LondonLax Posted January 3, 2021 Share Posted January 3, 2021 (edited) 1 hour ago, villakram said: Anything against the "let's all panic because of covid' nonsense is conspiracy theory. Right! Perhaps, if those who actually look at the actual data rather than panicking were listened to rather than labelled as "conspiracy theory" were given a little more respect (e.g., compare the Barrington crowd - conspiracy, ra, ra, ra - to how the clownshow off by an order of magnitude work from the Imperial college group - millions will die - is treated), then we wouldn't have so many who don't trust the obvious agenda driven narrative. Again with your talk about panicking? We are all just trying to look at the actual data. Plenty have an agenda and are looking to cherry pick data that suits that agenda. It would be helpful to post the full context of the data you are presenting so we can be better informed (not withstanding that you may not have understood the full context of what you were posting). ICU capacity has been significantly increased to cope with the significant increase in patients needing intensive care during this pandemic compared with a ‘normal’ year. The Spectator has chosen to present the data as a percentage of ICU capacity without mentioning that ICU capacity has increased (presumably the ‘nightingale’ wards are also included in there despite not being able to be used because there is no staff for them?) To the casual observer looking at that chart it could look like there is nothing out of the ordinary happening in hospital ICUs at the moment as it hides the fact that ICU is in much higher demand during this pandemic compared with a normal year. If you look on Twitter at some of the responses to the original tweet by the Spectator you get plenty in this flavour: Edited January 3, 2021 by LondonLax Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted January 3, 2021 VT Supporter Share Posted January 3, 2021 42 minutes ago, darrenm said: Re the vaccine rollout. AstraZeneca have said they'll be supplying the UK with 2m a week by mid Jan. It's still rubbish and someone needs sacking because we should have had 10m ready to go and 5m a week from the day it was approved and all of the operational support to be able to do 5m a week from the get go. Resourcing is a question of money and application and it looks like the gov have properly **** it up. But still, 2m a week should scale up to as many as we can jab pretty quickly and "JVT" has said they want the only bottleneck to be supply. We only need to vaccinate ~25m people to reach 70% coverage. Without a massive amount of effort, that could be done in 8 weeks. The impending national lockdown will send the R rate down back below 1 and the delayed effect should cross over enough people being vaccinated to start seeing an effect so that relaxation of restrictions during February shouldn't see the rate going back up. That's just how I see it in my head. Perhaps the government will continue to **** things up though. I wonder if they had extended the brexit transition period that they would've had more bandwidth to plan COVID measures like checking if manufacturing was in place for enough vials.. I really hope there's an independent inquiry and the idiots responsible get the book thrown at them. We're going to need 47m to get to 70%. And I wouldn't bet that we're below 1 on the R rate because of lockdown. It took 3 months of complete Spring lockdown to get below 1. It's harder to stop spread in Winter, there is a new more contagious strain and we're not in full lockdown. The best we can hope for is to slow it enough to keep the NHS in reasonable shape before the vaccines start to dent it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mjmooney Posted January 3, 2021 VT Supporter Share Posted January 3, 2021 Vaccinating the teachers is certainly desirable, but it doesn't address the problem of thirty kids together in a room all day then going home to thirty households. The fact that infected kids tend not to suffer any bad symptoms just makes them even more dangerous as 'stealth carriers'. Incidentally, at my granddaughter's primary school (in Tier 3 Leeds), years 2, 3 and 6 have been told not to come in tomorrow. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted January 3, 2021 VT Supporter Share Posted January 3, 2021 Thinking about it, we've already had 2.6m confirmed cases, and 1m people have already been vaccinated. I wonder how many people have actually had it but not been confirmed yet. We might hit herd immunity quicker than expected. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrenm Posted January 3, 2021 Share Posted January 3, 2021 11 minutes ago, sidcow said: We're going to need 47m to get to 70%. And I wouldn't bet that we're below 1 on the R rate because of lockdown. It took 3 months of complete Spring lockdown to get below 1. It's harder to stop spread in Winter, there is a new more contagious strain and we're not in full lockdown. The best we can hope for is to slow it enough to keep the NHS in reasonable shape before the vaccines start to dent it. 40m adults in the UK. -30% and - 2-5m for existing immunity. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted January 3, 2021 VT Supporter Share Posted January 3, 2021 BBC just said the aim is to get to 30m people by 4th April which will hit all of the at risk categories. Which I think matched my earlier estimate! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted January 3, 2021 VT Supporter Share Posted January 3, 2021 2 minutes ago, darrenm said: 40m adults in the UK. -30% and - 2-5m for existing immunity. Kids still spread it. Unless you get to 70% of total population you won't get herd immunity. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted January 3, 2021 Moderator Share Posted January 3, 2021 4 minutes ago, darrenm said: 40m adults in the UK. -30% and - 2-5m for existing immunity. More like 55m adults in the UK Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
darrenm Posted January 3, 2021 Share Posted January 3, 2021 5 minutes ago, bickster said: More like 55m adults in the UK Yeah fair enough, my rough count at a glance was crap 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted January 3, 2021 Moderator Share Posted January 3, 2021 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLax Posted January 3, 2021 Share Posted January 3, 2021 8 minutes ago, bickster said: It’s a shame testing was not up to speed in the first wave. I’d love to know how that hump in March April would compare to this if testing rates were equalised between the two waves. There could be a bumpy few weeks coming. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
sidcow Posted January 3, 2021 VT Supporter Share Posted January 3, 2021 4 minutes ago, LondonLax said: It’s a shame testing was not up to speed in the first wave. I’d love to know how that hump in March April would compare to this if testing rates were equalised between the two waves. There could be a bumpy few weeks coming. Yeah, I have been thinking that. Deaths have not yet reached the daily levels of the first spike so I guess there were still more who had it before, although treatment and new drugs have improved things so that might be misleading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LondonLax Posted January 3, 2021 Share Posted January 3, 2021 2 minutes ago, sidcow said: Yeah, I have been thinking that. Deaths have not yet reached the daily levels of the first spike so I guess there were still more who had it before, although treatment and new drugs have improved things so that might be misleading. Yes I think treatment is certainly better than it was in the early days when doctors were pretty much flying blind. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bickster Posted January 3, 2021 Moderator Share Posted January 3, 2021 9 minutes ago, sidcow said: Yeah, I have been thinking that. Deaths have not yet reached the daily levels of the first spike so I guess there were still more who had it before, although treatment and new drugs have improved things so that might be misleading. More transmisable does not equate to more deadly. Its a common trait in mutating viruses, the more transmisable it gets the less deadly. If it got more deadly, it would eventually wipe itself out. But that doesn't mean less long lasting effects Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted January 3, 2021 Share Posted January 3, 2021 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
snowychap Posted January 3, 2021 Share Posted January 3, 2021 Thread worth reading: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted January 4, 2021 Share Posted January 4, 2021 This tweet is doing numbers, but is a nice example of pure chutzpah: The problem he is complaining about here is the fragmentation of the school system. Academy trusts making their own decisions, with unaccountable autonomy, and a confusion of responsibility between ministers, councils and school leaders. So what's the punchline? Well, this is the fine work of Michael Gove's reforms at DfE when he was the Education Sec under Cameron. And who was Michael Gove's SPAD at precisely that time? None other than Sam Freedman, of course. 2 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Genie Posted January 4, 2021 Share Posted January 4, 2021 Matt Hancock has said that the old tier system is no longer capable of containing the spread of the virus. It was never capable. 4 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fightoffyour Posted January 4, 2021 VT Supporter Share Posted January 4, 2021 43 minutes ago, Genie said: Matt Hancock has said that the old tier system is no longer capable of containing the spread of the virus. It was never capable. Back to the extra hot Nando’s scale or staying very alert? Maybe an exam grade style letter system? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
HanoiVillan Posted January 4, 2021 Share Posted January 4, 2021 57 minutes ago, Genie said: Matt Hancock has said that the old tier system is no longer capable of containing the spread of the virus. It was never capable. That's the 'old' system that was introduced 16 days ago? 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts