Will there be another lockdown?

[Kate3150]

Read a few articles about this this morning… I didn’t watch Chris Whitty speak. Can’t imagine him actually saying those words?

Thread title edited by MNHQ with OP's agreement

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

This is the most important chart re a further lockdown.

Right now we have only 10% of patients in hospital than we did at the peak and the same is roughly true of mechanical ventilation.

However, these numbers are currently increasing by 50% weekly so, if it continues, we will exceed the previous peak in approximately 5 weeks time.

We really don’t want to get there again! In addition, if we get vaccine evading mutation, we will be in all sorts of trouble.

Of course, the hospitalisations are mainly older unvaccinated or partially unvaccinated, whereas the majority of cases are in younger unvaccinated, so we may peak with infection-mediated herd immunity among the young. That is the hope. The fear is more vaccine resistant strains and the NHS being overwhelmed.

We shall see….

@beingsunny ah thank you! But that is not watch us ‘in horror’. I would like to think it is a fellow nation watching to see what happens in the hope it works so they can follow.

Good post @TheReluctantPhoenix. Is there also a comparable chart of the numbers of people who are reporting they have Covid?

Sorry the reason I ask is because we are reaching the same numbers with Covid now as back in Jan and yet the number of people in hospital is significantly lower - which is to be expected with the vaccination programme now advanced.

However, these numbers are currently increasing by 50% weekly so, if it continues, we will exceed the previous peak in approximately 5 weeks time

About 10 days ago case growth rate was at around 50% so it makes sense that hospitalisations are now increasing by 50%.

A potential good sign is that case growth rate has steadily decreased to around 28% since then so hopefully hospitalisations will follow the same trend.

There may be a bumpy couple of weeks with cases whilst the football effect filters through though!

@Bordois no not in horror, but certainly anxious, I'm English and all of my family are over there so I have a personal interest
. I'm very worried for all my young nieces and nephews, the problems with schools closing is a huge stress.

I don't know what the answer is, we are currently going into week four of lockdown and are only at around 100 cases per day in the state. I'm struggling with homeschooling and am due to start a new job in two weeks while likely still homeschooling which is an awful thought.

We are looking to see what happens when you open up, wit a well vaxxed population (which we still don't have) and it seems nobody really thought about the impact for schools and businesses with so many in isolation.

Our PM seems out of step without state premiers so we are all keen to see what the future looks like and even more keen (in my case) to come home and seem my family.

I would also say, that if we can't suppress the virus here in sydney at 100 cases a day, 3 weeks into lockdown and we aren't seeing an improvement then you guys shouldn't bother. It would be an impossible task with the delta variant

Ok thanks to @TheReluctantPhoenix I found these three from U.K. gov website. This is looking promisingly good.

@beingsunny schools are open here. The recent issue has been isolation of bubbles which has hit some schools harder than others. My kids at different schools both didn’t need to isolate at all since going back in March. From Aug 16 those isolation rules will stop. Look at the charts above I posted. Seems that the link between cases and hospitalisation has been severed through vaccination. Before anyone jumps on that - not completely severed because we are not all vaccinated yet - but it looks like a promising set of data.

Don't know if you've seen these Blessex, mirror graphs comparing stats from the last wave and this current one? These are from a few days back but @RP131 updates them regularly

@LivinLaVidaLoki

Hes been misquoted.

From an article I found online.

"He added that more people could be fighting the disease in hospital "in five, six, seven, eight weeks' time", and went on: "They could actually be really quite serious... at that point if it looks as if things are not topping out, we do have to look again and see where we think things are going. "

www.google.com/amp/s/www.examinerlive.co.uk/news/health/england-could-plunged-back-lockdown-21065987.amp

Not the most reputable but tbh the most reputable aren't reporting it.

But this is how things seem to start. "Occasional" messages saying "something might happen" in 5 weeks or whatever. Then a little message from another MP. Then another..

@Bordois great! So all the data looks promising whichever way you cut it. Hence why we need to all stay calm and hold our nerve now.

And thanks OP @Kate3150 for changing the title of the thread

Morning everyone. We've had a number of reports about this thread including one from the OP herself, who was concerned that her thread title was misleading.

We've had a look and can see that she has clarified her intentions for starting the discussion lower down in the thread.

As another poster has said, there are some interesting points on here by many MNers so it would be a shame to zap the thread entirely.

However, we can see that feelings are running high here and so we've now edited the thread title, with the agreement of @Kate3150 - hopefully it looks a little less alarming now.

As ever, if you'd rather avoid this thread, it's possible to hide threads so that they don't appear for you.

Thanks all.

@Blessex,

I am not sure why you feel the data is promising?

Right now, approximately 1 in 50 cases are hospitalised, whereas it was 1 in 10 in previous waves. And, in addition, as the patients are, on average, younger, hospital stays are shorter.

But..,

We are already at about 40% of max case numbers from previous waves and are lightly to exceed them within a couple of weeks (2-3). If we get 5x the cases, we get the same number of hospitalisations.

Hopefully school and uni holidays will help. But, judging by recent behaviour I have seen (e.g, on crowded tube yesterday, 50% were not wearing masks), it will be a very close thing.

@TheReluctantPhoenix the data looks promising. Number of cases can number in hospital. See charts. Much much lower ratio of number in hospital now. We are going to have to ride this wave.

*vs not can

@Blessex,

See my previous reply.

Yes, approximately 5x better ratio, but we could get to 5x cases.

We really don’t want to be where we were wrt hospitals. It is a pretence that the NHS coped with either of the previous waves.

@TheReluctantPhoenix yep we probably will get to lots of cases (my own DS has delta right now - very mild) but the vast majority of those who are likely to end up in hospital is going to be a LOT lower because they have been vaccinated. You cannot compare now to the previous wave in the same way.

The only way out of this pandemic is through it

@Blessex,

You are ignoring my evidence based argument entirely.

I am absolutely not disputing that vaccines have made an enormous difference, the ratio is only 1/5 the number of hospitalisations.

But if 1/50th of a very large number of cases is too large for hospitals to handle, back we go into lockdown.

It is not ‘we’re going on a bear hunt’!

@TheReluctantPhoenix so we had 60,000 daily cases in Jan. You think we will be seeing 5x that eg 300,000 daily cases ?

What do you mean by bear hunt?

3 doubling times at the current 21 days each will take us to 300,000 cases a day so IF cases go on rising at the current rate we will be there by mid sept. Hopefully they will peak before that but no one seems too sure, it is certainly a risk.

I also work in the nhs. It's busy and numbers of Covid cases have gone up but it's isolation that's the bigger problem.

Every pandemic burns out eventually. The hotter the fire, the quicker it burns. As long as vaccines reduce the impact then we will be fine. And I'd much rather ride this wave now than in November.