Will the 2021 festival go ahead?

[jparx]

Still feeling more positive than negative. We need to get this Oxford vaccine approved and then come late Jan we could be looking at a much more positive picture in terms of # people vaccinated. Certainty will grow as time moves on. 

I also think if we reach late Jan and confidence has grown but not quite enough to plough ahead with the festival, they will delay the decision as much as they can if the trend line is moving up. Which I’m sure it will be.

[Leyrulion]

5 minutes ago, mike46 said:

Some positive news! If the figures that just 2% of the population vaccinated reduces the risk by 40%, we’re well on our way already. 
 

Things are going to look very different come March/April, might be too late for Glastonbury but late spring and summer is going to be a lot better. 

Well this is worse then I expected tbh. 

By mid January we will only have about 120k people immune through vaccination. A lot of those healthcare workers.

That's going to have absolutely NO noticeable effect on deaths and hospitalisations 

 

We're talking about late Feb, early March then before getting an impact on figures.

 

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

1 minute ago, Leyrulion said:

Well this is worse then I expected tbh. 

By mid January we will only have about 120k people immune through vaccination. A lot of those healthcare workers.

That's going to have absolutely NO noticeable effect on deaths and hospitalisations 

 

We're talking about late Feb, early March then before getting an impact on figures.

 

Yes, didn’t we know that was the case anyway? Haven’t the government been saying back to some sort of normality by Easter? I don’t think anyone was expecting much to have changed by January so why is it worse than you expected?

[zahidf]

2 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

Well this is worse then I expected tbh. 

By mid January we will only have about 120k people immune through vaccination. A lot of those healthcare workers.

That's going to have absolutely NO noticeable effect on deaths and hospitalisations 

 

We're talking about late Feb, early March then before getting an impact on figures.

 

Well lets see. Theyll be a lot more this week and next week with GPs, and it gives a strong protection after the first dose

[Leyrulion]

1 minute ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

Yes, didn’t we know that was the case anyway? Haven’t the government been saying back to some sort of normality by Easter? I don’t think anyone was expecting much to have changed by January so why is it worse than you expected?

?? 

You've put words in my mouth and made assumptions about something I didn't say.

I'm not talking about back to normality by Easter I'm talking about having enough people vaccinated to make a noticeable impact on hospitalisations and death rates. 

We may well be on track for a normality by Easter but if this is the starting point we definitely will not be in a position to confirm that far enough in advance to allow events like Glastonbury to plan.

So worse then expected.

[zahidf]

9 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

I don't think it's going to be nearly as fast or as clear cut as you're suggesting. 

By mid January the people vaccinated in the last week will become immune. If all 800k doses were used that's only going to be about 700k immune people (95% effective combined with a low number not getting a 2nd dose for whatever reason).

A large proportion of the very 1st people vaccinated are healthcare workers who are unlikely to get hospitalised anyway.

At the beginning from mid Jan going to be hard to detect an impact because of the relatively low numbers of vulnerable people vaccinated.

Realistically you're talking, as you mentioned, end of February before any confident projections about vaccination impact will be made public.

 

Simply not true. Lots of NHS workers have died and been hospitalized

I think end of Jan will have data. especially if Oxford does stop forward transmission

[Copperface]

13 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

 

But because it’s a festival it will be made to seem like a big deal. 

But it's not just about one single festival. There are many festivals scheduled over this period, so multiply the effects accordingly.

[DeanoL]

2 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

I think people have become weirdly comfortable with just shutting businesses down and entire Industries like it’s just an binary choice that has no negative impact.

Why do you think we can continue to do that indefinitely, or for that matter why?

I'm not saying there would be no negative impact. There would be huge upheaval. But if we had to do it, that upheaval could be managed. Some things would go away - a few examples:

Standing gigs - no longer possible - but we get more seated gigs, theatres and venues are refitted, new air circulation and purification systems are developed to make indoor spaces safer, theatres are arranged with retractable screens between strangers to avoid unnecessary contact, admission to theatres is changed to a more ordered queuing system so people enter seats in the order of the row, so you don't have to squeeze past someone to get to a seat. All that work would create jobs in sectors where work had gone away. Companies specializing in this sort of thing would crop up.

If you think that sounds ridiculous, that no-one would do it, that we'd never find the money, I'd invite you to compare changes to airport security between 2000 and 2005.

Pubs, as big crowded communal spaces would go away, but we would see further adoption of the model many are already using right now: you book ahead, you get table service, local street food providers are invited in to do catering. And yes, prices increase as capacity is lower, but over time the market will find an equilibrium.

Things would go away that people would miss for sure- yeah, standing gigs are fun but we went through this with football some years ago, now it's all seated there and the football industry hasn't vanished. Some people really liked British seaside piers, but they've basically shut down now, there's a few left that don't get much traffic - indeed British seaside getaways have gone almost entirely since the arrival of cheap flights to Europe and people preferring more picturesque parts of the country for "staycations" like Cornwall and the Lakes.

Those are just more recent examples, but throughout all of human history you see things go away that people thought we absolute pillars of society that they couldn't possibly cope without. New things arrive instead.

