SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

[Ludens the Red]

You're telling me 20 kids in a playground who are touching the same equipment, sneezing and coughing on each other, touching each other, is safer than 2 adults playing golf together using their own equipment?

Something tells me them 2 people playing golf are going to move a virus about much less than 20 little people in a playground.

Only 1 / 20 kids need the virus to have a chance of passing it into someone else in that scenario. That's 5% of the children there (I'm not even including the adults who, you know, need to watch them and will push the same swings and sir on the same benches as others).

The golf thing? You'd need at least 1/2 to have it anyway. Let's say 25% if it's a group of four.

Maybe j just don't understand math and logic though.

2 people go back to 2 households, maybe even 1.

20 little people probably go back to 30 households with split parents / babysitters while parents work.

It's not just "unfair", it's fecking stupidity.

Even taking into account staffing for golf courses, every job can be done socially distanced. It's basically the perfect exercise at this point.

I know it sounds petty I am moaning about golf, but the expect everyone to just follow some BS rules that actually make no real sense to actual people. I ain't a runner, a jogger, a walker. I don't have kids. I am expected to goto work through all this.

My outside sport is golf, that's my exercise, and I pass less people on a golf course than if I was out jogging anyway.

I'm not arguing btw, I think I'm just venting. Shiny new golf bats for Xmas, back to work today, and lockdown.

Is that you Gareth Bale? I was wondering why we’d not seen you on the Spurs bench recently. New golf clubs, makes sense now.

 

[One Night Only]

Is that you Gareth Bale? I was wondering why we’d not seen you on the Spurs bench recently. New golf clubs, makes sense now.

Got me! Might request to go on the bench sometime soon though. Nothing better to do now.

 

[Relevated]

Simpleton: announce a hard lockdown close it all down Arghhhhh!

*Boris announces lockdown*

Simpleton: ooh, so, errm, am I allowed to walk me dog twice a day


Why do people call for lockdown and then ask such daft questions trying to find loop holes

 

[NinjaFletch]

Got me! Might request to go on the bench sometime soon though. Nothing better to do now.

In fairness, as much as golf should be permanently and forever banned for reasons unrelated to Coronavirus, I can't see the logic at all for banning it when it's perfectly legal to meet up with a friend to go for a jog.

 

[worldgonemad]

What seems to be missed by some is schools are a huge swapping ground for viruses. The may not pass it on to teachers but children pass it on to each other, even a small percentage can be a large driver. In general a small child won't be passing the virus on to a tall adult in the shop, on the street, or in a class room.

What happens is the children transmit the virus to another child, that child goes home and has very close contact with their mum dad for many hours a day and passes it on to the parents despite how careful they've been at work, around friends etc. It's now in the family and the adults can spread the virus more easily to other adults and their own parents and other relations. You can be as careful as can be, dip yourself in Dettol all day if you like and not go near anyone but your child has gone to a large meeting ground for the part of town or village you're in, kids from hundreds of households, some over a thousand households like my old school. Another factor is grandparents do look after children on a semi permanent basis and other pick them up in cars each day. These more elderly people are exposed. I know some that have gone back to looking after their grandson or granddaughter becasue it's family, it's needed money and the parents are working. More furloughed parents mean less grandparents looking after kids, picking them up etc and passing it around elderly circles less. If the schools are closed with parent still working then there's less chance those looking after the kids like grandparents will catch it from them, a 4-8 week period will stop this constant spreading chain.

I must admit @redshaw, I have wondered about the low transmission quotes re kids in school, but have taken it at face value and not seen the sources for the claim. I've also wondered if kids with vulnerable parents have been given a permission not to attend schools so as to protect the parents.
The school thing is something which has got my back up I suppose, mainly because the schools don't seem to have been very proactive in making learning safer.
I've commented before about how the private schools in my area got organised with remote learning very early {within 2 or 3 weeks of the first lockdown}.
My youngest is in the final year of secondary school, meant to be the top comp in our area, and yet very little communication happened through lockdown, with intermittent contact with the school and only 1 lesson per week online with an actual teacher.
When they went back in September, initially they didn't even require students to wear masks in school communal areas, which I found shocking and raised with them.
I think if schools had focused on remote teaching where possible, clearer and firmer rules regarding masks and distancing, then at least secondary schools could remain open safely.
Primary schools are a different matter I imagine, as young children struggle to distance at the best of times and hygiene is a foreign word to them.
A concern I do have, about kids from secondary schools primarily, is that parents seem to have been happy for them to socialise in groups on an evening after school. I wonder how many will continue to be let loose now there is no school at all?

 

[worldgonemad]

My outside sport is golf, that's my exercise, and I pass less people on a golf course than if I was out jogging anyway.

I'm not arguing btw, I think I'm just venting. Shiny new golf bats for Xmas, back to work today, and lockdown.

I feel the frustration, I've got some new fishing rods and was hoping to get out as well. Mind you, with this weather I'm better off indoors!

 

[TheReligion]

You're telling me 20 kids in a playground who are touching the same equipment, sneezing and coughing on each other, touching each other, is safer than 2 adults playing golf together using their own equipment?

Something tells me them 2 people playing golf are going to move a virus about much less than 20 little people in a playground.

