Coronavirus (2021) thread

[DavidWhitesBoots]

I'd like to see Zahawi ( Vaccines Minister) or his boss Hancock at the press conference tonight to explain the vacine roll out programme - what is the plan, what are the difficulties and uncertainties, what are the timescales( aspirational,realistic, worse case).
I think the public would appreciate a degree of honesty and clarity on this.
The Govt have had enough time to work on it so they should share the details of the plan with the public.
If not tonight then a commitment from BoJo to give details to the House or in a future presser to be held soon.

I'd like to see both dragged before the public to explain their business interests after this is over, but agreed the lack of clarity is abhorrent.

 

[blueparrot]

It's a very very good ice cream shop to be fair, and very well known throughout the town and wider area. But I digress, surely the owner needs to take personal responsibility in such a situation or surely the Scottish government should be stepping in?

The local council will enforce or not. Think is it's difficult if they say takeaways can open and as well a papershop can sell sweets or ice creams, then to try and go through every possible loophole isn't possible. Maybe as a rule they could say if you closed first time close this. That was our reasoning.

 

[denislawsbackheel]

I'd like to see both dragged before the public to explain their business interests after this is over, but agreed the lack of clarity is abhorrent.

I’d like to see every one of the bastards having to do this.
I’d also like them held to account for every lie, every bit of misinformation since the crisis started and for every penny spent of public money tackling it.

 

[willipp]

It's a very very good ice cream shop to be fair, and very well known throughout the town and wider area. But I digress, surely the owner needs to take personal responsibility in such a situation or surely the Scottish government should be stepping in?

I dread to think what it must be like to be in the position they are in. Im sure a lot of these businesses are fighting for their futures and if they see a way to exploit a loophole that gives their business a chance of survival its understandable why they might take it. I'm not saying i agree, but if the government are allowing it to happen, its innevitable.

For me this is symptomatic of the whole thing. Rules have always been allowed to be interpreted and plenty of grey areas. On one hand the government are saying we should stay at home bar absolutely essential travel. Yet on the other hand restaurants, cafes etc can stay open for takeaways. Therefore they will mostly stay open and people will use them in large numbers.

The government had a chance here to leave no grey areas but yet again they didn't. Do we need takeaways, cafes etc open? Absolutely not, but like most things in this pandemic, its been left to the public and business owners to decide how its followed. There should be no more being told what we 'should' do and more telling us what we absolutely have to do.

 

[Healdplace]

More on N Ireland data. Some truly scary numbers wk to wk

3 wks v 2 wks v last wk v TODAY Deaths/Cases/ past 7 day cases total/ Patients/ Ventilated

6d - 489c - 3292 - 444p - 24v

16d - 439c - 3847 - 447p - 23v

14d - 1566 c - 5685 - 462p - 24v

18d - 1378c - 12, 487 - 577p - 34v TODAY


As you can see the weekly rolling cases total has more than doubled over Christmas and quadrupled over the past 3 weeks. The previous high it reached was in the 7000s. So this is now at by far a record number.

Also patients and ventilators have been stable for weeks but are now escalating since Christmas.

Exactly the same pattern as in the other nations care of this new variant and Christmas/New Year mixing.

 

[Blue Maverick]

Most of the military medical staff already work in the NHS to keep skills up to date in A&E etc so the idea that there is some untapped cohort of medics ready to be deployed is a bit of a myth

at the end of the day it is the trained medical people we need now not just squaddies being menacing in Land Rovers up and down the country

I didn’t say that I said the military should take over the running of it, also you can train almost anyone to put a needle into someone’s arm, it ain’t rocket science, the recording etc could be done by the any person as well, it will be a tick box and name check if you just want medics to give the injection. What you need to do is supplement the medics/nurses with average people to work as team to get them done en masse otherwise it will be 18 months before everyone gets one, this needs to be done in 6.

