When will this shit end?

[BobWillis2]

21 minutes ago, Andre91 said:

Our Principal has emailed out some updated details regarding the LFT/PCR results for schools: 

‘Lateral flow in school that is positive trumps a PCR and the positive lateral cannot be overruled by a negative PCR. Everyone has to self-isolate.

 

Positive lateral at home needs a PCR test. A negative PCR overrules a positive lateral taken at home.’ 
 

 

This is insane. 

[steviewevie]

 

[Andre91]

17 minutes ago, BobWillis2 said:

This is insane. 

It’s summarised info straight from an attached government document too. Madness. 

[gizmoman]

2 minutes ago, Andre91 said:

It’s summarised info straight from an attached government document too. Madness. 

Not mad if you are looking to justify vaccinating kids, more tests=more cases amongst schoolkids, vaccines are the answer.

[BobWillis2]

11 minutes ago, Andre91 said:

It’s summarised info straight from an attached government document too. Madness. 

If the LFD taken at school overrides the PCR result then what was the point in the PCR test at all?  
Also why not retest the home test with a LFD test in school if they’re so good? 
 

None of it makes any sense. 

[stuie]

1 hour ago, steviewevie said:

I guess he said something people didn't like.

The truth? 

[steviewevie]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56321537

[zahidf]

Hope the EU has evidence of the UK and US blocking vaccines for export...

[Reckoner]

A bit poor of Whitty to be making quips on Zero-Covid after the track record of his previous advice (acknowledging though that it might not have always been followed).

I think it’s fair though to say that the time has passed for the UK and that jabs in arms is a better strategy for a way out at the moment. My view has evolved here definitely with the success of the rollout and the newfound caution from the decision makers.

If the vaccination does the heavy lifting though  and new cases post-June are being genome sequenced, positive tested, traced and isolated, and people arriving into the UK are having some type of mitigation measure imposed, whether that be mandatory quarantine, testing, vaccinated pax only or a combination etc then you are pretty much following all the steps required anyway to keep cases low.

[stuie]

1 hour ago, Gregfc15 said:

A bit poor of Whitty to be making quips on Zero-Covid after the track record of his previous advice (acknowledging though that it might not have always been followed).

What’s been wrong with his previous advice though? That’s why I didn’t understand the trending hashtag last night. He’s always advised on the side of caution. If UK.gov ignored his advice, that’s not on him! 

[Reckoner]

1 hour ago, stuie said:

What’s been wrong with his previous advice though? That’s why I didn’t understand the trending hashtag last night. He’s always advised on the side of caution. If UK.gov ignored his advice, that’s not on him! 

For me, I meant that more from the angle that he is the Chief Medical Officer and co-chair of SAGE for a country that has 120k dead, been in lockdown for much of last year and all of this one, an economy in the toilet and is generally considered a good textbook example of what not to do which i admit is probably a little unfair to him and snide of me from here in my zero-covid life.

The hashtag seemed to stem from the fact that he managed to annoy everybody in some way with answers last night; Zero-Covid doomers , anti-lock-downers, June 21 and done types, timetable fast-trackers etc 

I appreciate that isn't all on him and it's more complicated than that, but as CMO he is in the best position to be providing frank and fearless advice to those in charge. I agree its a rock/hard place situation if he provides advice and they don't listen, but you also can't sit back and watch things disintegrate if you are ignored. Would flipping a table/resigning/leaking to the press have changed anything? Probably not, and he may have thought he was providing better service by continuing to be a moderating voice in the room, but I don't think it's unfair that some more scrutiny is applied to his role. Broadly speaking he seemed too conservative initially but generally correct in September and onwards.

To me the worry is a broader framework of decision making throughout the whole pandemic where they think they can control the spread of virus through the community which nobody has been able to do till this point. It hasn't been successful till now so it seems a worry to continue this in the future. The vaccines should change this, and it will be much easier to control and manage the spread with mitigating measures of varying degrees. I hope so, but knowing how infectious it is , i can't reconcile why you wouldn't be trying to squash it as best as possible when you have the chance and why you'd be so accepting of another surge leading to 30k more lost lives. I'm obviously heavily influenced in my view by my ties to two countries that have done relatively well (so far...) so i accept this is not how everyone sees things.

I've gone a bit off tangent here. Linking back to the original point, it just felt a bit poor of him to be so dismissive of Zero-Covid strategies based on the comparisons between countries including the one he has a fairly important role in. There are a number of legitimate reasons why it might not now, or even historically have been the right decision for the UK. He's smarter than "zero is impossible so how can you have zero covid". It misses the point, and you'd assume he knows that which was disappointing.

