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I'm getting a sense that the same old 'battle-lines' are being drawn up for everyone to follow on the vaccines.
I always wonder why it's so easy to guess someones opinion on things these days, I'd wager than if I asked someone who said "masks don't work" and said the lockdown was pointless because it stopped them going down the pub, they're the exact kind of people who'll tell you that they're not having the vaccine because it's untested. You could explain, until you're blue in the face the difference between rushing something, and doing something quickly by throwing huge resources it, but there's always a Social Media factoid that's bullshit, but somehow more compelling that they can 'prove' the opposite.
Still, I'm pleased to hear that supposedly Phase 1 will reduce the number of Deaths and Admissions by 99%, I hope that's true.
I always wonder why it’s so easy to guess someones opinion on things these days, I’d wager than if I asked someone who said “masks don’t work” and said the lockdown was pointless because it stopped them going down the pub, they’re the exact kind of people who’ll tell you that they’re not having the vaccine because it’s untested. You could explain, until you’re blue in the face .....
Masks don't work, Hancock said so....
Pubs are safe ...
Care homes are safe...
Schools are safe ...
Then the same government tells them the complete opposite and you wonder why they stopped believing?
Then the same government tells them the complete opposite and you wonder why they stopped believing?
A lot of the non believers I know still think Brexit is brilliant.
Thanks Tired - that makes more sense re drug trials.
One of Madames colleagues has just tested positive for a second time. First time in the Summer she was moderately ill, this time no news on her state so far other than the test result, a positive PCR test which I believe is quite reliable for positive results.
Everything points to both test results being reliable: consistent with her Covid symptoms the first time and her contacts the second time.
USA has recorded 1 million cases in the first 5 days of December 😱😱
dan - just posted that to the 2020 election thread.
Jeez, it's frightening.
trump still says absolutely nothing; talk about blood on his hands - that's an inadequate way of describing his culpability.
I’ve just seen the pictures of the GA rally tonight. Thousands of recnecks shoulder to shoulder, no masks.
USA has recorded 1 million cases in the first 5 days of December 😱😱
If you look at the US infection graphs on worldometers, you can see daily cases sharply increase 4-5 days after thanksgiving. Suspect we’ll see the same here after Christmas.
Assuming a five-day period of mixing, schools closed rather than open, and a typical doubling time of about 10-14 days noted from Tier 1 before lockdown with schools open, I think we can expect prevalence to increase by up to a factor of about sqrt(2) or 40% over Christmas. Not doom and gloom but there will be a bump. I’d say 25% was a good outcome.
Going into Christmas we will see admissions continue to fall for another week and stabilise due to Tier 2/3, deaths falling up to a week after that and then stabilise. All cause mortality will peak over Christmas week 51-52 but stay high due to post Christmas spreading. Normal peak death is Week 2 of the year.
Seasons spreadings to one and all...
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm6947e2.htm?s_cid=mm6947e2_w
The governor of Kansas issued an executive order requiring wearing masks in public spaces, effective July 3, 2020, which was subject to county authority to opt out. After July 3, COVID-19 incidence decreased in 24 counties with mask mandates but continued to increase in 81 counties without mask mandates.
I actually feel less optimistic now over the last few days. Not surprised that our cases have stopped falling now. Good that admissions and deaths are coming down, but it really wont last long.
It's not at all certain, but I anticipate cases clearly rising even before the Christmas free-for-all. I do think SAGE's suggestion of a doubling through that time is probably pessimistic, after all people won't be at work or school, it will just be family groups (mostly) and many of these must already be in fairly close contact. But it will be a further rise for sure.
Basically, it's a race to get the most vulnerable vaccinated as there's no other way we can sustainably hold out through the winter. Barely into Dec now!
but I anticipate cases clearly rising even before the Christmas free-for-all.
Two markets on London and Nottingham closed down today due to overcrowding and no distancing. It’s started already. It’s the NHS staff I feel sorry for, it seems people aren’t thinking about their Christmas which’ll be ****ed for them.
Hearing/seeing more and more comments in local news items/sites/TV from local health officials pinning the recent spread on inter household transmission.