 

[M18CTID]

Bumped into our postman on Sunday while out walking the dog. He was using up his holidays last week and the week before. I asked him if he was due back in work Monday morning (yesterday) to which he replied "So far". Asked him what he meant by that and he said he'd been coughing his guts up all night and all that week! So I asked him if it was a dry cough and he said yes. At this point I'm thinking "For fuck's sake!" and I suggested he go and get a Covid test that same day as no way his work would allow him to do his job while displaying symptoms like that unless he had a negative test to back it up. He just kind of shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly while giving it the old "I always get a cold at this time of year" line. Anyway, the other half texted me earlier to say it was a different postman who was delivering the mail this morning (she didn't see who was on duty yesterday so has only found this out today). Now at this point I have no idea whether our regular postie has it or not and it could just be a case of him having a bad cold or the flu but I could do with finding out because if he does have it then I'm guessing half of fucking Gorton has it as well going off the amount of people he would've bumped into while out walking his dog last week!

 

[Claytop]

Be interesting to see people's behavior's when out and about, I remember during the first lockdown people use to cross the roads etc to stay 2 metres apart, I think there was a lot of trepidation at that time. I don't think that's the feeling anymore.

 

[blueparrot]

I didn’t say that I said the military should take over the running of it, also you can train almost anyone to put a needle into someone’s arm, it ain’t rocket science, the recording etc could be done by the any person as well, it will be a tick box and name check if you just want medics to give the injection. What you need to do is supplement the medics/nurses with average people to work as team to get them done en masse otherwise it will be 18 months before everyone gets one, this needs to be done in 6.

Think a lot of that is the plan. Getting phase one done by June, hasn't totally been plucked out of the air with no thought about how to roll it out. Will there be teething troubles getting up to speed,yes almost certainly, but there is a plan and we will.

 

[Healdplace]

Northern Ireland care home outbreaks have also suddenly accelerated over Christmas.

Week before Christmas there were 87 outbreaks having fallen for some weeks since their circuit breaker. Two weeks later they are at 131 - higher than in many weeks.

The new variant will decimate these places all over the UK. Hence the urgent need to vaccinate there.

 

[Keith Moncrieff]

The EU are currently making a pigs ear out of the vaccination rollout. The general public in France don’t fancy having it, imo were doing a decent job in the U.K. compared to most countries. Only Israel have a better record

 

[Healdplace]

The 12, 487 weekly total in Northern Ireland is a good indicator of the people who caught this over the Christmas/New Year period and tested positive in the days after.

Here is how they look by age range: All from the tests reported from 29 Dec to 4 Jan. So likely caught it over the Christmas period.

Ages versus total cases

00 to 19 - 1386

20 to 39 - 5217

40 to 59 - 3757

60 to 79 - 1694

80 and over 433

The deaths will nearly all come from the bottom two but mixing with the age ranges below that who were 5 times more likely to catch it will be who accidentally passed it onto them.

This is why protecting the bottom two categories in all ways possible will be a major step forward to saving lives.

And at the same time getting to a point where the younger age groups can live more normally.

 

[trumpton]

I know you're tough up there with the cold weather but ice cream in January?....can't see them getting many people to actually infect.

I do agree with you, 'essential' has been used very loosely all year and should be stamped down on everywhere.

He failed to mention that the ice cream is battered and deep fried.

 

[BlueAnorak]

Cos isn't that life serving in the medical profession? Isn't it always like that? Surely we should have been ahead of this months ago getting them ready for this moment. They're good people wanting to help out. A short mid morning course isn't a huge deal if it helps save lives is it? I presumed they'd be used to courses and so on being former NHS staff. It can't be a surprise really. If they don't want to do it, fair enough, but I don't think a quick refresher course is a great reason personally given they know this is probably normal in the NHS.

NHS Management has NEVER been fit for the purpose of fighting a pandemic.
The army should be running the pandemic response aided by teams supplied from tge NHS, PHE, pharma and logistics companies.
I said DHSC, NHS and PHE were not fit for purpose back in February and so it has proved

 

[BlueAnorak]

The Kent variant is thought to have formed in an immune-compromised patient who was given very extended convalascent plasma treatment. I think it started to circulate back in September 2020.

Exponential growth from very low levels i.e. a handful of cases is at first slow.

Where did you get that nugget of information from.

 

[Healdplace]

So todays total deaths without out of hospital England ones (which will be a big catch up number today too) Is 628.

We might top 1000 today tragically.


