That's not a lockdown, this is a lockdown...

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 Lurking Dave 22 Oct 2020

Honestly folks watching the UK from afar I just don't get it, why the complaints about the restrictions under tier 3?

For reference, we have had stricter lockdown here in Melbourne for the past three months - curfew, pubs closed, essential retail, masks at all times, work and study from home etc. Don't get me wrong, it has been tough, but the upside is that we have got through winter without medical capacity being overwhelmed, now we are down to single digit cases per day and turning to opening up the economy in a controlled way.

I'm just shocked that the UK is marching towards a disaster with seemingly no regard to the lessons and experiences that can be drawn from other places. Actually not shocked, saddened, sigh.

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Removed User 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

The UK is 66 million complaining, Melbourne is 5. The UK just has more whining softcocks and a media that fuels that though Australia wouldn't be far off, ratio probably the same, just scale differs. 

Australia in general was an exercise in mismanagement, saved only by circumstance. Despite many people still flaunting the rules and advisories, a small population, spread wide, easily compartmentalized and isolatable made steering the canoe away from the waterfall easier. The UK is steering an aircraft carrier by comparison.

Australia's economy also has greater continuity and crisis proofing as the primary industries are fortified by being things like mining, beef, cotton etc, less reliant on crowding people into skyscrapers. Keeping above the waterline requires less of the factors that spread the virus than the UK economy which is service based. Australia's politicians know that while you are watching Netflix, the trucks at Roxby Downs that carried the country through 2008 are still moving. 

Leadership too, Australia's is weak, distracted and parochial. The UK's is weak, distracted, parochial, sectarian, pompous and lost.

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In reply to Lurking Dave:

> why the complaints about the restrictions under tier 3?

Because we seem to have become a nation of selfish, willfully ignorant, whining Poms.

Read any social media and you will find covidiots trying to find any excuse to be selfish tw*ts: masks kill you; it's all a hoax; vaccines are Bill Gates poison; it's all a government plan to control us. F*ck me, it's depressing enough not to have seen my family and friends in seven months, but to constantly read this stream of utter f*ckwittery, and realise the country I live in is filled with morons, really takes the biscuit.

Post edited at 02:19
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In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

> The UK's is weak, distracted, parochial, sectarian, pompous and lost.

That, too. You forgot incompetent and venal.

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OP Lurking Dave 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

> The UK is 66 million complaining, Melbourne is 5.

Fine, then compare Melbourne with Manchester...

>  Despite many people still flaunting the rules and advisories, 

Yeah nah, not "many people" and no advisories, it's pretty easy when there is a rule and not "guidance"

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In reply to Lurking Dave:

> I'm just shocked that the UK is marching towards a disaster with seemingly no regard to the lessons and experiences that can be drawn from other places. Actually not shocked, saddened, sigh.

They don't even need to be able to draw lessons from other places.  All the Tories need to do is remember the UK's own experience from a few months ago.  

The underlying problem is the same as what is about to give us no deal Brexit and has f*cked up the US under Trump.  We have evil self serving people obtaining power and money by taking advantage of total morons and then getting locked in to doing extremely stupid things because their base demands it.

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 summo 22 Oct 2020
In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

> We have evil self serving people obtaining power and money by taking advantage of total morons and then getting locked in to doing extremely stupid things because their base demands it.

Seems a bit harsh, I'm sure Salmond and Sturgeon have their good side. 

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Removed User 22 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

> > The UK's is weak, distracted, parochial, sectarian, pompous and lost.

> That, too. You forgot incompetent and venal.

Yes, I did, one must draw the line somewhere.

'Venal', what a great word. previously so rarely heard because it just never really applied on a large enough scale, now well on it's way to overuse by being almost the only word that comes close.

 Si dH 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

> Fine, then compare Melbourne with Manchester...

Manchester 's complants along with others are not that they have to go in to a lockdown, but that there isn't enough financial support. A few months semi lockdown is now here near as big a concern as the longer term impact on local areas where many jobs and businesses are lost. Most people accept the lockdown itself is necessary and I think as many have been asking for something stricter as for less. 

 kedvenc72 22 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

Put very succinctly. I want to put something funny but I find everything you mentioned so depressing!

 SAF 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

I'm in Wales, we had a harsher 3 to 4 month lockdown than England finishing 3 to 4 months ago, ending in single digit numbers, and we are being put back into lockdown on Friday.

Lockdown doesn't work!

So let me know how you're getting on in a few months!

Post edited at 07:41
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 Andy Clarke 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

> 'Venal', what a great word. previously so rarely heard because it just never really applied on a large enough scale, now well on it's way to overuse by being almost the only word that comes close.

A popular term in the eighteenth century and as an amateur linguist it's nice to see it making a comeback. I guess this is what is meant by a return to traditional values. Can't wait for rotten boroughs to come out of retirement.

 summo 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

Lock down does work, but not the kind where folk are using public transport to commute to work, exercise, walk the dog, shop, educate. 

A lockdown where one appointed member of the family was allowed out the house, once a week, to shop for food. That would stop the virus in its tracks. But it's not viable, so we need to have measures that contain the spread whilst still allowing some kind of life. 

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 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

Same as the first time around.

Abrogation of responsibility by our leaders. They haven’t the strength of conviction and character to lead us through this by making and communicating decisions before it’s too late. Instead they wait to act until the media is replete with dead bodies so people are asking them to act.  Then they make sure the blame lands on the people, and they wind up their mechanical apologists to go around accusing anyone who saw it coming of hindsight.

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 Ciro 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

> I'm in Wales, we had a harsher 3 to 4 month lockdown than England finishing 3 to 4 months ago, ending in single digit numbers, and we are being put back into lockdown on Friday.

> Lockdown doesn't work!

> So let me know how you're getting on in a few months!

Lockdown does work - you got down to single digit numbers. The problem is what came after - the government gave their corporate mates with no experience or expertise in public health £12bn to build a centralised track and trace system that is spectacularly unfit for purpose.

In effect, we bought the time to build a medium term program to deal with the virus, and then pissed it up the wall.

The sensible way out of this predicament would be to implement another full lockdown, and give a fraction of the cost of the existing system to local health authorities to expand on their existing track and trace structure and expertise (they all have this, because tracking and tracing STDs and local disease outbreaks had always been part of their remit). 

Don't hold your breath though - the Tories will continue funneling public cash to their pals whilst killing the vulnerable.

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 summo 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Ciro:

There was a Tory mp on r4 just now saying the virus behaves differently in different places and keeps changing. You can just hope the average r4 listener doesn't believe this drivel. 

 off-duty 22 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

> > why the complaints about the restrictions under tier 3?

> Because we seem to have become a nation of selfish, willfully ignorant, whining Poms.

> Read any social media and you will find covidiots trying to find any excuse to be selfish tw*ts: masks kill you; it's all a hoax; vaccines are Bill Gates poison; it's all a government plan to control us. F*ck me, it's depressing enough not to have seen my family and friends in seven months, but to constantly read this stream of utter f*ckwittery, and realise the country I live in is filled with morons, really takes the biscuit.

To be hones though, I think the reality on the ground is majority compliance with a vociferous minority given a lot (too much?) airtime.

The unfortunate consequence of that is a feeling, as per your post, that rejecting the restrictions is "common" which is likely to encourage more. That isn't actually happening, other than with the normal f@ckwits we routinely deal with who tend to ignore ANY rules.

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to off-duty:

>  I think the reality on the ground is majority compliance with a vociferous minority given a lot (too much?) airtime.