Only 1 / 20 kids need the virus to have a chance of passing it into someone else in that scenario. That's 5% of the children there (I'm not even including the adults who, you know, need to watch them and will push the same swings and sir on the same benches as others).

The golf thing? You'd need at least 1/2 to have it anyway. Let's say 25% if it's a group of four.

Maybe j just don't understand math and logic though.

2 people go back to 2 households, maybe even 1.

20 little people probably go back to 30 households with split parents / babysitters while parents work.

It's not just "unfair", it's fecking stupidity.

Even taking into account staffing for golf courses, every job can be done socially distanced. It's basically the perfect exercise at this point.

I know it sounds petty I am moaning about golf, but the expect everyone to just follow some BS rules that actually make no real sense to actual people. I ain't a runner, a jogger, a walker. I don't have kids. I am expected to goto work through all this.

My outside sport is golf, that's my exercise, and I pass less people on a golf course than if I was out jogging anyway.

I'm not arguing btw, I think I'm just venting. Shiny new golf bats for Xmas, back to work today, and lockdown.

Fecking golf should be banned anyway. Breeding ground for cretinous ex-football pros who think they are Davis Love III reborn.

 

[Wibble]

Your messaging has mellowed a lot in the last month or so! Starting to feel more at ease now the vaccines are on the way, albeit slowly?

Do you think missing out on those ~ 15 weeks of school for those 4 years had any impact, even in the short-term? I guess the amount of time spent in school is arbitrarily defined as is, but it is kind of hard to believe missing so much of something we deem so essential could have no impact. Did you worry about it at the time?

I think the UK is in such a mess what should have happened back in March/April doesn't now need to be stated. I still very unhappy with all governments, Australia's included, for various reasons. We have fecked up vaccine purchase by the look of things so will be a 2 or 3 months late starting as things now stand.

Missing the 15 weeks did reduce his ATAR (Uni entry score derived from A level equivalent exams) for sure, partly as we chose "easy" subjects that don't scale well and he was never very academic anyway. But he got through with a half decent result. He could have got into some courses at some Unis here, assuming he wanted to, and there are so many alternative pathways to almost any career these days as well.

We took a deliberate choice to prioritise his sport, led by what he wanted, and it turned out well. Post school he was offered a sports scholarship in the US almost out of the blue but didn't have a SAT score and he needed quite a high one to get in. Somehow he crammed for a month with our help and liberal use of The Khan Academy and got a good enough score to get in. My wife's reaction when she saw his result was "is that your score?"

He then found the first year of Uni hard as he hadn't enough practice with independent learning but scraped through. It scared the shit out of him as you can't fail a semester or have an overall GPA below 2 and still play/get a scholarship but he knuckled down and worked hard and is now getting straight B's which is more than good enough.

We are both former academics and teachers who still work in education so we were quite relaxed about it all as we know getting in to Uni to a very competitive course isn't really necessary straight out of school and is often a bad idea. We both have done things career wise that didn't even exist when we went to Uni and we know Uni isn't for everyone anyway. Our biggest stress was that he was 100% confident that he was going to get selected for the junior and youth national sides and we knew that it was far from certain as politics is often a huge factor and he had previously been repeatedly overlooked. But he was right which was a relief.

The next stress was that once he aged out of the junior ranks he was still in the state Institute of Sport on a scholarship but too young to have a chance of going to Tokyo and would therefore be a bit aimless for the next 4 years. Then the US offer arrived and he is motivated to get a degree (from a great Uni) in a way he wouldn't have been if he stayed here.

We were of course lucky that it all worked out despite the huge amount of effort from all concerned and it could all have fallen flat on it's arse, but the only way to not fail is to not try (platitude of the day contender).

The biggest issue with closed schools is a) social issues and hopefully a 3 month closure won't be that bad for most and b) kids who rely on school for far more than most, often from the lower socio-economic end of the scale. Special arrangements should be made but it is Boris and the Tories so they won't give a feck.

 

[Kag]

I taught my class all day today (the half that attended as parents were put in an impossible situation) and couldn’t answer their questions. I said this in March last year but quite possibly the strangest day of my adult life: we’re not supposed to be political during school hours and if anything it is actively discouraged. Not today. The building was full of anger, upset and resentment against this government, and at the heart of this you have confused pupils who just came in and cracked on quite the thing. Couldn’t fault them.

The political and ideological decision to send 3 million pupils to schools today will kill people. Johnson and Williamson must own that.

 

[redshaw]

This sort of action should've happened the moment it becomes clear in the data that the new strain looks to be more transmissible and target the areas like Kent Aus/China style. With a whole week of 50k+ cases and the prospect of this south east inferno replicating across the UK the death toll will be startling worldwide and could see Tories out for a long while. Even without the new strain we had high levels of around 20k cases not really going down. The autumn was a time to not go down the March April path of mistakes. The government is like the equivalent of sitting on a shore hoping the tide won't come in this time and when it reaches their chin they scramble out and get washed ashore with their trunks around their head. All this holding out to the last minute hasn't stopped the UK economy shrinking the most per reports. The AZ vaccine may just save some face if distributed quickly.

