Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[2hats]

"British Antarctic Territories"

 

[Steel Icarus]

i think i'm doing the riskiest thing i've done all year today, having a friend's teenaged daughter come to stay here for a bit from London. I don't think there's any point in trying to socially distance inside the house or anything like that is there. I am really just scared of the long covid.

Why don't you insist she shows you evidence of a negative lateral flow test before she arrives bimble ?

 

[elbows]

Since the healthcare system is under general strain, I've started using these sorts of data sources to keep an eye on a broader picture:

National ambulance syndromic surveillance: weekly bulletins 2021

The number of people calling ambulances each day, with results published every week under the syndromic surveillance system.

www.gov.uk

Emergency department: weekly bulletins for 2021

The number of people going to emergency departments each day, with results published every week under the syndromic surveillance system.

www.gov.uk

 

[Miss-Shelf]

that's really interesting information elbows that's for sharing - people are making as many covid related 999 calls now as there were in Nov 2020 which indicates people are either feeling quite unwell with covid or in a state of some anxiety after being in contact

I wonder if this data is harder to obscure - it's a broad indication of what people are experiencing

 

[elbows]

The BBC are finally covering the A&E crisis but with the framing 'stop bringing your sick young children to A&E'.

A&Es 'overwhelmed' by children with mild winter viruses, doctors warn

Winter viruses are flourishing as more people mix, and a doctor's chief says A&Es are struggling to cope.

www.bbc.co.uk

 

[brogdale]

Like when they harpoon whales and drag them onto boats to be cut up?

 

[andysays]

Like when they harpoon whales and drag them onto boats to be cut up?

Maybe it's a scientific research programme to see how effectively Covid is transmitted between UEFA VIPs and then back to their home countries.

Generous of the VIPs to volunteer to take part, IMO.

If only the rest of us were equally public spirited, we'd have this whole Covid thing sorted in no time.

 

[elbows]

Maybe some internal government pandemic comms werent so very different to this thread.

Cumming latest revelations include him mentioning on 3rd May 2020 that "At the moment I think we ar negligently killing the most vulnerable who we are supposed to be shielding and I am extremely worried about it".

And Johnson replying to something else about test & trace on 26th April 2020 with:

Thanks totally agree

The whole track and trace thing feels like whistling in the dark

Legions of imaginary clouseaus and no plan to hire them

Apps that don’t yet work

And above all no idea how to get new cases down to a manageable level or how long it will take

By which time uk may have secured double distinction of being the European country w the most fatalities and the biggest economic hit

So your email is bang on

We GOTTA turn it round

More evidence on how the PM's & Hancock's negligence killed people

Below is a note I sent on 26 April regarding how we could shift to Plan B including with a serious testing system. It helps people understand what an incredible mess testing was and why care homes were neglected. Hancock had monumentally failed. The Cabinet Office did not have the people it...

dominiccummings.substack.com

 

[maomao]

The BBC are finally covering the A&E crisis but with the framing 'stop bringing your sick young children to A&E'.

A&Es 'overwhelmed' by children with mild winter viruses, doctors warn

Winter viruses are flourishing as more people mix, and a doctor's chief says A&Es are struggling to cope.

www.bbc.co.uk

This will kill children sooner or later. At the height of the pandemic my kid was bounced between a doctors surgery who wouldn't examine him or let him on the premises because he had a 'fever' and an A&E department who wouldn't take a proper look because his temperature wasn't high enough for nearly two months before they managed to diagnose him correctly.

 

[platinumsage]

Apparently kids on TikTok have worked out they can avoid school by getting a positive lateral flow test result by using orange juice.

 

[nagapie]

Apparently kids on TikTok have worked out they can avoid school by getting a positive lateral flow test result by using orange juice.

I wanna do it!

 

[belboid]

I wanna do it!

I can confirm it works with Tesco’s orange & mango juice

 

[cupid_stunt]

WTF is going on in London, only about 37% of over 18s have been double jabbed, compared with the national average of almost 62%?

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

WTF is going on in London, only about 37% of over 18s have been double jabbed, compared with the national average of almost 62%?

A big part of that will just be the age profile. London is quite heavily younger adult weighted - that whole 'move to London after college then move out to have kids' thing. Then there's the low rates among some ethnic groups. There are probably other factors though I guess.

 

[belboid]

WTF is going on in London, only about 37% of over 18s have been double jabbed, compared with the national average of almost 62%?

