When will this shit end?

[Copperface]

16 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

It’s almost as if the real reason for the increase in cases is down to pre-xmas social mixing and not purely because of a different type of virus. 

It obviously is making things worse but things would have been catastrophically shit anyway as was predicted by experts since autumn.

It is, however, a very useful smokescreen to hide behind and claim that everything has changed. It has to a small extent, but the new variant has not turned the world on its head, just accelerated the pace  a bit.

Edited January 6, 2021 by Copperface

[Crazyfool01]

3 minutes ago, Copperface said:

It obviously is making things worse but things would have been catastrophically shit anyway as was predicted by experts since autumn.

It is, however, a very useful smokescreen to hide behind and claim that everything has changed. It has to a small extent, but the new variant has not turned the world on its head, just accelerated the pace  a bit.

yep we got the figures for how much this new variant might increase R potentially ..... but never the figure for how much Christmas might increase R 

[xxialac]

1 minute ago, steviewevie said:

Johnson's opening statement to MPs - Summary and key extracts

Here are the key extracts from Boris Johnson’s opening statement to MPs.

• Johnson effectively set 15 February as a deadline for when people in the top four priority groups should be vaccinated. He said:

 

By February 15 the NHS is committed to offering a vaccination to everyone in the top four priority groups, including older care home residents and staff, everyone over 70, all frontline NHS and care staff, and all those who are clinically extremely vulnerable.

Later, in response to a question (see 12.06pm), Johnson suggested 15 February might be the point at which the government could start considering easing restrictions, but he was more guarded on this in his opening statement.

• Johnson said the vaccination programme was being accelerated. He said:

 

And in working towards that target there are already almost 1,000 vaccination centres across the country, including 595 GP-led sites with a further 180 opening later this week and 107 hospital sites – with another 100 later this week.

Next week we will also have seven vaccination centres opening in places such as sports stadia and exhibition centres.

Pharmacies are already working with GPs to deliver the vaccine in many areas of the country.

• He said people should be “extremely cautious” about the prospect of the lockdown being eased after the the February half-term, as he would like. The easing of the lockdown would be “gradual”, he said. He told MPs:

 

When we begin to move out of lockdown I promise [schools] will be the very first things to reopen.

That moment may come after the February half-term, although we should remain extremely cautious about the timetable ahead.

And as was the case last spring, our emergence from the lockdown cocoon will be not a big bang but a gradual unwrapping.

That is why the legislation this house will vote on later today runs until 31 March.

Not because we expect the full national lockdown to continue until then, but to allow a steady, controlled and evidence-led move down through the tiers on a regional basis.

• He said the government was under a legal obligation, in the restrictions, “to remove them if they are no longer deemed necessary to limit the transmission of the virus”.

• He said schools would be “the very first things to reopen” when the lockdown could be eased.

• He said the risks to children from being in school were “vanishingly small”. But schools had to be closed because of the wider risk, he said. He told MPs:

 

All the evidence shows that schools are safe, and that the risk posed to children by coronavirus is vanishingly small.

For most children the most dangerous part of going to school, even in the midst of this global pandemic, remains I’m afraid crossing the road in order to get there.

But the data showed, and our scientific advisers agreed, that our efforts to contain the spread of this new variant would not be sufficient if schools continued to act as a potential vector for spreading the virus between households.

• He said that 50,000 laptops had been delivered to schools on Monday for disadvantaged pupils, and that more than 100,000 were being delivered in the first week of terms.

• He thanked phone companies for offering free mobile data to disadvantaged pupils. He said:

 

 

We have partnered with some of the UK’s leading mobile operators to provide free mobile data to disadvantaged families to support access to education resources.

And I am very grateful to EE, Three, Tesco Mobile, Smarty, Sky Mobile, Virgin Mobile and Vodafone for supporting this offer.

 

From

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/live/2021/jan/06/uk-covid-live-boris-johnson-parliament-vote-new-lockdown-latest-updates

And there it is:

"By February 15 the NHS is committed to OFFERing a vaccination to everyone in the top four priority groups"

 

Dear person (in mass generic letter), I'm writing to offer you the chance to get a vaccination at some future point...

Zahawi to underling: "Mark all those down as successful vaccinations, will you old sport" 

[steviewevie]

5 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

Forever? I must have missed that.

well, they are until at least the middle of February. Meanwhile hospitals are close to being overwhelmed.

