Not sure how effective that will be with the border still open, mind. People could just go from Britain > NI > ROI. Though I suppose the added friction and limited number of flights into Belfast would have *some* impact.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Not sure how effective that will be with the border still open, mind. People could just go from Britain > NI > ROI. Though I suppose the added friction and limited number of flights into Belfast would have *some* impact.
I honestly cannot speak to the specifics of the UK struggle with the virus as I am an American. This thread is very UK focused, no worries about that, but I just don’t know all the players over there nor do I know all the minutiae. Much of the reason for my comments like these stems from the absurdity found in the minds of large swaths of people in my country who operate in a state of selfishness & hubris although they know the dangers of this virus yet often don’t employ even a modicum of care when around others.
My criticisms of the populace aren’t specifically geared towards UK residents. My criticisms of those who are trying to absolve the populace & perhaps themselves by trying to blame the government for the shape in which we currently find ourselves focus on those who somehow think that if the government, any government, was spot on in its handling of the virus, made correct decisions at every turn, that this pandemic would be far less impactful & perhaps somewhat over. It’s this insistence on blaming government yet not blaming ourselves or each other that is so incredibly short sighted & naive that it borders in childish. So many on here blame poor governmental communication for the state of the virus when very little of us credibly assimilate news from our governments in the best of times & do what they ask of us, that we are beholden to governments for news & that we don’t get our news from other sources, that we wouldn’t or don’t know how dangerous this virus is to our ways of life if our respective governments weren’t honest with us. Do we actually expect our governments to be honest with us at all times? Claiming ‘woe is us’ that they obviously are not vis à vis to the pandemic is puerile & two faced.
I wonder which is a better government right now in handling this, the US or the UK? It might be a better comparison to evaluate specific states v. the UK due to population & size especially how the Us federal government has abdicated covid responsibility to the states, but, we are basically wide open as a country right now with a few exceptions although we know exactly what will befall us here in a matter of days or weeks.
Way too late on travel bans & way too late on banning silly end of year rituals, especially over here.
The defence of government makes no sense, we as individuals can all blame the public because we don't have an influence but the government does. They told people x,y,z were illegal and then announced x,y,z was now legal. What exactly did they expect to happen? Those who don't follow in detail will have assumed their behaviours if no longer banned were now safe.
Until i see some data that shows me an infection trend that doesn't fit loosening behaviours then I'm blaming the government. You only have to look at google mobility reports to see the uptick matches travel especially to retail.
Can someone tell me how the rest of the world is reacting to this new virus strain in the South East?
Obviously, I can see that countries are closing their borders - but - what's the general consensus.
Is that strain just here (SE UK) at the moment? Or has it already spread? Did it start here? Is the 75% more infectious considered correct?
Obviously, I can see that countries are closing their borders - but - what's the general consensus.
Is that strain just here (SE UK) at the moment? Or has it already spread? Did it start here? Is the 75% more infectious considered correct?
Norwegian papers said some days ago it is the same strain as earlier found in Denmark (not the one from minks) and other countries.
According to this and this, it's in most parts of the UK but at much lower levels, is definitely in the Netherlands, Denmark and Australia, is most likely in multiple other European countries, might have spread as far as South Africa, and so far evidence points back to it originating in the UK. More testing needed to actually understand the effect on transmission.
Thanks @Brwned and @BootsyCollins
So, if the 75% more infectious is correct, in all probability it will take over as the dominant strain of COVID all over Europe and probably elsewhere over the new few months.
If it's 75% more infectious, we need to lock down harder. until vaccines
I'm feeling really depressed about this. Everyone I know in Tier 1 areas is feeling really depressed.
So, if the 75% more infectious is correct, in all probability it will take over as the dominant strain of COVID all over Europe and probably elsewhere over the new few months.
If it's 75% more infectious, we need to lock down harder. until vaccines
I'm feeling really depressed about this. Everyone I know in Tier 1 areas is feeling really depressed.
You’ve literally made my point in your opening line, then added a shower of noise.
More transmission = More mutation.
Poor response = More transmission.
