Coronavirus Thread

[FoxyPV]

In a meeting about Covid impact and MsFoxy knocks on the door and shows me her positive lateral flow.......

[Countryfox]

4 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

the only reason soulsby isnt vilified more on FT is because he's a fan!

 

what a ridiculous point he's making

 

what have the council done over the past six months to get that percentage up ?

 

Glad you said that, I really thought I was missing something ...  but no, he is a complete tw@t !!  (fan or no fan).

[kingfox]

2 hours ago, dsr-burnley said:

But if we try and contain the virus, does that mean we have to remain under lockdown restrictions for ever, or is there a time when it can be "let out"?  According to the current death rates, and the ones from south Africa, it appears that omicron is less dangerous than flu on an individual basis and the only current major public danger is that it's all happening at once.  A lockdown of another couple of years to spread out the dates when people catch it, is possible, in theory at least.  But stopping it completely?

Like previous lockdowns, you simply have to slow down it’s spread, some will say lockdowns are useless, they don’t work, blah, blah, blah, every lockdown we’ve had, has seen numbers go down because of that action. I’d absolutely love to see Leicester’s rate go down to 30 per 100,000 cases again, instead of 1,557 per 100,000 that it is currently, that’s just utter ridiculous for a number of reasons.

 

Omicron is supposedly less severe, it now all depends on numbers in hospitalisations and deaths, but this is where the domino effect comes into play. Even if hospitalisations and deaths remain at a level, where the government suggests a lockdown is not needed, as we’ve seen over the past few weeks, case numbers are rocketing, coinciding with more people going back to work, but they can’t go back to work because they’ve been shoved into isolation.

 

We’ve now entered a staff shortage crisis, due to the UK letting it run rife and not imposing stronger restrictions. Hospital trusts are now declaring critical incidents because of staff shortages, retail and hospitality places could be forced to close anyway because of staff shortages, now schools have also gone back they’ll be a shortage of teachers.

 

It’s just not possible to do what we are doing, because as we’re starting to see, more cases you have, the bigger the staff shortage crisis becomes, it’s a simple domino effect, yet some buffoons don’t think about that consequence. 
 

How on earth are we meant to “ride the wave out”, when regardless of your vaccination status, you can still catch it, you still have to isolate, numbers are sky high and there are staff shortages in every sector

[bovril]

I'm amazed people are still talking about "controlling" or "slowing down" this variant. 

[st albans fox]

3 minutes ago, bovril said:

I'm amazed people are still talking about "controlling" or "slowing down" this variant. 

Well we don’t have to actively spread it …… we can live sensibly to try and avoid passing it on if we are unknowingly infected ….

[dsr-burnley]

4 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Like previous lockdowns, you simply have to slow down it’s spread, some will say lockdowns are useless, they don’t work, blah, blah, blah, every lockdown we’ve had, has seen numbers go down because of that action. I’d absolutely love to see Leicester’s rate go down to 30 per 100,000 cases again, instead of 1,557 per 100,000 that it is currently, that’s just utter ridiculous for a number of reasons.

 

Omicron is supposedly less severe, it now all depends on numbers in hospitalisations and deaths, but this is where the domino effect comes into play. Even if hospitalisations and deaths remain at a level, where the government suggests a lockdown is not needed, as we’ve seen over the past few weeks, case numbers are rocketing, coinciding with more people going back to work, but they can’t go back to work because they’ve been shoved into isolation.

 

We’ve now entered a staff shortage crisis, due to the UK letting it run rife and not imposing stronger restrictions. Hospital trusts are now declaring critical incidents because of staff shortages, retail and hospitality places could be forced to close anyway because of staff shortages, now schools have also gone back they’ll be a shortage of teachers.

 

It’s just not possible to do what we are doing, because as we’re starting to see, more cases you have, the bigger the staff shortage crisis becomes, it’s a simple domino effect, yet some buffoons don’t think about that consequence. 
 

How on earth are we meant to “ride the wave out”, when regardless of your vaccination status, you can still catch it, you still have to isolate, numbers are sky high and there are staff shortages in every sector

That doesn't answer the question.  If we reintroduce lockdown, how long will it last?  If Leicester's case load is down to a thirtieth of what it is now, does that mean that after 30 months' lockdown we can release it?

