UKH

Not a heavy duty thread. To the nearest whole factor, if you were attempting to plan *, what would you guess Covid would be like end September?  Twice as bad as it is now?.  My guess is that schools and more indoor stuff plus the current small increases, would be twice as bad as a minimum.

* fully get the potential futility of this, just doing some scenario planning guessing for work. 

Depends what you mean..

cases? Yes possibly twice as bad due to kids and schools

hosp/deaths? Similar to now or slightly higher I’d guess.

what’s your area of work?

Cases - as many or more?

Hospitalisations and deaths - hopefully no more than the same or a bit lower?

Disruption from isolation orders and school closures - hopefully a lot lower due to relaxation of requirements?

Really depends on how you define “bad”.

Jinx.

I appear to be calibrated about 30% more pessimistic than you.

You only have to look at Northern Ireland to see the potential for things to be worse - hospitalisations are already running at 2nd wave levels and the number of people in ITU is also close to them, despite comparable vaccination levels to the rest of the UK.

The big thing is going to be schools, and then universities going back.

Supporting asylum seekers in Wigan. Just getting my head around possible maximums and minimums for cracking on with English classes.  
And thanks, I was thinking similar, perhaps bit higher on the goal/deaths (say 1.5 times).

And I’m calibrated about 20% more pessimistic than you!  

I was being lazy with my language, but your answer helps. 

Some self analysis: I’m defo on the ‘risky’ side of life (ice climbing being my fav, when I used to climb), but I’m tending to err on the side of caution when it comes to work (that’s ‘relative to me’ caution, I’ve been in work lots, doing plenty face to face work).

Its all dying out due to the shortage of microchips.

There’s loads in Iceland. McCain’s. They’re shite though. Chips should NOT be microwaved. 

There is no one I trust more than you on this topic (although predictions obviously aren't be taken overly seriously), and I thought you might be saying expect NHS chaos, and possible lockdown this winter. 

If this is the "new normal" for the NHS, then it's plausible then an adult government could invest and make it work long term.

If only it were plausible that we might have an adult govenment.

That’s because you’re on fire. I’d be more pessimistic if I was on fire too

Shout it from the rooftops.  We're on a cusp and we're one of the first nations to get to that turning point, lots of uncertainty ahead.  Well, there's always been lots of uncertainty but there's even more now...

I hope that we're in a less brutal phase of the transition than we were, and that this isn't the long term steady state.   But we won't know until we get there.   The last 18 months have been a big reminder of how the NHS is underfunded for normal times, let alone disastrous ones.  Be nice to see that changing.

Wouldn't rule either out, but not by the end of September...  The uncertainty over the flu season compounds all the uncertainty.  I'll be really disappointed if we end up in lockdown, and I've got my optimists hat on, but certainly keeping it in mind under the folder labelled "worst case".

It will be like an episode of The Walking Dead