[mike46]

6 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

Well this is worse then I expected tbh. 

By mid January we will only have about 120k people immune through vaccination. A lot of those healthcare workers.

That's going to have absolutely NO noticeable effect on deaths and hospitalisations 

 

We're talking about late Feb, early March then before getting an impact on figures.

 

Out of interest, what were you expecting? Don’t mean that to sound rude, genuinely curious! 
 

For me, the fact this was the opening week and with limited centres open that’s encouraging. As of Monday, over 100 new centres started vaccinating so that number is going to increase rapidly.

[Zoo Music Girl]

5 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Simply not true. Lots of NHS workers have died and been hospitalized

That is a good point actually. Weren't there a few cases of health workers dying who were quite young and healthy, but it was to do with exposure to viral load? Hopefully vaccinating them will put a stop to those kinds of deaths.

This stuff got reported on a lot in the early days, mainly from Italy, but you just never hear about it now. Or maybe I'm not looking in the right places to see it.

[topmarksbri]

The current speed of vaccinations is only going to speed up - you can't use current number of people vaccinated per day to judge how many people will be vaccinated in January, February etc. 

[sjseabass]

5 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

I'm not saying there would be no negative impact. There would be huge upheaval. But if we had to do it, that upheaval could be managed. Some things would go away - a few examples:

Standing gigs - no longer possible - but we get more seated gigs, theatres and venues are refitted, new air circulation and purification systems are developed to make indoor spaces safer, theatres are arranged with retractable screens between strangers to avoid unnecessary contact, admission to theatres is changed to a more ordered queuing system so people enter seats in the order of the row, so you don't have to squeeze past someone to get to a seat. All that work would create jobs in sectors where work had gone away. Companies specializing in this sort of thing would crop up.

If you think that sounds ridiculous, that no-one would do it, that we'd never find the money, I'd invite you to compare changes to airport security between 2000 and 2005.

Pubs, as big crowded communal spaces would go away, but we would see further adoption of the model many are already using right now: you book ahead, you get table service, local street food providers are invited in to do catering. And yes, prices increase as capacity is lower, but over time the market will find an equilibrium.

Things would go away that people would miss for sure- yeah, standing gigs are fun but we went through this with football some years ago, now it's all seated there and the football industry hasn't vanished. Some people really liked British seaside piers, but they've basically shut down now, there's a few left that don't get much traffic - indeed British seaside getaways have gone almost entirely since the arrival of cheap flights to Europe and people preferring more picturesque parts of the country for "staycations" like Cornwall and the Lakes.

Those are just more recent examples, but throughout all of human history you see things go away that people thought we absolute pillars of society that they couldn't possibly cope without. New things arrive instead.

I’m sorry but this is completely ridiculous. The changes you’ve outlined here would mean social distancing with people you don’t live with would last forever. In which case the human race dies out in a generation because nobody is allowed to have sex with anyone they haven’t lived with for the entire time since 2020.

[zahidf]

7 minutes ago, Zoo Music Girl said:

That is a good point actually. Weren't there a few cases of health workers dying who were quite young and healthy, but it was to do with exposure to viral load? Hopefully vaccinating them will put a stop to those kinds of deaths.

This stuff got reported on a lot in the early days, mainly from Italy, but you just never hear about it now. Or maybe I'm not looking in the right places to see it.

Yeah NHS workers are still dying unfortunautely. Not reported as much. 

[Leyrulion]

17 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Simply not true. Lots of NHS workers have died and been hospitalized

I think end of Jan will have data. especially if Oxford does stop forward transmission

Sorry you've misunderstood. 

Not saying NHS workers haven't died but a reasonable understanding would realise that when comparing death rates of over 75's in general population with NHS workers the over 75's have a higher death rate which when more of them are vaccinated will make a clearer impact on the numbers then NHS staff.

[Leyrulion]

10 minutes ago, topmarksbri said:

The current speed of vaccinations is only going to speed up - you can't use current number of people vaccinated per day to judge how many people will be vaccinated in January, February etc. 

Hopefully it will speed up. 

We know the lag of the vaccine though so can judge how many people will be immune through vaccine after 28 days. Which by 15th December is going to be no more than 137,000.

 

[Leyrulion]

22 minutes ago, zahidf said:

Simply not true. Lots of NHS workers have died and been hospitalized

I think end of Jan will have data. especially if Oxford does stop forward transmission

I also didn't say we wouldn't have data by the end of Jan. The government will have this. I'm just cautious about there being enough data to tell the public about an impact on the vaccination programme.

[Leyrulion]

22 minutes ago, mike46 said:

Out of interest, what were you expecting? Don’t mean that to sound rude, genuinely curious! 
 

For me, the fact this was the opening week and with limited centres open that’s encouraging. As of Monday, over 100 new centres started vaccinating so that number is going to increase rapidly.

I think I was hoping for usage at a much greater rate of supply. So closer to 800k doses. 

We're meant to be getting 4 million doses by the end of the year and I had hoped we'd be 2 million+ plus into that number to make a big dent by early Feb.

