Wow: sorry, thats a whopper of a post.
TLDR: Sydney is in pretty hard lockdown to try to slow the spread of Delta while people are vaccinated. Even with pretty harsh lockdowns, it's still spreading. We are unlocking soon (once vaccination reached a certain point) and that is freaking people out.
Sounds miserable down there at the moment.
We are unlocking soon (once vaccination reached a certain point) and that is freaking people out.
To be fair, some of the communication timing has been 'unfortunate' to say the least. Announcing plans to lessen restrictions on a day of record cases in NSW seems counter-intuitive for example. And given there's so much conflicting modelling being bandied around about what rates of spread and severity will be if lockdown eases I can't blame people for being unsettled.
I heard an ABC interview with an epidemiologist a couple of weeks ago after a raft of changes in vaccination and quarantine/lockdown measures, pointing out that the only thing that hadn't changed was the thing that would make the biggest difference, and that was the establishment of major international quarantine facilities - eg a Howard Springs set up in each capital city. I can't see how we haven't managed to put that together yet.
the communication timing has been ‘unfortunate’ to say the least
Agreed.
On the whole, I think all of the states have done a really great job, even Victoria and NSW - despite the vitriol on social media. Mistakes have been made - sure, but I think overall the states have done a very good job. I don't really know much about Gladys (NSW premier) outside of her handling of the bushfires and pandemic, but based on how she's conducted herself during those times, I think she's done a really good job, despite her party affiliation.
Scomo and chums (the federal government), on the other hand, have been universally shit. Almost everything they have done/were supposed to be doing has been buggered-up to Bojo proportions.
the thing I'm most annoyed about is the complete absence of effort on their part. The juxtoposition between the state premiers (and state health leaders) standing up in front of the press every day and really being accountable for everything that's going on during what's essentially a war-effort, vs a state government who put somebody forward to speak to the press maybe once every couple of weeks, and who are so clearly under-delivering but just don't really seem to give a shit.
By far their most damaging failure was their lack of urgency re: the vaccine roll-out. The fact that 6 months after a vaccine being first available, we were still at stage 1a is inexcusable. Scomo's "it's not a race" statement will (I hope) come back to haunt him and the libs at election time. Alarm-bells should have been ringing when he removed vaccination targets, because he didn't want them to be used as a stick to bash him with for the next 12 months..... which is exactly why they were needed.
Always interesting to see the Australian perspective - as you say, complete mirror image if how the UK have handled the pandemic, seemingly united by a complete failure of communication.
Re mask wearing
It seems in some way to be regional or geographical even in small pockets
It seems to have been this way throughout. We live on the border of two local authority areas. Where we live, we had a much lower rate of deaths and infections, but shopping in Aldi from the start of the pandemic, mask wearing, distancing etc was much higher than I'd have expected to see.
A couple of miles up the road if we've used Aldi in the neighbouring area, yeah, I can see why you have higher infection rates if that's how you treat the publicly enforcable rules, **** knows what household adherence was like.
Interesting that against this third wave and growing concern in the UK, we've Erasmus partners across Slovakia, Spain, Malta, Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Italy and Greece all cancelling in person meetings slated for this autumn. In addition, some are cancelling everything in-person until end of projects in late 2022...
Mirrored by EWS I guess.
I'm left wondering how many of the public here are going to react to either protracted and worse wave 3, with accompanying distruption to normal life, and/or going back into restrictions.
I also think the growing awareness of how much is being spread in schools and early years is confirming so many teachers views that they were thrown under the bus last year.
Thrown under the bus? The vast majority of my daughters teachers went dark during the home teaching period, I was embarrassed for them!.
To be fair, they weren't as bad as my uni lecturers, they were even worse!
Other than schools, what other sectors are routinely testing and therefore picking up asymptomatic infections? My wife's colleagues (NHS) do but they are also PPEed to the max when working.
In Israel most of the hospitalised and seriously ill are double jabbed.
