Oh was he the one people kept using this gif in reply to?
I miss those times. Always brought a chuckle
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
I miss those times. Always brought a chuckle
Yes, maybe RAB is just a Scandinavophile (is that even a word?)Oh was he the one people kept using this gif in reply to?
I miss those times. Always brought a chuckle
A lot of people are incredibly argumentative in this thread, though. Wibble and Pogue are just as argumentative when it comes to lockdowns and restrictions being a positive thing as Regulus is towards the opposite end. I think the problem is that the former is seen by the masses as the only solution because it is the ultimate way to avoid deaths whereas the latter focuses on managing society being open to an extent and allowing a manageable level of deaths. I'm not saying he's right but he does have a point that it is difficult to try argue anything other than "lockdowns good everything else baaaad" in here!
Over 50s to get the booster jab. Front-line healthcare/social care workers and 16 to 49 with underlying health conditions too.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...red-to-all-uk-over-50s-jcvi-watchdog-confirms
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...red-to-all-uk-over-50s-jcvi-watchdog-confirms
The poster generated a lot of reports from other posters and a lot of mod time discussing it.
whether intentional or not, he rubs people the wrong way so hopefully he reads this and takes it onboard
Agreed @Pogue Mahone stop rubbing everyone the wrong way!
Bit dishonest, this. Sweden’s definitely not closed down between the 25th and 3rd every year, and suggesting that to win an argument is cheap.
Population wide, 80% take-up would be a massive success and with luck any covid outbreak would be self-limiting and sporadic. Whereas 80% of over 16s would just give you a natural retardant to a sudden rise in cases, but you'll see a lot of cases.
It's at that moment where your mindset has to change - do cases matter or are they just an early warning for hospitalisations and deaths.
Wide availability of testing can help - the NZ population are already used to the social solidarity argument, so stay home if you've got symptoms and get a test should be an easy sell. Provided it's backed with sickpay and other provisions (like home working or care leave) of course.
In terms of hospitalisations and deaths - the crunch is how close to 100% vaccination of the most vulnerable you can get. In this context 90% adult take-up is twice as good as 80%. But 98%+ uptake in the over 70s is even more essential.
Sounds obvious given what we know about age and covid risk? Not every country can do it, and not every country seems to be chasing it. Here's Hong Kong:
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Good point on the vaccination of the most vulnerable. There is a massive push on vaccinations underway right now and so far a very high uptake so if we do succeed in vaccinating a high percentage of our most vulnerable maybe it wont be as bad as I fear when we open up.
That’s a pretty outrageous distortion of my views in this thread.
Apologies if I got it wrong but you've generally been very supportive of lockdowns throughout as a way to deal with the virus, no?
It’s pedantic city in here today. Tell me what schools are open for me to drop my daughter at? What theme parks? Universities? Do I imagine the cities absolutely emptying? Museums? Swimming pools? Sports? Do I imagine everything being closed 24th, 25th, lots of stuff closed 26th and everything on the 1st and tonnes of cafes and shops being closed even for mellandagarna?
Norway and Denmark are even worse for what it’s worth, couldn’t tell you on Finland.
So yeah, not closed, but running at a fraction of normal, to make the pendantic ones in here happy today.
When they’re necessary, they’re necessary. When they’re not, they’re not. And there are so many different variables between countries no one approach will work everywhere. I certainly don’t think the decision to lock down has been taken lightly anywhere it’s happened. It’s an incredibly unpopular and expensive decision for a government to make.
The idea that I straight up think lockdowns are a positive is, obviously, ridiculous.
When everyone said Sweden would be fecked, healthcare would break down and we’d have the worst numbers in Europe, feck yeah I argued that was OTT drivel. 18 months in with no lockdown and no masks and that never happened.
I also argued that tonnes of early successes would be simply kicking the can down the road and end with similar or worse figures, that also happened all over Europe in particular. You have to go a loooong way down this list to find that “fecked” country that were so wrong, past many that “had it right” and hell, can you even find a European country with a similar population and lower numbers per capita? Even Greece has flown past now.
