The Coronavirus Discussion Thread.

What tyres for trying to ride through loopholes?

@poopscoop
Mum’s friends were jabbed at Leybourne- they were having the Pfizer one.

ETA if you’ve got a slot near the end of the day you might get lucky and get a jab yourself it’s due to be binned that day.

you should always stay local in the village, town, or part of the city where you live.

The vagueness has to be there, otherwise those like me who live in a tiny village with no shops or other facilities will quickly run out of supplies. Sadly others use it as a reason to pop to Ikea 60miles away. Back to rule 1...

You know what to do.

What I think I should do is try and cancel the appointment it really isn't urgent or critical.
But then on the other hand OH will presumably (still don't know) be in school tomorrow so in some way's that the last day I feel I can attend without being a risk to others.

then I just slip back into the fact many many people will be popping out for a 6 pack or some hob nobbs because it's legal to go to a shop and I'm left thinking ... what difference does me going to the hospital make?

I'm just being honest and the sort of thing going through my mind and probably many others... I'm really flip flopping forwards and backwards then I look at the £300 fee if I cancel and think about that ... then I think I could phone up and say I think I have symptoms ... then not get charged then I think that's wrong on so many levels.

Then I think .. unless I can get the follow up scan in a week I'm swallowing a load of radio isotopes for nothing (which isn't exactly risk free) and I'm assuming that I probably wouldn't be recommended or allowed to take another dose until say 8 or 16 half lives.

All that goes round and round and then at the end I come to the conclusion ... it's booked and they are expecting me or not. Roll the dice, hope I can get the follow-up in a week???

Meanwhile my riding messenger group is pinging away with tough guys ... and "uh u scared to go ride" comments... well it was I put it on snooze 😉 but just pointing out what others are thinking/saying.

Martinhutch

What tyres for trying to ride through loopholes?

Ah..glad we got the important questions. But tubeless and inserts? What do you weigh and are these hard pack loopholes or loamy ones.

All that goes round and round and then at the end I come to the conclusion … it’s booked and they are expecting me or not. Roll the dice, hope I can get the follow-up in a week???

Oh, your hospital appointment. Sorry, misunderstood. Speak to your clinic. Turn up if they’ll have you. They’ll know better than anyone. My boy is due in next week, we’ll ring them before setting off.

@ FB-ATB
Full Member

Mum’s friends were jabbed at Leybourne- they were having the Pfizer one.

ETA if you’ve got a slot near the end of the day you might get lucky and get a

jab yourself it’s due to be binned that day.

Cheers matey!

Watch time looks spot on to me, so live or watch wound forward.

He does look like he had a few drinks though!

Kelvin

Oh, your hospital appointment. Sorry, misunderstood. Speak to your clinic. Turn up if they’ll have you. My boy is due in next week, we’ll ring them before setting off.

This one is really not urgent or critical though. Just a bile readsorbtion test to give some possible options to manage symptoms or not. (and the symptoms aren't that bad... more inconvenient)

If I'm brutally honest I partly went along with the consultant out of interest and curiosity and because I have 3mo of my medical insurance left before redundancy so best get it now.
Possibly a touch more critical than missing a tooth whitening but not much!

lunge

They were just trying to keep a roof over their heads.

This is very true or feed their families.
Rule #1 goes two ways!

Lockdown 3 Aimless Drift.

So here in Staffs they are going ahead with the 2nd dose @ 21 days.

First lot coming back through in the next two days - even without the emotional investment i think it's probably the right thing to do.

This Wednesday, +7 days, and my folks are out the other end.

^^ That's great news for your folks mate, must be a huge weight lifted. Very, very soon anyway.👍

Lockdown 3 Aimless Drift.

Lockdown 33 1/3: The Final Insult

Before you get too excited about what sort of rides you can go on and which takeaways are open....a salient fact....

As many people are going to catch covid in the next two months, as the entire total who have caught it in the past year. Might be a few less if the lockdown is super-effective. Will be more if the lockdown doesn't work well.

If you are remotely keen to avoid catching it, and you can put off what you want to do until the spring, then put it off.

@thecaptain - do you have working or a link for that? I'm not disputing as I think you work in this area, but its the sort of easy soundbite that people will pay attention to if shared with something to back it up

Curious, is this...

As many people are going to catch covid in the next two months, as the entire total who have caught it in the past year.

The total who will catch it and test positive? As opposed to the total who catch it including an estimate for those who didn’t take a test?

do you have working or a link for that?

Back of an envelope calculations - Gov coronavirus site reports 2.7M positive tests to date, spread that total over the next 8 weeks and you've got an average of just over 48K cases per day. We're above that and rising at present (for cases reported per day at least), and if/when the lockdown/vaccination kicks in and cases peak the rate of decline is going to be slower than the rate of growth. So the claim stands up to basic scrutiny.

The vagueness has to be there, otherwise those like me who live in a tiny village with no shops or other facilities will quickly run out of supplies. Sadly others use it as a reason to pop to Ikea 60miles away. Back to rule 1…

If the government would just put Rule #1 into legislation....

It's my own calculation, outlined here:

https://bskiesresearch.wordpress.com/2021/01/04/not-even-half-way-there/

While I'm not an epidemiologist, I am an (internationally quite well-known) expert on model-based forecasting methods in general and this problem isn't a very difficult one. In fact a reader pointed out that LSHTM produced a report with similar numbers:

Note that their one optimistic scenario which has a better outcome was based on a lockdown starting on the 15th Dec, plus 2 million vaccinations a week, and we have already blasted straight past their peak predicted deaths (400 per day) for that scenario.

@thecaptain - funny who you find on here. We have a lot of overlapping contacts.

I can attest that he does know how to model stuff.

@thecaptain That's an impressive body of work.

@thecaptain

I’m not an epidemiologist or a modeller but I struggle to see how a simple SEIR model can give an accurate result in this case. The SEIR model would rely on the same number of contacts for each subject so might work well for say a population of rabbits that have similar behaviour or even to some extent a less lethal human disease like a cold where people don’t modify their behaviour.

What I think we are seeing is about 1/3 of people have a lot of contacts - NHS staff, shop workers and of course covidiots, another 1/3 have pretty limited contacts and the final 1/3 have turned into hermits. Therefore the 1-1/R point required for herd immunity over estimates, because the first 1/3 might represent 75% of the contacts so once they’ve caught it you pretty much have your herd immunity. So I think you’d get more accurate results with a compound model representing the different groups. I also appreciate there is a feedback loop in all of this so as the perceived threat drops the other 2/3 of people increase their contacts.

In Leeds, the rate for secondary school staff was more than four times that of the general population or 333 per cent higher.

The data shows that the prevalence rate was, on average, 1089.5 for primary staff and 1750.5 for secondary staff, compared to 404.3 for the LA as a whole. This average was taken for a period spanning from the week ending 19 October to the week ending 20 November.

And in Birmingham, the rate among school staff was more than three times higher than the local average. The data shows that, across the same time period, the prevalence rate was, on average, 1146.1 for primary staff and 1027.2 for secondary staff, compared to 312.2 for the LA as a whole. This excludes the half-term week.

In Greenwich, London, the prevalence rate was also significantly higher for school staff – at, on average, 264 for staff across primary and secondary schools, compared to 98 for the LA as a whole. However this average was taken for a longer period – spanning from early September to the end of November.

https://www.tes.com/news/exclusive-teacher-covid-rates-333-above-average?amp&__twitter_impression=true

That's the theory and people do build more complex models but the results end up being pretty similar. I suspect there's a bit of a network thing going on where we are all just a couple of connections from lots of people and so individual-level variability doesn't have quite the effect you might hope. A superspreader will give it to lots of people who think they haven't really met anyone recently...just this one person...it's really hard to cut contqcts down below a few per day for most working-age families etc.

But I'm not an epidemiologist, just a modeller who has done better than a lot of the experts throughout this outbreak.

Incidentally, Manaus in Brazil is having a second wave, after more than 50% of them caught it in the spring.

Hooooly shiiit, if thecaptains right about those numbers surely we're getting on for herd immunity levels by April/May?

The vaccines are too little too late going off those numbers!

thanks @thecaptain

If those numbers are right then as a base case we'd expect a similar number of deaths in the next 2-3 months (allowing for lag) as we have so far as well.

Of course that won't be right, because we have better treatments, the most susceptible have (sadly) already been exposed and died - the care home debacle, etc., the impact of the higher restrictions and school closures, and rowing against this tide is the vaccine too. How much headway that'll make against the strength of the tide, remains to be seen with how well they manage to implement the roll out.

Even then - there's a lot more lives going to be lost yet.

I'm more worried now than when this broke, TBH.

That’s the theory and people do build more complex models but the results end up being pretty similar. I suspect there’s a bit of a network thing going on where we are all just a couple of connections from lots of people and so individual-level variability doesn’t have quite the effect you might hope. A superspreader will give it to lots of people who think they haven’t really met anyone recently…just this one person…it’s really hard to cut contqcts down below a few per day for most working-age families etc.

