100,000 cases a day by August....bloody hell

[ssd]

We're all going to get it eventually it seems

[quote CoralSparkles]**@IrmaFayLear* And “this is all Boris’s fault” invective: of course the govt have made mistakes, but really there’s only one place to lay blame. Whether you believe it’s bat or lab, this whole terrible saga started in China and it seems they have sailed on from it absolutely scot free.*

England could have close its borders and not permit anyone to fly, drive or sail to our shores. It’s not China’s fault. Society in many East Asian countries are back to normal.

People with the virus were able to freely come into the country. This includes MPs and friends who were able to fly out on luxurious holidays and second homes. The gov decided to wreak havoc on society and mess with us psychologically (mental health), physically (no medical appointments) and financially. MPs and medical advisors gave generous contracts to their friends and earned loads of money through shares. They benefited from this.[/quote]
The fact that our government has made many very serious mistakes, either knowingly or not, does not annul the fact that as far as we know so far, the virus originated in Wuhan, China, and was initially covered up.
You can have more than one entity at fault for something - doesn't have to be one or the other.

@BigWoollyJumpers it’s statistically unlikely that no one else has a relationship to anyone under 25.

I just don’t think any of us have got what we want here. I’m all for the young (and old actually!) getting out there and enjoying themselves but the situation that we find ourselves in doesn’t seem to conducive to that tbh. We may only be left with a couple of measures but they’re ones that impact harder the more covid is in circulation.

The likelihood of either getting caught out by T&T, catching covid of being adversely affected by staff shortages in a business or organisation you need to use increases the more covid is in circulation. 100k cases per day massively increases everyone’s chance of being caught out. The papers have quoted predictions of 2-3 million people isolating at the same point of 100k cases p/d. Doesn’t sound like freedom to me.

Masks in my opinion are a reasonable mitigation measure as is isolating on return from an amber country and if living in a household with someone who has tested positive

I couldn't agree more!!!! Mask wearing has no bearing on the economy really, it's just a pain on the arse to wear one, it's something simple we could do that could have quote a big impact so I'm baffled as to why the government have decided to change this!

Masks are unlikely do anything though to prevent 100,000 per day by august, we have them now and we're on course for that with a pretty stable R for many weeks.

So I think the "big impact" is the thing that's missing in the analysis.

It really amazes me how many people blithely call others selfish whilst simultaneously expecting others to make sacrifices for them. We all have a responsibility towards each other - that includes those who are CEV having a responsibility towards fellow citizens who have already made huge sacrifices. INDEED

Also at @theemperorhasnoclothes what suggestion would you make then now a huge number are vaccinated, sit around twiddling our thumbs with lock down for ever and a day. That doesn't help the vulnerable in society either does it. The ones that cry selfish for allowing society to open up never have any answers to the problems. Just scream selfish to everyone else.

People with vulnerabilities will just see this as yet another example of them being treated as second class citizens with their rights and needs being ignored for the sake of some supposed wider benefit, for the apparent greater good.
Of course the majority will never allow their liberties to be curbed for the sake of the vulnerable and it is naive to think otherwise. The only reason liberties were successfully curbed last year was to stop the NHS being overloaded. As soon as that threat is removed, as it currently is due to the vaccines, normal life will resume. It is not unreasonable to expect people to exercise caution, but failure to do so will not be punishable. People will have individual responsibility for their lives, their decisions, the level of risk they feel comfortable taking, which is the way any normal society functions.

@BoredZelda

My best friend is a bed manager in a large city Trust and the majority of their positives are incidental findings (usually admitted via A&E because unwell/injured with something else)

The actual numbers reported by actual sources don't bear this out.

I know that people will vulnerabilities will say this is unfair but rather than dripping it out for months or years then this gets a lot infected in one mass go

No, people with vulnerabilities will just see this as yet another example of them being treated as second class citizens with their rights and needs being ignored for the sake of some supposed wider benefit, for the apparent greater good.