That’s the same as just about any modern issue in Britain; the problem here being the intersection of an occasional asymptomatic and highly infectious state and these idiots generating “super-spreaders”, which in turn seem to be driving cases.

The virus has hit on the right characteristics to weaponise the toxic aspects of our society.

The options seem to be over legislation for the under compliance of the vociferous minority, or focused surgical precision on those pushing misinformation and dangerous nonsense, as well as people following it.  There is hope - fining the 4 Manchester uni students £10k each for their house party might start to get through to some others...

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

> So let me know how you're getting on in a few months!

They’re going in to their summer with orders of magnitude less prevalence than we (the UK) had going in to our last summer.  Summer here wasn’t bad; every reason to hope that Oz is going to have a great summer.

 colinakmc 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Andy Clarke:

 “Can't wait for rotten boroughs to come out of retirement.”

They’re already back. A few 10’s of thousands of mostly old white men from SE England chose the prime minister for 60 million people across 4 nations.

Post edited at 09:24
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 neilh 22 Oct 2020
In reply to off-duty:

Spot on.

Most people I know are dong their best to comply as people understand the potential downside. Even the younger people I know are taking it seriuously, for the obvious reason - their wider families. Reports of full beds in hospitals help compliance.

I see very few cases of people not wearing masks now. Even builders turning up at the local Co-op for the lunch time buttie wearing them( a  few months ago they would pile in to the shops with no masks).

You get the odd fool.

What winds me up is all this talk of business and lockdown. FFS 90% of the economy is doing fine, stop talking the rest of us down.My order book is full and I am having to handle enquiries off from oversea about our business being closed because they have read the UK is locked down.The press wants taking out and shooting about the poor quality of reporting.

 Kalna_kaza 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

> Lockdown doesn't work!

It can work. But it helps if the government trying to enforce it doesn't constantly undermine public trust, and therefore support. 

I don't believe the UK will get a grip of the spread before a vaccine becomes available. Most people are trying their best to keep their distance, but the constant rule changes, scattergun messages and worsening economic situation just isn't conducive to controlling the virus.

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 SAF 22 Oct 2020
In reply to off-duty:

> The unfortunate consequence of that is a feeling, as per your post, that rejecting the restrictions is "common" which is likely to encourage more. That isn't actually happening, other than with the normal f@ckwits we routinely deal with who tend to ignore ANY rules.

That really isn't the feeling I'm getting in Wales at the moment.  None of my friends and family are "normal f@ckwits", having got through their entire lives with minimal police interaction and no criminal records, yet people are getting more and more inclined to "discretely" push and break the rules of the impending lockdown (and this is across the generations).  To give it some context, where I am would only be tier 1 if we were in England, and I think a lot of people just feel like sticking to the tier 1 rules (hospitality, tourism and most retail will be shutting on friday so can't do much anyway), which hardly seems unreasonable. 

There are obviously many people gearing up to follow the new lockdown, but not like in March, the mood is definetly very different this time round.

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 jkarran 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

> Fine, then compare Melbourne with Manchester...

In fairness, much of the complaint is not about the necessity of restrictions (though still a sizeable and heavily promoted minority view), it's about the unfairness of the government when they're imposed regionally vs its largess just a few months back when restrictions fell on blue and red areas alike. I have sympathy, it's self defeating to tell people to do what they simply can't afford to do, you get division, bitter resentment (as if there isn't enough of that in Britain already), poor compliance from a public health perspective and a much bigger mess to mop up next year with huge regions impoverished through carelessly crushing viable businesses (covid shutdowns now, 'Asutralia' style brexit in the new year).

jk

Post edited at 09:38
 SAF 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Kalna_kaza:

> I don't believe the UK will get a grip of the spread before a vaccine becomes available. 

When's that then?! My generation, my daughter's generation or her future children's generation. Everyone is pinning all their hopes on something that is far from a certainty.

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 off-duty 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

> That really isn't the feeling I'm getting in Wales at the moment.  None of my friends and family are "normal f@ckwits", having got through their entire lives with minimal police interaction and no criminal records, yet people are getting more and more inclined to "discretely" push and break the rules of the impending lockdown (and this is across the generations).  To give it some context, where I am would only be tier 1 if we were in England, and I think a lot of people just feel like sticking to the tier 1 rules (hospitality, tourism and most retail will be shutting on friday so can't do much anyway), which hardly seems unreasonable. 

> There are obviously many people gearing up to follow the new lockdown, but not like in March, the mood is definetly very different this time round.

Respectfully this is a similar kind of self selecting anecdotal data that is reflected on social media. I'm hearing similar moans and mutterings, but what is actually being seen, practically, across the population is majority compliance.

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 Kalna_kaza 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

> When's that then?! 

Well that's my point. There may never be a fully functional vaccine. I think we are more likely to reach herd immunity (if that's possible, maybe lots of vulnerable people will simply die) before the UK reduces infection rates to zero. 

The required level of control and discipline for suppressing the virus just isn't there.

 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Removed Userwaitout:

>The UK is 66 million complaining

 

The U.K. is about 5% of the 66miion complaining and being amplified by main-stream right wing press, YouTube and Twitter. 
 

No doubt that a similar proportion of Australians are complaining about their lockdown. Presumably on Sky News Australia etc. 

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 groovejunkie 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> Same as the first time around.

> Abrogation of responsibility by our leaders. They haven’t the strength of conviction and character to lead us through this by making and communicating decisions before it’s too late. Instead they wait to act until the media is replete with dead bodies so people are asking them to act.  Then they make sure the blame lands on the people, and they wind up their mechanical apologists to go around accusing anyone who saw it coming of hindsight.

Completely agree, they've learnt nothing from March (especially in lieu of the shambles that is Track & Trace) and we've already blown it. When London was in the shit we imposed a full national lockdown, now that its the north in trouble we have yet another miscommunicated confusing tier system where the regulations within tiers differ across regions (gyms etc). 

I really hoped we'd not be in this position (the last thing I want is full lockdown), we had every opportunity to get our act together. The surprise at the moment is how London's situation isn't worse than it is. There's little science to support herd immunity so is it just a matter of time? And should the fan turn brown in the capital (the only bit our govt really care about) will we see another massive u-turn, the scrapping of the tier system and a full national lockdown?

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 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Kalna_kaza:

No. We won’t get to herd immunity naturally. That didn’t even happen with smallpox over thousands of years. 
 

To infect the number of people necessary to achieve it would be criminal.  

 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to groovejunkie:

>The surprise at the moment is how London's situation isn't worse than it is.

 

People aren’t out and about down here much. There’s a high compliance with social distancing and mask wearing. We are creating a partial herd immunity by changing the R value through behaviour. Stop the behaviour and it’ll go back up again. See the effect schools opening has had. 

 Kalna_kaza 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> No. We won’t get to herd immunity naturally. That didn’t even happen with smallpox over thousands of years. 

In that case then it's endemic. We are not going to become like New Zealand at this late stage.

 SAF 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Kalna_kaza:

> Well that's my point. There may never be a fully functional vaccine. I think we are more likely to reach herd immunity (if that's possible, maybe lots of vulnerable people will simply die) before the UK reduces infection rates to zero. 

> The required level of control and discipline for suppressing the virus just isn't there.

The required level of control and discipline for suppressing the virus is not possible within a functioning society.

So presumably then we have to live with it and mitigate the risk at a level that doesn't damage society and the economy.  Elderly care, health care and social care are very expensive, so if we carry on as we are we won't be able to pay for that care and the elderly and vulnerable that we are trying to save will die anyway from other causes.