A younger and more transient population, some disagreement about how that population figure is come to (students etc being registered n London but aren’t there at the moment). And vaccine hesitancy

 

[quimcunx]

Mix of a younger population and a large BAME community that are understandably wary? Maybe we have a larger population of woo conspiracy types too.

My refugee friend was saying that his white friends have had their 1st but a lot of his black friends havent. He has had his 1st after asking my advice on whether he should or not.

He also reports that people he knows in Kenya are suspicious of it.

/anecdata.

 

[andysays]

Mix of a younger population and a large BAME community that are understandably wary? Maybe we have a larger population of woo conspiracy types too.

My refugee friend was saying that his white friends have had their 1st but a lot of his black friends havent. He has had his 1st after asking my advice on whether he should or not.

He also reports that people he knows in Kenya are suspicious of it.

/anecdata.

When I was waiting for my second jab last week, I got chatting to a youngish (early twenties I'd guess) black woman, who was also waiting.

Turned out she was also getting her second jab, because she had asthma, and she'd been encouraged by her mum who also has asthma, and had hers first.

But she also said that in general her friends (many of whom are likely to also be BME because we're in Tottenham, an area with high BME population) who don't have medical conditions and so are being offered their first jab about now were keen to have it, possibly to some extent encouraged by her having had it first..

Although I'm sure there is some apprehension in BME communities, we shouldn't just assume that it's inevitable and can't be overcome by personal contacts etc (not saying you're doing this, more making a general point).

 

[brogdale]

WTF is going on in London, only about 37% of over 18s have been double jabbed, compared with the national average of almost 62%?

Supply of Pfizer & Moderna have been an issue, apparently:

Give us the right vaccines to open up London

L
ondon health chiefs have requested extra supplies of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines so that they can tackle worryingly low levels of take-up in the capital, the Evening Standard can reveal.
They want to rush out doses to hundreds of thousands of younger people across the capital to help slow the transmission of the more dangerous Delta (Indian) variant.
London health officials are understood to have requested 367,000 extra Pfizer and Moderna doses — which can be safely given to younger age groups — on top of existing supplies.

Despite 7.8 million doses being given to Londoners, the capital has the lowest vaccination level of any region or nation in the UK, by a wide margin. Some 68.6 per cent of Londoners have had a first jab, compared with 79.2 per cent nationally. Some 43.4 per cent of Londoners have had a second jab, compared with 56.9 per cent nationally.

 

[Elpenor]

I don’t know about that I could get my second Pfizer jab in the London area 3 weeks ahead of when I can in Devon

 

[BillRiver]

WTF is going on in London, only about 37% of over 18s have been double jabbed, compared with the national average of almost 62%?

Is that "national" figure for England or for the UK I wonder.

 

[Raheem]

Is the proportion of people in London who are OAPs also lower than the national average? That might be part of the picture.

 

[brogdale]

Is that "national" figure for England or for the UK I wonder.

The ES piece I linked to had the London figure at 43.4% over 18's double jabbed, as opposed to 56.9 nationally, which I take to mean England.

 

[BillRiver]

The ES piece I linked to had the London figure at 43.4% over 18's double jabbed, as opposed to 56.9 nationally, which I take to mean England.

It's just that the government and media have been quite dodgy with that issue, often quoting UK figures when it makes them sound better while England figures (for numbers vaccinations) have been significantly lower than UK as a whole or than other individual UK nations eg Wales and Scotland, and England figures have often been harder to find out.

 

[2hats]

Supply of Pfizer & Moderna have been an issue, apparently:

It's a shame that Novavax, NVX-CoV2373, is unlikely to now get regulatory approval before late September* (raw materials supply issues).

The mRNA Vaccines Are Extraordinary, but Novavax Is Even Better
Persistent hype around mRNA vaccine technology is now distracting us from other ways to end the pandemic.

The success of the Novavax vaccine should be A1 news. The recent results confirm that it has roughly the same efficacy as the two authorized mRNA vaccines, with the added benefit of being based on an older, more familiar science. The protein-subunit approach used by Novavax was first implemented for the hepatitis B vaccine, which has been used in the U.S. since 1986. The pertussis vaccine, which is required for almost all children in U.S. public schools, is also made this way. Some of those people who have been wary of getting the mRNA vaccines may find Novavax more appealing.

