When will this shit end?

[Quark]

Just now, eFestivals said:

thanks. 🙂 

De nada. Just FYI my parents are in their 70s and my dad has them fully booked for deliveries until the end of Jan. So you've got no excuse 😂

[steviewevie]

2 hours ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

Government sources now suggesting all over 50’s will be vaccinated by mid March 

Fake news. It's end of March.

[squirrelarmy]

13 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

I think it will be unless the snow up North makes a significant dent in it ....  hopefully if they cant use it for a few days supply gets moved south and then moved back North when it becomes accessible again .... dont know quite how the supply chain works or if it can respond like that .... we need all the vaccine to be used and not chucked in the bin 

Everything is moving up here again. We don’t let a foot of snow stop us for long. 

[fraybentos1]

Just now, squirrelarmy said:

Everything is moving up here again. We don’t let a foot of snow stop us for long. 

Today's figures will be for yesterday though where it seemed to be heavy snow.

That said, I do think we will surpass the 300k mark today and over 400 odd next week!

[xxialac]

I'm certain we will be able to travel to at least Europe by the Summer but also pretty certain will mean extra faff like tests, forms etc.

I'd be booking a holiday now when they're cheap albeit still makes sense to get the hotel on a fully refundable basis.

[mcshed]

20 minutes ago, crazyfool1 said:

nip in to greggs

Can't do that up here anymore either, they have to serve you at the door. 

I have mixed feelings on the one hand the more we can do to reduce any possible transmissions the better and so whilst the effects of this are likely to be minimal everything we can do helps but I suspect there are more transmissions being caused by people unnecessarily in work and by some people just not following the rules so these further tightening around the edges seem a little like it misses the point.

[rascalpete]

4 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Fake news. It's end of March.

And end of March ties in with Easter....

[fraybentos1]

Scottish Gov figures said w/c 18/1 they'll receive around 325k doses of the Oxford and Pfizer vaccines combined so I imagine that would mean over 3 million for England next week to be available for use.

[Crazyfool01]

2 minutes ago, mcshed said:

Can't do that up here anymore either, they have to serve you at the door. 

I have mixed feelings on the one hand the more we can do to reduce any possible transmissions the better and so whilst the effects of this are likely to be minimal everything we can do helps but I suspect there are more transmissions being caused by people unnecessarily in work and by some people just not following the rules so these further tightening around the edges seem a little like it misses the point.

oh for sure .... definitely loads more people out and about and they arent all nipping to greggs and doing click and collect .... probably nipping to greggs because they are at work .....

[steviewevie]

A lot of Europe is so bloody hot over the summer I really don't know why anyone bothers.

[st dan]

My neighbours daughter recently tested positive after an outbreak in her workplace (6 confirmed positives in a team of 14). She works in an office for a small local company, and she worked at home with no issues from March - July last year in lockdown 1.0. 
There was absolutely no need for her to be in the office this time, except her boss insisted they had to. She’s since passed it on to her whole household, including her vulnerable brother.  Just scandalous. 

[Ozanne]

3 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

A lot of Europe is so bloody hot over the summer I really don't know why anyone bothers.

Iceland is pretty?

[Fuzzy Afro]

On the takeaways thing, there are pros and cons, need to see where the skills tip:

 

Pros:

- Allows businesses to keep trading, keeping people off furlough and benefits the economy

- Allowing anything that resembles normality, e.g. allowing people their weekly or monthly takeaway, is going to help people’s mental health

- Probable minimal impact on transmission of the virus.

 

Cons:

- Will have some impact on transmission, albeit minimal 

- More reasons for people being out of their home

 

I guess the fact that R already seems to be below 1 is the clinching factor for me in why takeaways should be allowed to stay open, but I do agree with the mitigations that Scotland has taken.
 

That’s to say that takeaway food should either be delivery, drive-through, or click and collect but given at the doorway. No entering a takeaway and queueing etc. That seems to be a fair balance I reckon. 

[steviewevie]

1 minute ago, st dan said:

My neighbours daughter recently tested positive after an outbreak in her workplace (6 confirmed positives in a team of 14). She works in an office for a small local company, and she worked at home with no issues from March - July last year in lockdown 1.0. 
There was absolutely no need for her to be in the office this time, except her boss insisted they had to. She’s since passed it on to her whole household, including her vulnerable brother.  Just scandalous. 

her boss is a twat and should be charged or something for that...

[steviewevie]

2 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

Iceland is pretty?

ok, apart from Iceland.

[DeanoL]

28 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

The other consideration is that being able to pick food up keeps these businesses going. As ever, that is always going to be a consideration even if people don’t want it to be, and something that needs to be weighed against the risk. 

