When will this shit end?

[Copperface]

22 minutes ago, efcfanwirral said:

Wow that's good news - got to admit I figured they'd be near permanent 

I know it's surprising but that alt-right Twitter account hasn't actually got that exactly right:

...face masks in closed spaces will still be required, with a final decision on the matter to be made in the coming two weeks.

Additionally, limits on entry and exit from the country will remain in place and potentially even be made more stringent to prevent the potential entry of new COVID-variants.

But, he says, the return to normal comes with an “asterisk.”

“The Health Ministry is working to continue the low morbidity and will continue to comprehensively observe the situation to prevent an outbreak. Of course, if there is an outbreak, we will have to go back.”

 

While that might be well on the road to 2019 type normality, that is not 'all restrictions' being lifted.

[Copperface]

21 minutes ago, eFestivals said:

Anyone heard anything from the tory death group lately 

Steve Baker has moved on to knocking the cost of dealing with climate change, promoting the launch of GBNews and attacking the BBC.

[efcfanwirral]

10 minutes ago, Copperface said:

I know it's surprising but that alt-right Twitter account hasn't actually got that exactly right:

...face masks in closed spaces will still be required, with a final decision on the matter to be made in the coming two weeks.

Additionally, limits on entry and exit from the country will remain in place and potentially even be made more stringent to prevent the potential entry of new COVID-variants.

But, he says, the return to normal comes with an “asterisk.”

“The Health Ministry is working to continue the low morbidity and will continue to comprehensively observe the situation to prevent an outbreak. Of course, if there is an outbreak, we will have to go back.”

 

While that might be well on the road to 2019 type normality, that is not 'all restrictions' being lifted.

It's the green pass I'm bothered about - there'll be covid restrictions like masks for years, I suspect with rolling restrictions each winter as our NHS can't cope even in normal times 

[Fuzzy Afro]

7 minutes ago, efcfanwirral said:

It's the green pass I'm bothered about - there'll be covid restrictions like masks for years, I suspect with rolling restrictions each winter as our NHS can't cope even in normal times 

Face coverings are getting abolished in most settings on 21st June. I’m sure a small percentage of people will voluntarily continue to wear them.

 

Will they get reintroduced in the winter? I think so, but perhaps it will be advisory rather than legal. Vallance has said that face coverings could be the first restriction to come back if they need to put the brakes on in winter rather than social distancing and lockdowns. Note that this is in shops im talking about. They’re staying on trains after 21/6/21

[gizmoman]

1 hour ago, zahidf said:

 

Would be great news if true, sadly it isn't, they recently extended the green pass to the end of the year,

https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/18052021

[efcfanwirral]

5 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

Would be great news if true, sadly it isn't, they recently extended the green pass to the end of the year,

https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/18052021

https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/green-passports-purple-note-restrictions-to-expire-june-1-edelstein-668924/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Some weird stuff going on! I was surprised at the idea that they'd scrap them - why would you give up something like that? Must be the same as the different sides briefing hugely different things to the media here 

[Copperface]

2 minutes ago, gizmoman said:

Would be great news if true, sadly it isn't, they recently extended the green pass to the end of the year,

https://www.gov.il/en/departments/news/18052021

Yup, looks like a bit of confusion and fake news being spread.

'Over the last few hours, false announcements, supposedly on behalf of the Ministry of Health, have been circulated.'

The Green Pass thing was not addressed - might be true, might not. All a little strange.

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium-most-covid-restrictions-to-be-lifted-in-israel-next-week-1.9836321

[eFestivals]

53 minutes ago, Copperface said:

Steve Baker has moved on to knocking the cost of dealing with climate change, promoting the launch of GBNews and attacking the BBC.

If he has a problem with dishonest journos he should try looking closer to home 

[steviewevie]

Dom posting top secret graphs now...

 

[gizmoman]

37 minutes ago, efcfanwirral said:

https://m.jpost.com/breaking-news/green-passports-purple-note-restrictions-to-expire-june-1-edelstein-668924/amp?__twitter_impression=true

Some weird stuff going on! I was surprised at the idea that they'd scrap them - why would you give up something like that? Must be the same as the different sides briefing hugely different things to the media here 

Maybe it is true! His facebook page has the announcement, (I'm assuming it hasn't been hacked)

https://www.facebook.com/YuliEdelstein

Seems a strange way to make a major announcement though, the comments suggest they are doing it because they were going to lose a legal challenge, very interesting development.