 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Kalna_kaza:

The vaccine will be out by Christmas. 

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 SAF 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Kalna_kaza:

> In that case then it's endemic. 

I think it is, but people (Government, population, media) aren't willing to accept it yet.  Certainly not the Welsh Goverment who are still declaring they are going to "eliminate" Covid 19.

 SAF 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> The vaccine will be out by Christmas. 

And if it is will you be first in line to have it?

According to the risk calculators I'm 15 years away from being at moderate risk from Covid19 and 35 years away from being high risk.  A poorly tested vaccine with no longitundinal studies is currently a FAR greater risk to me.  My 2 year old daughter will absolutely NOT be having the vaccination.

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 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

Poorly tested? It’s a vaccine, not a drug. 
 

It’s going through phase 3 trials at the moment. It will be monitored as it’s rolled out just like all vaccines. It’ll be given to high risk people first. You only need 60% take up so don’t worry you won’t be forced to be vaccinated. We have have a new flu vaccine every year. 

Post edited at 10:27
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 neilh 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

Its OK, its the over 50's first anyway so you will be way way down the priority list.

I assume your daughter has  been vaccinated against mmr etc.

 summo 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

>   My 2 year old daughter will absolutely NOT be having the vaccination.

Unless they have high risk medical conditions the vaccine might never be offered to those under 10 or 20yrs anyway. 

 Richard Horn 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

I seem to remember Australia congratulating themselves on their "brilliant" response a few weeks before Melbourne went into lockdown. The lesson you should learn from looking at all of Europe (not just UK) is that any feeling that lockdowns buy you something towards long term suppression is an illusion, and CV will be back probably in the autumn, and you will likely be in another 3 month lockdown.

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 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> Poorly tested? It’s a vaccine, not a drug. 

Are we in to Dunning Kruger territory again?  So soon after the .xls debacle.

I’ll wager SAF has more direct professional experience of vaccines and drugs than you, and that I have more direct professional experience of the development pipeline for pharmaceutical compounds than you.

As SAF says there are no longitudinal studies yet; there can’t be for some time.   This is an issue. No way out of this mess we created for ourselves is perfectly safe and none is a route we would take under anything other than from such a desperate situation.

> It will be monitored as it’s rolled out just like all vaccines.

Unless there’s a time machine this monitoring can’t produce the longitudinal data SAF refers to. 

> It’ll be given to high risk people first. 

Well, not if they’re high risk because of crap immune function; to do so would either be pointless or dangerous.  The people to target first includes those who are those at high risk of spreading the virus, not necessarily those at high risk of suffering from it.

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 SAF 22 Oct 2020
In reply to off-duty:

> Respectfully this is a similar kind of self selecting anecdotal data that is reflected on social media. I'm hearing similar moans and mutterings, but what is actually being seen, practically, across the population is majority compliance.

The same could be said for your "self selecting anecdotal data" which is no more or less valid than my lived experiences.  You may attend more of a "certain type of person" breeching covid regs, but does that mean that others aren't doing it, or is it just that middle classed people have more spaced out properties which convey more privacy and maybe a little more common sense to keep things discrete.

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 SAF 22 Oct 2020
In reply to neilh:

> Its OK, its the over 50's first anyway so you will be way way down the priority list.

> I assume your daughter has  been vaccinated against mmr etc.

And HCPs who are low risk of complications but high risk of spreading (like me!!)

My daughter has had all her vaccinations, and I am so glad that the UK has a comprehensive and tested vaccination programme protecting young children from childhood infections that can pose a very real risk to them in the short and longterm.  However, Covid does NOT fit the definition of a high risk childhood infection.

OP Lurking Dave 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Richard Horn:

Hmmm, not so sure on your maths there, we’ve been through winter and the population(23 million) has had <1000 deaths... lockdowns buy time for adaptation, better track and trace, therapeutic treatment. By Christmas Germany will be Weathering the storm, the UK?I hate to imagine.

 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

>Are we in to Dunning Kruger territory again?  So soon after the .xls debacle.

 

Indeed how you all laughed when I said the government were using xls, and you continued laughing when I pointed out evidence that they were using xls and told me I was wrong, are you laughing now? About that Dunning Kruger...

>I’ll wager SAF has more direct professional experience of vaccines and drugs than you, and that I have more direct professional experience of the development pipeline for pharmaceutical compounds than you.

He may well do, and you may well do. People are being vaccinated. There’s even a push for contest trials. I’m happy to listen to your experience. What is your experience of a novel virus pandemic? These are not normal times. So far your contribution to the whole debate is simply - lock everyone away in case we all die. 

Post edited at 11:28
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 Helen R 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

How're you doing over there Dave? Looks like it might get relaxed a bit more soon?

Here in NZ, we went through the 'proper' lockdown in march/april/may then we had another one, albeit not as strict and for not as long, in Aug/Sept. We're back to "normal" now. Another case has sneaked through the border via a port worker in the past few days, but it does seem like people are getting tested, isolating if they're ill etc etc, so hopefully they've caught it.

For what it's worth, to the UK folk, I found lockdown 2 much harder, as did many friends/colleagues. The first one... daily walks, sourdough, zoom calls to check in with folk, all the coping strategies. The second, we all struggled a bit more... just waiting for it to be over. I agree this has a long way to go, wherever you live, so look after yourselves my friends.

Post edited at 11:39
 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> Indeed how you all laughed when I said the government were using xls, and you continued laughing when I pointed out evidence that they were using xls and told me I was wrong, are you laughing now? 

I was't laughing then and I'm not laughing now.   I just deleted my re-hashing of that thread, it speaks for itself.  Voluminously.   Perhaps some of the other posters pointing out how ridiculous it was to  use  .xls to bridge two databases were laughing at you.  I don't know.  

You claimed in your example that the ONS used xls when the ONS used xlsx.  Don't re-frame your loss.  (Okay, you did find one single example of the former after what I imagine was some detailed searching)

>  So far your contribution to the whole debate is simply - lock everyone away in case we all die. 

I'm starting to think you're not capable of understanding anything I write.  I have never said that.  What a f******g stupid thing to say that would be.   I have received enough PMs to understand that the contribution I have made on UKC has in some way or another been welcomed by various people.  So, once again, your take is wrong.

> I’m happy to listen to your experience.

I am not talking about anyones experience.  I am calling you out for dismissing SAF's valid point that there are no longitudinal studies, and I was politely suggesting that SAF and I may understand what that means and you may not, and that what you wrote in no way dismisses, addresses or allays that concern from SAF.  Perhaps you do know what a longitudinal study is, and perhaps you do understand why we don't have them yet, and perhaps you just decided to go for a blustering, dismissive response any way.  

Post edited at 11:47
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 SAF 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> SHE may well do, and you may well do. 

FTFY

 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

>You claimed in your example that the ONS used xls when the ONS used xlsx.  Don't re-frame your loss.  (Okay, you did find one single example of the former after what I imagine was some detailed searching).

 

It wasn’t one example. It was a whole page of them. And it was the exact data sets in question. 

3
 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

>THEY may well do, and you may well do. 

FTFY. 

5
 Toerag 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

<thread hijack>I see your prediction of 180 deaths per day has come true already - how far in advance of your prediction?

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> It wasn’t one example. It was a whole page of them. And it was the exact data sets in question.

No it wasn't.  You're wrong.

The datasets in question were the per-person test results that were uploaded to the dashboard, with something like 18 spreadsheet rows per test result.   The example you linked to was a download of "Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional: week ending 18 September 2020".  

