Okay, but that doesn't answer the question, why is a vaccine the only way out of this, as you so boldly asserted?
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Vaccine Progress, Approval, and Deployment
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Okay, but that doesn't answer the question, why is a vaccine the only way out of this, as you so boldly asserted?
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R
RailUK Forums
Exactly.
It is worth noting that many hospital have created the extra ICU space by taking over operating theatres and recovery space as well as repurposing paediatric ICU space for adults. Hence it will need a big drop in cases which is sustained before they can start resuming scheduled operations.
Reducing restrictions would probably lead to increased case rates with greater hospital and ICU admissions in the following weeks. Vaccination is going to take quite a while to significantly bring down case rates in the working age population.
There was a paper out this week on the in effectiveness of herd immunity in Manaus (ground zero of new Brazilian strain with 484 mutation in addition to 501):
Science | AAAS
Estimate of 76% having had Covid but Herd not working to reduce transmissions that effectively...
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Exactly.
It is worth noting that many hospital have created the extra ICU space by taking over operating theatres and recovery space as well as repurposing paediatric ICU space for adults. Hence it will need a big drop in cases which is sustained before they can start resuming scheduled operations.
Reducing restrictions would probably lead to increased case rates with greater hospital and ICU admissions in the following weeks. Vaccination is going to take quite a while to significantly bring down case rates in the working age population.
There was a paper out this week on the in effectiveness of herd immunity in Manaus (ground zero of new Brazilian strain with 484 mutation in addition to 501):
Science | AAAS
science.sciencemag.org
Estimate of 76% having had Covid but Herd not working...
Then they should be choosing which restrictions they can lift with minimal effect on transmission.
Enabling outdoor activity would be an option. There needs to be compromise. They can't expect the population to be under house arrest for long periods.
Agreed on outdoor, I suspect they reckon people will just bend the rules on what they do outdoors
We should probably ignore the linked commentary, since it's by Sridhar who doesn't seem to be able to move away from obsession with elimination, and seems to resort to cheap abuse rather than argument when challenged.There was a paper out this week on the in effectiveness of herd immunity in Manaus (ground zero of new Brazilian strain with 484 mutation in addition to 501):
Science | AAAS
Estimate of 76% having had Covid but Herd not working to reduce transmissions that effectively...
The actual paper, which has been kicking about for a couple of months now in pre-publication form, Is broadly observational. It basically makes a robust estimate of the infection rate as being in the range 66-76% (there's some fiddling around with declining antibody levels in order to reach that number, but nothing particularly insane). It then observes is higher than the 60% theoretical estimate. It goes on to speculate that the reason for reaching a higher than expected level is rapidly-declining immunity.
It's an interesting paper, but it's a single study in a single area, and at each stage of reasoning there are firm conclusions drawn in spite of multiple credible competing hypotheses. It's not bad science, but it's very strongly in the "merits further study" bucket.
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People are already doing that if the York city centre this afternoon is anything to go by.
Pubs were open to serve alcohol with meals.
Pubs were open to serve alcohol with table service and social distancing.
Solent&Wessex
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No they weren't.
Tier 2 pubs were open to serve alcohol only with meals and you could only visit with members of your own household. No alcohol without food.
Tier 3 pubs were closed.
I know this as I lived in a Tier 3 area and only 10 miles from a Tier 2 area.
Unfortunately, the latest version of the tiers is a lot more restrictive, with SAGE allowed to run riot in their scapegoating of hospitality.
I disagree, perhaps someone could adjudicate.
I had a meal with alcohol in a pub in Covent Garden on the 15 December. That was when London was in tier 3?
The official (on the BBC, I assume many would look there) rule for tier 3 was supposed to be that pubs and restaurants can open until 18:00, but alcohol can't be served. Yet if you look elsewhere (AgeUK) for example it suggests that hospitality venues are closed, but can remain open for takeaway, drive through and delivery services.
No wonder people are confused. In fact it might be me who is, the BBC may be Scotland and AgeUK for England?
London went into tier 3 on the 16th
DustyBin
Established Member
Exactly.
It is worth noting that many hospital have created the extra ICU space by taking over operating theatres and recovery space as well as repurposing paediatric ICU space for adults. Hence it will need a big drop in cases which is sustained before they can start resuming scheduled operations.
