Does anyone else think the trial club nights at Liverpool are a mistake?

[ZNation]

www.bbc.com/news/newsbeat-56943652

Trial club nights 6000 people no masks or social distancing. You have to have had negative lateral test before attending and are 'encouraged' not compulsory for pcr test 5 days after.
I think this is too soon to be trialling large crowds when people can't even go in their mums house indoors

I hope it’s successful. I’m an old fart and haven’t been clubbing for years but oh my god I was jealous seeing the footage. Hope they all had a great time.

It’s a trial, it might work, it might not. The public health teams who have been involved must have a reasonably high degree of confidence for it to have gone ahead.

I get the thing about not being able to see family indoors and that feeling unfair, but that sort of scenario can’t be regulated the way this one can. And hopefully it’s only another 2 weeks before that is allowed anyway.

I fully support this. I’m not in the UK but my company trialled a similar mass event a few weeks ago together with other promoters in my city. Not one single infection or positive case within 2 weeks of the event, but everyone was wearing masks and there was a small degree of social distancing.

I’m not sure how different the outcome will be without masks, but I’m assuming anyone volunteering to attend is comfortable enough about catching the virus and its possible consequences - I know I would be.

Why are people saying this is a well controlled trial? If they were being tested on entry and results monitored I could agree however all they need to do is show that they have had a negative LFT result 24 prior to entry. All you need to get a negative result is a QR code/barcode for a test - no need to actually do a test!

[quote Allmyarseandpeggymartin]@IcedPurple I’ve been wondering this for ages what is an acceptable level of Covid given that we will live with it forever?

So 2500ish cases a day and 20ish deaths is the norm perhaps?[/quote]
It's not "normal" though because of the restrictions etc currently in place. We've got 2500 cases per day in spite of all the restrictions, social distancing, businesses closed, no foreign travel etc. It's inevitable the numbers will rise as things open up. The big question is how many cases will be acceptable in, say, 3 months time when everything is open and what happens when cases rise above that "acceptable" level.

We've got to hope that deaths and hospitalisations stay at an acceptably low level even if infection numbers rise. They're the numbers to watch, not just numbers of infections.

@Archiduchesse

Why are people saying this is a well controlled trial? If they were being tested on entry and results monitored I could agree however all they need to do is show that they have had a negative LFT result 24 prior to entry. All you need to get a negative result is a QR code/barcode for a test - no need to actually do a test!

It's not representative either. At the moment, case numbers are very low so it's possible, even likely, that no one who attended was infected, so there'd be no spread at all as you can't infect anyone else if you're not infected yourself. In, say, a months' time, community rates may be a bit higher and exactly the same number of people in the same place could cause infections to be caught if a small number of attendees were infected. It's simply not a properly controlled representative test. The only way it could be useful is if it turns out a few people WERE positive, but the tests hadn't caught it, and then see how many others were infected because of that - then you really have some evidence as to how x number of infected people spread it in such an environment.

Testing the water is one thing but jumping right in and making a gigantic splash is another. It’s a ridiculous idea driven by commercialism and not science and common sense.

Why do people say 'commercialism' as though it's a dirty word? What do they think pays for the NHS and other essential services?

We don't live in a laboratory. We live in the real world, and in the real world people need to make a living, and for thousands of people, events with big crowds is how they make that living. Not just night clubs, but cinemas, theatres, concerts, sports events, even university lectures and religious services. We have to start living again. Those who are terrified of reality can shut themselves up as long as they like.

Same number as 6 secondary schools.....

The only thing wrong with it was it wasn't near enough to me for me to go
I was properly jealous of them all having a great time
And actually, youngsters have been so hugely, negatively impacted by this entire situation, they've had their lives paused for them to look after people 50 or 60 years older than them at least.
I bet they wouldn't have cared if the playlist was Daphne and Celeste and Bewitched, to have that experience (a historic one as a trial as well) must have felt utterly amazing.
The vaccine is working. Please start to get used to things going back to what they were where possible.

I wanted to be there and I am 47!!!!!! Fab idea and obs the ones that don't agree I bet none of you are teenagers or own a club !!!! We need to get back to normality there are more people with mental health than covid

@JeanClaudeVanDammit

I hope it’s successful. I’m an old fart and haven’t been clubbing for years but oh my god I was jealous seeing the footage. Hope they all had a great time.

It’s a trial, it might work, it might not. The public health teams who have been involved must have a reasonably high degree of confidence for it to have gone ahead.

I get the thing about not being able to see family indoors and that feeling unfair, but that sort of scenario can’t be regulated the way this one can. And hopefully it’s only another 2 weeks before that is allowed anyway.

