Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[magneze]

I'm struggling to understand how we're not heading for a national lockdown let alone the bonkers schools stuff. Proper lockdown, schools closed, furlough scheme, ramp up vaccine roll out. Do this for January and we could be almost through the worst?

 

[teqniq]

Statement from the Royal College of GP's wrt to 12 week wait for second dose of vaccine. They appear to be in favour of it. Opinions?

Broadly they seem to be saying it's better to get more people (vulnerable elderly and healthacre professionals being top of the list) some protection asap.

Urgent update on COVID vaccine arrangements

rcgp-news.com

 

[magneze]

Statement from the Royal College of GP's wrt to 12 week wait for second dose of vaccine. They appear to be in favour of it. Opinions?

Broadly they seem to be saying it's better to get more people (vulnerable elderly and healthacre professionals being top of the list) some protection asap.

Urgent update on COVID vaccine arrangements

rcgp-news.com

Seems like the right thing to do. The mistake was cancelling the existing appointments for 2nd doses IMHO.

 

[LDC]

I'm struggling to understand how we're not heading for a national lockdown let alone the bonkers schools stuff. Proper lockdown, schools closed, furlough scheme, ramp up vaccine roll out. Do this for January and we could be almost through the worst?

That's pretty much my view, and seems to be the view of Indie SAGE and many others. Think January is slightly optimistic, but a couple of months and it'd be a huge step forward from where we are now.

 

[magneze]

That's pretty much my view, and seems to be the view of Indie SAGE and many others. Think January is slightly optimistic, but a couple of months and it'd be a huge step forward from where we are now.

Let's see where we are, but minimum of January. It's a shit month for going out anyway let alone for work.

 

[brogdale]

Statement from the Royal College of GP's wrt to 12 week wait for second dose of vaccine. They appear to be in favour of it. Opinions?

Broadly they seem to be saying it's better to get more people (vulnerable elderly and healthacre professionals being top of the list) some protection asap.

Urgent update on COVID vaccine arrangements

rcgp-news.com

Which is fine and well argued; it's just that I (still) can't understand why they didn't anticipate/appreciate the hurt/confusion/anxiety created by the government's decision not to honour what had already been promised to the relatively small cohort of folk who had already been booked in for their second jab.

 

[elbows]

Out of that 64,000 i guess if we assume ages etc are averaged out, around 500 to 640 will die and 6400 will end up at hospital?

Maybe, I dont do those sorts of sums so I'm the wrong person to comment on that really. Certainly there have been 2,542,065 positive cases detected and 262,688 hospital admissions/diagnoses so far. But a vast number of positive cases were never formally detected in the first wave so the second wave ratio between cases and hospitalisations is likely to be different to overall ratio when using this dashboard data.

 

[existentialist]

FFS Hyperdark you really like to continually illustrate how little you know and how you don't understand this stuff. What's the danger, we're a bit too cautious? As we are fast approaching 100,000 dead, have an out of control infection rate, and a new variant we don't fully understand the implications of yet, maybe being very cautious is sensible?!

I refer you to my honourable friend, Mr Dunning Kruger...

 

[brogdale]

Which is fine and well argued; it's just that I (still) can't understand why they didn't anticipate/appreciate the hurt/confusion/anxiety created by the government's decision not to honour what had already been promised to the relatively small cohort of folk who had already been booked in for their second jab.

I've been fielding more calls today from the very elderly relies who just don't understand what's happened. Most are saying they'll just turn up in the cabs they've booked unless they hear otherwise...and basically I think that's about all they can do tbh.
But putting 90 year olds in this position; fucking shameful for this "government".

 

[brogdale]

It's really knocked their confidence as well; some who preparing to start going out into the world again (a bit) now saying just sticking to garden path walks etc.

Well done Hancock; double the number of people in the headline numbers, but few of them confident that they've got safe immunity.

 

[Lord Camomile]

Given everyone a whole weekend to prepare

<edit: sorry, forgot there's a whole thread for this>

 

[rutabowa]

our school was due to open on the 4th despite being in a very high area, just got a pretty militant anti-government email from the head who is always v professional and in control of things. good for her. They are still opening though, but making Monday an inset day (possibly expecting that there will be further last minute changes from the government, I think)

I see 2021 is the year I develop my psychic powers.

