SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

If you're in tier 4 you can still send your kids into a school or go teach in one, but then are expected not to see your own family at all, at Christmas. If they're expecting people to abide by that kind of logic then they are mad, but I think more likely the plan all along was to get people to go out and spend their Christmas money and then announce they can't have a Christmas after most of them have spent it. Nothing to do with science. Nothing to do with saving lives. Just to do with attemptingh to control people and be seen to be doing the right thing even if in actuality it's the wrong thing.

There is nothing new or surprising about the infection rates in the south east. They've been on a steady increase for weeks almost exactly as per the predicted curve, and their chief scientist literally told them on live TV that the tier system would not be effective, when they announced the tier system. This happened on live television.

Some of the schools here wanted to close a week early, but the government threateneed them with legal action to keep them open. Infection transmission is mainly occuring between school aged people at the moment. Yet less than a week before deciding to move the whole region into a non existent "tier 4", the government was threatening schools to stay open regardles sof whether it meant more people being infected over christmas. Work out the scientific logic behind that.

There's going to be thousands of thousands of people in tears this evening and many of them wondering how they'll cope over the next few weeks. It's just plain cruel at this point. This could have been very easily avoided and lives could have been saved rather than lost in the process. They had the option of closing schools a bit early, or announcing much sooner that Christmas restrictions would have to change. They had the option of the "firebreak" lockdown. They have the option of going by assessment rather than freedom removal/control tactics. They had the option of imposing stricter restrictions sooner and backing it up with actual data rather than treating people like they are too stupid to understand.

Assuming the government isn't being run by dangerous idiots just because they are the government is silly.
 
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Vidic_In_Moscow said:
I have faith that they're doing the best they can in the circumstances they find themselves, with as much expertise & support as they need. I also don't believe that anyone else in the same boat would look significantly better right now or be doing a much better job. As I say the fact that we can learn about it so quickly, know the tips and tricks to reduce our risks and even produce a vaccine is a miracle in of itself. People really expect miracles it seems I think from a false sense of security they give themselves that the government is and should be in charge of absolutely everything that happens in the universe.

The biggest shame of all is that all of the experts that know all of the easy and 'obvious' choices that should have been made at every step of the way are trapped behind computer screens or else we'd be fine and dandy now.
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Think this is too far in the other direction. This government are a massive pile of shite and have been from the beginning of the pandemic. From the ridiculous messaging throughout, to the corruption, to the inadequacy of the NHS to deal with it because of their last 10 years of mismanagement, to their late decisions, they've made mistakes at every step. They would perhaps have made slightly less if they didn't have essentially one mandate as a cabinet, regardless of actual ability: 'getting brexit done'.

Still, I sometimes visit this thread and wonder if I've stepped into an alternate universe where Britain is uniquely suffering from Covid, while the rest of Europe (and World) swims in normalcy.

I know what someone will say immediately. Most deaths and biggest economic contraction in Europe. And they're right. The UK has been shite at every turn. As have Italy, France, Spain, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland and even Germany now, at some point or another. Its a bit like your friend laughing at you because you've got chlamydia when they've got gonorrhoea.

The whole situation is fecking depressing. I'm looking at work over the next few months and not seeing any way in which this isn't probably the grimmest few months of my career.
 
Dumbstar said:
There's a reason we have such a ridiculously high death count for a relatively small population. Unfortunately, idiocracy is here and it's global.
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It started with Boris's suicidal bravado in thinking it wouldn't be an issue in UK, so wasting Jan-March prep time.
Then the first lockdown wasn't really a lockdown at all, when compared to Asia, let alone Spain or Italy. Masks not mandatory, people allowed out for recreation, borders kept open and trains kept running.
Then we had Cummings
Eat out to help out.
Lets open pubs

Also, despite UK being such a multicultural, multiracial, multinational nation, our understanding of the world is often just with people within our borders and the general British public is surprisingly myopic in its points of reference. The average person thinks we are doing as well as we can, and generally oblivious on the measures nations like Australia, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, UAE and others took to get on top of the virus.