I must admit @redshaw, I have wondered about the low transmission quotes re kids in school, but have taken it at face value and not seen the sources for the claim. I've also wondered if kids with vulnerable parents have been given a permission not to attend schools so as to protect the parents.
The school thing is something which has got my back up I suppose, mainly because the schools don't seem to have been very proactive in making learning safer.
I've commented before about how the private schools in my area got organised with remote learning very early {within 2 or 3 weeks of the first lockdown}.
My youngest is in the final year of secondary school, meant to be the top comp in our area, and yet very little communication happened through lockdown, with intermittent contact with the school and only 1 lesson per week online with an actual teacher.
When they went back in September, initially they didn't even require students to wear masks in school communal areas, which I found shocking and raised with them.
I think if schools had focused on remote teaching where possible, clearer and firmer rules regarding masks and distancing, then at least secondary schools could remain open safely.
Primary schools are a different matter I imagine, as young children struggle to distance at the best of times and hygiene is a foreign word to them.
A concern I do have, about kids from secondary schools primarily, is that parents seem to have been happy for them to socialise in groups on an evening after school. I wonder how many will continue to be let loose now there is no school at all?

Secondary school kids will probably hang around a smaller group more local and not be spending many hours a day a week in a much wider circle, that's some benefit in terms of not spreading the virus and quite a few have smaller groups and spend time at home online gaming and socializing online.

It's really tough as many schools are so difficult to organize and lots of people depend on them so children don't go down the wrong path and I count education as very important but stopping and severely limiting the spread is quite straight forward if people can sit tight for a while like in Aus/NZ. For countries like England/UK stopping pubs etc is just one drawbridge cut, we cut two but we still have the third one down and get ransacked. We've tried living with the virus, tried various levels of restrictions, protocols at work but they don't have the impact.

 

[Jimble]

Has anyone that’s had it or been told to isolate been contacted by track and trace at all? We were expecting calls and or surprise visits to ensure we weren’t being naughty, but nothing so far. Only 2 days left hiding in the house. And then leave isolation in to full lockdown. Yay

 

[T00lsh3d]

You're telling me 20 kids in a playground who are touching the same equipment, sneezing and coughing on each other, touching each other, is safer than 2 adults playing golf together using their own equipment?

Something tells me them 2 people playing golf are going to move a virus about much less than 20 little people in a playground.

Only 1 / 20 kids need the virus to have a chance of passing it into someone else in that scenario. That's 5% of the children there (I'm not even including the adults who, you know, need to watch them and will push the same swings and sir on the same benches as others).

The golf thing? You'd need at least 1/2 to have it anyway. Let's say 25% if it's a group of four.

Maybe j just don't understand math and logic though.

2 people go back to 2 households, maybe even 1.

20 little people probably go back to 30 households with split parents / babysitters while parents work.

It's not just "unfair", it's fecking stupidity.

Even taking into account staffing for golf courses, every job can be done socially distanced. It's basically the perfect exercise at this point.

I know it sounds petty I am moaning about golf, but the expect everyone to just follow some BS rules that actually make no real sense to actual people. I ain't a runner, a jogger, a walker. I don't have kids. I am expected to goto work through all this.

My outside sport is golf, that's my exercise, and I pass less people on a golf course than if I was out jogging anyway.

I'm not arguing btw, I think I'm just venting. Shiny new golf bats for Xmas, back to work today, and lockdown.

Why don’t you go all Fight Club and just play golf in the street? They’ll be deserted what with lockdown and you won’t have to worry about being shit because no one will be there to see it

 

[Stack]

I have a cousin in London who caught the virus a month ago but luckily has recovered. I talk to her about once a month online and just want some good news for the UK.
Are there any dates in terms of vaccine doses being available and their rollout? Is there an actual known timeframe for manufacture and delivery?

 

[Carolina Red]

Hey! We’re winning!

 

[prateik]

7000 cases / 100k.. Bloody hell.

 

[WI_Red]

Hey! We’re winning!

Mormons getting busy!

 

[Rado_N]

Hey! We’re winning!

Masks are communist!

 

[Blackwidow]

Wanting to leave things as late as possible is totally normal. Germany were hailed as the success story up until winter, with their regional approach, their track and trace system and their proactive restrictions. Last week they had over 1,000 daily deaths, they are almost at 50,000 daily cases and it has risen each week, and they are about to extend their lockdown for 3 weeks. That’s because they wanted to leave things until as late as possible. Locking down does huge damage to the economy, so you don’t want to do it too early, you want to do it only when necessary. The problem is they misjudged the timing, like almost every comparable nation has done. Ireland were in a very different situation and managed things much better up until a few weeks ago, but look where they are now too.

Germany reacted on the higher numbers in autumn - they just did not react as strictly as they should have and probably later than they should. But it is always easy to tell that after it happens. There is a lot people think that the German government has overreacted in spring.

The 7-Tage-Inzidenz is the number of cases per 100k inhabitants in the last 7 days - to compare it with the chart of the English regions posted some pages before in this thread.

The trend seems to be that the numbers now go downwards - but the question is how much this is still influenced by less testing around Xmas and New Years. The lockdown measures between mid of November and mid of December (no school closures, all shops still open etc.) were not enough to get the numbers down. The lockdown probably will be prolonged for atleast another two weeks with schools still closed - but that will be discussed in a meeting this week.

