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We are back in April 2020 in terms of restrictions and the number of people in hospital. Back then, restrictions weren't eased until July 2020, therefore 3 months or so.
In broad terms, I don't see why this lockdown won't be the same again, i.e. at least 3 months long. The parameters are all the same. Yes, we have the vaccine which will ultimately stop hospital admissions and deaths, but it won't stop transmission (according to a bloke on the news I assume was qualified to say so). So, unless all of the most vulnerable are vaccinated within less than 3 months, it's going 3 months?
i wont be surprised.
prepare for teh worst and hope for teh best!
Mid March at the earliest but wouldn't be surprised if it goes to Easter.
If only so they can release a lot more for Easter and the tourism industry to make some money
I suspect longer than three months, May+ ...
Over promised and under delivered vaccine schedule
Weather in spring 2020 lockdown was way above average
Less businesses voluntarily closing during this lockdown
Businesses getting more lax about safety and prioritising profit in a bid to not go under
More people not conforming to social distancing rules at a time when new strains spread more easily
Positive test results and 1000+ daily deaths will take a lot longer to get under any sort of control compared to spring 2020
Boris will release restrictions too quickly
Etc.
as long as it takes. They shouldn't have stopped the previous lockdown so early.
Poah nails it, the great missed opportunity to stop it in its tracks last year.
Our NHS clients are expecting it to run until after Easter maybe May.
There is real panic in the NHS its the first time i have seen it in 20 years.
The situation is worse than Boris and the boys are telling the public.
Whilst the vaccine won’t fix everything, it should make a difference. Every million elderly/vulnerable people jabbed means a smaller pool of likely ICU inhabitants.
Granted we are starting from a dreadful place, but the end of the tunnel is closer than last time.
Who knows at this point, I don't think we can infer too much from the March lockdown. We are dealing with a new varient that's 70% more transmissible which could mean a much longer lockdown, or even a shorter one if it infects much of the population and [temporary] immunity causes a steeper but shorter infection curve.
Vaccines will make a difference for sure but I feel it will be very minor compared to everything else given the small percentage innoculated, lack of effect on transmissibility (?) and the time lag on immunity. If only the vaccine(s) had come a couple of months earlier they might have made a real difference but I guess we should count our blessings that we have them at all.
Realistically until enough people are vaccinated for herd immunity to work, so over to Boris to break with tradition, and deliver something effective in a timely manner
Using last year's lockdown as a guide and accounting for our much higher starting position I'm fully expecting large restrictions to be in force until the end of April with a partial easing for the summer. They may decide to do a small lifting of them for Easter but that could push infections back up and ruin the summer.
The key to all of this is how well (or more likely how not-crap) the vaccine rollout goes and how well the NHS survives the next few weeks. We won't really find out until either we get to April/May without any major disasters or the NHS is overwhelmed and the news is full of corridors and halls of people dying. Either way I think 2021 is going to be another write-off in general.
I’d say April/May as well.
A combination of fatigue and mid winter will likely extend this one longer than the previous.
mid march - mid april.
once they've vaccinated enough to ease pressure on the ICU wards, the rest of us <50 are getting thrown under the bus I reckon.
The government quietly extended furlough until the end of April a while back
That tells you everything you need to know. They're not expecting us to be out of it before then.
I just hope they learned the lesson from last time. They opened up everywhere at the same time when they should have left some places locked down for a bit longer.
I think Andy Burnham was right when he said they ended lockdown because the infection rates were dropping in London and the South East and our 'good times' PM wanted to open it up, so he opened up everywhere when he should have left the north locked down for another month or so as that was how long we were lagging behind London.
It would have saved us all an awful lot of bother. We were back in some form of lockdown 3 weeks later and we've never come out of it.
Do I think the government will have learned its lesson?
Of course not! They're ****ing idiots who'll do exactly the same again
once they’ve vaccinated enough to ease pressure on the ICU wards, the rest of us <50 are getting thrown under the bus I reckon.
They've pretty much said as much..
Back to tiers end of Feb I think. So, a very light lifting of restrictions and they will run to Easter for sure.
Johnson I mean Peston has just announced that we'll have 2 million doses of vaccine a week in 2 weeks time.
In that case I'll be getting my first jab at start of April (age 56, no other factors) - using https://www.omnicalculator.com/health/vaccine-queue-uk
Seems to good to be true - I'm betting on 6 months but with some easing from May onwards
once they’ve vaccinated enough to ease pressure on the ICU wards, the rest of us <50 are getting thrown under the bus I reckon.
