F**k me

[notevenat20]

In case anyone was doubting that we should stay home, take a look at www.covidmessenger.com/. The columns to compare is the one third from the right which is the most recent week and the one second from the right, which is the week before.

Oh shit.

I don't know how useful it is to compare this pandemic to one a hundreds ago. It's clearly a fucking disaster however you slice it.

Well this is a turnaround. It was obvious from November, if not much earlier, what was going to happen with schools open and no mitigation measures. Teachers were reviled and accused of being enemies of education whenever they asked for schools to be made safer, not least by the OP of this thread.

I think those are apples and pears. The b117 variant has changed everything. Discussion about what the right thing to do before we knew about b117 and after are just not relevant to each other. It's effectively a different and worse pandemic but this time with a vaccine that is available. It's all completely different.

And for the record, at no point did I revile teachers or call them enemies of education. I was very pissed off by how crap DCs school was in the first lockdown however. They were crap. I also disagreed that opening schools caused the rise in cases from late August. I still don't believe that.

But right now with b117 we are all screwed until we have vaccinated a lot of the country.

" It's effectively a different and worse pandemic but this time with a vaccine that is available. It's all completely different"

Is it? The old variant spread pretty easily in schools as ons survey figures attest. It now spreads a bit faster. Half the staff at my school got covid just with the old variant. From where I'm sitting schools have been a vector for covid for months, just like teachers have been saying all along. The new variable has magnified the problem, not created it.

An individual's posting history is available to search. I'm not stalking, I'm just amused and a little surprised at the change in attitude.

An individual's posting history is available to search. I'm not stalking, I'm just amused and a little surprised at the change in attitude.

I think that might be because you have neither understood my view now or then. Either that or you don't believe b117 has changed anything significantly.

@notevenat20

An individual's posting history is available to search. I'm not stalking, I'm just amused and a little surprised at the change in attitude.

I think that might be because you have neither understood my view now or then. Either that or you don't believe b117 has changed anything significantly.

B117 has changed things, but this sort of leap wasn’t unexpected due to Christmas. It’s why it was a particularly daft idea to not shut schools a week earlier before Christmas. There should have been at least a clear 10 days, preferably 14 between the end of term and mixing on Christmas Day.

I am just not sure about this schools centred analysis. B117 is increasing at the same rate in Denmark.

The variant has been known about since September. It was given freedom to transmit throughout our schools due to no social distancing or masks. Teachers and school staff witnessed first hand and were calling for mitigation but fell on deaf ears. Schools limped on until the end of term and the infection rates continued rising. Why are you so surprised the numbers now are this high. This has always been a highly infectious disease.

@CountessFrog

Didn’t you already know this? It’s been on the news.

Your post is fear mongering. We’ve all stocked up on that already, thanks.

Yeah! They should only post this sort of thing on a forum specifically for Coronavirus issues...Oh.

What is particularly annoying for those of us who went into tier 3 straight out of the second 'lockdown' is that London and much of the SE went into tier 2 - in the run-up to Xmas. You need to be an epidemiologist to know what was going to happen with all bars, cafes, pubs, etc open and crammed to the rafters with pre-Xmas revellers and office dos, then all of them cramming on to public transport, especially the Tube.

Look at the rank order and which areas are in the top 50 slots...

The variant has been known about since September. It was given freedom to transmit throughout our schools due to no social distancing or masks

I am not sure this is true. I thought they collected it in September, sequenced it in October and found out how infectious and widespread it was just before this lockdown.

@VickyEadieofThigh

What is particularly annoying for those of us who went into tier 3 straight out of the second 'lockdown' is that London and much of the SE went into tier 2 - in the run-up to Xmas. You need to be an epidemiologist to know what was going to happen with all bars, cafes, pubs, etc open and crammed to the rafters with pre-Xmas revellers and office dos, then all of them cramming on to public transport, especially the Tube.

Look at the rank order and which areas are in the top 50 slots...

Agree it was a disastrous decision. As was forcing schools to continue without additional measures.

It’s worth noting how much testing has increased as well over the last week. We tested over 650000 people yesterday, the average used to be about 350000 you test more you find more.