Wrong, wrong, wrong...

1
 Toerag 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

> I'm in Wales, we had a harsher 3 to 4 month lockdown than England finishing 3 to 4 months ago, ending in single digit numbers, and we are being put back into lockdown on Friday.

> Lockdown doesn't work!

It does, but you need to either eliminate completely or keep testing hard, and stop importing cases afterwards. As you came out of lockdown people had the impression that the virus was beaten and relaxed too much. You also imported it from elsewhere that hadn't got it under control as you did.

 neilh 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

I  agree....

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Toerag:

> I see your prediction of 180 deaths per day has come true already - how far in advance of your prediction?

I'm not sure we're quite there yet, I think there's a batch of unreported deaths from > 7 days ago being release recently and that this is putting the daily report numbers above actuals. If we're not there yet it's probably less than a week to go.

Edit:  Got that wrong, too.  I've attached my plot of actuals (by date of death, not by date of reporting).  It excludes the most recent 5 days of data as these are highly provisional.  The blue dot is an exponential fit to 180 deaths/day and it falls around today.   Doubling time is up to ~ 15 days so - assuming there aren't more retrospective deaths to be reported which could change all this - we've got ~ 400 deaths/day "locked in" now.

Post edited at 12:12

 Toerag 22 Oct 2020
In reply to summo:

>  A lockdown where one appointed member of the family was allowed out the house, once a week, to shop for food. That would stop the virus in its tracks. But it's not viable, so we need to have measures that contain the spread whilst still allowing some kind of life. 

...and this is the problem - the measures required to retain the spread in winter are actually quite harsh and cripple the economy and community more than people/governments will want to deal with in the long term. Proper lockdown & elimination is almost certainly more palatable than the level of restriction that is apparent is required in winter.

cb294 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

I'm with wintertree and SAF here: I won't scramble to get the vaccine either during the first round, maybe next autumn when safety and efficacy will be much clearer.

Nothing to do with covid in particular, if you are not at a particular risk of either getting severly ill or are in a position where you could be spreading a disease efficiently, early adoption can certainly be a bigger risk than the disease itself.

It is almost as with computers or software, where "early adopters" are useful idiots paying through the nose for the privilige to be beta testers ironing out the bugs and teething troubles.

No doubt vaccines are more thoroughly tested than the next generation iPhone, but any "bugs" could present a bigger problem, so the principle stands.

Would I recommend my 80 yo parents who both have heart issues to be vaccinated as soon as possible? Absolutely.

Would I recommend my children to get vaccinated early? Only my eldest who is a medical student working part time in hospital, certainly not the other two.

My wife and me? We are both teaching, so depends on how bad it gets and how much face contact we are going to have.

CB

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 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Lol. You’re bonkers. We were discussing tests and deaths in relation to Covid. September 2020 was bang up to date. I didn’t need to search for it, I have it bookmarked and have been looking at them each month since March. 
 

You’re just being pedantic, again. I have no idea why you still think they weren’t using xls. I’m pretty sure everyone knows they were. 
 

I know you don’t like that they’re using it and I know you refuse to believe that the rest of the world use Excel and not csv and a text editor, or get a software specialist to write code when Excel works straight off the shelf, but really I think I’ve made my point now. 

6
 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to cb294:

I think what often happens on these forums is someone says something and everyone rushes to prove them wrong. 
 

The premise is, there is a vaccine coming, it’s well advanced and in phase 3 trials. There are no indications there are any problems with it. There are no indications that it’s being ‘rushed’, and every indication that it’s being ‘fast tracked’, which means to me that lots of people are spending lots of money and time to make it their priority. 
 

As a result of this we have a vaccine that’s pretty much ready to go. And so herd immunity without a vaccine is a non starter. And the likelihood of there being no vaccine in ‘the near future’ is also extremely unlikely. 
 

We can debate when actually the ‘near future is’ but I’m pretty certain we will have a vaccine by Christmas. I did originally say by end of October but I think the scientists are keen to hold back to November for ‘political’ reasons. 
 

At no point has anyone said we are going to be throwing all caution to the wind and start mass vaccinating people against their will before Christmas. 
 

I think a lot of posters would do well to provide more considered responses than ‘well I’m not having it and neither are my family’. 

Post edited at 12:16
5
In reply to SAF:

> I'm in Wales, we had a harsher 3 to 4 month lockdown than England finishing 3 to 4 months ago, ending in single digit numbers, and we are being put back into lockdown on Friday.

> Lockdown doesn't work!

If lockdown ended in single digit numbers then clearly it did work.

The thing that didn't work was re-opening too soon and too fast in England. For Wales and Scotland the thing that didn't work was not being able to isolate themselves from a much larger country with higher infection rates and from the toxic London media undermining stronger health messages from devolved government.

The second thing that didn't work was handing out too many crucial contracts to the Tories mates instead of competent organisations.   They were basically using the short circuited decision making process during the pandemic as a way of enriching their friends.

The third thing that didn't work was not providing sufficient support for companies and people who had vastly reduced business or were not allowed to operate to get by.  They created economic incentives to break restrictions.

The final thing that kicked it off into a full blown second wave was re-opening schools and universities after allowing the infection rate in the community to grow significantly from the very low value post-lockdown.

The thing that will totally f*ck us up is no-deal Brexit in the middle of second wave Corona virus. 

1
 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> Lol. You’re bonkers. We were discussing tests and deaths in relation to Covid. September 2020 was bang up to date. I didn’t need to search for it, I have it bookmarked and have been looking at them each month since March. 

Further proof you didn't understand what you were talking about then or now.

The problems was in moving testing records - per person it seems - from one system to another.  Close "raw data" 

You're talking about highly processed, anonymised, summarised data.

> I know you don’t like that they’re using it and I know you refuse to believe that the rest of the world use Excel and not csv and a text editor,

I have it open right now and have 3 totally different kinds of work on the go in it.  Because I use the right tool for the job.

> or get a software specialist to write code when Excel works straight off the shelf, but really I think I’ve made my point now. 

Is your point that we should use a 15-year outdated package that looses data to join to databases and didn't work off the shelf but prevented 18,000 people from being contact traced in a critical phase of the pandmeic,  rather than use some of the £12,000,000,000 budget of the test and trace program to have someone write some suitable code to join two databases together?  Better to pay some consultants £6k per day to get some kids just out of school using Excel ey?  

 deepsoup 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> Are we in to Dunning Kruger territory again?

Oh my god.  After tirelessly banging your head on the brick wall of DoR's paradoxically intelligent stupidity for so long you must realise he's the very living embodiment, the paragon of Dunning-Kruger.  He's the intellectual equivalent of a cocky 18 year-old who's just passed his driving test in his mum's Astra and is absolutely convinced he's the best driver on the road.

Look, this is you right.  Trying to get DoR to pay a parking ticket:
youtube.com/watch?v=kGex0kLgNok&

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> I think a lot of posters would do well to provide more considered responses than ‘well I’m not having it and neither are my family’. 

Here you go then...

>  There are no indications there are any problems with it.

There is no long-i-tu-di-nal data.  Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

1
cb294 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

That is not the point. Both my daughters are vaccinated against HPV. Did we rush to get them vaccinated immediately when the vaccine was introduced (following a full, regular testing and approval process)? Certainly not, they were too young to be at an immediate risk, so it was safer to see whether any problems crop up following the full rollout (i.e., a longitudinal study that can BY DEFINITION only be done with experience in normal use).