But I’m not an epidemiologist, just a modeller who has done better than a lot of the experts throughout this outbreak.

Incidentally, Manaus in Brazil is having a second wave, after more than 50% of them caught it in the spring.

My gut feel is your result is pretty much in the ballpark, I think you mentioned you didn’t account the for the extra virulence of the new strain as it becomes more dominant so that will swing it the other way. That’s worrying about manus, I’d hope once you have 50%+ infection things would be calming down. Is this a result of reinfection of does it just pour water on the lower level of infection idea I proposed for immunity?

I’m more worried now than when this broke, TBH

I'm the same. Despite numerous posts about the vaccine etc. I've become really washed up in the media stuff this last 24 hours which I have tried so hard to avoid. This new lockdown just seems like the next one, and then there will be another. And it comes down to how long I can try and stay positive for.

The vaccines are too little too late going off those numbers!

Well, yeah, if you're under 50. But the people who die are people with significant co-morbidities and the elderly. Not actually that many of them and once vaccinated problem more or less solved.

Thanks I'm glad to see the message is getting through. Yes we are heading rapidly towards herd immunity through infection unless the lockdown is *extremely* successful. We won't outrun it with vaccination, it will save a few of the deaths (and is worth doing!) but won't stop the spread quickly enough to matter.

I'm only just over 50 and unusually fit so am not scared of dying from it but still would rather avoid the complications of long covid.

Even then – there’s a lot more lives going to be lost yet.

I’m more worried now than when this broke, TBH.

I think it feels worse because a month ago the vaccine was coming, the new strain wasn't widely known about and even though we expected a surge and a lockdown post Christmas, the vaccine was offering real hope.

It does feel that the virus has outsmarted everyone - even allowing for a government that is outsmarted by very simple things - and those hopes have been dashed in the short term.

Try and focus on your own behaviour and risk - you can't control anything else. I got through the first one, I'm going to get through this next one.

TiRed has always said late 2021 for things to settle and IF the vaccine can be delivered to plan, that's still my long term expectation. But anxiety levels are up to 11 again in my head again.

is this dithering and prevarication deliberate, knowing this would happen anyway and just trying to keep the right side of open revolt.

Are the government in private doing a brilliant job, but if they tell us how brilliant it is then it loses its effect......

Has anyone seen Saint Dom and his team of oddball geniuses recently?

My mum is also booked in next week for jab number 2.
Some how she got it on pretty much day 1 of the roll out.
Fingers crossed it doesn't get bounced back.
Maybe they are waiting till the very needy have had 2 x jabs till extending the time frame
Caterham, Surrey

@stevextc

This one is really not urgent or critical though. Just a bile readsorbtion test to give some possible options to manage symptoms or not. (and the symptoms aren’t that bad… more inconvenient)

Sent you a message about your scan, as had one in the summer.

Wales rules seem a little clearer (this time around). We're allowed to exercise as far as we want if it's from home (which I think was added due to pressure from cyclists last time), and you're allowed to travel a short distance to start for 'accessibility reasons'.

We won’t outrun it with vaccination, it will save a few of the deaths (and is worth doing!) but won’t stop the spread quickly enough to matter.

If this is the case, then Q4 2021/Q1 2022 is going to be marked by a lot of squabbling over whether relying on a second and third full lockdown was preferable to adequately ramping up hospital capacity. So much so, that I suspect it will be a major question in any inquiry that comes next.

I think the added risk at the moment is nhs capacity. I have a horrible feeling we’ll see some terrible scenes in the coming weeks of hospitals running out of oxygen/beds and people dying who may have survived with adequate treatment. It really is worth trying to avoid catching this at the moment just in case you need hospitalisation.

whether relying on a second and third full lockdown was preferable to adequately ramping up hospital capacity.

Was the latter even an option?

It really is worth trying to avoid catching this at the moment just in case you need hospitalisation.

This. As soon as capacity is exceeded, outcomes will get sharply worse. Time to hunker down if you can, particularly if you have anyone vulnerable in your household. As someone in the extremely vulnerable group (just about), I'll certainly be taking shielding even more seriously than first time around.

adequately ramping up hospital capacity

There isn't a cupboard full of nurses somewhere waiting to be opened.

adequately ramping up hospital capacity

There isn’t a cupboard full of nurses somewhere waiting to be opened.

