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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Brainaddict said:
Yeah, it's nuts. Feels like we could be back at 1000 deaths a day within 6 weeks. The one thing that could have stopped it has been refused by the government, and everyone carries on as normal. You begin to understand how the Spanish flu was (a) allowed to happen and then (b) forgotten about.
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Seems to me that a genuine lockdown is the only way to stop the acceleration we are going to see - already are seeing - over the next few weeks. Short of that we should be actually planning for circuit breakers (plural). We've already missed the chance to do it at half term, which will kill an unspecified number of people. Government objections about disruption to the economy would be minimised if people, organisations and businesses knew in advance they'd be reverting to working from home, online sales etc. Instead we carry on with a system that scientists are unanimous, afaik, won't work. Depressing as fuck and lethal.
 
A lockdown will be depressing but the country is tired and stressed and scared. The measures are hard to understand and although I think local restrictions make some sense there does not seem the will or resources to make it work. If there is a lockdown (month like France for example) then everyone knows where they stand and we have a chance to stem the second wave.
 
Definitely looking at a situation that is going to become horrendous in terms of hospital admissions and then death rates in a remarkably short time, unless the politicians actually listen to the scientists and impose a strict lockdown / circuit breaker for at least three or four weeks as soon as possible.
I'm planning on doing that for my household, but it needs more than individuals ...
That would need a bit of pre-planning, but would surely cost less (in the long run) than letting chaos reign until the early part of January.

[internationally, looking at the worldometer tally for 28th & 29th - both days had more than seven thousand deaths and half a million new cases ... ]
 
The public health chief in England’s worst-hit coronavirus area has called for an immediate three-week “circuit breaker” across the country, calling Boris Johnson’s current approach “the worst of all possible outcomes”.

Prof Dominic Harrison, the director of public health at Blackburn with Darwen borough council, said it was “highly unlikely” that the strictest tier 3 restrictions would reduce the infection rate or protect the NHS.



“To put it bluntly, we’re going to need a much harsher set of control measures that look very much more like the first total lockdown, and very much more like what France is doing,” he told the Guardian.

“It doesn’t have to be exactly the same as the first lockdown but unless we do an awful lot more, it’s really not going to have the desired effect.”
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“The idea of British exceptionalism, that we can fix it ourselves with some other kind of strategy, is going to be increasingly hard to defend,” he said.

Harrison suggested primary schools should continue to operate as normal but that secondary schools should operate on a two-week rota basis, except for pupils with special educational needs and the children of key workers who would remain in school full-time. The disruption, he said, would be less than the current situation of whole year group bubbles being sent home.

Harrison said the emerging consensus of many public health professionals and epidemiologists was that the strictest tier 3 measures – meaning the closure of pubs and bars that could not serve meals, as well as some other venues – were not “strong enough to turn around the high rates of transmission we’ve got in those tier 3 areas”.

Harrison said he believed a national lockdown would be announced or happen by default in about a fortnight, when the infection rate in London catches up to parts of the north-west, where tier 3 was implemented this month.

“By that time, of course, the north-west will have been in a tier-3 system that really was obviously not going to fix the problem,” he said. “And will have been further disadvantaged economically, socially. Everyone will be even more fed up and will be very conscious of the unfairness of it.”
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www.theguardian.com

Health chief in England's worst-hit Covid area calls for immediate lockdown

Dominic Harrison says Johnson’s tiered approach will not reduce infection or protect NHS
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
High school pupils of GCSE age and above and their teachers to have mandatory facemasks in class as well as in communal areas in tier 3 or 4 areas of Scotland (currently that's the majority of the population). My eldest will be pleased because she has doggedly been wearing a mask in class since the start of term in the face of peer pressure.
 
Badgers said:
A lockdown will be depressing but the country is tired and stressed and scared. The measures are hard to understand and although I think local restrictions make some sense there does not seem the will or resources to make it work. If there is a lockdown (month like France for example) then everyone knows where they stand and we have a chance to stem the second wave.
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Although I am pleased thinking about all the bragging cunts who spent lockdown1 being 'productive' and now will have fuck all left to do apart from moaning :D
 
Not sure where to post this but here’s a Jeremy deller print you can send to your loved ones to commemorate the rona


houseofvoltaire.org

FUCK YOU 2020 Poster Print

Fuck You 2020 170gsm gloss digital poster print 42cm x 59.4cm (unframed) Open edition, signed by artist on back of print Poster print sent rolled THIS ITEM IS NOW SOLD OUT. **Please note this item was a pre-order with stock arriving in early December. Orders are being processed and you will you...
houseofvoltaire.org houseofvoltaire.org
 
Badgers said:
A lockdown will be depressing but the country is tired and stressed and scared. The measures are hard to understand and although I think local restrictions make some sense there does not seem the will or resources to make it work. If there is a lockdown (month like France for example) then everyone knows where they stand and we have a chance to stem the second wave.
Click to expand...

