Is another lockdown inevitable?

[Notsowise]

I feel full of dread and anxiety.

I’ve been so adamant there won’t be but after yesterday’s announcement it feels inevitable and they are ‘letting’ us out now because they know they’ll need the compliance soon.

My mental health is really suffering, we postponed our wedding from last December to this December and I feel so stupid for rebooking it in winter. We’ll lose so much money if we cancel it and all the summer dates this year are gone. I don’t even care about how many guests, I just want to be able to get married as planned that day.

I don't know but I don't think we can write the possibility off. The whole thing has become such a mess. It is depressing, being lied to and manipulated continuously. Would love to move countries!

Poor you. I think you'll be able to get married that day, but it might have to be scaled down event. Would you consider writing a plan for what happens if you are only able to have 30,15 or 5 guests at the event as a way to feel more in control of likely options?

@sauvignonblue if we could have 30 or 15 I’d be thrilled! We do have the lists ready to go but it’s the thought of having postponed for a whole year and not even being able to be legally married that worries me.

The government have lost any trust I had in them and I second Sonnet about leaving the country after this.

I don’t think so listening to Chris Whitty

You won’t get any sense on here. All the doomers have now is the threat of a winter lockdown. They’re gonna play that card long and hard.

I think that will only happen if hospitals become full and unmanageable.

I dont think so, i think the message was we are now gonna live with it and we need to make our own risk assessments

I doubt it

I don’t know but I don’t think it can be discounted. As a teacher with kids in schools and most of my friends and family working on schools and the NHS it’s way worse out there again both in schools and hospitals and that’s in fair weather. A lot of fully vaccinated people getting it and appearing in hospitals. And the government seem to be whistling past the graveyard, presenting this “its all fine” persona that’s not what many of us are seeing.

Well there was alot of talk about the autumn and winter and i did think the same as you

No, the vaccination programme is a massive success.

If it gives you any reassurance a colleague of mine got married 5 days before Christmas last year...I think they had 15 guests.

All went to plan and looked beautiful.

I don't think so either, the only real defence we had were the vaccines and they will be administered in full to those who want them very soon. We can't use lockdowns and restrictions indefinitely for a million reasons. The emphasis will steer away from covid soon enough, daily cases and deaths will stop being reported as we don't do this with any other illness at least not to the media anyway I know the information can be found by anyone who wants to look. I think the strategy now is survival of the fittest and get back to pre covid lives. There will of course be a cost to this but presumably a lower cost than what lockdowns entail. Theres no ideal solution here.

I think it depends if there is a major flu outbreak as i cant see hospitals that used to struggle in bad flu years managing that alongside the 'extra' covid patients.

I sincerely hope not. With the majority of the vulnerable/elderly population vaccinated, and by autumn having had boosters, plus probably flu jabs pushed on them as well, a big influx of people into hospital should be avoided. The only reason we might see different to that is if a variant arises that evades the vaccines AND is more deadly. Ditto for flu. Honestly I think the chances for that happening are low. We should all be feeling far more optimistic, now.

Most of the unvaccinated are expected to catch Covid by the end of the summer as it will be so rampant and it will be almost impossible to avoid.
Given how well the vaccine rollout has been I think the idea is that we'll have enough immunity within the population to avoid another serious wave/lockdown. The issue might be other viruses i.e. flu which might put pressure on the NHS.

Honestly I dont think anyone can say for sure. But I feel you on the wedding front, we cancelled and rebooked our wedding three times now. Due to such uncertainty we've decided we're eloping in May next year, taking ourselves off to a registry office out of town and staying in a plush apartment. I can't bloody wait!

I don't think so. There is evidence from Sweden and other countries (and no I won't post it, either take my word for it or look it up yourself) that when there's a surge like we're having now it reaches a peak pretty fast then begins to drop off naturally. Up until now, there's been a knee-jerk response of locking down as soon as number rise to a certain point. The belief is then that the lockdown lowered the numbers but when you examine the data there's a lot of evidence that numbers fall off before any lockdown happens. Now some of that is inevitably due to people choosing to change their own behaviour but a lot of it is also due to the very simple fact that there isn't an endless supply of people to infect - yes more and more infections happen but inevitably it then starts to hit people who brush the infection off quickly, who were recently infected and are immune and of course now we have people who are vaccinated. So at a certain level it just has nowhere else to go and starts to dwindle. There is every chance that come winter infections are bubbling along (they'll never die out completely) but that there's no real concern about surges or waves or any of that shit because most of that is artificially created by lockdown - take away the lockdown and you get an initial upsurge then a more stable, manageable situation.

Hang in there. It's not guaranteed but there is a good chance everything will go ahead as you planned.

The current figures say there are 1905 people in hospital with Covid, out of a population of 67 million that's not really 'a lot'.

@billycorn

Most of the unvaccinated are expected to catch Covid by the end of the summer as it will be so rampant and it will be almost impossible to avoid. Given how well the vaccine rollout has been I think the idea is that we'll have enough immunity within the population to avoid another serious wave/lockdown. The issue might be other viruses i.e. flu which might put pressure on the NHS.

One thing about the high figures being quoted is it will be other pressures by then.

And as Whitty says public won’t do same for that.

It seems unlikely but will mostly depend on how well the vaccines continue working and how much protection previous infection provides. It's surprising hearing people say they are double vaccinated or had covid before (or both!) and now they have covid again and are feeling very unwell. Obviously most people won't require hospital treatment but if the numbers keep going up, coupled with a bad flu year, then who knows how the NHS will cope in the winter.

I was surprised Chris Whitty said twice yesterday the NHS is an emergency service and therefore will cope with anything, with emphasis on it being an emergency service. What does that mean? A lot of NHS treatment is meant to prevent health emergencies (various screening programmes and clinics, early treatment etc.).

Interesting. Maybe the 7 Bourbon biscuits I just shoved into my mouth in a ‘I won’t be wearing a wedding dress anyway’ were premature! I hope you all right

The tone was very much that we're now entering an era of personal responsibility and guidence rather than legal enforcement.

Potentially that might mean advising caution in seeing people, ventilation, capacities etc, rather than legal enforcement but we are a long way past last winter, and having a smaller wave of cases is better in the summer than deferring to the autumn.

I'm not going to proclaim never again, but we'd have to be bloody unlucky with a vaccine-busting, virilent varient to be in that position, and if we were, we can't function as a developed nation if we constantly shut down the economy as a disease management strategy.

@Notsowise

Interesting. Maybe the 7 Bourbon biscuits I just shoved into my mouth in a ‘I won’t be wearing a wedding dress anyway’ were premature! I hope you all right

Put the biscuits down

I doubt we will lockdown again. Certainly not in the strict way of March 2020 or earlier this year but I think some restrictions being brought back in would be a real possibility. Imo, the test will be if the vaccines ‘wear off’ and how quickly boosters can be administered if necessary etc. Autumn and winter will be difficult I think.