Javid’s an austerity/ money guy

He may be a money guy, but I predict his decision making after only a few days in office will damage our economy greatly over the next 12 months.

Yeah, I don’t think the government is capable of anything resembling even medium term planning.

Just shuffling along from crisis to crisis. We are just meat in the grinder.

If nothing else we will be a good or bad example for the rest of the world depending upon how this huge experiment goes.

Not much consolation to be honest.

So if my wife and kids have covid but I am feeling ok to go into work, am I allowed to if I’ve had my 2 jabs?

Also, how on earth will they possibly stop the person with only 1 jab so far, or worse still the folks that have chosen to not be vaccinated, from not self isolating? And let’s face it, if you are the sort to refuse the vaccination I doubt you’ll be the sort to voluntarily self isolate for 10 days if you can avoided it.

NSW/Sydney Update:

Aaaaaaaand lockdown has been extended by another week Was due to finish on Friday, with Kids back to school following half term on Monday.

Lockdown for another week, and schools delayed going back too (except for children of essential workers).

Will it work? Don’t know.

Interestingly, the cases are gradually moving into Western Sydney. The demographic there is very different to eastern suburbs/central Sydney, and I think (reading between the lines) they are worried about peoples compliance with restrictions.

My wife is getting her second pfizer Jab on Monday, me the week after – hopefully things won’t turn to utter shit before then.

Meantime, radio silence (as usual) from the empty suits in the Australian Federal Government re: vaccine roll-out.

Disappointing news batfink.

Are these all Delta variant? It’s increased transmissability will presumably amplify any noncompliance

So if my wife and kids have covid but I am feeling ok to go into work, am I allowed to if I’ve had my 2 jabs?

No. It’s against the law until 16th Aug. Hope you can WFH, and get paid still.

Also, how on earth will they possibly stop the person with only 1 jab so far, or worse still the folks that have chosen to not be vaccinated, from not self isolating? And let’s face it, if you are the sort to refuse the vaccination I doubt you’ll be the sort to voluntarily self isolate for 10 days if you can avoided it

Well, it’s against the law so fines and prosecutions? But that seems harsh if the reason they’re going to work is no work = no pay, to take more off them. I’m sure it’s been thought through.

Actually not different to now except….1/ numbers potentially being infected and as a consequence isolating; 2/ this is being done to restart the economy and may instead cripple it, with no support for businesses that can’t operate properly.

And yes, healthcare too.

We are predicting 50-100k new cases per day in the next couple of days.

Is this because compliance to the current rules is not happening ?

Are these all Delta variant? It’s increased transmissability will presumably amplify any noncompliance

Oh yes – it’s all Delta.

Basically – the system that has worked very well for Australia over the last 18 months, is really struggling with the delta variant. Its a question of whether the contact tracers can keep up with the rate of infection and isolate people before they become infectious. Its worked with all the other variants, but here, even with a lockdown (not a super-harsh one, admittedly) we are struggling.

The other states have done better – but that’s because they introduced restrictions with the cases at a much lower number….. as opposed to NSW who waited for a higher case number threshold to be reached before hitting the “panic” button. The Premier is getting some stick for that – but it’s easy to throw rocks with the benefit of hindsight. Previous (non-delta) outbreaks have been managed successfully without lockdowns in NSW.

Meanwhile, the Federal government (responsible for Vaccine procurement) are taking an absolute pounding from the press and opposition, and are scrambling to release crumbs of positive messages to desperately show that they are doing something…..anything. However, all it’s really demonstrating that they’ve done chuff-all up until this point. Today they announced a slew of private sector firms pledging “support” for the vaccine rollout.

Shadow Treasurer Jim Chalmers: ‘The Morrison government has stuffed up vaccines from the beginning’
Mr Chalmers speaking in Brisbane:

This is team Australia, and the captain has gone missing. What we saw today was another elaborate blame shifting exercise from a government desperate to avoid responsibility.

The problem wasn’t a lack of business input. The problem is a lack of vaccines, of quarantine and leadership. The problem here is Prime Minister has gone missing in the country needs … no amount of blame shifting and finger-pointing and business or generals can make up for the fact the Morrison government has stuffed up vaccines from the beginning.