The vast majority of teachers I know were in school teaching small groups, and teaching all the other kids at home remotely, and ringing each parent/pupil to try and assist them one to one to try and keep the kids focussed and the parents onboard. That was before testing of the pupils on site was a thing. All while being told schools are safe by the government, and demonised in the press for not being brave like the NHS staff (for wanting mitigations to be put in place that fell far short of anything happening in the NHS). This was before vaccinations were available to them.
In Israel most of the hospitalised and seriously ill are double jabbed.
Obviously. How many folk in Israel aren't double jabbed?
I also think the growing awareness of how much is being spread in schools and early years is confirming so many teachers views that they were thrown under the bus last year.
Because it's being proactively tested, rather than reactive testing everywhere else. Proactively test elsewhere and you'll find more so you can easily have that argument for any sector.
Plus we didn't need Covid to tell us that dirty little children are spreaders of viruses, it's been known for erm, a pretty long time.
Thrown under the bus? The vast majority of my daughters teachers went dark during the home teaching period, I was embarrassed for them!.
To be fair, they weren’t as bad as my uni lecturers, they were even worse!
Does that not highlight That video conferencing is a very different skill to that of teaching stood Infront of a class.
I sure as hell can't stand in front of a class and teach effectively but I do how ever do online training over VC with people around the globe.
Then there is the other side the ones not in school working with the vulnerable and key workers kids were given no help or guidance to set up at home. The vast majority of teachers my wife included had no work systems or access to work systems from home or external systems in any meaningful way. Her work laptop arrived in december 2020..... the school still operates a hardwired desktop system - and that's a c~10 year old school.
She was working from an old mobile phone with a sim she supplied and paid for and my desk top computer in the spare room - all while trying adhere to a privacy policy on VC that didn't exist essentially - hence why you saw creeps getting into online classes hitting the headlines
So yeah Id go with Matt's sentiments.
Not everyone in a position to throw their own money at their jobs and these days very few younger folk have their own laptops it's all tablets these days.
That's all hurdles before you realise that the resources you have to teach with don't actually convey over VC.....
But yeah. Lazy.
worse wave 3
I think what’s important here in the UK is what exactly is considered to be “worse”. With 100 deaths at 25k cases seeming to be a politically acceptable loss of live and assuming a liner trend, is 400 deaths per day at 100k cases deemed politically acceptable, or do we see an intervention (as I suspect) when deaths start to get to a certain point and Flu related deaths get considered into the mix? It’s expected that Flu may well be more deadly this year due to our repressed immune systems, so does that have a bearing on restrictive interventions in Winter 21/22?
In Israel most of the hospitalised and seriously ill are double jabbed.
Thought experiment about a hypothetical disease and vaccine.
Assume that 50% are vaccinated and 50% not. Assume that vaccination provides 90% protection. Out of 1000 people, 500 will be vaccinated and 500 will not. Expose them all. 500 unvaccinated will get the disease. 50 vaccinated will get it, total 550. Percentage catching it who are vaccinated is 9%.
Assume that 90% are vaccinated and 10% not. Assume that vaccination provides 90% protection. Out of 1000 people, 900 will be vaccinated and 100 will not. Expose them all. 100 unvaccinated will get the disease. 90 vaccinated will get it, total 190. Percentage catching it who are vaccinated is 47%.
Assume that 99% are vaccinated and 1% not. Assume that vaccination provides 90% protection. Out of 1000 people, 990 will be vaccinated and 10 will not. Expose them all. 10 unvaccinated will get the disease. 99 vaccinated will get it, total 109. Percentage catching it who are vaccinated is 91%.
Note that the number of cases goes down as the percentage of vaccinated becoming ill goes up.
Prior to the vaccination program, I believe the restrictions were too little too late and we could have avoided tens of thousands of deaths with stricter controls. However, now we’ve been vaccinated I’m now coming to think more restrictions could be counter productive.
Here’s why....
