Covid-19 pandemic

[San Bernardhinault]

That, and Capybara’s comment on the previous page, are very reassuring, If these dates are dependent on case counts and hospitalisations behaving as predicted, and will be pushed back if necessary, then it sounds like the kind of rational, proper process for reopening that they should have implemented last April or May. They’re very late to the party, but I’m glad that they are finally doing it the right way.

That was pretty much how California’s “reopening” was described by the governor last April - which was reassuring at the time, except we didn’t know that he had no political will at all and caved completely to opening one thing after another in rapid succession without time to observe the impacts of the previous change.

[Janik]

It depends whose voices remain prominent in the process. As noted by others up thread, if these dates* themselves become fixed then it will only be a brief flirtation with doing it the right way.

* - I can hear the "businesses want certainty so they can plan" crowd already.

[San Bernardhinault]

Oh joy. The UK new cases number out today, 10,641, is actually HIGHER than the figure for the previous Monday, 9,765. So, after several weeks of decline, rapid a while ago but recently very slow, the 7 day rolling average new cases number will actually be going UP today. Having fallen only to a level (around 11k per day) which is at least an order of magnitude greater than we should be tolerating or taking as a sound basis for relaxations.

You still shouldn’t be looking at daily numbers. They remain too volatile (and will therefore give occasional day-to-day variations which will push the 7-day average up). Currently the UK appears to be down about 20% case count on the 7 day average since last week. That order of change has been dropping: 25%ish the previous week, 30%ish the one before, and 35%ish the one before that. But it’s still falling right now. The rate it falls probably will keep decelerating, but as long as week-on-week 7 day averages are falling you probably shouldn’t be too nervous yet. There are too many ways that either this Monday or last Monday could be an outlier to worry too much about what happens just on consecutive Mondays.

[anton pulisov]

The governement's own modelling thinks its crazy.

https://twitter.com/ProfDaveAndress/status/1363932372895432707?s=20

but all those deaths will make the NHS a more appealing investment

All the modelling by Imperial College has been absolute rubbish so far.

Schools up to the age of 16 have been open in Sweden throughout the pandemic and caseloads were never as high in Sweden as in the UK.

Now, I'd rather Sweden had done more and reduce deaths, and had closed schools at during peak clusterfuck times, but there might come a point when the longterm societal benefits of kids being able to go to school and meet their friends are worth considering.

They should definitely be vaccinating teachers.

[ad hoc]

One of the new senators in the Romanian parliament, representing the very new far right AUR party, which came from nowhere to get 10% of the vote in the elections late last year, has been kicked out (of the party, not sadly the senate) after in her maiden speech she went on about how the vaccine was designed to destroy Romania and make its women infertile.Even for the AUR (much of whose votes came from anti mask bollocks) that seems to have been a step too far

[Patrick Thistle]

The bit of Radio 5 I listened to this morning was all about booking holidays and how important it is to have holidays and how everyone wants to know when they can go on foreign holidays and what if other countries don't have vaccinations and the UK Government doesn't let people go on holidays and eventually I gave up and switched off the propaganda from the people who sell holidays.

Irony of the segment was the lake district b&b owner talking about how holidays in the UK are really great and then saying she hoped she was able to go to Portugal for the holiday she had just booked.

[Lang Spoon]

Fuck sake, people are such entitled cunts. It wasn't that long ago I couldn't get home fir Christmas from Barcelona because return flights would have cost over a grand. Ok it was a long time ago, but folk have been spoiled by the era of cheap flights.

[Walt Flanagans Dog]

The bit of Radio 5 I listened to this morning was all about booking holidays and how important it is to have holidays and how everyone wants to know when they can go on foreign holidays and what if other countries don't have vaccinations and the UK Government doesn't let people go on holidays and eventually I gave up and switched off the propaganda from the people who sell holidays.

Irony of the segment was the lake district b&b owner talking about how holidays in the UK are really great and then saying she hoped she was able to go to Portugal for the holiday she had just booked.

Current top story on the BBC website is "Holiday bookings surge following lockdown exit plans" and again that "no earlier than" caveat isn't sticking with people (and nor is the even lesser noted bit that there is going to be a government "task force" reporting back by 12 April on how travel will operate, because people are clearly already assuming its going to be a free for all).

[Capybara]

Yep Radio 5 barely mentioning 'no sooner than'. I find it simultaneously astonishing and not astonishing that people are rushing out and booking holidays on the back of yesterday's announcement.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/SiouxsieW/status/1364132767953350661?s=19

What could possibly go wrong in the UK?

[Balderdasha]

When my kids' school reopened on Friday September 4th 2020, the day before there were 1,735 new cases and 13 deaths from Covid-19 recorded in the UK.

Last Thursday, there were 12,057 new cases and 454 deaths recorded.

