Well that's good in a way, no?. For mass testing to be successful you are going to need a large uptake and a lot of buy-in from the public. It sounds like people are pretty motivated round your way. Obviously there is a capacity issue but mass testing doesn't mean test everyone in the first few days.
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
- Thread starter Sasaferrato
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Well that's good in a way, no?. For mass testing to be successful you are going to need a large uptake and a lot of buy-in from the public. It sounds like people are pretty motivated round your way. Obviously there is a capacity issue but mass testing doesn't mean test everyone in the first few days.
ska invita
back on the other side
i think it will be even worse in January, Id go now if anything. Cases are only going up as of the 2nd Dec
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
In this particular case it does. There's thousands of students about to disperse around the country in very narrow window. There's an equally narrow window for meaningful testing beforehand.
High demand is great though.
teuchter
je suis teuchter
My thinking is Feb/March rather than Jan, partly for that reason.
I think people might be overplaying the effect the 5 days of Christmas will have, in terms of overall numbers, and the idea that it'll cause a massive surge afterwards seems a bit melodramatic. To me it seems the main thing to worry about is the impact it might have on the more elderly part of the population.
My guess is London going into tier 3 for a while after christmas and then maybe being able to ease a month or two later, at which point we will be allowed to travel again. But who knows.
20Bees
Well-Known Member
I don’t ‘get’ the fuss about Christmas even in normal times and dislike big family gatherings, I’m glad to avoid them this year and not be driving 100 miles each way simply because it’s expected. As a supermarket worker we only close for the Friday and Saturday this year anyway, people gotta shop...!
Yet for wider family, and friends, who have lost spouses and worse, children, horribly young to vile illnesses or to accidents, I hear their views that they’ll live for today, and see and hug their loved ones when they choose, because nobody is guaranteed tomorrow. Listening to a phone-in on radio earlier, clearly there will be people for whom the 23-27 December are nothing more than arbitrary dates that will be interpreted with some.... flexibility.
Yet for wider family, and friends, who have lost spouses and worse, children, horribly young to vile illnesses or to accidents, I hear their views that they’ll live for today, and see and hug their loved ones when they choose, because nobody is guaranteed tomorrow. Listening to a phone-in on radio earlier, clearly there will be people for whom the 23-27 December are nothing more than arbitrary dates that will be interpreted with some.... flexibility.
Tols my dad I would see him in January or February or July
elbows
Well-Known Member
To achieve much more than was managed over summer, what would have been required was the belief that eradication of the virus was actually possible and feasible. The authorities here did not believe in that plan, and this is not surprising because it is tricky to achieve, and because the establishment see this country as a global hub and had no appetite for ongoing travel restrictions and strong border measures.
Another way of putting that is that even the strongest lockdown measures we had at any point would not have been expected to push cases down to nothing, just to low levels. Even for a region such as the South West which was relatively less affected by the first wave, and where lockdown was early enough relative to their epidemic curve to do a lot of good, they only achieved a handful of days over summer where they had 0 recorded hospital admissions/diagnoses. And on the other hand, even a region like the North West where press reports painted a picture of an epidemic that never really ended, by August daily hospital admissions there were down to a level that didnt massively stand out compared to other large regions.
I suppose I would say that the original lockdown and the pace of easing of restrictions was enough to give us a several month long window of opportunity, where levels of infection in the community were low enough in July and parts of June and August that there was a real opportunity to get on top of things further using a proper test & trace & isolate system. But the chances are that data from such a system would have told authorities about outbreak situations that they had no will do deal with properly, eg workplace outbreaks that, to manage effectively across the board, would have required new measures which were incompatible with their economic agenda. And there are not many opportunities to compare ourselves to countries in Europe to see what we did wrong, because they mostly all made similar mistakes, the pace of relaxation of measures was broadly similar and they all ended up facing similar 2nd wave viral resurgence. And they probably dont view all the mistakes as actual mistakes, but rather an inevitable consequence of them thinking that it was inevitable the virus would come back big time for autumn/winter and that they should use the summer as an opportunity to temporarily resume various economic activities.
Much may be claimed about what would have been done differently with the benefit of hindsight here and across the world, but in most cases I dont think hindsight was actually required, rather it was a question of what fundamentals were baked into their cold calculations and expectations. Something very large would have to have been added to the mix to get countries to follow a very different strategy, such as if there was never much reaonable chance of a vaccine ever coming. So long as a vaccine offered them a long term solution, things boiled down to a numbers game where it was all about trying to do normal economic activities when possible, and resorting to drastic restrictions only when the hospital numbers threatened a system collapse. Its mostly only been smaller countries with somewhat different economies and sense of what was possible in terms of border and travel restrictions, where efforts to actually minimise the number of deaths appear to have been done more sincerely.
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
My understanding is that the somewhat-similar-to-Christmas event of Canadian Thanksgiving produced exactly the massive surge many are worrying about. I don't think it's melodramatic to be concerned about this at all. Of course by Christmas we will also be able to see the impact of Thanksgiving in the US. If that's bad, I hope it gets plenty of coverage here as might encourage people to be more careful over the Xmas break.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Following on from what I just said, there was a period where the Scottish administration made noises about full suppression of the virus. I did not judge such sentiments to be completely sincere though, but thats partly because Scotland does not have control of all policy areas and was inevitably still tied to an extent to the UK government approach.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Yep. 'Hello Nan, we come bearing gifts and viruses'.