 

What is the long term plan?  All your plan tells me is that you want to take action now, in some form or another, to cut cases in the very short term.  So we cut cases in January.  What happens in February?

 

In the first lockdown we were waiting to find out what this disease was and what its effect was going to be.  In the second lockdown we were waiting for the vaccine.  What would we be waiting for in the third vaccine? 

[Ric Flair]

3 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Like previous lockdowns, you simply have to slow down it’s spread, some will say lockdowns are useless, they don’t work, blah, blah, blah, every lockdown we’ve had, has seen numbers go down because of that action. I’d absolutely love to see Leicester’s rate go down to 30 per 100,000 cases again, instead of 1,557 per 100,000 that it is currently, that’s just utter ridiculous for a number of reasons.

 

Omicron is supposedly less severe, it now all depends on numbers in hospitalisations and deaths, but this is where the domino effect comes into play. Even if hospitalisations and deaths remain at a level, where the government suggests a lockdown is not needed, as we’ve seen over the past few weeks, case numbers are rocketing, coinciding with more people going back to work, but they can’t go back to work because they’ve been shoved into isolation.

 

We’ve now entered a staff shortage crisis, due to the UK letting it run rife and not imposing stronger restrictions. Hospital trusts are now declaring critical incidents because of staff shortages, retail and hospitality places could be forced to close anyway because of staff shortages, now schools have also gone back they’ll be a shortage of teachers.

 

It’s just not possible to do what we are doing, because as we’re starting to see, more cases you have, the bigger the staff shortage crisis becomes, it’s a simple domino effect, yet some buffoons don’t think about that consequence. 
 

How on earth are we meant to “ride the wave out”, when regardless of your vaccination status, you can still catch it, you still have to isolate, numbers are sky high and there are staff shortages in every sector

On the flip side, the domino effect to the economy and people's lives caused by lockdowns is equally as unacceptable long term.

 

The countries you quote as well are either very remote (NZ) or Eastern authoritarian societies which is as unpalatable as anything western countries are doing where they are failing to control the spread. Look at the countries in some sort of lockdown of our demographic in Europe and you'll realise they're the worst of both worlds. They are locking down and still having huge numbers but ultimately hospitalisations and deaths are still within what's going to be deemed what's acceptable as a qay of life for getting on with it.

 

 

[bovril]

Just now, st albans fox said:

Well we don’t have to actively spread it …… we can live sensibly to try and avoid passing it on if we are unknowingly infected ….

Passing on a highly contagious respiratory virus is not about being living sensibly, it's luck. 

 

I am fine with people wanting more restrictions, but I would like them a) to provide evidence that long term they are the best solution and b) explain what the end game is. 

[st albans fox]

4 minutes ago, bovril said:

Passing on a highly contagious respiratory virus is not about being living sensibly, it's luck. 

 

I am fine with people wanting more restrictions, but I would like them a) to provide evidence that long term they are the best solution and b) explain what the end game is. 

How many non medics are asking for more restrictions?  I’m merely saying the ones we have are not really that intrusive and will make a difference ref general behaviour 

[kingfox]

3 minutes ago, dsr-burnley said:

That doesn't answer the question.  If we reintroduce lockdown, how long will it last?  If Leicester's case load is down to a thirtieth of what it is now, does that mean that after 30 months' lockdown we can release it?

 

What is the long term plan?  All your plan tells me is that you want to take action now, in some form or another, to cut cases in the very short term.  So we cut cases in January.  What happens in February?

 

In the first lockdown we were waiting to find out what this disease was and what its effect was going to be.  In the second lockdown we were waiting for the vaccine.  What would we be waiting for in the third vaccine? 

It’s a never ending cycle that we are stuck in, they’ll be certain problems if they impose a lockdown, they’ll be certain problems if we continue with what we are doing.

 

How long would a lockdown be needed for, I’d love to have an answer for that, but there simply isn’t one.

 

It’s all about waiting on the peak, then cases will gradually start to flatten, as we’ve seen with South Africa. Supposedly the peak in London has already been reached, but there’s current uncertainty surrounding that, plus the effect of New Year has yet to take a foothold yet.

