Westministenders: Lockdown continues

[BigChocFrenzy]

The UK has been on lockdown since 23 March,
with no end in sight.

The deaths peak is predicted to be around 17 April,
with the controversial IHME prediction that the UK will have considerably more total deaths - 66,000 - by summer than other European countries.

Supermarkets are struggling to satisfy demand for online slots for the vulnerable
and to keep shelves supplied for other customers

Like all countries, the UK economy is being hammered and heading for a deep recession.
Estimates are for UK GDP to fall 15% this year.

A million people have applied for Universal Credit
The self-employed and small - and some large - businesses are struggling to stay solvent.

They don't know how long to plan for.

The PM is in ICU and Raab has taken over as stand-in, but needs Cabinet approval for decisions.
Probably BJ will be unfit to resume his duties as PM for several weeks, if ever.

WIll he stand down soon and let the Cabinet choose a new PM,
or will the UK continue for weeks with a stand-in leader during the worst crisis since WW2

What's the plan, anybody?

I'm not keen at all on DS1, with his bad chest, going back to school after May 11th, where he is a weekly boarder sharing a room with 3 other boys.

The article that TatianaBis linked to mentions Dyson's ventilators near the end. "not thought to have undergone rigorous testing yet."

@squid4, I’m in the NE and my dcs DT department has decided to produce some visors. If you are the one who are receiving them, I’m very happy that you are finding them helpful.

(I’m also incensed and deeply angry that you would have to rely on that sort of action and that the government hasn’t stepping in appropriately. That should never have happened)

This is Brexit/ immigration related rather than virus related...

As a complete aside for work (HR) purposes I had to look at the new immigration rules on the government website. It says the following from Jan 2021:

-EU citizens will not require a visa to enter the country when visiting.

-Citizens of Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea and the USA, who possess biometric passports, will continue to be able to use e-gates.
-We will unilaterally allow EU citizens to continue to use e-gates, but we will keep this policy under review.

All migrants looking to enter the UK including those from the EU coming to work or study should apply for a work visa in advance on line online. That's where all the salary threshold rules kick in.

It seems to me- we had all that absurd four years off fuss. All about how to keep out hardworking EU citizens who were net contributors as proven by every study shown. Now despite all the fuss about work visa rules the actual enforcement is down to:

1. The EU worker doing the right thing and getting a visa in advance.
2. Employers enforcing the system properly by checks.

is it overly cynical of me to observe that yes this whole charade will put off people by making them feel unwelcome.However, any lower skilled workers who are still prepared to come will simply be driven more under the radar?

points-system

introduction

As well as heart attacks, it looks as though children have been collateral damage with lockdown. I understand if the child has diabetes or asthma/weak chest not taking them to hospital, but a perfectly healthy child? The poor parents faced with that decision, I don't envy. I think that 11yr old dying has made this a harder decision than it would have been a few weeks ago for many. If only we had been testing and could use the data to find out risk factors in children .

If only we had been testing and could use the data to find out risk factors in children

You'd need to give a shit first.

We probably need to get out of the old mindset about the school year

Which is itself an artefact of history. Study after harvest with breaks for winter, planting in spring and working the fields June-August.

No real reason there couldn't be a much more spread out an less intensive way of learning, if people had the will and imagination.

A corollary to the ACC quote upthread might be: When a society decides a course of action is possible, they are usually right. When a society decides a course of action is impossible, they are usually wrong.

Brexiteers should know this only too well. They told them Brexit was impossible, but they did it anyway. Lets see about economic equality next. Followed by Equality of opportunity and a fairer society for the less wealthy and more vulnerable, eh ?

pretty I'm in Scotland. MIL died mid March, pre-lockdown (not CV related). The funeral date was set for nearly 2 weeks later to accommodate work commitments by our DD and DS. Then lockdown came into force and neither had any work commitments anyway. Church, undertaker and cemetery all imposed their own constraints which changed by the day, so DH was constantly updating his arrangements - stressful. Funeral was church service with 7 mourners, prayer and tribute, no hymns, hymn sheets or music of any kind. Undertakers handled the coffin on their own. At the cemetery, their staff removed the coffin from the hearse and placed it in the grave before we were allowed to leave our cars, nobody used the cords. I'll admit we did have DD, DS and partners back to our house afterwards, carefully socially distancing (and we're all fine, 2 weeks later) . DH in particular found it very hard at the time. He's hoping to have a memorial service later; at FILs funeral, the church was packed.

I expect a big rise in memorial services post lockdown. People need to be remembered properly.

Has anyone seen Trump's latest meltdown?! He's a very useful idiot to certain sectors of the US, that's for sure, but I wonder if any of them are getting nervous.

.

AuldAlliance The issue is that summer looks the safest time
September would probably see cases rising again, with the winter terms later having a long high peak of cases, the most dangerous time

It could be an option for parents to keep children out of education until the vaccination program, if they have health issues

Obviously for those without childcare it isn't really a choice to keep them home for 18 months or whatever,
quite apart from the impact on their education and socialisation.