Anyone know if that is supported anywhere, or if it could be based on proper data? Anecdotally seems to be a connection between the few FB "friends" I know who have tested positive and the same people posting pics of themselves failing to socially distance over the last few months.
(And I'm not trying to infer it has nothing to do with schools/students etc)
50% of the population is below average intelligence. COVID-19 has made it apparent who's in the lower 50%
Just because “most cases” are inter household, it had to get into the house somehow.
If you stop the person who brings it into the household in the first place - you stop the lot!
Yeah I mean it's pretty ****ing obvious that one infected person is likely to pass it on to household members. Indoors for a long time with no social distancing - what's to stop it? Just like flu and colds and norovirus and everything else.
I appreciate the comments about initial infection into a household. My question related to remarks from health officials about "inter" household transmission and not "intra" household transmission.
So do they gave access to any data that would reliably confirm that?
I do think SAGE’s suggestion of a doubling through that time is probably pessimistic,
Yes, me too. But think a half-doubling is not unreasonable over the entire period, and have said as much. Having been out today, Windsor was busy, so yes a lot of extra contacts about. Maybe cases will rise a little earlier. It’s been a week after a policy change (either way), two for cases abs three for deaths. Half term is visible in the ONS prevalence data, especially when broken down by age.
Sorry misunderstood that MCTD. FWIW my impression is that most of these assertions about modes of transmission have been poorly supported. Obviously when a group of people like a school class all go down with it together the link may be obvious, but when it's just a case of asking what someone did in the past week, it's far more tenuous because of the unknown base rate (ie, how many people did exactly the same things *without* getting infected).
My daughters school (Tonbridge) now has yr 7,8,9,10,11 all off isolating! 7-10 home until January. Y 11 back in on 14th.
Secondary household attack rates reported up to 25%. This was one of the first studies with rates half that in China
Closed confined inside spaces. My favourite being the Canadian spinning class. I’d give those a miss for a while - over 60 including secondary cases!
My infection came in via my son searching passengers at Heathrow. We never passed it beyond the house.
my impression is that most of these assertions about modes of transmission have been poorly supported.
Thanks, that was my impression, but seem to be hearing it a lot.
Update from the antipodes (beepbeepbeepbeepbeep)....
NSW have had our first "community acquired" case in about a month: A cleaner in a quarantine hotel in Darling Harbour (Sydney's equivalent of Leicester square). They have genotyped the virus and traced it back to American cabin crew who were quarantining at the hotel.
They have published the details of the individual trains and trams that she took while infectious, and are asking people to come forward and get tested.
There's also been a snafu at the airport: 2 Germans were allowed to land at Sydney an catch a connecting flight to Melbourne without quarantining for 2 weeks on arrival. This has gone down like the proverbial shit sandwich with the victorians - given how hard-won their eradication has been.
Victoria has reported 0 new cases today, marking the 38th day in a row that the state has recorded no new coronavirus cases or deaths. There are currently 0 active cases state-wide.
Meanwhile restrictions are starting to lift: Victoria's mask mandate is being softened, and even NSWs very mild restriction of only 1 person per 4sqm at indoor venues (restaurants/bars/cafes) is changing to be 1 person per 2sqm.
International flights into Melbourne are starting again - all eyes are on their quarantine procedures for returning passengers - a single leak from which (a security guard rooting an inmate - that's the official Australian term btw) was responsible for hundreds of deaths in Melbourne.
Australia and NZ are examples of how an island nation should manage a pandemic.
If only the UK had taken a strong, clear and decisive action.
Leaving politics and personalities out of it, the UK response has been abysmal with countless avoidable deaths.
Too many of the great british public are also culpable.
Science appears to be coming to our rescue.
Australia and NZ are examples of how an island nation should manage a pandemic.
If only the UK had taken a strong, clear and decisive action.
Leaving politics and personalities out of it, the UK response has been abysmal with countless avoidable deaths.
There have been a few cock-ups along the way (a whole cruse ship riddled with covid disembarking in circular quay, for instance) - but they/we have got a lot right, maybe not the first time - but pretty quickly.
