The Road Map: It’s Bollocks, Right?

[AllTheWayFromLondonDAMN]

So, I feel a bit like I’m going loopy. And I want to preface this by saying that I really hope I’m wrong. We are both secondary teachers with two small kids and this year has been an absolute bitch. Work for us has been hugely full in, whether it’s been in school or online teaching. Our infant school aged children have missed school terribly and their whole lives at this age are all about school, their little pals and their grandparents and cousins, all of whom have been off limits for months. So this has been far from fun for us and I have no desire for this to carry on (before anyone accuses me of that).

BUT this is all bollocks isn’t it? I know that numbers are going down and that we are doing really well with the vaccinations but this road map that Boris has announced.... it’s magical thinking isn’t it?!?! Less than eight weeks ago we were in dire straits, with tens of thousands of cases and more than 1500 people a day dying. This lockdown has choked those numbers down but now... throwing all the schools back in at once?! Telling us that we will be able to open up hospitality in only six weeks or so?! Saying we won’t even have to wear masks in just 16ish weeks?! REALLY? Because whilst I know that the warmer weather will make things better and of course the vaccine is making things better, it just feels a bit to me like Boris has decided that he’s bored of Covid so he’s just announcing that it’ll he done and dusted and we can just forget about it by midsummers day. Which seems.... bonkers. Bonkers when this has been going on a year now and very recently we were in huge trouble. Some areas of the country are still in huge trouble. Are other European countries talking like this? Like we can just say we have all had enough, so we are going to stop Covid?! Because if it was that easy wouldn’t we have done this a year ago?!?!

So am I the mad one who’s just being a pessimistic old boot, or is anyone else finding this whole change of tone just a bit.... weird?

From my own point of view, i think the roadmap is OK....but people's behaviour (rather than the plan itself) may mean some adjustments are needed.

So if the return to school JUST involves children going to school, I can see that - especially combined with the Easter break - the increase in R is containable while everyone else (who should remain locked down) gets on with having the vaccine.

However, if the return to school prompts adults to have many more contacts per day - particularly if many employers use this as a reason why many parents can return to work out of the home - and also children to further increase contacts through after school care, parties, sleepovers etc 'because they see each other in school anyway', then i see this as potentially more of a problem. Particularly if the 'oh,it's all over' mentality grows and more and more people heavily anticipate the further steps.

So the plan as written may be feasible. The plan as enacted and as acted on by the Great British Public - I am less confident of.

There’s so much about this last year that’s been bonkers........ eat out to help out, encouraging people to mix at Christmas (until they panicked......too late!!), encouraging people to go abroad last summer etc...

It’s such a mess. I think you’re right, the latest roadmap is bonkers.

To those that think the roadmap is bonkers, this second (or is it the third?) lockdown for a lot of the country started before Christmas. 12 April is still a while ago for any meaningful socialisation and 21 June is a long long way off yet. Do you think pandemics last forever? Do you think the vaccines won't work? There will be a long 5 week gap between each stage of reopening, what more do you want? Kids have to go back to school.

I think the roadmap may have to be taken with a pinch of salt, they have already said dates may change.

However, we should be in a much better position due to the vaccine. The infection rate will rise again with schools opening, I think it's inevitable. There will sadly also be more deaths, covid is not going away anytime soon. The difference is that that the vulnerable will have been vaccinated. The vaccine massively reduces serious illness and death so the nhs is not overwhelmed. There is evidence to say the vaccine also prevents transmission so it should in theory lower the r number too.

I personally think teachers should have been offered the vaccine prior to schools returning.

It was/is never about stopping people getting it, it’s about stopping those who IF they get it being those that end up in hospital. Our health service cannot/would not cope. That’s what the whole Save the NHS slogan is all about.

The difference is that that the vulnerable will have been vaccinated.

Some of the most vulnerable to death have been partially vaccinated by a vaccine that does not give 100% protection and whose full protection is not given until some weeks after administration

That is why we also have to keep cases down over the coming couple of months - so that there is time for more of those vulnerable to severe illness / ICU admission to be vaccinated, for the most vulnerable to get the second vaccination and for all vaccinated groups to reach the fullest immunity.

If we allow R to rise to the point of rapid exponential growth again in the near future, the partially vaccinated, the % for whom vaccination is not effective in creating immunity and those whose immunity has not yet had time to develop will be at risk.

Everyone talks as if 'vaccinated = completely out of danger'. That's not true.

