Chris Whitty saying even tier 3 probably wont be enough to reduce the R

[KetoPenguin]

What do you think this means for areas in tier 3, total lockdown? How soon do you think this would happen and how likely is it for tier 2 areas to be upgraded to the same level? Do you think the much rumoured circuit breaker over half term is likely at least in these areas?

@saraclara

I don't know how things are further south. There's probably better testing facilities and preventative measures at Oxbridge or Eton for example. Cases are rising further south but they're behind the north.

The South means Oxbridge or Eton to you @annabel85 ?!

As a northerner transplanted to the south east, I'm usually laughing myself silly at southerners' ideas of the North. But your post outdoes them all!!!!

I thought the same!

There are plenty of universities, higher education colleges and even - shock horror - state secondary schools and sixth form centers here in the South! ..... And from what I can see the testing is the same as elsewhere in the country!

@SoUtterlyGroundDown That’s such a sociopathic response to someone telling you about their recent bereavement that I’m not sure you’re worth engaging with further.

@ColonSemiColon I am so sorry for your loss.
I’m not sure it is worth engaging once a thread descends to calling highly respected professionals names you be told off for, if you were in primary.
This mindset is partly why we’re in the position we are now.

Colon please don’t try and make judgements on someone’s mental health. It really isn’t your place. Getting a gp appointment for a lot of people is very difficult at the minute and not as easy as you suggest. It is also not helpful to compare too other situations. If someone is feeling suicidal or despairing then they are not going to be in the right frame of mind and your unsympathetic post could tip some one over the edge. I’m sorry for your personal loss but other people have the right to feel the way they do without their feelings being dismissed even if it was just hyperbole. People feel what they feel.

@ColonSemiColon
So sorry for your loss
That was a disgusting response and I agree that continuing to engage with certain posters on this thread is pointless.

If lacking intelligence and empathy was a protection against covid then no vaccine required.

'The propensity for producing false positives is staggering.This is concerning as the number of positive cases is the catalyst for the measures being implemented.'

Do you really think they say oh positive results are increasing let's lockdown!

hospital admissions are climbing, so then will deaths just people do not die immediately so those numbers will take a bit longer. Dont you care about anyone over 50 who is overweight (of which there will be many) and therefore more at risk of a lengthy hospital stay?

You need to cast your mind back to the threads a few months ago 'Government didnt do enough they should have more restrictions!'.

@buffyp Hyperbole isn’t a feeling, it’s a form of argument. And arguing that death would be better than lockdown is a fucking tasteless use of hyperbole when hundreds of thousands of people in this country have actually lost loved ones during lockdown and would give anything it took to give them back.

@Aquarius15 and @Pomegranatespompom thanks for your condolences. I should really avoid threads like this, reading the stupid isn’t good for me.

The countries that have been most successful at controlling the virus have seen least economic damage. Within the uk areas that have lower virus levels will have more people out spending - because the cautious wont go out and spend if they think they'll end up in hospital. Although more old people die a significant number of beds are taken up by covid patients aged under 65. Around 30% of those with covid still have shortness of breath after 60 days, 40% still have fatigue. www.clinicalmicrobiologyandinfection.com/article/S1198-743X(20)30606-6/fulltext Male fertility can be affected www.jpost.com/health-science/covid-19-could-cause-infertility-new-israeli-study-644767?fbclid=IwAR0PKFbpbdfCmuGHor-Xzpw8H_dJzRQQzK5uDZc2NdRXqBFWFAUG51e5z14 and pregnant women are more likely to get long covid than other people.

Covid-19 is a very nasty illness that can have long term effects even on the young.

New treatments are being developed, the virus does less well in summer. A vaccine is not the only way out of this and it will not be 10 years before this reduces to something like flu. We need to get through this winter with as little damage as possible.

Track and trace needs to be handed back to the local public health teams who would have to expand but would cost less than Dido's failure. 6th formers need to wear masks in schools as do teachers. Lockdowns will need to happen as long as people are idiots who think they can meet as many people as they please without consequences.

There are alternatives - euthanasia for anyone over 85 or lock up everyone 16-30, the age group spreading most of the virus. We cant shield the vulnerable so confine the major virus spreaders.

It's out of control now - it will be what will be. Take care and look after yourself the best you can. As hapless Johnson and chums plough onto Brexit and screwing up the country. Never felt more pessimistic about the future. The UK elected a clown and now we have a circus of horrors.

