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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Private Eye this issue came with:

Good(ish) news
SURPRISINGLY, the mass UK gatherings outside - from VE Day onwards - have yet to be followed by significant spikes in hsospital admissions and deaths from Covid-19. They could yet happen, but so far, so lucky.

Yes and this goes along with what I've been reading that the risk of transmission when outside is significantly reduced. Which gives us a clue to this..
What the hell is going on in those hotspots ?

The virus is spreading in households and places of work.
 
I'll reiterate the angle that came up last night though - these figures are potentially misleading when they dont take into account the variation in the number of tests actually carried out in these different regions. And since the government still cannot give us figures for 'pillar 2 number of people tested' in total, let alone by area, we lack this context.

Thank you. You obviously know a great deal about these stats, so it's really useful to have your input like that. :)


The virus is spreading in households and places of work.

Yes, and that is partly what makes some of the stories coming out about workplaces in Leicester so alarming. I saw a link on Twitter to this post in a community Facebook group for a Leicester suburb. Has a certain ring of truth about it...

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You could add shops to the mix. I’m fairly sure I caught it on a trip to the supermarket.

Yeah. Those crazy first few weeks of lockdown when we all had to traipse around several shops just to scrape enough food for a few days. Looking back on it, it took bloody ages for the supermarkets to get any sort of distancing policies in place and even now its patchy.
 
The one I go to is fairly small and not that busy. It’s got a lot busier than it was though since the relaxing of lockdown. I’d say staff on the checkout aren’t distanced enough from customers. And a lot of customers now seem to have forgotten about keeping two metres apart. In any case it’s the one place I’ve been with lots of people in an enclosed space.
 
Thank you. You obviously know a great deal about these stats, so it's really useful to have your input like that. :)




Yes, and that is partly what makes some of the stories coming out about workplaces in Leicester so alarming. I saw a link on Twitter to this post in a community Facebook group for a Leicester suburb. Has a certain ring of truth about it...

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And this kind of blatant, flagrant breach of employee rights is the core on which Tory employment/economic policy is built. They know this shit goes on, but they very carefully remove the teeth of legislation, and defund the services that would pursue it, so that such rights as people might still have are unenforceable. #notenoughlampposts
 
They are talking about tracking covid-19 through monitoring the amount of virus in sewage.

Apparently a simple early warning system which does not require mass testing.
 
They're welcome to my septic tank, that's fairly fine grained.

Did read about them thinking of testing lots of people at once though and only testing individually if there's a positive.

Eta: I suppose they can test street by street though which might be handy.
 
Its likely to be per water treatment plant unless they have a specific reason and capability to zoon in further. I'd be more comforatble about the current phase if the sewage surveillance system was already up and running everywhere. It would help with situations like Leicester too, where they dont seem to be sure how much the high numbers in Leicester are down to the amount of testing there.
 
Private Eye this issue came with:

Good(ish) news
SURPRISINGLY, the mass UK gatherings outside - from VE Day onwards - have yet to be followed by significant spikes in hsospital admissions and deaths from Covid-19. They could yet happen, but so far, so lucky.

Not that SURPRISING. Open air. Protesters were distancing, mask wearing and hand sanitizing probably much more than the pursed lipped headlines suggested.
 
You could add shops to the mix. I’m fairly sure I caught it on a trip to the supermarket.

I'm sure that's the case, but I suspect there's a lot more research to be done on this because the risk is going to be very different across different sorts of shops. I don't fancy a trip to a big, badly ventilated supermarket with large numbers of people coming to it from miles around, whereas I don't worry about going to my local greengrocer, which is open-fronted and only letting in two at a time. I imagine that shops could be a good vector for fomite transmission as well, and we certainly don't know enough about that yet.
 
Yes, I’ve been in a few other shops and they’ve felt pretty safe. I could possibly have caught it in one of them but it’s unlikely.
 
I still wear an N95 and disposable gloves in supermarkets. And I go early when the old people do (though not at the special hours when they had them) because a lot of them wear masks. Shopping centre is busying up though.
 