Broadly speaking I’m just convinced peoples lives are to interlinked and wide ranging in the UK for a local lockdown to work in the UK. Living in one local authority, working in another, shopping in a third, family/friends in a fourth and fifth

Boundaries need to be very clear. Could isolate Cornwall and Wales, not sure you can really successfully isolate Birmingham from Walsall etc.
 
kabbes said:
elbows, by eye it looks as if the south-east is proportionally less affected so far (compared to its own first wave) than other regions. Am I right?

if so, interesting to speculate why. I suspect it’s partly that its own first wave was heavily commuter-driven, whereas a lot of those people are now WFH. The same thing (for various reasons) wouldn’t be so true in other regions. It’s also probably partly due to the lack of big metropolitan universities in the south-east region (relatively speaking as compared with other regions).
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This absolutely has to be a massive factor in why the numbers are not significantly higher yet. Anyone who's been into the City in the last few months will know that whilst its not a ghost town it's not far from it.

The decision most businesses and most people took to tell Johnson to go fuck himself when he was saying everyone back to work a few months back has undoubtedly slowed the spread and saved lives.
 
kabbes said:
elbows, by eye it looks as if the south-east is proportionally less affected so far (compared to its own first wave) than other regions. Am I right?

if so, interesting to speculate why. I suspect it’s partly that its own first wave was heavily commuter-driven, whereas a lot of those people are now WFH. The same thing (for various reasons) wouldn’t be so true in other regions. It’s also probably partly due to the lack of big metropolitan universities in the south-east region (relatively speaking as compared with other regions).
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Since all regions are still showing the classic curve shapes, I am not currently prepared to try to differentiate between areas that may continue to stay well below their first wave levels, and those that are just a bit further behind with the resurgence and will eventually get there. Time will tell.

As for reasons why, I do speculate about these things, but in reality it is pretty much impossible for me to separate all the possible factors.

For example, people know by now that I do go on about hospital infections a lot (largely because the media doesnt build that stuff into their standard narratives much). And right now I am analysing per-trust hospital data to see if enough data has been provided to spot such outbreaks (I think it has, just in a slightly obscured way that requires spreadsheet work from me that is prone to me making mistakes and so makes me nervous). But when I spot one of these, and the community in question then also ends up having higher rates of infetion and hospitalisation than other parts of the region, I should be careful about what this 'proves'. Because as time goes on I am starting to think more and more about things in terms of tipping points. eg if the levels of infection rise in the community, then past a certain point it becomes much harder to prevent hospital outbreaks. Same with care home data. And then in theory these things will end amplifying infection in all settings in that area. Under this way of thinking about things, me finding hospital outbreaks doesnt necessary prove anything about that hospital, but I can potentially use these things to spot areas that are in danger of going well past the tipping point and into dangerous territory where we might expect the situation to get worse in the near future.

With that last point in mind, I have to say that there are some trusts in the South East which show up on my provisional list of hospital outbreaks. I need to check my facts a lot more before I would even consider publishing such a list, but I am at the stage where I see possible outbreaks in the data and then I go looking for news stories from the relevant hospitals to see if there is a probable good fit that gives me more faith in my data. I have not attempted this for the South East yet. I've tried it with one trust in the South West that showed up, University Hospitals Dorset NHS Foundation Trust, and my method worked, I went looking for confirmation and found mid-October local news stories about an outbreak at Poole Hospital Visiting restrictions on two wards at Poole Hospital after patients test positive
 
Drakeford admits local lockdowns did not work.

There will not be local lockdowns after the end of Wales' 17-day firebreak, First Minister Mark Drakeford has confirmed.
Once the current Wales-wide restrictions end on 9 November, there will not be any local variations.
Bars, non-essential shops, restaurants, cafes and churches will reopen at the end of the current lockdown.
But the system of 17-separate local lockdowns will not return when new restrictions are announced on Monday.
Mr Drakeford confirmed earlier indications that the new system would not have local restrictions.
He told a press conference the local lockdowns had helped, but were not sufficient to deal with the "onslaught" of the virus and "didn't work well enough".
He added: "For the sake of clarity and simplicity, our decision is is that the other side of the firebreak period from 9 November, we will have a set of national rules that will apply in all parts of Wales.
"I hope that that will help people in Wales, just to be clearer about what they are being asked to do.
"Because we have had evidence of people wanting to do the right thing, but not always being certain what the right thing is, because the rules have been more difficult to follow than we would have liked.
"We're going to simplify. We're going to clarify."
Click to expand...
 
William of Walworth said:
planetgeli : I thought I'd just add the link, but thanks a lot for today's Wales update :) (I'd missed it)

Drakeford might be boring, but the useless Johnson could learn (if he wanted to! :rolleyes: ) quite a lot from him about common sense ! :mad:

I'm personally not convinced yet that just a two week firebreaker was long enough in Wales, but at least its introduction was decisive :)
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How's things going in Wales William of Walworth ? Are the rules being observed? Does it feel like March & April again?
 