 

Who knows when the peak will come, but in the meantime is what we are seeing and our action of tackling it enough? 
 

As I’ve said already, higher the cases, the bigger the staff shortage crisis becomes, as some reports stated at the weekend, a lockdown could be implied by default. It will be impossible for the NHS, retail and hospitality sectors and schools to manage, when they have no bloody staff. 

 

A third vaccine that wanes after ten weeks, then what? They’ll probably push all hope in a fourth vaccine, to save the older population from hospitalisation and death again, that good ol’ never ending cycle. 

[Nalis]

4 hours ago, kingfox said:

Point the blame at whoever, at the end of the day this has been going on for two years, yet some people still can’t fathom out the domino effect that this virus causes.

 

All this “Learn to live with the virus” bollocks, we are seeing what happens when you let it run rife, certain sectors hit a crisis because too many staff are forced into isolation. To me that’s not learning to live with the virus, that’s just a complete and utter mess, which you can’t let be the norm. 
 

As certain media outlets said over the weekend, we could be forced into a lockdown by default, regardless of the situation in hospitals. 
 

Our method of basically giving up is bullshit.

I dont know, I feel its virtually impossible for the UK or any EU country to have a zero covid policy for a variety of reasons.

[KrefelderFox666]

58 minutes ago, FoxyPV said:

In a meeting about Covid impact and MsFoxy knocks on the door and shows me her positive lateral flow.......

Never heard that terminology used before...

[dsr-burnley]

28 minutes ago, kingfox said:

It’s a never ending cycle that we are stuck in, they’ll be certain problems if they impose a lockdown, they’ll be certain problems if we continue with what we are doing.

 

How long would a lockdown be needed for, I’d love to have an answer for that, but there simply isn’t one.

 

It’s all about waiting on the peak, then cases will gradually start to flatten, as we’ve seen with South Africa. Supposedly the peak in London has already been reached, but there’s current uncertainty surrounding that, plus the effect of New Year has yet to take a foothold yet.

 

Who knows when the peak will come, but in the meantime is what we are seeing and our action of tackling it enough? 
 

As I’ve said already, higher the cases, the bigger the staff shortage crisis becomes, as some reports stated at the weekend, a lockdown could be implied by default. It will be impossible for the NHS, retail and hospitality sectors and schools to manage, when they have no bloody staff. 

 

A third vaccine that wanes after ten weeks, then what? They’ll probably push all hope in a fourth vaccine, to save the older population from hospitalisation and death again, that good ol’ never ending cycle. 

My guess would be that annual vaccines will do, just like flu.  Besides, if this wave continues as it is, then the number of people susceptible to the virus should be negligible fairly quickly and that would faltten the wave like nobody's business.

 

I reckon that the best policy would be to ride it out now in the hope and expectation that the number of cases must of necessity drop.  And let the NHS cope as best it can, accepting that certain treatments will be less effective for the short term, and also accepting that people like parafox (if he was willing) would be allowed back to work without the palaver of retraining.  Medical people aren't fools, they know what they can and can't do.

[kingfox]

1 hour ago, dsr-burnley said:

My guess would be that annual vaccines will do, just like flu.  Besides, if this wave continues as it is, then the number of people susceptible to the virus should be negligible fairly quickly and that would faltten the wave like nobody's business.

 

I reckon that the best policy would be to ride it out now in the hope and expectation that the number of cases must of necessity drop.  And let the NHS cope as best it can, accepting that certain treatments will be less effective for the short term, and also accepting that people like parafox (if he was willing) would be allowed back to work without the palaver of retraining.  Medical people aren't fools, they know what they can and can't do.

Patrick Vallance mentioned that yesterday, but how long will it take to get a sufficient vaccine, that question of course is unknown.

 

Yet again he also said, we don’t know when the peak will come and how bad it’s going to be.

 

Is what we are doing now sustainable enough?

 

They bang on about protecting the NHS, we have to keep the hospitality sector going, we have to keep schools open. As we’re on a football forum, the same thing can be said about football. 
 

But letting the virus run rife isn’t protecting those sectors is it, it’s just causing a wave of staff shortages, to the point where NHS trusts are declaring critical incidents, and schools are already being forced to shut because of a lack of staff.

