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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

The NHS is offering jabs at both the Reading and Leeds festivals this weekend.

Surely no one will risk the side effects whilst at a festival? :hmm:
 
thismoment said:
I think it’s also a case of what people are individually used to. For example, I am ok with getting the train and tube for my commute to work, it the most practical to get to work. I’ve probably been on 2/3 buses since the pandemic. However, last night I had to get a bus home and didn’t get it because it was very busy (there were lots of people sitting next to each other) and more people were getting on. I waited for another bus and same thing. I ended up getting a cab. And yet I get the tube for work which doesn’t make all that much sense except it’s what I’m used to.
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I'm having to get the bus to work tomorrow which I'm apprehensive about. It's been a year since I did public transport and it freaked me the fuck out.

I'll be getting on early on the journey so hopefully can get a good seat near the back or in a perfect world the back of a double decker. Windows open, mask on, music blaring, twenty five mins and off.
 
S☼I said:
I'm having to get the bus to work tomorrow which I'm apprehensive about. It's been a year since I did public transport and it freaked me the fuck out.

I'll be getting on early on the journey so hopefully can get a good seat near the back or in a perfect world the back of a double decker. Windows open, mask on, music blaring, twenty five mins and off.
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Damn thats really shit, I mean we all have to balance genuine concerns with the need to actually live but I have to admit the thought of getting on a bus with a load of maskless mouth breathers would scare the shit out of me right now (I hope there arent too many maskless on your trip just they seem to be increasing rapidly round my way these days) sending protective vibes
 
I now get buses and trains regularly and have just accepted that it is a risk worth taking, given how difficult my life is trying to avoid it or limit it. Generally about half of the other passengers are maskless. I'm avoiding journeys longer than about 20 mins on a single form of transport and I try to sit near a window. I won't sit inside a pub or restaurant though and I think that's a lot more risky given generally much poorer ventilation and the fact you're likely to be sat there in the same space for longer. I've got a friend though who won't even do a five minute journey by public transport but is perfectly happy to go to restaurants - I guess because she thinks that adds more to her quality of life.
 
Yeah, of course a lot about perceived risk is how large it is in your head, I mean I'm not nervous about sharing a classroom with 20 unmasked students for an hour while unmasked myself ten times a week but 25 mins on a bus is bothersome. As with everything else during the 'Demic (as nobody calls it) I'll just focus on what I can do as I can't do more.
 
Yesterday evening I met up at a central london pub with some friends I've not seen for a while. It was obvious that within the group there were quite different feelings about risk and so on. For most of the evening we sat at an outside table but the outside area was closed at some point and we moved inside. I wasn't totally comfortable with this; although I've been going on public transport a fair bit I've still been avoiding sitting indoors in pubs and restaurants. I am gradually changing my approach on a "probably isn't going to get much better than this now" basis so I did move inside, where it wasn't actually very busy (but not windows/doors left open for ventilation). No-one in the pub was wearing a mask; this had been mostly true throughout the evening, and you had to go to the bar to take orders.

Anyway the point of this boring story is that maybe it reminded me how much behaviour is influenced by peers and normalised by what you see around you. Being in a pub with people I know well, some of whom were entirely unbothered by covid risk, and also surrounded by others all of whom seemed quite comfortable with this situation, changed my feeling about what seemed appropriate to the extent that if I'd put on my mask to go to the toilet I would have felt conspicuous and people might have thought I was doing it to make a point, in the way that I see people unmasked in the supermarket and thing they are just doing it to make a point.

Then on the way home I stopped in at a convenience store, put my mask on as usual and then felt a bit weird about it, as if I could now see myself from the outside as looking paranoid.

Over the past months I've seen groups of people on trains etc all unmasked and it's irritated me a bit, for reasons most people reading this will relate to. But yesterday got me wondering, whether when I see those groups of people, several of them actually would prefer to be wearing a mask but they are caught between what they'd do themselves and how they think their peer group would read their decision.

