Yet again the NW is behind the rest of the country

[RedToothBrush]

www.itv.com/news/granada/2021-02-12/hannah-miller-will-the-north-be-in-lockdown-for-longer
Hannah Miller: Will the north be in lockdown for longer?

I've been saying this for some weeks now that parts of the NW are significantly behind other parts in the country and peaked much later than London.

All these calls for ending lockdown asap are worrying in this context. It does not matter the data.

The April lockdown was lifted too early in the NW and there were consequences to this.

I hope to go that the same mistake is not made again.

This seriously needs flagging more as a real issue.

What boils my piss is that they lump all of Lancashire in together!!

Lancaster has rates on a par with South Lakeland and Craven with whom we share hospitals and health resources rather than South Lancs

My area of the south east has had large falls in cases recently and is now quite low and still dropping. We were one of the areas who went into lockdown before Christmas. We couldn’t even see one household on Christmas Day. If some areas of the north are lagging behind a bit surely it makes sense for those areas which went into lockdown first to come out of it first, and areas of the north and anywhere else that went into lockdown a bit later stay in it a bit later to get the cases down more?

BoJo has said tiers are unlikely.

[quote moominmomma1234]**@Pastanred* @RedToothBrush* it’s east Lancashire where I live . Maybe it was just that area then where the council kept schools shut.
I think the government will open things nationally but regions/local govt will override it and we will end up with regional variations yet again .
I just want the govt to do the right thing, whatever that is,
I think midlands might be worse than NW this time[/quote]
Lancashire County Council did keep all schools off for longer than some other parts of the country, you are right.

Certain parts of the north west have had high cases for a very long time now, despite being in higher restrictions under the guise of various different names, for various reasons. The rest of us just kept lumped in with those areas regardless of how low our cases go.

My concern with a tiered approach to opening schools is that some children will be back to receiving a proper education, while others won’t and our educational outcomes are already lower overall in the north than the south.

@Cloudsurfing

My area of the south east has had large falls in cases recently and is now quite low and still dropping. We were one of the areas who went into lockdown before Christmas. We couldn’t even see one household on Christmas Day. If some areas of the north are lagging behind a bit surely it makes sense for those areas which went into lockdown first to come out of it first, and areas of the north and anywhere else that went into lockdown a bit later stay in it a bit later to get the cases down more?

🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈🙈 we’ve been in higher restrictions for nearly all of the bloody year! Please don’t think we’ve had it easier in the North just because we were “allowed” to see another family on Christmas Day!!

@LadyCatStark I don’t think you’ve had it easier at all, I know you’ve been in harsher restrictions for longer and it’s awful. I just meant that logically we went into this lockdown sooner, so we have had longer for cases to come down, so wouldn’t it make sense for the areas which didn’t to stay in lockdown a couple of weeks longer to get cases down more then open up? Instead of everywhere going back into tiers?

The problem with bringing the country out of lockdown in separate stages is that people leave their own area to go to pubs/shops etc.

When Bolton was first put in higher measures and their eat in dining stopped, people left Bolton and then our area went up too along with the rest of GM.

When Greater Manchester was in T3 I was seeing friends going out in Liverpool which was T2.

The faster we can get vaccines in peoples arms the better, that way once we come out of f this lockdown that could be it. Yes Covid will still be here, but hopefully not in a way that will overwhelm services. We can add the booster to the annual flu jab!

If they use hospital admissions to decide on tiers it would be even more unfair as they sent cases from the south to the north. My local hospital had people from Kent in which is nearly 250 miles away

With this now being a repeating pattern, I do wonder if the SE bias in implementing lockdown triggers as the SE is approaching its natural peak, and the lockdown accelerates the decline, in addition to the virus hitting a threshold of immunity. In the North and Midlands, that peak is curtailed which you would logically expect to bring numbers down rapidly, but it doesn't... less immunity through infection has occured so you end up with a more natural slow-burn of cases, plus the social and economic burden of longer restrictions.

