that doesnt get to the size required to cause near-instant doom on the hospital admissions front.
 
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ska invita said:
that looks like a shorter wave than i imagined/wouldve expected
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Other shapes and timings are available but you'll probably have to trudge through all the papers I linked to a little earlier to find them.

There is a huge range of uncertainty because unlike previous waves, this planning assumes the peak wont happen due to lockdowns etc, they assume it will happen due to the virus running out of sufficient vulnerable people in its path. Which doesnt mean it suddenly runs out of victims, just runs out of access to enough of them to maintain exponential growth, doubling in size etc.

Unknowns are many and include how people will behave and mix in the months ahead, and various other things that make a difference such as how many people who are vaccinated or previously infected will get infected this time. They also know how many vaccinated people there are, but due to imprecise population estimates they dont actually know how many unvaccinated people there are. And that matters to these sorts of models where they need to know how many suseptible people there are at any moment in time.

I wont be surprised if everything happens more quickly than these models suggest, but nor will I be surprised if it drags on horribly. I wont be surprised if it fails to reach close to the levels that force them to slam on emergency brakes, but I wont be shocked if it busts past all the limits and causes much woe. And if I was forced to guess right now, I'd have a dilemma because Scotland has shown some signs of having peaked, but this needs to be confirmed via other forms of data that I dont have any access to yet. And even if things have peaked there, we dont know what sort of rate of decline there will be, or whether future changes allow the virus to get going in the upwards direction again.
 
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I guess its been about a year since last years 'preparing for winter' pandemic report. There seems to be an equivalent for this year. I havent read the full report yet, but the BBC attempt to summarise some of it here:

www.bbc.co.uk

Medics fear surge in winter viruses alongside Covid

A potential triple whammy of viruses prompts calls for more testing to reduce spread this autumn.
www.bbc.co.uk

The report:


People staying home when ill, continuing with face covering and social distancing, and thinking about testing for multiple respiratory viruses at once are some of the themes.
 
Early in the pandemic I seem to recall the authorities doing the usual 'no evidence of greater risk in...' thing in regards pregnant women and covid, which I may have been happy to report on early on.

Unfortunately that is no longer considered to be the case and so the current disgraceful situation with letting case numbers go crazy means we also get stories like this:

www.bbc.co.uk

Covid unlocking risk for pregnant women, say doctors

Doctors and midwives warn Covid can pose a greater risk to women in the later stages of pregnancy.
www.bbc.co.uk
 
elbows said:
Early in the pandemic I seem to recall the authorities doing the usual 'no evidence of greater risk in...' thing in regards pregnant women and covid, which I may have been happy to report on early on.

Unfortunately that is no longer considered to be the case and so the current disgraceful situation with letting case numbers go crazy means we also get stories like this:

www.bbc.co.uk

Covid unlocking risk for pregnant women, say doctors

Doctors and midwives warn Covid can pose a greater risk to women in the later stages of pregnancy.
www.bbc.co.uk
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Important to know, thanks.

Let's all spread the word to any pregnant people we know.
 
Pregnancy has been on lists for a while. Vulnerable but not extremely. I think pregnant women are likely well aware as literally from the day you declare you're pregnant everyone tells you everything dangerous.
 
Pickman's model said:
Sure other people have said this but I'm sure people are dying and suffering unnecessary pain because the government has decided that the way to smash the health service is simply to undermine efforts to prevent transmission of the virus, betting that the lower death rate now won't be noticed by people. And the knock-on effect on waiting lists will make force a ton of people to go private. The doctors and academics protesting this are trying to be reasonable with people who are unreasonable.
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You are seriously saying the removal of restrictions is happening now because it's part of the government's cunning plan to destroy the NHS? Bonkers.
 
bimble said:
You are seriously saying the removal of restrictions is happening now because it's part of the government's cunning plan to destroy the NHS? Bonkers.
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Eighteen months ago, I'd have agreed with you, bimble. Now, I'm not so sure.

I don't necessarily think the goal is "destroy the NHS", so much as "let's get our snouts in the trough", but the means of achieving that goal are pretty much the same - create a situation where you can say "The NHS is failing - the only way to save it is to sell bits of it off to our mates" (OK, they probably won't say that last bit out loud), and then start flogging it off.

Maybe it isn't even that - perhaps they're just so keen to look all freedom-loving and libertarian that they'll simply use the state of overwhelm in the NHS as their benchmark (after all, they'll be thinking about the "optics"), and then they can opportunistically use its apparently failing state to do the snouts in the trough thing. They probably think they are being extremely clever.
 
i think this is stupid. There's no need to look for such machinations, they're not even that rational as to be doing it to make money.
 
bimble said:
You are seriously saying the removal of restrictions is happening now because it's part of the government's cunning plan to destroy the NHS? Bonkers.
Click to expand...
What's bonkers is the way you make up what other people are saying. I am saying that people are dying and suffering unnecessarily because of the choices the government has made. That's well known, it shouldn't be controversial. There are people not getting diagnoses or treatment and waiting lists are at record highs.

Before the mantra was protect the NHS. Now the government admits the virus will run rampant through the population but against the science, against the evidence presented to it, is removing restrictions. This will increase the chances of overloading the NHS. We know the government has been running down and privatising the NHS for years. We know that many existing trends have been accelerated by the virus.

Yet you say it's mad to believe the government would take advantage of the crisis to achieve its ideological aims. I wonder, have you been watching what's been going on the past eighteen months as the government has spaffed billions on ineffective private measures which would have been done cheaper and efficiently by the NHS? While they let the delta virus in because Johnson wanted to go to India? It's madness to believe they won't take advantage of the pandemic.
 
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