When will this shit end?

[Spindles]

1 minute ago, steviewevie said:

Just know Trump is going to use this whole situation to win that election.

Oh?  I wonder what the 'October surprise' he was predicting would turn things around might be...

It's been pointed out that it would take far too many people and more organisation than a clown like Trump can muster to effectively pull off faking it, the timing is just TOO perfect though.  If I was Biden I'd wait til he's out of hospital and then demand independent antibody testing.

[Mr.Tease]

1 minute ago, crazyfool1 said:

How the hell are they gonna explain trump drive about ? Has he just given up ? Or has he had false test results or remarkably fought of the virus ? Bloody madness 

It's so far beyond stupid, every day its plummeting to new levels of absolute f***wittery

[zahidf]

 

[Ozanne]

5 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

 

If he was ill enough to go into a hospital for COVID 2 days ago, how is he up and about like this now. This doesn't add up at all.

[stuartbert two hats]

12 minutes ago, Spindles said:

Yeah, I sort of expected it at the end of the spring but it never came to pass and I relaxed.  I'm not so sure what the climate will be like in the next few weeks and months, to be honest.  Everything that we have seen this year had been predicted, both in scholarly literature and fiction and it has been interesting to see how some of that prediction panned out.  Civil unrest is something that is frequently referenced as a possibility of keeping the population in a non-normal civil state for any period of time, I think furlough saved us earlier in the year and it will be interesting to see what the nation looks like by November and December.  I think the world will look much changed from the pre-pandemic world by March.

 

Again, this is my paranoid head speaking, but it's sort of ideal.  A large chunk of the population in housing that can easily be policed for people breaking regulations, given a period of freedom to spread and then locked down gets a big chunk of the population, mostly less vulnerable adults through natural inoculation.  It seems to me that this is potentially a safer way to deal with that section of the population than them being at home.  It also seems like a nightmare authoritarian dreamscape that such a thing would actually happen and be anything more than the stoned ramblings of an old man.

It's definitely occurred to me at my most tinfoil moments. Compared to schools, the scope for infecting the students is far higher, but kids live with their parents, which makes them a strong vector for the rest of society, but the students? They live in their own bubble at the best of times, I know I did.

[Spindles]

1 minute ago, crazyfool1 said:

How the hell are they gonna explain trump drive about ? Has he just given up ? Or has he had false test results or remarkably fought of the virus ? Bloody madness 

I'm sorry but with my wildly swinging mood today I'm close to being back in the he's faking camp.  They've clearly lied and created a new narrative by rearranging previously stated dates and times to avoid accusations of him spreading it but then been shambolic in doing so.  If it is a scam it WILL fall apart, because he and everyone he has surrounded himself with are either grifters or sycophants and it takes an honest man to have a decent work ethic.

[Mr.Tease]

1 minute ago, Ozanne said:

If he was ill enough to go into a hospital for COVID 2 days ago, how is he up and about like this now. This doesn't add up at all.

And be given experimental drugs and drugs usually only given to the severely ill

[Spindles]

Just now, stuartbert two hats said:

It's definitely occurred to me at my most tinfoil moments. Compared to schools, the scope for infecting the students is far higher, but kids live with their parents, which makes them a strong vector for the rest of society, but the students? They live in their own bubble at the best of times, I know I did.

Yeah, I'm someone of not always sound mental health and I have to be careful not to get carried away with creating my own narrative from what I observe by seeing connections that aren't there or else I'll end up being that shouty man in the street trying to tell you about how the bees are whispering to us.  I do think that from a practical and logistical standpoint it is something that could make sense to someone though.

[Ozanne]

1 minute ago, Mr.Tease said:

And be given experimental drugs and drugs usually only given to the severely ill

Exactly. Those drugs don't work that quickly, he should be getting near the stage where the infection would become more serious yet he's suddenly up and about.

[shoptildrop]

Article in the Guardian on how festivals could look in 2021

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/oct/04/music-festivals-plan-for-phased-return-in-2021-after-covid-wipeout?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1601848657

 

[Spindles]

I was just looking at this map and it is insane the explosion of numbers in the North.  By comparison, around a week ago Wales was looking ropey on around 350 and they've gone up by 1/3, NW was about 1500, it's more than quadrupled, North East has risen by a similar margin.  

[FestivalJamie]

Guys I’ve just seen the cases, 22,000. WTF????

[stuartbert two hats]

1 minute ago, Spindles said:

I was just looking at this map and it is insane the explosion of numbers in the North.  By comparison, around a week ago Wales was looking ropey on around 350 and they've gone up by 1/3, NW was about 1500, it's more than quadrupled, North East has risen by a similar margin.  

Does this include the lost cases? Didn't someone say they were from London a day or so ago?

[stuartbert two hats]

Just now, FestivalJamie said:

Guys I’ve just seen the cases, 22,000. WTF????

More lost cases, as expected. It has not been 22,000 today.

[FestivalJamie]

1 minute ago, stuartbert two hats said:

More lost cases, as expected. It has not been 22,000 today.

Yeah but it’s still horrendous. How can they lose thousands of cases?

[Chapple12345]

1 minute ago, FestivalJamie said:

Guys I’ve just seen the cases, 22,000. WTF????

They're from various specimine dates but it explains lower numbers from the last week, once they are sorted out hopefully we'll have an indication if the true daily numbers but I reckon they're standing at around 10K a day for the time being 

[Chapple12345]

2 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

More lost cases, as expected. It has not been 22,000 today.

I really do wonder how many days we'll have these 'lost cases' for or if it's just been a weekend catchup 

[shoptildrop]

1 minute ago, FestivalJamie said:

Yeah but it’s still horrendous. How can they lose thousands of cases?

