Shops/pubs/indoor mixing 'not till cases under 1000 a day'

[bathsh3ba]

According to The Telegraph.
www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/02/16/covidlockdown-continue-cases-drop-1000-day/

First it was save lives.
Then it was prevent hospitalisations and protect the NHS.
Now it's all down to cases apparently.

Beginning to think the whole thing is pointless. OK so schools may partly open and some outdoor mixing but even that is sounding unsure.

@CornishYarg

I hate to mention false positives, as they are regularly latched on to by Covid deniers, but aren't they going to be relevant here? We're generally testing around 500k+ people a day now, far more than we were in the summer when cases got below 1000. And we're now carrying out random testing e.g. healthcare workers, door-to-door testing.

This article from October discredited the dodgy argument that the majority of cases were false positives. However, it mentions a false positive rate of 0.8% for PCR tests. No idea how reliable that is but if it is correct then that would result in 0.8% of 500,000 = 4,000 false positives per day.
www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/54270373

The next article considers the false positive rate for lateral flow tests. The false negative rate is a far bigger concern for these tests, but the article suggests a false positive rate of 0.32%. 0.32% of 500,000 is still 1600 cases per day.

Oops, forgot to add the second article.

fullfact.org/health/lateral-flow-test/

@PrincessNutNuts

No covid. What a nightmare. Why would anyone want that!

.

@PrincessNutNuts
How is your Great Uncle doing today?

Once hospitalisation and deaths are down, it doesn't really matter how many cases there are, given that for the vast vast majority of people, Covid will be a mild illness, if they get any symptoms at all.

I sort of agree but the word mild is doing a lot of work. The people I know who had covid and didn’t need to see a doctor had symptoms ranging from “flu like” to really horrible. It is common to have problems breathing for example which is very distressing even if you don’t end up in hospital.

Notovirus is really distressing and very infectious but we don’t shut our lives down for fear of it.

If that takes 6 months, so be it. We need to do whatever is necessary to keep people safe and save lives. One further unnecessary COVID death is one too many. 😂😂😂 sure

I don't think 1000 cases a day is a ridiculous point to aim for. I would actually be pleased if the Gov was more transparent about how they're basing their decisions, so we can see what to aim for.

However, looking at cases is not a long term solution. If cases dip to 1000, we open restaurants (or whatever). If cases then ride to 1600, but with no increase in hospitalizations or deaths, then they should remain open. Otherwise the 1000 case thing is totally arbitrary.

The people I know who had covid and didn’t need to see a doctor had symptoms ranging from “flu like” to really horrible

Flu has symptoms which can be really horrible. Remember, people die from flu too and I'm sure it's not any more or less pleasant than dying from covid. But as a society we take the risk of flu, alongside a vaccine, because otherwise we can't live our lives. Now we have vaccines, covid needs to become the same.

If we can get to less than 1000 a day they can be probably tracked and traced and sequenced
Such a shame the government didnt pull their finger out with a decent track and trace in the summer. We had fewer than 1000 cases a day for a while in August, in some areas practically zero, and they didn't take advantage.

Am I missing something? Latest number is 10,625 a day and it’s been dropping by 25% a week since mid jan. Obviously that rate of decline can’t last forever, but we should be under 10k VERY soon... in days, if the rate of decline continues.
(The bigger question then is what happens if the cases get back above 10k which they will once restrictions are lifted.)

@fudgesundae I think they're saying 1000, not 10,000 cases, so more like 4-6 weeks away

[quote ChocOrange1]@fudgesundae I think they're saying 1000, not 10,000 cases, so more like 4-6 weeks away[/quote]
thank you! Thought I must be missing something. Too early, can’t read!!

@RedFrog2 you know the economy pays for the NHS and everything else?

If it helps, I’m in Germany where we have 5-7k cases a day, slightly higher population. Full lockdown has been extended until mid-March, except for school years 1-3 who go back next Monday (opt-in basis, parents can decide to keep them at home). My local incidence is 47, they said once we get it down to 50 they’ll relax, but the new threshold is 35.

So we’re looking at end of March-April for restrictions to start easing. I think that’s similar to what the UK is doing (except schools, of course...).

Seems a sensible approach. In my opinion those places that can enforce social distancing or have built in track and trace perhaps should be able to open even on restricted hours a bit earlier than others.

False positives are the elephant in the room as far as I can see. No one wants to acknowledge the basic maths.

And more importantly the low ppv from testing asymptomatic people

I cried reading this.
I’ve barely seen anyone since the tiers changed in my area in October, apart from the odd outdoors meeting in the fucking cold. We are a childless household and it feels so unfair that we have to wait until what will be almost the end of the school year to do anything, whereas Sue down the road can walk to school with her mate, let the kids play in the park etc on the walk back ‘unplanned of course’
Would logic not dictate that if they are opening the schools, then household groups would be safe to meet, or will protect the nhs now change to protect the Dfes? And life remains shut so long as schools can open however long it takes to hit that magic number in the 100s?

If we keep coming out of lockdowns too hastily, the numbers won’t be low enough for minimal community spread meaning we're always firefighting and risk future lockdowns. If we leave the lockdown until numbers are low enough it puts us in a far getter outlook in the longer term which will then support businesses staying open in the longer term. Remember it takes a lot longer to bring cases down than have them grow exponentially

With vaccination happening shouldn’t we be using hospital admissions as the decision point not positive tests?
Wasn’t that the whole point??

It would be madness to base anything on case numbers. I despise this government's incompetence but even I dont think they are that stupid. It will be base don numbers needing hospital admission and dying.

Better treatments will put an end to this even if vaccines fail. Meanwhile take vitamin D supplements.

unnecessary trips to the shops for gin and chocolate

Siri, what is an oxymoron?

@Florabritannica

As I understand it, it’s about driving down transmission, because the fewer cases there are, the fewer chances the virus has to mutate.

This is how I understand it, too.

We cannot allow the goalposts to be moved every time we are about to reach freedom
It's the virus moving the goalposts by mutating. How do people want to stop that?

@XenoBitch

They say 'protect the NHS'.... I feel it is a lie now. They want zero Covid.

This is my worry too. ‘Protect the NHS, flatten the curve’ was all we heard at the beginning.

New treatments are coming along all the time. Soon this may be less of a problem than flu - because if we cant vaccinate a way out of this we'll be able to treat it. So more like a headache than flu.

We have to keep the pressure of hospitals for a while longer - but the doom muppets should be laughed at.

I think it’s very easy to give away other people’s rights (their right to see their family, their right to earn a living) if you want zero covid because you are scared witless, but can personally pay your mortgage / feed tour family. It becomes more complicated when you are personally affected and need the economy to recover to save your industry.

The mantra we are all “in it together” is of course crap - maybe in the same sea, but certainly not in the same boat!

Maybe we should all go onto furlough money (80% up to a maximum of £2500) Might focus some minds, we could use the excess to pay for the pandemic? (That of course is a bonkers idea but I’m using it as an example as to how if you aren’t effected by a wage cut or threat of redundancy - for over a year now - it’s really easy to say those people should use suffer)