If this conversation with business was so important, why [did it] take Josh Frydenberg 18 months to arrange it? Again, the problem wasn’t a lack of business input. The problem here is a lot of vaccines and Australians and their economy are hostage to the Prime Minister’s incompetence when it comes to those [failures] on vaccines and quarantine.”

Is this because compliance to the current rules is not happening ?

Maybe partly, more likely just the feed through of earlier relaxations with a much more infectious variant.

We are predicting 50-100k new cases per day in the next couple of days.

There’s a typo there – 50-100k new cases per day in the next couple of weeks. We’re at 25-30k per day currently and Vallance said doubling time is around 9 days.

Is this because compliance to the current rules is not happening

Its a feature of the transmissibility of the virus, and that no real attempts seem to be being made to prevent it. Just letting it happen. Difficult to know for certain if people are following isolation rules etc, meeting as larger groups outside of controlled / regulated events and so on, but given observable compliance like mask wearing is dropping then yes I strongly suspect other rules are also being ignored already, and many of them will be dropped on the 19th

How many infected people are not isolating despite knowing they are infected… hopefully not many.

How many know they should be isolating because of contact with infected people, but aren’t…probably quite a few

Guardian predicting 10M isolating this summer.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jul/06/data-predicting-2m-uk-summer-covid-cases-prompts-health-fears

I think that’s ott, because there will be substantial doubling up etc. And people that ignore it anyway, out of necessity or just because

One of my daughters has to self isolate, but has just had a negative lateral test result.
The other daughter though is allowed to go to school.
The both go to the same school. The school has been hit quite hard with daily emails from them advising of new cases.
Should daughter 2 also self isolate? I’ve had a read of the rules and doesn’t look like it’s necessary, but don’t really understand why 1 does and not the other.
Same for the wife and myself. We can’t not come into contact with the daughter who is self isolating.
Wondering if we all should just self isolate for the next 10 days?

I assume the 16th of August is the date we will have reached the point at which the government deems enough of the population has been fully vaccinated to the point where Covid becomes just another illness. We have to reach that point sometime, is it around 8 weeks after over 18s were offered the jab? We were told hospitslosations and deaths are now the key metrics, assuming that’s the case and infection levels are not a worry for the government. Maybe if they were in the Northwest they might think twice, we had this before when it was bad up north and the South went out to party, didn’t go well last time, anyone remember Christmas being cancelled?

I’m no longer sure what’s going on, case rates around me are now mental (Rossendale), started with a big outbreak in a school and just got worse. Really not sure where we go from here, as usual the government is rudderless, offering zero leadership but I’m also going to blame the masses who really haven’t been following the rules for ages, admittedly with tacit approval from Boris and team. Social distancing has been a joke for ages, mask wearing variable, use of the app sporadic and the app itself can easily send you into isolation when you know you haven’t been in contact with anyone (colleagues wife got pinged but was sat in a closed office for the entire period she was supposed to have been in contact with 2 others neither of whom had Covid, must have been pinged by someone in the corridor or on another floor). Isolation when in contact seems to be personal choice, if you can WFH you do otherwise you ignore it until you have symptoms. Loads of people are back in the office and then we have the test events, Euros etc. To spread it all around.

I said it earlier but lifting restrictions on the 19th is a dead cat, infections are already out of control, lifting a handful of restrictions being poorly enforced won’t make a massive difference, if we want cases to come back down it’s back to May 16th or April 11th, the only thing that has made dent has been proper lockdowns.

Can’t see this improving until significant numbers of school kids have been jabbed and there doesn’t seem to be any indication of that happening anytime soon.

@w00dster, its just your daughter who has been asked to isolate, unless she comes down with symptoms.

We are on week 4 of one of our kids out of school isolating. The primary school last week only had two year groups in, it’s been a disaster of a term so far.  This delta variant is causing chaos in schools.

This delta variant is causing chaos in schools.