This is all quite obvious really; I just found it notable how rapidly my behaviour was altered by the social context.
 
teuchter said:
Yesterday evening I met up at a central london pub with some friends I've not seen for a while. It was obvious that within the group there were quite different feelings about risk and so on. For most of the evening we sat at an outside table but the outside area was closed at some point and we moved inside. I wasn't totally comfortable with this; although I've been going on public transport a fair bit I've still been avoiding sitting indoors in pubs and restaurants. I am gradually changing my approach on a "probably isn't going to get much better than this now" basis so I did move inside, where it wasn't actually very busy (but not windows/doors left open for ventilation). No-one in the pub was wearing a mask; this had been mostly true throughout the evening, and you had to go to the bar to take orders.

Anyway the point of this boring story is that maybe it reminded me how much behaviour is influenced by peers and normalised by what you see around you. Being in a pub with people I know well, some of whom were entirely unbothered by covid risk, and also surrounded by others all of whom seemed quite comfortable with this situation, changed my feeling about what seemed appropriate to the extent that if I'd put on my mask to go to the toilet I would have felt conspicuous and people might have thought I was doing it to make a point, in the way that I see people unmasked in the supermarket and thing they are just doing it to make a point.

Then on the way home I stopped in at a convenience store, put my mask on as usual and then felt a bit weird about it, as if I could now see myself from the outside as looking paranoid.

Over the past months I've seen groups of people on trains etc all unmasked and it's irritated me a bit, for reasons most people reading this will relate to. But yesterday got me wondering, whether when I see those groups of people, several of them actually would prefer to be wearing a mask but they are caught between what they'd do themselves and how they think their peer group would read their decision.

This is all quite obvious really; I just found it notable how rapidly my behaviour was altered by the social context.
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We are in a transition period. There is no right and wrong way to act or feel about this stuff now (imho). I don’t mask at my hotel but i do on transport and in shops. I’ve not had a indoor pint yet but will at some point soon i’m sure.
 
Yeah I'm definitely aware that my attitude to risk around this isn't consistent - it varies based on all sorts of things to be honest. Probably just mood as much as anything.

It all feeds into that 'it feels safe' thing that you hear people say a lot now. How closely is that related to actual safety? Probably pretty loosely a lot of the time I think.
 
It's so difficult to navigate this. Some days I really feel I should just be braver - still wear masks in shops and buses but also do things like go back to the gym, sit inside pubs, go to the cinema etc, and just accept that infection will come eventually and I will cope. But then I hear the latest story of some acquaintance going down badly with covid and taking weeks and weeks to recover and I change my mind. And then I see people behaving like it's totally all over and feel really resentful that they're having a fuller life than me.
 
Johnny Vodka said:
News reports floating around that Scotland could be heading into another lockdown, or at least an increase in level. There's going to be an update today.
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They've broken their daily positive cases record again.

But they wont do anything about this yet, since their approach is only a slight modification of the approach taken in England - better attitude to masks, a slightly more reasonable unlocking timetable over summer, better public messaging. Those things can help a bit but I dont think they are key difference makers that will turn the tide at this stage. And overall there is still the same overarching cold calculations and plan to try to learn to live with covid more rapidly than it seems sensible to attempt.

I dont know at what stage they would be forced to u-turn and reimpose certain restrictions. But since we've seen in the past that just starting to warn of the risk of having to reimpose stuff can have an impact on behaviour which can help. So thats all they are trying for now, change the mood music and see how people respond. I doubt it will be enough but predictions are difficult.
 
Monkeygrinder's Organ said:
It all feeds into that 'it feels safe' thing that you hear people say a lot now. How closely is that related to actual safety? Probably pretty loosely a lot of the time I think.
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Such feelings are a combination of fatigue/wishful thinking and crude expectations about vaccines and summer and the plan the governments have been signalling for most of 2021 that the media have gone along with. Plus how people see others behaving in the wake of those changes.

