October Becomes November Lockdown

[BlueThursday]

New thread

I suspect this will be the second of many

@RaspberryCoulis

Level 3 should be for as short a time as possible

Anyone who believes that is a total numpty. File in in the same drawer as

"short term measures to protect the NHS"
"never aimed for an elimination strategy"
"blended learning was only ever a contingency"
"SQA results are fair"
"quick 16 day circuit breaker"

It's all flannel, all lies, they are making it up as they go along and are trying to gaslight us all into thinking they have a strategy.

Yep

Well we'll see what happens on 10th November if any of the places mentioned today shift down. I think the way things are rising in England and Europe it doesn't look good long term really.

We're not New Zealand so if England gets worse it'll spread all over anyway and we'll be back to how it was like in March or worse ☹

@RaspberryCoulis

Level 3 should be for as short a time as possible

Anyone who believes that is a total numpty. File in in the same drawer as

"short term measures to protect the NHS"
"never aimed for an elimination strategy"
"blended learning was only ever a contingency"
"SQA results are fair"
"quick 16 day circuit breaker"

It's all flannel, all lies, they are making it up as they go along and are trying to gaslight us all into thinking they have a strategy.

Yup. There was no point at all in coming up with this tier system to then immediately and demonstrably ignore it.

I am happy for the folk in Lanarkshire that they don't have to live with t4 (yet) - just commenting on the stupidity of the approach

Here's the paper that explains the justifications. It's a bit copy and paste error- tastic (annex 2). I also think it's a few days out of date (there's a 3 day lag) which is fair enough, but I thought they were waiting until the last minute before deciding on the levels.

I think you're right, statistically. DPs live in East Lothian and they have to travel to Edinburgh for most things health related. Luckily, we live about a mile from the ERI so can walk in about 20mins!

Hmm, well if you look at the deaths compared to case numbers, there is no real evidence that this is anything like before. I can't see how to look at historical hospital numbers or any information on where we are compared to usual at this time of year, but the Lanarkshires are the only areas where there have been anything like a notable number of deaths and they have been plus 300 positive tests for weeks on end. Most places are seeing very small amounts of deaths and also these may be unrelated to covid at all (still not got those stats). I think I said before that Stirling has had one "covid" death since May which is about 1 in 400 of normal amounts. I think 26 since this began.

I think a bit of perspective needs to be employed rather than scare mongering.

It looks like the travel thing is just advisory, not law?

@WouldBeGood

It looks like the travel thing is just advisory, not law?

It is.

yes advisory but threat given about what will happen if we don't do as we are told and said that police can't track every journey so we've to be good.

We're in East Dunbartonshire and we have to travel out of local authority for everything. We are a very small local authority, no hospitals. I could drive 10 minutes from my house and be in Stirlingshire, Renfrewshire, West Dumbartonshire, Glasgow. Slightly further and i;m in Argyll, Lanarkshire or East Ren.

Not leaving our local authority at all isn't happening - in fact, i'll be leaving this evening to take DD to her dancing lesson in town.

Tier 2: In this tier there will be no in-home socialising allowed and up to six people from two households can meet outdoors and in hospitality settings.

It doesn’t specify meeting other households for tier 3? Do we assume we default to the tier 2 guidance on that?
As long as we meet outside in a cafe or restaurant (before 6pm). Walking for outdoor exercise with another household is still allowed in tier 3, up to 6 people over 12?

What a head mash.

I wouldn’t want to break the law really, but I’m happy to do perfectly safe things of it’s just advisory. Always careful not to put anyone at risk

@Bytheloch

Tier 2: In this tier there will be no in-home socialising allowed and up to six people from two households can meet outdoors and in hospitality settings.

It doesn’t specify meeting other households for tier 3? Do we assume we default to the tier 2 guidance on that?
As long as we meet outside in a cafe or restaurant (before 6pm). Walking for outdoor exercise with another household is still allowed in tier 3, up to 6 people over 12?

What a head mash.