The Novavax vaccine also has a substantially lower rate of side effects than the authorized mRNA vaccines. Last week’s data showed that about 40 percent of people who receive Novavax report fatigue after the second dose, as compared with 65 percent for Moderna and more than 55 percent for Pfizer. Based on the results of Novavax’s first efficacy trial in the U.K., side effects (including but not limited to fatigue) aren’t just less frequent; they’re milder too. That’s a very big deal for people on hourly wages, who already bear a disproportionate risk of getting COVID-19, and who have been less likely to get vaccinated in part because of the risk of losing days of work to post-vaccine fever, pain, or malaise. Side effects are a big barrier for COVID-vaccine acceptance. The CDC reported on Monday that, according to a survey conducted in the spring, only about half of adults under the age of 40 have gotten the vaccine or definitely intend to do so, and that, among the rest, 56 percent say they are concerned about side effects. Lower rates of adverse events are likely to be a bigger issue still for parents, when considering vaccination for their children.

Don’t get me wrong—the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have been extraordinary lifesavers in this pandemic, and we may well be heading into a new golden age of vaccine development. (This week, BioNTech started injections in an early trial for an mRNA vaccine for melanoma.) But even the best experts at predicting which drugs are going to be important get things wrong quite a bit, overestimating some treatments and underestimating others. Pharmaceuticals are generally a gamble.

But here’s what we know today, based on information that we have right now: Among several wonderful options, the more old-school vaccine from Novavax combines ease of manufacture with high efficacy and lower side effects. For the moment, it’s the best COVID-19 vaccine we have.

* see also Valneva, VLA2001 - pending final results of phase 3 trials.

 

[David Clapson]

Lambeth Council emailed this just now:

Lambeth currently has a case rate of 150 per 100,000 people, which is a 50 per cent rise since the start of June. The highest number of cases are among those aged 20 to 35, and Lambeth Council is particularly urging people in this age range to get a PCR test as well as using regular rapid tests.

 

[Cat Fan]

This will kill children sooner or later. At the height of the pandemic my kid was bounced between a doctors surgery who wouldn't examine him or let him on the premises because he had a 'fever' and an A&E department who wouldn't take a proper look because his temperature wasn't high enough for nearly two months before they managed to diagnose him correctly.

Please don't be too stressed about this, all the evidence points to Covid having almost no risk to anyone normally healthy under 30 and it's certainly not risky to young babies. The data and evidence is all there.

The story says A&E are busy because parents are stressed and bringing in kids when they don't need to (mild colds or whatever). NHS guidelines say they have to keep in for obs for 4 hours so you can imagine they get very busy.

 

[Cat Fan]

Would encourage everyone to keep an eye on the government dashboard. Yes, cases are up but hospitalisations/deaths are way down on previous waves. This means the vaccines are working at preventing serious illness in the vulnerable, which is a huge, huge relief.
The media hypes everything to generate more clicks but sometimes it's good to just look at the data.
Daily summary | Coronavirus in the UK

 

[Steel Icarus]

Would encourage everyone to keep an eye on the government dashboard. Yes, cases are up but hospitalisations/deaths are way down on previous waves. This means the vaccines are working at preventing serious illness in the vulnerable, which is a huge, huge relief.
The media hypes everything to generate more clicks but sometimes it's good to just look at the data.
Daily summary | Coronavirus in the UK

Sounds great, but presumably you're taking into account the length if time between a rise in cases and hospitalisations and finally deaths?

 

[maomao]

Please don't be too stressed about this, all the evidence points to Covid having almost no risk to anyone normally healthy under 30 and it's certainly not risky to young babies. The data and evidence is all there.

The story says A&E are busy because parents are stressed and bringing in kids when they don't need to (mild colds or whatever). NHS guidelines say they have to keep in for obs for 4 hours so you can imagine they get very busy.

I'm not worried about covid. My son has leukaemia and was repeatedly turned away from hospitals and doctors in November and December last year because his fevers were misdiagnosed as 'mild colds'. Parents should be believed when they say their kids are ill and shouldn't be made to feel that they are wasting doctors' time or have to wait two months before someone considers a blood test. I have met the mother of a child with neuroblastoma who literally had to sit down in the middle of A&E and refuse to go to get her son looked at properly. The same goes for adults quite frankly it's just the framing of that particular article that sent shivers down my spine.

 

[Elpenor]

Leading on from what maomao says I’ve found nothing but resistance from GPs when I’ve visited with concerns. It feels like they show no interest, are desperate to get you out of their office and are reading from scripts.