 

 

Edited March 10, 2021 by Gregfc15

[Ozanne]

2 hours ago, stuie said:

What’s been wrong with his previous advice though? That’s why I didn’t understand the trending hashtag last night. He’s always advised on the side of caution. If UK.gov ignored his advice, that’s not on him! 

That hashtag was trending because Whitty said that there would be another wave in the summer after we open up again. 

[mcshed]

8 hours ago, zahidf said:

Hope the EU has evidence of the UK and US blocking vaccines for export...

It's inflammatory language certainly but the US and the UK aren't exporting vaccines at the moment, their governments haven't banned anything they have just signed contracts that give them control of all of the vaccine supply that has been manufactured there so far. So not a legal ban on exports just an economic one.

[JoeyT]

Looks like the delivery has come in...

 

[Fuzzy Afro]

Here comes the ramp up 

[Ozanne]

 

[Fuzzy Afro]

4 hours ago, stuie said:

What’s been wrong with his previous advice though? That’s why I didn’t understand the trending hashtag last night. He’s always advised on the side of caution. If UK.gov ignored his advice, that’s not on him! 

Whilst the government did ignore advice to lock down earlier in both September/October and December, leading to embarrassing u-turns when the NHS got into trouble, it probably IS fair to criticise the scientists over the first wave.

 

SAGE minutes reveal that the government did follow the scientific advice on wave 1. The problem was that the advice was tailored to a flu pandemic and was based around fomite transmission (I.e. big focus on hand washing and the idea that face coverings are counter productive) as opposed to airborne transmission and perhaps more importantly, the focus on mitigating the virus to reach herd immunity rather than trying to contain and suppress it. 
 

In fact the government wanted to lock down before the scientists officially recommended it. Dominic Cummings bizarrely turned up to SAGE meetings to advocate a lockdown just weeks after his “herd immunity, protect the economy and if some pensioners die then so be it” remark.

 I think at the future enquiry Whitty and Vallance will be thrown under the bus at least with regards to their behaviour in early to mid March. 

[Toilet Duck]

3 hours ago, Gregfc15 said:

For me, I meant that more from the angle that he is the Chief Medical Officer and co-chair of SAGE for a country that has 120k dead, been in lockdown for much of last year and all of this one, an economy in the toilet and is generally considered a good textbook example of what not to do which i admit is probably a little unfair to him and snide of me from here in my zero-covid life.

The hashtag seemed to stem from the fact that he managed to annoy everybody in some way with answers last night; Zero-Covid doomers , anti-lock-downers, June 21 and done types, timetable fast-trackers etc 

I appreciate that isn't all on him and it's more complicated than that, but as CMO he is in the best position to be providing frank and fearless advice to those in charge. I agree its a rock/hard place situation if he provides advice and they don't listen, but you also can't sit back and watch things disintegrate if you are ignored. Would flipping a table/resigning/leaking to the press have changed anything? Probably not, and he may have thought he was providing better service by continuing to be a moderating voice in the room, but I don't think it's unfair that some more scrutiny is applied to his role. Broadly speaking he seemed too conservative initially but generally correct in September and onwards.

To me the worry is a broader framework of decision making throughout the whole pandemic where they think they can control the spread of virus through the community which nobody has been able to do till this point. It hasn't been successful till now so it seems a worry to continue this in the future. The vaccines should change this, and it will be much easier to control and manage the spread with mitigating measures of varying degrees. I hope so, but knowing how infectious it is , i can't reconcile why you wouldn't be trying to squash it as best as possible when you have the chance and why you'd be so accepting of another surge leading to 30k more lost lives. I'm obviously heavily influenced in my view by my ties to two countries that have done relatively well (so far...) so i accept this is not how everyone sees things.

I've gone a bit off tangent here. Linking back to the original point, it just felt a bit poor of him to be so dismissive of Zero-Covid strategies based on the comparisons between countries including the one he has a fairly important role in. There are a number of legitimate reasons why it might not now, or even historically have been the right decision for the UK. He's smarter than "zero is impossible so how can you have zero covid". It misses the point, and you'd assume he knows that which was disappointing.

 

 

I didn’t really interpret it like that though, I got the impression that he was referring to the future. Zero-Covid is a temporary strategy until you have another way out, it’s not something you can do forever and the biology of the virus and the nature of our vaccines for it suggest it ain’t going anywhere for a long time. You asked me at the start was there anything scientifically wrong with the quarantine approach that Australia was following and I said, no it’s scientifically sound, but if you do it, you really have to do it! At that time there was all sorts of shenanigans in quarantine hotels and Melbourne had its outbreak. I remember saying I was surprised, as border control in Australia was something I had always experienced as completely no nonsense! That was tightened up considerably though and it’s worked brilliantly. 