So we end up with a British public who have been educated in the worst possible way for living through a pandemic, and many of whom have normalised the worst pandemic behaviours.

I don't agree with your last point about idiocy being global. Might be a western Europe issue, but many populations adhere to restrictions and obligations far better than people in UK.
 
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Vidic_In_Moscow said:
I have faith that they're doing the best they can in the circumstances they find themselves, with as much expertise & support as they need. I also don't believe that anyone else in the same boat would look significantly better right now or be doing a much better job. As I say the fact that we can learn about it so quickly, know the tips and tricks to reduce our risks and even produce a vaccine is a miracle in of itself. People really expect miracles it seems I think from a false sense of security they give themselves that the government is and should be in charge of absolutely everything that happens in the universe.

The biggest shame of all is that all of the experts that know all of the easy and 'obvious' choices that should have been made at every step of the way are trapped behind computer screens or else we'd be fine and dandy now.
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How much detailed knowledge or exposure do you have to how other countries have dealt with this?

Thailand has identical population to UK. plus Bangkok is a very busy international hub. they have 60 deaths so far vs UK 67,000+ deaths
Vietnam has 35% bigger population to UK: 35 deaths
Philippines is almost double UK population: 8,900 deaths
Take even a country like South Africa, 90% of UK population : 25,000 deaths.

There are so many countries 'in the same boat' as UK, and yet every single one is doing so much better.
 
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Pogue Mahone said:
A friend of mine just sent me a photo from inside the Westfield shopping centre, in London. Throngs of people. Loads without masks. Is that normal in the UK?!

All very well moaning about Boris and the gang but that photo really shocked me. Looks like the British public need to up their fecking game or reap the consequences.
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Vidic_In_Moscow said:
I have faith that they're doing the best they can in the circumstances they find themselves, with as much expertise & support as they need. I also don't believe that anyone else in the same boat would look significantly better right now or be doing a much better job. As I say the fact that we can learn about it so quickly, know the tips and tricks to reduce our risks and even produce a vaccine is a miracle in of itself. People really expect miracles it seems I think from a false sense of security they give themselves that the government is and should be in charge of absolutely everything that happens in the universe.

The biggest shame of all is that all of the experts that know all of the easy and 'obvious' choices that should have been made at every step of the way are trapped behind computer screens or else we'd be fine and dandy now.
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You have faith in this bunch of Tory spivs? Jesus Christ.
 
Flout the rules, lose your furlough pay.

We'd see much higher compliance then imo
 
Relevated said:
This is cool man but I bet their attitude would have been different if the government didn't lie, go back on their words, change rules last minute, etc etc.
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Personal responsibility has to come into this at some point. If everyone actually listened to the science and what experts have been saying we wouldn’t be in this position.
 
It's disappointing seeing all those White And Majority Ethnic people risking their own lives and the lives of others.
 
I bet half of those Londoners jumping ship were telling the northerners to suck it up when they were in tier 3 for weeks
 
To be fair I think it's a bit of a stretch to call any group of people in St Pancras 'Londoners'. More than likely a lot of them are going home to where they are actually from.
 
sammsky1 said:


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My instagram timeline is full of people "escaping London" planning parties as a feck you or saying they are sticking to their original plans.

This is what happens when the government use bullshit to try and retrospectively move the goalposts. They aren't trying to save lives because announcing these changes at this stage when it's obvious so many people wont stick to them is going to be of very little help. They are trying to save face by pretending they are doing the right thing while tricking people into thinking they would have a Christmas so they'd go out and spend money on it.

I've had my mum on the phone crying three times. I'm going to have to still go see her at the very least because cutting her off from the world for Christmas with this little notice when she can't even isolate or form a bubble to get around it is cruel, and it's a lesser evil for me to break the rules at this point than do that to someone. That's the dilemna this bullshit has put hundreds of thousands of people in.

There was no reason not to come to this decision 2-3 weeks ago or longer if it was ever going to be a possibility. Nothing has changed in that time to make where we are at now a surprise in terms of the infection rate. Only 3 days ago they "reviewed" the tiers supposedly. Only a day before they were forcing Schools in London and Essex to stay open despite requests from the schools to close a week early due to the infection transmission being linked directly to school aged people.