Nobody knows this about warm weather though.

it's a supposition that I thought was supposed when there were fewer hot country cases. And now unsupposed?

It could be an option for parents to keep children out of education until the vaccination program, if they have health issues

I'm up for a bet that absolutely no one anywhere in government has even started looking at what a vaccination programme would look like and more critically how society should deal with it ? What will be done about the 5-10% of people who will refuse vaccination for themselves or their children ?

In answer to some of the posters who seem willing to excuse the government any amount of incompetence with the siren whine but what do you expect them to do ? there's one very simple example. It may have many complex arguments beneath it. But I think it's a fair problem that the alleged "greatest and good" we have in power to be deploying a few brain cells on.

Again, open to having my thinking checked. I know the drill these days.

Oh... and one of the reasons transmission is slower in the summer is... because schools are closed!

Nobody knows this about warm weather though.

They do know that viruses don't like UV light too much, and there's more of that about in summer ...

I've seen teachers on Twitter saying kids won't be back until 2nd May bank holiday. I don't want mine going back but I'm lucky - I can wfh, she's older. I'm more worried about my employer deciding we should all be back working in the office - for no reason other than "because".

But kids will see far less UV light if they are inside schools?

Anyway, this is an interesting read :

www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/is-coronavirus-seasonal-summer

I am partly coming at this from a selfish angle : my school is so hot in the summer months that people were fainting everywhere last July.

Question is, whether COVID is flu-like (!) in its seasonality
If not, then all we have is the usually higher immune system functioning in summer, partly due to less Vitamin D deficiency then

Roles of Humidity and Temperature in Shaping Influenza Seasonality

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4097773/

Experimental studies in guinea pigs demonstrated that
influenza virus transmission is strongly modulated by temperature and humidity.

A number of epidemiological studies have followed up on these findings and revealed
robust associations between influenza incidence in temperate regions and local conditions of humidity and temperature,
offering a long-awaited explanation for the wintertime seasonality of influenza in these locales

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/04/09/830297538/scientists-try-to-figure-out-if-summer-will-slow-the-spread-of-covid-19?t=1586863836764

Akiko Iwasaki, a professor of immunobiology at the Yale University School of Medicine...

In winter, the drop in the amount of water vapor in the cold, dry air makes it easier for viruses to become airborne.
This makes what Iwasaki calls the "perfect setting" for respiratory viruses to transmit.

"When you cough or sneeze or even talk, you're generating these droplets that are coming out of your mouth,"
she says.
"And some of them, if you're infected, will contain virus particles

In very arid conditions, those particles lose the water vapor and they become airborne."
This allows the virus to persist in the air for a long time, much longer than in summer.

Of course, she's talking about traditional cold and flu viruses that have been studied for years.
The question is whether the new coronavirus will also behave this way.
^....
The World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in their guidance on SARS-CoV2 downplay airborne spread,
saying instead that the primary form of transmission is by "large respiratory droplets.
^
"This debate - airborne vs. droplets - is a crucial divergence in thought when it comes to figuring out if COVID-19 is going to be seasonal.

If the primary form of transmission is airborne, then the novel coronavirus could become a seasonal disease.

If it mainly spreads through "large respiratory droplets", then seasonality is less likely.

Crikey! Nicola Sturgeon investigating reports that PPE is being diverted to England and had contacted Matt Hancock about it! That's not good if true!

From what I've seen on fb all of those people who haven't had refunds for holidays would just up and leave on them, regardless of whether schools re-opened over summer. If you won't let insurance cover refunding of these, you will have families not willing to sacrifice £k's after being stuck at home all Spring. FWIW I can't see it happening for a while unless, as I mentioned, they decide that restarting the economy and then locking down again is the way forward (am wondering if Odey and Rees Mogg get off on the shares and stock market going up and down as a result). That is more likely what will swing it rather than safety.

Highest number of deaths ever recorded beginning of April apparently☹️

If COVID is not seasonal, then it means even more deaths
because no country can stay locked down, or anywhere near that, for 18 months
(although no country can lock down for the coldest 5-6 months either, so we may be screwed anyway)

DG A CDC paper calculates that the COVID R0 could be as high as 5.7,
double the earlier estimates,
which would require herd immunity of at least 85%

https://wwwnc.cdc.gov/eid/article/26/7/20-0282_article

Note: R0 of flu is only 1.2-1.6, SARS about 1.8

Sos this was on BBC yesterday. But it seems to have been fake news after all.

But herd immunity isn't happening - people in Korea being reinfected.
Also looking at weather, Italy and China had warmer climates than we did when the virus hit. It made no difference.

These all just sound like idealistic thinking to me, rather than anything with real proof in relation this this particular virus.