We just need to move on…

[Moonme]

Anyone else infuriated by people saying this. It’s like, yes of course we all want to move on but we have a novel virus circulating in high numbers. Are people really so naive to think if we wish it away it’ll be gone?!

Or - we simply need to accept that whenever restrictions are lifted there will be an inevitable rise in cases

@AlecTrevelyan006

Or - we simply need to accept that whenever restrictions are lifted there will be an inevitable rise in cases

don't think anyone's debating that point?

it's whether trajectories of infection imply we're going to breach unsafe levels of transmission that's the concern

I think some still are debating that point - there is a view that if everyone behaves then at some indeterminate point in the far future we can emerge from our bunkers and Covid will have disappeared

Agree it's about the proportionality. Most people agreed that through 2020 when we had no immunity against a novel virus, we needed to take measures.

However, with a high % of the population vaccinated, and that number rising every day, there comes a point when the measures the government is imposing is disproportionate to the risk. There is such clear evidence that the vaccine is working very well at keeping people out of hospital, and stopping them from dying if they are admitted.

Ensuring that nobody ever dies of anything is impossible. The public will have to accept Covid deaths forever, as we live with deaths from flu, or measles, or pneumonia, or whatever else.

What is an ‘unsafe level of transmission’?

Ensuring that nobody ever dies of anything is impossible. The public will have to accept Covid deaths forever, as we live with deaths from flu, or measles, or pneumonia, or whatever else.

Yes

I think some are majorly struggling with this though.

Thinking we should be taking very restrictive measures until deaths are eliminated. But that’s not going to be possible short of locking down very significantly, for a long time to come.

The whole thing was about keeping the nhs at a level it could still run.
But it had been underfunded for so long it was barely running before 2020.

@TheKeatingFive

What is an ‘unsafe level of transmission’?

Well clearly the most obvious is the point at which the number of COVID+ individuals is so high that it translates to numbers requiring hospital treatment of which we don't have enough beds and staff. This puts everyone at risk, even if you're not particularly susceptible to COVID, as it will mean non-COVID emergencies can't be safely dealt with.

Other factors to consider are the proportion of people suffering from long term complications (again, a small proportion of a very high number will translate to a lot of individuals affected), and the risk of new emergent variants when transmission rates are so high.

@MaxNormal

Delta was going to get in regardless. We'll be over the Delta wave when Europe and the US are in the thick of it.

Will we? People are easily catching CV after vaccinations, so with antibodies (many of those would have had previous natural infections) so presumably, there is little to stop catching it again and again?

I think it's no point getting angry about others. I just shrug and do what I think is right.
From what I've read, majority are taking sensible measures. Just fingers crossed for time being.

@Moonme

Anyone else infuriated by people saying this. It’s like, yes of course we all want to move on but we have a novel virus circulating in high numbers. Are people really so naive to think if we wish it away it’ll be gone?!

Yes, it's nonsensical. I think what they mean is lets just forget about people who have died/dying/unwell because I want to crack on.

To be honest I was very relieved when I went to tesco this morning and not much had changed. A handful of people not wearing masks. But not many more than usual.

Well clearly the most obvious is the point at which the number of COVID+ individuals is so high that it translates to numbers requiring hospital treatment of which we don't have enough beds and staff.

As has been pointed out, the nhs was struggling to cope to begin with. At what point do we tackle that head on and reevaluate funding, purpose, capacity, role?

Or do you think we should just get used to rolling degrees of lockdown for years and years ahead, to keep a very flawed health service barely functioning?

@KittyMcKitty

Case numbers where I live are the highest they’ve been at any point in the pandemic.

Same but the message is fuck it and carry on apparently Second dose booked this afternoon thankfully

@TheKeatingFive

Well clearly the most obvious is the point at which the number of COVID+ individuals is so high that it translates to numbers requiring hospital treatment of which we don't have enough beds and staff.

As has been pointed out, the nhs was struggling to cope to begin with. At what point do we tackle that head on and reevaluate funding, purpose, capacity, role?

Or do you think we should just get used to rolling degrees of lockdown for years and years ahead, to keep a very flawed health service barely functioning?

That takes years, even if it were to start right now.

Its the classic cart and horse scenario, we need to deal with the funding of the health as a separate issue, though there appears to be no such plan.

As far as i'm concerned, we should have carried on with the pre july 19th restrictions because we will be back in far harsher restrictions very soon.

@TheKeatingFive I don’t disagree but that doesn’t help pressure on the NHS right now does it? We haven’t got years for recruitment drives, training, purchasing/leasing premises etc. To me it’s two separate issues both worthy of their own debates and strategies.

To be clear I’m not suggesting lockdowns at all but I fail to see the logic of not at least trying to slow the spread through restrictions like limiting crowd numbers, encouraging wfh, masks etc.

@TheKeatingFive

Well clearly the most obvious is the point at which the number of COVID+ individuals is so high that it translates to numbers requiring hospital treatment of which we don't have enough beds and staff.

As has been pointed out, the nhs was struggling to cope to begin with. At what point do we tackle that head on and reevaluate funding, purpose, capacity, role?