Well said

@IcedPurple

Tim Spector who runs the Zoe app said yesterday that the Covid pandemic is over in the UK. About 1 in 1000 people currently has the virus, so it's at levels similar to seasonal flu. I'm not sure when people think it's 'safe' to start opening up, and this was a carefully managed trial, not a free for all. Maybe never? Some people really are quite comfortable with the current situation, however much they might like to deny it.

You always talk sense @IcedPurple

@Dolciedolly

I wanted to be there and I am 47!!!!!! Fab idea and obs the ones that don't agree I bet none of you are teenagers or own a club !!!! We need to get back to normality there are more people with mental health than covid

Yes this I'm a DJ. I've had no work since NYE 2019/20. I cannot wait for pubs and clubs to open without restrictions.

With every step out of lockdown, there are always people who think it's "too soon" and we should hold off for "just a bit longer". The trouble is, "just a bit longer" is killing the entertainment and travel industries, and trials like these help us understand the risks better instead of having to impose blanket illegality on their normal income sources. Great news to see some positive thinking here.

@GreenWheat

With every step out of lockdown, there are always people who think it's "too soon" and we should hold off for "just a bit longer". The trouble is, "just a bit longer" is killing the entertainment and travel industries, and trials like these help us understand the risks better instead of having to impose blanket illegality on their normal income sources. Great news to see some positive thinking here.

Exactly. Many sectors of the economy have had literally zero business for 14 months and counting. Summer is normally a busy time for a lot of them, so by carrying out trials like these, it opens up the possibility that they may be able to salvage at least something from the season. It seems like many people find it difficult to understand that nothing in life is without risk.

We need to have trials if we want to open up and have some normality.

And it is better to trial than to just jump right in and open again without taking precautions and then realise it was a mistake.

We have to try things out.
An advance party (pardon the pun).
We can’t just open all the clubs on the same night without any idea how that will pan out!

It's a trial. We have to start somewhere

OP I agree. We should definitely wait until everything has opened up and then do trials. What could possibly be wrong with that?

@Tiktokersmiracle exactly people that want lockdown are prob getting paid
Enough is enough !

I think it's great.

Of course it was a good idea if we dont pilot events like this how are we ever going to open things up without knowing the consequences or do the ones condemning it think that either a they should never open or b open up all at once and hope for the best?
Everyone who went to the event knew the possible consequences and contrary to some PP claims that anyone could scan a bar code and claim the test was negative, anyone who went to the event had to go to 1 of 5 specified testing sites beforehand to be tested and this was checked and verified on entry

twitter.com/MerseyPolice/status/1388204060516528139?s=20

Merseyside Police
@MerseyPolice
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22h
We've received a few messages from concerned members of the public who have seen videos from a not socially distanced nightclub event in Liverpool. This is fortunately a legal event which is part of the pilot scheme. Click below for regular updates on this and other pilots.

I think it is a trial that needs to be controlled as much as possible so remove as many variables as you can - doing it now means you can probably focus on the impact of the nightclub rather than adding in other things.

They I think were trialling two things - both COVID (so they will test again on THursday and take it from there) and how nightclubbers react to the added COVID safety bits added in

Its a science experiment you cannot wait until things are opened to test because that has to many variables

I don’t think it will cause a spike in infection as the infection rate is low, however it’s irresponsible as you only need one case that was a false negative to fall through the net to cause a huge number of infection from just this one event.
An excellent trial would have been if everyone at the event was vaccinated with one dose at the very least. Considering that everyone would have had their first dose by July time and we will have a significant percentage of vaccine herd immunity in literally a few weeks’ time, why sacrifice the low infection rate for the sake of this trial? We are nearly literally few weeks away from vaccinating everyone.

This is not a controlled trial by any shape or form as they are not following up on all the individuals that attended the event, they are “encouraged” to do a pcr test which is a very poor and a not scientific trial.

They’re trying to replicate what they’d do in the future as much as they can.

The follow up test is not compulsory because we can’t expect everyone to test themselves after every single activity they do this summer. It’s enough we’ll be testing before doing most of them.

These people were happy to participate in the trial. We will never achieve 0 Covid (at least not this summer), and the quick tests will never be 100% reliable. At one point it will be deemed safe to have a small percentage of infected people who will be free to go about their life freely as all the vulnerable will have been protected.

We need to start opening up and like PP said, those defending eternal lockdown and measures are probably WFH on a full wage and their quality of life has only improved this year. Those on furlough or unemployed since March 2020 are desperate to get back to work.