Tiering up the Covid elimination strategy

[dancemom]

Sadly the end was not as close as we thought so new thread required ....

I'm so grateful for the vaccine - Boris the frog Prince has had quite enough kisses in his life though!

My goodness, the poor Australians (!) They've been able to carry on as normal, bypassing the huge loss of lives and economic devastation we've had in the UK.

That's just not true. Australians have been banned from leaving their home state until very recently. Australians living overseas were not allowed to travel home. Melbourne and the state of Victoria had a 112 day lockdown ending only in October - stay at home, restaurants closed, shops closed.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-54686812

All this "carrying on as normal" is bollocks, just as it is bollocks to say we're "very much in the middle" of the vaccines per 100k table when there are 200ish countries in the world, the UK is EIGHTH and behind teeny tiny overseas territories like Curacao and Aruba.

At least DC is a good modern update to the boy who cried wolf to tell the kids about. It's been clear all along that many (nearly all) countries made decisions that turned out to be bad throughout this crisis at various stages.

@RaspberryCoulis

My goodness, the poor Australians (!) They've been able to carry on as normal, bypassing the huge loss of lives and economic devastation we've had in the UK.

That's just not true. Australians have been banned from leaving their home state until very recently. Australians living overseas were not allowed to travel home. Melbourne and the state of Victoria had a 112 day lockdown ending only in October - stay at home, restaurants closed, shops closed.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-54686812

All this "carrying on as normal" is bollocks, just as it is bollocks to say we're "very much in the middle" of the vaccines per 100k table when there are 200ish countries in the world, the UK is EIGHTH and behind teeny tiny overseas territories like Curacao and Aruba.

One of my best friends lives in Australia and another of my friends is currently on her way out there. I have thought of going out there myself!

Go for it @starryeyesuprise we seriously looked at moving to NZ but parents would never afford a visit and didn't want to keep DS away from GPs.
The visa entry system for both is quite tricky unless in a high demand work category though!

Oh and food is bloody expensive paying £6 for a wedge of watermelon!

Also, re the vaccines- we only have so many as the EU agreed to share their vaccines ( and we import vaccines from India at hugely inflated costs ). Without the EU, we would be up a creek .

Indeed @RaspberryCoulis, and in fact Melbourne is just going into another lockdown, with schools and nonessential services shut and a 5km travel limit, following a fresh outbreak. The article also points to problems they are having with their vaccination programmes. At this point in time I don't envy the Australians who have considerable work to do to get to herd immunity and will face this kind of uncertainty for some time to come.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-57263811

"Also, re the vaccines- we only have so many as the EU agreed to share their vaccines ( and we import vaccines from India at hugely inflated costs ). Without the EU, we would be up a creek ."

Let's see if I have this straight - we are way ahead of most of Europe in terms of vaccine delivery because they gave us their vaccines to the detriment of their own citizens, and not because the UK made separate, more watertight deals on vaccines last summer? If that's the case, why was there all that nastiness a few months ago when the EU tried to get Astra Zeneca to renege on its contract with the UK?

@StarryEyeSurprise

Also, re the vaccines- we only have so many as the EU agreed to share their vaccines ( and we import vaccines from India at hugely inflated costs ). Without the EU, we would be up a creek .

We have so many because we ordered early, spread the risk with multiple different ones ordered (although not all registered as of yet) and also set up a dedicated vaccination task force department which acted quickly as well as ploughing millions into the programme, research and procurement.

The vaccines are the property of the companies which develop them not the countries hence the EU was highly criticised when they tried to block shipments. They also ended up being false as they had "seized" their own doses in the case of doses in Italy!

Exactly, the UK government backed many horses and over-ordered far more vaccines than we could possibly use. So when Pfizer was approved in December, then AZ in January and Moderna in the early spring, we had already paid for thousands of doses which had been set aside for us. This had nothing to do with the EU, we'd left by that point and explains why they were manoeuvering to block supply earlier this year.

We have in the UK given 1 dose to 57% of the population, 35% have had two doses. Should another wave of Covid strike, these people are all protected and that number is going up every day. Australia is way behind with 2% of their population having had 2 doses.

The UK government has undoubtedly made mistakes. But it's also wrong to say that all of the people who have died with Covid on their certificate would have been alive and well had decisions been made earlier or different choices had been made. That's not being callous, it's stating fact.

• 464 new cases of COVID-19 reported
• 28,699 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results
◦ 1.8% of these were positive
• 0 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive
• 4 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 83 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 3,174,807 people have received the first dose of the Covid vaccination and 1,942,285 have received their second dose

Blimey. The numbers are going up again.

I think hospital numbers are down quite a bit though?

Yesterday according to travelling tabby - numbers were 83 in hospital, down 15. ICU was 4, down 2.

These new cases are not resulting in hospitalisations. Cases do not matter.

Yes NS said today that hospital and ICU numbers were down which is good news.

Glasgow spike started a few weeks ago so seems like it's cases rather than hospital numbers so far. Long may it continue!

Hopefully Glasgow numbers will start going down as well, Moray is back to very low levels pretty quickly. Local messaging, mass vaccine speed up and quick extensive testing seems to have worked maybe its a model which can be applied elsewhere!

Thank fuck for that.

So do people think Glasgow will come out of Level 3 tomorrow or is that too much to hope for?

My gut feeling is that they will release Glasgow tomorrow and will cite the numbers stabilising and hospitalisations falling. Overall there seems to be a shift in message away from 'we need to be cautious and keep cases down' and more towards getting back to normal. Numbers in a few boards have now crept up above the level 3 threshold but they won't want to be seen to be going backwards when the rest of the UK still looks on track to open up. They're also getting a fair bit of heat from businesses and they want to open up Glasgow for the Euros a couple of weeks, so I think their hand will be forced by that.

@Scottishskifun

Yes NS said today that hospital and ICU numbers were down which is good news.

Glasgow spike started a few weeks ago so seems like it's cases rather than hospital numbers so far. Long may it continue!

Hopefully Glasgow numbers will start going down as well, Moray is back to very low levels pretty quickly. Local messaging, mass vaccine speed up and quick extensive testing seems to have worked maybe its a model which can be applied elsewhere!

They've been doing all of that in the areas affected in Glasgow. Door to door testing has been happening in the Glasgow hot spots also.

Edinburgh is going up, unsurprisingly. Cases at DD's high school now. Which is shite as assessments are still going on.

Well let's hope they have a response like Moray!

BBC article said testing increased 6 fold, 70% of 18-29 Yr olds now vaccinated, 68% of 30-39 year olds and 80% of 40-49 year olds.

Let's hope Glasgows uptake will be as high!

I’m In two minds about Glasgow being freed now as DD os going to stay over in a hotel with a friend on Saturday and I’d be quite happy if her drinking is curtailed

That was a joke. Kind of 😃

😆@WouldBeGood I'm envious of your DD

@titsintiers aw! I’m off to a hotel tomorrow! The excitement is something!