Reducing restrictions would probably lead to increased case rates with greater hospital and ICU admissions in the following weeks. Vaccination is going to take quite a while to significantly bring down case rates in the working age population.
There was a paper out this week on the in effectiveness of herd immunity in Manaus (ground zero of new Brazilian strain with 484 mutation in addition to 501):
Science | AAAS
Estimate of 76% having had Covid but Herd not working to reduce transmissions that effectively...
Remember though that we will be coming out of winter in the coming weeks. Once the weather improves we will see a reduction in infections and cases, at which point restrictions need to eased significantly before being removed altogether. We mustn’t make the same mistake(s) we made in 2020.
I did have a look at the article but as soon as I saw it was coauthored by Sridhar I lost interest to be honest, she appears to have a habit of conducting a limited study and presenting the findings as conclusive (if they support her position).
Ah that explains it. Apologies to Solent and Wessex.
DustyBin
Established Member
This is correct, and I should know!
Luke McDonnell
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When do you think we will be able to travel overseas without having to quarantine I have heard talk of the introduction of supervised quarantine in hotels and some suggestions online that this should remain in place for the rest of the year and there should be no exceptions even if you have been vaccinated due to the fact that a) we do not know how effective the vaccines are in reducing transmission and b) concern about variant's being imported that may make the vaccines less effective compromising our vaccination programme. I was looking forward to go to Spain this year in the summer and we are planning as it will go ahead so far but that concerns me a bit the international travel may be off limits for all this year even though I would be happy holidaying in the UK I would still like to get to Spain as my uncle lives there. So when do you thing quarantine free travel at least in Europe will be permitted? I am not that bothered about long haul travel as that could wait a little longer.
Also when will the requirements for face masks be finally lifted. I have adapted well to using them but it would be nice to go on a longer train journey mask free.
Also when will the requirements for face masks be finally lifted. I have adapted well to using them but it would be nice to go on a longer train journey mask free.
Truth is Luke, nobody knows.
Very much too soon to say.
I think that masks will probably be left in place for people to progressively ignore for most of the rest of the year. Too many people see them as "no real inconvenience to anybody", which makes them the easiest measure to leave in place if you want to be seen to be taking action.
Air travel is a difficult one - I can't see these impossible restrictions being at all popular beyond May. On the other hand, they are suggesting more and tighter restrictions now which won't even come in for at least a month, so it's possible that somebody has chosen this as their latest hobby-horse and they will try to keep it in all summer.
Philip
On Moderation
I think any assertions that lockdown will continue until April (or longer!) are very pessimistic and very unlikely. Reducing the ICU admissions by 25% (providing no problems with vaccine progress) is still a sizeable number and don't forget the effect of lockdown on case numbers; case rate already starting to drop heavily in some areas and other areas beginning to see a drop in cases. Another month of lockdown from now should see cases at much more manageable levels for the health service and with vaccination progressing I don't think it'd be necessary to keep the restrictions as tight as they are.
That said, I can see pubs remaining closed until at least April and probably a meals with drinks policy until around May (if they open in April). Lifting restrictions on travel and overnight stays within the UK will provide a boost though and hopefully this might be something that will happen around late Feb/early March.
That said, I can see pubs remaining closed until at least April and probably a meals with drinks policy until around May (if they open in April). Lifting restrictions on travel and overnight stays within the UK will provide a boost though and hopefully this might be something that will happen around late Feb/early March.
One thing is for certain it will be different for each country (or maybe EU if they can actually agree) as well as different airlines having differing policies. Ryanair will be pushing for total free for all, whilst remember the QANTAS CEO said a couple of months ago, no vaccine no fly. So then on top of that it would be what the Australian Government wanted, plus what the UK may impose on return, which I suspect they do not know yet.
Regarding Spain you could always try emailing the Embassy to see if they have a plan, but I doubt it yet, especially if other variants start kicking around here and of course Spain borders Portugal which has implications on the Brazilian variant.
Jozhua
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100% agree.
I'm really losing my faith in government with how they are treating outdoor activities. Especially because of how long the restrictions are expected to last and how long people have already been under restrictions. Little wonder average mobility is slowly rising, as can be seen in the Google Mobility Trends (I have created a new thread for more recent updates on that)
That rather begs the question if any restrictions have minimal effect on transmission, why were they imposed in the first place?
