Coronavirus

[Ldr]

Especially given the ave age of death usually

https://publichealthmatters.blog.gov.uk/2021/03/31/life-expectancy-in-england-in-2020/

[Ldr]

Anyhow, how’s tricks over there atm Syd?

[Axholme Lion]

What I want is for people to remember how we have ended up, every single step of the way, with one of the worst outcomes in Europe. I want people to reflect on the decisions that got us here.

But that's all history now. We need to be looking forward and getting back to normal. Too many people are using covid as an excuse to do nothing. How many of these people that insist on working from home are out and about at the weekend doing whatever they want? An extra jab for the over fifties is the way to go and we can live our lives again.

[BillyStubbsTears]

I disagree Ldr.

1) According to ONS figures, both men and women at those mean COVID death ages have 8-9 years life expectancy.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/healthandlifeexpectancies/articles/lifeexpectancycalculator/2019-06-07

2) The mean death age doesn't map directly onto mean life years lost.

Example. The mean COVID death age for men is 78 years. The mean life expectancy for a 78 year old man is 9 years.

But, consider a hypothetical case where only two men had died of COVID. One at 98, the other at 58. So the mean death age is still 78.

The mean life expectancy for a 98 year old man is 2 years. The mean life expectancy for a 58 year old man is 26 years. So the mean life years lost is 14, not 9.

The 10.2 years figure looks very believable to me, and matches figures I've heard from actuarial researchers earlier in the epidemic.

That blows the "low hanging fruit" theme right out of the water.

[SydneyRover]

Anyhow, how’s tricks over there atm Syd?

It feels a bit like johnson is in charge here too, NSW is running 600+ cases/day and growing and the government has been attempting to contain it with a half arse lockdown. Death by a thousand cuts. The vaccine rollout was on the back burner as we had few cases and were told it wasn't a race ........... until it was, we now have 30% fully vaccinated in NSW with 50% on one dose. The government is blaming 'delta' as though we haven't seen the international news and is clamping down a bit harder each week as it gets worse. Masks will be mandatory outside from Monday with curfews in listed LGA's. We could only travel in a 10k radius up till last week now it's 5k but that is still around 75k sq to roam around in. We scream at the telly a fair bit but otherwise we're ok.

[bpoolrover]

You could argue Spain still have lots of restrictions and 121 died there yesterday

[Pancho Regan]

OK, so I've kept my mouth shut on this thread since I clearly got the prediction of what was going to happen at the back end of July wrong. Hands up. It happens.

BST, what exactly do you mean by “Hands up. It happens”?

You have been, by a country mile, the most prolific poster on this thread. You have peppered us with statistics, showered us with predictions.

I’m sure I recall you not many weeks ago predicting 600,000 new cases per day by mid-late August, and daily death rates by now of 250 to 300.

You were miles out in those predictions and some might say you have been a harbinger of doom on this topic since the very beginning.

Do you feel even a slight sense of embarrassment by your hugely over-inflated predictions of infection rates and deaths?

It’s not easy for any of us living through the dreadful consequences of this pandemic, but I really don’t think we are helped by your constant, inaccurate, exaggerations of the numbers.

Perhaps the most prudent of your contributions was when you “kept your mouth shut” once you realised you had got your predictions for the end of July so terribly wrong.

A lesson learned perhaps?
Apparently not.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Pancho

I called this one wrong. Like I said.

What you mean by "your constant, inaccurate, exaggerations of the numbers" I can only guess at though.

I was calling what was coming from early March last year. And again in October last year. Not because this is a dick waving contest. Because it was important to counter the attitude that this didn't matter. That the virus would fade away. That lockdowns weren't necessary. That we should learn to live with it.

Those attitudes would have doubled or trebled the scale of the disaster if they had prevailed. So they needed countering.

I don't recall you piling in here having a right pop at people who were not taking this epidemic seriously last year. While we were seeing 150,000 people die prematurely and £0.5trn of economic cost. Strange that you choose to do so now, ignoring the previous 18 months.

But yes I got the call on this summer wrong. The experience of the previous 18 months led me to be cautious rather than optimistic. The optimists have been right for 1 month. I was wrong. Happy now?

[SydneyRover]

this has just popped up on the Guardian

''An analysis of the third and final stage of the research programme, released on Friday, found that more than 85% of all the infections connected to the 49 days of various outdoor sport, music and entertainment events came from the eight Euros games involved, and mainly the semi-final and final''

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/20/9000-covid-cases-linked-to-euro-2020-games-in-mass-events-scheme

[dickos1]

Bpool.