My sons schools now has half of all Years at home, and I strongly suspect the school will close before the term is out. I’m starting to struggle now, work and client expectations is that we can start meeting people (with the usual work caveats, but the push is there) yes all you read about is mass exposure, long Covid concerns and mass isolation potential.

It’s just feels as though life it’s turning to disorganised ratshit with a slightly less worse outcome potential, just at the point everyone thought they might get a short break just from the process not least perhaps just a short holiday. I think I’d rather be semi-locked down and go to a Covid safe staycation like last year rather than this uncertainty tbh.

TLDR; if your anxious then current plans have moved the gauge upward rather than lowered it IMHO.

Just to add another perspective I was listening to a “younger generation” radio station presented by a couple of well known young celebrities yesterday. The stark difference in their opinion was very apparent, they cannot wait to “sit in at Nando’s” “Clubbing is soon back on, heelllll yeah” and so on. I’m aware I’m posting amongst fellow middle ageists in the majority, but it just became so apparent that there’s likely and age level that’s not even worrying about half the stuff we are.

Anyway, sorry for today’s early morning ramble…

The stark difference in their opinion was very apparent, they cannot wait to “sit in at Nando’s” “Clubbing is soon back on, heelllll yeah”

Yep and they are the key spreader group and least likely to be vaccinated.

they cannot wait to “sit in at Nando’s” “Clubbing is soon back on, heelllll yeah” and so on

They will learn, as experience is always exam first and lesson second (if you survive the exam in this case).

They will learn, as experience is always exam first and lesson second (if you survive the exam in this case).

What will ‘they’ learn? That this illness is pretty much zero risk for their age group?

New case numbers in Scotland have been dropping for nigh on a week now, thankfully.

New case numbers in Scotland have been dropping for nigh on a week now, thankfully.

Some interesting “analysis” going on too, suggesting that the higher peak in Scotland is because the Winter peak was much lower and there are thus fewer people with natural antibodies. If that turns out to be the case then it will justify the slightly tougher restrictions we had while awaiting the deployment of the vaccine.

However, Raigmore Hospital is currently struggling to cope (BiL had to be transferred to Glasgow) at the weekend.

And the discrepancies in restrictions (between Scotland and England) after July 19th will cause problems. There are certain Unionist groups who will choose to ignore the ScotGov guidance and also folk coming up from down South who will be ignorant of the differences.

How many infected people are not isolating despite knowing they are infected… hopefully not many.

Absolutely loads, I would imagine. Simply because they can’t afford too.

Millions of people have had absolutely no financial support whatsoever from the government since the first lockdown last March. Millions are on zero hours contracts, are freelance or self-employed and they know that if they don’t carry on working they will have no income at all. At best they’ll get universal credit, which is little better than nothing. 70 quid a week?

The labour party, amongst others, have been telling the government all along that they can’t expect people to self-isolate if this means the loss of 100% of their income. The government aren’t interested.

So if you were told you needed to self-isolate for 10 days, yet you had no symptoms, knowing that this would mean no income for those 10 days and possibly the loss of your job, what would you do?

Thats been the dilemma facing millions of people. I’m sure many would really want to do the right thing, but simply can’t

Scotland numbers do indeed look promising

they cannot wait to “sit in at Nando’s” “Clubbing is soon back on, heelllll yeah” and so on

Talking to my young person and his friends, there is no appetite to go all out yet. Just turned 18 and no intention of going to busy pubs and clubs, happy to quietly carry on with small groups of likeminded friends, wearing masks and distancing till they are double jabbed and/or things settle down.

The number of .”let it rip ” youngsters is probably similar to the proportion of the older “let it rip” demographic. He’s just lost one grandparent and has no desire to risk losing the remaining three, and he knows his musical career aspirations depend on working lungs.

Have to say our local schools aren’t too badly hit as yet, despite a 10 fold increase in positive tests locally in the last 4-6 weeks, and we are now averaging 1 death a day after weeks with zero deaths.