It's not going to be exactly fine-grained, though, is it?

Its no good at determining precise locations or precise numbers of people infected, but it is good at monitoring relative changes in the population, starting at rather low levels.

This is from a study on polio:

To assess the sensitivity of poliovirus monitoring, one study (Ranta et al., 2001) flushed a one-time bolus of 11 containing 2×10^10 infective poliovirus type 1 vaccine strain down a toilet 20 km (12 miles) from the sewage plant (Table 9.11 ). Samples were automatically collected and assayed for the next 4 days. Infectious poliovirus was still detected after 800 million liters had passed through the system. The authors concluded that their monitoring system could detect one infected person in 10,000 residents of the community, assuming that 108 infective viruses are excreted by a child over a 4-day period of time. The study showed that pathogens appear to be greatly retarded in sewage systems, where a onetime event resulted in a detection period over 4 days. The pathogen was also easily detected in 200-ml samples for every 5×10^6L of sewage flow.
 
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Private Eye this issue came with:

Good(ish) news
SURPRISINGLY, the mass UK gatherings outside - from VE Day onwards - have yet to be followed by significant spikes in hsospital admissions and deaths from Covid-19. They could yet happen, but so far, so lucky.

Yep, they've had similar experiences in the US - researchers say they haven't found much of a link between COVID infections and the George Floyd protests - they reckon the recent surges in cases have been due to indoor gatherings, especially in bars and at house parties.
 
Re: mask wearing, it seems to vary a lot depending on location. Roughly, I've seem them most widely worn on public transport, then the supermarket. I had a wander round town last week for the first time since lockdown, and there was a big drop off, very few people masked up at all. Then I went to a shop in an out-of-town retail park a few days later and there was about three of us.

I'm not sure what the reason for this variation is...
 
No figures for the uk today on worldometer?
Out now.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) in the UK

Looking at the total cases for English regions, they've totally changed since a couple of days ago. Some up, others down. Not sure what's going on there. Their explanation at the top doesn't tally.

Edit: Sorry, I misread. So they've revised the number down due to duplicates but the numbers for regions etc now include pillar 2. Hence going up. It appears that recent daily new cases totals have been too high, due to double-counting in pillar 2, the bit they sold off to their mates. I guess worldometers is working out how best to show the correction.

I've noticed a few countries rather drastically rearranging their figures recently. Sweden did it a little while ago as well.
 
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Interesting YouGov poll for Sky News shows massive support (83%) for another lockdown if needed, and a similiar percentage of people would self isolate if requested to do so.

Britons would strongly back a second lockdown if coronavirus cases spike, according to a new poll for Sky News which reveals the country's ongoing caution over the pandemic.

As most of the nation prepares to lift the lockdown in the coming weeks, starting with England on Saturday, more than eight in 10 people (83%) said they would back another shutdown if there is a second spike.

Almost eight in 10 (78%) said they would self-isolate for 14 days if asked by an NHS test and trace official, while 69% said they would even follow an instruction to self-isolate from a smartphone app.

 
The one I go to is fairly small and not that busy. It’s got a lot busier than it was though since the relaxing of lockdown. I’d say staff on the checkout aren’t distanced enough from customers. And a lot of customers now seem to have forgotten about keeping two metres apart. In any case it’s the one place I’ve been with lots of people in an enclosed space.

I've been using a similar place; a Sainsbury's convenience store just down the street. It's small and therefore pretty much impossible to distance staff from customers, but they are being pretty good about only letting a few people in at a time. I tend to be pretty careful in there - mask, hand sanitiser on the way in and out, quick disinfect of tins, bottles and so on when I get them home - but I think I'm probably being overly cautious. If it was a significant transmission hub you'd expect that to affect the staff, but none of the regulars seem to have gone off sick, and although they're taking precautions they don't seem as concerned about the situation as you'd expect if the virus was circulating among them.

In general, though, I don't think British supermarkets have been as assiduous about their precautions as in some other countries. My sister tells me that where she is in Germany you have to use a trolley rather than a basket, and it's taken away and disinfected after every use. The shops I use aren't doing anything like that.
 
