When will this shit end?

[Crazyfool01]

A fun day at work ... (not ) 2 more cases and I think around 10 were sent home to self isolate or the app pinged them today .... I think that might be described as an outbreak soon ... not like I didn’t warn them !!! 😞 and yes I know it’s hard to stop it coming in ... but quite frankly the covid secure measures are appalling 

[Homer]

2 hours ago, northernringo said:

You can see he has a pretty big heel on his shoe too.

It says a lot about how ridiculous Trump is that he also wears lifts, despite being over 6ft (who gets small man syndrome at over 6ft?!). And he also wears a girdle. This is the reason why he often appears to be 'toppling forwards' in photos.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Homer

[squirrelarmy]

2 minutes ago, Homer said:

It says a lot about how ridiculous Trump is that he also wears lifts, despite being over 6ft (who gets small man syndrome at over 6ft?!). And he also wears a girdle. This is the reason why he often appears to be 'toppling forwards' in photos.

Melanoma Trump is also about 6 foot tall. He won’t want to look small in public next to her. 

[st dan]

16 minutes ago, ace56blaa said:

The thing to note is that No Time to Die is not the only film being delayed today. Bond, the Uncharted movie, edgar wrights new film and tons of others have been delayed too. 

The thing is once you put something like James bond, it will make a loss, because of the high budget, Disney did it with Mulan and made a huge loss, Warner Brothers is simultaneously releasing all films on HBO max and cinemas, but they got tons of backlash from everyone else in hollywood, including Christophr Nolan who made Tenet for them, now not working with Warner Bros anymore. So as much as studios might want to release on streaming, its a complicated situation. Also I'd always rather see something like bond in a cinema. They are probably thinking this is the last time they'll have to delay because of vaccine rollout 

Also ‘No Time To Die’ isn’t the most appropriate title for a film to be released just now, in any format. Genuinely think this will be taken into consideration when delaying the release again. 

[Toilet Duck]

1 hour ago, dingbat2 said:

I have a naive question, sorry I am just a bit confused! 

If the new variant initially had an r-rate of say 1.7, that means 10 people who have the virus spread it to 17 people who in turn spread it to 29 people, and so cases go up exponentially.

If the first does of a vaccine has a 75% efficacy rate, then 75% of the 17 above wont get it (assuming everyone is vaccinated) so only 4 get the virus who then pass it on to 1 or 2 people. so r-rate becomes 1.7 * .25 = 0.4, so does the virus then fizzle out (assuming no further mutations) . Does the virus then effectively disappear or at worst only affect a few people who in turn don't spread it? Or will all of the people who have the vaccination still be carriers even though they don't get the virus?

Won't there therefore be a target rate for r (being a combination of the rate from the variant * restrictions measures in place * effectiveness of the jab) where the virus will be allowed to go round the population on the basis it wont really spread any further, and people can only get it from importing it from areas/people not already vaccinated. And even if they do import it, it wont spread it anyway. So simplistically the r-rate is a*b*c,

a being the r-rate the most prevalent variant in the population currently

b being the impact of current restrictions 

c being a combination the efficacy of the jab and percentage of people who have had that jab 

... and when a*b*c that goes below certain levels restrictions could start be lifted (e.g. , <0.8 tier 4 restrictions lifted, < 0.6 tier 3 restrictions lifted, <0.4 all restrictions lifted). 

 

Howdy, we do use R_E and R_T to give us an idea of what is happening in terms of transmission, but the major problem with picking a transmission or reproduction rate as a threshold for determining tightening or loosening restriction is the variability in those estimates. A while back we discussed how variation in the reproduction rate (K) meant that some people were essentially super spreaders, but others weren't. The new variants appear to behave a bit differently and anecdotally, reports indicate that in previous waves, while household contacts did get infected, it's much more frequent in this wave and entire families are being admitted to hospital. So, maybe the variants that are starting to take over now have less variability in transmission due to being more infectious, but it's still early days on that (models suggest that's the case, but the hard data is still being worked on...I think the modelling data is pretty convincing at this stage though).

