A 2-week 'circuit breaker' could be coming after Christmas

[dancingstars]

Reported by The Times and The Guardian which means another NYE stuck indoors...

@MsAgnesDiPesto

I can’t believe that people are being so wilfully hard of thinking on this. I see it on every thread. ‘I’ve had enough!’ ‘The government doesn’t know what it’s doing!’ ‘ the government had parties, so I will too!’.

Yes, those things are true.

BUT

The pandemic is caused by a new virus. It does what it wants to, in predictable and unpredictable ways. The government is not guiding its progress. As much of a shower of shit as they are, it’s not their fault that the virus is changing, and we have to change our response to it accordingly.

Here are some more facts:

If the doubling rate continues, and it is so far, then it will be less than 2 weeks before a number the size of our population is infected. That’s everyone. All at once, not in manageable shifts.

Forget the NHS for a minute - although of course it would be a disaster for the service and therefore for all of us.

Think instead of all the other services which would not be able to run. Food chain supply. Medical supplies. Water and sewage services. Power plants. Bin collection and waste processing. Burying the dead, fgs. Schools and education all shut. Public transport off.

Of course the state of the NHS is the fault of successive, rapacious Tory governments’ underfunding. But even if we gave them all the money they need, today, it would be years before the service could run as we all want it to. We can’t, sadly, magic up the staff and capacity we would need to handle the numbers affected, even if we do allow EU workers back (which of course should have always been the case).

As of yesterday, only 51% of people had received a booster. They aren’t efficacious until maybe a couple of weeks later. So at the moment, huge swathes of the population are in a position where they are vulnerable to transmission, and if they catch Omicron, they are out of the workforce for ten days. Only a small proportion can be taken out of the equation when considering the doubling rate, as a much smaller number than the 51% will be fully protected as of now.

So we have to be prepared to take measures which will keep things manageable and allow the country to keep running, even if it is in a reduced or tick over mode, until boosters are received and working - which 2 weeks slowdown at the beginning of January would offer.

I hate the idea. I hate it all. I have developed anxiety and depression due in part to the effect of the pandemic. But I can see why this is needed, and how it will directly affect my life if we don’t do it.

Why can’t so many of you?

Because its complicated.

Not liking restrictions is easy. Plus restrictions are financially expensive to people

(the same people who would be stuffed by the alternative without support but thats a different story).

@rrhuth

But i dont think the public will grasp the concept and indeed the success of this one even if it works anyway agree with that - it seems if things do not completely break 'there was no need anyway' (rather than things didn't break because something was done) and if it looks bad it will be 'there was no point' (rather than it would have been even worse without action).

Thats your paradox.

A success on this one, is still going to look like a miserable failure to a majority of the public.

Its like the millennium bug paradox. Why all the panic over something that never happened.

@GiveMeNovocain

If your calculations claim the whole population will mean that an entire population catches a virus in in a very short timeframe, might I suggest you start with a new envelope. Even during the plague and measles this has never happened

Not quite so much commuting, factory working etc. during the plague

When was the last measles break out with no vaccines?

@MsAgnesDiPesto

I can’t believe that people are being so wilfully hard of thinking on this. I see it on every thread. ‘I’ve had enough!’ ‘The government doesn’t know what it’s doing!’ ‘ the government had parties, so I will too!’.

Yes, those things are true.

BUT

The pandemic is caused by a new virus. It does what it wants to, in predictable and unpredictable ways. The government is not guiding its progress. As much of a shower of shit as they are, it’s not their fault that the virus is changing, and we have to change our response to it accordingly.

Here are some more facts:

If the doubling rate continues, and it is so far, then it will be less than 2 weeks before a number the size of our population is infected. That’s everyone. All at once, not in manageable shifts.

Forget the NHS for a minute - although of course it would be a disaster for the service and therefore for all of us.

Think instead of all the other services which would not be able to run. Food chain supply. Medical supplies. Water and sewage services. Power plants. Bin collection and waste processing. Burying the dead, fgs. Schools and education all shut. Public transport off.

Of course the state of the NHS is the fault of successive, rapacious Tory governments’ underfunding. But even if we gave them all the money they need, today, it would be years before the service could run as we all want it to. We can’t, sadly, magic up the staff and capacity we would need to handle the numbers affected, even if we do allow EU workers back (which of course should have always been the case).

As of yesterday, only 51% of people had received a booster. They aren’t efficacious until maybe a couple of weeks later. So at the moment, huge swathes of the population are in a position where they are vulnerable to transmission, and if they catch Omicron, they are out of the workforce for ten days. Only a small proportion can be taken out of the equation when considering the doubling rate, as a much smaller number than the 51% will be fully protected as of now.

So we have to be prepared to take measures which will keep things manageable and allow the country to keep running, even if it is in a reduced or tick over mode, until boosters are received and working - which 2 weeks slowdown at the beginning of January would offer.

I hate the idea. I hate it all. I have developed anxiety and depression due in part to the effect of the pandemic. But I can see why this is needed, and how it will directly affect my life if we don’t do it.

Why can’t so many of you?

