This just reinforces that the UK's "lockdown" wasn't really a lockdown at all. There were some restrictions which had a big impact on some groups of people (like folk in care homes who couldn't see their families, cancelled weddings and not being able to attend funerals of loved ones), but the general restrictions didn't prevent people from going out and about.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
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Nasty bugger indeed
Constant lockdowns will also likely further dissuade people from having potential future vaccines. You wonder what impact it’ll have on take up of future jabs, especially in groups more naturally inclined to be resistant, when they start to notice that they’re placed under restrictions on a regular basis whether they’ve had it or not
What lockdowns? And how on earth will restrictions to restrict the spread dissuade anyone from getting vaccinated?
The very next thing I typed in the post hat you quoted
Covid restrictions in sweden now are strange. Case numbers have risen but less than a hundred people in icu in all of sweden and seemingly not rising sharply compared to last year. Average of ~5 covid deaths per day. If this strains our healthcare system it's because of severe underfunding and private actors looting the system. But it's convenient to blame ordinary people trying to just live their lives. At least people here aren't as divided and hateful towards eachother as you seem to be in UK.
You have covid restrictions in Sweden?What are they?
I have the same thoughts as your first paragraph too mate
and I also agree with your second paragraph. If Hospitals are in serious peril with being over run with hospitalisations then of course most sensible people would accept further lockdowns/heavier restrictions. We are at a stage where they are ever so slightly rising again hitting figures nation wide at around 8,500 Covid patients with less than 1,000 in ICU’s
Pales in comparison too the 50,000 Covid related patients we had in our hospitals at one time during the height of the second wave.
The vaccination program has been outstanding in keeping hospital numbers so low. Which is why my get a little irritated when I see talk of further restrictions or possible lockdowns when the current state seems perfectly manageable thus far with slight increases being a million miles away from worrying.
Middle class people generally did quite well in lockdown, so it's not surprise those are the ones who seem eager to return to those restrictions.
You could also swap “class” for “aged”. Right now, I couldn’t give a shit about night clubs being shuttered, or limitations on how many people are allowed in bars. Twenty years ago it would have been absolute agony.
The worry is always that if you look at today's hospital stats you're effectively always about two weeks out of date. Where case rates are growing fast (and we know Omicron cases are capable of doubling in two days) that could mean that there are a lot of hospitalisations/deaths already in the queue.
Some countries and people want to act as if some of those potential doublings have already happened, and to stop it doubling again before it's too late.
The UK, looking at a combination of SA data and its own (mostly London) data, have decided they can wait to see what really happens to case rates and hospitalisations. The timing is terrible - Christmas sees massive intergenerational mixing and New Year usually means a lot of strangers or occasional contacts meet up. But, looking at the data, it really still looks possible we can ride it out. With no restrictions, other than the self-imposed ones or with restrictions that don't start until we know more, rather than just because we fear more.
Incidentally, when I say ride it out - that's not because I dismiss the deaths or the suffering, it's that I suspect the only choice we have is between them taking place in January and them being spread over the next 3 months. I lost three family members in the first wave, I've got vulnerable family members now. I don't take it lightly. However, I do believe that life does have to go on, and that while new lockdowns and restrictions are only minor inconveniences for some they are seriously damaging for others - whether financially, educationally or emotionally.
They are not very strict but basically means no nightclubs, limited access to pubs, live concerts and sports. Something I can deal with but shouldn't have to.
I guess they'll be removed as/when they know more about the risks posed by Omicron? Denmark and the UK should have a lot of data in the next two weeks.
If the news is bad, those restrictions won't be enough but they may have kept starting numbers low enough to cope better, and without really strong measures. If the news is good, then they may have gone in three weeks time.
That reasoning made no sense whatsoever. Someone would have to be really really stupid to think that was in any way logical.
The sales pitch in most of Europe was that the vaccine was the road back to normality. That was given as a reason why we needed restrictions - to give time for vaccine development and rollout. It was given as an inducement to the young (and the naive) who imagined they were invulnerable to covid to get vaccinated anyway.
The pandemic and the lockdowns were massively painful (financially and emotionally) for some people. Meanwhile, others benefited financially, enjoyed the lack of a daily commute, and weren't bothered by most of the impositions. Even so, most people felt the pain of not seeing family/friends as they had before, or of not being able to travel freely.
Like I say, the vaccines, masks, restrictions weren't just sold on personal health benefits, or even as a way to protect others. They were sold to people as the way out of a crisis and back towards a normal life.
In Denmark, the region that include Copenhagen, has stated today that 1/3 of hospitalizations registered as Covid cases is actually only a byproduct of other procedures where the hospitalized just so happens to have Covid as well. It seems like a lot of the patients in the psych wards have covid
Do they indicate how many of those cases are amongst people who caught it in hospital or similar settings?
Agreed fully. Rationality is the best and only way forward. We’ve done a great job with the vaccinations and should enjoy the benefits it’s offering us and remain optimistic as long as the data regarding hospitalisations and deaths affords us to do so.
Posting this not necessarily as an endorsement, but I think many are coming around to this point of view right now (note he is a UCL professor who, according to Wikipedia, “led the first large-scale sequencing project of the Sars-CoV2 genome”):
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lockdown 1 was pretty strict and strongly enforced. The second lockdown from Jan to March was more lenient in regards to being outdoors . For that i assumed it was based on what they had learnt about the virus.