 

It’s alright trying to ride the wave, but it just snowballs to the point where it’s hard for it to be sustainable.

Edited 5 January 2022 by kingfox

[HighPeakFox]

8 hours ago, shade said:

We're all victims, we're all human beings. Never forget that.

I'm no victim, and I have little time for victim mentality either. 

[dsr-burnley]

59 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Patrick Vallance mentioned that yesterday, but how long will it take to get a sufficient vaccine, that question of course is unknown.

 

Yet again he also said, we don’t know when the peak will come and how bad it’s going to be.

 

Is what we are doing now sustainable enough?

 

They bang on about protecting the NHS, we have to keep the hospitality sector going, we have to keep schools open. As we’re on a football forum, the same thing can be said about football. 
 

But letting the virus run rife isn’t protecting those sectors is it, it’s just causing a wave of staff shortages, to the point where NHS trusts are declaring critical incidents, and schools are already being forced to shut because of a lack of staff.

 

It’s alright trying to ride the wave, but it just snowballs to the point where it’s hard for it to be sustainable.

All fair points.  But it still hard to find anyone, scientifically qualified or no, who will say what the long term plan would be if we lock down now.  Either the long term plan is to lock down and stay locked down, or else it is to release lockdown within a few months - and if the latter, what conditions will enable that release and why do they think those conditions will come about?

[Sol thewall Bamba]

Lots of deaths announced today but Whitty did mention this would be the case yesterday. ONS doubling down on the theory that it's peaked in London. How far ahead of the rest of the UK is London generally?

Edited 5 January 2022 by Sol thewall Bamba

[z-layrex]

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mayo-clinic-fires-700-unvaccinated-employees/

 

Starts here in the spring.

[Wymsey]

Just now, z-layrex said:

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mayo-clinic-fires-700-unvaccinated-employees/

 

Starts here in the spring.

At University Hospitals of Leicester, staff not wishing to be vaccinated will be re-deployed to non-clinical/non-patient-facing positions.

[Stivo]

15 minutes ago, Sol thewall Bamba said:

Lots of deaths announced today but Whitty did mention this would be the case yesterday. ONS doubling down on the theory that it's peaked in London. How far ahead of the rest of the UK is London generally?

I would guess between 1-2 weeks.  The models were predicting a peak in mid to late Jan.  

 

ONS estimate that 1 in 10 people in London have it and 1 in 15 in the uk as a whole. 
 

London was at 1 in 15 on 20th December which is 16 days ago, so its  plausible  that the peak elsewhere will be around the 21st??  Indeed if you take the view that the London peak was a week ago then you could pull the date  a week closer.

Edited 5 January 2022 by Stivo

[kingfox]

29 minutes ago, dsr-burnley said:

All fair points.  But it still hard to find anyone, scientifically qualified or no, who will say what the long term plan would be if we lock down now.  Either the long term plan is to lock down and stay locked down, or else it is to release lockdown within a few months - and if the latter, what conditions will enable that release and why do they think those conditions will come about?

Same can be said about many other things, not just where lockdowns are concerned, a long term plan, I don’t see a long term plan regarding this virus.

 

Lockdowns work to a certain extent, but of course it’s not a sustainable method. 
 

But is what we are doing now a sustainable method? Out of all the variants so far, they are letting the most prevalent one run rife, the downside to that as I’ve already said, is a high number of cases = A staff shortage crisis. We must keep certain sectors open, yet those certain sectors will either struggle or be forced to shutdown anyway, because they have no bloody staff.

 

As the second tweet, to the tweet I posted earlier said, countries that rely solely on the vaccine won’t be able to tackle what we are seeing now. As we are already seeing, certain situations snowball into a crisis, they are desperate to keep our sectors running, but they are not helping them with the current methods they are sticking by. 
 

I just laugh nowadays whenever I see someone say “We must keep Schools open”, it will be bloody hard to keep schools open when they are being forced to shut because of staff shortage.

[st albans fox]

15 minutes ago, Stivo said:

I would guess between 1-2 weeks.  The models were predicting a peak in mid to late Jan.  

 

ONS estimate that 1 in 10 people in London have it and 1 in 15 in the uk as a whole. 
 