I think this was was naivety on my part. I'd made some assumptions about distribution with no evidence!

[eFestivals]

54 minutes ago, MrBarry465 said:

We know from trials, it hasn't been tested at this scale yet.

Welcome yourself to the world of the anti-vaccers. 😛

It's not impossible that a bad effect will be found - after all, it's happened in the past - but there's no reason to dismiss the science of a mass trial as not replicable* across bigger numbers.

(* within the small margins of error).

[DeanoL]

16 minutes ago, theevilfridge said:

I’m sorry but this is completely ridiculous. The changes you’ve outlined here would mean social distancing with people you don’t live with would last forever. In which case the human race dies out in a generation because nobody is allowed to have sex with anyone they haven’t lived with for the entire time since 2020.

You'll have to tell me where I said that?

[sjseabass]

Just now, DeanoL said:

You'll have to tell me where I said that?

Why would theatres and pubs make the changes you’ve outlined permanently if social distancing wasn’t in place?

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

25 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

I'm not saying there would be no negative impact. There would be huge upheaval. But if we had to do it, that upheaval could be managed. Some things would go away - a few examples:

Standing gigs - no longer possible - but we get more seated gigs, theatres and venues are refitted, new air circulation and purification systems are developed to make indoor spaces safer, theatres are arranged with retractable screens between strangers to avoid unnecessary contact, admission to theatres is changed to a more ordered queuing system so people enter seats in the order of the row, so you don't have to squeeze past someone to get to a seat. All that work would create jobs in sectors where work had gone away. Companies specializing in this sort of thing would crop up.

If you think that sounds ridiculous, that no-one would do it, that we'd never find the money, I'd invite you to compare changes to airport security between 2000 and 2005.

Pubs, as big crowded communal spaces would go away, but we would see further adoption of the model many are already using right now: you book ahead, you get table service, local street food providers are invited in to do catering. And yes, prices increase as capacity is lower, but over time the market will find an equilibrium.

Things would go away that people would miss for sure- yeah, standing gigs are fun but we went through this with football some years ago, now it's all seated there and the football industry hasn't vanished. Some people really liked British seaside piers, but they've basically shut down now, there's a few left that don't get much traffic - indeed British seaside getaways have gone almost entirely since the arrival of cheap flights to Europe and people preferring more picturesque parts of the country for "staycations" like Cornwall and the Lakes.

Those are just more recent examples, but throughout all of human history you see things go away that people thought we absolute pillars of society that they couldn't possibly cope without. New things arrive instead.

Airports are means to and end though, I think people will put up with whatever they need to to get to their end destination, which is the bit they’re actually worried about.

Gigs/Festivals/Pubs are not a means to an end, people go them because they enjoy doing so. If you change that actual experience they potentially stop enjoying it and no longer want to do it. 

[zahidf]

11 minutes ago, Leyrulion said:

Sorry you've misunderstood. 

Not saying NHS workers haven't died but a reasonable understanding would realise that when comparing death rates of over 75's in general population with NHS workers the over 75's have a higher death rate which when more of them are vaccinated will make a clearer impact on the numbers then NHS staff.

oh fair point!

i think its wrong to look at full immuncsation by the way. If it has strong protection 10 days after the jab, then it should have some small impact this year

 

[DeanoL]

Just now, theevilfridge said:

Why would theatres and pubs make the changes you’ve outlined permanently if social distancing wasn’t in place?

Because you would have a drive to reduce people's contacts to minimize risk. Obviously systems would be need to be in place for people to meet new people, join new social groups, and yes, date. (Ironically the sort of system you would want already exists in Tinder/Bumble etc).

Again I don't think any of this would actually be necessary for COVID - it's just a thought experiment that if a pandemic with a much higher death rate came along that was entirely vaccine resistant, how we could/would react. 

[eFestivals]

52 minutes ago, DeanoL said:

The problem is with a 5 day festival, the 20 people a superspreader has contact with on Wednesday are then spreading themselves by Friday/Saturday and it swiftly multiplies. And 100 people might not sound like loads, but it's ten times the close contacts someone has on an average weekend.

I appreciate there'd be a greater risk with a festival as there would be more than average contacts.

But if the virus is spreading wildly at a festival it'd also be spreading wildly outside of the festival too, and that factor needs to be taken into account.

Because that either means the festival wouldn't be allowed to go ahead because the virus was spreading wildly, or because the govt has decided that it's not too concerned with the virus spreading wildly (probably because the healthcare demands are under control).

If Glastonbury does go ahead, it's going to go ahead in an environment where there's similar risks within the rest of society (and probably a low risk).

[DeanoL]

2 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

Airports are means to and end though, I think people will put up with whatever they need to to get to their end destination, which is the bit they’re actually worried about.

Gigs/Festivals/Pubs are not a means to an end, people go them because they enjoy doing so. If you change that actual experience they potentially stop enjoying it and no longer want to do it. 

Maybe, but then those things would go away. This leaves people with money, and a desire to do something fun - it's possible that would be a new thing, developed to appeal to whatever it was people felt they were missing. The economy adapts, the market adapts, people adapt.