Yeah. There's no doubt closing takeout and click and collect would reduce numbers a bit. You reduce the number of direct contacts, and there's fewer reasons for people to be out. But it's not going to be a big reduction. Meanwhile the economic damage it does would be significant.

The problems is that all the measures we have left fit into that category: minor reduction in numbers at a large cost (economic or otherwise).

The flip side of this is that we probably only need a minor reduction to get us over the "NHS being overwhelmed" hump...

 

[st dan]

1 minute ago, steviewevie said:

her boss is a twat and should be charged or something for that...

Absolutely - she’s just a young girl so she wasn’t really in a position to fight her cause. Her dad is furious, but doesn’t look like there is any action to be taken or anything as they hadn’t broken any rules as such. 

[Crazyfool01]

1 minute ago, DeanoL said:

Yeah. There's no doubt closing takeout and click and collect would reduce numbers a bit. You reduce the number of direct contacts, and there's fewer reasons for people to be out. But it's not going to be a big reduction. Meanwhile the economic damage it does would be significant.

The problems is that all the measures we have left fit into that category: minor reduction in numbers at a large cost (economic or otherwise).

The flip side of this is that we probably only need a minor reduction to get us over the "NHS being overwhelmed" hump...

 

there is also potential transmission between all the people at those workplaces where the space is often not very good to enable social distancing .... so it isn't just the short interactions between customer and staff , its the longer interaction times between staff that would be a greater risk I would say 

[zahidf]

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-supreme-court-backs-small-firms-over-business-interruption-insurance-claims-12188322

Insurers will have to pay out on the business interruption clauses from lockdown

 

[Ozanne]

7 minutes ago, st dan said:

Absolutely - she’s just a young girl so she wasn’t really in a position to fight her cause. Her dad is furious, but doesn’t look like there is any action to be taken or anything as they hadn’t broken any rules as such. 

Let’s hope they all pull through especially the vulnerable brother. 

[Fuzzy Afro]

9 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Yeah. There's no doubt closing takeout and click and collect would reduce numbers a bit. You reduce the number of direct contacts, and there's fewer reasons for people to be out. But it's not going to be a big reduction. Meanwhile the economic damage it does would be significant.

The problems is that all the measures we have left fit into that category: minor reduction in numbers at a large cost (economic or otherwise).

The flip side of this is that we probably only need a minor reduction to get us over the "NHS being overwhelmed" hump...

 

Do you genuinely think that having takeaways open is the difference between the NHS being overwhelmed or not? 

1 minute ago, zahidf said:

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-supreme-court-backs-small-firms-over-business-interruption-insurance-claims-12188322

Insurers will have to pay out on the business interruption clauses from lockdown

 

This is a genuinely horrendous decision and anyone who disagrees has completely misunderstood how insurance works. 

[zahidf]

1 minute ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

Do you genuinely think that having takeaways open is the difference between the NHS being overwhelmed or not? 

This is a genuinely horrendous decision and anyone who disagrees has completely misunderstood how insurance works. 

Why? the insurers tried to get out of paying and were told they had to pay

[eFestivals]

4 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

Do you genuinely think that having takeaways open is the difference between the NHS being overwhelmed or not? 

it could be.

Simple fact is that any place where people might come into contact with each other is a transmission risk.

Reducing the transmission opportunities reduces the demand on hospitals.

Edited January 15, 2021 by eFestivals

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

9 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

Yeah. There's no doubt closing takeout and click and collect would reduce numbers a bit. You reduce the number of direct contacts, and there's fewer reasons for people to be out. But it's not going to be a big reduction. Meanwhile the economic damage it does would be significant.

The problems is that all the measures we have left fit into that category: minor reduction in numbers at a large cost (economic or otherwise).

The flip side of this is that we probably only need a minor reduction to get us over the "NHS being overwhelmed" hump...

 

We all know the best way to tackle the virus is if they nailed our doors shut so we couldn’t leave the house at all. That would get the virus completely under control.

The problem is that would massively affect people’s mental health and screw the economy even further.

It’s a balance, but changing one thing will have a positive impact in one place but a negative elsewhere. It would be really simple if it was only about the virus, but it isn’t.

[DeanoL]

5 minutes ago, Fuzzy Afro said:

Do you genuinely think that having takeaways open is the difference between the NHS being overwhelmed or not? 

It could be.

The thing is we're not looking at the NHS being massively overwhelmed are we? We're looking at demand being slightly too high for them to cope with, even with the accepted reduction of non-COVID treatments and so on. So we don't need to reduce it much. If demand is going to be 1% more than it can cope with, and shutting takeaways drops demand by 1%, then yes, it stops it being overwhelmed.