Scotland numbers do indeed look promising

Long weekend booked in Edinburgh in late August, so watching Scottish issues closely. Though as my first AZ jab was from an Indian batch you may not let me in anyway…

However, Raigmore Hospital is currently struggling to cope (BiL had to be transferred to Glasgow) at the weekend.

Aye, there will be the usual lag from case > hospital > deid.

I’m heading to Scotland with the other half and another couple a week on Saturday for 3 nights in a self catering airbnb. Our intention is to keep ourselves to ourselves, lunch at cafes outdoors, maybe dinner out one night, masks whenever going into a shop etc.

Is there anything else we should be doing, as far as I can tell the current rules north of the boarder are similar to those down here now? And follow rule 1, obviously!

Out and about the last couple of weekends Sam, Mull and then up the A82, it’s pretty much business as normal, apart from some places still being shut due to no staff (Brexit, not covid) and mibbe the odd one closed due to isloating staff.

Where ye off to?

Comparison of Wave 2 with the current wave – ignore the last datapoint since it’s not a complete week. Anyway, cases doubling every 7-14d. Admissions doubling every 4 weeks (it’s a log-2 scale to read). Deaths are following admissions. What’s notable is the difference from Wave 2, where cases admissions and deaths were largely parallel (proportional on a log scale). We are at about 400 admissions/day at the moment – perhaps 1000/day in six weeks time.

The difference in doubling times is likely due to the nonlinear effects on protection of the elderly from admissions compared to infections.

So if you were told you needed to self-isolate for 10 days, yet you had no symptoms, knowing that this would mean no income for those 10 days and possibly the loss of your job, what would you do?

absolutely I agree Binners. That was the realisation I had last night / this morning when I realised that the self isolate rules for contact with an infected person didn’t end on 19th, but run another month to 16/8. And yes, 100K cases per day has impact of potential 100-200 deaths a few weeks after, but possibly 300-500K people isolating as a result of contact (acc to the law at least) with no compensation – so opening the economy quickly / without restrictions could be the thing that cripples it as a result.

All the pubs will be open, just no-one’s allowed to work or drink in them.

Looking at the age profile of cases, it has been circulating predominantly among the young, and you can see it only really making headway into the older age groups about now, so the true hospitalisation and death numbers from the current ‘strategy’ may be a bit more lagged than current coverage suggests. Hopefully it show that the link between infection and hospitalisation remains weak.

NE England seems to be a focal point at the moment, double vaccination rates aren’t great, so could well be a mini petri dish inside the great national petri dish that is our summer and autumn.

I think we’ll have more clarity by ‘Let it RIP Day’, but given that particular decision is set in stone, the politicians may find their freedom joy slightly undermined by the reality of what this policy means.

so opening the economy quickly / without restrictions could be the thing that cripples it as a result.

As someone said further up the page “I’m sure it’s been thought through”…

…just not by the gov.

@TiRed, is the TL:DR that cases are going up in a similar way between Wave 2 and 3

but that hospitalisations are going up more slowly and deaths track hospitalisations?

Infection Fatality Rate = 0.085% call it 1 in 1000

https://twitter.com/kallmemeg/status/1412529300922904576?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1412529300922904576%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.theguardian.com%2Fpolitics%2Flive%2F2021%2Fjul%2F07%2Fuk-covid-live-minister-isolation-rules-fully-vaccinated-august-boris-johnson-coronavirus-latest

So it we get to 1 million cases we have 1,000 deaths, if 10 million, 10,000 deaths. Plus the excess deaths from other treatments being deferred.

The latest ONS survey is now saying that ~89% of adults now have antibodies, which is 3% points higher than the previous week.

Assuming that level of increase we should be >95% coverage by the 19th.

Given that level of coverage, I cant understand the logical reason not to relax restrictions.

Depends on the relationship between the presence of antibodies and the level of protection an individual has. The vast majority of those single-vaccinated will test positive for the presence of antibodies.

https://www.bmj.com/content/373/bmj.n1274

And yet we know that single vaccination confers only partial protection against severe illness with the delta variant.

Not saying we shouldn’t open up, but we should be clear that this stat and immunity are not the same thing.

I cant understand the logical reason not to relax restrictions.

