I guess passports make more sense long term (boosters or improved vaccines for new variants).

I suppose it’s useful to get people accustomed to the idea. Then if they can get the Europeans to accept them it can be painted as a win rather than us having to sign up to their scheme…

A quick trip into town…

Mask use:

Train in ~ 30%
Ordering in queue in cafe ~ 25% (ie me)
Opticians/chemists ~ 100%
Sweet shop ~ 100%
Train back ~ 10%

Obvious where the behaviour has changed the most. Will be using the car more than normal this summer, for sure. You can eye up a shop or cafe before use, and make your “choice”. Once you’re committed to public transport you’re entirely dependent on other people’s “choices”. And for a duration that’s also outside your control.

I havent been out this week, will be interresting to see how much has changed. Wife said on Monday mask wearing was at previous levels and I did wonder if it might actually be sustained, not so sure now, I did think when it was announced we’d see adherence collapse pretty quickly, starting the with selfish which will eventually infect every one else, why bother wearing on to protect others when no one else is. I’ll make my own decision based on what I see, if others make the effort I’ll definitely do my bit, if others aren’t there’s no point really. FWIW I’ll be avoiding eating indoors and public transport where I can regardless.

In the few shops I’ve been in since the weekend, mask wearing seems to be the same as always. Only a couple of people not wearing them. Seems totally normal these days. I guess that’s what nearly 18 months of wearing one does to you.

COVID cases down today though they aren’t really are they as that’s not how exponential growth works. We are seeing the next big problem. People are not reporting cases or going for PCRs during the holidays and and now the schools are not chasing. My son was a likely close contact of someone at school earlier this week who had a positive lat flow. School said to us to take daily lat flows and come in as it’s not their responsibility anymore and wait for track and trace. Turns out he’s not gone for a PCR so no track and trace. I suspect that this is happening all over the country as people don’t want to isolate their households during the hols.

In the few shops I’ve been in since the weekend, mask wearing seems to be the same as always.

Yup, all the shops I passed seemed to have near universal mask use in them.

I suspect that this is happening all over the country as people don’t want to isolate their households during the hols.

Hospitalisations is more of the key metric anyway, not just for covid but for wider so people may avoid a PCR but it’s unlikely you’ll want to avoid a trip to hospital to save your life.

Cases have dropped without the number of PCR tests dropping… which is a good sign. Fingers crossed. Hospitalisation is absolutely key… but the lag also means it tells us more about what has happened than what is happening. Hopefully they will also be falling soon into August.

In the few shops I’ve been in since the weekend, mask wearing seems to be the same as always. Only a couple of people not wearing them. Seems totally normal these days. I guess that’s what nearly 18 months of wearing one does to you.

I was in my local Sainsbury’s yesterday and I’d say only about 50% were wearing masks

Is the cases plateau real, or is it because…

Businesses no longer have access to free LF tests, so doing less?
Poor self-administered tests to get negatives that won’t affect hollibobs?
People only getting PCR tests if they feel genuinely unwell, so their hollibobs aren’t ruined?

Devon now gone 400+. England map looking very purple now.

How long before Wales’ cases strongly suggest their continued stricter rules show just how poor Boris’ judgement was/is?

Re masking wearing, I popped into a Motorway services today and the whole time I was there only saw 2 people without masks; an older chap who should know better and a young late 20’s builder type having a piss, didn’t even wash his hands.

Jesus, this thread has went from being incredibly informative, really great stuff, to something out of last of the summer wine, or the maskectorists!

A few pages back I said that India was of interest because despite 2/3 of the population having had Covid the death rate was low even if you added one or even two zeros to the official figures.

Two recent articles in the Guardian give support to those suppositions. Antibody testing says 65% of tbe population has had it and the death figures are probably 10 times the official figures.

Now have a look at the population of India and do your sums for a country in which the vast majority of Covid sick had no access to health care and were not vaccinated. And the same ethnic groups pointed out as especially vulnerable early in the UK first wave. The death rate is lower than I’d have expected.

All those things put together lead me to the conclusion that Delta is more transmissible but less deadly. Not enough to stop worrying about it but enough to make me think the predicted (go back to the early part of this thread) evolution towards more transmissible but less deadly is happening.

Someone locally puts a summary of daily cases and deaths for the local authorities across Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire – the number of daily cases seems to have steadied, which is encouraging. Getting 1 or 2 deaths a day coming through from previous infections, but case numbers seem to have stabilised at least.

The death rate is lower than I’d have expected.

All those things put together lead me to the conclusion that Delta is more transmissible but less deadly

I feel you might not have considered the age distribution enough in your comparisons there.