Covid is the most infectious respiratory infection known to man, this coupled with waning vaccine immunity and a large proportion of the public that are bored with restrictions mean it will continue to circulate at high levels for the foreseeable future. It’s not really a question of if you’ll be exposed to it, it’s when.
So you can either go back to some normality and accept you’ll be exposed to the virus maybe every 2-3 months or be ultra cautious and restrict all your interactions and maybe get exposed every few years. The second option might seem more sensible at first sight, it I think multiple regular exposure might actually be better.
I think tired said antibody levels half every 2 months after vaccination (but maybe different for infection?) so after 4 months you have 1/4 of the antibodies, but after 2 years you’ll have 1/4096, so I’m thinking it’s better to have regular exposure to the virus to give the immune system a regular booster, most likely you’d get no symptoms or very mild symptoms but your immunity would be continually topped up. If you hide away and your immunity has waned there is a risk you’d get hit much harder. It’s analogous to being lifted off the ground holding onto a powerful kite in a storm, if you let go you’ll fall to the ground and maybe graze your knee, but if you hold on you’ll potentially fall much further and break your neck. So would you rather graze your knee every 3 months or break your neck every 2 years?
Government is waiting for the media backlash on deaths/vaccine effectiveness, when that starts they will reintroduce masks initally and get boosters issued along with flu vaccines.
As for whats politically acceptable its down to the media response to deaths etc. I think we are some way off that yet.
The general public are led by the nose of media and social media not ONS stats. So no real electoral impact.
Rishi wants to stop furlough and support and cut benefits and pensions and increase both direct and indirect taxation on a huge scale.
This winter will be the big test for the UK, i think its going to be unpleasant.
With 100 deaths at 25k cases seeming to be a politically acceptable loss of live and assuming a liner trend, is 400 deaths per day at 100k cases deemed politically acceptable, or do we see an intervention (as I suspect) when deaths start to get to a certain point
On the Scottish equivalent thread I opined that 25 deaths per day would be considered acceptable. Scale that up tenfold for the UK and you're looking at 250/day. Up to 500/day will be "concerning" and we'll only see significant restrictions re-imposed beyond that number. I came to that conclusion based on the actions of our governments and the preparedness of the population to go backwards into last year's measures.
As before, the bigger test will be the capacity of the NHS to deal with the severe cases.
Mudmuncher that approach will lead to large and ongoing death tolls and probably unsupportable levels of long covid. Not saying that its not the answer but that requires a huge mental step change in the general publics perception of whats acceptable.
I agree we need to stop assuming we can fix everything, humam arrogance is taking a hit and we are being put back in our place by nature.
Mudmuncher, your scenario, if played out over many years, is entirely reasonable, especially if we have yearly jabs and treatments available as per flu. It’s a sound long term approach. The problem comes if we try to use exposure rather than vaccination as our short term approach (arguably it looks like we are) over the coming months. That will cause more poor health outcomes (and, yes, deaths) than we (well those directly effected) should have to put up with to allay the boredom of politicians as we get through the pandemic stage of this virus. We will end up with this virus being endemic. There is no clean short cut to that, it will take time and patience, and leadership.
As an alternative to your analysis, Mudmuncher: if you're going to get Covid anyhow then the more recent your jabs the less likely you are to take up a hospital bed. And your own immune system will have been exposed to the real virus under relatively safe conditions. Double vaccination and having the virus seems to offer the highest level of protection against both getting the virus and serious illness.
Keep vaccinating people knowing you'll have fewer people in hospital and they'll also build their own immunity as they get infected whilst vaccinated. Every six months seems reasonable given the two month halving until people have had the virus.
Once people have actually had the virus we may be able to increase the period between their jabs as natural immunity seems more durable than vaccine induced immunity in some people.
As there are more numbers to crunch I hope these trends confirm and a protocol can be established. At present in France if you've had the virus you don't need a jab for your pass sanitaire for six months and then only need one jab. If you catch the virus between jabs you don't need the second jab.