If the reproduction rate is below 1, then yes, eventually widespread infection will fizzle out (how far below 1 it stays determines how quickly you get there), but that doesn't mean elimination. There's other places the virus can hide  e.g animal reservoirs, new people are born (who are not immune), immune function waxes and wanes (age, time of year, lots of things) and the vaccines don't provide 100% sterilising immunity, so some vaccinated people will still get infected and probably pass it on (how many, we still don't know for sure...and this is one of the major flaws in your calculation above, as we have no clear idea yet what the vaccines will do to the reproduction rate, only what they do to development of symptomatic disease/severe disease and death). There's suggestions that by by vaccinating the adult population (and probably adolescents towards the end of the vaccination programme), we force the virus to become an early childhood disease (with hopefully the same kind of mild symptoms that we see in that age group currently...as the father of an asthmatic 5 year old, this frightens me a lot!), but how that plays out is a complete unknown at the moment (childhood vaccinations are pencilled in for the end of the current vaccination programme, but whether they happen is entirely dependent on the companies providing data on safety and efficacy on that age group, which they don't have yet). So, rather than picking what kind of restrictions are needed based on specific effective reproduction rate targets, hospital admissions and fatalities will still be the primary measure used to determine what we can and can't do. There's also the unknown level of morbidity associated with mild infection in low risk individuals (those last on the list for vaccination), so while most expect things to loosen significantly once the at risk population has at least 1 shot (I'd define that as >45s plus those with specific co-morbidities below that age), the same curveball that always been there still remains (and new variants further complicate matters!).

If we were to just pick an R_E to open up, currently in Ireland it's between 0.5 and 0.8 which would be tier3/tier4 in the above plan...however, while the case numbers have dropped significantly from our world-leading peak a few weeks ago, they are still 10x higher than when we came out of our previous restrictions at the start of December and hospital occupancy remains very high (though stabilising now outside of ICU). So, we are nowhere near starting to open back up again (March would be the earliest I'd expect, though they may look at schools after the mid-term, I have my doubts though)...but to come back to your question about how vaccination might influence all of this, as more and more people become vaccinated (in addition to those who have been previously infected as well as expected seasonality), yes, there will come a time (likely between Easter and Early summer) where a critical mass of people are protected from disease (not necessarily infection) and "b" in your calculation can start to be removed from the equation (if death were the only thing we were trying to avoid, "b" could be removed earlier, but it's not the only outcome we'd like to avoid). After that, depending on the levels of morbidity in low risk groups, "a" almost becomes moot (if there's still an avalanche of young people either too sick to work, with long term side effects or being admitted to hospital, then unfortunately we'll probably have to spend the summer vaccinating them too...at the rate you guys are currently going, >45s are due to have 1 shot by the end of April or thereabouts and I would expect things to get a lot better from that point on). 

[Homer]

10 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

Melanoma Trump is also about 6 foot tall. He won’t want to look small in public next to her. 

He's also shorter than Obama - as nicely illustrated here. (Trump is actually taller than Putin - but something said in their meeting made the him cower for some reason. The minutes were also destroyed.)

[Ozanne]

31 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

A fun day at work ... (not ) 2 more cases and I think around 10 were sent home to self isolate or the app pinged them today .... I think that might be described as an outbreak soon ... not like I didn’t warn them !!! 😞 and yes I know it’s hard to stop it coming in ... but quite frankly the covid secure measures are appalling 

Sorry mate they’ll learn to listen on day, hopefully! Only 2 more shifts left for you till some time off. 

[Crazyfool01]

2 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Sorry mate they’ll learn to listen on day, hopefully! Only 2 more shifts left for you till some time off. 

yep indeed .... some relief for a bit ... cheers for last night by the way 🙂 

[Ozanne]

 

[Copperface]

1 hour ago, eFestivals said:

it'll be after the May local elections, if it happens soon. 

Tories aren't looking good for those, which is why Spaffer is desperate to delay them until October.

 

Think the Tories want to get them out of the way before the full impact of their crap  becomes apparent.

Councils are begging them to delay, but they are currently refusing any delay and have rebuffed any approaches on both health and/or financial grounds.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Copperface

[Ozanne]

2 minutes ago, Copperface said:

Think the Tories want to get them out of the way before the full impact of their crap  becomes apparent.

Councils are begging them to delay, but they are currently refusing any delay and have rebuffed any approaches on both health and/or financial grounds.

The electoral commission wants them to go ahead in May doesn’t it?

[Copperface]

4 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

The electoral commission wants them to go ahead in May doesn’t it?

