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UK Politics - Matt's Handcock


Werthead

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On 7/5/2021 at 6:50 PM, Werthead said:

That was easily the most awkward and self-contradictory briefing for some considerable time. It's very clear that the scientific advisors were on a different page to Boris and trying very hard to sound like they were on the same one, without much success.

Boris also managed to make a fairly nonsensical point by making his new "gotcher!" statement, "Well, if not now, when should we open up?" to which quite a few responses seemed to be, "well, when the vaccination programme is completed, obviously, which you just said would be in September or just a few weeks past the the July 19th date," which of course he ignored, aside from suggesting that summer would act as a firebreak to the spread of the virus, as it rather noticeably failed to be last year and in warmer temperatures are rather failing to be in other parts of the world.

I think the weakening of the link between the virus spread and the number of hospitalisations and deaths was very strongly demonstrated during the briefing, though (25,000 new cases versus 15 deaths and less than 2,000 hospitalisations), and there's certainly very good reason for optimism there, but the PM failed to make a compelling case for a "grand reopening" on July 19th as opposed to mid-September and certainly failed to make a case for removing mask use on public transport and in shops.

I think leaving it to September means you run into schools reopening, deteriorating weather, and the usual spike in flu cases as Winter approaches.    

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43 minutes ago, DaveSumm said:

Didn’t just read the headline by any chance did you?

What makes you think I even read the headline? Believe it or not, I wasn't referring to anyone here. These people are everywhere. Covid deniers and anti-vaxxers. I'm fucking sick of it.

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1 minute ago, Spockydog said:

What makes you think I even read the headline? Believe it or not, I wasn't referring to anyone here. These people are everywhere. Covid deniers and anti-vaxxers. I'm fucking sick of it.

It read an awful lot like you were talking about HoI’s link, which was titled ‘does Long Covid exist’, followed by you talking about people who don’t think it exists. Just a coincidence then…

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18 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

But there is also always a lag from case numbers rising to hospitalisations rising to deaths rising. If hospitalisations don't start rising at the beginning of August I think you can then be hopeful that hospitalisation and death will remain low despite infection rate rising.

The lag is about 8 days from case numbers rising to hospital admissions rising.  Case numbers began rising about 3rd May, and have rocketed since then.  But hospital admissions have risen at a far slower pace since then, demonstrating that vaccination has worked very well.  
 

Back in January hospitalisations were about 10% of cases, now they’re around 1.5%.  Deaths were around 1% of cases, now they’re around 0.09%.

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17 minutes ago, SeanF said:

I think leaving it to September means you run into schools reopening, deteriorating weather, and the usual spike in flu cases as Winter approaches.    

I'm not sure why these are relevant factors. The schools reopening - due to the curious refusal to vaccinate children of at least secondary school age - will cause a spike in cases regardless of if there's a reopening on July 19th or September 19th. COVID's susceptibility to the weather was a theory from last year that seems to have been mostly disproven; the nuclear explosion in cases in much hotter countries like Brazil, Mexico and India shows that warmer weather has little impact in itself, more in the secondary effect (i.e. people naturally spending more time outdoors), so again it has zero bearing on where the pandemic will be in the autumn. The combination with flu is a key point and one victory of the greater precautions last year is that they were also effective at reducing the number of flu cases. This year a weapon in the armory could be a combination of COVID boosters (those it's starting to look like these will be unnecessary in most cases as significant antibody protection appears to last over six months and potentially over twelve) and the flu jab being made more widely available.

None of these are arguments for easing restrictions now rather than in September when all adults will be double-vaccinated. Note that these arguments are not for a return to lockdown, but for the maintenance of current, common-sense measures such as continuing WFH and continuing to use masks in relevant settings, whilst allowing modest reopening of sporting events, cinemas, nightclubs etc.

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It read an awful lot like you were talking about HoI’s link, which was titled ‘does Long Covid exist’, followed by you talking about people who don’t think it exists.

The article - written by a psychologist, not a physician - was decidedly pointless. He asked did Long Covid exist, discussed the possibility that some cases may be real, some may be psychosomatic, drew somewhat dubious comparisons with Chronic Lyme before concluding, effectively, "fuck knows, maybe? Someone paid me money to write this."

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The lag is about 8 days from case numbers rising to hospital admissions rising.  Case numbers began rising about 3rd May, and have rocketed since then.  But hospital admissions have risen at a far slower pace since then, demonstrating that vaccination has worked very well.  
 

Back in January hospitalisations were about 10% of cases, now they’re around 1.5%.  Deaths were around 1% of cases, now they’re around 0.09%.

 

Indeed.

However, the BBC's analysis today seemed to go in two directions. The first was discussing the idea from the briefing yesterday that with vaccination, the virus could peak by itself and cases could start to decrease, effectively that herd immunity has now been reached or will be reached imminently (through a combo of previous exposure and vaccines) and this will be the final thing that breaks the back of the virus. This is a reasonable argument, since before the vaccinations began in December, around 7% (maybe 10% in optimistic cases) of the population had achieved immunity and that figure now is around 50% or somewhat above 50%, and around 60-70% the virus simply runs out of infection vectors, dead-ends and cases fall rapidly. This was treated as a positive outcome.

