UK Politics - It's a bit glitchy

[Werthead]

On 10/13/2020 at 6:18 PM, BigFatCoward said:

143 deaths. I hope that us a statistical outlier and not the start of a trend. I was hoping that huge increase in cases would be offset by improved treatment.

It seems not. The number of case infections and deaths are now higher than on the first day of the first lockdown and it appears the treatments that are in place, whilst certainly having an impact, are not having a really huge impact (say halving the number of deaths). It's certainly hugely better than nothing but it doesn't seem to be having the huge impact people were hoping for.

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Sure , but for how long do we keep doing that? Years? Until there is a reliable vaccine?

The current long-term view seems somewhat optimistic, despite the doom and gloom in the short term (the next 6-8 weeks will likely be quite rough again). We are vastly further ahead on vaccine research then anyone believed possible back in March. Multiple vaccine candidates are in advanced clinical trials, at least three in human trials (although the Russian and Chinese ones I take with something of a pinch of salt), and the best-case candidate is being mass-produced with more doses than the entire population of the country in preparation for delivery the second it gets regulatory approval. Of course there could be a series of more hiccups and they announce it doesn't work well enough or is too dangerous, but I think there are reasonable grounds for cautious optimism. Right now we seem to be where scientists were expecting us to be in mid-to-late 2021, way ahead of schedule.

Obviously the disruption will continue through the end of this year and into next, but by the spring, about a year after the last lockdown started, we should have a clearer idea of a timetable going forwards.

Even without a vaccine, I think we can look at the situation from roughly June to September when cases and deaths dropped like a stone and flatlined at a handful of new cases a day and, on several days, no deaths at all, even as we were opening up the economy, and take lessons from there on how to proceed. The universities seem to have been a massive source of superspreading, so simply keeping the universities on remote learning where possible until a vaccine is available might be the best way forwards.

Hospitality may have had some impact, but the impact does appear to have been more limited than expected, mainly because the industry took the situation reasonably seriously (unsurprising, when they could be fined or shut down if they broke the rules).

Based on the situation not just in the UK but worldwide in that time period - and still right now in Italy where they've never taken the eye off the ball - it does appear that we can drive down the R rate to well below 0 without a full lockdown. It just requires interim restrictions and measure being put in place and people sticking to them. The second wave with its attendant number of infections and deaths may be the tragic price that has to be paid for the people who don't understand the situation to finally get on board that there is no going back to the old normal until we have a vaccine, period.

[The BlackBear]

6 hours ago, mormont said:

It may be more about fees, tbqh: I know a lot of unis are insisting that there will be some face-to-face teaching and that this justifies the full fee. It may also, from the point of view of the governments involved, be about protecting the private rented sector, which would have been in real trouble in many places without the student market. Rents would have cratered. (Not a bad thing, in fact long overdue in my view.)

Partner works in post grad support for Edinburgh Uni, and up until the most recent tightening up of restrictions was going into the office. They weren't having face to face meetings with students, and all of her work is email based, perfectly doable from home, but they wanted to get a number of staff in to justify the office upkeep.

[Pebble thats Stubby]

London and Essex to move to Tier 2 this weekend.

 

Not sure I will personally notice the difference.

[SeanF]

I don't think a second  lockdown would be a good idea at all.  Shutting everything down for a fortnight would not eliminate the disease, would likely tip a lot of businesses over the edge, and when it came to an end, it would just be rinse and repeat.  But, in practice, it would not last a fortnight.  As with the first lockdown, the pressure would be to keep extending it.

[mormont]

5 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I don't think a second  lockdown would be a good idea at all.  Shutting everything down for a fortnight would not eliminate the disease, would likely tip a lot of businesses over the edge, and when it came to an end, it would just be rinse and repeat.  

I don't think anyone has suggested that a second lockdown would 'eliminate the disease'. It would save a number of lives, though, and buy time. The alternative is exponential spread, which will also not be good for businesses.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54538278

[Pebble thats Stubby]

Business should be supported with any lockdown.

A full hard lockdown that everyone followed would help a lot.  then you have to put in place effective trace and trace (not what we have now).  The earlier you lock down the shorter it can be.

Unfortunately doing the right thing in a timely way will cost a lot of money right now.  which makes the government rather reluctant, especially if they think that there will be lots of rule breakers (They can't even keep to the rules themselves) which limits the effectiveness of any lockdown.   and afterwards they have to be willing to spend the money and recourses with track and trace  which cost more or they will just waste it again and we will need another lock down in a few months.