I've been using a similar place; a Sainsbury's convenience store just down the street. It's small and therefore pretty much impossible to distance staff from customers, but they are being pretty good about only letting a few people in at a time. I tend to be pretty careful in there - mask, hand sanitiser on the way in and out, quick disinfect of tins, bottles and so on when I get them home - but I think I'm probably being overly cautious. If it was a significant transmission hub you'd expect that to affect the staff, but none of the regulars seem to have gone off sick, and although they're taking precautions they don't seem as concerned about the situation as you'd expect if the virus was circulating among them.

In general, though, I don't think British supermarkets have been as assiduous about their precautions as in some other countries. My sister tells me that where she is in Germany you have to use a trolley rather than a basket, and it's taken away and disinfected after every use. The shops I use aren't doing anything like that.
The Tesco I use (Carmarthen) does at least make an effort at cleaning each trolley, although it tends more to be a spray-in-the-general-direction-of from 3 metres away...
 
I think I'm probably being overly cautious.

If the precautions you're taking occupy only a little of your time, maybe you're not overdoing it. I took on some supermarket work recently and jacked it in after a few weeks, because behind the scenes there was no hygiene discipline or concern over social distancing. Guess it depends on your age and health too.
 
If the precautions you're taking occupy only a little of your time, maybe you're not overdoing it. I took on some supermarket work recently and jacked it in after a few weeks, because behind the scenes there was no hygiene discipline or concern over social distancing. Guess it depends on your age and health too.

Yes, that's pretty much my attitude: it only takes a couple of minutes to wipe packets down with an antiseptic wipe or spray a bit of disinfectant on them, so I might as well. Food packaging and similar isn't thought to be a major transmission vector but we don't really know, so it seems sensible to take precautions. I'm still just about young and in good health, but even so the virus can be very nasty indeed and I'm keen to do everything I can to avoid it!
 
We’ve stopped wiping and washing all the shopping in the past few weeks but we are taking everything we can out of the packaging. Fruit and veg go in net bags, crisps and other multipack stuff gets tipped out into a bag for life.
I don’t wear a mask in the supermarket because it made me more anxious. I have noticed that I’m still really anxious doing a big shop. I’ve found that I’ve had enough at a certain point in the store and keep forgetting cleaning stuff and toiletries because that’s nearly at the end and my head is about to explode.
It’s stressful and I had a bit of a funny turn a couple of weeks ago and thought I was having a heart attack. People can be quite rude and inconsiderate and lots don’t really distance at all now.
I did a Tesco click and collect last week but lots of the veg was very close in date, my peppers were mushy and one of the packets of chicken was open so I still had to go in the bloody shop to return that.
We’re trying a Sainsburys delivery this week but haven’t ordered any fruit or veg. Mr Looby is happy to go to Waitrose every 2-3 days to get that. It’s up the road, distancing is managed well.
I guess it’s about figuring out what works for you. This week I’ll sit in the car with a coffee while he does his mum’s shopping.
I’ve got a booze injury too, from a security tag on a bottle of rum in Tesco.
 

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I'm really glad my allotments there for fruit and veg, our closest shop is a Tesco express so the choices there are fucking awful and limited. There's a butchers doing well and supplying fruit and veg since this started so we go there in an absolute emergency.


Otherwise it's a Sainsbury's every couple of weeks for frozen things and a trip to the Tesco for the odd jug of milk and pack of biscuits
 
I get the feeling that different people are operating in totally different parallel bubbles with regard to perception of risk and so on.

On here, a lot of people are worrying about being asked to go back to work, discussing wiping down shopping, wearing gloves to the supermarket etc.

On another forum that I sometimes look at, there's a thread with an OP basically saying can't we just abandon social distancing already and get back to normal and stop pandering to the paranoid and overly cautious. And most of the replies agree with them, to a greater or lesser extent. They are describing people they see in the supermarket wearing masks and gloves, trying to stay 2m away from everyone, as if they are nutters.
 
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