3 wks v 2 wks v last wk v TODAY:- 332 v 491 v 419 v 628 TODAY

 

[liamctid]

I've closed my coffee shop, our thinking we don't want t encourage non essential shopping, though takeaway is a loop hole we've been told not to look for. Hopefully todays announcement of grants will persuade those staying open to close. I mean how many ice creams can they be selling, in January in Ayrshire.

Best of luck mate - I sell coffee machines to cafe's/restaurants (I should say offices as well but it's been a long time since that happened!) and our business also sells beans - we're proper in limbo at the moment as we don't know if places are going to open for takeaway from the coffee pov and over the weekend we had 16 enquiries regarding a new machine (January always busy - new year new me merchants) but in the past 24 hours we've had 1 enquiry. In November and December we had 280 machine enquiries, but as you can guess we only make money on installations - not a lot of that been going on since October. I'd imagine in 48 hours we'll know what we're going to do.

That news about the grants this morning is great news for the sector anyway.

 

[Healdplace]

And three nation cases without England:

3 wks v 2 wks v last wk v TODAY:- 1949 v 4516 v 5971 v 5976 TODAY

 

[BlueAnorak]

Regarding the earlier discussion about prevalence of ventilation versus hospital bed occupancy this is a point I have been tracking given the new variant of the virus.

We are expecting any wave now to be less deadly as we were putting too many patients on ventilators as we had no other treatments to offer to save the sickest.

Here is some data as the wave we had in the North West in the autumn was driven by the older versions of the virus as the new one was yet to arrive in any numbers.

But where we are now is driven by the new variant - particularly in London but increasingly so in the NW (at last count pre Christmas NW was 25% new variant and rising London around 70%).

Is the new variant causing patients to become more ill and requiring extra ventilation is the question the data might help answer?

At the peak of the first wave (12 April) there were 18, 974 in hospital in England with Covid. And 2881 on ventilators.

That is 15.2% of all patients ventilated.


In that first wave in the NW in April 3065 were in hospital on 13 April. And 350 on ventilators a day or two later at the most. That is 11.4% of the patients ventilated at peak. Which is well below the England average.

Why did the NW have below average numbers on ventilators from the start?


In autumn when there was a second wave focused in the North West at its peak on 16 Nov there were 3158 in hospital, We briefly went above the numbers in that first wave. But that is still (for now) the most ever in hospital in the NW. But the NW is rising again so possibly not for long.

Ventilator numbers in that November wave peaked that same week at 280. So this was an 8.9% maximum on ventilators - a modest but clear reduction of the proportion ventilated from the 11.4% in April.

In London during the first wave they peaked at 5198 patients on 8 April (London was about a week ahead of the NW in the first wave as it started in the south and spread north much as this new variant seems to have done in December).

Ventilators peaked in London two days later at 1057 - making the maximum % on ventilators there 20.3%.

So there were significantly more put on ventilators in London than the NW during the first wave.

A fact I have not seen mentioned by anyone nor explained. It does seem odd.


Currently in London there were (yesterday) 6733 in hospital - well over the first wave peak patient number already as you can see.

And on ventilators right now there are 814. That is 243 below the peak number in April but rising fast.

As there are more patients but fewer on ventilators this brings a percentage of 12. 1% in London right now- well below the 20.3% in April.


The current situation in the NW as of yesterday is 223 on ventilators from 2812 patients which is 7.9%

To summarise:-


So the old strain created in London a peak ventilated number in April of 20.3% and the new one right now is at 12.1% - significantly less even given it is driven by the more virulent strain,

The old strain in the NW created in two waves 11,4 % ventilated in April and 8.9% in November. Currently the numbers in the NW on ventilators are 7.9% of patients. Lower still.

So that certainly seems to suggest the new strain is not proving more dangerous. Just far easier to spread.



The England wide situation right now is 26, 626 in hospital and 2310 on ventilators - which is 8.7%. Similar to the NW in the November wave.

They have moved away from machine ventilators because frail people die when you put them on it. They also can trigger inflamation and clots
Oxygen CPAP machines made by McClaren etc are the weapon of choice now. Only younger people who are very ill go on ventilators now.

 

[kippaxwarrior]

40 positive tests in the latest round of premier league testing. Highest since testing began