What if they had been 17 with changing boyfriends? Different risk, different conclusion.

CB

In reply to summo:

> A lockdown where one appointed member of the family was allowed out the house, once a week, to shop for food. That would stop the virus in its tracks. But it's not viable, so we need to have measures that contain the spread whilst still allowing some kind of life. 

I'm not sure it is so impossible.  If you planned it, funded it with a one-off payment to every household and gave a few weeks warning so people could prepare maybe you could have an ultra-hard lockdown for double the infection cycle (so if you locked down with someone who had it and caught it yourself during lockdown you would also be through it by the end of lockdown).   With a planned hard lockdown you could also stockpile a huge number of test kits and test everybody in the country before releasing them from lockdown.

1
OP Lurking Dave 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Helen R:

Hey Helen, yeah further relaxation coming on Sunday. But still, after restrictions are lifted we will still have more than UK tier 3, which we are generally OK with 😂. I guess some (a lot)  depends on if you can work/study from home. I guess you still have parents back home, all the best, I know how hard it is.

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to deepsoup:

I’m trying not to but I grinds my gears to see someone shoot down a valid point from a poster when they clearly don’t understand the point, and don’t understand that they don’t understand.

It must be a good video; I can’t watch it from my labs...

 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

No. My point was the government were using xls. 
 

Nothing more. 
 

You decided to use it as a soap box to tell me what they should have been doing. And you continue to do so. 

Post edited at 12:45
4
 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to cb294:

Then don’t get the vaccine!

All I am saying, and continue to say, is that there is a working vaccine on its way. 
 

How are you going to do longitudinal studies if you don’t vaccinate more people? 
 

I worry about you lot, being scientists and all. 

6
 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> No. My point was the government were using xls. 

I'm curious - did you choosing a 15-year out of date file format accidentally coincide with the total incompetence of the test-and-trace program or are you now managing a bunch of kids just of school using old PCs running Excel to collate test and trace data - that being the main reason you defended its use...

> You decided to use it as a soap box to tell me what they should have been doing. And you continue to do so

No, you continued to defend the use of .xls as the data interchange format between two databases in the face of evidence its not fit for that purpose and an onslaught of well informed comment from many posters.   Then again you also spent about 20 messages arguing it was entirely sensible for DC to test his eyesight for driving to Barnard Castle so I'm starting to form an overarching picture here...

Post edited at 12:50
 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

At no point did I defend the government. 
 

I pointed out they were using it. And I gave some reasons why they were using it. 
 

You then gave a load of reasons why they shouldn’t. That really is neither here nor there. It’s totally irrelevant. Neither of us work for a government IT policy department. 
 

You’ve somehow managed to turn this into some kind of personal vendetta.

1
 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> All I am saying, and continue to say, is that there is a working vaccine on its way. 

No it's not.  Your 10:26 message clearly dismissed SAF's concerns about safety in the absence of longitudinal studies without showing any sign of understanding the basis for their concern.

So, not, it's not "all you are saying".

> How are you going to do longitudinal studies if you don’t vaccinate more people? 

Are you being purposefully obtuse and dim about the differences between the coming vaccination program and a typical vaccine roll out?   To be clear before you build a new straw man, I think a successful vaccine - or a mix of such - is critical to getting out of this miserable situation.  I also understand the concern SAF raised and am not going to dismiss it with blustering nonsense.

> I worry about you lot, being scientists and all. 

Tell me DoR, what do you worry about with me?  My inability to communicate with people who have severe reading comprehension issues and a difficulty understanding basic concepts?

1
 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

>arguing it was entirely sensible

 

Nope. Wrong there as well. 

4
 wintertree 22 Oct 2020

> I pointed out they were using it. And I gave some reasons why they were using it.

Yeah, but they were all laughably bad reasons - not that I was laughing.  They showed you to have a complete lack of understanding of databases, data integrity and high throughput data analysis pipelines.

> Neither of us work for a government IT policy department. 

Well, I'll sleep a little better tonight knowing that.  Although I did't suggest you might work in government IT policy, I was wondering if you were part of the paid consultancy mob totally f*****g up test and trace, as I can't see any other reason anyone would defend that misuse of xls files if they understood what they were talking about. 

> You’ve somehow managed to turn this into some kind of personal vendetta.

Wrong.  That was you last week when you started incoherently accusing another poster and I off being in cahoots together to follow you around the forums to besiege you with strawman arguments....  

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> Nope. Wrong there as well. 

Correct.  As usual.  With a link to supporting evidence.  As usual.

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/cummings_eyesight-719870?v=1#x9...

1
 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

Indeed. Lots of posters looking to create argument where there was none. A bit of lynch mob there. 
 

You don’t seem to grasp the subtleties.

7
In reply to wintertree:

> Is your point that we should use a 15-year outdated package that looses data to join to databases and didn't work off the shelf but prevented 18,000 people from being contact traced in a critical phase of the pandmeic,  rather than use some of the £12,000,000,000 budget of the test and trace program to have someone write some suitable code to join two databases together?  Better to pay some consultants £6k per day to get some kids just out of school using Excel ey?  

To put it in context £12 billion is getting on for $15 billion and the top IT companies in the world Google/Microsoft/Amazon etc are spending about $20 billion. a year on R&D.

With that kind of budget they shouldn't be f*cking up like this.

 DancingOnRock 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

>Yeah, but they were all laughably bad reasons - not that I was laughing.  They showed you to have a complete lack of understanding of databases, data integrity and high throughput data analysis pipelines.

 

Thanks for that. I’m not sure I claimed I did have grasp of any of that. Just that the government were using xls. 
 

If you’re not stalking me, why do you have all these threads bookmarked? I’m beginning to worry about you. 

4
 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> If you’re not stalking me, why do you have all these threads bookmarked? 

"All these threads" - one thread

"Bookmarked" - seared in to my brain by the sheer ridiculousness of the thread.  Honestly I may carry that one to my hopefully distant grave it was so preposterous.   I don't think I'll be the only person with a long standing recollection of that thread either.

For reference I have have never bookmarked a UKC thread.

 deepsoup 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> It must be a good video; I can’t watch it from my labs...

It's the "Thick people win arguments" sketch from Chris Morris's dark and disturbing "Jam".
(Like the Fast Show if Paul Whitehouse had been David Lynch instead.)

Ah - here's the whole episode: youtube.com/watch?v=Qpn7C6r-WEM&
My god you can really appreciate the horror of Youtube adverts when they pop up in the middle of that lot!  The 'thick people' sketch is 14 minutes in.

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to deepsoup:

That's also blocked here it seems - I'll put it on the evening's playlist; thanks.  

I was a fan of both Blue Jam and Jam at the time; really quite something.

> (Like the Fast Show if Paul Whitehouse had been David Lynch instead.)

I like it.

 The New NickB 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

> Lockdown don’t work.

Lockdown is a mitigation strategy, it isn’t a solution. As a mitigation strategy it works to varying degrees related to its intensity. Other risks obviously arise out of the mitigation and they have to be considered as part of the risk analysis, but to say lockdown doesn’t work is wrong.

We would be in a much worst state in terms of deaths (not just from COVID) and economically, if we had not locked down. The fact is, the solution will take time, lockdown mitigates some of the very serious risks associated with COVID.

Even the current Tier 1 restrictions reduce the R number from something above 3 to around 1.5 or less. 

 Bobling 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

Noooooo!  Not Wintertree vs DancingonRock round 2....I cannae take it!

