Heading into winTier ..... the one we hoped it would be over before...

[dancemom]

New thread Tierers ...

That's another good point @patritus, how are they being vaccinated. We now know that the increased spacing we used between doses gave better protection than the trial spacing of 3 weeks used by a lot of other countries. I have also seen some indication that AZ may offer longer lasting protection than first thought against severe disease and new variants, but didn't most of the elderly (most likely to be badly affected) get Pfizer anyway?

I not sure about the very elderly but pretty sure the majority of 50-80 yr olds ( most likely group to end up in icu) got AZ

I know that Germany have a lower percentage vaccinated in the over 70s age groups than us and they always talk about a vaccination gap compared to the UK, so this is likely to be a factor. They also have a lower threshold for being admitted due to having many more hospital beds per head of population than the UK.

Do they have a lower threshold for ICU admission too @LaughingLemur? I really don't know, although I am aware that NHS provision is shockingly poor by international standards, even before COVID.

I'm afraid I don't about ICU admission but certainly more precautionary hospital admissions, which wouldn't happen here due to bed shortages.

Can anyone confirm, if the 1st day of a positive lateral flow test is day 0 or day 1?

Day 1 @Justmuddlingalong. After I had reported the positive test I got an email confirming isolation dates. Day 1 was the day I’d received the positive LFT.

Brilliant. Thanks for that @florafoxtrot

• 5,307 new cases of COVID-19 reported.
• 0 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive (Noting that Register Offices are generally closed at the weekend)
• 13 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 1,051 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,432,566 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 4,151,403 have received their second dose, and 3,397,270 have received a third dose or booster

I'm starting to wonder if something weird is going on with our figures. We're the only part of the UK who are essentially flat in terms of case numbers (only NI is higher now, and they will pass us in a few days on current trends), and we're bucking the hospitalisation trend as well with ours going up while the UK as a whole drops off quite rapidly. How are the harshest restrictions actually leading to the worst COVID outcomes, or is there just something fishy with data collection? I really hope Sturgeon doesn't use this as an excuse to keep us all restricted when NI is already free, England will be in a matter of days (and barely had any restrictions left anyway) and even Wales are planning to drop restrictions in a few weeks.

• 6,427 new cases of COVID-19 reported.
• 18 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive
• 12 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 1,060 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,433,160 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 4,152,325 have received their second dose, and 3,404,119 have received a third dose or booster

Might have to find my lippy from the back of a drawer.

Ha! That was my first thought too aurea . I'm going to look like a clown the first few times I go out, having not bothered for so long...

I'm so confused by the numbers too. They just aren't falling in scotland, whereas they are everywhere else, and there's a steady creep up of hospital numbers. Possibly there is higher testing up here, but I still can't work out why the cases per 100k would be showing such different patterns even if that were the case. It definitely doesn't show that being "cautious and sensible" and keeping restrictions has been doing anything useful in terms of limiting infections. So that's nice.

Also, it seems that dancemom could be out of a job if they stop testing and reporting on numbers from April. (we should have a whip round to get a commemorative carriage clock or something as a retirement gift ) I know NS confirmed testing will continue, but she said there will be an update in March, and I can't imagine they will continue to "self fund" testing, when there are so many other draws on NHS Scotland money.

Should it not be a commemorative face mask for @dancemom 's retirement

Being on my retirement, I ran out of thread titles some time ago 😆😆

Very sensible of you to gently wind down to your retirement @dancemom

On the way to retierment

@LateOnTheBandwagon

On the way to retierment

Well, that's the next thread title sorted! Assuming we even need one, of course...

Retierment. Nice.

Hospital numbers up again today. How/why?

Are we giving out fewer antivirals?

Scottish people affected more severely than rUk as more overweight, more vitamin D deficiency, more type 2 diabetes???

Taking people in for less serious symptoms?

Taking more people in for another reason?

What's going on?

I don't know and I would really like someone to address it. All we get now is updates to Parliament with no journalist questioning etc, and it never gets highlighted.

• 6,756 new cases of COVID-19 reported.
• 15 new reported deaths of people who have tested positive
• 11 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 1,093 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,433,601 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination, 4,153,359 have received their second dose, and 3,410,555 have received a third dose or booster

@mibbelucieachwell or more people catching it in hospital

Although I heard the latest ONS household survey shows Scotland has rising case, 1 in 20 up from 1 in 25 whilst UK as a whole has falling cases

I couldnt give a jot about case numbers. It really is time to live with covid now, two years lost to it and kids have sacrificed the most.
Im over the moon that nicola has been humilated and has had no choice but to get rid of the ludicrous vaccine passports.

All good questions/ theories mibbe. I suppose the actual numbers aren't especially huge, and if they aren't causing stress to the NHS it may not matter (though I'm still not sure the NHS is anywhere near where it was pre covid, especially in scotland!) but I'm surprised no one has asked/ questioned the difference between the UK trend and our trend.

I saw that about the rising infection levels too patritus. It's odd, as that doesn't seem reflected in the daily testing (which is steady, though if anything on a glacially slow decline) but I think the ONS is based on a not huge sample in Scotland (and wales/ NI) , so they've always said trends are a bit more uncertain in the devolved nations. Glad it hasn't been used as an excuse to keep things in place for longer though (though there's still time I suppose!)

I also heard that the ONS says we're going up while the rest of the UK falls, and tbh I can believe it - Tabby shows us bucking the trend in a similar way for the last few weeks (progressively worse position cf rUK), and I think he said yesterday that our cases are now starting to creep up too whereas the UK as a whole is falling. I don't know why, although I think it is incontrovertible evidence that our increased restrictions are clearly not helping! Perhaps it is a combination of our poorer health and harsher/longer restrictions (which will have worsened people's physical and mental health in multiple ways), or more hospital transmission, or maybe the relative lack of natural immunity from the 'zero COVID' days still working it's way through. The lack of challenge on this from the media is very striking, especially given Nicola's proclamations about how harsher restrictions kept everyone 'safer'. I also note she decided to basically emulate Boris' plan a day or so after slamming him for it but no-one in the media seems to have noticed! (optional isolation, scaling back testing to key groups, there's no real difference there but the way she tells it it's massively irresponsible, just not when we do it!)