Will this level of cases now just be acceptable?

[Tuba437]

Just having a think to myself. We're now at around 30k cases a day in general. The 7 day average daily deaths is about 89 (this was for around 45-50k cases a day). We can assume that I a month or so deaths will be at around 60 a day.

Over a year that works out at about 21k worth of deaths. Will this just be the acceptable number. We know the vaccine doesn't stop the spread so I highly doubt were ever just going to get down to sub 5k cases a day again.

21k is considered a very mild flu death rate for the year. We have a new virus around now so more deaths a year are going to be a thing whether we like it or not.

I also think red list countries should only be for countries with worrying variants. If I don't have to isolate if my wife tests positive (just daily testing) then why on earth would I have to spend 1500 on a government hotel to quarantine as I've been to a country with a lower covid rate than us?

Sorry about the rant.

I also think red list countries should only be for countries with worrying variants. If I don't have to isolate if my wife tests positive (just daily testing) then why on earth would I have to spend 1500 on a government hotel to quarantine as I've been to a country with a lower covid rate than us?

Completely agree. And many of those countries depend on tourism to fuel their economies. It's shameful.

You have blamed children, some poster said something about going back and spreading it to others. That's blaming. Yea but the government and scientists have removed mandatory restrictions. I don't know what you want from this?

The thing is if you want restrictions have them. Just don't say they should be imposed because judging by the temperature of the general public you will be quite alone.

We have heard an awful lot from Professor Dingwall in the press. He is a sociologist and his opinions are idiosyncratic to say the least.

I think being in lockdown has been very difficult for many people; continuing to work as a keyworker has also been very difficult.

We can also look at what happened in India / Italy / Brazil and consider whether we would prefer to have lived through their experience of covid.

I imagine on a sociological level those countries would also have suffered a great deal.

@Peteycat

The thing is if you want restrictions have them. Just don't say they should be imposed because judging by the temperature of the general public you will be quite alone.

I haven't been saying I want them imposed. I don't think very many people want to be in a position where they could be imposed. That is why it is so important to act together to get through the next few months as safely as possible.

I imagine on a sociological level those countries would also have suffered a great deal

This is a very good point. Few people stop to think of what might have happened to them or their families had we not had restrictions.

I disagree. I regularly think about what could have been. I just can't understand why on earth anyone supports more of them.

Yes we should always think of others of course. I just think that getting into masks and sd again plus booster vaccines being discussed it will just be a perpetual situation.

Herecomethsun perhaps I am wrong. You say you don't want them, I understand what you are saying here. I just feel though that you support them but not everyone does. I don't want my family to be restricted anymore. I'm sure you don't either.

I agree about sticking together to get through this but in the best human way. Which in my opinion isn't isolating people again and mask wearing.

@Peteycat

Herecomethsun perhaps I am wrong. You say you don't want them, I understand what you are saying here. I just feel though that you support them but not everyone does. I don't want my family to be restricted anymore. I'm sure you don't either.

I agree about sticking together to get through this but in the best human way. Which in my opinion isn't isolating people again and mask wearing.

why do you oppose mask wearing in certain settings @Peteycat?

everyone wants the pandemic to be over, but ditching all restrictions and not encouraging vaccination won't make it so

We can also look at what happened in India / Italy / Brazil and consider whether we would prefer to have lived through their experience of covid.

But it’s not like it was lockdown or Brazil. There are countries that avoided any prolonged strict lockdowns and also avoided the scenes mentioned above. Large areas of the US, Sweden, even Japan fits that category.

Yes we should always think of others of course. I just think that getting into masks and sd again plus booster vaccines being discussed it will just be a perpetual situation

But it is a perpetual situation, what bit of Covid and what it does to people is just going to go away?

I’d rather live with very modest mitigation measures like mandatory masks and ventilation in order to avoid having to SD again until we know more, which will likely be after this winter, than for take more risks on the unknown. I also don’t understand how people here seem to think that we are somehow superior to every other country in the world that has so far chosen not to do what we are doing.

Let’s face it, the only thing we’ve got right so far is the vaccine rollout!

@TheKeatingFive

We can also look at what happened in India / Italy / Brazil and consider whether we would prefer to have lived through their experience of covid.

But it’s not like it was lockdown or Brazil. There are countries that avoided any prolonged strict lockdowns and also avoided the scenes mentioned above. Large areas of the US, Sweden, even Japan fits that category.

Sweden hasn't done well in comparison to it's northern European neighbours though

Similarly to the US - it is very difficult to compare states due to differences in populations (people LOVE the florida verus cali argument), but overall it does suggest that mitigation measures helped prevent death and hospitalizations. Will try and dig out the paper I read on it - was a preprint at the time.

Large areas of the US, Sweden, even Japan fits that category

Sweden has openly acknowledged that its way of dealing with Covid was flawed and resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths. The US is a complete mess, not less because of the huge political divisions between Covid deniers and public health, many of which have now stoke huge rates of vaccine hesitancy and are thereby once again contributing indirectly to unnecessary deaths. Neither is an approach that warrants emulating. Japan is completely incomparable, not least because hygiene measures such as masks are ALREADY a normal part of day to day society. They’re also a typical Asian collectivist culture whereby people put the needs of society above the needs of themselves (unlike the West where if it doesn’t work for us individually we don’t like it). So you just cannot compare the two at all. In many ways, the Japanese (and I know this as I have family there) don’t actually need authoritarian rules as they are typically doing the sensible thing anyway, and no one will ever want to go against the crowd.