I think (and I agree it is head mashing) that you can meet another household inside a hospitality venue in either level 2 or 3 (or outside of course if you can cope with that without your fingers falling off from cold) . In level 3 you can't have alcohol though, but you could have a meal with them up until whenever they close. And I think restaurants will be allowed to open again even in level 3 so there will be a bit more choice than just meeting in cafes.

Outdoor walks are fine even in level 4 I think. So 2 households, up to 6 over 12s. Though you can have an infinite number of under 12s from as many households as you want (unless you're an unregulated childcare setting...) which is my idea of hell, frankly...

NS has now lost all credibility in my eyes as the decisions re placing council areas in tiers is clearly political. So not prepared to put lanarkshire and the west into stricter measures while Edinburgh and parts of Lothian put into tier 3 despite much lower levels of infections.

The East Lothian numbers are odd; I know for a fact that when I was looking at it last week they were around 60ish. They did go up to the 70s. On the paper they published on the 26th, it was 57. Apparently we are now on 99...yet there was no mention of it having got worse here and all the chat was about moving it down which surely it wouldn't be if it was accelerating like that?

Similarly the positive test indicator has now miraculously moved from a 2 to a 3.

Obviously it's perfectly possible as it's a fairly small population so the numbers will bounce around, but it just seems odd.

I’m the same @RaspberryCoulis my 3 nearest supermarkets (possibly more) are actually over the border in Glasgow. Crossing the Main Street here actually takes you over the border

level 3 is 6/2 outdoors and in hospitality settings

Public tableau updated and cases for East Lothian are saying 77.5, edinburgh 74.2 and Stirling 58.4 that's up to 28/10. Om a brighter note, no area is above 300 any more

I don't really understand why the positivity rate indicator is being used to make decisions. From reading the document the figure is

The number of positive tests* in a 7 day period is divided by the total number of tests in the same period for people in the area to give the percentage.

So surely there are going to be more positive tests coming back in n areas where there is a high number of hospitals /care homes /other care provision where staff have to test on a regular basis than somewhere that doesn't have so much care provision? Or am I missing the point here

Ok, thanks @NotAnActualSheep Would be helpful to have that specified in the official tier info, but so would many other things...

No, I don't think you are. the figures are mostly bonkers and don't mean anything. You can't really count a positive test as a case. Even if you ignore any inaccuracies in the actual testing, a positive test could be a 14 year old that has a brief temperature for a day and is otherwise fine. We should only be counting cases as people who need a hospital bed "because" they have covid.

@WaxOnFeckOff

Public tableau updated and cases for East Lothian are saying 77.5, edinburgh 74.2 and Stirling 58.4 that's up to 28/10. Om a brighter note, no area is above 300 any more

Yes but Embra teased with potential uplift to tier 2, so why not Stirling (my sheep pen)?

Surely the issue with mixing with other tiers is that you can’t travel between the LA areas so where do you meet? If you’re tier 2 you can’t go into a tier 3 area and if you’re tier 3 you can’t leave?

@IwishIwasyoda

I don't really understand why the positivity rate indicator is being used to make decisions. From reading the document the figure is

The number of positive tests* in a 7 day period is divided by the total number of tests in the same period for people in the area to give the percentage.

So surely there are going to be more positive tests coming back in n areas where there is a high number of hospitals /care homes /other care provision where staff have to test on a regular basis than somewhere that doesn't have so much care provision? Or am I missing the point here

I think it could actually be the opposite - you are likely to have a lower positive rate when you are testing people who have no symptoms. So somewhere with lots of hospital/care staff will be testing folk with no symptoms regularly whereas areas who don't have that should only be testing symptomatic people who should have a greater chance of being positive

oddly the neighbourhood page of tableau hadn't updated and was still showing 99 for East Lothian. Some odd jumps certainly.

I think part of the problem is also that even the official figures produced are not always based on the same 7 day period. So I quoted figures above but if you go onto a different tab the 7 days is over an earlier period and Stirling is then 70.1 for example.

That's really not helpful.

I can't understand why the percentage of positive tests or cases per 100k is especially interesting as a key measure - I'd expect that to be a key part of forecasting but forecasting is called out in a separate indicator?

Glad Lanarkshire isn't t4 for wouldbegood!