Rishi Sunak - Moving Goalposts for Lockdown

[LucilleTheVampireBat]

So it is in the news that Rishi Sunak has said he is concerned that government scientific advisers are moving the goalposts in a bid to extend the lockdown.

He is said to have stated that the justification is being shifted from the original and boakworthy "Protect the NHS" narrative, and is now not focusing on hospitalisations, but rather on the number of cases.

This was my concern all along. That they would try to change the narrative in order to justify extending this hideous lockdown even longer.

This quote is from the Telegraph article: "He (Rishi) has told allies that Britain is approaching a "fat lady sings moment" when lockdown must be lifted, never to return". I truly hope that this is the case!

We have very limited evidence so far on the vaccines. Most of the people in the trials would not have been in the most vulnerable groups. The vaccines weren't designed to be given with the second dose delayed for ? 12 weeks (the plan for how this is going to work is unclear).

We are doing really well with the vaccines, and we are getting there with the lockdown, but numbers are still high.

It would be a real shame to jettison our hard got gains at this point. We need to move forward but carefully and intelligently. The intelligent part is where listening to the scientists comes in.

LostinWinter while their job is to advise on health they aren't completely oblivious to the impact on the economy or mental health. Chris Whitty has a degree in economics for example.

Also, people don't pay taxes when they are ill. Or dead.

@herecomesthsun

The evidence so far all shows that delaying the second dose will in fact substantially increase the level of protection provided- both in terms of severe illness and transmission.

If anything, the pandemic has shown how the general population are a bit slow when it comes to science. It should be a compulsory pass like maths and English.

As CW has explained, multiple times, even talking slowly. The vaccine is great, it will stop old people dying. The problem is, it won’t help hospital capacity because the people who need treatment, who take beds, yet will live. They aren’t in the first wave of vaccinations. If you let it rip through as before it could undo the progress with vaccines.

Nature changes the goalposts because that’s what viruses do. It’s not even GCSE biology to be fair.

He is right like many others who are concerned about their incomes. Not everyone is on furlough, there are a lot of people who have fallen through the net. The longer this goes on, the longer the financial impact will stay. Eat out help out was the worse campaign ever though. I will support no tourism as it wasn't so bad last year not to have tourists and a lot of businesses just about managed without them but other businesses such as the entertainment, airline and hotels could maybe get help until the pandemic world wide drops significantly and to open up the rest will be a good starting point to start pumping into the economy.

@Itisasecret

But it is not about ensuring no one needs hospital treatment. The purpose of lockdown is making sure the NHS can cope.

If you remove the people who are most likely to need hospitalisation, you reduce numbers so that the NHS can cope with those who do need treatment.

@herecomesthsun

We have very limited evidence so far on the vaccines. Most of the people in the trials would not have been in the most vulnerable groups. The vaccines weren't designed to be given with the second dose delayed for ? 12 weeks (the plan for how this is going to work is unclear).

We are doing really well with the vaccines, and we are getting there with the lockdown, but numbers are still high.

It would be a real shame to jettison our hard got gains at this point. We need to move forward but carefully and intelligently. The intelligent part is where listening to the scientists comes in.

Trial results on the AZ job have been reported this week that the 12 week gap (as the virologists exepected) gives very good protection

www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n326

I think we can stop the largely uninformed comments on this now

We are currently running at 400k doses a day. All those people will need second doses.

If we charge into 2019 type normality in a month or 2, there would be a very high number of cases with an inevitable increase in hospital admissions and deaths. If we have very high levels in the community, and older groups are vaccinated, the admissions and deaths will be in younger people, perhaps with an undetected vulnerability. That would be very sad to see, as well as an economic loss in lots of ways in its own right.

The politicians are right to exercise a degree of caution.

We are inevitably going to get more variants as well. If we are careful about going forward, then we will be in a better position to guard against these and respond to them effectively.

That will hlp the economy as well as health.

@Itisasecret

If anything, the pandemic has shown how the general population are a bit slow when it comes to science. It should be a compulsory pass like maths and English.

As CW has explained, multiple times, even talking slowly. The vaccine is great, it will stop old people dying. The problem is, it won’t help hospital capacity because the people who need treatment, who take beds, yet will live. They aren’t in the first wave of vaccinations. If you let it rip through as before it could undo the progress with vaccines.

Nature changes the goalposts because that’s what viruses do. It’s not even GCSE biology to be fair.

This is unfair. Maybe the economics of society and how taxes are raised should also be compulsory then.

While I dont want to come out too soon that we go straight back in again - Theres no point us coming out of this if we dont have an economy to go back too.

I quite like Rishi. He has really impressed me. Yes he made mistakes but most of the time he has exceeded my expectations.

The fact that Rishi Sunak is allowing this to ‘leak’ to the papers indicates he is at least partly driven in taking this stance by his own political ambitions - he knows it plays well with back benchers who are sceptical of lock down. He will also be aware that Johnson has had a bit of a public ‘bounce’ on the back of the vaccine roll out.

Doesn’t mean that there aren’t very valid arguments to be had over the strategy going forwards ( although I have to say Johnson doesn’t ever strike me as an advocate of locking down for longer than needed tbh)

[quote FizzyPepsi]@Itisasecret

But it is not about ensuring no one needs hospital treatment. The purpose of lockdown is making sure the NHS can cope.

If you remove the people who are most likely to need hospitalisation, you reduce numbers so that the NHS can cope with those who do need treatment.[/quote]
Yep, and what has CW said for some time now? That will not be in the first lot. So it’s great that the people who are at a high risk of dying will be vaccinated soon. It still means the hospitals will be struggling to cope with large numbers. Bluntly, the people who are being vaccinated now are not a burden on the NHS because they will die.