London was at 1 in 15 on 20th December which is 16 days ago, so its  plausible  that the peak elsewhere will be around the 21st??

with kids back to school, it could be an even faster peak across the rest of the country .....

[dsr-burnley]

5 minutes ago, kingfox said:

Same can be said about many other things, not just where lockdowns are concerned, a long term plan, I don’t see a long term plan regarding this virus.

 

Lockdowns work to a certain extent, but of course it’s not a sustainable method. 
 

But is what we are doing now a sustainable method? Out of all the variants so far, they are letting the most prevalent one run rife, the downside to that as I’ve already said, is a high number of cases = A staff shortage crisis. We must keep certain sectors open, yet those certain sectors will either struggle or be forced to shutdown anyway, because they have no bloody staff.

 

As the second tweet, to the tweet I posted earlier said, countries that rely solely on the vaccine won’t be able to tackle what we are seeing now. As we are already seeing, certain situations snowball into a crisis, they are desperate to keep our sectors running, but they are not helping them with the current methods they are sticking by. 
 

I just laugh nowadays whenever I see someone say “We must keep Schools open”, it will be bloody hard to keep schools open when they are being forced to shut because of staff shortage.

This is short term.  We aren't going to have 5m cases per week for very long.  By February we should be over the worst and by March, almost back to normal.  The long term (and possibly short term, fingers crossed) plan is that if, with the help of vaccines, this disease becomes no worse than flu, then we can treat it like we treat flu.

[Stivo]

2 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

with kids back to school, it could be an even faster peak across the rest of the country .....

I found a graph for what happened in London which suggests that you might be right even without the schools.

 

 

 

[reynard]

3 hours ago, kingfox said:

It’s a never ending cycle that we are stuck in, they’ll be certain problems if they impose a lockdown, they’ll be certain problems if we continue with what we are doing.

 

How long would a lockdown be needed for, I’d love to have an answer for that, but there simply isn’t one.

 

It’s all about waiting on the peak, then cases will gradually start to flatten, as we’ve seen with South Africa. Supposedly the peak in London has already been reached, but there’s current uncertainty surrounding that, plus the effect of New Year has yet to take a foothold yet.

 

Who knows when the peak will come, but in the meantime is what we are seeing and our action of tackling it enough? 
 

As I’ve said already, higher the cases, the bigger the staff shortage crisis becomes, as some reports stated at the weekend, a lockdown could be implied by default. It will be impossible for the NHS, retail and hospitality sectors and schools to manage, when they have no bloody staff. 

 

A third vaccine that wanes after ten weeks, then what? They’ll probably push all hope in a fourth vaccine, to save the older population from hospitalisation and death again, that good ol’ never ending cycle. 

It is too late to act now in all truth. If we were going to do anything more severe it needed doing before Christmas but that would have been political suicide for Boris.

The main thing that could help now is people's behaviour. As an older person I'm mitigating my risks by not going to places I normally would and the thought of a crowded indoor setting isn't that appealing to me right now but of course people are free to make their own choices.

The London figures are interesting but there are a number of unanswered questions.

1 The virus has not yet peaked in those over 50 where numbers are increasing and they are the cohort of people most likely to fall sick. How will these people be in hospital, will they need hospital care at all and if so how many?

2 The figures are only up to date until 31st December. What will the effects be of the parties that went on on New year's Eve?

3  What will happen once we've had a few days of schools going back? All indications from previous Delta cases would indicate that this will lead to even more cases.

 

I do wonder if they have decided to go for herd immunity through the back door here. If, and it still remains an if in older populations, Omicron does indeed end up being less dangerous then we're going to have a lot of people with some kind of immunity in a very short time frame. However, they will then build up community immunity along with some immunity from vaccines etc. 

Eventually vaccines will be developed, if not this year probably by Spring 2023, that deal with multiple variants, the virus will hopefully become endemic and we can vaccinate annually like we do for flu.

 

Most areas of Leicestershire are now above 1600/100k infection levels. In London these seem to have tailed off once an area reaches 2000-2500 per 100k. If that continues it would suggest locally we still have some way to go before we see infections tail off.

Still a few very bumpy months ahead and we need to get our act together globally to vaccinate more people in more countries.