The other argument presented is that if this calculation is off, especially if the new variants of COVID (not just the rarer and more limited - at the moment - cases of Delta Plus, Epsilon and Lambda, but plain old Delta) reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine even modestly, than the effective current population yet to achieve immunity drops sharply, which puts us in the same boat we were pre-vaccine but with a lower hospitalisation rate and death rate (yay) but that rate could still be significant. If the previous ceiling on deaths per day was between 1,000 and 1,500, the deaths per day could still be around 300 (or three 9/11s per month) which is still pretty high, and the hospitalisation rate would still overwhelm the NHS, just over a longer time period. If Epsilon and Lambda's apparent in-the-lab greater resistance to the vaccine proves to be less of a real-world issue than previously thought (as to some extent Delta's was), this problem disappears.

The basic line coming from Valance and Whitty was that the link between COVID, hospitalisations and deaths has been reset to a much lower level than previously, but the only way we'll find out what the new level is, is to basically stress-test the system and see when it breaks. It could be excellent news (it doesn't break, the new variants are not as concerning and we achieve herd immunity and the ability of the virus to spread collapses) or it could still be pretty bad news (the rate of hospitalisations and deaths is reduced hugely but what's left behind is still nontrivial and would still kill tens of thousands over a prelonged period of time).

The BBC also made drew an excellent analogy on even current vaccine effectiveness versus Delta: if you're in your eighties and you've been double-jabbed, your resistance to COVID ill-effects is increased to around that of someone in their sixties. That's a much better result, but catching COVID in your sixties is still a concern, and your chances of dying are still much greater than younger people.

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Google mobility data for June show that the number of visits to UK grocery, retail and recreation hubs has dropped in recent weeks, after rising sharply from January’s low as restrictions in the UK have gradually been lifted. Similarly, retail footfall declined throughout June to 25 per cent below June 2019 levels, according to the retail consultancy Springboard. 

Once masks are abandoned, that's it for me. No more shopping, unless it is absolutely essential. 

According to the FT, it looks like I won't be the only one. 

 

 

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39 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Once masks are abandoned, that's it for me. No more shopping, unless it is absolutely essential. 

According to the FT, it looks like I won't be the only one. 

 

 

I only really do one big shop once a fortnight, and I go when it's quiet. You living in London though, I'm guessing there is no 'quiet time' unless you go at 0300. 

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A lot of the conversation over the last few days has looked away from the situation on the ground and also ignores basic medicine & facts. The NHS does not have enough give in the system to have 40-50k new covid cases everyday, hospitals run at full capacity, and summers are meant to be slower, but this summer is not slow at all. A&E attendances are at winter levels at the moment, but when you don't have give in the system, this is what happens

No masks & no social distancing at all is an odd public health strategy. It's an abdication of responsibility.

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3 hours ago, Raja said:

A lot of the conversation over the last few days has looked away from the situation on the ground and also ignores basic medicine & facts. The NHS does not have enough give in the system to have 40-50k new covid cases everyday, hospitals run at full capacity, and summers are meant to be slower, but this summer is not slow at all. A&E attendances are at winter levels at the moment, but when you don't have give in the system, this is what happens

No masks & no social distancing at all is an odd public health strategy. It's an abdication of responsibility.

The choices are:-

Unlockdown now.

Unlockdown in the Autumn

Unlockdown in Spring next year.  There are pros and cons to each, but I think the government have made the right call.

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

The choices are:-

Unlockdown now.

Unlockdown in the Autumn

Unlockdown in Spring next year.  There are pros and cons to each, but I think the government have made the right call.

What about the doing away woth all restrictions such as masks? Social distancing?

Should thr government not have at least waited another four weeks to vaccinate more 12-18 year-olds?

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1 hour ago, SeanF said:

The choices are:-

Unlockdown now.

Unlockdown in the Autumn

Unlockdown in Spring next year.  There are pros and cons to each, but I think the government have made the right call.

I have no idea what sort of logic has led you to think that these are the options, or that the options as as binary as this.

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3 minutes ago, BigFatCoward said:

How many cases will come out of the England fans hugging and singing in strangers faces tonight? 

I wonder if there's going to be a divergence in the trajectories of cases between England and Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland over the next couple of weeks?

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52 minutes ago, williamjm said:

I wonder if there's going to be a divergence in the trajectories of cases between England and Scotland/Wales/Northern Ireland over the next couple of weeks?

I suspect this is not the "it" they were thinking of in "it's coming home."

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The choices are:-

Unlockdown now.

Unlockdown in the Autumn

Unlockdown in Spring next year.  There are pros and cons to each, but I think the government have made the right call.

 

No, they're not. There are plenty of more granular options, like loosen some restrictions but keep the requirements for masking, social distancing and work from home in place until the vaccination programme is complete, which it will be in between eight and ten weeks. Or keep the current rules - which are still allowing cases to increase dramatically, remember - until September.

Javid seems to be suggesting that he's perfectly happy to have 100,000 cases a day, which is quite an admission. At that number, the relationship between cases and deaths better be really broken otherwise he's inviting a disaster.

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8 hours ago, SeanF said:

The choices are:-

Unlockdown now.

Unlockdown in the Autumn

Unlockdown in Spring next year.  There are pros and cons to each, but I think the government have made the right call.

Well that's pure horseshit.

Where's the option for "wait another 2 weeks until schools/universities break up for the summer"?

Where's the option for "wait until the vaccination rate slows down , and we have that side as good as it's going to be"?

Where's the option for "open up the remaining businesses / events, but maintain mask mandates, social distancing and work from home"?

Just to double your options without even having to engage my brain in the slightest. All of which are better than your 3.

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