45 here, and tbh I'm accepting of being thrown under the bus if everyone over 50, all the vulnerable and all of the NHS staff have been vaccinated.
Johnson I mean Peston has just announced that we’ll have 2 million doses of vaccine a week in 2 weeks time.
In that case I’ll be getting my first jab at start of April (age 56, no other factors).
You seem to be assuming here that this government can arrange to get those 2million manufactured doses per week into 2 million people per week.
Then again, you don't specify whether you mean April 2021 or 2022. So perhaps you weren't assuming after all 😉
They've already said it will likely be March at least haven't they?
Meanwhile NZ lifted most of its restrictions months ago. It's almost as if electing a lying populist buffoon as PM wasn't such a great idea....
I was also wondering what happens to people under 55 once the at risk groups are vaccinated and places start to open up.
Is it just herd immunity time then?
I assumed initially that healthy under 55's (or maybe under 40) wouldn't get the vaccine at all but the newspapers seem to suggest the entire population will get a jab (eventually).
We are back in April 2020 in terms of restrictions and the number of people in hospital. Back then, restrictions weren’t eased until July 2020, therefore 3 months or so.
In broad terms, I don’t see why this lockdown won’t be the same again, i.e. at least 3 months long. The parameters are all the same. Yes, we have the vaccine which will ultimately stop hospital admissions and deaths, but it won’t stop transmission (according to a bloke on the news I assume was qualified to say so). So, unless all of the most vulnerable are vaccinated within less than 3 months, it’s going 3 months?
I honestly wouldn't like to guess. Personally I find STW to be very glass half-empty, so I doubt many will agree with me.
That said there are some positive and negatives that will be a factor. None of this is even close to a 'known science' just guesses really.
Negatives:
The main one, we don't really know how much the lockdown had an effect on transmission, and how much was down to the seasons changing. Last time lockdown started in March, we're in Jan. If seasonal differences are a big factor, numbers may not fall again until June/July.
Apathy also plays a part, last March the roads were empty, lots of businesses, expecting a short/sharp lockdown sent most of their staff home etc, locally at least, the roads seem busier, less people are on Furlough now, more people back working from their office/site/factory whatever. Hopefully it all just means Business has adapted and workplaces are more Corvid-compliant.
Positives:
The Obvious one, the Vaccine, even if everyone who wants a vaccine over 65 or in another high-risk cat in the UK gets it, it will reduce Hospitalisation and Deaths by around 90%. Once hospitalisation and deaths falls, the R number matters a lot less. Make no mistake, if the daily death and hospitalisation figures are 10% of what they are now, Boris will want as much of the economy open as possible, if not all of it.
Really unknown:
There's chance that the virus will start to run out of new people to infect. Now I know it's possible to catch it twice, but that's not to say you will catch it every time you're exposed to it and confirmed reinfections are incredibly rare. There have been 2.7m confirmed cases in the UK. Most of the cases in the first lock-down weren't recorded, and we still don't know how many people have actually had the Virus. The New Scientist estimated that only 14% of people with Covid in the UK have actually been reported, this is partly due to poor testing early on and partly because people with mild symptoms never took a test.
So, and this is by no means as given, but just a theory. IF 2.7m represents 14% of People with Covid who had symptoms and took a test, there's likely as many as 16.5m people who had Covid and didn't have a test. So 19.2m people in the UK have had Covid at least once and have some level of immunity. With 50k-ish new cases a day being reported (and if the 14% figure is correct) it's likely that 350k people a day are actually catching it, so in about a month, scarily more people in the UK will have had the virus than not, which will reduce the R rate through lack of new hosts. Here in Wales the figures are much higher, we could in theory have all been exposed to it within 2 months.
Personally I find STW to be very glass half-empty, so I doubt many will agree with me.
Maybe so but the glass has actually been pretty firmly half-empty here for a while now - hopefully the optimists will be right about something eventually.
I was also wondering what happens to people under 55 once the at risk groups are vaccinated and places start to open up.
Is it just herd immunity time then?
I assumed initially that healthy under 55’s (or maybe under 40) wouldn’t get the vaccine at all but the newspapers seem to suggest the entire population will get a jab (eventually).
We're (everyone under 50 and 'Healthy' are in Phase 2 which will start as soon as Phase 1 ends, which frankly is a mystery because frankly so far, phase 1 has been a glimmer of what it was planned to be, but hey Oxford is here now.