Sorry that’s @TheKeatingFive

I’d rather live with very modest mitigation measures like mandatory masks and ventilation in order to avoid having to SD again until we know more, which will likely be after this winter, than for take more risks on the unknown.

‘Know more’ about what, though? What information don’t we have that we’re expecting to get? What would it change?

I think measures are warranted to wait for vaccines, to avoid NHS capacity being swamped. But I can’t really see a case for “we should keep measures because we don’t know what the future holds”.

@GoldenOmber

I’d rather live with very modest mitigation measures like mandatory masks and ventilation in order to avoid having to SD again until we know more, which will likely be after this winter, than for take more risks on the unknown.

‘Know more’ about what, though? What information don’t we have that we’re expecting to get? What would it change?

I think measures are warranted to wait for vaccines, to avoid NHS capacity being swamped. But I can’t really see a case for “we should keep measures because we don’t know what the future holds”.

Not the PP, but a key thing we don't know enough about is proper prevalence estimates of long term effects of COVID including long COVID, in addition to long term effects in children.

If this is found to be not be a significant issue then great, but until the point I'd prefer a precautionary approach than just letting levels get increasingly high in schools and the community.

(And of course, overwhelmed healthcare)

Sweden has openly acknowledged that its way of dealing with Covid was flawed and resulted in thousands of unnecessary deaths

The king said that, not the government. He’s entitled to his view of course, but most counties have multiple points of view on their strategies, it’s not even slightly unusual.

Sweden’s ‘unnecessary deaths’ came from letting it into care homes, exactly the same as countless countries that locked down hard.

No other country is solely compared to its two nearest neighbours. Just Sweden, whose stats don’t look worse than most of the western world.

It’ll be a long time before we understand the true costs of lockdowns. I expect we’ll see revision after revision over what was the right thing to do.

@speckledostrichegg thanks, yes this is exactly it. We need to know more about long Covid, more about what happens now that there will be no restrictions among unvaccinated children, more about how long the vaccines last, more about the extent to which vaccine trials are successful in younger ages, more about the longer term health implications, so much more.

It’s utterly irresponsible to pretend that none of these questions are important, which is exactly what is happening by the withdrawal of all NPIs (non-pharmaceutical interventions).

What really pisses me off quite honestly is the disparity in the effect of mitigation measures.

“My” asking you to wear a mask, open the window, or reconsider testing policies for contacts does you absolutely no harm whatsoever.

“Your” insisting on not doing so puts my health at risk, that of my family at risk, and possibly worse if long Covid results in loss of future earnings, impact on career, or death of a loved one.

I’ve used “” because it’s not a hypothetical not a you v me argument

@TheKeatingFive

The king said that, not the government

FFS. Anders Tegnell said it, Sweden’s state epidemiologist and head of their Covid response. He is not the king. Google it.

@TheKeatingFive

No other country is solely compared to its two nearest neighbours. Just Sweden, whose stats don’t look worse than most of the western world

I’ve written a comparative analysis paper on the variation in responses and outcomes to Covid response. I’m not linking to it for obvious reasons. Please accept the fact that I know more than the basics on this stuff.

Not the PP, but a key thing we don't know enough about is proper prevalence estimates of long term effects of COVID including long COVID, in addition to long term effects in children.

Im not saying we shouldn’t continue to gather that information. But it would take years and years to feel 100% confident about all potential long-term effects, and what would it change in terms of keeping restrictions like masks and close contact isolation in place?

Because we know covid is not going away. It’s going to be out there whatever we do, we’ll be exposed to it at some point whatever we do. So what would wearing masks for an extra 5 years really gain us?

FFS. Anders Tegnell said it, Sweden’s state epidemiologist and head of their Covid response.

Anders Tegnell said there are things that should have been done better / differently which arguably speaks to his maturity and humility. He has never supported the lockdown strategy:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52903717

In retrospect, his words from last year sound very true today:

He warned it was too early to say whether the lockdowns had worked or not. "We know from history during the last three or four months that this disease has a very high capacity to start spreading again."

Cases in Australia keep going up even during the lockdown.

@RoseStar,

Having read your posts I can see your argument but:

You have to have hospital admissions under control before you even consider anything else. Without that, society falls apart. And with infectious disease, that implies a population r number below (or equal to) one.

Obviously the r number is applied to a baseline number of cases (around 200k per week right now). If you feel the impact of long COVID is serious, you may choose to lockdown for longer to lower this baseline.

Clearly, also, as a society, we have to decide how many deaths are tolerable (they are currently not a major issue). But, given our hospital staffing issues, managing hospitals and managing impact are pretty much equivalent.

If we had 10x the hospitals, we might decide that hospitals were no longer the limiting factor but absolute deaths and or long term implications of long COVID were.

My reasons for disliking masks are none of your business. In fact, to be quite honest I have massive valid reasons but I'm not going to discuss that with strangers. They are no good psychologicaly for children for a start.

Visually impaired people struggle with reading people's faces in them. Visually impaired people struggle with two meters distance, they can't see you.

Deaf people cannot read your lips.

People with dementia or learning disabilities may be scared.

Even dogs are terrified. I have experience of this should you wish me to elaborate.

Was talking to a lady the other day who experienced an armed robbery attack at work. Masks give her flashbacks.

Yes you may ask me to wear a mask, to which my answer will be a strong no.

People put them in their pockets after wearing deeming them filthy and useless.

People can't breath properly in them.

There's more but it's been a long day.

Without being mean too, I've been to so many places where people in masks literally stink. They wear a mask but haven't washed for a week.