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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Come on guys what are we worrying about 🤔.....tomorrow we can celebrate the 75th anniversary of 'stuffing' the Germans with a bank holiday🥳 and Monday we can bugger off out 🚶‍♀️🚶‍♂️🚶‍♀️🚶‍♂️ to try and catch the virus...it's what the last 6 weeks has been about isn't it? Meanwhile our Churchillian PM continues to make promises 🤥🤥 that..........................
 
I think for me it's this:

  • There is no pattern in decline for new cases. Obviously that may represent a real decline (because more testing), but with at least 5k new cases/day... um.
  • The picture for deaths is still unclear. Does seem to be a decline, but really needs another week to see how that plays out.
  • US deaths may be coming up. Again, really needs a week to be clear, and exactly what that represents is difficult to say.

Broadly though, the theme there is 'let the data clarify itself (themselves?) a bit'. Monday week might be the right time for some (cautious) announcement, I just don't see how Monday can be.
The hospitalization is on its way down, though more sharply in London. I agree about the new cases though. With testing ramped up to these levels Germany found this kind of level of new cases around 3 to 4 weeks ago. My biggest worry is the evident failure to stop spread in hospitals. How long people are outside or if they're having picnics is as good as irrelevant compared to that, yet this will be the focus rather than the ongoing infection protocol failures.
 
The hospitalization is on its way down, though more sharply in London. I agree about the new cases though. With testing ramped up to these levels Germany found this kind of level of new cases around 3 to 4 weeks ago. My biggest worry is the evident failure to stop spread in hospitals. How long people are outside or if they're having picnics is as good as irrelevant compared to that, yet this will be the focus rather than the ongoing infection protocol failures.

Seems to me outside of London the situation is largely plateaued. General trend is downwards with both deaths and hospitalisations but not in any great way. It would be interesting to see the trend line for the country if London was removed?

The start of lockdown was driven by the situation in London. Is the phasing out of lockdown being driven in the same way?
 
I'm sure I read guidelines somewhere about walking for an hour, cycling for half an hour and running somewhere between the two per day.
 
I'm sure I read guidelines somewhere about walking for an hour, cycling for half an hour and running somewhere between the two per day.
Discussed here
 
Seems to me outside of London the situation is largely plateaued. General trend is downwards with both deaths and hospitalisations but not in any great way. It would be interesting to see the trend line for the country if London was removed?

The start of lockdown was driven by the situation in London. Is the phasing out of lockdown being driven in the same way?
Yeah, the lack of progress outside London is a worry. Only thing I would say about that, having spent waaaaay too much time looking at these things, is that there is a general (although not universal) pattern across countries that the more severe your outbreak, the steeper the initial curve down is, simply because it was so high to start with.

The pattern here would actually be consistent with the idea that hospitals are now the main source of reinfection. It's worrying - if they can't sort it out, infection levels could remain at a certain level for ages yet. Has anybody in government even admitted that this is a thing that needs sorting out?
 
It occurs to me that, in the lead-up to lockdown, the papers released on SAGE stuff indicate that a major consideration was that 'everybody else is dong it, so people will expect us to do it'. Is the same logic being applied here? Is there any more thinking behind it than that?
 
It occurs to me that, in the lead-up to lockdown, the papers released on SAGE stuff indicate that a major consideration was that 'everybody else is dong it, so people will expect us to do it'. Is the same logic being applied here? Is there any more thinking behind it than that?

Yeah, that was my instinct... 'Italy is easing up, we need to keep up with Europe'.
 
Yeah, that was my instinct... 'Italy is easing up, we need to keep up with Europe'.

If that's true, then it's absolutely sophomoric logic. Aren't at least some of the SAGE folks supposed to have a scientific background? Sounds like they should be fired. Out of a cannon.
 
If that's true, then it's absolutely sophomoric logic. Aren't at least some of the SAGE folks supposed to have a scientific background? Sounds like they should be fired. Out of a cannon.

Yep... and there are some good scientists and statisticians on it. But there are a lot of them, they need to agree on the advice they're giving, and even if that advice is absolutely spot in it's then getting shunted through a set of people who probably need 'my valet' to tie their shoelaces.
 
If that's true, then it's absolutely sophomoric logic. Aren't at least some of the SAGE folks supposed to have a scientific background? Sounds like they should be fired. Out of a cannon.

I think you may be looking for where there is none. More like the already quasi-religious genuflection before 'the economy' descending to the level of a cargo cult, human sacrifices and all.
 
You can't pretend that what other countries are deciding to do is irrelevant to what the best decision is for the UK.
 
Yep... and there are some good scientists and statisticians on it. But there are a lot of them, they need to agree on the advice they're giving, and even if that advice is absolutely spot in it's then getting shunted through a set of people who probably need 'my valet' to tie their shoelaces.