Actually, the balance is where society asks the vulnerable to take extra precautions and limits the freedom of 16-30 year olds to mix outside their age group.

I'm not especially at risk, although over 50, and my DS contracted it within days of arriving at university. He was tested (by the uni team) 36 hours later, and got a positive 48 hours after, so he self-quarantined, along with his hall of residence. Apparently, it has prevented a big outbreak, so far.

A degree of commonsense and self discipline on both sides would help.

How is the utterly incompetent Dido still in charge of T&T? It’s an absolute disgrace.

@vera99

It's out of control now - it will be what will be. Take care and look after yourself the best you can. As hapless Johnson and chums plough onto Brexit and screwing up the country. Never felt more pessimistic about the future. The UK elected a clown and now we have a circus of horrors.

Totally agree

Remember that people “knew what they were voting for” though. Well this is it

@ColonSemiColon

His plan is, and always has been, rolling lockdowns with various levels of restrictions to buy time while a fully functioning test and trace system was set up and then more limited rolling measures until a vaccine or cure. This is essentially every country in the world’s plan. Some have managed the test, trace, isolate so well that their need for rolling lockdowns is already reduced. Unfortunately our government have royally fucked up test and trace and are reluctant to go for nationwide lockdowns. The country has also been repeatedly mislead by a PM telling us it’ll all be over in x weeks, when he could have been explaining that rolling restrictions would continue to be necessary.

When Kier Starmer is PM and sets up an inquiry into all the unnecessary deaths, I imagine Whitty’s will be the most interesting testimony.

Very true.

@Pomegranatespompom

How is the utterly incompetent Dido still in charge of T&T? It’s an absolute disgrace.

Not seen Hancock on tv much either

This is why we cannot simply ‘listen to the science’. Chris Whitty has a one-dimensional focus on COVID and preventing transmission.

He is not an expert in economics, education, mental health, domestic violence, business, child abuse. oncology, government finances, psychology or behavioural science.

It’s all very well him advising we lockdown until there’s a vaccine but he doesn’t have to worry about all the other consequences of doing that.

We could wave goodbye to the NHS for starters. There just wouldn’t be the money to continue funding it after we have millions more unemployed and not paying tax.

[quote ColonSemiColon]@TrustTheGeneGenie If you are genuinely thinking that death is preferable to ‘bare existence’ then you need to seek medical support for your mental health. If it’s hyperbole then you need to think about what a bare existence actually is. There are people walking five miles a day to get water and existing on minimal food, and still fighting desperately to stay alive. A bare existence isn’t only meeting six mates in the pub for a year.[/quote]
mate, i don't even go to the pub. Can you not think actually it might be lack of seeing people i care about that's the issue?

Such a lack of empathy on this site

We could lock down for 1,3,6 months like NZ covid is lurking it seems,

When you look at the worldometer, UK is pretty bad deaths per head of population. Chris Witty is right to be concerned perhaps.

@TrustTheGeneGenie My kids will never see their dad again. He’s dead. During lockdown. Fuck off pretending death is better than lockdown as you sit there with your live nuclear family, able to visit others in gardens. You’re in no fucking position to talk about empathy.

So Boris imposes a tier system and restrictions yet the super speakers are still going into school and university.

He is not an expert in economics, education, mental health, domestic violence, business, child abuse. oncology, government finances, psychology or behavioural science

No he isn't but CV running amok causes a whole load of these and other problems.
People will not go out and about spending money if they risk getting very ill, causing the very issues that you are, rightly concerned about.

I had hoped that over the summer Johnson would have got our testing capacity up, and sorted track and trace, he did neither, so we are now back exactly as we were in March.

We have achieved nothing at all.

He is not an expert in economics,

Doesn’t he have a qualification in economics?

*So why are all Tier 2 and 3 areas to the north of Birmingham? Have no students moved into halls to the south of a Birmingham?

Genuine question, but surely if it’s students, it would be nationwide?

Or does Boris only want to further lockdown the Midlands and North, regardless?*

I was looking into this a bit more as I couldn't understand why some areas had higher infection rates per 100,000 but didn't have further restrictions but then it described the tier system in more detail, restrictions are based on rise of infection and the capacity to overwhelm the hospitals in the area, Birmingham has 4,000 extra beds with Nigtingale and so does London, looking at northern Nightingale hospitals they seem tiny in comparison.

Beds is one thing, but staff?