	Total cases	Difference to yesterday	Number of cases in the last 7 days	7-Tage- Inzidenz	Number of deaths
Baden-Württemberg	244.930	1.016	14.301	129	4.947
Bayern	334.567	1.948	20.858	159	6.925
Berlin	98.754	657	4.618	126	1.305
Brandenburg	42.887	174	4.295	170	1.008
Bremen	13.747	34	552	81	204
Hamburg	37.535	0	2.027	110	661
Hessen	140.371	406	8.397	134	2.991
Mecklenburg- Vorpommern	12.562	108	1.472	92	179
Niedersachsen	110.777	506	7.282	91	2.041
Nordrhein-Westfalen	402.519	1.925	21.620	120	6.820
Rheinland-Pfalz	74.435	520	4.825	118	1.476
Saarland	20.199	58	855	87	445
Sachsen	139.700	1.368	13.153	323	3.378
Sachsen-Anhalt	32.083	586	4.003	182	694
Schleswig-Holstein	25.751	211	2.272	78	446
Thüringen	44.696	330	5.364	251	1.054
Gesamt	1.775.513	9.847	115.894	139	34.574

 

[rcoobc]

It is something you are going to have to deal with so I was actually being helpful. My son missed approx 15 weeks of school per year for his last 4 years of school including a full year of remote learning so I know it isn't trivial but it is achievable and the younger they are the easier it is generally and the learning disadvantage less important.

Obviously it is much harder for some than others either due to work situations e.g. do both partners work from home or have to work at all, socio-economic matters and the educational background of the parents etc etc all make a difference. But for most a term of helping your kid to learn remotely won't matter much for them in the long term.

You aren't being helpful at all mate.

I already spend way more hours teaching my kids outside of the classroom than most would guess.

But that wasn't the topic of conversation, we were talking about the incompetance of teachers and schools to provide a basic education.

It's pointless you asking me to spend time teaching my kids - either I already do that or I don't, but it's not going to help the rest of the countries children who are missing out on their education.

 

[Skills]

With the level of community spread now matching/exceeding last March, are we getting any data about re-infections in that time scope? I know testing was limited back then.

Secondly, why is the new variant more transmissible? Is it because you're asymptomatic for longer, or you're more likely to spread it while asymptomatic?

 

[Dancfc]

Wtf is this?

I can't play golf, yet playgrounds are staying open for kids? feck off man.

This type of shit is exactly what not only fuels the conspiracy theorists but allows them to sow seeds in other people's heads.

I like playing tennis so I feel similar to you right now, surely the rewards outweighs the risk here?

 

[Wibble]

With the level of community spread now matching/exceeding last March, are we getting any data about re-infections in that time scope? I know testing was limited back then.

Secondly, why is the new variant more transmissible? Is it because you're asymptomatic for longer, or you're more likely to spread it while asymptomatic?

It isn't certain yet, but more than possible, that the variant is more transmissible due to insufficient data. Human behaviour could well account for some or all of the increased in infections. If I were a betting man I'd say it probably will turn out to be more transmissible, if no more severe in symptoms, but perhaps not by as much as the 70% Boris has kept bashing on about, like a drowning many grasping a safety bouy.

If it is more infectious it will be due to changes to the make-up of the protein spike that means it binds to human cells more easily. The mechanism of how increased transmissability may occur is unclear at this stage but may include factors such a higher viral load in nasal and bronchial tissues.

So far there is no suggestion that this variant is more harmful or won't be protected against by vaccination.

As for reinfections I don't think that it is a major concern. They do happen but no more, and possibly less, than with most viruses.

 

[RoadTrip]

He will get held to account at some point come the next election but just because I hold people to blame doesn’t mean I’m approving of the government’s actions so take your apology and shove it where the sun don’t shine son.

but you spend all your time in this thread defending them. And did I say you were approving their actions? No. Just that you choose not to focus on it, rather the things people do wrong. So shove your bullshit back up that dark passage where it came from yourself .

 

[Dancfc]

With the level of community spread now matching/exceeding last March, are we getting any data about re-infections in that time scope? I know testing was limited back then.

Secondly, why is the new variant more transmissible? Is it because you're asymptomatic for longer, or you're more likely to spread it while asymptomatic?

It's what virus' do isn't it? Mutate to survive.

 

[TheGame]

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

 

[RoadTrip]

There's no trained staff on the magic staff tree to function the Nightingale's. The issue isn't capacity as in space, it's trained ICU staff to manage critical care.

It’s more that the Nightingale hospitals were set up before the virus was truly understood. It means they can’t actually administer the required medicines there eg. ventilators. They’re not equipped for it. At best, those hospitalised but are treatable with oxygen are the only ones who could go there.

You’re right though too, staffing is also an issue.

 

[Wibble]

You aren't being helpful at all mate.

I already spend way more hours teaching my kids outside of the classroom than most would guess.

But that wasn't the topic of conversation, we were talking about the incompetance of teachers and schools to provide a basic education.

It's pointless you asking me to spend time teaching my kids - either I already do that or I don't, but it's not going to help the rest of the countries children who are missing out on their education.

I was trying to say the stress about it can be downplayed a bit. The forecasts on long term doom are for the most part overplayed.

Schools are probably struggling given the flip flopping by the government. So give them a break. Be pissed off by Bojo et al. but when it comes to helping schools to teach your kids remotely I'm afraid you just have to suck it up for your kid's sake no matter what you already do.

I quit teaching because I though it was essentially broken and requires redesigning from the ground up. But like you I had to just deal with what is for my own kid.