@CountessFrog

Didn’t you already know this? It’s been on the news.

Your post is fear mongering. We’ve all stocked up on that already, thanks.

Your post is attempting to silence the truth. We've had so much of that our hospitals are on the brink of collapse.

You sound like a government advisor @notevenat20. Convincing yourself that this has all come as a complete surprise and looking at the reasons why.

@CountessFrog

Didn’t you already know this? It’s been on the news.

Your post is fear mongering. We’ve all stocked up on that already, thanks.

It's not scaremongering if it's the truth.

@notevenat20 - to be fair, it was exceedingly obvious how rapidly the new strain was spreading several weeks before the Government did anything about it. If you look back at the schools posts you were involved in, you will see how many people were pointing out how rapidly covid had taken off in schools that had been completely unaffected before half term. Yet still staff were being told by smug twits that this was obviously entirely down to their behaviour, because kids who don’t wear masks in crowded classrooms don’t spread it... all relying on data that was obviously dangerously out of date while doing so. It was pretty offensive to be blaming adults for spreading it to each other, rather than the situation schools had been left in - underfunded, overcrowded, cramped and understaffed.

I posted this on December 6th on one of noblegiraffe’s safer schools threads.

No one should be remotely surprised at the situation we’re in now.

You sound like a government advisor notevenat20. Convincing yourself that this has all come as a complete surprise and looking at the reasons why.

Sadly unpaid. I don't think it's a surprise that viruses mutate and sometimes the mutations are worse than the original. Now that we have a vaccine locking down also makes sense. But I am not sure we could have locked everything down months before the mutation assuming what and where it was coming without a crystal ball.

In terms of what we could have done that would have made a significant difference, I just don't know. It's clear that centralised quarantining works (that is locking people up in hotel rooms with food delivered by robot ) but we don't want that. It seems that high tech intrusive policing works (as in S Korea) but we don't want that either. Closing the borders for months and locking everyone down also works but we would have had to do it from march 1 and no one would have accepted that. And so on...

The only way to save thousands of lives now is to quarantine more quickly. If the govt spent billions on that it would still be worth it even purely economically.

I don't think it's a surprise that viruses mutate and sometimes the mutations are worse than the original

But this isn't all because of the mutation. This wave at this time was predicted right from the start. This winter was always going to be the hard one. The point of the first lockdown was to buy time so that we had better treatment, contact tracing and safer public buildings.

The fact that the government failed to use the summer to put effective systems in place in a number of crucial areas (and even encouraged activity which started the spike early) is why it's so bad now. Different choices would have given a shallower curve. The spike protein mutation isn't helping but it hasn't fundamentally changed the calculation.

The point PPs have made is that when some posters tried to talk about the precautions which could slow the spread they were criticised by you. At this point I would suggest a little humility might go a long way, but I am willing to be bet that would be a waste of my time.

@walksen

" It's effectively a different and worse pandemic but this time with a vaccine that is available. It's all completely different"

Is it? The old variant spread pretty easily in schools as ons survey figures attest. It now spreads a bit faster. Half the staff at my school got covid just with the old variant. From where I'm sitting schools have been a vector for covid for months, just like teachers have been saying all along. The new variable has magnified the problem, not created it.

I agree with this. Also - Far more traffic through my rural village than in the first lockdown, so some people are still not grasping this. Also a few evenings ago I saw people running together, no masks, side by side, and two cars full of people hugging goodbye , nine people including children. We are in Wales and this is totally against the rules here so clearly people are just not listening.

But this isn't all because of the mutation

I think it is all because of the mutation. At the end of the November lockdown the numbers started going up again even though we were still in lockdown. That seems to be entirely because of b117. This also means that we can't use any of the tier systems we had before.

Who’s publishing those numbers as it’s not phe or government website and isn’t right for my area.

This isn't scaremongering! It's stating facts, which many folks seem keen to ignore. I think we need to see more of this, as so many are not taking the current dire situation seriously. Thanks OP, doesn't apply to me as not in England. I look at the Worldometer, which is pretty scary in itself, as the UK has not been far from the top of the charts during this whole last year.