Most people are arguing that we should be relaxing restrictions, but not abandoning all measures aimed at stopping spread. The antibodies news is good… but does it look as if that is stopping the virus spreading? No, not yet. So, in that case, there is no herd immunity, only most people having some individual immunity. The assumption seems to be we can’t get to the % coverage required to protect communities rather than just individuals without vaccinating teens.

Given that level of coverage, I cant understand the logical reason not to relax restrictions.

I think “relax” is appropriate, but it’s “completely remove” that people have a bit of an issue with.

I’m aware I’m 2 days, and probably pages late to this, but since the announcement on Monday, it’s obviously been on my mind a lot. The fact I live in Wales and not England doesn’t really matter per-se, because despite what Labour are saying, the Labour led Welsh Gov will likely broadly do the same as England, they might change the odd little thing, move the date by a few weeks or whatever just to be seen to offering a better alternative, but that’s about it. We’ve never done anything really dramatically different to England.

I have to say, despite my utter dislike and distrust of Johnson, I can’t help but think this is the least worse solution, considering ALL the factors.

Yes, obviously being a Tory he’s got his mind on his pocket and the pockets of his mates as much as the health of the Public, but this was always going to be the inevitable end of this stage of Covid.

As I understand it, the best Vaccines we have only really reduce the R0 of Delta to roughly the R0 first strain of Covid that came to the UK last year, before we had vaccines. There are no circumstances in which we could stop it spreading to every one at some point, no practical ones anyway.

I’ve read lots of people’s opinions (because we’ve all got them and they’re all as valid as everyone else’s, well, unless it’s your actual job) about how bad an idea it is, but few offering any alternatives. Keir Starmer talks about “removing all restrictions at once” as a bad idea, which is plainly not true, we’ve been removing restrictions for months, not all at once at all, most of them have resulted in an R number over 1.

I would love to be corrected, but I can only see 3 options.

1) The plan, like it not we’re following. Remove all restrictions, allow Covid to transmit freely, causing a huge 3rd wave that will (based on what I read when they pushed it back 4 weeks) end in October when, running out of hosts Covid will fall back down to very low numbers. So when we reach Flu season the NHS isn’t dealing with Flu and Covid at the same time. We risk the projections not being accurate and finding ourselves dealing with a healthcare crisis we can’t handle.

2) Impose more restrictions until the R rate is sub 1, and keep them in place until Spring 2022, even after everyone who wants to be vaccinated has both jabs. At least 7 months. We risk another strain arriving that could be more dangerous, more infectious or both.

3) Push it back until every adult who wants it is fully vaccinated which will be October I think? The elderly who had their jabs 8-10 months prior may not be so well protected and we’ll be inviting a 3rd wave over the winter because it doesn’t matter if we vaccinate everyone, they’re not effective enough to reduce the R0 below 1. We risk the combination of Flu, Covid and other deferred illnesses all hitting at once, causing a healthcare crisis the NHS can’t manage.

I think there is a factor to 2 and 3 that doesn’t often get mentioned, compliance. Mask wearing, social distancing, indoor meeting, hugging etc, lockdown fatigue seems very high to me, just this morning I popped into the local shop, the sign outside asking people to wait until someone else leaves, long gone, they’ve given up and this is Co-Op, not a local indie place, inside, around 20% of people, AKA the Dickhead seemed to have swapped their masks for sunglasses, I don’t understand the link, the the hardcore anti-mask lot have taken to wearing sunglasses indoors, I don’t know why.

I’ve had to conclude, it’s the least worst solution I can dream up.

So if you were told you needed to self-isolate for 10 days, yet you had no symptoms, knowing that this would mean no income for those 10 days and possibly the loss of your job, what would you do?

Reports in the news and on PMQs that people are deleting the app. Ignorance is bliss… perhaps.

I think “relax” is appropriate, but it’s “completely remove” that people have a bit of an issue with.

A point that keeps getting missed in the black and white social media age.

A friend who is double jabbed and had covid at Christmas has apparently tested positive again? Not sure how much faith to put on antibody stats