And all I’m saying now is that New Zealanders can seek solice in a similar sized population that was an early success and has remained that way (something I was very wrong on), there’s no reason New Zealand can’t get to 80%+ and never have Covid as a huge problem to live with. The vaccines coming so early (another where I was waaay off) and being so efficient looks to have seen to that.
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Difficult? It’s nigh on impossible.
Any suggestion that a restriction or lockdown went too far, maybe wasn’t necessary or maybe went on too long is met with a schoolyard level of bullying in here
Case numbers show early signs of levelling off, maybe indication spread among younger people is down due to vaccine push in July and August?
There’s always going to be a reason to argue for the indefinite implementation of restrictions
Let’s wait for the boosters
Let’s get winter out the way
Let’s wait for schools to break up at Easter
Let’s wait for the warmer weather
Let’s wait for the summer holidays
Let’s wait for the boosters
Let’s get winter out the way…
There will never be a time when restrictions won’t seen logical as long as the virus exists and nobody thinks it’s going anywhere. We’ve also gone from a position where zero covid was accepted largely as not achievable to arguments that it existing in the community is a reason why we need restrictions.
Let’s wait for the boosters
Let’s get winter out the way
Let’s wait for schools to break up at Easter
Let’s wait for the warmer weather
Let’s wait for the summer holidays
Let’s wait for the boosters
Let’s get winter out the way…
There will never be a time when restrictions won’t seen logical as long as the virus exists and nobody thinks it’s going anywhere. We’ve also gone from a position where zero covid was accepted largely as not achievable to arguments that it existing in the community is a reason why we need restrictions.
Not really being pedantic, but yeah, there are bank holidays around Christmas. However, the 25th is the biggest homecoming celebration of the year with everyone and their dog usually going out clubbing with friends, and then the 27th through 30th is spent in shopping centres by people who are free from work due to prices being slashed ahead of the new year. Hardly comparable to a lockdown, which is why I called your argument dishonest. Just because you can’t drop your kids as a school doesn’t make it comparable to a lockdown of society.
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That’s not true. With every week that goes by more and more people are exposed to the virus or the vaccine and get some protection. It won’t be long before everyone, everywhere has either been infected or vaccinated. The tricky bit is knowing how close to that end-point we can get back to fully “normal” life.
But that won’t be the case the argument will then shift to waning immunity. I’m sure back in spring people then arguing that over summer we would be able to lift restrictions due to level of vulnerable people vaccinated are now arguing for continuing restrictions despite that threshold being met. There will always be an argument why restrictions make sense for some. They’re not wrong at all but some do appear to be in position where you wonder if there’ll ever argue any different.
Over last 7 days the number in hospital with COVID has increased by 594 to 8256. But in that period over 6049 have been admitted with the virus showing that even for those hospitalised they do not seem to be staying very long in the main
Over last 7 days the number in hospital with COVID has increased by 594 to 8256. But in that period over 6049 have been admitted with the virus showing that even for those hospitalised they do not seem to be staying very long in the main
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Plus the infections in the June-August - a couple of million of those probably. Now add in the fact that people aren't quite back to old normal and the fact there does seem to be a self-moderating action kicking in following major surge events. Quite a few variables moving in different directions - particularly if you try and include waning vaccine efficiency and boosters in there.
Complicated picture, but not the unremitting gloom that some people imagine when they see the headline number.
Waning immunity will only be an issue if cases surge again. Which hopefully won’t happen. Israel’s current surge seems to be driven by their relatively high % of unvaccinated rather than waning immunity (which is not to say that it isn’t a real thing, just not a major problem).
That’s always been the case. And we’re getting better and better at managing covid patients, hence admissions are likely shorter now than in previous waves. Plus vaccinated patients are likely to bounce back quicker.
ICU bed occupation is a more useful metric anyway.
That’s still over 6000 admitted in a time of year where if there weren’t restrictions you’d also have flu admissions etc. That’s before the system even thinks about elective surgery.
I had to go to A&E with my partner on Saturday morning and it was genuinely like a third world country. A&E is grim at the best of times, but I’ve never experienced it like that. I don’t know how much of that is purely funding issues, extra Covid patients or them just having a busy day, but it’s not sustainable.