I don't think anyone knows, but there's a chance that phase 2 will be different, firstly it won't come until Summer and by then, if the vaccines works as it should, numbers will be very low. The challenge then will be dragging the anti-vaxx/mask/science/****ing common sense people in. They may decide that speed is the greater good than social distancing and it will speed the whole show up massively because they can have a single Nurse/Doctor watch over a couple of dozen people waiting for the 1 in 100k (or whatever) have have an anaphylactic reaction.
Back to tiers end of Feb I think. So, a very light lifting of restrictions and they will run to Easter for sure.
Based on last year, I just can't see this. I naively thought that the 1st lockdown in March 2020 would cause a really sharp, almost instant drop in cases. It didn't. They just slowly rolled off Acutally they increased first then slowly rolled off, then tiers were introduced. I can't see this being any different.
Is this a bit of a rehash of the main thread?
I'm thinking full lockdown will be needed till Easter to get vaccines in and some breathing space for the NHS. Then Tier 4 till summer.
I expect the government will end lockdown after February half term, when only the over 70, Brexit voting Mail readers will have had their vaccinations, as the rest of us don't matter.
Not sure how long this ‘lockdown’ will last, but I think it’ll be June 2022 before we can stop being concerned about tiers & lockdowns etc
45 here, and tbh I’m accepting of being thrown under the bus if everyone over 50, all the vulnerable and all of the NHS staff have been vaccinated.
i'm not, unless the vaccine is available privately.
Is this a bit of a rehash of the main thread?
I wanted to specifically concentrate on what's different to March 2020 lockdown in broad sense. I don't think there's a lot. But Boris is saying Feb half-term.... based on what? It'll be different because you say so?
Personally I find STW to be very glass half-empty, so I doubt many will agree with me.
Maybe so but the glass has actually been pretty firmly half-empty here for a while now – hopefully the optimists will be right about something eventually.
This sounds like the start of an argument I don't want to have, but whilst things have been very shit for a very long time, at lot of people on the main covid thread are yet to have their worst nightmares come true.
Very few posters for example could bring themselves to hope a vaccine would be found within 2-3 years, let alone by the end of 2020.
I'm guessing late spring, early summer depending on how fast the vaccine gets put out.
Vaccination (targeted for front line and the vulnerable first,) should theoretically devestate the spread of the virus, but i've not seen much data on that, as in, you could be relativley safe after vaccination, but to what extent can you still be an asymptomatic carrier/spreader? that's the key part.
I fear a lot of people will simply stop caring, many alreay have, if they even did in the first place.
Vaccination (targeted for front line and the vulnerable first,) should theoretically devestate the spread of the virus
News guy said otherwise. The vaccine doesn't stop you spreading it. It just stops you getting serious symptoms that need hospital treatment
IF 2.7m represents 14% of People with Covid who had symptoms and took a test, there’s likely as many as 16.5m people who had Covid and didn’t have a test. So 19.2m people in the UK have had Covid at least once and have some level of immunity.
I'm with you here....
With 50k-ish new cases a day being reported (and if the 14% figure is correct) it’s likely that 350k people a day are actually catching it,
Not sure this bit necessarily holds though, given the different levels of testing between March and now? My guess is that the case numbers are a much closer reflection of the real prevalence of COVID now than they were last spring.
but to what extent can you still be an asymptomatic carrier/spreader? that’s the key part.
There some data from the Moderna trial that shows that it both reduces the spread and reduces the time that vaccinated people are contagious for, if/when enough people are vaccinated it will have an effect on the R number.
I think most experts are reasonably confident that the vaccines will reduce the spread as well as protect people who've been vaccinated, but it will be months before it can be proved.
As TiRed has pointed out, there's no evidence to support that it will limit transmission, however I'm fairly sure he mentioned that he would be surprised if it didn't - which I tend to agree with.
FDA Q&A also agrees.
They just can’t say the vaccine stops transmission because the trial wasn’t there to find that out.
but it will be months before it can be proved.
Yeah that's the issue really, people might just get lax in the meantime, causing unesseasry new infections, so ASSUMING we can roll out the vaccine faster than we already are (HA!), we'll still be seeing a rise in infection and hostpitalisation for a few weeks/months to come before we see the effect of vaccination in the statistics.
IF 2.7m represents 14% of People with Covid who had symptoms and took a test, there’s likely as many as 16.5m people who had Covid and didn’t have a test. So 19.2m people in the UK have had Covid at least once and have some level of immunity.
I’m with you here….
With 50k-ish new cases a day being reported (and if the 14% figure is correct) it’s likely that 350k people a day are actually catching it,
Not sure this bit necessarily holds though, given the different levels of testing between March and now? My guess is that the case numbers are a much closer reflection of the real prevalence of COVID now than they were last spring.