But we know the date of the inquiry starting means that it won't report until after the next election. So no-one will ever be held to account by the electorate.

quite probably but the 1st 300 pages of this thread were discussing it, is it not better to look at how things are going now

Bpool
Do you think things are going well at the moment? Relative to, say, most other European countries?

We DID get a head start on vaccination. But most European countries have now caught up, while having way lower infections in this wave. Which means that the are seeing far fewer deaths and far less stress on their health systems as they get back to full economic performance.

Don't you think we should be asking why we are settling for 100 and rising deaths per day for the foreseeable future, while Germany has 15 and falling?

Do the Germans have thousands of people refusing the vaccine?
I don’t know but for me we’re always going to be getting cases when we have a vast number of our population refusing to be vaccinated

[BillyStubbsTears]

Dickos.

Yes they do. It's a major issue there. They are still debating banning non-vaccinated people from hotels, bars, stadiums etc.

The reason we've had the worst outbreak in Europe over the past 4 months is that we totally f**ked up management of travel restrictions when the Delta variant hit in April and we let Delta loose. And yes the vaccinations mean this hasn't resulted in crisis-level hospitalisations and deaths, to date. But the scale of the Delta outbreak here means that we are in a far worse position than Germany for the long term management of COVID over this Winter.

[dickos1]

Now you’ve mentioned Germany their number of cases per day has been rising significantly over the last month, now around 9k new infections a day.
As you’ve stated yourself many times before if they cases are going up each day then it won’t be long until the deaths start going up.
Germany could just be a month or so behind us!

[BillyStubbsTears]

That's true and I hadn't spotted that recent rise in Germany. But a couple of observations.

1) You're taking a single day as an example. You need to look at 7 day averages to smooth out peaks and troughs in daily figures. The 7 day average in Germany is currently 6000 new cases per day.

2) Germany has a track record right through this epidemic of acting promptly. So they have never once had a 7 day average greater than 26k new cases per day. By contrast, we have had a 7 day average between 26k-47k every single day for the past 7 weeks.

So yes it is possible that Germany might  have as many cases as us in a few weeks. But I wouldn't bet on it.

[dickos1]

I wouldn’t bet on anything
My stance throughout this thread is it’s ridiculous to keep comparing with other countries as we’ve no idea what is going to happen, a month ago I tried to make this point to you when you were saying with certainty how bad our cases and deaths were going to get over the next few weeks.
We’ve no idea, we got delta first but now it’s going around the globe so maybe just maybe it was an act of intelligence letting it in here.
And before you go wild I’m merely stating it could be but we will not know for at least a year or so

[wilts rover]

It was an act of intelligence allowing people to catch a fatal virus.

Thats where we are now.

[SydneyRover]

I wouldn’t bet on anything
My stance throughout this thread is it’s ridiculous to keep comparing with other countries as we’ve no idea what is going to happen, a month ago I tried to make this point to you when you were saying with certainty how bad our cases and deaths were going to get over the next few weeks.
We’ve no idea, we got delta first but now it’s going around the globe so maybe just maybe it was an act of intelligence letting it in here.
And before you go wild I’m merely stating it could be but we will not know for at least a year or so

If you don't control the borders it comes right in with the next visitor or the next resident returning, it's quite simple. Did johnson close the borders, restrict visitors?

[bpoolrover]

It’s not that easy to control the borders as every country just about has found out unless they keep them closed like Australia

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

One point on the rise of cases it would be interesting to see if events are part of that. I would say social distancing is a thing outside of events but far less so at football etc (quite quiet at the KMS today mind).

[BillyStubbsTears]

BFYP.

Have a look at the UK map of cases on the Kings College Zoe site.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#interactive-map

Many of the places that have had roaring holiday seasons are now deep purple.

Devon & Cornwall. Somerset coast. South West Wales, Bournemouth, Brighton (in fact much of the South Coast), Dales, Northumberland.

Suggests that packing people in is having a consequence.

Interestingly, I was up on the Cumbria/Dumfries border for our holiday a couple of weeks back. Fascinating micro example. On the England side, noone was wearing masks in cafes and pubs. We'd just had Freedom Day and social distancing wasn't much in evidence. On the Scottish side it was totally different. No entry into many places without a mask. Social distancing very much in evidence.

Look at the consequence either side of the border.

[bpoolrover]

If you look at Scotland as a whole thou it seems pretty much the same, 3400 new cases in Scotland 5 million population 32k in England

[BillyStubbsTears]

Bpool
Their schools have gone back and they've restarted testing kids. Last week it was less than half that many.

