Good News Part 6 - we're gonna need a bigger boat. Yeah Science!

[InterfectoremVulpes]

Good news and vibes only please

That's good Fuzzy - glad they're making progress now.

The littleowl1 slidebar - more green! (Greens are very good for you).

@IncludeWomenInTheSequel

I am howling at the Biden inauguration speech. If this isn't a good news day then I don't know what is.

Me too! Its made me feel so positive about the future. Good things can happen.

@littleowl1

Good news on our barometer again on www.covidmessenger.com today!

We have yet more green councils!

Out of 315 councils in England, we have:

300 councils with falling cases week-over-week

Whoop whoop!

Here's hoping we can crack an all green table by the weekend! Wouldnt that be fab progress since last week!

You are an absolute legend

Thanks for adding all the hospital admissions and ages too.

Bring on the green

@IncludeWomenInTheSequel

I am howling at the Biden inauguration speech. If this isn't a good news day then I don't know what is.

Haven't seen it yet. Will catch it later but let's hope the door DID hit Trump on the way out.

They just had a young woman named Amanda Gorman with some amazing spoken word verse. You have to get it on catch up. Incredible.

@IncludeWomenInTheSequel

They just had a young woman named Amanda Gorman with some amazing spoken word verse. You have to get it on catch up. Incredible.

I heard that it was very good

I missed what was before that though sadly

@IncludeWomenInTheSequel

I am howling at the Biden inauguration speech. If this isn't a good news day then I don't know what is.

Ditto!!

Thank you everyone for the kind words over the last few days. I am so glad the site is helping people .

It is inevitable that we will have a bit of bumping along, especially in a week or so when cases (hopefully) fall to quite low levels. Isolated outbreaks can knock the week-over-week changes quite a lot when cases are low. But even at these high levels, there will be a bit of volatility.

To be honest, I had thought we would have more of this "noise" ie- flipping from red to green. As @MarshaBradyo noted, the remarkable magnitude of the fall in cases in most councils following lockdown has kept this noise to a minimum - the sharp falls overriding any localised outbreaks which are mostly small by comparison.

But we should wholeheartedly expect that, when cases fall to low levels (and normalise for the reduced contact in society owing to lockdown), we will see much more noise week-over-week as cases "bump along the bottom" so to speak - flipping from green to red and back again.

At that point monitoring the week-over-week changes in a barometer may not be the most insightful way to track progress but, depending on what is going on, I will try to work out a graphic that captures what's going on.

My good news: I’ve been accepted as an NHS Volunteer Responder. Can anyone else who’s signed up tell me what happens next? I’ve downloaded the goodsam app. Is this how it will be possible for me to volunteer doing, for example, marshalling and/or admin at a mass vac hub or do you do that a different way?

I know I know I know, schools are a pretty divisive issue at the moment.... but that would be one of the most positive things to come next, children back to school - do we think it might be too optimistic to hope for this after Feb half term what with the steady fall in cases and the vaccine roll out????

@goldpendant

I know I know I know, schools are a pretty divisive issue at the moment.... but that would be one of the most positive things to come next, children back to school - do we think it might be too optimistic to hope for this after Feb half term what with the steady fall in cases and the vaccine roll out????

My optimistic hope is that it will be after feb half term; my realistic hope is that it will be the beginning of March. But that’s just me!

What I do think is that it’s virtually guaranteed to be the first thing “unlocked” as it were.

@louisejxxx

My good news: I’ve been accepted as an NHS Volunteer Responder. Can anyone else who’s signed up tell me what happens next? I’ve downloaded the goodsam app. Is this how it will be possible for me to volunteer doing, for example, marshalling and/or admin at a mass vac hub or do you do that a different way?

Not necessarily but possibly. I’ve signed up via St. John ambulance to be a “vaccination care volunteer”- not entirely clear what it is. What I can tell you it that it’s very long winded as have to do lots of online mandatory training none of which seem to be relevant to the actual job. All H&S, safeguarding etc. Great to (hopefully) get involved though.

Hurrah for you people volunteering for things. (I'm a bit envious - I wanted to be a vaccinator, but being CV and living with A CEV I can't).

The world needs more people like you!

@goldpendant

I know I know I know, schools are a pretty divisive issue at the moment.... but that would be one of the most positive things to come next, children back to school - do we think it might be too optimistic to hope for this after Feb half term what with the steady fall in cases and the vaccine roll out????

I really hope they might, but realistically I think they'll remain shut a while longer. I can't any reason for them to be shut after Easter if things carry on as they are now.

Thanks for the info @Frazzled2207 - I’ve just had a look at the description for that role online and that looks more in line with what I was hoping to do, so have applied for that now too.

@goldpendant from the article I posted this morning:

1. February reopening a ‘reasonable assumption’, but still some unknowns

The scientists were pressed on whether the government’s aim of reopening schools after February half term was likely to be met. Harries said the date had been set by DfE “but it seems a perfectly reasonable assumption in the sense of if you’re looking at the epidemiology you’re watching a wave of virus come across the country”. “We can see it’s hopefully starting to level off now in the original areas where the new variant rose, and we have a national lockdown and we can start to see that those numbers are starting to be contained,” she said. “So you can get a sense of the timeframe in which those waves might come down and in which we could potentially open schools. “What I can’t guarantee is that in this interval between now and February that there wouldn’t be another variant or we may find some other epidemiological change, so I think these are very sensible time estimates, but they need to be understood as not fixed dates.” Harries added that she understood people wanted “very certain dates” for reopening, but “unfortunately that’s not how the virus works”.

That sounds promising @AlexandraEiffel thank you for sharing.

In other positive news I have been accepted as an NHS vaccinator, all trading/screening etc done and awaiting deployment!

@louisejxxx

My good news: I’ve been accepted as an NHS Volunteer Responder. Can anyone else who’s signed up tell me what happens next? I’ve downloaded the goodsam app. Is this how it will be possible for me to volunteer doing, for example, marshalling and/or admin at a mass vac hub or do you do that a different way?

Me too but had nothing yet

I'm on the novavax trial .... there should be some firm info on it next month but they're optimistic for green light by Easter I think. No idea about actual supply though.

Everyone involved in the trial (the biggest vaccine trial in the UK I think) has been extremely optimistic. It uses slightly more proven technology than other things, similar to the HPV vaccine I'm told. And certainly after 2 jabs we were told that there have been no serious reported side effects, anywhere.

Coming back to here as wandered into the other threads. God that board is scary tonight. Can anyone tell me how to hide that topic but I still want to see this one!

DH was on the novavax trial. They said they were considering letting people know what jab they had when data was published (i.e. sooner than usual) . They also mentioned really high rates over 90%. That was early data though.

The schools article really cheered me today. It made me feel like there are intelligent people having sensible discussions about schools opening.

I don't venture to the rest of the board. I think if you hide the topic but watch this thread it go to threads I'm on, you can get back to it

On a big positive last week my Mum and Dad who retired from being drs 3 years ago did their first vaccination shifts and on my Dad's first shift my 88 year old gran was vaccinated...by complete coincidence! Their centre have now done all 80+ our area have done all care homes and are on to 75-79. I'm just really proud of them needed to out it down somewhere!

@clareykb
Am just catching up on this thread and this is a great post to go to sleep on! Thank you to your parents for what they are doing!

Big thank you to your parents Clarey x