 

[Chaircat Meow]

30 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

Business should be supported with any lockdown.

A full hard lockdown that everyone followed would help a lot.  then you have to put in place effective trace and trace (not what we have now).  The earlier you lock down the shorter it can be.

Unfortunately doing the right thing in a timely way will cost a lot of money right now.  which makes the government rather reluctant, especially if they think that there will be lots of rule breakers (They can't even keep to the rules themselves) which limits the effectiveness of any lockdown.   and afterwards they have to be willing to spend the money and recourses with track and trace  which cost more or they will just waste it again and we will need another lock down in a few months.

 

Except the test and trace system isn't working. 

A lockdown is a good plan if you use the time to set up a system that obviates the need for further lockdowns but we seem incapable of doing this. 

In my view, if a half effective vaccine is not close by March, people might be more willing to accept higher casualties from the virus. We're not there yet though. 

[Heartofice]

8 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Except the test and trace system isn't working. 

A lockdown is a good plan if you use the time to set up a system that obviates the need for further lockdowns but we seem incapable of doing this. 

In my view, if a half effective vaccine is not close by March, people might be more willing to accept higher casualties from the virus. We're not there yet though. 

Agree with this. Right now there doesn’t seem to be any real benefit to a lockdown, other than getting numbers down.. for the sake of getting numbers down. If there was some real risk of the NHS getting overwhelmed I’d understand, but that didn’t come close to happening last time at the absolute peak,with the Nightingale hospital going unused. 

All that will happen with a circuit break is that you delay those numbers a couple of weeks and then you are back where you started.. with a load more uncertainty in the economy and a bunch of businesses going to the wall. 
 

There is no decent test and trace system around the corner, not even close. The vaccine is everyone being hopeful. 

[Pebble thats Stubby]

17 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said:

Except the test and trace system isn't working. 

A lockdown is a good plan if you use the time to set up a system that obviates the need for further lockdowns but we seem incapable of doing this. 

In my view, if a half effective vaccine is not close by March, people might be more willing to accept higher casualties from the virus. We're not there yet though. 

this is kinda what I said

for a lockdown to work and be worth it they need to be willing to spend money on

1) supporting business and people

2)Getting and maintaining an effective Track and trace

3) full compliance with lockdown restrictions.

 

 

[DaveSumm]

26 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Right now there doesn’t seem to be any real benefit to a lockdown, other than getting numbers down.

What other benefit are we looking for? That’s its sole purpose. As has been said in a few threads, there should be an alternative by now, but there isn’t, so we’re left with these restrictions as our only card to play. 

In a way, the fundamental equation hasn’t changed since the beginning: how many lives are worth X amount of economic benefit? And I’m not saying there’s an easy answer to that, it’s not just ‘lives’ regardless, but there’s no good option. We’re trying to find a least worst path.

[Chaircat Meow]

9 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

this is kinda what I said

for a lockdown to work and be worth it they need to be willing to spend money on

1) supporting business and people

2)Getting and maintaining an effective Track and trace

3) full compliance with lockdown restrictions.

 

 

I am questioning why 2) is suddenly going to start working now.  A lockdown would be great if we could figure out how to do all the stuff that makes it a useful long-term strategy but it seems we can't. And I am not convinced this is purely a government issue - I think the public are not willing enough to make it work. 

[Pebble thats Stubby]

Its not gonna suddenly work unless we put in enough money and resources at it and not at favoured Tory Chums.  Its possible for Track and Trace to work other countries have better more effective ones.   

You also need people told to isolate to actually do so.  so that means more then being paid statutory sick pay.

We need openness and good communication between the public and the government.  We need to be able to trust the Government and health advice given.   (this means them also being worthy of that trust)

 

So yes its not gonna suddenly work.  we wasted the last lockdown because we did not do these things.  This is me saying if we do a full lockdown we need to do these things not that I believe we will do these things.  Its a subtle difference.

[Chaircat Meow]

22 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

Its not gonna suddenly work unless we put in enough money and resources at it and not at favoured Tory Chums.  Its possible for Track and Trace to work other countries have better more effective ones.   

You also need people told to isolate to actually do so.  so that means more then being paid statutory sick pay.