But, would you be happy with only a trickle of people allowed in and out of the country for who knows how long (years in reality) after everyone is vaccinated until the virus is eliminated? That’s zero Covid/zero risk. What I thought he was saying was if it’s not zero, then what is it? What number? Society has accepted that people die (it’s pretty much the only thing in life we can guarantee), so where do we draw the line with this disease? And how do we attain that? and I guess that’s vaccine controlled disease incidence and mortality, surveillance like we have for other notifiable diseases and adaptation of our vaccine control strategy to react to possible threats. But if that’s the reality after everyone that will get vaccinated is, then that inevitably leads to future flare ups and makes Covid one more cause of death in the vulnerable unless we keep shutting down whenever it happens until it’s gone completely (and it doesn’t drift too much). I just think that’s unattainable in the short to medium term (maybe cumulatively possible with repeated, updated vaccinations over the next decade, or maybe the virus finds its equilibrium in that time). I don’t think he was having a go at countries that used complete suppression as a means to get through the last year, more that it has to end at some point (whereas zero Covid advocates suggest we should be eliminating it now and keeping restrictions to maintain that until it is gone for good...something so far that has only worked for smallpox, should have worked for measles and polio, but hasn’t yet...and they are fairly different viruses to this one too in biological terms). 

I didn’t see the whole thing though, so may be taking this out of context, but the bit I did see seemed reasonable to me, and that as a society, we decide what level of risk we are willing to accept (same as we do for flu, pneumonia and other potentially fatal infectious diseases). I would expect that once Australia and NZ have vaccinated their populations, they’ll open up to the world again, and that will mean cases, morbidity and mortality as some people won’t get vaccinated and others will but will be in that % for whom it doesn’t work very well.

I hope you do open up again! my wife’s cousin and her family were supposed to be heading over to stay with us from Brisbane last Easter...then it was Christmas...then it was this Easter...now it’s maybe next Christmas! And we were supposed to be heading over this summer, but hopefully next year...haven’t been down under in over 10 years and I’d like to get back! 

[Ozanne]

 

[steviewevie]

12 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

 

they did a good job on the testing...it was the tracing side of it that wasn't so good...

[JoeyT]

 

[steviewevie]

and actually they have improved tracing quite a bit I think....but then it's getting people to self isolate....

[zahidf]

4 minutes ago, JoeyT said:

 

50% chance of June conditions being met seems pessimistic to me. Politically, if deaths are low, i don't see how that can be changed at the moment

[Toilet Duck]

4 hours ago, Gregfc15 said:

For me, I meant that more from the angle that he is the Chief Medical Officer and co-chair of SAGE for a country that has 120k dead, been in lockdown for much of last year and all of this one, an economy in the toilet and is generally considered a good textbook example of what not to do which i admit is probably a little unfair to him and snide of me from here in my zero-covid life.

The hashtag seemed to stem from the fact that he managed to annoy everybody in some way with answers last night; Zero-Covid doomers , anti-lock-downers, June 21 and done types, timetable fast-trackers etc 

I appreciate that isn't all on him and it's more complicated than that, but as CMO he is in the best position to be providing frank and fearless advice to those in charge. I agree its a rock/hard place situation if he provides advice and they don't listen, but you also can't sit back and watch things disintegrate if you are ignored. Would flipping a table/resigning/leaking to the press have changed anything? Probably not, and he may have thought he was providing better service by continuing to be a moderating voice in the room, but I don't think it's unfair that some more scrutiny is applied to his role. Broadly speaking he seemed too conservative initially but generally correct in September and onwards.

To me the worry is a broader framework of decision making throughout the whole pandemic where they think they can control the spread of virus through the community which nobody has been able to do till this point. It hasn't been successful till now so it seems a worry to continue this in the future. The vaccines should change this, and it will be much easier to control and manage the spread with mitigating measures of varying degrees. I hope so, but knowing how infectious it is , i can't reconcile why you wouldn't be trying to squash it as best as possible when you have the chance and why you'd be so accepting of another surge leading to 30k more lost lives. I'm obviously heavily influenced in my view by my ties to two countries that have done relatively well (so far...) so i accept this is not how everyone sees things.

I've gone a bit off tangent here. Linking back to the original point, it just felt a bit poor of him to be so dismissive of Zero-Covid strategies based on the comparisons between countries including the one he has a fairly important role in. There are a number of legitimate reasons why it might not now, or even historically have been the right decision for the UK. He's smarter than "zero is impossible so how can you have zero covid". It misses the point, and you'd assume he knows that which was disappointing.

 

 

Sorry, I keep thinking you are in Australia for some reason rather than Singapore! 

[zahidf]

7 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

they did a good job on the testing...it was the tracing side of it that wasn't so good...

Yeah most the money seems to be on the testing aspect of things