It's only a guess really, but we also have to consider how many people who get it, just don't know about it. If everyone who caught it had noticeable symptoms, self-isolation would have had a greater effect. Early in the pandemic, it was said 80% of people get no symptoms, or such mild symptoms they wouldn't notice, later that estimate grew to as high as 90%, I think it's been revised down now, but even if it's 75% of people and everyone with Symptoms is actually asking for and getting a test, it's still a quarter of a million people a day catching the virus.
They just can’t say the vaccine stops transmission because the trial wasn’t there to find that out.
Indeed, and why would it? first problems first, but of course that's the second biggest question.
so ASUMING we can roll aout the vaccine faster than we already are (HA!), we’ll still be seeing a rise in infection and hostpitalisation fore a few weeks/months to come before we see the effect of vaccination in the statistics.
It's really frustrating isn't it and no one can really agree on what the bottle neck it.
The Government are still talking about getting enough 'volunteers' to administer it. **** a duck, My Wife is seeing 2 patients a day at the moment because of Covid, give her a box of vaccines and she'll bang through 20 a day on her own, gladly, with a big smile on her face. Shitfire, with a bit of process and logistics planning I reckon I could have Nurses doing 1 every 5-10 minutes with another watching over 10-15 of them in a socially distanced post-jab waiting room.
Reading the NHS trust e-mails my Wife gets, it's all be down to supply up to now, the Pfizer requirements are hassle, the centre for NHS staff near us is massive, but most of the stations are empty because we were only getting 2000 doses a week, they could handle 10 times that now without any extra resources. I'd hope they'll be at full capacity soon.
The Government are still talking about getting enough ‘volunteers’ to administer it. **** a duck, My Wife is seeing 2 patients a day at the moment because of Covid, give her a box of vaccines and she’ll bang through 20 a day on her own, gladly, with a big smile on her face. Shitfire, with a bit of process and logistics planning I reckon I could have Nurses doing 1 every 5-10 minutes with another watching over 10-15 of them in a socially distanced post-jab waiting room.
Reading the NHS trust e-mails my Wife gets, it’s all be down to supply up to now, the Pfizer requirements are hassle, the centre for NHS staff near us is massive, but most of the stations are empty because we were only getting 2000 doses a week, they could handle 10 times that now without any extra resources. I’d hope they’ll be at full capacity soon.
Yeh it's a question of manufacture and logistics I suppose. if every GP practice had a few in the fridge, they could simply jab everyone who came into the surgery, for any unrelated reasons.
In better news, my nan, whos 95, had had her first injection, she's due the second one in a few days, so it is rolling out. She's my only surviving family member so I might dare to see her in person some time soon.
Every million elderly/vulnerable people jabbed means a smaller pool of likely ICU inhabitants.
The consultant from St Georges interviewed by BBC earlier said he had 20, 30 and 40 year old patients dying in ICU beds. It's got away from us in the second half of 2020 due to piss poor management by the Dunning-Kruger politicians. See also the idea to get one jab in everyones arm and then a second when they can (I'm not convinced they will be able to meet the 12 week target for injection 2).
Our kids are going to be paying for this for many decades to come.
Edit 1:Actually getting needles into arms will be difficult in some places as they don't have a hub. Places like West Suffolk (Hello Hatt Mancock) & Suffolk Coastal (Hello Therese Coffey) are without, as is Cambridge. There was a list on a link from a Guardian article yesterday which I'll try to find and link to later.
Edit2: https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/118-areas-england-without-covid-23254368 Apparently 25% of the population do not have access to a hub!
Is transmissibility important? As long as people don't get sick enough to end up in hospital or dead, do we care?*
*as in, should we have limits imposed on businesses and personal actions?
Yes, we have the vaccine which will ultimately stop hospital admissions and deaths, but it won’t stop transmission (according to a bloke on the news I assume was qualified to say so).
I think the simple answer is nobody knows for sure if the vaccine will stop (or substantially reduce) onwards transmission. There just isn't enough data for any manufacturer to make such product claims with either one or two doses. However, there's certainly a possibility it will (and depending which expert you speak to that might be anything from "its possible but unknown" to "many other vaccines do have this effect at least in the short term"). However as the vaccine is prioritised to those most at risk, and logically those most at risk are doing their best to socially isolate they probably don't break as many transmission chains if it does prevent transmission, as if they vaccinated the socially active.
So, unless all of the most vulnerable are vaccinated within less than 3 months, it’s going 3 months?
Well depending on who you call the vulnerable - Borris was talking March, Nicola as talking May.
Sturgeon hinted at May today.