They might have, unfortunately the finer details are only available in a report directly to the government, which might be public, but I haven’t found it.
However, anecdotically my sister is a doctor in a cancer ward, and she says almost all of their covid infections happen after the patients (quite sick as it’s a ward for the less treatable cancers) are hospitalized
I doubt they would have the same enthusiasm if they weren’t being paid holiday through furlough.
I think he's right, but obviously timing is not a minor point. Timing will differ from country to country and the variant we're facing at the time might pick the route, but the broad principle is one I agree with.
It's not a nice message, but it's reasonable to assume that just as we live with flu and other infectious diseases - that remain deadly to some people, irrespective of years of vaccine development and treatment research - we'll live with this as well. In fact it's important that we restart normal life, too many things (from education to relationships to care for the old and vulnerable as well as things that get dismissed as "just for fun") are being left undone or badly done at the moment.
I don't think they're talking about that kind of person.
They're talking about the kind of people who are already married, with a house and garden, perhaps enough spare rooms so that they have an actual 'study/office' room, perhaps kids already old enough to have gone off to university and who are settled and comfortable in their jobs/careers, often which can be done at home.
That's not to say those people haven't also had to sacrifice things, haven't also had a shit time of things at times, haven't also lost people. It has undoubtedly been easier for those though than many many others in society, financially, socially, personally, emotionally, mentally etc.
Can't help but notice that many of those calling for lockdowns at the earliest possible moments tend to be those in the former group.
The UK's first lockdown was a proper lockdown. We may not have had police roaming around the country asking every single person out what they were doing (though that did happen on occasion). Especially the first couple of months, the roads were almost entirely empty on my way to and from work.
If we're talking China style lockdown, then none of us in Europe had a proper lockdown.
Uptake for the over 12s is nice and high, hopefully we start to see that helping things soon for you guys.Ah, yeah, sorry. I plugged in 57m instead of 67m as the UK population. It should be 76%, 70% and 48% for the entire population.
That being said, uptake for eligible over 12s it's 89.8%, 82.2% and 56.5%. So if we're bringing age into it, the real figures are even better.
There was a bit of a pause after 23rd December because all the sites shut down. But I expect the vaccination program to pick up again this week.
Get well soon
Think this will be quite variable by the way. I am not sure if the systems will be the same but our haematology ward (blood disorders, including blood cancers and those who've blood cells have been shot from chemotherapy and are at much higher risk of infection because of it) is a green ward. You are not allowed in as a patient until the formal pcr has come back as negative and all staff who work there regularly must do a pcr at least once a week.
Rules of course, while strict, aren't as much on other wards so think the percentage of hospital acquired covid would be far higher amongst those patients than it would be in the general patient population.
As @jojojo has pointed out, the issue it presents is that regardless of whether they are in because of covid or happen to have covid, we need to cohort them away from other patients and this provides logistical difficulties if the numbers get too high.
The other issue that is doctors are not just 'doctors' but we have our own specialisms. Of course, for the most part, we can get by, especially if for instance we do internal medicine. But what you'll find is that these wards may end up being filled with gastro, cardio, endo, neuro patients who should be on their base wards and are not. So either aren't being looked after anymore by their regular team or the regular team have to come to the red ward from green wards and increase the risk of hospital acquired transmission to their other patients, as well as transmission to themselves!
Logistical issues galore.
After almost 2 years of avoiding it, despite working at times on Covid wards, on wards where aerosol generating procedures are ongoing....I've finally succumbed to this stupid disease. I think from a particularly packed train I had to get. For fecks sake.
Shite. Get well soon. Although probably no better time to get infected.
Here’s a good really well informed thread on how omicron is affecting the NHS (mainly aimed at other readers, I’m sure you have your own experience/opinion already!).
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tl;dr
Basically the same experience as SA.
Get well soon
Thanks guys.
And totally agreed, the staff absences (exhibit A!) are a huge problem in keeping anything like a normal service running at the moment.
I think he advises the Government too. Anyway, what he’s saying isn’t new in any way. The U.K. have taken this approach since the summer when they opened up with zero rules knowing it could result in 100,000 cases a with Delta day - we’ve all known it’s endemic for some time. I’m guessing the messaging will soon change - and the testing of people without symptoms/isolation of contacts/isolation time for those with symptoms will reduce - I think by February many countries will be taking this approach.
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Small study but potentially very good news indeed.
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More good news!
That's very interesting.
I wonder what the bioethicists/scientists/policy makers will make of the policy of essentially re-thinking herd immunity - both infection and vaccine-induced- and being lax with restrictions with UK and South African data come January/February should explosion in Omicron cases potentially not translate into too much stress on healthcare systems - by way of severe disease, ITU admissions, turnaround of patient admissions.
I think herd immunity as a path to eliminating the virus is off the table but as a tactic to enhance population immunity it seems a lot less crazy than the “let the bodies pile high” stuff from March 2020, now we’ve a heavily vaccinated population and a less virulent variant.
Of course you're going to have people sitting at home thinking wtf did I bother getting these vaccines if I can't live my normal life, if the UK was to lockdown again.
That was the whole drive behind them in the first place.
Reading everything we really should be back to normal come March. Hopefully we can share more vaccines with the rest of the world.
Still just a standard dose of man flu here with me after testing positive Xmas day.