My own sense of safety is influenced less by those things because the dominant indicator for me is the rate of infection, and the numbers are huge this summer so I am not on board the 'feels safer' bus at all. Having received my 2nd jab 3 weeks ago my attitude towards personal risk was modified, but not by the extent necessary to override the feelings I have as a result of current daily positive test numbers.
 
killer b said:
I don't think there's many truly effective restrictions they could reimpose without westminster providing the cash to support them is there?
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I know what you mean but I'll reserve judgement on that and see what happens. We'll only get an answer to that question if their projections show an impossible burden on hospitals etc.
 
elbows said:
I know what you mean but I'll reserve judgement on that and see what happens. We'll only get an answer to that question if their projections show an impossible burden on hospitals etc.
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It's just that when we talk about Scotland's approach being 'only a slight modification' of England's, it needs to be seen in that context - the Scottish government doesn't have the cash to close the pubs, extend furlough, support businesses etc, so the actions available to them are necessarily fairly close to the English government's actions.
 
killer b said:
It's just that when we talk about Scotland's approach being 'only a slight modification' of England's, it needs to be seen in that context - the Scottish government doesn't have the cash to close the pubs, extend furlough, support businesses etc, so the actions available to them are necessarily fairly close to the English government's actions.
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Its partly that but its also about establishment instincts there, which are only slightly better than Englands.

Its not just funding either, there are other policy and systemic issues where Scotland remain tightly bound to the overall UK approach, with no real choice in the matter. I suppose I expect that the Scottish pandemic public inquiry might end up shining a light on some of those matters in a way that could see such things become part of the independence debate.
 
teuchter said:
I am gradually changing my approach on a "probably isn't going to get much better than this now" basis
Click to expand...

This is one of the insidious effects of the current government approach.

The current levels of infection are not what advisors had in mind when it comes to the baseline of cases to expect in a 'learning to live with covid' era. eg modelling showed a wave that then diminishes at some point, down to much lower levels than we are dealing with at the moment, and those lower levels are what the government had in mind, that was the prize and it hasnt happened. If cases instead were to remain at these levels, then I dont think its a sustainable situation that would enable the government to get away with their preferred approach. Especially not given that we are talking about a rate in summer, with much extra pressure of various sorts expected in autumn and winter.

A crystal ball would have been most useful for determining what part of late spring/summer was actually most appropriate to let our guard down and recharge our mental batteries. So far in this pandemic our thoughts about personal risk and what behaviours to indulge in have been out of sync with reality, mostly through no fault of our own. eg this year people have been doing stuff in July and August that was actually safer to do in May. And last year the government were so slow to change the advice to people shielding that the safest period was missed and people ended up being encouraged to dance too close to the fire when the fire had already started growing bigger.

Even if the government had a much better approach to the pandemic I dont know as it would have been possible to radically improve this picture. Not least because if people had relaxed sooner then we'd have been back in the shit sooner.
 
In other words the 'learning to live with covid' agenda was based on there being an exit wave that the government were happy to risk having to deal with temporarily, especially if it meant having the cases out of the way during summer rather than the same wave happening in the more dangerous autumn and winter period.

And I am keen to point out that there is a difference between the levels of infection that government was prepared to deal with temporarily as part of an exit wave, and the levels they would be prepared to deal with on an ongoing basis.
 
elbows said:
They've broken their daily positive cases record again.

But they wont do anything about this yet, since their approach is only a slight modification of the approach taken in England - better attitude to masks, a slightly more reasonable unlocking timetable over summer, better public messaging. Those things can help a bit but I dont think they are key difference makers that will turn the tide at this stage. And overall there is still the same overarching cold calculations and plan to try to learn to live with covid more rapidly than it seems sensible to attempt.

I dont know at what stage they would be forced to u-turn and reimpose certain restrictions. But since we've seen in the past that just starting to warn of the risk of having to reimpose stuff can have an impact on behaviour which can help. So thats all they are trying for now, change the mood music and see how people respond. I doubt it will be enough but predictions are difficult.
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I kind of think that anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers aren't going to change their behaviour (or adhere to the rules) just because cases rise. They seem to have a certain thick stubbornness about them IME.
 