In my mind, the most impactful intervention has been effectively banning international travel (compassionate travel is allowed by exception) - only citizens and permanent residents are allowed back in, and on arrival are held in quarantine for 14 days. Literally locked in a hotel room. I think we are allowing 6,000 arrivals per week at the moment. As an idea of scale the last 7 days, we've had 70 confirmed cases in quarantine hotels, but only 2 in the community. That's the whole of Australia BTW. The Victorians have given us all an excellent illustration of how important this quarantine has been.
Working within a "closed system" has allowed us to keep the numbers down to a level where we can much more effectively track and trace - the best in the world I suspect, although the south Koreans have done excellently (using human tracers much more so than an app), but also the restrictions have generally been much milder, and so are more sustainable long term.
We've had to cancel a holiday to Fiji (Fiji is closed too - so not just Australia's fault) - which has cost me about $2k, and it really sucks that my kids (2 and 4) haven't seen either sets of grandparents for one of their birthdays, and this Christmas... but there has never been a moment when I'm not glad we are here vs the UK.
My fear is that one of the grandparents in the UK will get it (all in their 70s) - and we will be so far away. I've already lost an uncle and a distant inlaw to it..... hopefully that's all, but both sets of grandparents are under instructions to ignore boris et al, and strictly self isolate until they get the vaccine. I fear that christmas and pre-vaccine complacency is going to be an issue.
Australia & NZ are examples of nations that had a zero Covid policy from the outset.
As i have consistently tried to explain elsewhere, all WE have tried to do is to make sure there is a spare bed in Intensive Care when YOU need it.
We have thus far succeeded in this limited remit, and so we can tentatively chalk it up as a win.
We can argue the toss as to whether we should have been more ambitious, but we saw it out until a vaccine was developed. So we've got that going for us. Which is nice.
^ I honestly can't tell how much of that is sincere, or sarcasm.
Australia & NZ are examples of nations that had a zero Covid policy from the outset.
No, no we didn't - in fact NSWs stated goal was expressly not eradication, but to build effective processes and systems so that further lockdowns were not needed despite clusters continuing to pop up. Victoria's lockdown was a result of one of those processes failing - demonstrating the point.
The premier of Victoria was under such huge pressure after the quarantine failures led to hundreds of extra deaths, that he had to go-in extra hard with the second lockdown - and even then then goal was only to get the rolling 14 day daily average down to single digits, not zero.
I think NZs policy only became eradication when they realized it was achievable, and again, required a second lockdown due to a quarantine failure.
I guess I agree with the the fact that the UK has (so far) achieved it's goal of not overwhelming the NHS...... however, I'd know where I'd rather live.
Yes, the UK governments goal of not absolutely burying the NHS. Or rather not burying it too much. Though that almost happens every winter anyway, enough that it makes the news but not enough that it's not forgotten by March by most of the populous.
Even at the point we are now, early in winter, I suspect the human aspect of the "NHS" is already pretty buried and burnt out.
My partner is far away from the pointy end of the NHS in a lab but is absolutely destroyed at the complacency within her own family let alone the general population and her work place.
It's not helped by the fact that the management within her department are unwilling to tell other staff when a co-worker is off work due to testing positive! I am absolutely fuming about this.
I find that absolutely f*** immoral! I won't even get into the legal/ health and safety aspect of it.
F clapping in Spring. Going out and banging on a saucepan. Well. Bloody. Done. Utter hypocritical ** many of them. Go out on your doorstep on a sunny Thursday to clap then go on FB to moan about not being able to go to the pub. God forbid having to put on a mask for 5 minutes in the co-op, the utterly terrible infringement on their civ libs. The horror! Wearing a mask for 5 minutes in a shop is absolutely the LEAST anyone can do during this. Jesus, I find it more uncomfortable to gargle Listerine twice a day after doing my teeth.
I haven't as much as hugged her since this shit began as I am terrified of passing it to the person I am shielding. My partner doesn't live with me so we have totally given up any sort of physical interaction. Not just the obvious, I'm talking just hugging/ holding hands, the very stuff that helps people get through times like this. We meet up during the week in separate cars and go for day long walks, distanced, whatever the weather as we know the risks of meeting up indoors. Not for *us*, but for the person I am desperately trying to protect through this. My partner is amazing... incredible and I know how unbelievably tough this had been for her. She could have easily walked away and I wouldn't have blamed her. We just hold out a hope that by Spring things will change. Thats what we do. We are on pause hoping for better.