The case numbers and death numbers are not falling fast enough to get down to the September figures but March 8th.

Three weeks of ten million kids and teachers in school before Easter is likely to lead to a huge spike in cases. I really hope I'm wrong.

The stop-start of it all is the worst thing. My kids were really upset in January when school didn't reopen, and it was announced the night before they were supposed to go back, but now they're really anxious about going back to school.

[greenhouse]

The governement's own modelling thinks its crazy.

https://twitter.com/ProfDaveAndress/status/1363932372895432707?s=20

but all those deaths will make the NHS a more appealing investment

And yet last summer restrictions were released in much the same way, but there wasn't a spike. In fact cases and hospitalisations continued to fall for quite some time.

I appreciate children are in school this year, but modelling that shows cases will be worse this summer than last, despite the vaccine rollout, surely indicates something is badly wrong somewhere in the models.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://twitter.com/brianmoore666/status/1364201061012094983?s=19

He's been good on this.

[Antepli Ejderha]

https://schoolsweek.co.uk/march-8-sc...gs-we-learned/

This is useful about schools returning, face coverings until Easter in secondary schools is one thing.

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

By way of light relief - a list of 1200 new German words, {edit: almost entirely but not quite] due to COVID from the past 12 months which lexicographers have identified (mainly compounds, of course):

Neologismenw?rterbuch : Neuer Wortschatz rund um die Coronapandemie (owid.de)

Edit: I like Tinywedding. Always makes me chuckle how the Germans play with English to create words/expressions that we, with no similar compounding instinct, wouldn't have.

Interesting that they have coined Whataboutism, when I think native English speakers might be more likely to say what-about-ery or something similar.

Edit: they have invented a cocktail they've called Quarantini

Edit: hideous coinage "Workation", for people decamping to a scenic area to work remotely.

[Satchmo Distel]

Is Naomi Wolf the kind of grifter who would appear on Tucker Carlson to call for a Left-Right coalition against COVID "authoritarianism" in NYC? Apparently so. I hadn't followed her career that closely since she wrote some bollocks in the guise of a new form of feminism, but WTF?

[Evariste Euler Gauss]

Currently the UK appears to be down about 20% case count on the 7 day average since last week. That order of change has been dropping: 25%ish the previous week, 30%ish the one before, and 35%ish the one before that. But it’s still falling right now.

Sorry SB I think you must be looking at out of date figures. That 20 per cent figure you give is way off the actual figure of around 11 per cent. I wasn't just reacting to a single day's numbers, my reaction was coloured by very poor week on week case number falls over the past several days, resulting in a very weak fall in the 7 day average number.

The rolling 7 day UK average new cases per day for the last 5 Mondays have been:

25 Jan; 33,738
1 Feb: 23,732
8 Feb: 17,714
15 Feb: 12,580
22 Feb 11,187

Those are weekly falls in the rolling 7 day average number of, in chronological order, to the nearest whole per cent, 30%, then 25%, then 29%, then 11 per cent.

At that current rate of a decline of 11 per cent per week, the number would take 6 weeks to halve, or 12 weeks to shrink to a quarter of its current level. But of course it won't, because restrictions are being lifted much sooner, and in particular schools are going back. Balders gave the numbers above for the new case rates last time schools reopened and showed how this time they are an order of magnitude higher. It's not looking good. The fatalities might not be so dramatic because the most vulnerable groups are mainly vaccinated, but a lot of young to middle aged adults are going to pick up nasty cases of COVID, including long COVID (and of course some vaccinated folk will die as it's not 100 per cent effective).

[Edit: at least today's number, just announced, was much better,: 8489 down from 10625 the previous Tuesday - a Tuesday on Tuesday fall of 20 per cent. ]

[ursus arctos]

Wolf has been on this for a couple of months, apparently triggered by her catching a good deal of flack for having participated in surreptitious dinner parties

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Is wolf the one that was tweeting about how Belfast had the marvellous clean air it had in the seventies because it didn't have 5g?

Unfortunately belfast has 5g and 50 years ago it had some of the worst air pollution in europe

[Lang Spoon]

She also thinks Teh Brits Stole the 2014 Indyref. She's fucking terrible.

[Patrick Thistle]

Does anyone know if there is data showing hospital acquired infections as opposed to community transmission? I wonder how many new cases currenly are people catching it in healthcare settings.

[Nocturnal Submission]

A bit more on the African figures: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-56167296

[Paul S]

If this hasn't been shared, the BBC ran an article yesterday as well about the cost of not counting the dead. The graph two thirds down from Egypt explains their apparent low covid19 tally, quite an eye opener!

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/ntarnopolsky/status/1364283466309906435?s=21

[Nefertiti2]

The future is vaccines for the rich and then the rest can die. Plenty more where they came from.