I said very clearly, had an area that had responded well, encountered an unhelpful mutation, sympathy would be easy to find. it could be written off to bad luck.
You can’t have among the worst global responses, then say “Oh no, who could have possibly predicted doing it this badly would raise our chances of encountering this exact problem”.
That is quite a grim way to put it but certainly plausible. I think the European countries might handle their borders differently if they identify the spread and come to the conclusion it is much more transmissible, and so for some of the countries in e.g. the Nordics, it isn't inevitable that it will become the dominant strain. But that obviously brings a lot of implications with it.
I would prefer to take the optimistic viewpoint that if people are sufficiently convinced this new strain is that much more easily spread, people will self-regulate better without the need for more draconian interventions. We'll look at is a new and present danger as in March, rather than this thing that's just always there that we just have to get on with. People will take it more seriously, get back to washing their hands more vigorously, make more of an effort to brave the winter and go for walks rather than chill out in other homes, etc.. Difficult to maintain that optimistic viewpoint after being kept up all night by a bunch of people my age having a house party in an Airbnb while I'm on day 9 of self-isolation post-travel and the hospitals in our area are overflowing, but hope is all we've got...
I wish I could share your optimistic view but I cant. Sadly there are a portion of all populations who wont react to a problem until it is hurting them first hand, its sort of like antivaccers, the absence of fear issue. Even if they end up being a relatively small number with this virus and new strain its still going to be too many. Its going to take clear rules and empathetic but firm policing of those rules to get a hold of this. That and the vaccine.
Girl in work tested positive. Was in contact with her Tuesday and Wednesday.
Luckily I took a test yesterday, so hopefully that gives me the all clear, but right now not looking likely.
Luckily I took a test yesterday, so hopefully that gives me the all clear, but right now not looking likely.
I admire your optimism for humans doing the right thing but I can’t share it. We’ve tried everything apart from Asian style lockdowns and completely locking the borders down - no doubt I’ll get replies about how we can’t lock the borders but uk and ireland are islands, they can lock their borders down to everything apart from food coming & medical supplies coming in. It’s time to take a harder look at it imho before January gets away from us
Good luck fella
Various people have come out that this mutation in particular, has been known about since Sept and Oct and the transmissibility of it was known then as well.
So you're incorrect.
Some of the early posts in this thread haven’t aged well
It’s a strange bug. I was positive. My wife and son negative. They definitely came into contact with me more than your colleague I’m guessing!
It depends what you mean by personal judgement. There is a difference between someone wanting to go to a party for example, and wanting to see their loved ones at Christmas becuase they are worried about how they will cope otherwise. If someone self isolates for 2 weeks, then sees another household who have self isolated for 2 weeks, the risk is literally zero. The problem is that if you let everyone make that judegment, a lot of people would just skip out the self isolating bit. I don't think it's a good idea at all for everyonto just be making their own mind up, but I just don't think you can judge people particularly harshly for coming to their own conclusions at this point. With the exception of the just obviously ignorant ones, and even then, who knows what they are going through.
If the rules were clear, and the message was consistent, and the relevant science was made available to back it up, I think then you can judge people or expect them to stick to guidelines. But for example, if I went and saw my family in Derby, I have no idea if I even would be breaking the rules, because the rules are all over the fecking place. Technically I could say I have formed a support bubble with them, then go up there and infect them all with covid, and not be breaking the rules. I'm still expected to go into people's homes as part of my job but am told it's ok to then go and see my dad...but I can't see my less vulnerable brother or sister, and they also can't see my dad, even though they pose significantly less of a risk to him than I do. I'd be legally obliged to send my kids into school at a time when infection is spreading mostly among school aged people, and a time of year when minimal actual learning in school occurs, even if a vulnerable person was living with them at home...but then they get told 4 days before christmas that christmas is cancelled and they can't see anyone, because we have to do everything we can to stop people transmitting the virus.. When the rules are that idiotic it's hard to pin infection rises on people ignoring them. For a start its impossible to even prove who is and isn't ignoring them. It also becomes harder to stop people making personal ill judgements, because the last thing anyone wants to do in a crisis is follow the advice of an idiot, and unfortunately the scientists are relying on Boris to relay messages for them, which is a bit like Homer Simpson telling you how to avert a nuclear meltdown.