This makes sense. Thankyou.😀

A peak is more likely to reduce numbers than what is proposed

I know, Marsha. You'd have thought they'd have learned this by now, but still they pretend to be able to control a virus when it's looking increasingly as if we can't control it at all

Nobody denies the consequences could look horrible and nobody's enjoying this, but it seems we can either destroy everything else in a probably futile attempt to "stop the virus" or accept what's coming and work with whatever's left

@MsAgnesDiPesto if it gets so bad that everyone is infected, and water and food supplies are affected then the answer is easy:
Everyone is infected, so no need to stay at home and isolate. Most people aren't ill for a full 10 days so they just go straight back to work.

Or we all die of starvation and no water.
Which you seem to think is possible. 🙄

I do not see what your alternative is? No one has a time machine to go back, switch PM, fund the NHS properly for the last 24 months and be in a different place now

You could fling all the money in the world at the NHS and it would still waste money and say it is underfunded.

I have witnessed the sheer waste of just small things that nhs staff do because that is what they have been taught to do and no one seems to think or ask why they do something which doesn’t need doing and whilst only costing a small amount but multiplied millions of times over the years would probably go a long way to being able to fund more operations, nurses, doctors.

There is such obvious gaping holes in how money is spent, how the practice of trying to save money ends up costing money and the training of doctors and nurses that I think even I could save them possibly millions.

@Kennykenkencat

I do not see what your alternative is? No one has a time machine to go back, switch PM, fund the NHS properly for the last 24 months and be in a different place now

You could fling all the money in the world at the NHS and it would still waste money and say it is underfunded.

I have witnessed the sheer waste of just small things that nhs staff do because that is what they have been taught to do and no one seems to think or ask why they do something which doesn’t need doing and whilst only costing a small amount but multiplied millions of times over the years would probably go a long way to being able to fund more operations, nurses, doctors.

There is such obvious gaping holes in how money is spent, how the practice of trying to save money ends up costing money and the training of doctors and nurses that I think even I could save them possibly millions.

Probably right but I am not sure now is the time to address the paperclip budget!!

Overstretched organisations do not run well.

[quote FrazzledCareerWoman]@neveradullmoment99
"Children are 20% more likely to be hospitalised with this variant."

Where did you get this info, please? [/quote]
Yes where is this from? Data from SA shows that all children in hospital with omicron where admitted for other reasons and they all had mild symptoms.

Either post your source or stop scaremongering.

So we have to be prepared to take measures which will keep things manageable and allow the country to keep running, even if it is in a reduced or tick over mode

The assumption here is that we can do this. That there exists a set of ‘measures’ which substantially reduce transmission while still keeping the country functioning; and that we know what those are; and that we are able to implement them.

We have never been able to achieve this before. We could not achieve this with the original version. We could not achieve this with alpha. We could not achieve this with delta. (Look at the case rates of parts of the UK that tried to continue ‘measures’ after July 19th, vs England’s - pretty much none.) The only thing that worked was months-long lockdowns, and those only worked to boot the problem down the road a bit.

And now we have a variant that is more transmissible than all of those, that is doubling every 2-3 days. But we’re still telling ourselves we can get control over it in a couple of weeks using measures which still keep the country functioning? We are kidding ourselves.

If your calculations claim the whole population will mean that an entire population catches a virus in in a very short timeframe, might I suggest you start with a new envelope. Even during the plague and measles this has never happened

Don't spoil it, Novocain

[quote poshme]@MsAgnesDiPesto if it gets so bad that everyone is infected, and water and food supplies are affected then the answer is easy:
Everyone is infected, so no need to stay at home and isolate. Most people aren't ill for a full 10 days so they just go straight back to work.

Or we all die of starvation and no water.
Which you seem to think is possible. 🙄
[/quote]
I haven’t made any suggestion of what the mitigations or the effects would be, in my post. I have simply extrapolated out from the facts what could happen if we don’t intervene at all apart from the booster campaign. Of course there would be ways to mitigate. But it wouldn’t avoid an immediate and very serious crisis.

Facts are inconvenient, I know, but they exist. It’s up to us how we respond. Insisting it’ll all be fine without modelling or planning isn’t much of a strategy.

MsAgnesDiPesto well said.

@GoldenOmber

So we have to be prepared to take measures which will keep things manageable and allow the country to keep running, even if it is in a reduced or tick over mode

The assumption here is that we can do this. That there exists a set of ‘measures’ which substantially reduce transmission while still keeping the country functioning; and that we know what those are; and that we are able to implement them.

We have never been able to achieve this before. We could not achieve this with the original version. We could not achieve this with alpha. We could not achieve this with delta. (Look at the case rates of parts of the UK that tried to continue ‘measures’ after July 19th, vs England’s - pretty much none.) The only thing that worked was months-long lockdowns, and those only worked to boot the problem down the road a bit.

And now we have a variant that is more transmissible than all of those, that is doubling every 2-3 days. But we’re still telling ourselves we can get control over it in a couple of weeks using measures which still keep the country functioning? We are kidding ourselves.