Or do you think we should just get used to rolling degrees of lockdown for years and years ahead, to keep a very flawed health service barely functioning?

well quite, but that's not something that can be immediately fixed, and even if BJ and co had begun tackling it 18 months it still would not be adequate time to make a difference. Even well resourced and funded healthcare systems would buckle under the strain of cases in the 100,000s. Simply the impact of so many staff being off sick and needed to isolate is very hard to deal with.

At no point have I suggested rolling lockdowns, but equally it makes no sense to drop all suppression policies at once, when we're in the midst of exponential transmission.

This is exactly what I meant in my original post "we need to move on", has to be in the context of managing coronavirus whilst continuing to reopen society. It's not a binary either/or situation.

It has been said to death now and so many people can't seem to give any better options....

We are and always were going to have an exit wave...we had 3 choices.

Wait until autumn, more people may be vaccinated but having the wave in the autumn/winter could end up causing more deaths as the NHS is already under pressure then.

Wait until next spring - just not a realistic time scale and the mental health of people and hospitality sectors will not survive with social distancing still in place.

Do it now where we may have higher numbers but they are predominantly in people who are unlikely to get seriously ill. 4k people currently in hospital and 4k have been admitted in the last week. So roughly the same amount of people are going into hospital a week than are coming out. (Yes this will go up with higher cases but extremely unlikely to get to the 40k in hospitals that we had before)

Those are the 3 choices..
None of them are great but we had to pick one. People say we should just keep masks but once again once that is dropped we will still get another wave and likely during school time or winter.

To the people that say we're the laughing stock of the world. That is complete crap. The rest of the world doesn't care what we do and concentrate on their own issues. If anything they will want our plan to work to show their population that you can open once people are vaccinated which may help poor vaccine take up in the likes of France.

People are easily catching CV after vaccinations, so with antibodies (many of those would have had previous natural infections) so presumably, there is little to stop catching it again and again?

In which case we even more obviously can't keep living under restrictions long-term.

As far as i'm concerned, we should have carried on with the pre july 19th restrictions because we will be back in far harsher restrictions very soon.

And think of lifting them when?

Because the modelling suggests that no better window would present itself until quarter 2 2022. Assuming of course we don’t have variant x disrupting plans again at that stage. That’s entire industries unable to open for two years (best case) and in many cases consigned to the waste heap. We need to be clear about that.

That takes years, even if it were to start right now.

I should have been started March 2020. But it is absolute criminal that national conversations m about it’s long term future aren’t happening right now.

To the people that say we're the laughing stock of the world. That is complete crap

This. The country I'm from has just had largescale looting, unrest and destruction of infrastructure, and this during a wave equal to ours. Not a lot of social distancing while looting your nearest shopping mall.
Their vaccine roll-out was already shite and this has not helped matters.

Oddly enough laughing at the UK isn't really occuring to anyone.

[quote Cornettoninja]@TheKeatingFive I don’t disagree but that doesn’t help pressure on the NHS right now does it? We haven’t got years for recruitment drives, training, purchasing/leasing premises etc. To me it’s two separate issues both worthy of their own debates and strategies.

To be clear I’m not suggesting lockdowns at all but I fail to see the logic of not at least trying to slow the spread through restrictions like limiting crowd numbers, encouraging wfh, masks etc.[/quote]
Surely it's because this is meant to be the exit wave. They want it done before schools go back. Better to have much higher cases over a short period of time if they believe the NHS can cope, let's not forget we currently have 10 times less people in hospital with covid than we did during the winter.

Where as before it was flatten the curve to protect the NHS. Now it seems to be have a high and quick peak and attempt some for of herd immunity before the winter months.

I don't know if it's the right decision or not. Chris whitty has agreed to it and if he didn't and had any integrity he would resign so thats good nough for me.

it is absolute criminal that national conversations about (the NHS's) long term future aren’t happening right now

FWIW I'm entirely confident that conversation's are happening, and have been for a while - it's just that folk might not like what's being discussed when the details start to leak out

Seen in one light the virus is an absolute gift to a privatising government, and did anyone really expect them to neglect the possibilities it creates for a payday to end them all?

@Tuba437 which is a fair POV, but I’m afraid that I don’t trust this cabinet to have fully digested the moderate and worst case outcomes of their scenarios. They’ve taken to many bets over the course of this pandemic that haven’t paid off and their ability to consider wider repercussions is barely average. They haven’t adjusted their strategy designed at the start of the year to take into account the delta variant which is a basic failure in my eyes.

Nothing about this reopening suggests anything about caution to me and therefore I don’t believe they have any plan B or C waiting in the wings if it does go wrong.

That’s entire industries unable to open for two years (best case) and in many cases consigned to the waste heap. We need to be clear about that

I agree we do. We still don’t fully know how things are going to turn out but the impact can’t be waved away much longer. We can’t, as a country, continue to prop up jobs that aren’t going to be viable in the medium term. As a country we’ve had to accept a level of death can’t be controlled and it’s time to do the same with the economy.

@MaxNormal

Delta was going to get in regardless. We'll be over the Delta wave when Europe and the US are in the thick of it.

I kind of agree with this. The US are just starting to see their numbers spike again in a lot of states that are fully open with no restrictions and people I know over there are starting to get concerned. Doesn't help they have so many anti vaxxers in America either.