@oldmanmtb2, my thoughts are the multiple regular exposure would lead to less deaths. Restrictions are just kicking the can further down the road and reducing vaccine protection when it inevitability comes back.
@kelvin, We should be pretty much at the point where every adult is jabbed, but maybe we should give it another month to pick up the stragglers and ensure everyone has had their second jabs.
We have had a monumental effort to vaccinate millions of people in a very short period of time, so the level of protection is as good as it’s going to get. Immunity will wane, so my point is it’s perhaps better to get on with exposure to fortify our protection rather than to avoid exposure and potentially undo all of that immunity and protection from the vaccines.
There are no good solutions, we are between a rock and a hard place and I’m not 100% confident I’m correct, but it seems to be the best option as far as I can tell.
As an alternative to your analysis, Mudmuncher: if you’re going to get Covid anyhow then the more recent your jabs the less likely you are to take up a hospital bed. And your own immune system will have been exposed to the real virus under relatively safe conditions. Double vaccination and having the virus seems to offer the highest level of protection against both getting the virus and serious illness.
Yep, exactly my point
my point is it’s perhaps better to get on with exposure to fortify our protection rather than to avoid exposure and potentially undo all of that immunity and protection from the vaccines.
I suspect that there is already an element of this in the current relaxation of restrictions - allow people to be exposed/infected in the summer when pressure on the NHS is lower.
In France 1 in 10 of serious cases are vaccinated, in Israel which vaccinated earlier it's higher. We can learn from the country that vaccinated first about when to do it again. Six months for the elderly.
Immunity will wane
Boosters. And improved vaccines. And the availability of better treatments for those still falling ill. All that is coming, and coming at us fast. Short cuts that seek to infect and damage people in the name of “getting this done” as soon as possible is a political choice that we are being groomed into accepting.
Does that not highlight That video conferencing is a very different skill to that of teaching stood Infront of a class.
I'm not talking video conferencing, I'm talking not even utilising the software available to give the kids stuff to do, basically doing nothing, sending out **** all work for months. If I'd done that, I'd have had my jotters.
But yeah. Lazy.
Absolutely.
Some of them have been good, some bad, me saying all of them are as bad as folk holding them up as some kind of martyr, both viewpoints ridiculous, the truth as ever is somewhere in the middle.
we are being groomed into accepting.
Bollocks. It's not all the doing of the politicians and the media. Step away from STW and the majority of folk just want to get on with things. They'll accept a much higher death rate than we're currently experiencing.
More anti-teacher shite I see. Rule number one guys.
I've never seen Madame work so hard, 90% of her colleagues likewise. meanwhile the rest of society... . Teaching is among the professions that rose to the challenge.
I also think the growing awareness of how much is being spread in schools and early years is confirming so many teachers views that they were thrown under the bus last year
Although I don't think the stats back that up. If the below is correct then the measures in place at schools did a reasonably good job at managing the risk. From the data in the link it looks like manual workers or indeed bus drivers would have more grounds for that view
Rates of death involving COVID-19 in men and women who worked as teaching and educational professionals, such as secondary school teachers, were not statistically significantly raised when compared with the rates seen in the population among those of the same age and sex
Where British teachers have been thrown on a bus is where mask wearing and open windows aren't obligatory.
More anti-teacher shite I see. Rule number one guys.
You can quote some daft rule if you wish, but to say that the whole teaching profession is some kind of martyrdom is as ridiculous as saying the rest of us are lazy. Mrs Nobeer is a nurse, and she'll be the first to tell you she works wi some right lazy bastards, teachers don't seem to be able to do this, the holier than thou attitiude is incredible.
Where
BritishEnglish teachers have been thrown on a bus is where Masking wearing and open windows aren’t obligatory.
Boosters. And improved vaccines. And the availability of better treatments for those still falling ill. All that is coming, and coming at us fast. Short cuts that seek to infect and damage people in the name of “getting this done” as soon as possible is a political choice that we are being groomed into accepting.