It's actually at a point where I can see it ending in full on riots. People aren't so stupid that they can't tell complete bollocks from reason, and using complete bollocks to take people's freedoms away is dangerous at the best of times.
 
Tibs said:
Flout the rules, lose your furlough pay.

We'd see much higher compliance then imo
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Yeah, we definitely need to punish those suffering the most from the virus more. They’d had such an easy ride.
 
acnumber9 said:
Yeah, we definitely need to punish those suffering the most from the virus more. They’d had such an easy ride.
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I was on furlough for a few months and had it easy. Far easier than my colleagues who were still working. There should be higher punishments for those breaking the rules but there's far too many to police now.
 
RonaldoVII said:
I was on furlough for a few months and had it easy. Far easier than my colleagues who were still working. There should be higher punishments for those breaking the rules but there's far too many to police now.
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Good for you.
 
RonaldoVII said:
I was on furlough for a few months and had it easy. Far easier than my colleagues who were still working. There should be higher punishments for those breaking the rules but there's far too many to police now.
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I don't see how you fairly punish people for breaking the rules when the rules themselves make no sense and no one knows the situation an individual is breaking the rules in or why.

If someone who's been on their own all year in tier 4, self isolates for 2 weeks to go and spend Christmas with their family in tier 2, do you think they deserve to be punished? What if doing that is the only thing that gets them through this? What if they say they are forming a support bubble with their family? How do you prove whether that's a lie?

Who's going to judge where the line is between being irresponsible and making reasoned judgements to try and maintain a quality of life? and who's going to judge if someone has or hasn't crossed it? Particularly considering the most irresponsible and inconsistent people during the whole pandemic have been the British government.

Short of throwing large lockdown parties or being a mask conspiracy weirdo I find it hard to judge anyone at this point. No one knows what anyone else has been through since March or what circumstances they are making their decisions under.
 
noodlehair said:
I don't see how you fairly punish people for breaking the rules when the rules themselves make no sense and no one knows the situation an individual is breaking the rules in or why.

If someone who's been on their own all year in tier 4, self isolates for 2 weeks to go and spend Christmas with their family in tier 2, do you think they deserve to be punished? What if doing that is the only thing that gets them through this? What if they say they are forming a support bubble with their family? How do you prove whether that's a lie?

Who's going to judge where the line is between being irresponsible and making reasoned judgements to try and maintain a quality of life? and who's going to judge if someone has or hasn't crossed it? Particularly considering the most irresponsible and inconsistent people during the whole pandemic have been the British government.

Short of throwing large lockdown parties or being a mask conspiracy weirdo I find it hard to judge anyone at this point. No one knows what anyone else has been through since March or what circumstances they are making their decisions under.
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Surely it's beyond question at this point that the more personal judgment we've allowed people to make during the pandemic, the more the virus has spread? The population hasn't self regulated in the way that is necessary to minimise harm to itself. So the people advocating for people to take decisions into their own hands because the government haven't earned that legitimacy are directly advocating for a position that will in all likelihood lead to more harm. Suspending judgement on that individual position seems problematic in that context.

It will make the spread worse and it will require more draconian rules on commerce and socialising at a later point, because it simply isn't manageable with the resources we have for people to just do what they think is best. That's just the evidence we have. There is no reason to believe that individual judgment in this scenario will result in better outcomes for the population than the idiotic governments decisions. It might result in better outcomes for the individual, but that's a dangerous view to take, with obvious longer-term risks.

So while it is a valid position to take, from at least one perspective, it's important to acknowledge it is not a harm-free choice. It is a choice about which harms you prefer, and you're making decisions that impact on other people. They should be judged because that's part of the social contract. That is one of the things that helps maintain the overall health of societies.
 
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Pogue Mahone said:
A friend of mine just sent me a photo from inside the Westfield shopping centre, in London. Throngs of people. Loads without masks. Is that normal in the UK?!

In Ireland you could go days without seeing a single maskless person in an indoor space. I know the benefits of masks are kind of uncertain but to me it’s a marker of general civic spiritedness during the pandemic. If they can’t be bothered wearing a mask in a shopping centre then chances are you’re taking the piss in other ways too.

All very well moaning about Boris and the gang but that photo really shocked me. Looks like the British public need to up their fecking game or reap the consequences.
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To be fair, people rushed to Westfield before the shops shut. Easily avoided if Govt had its shit together.
 
I know it is a very different situation but NSW has locked down the 250000 people who live on Sydney's north shore with a stay at home order to contain an outbreak of 68 cases. Restrictions have increased slightly in the rest of Sydney e.g. back to 1 person per 4sq m in restaurants and pubs. The other states are locking their borders with us because this is viewed as far too lax an approach.
 
GloryHunter07 said:
To be fair, people rushed to Westfield before the shops shut. Easily avoided if Govt had its shit together.
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Isn't it also easily avoided by people not needing to go to the shops so close to Christmas in the midst of a pandemic, either by having bought online or bought in the shops weeks back, when London was in a less precarious position? Or if they absolutely had to go, to only go with masks? Sure, the government created a problem, so people had to make choices. Shouldn't we expect them not to make choices like this? When the government makes bad choices it doesn't give licence to people to make their own bad choices, surely?
 
noodlehair said:
It's actually at a point where I can see it ending in full on riots.... People aren't so stupid that they can't tell complete bollocks from reason, and using complete bollocks to take people's freedoms away is dangerous at the best of times.
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You know, that's what I thought at the beginning of this pandemic. Now I'm starting to lean towards the opinion that most people are law-abiding. Masks and lockdowns are well outside their comfort zones, but to go rioting is a step too far.

To date society and rule of law have generally held up quite nicely.
 
For those sceptical about the relevance of this mutation, here's a couple of outside perspectives:

“This spread is happening at a moment in time when there are already many lineages circulating, and despite that it is displacing them all,” said Kristian Andersen, a geneticist at the Scripps Research in La Jolla, Calif. “We can’t say for sure, but to me it looks like this very explosive growth is primarily because” of its new mutations.

The new variant in Britain shares a crucial mutation with a lineage that is growing just as explosively in South Africa. At a World Health Organization meeting early this month, scientists reported that the South African variant accounted for 80 to 90 percent of newly identified infections, driving an explosive second wave.

“We normally see 20 to 30 lineages in our samples at a given time,” said Tulio de Oliveira, a professor at the University of KwaZulu-Natal’s Nelson R. Mandela School of Medicine, in Durban, who first flagged the variant. “Now, we see only one.”
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They need more testing to verify the claims of being "up to 70% more transmissible" and it obviously doubles up as convenient political cover, but at the very least there's reason to think this requires a change in tactic. And while the UK is criticised for its slow response in most things, if it is the case that Nervtag only shared their analysis the day before (which eventually becomes public record), then I don't think there's much to argue about. The UK were noted in that article in nature as being particularly proactive on studying the generic variations:

The clearest sign that D614G has an effect on the spread of SARS-CoV-2 in humans comes from an ambitious UK effort called the COVID-19 Genomics UK Consortium, which has analysed genomes of around 25,000 viral samples. From these data, researchers have identified more than 1,300 instances in which a virus entered the United Kingdom and spread, including examples of D- and G-type viruses.

A team led by Andrew Rambaut, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Edinburgh, UK, epidemiologist Erik Volz, at Imperial College London, and biologist Thomas Connor at Cardiff University, studied the UK spread of 62 COVID-19 clusters seeded by D viruses and 245 by G viruses7. The researchers found no clinical differences in people infected with either virus. However, G viruses tended to transmit slightly faster than lineages that didn’t carry the change, and formed larger clusters of infections. Their estimates of the difference in transmission rates hover around 20%, Volz says, but the true value could be a bit higher or lower. “There’s not a large effect in absolute terms,” says Rambaut.
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https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6

These are genuine experts in their fields working on these things, and when looking at that new strain before they were happy to say the effects were relatively muted. 20%, not 70%. For them to have mistakenly understood this one or greatly exaggerated the changes would be really unusual. It can't be put down to just bumbling Boris.
 
sammsky1 said:


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So many in this thread want to blame the government but not foist any blame on the populace. It’s not all the government. It’s at best half & half with probably more blame on the populace.