Johnny Vodka said:
I kind of think that anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers aren't going to change their behaviour (or adhere to the rules) just because cases rise. They seem to have a certain thick stubbornness about them IME.
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They also won't get vaccinated because of the threat of Covid passports. They'll cut their nose off to spite their face and say "Well, I just won't go to gigs then!"
 
Johnny Vodka said:
I kind of think that anti-maskers/anti-vaxxers aren't going to change their behaviour (or adhere to the rules) just because cases rise. They seem to have a certain thick stubbornness about them IME.
Click to expand...

The behaviours of that group arent the key difference maker, not unless their numbers swelled to become a really huge chunk of the population. Its everyone else that is relied upon to make a notable difference when the mood music goes gloomy.

There are limits to how much can be achieved by that alone. We've seen this summer that such effects were enough to blunt some of the reopening effects in England, at least for a time. But its not something I can rely on to carry the pandemic weight over a prolonged period without other actions being taken by authorities.
 
Frankly I find it very tempting to believe that the entire 2021 approach taken by UK authorities relied on vaccines keeping case numbers down to a far greater extent than is actually happening with the Delta strain. There are too many breakthrough infections.

Whether this failure is sufficient to totally derail the plan is not clear to me, because there could be 'unexpected' turns in the same way the mid July peak was 'unexpected'. Or it might take quite a long time before the shit hits the fan to the extent that a rethink becomes unavoidable. Or things could move quickly, I cannot tell. If Englands case numbers explode again like Scotlands have, I suspect the current plan wont be sustainable for all that long.
 
teuchter said:
Yesterday evening I met up at a central london pub with some friends I've not seen for a while. It was obvious that within the group there were quite different feelings about risk and so on. For most of the evening we sat at an outside table but the outside area was closed at some point and we moved inside. I wasn't totally comfortable with this; although I've been going on public transport a fair bit I've still been avoiding sitting indoors in pubs and restaurants. I am gradually changing my approach on a "probably isn't going to get much better than this now" basis so I did move inside, where it wasn't actually very busy (but not windows/doors left open for ventilation). No-one in the pub was wearing a mask; this had been mostly true throughout the evening, and you had to go to the bar to take orders.

Anyway the point of this boring story is that maybe it reminded me how much behaviour is influenced by peers and normalised by what you see around you. Being in a pub with people I know well, some of whom were entirely unbothered by covid risk, and also surrounded by others all of whom seemed quite comfortable with this situation, changed my feeling about what seemed appropriate to the extent that if I'd put on my mask to go to the toilet I would have felt conspicuous and people might have thought I was doing it to make a point, in the way that I see people unmasked in the supermarket and thing they are just doing it to make a point.

Then on the way home I stopped in at a convenience store, put my mask on as usual and then felt a bit weird about it, as if I could now see myself from the outside as looking paranoid.

Over the past months I've seen groups of people on trains etc all unmasked and it's irritated me a bit, for reasons most people reading this will relate to. But yesterday got me wondering, whether when I see those groups of people, several of them actually would prefer to be wearing a mask but they are caught between what they'd do themselves and how they think their peer group would read their decision.

This is all quite obvious really; I just found it notable how rapidly my behaviour was altered by the social context.
Click to expand...

I had very similar. I thought I'd wear a normal mask if others were and a protect me mask if others were not, but actually when I had to check into a hotel it was a harvester style pub and no one was wearing masks and it was only a few minutes and I just didn't then or any other time I went inside to order a drink etc. I was pretty much the only person eating and drinking outside. When I had the breakfast buffet I didnt wear one either even though it was half an hour inside. It would have felt awkward and a bit pointless doffing and donning between eating and collecting things.
 
My somewhat casual observation of Scottish wastewater data so far continues to indicate that this is a useful form of surveillance.

Certainly the big rises mentioned in last weeks report, that I mentioned here Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion have since been confirmed by more recent positive case figures.