I've been very pissed off with my son's schools from time to time but often in the end you just have to cope.

I'd hope this would be a catalyst for modernising education so that we emphasise critical thinking and problem solving over memorisation and bullshit standardised testing, but I'm not holding my breath.

 

[Penna]

Churches are mostly empty I think

I have watched Mass online from all over the country since March. Catholic churches aren't empty, no idea how it looks in the CofE.

Since people have been allowed back in the churches, they are sitting apart from each other in the pews, there's no singing, everyone is wearing a mask, the services are kept as short as possible and no-one shakes hands.

There's no sharing of the wine and many priests are distributing the communion wafers as people leave, so they actually don't leave their seats during the service.

At the end of the service you see volunteers wiping down the pews with disinfectant. I don't think they could do much more to stay safe.

 

[United Hobbit]

You're telling me 20 kids in a playground who are touching the same equipment, sneezing and coughing on each other, touching each other, is safer than 2 adults playing golf together using their own equipment?

Something tells me them 2 people playing golf are going to move a virus about much less than 20 little people in a playground.

Only 1 / 20 kids need the virus to have a chance of passing it into someone else in that scenario. That's 5% of the children there (I'm not even including the adults who, you know, need to watch them and will push the same swings and sir on the same benches as others).

The golf thing? You'd need at least 1/2 to have it anyway. Let's say 25% if it's a group of four.

Maybe j just don't understand math and logic though.

2 people go back to 2 households, maybe even 1.

20 little people probably go back to 30 households with split parents / babysitters while parents work.

It's not just "unfair", it's fecking stupidity.

Even taking into account staffing for golf courses, every job can be done socially distanced. It's basically the perfect exercise at this point.

I know it sounds petty I am moaning about golf, but the expect everyone to just follow some BS rules that actually make no real sense to actual people. I ain't a runner, a jogger, a walker. I don't have kids. I am expected to goto work through all this.

My outside sport is golf, that's my exercise, and I pass less people on a golf course than if I was out jogging anyway.

I'm not arguing btw, I think I'm just venting. Shiny new golf bats for Xmas, back to work today, and lockdown.

I agree, my dad plays golf and will struggle staying at home as he usually works long hours- if he could just play golf he would be fine. Even if they made it a rule they can only play on their own or with someone in their house/ only use their own clubs/ toilets are shut- it's technically a glorified walk!

 

[RoadTrip]

7000 cases / 100k.. Bloody hell.

? The number in brackets is cases per 100K isn’t it? So 600-800. Which incidentally is less than here in London feck sakes.

 

[Berbasbullet]

Simpleton: announce a hard lockdown close it all down Arghhhhh!

*Boris announces lockdown*

Simpleton: ooh, so, errm, am I allowed to walk me dog twice a day


Why do people call for lockdown and then ask such daft questions trying to find loop holes

Because they want to be furloughed?

 

[RoadTrip]

This type of shit is exactly what not only fuels the conspiracy theorists but allows them to sow seeds in other people's heads.

I like playing tennis so I feel similar to you right now, surely the rewards outweighs the risk here?

I think he is just ranting but there is, in fairness, logic to the argument he makes. The overarching point as you say is, for the greater good/reward, it makes sense just to close everything to reduce risk. But Regarding golf, you don’t share balls or clubs. You can play the whole round without being near each other or touching anything that the other is using. It’s basically akin to meeting someone to do exercise together (which I believe is still legal) and hence logically, it doesn’t make sense. I think we all get the bigger picture and this is a tiny thing in the grand scheme of things but is a clear example of how everything this government does makes no sense.

 

[Volumiza]

but you spend all your time in this thread defending them.

I really don’t though. It just surprises me when the focus is all on the government when I view it slightly differently. I’ve said repeatedly that I think the government have screwed up many times and Boris himself has been awful, I doubt there is one post of mine here where I’m a cheerleader for the government, my point though is always the same.

Just because our government is stupid, and allows us to do stupid things, does that mean we have to be stupid and do stupid things? No! But I see it every day. I live somewhere that is popular with visitors and usually I have no problem with it but all I see now is stupidity and selfishness and judging by the numbers there’s a lot of it about.

. Just that you choose not to focus on it, rather the things people do wrong.

That’s not correct, I’ve had many a rant to my Mrs about the government and their weak actions but it is the things people are doing wrong that is the main driver in what is happening ... in my opinion.

Judging one doesn’t mean you aren’t judging the other but I don’t like posts where the public seem to be completely absolved of blame, it really annoys me. The government are doing a bad job throughout but sections of the public are being complete idiots, displaying all the worst aspect ms of human behaviour, that is my view and it will take a lot to shift that.

I just don’t like being @Volumiza’d making out I’m defending the government, I’m not, but the population are largely to blame ... again, in my opinion. If everyone behaved as I have behaved (and I’m sure a lot on here too) then the numbers may not be so high.

So shove your bullshit back up that dark passage where it came from yourself .

Touché

 

[United Hobbit]

We have good reason to believe the Oxford vaccine - which will be the vast majority of vaccination in that time - will be effective up to 12 weeks after the 1st dose, as per this key finding.



Almost half of the UK triallists got the 2nd dose 12+ weeks afterwards, so that's a very meaningful finding.