There’s absolutely no reason for pictures like this. This picture isn’t due to the idiocy of the government, it’s due to the idiocy of the populace.

When will people finally realize this?
 
sammsky1 said:


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Aside from the worst government and prime minister in history doing a terrible job, what you've posted above is also part of the reason why the infection rates here are so high and the worst in Europe.

We're in tier 4 where I am, my family made the decision earlier in the week to cancel our Christmas plans, it's just not worth it.

The people who live in the house at the back have been constantly flouting, they had people over yesterday even though we were in tier 3 at that time. If I see anymore people over there I'm tempted to call the police (Although I think the Mrs will probably try to stop me)
 
calodo2003 said:
So many in this thread want to blame the government but not foist any blame on the populace. It’s not all the government. It’s at best half & half with probably more blame on the populace.

There’s absolutely no reason for pictures like this. This picture isn’t due to the idiocy of the government, it’s due to the idiocy of the populace.

When will people finally realize this?
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Unfortunately, a significant number of people will always do what they want, without a thought for "the others". The people who comply with the rules aren't enough on their own.
 
Penna said:
Unfortunately, a significant number of people will always do what they want, without a thought for "the others". The people who comply with the rules aren't enough on their own.
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And then these mensas will create an uproar when truly severe lockdown measures are enacted.
 
Brwned said:
For those sceptical about the relevance of this mutation, here's a couple of outside perspectives:



They need more testing to verify the claims of being "up to 70% more transmissible" and it obviously doubles up as convenient political cover, but at the very least there's reason to think this requires a change in tactic. And while the UK is criticised for its slow response in most things, if it is the case that Nervtag only shared their analysis the day before (which eventually becomes public record), then I don't think there's much to argue about. The UK were noted in that article in nature as being particularly proactive on studying the generic variations:



https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-02544-6

These are genuine experts in their fields working on these things, and when looking at that new strain before they were happy to say the effects were relatively muted. 20%, not 70%. For them to have mistakenly understood this one or greatly exaggerated the changes would be really unusual. It can't be put down to just bumbling Boris.
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I did a bit of reading on this myself. The concern is legitimate. The mutations are in regions which could plausibly cause the virus to be more virulent. And there’s hard evidence that it’s involved in a very big outbreak. However, what we know about super-spreaders and exponential growth means we still can’t separate correlation and causation.

There was similar discussions earlier in the pandemic when a new strain seemed to spread much more rapidly in Europe than any previous strains had in China but that turned out to be a property of the society it was infecting, rather than any change in the way the virus itself behaved. And it’s not hard to think of less sinister reasons for explosive outbreaks when you see images of those maskless crowds in London shops.

We’ll know for certain soon enough, after the long suffering meeces have been put through the ringer once again.
 
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Anyone know if theory test centres will be open in tier 4 areas? GOV site hasn’t been updated yet and can’t find information anywhere else.
 
dwd said:
Came into effect 17 minutes ago.
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Those videos were tweeted during tier 3 restrictions.
Still don't make it right but the context of them was wrong.
 
So a new strain/mutation was found in the UK that's more transmissible?
 
Its a mess entirely of the governments making, the resurgence is nothing more than their relaxation and its absurd to say they couldnt have known, they knew and decided to string the population along. There's a reason Essex were begging to go into a higher tier and why the experts even then said it wasnt enough to stop the spread. You can't relax the law and then get confused that people are relaxing their behaviours. New variant a good cover for the Tories going by the paper headlines though.

We travelled to family last night, we were on day 7 of a self imposed quarantine so there was no way we weren't going. We'll be quarantining as a bubble for another 10 days now but worth it.

Then my missus has Facebook friends complaining who have seen family every week and been shopping in London with their kids. No sense it's their own fault because the government said it was fine.
 
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