I think the state system may have helped you out a bit, for instance the ability of states to close borders.  I shudder to think what would have happened if the county of Otheringtonshire had had that sort of ability.  Possible there just not workable here - even the devolved governments don't have the ability of say WA to close the border crossing points (OK WA is fortunate geographically in this regard!). 

Also "That's not a Lockdown....THAT's a Lockdown".

 jkarran 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

> When's that then?! My generation, my daughter's generation or her future children's generation. Everyone is pinning all their hopes on something that is far from a certainty.

Yes it's uncertain but the odds are stacked in our favour, the news from the studies is generally positive and we are well on the way to obtaining some certainty, probably within a handful of months.

On the flipside we know what it'll take if we want to get rid of the virus the old way. It doesn't look appealing. We know a middle ground allowing some social and economic freedom can work with care. We know what will happen if we give up, at least we know how that chain reaction failure starts.

We could have made better, hard choices in February but we didn't so for now it seems to me prudent to muddle on for a while minimising harm until we have some more answers. None of the alternatives look better and until clearly better alternatives start drawing investment away to countries with a workable strategy we can just about afford to.

The real crunch and the acid test of the government's leadership comes when our options start to open up.

jk

Post edited at 13:57
 jkarran 22 Oct 2020
In reply to off-duty:

> Respectfully this is a similar kind of self selecting anecdotal data that is reflected on social media. I'm hearing similar moans and mutterings, but what is actually being seen, practically, across the population is majority compliance.

How would you know? Much of the new burden applies private space.

It's certainly my experience this time around that more people I know are willing to discretely break the rules in a 'limited and specific' manner.

jk

 girlymonkey 22 Oct 2020
In reply to SAF:

> And if it is will you be first in line to have it?

Well it's already been trialled on many people, so none of us will be first in line unless we are on the trials! That's how these things work. I will take it happily. It keeps everyone around me safe as well as me. It looks like I will still be doing care work by Christmas, so I would probably be one of the earlier ones offered it if it is available. 

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to The New NickB:

> Even the current Tier 1 restrictions reduce the R number from something above 3 to around 1.5 or less. 

Yes; we're in a much less desperate situation than last time around and I get the feeling that it wouldn't take much more in the way of well targeted, well obeyed control measures to tip the scales to R < 1.

In terms of how much less desperate, I've put my latest measures of doubling times from the government gateway data below.  

  • Doubling times for deaths are > 12 days which is ~ 2x better than last time around, and they're even better for hospital admissions and cases.
  • The doubling time on cases is really increasing quite a lot which his great news and perhaps that's starting to translate into the hospitalisations doubling time which is a tentative sign that the various restrictions and their messaging/enforcement have pulled us back from the brink.
  • I remain perplexed by hospital admissions doubling slower than deaths consistently; this implies that deaths outside of hospitals are driving the growth in deaths, although I haven't dived in to the data to look at this.  The alternative interpretation is that we're charging up an ever increasing "buffer  of hospitalised patients who take longer to die than the 28-day reporting period.
  • The cases data may have been quite distorted by the demographic bubble of undergraduates in late September/early October.
  • We also have the south regions undergoing exponential growth but not yet with sufficient numbers to dominate these plots....  But their time is coming it seems.
Post edited at 15:00

 HansStuttgart 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> I remain perplexed by hospital admissions doubling slower than deaths consistently; this implies that deaths outside of hospitals are driving the growth in deaths, although I haven't dived in to the data to look at this.  The alternative interpretation is that we're charging up an ever increasing "buffer  of hospitalised patients who take longer to die than the 28-day reporting period.

Could be the population age distribution of the hospitalizations systematiccally shifting to higher average age.

 kamala 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Toerag:

Sounds about right to me. My health professional source tells me the North Wales recurrence was mostly started by people returning from summer holidays in Spain, closely followed by schools and universities (Bangor) re-opening. (Can't swear to the accuracy of his information, but sounds plausible.)

Looks like the N Wales case-number curves are going down a bit now, starting from about a week (or two?) ago - for most of the counties except Anglesey which wasn't closed off the way Conwy was. I'm really hoping that's a sign this degree of travel restriction is slowing the spread.

 Dave the Rave 22 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

Can we send our Covid lawbreakers over to you on a ship? You could call it Covid Bay where they land?

 The New NickB 22 Oct 2020
In reply to DancingOnRock:

> >THEY may well do, and you may well do. 

> FTFY. 

This says so much about your contributions of these threads.

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> We also have the south regions undergoing exponential growth but not yet with sufficient numbers to dominate these plots....  But their time is coming it seems.

The latest PHE Surveillance Report has landed [1].  Figures 35a and 36a - attached below - don't point a great picture.  Hospital admissions are rising exponentially in every region and every age group from 45 upwards.  Hopefully the apparent slackening in cases will soon translate in to admissions in the Northern regions now in Tier 2/3, but it looks like everywhere else is on the same sort of exponential track, just a few weeks behind.   Figures 40a and 41a are a similar story for ICU admissions, but with smaller numbers so noisier plots.

From what I can tell the data in these plots is up to a period 14 days ago, and plotting of more recent admissions data from the government dashboard shows it starting to slacken, so I think it's reasonable to hope that by next week the worst hit Northern regions will be dropping below the exponential, but unless policy changes down south, it'll take over driving the growth.   Critically though, cases are level or increasing in the north, not decreasing, and it looks like ~400 deaths/day is already locked in.  If the northern restrictions just hold cases level and the south rises to meet them before similar restrictions come it, 1000 deaths/day for England alone seems likely - this is my nominal point for "healthcare overload".  Let's hope I'm being thoroughly pessimistic here, but...

I think it's time to change the light bulb -  youtube.com/watch?v=jZn1fhMdrbQ&

[1] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/...

Post edited at 21:21

 jkarran 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

> I remain perplexed by hospital admissions doubling slower than deaths consistently; this implies that deaths outside of hospitalls are driving the growth in deaths, although I haven't dived in to the data to look at this.  The alternative interpretation is that we're charging up an ever increasing "buffer  of hospitalised patients who take longer to die than the 28-day reporting period.

There was a clear hint at what's maybe going on there in an R4 interview a couple of days back. I'm afraid I've forgotten almost everything about it but the speaker was authoritative (possibly Van Tam though hazy memory says female). Anyway they were discussing the ICU admission rate for different age bands and toward the upper end it was noted they they drop off a cliff. I think the quote was something like 'they're not appropriate candidates', bland but basically a clear statement that older covid patients aren't getting intensive care, quite possibly not even hospital care in stressed areas, I suspect in reality many are being treated and dying in homes. 

Anyway, hopeless interjection given my poor memory but that bit of the interview, quickly glossed over, it made an impression.

From last time around I remember someone I know who's not well being (feeling anyway, second hand story) leant on to agree a DNR order when they were shielding. I suspect there is once again quite a bit of pressure to keep the least likely to survive out of hospitals.

> We also have the south regions undergoing exponential growth but not yet with sufficient numbers to dominate these plots....  But their time is coming it seems.

Worryingly and interestingly it does look a lot like the weather driving it south. Rough few months ahead I fear!

Jk

Post edited at 21:54
 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to jkarran:

If you compare Figure 36a and Figure 40a in the report it tallies with that - over 85s are the highest per-capita admission to hospitals (more than 2x the next highest age range), but they're the 4.5x less likely to be admitted (per capita) than the next younger age ranges.

That to me suggests that perhaps 90% of people over 85 who are hospitalised are not making it to intensive care.  Feeling as I do now I'd certainly sign whatever is needed to keep me out of ITU if I was that age.  I also imagine (don't know) that beyond a certain frailty, ITU doesn't help.

