Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Kevbad the Bad]

It seems to be working in other countries, and Washington state is even offering “Joints for Jabs”.

Hmmn. Time for my booster, methinks.

 

[Dogsauce]

It's not ideal, but if it helps in this particular unique situation, I am more comfortable with inducements than the threat of passports for clubbing, which I've never been convinced will happen, I prefer the carrot to the stick approach.

It seems to be working in other countries, and Washington state is even offering “Joints for Jabs”.

They should offer to legalise weed here if people under 30 reach a 95% vaccination status. Watch the peer pressure at play...

 

[Cerv]

It's not ideal, but if it helps in this particular unique situation, I am more comfortable with inducements than the threat of passports for clubbing, which I've never been convinced will happen, I prefer the carrot to the stick approach.

It seems to be working in other countries, and Washington state is even offering “Joints for Jabs”.

passports for university access was announced and dropped within a space of a week. seems like Universities UK have a better lobbying outfit than the Nighttime Business Association. similar objections on the total impracticality of checking.

given the 8 week turnaround to get double dosed, anyone intending to keep on clubbing through Sept needs to be getting theirs already. I really wouldn't be surprised if by the time we get there the government doesn't follow through on the requirement. the threat is enough to motivate (young) people now, without then having to go to the effort of actually enforcing anything or holding the awkward vote in parliament with another backbend rebellion.

 

[thismoment]

I am so worried for some of my family that have not had jabs yet that if they get it done to get a freebie then it is what it is….obviously in an ideal world they would just have had it done already

 

[Cat Fan]

passports for university access was announced and dropped within a space of a week. seems like Universities UK have a better lobbying outfit than the Nighttime Business Association. similar objections on the total impracticality of checking.

given the 8 week turnaround to get double dosed, anyone intending to keep on clubbing through Sept needs to be getting theirs already. I really wouldn't be surprised if by the time we get there the government doesn't follow through on the requirement. the threat is enough to motivate (young) people now, without then having to go to the effort of actually enforcing anything or holding the awkward vote in parliament with another backbend rebellion.

Young people don't really like clubbing as much as in the old days for what it's worth. I'd be very surprised if the threat on access to clubbing actually changed many people's minds.

 

[Cat Fan]

I am so worried for some of my family that have not had jabs yet that if they get it done to get a freebie then it is what it is….obviously in an ideal world they would just have had it done already

Yes, exactly. If there's one thing young people don't always have it's tons of free time, or even access to their own private transport to get to a centre.

It costs money and time to get there, so a small freebie or incentive is a pretty good idea IMO.

It doesn't have to be huge, it could be like when you go to give blood and you get a tea and biscuit and a pat on the back.

 

[kabbes]

Of course short-term, ends-justify-the-means solutions do work for the things they are being used to directly address. That isn’t the question. The question is whether you are actually better off in the long run by employing them. You can give a dog a treat every time it misbehaves in order to get it to shut up then and there but by doing so you are training it to misbehave.

 

[elbows]

Diminishing opportunities for Johnson to brag.

 

[elbows]

It’s a great way of teaching younger generations that you should only do things if there is an immediate personal consumer reward for it, and you should never do anything communally minded straightaway because that means you won’t be rewarded for it. What wonderful lessons.

Plenty see vaccination as its own reward, personally and more broadly, and I doubt a large chunk of them will change their mind just because the carrot and stick has come out now.

 

[platinumsage]

I got a smartie for having a measles vaccination aged 2.

 

[elbows]

I cannot evaluate whether there are any flaws in this exercise, but its worth keeping in mind, and is a good fit for concerns about the UK in the current phase.

 

[kabbes]

Plenty see vaccination as its own reward, personally and more broadly, and I doubt a large chunk of them will change their mind just because the carrot and stick has come out now.

I am more concerned about the ongoing fragmentation of the sense of community being its own reward.

 

[elbows]

I am more concerned about the ongoing fragmentation of the sense of community being its own reward.

Well I cant quite describe myself as relaxed about that subject, but the pandemic response as a whole demonstrated that the erosion of such things over the last 40 years has been overstated, at least on some fronts.

I'd suggest that peoples sense of community is a distorted mess with limitations and barriers in some ways, but has held up remarkably well given all the bullshit that has been thrown at us for many decades.

 

[elbows]

Possibly in part because those who are marginalised find ways to form a new sense of community within the marginalised group.

 

[kabbes]

Well I cant quite describe myself as relaxed about that subject, but the pandemic response as a whole demonstrated that the erosion of such things over the last 40 years has been overstated, at least on some fronts.

I'd suggest that peoples sense of community is a distorted mess with limitations and barriers in some ways, but has held up remarkably well given all the bullshit that has been thrown at us for many decades.

I think the pandemic response has shown that there has been an erosion of the sense of community to some degree, but that humans are social creatures who don’t give up their mutual sense of social support easily. Nevertheless, the degree to which the sense of “what’s in it for me personally?” has permeated demonstrates that feeding the sense of individual reward being the only thing worth worrying about is dangerous.

 

[elbows]

Motivation to be vaccinated is almost always a combination of what it does to sense of person risk, risk to your family, and wider community risks.

The broader benefits are still part of the messaging, but getting the uptake to go beyond the level that it originally settles on after initial uptake is very difficult. I'm not surprised they have resorted to gimmicks.