Wife had someone lean right in to her and invade her personal space in Tesco checkout queue this afternoon, she is 9 months pregnant. She told the lady (who was maskless) to back off and had a very snotty retort back from the lady about it no longer being a requirement. The young girl at the checkout told the lady to back off and don’t make other customers feel uncomfortable. If she does, they won’t serve her. Apparently staff there had been told to enforce distancing and they will be backed up by senior management. If only the government could be as firm on their messaging.

So what do we think about food workers not needing to isolate if pinged? Feels like a pathetic knee jerk reaction to news stories showing empty shelves. Surely this is the end for the app even if it doesn’t know it. Who in their right mind still has it on their phone? Why would you isolate if next door doesn’t have to or people without the non-mandatory app don’t get pinged or can hide. Either scrap the app and isolation or bring back some proper measures to control the spread. The current mess is the worst of all worlds, it isn’t reducing the spread, it’s hurting business and it’s enforcing the notion that people can effectively do what they want so God help us if we do need to put restrictions in place again, I predict adherence will be patchy at best.

Meanwhile in the USA nautural selection of the stupid continues. I know I should feel some compassion for them but if they’d lived they’d only be voting Trump again
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/jul/22/us-coronavirus-covid-unvaccinated-hospital-rates-vaccines

So what do we think about food workers not needing to isolate if pinged?

Memo to all journalists … don’t mention Brexit if you want any further briefings or invites to ask questions from anyone connected to the government.

Nobeer, you’re right to say the thread was informative.
It is now dominated by a small number of posters who comment about everything posted by others.
TiRed and the few others who are informed and directly involved are worth reading but their posts are increasingly infrequent.
To sum up…too much noise, too little substance.
Thus far – 32,060 posts; could Mark analyse to identify the top 10 posters and state their number of posts?
This thread is evidence of the STW acronym – you know, same ten bankers.

Gah: 136 cases in NSW last night. “No doubt that the numbers are not going in the right direction. The situation that exists in NSW is regarded as a National Emergency”

Residents of two large local government areas are no longer allowed to leave their suburbs (unless essential workers) – things are deteriorating.

They have also telegraphed a ramping-up of pressure on the federal government re: vaccine rollout – looks like they want more Pfizer jabs in respect to the younger populations of the most heavily impacted suburbs, and it looks like they are going to move to prioritise the 1st jabs for people, rather than reserving supplies for peoples second jab. Something that I saw coming, and was anxious to get my second jab before came into effect.

The Australian government needs to get on top of it’s coms strategy NOW. How terrible politicians are at communication has always been a bit of a joke for me since I moved here 10 years ago – but it’s now costing lives. They seem to just be standing in front of a bank or reporters without any kind of prep for basic questions that they were obviously going to be asked – as a result, the messages given are unclear, confusing, or just plain stupid.

I’ve been really critical of the BBCs reporting during the pandemic – it’s been very obviously heavily biased towards the government – it feels like they went onto some sort of “war footing” whereby their priority was to support the government messaging rather than “independent” journalism. That’s very obviously missing here in Australia – there have been so many articles about the cases of people dying after the AZ jab, and virtually no “public information” type articles laying out the relative risks of jab vs jab, and jab vs no jab, and urging people to get vaccinated. Maybe that’ll change now that a “national emergency” has been declared?

Dunno. Interesting times.

Definitely interesting times @batfink – sorry it’s looking ‘pretty average’ down there at the moment 🙁 Hope it doesn’t spin out of control.

I’m confused why the QLD border didn’t shut sooner personally – they shut off to SA and VIC pretty quickly.

I’m sorry but i’m not really on the same page with you about the messaging. Admittedly i’m in the industry, but most of the information i’ve seen and heard has been quite clear about the risks of the jabs. I guess the polarisation of the public’s media sources doesn’t help.

On the positive side, this morning I heard the TGA has approved Pfizer for 12-15 year olds in Australia… now we just need to get enough of it out there.

For my part, I’ve sent emails to my kid’s school’s Principal about the lack of parents mask-wearing at the bus stop. People just still don’t seem to be able to grapple with the concept of how viruses spread.

it’s stuff like this that I’m talking about:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-23/queensland-coronavirus-vaccination-astrazeneca-rare-blood-clot/100315488

Was the Oxford professor on R4 this morning saying schools have no effect on spread(amodel that can be applied elsewhere?? That being the case I presume all the Oxford colleges will just open their doors an crack on.

I may have misheard Mrs 100th was busy giving me a breakdown of the latest office politics.

Was the Oxford professor on R4 this morning saying schools have no effect on spread(amodel that can be applied elsewhere?? That being the case I presume all the Oxford colleges will just open their doors an crack on.

My understanding is that Cambridge are saying “back to normal” when they reopen in the autumn.