This weeks report says:

• Nationwide, the latest levels of wastewater Covid-19 RNA have approximately doubled since the previous week.

Wastewater Covid-19 RNA concentrations are now approaching the maximum level reached during the peak in July 2021. The rise in wastewater has been greatest in the central belt and the south.
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This weekly report also has various detail about contacts:

• Average contacts have increased by 15% in the last two weeks (comparing surveys pertaining to 5th August - 11th August and 19th August - 25th August) with a current level of 4.7 daily contacts.
• Contacts within the work have increased by approximately 64% compared to two weeks prior. Contacts within the home and other settings (contacts outside of the home, school and work) have remained at similar levels over the same period.
• All age groups with the exception of those aged 18-29 have had an rise in contacts within the last two week, with those aged 30-39 approximately doubling. Increases across the age groups are largely driven by a rise in contacts within the work setting.
• The biggest increase in interactions is seen between those 30-39 with those under 18.
• Visits to a work place have increased from approximately 14% to 19% with individuals visiting a pub or restaurant increasing from 46% to 49% in the last two weeks.
Click to expand...

 
That Scottish report also has some useful data on vaccination and people testing positive. It not perfect, eg it doesnt differentiate between one dose and two doses, but its far more than we get for England.

Screenshot 2021-08-27 at 14.23.jpg

The Early Pandemic Evaluation and Enhanced Surveillance of Covid-19 (EAVE) 2 Study Group4 has updated the pattern of demographics and clinical risk groups over time for those who tested positive in Scotland (see Technical Annex in issue 34 of the Research Findings).

Figure 4 gives the age group, risk group and vaccination status of those first testing positive in the period 7th to 13th August 2021 and linking into the EAVE cohort. Vaccine status is a simple binary classification denoting that the individual had at least one dose of the vaccine before testing positive (vaccinated) or was unvaccinated at the time of testing positive. Risk group status is the number of Q-Covid5 risk groups to which a person belongs.
Click to expand...

One quarter of those testing positive are under 18, 50% are aged under 30 and only 6% aged 65+6. Among those aged under 18 the vast majority are unvaccinated while among those aged 18-29 just over half of them are vaccinated, most will just have had one dose. Very few individuals testing positive under 40 have multiple co-morbid conditions (0.2% of all cases were under 40 and had 3 or more co morbid conditions). The majority of those aged over 40 are vaccinated when testing positive, and most will have had two doses of vaccine, but a relatively small proportion are in the groups most at risk of a severe outcome. Among those testing positive 1.5% are aged 65+ and have 4 or more co-morbid conditions.
Click to expand...
 
elbows said:
This is one of the insidious effects of the current government approach.

The current levels of infection are not what advisors had in mind when it comes to the baseline of cases to expect in a 'learning to live with covid' era. eg modelling showed a wave that then diminishes at some point, down to much lower levels than we are dealing with at the moment, and those lower levels are what the government had in mind, that was the prize and it hasnt happened. If cases instead were to remain at these levels, then I dont think its a sustainable situation that would enable the government to get away with their preferred approach. Especially not given that we are talking about a rate in summer, with much extra pressure of various sorts expected in autumn and winter.
Click to expand...
Yes, I realise this, and my "probably isn't going to get much better than this" approach is based on my guess about what's going to happen next, which is that we will wobble around for an extended period of time with a rate that is much higher than the target, and higher than it needed to be, had there been a better response up until now. And I know that by second-guessing what the government response to things is going to be, I help to reinforce a kind of vicious circle... but at some point everyone reaches the stage where they are fed up with being the mug sat at home for the greater good while everyone else gets on with things and enjoys themselves. That threshold is clearly very different for different people, and is also related to the perceived personal risk (ie not the "greater good" risk). I'm happy to be the guy that stays at home for a couple of months longer than many of my peers but I don't think I'm going to be the guy that does that for 6 months or two years or whatever.

I think my behaviour will now only move back towards a "more cautious" approach if there's a really dramatic rise in cases and/or a significant rise in hospitalisations/deaths.
 
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