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I think we’ll be lucky to get under 100 daily deaths (consistently) in the next month.
It is at this point we are diverging from the Italy/Spain curve, and not in a good way.
Case numbers were not good enough to remove lockdown, let alone spectacularly torpedo it the way this government has done.
Still, 25 degrees and sunny this weekend, anyone off for a jolly?
As this thread progresses i'm curious as to what the nay sayers now say the answer should be ?
I'm guessing removing the current government is next to impossible ? So, what's the actual answer that you want now in place ?
I'm still not sure what disecting how rubbish the UK are and how they're doing everything wrong, without actually having something constructive putting in place instead. What would you like to see happen now and how would it positively affect the current situation in the UK?
I suppose, just as organisations, companies and individuals began social distancing and shut down moves before the government themselves acted, we need to adopt a similar approach as we open up. It means more deaths and a much longer period of economic disturbance than if the government acted at the right times, but it’ll still be better than leaving this up to them. The first key step is for us to wait ‘till track/trace/isolate is ACTUALLY in place before acting as is if it already is, as the government want us to do. The second step is to wait for active cases to be lower than they currently are… look to countries getting a grip on this to determine what that traceable/containable level of infections is, rather than blindly following instruction from our government… we’re only weeks away from it ourselves, if we don’t throw away the progress made recently by dropping restriction this weekend and next week that is.
The problem I see is how people are going to be able to cope if the government decides things are safe enough to pull back from lockdown (and removes the financial support for businesses and people).
If you are at risk, going back to work might make you ill or kill you, but you may have to make that choice if there is nothing to support you or fall back to. As much as a company might want to do the right thing, they may not have a choice if there is no other support coming in, it's either back to normal or cease to exist. How can anyone take a principled tand in that situation, you would be screwed either way.
If you’ve been furloughed, or received the support for the self employed, I hope you’ve been spending as little as possible, to spread that help out enough to get you through some of the summer. Also, remember, if most of us drop social distancing measures too soon, people working in hospitality etc will have to stay away from work even longer, perhaps without enough financial help. Rushing back will hit some industries very hard, if it means that new cases can’t be isolated, and many public spaces need to stay closed for longer.
As a rule of thumb… add 2 to 4 weeks to all the dates currently coming from the government, and hope they have track/trace/isolate running properly before the end of June, and we’ll be “fine”.
I’m still not sure what disecting how rubbish the UK are and how they’re doing everything wrong, without actually having something constructive putting in place instead.
Most of the criticism relates to past actions/inactions. Going forward it will be a shitshow regardless of who is running it. As a country, we failed to use the months leading up to lockdown to prepare, and then entered lockdown too late and too weakly, fuelling significant excess deaths. Now they have managed to fatally undermine public health messaging both for track and trace, and any further lockdowns, national or local. We abandoned contact tracing and community surveillance early, and are now reintroducing it late in a haphazard way, apparently having squandered more months.
I don't know if anyone else could do any better from this point, especially as many of the contracts seem to be handed out to their mates.
I suppose I could do my civic duty and not harp on about it though.
More evidence to support obesity being a majoor factor, Stevextc:
"Dr. Gulick’s review of data from the first 393 Covid-19 patients admitted to NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell Medical Center and NewYork-Presbyterian Lower Manhattan Hospital identified obesity as a risk factor for admission. He also found that among adults under the age of 54, half live with obesity, though the New York City obesity rate is only 22 percent."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/16/health/coronavirus-obesity-higher-risk.html
Similar numbers to the French study. The BAME factor they cite is weight and it also affects poor white Americans:
"The new findings about obesity risks are bad news for all Americans, but particularly for African-Americans and other people of color, who have higher rates of obesity and are already bearing a disproportionate burden of Covid-19 deaths. High rates of obesity are also prevalent among low-income white Americans, who may also be adversely affected, experts say."
I have no complaints about the plan of action. Staged reopening of schools, shops and eventually restaurants, pubs, cinemas etc. I would anticipate these running at half capacity to maintain distancing. Little public gatherings for the summer. I think people will mostly behave and take it seriously - Cummings notwithstanding, actually.
Testing and tracing are the only real options available in the absence of prophylaxis and vaccination, together with some sensitive real-time measures to detect when action is necessary. These need to be at the local level (NHS trust/LTLA). I'm thinking of some metrics as I type. How it will work for the outliers like Son2, people working at checkouts etc., that is a huge issue.
The FT analysis hints at lockdown efficacy being a function of date of onset. Who hasn't put off an important decision in life, only to find their hand forced by later events? The UK appears no different.
I’m still not sure what disecting how rubbish the UK are and how they’re doing everything wrong, without actually having something constructive putting in place instead.