Absolutely this. We are building new ICUs and HOBs here, additional staffing is being provided by redeployment but the pool is getting smaller.

In California....

https://mobile.twitter.com/Pervaizistan/status/1346283751861608449

Is it a lack of bottled oxygen or lack of equipment to administer it? Seems crazy to have to ration something so cheap and basic.

There isn’t a cupboard full of nurses somewhere waiting to be opened.

Yup, this is all about public perception, as we've only ever talked about hospital capacity issues for years with 'beds' as the unit.

“Is it a lack of bottled oxygen or lack of equipment to administer it? Seems crazy to have to ration something so cheap and basic.”

In the hospital my wife works at its more a case that the ‘plumbed in’ O2 system can’t deliver enough flow to keep up with demand so they are having to use bottled O2 instead.

That California tweet is very scary. But [more subtle] rationing of care will be happening here in the next few weeks. Perhaps we need to be less subtle, and more transparent, in the UK, depressing though it would be... to get the message across that we are acting to try and reduce transmission for important reasons.

Absolutely this. We are building new ICUs and HOBs here, additional staffing is being provided by redeployment but the pool is getting smaller.

So what capacity is there, beyond the soundbites pedalled by the government, if push came to shove and we brought in as many retired/industry doctors/nurses as we could and mobilised all of the militaries healthcare resources? How much could we squeeze from the stone?

Aren't we already? When my aunt was a "military" nurse, she worked in NHS hospitals as often as not. Although she's "retired" from that, she's now in charge of nursing for a care home... so very much needed there. I don't think we have a nation of thumb twiddling doctors/nurses that haven't already stepped forward if they can... we've had that "recruitment" drive already.

Fair enough!

Sorry, I just can't quite believe we've got to a point where we've spent ****ing billions on vaccines and lockdowns to then seemingly shit the bed at the last minute and spaff all that effort and money away.

I can believe it. I also think that it is entirely unforgivable. Which is why I was calling for Tory MPs to put a full time PM in place who will act sooner than the last minute.

Latest How To Vaccinate the World on the Radio 4 has Larry Brilliant - ex-hippy, ex Hindu monk, ex WTO epidemiologist, ex Google etc.

His take was that countries like the UK and USA that haven't got the track, trace and isolate message would get back to normal in end 2021 but go through hell first. Sadly, I think he's right.

Other takeouts from his smallpox experience in India - a vaccine's not enough but it's a good start. Once you've got a working vaccine track, trace and isolate is needed still.

His other point was that new virus jump between species all the time. We got lucky with ebola because it was so rapidly fatal and not airborne. We got unlucky with COVID-19 because it wasn't rapidly fatal but was easily transmissible. What happens with the next novel virus is a lottery.

I can and I can't, I sort of expected them to at least make sure they were spending their money wisely being that they call themselves Tories.

But nooo, six months of my knocking heads together to help get a vaccine manufacturing facility up and running pissed up the wall.

BBC R4 Today doing their "balance" thing and platforming Sunetra Gupta the day after an important new lockdown measure is introduced. Not sure whether this is better or worse than giving Nigel Lawson a megaphone on climate change.

I'll be back to doing a night loop that mostly involves the TPT near me.

I'd ride in the day but the TPT will be like bank holidays every day now unless heavy rain.

Yeah, heard that this morning DrJ... she didn't sound as if she believed what she was saying, did she? No one should.

I heard the larry brilliant interview, well worth a listen
My friends dad died from covid. Fell on ice, swollen knee didnt go down but got worse
Went to hospital, waited anf waited to be seen, finally ly admitted amd sortef next day
Went home, back a week later with covid, dead in 3 days. Old though but avoidable

The UK is many tens of thousands of Nurses short anyway. EU nurses no longer want to come here adding to that. Not much point in having beds if you cannot staff them.

Retired nurses lose their registration. rightly so as they will not be up to date)

So what capacity is there, beyond the soundbites pedalled by the government, if push came to shove and we brought in as many retired/industry doctors/nurses as we could and mobilised all of the militaries healthcare resources?

maybe 1% at a guess. Its a very small amount for sure and would either need an exemption from registratiion requirements with a legal exemption from negligence claims or a training programme to regain regisytration

One year out of work = no registration.

I am going to listen to that Larry Brilliant interview. Never heard of him before, but with a name like that I feel confident that it will be really really good.

Well the roads seem fairly busy out there where I'm looking. Kids out wandering with parents too so I guess none of them are doing any online learning.