It won't come as any surprise to them, it happened long before covid.

Actually there was an article on one of the threads I was watching the other day that reported a paediatrician saying just that - children coming in for other reasons and getting tested and being positive!

Unfortunately, now sure what thread it was on.

@SamW98

"Completely agree.

I've only worked 16 weeks since April 2020 and my savings are starting to run out.
Many of my circle work in the arts, entertainment, music, dance, clubs, bars, event promotion etc and those sectors have been absolutely decimated to the point most will be unable to ever recover. Most of those have been unable to claim or earn a living in over a year.

But still we get the 'I don't do to pubs/clubs so what does it matter' comments. Well it matters a hell of a lot to those unable to pay their mortgage and bills now"

I feel for you all. But the wails of 'selfish' we need to wait longer and longer, etc etc but what about X who is vulnerable we need to wait until every single vulnerable person cannot possibly get it. Sadly, there will always be those in society who cannot go out and mix freely due to a variety of conditions and covid adds to that BUT we cannot lock everyone else away because of that. There are many, many differences and inequalities in life but we cannot cover all of them. 18 months now of doing so and still covid is here.

In the first wave, we only tested people who arrived at hospital with severe COVID symptoms. So we had very few cases. Admissions and deaths were closely related.

In the second wave, we see a similar relationship between admissions and deaths, but our high levels of testing means we could see more of the outbreak and cases now also align closely with admissions.

In the third (current) wave we see cases no longer tell us very much about admissions and deaths. The relationship has broken. Clinging to the testing apparatus we have built is causing people with mild illness, plus a lot of their contacts with no illness, to isolate. Arguably unnecessarily. Because all that isolation really achieves is a slow down in the spread of that mild illness.

I can't think of any good reasons why we could not simply revert to the arrangement we had in March 2020. If you have a cold, stay at home. If you are ill enough to go to hospital, then we will test you. Because those cases are the only ones we need to worry about,.

how about maintaining masks indoors & serving at tables? & bit of social distancing for queues?
Watching football & Wimbledon I think we are due a deeper outbreak
There is a sequence to infections - it takes time to become infected than another gap to hospitalization & tragically to death.
Due to the really bad handling at the beginning at lot of the very elderly & most fragile have died in nursing homes & elsewhere (nursing home average age has dropped! due to these deaths)
I know of 3 thirty something lads went out to pub last week - all got mild cases (one definitely fully vaxxed over a month ago the other 2 had at least one if not 2) However everybody has links & no one knows how long good their immune system is or how long it lasts last
I think it would be more sensible to take a couple of weeks & check result s before opening fully at least

how about maintaining masks indoors & serving at tables? & bit of social distancing for queues

Because that leads to 100,000 cases a day in August (actually late July on current rates)

If you don't want 100,000 cases a day, you need new restrictions, not the same ones we have today.

I think it would be more sensible to take a couple of weeks & check result s before opening fully at least

Umm that's what the 4 week delay was for, just how long do you want them to keep checking for?

www.fil.ion.ucl.ac.uk/spm/covid-19/forecasting/

Current estimates of the vaccination efficacy are:
preventing infection: 15.8% (CI 10.0 to 21.1)
preventing transmission when infected: 84.6% (CI 81.9 to 87.0)
preventing serious illness when symptomatic: 62.3% (CI 59.6 to 64.8)
preventing fatality when seriously ill: 93.4% (CI 91.9 to 94.7)

"England could have close its borders and not permit anyone to fly, drive or sail to our shores. It’s not China’s fault. Society in many East Asian countries are back to normal."

Great idea. As most of our food and essential stuff is imported, we would have starved to death, or died from lack of medicines and certainly not been able to do much work. The oft-lauded Australians keep having outbreaks due to air crew. Most of our food comes in by lorry, approx 10,000 a day through Dover alone, plus other ports have RoRo ferries from the Continent with even more. It would be unrealistic to suppose that all those drivers are somehow immune from Covid, or that they could be prevented from leaving their trucks while in the UK (not to mention that many actually live here).