We should expect some people to get infected with covid in the interim period because we know the efficacy 21 days after the first dose is worse than the efficacy after the second dose, and we know the efficacy after the first dose was substantially worse in the UK (84 days between doses) than Brazil (36 days between doses). But even then it's still stopping around half of those people from getting any covid, and almost all of them from severe covid.

The Pfizer vaccine is different because they ran a different trial. It works a lot better than Oxford's vaccine in many ways so we hope it works better in that sense too. But we don't know whether it provides protection up to 12 weeks after. Even their phase I/II study only changed the dose level of the vaccine, not the dose phasing, so we really have no data on how effective the dose is after 21 days. It might decline a little but hold up pretty well like AstraZeneca's, or it might stop working well a month after. The immune response was notably different between the two so it's a risky assumption to believe they'll work the same way.



Their main point is that kids are safe, because they don't transmit it as much as adults and they don't get infected as easily as adults, which is why teachers get infected less frequently than the average profession despite having more human contact than the average profession. If schools were unsafe, teachers would be getting sick substantially more than the average worker. That was a reasonable fear back in March but it hasn't worked out that way, in part because class quarantines have been so frequent, and in part because the kids that get it before quarantine are less likely to pass it on.

When the virus is transmitting at such a high level for such a long time in the general community, it matters less that kids are less likely to get it than the average person. The exposure levels of all people in the UK are at such an elevated level that the risk of kids getting it and bringing it back becomes too high, and there are already too many people getting it without children adding to the spread. They've been doing as much as they can to keep schools open but there's no more wiggle room.



Kids spread it less easily than adults. All people are significantly less likely to spread it outdoors, but there's still a risk of spreading, and that risk is minimised much more by being a tiny human. That might be unfair but that unfairness is driven by the biology of the virus, it's just a fact at this point that they get it and pass it on less often.

Ah ok thank you that's really interesting, good to know at least one works with their new timescales. Why don't they just keep the Astra one at the timescales it's supposed to be, get those people completely vaccinated then they're "out the way" technically fully sorted.... as won't this mass vaccination program be pretty ineffective if it turns out that specific vaccine doesn't work if the doses are too far apart?

 

[McGrathsipan]

Shuffle him out the back door when covids almost over and then let gove / sunak take the glory is probably the plan

What Glory?

 

[F-Red]

Why don't they just keep the Astra one at the timescales it's supposed to be, get those people completely vaccinated then they're "out the way" technically fully sorted.... as won't this mass vaccination program be pretty ineffective if it turns out that specific vaccine doesn't work if the doses are too far apart?

The AZ vaccine, which will broadly be the vaccine that the mass population will get, is still effective at immunising with 12 week gaps. The critical point that they're working to is whilst the production of the vaccine gets up to speed, they're utilising as much volume of the vaccine as possible to get first doses into the target groups. This is because after a single dose, the hospitalisation rates drop significantly, which is the biggest problem at the moment. By 11-12 weeks (which is end of March), they expect to have production volumes in a place to administer second doses, and hospital admissions much lower than what they are currently.

 

[RoadTrip]

I really don’t though. It just surprises me when the focus is all on the government when I view it slightly differently. I’ve said repeatedly that I think the government have screwed up many times and Boris himself has been awful, I doubt there is one post of mine here where I’m a cheerleader for the government, my point though is always the same.

Just because our government is stupid, and allows us to do stupid things, does that mean we have to be stupid and do stupid things? No! But I see it every day. I live somewhere that is popular with visitors and usually I have no problem with it but all I see now is stupidity and selfishness and judging by the numbers there’s a lot of it about.



That’s not correct, I’ve had many a rant to my Mrs about the government and their weak actions but it is the things people are doing wrong that is the main driver in what is happening ... in my opinion.

Judging one doesn’t mean you aren’t judging the other but I don’t like posts where the public seem to be completely absolved of blame, it really annoys me. The government are doing a bad job throughout but sections of the public are being complete idiots, displaying all the worst aspect ms of human behaviour, that is my view and it will take a lot to shift that.

I just don’t like being @Volumiza’d making out I’m defending the government, I’m not, but the population are largely to blame ... again, in my opinion. If everyone behaved as I have behaved (and I’m sure a lot on here too) then the numbers may not be so high.



Touché

In fairness I probably shouldn’t have called you out. And on that basis I probably don’t have a foot to stand on.

I guess where I am, when I go to the supermarket etc. I actually see really good compliance with masks etc. Also I’ve barely noticed anyone on my street who have had people over. Maybe I’m just lucky. I know rule breaking is happening but I haven’t really witnessed it at such a large scale that we should be focusing on it vs the government. I guess my overall point is that whilst not the intention, calling out the public in effect partly absolves the government. And we should not in any way be absolving them. And I had a lot of sympathy for Boris, gave him the benefit of the doubt given how tough the situation was. But the last few months in particular that have been shamefully bad.

 

[golden_blunder]

There were a couple of pubs local to me who were doing take away pints in plastic glasses, no idea why you would want one though as you would have to stand outside in the car park and have it.

I didn't order anything myself but they were doing deliveries of mini kegs as well which wasn't a bad idea at the time and might have kept a few places ticking over, this might be the final blow for some places though.

Grim times if you are a landlord.


Nope don't think it does.