@lunapeace

To those that think the roadmap is bonkers, this second (or is it the third?) lockdown for a lot of the country started before Christmas. 12 April is still a while ago for any meaningful socialisation and 21 June is a long long way off yet. Do you think pandemics last forever? Do you think the vaccines won't work? There will be a long 5 week gap between each stage of reopening, what more do you want? Kids have to go back to school.

Follow SAGE's advice.

Reduce transmission in schools by reducing the number of contacts each of the 10 million children will have each day.

Give the most vulnerable the most protection we can as soon as we could instead of watching thousands of them die while the 2nd dose of vaccine is withheld for months so it can be given to less vulnerable people.

That's my top 3.

I personally think teachers should have been offered the vaccine prior to schools returning.

I think so too - but not because of potential deaths, more because I think that the inevitable illness amongst teachers, and the accompanying inconsistency of education and (at worst) repeated self isolations, is SO damaging to children on top of everything they have already endured.

@cantkeepawayforever I agree it's partial protection and there will be further deaths, even amongst those vaccinated. That's the sad truth. The government is looking at the data. I have had first vaccine dose but haven't changed my behaviour. The risk is still there.

Yes for teachers being offered the vaccine from a consistency of education but also the risk they are facing. We have not even seen the tip of the iceberg of long covid yet.

I can also echo the long teacher absences due to Covid. We've had 8/30 school staff contract the virus in our small primary school and the average recovery time is 3-4 weeks if you survive. One member of staff sadly died.

The most recent case was a TA in her late 40's. She got seriously ill with it and now has long Covid, so it's alright saying school staff don't need to be vaccinated. The reality is schools won't be able to stay open if it rips through us like it did in December.

Children's learning is the priority though... according to the government.

@Stellaris22

Being cautious is not a bad thing. Personally I think children's mental health is extremely low at the moment and I certainly wouldn't be getting their hopes up for things like proms and a big summer of music festivals and holidays.

Cautiously plan, yes, but be very aware of the effect on mental health if these plans can no longer go ahead. This isn't being mean or loving lockdowns and restrictions (a very immature response to assume that).

@stellaris22 - this past year has certainly taught us to be cautious and my children are no exception to this. We have had loads of plans cancelled, including a ‘once in a lifetime’ family holiday, milestone birthday party, school trips, DS in a big school musical production etc. They are fully aware that things we are planning now might not happen but we are having fun hoping and planning rather than wallowing in misery and gloom.

It was never about people not getting it

It was about protecting the NGS, remember? About preventing a situation where sick people are in tents in parking lots, and too many people dying to cope with

Now that we are so far ahead with vaccinations, this fear has been allayed

It will still spread, but people will no longer die if it in numbers that would overwhelm the health service

Zero covid can not be the end game

We’d be locked down forever

We need to go out again, some of us will still get it, but it won’t affect us so badly

I think the roadmap is too slow

So I agree schools make me nervous, but it's worth having a good look at vaccinations: they're an extraordinary thing.

1. Cohorts 1-4 account for:85 ish% deaths, 60% of hospital admissions and 33% of ICU admissions. They have all been offered a vaccination and will be benefiting from it before 8th March.

Source: www.covid-arg.com/post/how-soon-will-we-see-the-benefits-of-the-vaccine-rollout

1. We have done 19.5M vaccines so far. Die to the timing of the ramp up of the programme and the 11 weeks for second dose, we will lose around 2 million "potential" first dose vaccinations before the end of march to needing to do second doses. After that point it really ramps up, so pre April is key.

1. At 3.0M a week (think we will be a little lower and then a little higher, and with 4 weeks and 2 days before the end of March, that's about 13M doses, of which we can expect 11M to be first doses.

1. So by the end of March we can expect to have vaccinated around 30.5M adults. This is, give or take a couple of days, enough to have vaccinated 100% of the CEV, CV and Over 50s population.

Source: www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-55045639

1. Given there will be overlap in the CEV and CV Vs health and social care as well as younger age cohorts, in reality the total will be a little lower than 32M. Given not everyone will want it, we can expect that everyone will have been offered it by then.

1. So then we'll be at the end of March, it will be the Easter Holidays, and we will have two weeks for all those doses to kick in before kids are back at school again.

1. You've now covered off 99% of covid deaths.

Source: www.covid-arg.com/post/vaccine-priorities (pdf at the bottom of the page).

1. What about hospitalisations ? The picture isn't as good here, but it's still pretty good: we can expect hospitalisations to reduce by over 80% and ICU admissions over 70% by this point.

Source: associationofanaesthetists-publications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anae.15442. figure 2 - orange line is hospitalisations as far as I can tell, purple is ICU admissions.

