Exit plan by Tony Blair Institute

[avenueq]

Looks a bit like #zerocovid to me!
What I don't understand- where do the vaccines come in?

Though schools would have opened in January according to this... bit strange

Haven’t read it - but picking up on zero Covid strategy - surly the only way this could ever work is if the whole world did it and the whole world went into lockdown. All at the same time. No travel. No nothing. I can’t see how else it could work?
It’s all very well getting to zero Covid in an area / country, but unless you cut yourself off from the rest of the world forever, surly it won’t stay like that?

Depends what restrictions are left once hospitality is fully open. If it's just some restrictions on international travel and isolation for contacts of people with Covid, then I would say that's to be expected. I wonder though whether they might also mean restrictions on large gatherings, night clubs, etc, which would effectively mean banning those things for many years, as we're not of course ever going to get to zero Covid as long as it's spreading somewhere in the world as we can't close our borders completely.

I'm not interested in the views of war criminals.

Thankfully he’s not the prime minister.

He’s not the prime minister but he was the first one to suggest delaying the second dose to 12 weeks and that happened....

He was but that was a good idea. This is not.

Zero cases is unrealistic. Even in Australia you can see just how hard it is to have none at all. At some point we have to accept a low level of cases and just get on with life.

Gish!

It's the Nando's scale back again, but with a unique use of the term 'R' (looks as it that bit was written by a non-scientist, as otherwise it would actually be R, or it would be the rate per 100k, not some weird mash-up of both)

No idea why Blair is trying to attach his name to something that's been a feature of the planning form at least 8 months!

We went to Alert 5 in late Dec/early Jan (sorry, don't remember exactly when but some time around the start of this lockdown) and we need to get off that before opening up. It is based in how full hospitals are - which as it is essentially about danger of overwhelming capacity is by far the most useful measure.

The Nando's scale went down to about 2 last summer didn't it? And they paused shielding, even though that originally features only at 1.

I wish Blair would bore off. Someone tell him he’s not the PM & hasn’t been for nearly 14 years now.

I’d go for zero Covid. Those countries who have, at least they have functioning schools and some domestic economy.

I think Sturgeon is aiming for this.

We have vaccines and improved testing now. It's possible.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

I’d go for zero Covid. Those countries who have, at least they have functioning schools and some domestic economy.

I think Sturgeon is aiming for this.

And how do you maintain that? Australia and New Zealand have no land borders, which we do. They are thousands of miles away so entry/exit is easy to control. We are 26 miles from a major land mass with multiple entry and exit points and a huge amount of road traffic in and out. Zero Covid would be impossible to achieve without YEARS of restrictions and crash lockdowns.

Quarantine people who enter the country?

We may still have years of lockdowns ahead.

Zero covid? How is that even possible in the UK now?

We would need a three month China type lockdown. Oh wait......

Well we are having endless lockdowns now.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

Quarantine people who enter the country?

Even lorry drivers who come here multiple times a week from the continent bringing fresh goods??

Australia and NZ are so far from anywhere that their economies function with less international trade. I just don't see how that can work in Europe / GB.

It is possible because at some point everyone will have to have a test before going anywhere like school, restaurants etc. Testing is becoming faster and more accurate. Just takes time.

‘Zero Covid’ with 8 billion free thinking people on the planet & 7,000 trucks using Dover alone every day. Hmm. Call me overly cynical but I somewhat doubt it.

@ArseInTheCoOpWindow

Quarantine people who enter the country?

Do you have any idea how much food and stuff we import? You can't quarantine every single lorry driver, ferry crew and air crew. Prices would skyrocket. Also quarantine does not stop cases completely as has been seen.

Doesn’t look much different to last year’s Nando’s chart.

I do wish TB would fuck off but at least this is a comprehensive plan of sorts. It doesn’t ignore vaccinations because vaccinations should contribute towards a low R number and low hospitalisations.

Zero covid isn’t realistic but low covid is; to achieve low case numbers and maintain them to avoid exponential growth explosions the plans share a lot of similarities but I don’t think there’s any question that we never have, nor will, be aiming for zero covid because it’s just not achievable.

Australia and New Zealand, just to make the point, aren’t in that much a different situation to the rest of the world. They’re still going to be as reliant on vaccines to open up globally (and domestically) but they’re doing it with much less illness and death. They will have to cope with a degree of community spread at some point which I’m sure they’re aware of, but they’ve chosen to play the waiting game for vaccinations and hopefully treatments so the impact isn’t as great. Whether a country has remained open or closed up shop the solution is the same for different sets of problems.

I'm not reading that as wanting zero covid. Level one just looks like masks on public transport, no hand shakes etc. All while we still have the pandemic. Covid may never end, I think policy makers realise that, the pandemic will end one day though.

It doesn’t affect trade and freight.

Items can be removed lorries etc by internal workers. Or delivery personnel get test prior to entry.