Councils provide all the infrastructure and personnel to run them as well as pay for them. 

This came though to me the other day and  gives a bit more background:

https://www.lgcplus.com/politics/governance-and-structure/minister-tells-mps-high-bar-needed-for-postponing-local-elections-13-01-2021/

 

You'd think if they really wanted them delayed they would agree straight off and pass the required legislation.

Edited January 22, 2021 by Copperface

[JoeyT]

R number now below 1... (maybe)

 

[Ozanne]

4 minutes ago, Copperface said:

Councils provide all the infrastructure and personnel to run them as well as pay for them. 

This came though to me the other day and  gives a bit more background:

https://www.lgcplus.com/politics/governance-and-structure/minister-tells-mps-high-bar-needed-for-postponing-local-elections-13-01-2021/

 

You'd think if they really wanted them delayed they would agree straight off and pass the required legislation.

That’s interesting, thanks.

I agree if they wanted to delay them then they could. There are ways for the elections to go ahead as we’ve seen around the world. Besides we have postal ballots too. 

[zahidf]

3 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

R number now below 1... (maybe)

 

These are normally a couple of weeks out as well, so the real R rate is probably lower

[Fuzzy Afro]

1 hour ago, steviewevie said:

Sunak needs to move soon as he could be very unpopular in a few years time...

He’ll probably pull a high profile resignation when things are back to normal, so he gets remembered as the guy who gave us all phree munney and not as the next guy who put taxes up. Then he’ll run for leadership. 

35 minutes ago, st dan said:

So from reports/interviews etc, which front benchers are pushing for restrictions to end as soon as possible (maybe March) and which are still taking a more cautious approach? 

From what’s been mentioned in the past, Michael Gove and Matt Hancock are the two most cautious members of the cabinet, always favouring a slow release from restrictions and a very quick entry into them when data starts to go the wrong way. On the other hand Rishi Sunak is the most in favour of opening up, flanked by Priti Patel, Grant Shapps and Alok Sharma. I’m not sure where other members such as Dominic Raab/Robert Jenrick/George Eustice/Liz Truss lie on this and I assume Gavin Williamson is just left in the corner at cabinet meetings with the biscuit tin so he probably doesn’t get a say.

 

The great covid centrist in it all is Boris Johnson of course. I think he just does whatever he’s told to by whoever he spoke to most recently. 

[Ozanne]

 

[fraybentos1]

Over 400k vaccinations yesterday!

[fraybentos1]

 

[zahidf]

Just now, fraybentos1 said:

 

Oooh great news.

[Copperface]

2 hours ago, Leyrulion said:

This is what I mean by the poor public communication on herd immunity. You say herd immunity isn't possible and then essentially go on to describe herd immunity. 

Herd immunity doesn't always mean no disease in the community, it means there are enough protected people to stop the disease spreading quickly into high risk groups. 

Take measles, most people will have been vaccinated against it in the u.k but it still exists it's just not generally an imminent public health threat any more.

This is a pretty interesting briefing which covers the whole strategy

 Even as vaccines are being deployed at scale, continuing with other infection prevention and control measures remains vital until a sufficient number of people have been vaccinated and the desired population impact of the vaccine has been achieved. Vaccination must be seen as part of a balanced combination strategy for preventing and suppressing infection. 

https://www.adph.org.uk/2021/01/explainer-covid-19-vaccination/

[fraybentos1]

7 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Oooh great news.

All about consistently keeping it this sort of level now. Unfortunately likely to be a dip at the weekend again but hopefully less severe than last weekend. Time will tell!

[JoeyT]

6 minutes ago, fraybentos1 said:

 

This is amazing news.

Quote

This is a record daily figure, both for England only and for the UK. For England it's an increase of 30% on the figure reported last Friday. For the UK, it takes the total number of 1st doses past five million and confirms the rate is over 2m a week.

 

[zahidf]

Just now, fraybentos1 said:

All about consistently keeping it this sort of level now. Unfortunately likely to be a dip at the weekend again but hopefully less severe than last weekend. Time will tell!

Todays should be 400k ( reported tomorrow). Some supply issues next week potentially as well. Still, happy its going well so far. 

[zahidf]

I personally think it will be 1 or 2 million short myself still, but fair play to them

Edited January 22, 2021 by zahidf