All in favour of boosters, I think it’s crazy we aren’t getting on with that right now. Given the relative low numbers getting jabbed at the moment there must be capacity.
I’m not in favour of “getting this done” by the way, I just think my approach might lead to less death.
If I had a magic wand and could halt all transmission/infection for 6 months to get all kids jabbed etc. Would it be the right thing to cast that spell? I’m really not sure, you’d increase protection for those that aren’t really affected, but in those 6 months the antibody levels in the vaccinated vulnerable would have dropped to 1/8, so you’d possibly end up with more death/disease.
So how many of Mrs Nobeers colleagues didn't rise to the challenge of Covid?
but to say that the whole teaching profession is some kind of martyrdom
Nobody did, but now you have, remember rule number one.
Kids get long Covid too, increasing infection rates now will result in more kids with long Covid.
You really don't want this virus whatever your age and vaccination status.
So how many of Mrs Nobeers colleagues didn’t rise to the challenge of Covid?
In her old job, I'd say about a third of them.
In her new role, it's hard to tell, as there's virtually **** all in terms of permenant experienced staff, full of bank and agency staff, hard to tell if they're lazy or inexperienced but in both cases it's not ideal.
Nobody did
I'd say 'thrown under a bus' is fairly close to this, would you not?.
I think being sent into a class room with closed windows and no mask wearing at 66 fits teh figurative expression of "being thrown under a bus" pretty well. Your quote is in no way figuartive, no a common expression and a whole lot more provactive.
I'm provoked and defending my corner.
I've no idea what you're on about, so I'll leave you in your corner. 🙂
Yeah, this has gone off on a tangent. I don't think anyone said the covid precautions taken by schools were perfect. And I'm certainly happier sitting at my WFH desk than having to go into a class full of kids. But those figures seem to indicate they weren't put at undue risk compared to the rest of the population, and risk was lower than some other occupations. Partly I guess because they weren't actually in the classroom for much of the first 2 waves... and when they were back I'm sure some of them did open a window even if it wasn't mandatory 🙂
Except many were in the classroom. Schools were open even when teachers were being lambasted for them being closed. As for risk… I know teachers who left the profession rather than become an obvious vector between the classroom and at risk people at home. A hard choice. Risk isn’t just about your own health.
All in favour of boosters, I think it’s crazy we aren’t getting on with that right now. Given the relative low numbers getting jabbed at the moment there must be capacity.
I do wonder, despite the puffing about tens of millions of doses which supposedly would be available post-summer, whether the supply isn't there, and quite possibly won't be before the winter.
The booster supply is coming. No, we don’t have them in the UK yet.
All in we have around 500 odd million of the various doses on order? would be interesting to see when they are all expected.
The issue for me is that we should be planning on the basis that the schools returning will create another round of increased transmission, and that immunity in the first-vaccinated (and most vulnerable) groups has already begun to wane. Neither of these things is certain, but, given the month or two it will take to go around with the jab, and the lag between jab and maximised immunity, it doesn't seem wise to wait until we can see either of them happening.
My head teacher gf might take issue with the idea that she or her staff weren't doing everything they could for their pupils while facing unknown risks to their health, certainly early on, but then schools do differ. Some are just shite. PHE were doing a good job of helping in the event of infections but the direction from the DOfE was absolutely woeful. She was here one night watching Johnson on TV to find out what they were doing in three days time FFS. While the teaching profession hasn't shown greater rates of infection than the general pop it's also true that a lot of have left the profession in order to protect their own or family members health. Of course we're awash with teachers so that's not a big deal...
The current vaccinations were not formulated for Delta but do a decent enough job of protection. Waning protection over time was expected. Vaccination does a better job of protection than infection.
Almost 7,000 new cases in Scotland yesterday. Assuming England follows on two weeks behind (as we've seen) expect 100,000 cases/day by 10th September. Could be more as there is still a reasonable amount of mask wearing up here.
No "circuit breaker" being planned.