I'm sat supposedly wfh delivering online guitar lessons to high school kids.....first 3 haven't showed up. Take up during the first lockdown was really good....seems a lot less enthusiasm for anything lockdown related this time around.

Still if none of them show up I can completely bin off my music and go full time as a van driver!

One year out of work = no registration.

Government is happy to assume liability. See Pfizer.

And they have been (re)training. But this has all been happening already... there isn't an un-tapped reserve of retired people to bring back in at short notice this month.

One year out of work = no registration

Which is a lot less than for a doctor (Could be wrong but reaccreditation is every five years). Being able to prove that you have kept up to date with CPD over an absence would make a hell of a lot more sense than putting in a random shift once or twice a year to keep a PIN number.

 

Well the roads seem fairly busy out there where I’m looking. Kids out wandering with parents too so I guess none of them are doing any online learning.

Doesn't seem much quieter here either!

theotherjonv

is this dithering and prevarication deliberate, knowing this would happen anyway and just trying to keep the right side of open revolt.

Increasingly I believe that the dithering, prevarication is as much to do with not making any decision but having decisions forced on them/us. Quite literally by doing little/nothing the choices are made for them.

Are the government in private doing a brilliant job, but if they tell us how brilliant it is then it loses its effect……

Has anyone seen Saint Dom and his team of oddball geniuses recently?

I suspect not and wonder what St. Dom is doing ... probably off on another eye test?

Don’t seem much quieter here either!

Pretty quiet here but the hospital was heaving!

Well the roads seem fairly busy out there where I’m looking. Kids out wandering with parents too so I guess none of them are doing any online learning.

Just heard my son's friend that lives in sheltered accommodation due to mental health issues has tested positive... along with everyone else in the facility.

He was taken to hospital by ambulance last night. I've known the lad since he was a baby.

He's only 23 years old.

What pisses me off are the ignorant ****ts who insist on walking two-abreast on narrow pavements on busy roads.

WTF is wrong with people!

If my retired father is anything to go by, they're bored out of their brains and completely fed up. I don't agree with him going there, or indeed his daily stroll to the shop for a paper, but I understand why he does it.
He wants some human interaction, some purpose, something to do. he can't see his mates for a quick pint, he can see me, my brother or his granddaughter. He spent his entire working life talking to people, interacting, and for the last year he can't do that, and it's beginning to show. He's struggling.
It's easy to say they're wrong for doing so, and maybe they are, but you also have to see it from their perspective as to why.
I don't expect this to be a popular view...

Deleted

20+ years working in the operating theatre if I was anywhere near retiring age I’d walk out the door never to return if I was retired like **** would I come back! Had my my vaccine on the 31st to be told I won’t be getting 2nd dose for another 12 weeks as first dose gives ‘ample’ protection slightly peeved about that as I feel iam being put at maximum risk, helping treat trauma patients with unknown covid status, spending hours on itu proning and unproning patients, going out to wards helping intubate patients, sitting in back of ambulances with covid + patients transferring to other hospitals, wife does the same job so we work alternate 12 hr shifts. Pretty f%#$ed off with all tbh. Sorry rant over

My girlfriend's grandad (aged 78) had his 82 year old mate around last night....both sat inside. We're living in our motorhome on their farm now and aren't even going inside their house to use the toilet....they couldn't give a toss though. They'll have their other friends over for Sunday lunch this weekend I'm sure too.....that'll be 4 different households all 75 plus mixing indoors.

They're lovely lovely people and would help anyone out....but it's really really starting to wear me down watching their behaviour. It also really worries me....my girlfriend has never known her dad and was brought up at her grandparents with her mum. Her grandad has had a few health issues and she is terrified of losing him.....he really is basically her dad.

Well this thread is even cheerier than normal today I see 🤣

Increasingly I believe that the dithering, prevarication is as much to do with not making any decision but having decisions forced on them/us. Quite literally by doing little/nothing the choices are made for them.

This explanation was advanced in The Grauniad recently:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/15/boris-johnson-pandemic-britain-christmas-covid

"Johnson’s technique for dealing with problems is to let them run out of control, building to a point of sufficient crisis that delay is no longer viable. That way the choice becomes perversely easier because there are fewer options left. Wait long enough and there might be only one."

He wants some human interaction, some purpose, something to do. he can’t see his mates for a quick pint

Lunge - I think you might be surprised! I certainly understand the why he would want to do that. A lot of us (certainly those off work for a year) understand the want to go out & do "something/anything". One half of me constantly wants to, whilst the other wants to hide under the table!