[zahidf]

London New Cross Inn have been told they're allowed full capacity from June 22nd but if variants set it back will be a month later. Good to know they've actually been informed tho I thought things would be up in the air. Fingers crossed anyway.

[stuartbert two hats]

The MEN haven't been particularly alarmist and have been doing some pretty good reporting throughout this pandemic, but give that these are the numbers, what's the headline you would go for, given the big story in the region?

Now, I might be tempted to mention the first daily drop in Bolton for weeks, but what do they go with?

https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/latest-coronavirus-infection-rates-eight-20661591

"The latest coronavirus infection rates as eight out of ten Greater Manchester boroughs see rises"

Not hysterical, but really not focusing on the main story - which also happens to be a positive one. It's hard to get out of the habit of chasing gloom, I guess.

[zahidf]

"Admitted "

 

[steviewevie]

 

[steviewevie]

 

[BobWillis2]

Government PR is in overdrive trying to drown out Cummings with good news. 

[Ozanne]

2 hours ago, steviewevie said:

Dom posting top secret graphs now...

 

It's gonna get very interesting over the next few days with all the bits coming from Cummings, it looks like he has a lot of evidence to support some off his claims as well.

[Ryan1984]

Yes, they are on a charm offensive right now. Surely Dominic of Barnard Castle has one major mic drop moment prepared for Wednesday.

[steviewevie]

From those John Burn-Murdoch tweets...

overall takeaway from this preliminary vaccine efficacy data remains:
• First dose protection looks be around one-third lower against B.1.617.2, both for Pfizer and AstraZeneca
• Second dose protection holds up pretty well, both for Pfizer and AstraZeneca

on transmissibility we remain in a largely similar place to last week:
• B.1.617.2 does spread more easily
• How much more easily varies by location/cluster, and different clusters have different contexts
• So still very hard to know how much is innate vs context-specific

 

[Fuzzy Afro]

There are only three ways to end a pandemic:

 

1) Herd immunity by natural infection

2) Herd immunity by a combination of natural infections and vaccination

3) Eradication

 

Given that we aren't eradicating it, it's a question of letting it spread quickly and getting it over and done with or lock down indefinitely to slow the spread until the vaccines are ready. Given the considerable uncertainty over how long an effective vaccine would take, it makes sense why natural herd immunity was the original plan. The issue is the severity of covid (compared to the flu pandemic they'd gameplanned for) means achieving this herd immunity would result in a minimum of 250,000 deaths, and possibly double that given the NHS would be overwhelmed.

 

One thing they really fucked up on is not carrying out human challenge trials on the vaccine instantly when they were created. Cummings believes that had that been done we could have started getting jabs in arms as early as summer 2020 whereas the more bureaucratic phase III trials that were actually done led to months of dither and delay while the second wave brewed.

[Ozanne]

8 minutes ago, Ryan1984 said:

Yes, they are on a charm offensive right now. Surely Dominic of Barnard Castle has one major mic drop moment prepared for Wednesday.

I reckon so, he could be building up to it with this long Twitter thread.

[steviewevie]

Long Chris Pagel thread. Enjoy.

 

[Fuzzy Afro]

10 minutes ago, Ryan1984 said:

Yes, they are on a charm offensive right now. Surely Dominic of Barnard Castle has one major mic drop moment prepared for Wednesday.

 

Won't cut through.

 

150,000ish bereaved families maybe make up 1% of the UK population. The rest of us care much more about what's happening now than Dominic Cummings version of events that happened ages ago.

[Fuzzy Afro]

9 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Long Chris Pagel thread. Enjoy.

 

 

Ah so the latest fake SAGE technique to fudge the numbers is to split the pandemic up into its underlying variants and show that a particular one is growing and use that in itself to argue against a reopening, even though the overall position is okay.

 

I note again that she thinks long covid is a reason to delay the roadmap. I, for one, am glad that the government will take a dim view of that proposition.

[BobWillis2]

So depressing.