Coronavirus (2021) thread

[ob]

One of best mates about to have operation for bowel cancer this afternoon. Been cancelled twice already. Him, his wife and daughter all had covid. She told my this morning she still not feeling right 12 weeks after testing positive. Come on my oul mate Bootin you can beat this thing as in your nickname your tough as oul boots

 

[denislawsbackheel]

Phased re-opening of schools will start in Wales and Scotland from 22 Feb onwards.

Not under their jurisdiction in England.

 

[NeilYoungIsBack]

Not under their jurisdiction in England.

No kidding. Shows the direction of travel though

 

[xgorton]

God bless the Jews!

And lot's of love for the Palestinians

 

[Healdplace]

pleased for you, as I know that this has in some ways consumed you with all the reporting, analysis and investigative work you have put in on providing a personal twist on the data for all on here- hope it brings you some comfort knowing you're half way there

Thank you, I am 69 so was not really expecting it before now. I had assumed by mid February so they are a little ahead of target.

As long as I have not filled a gap at the last minute as people are refusing the AZ jab in numbers now because of the current 'bad' news. Someone more vulnerable who really should have had it but was scared off. They said no when I asked when booking but it seems hard to imagine they are expecting people to travel in my case several miles and be there in 120 minutes . I suspect they are just going down a list and getting through as fast as possible.

I went to a doctors surgery in an area I was utterly unfamiliar with and the way it was organised was amazing - though you were at more risk of being clobbered by the cars driving in and out every few moments as you snaked the socially distanced queue round the car park.

Very efficient though.

 

[Healdplace]

England hospital deaths 509 - way down from 767 last Tuesday. Always a big catch up from weekend.

That is the good news.

The bad 109 of them from the North West.

Highest split yet and over 20%.

Always a catch up as NW records least over weekends but the deaths here are certainly higher than they should be.

As I noted in the hospital data for yesterday last night the only region where ventilator numbers rose on a day of big falls elsewhere.

 

[Healdplace]

The highest number of those NW deaths were in Liverpool and Knowsley (30 between them) and East Lancashire (17) by the way. Stockport at 9 was most in Greater Manchester.

 

[Mon Autre]

and if they'd been above board in their practices to start with we wouldn't have a pandemic. It doesn't clear them just because they did some things right mostly out of self-preservation at that point.

If they were honest and had integrity about the whole thing they'd have given full transparency and access, released every bit of available data instead of deleting it and already started compensating other countries for what they're culpable of.

The irony here is that we pursued the kind of herd immunity strategy that has put the whole world at risk by allowing the virus countless more opportunities to mutate into a vaccine resistant strain. I'm no fan of the Chinese government either but they can at least say that they dealt with it and got their infection rates down while our PM was talking about "taking it on the chin".

 

[Marvin]

Hancock is linking the lifting of the restrictions to the performance of the vaccines against the new variant. Will vaccination be sufficient to hold it back, or do we need restrictions in place until we get Vaccine Round 2?

A potential way out would be for the UK to explore other vaccine solutions. Novovax is staring us in the face and yet no one seems to discuss this. They claim 60% effectiveness against the SA variant. Have all these politicians forgotten this? The UK has ordered 60m doses. If that works, use it.

 

[Healdplace]

509 England hospital deaths by age:

20 -39 (7) 1.4%

40 - 59 (52) 10.2%

60 - 79 (204) 40.1%

80 PLUS (246) 48.3%

This looks like the most significant numbers yet.

Pretty sure that is the lowest over 80 split ever and the closest the two upper age groups have been together and the highest split I recall of under 60s at 11.6%

All of which is consistent not with rises in the under 60 deaths but rises in the percentage of them - which is different - because the older age groups are starting to fall dramatically in numbers.

First real sign of vaccine impact I think.