There are a number of worrying aspects to the current phase. Messaging has been hugely flawed by this 'learning to live with Covid' shit because part of that message implies that its somehow OK for younger people to get infected. And plenty of vaccination appointments have been hampered by the people involved having caught the virus in reent times, delaying their opportunity to get vaccinated.

A more sophisticated version of 'learning to live with Covid-19' would certainly have emphasised that the relaxation of measures is only sustainable if we achieve higher vaccine uptake. In contrast to the bullshit about 'irreversible unlocking' that we got instead.

 

[two sheds]

I got a smartie for having a measles vaccination aged 2.

polio vaccination was on a lump of sugar I liked that

 

[LDC]

A more sophisticated version of 'learning to live with Covid-19' would certainly have emphasised that the relaxation of measures is only sustainable if we achieve higher vaccine uptake. In contrast to the bullshit about 'irreversible unlocking' that we got instead.

Totally, they could have more publicly and clearly linked loosening restrictions to % of the population vaccinated, and made it feel like a collective effort to get vaccinated and be part of things improving for everyone.

 

[kabbes]

Time was that a government would have made a decision about whether everybody needed vaccinating (except those that couldn’t be) and mandated it. I offer no view on whether that is a better approach or not but it certainly demonstrates that the current neoliberal “personal choice is everything and the free market of ideas will win out” assumption is not an inevitable and only approach. It doesn’t have to be about persuading each individual that it is in their personal best interests to do something.

 

[wtfftw]

We are going to be learning to live with it, unless I've missed some mention of vaccinating young kids.

 

[elbows]

It does seem to be possible to find some placces on the dashboard that are not following the same patterns seen elsewhere.

Here are a couple of examples. Can people find any others? Doesnt have to be rises above earlier July peak, can be broadly flat number of cases too.

I will study the data by age group for these places when I get a chance.

Exeter



Lincoln

 

[elbows]

Actually probably no need to sift through places manually, can just use some of the tables on this website, for example the "R-Values - Highest first" table.

COVID-19 in England - Estimates of R for each Local Authority

 

[glitch hiker]

I freely admit that I'm possibly, very, embarrassingly, wrong to say this: but I just don't trust these daily figures anymore. I cannot see how the virus has receded such from the weekend of 50+k cases right on the cusp of the 19th. Yet here we are being told that's happening.

 

[FridgeMagnet]

No I am suspicious of them as well. The rise didn't seem unprecedented, we've seen that in other circumstances, but this sharp fall just doesn't look like anything we've seen before.

 

[Storm Fox]

CovidZoe is showing the peak has just passed, but I don't know how CovidZoe trends relate to the official figures in past peaks.

 

[sojourner]

Our numbers up north are rising all the time, in contrast to the positive messages on national news.

 

[elbows]

Our numbers up north are rising all the time, in contrast to the positive messages on national news.

Where do you mean?

 

[elbows]

No I am suspicious of them as well. The rise didn't seem unprecedented, we've seen that in other circumstances, but this sharp fall just doesn't look like anything we've seen before.

This is one of the reasons I'm trying to look at cases by age group in places where the pattern is different to the recent overall national and regional trends. More on that later.

In terms of the overall data, it was suspiciously sharp. However some of the data last week caused a subsequent bump that made the overall downward trend seem a bit more plausible. And the very peak of waves can feature some big spikes on top and the drop off from those can be very sharp, but drops of that sharpness dont last long.

Probably the safest bet right now is to assume that multiple things happened, and we cant be precise about any of them. For example something real probably happened to case numbers, but also one or more things happened that affected this particular form of data, at a minimum making it more extreme than the underlying reality.

Hospital admissions so far are compatible with at least a plateau, and should give clearer signals during the coming week. The laggy but still useful ONS population survey, based on testing a sample of households, should be a bit more useful when the next version comes out this coming Friday. And the data from the main testing system will still be interesting this coming week, even if we arent sure what to make of its recent performance. So I think we'll have more clues by the end of this coming week, although whether a coherent picture will emerge or not I cannot claim to know.

As for trusting the figures or not, its always better not to rely on a single measure to tell what is going on, especially when it shows something very dramatic. But I still have to pay some attention to it because the other forms of data that can back it up or give a different picture take quite a bit longer to emerge.

Plus I still cannot ignore what happened in Scotland, a reasonably impressive rate of decline that has been backed up by other data so far. It probably isnt too much longer before we see what clues Scotland offers about how the rate of decline may slow, whether number of cases gets stuck around a certain rate etc.

Looking at positive cases by specimen date graphs for Scotland and England, it is true that Englands plunge looked incredible and a bit absurd for a time. But a bulge of cases last week makes the overall downwards slope look somewhat less absurd now, it looks more like a decline with an additional chunk of testing/data missing from a period following the peak, but then a return to something more realistic looking. Whether my perceptions of how it looks have further to change still I cannot say either.

 

[Dogsauce]

polio vaccination was on a lump of sugar I liked that

I remember thinking that was the reward for having the inoculating jab I had at the same time. Sharp needle then here’s a lump of sugar to make it better.

 

[two sheds]

It's the only vaccination I remember as a kid, was about 6 I think, got it in our front room.