This mega rant isn't aimed at anyone by the way. Ok,not anyone on this forum anyway.
If someone says to me that "vitimin D is my PPE" tomorrow though, I might just do some time for them.
Stay safe all.
Jesus.....sorry to hear all that Poop
You have a precious gem of a partner there poop. Virtual hugs from me to both of you.
Australia and NZ are examples of how an island nation should manage a pandemic.
If only the UK had taken a strong, clear and decisive action.
We should certainly have bitten the bullet on quarantine and international travel from earlier on BUT at a practical level (I'm not using this to justify the government's criminal inaction) the volume of international travel to, from and through the UK is on a completely different scale to Australia and New Zealand. That doesn't mean action shouldn't have been taken.
Some people have been absolute selfless heroes through this to protect loved ones, and others have been utter bellends. The lines between the two will get deeper and wider as Christmas and vaccine complacency creep up. More of my circle of "friends" who were posting pics of non-social distancing activities through this year are admitting that they have had positive tests, and wondering why I'm still refusing offers to meet up for a ride or a coffee.
Nobody can afford complacency. I was hearing last week of two CV victims in the one ward, 27 and 33, not obese and with no underlying conditions. I cannot believe that the Thurmaston shopping centre, and this must be replicated all over the place, car park is always rammed and there's not a proper food shop there, it's all nick-nacks. I'm beginning to wonder whether there are some people you can't frighten, even with death. Religion? Empiricism? Idiocy? Cummings? Consumerism? What's that short-term memory loss thing called again? Sadly, some'll be pushing up daisies and communing with their angels before we can unmask the truth.
One of my children has a classmate who is positive and now has to isolate for 14 days
So how does we manage school pick up for siblings ?
Should they even be in school if their brother might be positive anyway
My parents are relatively close but asking them is a no go because they are old & hi risk
Other school parents we'd normally ask are isolating themselves
The daft thing is,he'd be outdoors at all times on school pick up, so transmission chance is virtually 0
And we will now end up involving more people in our family bubble to get round this, which is much more risky
So how does we manage school pick up?
Not sure what your work circumstances are but ours have been very accommodating to let us work around that problem when we've had to. We have been very lucky, I know.
Yeah I've spoken to my boss, and he's been very helpful, or work had been split into bubble and I'm on the late shift 2-8pm, but it's an hours commute away so I'll be doing a half shift, which impacts a lot on the rest of the lab and the work I do.
People’s behaviour is intrinsically linked to their perceived likelihood of direct impact. See speeding. Without that close link then changing behaviours is challenging. The media reporting that everyone has comorbidities reduces that perceived likelihood. Pregnancy is a comorbidity btw. The problem with what is a rare event, isn’t that it is rare, it’s the fact that the susceptible sample size is so large, so total numbers are still big. At the beginning I said that people will know somebody who knows somebody who has died. That’s not as common as knowing someone directly (which I do). But looks about right.
We’re at the knowing someone who’s had it stage. The potential for mortality is about 0.5% of the population of 1/200. That’s pretty good odds and much better than it could have been for SARS-CoV-1 (1/10!). If this had been a transmissible form of that virus, the streets would be deserted and we’d all be inside waiting for that vaccine. Mercifully it is not.
Poop well done for being the better person. It’s hard. But have not seen my sister’s children since January. Zoom doesn’t cut it and they are a family of five in Tier 3. So we can’t both visit them anyway! But in six months things will look a LOT better. Of that I am in no doubt.
@kimbers, we're in a similar position. Eldest daughter is confined to her room for 2 weeks (allowed to use the bathroom obvs, can't get round that risk), youngest is still getting the school bus. Both at the same school.
Fathomer, the car park is permanently full and people are so desperate to get in there they'll block the roundabout at the entrance. Unfathomable.
We can argue the toss as to whether we should have been more ambitious, but we saw it out until a vaccine was developed. So we’ve got that going for us. Which is nice.
I'll offer my congratulations if we get past January/February without overwhelming the NHS. This government still has the chance to **** up the logistics of vaccine delivery, relatively few people will be vaccinated in the next couple of months, and the consequences of Christmas remain to be seen.