1. overall this means that the virus circulating will have much less impact. Combine that with continued onward vaccination (albeit I anticipate at a lower rate due to significant volumes of second doses) and you can see the road map might have some risky points where things may have to slow down, but isn't as crazy as you'd think at first sight.

That was very long, the TLDR is: vaccines are awesome, they are what make this roadmap feasible if not a certainty.

@cantkeepawayforever

The difference is that that the vulnerable will have been vaccinated.

Some of the most vulnerable to death have been partially vaccinated by a vaccine that does not give 100% protection and whose full protection is not given until some weeks after administration

That is why we also have to keep cases down over the coming couple of months - so that there is time for more of those vulnerable to severe illness / ICU admission to be vaccinated, for the most vulnerable to get the second vaccination and for all vaccinated groups to reach the fullest immunity.

If we allow R to rise to the point of rapid exponential growth again in the near future, the partially vaccinated, the % for whom vaccination is not effective in creating immunity and those whose immunity has not yet had time to develop will be at risk.

Everyone talks as if 'vaccinated = completely out of danger'. That's not true.

I agree with all that (well apart from if you think the vaccine is ever 100% protection. Don't think that is what you are saying). Plus of course most the protection comes from the first jab. However that does take time to build up. So better to continue with restrictions.

What you have said is why I am so pleased to have such a well thought out plan. A long slow roll out. Where we don't fully relax until everyone has had their second jab with a 3 week wait for it to be fully effective.

As the vaccines have been proven to work better with a longer gap in AZs case and more or not much weaker than two doses with Pfizer. Why on earth would anyone think waiting for the second is bad?

Please keep up with the latest research before talking tripe. To be honest even tha original results indicated that for both vaccines.

Some people really think they know better than scientists that have years of experience apparently 🤦‍♀️

@BrideofBideford

It was never about people not getting it

It was about protecting the NGS, remember? About preventing a situation where sick people are in tents in parking lots, and too many people dying to cope with

Now that we are so far ahead with vaccinations, this fear has been allayed

It will still spread, but people will no longer die if it in numbers that would overwhelm the health service

Zero covid can not be the end game

We’d be locked down forever

We need to go out again, some of us will still get it, but it won’t affect us so badly

I think the roadmap is too slow

There is always one

@Nacreous - brilliant post! Thank you for all those stats.

Original poster I hear you loud and clear as you have my empathy and yes you are pretty much spot on! I suspect 2021 will be a repeat of 2020 but possibly less fatalities as vaccination (first, second or as necessary third booster doses) may assist a little until the new mutations mean another wait for new vaccines to catch up in terms of efficacy.

It is evident from recent announcements from Professor Jonathan Van Tam and Professor Chris Whitty that the UK Covid data although moving in the right direction of travel is far far from what would be optimistically considered cautious territory. Basically it is still very critically bad but not recent very very critical. What may be important to take into account after a year is the general reluctance to continue to be alert and proactive to mitigate and moderate everyday life due to Covid fatigue and desensitised Covid statistics as nothing more than a daily recorded number with less tangible fear or relevance. People are increasingly blasé as the weather conditions change more favourable for outdoor activities from recent tough winter conditions to mild spring weather.

I suspect the rush to fully reopen certain sectors such as in person face to face over crowded schooling especially bravely without mandatory risk mitigation measures is a broken record repeat of a disaster waiting to happen. The continued British entitlement exceptionalism of being individualistic and not particularly civic duty of care minded may keep up in a constant yo yo state of flux with better Covid performance following reimposed quasi lockdowns and then more rampant out of control mutating super spreading when sectors are rushed open and so the perpetual cycle of boom and bust or bust and extra bust. Never eradicating the cause but periodically slight containment until new mutations brings more disastrous consequences to lives and livelihoods. Essentially this is not Ebola as the Covid fatalities rate is much lower. If this was Ebola perhaps there will be fewer non believers anti vaxxer anti masks bit of flu types who are never scared of anything and think the globe is making a fuss out of nothing - hence there lies the problem as much as the pandemic disease itself the other disease of ignorance and stupidity. Prevention is always better than the cure but many prefer short term short sighted comfort and freedoms although with unsustainable risks to long term sustainable safety but less freedom and pre pans comfort and norms. I truly hope this is wrong and too negative a prediction!

*I personally think teachers should have been offered the vaccine prior to schools returning.

I think so too - but not because of potential deaths, more because I think that the inevitable illness amongst teachers, and the accompanying inconsistency of education and (at worst) repeated self isolations, is SO damaging to children on top of everything they have already endured.*

Homeschooling has meant that my Yr 8 DS has finally had an education this year. The stop start, in out - constantly off isolating Autumn term was useless for learning. Plus so many of the teachers were off sick the whole time.