It may have escaped your notice but the government are the ones in charge, what I want isnt really important, being constructive wont help, ensuring these useless shysters are held to account ober the cluster **** they have over seen and are continuing to oversee is all we can do. You sound like Boris junior saying "move on". Debate should not be shut down by such an utterly ridiculous comment such as yours.
If you know things are bad when you find yourself agreeing with Piers Morgan, you know they're really, really bad when you find yourself agreeing with Kay Birley.
Well, having been in lockdown since a week before the official date and pretty rigidly stuck to the rules, after the last week or so's woeful failure of our Government I will be telling them to ram the tracing app as well as any other advice they give or help they ask of me.
Looking round where I live it seems since the weekend people have decided life is back to normal with busy roads, plenty of non-family groups walking about and a general less careful attitude seeming to be taken by the public.
What I'll be doing is watching the numbers, reading the facts and protecting my family using 'common sense'. I'm absolutely furious with the utter inept performance by the mob in charge (although not suprised) with the Cummings cluster**** being the final straw.
Without wanting to derail the thread, any benefit of the doubt I gave to this regime has gone. They are both malicious and incompetent and that's a bad combination. It's also disappointing to see Jenny Harries totally compromised and nothing but a Downing Street puppet and that goes for Chris Whitty too. Surely they should be giving scientific advice not obeying political instruction, but do you reach that sort of office by having integrity?
Looking round where I live it seems since the weekend people have decided life is back to normal with busy roads, plenty of non-family groups walking about and a general less careful attitude seeming to be taken by the public.
Most definitely not the case here in west of Scotland, there's a noticeable upturn in traffic since the first few weeks of lockdown, but it's still dead to be honest. Stopped for an ice cream on Troon beach on the way home from work yesterday lunchtime, was a cracking day, maybe 40 or 50 folk along the whole 2 mile promenade.
One of our procurement team drove to Preston last week to take a valve for overhaul, was quicker than using a courier, so the plant (pharma) was offline for less time, and he reckoned the traffic around Preston was 3 times as busy as it is here.
Testing and tracing are the only real options available in the absence of prophylaxis and vaccination, together with some sensitive real-time measures to detect when action is necessary. These need to be at the local level (NHS trust/LTLA).
That’s exactly what I posted in this thread recently, but with the (obvious to most) caveat that we should wait for the track/trace/isolate measures to be real and in place, rather than just government PR, before pushing on with increased opening for schools, shops, group gatherings etc.
Update:
https://twitter.com/spittingcat/status/1265995343260520448?s=21
In addition… the testing turn around time is still too slow to support track/trace/isolate.
Have I missed something here? I thought an app was to be developed in return for £250m given to 'Faculty', the Brexit Delivery Company. Now if you're sick some call centre rings up and asks who you've been in contact with on the train, in the shop, down the street. Is this a post-app app or would it be better if they went and got a job they could do?
Forget about the app for now… it’s an extra tool… the manual track/trace function is the main thing. Neither mobile app nor manual teams (local or all England level) are ready yet though, for many often discussed reasons, including the dubious and opaque way that private providers and overly centralised approaches were chosen.
What I’ll be doing is watching the numbers, reading the facts and protecting my family using ‘common sense’.
Is that the same as 'good old British common sense', or your own variety?
I'll be doing the same, for what it's worth. I certainly won't be rushing to get my kids back into school before term end. My lad's school is making noises about holding A Level mocks in July, though, so we'll have to see what case numbers are doing in the catchment (which covers a significant chunk of West and North Yorkshire, and even a bit of Lancashire).
My level of trust in the government to follow independent scientific advice is now non-existent. Let's face it, half their blather in the past week has been mainly to distract us from Cummings.
Debate should not be shut down by such an utterly ridiculous comment such as yours
Can't help but think that works both ways.
Can’t help but think that works both ways.
Care to explain, or have you taken a no debate vow?
In addition… the testing turn around time is still too slow to support track/trace/isolate.
How many tests do they need to turnaround in an adequate timeframe to claim success?
I’m guessing between 1 and 5...
Lockdown is over… garden parties are go… more new deaths announced today than most European countries have had in total.
At least we won't be having a second wave like those pesky foreigners. We'll never get out of the first one.
We went into this a couple of weeks behind Spain, now we're roughly four weeks behind, if this trend continues.
Lots of emphasis on increased School opening June 1st… with no mention that this isn’t happening in many areas… parents v teachers fake tension being stirred up again. Should be making it clear this is on a regional basis.
I'm wondering how this sits with data protection regulations?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/28/nhs-will-keep-personal-data-of-people-with-coronavirus-for-20-years--uk-test-and-trace-programme
Can you opt-out? Doesn't seem so - is there an update to GPDR to add a specific exclusion?