[bpoolrover]

The schools have only just gone back thou, and they opened up fully after England, and in 2 weeks it could be completely different, it’s like you compared the uk to numbers in Germany yet it’s impossible as we have no restrictions and they do so of course there numbers will be lower, in Scotland for example they have 2 football teams that attract any sort of crowds, in England there are probably 20 so there will be far more mixing of people, if everyone that could got vaccinated there would be far less people in hospital and dying at some point unless the numbers change dramatically were just going to unfortunately accept some deaths or we have to stay in lockdown

[big fat yorkshire pudding]

BFYP.

Have a look at the UK map of cases on the Kings College Zoe site.

https://covid.joinzoe.com/data#interactive-map

Many of the places that have had roaring holiday seasons are now deep purple.

Devon & Cornwall. Somerset coast. South West Wales, Bournemouth, Brighton (in fact much of the South Coast), Dales, Northumberland.

Suggests that packing people in is having a consequence.

Interestingly, I was up on the Cumbria/Dumfries border for our holiday a couple of weeks back. Fascinating micro example. On the England side, noone was wearing masks in cafes and pubs. We'd just had Freedom Day and social distancing wasn't much in evidence. On the Scottish side it was totally different. No entry into many places without a mask. Social distancing very much in evidence.

Look at the consequence either side of the border.

I guess we can't stop people going on holiday though?

I do agree with that point on the border as I've just spent a few days in Dumfries myself visiting my 90 year old Grandpa who lives there,though with tight rules couldn't visit my gran in her home.  They do enforce it quite tightly though nothing else did feel much different and they do also allow mass events eg football. Schools went back there on Wednesday so that effect will be interesting and a precursor to England.

Interesting in our hotel though they were asking people to wear masks even at breakfast. One guy did not like that fact and complained etc. Totally not needed, just do as asked everyone else was.

Mask use round here still seems quite high, it is noticeably different in certain areas though.

[BillyStubbsTears]

Seems to me it is inevitable that our daily positive test numbers will go up very rapidly when we start testing in the run up to schools opening in a couple of weeks.

Obviously what really matters is not the raw test numbers, but more the deaths and hospitalisation figures. Both of those unfortunately are rising at the moment after a brief lull, and the rate at which they are rising has got faster over recent days.

I agree with Bpool that there IS a level of deaths that you have to live with. What I don't know is what that level is. We are now at 100 per day and my sense is that is "acceptable" (in the sense that the consequence of trying to grind that down would probably do more harm than good). But where is the cut-off? I dunno.

[bpoolrover]

There has to be a cut off as you say bst and hopefully we will not get to it, my hospital as I
Posted on anther post has 22 ish patients with covid and half are not in for covid but other things, if the numbers are say a third of that around the country the actual numbers poorly in hospital woukd be a lot lower than the figures suggest( of course it might not be the case)

[SydneyRover]

It’s not that easy to control the borders as every country just about has found out unless they keep them closed like Australia

You do remember this bp?

''Covid variants: Why hasn't the UK banned all international flights?

One is India, where a new mutation of coronavirus first identified in the country has spread to the UK. This has been linked to international travel. It has been classified as a "variant of concern" and more than 3,400 cases of it have been found in the UK.

But despite this and the discovery in the UK of other variants identified abroad, the government has never banned international travel altogether - unlike some countries''

You would think a small island would be one of the easiest places in the world to restrict travel in and out?

Lots of countries went on the so called Red-List except India when johnson wanted to talk about a trade deal with them, how is the urgent trade deal going by-the-way? Got the Delta variant didn't nail the trade deal.

[bpoolrover]

so our borders should be shut till the virus has gone? That will be a very long time! Amd how many countries have done that? Germany France Spain Italy?

[SydneyRover]

so our borders should be shut till the virus has gone? That will be a very long time! Amd how many countries have done that? Germany France Spain Italy?

Is that what you want bp, no one is asking for that are they, people just wanted more common sense from johnson and to have had India, the source of the delta virus on the red list until more people were vaccinated resulting in less spread of the variant, less deaths and less people in hospital. If there is a single glaring consistent problem about johnson and how he has handled the pandemic it is that he has been slow to act, glacially slow.

[bpoolrover]

He probably was slow would it have changed anything or would it have just arrived a week or 2 later, I doubt we will ever know

[drfchound]

Blackpool, you didn’t suggest we close our borders be closed until the virus has gone did you?