This term/back in school is going to be the same, isn't it? How can it not be?

@Nacreous

So I agree schools make me nervous, but it's worth having a good look at vaccinations: they're an extraordinary thing.

1. Cohorts 1-4 account for:85 ish% deaths, 60% of hospital admissions and 33% of ICU admissions. They have all been offered a vaccination and will be benefiting from it before 8th March.

Source: www.covid-arg.com/post/how-soon-will-we-see-the-benefits-of-the-vaccine-rollout

1. We have done 19.5M vaccines so far. Die to the timing of the ramp up of the programme and the 11 weeks for second dose, we will lose around 2 million "potential" first dose vaccinations before the end of march to needing to do second doses. After that point it really ramps up, so pre April is key.

1. At 3.0M a week (think we will be a little lower and then a little higher, and with 4 weeks and 2 days before the end of March, that's about 13M doses, of which we can expect 11M to be first doses.

1. So by the end of March we can expect to have vaccinated around 30.5M adults. This is, give or take a couple of days, enough to have vaccinated 100% of the CEV, CV and Over 50s population.

Source: www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-55045639

1. Given there will be overlap in the CEV and CV Vs health and social care as well as younger age cohorts, in reality the total will be a little lower than 32M. Given not everyone will want it, we can expect that everyone will have been offered it by then.

1. So then we'll be at the end of March, it will be the Easter Holidays, and we will have two weeks for all those doses to kick in before kids are back at school again.

1. You've now covered off 99% of covid deaths.

Source: www.covid-arg.com/post/vaccine-priorities (pdf at the bottom of the page).

1. What about hospitalisations ? The picture isn't as good here, but it's still pretty good: we can expect hospitalisations to reduce by over 80% and ICU admissions over 70% by this point.

Source: associationofanaesthetists-publications.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/anae.15442. figure 2 - orange line is hospitalisations as far as I can tell, purple is ICU admissions.

1. overall this means that the virus circulating will have much less impact. Combine that with continued onward vaccination (albeit I anticipate at a lower rate due to significant volumes of second doses) and you can see the road map might have some risky points where things may have to slow down, but isn't as crazy as you'd think at first sight.

That was very long, the TLDR is: vaccines are awesome, they are what make this roadmap feasible if not a certainty.

Great post thanks for this

[quote Inastatus]@Nacreous - brilliant post! Thank you for all those stats.[/quote]
No worries! The lockdown lifting plan made me both sad (as I desperately want to get back to normal and have my life back) and 4 months is a long time, but also nervous (because hospitalisations are still jolly high currently, we can't afford to make things worse) so I did some stats reading to try and reassure myself. I honestly think the schools going back is the riskiest bit because the hospitalisations will not have had much time to decrease before then but if we get through that stage I reckon everything else should be okay.

@Nacreous

Your post I assume is dependent on the vaccination efficacy against all evolving yet to be sequenced possibly more challenging mutations. I otherwise agreed with your optimism if there would be no issues with more potentially dangerous dominant super mutations. Let’s hope we can eventually deal with this disease as with other respiratory viruses like influenza and hope it does not become more like Ebola. With vaccination take up we can possibly get enough community herd immunity. We just need to convince the anti vaxxers to play their part for their own health and safety as much as others in their proximity. The anti vaxx and non mask brigade plus now non asymptomatic testing types has been a big stand out feature of the so called British entitlement exceptionalism class - the Brits who are selfish short sighted and essentially reckless ignorance of risk mitigation measures despite a global pandemic medical war that is hard to win enough already given the ongoing collateral damage of 0.1 million plus UK Covid excess fatalities and many more daily plus countless livelihoods lost let alone those with life long post Covid syndrome medical disabilities. I hope the vaccination program offers the long term sustainable protection and everyone does the right thing to get this protection when called up to receive their vaccination to protect themselves and others.

Have spent months looking at this in depth - to put into my brain what I knew in my soul :( Dr. Claus Kohnlein - full interview for upcoming documentary PLANET LOCKDOWN
www.bitchute.com/video/HBRsUr3IRorr/

dr. Reiner Fullmich - full interview from upcoming documentary PLANET LOCKDOWN
www.bitchute.com/video/etCeOCTOqCpC/?fbclid=IwAR08935f6mqEXpIf_jhCL43m6SAseKMo74ujI3nBY0Xxk-VQ550eGOTEXmo

And no not antivax - but this time it did not seem right. Reseached the backside off it - :(

What does the video link say?