 

[StoneRoad]

Given everyone a whole weekend to prepare

<edit: sorry, forgot there's a whole thread for this>

world-beating twats
(how come we proles can see the need for these measures and they have to keep flip-flopping and u-turning their way through the pandemic, and usually too little, too late, so there are more, un-necessary deaths)

 

[tommers]

Well we had a zoom call last night that involved somebody who sits in the sage meetings and my 8 yr old daughter was pretty high on shloer and shouting at him for about 5 minutes about why more people hadn't had the vaccine yet "you've got the cure, just give it to people!" . So we'll see if that has any effect, he looked pretty scared.

 

[maomao]

I wish they'd close the bloody nurseries then. Not going to be sending my son (as his primary age sister will miss him apart from anything else) but may end up having to pay for it which we wouldn't if they'd close them.

 

[Spandex]

Statement from the Royal College of GP's wrt to 12 week wait for second dose of vaccine. They appear to be in favour of it. Opinions?

Broadly they seem to be saying it's better to get more people (vulnerable elderly and healthacre professionals being top of the list) some protection asap.

Urgent update on COVID vaccine arrangements

rcgp-news.com

The principle is sound. With the virus out of control across the country, making 20 million people 70% immune instead of 10 million people 90% immune* could save thousands of lives.

The question is: how are the government going to fuck it up? The vaccine program is a bold new frontier for the bumbling incompetents in charge to make a mess of things.

The way they've made the change to how the vaccine will be administered, regardless of whether it's a good move, has already sowed chaos where there needed to be none. The experiences brogdale has had shows the impact on the older people who've been affected, but from the other side there's chaos too. Having arranged thousands of appointments with often confused and vulnerable older people, many of whom don't answer or even have a phone, let alone email, internet or smartphones, NHS staff now have to cancel all those appointments and rearrange them.

Where else can things go wrong?

It's still early days in the vaccine program and it's nowhere near up to speed yet. That's to be expected with a massive new project, but it took three weeks to vaccinate somewhere over 600k people. They need to be doing double that every week. If it takes too long to get the mass vaccinations going will the advantages of the change materialize?.

There's been reports of supply issues with the vaccine due to demand. Might these supply issues cause problems for everyone getting a second dose and achieving the full effect of the vaccine?

Will the whole project be handed to a Minister's cousin who runs a pet shop for twice the price?

Will the unthinkable happen and the government manage move heaven and earth to deliver an effective mass vaccination program by Easter without cocking it all up?

* all figures for illustrative purposes - not actual figures.

 

[frogwoman]

COVID-19: Eight-year-old dies with coronavirus as cases exceed 50,000 for fourth day running

Nightingale hospitals are being readied for use but the Royal College of Nursing has "real concerns" about a lack of staff.

news.sky.com

8 year old child dies

 

[weltweit]

I am trying to find out if government recommendations have changed in response to the UK variant. I expect current recommendations might be inadequate, as evidenced by the fact that it is spreading so rapidly. I can't even find in the .gov advice pages that they are yet recommending companies change their actions.

Like so many I am now also in Tier 4, that tightens things a bit, but as regards work, there is again if you can work from home you should, apart from that where work is concerned not so much.

 

[William of Walworth]

Like so many I am now also in Tier 4, that tightens things a bit, but as regards work, there is again if you can work from home you should, apart from that where work is concerned not so much.

This absence of change to any absence from work recommendations annoys me a lot!

 

[weltweit]

This absence of change to any absence from work recommendations annoys me a lot!

Your double absence confuses me slightly

If you agree recommendations should be updated, I am with you.

 

[William of Walworth]

Your double absence confuses me slightly

If you agree recommendations should be updated, I am with you.

Apologies, what I really meant was " This absence of change to any recommendations about absence from work annoys me a lot! '

 

[souljacker]

Given everyone a whole weekend to prepare

<edit: sorry, forgot there's a whole thread for this>

Why the fuck is it just London? We're only down the road!

 

[weltweit]

Why the fuck is it just London? We're only down the road!

Indeed, we are also Tier 4, why not here also?

 

[20Bees]

This absence of change to any absence from work recommendations annoys me a lot!

The store where I work has set up serial testing for staff who are contacts that would otherwise be isolating. A negative test before each shift for 7 days means they can stay at work. The aim is to reduce absence, identify asymptomatic positive cases, and provide reassurance, and the target is to conduct 300 tests a week, currently two weeks in they’re doing about 30 a day.

 

[weltweit]

The store where I work has set up serial testing for staff who are contacts that would otherwise be isolating. A negative test before each shift for 7 days means they can stay at work. The aim is to reduce absence, identify asymptomatic positive cases, and provide reassurance, and the target is to conduct 300 tests a week, currently two weeks in they’re doing about 30 a day.

Sounds positive, have they found any asymptomatic cases yet?

 

[2hats]

Dosing regimen could rapidly become moot. AZD1222 (Oxford/AstraZeneca) with 100 million doses, more portable, easier to handle, vaccination due to start Monday versus 40 million BNT162b2 (Pfizer/BioNTech) doses, more difficult to handle, likely would see AZD1222 come to dominate the vaccination programme quite quickly (though depends on supply, distribution).

Unlike BNT162b2 (Pfizer did test 1 v 2 dose strategies with different intervals and found 2 dose with 21 days optimal), the evidence for much improved efficacy with AZD1222 in waiting 3 months for the second shot already exists and is quite strong. A well designed rollout programme could return to a smaller number of BNT162b2 recipients in far less than 12 weeks (and in the meantime immunogenicity trials for extended intervals could be conducted). Whilst quite a number of vaccines produce a stronger immune response with a lengthy interval between jabs, this (the Pfizer vaccine) is the first time a mRNA platform has been deployed so it would probably be wise to err on the side of caution and keep to the known performance envelope (as per the manufacturer's recommendations) until such time as the extent of that envelope can be better characterised. Also for reasons of public confidence and "following the science" (or be honest and explain that this is something of a gamble based on informed speculation).

However, it is potentially risky to leave a growing section of the population with partial immunity in the face of an uncontrolled, highly transmissible virus with even more infectious variants evolving. Ideally, one needs to be reducing case numbers first before vaccinating.

So, irrespective of dosing strategy - where many more inoculations per unit time are needed - all recipients still need to mask up and socially distance till and beyond their second dose (ie behave as if everyone around them and they themselves are infected and infectious) until the sterilising profile of each vaccine can be determined. Cases need to be brought down and true test, trace and isolate instituted (but this has been said repeatedly).

(I note from the latest mobility data for London that activity is around double that seen in March/Apr and that's with a virus now >1.5x transmissible).

 

[Badgers]

 

[LDC]

COVID-19: Eight-year-old dies with coronavirus as cases exceed 50,000 for fourth day running

Nightingale hospitals are being readied for use but the Royal College of Nursing has "real concerns" about a lack of staff.

news.sky.com

8 year old child dies

Hearing that there's a much higher percentage of people in their 40s and under in ICU (with 20s not being uncommon) with this variant. Not sure if it's true, but if it is I wonder if we're going to get some grim news about that soon. That will change some attitudes I'd have thought?

 

[cupid_stunt]

Hearing that there's a much higher percentage of people in their 40s and under in ICU (with 20s not being uncommon) with this variant. Not sure if it's true, but if it is I wonder if we're going ot get some grim new re: that soon. That will change some attitudes I'd have thought?

There's been an increasing number of comments from doctors & nurses, interviewed on TV or quoted in the press, that a lot more younger people and children are ending up in hospital this time.

Martin Llewelyn, professor of Infectious Diseases and NHS Consultant, pleaded for people not to mingle on New Year's Eve after revealing there was a "staggering" number of coronavirus patients admitted to hospital wards just days after Christmas.

The President of British Infection Association tweeted: "Back on the wards today. Staggering amount of Covid.

"Striking difference from last time - large family outbreaks with teenagers/young adults the focus. Multiple family members being admitted.

It also attracted responses from fellow medics who confirmed his claims.

One replied: "I've seen lots of family groups admitted. It's been completely heartbreaking at times."

Another posted: "Have had the same experience this long, long, long (!) weekend. It’s terrifying. Young people needing CPAP or a tube across the region. Unsustainable."

A woman tweeted back: "Yes it's horrendous, a relative of a relative has had 4 family members with CV19, 2 have sadly died, with in a day apart, husband and wife, other 2, one was poorly but thankfully managed to pull through and the other had no symptoms at all."

Daily Mirror link.

Laura Duffell, a matron at King’s College Hospital in London, said the new strain of Covid was affecting children and younger adults with no underlying health conditions in increasingly worrying numbers.

Speaking to The Telegraph, she described “whole wards of children” suffering from Covid. “It’s very different. That’s what makes it so much scarier for us as doctors, nurses and porters and everyone else who is working on the front line.

“We have children who are coming in. It was minimally affecting children in the first wave... we now have a whole ward of children here and I know that some of my colleagues are in the same position, where they have a whole ward of children with Covid.”

Yahoo News link.

I guess this will bugger up plans of getting back to normal once older people have been vaccinated, which is very worrying.

 

[platinumsage]

These anecdotes of younger healthy people being seriously ill should show up in the stats somewhere if significant. Is there any data for ICU admissions by age?