Plus the effects of weather (wasn't last summer from June quite split regionally on weather?) So it is easier to socialise safely outside in the south than the north.
Plus vitamin D, so southerners are less likely to be deficient.
Plus the multitude of factors associated with poverty, and the social groups most likely to be in poverty.
Plus lockdown fatigue in areas that had barely any respite from strict measures. Leicester has hardly been a glowing example of the effectiveness of additional measures being imposed long term.

Vaconation should be the best equaliser of the north/ south divide on virus management.

When Greater Manchester was in T3 I was seeing friends going out in Liverpool which was T2.

This was the exact problem. And i think the government have at least acknowledged that the tiers were part of the problem because it just ended up spreading cases further as people dodged the restrictions.

Living on the border with other counties it was very apparent the sheer degree to which this was happening. It was deeply frustrating and sole destroying to see day in and out.

Thats what i cant deal with again. The sheer degree of piss takery. Restrictions being put in places ended up being a relief at times as a result because it meant everyone was forced to get on with them rather than travelling to get around the rules, which was driving cases upwards.

Tiers were completely unworkable in practice.

With this now being a repeating pattern, I do wonder if the SE bias in implementing lockdown triggers as the SE is approaching its natural peak, and the lockdown accelerates the decline, in addition to the virus hitting a threshold of immunity. In the North and Midlands, that peak is curtailed which you would logically expect to bring numbers down rapidly, but it doesn't... less immunity through infection has occured so you end up with a more natural slow-burn of cases, plus the social and economic burden of longer restrictions.

They did look at this and the main problem is that there's more people per head of population in jobs which are termed 'unskilled' and 'working class' in the NW. And were more economically deprieved.

It does suggest all the modelling prioritises the South because of the democratic profiling.

North West here. Much of what you say is true but on the plus side we are doing really well with the vaccination programme, way ahead of other parts of England. That’s our way out.

@DenisetheMenace

North West here. Much of what you say is true but on the plus side we are doing really well with the vaccination programme, way ahead of other parts of England. That’s our way out.

And they cut back the vaccines supplied to the region for the whole of February for other areas to 'catch up'. We ended up being a victim of own success.

Even more frustrating tonight is hearing from two separate people involved in roll out how some CCGs have been given permission to start inviting groups 5 and 6 whilst ones closest to me have so far been refused and vaccinations in the area have ground to much of a halt in the last week.

We’re rattling ahead here in West Yorkshire and a couple of my younger friends have been called to have their jab next week as they are clinically vulnerable.

@Lissy23

We’re rattling ahead here in West Yorkshire and a couple of my younger friends have been called to have their jab next week as they are clinically vulnerable.

My inlaws are group 5 in another area. They got called this week. (Thank fuck) Meanwhile the CCG im in is deliberately prevented from cracking on with group 5 even though vaccine has been available to do so this week and they cant get anymore people through the doors from groups 1 - 4 and the number of vaccinations done this week has been significantly lower than previous weeks. Im hearing its not just my CCG having this issue too.

There is no consistency in policy.

Some people are commenting on here that Yorkshire has been under additional restrictions since last March. That simply isn’t true for the whole of Yorkshire. I was in York early September 2020 and the restrictions were no different to those in place where I live in the South. Friends from Leeds visited us and, at that point, they were not under additional restrictions -
I think theirs started towards the end of September. Whereas the area that I live in South entered additional restrictions in mid October, so only a couple of weeks difference. Also, at that point, family members in parts of Derbyshire were under lower restrictions than where I live in the South. Their children were still having play dates and they were still having visitors to their house.

In the north people were blamed for our behaviour, when it was the south it was a new variant

Pretty sure the new variant hasn’t been made up. We have the most advanced sequencing in the world. If a new variant was responsible for high case loads in the north we would have found it.

I live in Northumberland and the number of cases here per 100,000 was 137 six days ago. I would be interested to know what they are in areas of the NW. We went into tighter restrictions again last September, and I know that that didn't apply to some parts of Yorkshire. The worst case rates per 100,000 appear to be in places in the Midlands at the moment (thank you Covid Messenger).