You’d have thought patient care can’t just be measured by how many beds are empty in wards.
Yeah too much burden on resources and staff. It’s not sustainable. Call me paranoid but how long before Tories start saying we can’t do it alone and start selling off to insurance companies
hope your partner is ok
It's already starting, this is just the tip of the iceberg. It's one of the reasons why I'm against the vaccine passports for domestic use, once you open the door for government access to give an inch then there will be plenty of opportunity for them to take a mile.
Fortunately that particular policy has been indefinitely postponed due to backlash.
Yeah, I'm still waiting on the part where they'll devolve the decision to local NHS trusts and they'll try and manage on the QT.
The whole thing was a joke and they also made opting out deliberately convoluted and misleading. There were at least two opt-out forms to fill and only one was possible to do online. The second required filling out a form which was difficult to find on the NHS website. Requesting said forms took several months from NHS Digital.
This is aside from the fact that most of your medical data is not available on the NHS app and for the data which is, it requires accepting a third party (Patients Know Best) whose role in delivering this service is not particularly clear to me either.
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So cases are falling in UK and Ireland after schools reopened.
It does seem like it’s just a case of kids not being as good a vehicle for spreading the disease as adults or at least the whole bubble thing whether an actual system of natural behaviour of kids grouping into classes and friendship circles.
When kids are off school, adults go on holiday, adults go around other peoples houses with the kids, go to cinemas, restaurants, bowling alleys, shopping centres etc etc and there’s just a magnitude more opportunities for any individual to cross paths with people they normally wouldn’t.
It's a big moment data wise and not easy to call as a lot depends on how many kids/parents/teachers are vaxxed or have had covid already. Between the vaccine and prior infection, some places/groups will have a kind of functional herd immunity in place.
Those are cases rather than case rates. It's worth noting that cases are lower now than they were on the day that restrictions were removed. Night clubs, festivals, full football matches didn't really change things.
Schools, colleges and life moving indoors will, but no one knows by how much. Hospitals are under sustained pressure at the moment. So what the system can tolerate depends on who catches it - if they're mostly under 40, or under 75 if vaxxed we're ok. Though obviously the unlucky, the unvaxxed, and the ones with impaired immune systems who end up hospitalised or dead won't be quite so "on average" minded.
The heat map for case rates (cases per 100k) gives a different angle on some things, that's on:
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases?areaType=nation&areaName=England
The
I know its Stephen Nolan but this guy is heartbreaking to listen to, lost his wife and daughter (only 32) to Covid over the weekend. They weren't vaccinated.
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These types of stories seem to have the opposite impact on the anti vaxxers as they then point to stories where people have had vaccines have also died. It's very difficult to change their minds despite the fact in this story the vaccine probably would have saved their lives.
Plus NZ and AU aren't willing to accept the mass deaths that many places around the world have. Some will occur of course but .....
The problem is the Tories, not the vaccine passports. Off-topic, but the UK has been steadily privatising the NHS for many years, it started in the late 1980s with the introduction of NHS Trusts which were to be run like businesses. I worked all through that time in NHS management and I know exactly how things went wrong.
When your raw material is people, you can't run things as if you're in manufacturing industry. Here's an example from the early days - I sat through many high-level meetings hearing the top brass berating hospital managers for missing targets on outpatient cancelled appointments. Two hospitals were held up as great examples of Trusts which had low levels of cancelled appointments - they were both cancer hospitals. Anyone with half a brain cell would realise that if you have cancer, you're far less likely to miss your appointments than if you're just going for a check-up on your hip surgery or whatever. This didn't seem to occur to the Tory-appointed grandees.
Italy set to become the first country in Europe to make the Covid pass mandatory for all workers. Can't say I'm not fully in support of this, it's already difficult to do things if you're not vaccinated and it's a good way of weeding the anti vaxxers out.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...n-pass-mandatory-workers-minister-2021-09-15/
https://www.reuters.com/world/europ...n-pass-mandatory-workers-minister-2021-09-15/