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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Dr Susan Hopkins was asked whether they expect number of infections to keep going down, given the easing of restrictions etc. She said it was hard to predict more than 2-3 weeks ahead with confidence, made some mention of the somewhat differing trends in different age groups, but still tried to be as positive as possible about the prospects of decline. Given what we saw with Delta dragging on, a wave without a big formal lockdown, I'm trying to keep my expectations blank, both possibilities seem plausible to me so far.

At least Hopkins emphasised that its peoples behaviour in the coming weeks that will make a difference to this picture. Emphasised getting vaccinated, regular testing, taking care on public transport, indoors and in crowded places (masks etc), in the context of people returning to work.
 
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Even with this government, talk of bumps in the road and unknowns about future variants isnt going away. But now there is greater emphasis on how 'the British people' respond responsibly to these events, and pharmaceutical measures. Thats understandable, and is closer to the environment (peoples attitudes) in which I was used to talking about flu, pandemics etc before the current pandemic arrived.
 
elbows said:
Even with this government, talk of bumps in the road and unknowns about future variants isnt going away. But now there is greater emphasis on how 'the British people' respond responsibly to these events, and pharmaceutical measures. Thats understandable, and is closer to the environment (peoples attitudes) in which I was used to talking about flu, pandemics etc before the current pandemic arrived.
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I thought you might have been chucking things at the screen when Javid dropped the f word....
 
Javid was asked when the definition of fully vaccinated would be changed to include boosters. A good question, and something that might make a notable difference to booster uptake rates going forwards, since momentum was lost once 'Christmas had been saved'.

Javid does get a bit carefree with his wording on this sort of thing, I'm going to assume some of his choice of words in response made some professionals groan because they usually tend to moderate their language to downplay the extent of certain things. This is my own attempt at transcribing the bit in question, might not be word perfect but is close:

"We are looking at the definition of fully vaccinated. If we look at what we have learnt in the last few weeks, we know that two vaccines are not enough against Omicron. Nowhere near enough, they just dont work, in terms of protecting, certainly against hospitalisation. But we know that 3 vaccines, they can err, they can give you, Susan, is it 88% protection against hospitalisation, and so they work, and thats why we are where we are today".

I dont actually disagree with that, although even I might have been a bit more cautious with some of my language when making that point, I probably wouldnt have said 'they just dont work', I'd have pointed out some estimates for protection they still offered that fall far short of protection after boosted but still not close to no protection.
 
platinumsage said:
I thought you might have been chucking things at the screen when Javid dropped the f word....
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Depends on exactly how its used. In this case he was pointing out stuff I've already been going on about, such as establishment preferences for guidance and pharmaceutical measures rather than laws.

My stance is actually far more moderate than would have come across during various hairy moments in the last 2 years. I became very loud in part because I'm aware of what the orthodox approach is, where its comfort zone ended, and how this virus was incompatible with that comfort zone in the no vaccine era. As we return to the orthodox approach more and more, I'll be able to come to terms with much of it. But it would help if the timing was right, and if we take the opportunity of the pandemic to at least permanently change attitudes towards mass diagnostic testing in this country rather than guessing and over-reliance on sentinel surveillance that isnt large enough/nuanced enough/timely enough and does little to help individual patients.
 
2hats said:
Oh dear. I sincerely hope you aren't involved in any line of work that demands numeracy or scientific understanding.

FTFY.
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You need to justify the edit.

You have google and can search. I can't generally can't be bothered to do what you can do for yourself.

Prof Julian Hiscox, Chair in Infection and Global Health, University of Liverpool and
Dr Elisabetta Groppelli, virologist, St George's, University of London
Prof Eleanor Riley, an immunologist at the University of Edinburgh all contributed to this article.
www.bbc.co.uk

Endemic Covid: Is the pandemic entering its endgame?

Are we about to start the era of endemic-Covid and what will that mean for our lives?
www.bbc.co.uk

I think I would listen to these people than to you.

