Patronii in person, anti Dementors visit the zoo

[ISaySteadyOn]

Never started a long running thread before but I figure even lurkers should take a turn. Hope the title ok.

I was just reading that the R number is less useful as the numbers decrease as any new cases impact it so much.

There was also talk of local outbreaks affecting it.

I'm thinking hard to understand 😃

I was always concerned about the R value becoming a target.

How is it calculated, Chris Whitty?

"Oh it's a complicated calculation based on averages from different locations. It varies a lot and the parameters, vaeiables, and constants change based on shifting circumstances."

Hmmmm, so you'll just give us a number and we have to take your work for it?

Can you clarify how this differs from pulling a number out of your arse?

Whereas the GOV.UK website reckons it's between 0.7 and 0.9 and was updated today. So hmm. (Also, rate of infections across the South West is declining, number of deaths is sporadic, but R number is increasing? How?)

Just had a lovely non socially distanced chat with my pal that I haven't seen since lockdown started. She concurs totally with everything I said and is horrified by the lack of education for the DCs. She is a scientist working on using existing drugs to see if they'd be a fit for covid-19 so I think she knows what she's talking about. So great to meet one of us in real life !

how can the R rate go up when the infection rate is going down?

I suppose if the infection rate is going down but going down more slowly? Any R below 1 means the infection rate will keep falling. It will fall faster at 0.1 than it will at 0.99, but even at 0.99 it'll still be falling, because that 0.99 means that every 100 people will infect 99 new people and so on.

Obviously quite a rough calculation, especially when numbers of total people infected get smaller and smaller.

I'm NW the local paper from our nearest big town is absolutely gleeful in its reporting that the R number has risen.

I can't deal with the numbers anymore - I can't deal with how they change them to make us despair everytime there's some hope incoming and how people lap it up and demand we're locked down harder. I can't live like this much longer - it's horrendous - I think if I hadn't at least got the kids back into school I would have done some serious harm to myself to be honest I'm that low and it's only those hours they're in school, and the odd chat at arm's length with the other people out there that is keeping me going this week.

They basically just make a number up for R each week using some vague combination of figures and sciency bits no one will elaborate on (sounds about as scientific as the claims on a fucking shampoo advert or the Big Mac secret sauce recipe) and then tell us our kids have to be relentlessly miserable for longer and keep the play grounds locked up while the middle class older Tory crowd can have their games of golf. And the R value always hovers "just below" 1 so they can keep us slightly feeling of peril.

It's like every time the numbers get down into the 200s with any degree of frequency they move the goalposts to keep them hovering around the 350 mark. You start thinking "oh we might get a day where it dips below 100 soon" and immediately they find some more deaths to throw in and bring it back to their 350 mark they seem to be determined to keep it at.

I just don't know how much longer I can function through this shit - I'm only still going at all for the kids. I have the awful feeling we're going to start to see suicides where people feeling like we do decide to take the kids with them.

@Allflightscancelled, me too but tbh, if I met Ferguson and Whitty in a dark alley, I think that my actions would be neither legal nor respectable.

And I am someone who will rescue spiders and slugs.

@DominaShantotto, I have an awful feeling that you may be right.

And because I understand the feeling.

My daughter's just shown me a video of a demented American woman shouting about how PISSED OFF she is about lockdown. Apparently she's just like me

Checking in. I can't help wondering why nobody on the dementor side is mentioning that a rise in reported cases might tie in with an increase in testing?
Strange that an increase in reported hate crime/ domestic violence is publicised as "We should be cautious of treating this as an increase in crime - if more people are reporting it then we should feel positive that awareness is going up and that more cases are being recorded", but when it comes to COVID (potentially exactly the same theory) then doooooooooom!

Completely agree with the comment upthread about Zoom choirs. I usually play the organ at a local church and find myself a bit depressed by the plinky plonky YouTube stuff that is replacing me on Zoom services at the moment. I wouldn't mind so much if it was any good...