For example: "Those who have been identified as contacts of people with coronavirus will have all but their date of birth collected and stored for five years."
Also, I keep seeing Public Health England mentioned in the news... Does the Scottish public health body just do the same as they do - like a sub-body/branch, or are they totally separate?
Lockdown is over… garden parties are go… more new deaths announced today than most European countries have had in total.
Partly because of the ridiculous "pre-announcement" stuff, telling people what will happen from a certain date. We had it at the start where we were told not to go pubs and then told that pubs would close on [date] which prompted one last massive countrywide piss-up before the pubs closed.
And then the notice about being allowed to drive to places, that was announced / leaked a few days in advance which lead to hordes of people flocking to beaches and beauty spots and now we're being told that "from Monday" we can meet family which means this weekend will be wall-to-wall family gatherings.
Honestly, the entire "control" behind this has been batshit mental from the start. I use the word control in its loosest possible sense.
So watching the brief today how does Boris get to decide when other people do or don't answer question he is basically censoring people.
So am I allowed to drive 100miles to see my mum?
You can already do that, if you are prepared to meet outdoors and maintain social distancing, which shouldn't be too hard in this weather.
So am I allowed to drive 100miles to see my mum?
You can go 264 miles!
and now we’re being told that “from Monday” we can meet family which means this weekend will be wall-to-wall family gatherings.
What was the point of that? ScotGov are relaxing lockdown as of tomorrow.
You can already do that, if you are prepared to meet outdoors and maintain social distancing, which shouldn’t be too hard in this weather.
Who knew!!
Most things back to normal in France as of 2/6. It's up to us now not to be stupid, and wear masks if the local authorities so decide.
So watching the brief today how does Boris get to decide when other people do or don’t answer question
There might be an argument that the third or fourth time the same question is asked, most of the ground has been covered.
And then the notice about being allowed to drive to places, that was announced / leaked a few days in advance which lead to hordes of people flocking to beaches and beauty spots and now we’re being told that “from Monday” we can meet family which means this weekend will be wall-to-wall family gatherings.
Hey mate, waddya doing on Monday night? Fancy joining us in our vast new lockdown hot-tub for an evening of socially-distanced beer and footsy? I'd say the weekend, but you know, rules...
ps: our neighbours are psychic, they predicted the new rules and implemented them four days in advance. Who knew?
So watching the brief today how does Boris get to decide when other people do or don’t answer question he is basically censoring people.
World King.
Still at 400 deaths a day and lockdown is being relaxed?
How does that compare with other badly hit countries?
Who knew!!
Everyone who read the rules 😄
Very concerned that deaths and infections seem too high to my non expert brain for further social easing. Should have waited two weeks to see if the schools changed the numbers.
Don’t you need the actual daily deaths not the reported deaths? Those 400 reported today could go back a couple of weeks. I’m not sure where the actual data is though
https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-daily-deaths/
If you go here you can see the daily deaths for today are about 70. The other are historical deaths. You have to go through all the data and collate the information they don’t seem to tally it. So daily death rate isn’t as high as reported.
Edit doesn’t mean those deaths for today won’t increase over the next few weeks to get today’s true figure.
If you go here you can see the daily deaths for today are about 70. The other are historical deaths. You have to go through all the data and collate the information they don’t seem to tally it. So daily death rate isn’t as high as reported.
that also means there are COVID related deaths today that are not in those 70
With most deaths being reported in about 3 days, there is no real reason not to just use the daily announcements as an estimate of how things are going (though there is a clear weekly cycle in reporting to be aware of). This small delay is no big deal compared to the 2-4 weeks delay between getting ill and dying!
Today being worse than this day last week isn't a good sign at all, though it is only one day and might be a blip. If Friday and Saturday are high too I'll be worried.
(yesterday's number was also up on a week ago, but would have been bumped up by the BH)
I've pretty much given up taking daily figures too seriously in this tail phase (we hope) for most countries as they all suffer from reporting system anomolies. Totting up mid-week to mid-week gives a smoothed view. My unexplained anomoly for today is 3325 new cases in France today after a week around 300 new cases a day.
Our kid's school has just announced they are not reopening next week.
Head Teacher says that R is as high as it's been for near on a month, has seen nothing to suggest otherwise. Doesn't want to put staff / kids / community at risk.
Has BoJo done a Trump? Basically push the hard decisions to a local level who can then take all the flak for the continued negative impacts of lockdown.
Edit: the return to school plan was staged. A 2 week delay effectively ends the school year for a chunk of pupils. Every week thereafter ends the year for more kids. I'd say if they're not back by 2nd week of June it's all over as the school would have to decide which kids to disadvantage.