Case numbers dropping due to lockdown

[womanity]

Not vaccine.

Why has Boris said this? I don’t understand.

I get he wants people to still follow rules, but he also wants them to get vaccinated, right?

GiveMeNovocain It's clearly absolute nonsense. Of course vaccination is making a huge difference. Stopping spread in hospitals and care homes has made an incredible difference and now it's making a difference in the community. I have no idea why the pm would deny how effective it's been.“

No PM fan, man’s a knobber. How he got where he is baffles me.

I sort of got what he meant though. Lockdown got us to where we were before the vaccination programme started to take serious effect. Don’t forget, for the first couple of months, it was only really the very vulnerable and NHS staff who were protected. The uptake by care home staff remains pretty disappointing (hence the discussion about mandating). The elderly and care home residents weren’t mixing with the rest of the population anyway.
When the vast majority of the adult population is vaccinated in July, the pendulum will swing the other way snd the vaccines will be doing the heavy lifting.

Until then, we do need to keep up social distancing and mask wearing to minimise the likelihood of variants. All of us who are fortunate enough to have been vaccinated owe that much to younger people who have given up so much to protect us. They now deserve the same courtesy: please, vaccinated oldies like me, wear your mask, keep your distance and take your twice weekly LF tests for their sakes 😊

Roll on July.

I don't think PrincessNutNuts has ever claimed to be an expert (unless I've missed something).

A lot of people are making the assumption she is. That is potentially harmful if she isn't actually one.

It obviously is achievable, but there isn't the political or public will or foresight for it.

There isn't the political or public will for it because of the harm that would be done. It's not just the case that people are a bit bored and can't be bothered to keep going with restrictions. I don't trust Boris but I do trust people like Whitty and his colleagues. A huge amount of thought and modelling has gone into all of this and zero Covid is not realistic. Not for the UK. I think Whitty is the kind of man who would be pushing hard for it if was. He cares about saving lives.

What will those be? With the issue of climate change not going away, limiting international travel is something we're all going to have to look at in the coming years. If we want to do anything about it, that is.

Honestly, no one can answer that fully right now because things could play out in different ways, but if you look online, there are some extremely distressed people out there who can't get home to loved ones or who won't see their relatives for potentially a very long time. It's not a quantifiable harm and individuals will have to carry the burden of being separated from loved ones in private, mostly, but it is still real harm. I absolutely agree with you about climate change but taking the drastic action of shutting off a country like Australia isn't something that you can do with no consequences. Taking away the money tourists and students bring in is a huge issue - we can't predict what that will do to their economy fully yet. They also have the moral dilemma of what to do in the much longer term - do they allow the virus in one day and see a wave of deaths (bearing in mind the vaccine doesn't protect 100% of people) or do they keep throwing money at restricting cases indefinitely. How much will that cost long term? A lot when you really break things down fully, I'd guess. The virus is extremely good at sneaking through borders even with checks. Would the population comply with living like this long term? I'd say no, again when you look at the detail of it. That might mean civil unrest. Political turbulence. Growing inequality (no doubt the rich will get in and out). You could probably write a Phd analysing this in great detail so I'd leave it there but it is going to be difficult for them.

@mrshoho

*20:16savethegrannies(although I've yet to hear a coherent argument against shielding the elderly and vulnerable and letting the rest get on with it).*

Do you actually believe this would have been a better approach? Maybe I'm misunderstanding.

I don't know and would never claim to. All I am saying is I never heard a satisfactory answer about why we could not at least attempt this approach. Instead they almost seemed to do the opposite by keeping sodding garden centres open so the precise demographic which was/is at risk could go mingle.

I don't know and would never claim to. All I am saying is I never heard a satisfactory answer about why we could not at least attempt this approach.

At least in part because these are the people least able to live without close contact like personal care or doctors appointments, and least able to move to things like online shopping and zoom chats.

Freya It's not her fault if other people deduce she's an expert because of her well written articulate posts. It's not harmful either, to do what she's doing - which is to say the same as Boris and the actual experts (the scientists). They've all warned us we need to remain cautious for the time being, because the majority are only partially vaccinated.

It's awful that some countries, mainly European plus Brazil, failed to do the right thing, meaning those that did still need border restrictions.

It's important to remember that it isn't just two 'outliers' as some people seem to think. Australia and New Zealand are in good company. Thailand, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong, Vietnam, many African countries. All took the same sensible approach.

Unfortunately there's going to be extremely distressed people during a pandemic. The best solution is to take action to bring it to an end as soon as possible. Instead of prolonging it.

Lots of people can't see their families in the UK. Our way has hardly prevented distress.

I'd say the repeated long lockdowns (with the mental and physical health toll) AND ruined businesses, 150,000+ dead, and 1 million+ suffering from long covid is more distressing for greater numbers of people than temporary closed borders and real quarantine.

@FreyaFolkvangr

PrincessNutNuts would you mind sharing your credentials? Are you a scientist? I'm concerned you're spending a lot of time on here presenting information as if it's accurate and while you might very well be in a good position to be doing that (I don't know!) I think a lot of people are reading what you're writing as if you're an expert. I think if you're not a scientist and this is all just your opinion, it would be appropriate to share that.

I don't believe Zero Covid is remotely achievable in this country, incidentally. You have to look at every country on its own terms, if you're talking about places like NZ. Zero Covid could have been achieved here if we'd done things differently over a year ago, perhaps. Now? No. And the majority of experts think that too. We would run into massive economic problems and an associated impact on peoples' health and wellbeing if we attempted it from here now. Isn't Canada having issues with the Brazilian variant despite making people quarantine in hotels? NZ and Australian are going to face their own serious issues from shutting out the rest of the world. We won't necessarily be envious of them in the longer term.

Just an ordinary mum @FreyaFolkvangr.

If I ever say anything that's inaccurate feel free to put me right.

THIS is the problem

twitter.com/MetroMayorSteve/status/1377748102883508226?s=20

Steve Rotheram
@MetroMayorSteve
Shocking suggestion from the Tory I was on #Newsnight with that people would try and catch COVID for £500.

Nearly 130k people have died of COVID in the last year alone because of his party's handling of the pandemic.

What an insult

Should be fired with immediate effect. Being a Tory tough he will probably be lining up a Peerage in a few years 🧐