Ive noticed they've gone very quiet about the non existent spike! They were screaming about it a few weeks ago and they havent mentioned it once since snort

Hilarious @AlexisCarringtonColbyDexter ! Feels good doesn't it. Please God let it be the same with schools too.

@DominaShantotto from me too.

I'm really sorry you're feeling so low. And I really agree with you about the manipulation of the numbers.

Hang in there.

DominaShantotto - I feel the same.

UndertheBus your tiny spike on 24th May is Weston hospital. They closed the next day to new admissions.

Having looked more at the 2 council demands, the only way I can see this working is if people are made to queue to get into town centres🤔. As if that is going to happen. I'm quite looking forward to the 15th and the dementors going up in smoke at the queues getting entwined or people queuing to get into queues. They will BLOCK THE STREETS FOR EMERGENCY VEHICLES and I DESPAIR, THERE WILL BE A 2ND WAVE.
From 1 authority we are not allowed to have someone outside the bank directing people to ATMs etc to reduce the queue but we must have someone outside to tell them they can't join the queue and will have to come back later. WTF? I hope they have plenty of police on duty because that will not go down well at all.

Hola, just checking in, will catch up on the thread soon.

Interesting how we got similar about R number just before the weekend

No-one seems to wear masks in Bath much. Unless maybe a couple in Waitrose, mainly foreign people.

That sex list, oh my god. A socially distanced mutual wank in the garden. How erotic

Been cheering myself up by reading about vaccines.

It looks like even Anthony Fauci in America who was very pessimistic about vaccines in 2020 at the start of this is now saying that a working vaccine by the end of this year is doable. The Oxford vaccine people were worried that there wouldn't be enough virus circulating in the UK to test theirs properly but are now testing in other countries, including Brazil which is being very badly hit, so might still meet their September goal. And there's several other companies saying they're aiming for a vaccine in autumn as well. So looking quite good really.

I see they've bumped up the death numbers from 142 which is clearly much too low running into the weekend .

They are really scraping the barrel now.

Checking in, haven't been on the last couple of threads as I needed a bit of space and time away from it all. It didn't help, I spent a lot of yesterday in tears. DC2 went back to nursery this week which should be great and I'm grateful for but he's really struggling to settle back into it, he's overwhelmed and just not used to seeing other adults or children. It makes me so angry to see my once happy, confident child suddenly frightened by the sight of another adult. And I'm desperate to see my parents but they live 5 hours away so I can't see them unless it's an overnight stay which they're worried their dementor neighbours would start screeching about if we turned up there. I'm just fed up and totally pissed off at the damage we're doing to families, especially ones that live far apart.

I've felt more depressed during this time than I have ever before in my life. The changing goalposts, snitching and judging, hysteria and shrieking as well as the loss of liberty and worries about the future have turned this into a toxic mix.

Turns out I can cope with most things, but I like the world carrying on even without me for a while. When DH was in hospital I remember chatting to the ICU nurses about their weekend and they apologised for talking about it. I pointed out that as my world was work and the hospital my favourite bit of the day hearing about the fact there was still life going on outside.

The r rate is just a joke now. They make out that it must be spreading like wildfire in the communities which is clearly rubbish. The R number fluctuates more when the total number of infections is low anyway.

Germany have a traffic light system that they use.
The R rate in Germany as a whole is about 0.89 and would be classed as a green light (anything under 1.1).
The R rate is one of three traffic lights which must turn red before lockdown changes are implemented in local areas. The other two being for new infections and for the proportion of intensive care cases. New infections traffic light turns red at 30 cases per 100000 - and the light goes red at 25% of icu cases having the virus. All 3 need to be red before any changes are made.

So Germany doesn’t obsess about the r rate like the UK does, they realise it is not that useful (especially at low numbers of infections) on its own.

Really fed up of the UK attitude, it’s just bonkers. They are literally looking for reasons to prolong a lockdown which was only meant to be in place short term.