A number of pubs local to me were doing delivery pints in plastic cups usually with a meal though

 

[Brwned]

Got to admit, I agree with all the above @Brwned. I would add Italy to your examples as well. They got hammered initially and were taken by surprise by the virus. This was followed by a lengthy and much more strict lockdown which many posters here commented on. For quite some time restrictions were only very gradually released, and even then cases still snowballed out of control.
As much as our government have made mistakes, it's fair to say that almost every other country has made similar mistakes.
Out of interest @Brwned what's your take on Boris saying earlier that the new varient has had a huge impact on the decision to shut us down at this point?
From the graphs I've looked at, it really seems like the spread rapidly accelerated from around 10th December.

Personally I think opening shops for Christmas and opening up the household mixing was always going to lead to a spike that required a lockdown in January, and it was a stupid trade-off for the government to make and the public to take up. Short-term gain for long-term pain is rarely a good strategy.

It's undoubtedly true though that the new strain has had an impact, and has significantly changed their plans. Without the new strain we may have repeated the "circuit-breaker" from November: stabilise cases across the country and bring the worst areas back into levels the government think are manageable. I don't think they would have considered another lockdown for an indefinite period to even be a last resort if it wasn't for this variant.

I think their idea of what was a manageable level was always misguided though. They were letting things get out of control and mistiming the responses consistently in Winter. They were moving closer to the US' perspective than Germany's, without properly communicating that to the public. Boris on Sunday was the closest to that in a while.

I think the UK is in such a mess what should have happened back in March/April doesn't now need to be stated. I still very unhappy with all governments, Australia's included, for various reasons. We have fecked up vaccine purchase by the look of things so will be a 2 or 3 months late starting as things now stand.

Missing the 15 weeks did reduce his ATAR (Uni entry score derived from A level equivalent exams) for sure, partly as we chose "easy" subjects that don't scale well and he was never very academic anyway. But he got through with a half decent result. He could have got into some courses at some Unis here, assuming he wanted to, and there are so many alternative pathways to almost any career these days as well.

We took a deliberate choice to prioritise his sport, led by what he wanted, and it turned out well. Post school he was offered a sports scholarship in the US almost out of the blue but didn't have a SAT score and he needed quite a high one to get in. Somehow he crammed for a month with our help and liberal use of The Khan Academy and got a good enough score to get in. My wife's reaction when she saw his result was "is that your score?"

He then found the first year of Uni hard as he hadn't enough practice with independent learning but scraped through. It scared the shit out of him as you can't fail a semester or have an overall GPA below 2 and still play/get a scholarship but he knuckled down and worked hard and is now getting straight B's which is more than good enough.

We are both former academics and teachers who still work in education so we were quite relaxed about it all as we know getting in to Uni to a very competitive course isn't really necessary straight out of school and is often a bad idea. We both have done things career wise that didn't even exist when we went to Uni and we know Uni isn't for everyone anyway. Our biggest stress was that he was 100% confident that he was going to get selected for the junior and youth national sides and we knew that it was far from certain as politics is often a huge factor and he had previously been repeatedly overlooked. But he was right which was a relief.

The next stress was that once he aged out of the junior ranks he was still in the state Institute of Sport on a scholarship but too young to have a chance of going to Tokyo and would therefore be a bit aimless for the next 4 years. Then the US offer arrived and he is motivated to get a degree (from a great Uni) in a way he wouldn't have been if he stayed here.

We were of course lucky that it all worked out despite the huge amount of effort from all concerned and it could all have fallen flat on it's arse, but the only way to not fail is to not try (platitude of the day contender).

The biggest issue with closed schools is a) social issues and hopefully a 3 month closure won't be that bad for most and b) kids who rely on school for far more than most, often from the lower socio-economic end of the scale. Special arrangements should be made but it is Boris and the Tories so they won't give a feck.

Glad it worked out! Although it does sound a bit like academically he might have faced some disadvantages from missing that much school, and having sports achievements compensated for that both in short-term self-esteem and long-term prospects. It is hard to see how that maps onto a bookish young person at this time, they rely more on academic growth for their short-term self-esteem and long-term prospects than your son would by nature, and they don't even have the option of another outlet like sports in this moment. It seems reasonable to worry they might suffer more than your son did, in ways we don't quite understand.

Germany reacted on the higher numbers in autumn - they just did not react as strictly as they should have and probably later than they should. But it is always easy to tell that after it happens. There is a lot people think that the German government has overreacted in spring.

Yeah, I suppose that was my point. They didn't take the right measures at the right time - that's the assessment now, after the fact. But you also could easily have said they should've taken harsher measures earlier, and many did. It inevitably would've cut transmission more, and prevented more medical harm. That was a valid viewpoint that Merkel and co. had to consider. But they also had to consider the damage of taking harsher measures too early. The damage to the economy and society are obvious, so the government is required to limit that as much as possible, by doing things as late as possible. It's just difficult to know when that is.

Merkel's assessment of "as late as possible" was much earlier than much of Europe's in spring, which led to better case management. But like you say it also got a strong pushback from many citizens and regional governments. It weakened her ability to do that a second time, and it would've changed her calculations somewhat too. Maybe she did things too early, maybe Germany could cope with more, maybe the damage to the economy is too severe. So Merkel's assessment of "as late as possible" in autumn was different to spring, and even right up to November, there was a desire to leave some things open for longer because it was thought that things could be managed as they are.

