Covid-19 pandemic

[Balderdasha]

The official UK death toll of 86,015 is now higher than the population of Guildford.

[Balderdasha]

We have now reached 2 million deaths worldwide from Covid-19.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

The reason there is the discrepancy between the Guardian figure of over 100,000. The 86,000+ is deaths within 28 days of a positive Covid-19 test. The 100,000+ is deaths where Covid-19 is mentioned on the death certificate (but may not be the only cause).

Thats a bit of a fiddle isn't it? The proportion of people in ireland who die more than 28 days after their positive test is large.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

https://twitter.com/gavreilly/status/1349765471789314052

This would be more amusing if there weren't 4,000 cases today. Ringsend is more famous for its drugs than its burgers mind you.

[Amor de Cosmos]

This Province is looking at the legal ramifications of preventing visits from elsewhere in Canada.

[Patrick Thistle]

Travel from South America, Panama, Portgual and Cape Verde to the UK banned to stop the Brazilian variant which might be more contagious.

Also a guest on 5 Live Breakfast has just said the South African variant shows resistance to the vaccine. That threw the presenter a little bit.

[Sporting]

Travel from South America, Panama, Portgual and Cape Verde to the UK banned to stop the Brazilian variant which might be more contagious.

Travel bans don't seem to work, do they?

[Janik]

They are always too late. Which is a given with something that is contagious before symptoms show. By the time you discover something new has emerged, the genie is already out of the bottle. However there was very little travel going on between the UK and Brazil anyway as Brazil had put its own travel ban in place a couple of weeks ago in response to the UK’s own new variant.

[Lang Spoon]

Travel from South America, Panama, Portgual and Cape Verde to the UK banned to stop the Brazilian variant which might be more contagious.

Also a guest on 5 Live Breakfast has just said the South African variant shows resistance to the vaccine. That threw the presenter a little bit.

Aw fuck. I thought the Pfizer one worked on it.

[Lang Spoon]

https://www.irishexaminer.com/world/arid-40207310.html


goddam the HSE. The bit about the drop down menus is what does it for me, they've had almost a fuckin year to refine the IT systems. So a tracer recording school, shop, pub, whatever as a possible source, official record is the fantastic nebulous "community transmission".

[Moonlight Shadow]

One of my wife staff, the counselor dedicated to their patients, has been seconded to help Covid wards staff dealing with the situation.

I won't go into details but PTSD sums up pretty much the prevailing mental state...

[S. aureus]

My son's school wants to re-open for part-time on site learning on February 3rd. They have sent a survey round.
Firstly, how has San Mateo County been doing lately? Let's take a look - yesterday the 7-day average for new cases was higher than it's ever been, and there have been more deaths in the past 7 days than any other 7 day period. Yep, seems like the right time to re-open.
They sent around a survey asking us when we'd be willing to send our kids back to school, the options were in the purple (where we are now, everything completely fucked), in the red (still fucked) or never. Maybe this was based on the assumption that we'll never be doing better than the red, which is probably not unreasonable actually.

[Antepli Ejderha]

1,280 deaths, down 45
55,671 cases down 12,292

UK figures for today.

[ursus arctos]

https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1350148243976384519

[San Bernardhinault]

Holy crap. Did they just not care? Is it active attempted sabotage? Or did they believe that new doses would magically appear?

[Antepli Ejderha]

Do these new UK rules actually mean anything in reality or are they just for show?

[Patrick Thistle]

54 deaths reported in Wales today. There have been 174 deaths reported in 3 days.

Johnson has announced all travel routes into the UK will be closed down on Monday to try and stop the Brazilian strain.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/dfe-says-m...resh-concerns/

Mass testing to go ahead in schools despite reports that the Regulator hasn't approved it. Wtf?

[ursus arctos]

Holy crap. Did they just not care? Is it active attempted sabotage? Or did they believe that new doses would magically appear?

Likely all three, but "don't care" has been the fundamental "principle"

[San Bernardhinault]

"Don't care" was my working hypothesis, but it begs the question of why they said anything at all.

[ursus arctos]

To deflect criticism, which is one the other organising principles

Self-enrichment is a third

[San Bernardhinault]

That makes sense. Deflect criticism now and hope somebody else is in the firing line when the chickens come home to roost (to mix my metaphors).

[ursus arctos]

Yes, there is another principle that has come to the fore since November, which is to actively set lethal booby traps for the new administration. It is the corollary of the earlier policy of taking the opposite side from the Obama Administration on every possible question.

[anton pulisov]

And today Sweden has joined the 0.1% of the population dead from Covid club.

I wonder if Anders Tegnell and Johan Giesecke still think the IFR is less than 0.1%

[Favourite Worst Nightmare]

Johnson has announced all travel routes into the UK will be closed down on Monday to try and stop the Brazilian strain.

This would be very sensible, and an approach that should have been taken in the first instance, given the advantage of being an island nation.

However I my understanding is that travel is only banned from South America and Portugal.

Other arrivals will have to “show proof of a negative test prior to departure and quarantine for 10 days upon arrival”, yet how this is to be policed is not clear to me.