Teaboy said:
How's things going in Wales William of Walworth ? Are the rules being observed? Does it feel like March & April again?
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Not all that far off is my impression -- Swansea town centre had been very quiet, and so have the roads -- far less in the way of traffic.

I think there are more workers counted as 'essential' than last time, so there is still some pretty moderate-level commuting traffic, but vastly fewer vehicles than prior to this firebreaker.

On my 'essential work' ;) bus (Mondays to Thursdays), I'm now getting temperature checked with the driver's 'gun' every day both directions, which never happened before.

Sainsbury's and Lidls are also a fair bit quieter from what I've seen, maybe (even) more people are now ordering supplies on-line -- about half an hour ago, for instance, I had some class beer delivered from our local brewery ** :p :thumbs:, and we haven't had much of that done at all during the pubs-open period .....

**got just 12 of those, plus some 'beer in a box' of another of theirs, Chocolate Vanilla Porter :)
 
Btw, has there been any word on the use of saliva antigen tests since the overblown and quickly abandoned "moonshot" nonsense?
Anything on the sensible and more realistic application of them, like testing of hospital
and care home staff/teachers or visitors of care homes?

Eta: Just answered my own question to an extent with this article from yesterday's Guardian, but would like to hear people's thoughts.
 
Covid spreading faster than 'worst-case scenario' in England

Covid is spreading "significantly" faster through England than the government's predicted "worst-case" scenario, documents reveal.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says there are around four times as many people catching Covid-19 than anticipated.

A "reasonable worst-case scenario", used by officials and the NHS to plan, had estimated 85,000 deaths from Covid-19 over the course of winter.

But an official Sage document, dated 14 October and published on Friday, estimated that, by mid-October, there were between 43,000 and 74,000 people being infected with coronavirus every day in England.

Their report said: "This is significantly above the profile of the reasonable worst-case scenario, where the number of daily infections in England remained between 12,000-13,000 throughout October."

It added that the number of people with Covid-19 needing hospital care is already higher than the winter plan and deaths will "almost certainly" exceed the plan in the next two weeks.
 
zora said:
Btw, has there been any word on the use of saliva antigen tests since the overblown and quickly abandoned "moonshot" nonsense?
Anything on the sensible and more realistic application of them, like testing of hospital
and care home staff/teachers or visitors of care homes?

Eta: Just answered my own question to an extent with this article from yesterday's Guardian, but would like to hear people's thoughts.
Click to expand...

Yeah its real stuff that will be part of the future, despite the Moonshot hype version going down badly.

But I've said that before, and I dont have much to add. Except that trials continue and are gradually getting more ambitious, eg:

www.bbc.co.uk

Covid-19 tests to be offered to all Redcar residents

Sites will be set up with the help of the Army after the town is chosen as part of a pilot.
www.bbc.co.uk

A mass coronavirus testing programme will be rolled out across Redcar with all 36,000 residents being offered a test whether they have symptoms or not.
Sites will be set up with the help of the Army after the town was chosen as a pilot alongside two other areas.
The town's Conservative MP, Jacob Young, backed the move and said testing would begin on 23 November.
He said the tests offered would use saliva samples rather than swabs, with results available in half an hour.
Click to expand...
 
planetgeli said:
Covid spreading faster than 'worst-case scenario' in England

Covid is spreading "significantly" faster through England than the government's predicted "worst-case" scenario, documents reveal.

The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage) says there are around four times as many people catching Covid-19 than anticipated.

A "reasonable worst-case scenario", used by officials and the NHS to plan, had estimated 85,000 deaths from Covid-19 over the course of winter.

But an official Sage document, dated 14 October and published on Friday, estimated that, by mid-October, there were between 43,000 and 74,000 people being infected with coronavirus every day in England.

Their report said: "This is significantly above the profile of the reasonable worst-case scenario, where the number of daily infections in England remained between 12,000-13,000 throughout October."

It added that the number of people with Covid-19 needing hospital care is already higher than the winter plan and deaths will "almost certainly" exceed the plan in the next two weeks.
Click to expand...

Well that's all well and good but we can't be far away from herd immunity?
 
planetgeli said:
A "reasonable worst-case scenario", used by officials and the NHS to plan, had estimated 85,000 deaths from Covid-19 over the course of winter.
Click to expand...

I note that the late August story featured the usual obligatory Heneghan quote, demonstrating how wrong a pandemic prediction path a particular agenda and narrowness of mind can get you, even if you are an 'expert' in this pandemic.

Prof Carl Heneghan, from Oxford University, said some of the assumptions made in the model were "implausible" and that the report assumes that "we've learnt nothing from the first wave of this disease".
Click to expand...

In fact lessons from the first wave include not listening to Heneghan when he goes in that direction.
 
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