In spring the majority of the UK saw Germany and Merkel as a shining light, they reacted quickly and assertively and appeared to reap the benefits of that. That success was ascribed to their regional governance, their testing program, their medical excellence, their community togetherness and all sorts of other things that the UK was evidently missing. It was a clear-cut description: German government is good, UK government is bad, therefore Germany has good outcomes and the UK has bad outcomes. That's how it has been and that's how it will continue to be, because those fundamentals are what dictate the outcomes.

The UK followed the regional governance model and now people point to the flaws of it. The UK went on to test more per capita than their major neighbours and then people pointed to their inability to trace contacts. Germany were doing the right thing, but they were also doing it the right way. The UK were finally doing the right thing, but clearly they were doing it the wrong way. Germany went on to face exactly the same problems. Contact tracing cannot keep up with this volume of cases, it doesn't matter which country that happens in. And regional governance leads to more responsive government when things go well, and more fragmented government when things go badly, with lots of time wasted on political in-fighting.

Throughout all of this, every government left things as late as possible. They just had different perceptions on how late that was, anchored against different sets of priorities at different times. The UK choosing to leave things as late as possible isn't the problem, the problem was what they used to judge how late that shoud be.

Ah ok thank you that's really interesting, good to know at least one works with their new timescales. Why don't they just keep the Astra one at the timescales it's supposed to be, get those people completely vaccinated then they're "out the way" technically fully sorted.... as won't this mass vaccination program be pretty ineffective if it turns out that specific vaccine doesn't work if the doses are too far apart?

I think you mean the Pfizer one! The Oxford one and Astra one are the same, Oxford designed it and Astra Zeneca are manufacturing it. I think AZ were something like Oxford's fourth choice too, which does give you some pause about how likely we are to meet their production targets without delays...

We shouldn't be too worried about the vaccines not working overall. Pfizer's vaccine after dose 2 will be very effective. It might be less effective if we spread out the doses over 12 weeks rather than the recommended 3 weeks, but it doesn't need to be 95% effective anyway. Even if it was 30% less effective by spreading out the doses - which seems unlikely - it would still be better than Oxford's. If Oxford sees no hospitalisations from a 62% effective vaccine, then it is reasonable to expect Pfizer's vaccine to prevent the vast majority of hospitalisations on this adjusted vaccination schedule too. But that's after dose 2.

The problem is the period between dose 1 and dose 2. People will get infected then, from both Oxford's and Pfizer's. We can guarantee that.

Oxford's data tells us that we should expect few, possibly no hospitalisations of healthy people in the interim period between dose 1 and 2. Their data on this adjusted dosing schedule had very poor coverage of older people and other vulnerable populations, so one of the reasons they got no hospitalisations is because few of the people that got covid in their trial would typically be hospitalised anyway. We know it is less effective at preventing people getting covid in the interim period, so lengthening that interim period and exposing it to more vulnerable people means some people might be hospitalised after it. But we know it still cuts case numbers quite a lot, even in that long interim period. And after that interim period it works as well, maybe better. So I don't think we could call it ineffective.

Pfizer's data tells us we should expect no hospitalisations for 3 weeks, and they have better data on older populations and other vulnerable populations, but we don't know if it holds true for 6, 9 or 12. After people get that second dose on week 12, we can reasonably expect almost all severe cases of covid to disappear...for an unknown but limited time period. But before people get that second dose, it's possible that a significant number of people - at-risk people - get hospitalised because the immunity after dose 1 is short-lived.

So I'd say we shouldn't be quite as broadly concerned as you are, it shouldn't fundamentally maim the mass vaccination program. It just might put more people taking the Pfizer vaccine at personal risk than they otherwise would have, for a limited period. And it exposes more people to longer risk during that interim period for Oxford's vaccine than each of those individuals would ideally want. And that risks harming public trust. Because of that, I think we should just stick with the 2 doses over 3 weeks for Pfizer and the flexible vaccination strategy for Oxford, like you say. Technically that is left up to the discretion of vaccination providers, and I do know people that got the first Pfizer dose that have been told they are still getting the second dose 3 weeks later. So maybe that will happen in a lot of cases anyway?

 

[Volumiza]

I guess where I am, when I go to the supermarket etc. I actually see really good compliance with masks etc. Also I’ve barely noticed anyone on my street who have had people over. Maybe I’m just lucky. I know rule breaking is happening but I haven’t really witnessed it at such a large scale that we should be focusing on it vs the government. I guess my overall point is that whilst not the intention, calling out the public in effect partly absolves the government. And we should not in any way be absolving them. And I had a lot of sympathy for Boris, gave him the benefit of the doubt given how tough the situation was. But the last few months in particular that have been shamefully bad.

Boris has been weak, indecisive and slow to act, no doubt. Three of the worst traits possible in the current situation. There! See? My view of the government.

But we have all known how the virus spreads, the conditions it loves to find a new host. We all know what we need to do to slow it down and mitigate the spread, and we have all known since last March pretty much so why are we here? At some point we, the people, have to take responsibility and behave in a manner that will help keep the numbers down. We know how to do it, so, if lots of people aren't being stupid and either ignoring or flat out disobeying the rules, then why are we seeing such rapidly rising numbers?