Of note is this quote
Prof. Julian Hiscox said:
There will be people - mostly the old and vulnerable - who will die from endemic Covid. So there is still a decision to be made about how we live alongside it.
"If you're willing to tolerate zero deaths from Covid, then we're facing a whole raft of restrictions and it's not game over," Prof Hiscox explains.
But, he says, "In a bad flu season, 200-300 die a day over winter and nobody wears a mask or socially distances, that's perhaps a right line to draw in the sand."
Lockdowns and restrictions on mass gatherings will not come back and mass testing for Covid will end this year, he expects.
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The EMA

EMA regular press briefing on COVID-19 | European Medicines Agency

www.ema.europa.eu www.ema.europa.eu
"Fast moving to a situation where there is Endimicity"

Interesting to hear more doses aren't something we can ore should keep doing over and over for the general population.
 
A lot of my compaints on those fronts Sunray are to do with timing and the degree of certainty expressed.

And the term endemic is being used for purposes including crude propaganda at the moment. It will take a long time to find out what endemic levels look like, how often epidemic waves will still feature and how challenging either the endemic or epidemic levels are to coping via pharmaceutical means alone.

Its no surprise that the establishment does not envisage the entire population being vaccinated every year. I'll take that topic a few months at a time I think, like many others this year, still lots to learn. And some of those who rushed too far ahead already made some howlers in the Delta wave, let alone Omicron. I'm interested in what is actually sustainable for say 9 months a year, and what winters will look like, including what sort of resurgence eventually happens with flu, given the NHS pressures are combinations of things.
 
This is a good summaryhttps://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/jan/19/science-covid-ineradicable-disease-prevention?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter
 
Sunray said:
You need to justify the edit.

You have google and can search. I can't generally can't be bothered to do what you can do for yourself.
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You certainly can't be bothered to look at plots, read the captions and then think about what they are illustrating.

Bothering might not be your thing, and the article is largely very parochial, but did you manage to read to the end of it?
"For the world it is still a pandemic and an acute emergency," Dr Groppelli concludes.
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They also conveniently fail to discuss animal reservoirs and sequelae of COVID-19 beyond shorter term "mild" respiratory issues.
 
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2hats said:
sequelae of COVID-19 beyond shorter term "mild" respiratory issues.
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Thats an area that bothers me but where I have not lived up to being a doom-monger, since I dont like to go on about it too much with no clear info about how big a deal this will be. It troubles me because I dont expect it to be a non-issue, I just struggle to figure out what the right balance might be in terms of going on about it in a way that may be bad for peoples mental health.
 
Interesting, having commented about the removal of mask mandate on a national news FB post, how you get all the 'Face nappies are a government plot!' people.... if so, it's one they've decided not to bother with so not sure what they're so incensed about.
 
Cloo said:
Interesting, having commented about the removal of mask mandate on a national news FB post, how you get all the 'Face nappies are a government plot!' people.... if so, it's one they've decided not to bother with so not sure what they're so incensed about.
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A plot to what, though? I’ve never understood what nefarious aims getting the population to wear masks in crowded places might serve.
 
prunus said:
A plot to what, though? I’ve never understood what nefarious aims getting the population to wear masks in crowded places might serve.
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They seem to have a couple of arguments, all of them stupid:

  • That if we agree to wear masks, we'll be 'primed' to obey more extreme demands on us, like, presumably, reporting our friends and family to the authorities for criticising the government. Because that totally logically follows from wearing a mask in public to help slow down a dangerous infection.
  • That if They make us cover our faces it'll dehumanise us and make us more inclined turn against one another so They can control us. This fails to note that the government doesn't need masks to dehumanise people - strategic use of words like 'refugee', 'scrounger', 'benefits claimant', 'asylum seeker' etc have done that job very nicely.
  • To make the kiddies scared of other people which will, guess what... ? make it easier to control us. :rolleyes:
 
Much to my surprise, we got an email this evening saying that our work is not rescinding the WFH recommendation, because case rates are still so high. I am surprised because I know the higher-ups are very keen to get everybody back into the office
 
There are probably plenty of companies that dont like the sound of office outbreaks. And health & safety at work and employee relations are extra tedious at a time of high viral prevalence. They may also relish the prospect of the eventual return being done at a time when they are far more confident that its sustainable. I'm mostly talking about companies where working from home was really feasible and so at this point is in some ways 'the easy option', as opposed to various sorts of jobs where people are inevitably in harms way all the way throughout this pandemic.