Possibly insisting on controlled quarantine for other travellers might have worked, but again, Australia has had Covid brought in by essential workers. Would it really be practical for every doctor, engineer, sea worker, consultant, etc who either needed to frequently do some short-term work abroad, or was needed for some short-term work here, to spend 10-14 days in quarantine? It's theoretically possible, but would even further mess up our economy, which is very internationally connected.

@Whatever9999

I think it would be more sensible to take a couple of weeks & check result s before opening fully at least

Umm that's what the 4 week delay was for, just how long do you want them to keep checking for?

Until they level off and we have an understanding of what infection rate we’re dealing with. Seems reasonable.

how about maintaining masks indoors & serving at tables?

Masks perhaps. But serving at tables means more staff and fewer customers for much of the hospitality industry. So more venues and performers unable to produce sufficient profit. Which leads to business closure and unemployment. Unemployment has long term impact - benefits in this country are enough to keep you from starving to death, but that’s about it.

There really isn’t a simple solution.

I think cases were going to keep on rising regardless of the 19th... With families and friends mixing in doors and hugging/kissing/sleepovers etc. It was inevitable... Be interesting to see how many cases the end of August this year though compared to the end of last August and the hospital admissions/deaths.
Personally ill still be cautious and stand back from others whilst chatting etc. And I don't think we'll be visiting an indoor arcade or soft play this year!

Until they level off and we have an understanding of what infection rate we’re dealing with.

Cases aren’t going to level off for weeks, probably months if we keep current restrictions. The current measures are simply not enough to stop a third wave. We would be facing the entire summer with restrictions and hit a peak in the autumn when schools are back in and the nhs is starting to deal with the impact of normal seasonal viruses. If we keep restrictions through august we will be keeping them until next spring.

Valance actually made this point when they announced the delay to “freedom day”. He explicitly said that if we keep restrictions beyond the 19th July we risk having the next peak in autumn / winter when the nhs is under other pressures.

" I couldn't give a shit."

You have made that abundantly clear loubylou1010

@sirfredfredgeorge

how about maintaining masks indoors & serving at tables? & bit of social distancing for queues

Because that leads to 100,000 cases a day in August (actually late July on current rates)

If you don't want 100,000 cases a day, you need new restrictions, not the same ones we have today.

If we are looking at 100, 000 cases a day in August even with these restrictions, then the last thing we should do is just stop the restrictions.

It's a bit like someone out in the ocean with a hole in his boat he can't mend, deciding to stop bailing out the water. Or even taking an axe to the boat. It's not going to put us in a better position, however you look at it.

Tbf @ChloeCrocodile I personally never supported the whole ‘freedom day’ marketing anyway and think it’s the same heap of BS that should be filed away with with ‘saving Christmas’ and the NHS getting millions a week if we all voted for Brexit. It’s a virus and new vaccines, it would have been more sensible to prepare people for ebbs and peaks whilst we observed the effect of vaccinations and lifted/reintroduced restrictions, in reality we’re talking next spring at least.

The economic fall out is disastrous but unsustainable recovery is as well and has the very real potential to deepen existing problems.

I really do hope I’m wrong, I was wrong about the strategy of increasing the length of time between vaccinations and I’m happy that I was. I take no pleasure in seeing holes in the plan but that doesn’t mean they’re not there.

[quote loubylou1010]@Jaxhog yes my freedom is worth more than your life, you're an adult concentrate on you're own well-being as I couldn't give a shit. [/quote]
How rude are you?

@amicissimma we may get to 100,000 cases a day because the Prime Minister did not put India on the red list at the same time as Pakistan.

The very least we should do is keep face coverings on public transport, when visiting the GP or hospital, and stopping any increase in large scale events until we know what the impact of events at Wembley and Wimbledon have been.

@loubylou1010 rude as your response is, it is shared by many people in this country, including many Tory backbench MPs.

(I assume you are not one in disguise).