I mean at the start of all this I'd assumed it would drag on for quite a long time but I also assumed our government would get better at handling it. They actually seem to be making more and more of a mess of it. Cancelling Christmas this late is going to have such a limited effect of damage limitation that it will more than likely be outweighed by the damage that decision will cause through people panicking, ignoring it, or being hit mentally or financially. I don't see how this "we only found out on Friday" excuse washes at all. If the new strain was 70% more transmittable the data would have been quite clearly showing that for some considerable time now...and you suspect it probably has and that Boris and co have just chosen to ignore it and hope it goes away.
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Only because they allowed the BLM marches or it would have all kicked off pretty majorly then. They've passed laws since to ban protesting so you can guess what will happen the next time people decide to protest about something...and I suspect cancelling Christmas 4 days before Christmas will stir up emotions in a lot of the anti lockdown brigade. There's also the brexit fun very close on the horizon, so I think it's on more of a knife edge than it may appear.
If you look you can find some pretty interesting videos of the last anti lockdown protest. That was only a few hundred more angry people away from being a trigger point.
Sorry if this has been covered but I haven't been in this thread lately.
Do we know if the mutated strain is any weaker symptoms-wise or is it just as bad and more infectious?
These images are all extremely predictable when you cancel Christmas 4 days before Christmas an d effectively attempt to quarantine people, but only for some of the country. Being surprised at people reacting in an entirely preditctable way is an act of stupidity.
Just like sending Uni students back to Uni and then acting shocked that they behave like Uni students.
Apparently they don't believe (key word) that it creates a stronger immunological response in the lungs. Moreso that people who have it are some 70% more infectious, but again, they don't believe it is anymore deadly or dangerous.....(key word)
People don’t need to be getting coffee at the local store.
It's childish to absolve these people in the picture of any responsibility. This is 100% hubris & selfishness by the people. Don’t try to blame their idiocy on the government. They’d do it even if christmas wasn’t rightly cancelled.
They knew what about the transmissibility? If they knew that it impacted the spike receptor binding domain they could have had some plausible theories early on. Very difficult to get good data to even test the hypotheses at that stage.
I will happily agree with you that if they knew that it was almost 2x as transmissible based on solid data then it was negligent not to mention that. But if that is the case that is not just about the UK but globally. They were ethically obliged to report something that significant and it would be utterly bizarre if UK scientists, who have participated a lot in global efforts, consciously chose not to do that. They don't need the UK government to do it.
Look at that article from nature summarising their latest understanding of mutations at the end of November. They said all evidence they had suggested mutations hadn't increased transmission, even though theoretically they could. WHO only informed a couple of weeks ago. So the entire scientific community was out of the loop.
So let's see the evidence...
Ok thanks. I was hoping there was a chance it would be weaker. I'm sure we'd all take more infectious and less dangerous.
Something similar happened to me, so I had a look into this.
If you are contacted by track and trace you are legally obliged to self isolate. If you aren't then you legally dont have to.
All countries do this different, but it seems like many are saying that 5 days after contact, you could take the test and if you are negative, you are almost definitely fine. But you should give it 5 days. So if you are you were in contact with her Wednesday and you took the test yesterday, that is only 3 days, which isn't ideal. Although I don't know know the chances in percentage that it wouldn't show up yet.
Dr Susan Hopkins from Public Health England, and Dr Maria Van Kerkhove, Covid-19 technical lead at the World Health Organisation were on Marr this morning, and unless I misheard they were aware of and researching this new strain from Kent, UK in September and October, during this time understanding how the mutations affected transmissibility of the virus.
Available on iPlayer.
The other day I somehow found myself on the first page of this thread thinking it was an entirely new one. For those few minutes, I really thought the world was ending. How could a 2nd SARS virus be found in China
Do these countries banning flights from the UK.... are they still allowing them to go to the UK?
Issue is, more infections means more deaths.
If it's 70% more infectious, you'll have more people getting the virus than would before, so more deaths.