Seems to me the formulation about meeting x number of people y number of bubbles over Christmas is just about meaningless. People will have reached their own conclusions about risk now and will be doing as few or as many visits as they think fit. The new rules may have some bearing on how people act over Xmas, but I doubt there will be much. Certainly there will be no enforcement. Admittedly, the government had to come up with some kind of formulation, but the only logical and consistent message would be 'don't do it'. Beyond that, the focus should be on finding ways for elderly and vulnerable people to get some support and contact should be the priority, along with some level of family visiting for those people. The ideal would be for people planning on visiting the elderly or vulnerable to get a test first, but we don't seem to have the moonshot in place yet.
Maybe some of this is/should be about community rather than top down rules. The misty eyed version is one of social organisations working in communities to bring people together over Christmas and beyond. But whilst lots of people have been actively doing that, there isn't enough mutual aid. Not easy to recreate it of lockdown.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
I think you'll find that Mr Johnson is shielding. Shielding from the Child Support Agency and from paternity tests that is.This is going to be an exam question in future years.
If one support bubble comprises two households, each support bubble counts as one household for the purposes of Christmas, and three Christmas households will be allowed, how many of his children will Boris Johnson be able to see?
teuchter
je suis teuchter
This seems overstated to me. It looks to me that they are following a gradual increase just like many places. There's not anything that looks like a "massive surge" to me.
I'm not saying Christmas won't have an effect, nor am I saying that I think it's a good idea, in general, for people to go and see family.
I'm saying it seems unlikely to me that it will create some kind of massive upsurge that will result in us going into a strict lockdown, or anything like that. This is in the context of discussing whether significant travel restrictions are going to appear post-christmas, for a long time.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
The student testing they are setting up at my place has a very heavy emphasis on being voluntary, so nothing like the government's soundings a while back. They also want staff volunteers to help administer the tests, not just managing the queue, but also having some direct role in the testing itself. Nope!
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Yep. A nice/creative solution would be to say there will be a 2 day bank holiday at a time to be announced in the Summer. Do Xmas then. From their perspective, they'd also get an increase in spending/travel around that date.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Apparently not.
Cunt.
brogdale
Coming to terms with late onset Anarchism
Blood all over their useless fucking neoliberal hands.56,533?!
teuchter
je suis teuchter
Why do I get this for a request that we focus on meaningful, useful statistics?
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
56,533?!
66,713 deaths with COVID-19 on the death certificate, nearer 75,000 with the extra 'unexplained' excess deaths.
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
But they do tell us something.
For a start we know that another 696 people have died from Covid.
We know that we aren't past the peak for people dying in the second wave yet.
We know that yesterday's lower 11,299 new cases hasn't been sustained, so not to get our hopes up that new cases are falling dramatically.
We know that new case figures remain below 20,000 per day, so that total is coming down from where it was since October.
In total isolation with no context they may be meaningless but for those that follow the figures they do have meaning.
Orang Utan
Psychick Worrier Ov Geyoor
cos it's not up to you
frogwoman
No amount of cajolery...
That basically means around 1 in 1000 people have died of covid!
teuchter
je suis teuchter
We don't know from that single number, on which days they are spread across, or how they are distributed.
We don't know that. We don't know either way. And in any case even if we did know, the numbers posted don't tell us.
As above, we don't know from that single number, on which days they are spread across, or how they are distributed.
The single number tells us nothing useful about this.
You don't necessarily know that, again due to the reporting delays.
Even if you follow the figures closely, they have little meaning.
I think it's probably best not to get to hung up on the daily numbers just because it's bad for you. The broader picture remains one of cases going down in parts of the country, and slowing or plateauing elsewhere, so things appear to be going in the right direction - maybe the higher number of deaths in the daily numbers today is an outlier, or some late reporting, or whatever. Maybe they're an indication of a bigger problem, but it's likely not to be.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Todays numbers make the recent plateau look slightly more like a slow increase than a plateau, but that was sort of expected hence the caveats I added to my waffle when speaking of plateaus in recent days.
So long as people talk about that daily data, it is somewhat inevitable that I will feel like posting my graph several times a week, recently most usually to put large numbers in context it seems.
So long as people talk about that daily data, it is somewhat inevitable that I will feel like posting my graph several times a week, recently most usually to put large numbers in context it seems.
Spandex
A crazy bulbous punchbag of sound
Daily figures don't give any kind of precision - you have to wait days or weeks for that. But, looked at as part of an ongoing pattern they do give a clue of where we might be now rather than a week or two ago. Of course it's better to look back with hindsight to get an accurate picture of where we were, but with a rapidly changing situation I like to have an idea (without certainty) where we are. Also, I'm impatient to know what's going on.
If you want to be pedantic, all top line national figures are largely meaningless as they disguise significant variations in the regional and demographic pictures.
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