Signal-to-noise ratios must also be pretty poor with so many behavioural voodoo priests and big-data soothsayers lurking about.
 
Something that's bothering me a lot about COVID-19. In many other events involving needless death of large numbers of people like a terrorist attack or a natural disaster or something you'd have minutes silences ordered by the govt, flags at half mast, memorials announced etc. There doesn't seem to be anything like that with this unless I've missed it. There aren't many details about most of the people who died and I guess it's because there are just so many but it seems really sad and wrong :(

There was the Trade Union initiated minutes silence for front line workers.
 
It does not help that the BBC and the rest of the press is failing to cover the pandemic as an emergency. The BBC is basically back to the wartime rules coverage. You go on the BBC's website and what you see is stories like 'I am 23, I hadn't realised Covid-19 can affect me too' or 'Corona virus: I get dressed up every day but have nowhere to go', etc. The general approach seems to be let's not dwell on the daily death rate and government's blunders, instead let's do a bit of public-health messaging and tell the public what is being done about testing. What you get after weeks of this sort of coverage is masses of people desensitized to the horror of covid-19, similar to when soldiers are dying in some distant conflict and you can't quite associate yourself with their deaths because no one talks about their deaths nor the reasons and causes of their deaths.

Life right now feels like two parallel running high speed trains. On one train everyone is dying and on the other people are just longing to arrive somewhere alive. There is a strange sense of cruelty and coldness about people waiting for others to stop dying so they can arrive somewhere to resume their normal lives.

Broadcast News, especially Sky News, has portraits of victims of Covid every night, as does the Guardian, quite moving as well.
 
I thought you were supposed to ramble once a day and close to home , and maybe those are both changing? Looks like national trust likely to reopen its sites (which will be very inconvenient as I’ve gotten used to having the whole place to myself)

i had a to go a bit further to get my weekly hobble, there were large amounts of middle class families out and about.

I thought you were supposed to ramble once a day and close to home , and maybe those are both changing? Looks like national trust likely to reopen its sites (which will be very inconvenient as I’ve gotten used to having the whole place to myself)

Desperate for that to happen, well the gardens.
 
You can't pretend that what other countries are deciding to do is irrelevant to what the best decision is for the UK.

But neither can you ignore the context for why those countries are doing what they're doing in the first place. Like having fewer deaths, better testing regimes and more pro-active infection control than our feckless PPE wanker government ever bothered to do.
 
But neither can you ignore the context for why those countries are doing what they're doing in the first place. Like having fewer deaths, better testing regimes and more pro-active infection control than our feckless PPE wanker government ever bothered to do.
exactly. What other countries are doing, how and when they are doing it, and what effects it is having are all obviously crucial factors to consider for any country that finds itself at the rear of the race.

From those considerations, we're around three weeks behind where Germany was when it started easing, with no guarantees we'll ever get where they are now because of the ongoing ppe disaster. I don't mind the idea that they might ease some restrictions that are probably now (and possibly always were) irrelevant to the ongoing struggle, but only if combined with a massive effort to tackle the current shortcomings. They won't even acknowledge the current shortcomings, so what hope is there of that?

ETA: Their 'five tests' thing always smelled of total bullshit. And indeed it was.
 
Is there any reliable summary of where we are at with PPE by the way? Like how many hospitals are currently short, etc? With numbers and stuff?
 
Outdoor space first I suspect.
There's nothing about the National Trust in any of the papers. Maybe limited openings of some completely outdoor sites but unless they just throw open the gates there's going to be pinch points. And public toilets. And ice cream vans with queues. It sounds really unlikely to me.

Any major leisure focused easings will be an incitement to break what has been a remarkably peaceful lockdown with none of the public disorder that was predicted 6 weeks ago.
 
If I remember right, bimble lives in a house on a National Trust site, so may be informed about this before it's made public.

Apologies if I've got it wrong, and will happily delete this post if required, so please don't quote me.
 
I find it hard to see the National Trust woodland near me opening up anytime soon. In fact there’s nothing really stopping anyone going there apart from a sign saying the car park and cafe are closed. There’s nothing to actually stop anyone parking in the main car park and I’ve noticed more people are doing this. The car park ticket machines are covered up and out of operation - and as you have to touch them to use them I can’t see how they would be brought back into use without creating a hazard. Reopening the toilets must also create a risk, for the public and for whoever has to clean and maintain them. The footpaths are still open and there are people about but I think mostly locals. At the moment it’s manageable. I’m not sure it would be if it reopened officially. Most of the money for running it must come from the car parking charges and unless these can be reintroduced safely then I can’t see much commercial reason to reopen.
 
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