Ebola for example is 50% fatal (citation needed) but it's transmissibility is very low.
Tested positive today, got to self isolate until 27th.
Living alone and not able to get out for food etc and Xmas completely cancelled. Brilliant.
Living alone and not able to get out for food etc and Xmas completely cancelled. Brilliant.
I agree with you that communication has been rubbish. I don't agree with you that rules are inconsistent and there are reasons that explain why similar situations are handled differently, based on different sets of societal priorities. But let's accept your position on that too.
We now know this is a dangerous time. We also know the vaccine is a legitimate exit strategy. Let's say we stop paying attention to government rules and instead make judgments bases purely on what is the best way to handle this pandemic as a society. If you choose to see your friends, your family, etc. you are taking a risk that you will spread the virus. Every one of those interactions counts, not just the parties. The motivations can provide individual justification but that doesn't change the epidemiological outcome. The self isolation is only plausible in very specific circumstances for a few people. People gotta eat.
If people weigh up their own individual risk of catching and passing on the virus, don't you think they'll end up making decisions that are an acceptable level of risk for them as individuals, but an unacceptable risk for society? Is there any reason to believe that if people were left to rely on their own judgment, they would be able to manage things in a way that prevent hospital capacity going over 90%?
If not, then choosing not to judge those decisions therefore encourages individuals to take actions that cause more societal harm. I don't see any way around that.
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Sorry to hear this mate. Shit at any time, but the week before Christmas sucks.
The infection rate here is soaring but has been very low compared to other areas for the whole pandemic until now. It's a bit daft not to attribute some of the speed of the infection rate to the fact a lot more people here simply wont have had it at all yet.
Regardless, surely the overall transmission patterns would give a fairly accurate idea that there was a problem before this fecking Friday. For example, I knew there was a problem before then, because I looked at the publicly available data and saw that there very obviously was. We've crept up from 40 cases per 100,000 to nearly 500 per 100,000 in under 2 months. It hasn't just suddenly happened this week, no matter what it's attributed to.
We need rules for something like this because it's a crisis, and most people lack common sense at the best of times, never mind when they are in survival or reactionary mode. Give people guidance that helps them get through a crisis and they will generally stick to it rather than take risks.Give them guidance that keeps changing, often contradicts itselfm and at times obviously makes no sense, and people will end up all over the place or making their own decisions.
It's like being in a burning building and having to choose whether you let someone guide you out. If they're dressed as a firefighter and appear to be leading you to where they think the exit is, then you're probably going to follow them. If they're dressed as a circus clown and keep changing their mind about which way to go, and occasionally try to make you walk through things that are on fire, you're probably going to start thinking about finding your own way out, or at the very least start getting very angry at them when you notice your arm is burning.
That's a bummer. Take care of yourself
Yeah I’m a bit annoyed but I feel better today after 4/5 days of feeling truly awful. Cheers.
I just listened to Kerkhove talk about it and she definitely did not say that. The fact that they were conducting studies to understand the transmissiblity since September does not at all mean that this one raised any alarms at that point. It's just the process. They are legitimately difficult and time consuming tasks that need to be balanced against a whole host of other critical tasks. Just like they're still running studies now to understand all of those factors. We still don't have conclusive answers on those four key elements, in her words, but we have some interim findings from very recently. I will listen to it all and PHE will have a different level of involvement but there was nothing in her words that suggested they knew this was serious and didn't alert them quickly enough, even though they knew the strain was first identified in September, and things only escalated last month. She couldn't provide a specific date but I'm sure that will come.
Yeah won’t be able to see my kids or anyone and as I live alone it’s going to be tough getting food in and stuff but at least I’m seemingly getting over the symptoms. Cheers.
Probably not, a plane has to return and commercially it makes sense to fly a plane on the proviso that it earns money on the way home. I can't see the bans changing for at least a month.
With opinions such as this being so prevalent we hav’nt got a chance and the U.K. is well and truly fecked. Talk about ‘it’s not my responsibility’. Its at times like this that it crosses my mind that a ‘police state’ might not be a bad idea.