You've hit the nail on the head. It's long been apparent that a lot of these restrictions have been imposed to be seen to be doing something, because they can't actually make a difference in the areas where transmission is actually happenning.
The fiasco over hospitality curfews is a case in point.
Richard Scott
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That's a very good question that our politicians probably have no clue to the answers. Just being seen to be doing something.
However, what's not clear is how much transmission is from households mixing and how much is within households. I suspect that the majority is the latter with not all that much of the former.
That's not to say that it's not something that helps reduce numbers, rather when comparing it against (for instance) going to the pub it could well be that pub and household mixing could be similar but the official figures include within households and so pubs look a lot "safer".
Unless there's data available which breaks out down more.
Vaccines will only work if cases are low or nearly everyone has had it. Almost anything else would have a small impact without other measures (such as the current lockdown).
You also have to remember that from vaccine to not going to hospital can be about a month (at least 2 weeks for the vaccine to prove protection and then 2 weeks before they would have gone to hospital). Therefore although some (but probablya carry small amount given the limited number vaccinated 2 weeks ago) of the current falls in cases can be associated with the early stages of vaccination there'll be almost no fall in hospital cases yet (due to very few having been vaccinated a month ago as there'd only been 10 days of vaccinations at that point).
Therefore if we got the mid February target that's not going to show up until mid March on the hospitalisation stats (although between now and then numbers will start to fall due to the lockdown).
Without the lockdown is likely that a 25% reduction due to the vaccine would have been offset by rising case numbers.
Whilst it's possible that the virus could run out of people to infect, even at 0.5% of the population getting infected for 26 weeks or of the last 39 and 2.5% for 13 weeks that's only 45.5% so we'd need another 8 weeks at 3% to reach 70%. However even in the very high cases recently it's only been about 2% and with plenty of areas lower than that it's clear that case numbers could have carried on upwards for some time, most likely pushing it to a point where the NHS was failing.
As they had already put in place measures like using medical students and 1:4 treatment on ICU rather than 1:1, as such it's unlikely that it could have continued with much more capacity being needed.
As I said before, what are the other ways out?
As things stand a vaccine is our best hope, without it we would be looking at restrictions continuing for a long time. With it once cases are reduced and we've got a decent number of those at high risk of needing to go to hospital vaccinated and an ongoing programme of vaccinations then there's scope to start to remove restrictions as the more limited scale of infection should be manageable. However if there's ongoing concerns of importing a new strain that isn't limited by the vaccines then international travel could have restrictions for some time.
These were both true at different points in time – in the mid-October to early November version of tiering in England, pubs in tiers 1 and 2 could serve alcohol without a meal, whilst tier 3 was only with a meal. In the December to early January version, tier 1 could serve without a meal, tier 2 with a meal, and tier 3 takeaway only. In each case the rules as to who could sit together in pubs was tier 1 had rule of 6, tier 2 was rule of 6 outdoors and household only indoors, and tier 3 was household only in either case.
As referred to above, London was announced as entering tier 3 on 14 December with effect from 16 December.
Your last line is correct. England did not at any point have a rule allowing pubs and restaurants to open but only allow non-alcoholic products to be eaten in, nor an 18:00 closing time. Though the situation has moved on (again) and in England pubs are now no longer allowed to sell alcohol by walk-up or click & collect, only by delivery.The official (on the BBC, I assume many would look there) rule for tier 3 was supposed to be that pubs and restaurants can open until 18:00, but alcohol can't be served. Yet if you look elsewhere (AgeUK) for example it suggests that hospitality venues are closed, but can remain open for takeaway, drive through and delivery services.
No wonder people are confused. In fact it might be me who is, the BBC may be Scotland and AgeUK for England?
In Wales, the first minister is willfuly delaying some vaccinations, thereby extending the duration of the problem, in order to prevent "vaccinators standing around with nothing to do".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-55704017
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-politics-55704017
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Bantamzen
Established Member
"Mark Drakeford said one of the reasons more of the supply had not been used at once was to prevent "vaccinators standing around with nothing to do".
What the actual.......??? Wales, you need to get rid of this clown ASAP!
Surely after a few weeks of operations, there will be lots of things that they've worked out, and some downtime to streamline the process would be ideal, never mind if the vaccine supplies arrive earlier than expected.
According to the Telegraph, the government plans to Vaccinate everyone by June (https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion...Echobox&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1610918559)
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