> Worryingly and interestingly it does look a lot like the weather driving it south. Rough few months ahead I fear!

An interesting theory of yours you've raised before and nothing in the data is ruling it out...  A stretch too far to link it to vitamin D?

Post edited at 21:39
 jkarran 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I have no idea what the mechanism would be, behaviour alone could do it but thinking how seasonal colds are and how little my behaviour shifts seasonally in normal years I could easily believe there's more to it. I know nothing about vitamins/hormones.

Jk

 wintertree 22 Oct 2020
In reply to jkarran:

It probably is something mundane about weather and behaviour.  It seems like understanding exactly what it is would make a massive difference.   Daft idea for any computer scientists who are bored - crowd source an effort to analyse geotagged imagery from flicker, instagram etc to see if the fraction of windows open on houses and offices has a seasonal component, and how that component lags between north and south...

 Dr.S at work 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I'd say weather - and daylight hours.

Up until a week or so ago down here (Somerset/Bristol) we often had meetings outside at work. Now its pretty much off the cards, and its feeling much more crowded.

 Dave the Rave 22 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

I’ve had 4.5 octogenarians that I’ve treated this week, and were Covid positive in hospital last week, offer to make me a cup of tea on my visit.

The 0.5 offered, but didn’t actually have any tea bags so we went to the shop.

Post edited at 22:54
 neilh 23 Oct 2020
In reply to jkarran:

Flaw in that argument is that DNR were widespread before Covid. Also it’s the family which usually signs them. 

 wintertree 23 Oct 2020
In reply to HansStuttgart:

> Could be the population age distribution of the hospitalizations systematiccally shifting to higher average age.

I think you're right - this matches the demographic breakdown in the latest PHE report - admissions rising fastest in the oldest age range, but ITU admissions fall off a cliff for that age range.  That only points to one thing - deaths growing fastest at the top of the age range.

 jkarran 23 Oct 2020
In reply to neilh:

Well my anecdote is from the first hand experience of someone with mental capacity who was shielding, they were getting calls perceived to be applying pressure to agree a DNR in advance of any possible covid hospitalisation. I'm honestly not sure what flaw you think you've found in that unless you think the timing was a coincidence, I mean it could have been but it fit a pattern of media reports from that period.

jk

Post edited at 10:15
In reply to neilh:

> Flaw in that argument is that DNR were widespread before Covid. Also it’s the family which usually signs them. 

My mother was asked to sign a DNR a couple of years ago and in my view it was handled very sensitively and with absolutely no pressure.   She clearly understood her situation and did not want to be resuscitated to prolong it.   For very old people approaching the end of their life who have multiple terminal conditions which they are too frail to be treated for being resuscitated is not in their interests.  With an aging population they are bound to be widespread.

I think what was happening during Covid was different.  In one case it was the patient's own condition which was driving the DNR, in the other it was the inability of the health service to treat them due to the pressure from Covid.

 Morgan Woods 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

Is it about people complaining or about having the right strategy? It seems like the current approach is wait for cases to get to 20,000 per day and then tinker round the edges. Not sure what level of success is expected?

 Cobra_Head 23 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

A lot of it, is voicing disdain at the governments handling of the problem and the "two tier" system that seems to be available for friends of the PM.

Cummings has a lot to answer for, but more so Johnson for not sacking him.

People are pissed off, with being in lockdown and restricted, obviously, but the lack of direction, clarity and logic, is even more frustrating. I think people are starting to fight against all the bullshit, unfortunately, that means the virus will spread even more.

 Tringa 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

> Honestly folks watching the UK from afar I just don't get it, why the complaints about the restrictions under tier 3?

> For reference, we have had stricter lockdown here in Melbourne for the past three months - curfew, pubs closed, essential retail, masks at all times, work and study from home etc. Don't get me wrong, it has been tough, but the upside is that we have got through winter without medical capacity being overwhelmed, now we are down to single digit cases per day and turning to opening up the economy in a controlled way.

> I'm just shocked that the UK is marching towards a disaster with seemingly no regard to the lessons and experiences that can be drawn from other places. Actually not shocked, saddened, sigh.


Thanks again LD.

Like others in the UK I am amazed by

(a) the attitude of some(albeit a relatively small number, I think) who complain about any restrictions, and some of these who try to find ways why the restrictions should not apply to them.

and

(b) the government who seem unable to see what is happening elsewhere and learn from them.

A full lockdown will have a huge impact on the economy - we have a pandemic of a disease for which at present there is no vaccine, of course it is going to have a huge impact.

As the main way COVID19 is spread is contact between people then reducing such contacts is going to reduce the spread. Intuitively this seem blindingly obvious and we have the evidence in LD's post - tough measure result in single digit cases per day.

Dave

Removed User 24 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

> Read any social media and you will find covidiots trying to find any excuse to be selfish tw*ts: masks kill you; it's all a hoax; vaccines are Bill Gates poison; it's all a government plan to control us; it's only guidance and I'm a climber so doing what I want is IMPORTANT. F*ck me, it's depressing enough not to have seen my family and friends in seven months, but to constantly read this stream of utter f*ckwittery, and realise the country I live in is filled with morons, really takes the biscuit. 

You left one out

In reply to Removed UserBilberry:

> You left one out

Sadly, I've seen quite a bit of that, too.

 Blunderbuss 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

Patients in English hospitals are now at 40% of the peak number in April with a doubling time consistent at 13 days.....2 more weeks of this and we are heading into big trouble.

Something 'serious' is going to force the governments hands into stronger measures, I dont know what it will be but it seems inevitable now...

 The New NickB 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

> Patients in English hospitals are now at 40% of the peak number in April with a doubling time consistent at 13 days.....2 more weeks of this and we are heading into big trouble.

I think we are going to hit trouble before then, like when London hospitals were struggling before the rest of the country in March, North West hospitals are starting to reach that point. 

 Blunderbuss 24 Oct 2020
In reply to The New NickB:

Yes fair point, Yorkshire hospitals are also filling up quickly...

 Offwidth 24 Oct 2020
In reply to off-duty:

There is a big difference between majority compliance most of the time and majority compliance all of the time (except for allowed exceptions). I know quite a few people who understand the virus and support the efforts to reduce it yet sometimes do something stupid. Hands, Face, Space is what is written on Boris's podium yet that message just isnt being regarded as a priority all of the time if people from different households do things like meeting indoors or giving lifts, in areas with significant infection levels, for non essential reasons. Then we have money saving, 'perfect storm', government initiatives, like students returning to student housing in September and some face to face teaching (when they could have stayed at home for a couple of months with online teaching and government subsidy for University accomodation income losses).  This isn't just about covidiots, there is state incompetence and shades of grey in compliance.

 groovejunkie 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

> There is a big difference between majority compliance most of the time and majority compliance all of the time (except for allowed exceptions). I know quite a few people who understand the virus and support the efforts to reduce it yet sometimes do something stupid. 

It's a bit like the argument for fans in stadiums. On the one hand, spreading 5 or 10 thousand  people out in a 60000 seater stadium (essentially an outdoors space anyway) on paper looks a pretty safe and reasonable proposal. Then consider what some of those people will do before and after the game and how many others (without tickets) will turn up just to be a part of it and you have the minority (once more) ruining it for the majority. When Liverpool won the league, the club, the players, the mayor and the police begged the fans not to descend on the stadium. Thousands ignored it, thus enforcing the argument for keeping the stadiums empty. Total own goal (pun intended) because a lot of people are ultimately selfish and stupid and their actions in so many settings will perpetuate this mess.