One impression of the lurch back to the old normal is given if people listen to the Johnson government and great swathes of the press. The wider reality is far from a perfect match to that, and even the government know this. Its one of the reasons they can move early, because they know that although some things change reasonably quickly, others are a much slower affair. They can quack on all they want about the 'freedoms' that were on offer last summer, but they know that all sorts of things did not actually return to the old levels during that time, including number of contacts between people. Others did trend back towards the old normal, but didnt necessarily make it all the way back, even when given months to do so.
 
Trying to run a woodworking business from home is a nightmare - especially with the workshop manager "off sick" ...

But I already was doing a significant part of the job from home anyway.
The workshop office is not soundproof, nor is it interruption proof, which has consequences,
Quite often, I take calls from clients and suppliers that involve long discussions - I can't cut the calls short, nor can I tell the team to stop noisy work ...
Also, compiling tenders, reports and other documentation needs peace and quiet to allow me to concentrate ...

So, I'm torn between two opposing forces.
I ought to be there for supervisory reasons, but equally, I need to WFH to do admin etc.
 
elbows said:
various sorts of jobs where people are inevitably in harms way all the way throughout this pandemic.

One impression of the lurch back to the old normal is given if people listen to the Johnson government and great swathes of the press.
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In the last several months part of my job has been to visit nursery settings to assess students in practice
I have found that 1) i'm the only person wearing a mask 2) that my students and other nursery staff voice press messages like 'get back to normal' 'we're all going to get it anyway' 'got to live our lives' 3) that people who work in nurseries have been in harms way throughout the pandemic [and didn't close when schools did] so this influences attitudes
 
Yes there are several parallel realities at the moment that feature some big differences.

In many ways this is consistent with the feature of this pandemic whereby the pandemic shone a light on shit that was always there, bringing longstanding inequalities and differences of perception and priorities into sharper focus.
 
FridgeMagnet said:
Snip - got a bit paranoid
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I spent a big chunk of my working life doing contracts for big multi-nationals, ideally three days a week, I also had a clothing shop in Brixton then Camden market, which satisfied my more creative side and kept me busy between contracts. I do remember once legging it down Granville Arcade because I had reggae music in the background and the MD of a telecoms company on the phone, but mostly it worked for me. So my suggestion is for you to consider cutting your hours a bit and doing something else (voluntary or paid) as well which gets you out of the house and mixing with good people.
 
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Once I get this COVID and isolation over early next week I might actually try to go into office again on at least a fortnightly basis - they've kept it open since 'Plan B' for a few people who have real difficulty wfh for one reason or other and have announced they will open more widely after next week, but still no mandate to come in. Since Xmas I've hit a bit of a wall with being at home every day for nearly two years and fancy the change of scene - I really don't need to go in at all for the work I do, but the few times I came in during autumn I did quite enjoy the quiet hum of people around.
 
Since I previously pointed out how many contacts were reached by Test & Trace and told to self-isolate, here are the latest figures in that respect:

Covers England for the period 6th to 12th January 2022.

In the current reporting week, 1,016,532 (82.0%) were reached and told to self-isolate, an increase from the 947,067 (76.8%) reached in the previous reporting week. 222,991 (18.0%) were not reached, a decrease from 286,002 (23.2%) in the previous reporting week.
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Apart from Test and Trace being a collossal waste of money and a near abject failure.
With the Omicron variant now sweeping the country unabated, is their work of any real use? I'm not sure there is anymore. Disband it and save the money.
 
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Sunray said:
Apart from Test and Trace being a collossal waste of money and a near abject failure.
With the Omicron variant now sweeping the country unabated, is there work of any real use? I'm not sure there is anymore. Disband it and save the money.
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Or run it properly, like some of the local authorities did, and do a better job for far less cost.

There really isn't room for counsels of despair.
 
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