We need openness and good communication between the public and the government.  We need to be able to trust the Government and health advice given.   (this means them also being worthy of that trust)

 

So yes its not gonna suddenly work.  we wasted the last lockdown because we did not do these things.  This is me saying if we do a full lockdown we need to do these things not that I believe we will do these things.  Its a subtle difference.

France admitted today that their system is worse than ours and non-Tory run bits of the UK are not doing much better either (if at all), so this many not be easy to resolve as you think. 

[broken one]

48 minutes ago, Pebble thats Stubby said:

Its not gonna suddenly work unless we put in enough money and resources at it and not at favoured Tory Chums.  Its possible for Track and Trace to work other countries have better more effective ones.  

Question is if you have enough money to put in all the activities and to feed those who land in the gutter in the process. And for how long. Now there is similar number of infections and deaths per day in UK and Poland, the difference is budget.  After the 1st lockdown they gave away all the money they had. And still it was NOTHING in comparison to needs. When I think of losing job with 3 kids and bank debt... well, I think Id rather survive the infection than this.

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, DaveSumm said:

What other benefit are we looking for? That’s its sole purpose. As has been said in a few threads, there should be an alternative by now, but there isn’t, so we’re left with these restrictions as our only card to play. 

In a way, the fundamental equation hasn’t changed since the beginning: how many lives are worth X amount of economic benefit? And I’m not saying there’s an easy answer to that, it’s not just ‘lives’ regardless, but there’s no good option. We’re trying to find a least worst path.

Sure but at what point are the numbers too high and when are they acceptably low. We could go look at Chris Whittys Graph of Doom and say that we must be heading towards exponential growth, but clearly that isn’t happening.

If we are worried about numbers being high it can only be because we don’t believe we can cope with those high numbers from a medical perspective. But It’s already been shown we easily can.  Unless of course the numbers got to the unrealistic points on the famous graph.. which they won’t because it doesn’t take into account where the cases are occurring or that social distancing, Mask wearing and sanitising are all pretty much standard practice now for many people.

The problem is there is really no end in sight and I honestly don’t see the current measures having the desired effect.

[SeanF]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Sure but at what point are the numbers too high and when are they acceptably low. We could go look at Chris Whittys Graph of Doom and say that we must be heading towards exponential growth, but clearly that isn’t happening.

If we are worried about numbers being high it can only be because we don’t believe we can cope with those high numbers from a medical perspective. But It’s already been shown we easily can.  Unless of course the numbers got to the unrealistic points on the famous graph.. which they won’t because it doesn’t take into account where the cases are occurring or that social distancing, Mask wearing and sanitising are all pretty much standard practice now for many people.

The problem is there is really no end in sight and I honestly don’t see the current measures having the desired effect.

To get numbers down, you have to go for a lengthy lockdown, as we did in March - but that will cause widespread hardship, and probably be intolerable to the public.  A short lockdown just seems to be giving us the worst of all worlds, IMHO.

[BigFatCoward]

If we hadn't went full lockdown in march we might actually be in a better place long term. If we got to 3-5,000 deaths per day, all the fucking idiots might have taken the rules seriously. We would have more deaths right now, but perhaps fewet long term deaths and less economic hardship (I am in no way advocating that would have been an appropriate course of action). 

[DanteGabriel]

17 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

If we hadn't went full lockdown in march we might actually be in a better place long term. If we got to 3-5,000 deaths per day, all the fucking idiots might have taken the rules seriously. We would have more deaths right now, but perhaps fewet long term deaths and less economic hardship (I am in no way advocating that would have been an appropriate course of action). 

Speaking from an American perspective, you may overestimate the effect that many deaths would have on the seriousness levels of fucking idiots.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

11 minutes ago, DanteGabriel said:

Speaking from an American perspective, you may overestimate the effect that many deaths would have on the seriousness levels of fucking idiots.

But we have freedumb! 

[Zorral]

2 hours ago, Heartofice said:

there doesn’t seem to be any real benefit to a lockdown, other than getting numbers down.. for the sake of getting numbers down

So you're volunteering to take out the bodies and bury the dead when the numbers overwhelm the facilities and capacities and even the manpower.  You're volunteering to nurse the 'mildly' ill and empty their bedpans and wash their bodies and change their clothes because there are no nurses available, due to illness, death and just plain burn-out, and well, lack of numbers.  You're volunteering to bring food to the children left without care because their parents are too sick to do it, clean their homes and wash their clothes and tuck them into bed.  O would there were thousands and thousands more just like you!