[Copperface]

1 minute ago, xxialac said:

And there it is:

"By February 15 the NHS is committed to OFFERing a vaccination to everyone in the top four priority groups"

 

Dear person (in mass generic letter), I'm writing to offer you the chance to get a vaccination at some future point...

Zahawi to underling: "Mark all those down as successful vaccinations, will you old sport" 

Exactly what they did with the testing numbers earlier last year.

[Radiochicken]

1 hour ago, Toilet Duck said:

So far what we have is decent pre-clinical evidence that viral load is decreased in vaccinated animals and this should suppress transmission. The Oxford trial also included weekly PCR self-swabbing for participants in the UK and has looked at the numbers of asymptomatic PCR positive cases in vaccinated versus control participants. That showed a 58% reduction in asymptomatic cases after vaccination. The problem with that is that the reduction was in the half dose:full dose vaccinated people (it was only 3% in the full dose participants) and that's not the regimen that is being rolled out. It also had a pretty big confidence interval (the lower one was down at 3%), so they aren't sure yet. It was statistically significant, but that doesn't always translate into anything clinically meaningful. However, what is being rolled out is two full doses with a 12 week gap. Buried in the Oxford trial results was pretty firm data that this had a significant increase in the amount of neutralising antibody present (it grew when more time was left between jabs), so this is expected to increase the overall efficacy of the vaccine as well as provide better protection from infection itself. J&J have seen similar things in their early data, Novavax as well and Moderna claim they see a big reduction in viral load (but I haven't seen that data). Pfizer are going to assess this at a later date in their phase 3 trial. They are collecting blood samples from participants 6 months after they finish to look at how well the immune response holds up and they can look at the same time for antibodies to other parts of the virus not contained in the vaccine which will let them see how many people became asymptomatically infected in vaccine versus control. My guess is it will provide a degree of protection from infection and onward transmission, but not sterilising immunity that would completely wipe out the virus...it should contribute to reducing R though.

I’m way out of my depth with this question... so just ignore me if I’m talking rubbish...

But does the assumption you could still catch and pass it on (but to a lesser degree) and it not being sterilising immunity make mutations more likely?

[Chawk]

On 1/4/2021 at 9:28 PM, st dan said:

Its my 30th birthday on Wednesday .. happy birthday to me eh!!

 Happy Birthday @st dan!!

[Tranquility of Solitude]

25 minutes ago, stuartbert two hats said:

I've spaffed my upvotes up the wall already.

Premature appreciation. 

[stuartbert two hats]

1 minute ago, Tranquility of Solitude said:

Premature appreciation. 

Another one I can't upvote.

[JoeyT]

Wales flatlining? Death figure grim however.

 

[steviewevie]

10 minutes ago, Chawk said:

 Happy Birthday @st dan!!

oh yeah, happy birthday @st dan you old fart.

[xxialac]

 

 

 

This pillock (who 'doesn't believe' in masks and 'panics' when she wears one) said on television this morning that she won't take the vaccine as she doesn't want to put it in her body.

Breathtaking lack of self awareness...

 

Edited January 6, 2021 by xxialac

[zahidf]

 

Edited January 6, 2021 by zahidf

[Zoo Music Girl]

1 hour ago, DeanoL said:

I feel the same, and we do the same (except don't really go to the shops). Ended up with a cold today though. Fairly certain it's not COVID (none of the three main symptoms, just headache and blocked nose) but I guess that it could have been? I caught it off someone, despite having very few contacts, and if that person had COVID rather than a cold, I'd probably have that now. 

That's what I was thinking. I'm getting a test as doing the Zoe symptom tracker and they've asked me to based on a sore throat but I don't think I have it. But I am just as surprised to have caught anything as come into contact with people about as much as you do, apart from a fortnightly trip to the supermarket. If it's that transmissible it could be that, though, or maybe deliveries or catching it from our upstairs neighbour who we share a hallway with. Who knows? Will be surprised if I have it.

[phimill]

39 minutes ago, balti-pie said:

I'm frontline NHS staff, though i work in Psychiatry and not in anything medical. I got my vaccination appointment today: for 19/01. The system to book a slot was fairly easy and rudimentary, i'm just a bit surprised that the appointments are running mon to fri from 8am to 7pm and there's none available over the weekends: surely if you're desperate to push out the vaccine as soon as possible you wouldn't immediately discount 2/7th of the available time? 

well, i'm grateful for it happening, at least . . . . 