Brilliantly well put, GoldenOmber

@GoldenOmber

So we have to be prepared to take measures which will keep things manageable and allow the country to keep running, even if it is in a reduced or tick over mode

The assumption here is that we can do this. That there exists a set of ‘measures’ which substantially reduce transmission while still keeping the country functioning; and that we know what those are; and that we are able to implement them.

We have never been able to achieve this before. We could not achieve this with the original version. We could not achieve this with alpha. We could not achieve this with delta. (Look at the case rates of parts of the UK that tried to continue ‘measures’ after July 19th, vs England’s - pretty much none.) The only thing that worked was months-long lockdowns, and those only worked to boot the problem down the road a bit.

And now we have a variant that is more transmissible than all of those, that is doubling every 2-3 days. But we’re still telling ourselves we can get control over it in a couple of weeks using measures which still keep the country functioning? We are kidding ourselves.

Well put

If we are all going to get Omicrom then what is the point of the point of locking down and wouldn’t that mean we would all be immune till probably mid next year at the least and if that happens everywhere else then only NZ would be a danger but they aren’t letting anyone out anyways.

Wouldn’t that mean, like the Spanish flu dying out that there was no one to infect as we would be all immune and it would be gone.

After christmas, so after everyone has heavily socialised and the damage has already been done.

Good luck getting people to comply in the first place after the Tories partied while people died on their own in care homes!

Firstly I have no idea how Neil Ferguson still has any role in advising the government- he has been wrong again and again.

He doesn't advise the government directly - he's just one of dozens of contributors to SAGE, who make the advice - albeit he is one of the few who keeps responding to requests from the BBC to come on the air.

Why then are we trying to prolong it all

@MollyQueenOfSocks

After christmas, so after everyone has heavily socialised and the damage has already been done.

Good luck getting people to comply in the first place after the Tories partied while people died on their own in care homes!

Oh yes. 2 weeks starting last week would have been better, but everyone here said they wouldn’t comply, so there wouldn’t have been any point. People don’t seem willing to act till the consequences are already on their doorstep. They don’t trust the scientists who are literally trained and paid to do this sort of forecasting.

People did not fully obey lockdown/tier system or whatever last time ( cheese and wine, anyone?) So to think they will this time, when their mental health is shot and the economy is going down the pan, is optimistic to say the least. Look at the comments on this site.
But we do need to do something to slow the rate of people needing medical assistance. Locking down in the draconian manner of China would make a difference, but we're obviously not going to to that. We will just have to faff around at the edges as we have done before and hope it achieves something. Personally, I shall continue to live like a hermit to try to avoid covid, I am lucky enough to be able to do so and this approach has served me well so far, and hope to God I don't need a doctor for anything else.

I think we can’t really be second guessing on how best to tackle COVID . the government have the facts and the top advice and we don’t. So who knows how it would have played out last year if they hadn’t restricted Christmas etc we may think it’s all in vain but we can’t be sure. We also don’t know what would happen if no one complies would there be a bed for a sick loved one or in fact medical staff to treat them. Individuals can make their own risk assessment if restrictions are instigated. It’s not just about cash for the nhs there’s also massive understaffing and you can’t just conjure up medical staff and a lot of them winks probably be isolating. It’s a mess.

So not the Guardian or the Times. Nice one, OP

The Times is reporting this and everyone else is following them. A quick Google would tell you that

Why should I have to google what the OP has failed to provide?

That would be the one who hasn't come back.

@Puzzledandpissedoff

If your calculations claim the whole population will mean that an entire population catches a virus in in a very short timeframe, might I suggest you start with a new envelope. Even during the plague and measles this has never happened

Don't spoil it, Novocain

In the past we didn't have such long, complex and fragile supply chains.

Thats one of the issues here. We are more vulnerable to a breakdown in availability of things because modern life is more complex.

In the past people ate potatoes. The potatoes travelled from the farm to the house on the farmers cart for sale in the nearby town in the most complex chain. Potatoes keep a while so you can put them in a warehouse for a while. You have someone who sells the potato. So a chain of maybe 4 or 5 people involved.

Today, potato might be imported from Lithuania. So it has to be farmed, put on a truck (which needs to be supplied with petrol and the supply chain for that), go through customs and border checks in a minimum of 2 places, go to the factory to be chipped and cleaned with water (which has to also have all the supply chain for packaging and clean water), then shipped to the supermarket, who then sell it in the freezer section (which needs electricity and the supply chain to run that).

So it means various constrictions in labour can affect productivity which when people live on a much more 'just in time' lifestyle, can be a lot more problematic. Just small labour shortages in just one area of the supply chain can have a big impact further down the line.

We know that the public does not understand supply chain or supply chain shock well.

Think of it as compound labour shortage problems if you will.

Our society is built the fragility of stability which we have grown to take for granted...

@MsAgnesDiPesto Absolutely agreed. People have seen the hypocrisy of the government and basically said they won't comply, regardless of whether or not it could help tame the numbers.

To an extent I don't blame anyone for that, however I know I would rather comply, get my booster vaccine and get through all of this again. I'd rather family were alive and I was able to see them in a couple of weeks rather than potentially never see them again.