He’s made this very clear, multiple times. I blame the media myself. This misconception that the NHS will be fine in weeks, it’s pretty far off the mark.

@Ch3rish

uninformed comments

lolololol

From the item you quoted
"
"Azra Ghani, chair in infectious disease epidemiology at Imperial College London, urged caution over the results, however, pointing out that the study was not designed to look at different dosing gaps or at one versus two doses. “Participants who received a single dose were younger, more likely to be female, more likely to be a healthcare worker, more likely to be resident in Brazil, and more likely to be white than those who received two doses. In addition, those who received a single dose were followed for a significantly longer period of time,” she said. “This means that it is not sensible to compare the efficacy estimates from a single dose with those from two doses.” "

It is a pretty small study, reported as a preprint isn't it?

We are still awaiting more evidence really.

Though it is certainly reassuring that we have scraps of evidence to support the current plan.

You may remember that the chair of the BMA was asking for the doses to be 6 weeks rather than 12 a short while ago.

I think the vaccine effort is valiant and is doing very well, but I think we still need caution. And we still need to be listening to Whitty and co.

@herecomesthsun

With all due respect, the chair of the BMA is a GP- he hasn't got any more expertise on vaccination programmes or efficacy than you or me.

The goal posts change because the science develops and the virus mutates.

I definitely trust scientists more than a senior member of the Tory party.

@Itisasecret

If anything, the pandemic has shown how the general population are a bit slow when it comes to science. It should be a compulsory pass like maths and English.

As CW has explained, multiple times, even talking slowly. The vaccine is great, it will stop old people dying. The problem is, it won’t help hospital capacity because the people who need treatment, who take beds, yet will live. They aren’t in the first wave of vaccinations. If you let it rip through as before it could undo the progress with vaccines.

Nature changes the goalposts because that’s what viruses do. It’s not even GCSE biology to be fair.

That's quite an unfair and patronising post. The most vulnerable you are referring to will be vaccinated by two weeks time. I don't think anyone is saying we need to fully come out of lockdown at that point. but at 400k vaccinations a day, and now it's been shown that one dose gives good immunity and cuts transmission, we should actually have vaccinated all of groups 1-9, and probably some of the next groups, by end of March. That is, most definitely, enough to start opening up the country and getting back to normal.

Yes it could have been a different picture if it had been shown that one dose wasn't effective, or transmission wasn't effected, but this isn't the case. The current vaccines are also effective enough against the new strains.

I think most people know and understand this, most people are not stupid.

It feels like groundhog day. And it will feel like that when we go into lockdown x because the restrictions will be lifted too early, normal measures will still not be mandatory (borders closed/masks/...) and the economy will tank even more.

Why on earth is it so hard to understand that "going back to normal" is not an option?

We need protective measures and vaccines together and not "normal" at a blink of an eye.

On vaccines: there will be a lot of vulnerable ppl left out. Everyone under 18 for instance, which includes my son.

I don't see how Eat out to Help Out caused the November lockdown, as suggested here.
EOTHO was in August. Cases didn't start rising again until after students and schools all started mixing in September.

Cases zoomed up in December until after Christmas - if EOTHO had caused big problems, we'd have seen it from mid August onwards. Yes, it encouraged people out of the house, but into (mainly) controlled environments where proprietors were doing everything they could to limit spread. The complete opposite from uncontrolled mixing at Christmas - both family gatherings and heaving shops whilst people were doing Xmas shopping.

As itsasecret said, the intensive care units are not full of eighty five year olds. They’re full (on average) of sixty-somethings who haven’t been vaccinated yet.

Sunak has consistently been overly gung ho about lifting restrictions and IMO his influence has ended up with us being in a worse economic position that we would have been if he’d simply rolled over and done whatever Sage suggested to suppress the virus.

On the upside, his influence and that of the large number of Tory backbenchers he speaks for means that the people who moan that the government is in thrall to a bunch of zero-risk zealots and we’ll be in lockdown for ever are very obviously wrong. The very instant that there’s public and scientific critical mass behind the idea that it’s time to loosen up then that’s what we’ll be doing: it’s inherent in the makeup of this government.

@TheSunIsStillShining

Under 18s will not be vaccinated because they are at more risk from flu than COVID.

[quote FizzyPepsi]@TheSunIsStillShining

Under 18s will not be vaccinated because they are at more risk from flu than COVID.[/quote]
You do know that children get the flu vaccine to help stop community spread. They are known to spread it easily.

It’s not a far shout to say this could happen with Covid. Even JTV said the vulnerable children should ask their practitioner about it. So children are being vaccinated, even now.

[quote FizzyPepsi]@herecomesthsun

With all due respect, the chair of the BMA is a GP- he hasn't got any more expertise on vaccination programmes or efficacy than you or me.[/quote]
Well I and he are both medically qualified and have various additional qualifications. Though I don't claim any specialist knowledge on vaccines, I do respect Profs Whitty and Van Tam and think if the government had followed their advice more closely we would be in a better position with both health and the economy.

He’s made this very clear, multiple times. I blame the media myself. This misconception that the NHS will be fine in weeks, it’s pretty far off the mark

Define fine. We were told that this needed to happen because the NHS was 'overwhelmed'. It was our duty to prevent this. Now the NHS needs to be 'fine' before we can open up? I don't accept this.

I agree Stranger - him pushing hard for reopening has caused more damage to the economy in the long term. It would be a mistake to do this once again when we can now see a light at the end of the tunnel.