Nobeer, you’re right to say the thread was informative.
It is now dominated by a small number of posters who comment about everything posted by others.
TiRed and the few others who are informed and directly involved are worth reading but their posts are increasingly infrequent.
To sum up…too much noise, too little substance.
Thus far – 32,060 posts; could Mark analyse to identify the top 10 posters and state their number of posts?
This thread is evidence of the STW acronym – you know, same ten bankers.

Needs funny pun at end like what Gary Linker does.

Who in their right mind still has it on their phone

Surely better to make informed decisions? There’s no legal requirement to isolate if you’re pinged by the app. It might cause you to be more careful about contact with other people and step up your testing regime though.

All this talk about it from business ‘leaders’ is IMO about their desire to escape the duty of care they have to their staff and customers. Times are tough, I get it, but everyone is trying to find a way through this.

All this talk about it from business ‘leaders’ is IMO about their desire to escape the duty of care they have to their staff and customers.

A million times this.

On the current England trajectory, it’s simply a matter of time before time off work for Covid related reasons will be counted towards attendence procedures, people will turn up for work with the “Covid sniffles” to avoid getting a warning.

Depressingly on point from The Mash, as usual.

https://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/millions-exercise-judgement-not-to-be-arsed-to-wear-masks-20210722210389

The British Medical Association, effectively the trade union for doctors, has called for “an urgent rethink” of the government’s Covid strategy, arguing that Boris Johnson has gone to far in lifting restrictions. Dr Chaand Nagpaul, the BMA chair, has frequently questioned government policy in the past, but this morning he issued a particularly strong critique, arguing that the media focus on the so-called pingdemic is missing the point. He said:

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/jul/23/uk-covid-live-news-latest-updates-coronavirus-pingdemic-boris-johnson?page=with:block-60fa8ae78f0814e7a316fe35#block-60fa8ae78f0814e7a316fe35

99.7% survival rate ! Seriously get on with your lives  like we used to ! It’s all b*ll*cks!

Insightful.
Would you care to explain the difference between case fatality rates and the effect of longer term morbidity on public health and the effect of nhs capacity on non communicable diseases such as cancer survival

Insight from the care sector…..

Wife is in a head office ‘management’ role in a chain of care homes. Sounds like it’s in meltdown – not from rampant covid but mass numbers of staff out of action and isolating.

Some of it is genuine but some not so much…..

A work group whatsapp where members of staff forgot a manager was in the group. Ping parties are now a thing apparently. A bit like chicken pox parties amongst middle class folk with toddlers.

To get 10 days paid off work in the good weather you need a screen shot you have got ‘pinged’. You have a friend with asymptomatic covid that shows up on a lateral flow and before they go into isolation you pop round with your phone and leave it on their kitchen table alongside theirs for an hour. Hey presto 10 days in the back garden topping up your tan. Other colleagues not in the know doing the right thing and you know, actually working, breaking themselves to cover the hours as bank staff impossible to come by. Resident welfare is suffering as a consequence.

People are shits.

All this talk about it from business ‘leaders’ is IMO about their desire to escape the duty of care they have to their staff and customers.

The standard answer seems to be “we can’t legally ask our employees to remove the app, but….”

Its an utter farce

99.7% survival rate ! Seriously get on with your lives  like we used to ! It’s all b*ll*cks!

How much of the survival rate do you think is due to the measures we have undertaken so far? ie: not just getting on with our lives, but rather isolating when infected, shielding the vulnerable, vaccinating, mask wearing and so on? Don’t hoy it away now, is the plea.

See also –

Millenium bug – well that never happened did it!

To get 10 days paid off work in the good weather you need a screen shot you have got ‘pinged’. You have a friend with asymptomatic covid that shows up on a lateral flow and before they go into isolation you pop round with your phone and leave it on their kitchen table alongside theirs for an hour. Hey presto 10 days in the back garden topping up your tan.

Some people are arseholes. But what can you do about it?

Some people are arseholes. But what can you do about it?

Death penalty seems the only permanent solution.

99.7% survival rate ! Seriously get on with your lives like we used to ! It’s all b*ll*cks!

3 in 1000 die of it then (leaving aside long covid etc)

There’s 333 sweets in this tub. You MUST eat one.

How lucky do you feel?

MCTD I get your point but it’s a bit disingenuous. If you’re unvacced and over 80 a better analogy would 330 sweets with blank wrappers and dozens that are toxic. If youre 25 fit and healthy, more like 1 or 2 might make you a bit queasy and they are clearly labelled. But if you’re in the former group 99.7% doesn’t look so great.

We will need to get on with our lives, but not quite like we used to and not quite yet, unfortunately many have decided the time is now and it’s party time.