Could the Mon-Fri be due to the potential of the BioNTech vaccine being given to NHS staff in hospitals - so usage would be higher Mon-Fri and thus less wastage during the weekends?

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, xxialac said:

 

 

 

This pillock (who 'doesn't believe' in masks and 'panics' when she wears one) said on television this morning that she won't take the vaccine as she doesn't want to put it in her body.

Breathtaking lack of self awareness...

 

who is she? what's happened to her face?

[Toilet Duck]

9 minutes ago, Radiochicken said:

I’m way out of my depth with this question... so just ignore me if I’m talking rubbish...

But does the assumption you could still catch and pass it on (but to a lesser degree) and it not being sterilising immunity make mutations more likely?

It’s not rubbish at all! On the one hand, a vaccine with sterilising immunity would put a selective pressure on the virus to escape from that. On the other hand, mutations accumulate when the virus replicates and we see faster accumulation of variants when it is spreading freely. Additionally, when hosts are harder to find, viruses tend to evolve to be nicer to the one they have! So, it’s possible that we end up selecting for mutants that evade the immune response elicited by the vaccine, but at the same time, it’s harder for them to spread at scale (so it should be a slower process for them to emerge). We would deal with that the way we deal with the evolution of flu, but updating the vaccines, but the hope is that these ones will be good for a few years yet!

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

That's what I was thinking. I'm getting a test as doing the Zoe symptom tracker and they've asked me to based on a sore throat but I don't think I have it. But I am just as surprised to have caught anything as come into contact with people about as much as you do, apart from a fortnightly trip to the supermarket. If it's that transmissible it could be that, though, or maybe deliveries or catching it from our upstairs neighbour who we share a hallway with. Who knows? Will be surprised if I have it.

I assume we should expect the same symptoms with these new variants?

[steviewevie]

So, loads of tory mps saying they will back this lockdown, but will be last they back...so lets hope the vaccines are effective!

[Fuzzy Afro]

Clap for carers to return from tomorrow 

[squirrelarmy]

8 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

who is she? what's happened to her face?

She’s obviously had an allergic reaction to that make up plastered on her face. 

[steviewevie]

4 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

Clap for carers to return from tomorrow 

oh god

[xxialac]

1 minute ago, squirrelarmy said:

She’s obviously had an allergic reaction to that make up plastered on her face. 

Maybe they should secretly slip some of the vaccine into the botox formula as a way of getting the idiots done?

[hillwalker]

10 minutes ago, phimill said:

Could the Mon-Fri be due to the potential of the BioNTech vaccine being given to NHS staff in hospitals - so usage would be higher Mon-Fri and thus less wastage during the weekends?

with us it's mostly because the people vaccinating are volunteering away from their normal day jobs. Off duty docs, office based nurses and there's just more of these people around during the week. 

[hodgey123]

57 minutes ago, philipsteak said:

I've heard pretty good things about Greggs before

It is scary how bad some low paid workers are treated. We've had people quit working here to go somewhere else and then pretty quickly regret it. In some cases essentially beg to come back. We get pissed off with some of the things our bosses do, and think we get treated pretty badly at times but man there is so much worse out there

We had a really odd situation after the November "lockdown". We reopened a handful of sites (was supposed to be 12 but some got closed because of the tier they were in) just so that we had a presence, so that we could "be there for our customers and members". My site was one that was open. And I can safely say from the number of guests we had that our customers didn't give a crap we were open and weren't bothered about us being there for them. We were losing money by being open, if we'd closed then we obviously would have lost all income but our major expense would have been covered by furlough. I think it got so bad on a couple of occasions that we actually had more staff than guests.

It became this weird battle between hostel managers/staff and senior management. They finally backed down and closed us all just before Christmas. But it lead to a lot of unnecessary stress, anger (towards senior management for making us do this, and people from high tiers for trying to travel), resentment, all for nothing. Or actually, less than nothing. There were times as well when I couldn't help thinking that by being open we (and by extension, me) were helping with the spread of the virus. And all for something so unimportant.

You are exactly right on the other point - the businesses do not gain from forcing their workers to keep stores open in any sense and actually lose out financially and with the resentment caused. The same thing happened last March and Costa ultimately shut their stores after a few days of struggling to keep them open. Let's see if that happens again this time.