This is Dido Harding we are talking about, her forte is losing data 

[Leyrulion]

7 minutes ago, Spindles said:

I was just looking at this map and it is insane the explosion of numbers in the North.  By comparison, around a week ago Wales was looking ropey on around 350 and they've gone up by 1/3, NW was about 1500, it's more than quadrupled, North East has risen by a similar margin.  

Greater Manchester has had a local lockdown since the end of July and cases have only kept going up. 

In truth Greater Manchester never fully got rid of the first wave, Andy Burnham didn't want us to open at the same time as the rest of the country. But we did because the government said so in spite of the evidence.

[Spindles]

7 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

Does this include the lost cases? Didn't someone say they were from London a day or so ago?

It's yesterday PHE regional numbers, so only as accurate as that.  It's from a live tracker page using various decent official data sources so the data should realign after date correction in the same way that Worldometers data does.

4 minutes ago, FestivalJamie said:

Yeah but it’s still horrendous. How can they lose thousands of cases?

There were issues within the infrastructure (which is now running smoothly again) and this could be explained in many ways, certain institutions might have had occurrences that delayed confirmation of case positivity.  There was a snarl up about 10 days or so back and I think we are seeing the catch up effect of a system that was running at reduced capacity for a period of days and surge efforts have been resulted in backlog cases mixing with the regular numbers.  In other words when it looked like there were 5000 cases in a day there were probably 5500, when it looked like there were 7000 it was likely 8000 or higher and by the time we reached 10k a day the backlog clearing would drive numbers above realistic expectations.

[Toilet Duck]

33 minutes ago, Chapple12345 said:

I think people would support this but only if they promised it was a 4 week thing instead of indefinitely adding on weeks, I fear this will become a situation where the cure is worse than the virus - I work in a school and would selfishly wonder as to why I could see 30 other children but not my own friends and family 

As we're dealing with the Tories theyll find a way around it, I expect they'll put much stricter measures on the worst affected areas rather than the whole country, I'm in Norfolk which is a very Conservative area and it's been reported on my local news a lot of MPs around here would have problems with us being placed under strict lockdowns because we have a much lower infection rate to the rest of the country so I could see ugly scenes in parliament if this were the case 

To be honest, there are parts of Ireland with much lower infection levels too (there’s even parts of Dublin with really low levels compared to other parts). Dublin has been pretty flat for the last week, but cases rising elsewhere. It’s not the overall infection level that has them spooked though, it’s ICU capacity. We had 4 times as many in ICU when we shut down in April, but spare capacity is much lower now as most of ICU is full with non-COVID cases, so we are at about 50% of the free capacity now all of a sudden and they are worried about the direction infections are going (we also nationalised all the private hospitals back in April, but now they are back running as they were and operating as COVID-free facilities, further cutting surge capacity)...

[Spindles]

2 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

Andy Burnham didn't want us to open at the same time as the rest of the country. But we did because the government said so in spite of the evidence.

I am strong believer that the solution, from the outset, would have been regional governance and compartmentalised response.  A central government sets the rules within which measures can be applied and each area then advises and regulates it's own population accordingly, with the decision on where within the measures they should be decided at a regional level.  No official or medical personnel from one region should mix with those from another region, where possible all transport between regions apart from essential freight should be restricted.

[stuartbert two hats]

3 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

Greater Manchester has had a local lockdown since the end of July and cases have only kept going up. 

In truth Greater Manchester never fully got rid of the first wave, Andy Burnham didn't want us to open at the same time as the rest of the country. But we did because the government said so in spite of the evidence.

I've been living through it, Stockport had about a month off, but it's been nothing like the first proper lock down. All shops open, pubs+gyms open, schools back, travel wherever you like for as long as you like. There have been measures certainly, and to impose these elsewhere would probably feel like a "lockdown", especially the not having people round part, but it doesn't feel like a lockdown to me.

[Chapple12345]

1 minute ago, Toilet Duck said:

To be honest, there are parts of Ireland with much lower infection levels too (there’s even parts of Dublin with really low levels compared to other parts). Dublin has been pretty flat for the last week, but cases rising elsewhere. It’s not the overall infection level that has them spooked though, it’s ICU capacity. We had 4 times as many in ICU when we shut down in April, but spare capacity is much lower now as most of ICU is full with non-COVID cases, so we are at about 50% of the free capacity now all of a sudden and they are worried about the direction infections are going (we also nationalised all the private hospitals back in April, but now they are back running as they were and operating as COVID-free facilities, further cutting surge capacity)...

The Norfolk and Norwich Hospital around 5 miles from me has set up a specialist Covid unit so it can function normally should things worsen here, I get it's a big effort for everyone but I fear more stringent measures on the whole country may do more harm than good - I think they need to fully implement the more stringent measures on the lock down areas instead of nationwide 

 

8 minutes ago, Spindles said:

There were issues within the infrastructure (which is now running smoothly again) and this could be explained in many ways, certain institutions might have had occurrences that delayed confirmation of case positivity.  There was a snarl up about 10 days or so back and I think we are seeing the catch up effect of a system that was running at reduced capacity for a period of days and surge efforts have been resulted in backlog cases mixing with the regular numbers.  In other words when it looked like there were 5000 cases in a day there were probably 5500, when it looked like there were 7000 it was likely 8000 or higher and by the time we reached 10k a day the backlog clearing would drive numbers above realistic expectations.

Thank you for clearing that up, so hopefully tomorrow we will have a more realistic picture of cases than over this weekend? 

[fraybentos1]

Lots of cases but only 33 deaths and hospitalisations way way down from spring time. Is there really any need for the hysteria?