 Offwidth 24 Oct 2020
In reply to groovejunkie:

I'm more conflicted on outdoor stadiums, especially as the knock-on issues do seem to be a behavioural problem for some football fans. However it is a bit unscientific and class laden to open socially distanced indoor cinema and theatre venues with higher risk levels at the venue and close outdoor sport stadiums with lower density outdoor seating. I'd  probably say both types should be open or both closed depending on the local infection rates.

A lot of professional sport is really struggling with finance due to lack of gate income where those Liverpool fan type problems would be unlikely; so maybe link stadium opening being subject to fan behaviour.

Post edited at 13:53
1
 Tom Valentine 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Blunderbuss:

I think it's clear that the popular practice of finding "wiggle room" in the advice and legislation  is going to  have to be shut down in a fairly drastic manner.

 groovejunkie 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Offwidth:

I've just read that some clubs are now allowing fans to come to home games, to book a meal and watch the game on a screen in the hospitality areas (very small numbers of people). The game is taking place in the ground that they are sat in but the curtains are drawn so that they cannot watch the game through the window and must watch it on the screen! What a mess. 

In reply to Offwidth:

> However it is a bit unscientific and class laden to open socially distanced indoor cinema and theatre venues with higher risk levels at the venue and close outdoor sport stadiums with lower density outdoor seating

The big difference is that people going to the cinema or theatre aren't part of a tribal culture that encourages strong social bonding both within and without the venue; once the performance is over, they will go their separate ways, and not seek to socialise or celebrate with other audience members. Those other audience members remain strangers, not fellow tribe members.

 deepsoup 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Tom Valentine:

> I think it's clear that the popular practice of finding "wiggle room" in the advice and legislation  is going to  have to be shut down in a fairly drastic manner.

Ah yes, "unity" to nick a good word from another thread, "solidarity" you might also say if you were a bit of a lefty like me.  We had loads of that back in April/May, how strange the way it all just seemed to fall apart.

Perhaps a necessary step along the way would be to stop building in the 'wiggle room' that allows the relatively privileged to enjoy a lighter touch (while the true elite can ignore it all completely without consequences anyway).  If watching a football match is too big a risk, going grouse shooting should be too.

It also wouldn't hurt to have an actual functioning testing and contact-tracing operation, so that there's rather more point in having 'local' lock-down measures in the first place, along with the hope and expectation that it'll be possible to lift them again before too long. 

Perhaps even a system that involves a fraction of the mind-boggling amounts of public money currently being stuffed into the pockets of corporate fatcats used to enable people who are not well-off to stop working and stay at home for a couple of weeks as and when required whilst still being able to pay the rent and feed their children.

 Tom Valentine 24 Oct 2020
In reply to deepsoup:

Can't disagree with any of what you've said. Better advice and legislation will be simpler and probably more rigid.

Actually the wiggle room comment might have been prompted by your phrase but I was thinking less about crossing the odd county line and more about the ridiculous state of affairs with masks, where people who decide to exempt themselves being advised by GOV UK that they don't have to provide a reason if questioned and that they shouldn't routinely have to undergo challenges or requests for supporting causes. 

 deepsoup 24 Oct 2020
In reply to Tom Valentine:

On the narrow (but emotive) subject of masks in supermarkets, I've been quite cross with Tesco et al over their stance. 

Their staff have been advised not to challenge people because they risk taking abuse if they do and perhaps rightly so, nobody should face abuse at work.  But the profits of the big supermarkets are up, way up, and they could easily afford to supplement those existing staff - that one they always had hanging around the door and the checkout/customer service person who's just been given the task of marshalling the queue.

Among the tens maybe hundreds of thousands of people currently without work in our 'cultural' industries are all the stewards and security people who usually work on concerts, football matches etc.  They are well used to asking people to do things they don't really want to do - not dancing in the aisles, not taking photos, you know the kind of thing - and to ushering such people out if they refuse to comply.  Those people are often drunk and a fair bit more belligerent that the punters at the supermarket on a Wednesday afternoon.

That too is a poorly paid, usually zero-hours job, but quite a few of the stewards, 'door supervisors' etc. have made a career out of it and are extraordinarily good at enforcing rules without unnecessarily pissing people off.  It would have cost Tesco almost nothing to recruit or subcontract a bunch of them (from, eg, ShowSec) to ask people politely whether they're really exempt, hand out a sunflower lanyard if so and ask them to kindly put their f*cking mask on if not.

Post edited at 15:47
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 groovejunkie 24 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

> > However it is a bit unscientific and class laden to open socially distanced indoor cinema and theatre venues with higher risk levels at the venue and close outdoor sport stadiums with lower density outdoor seating

> The big difference is that people going to the cinema or theatre aren't part of a tribal culture that encourages strong social bonding both within and without the venue; once the performance is over, they will go their separate ways, and not seek to socialise or celebrate with other audience members. Those other audience members remain strangers, not fellow tribe members.

unless of course they are all in there to watch football?

In reply to groovejunkie:

> unless of course they are all in there to watch football?

The tribal socialising is an integral part of watching football, for a significant proportion of football fans, IME.

 groovejunkie 24 Oct 2020
In reply to captain paranoia:

thats my point too, cinemas are showing football games!

In reply to groovejunkie:

> cinemas are showing football games!

Ah, gotcha.

 Toerag 24 Oct 2020
In reply to wintertree:

>  I remain perplexed by hospital admissions doubling slower than deaths consistently; this implies that deaths outside of hospitals are driving the growth in deaths, although I haven't dived in to the data to look at this.  The alternative interpretation is that we're charging up an ever increasing "buffer  of hospitalised patients who take longer to die than the 28-day reporting period.

It will be like here in the spring - those likely to die / not survive intubation simply aren't being sent to hospital, they're dying at home or in the care home where they can be tended to by the nursing team they know in a familiar environment.  All our deaths here never got near the hospital.

Removed User 25 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

Just been to Todmorden today and spoke to a lass on the outdoor market she said you couldn't get into any of the pubs on Saturday night because they were rammed with people from  Burnley and Rochdale which are in Lancashire and Greater Manchester both of which are in Tier Three. Tod is in Calderdale and is in Tier Two along with Hebden Bridge which looked rammed with people today. Not long before we are in tier three then and so it goes- who's next .

 Davidlees215 25 Oct 2020
In reply to Lurking Dave:

Only a handful of people (mostly conspiracy theory nutjobs) are complaining about there being rules in place to reduce the spread of covid.

Most complaining is either about a lack of money to pay people who are being told they are not allowed to work, a lack of money to fund local track and trace or the complete confusion about rules that appear to change weekly.

Where I live near Leeds, last week we were allowed to mix inside the pub but not in private gardens, now we're allowed to mix in private gardens but not the pub (not sure if you can mix in a pub beer garden). If I ask track and trace app what the rules are in my location it says 'your postcode includes areas that are medium and high'. It is actually tier 2, but if I walk a mile away I'm in north Yorkshire and tier 1. Three miles away in another direction I'm in Bradford that currently has the same rules but may change. If Leeds becomes tier 3 can I walk to a pub a mile away that is in tier 1? Apparently it will be advised against but nothing legally stopping me. Some areas that are tier 3 gyms are forced to close, others they are open. Some areas that are tier 3 soft play is closed others it is open. Even when the prime minister was asked about rules in an area he was visiting he got it wrong.


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