All my colleagues in our BLR office have it or have had it. I asked about social distancing and the reply i got was "well it's not all that easy sometimes, especially at big events."
Plus the govt acted very late
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.
Plus the govt acted very late
Hard to unpick heat from behavioural changes. In summer the schools are closed, socialising happens outdoors, office and home windows are open etc etc
June 21st full reopening looking more and more unlikely. This fecking variant is the real deal.
More outdoor activities, more open windows, no schools open.
I think as far as we can tell the weather matters more in behavioural terms. Warmer weather - more likely to be outdoors, windows open etc. Less likely to be indoors in confined, crowded or unventilated spaces. Unfortunately good weather doesn't protect you from overcrowded public transport, housing or busy, poorly ventilated workplaces.
For the UK, someone did a calculation on the weather effect:
I'd guess Norway would be similar, but with even lower population and housing density than the UK.
That makes a lot of sense. People gathered in droves in parks but as long as it's outdoors I reckon the chance of catching covid is lower, even though the group is large? Public transportation was still pretty packed, though. And no one used masks. I also think most bars and restaurants in the capital were full during night hours, though with the 1 meter rule enforced.
Grim. But with so much of the UK vaccinated how bad can it be? The vaccines are still proven to be very effective against it right? Just seems like we'll be in an endless cycle of lockdowns if these variants can STILL feck things up so much even with everyone vaccinated.
I think it’s pretty clear by now that AZ vaccine is not as effective against these variants and hence the slight surge. Israel who used only Pfizer exclusively and had all the variants (including Indian) present in the country as well is not seeing any surge at all, in fact last I’ve seen they only recorded 5 daily cases or something like that.
Was chatting to a business colleague I know who lives in Israel the other day. He says covid is basically a complete non-issue for them. And not just because of all the other grim recent events in Israel/Gaza
This variant won’t feck things up with everyone vaccinated. The concern is how much damage it can do before we get to that point. With vaccinated” meaning after receiving both doses of the vaccine.
Currently this only applies to 50% (I think?) of the UK population. 20% fully vaccinated in Ireland.
I don't think it's because of the mutation. Last summer was also things were pretty out of control and actually settled down a couple of months after summer.
That's why everyone's eyes will be on Bolton etc. Right now it seems to be a race between outbreaks and the vaccine. In Bolton it looks like it's being brought under control, with the rate starting to fall again - but it's had vaccine buses, mass testing and a strong message from local government that they'll help people qualify for self-isolation financial support etc.
The thing is that "local factors" are a big deal and if vaccine coverage is as important as it looks then those early warning about cases in London could be a prelude to a sudden growth there, because London has way lower vaccine takeup than the rest of the country (including Bolton when it's numbers started to grow.
Bolton's hospital admissions were mostly in their 30s/40s and either unvaccinated (and ineligible) or they'd only recently become eligible for their first vaccine at the time they got infected. The cases in that age group, even the hospitalisations, aren't expected to turn into deaths, but they can easily fill additional wards and lead to non-covid cases getting cancelled again.
Gotcha. Thank feck we're mostly Pfizer then. Sweet, beautiful 4 week gap Pfizer.
A vaccine takeup chart of the UK. Basically they're looking at an area's age profile and comparing it to the actual vaccine takeup in the area.
Side note. It does look as though the UK needs to move away from “first dose” metrics and talk about % fully vaccinated.
That's interesting. Am I reading it right that the two worst affected areas for the recent surge in infection, Bolton and now Blackburn (with Preston just taking off) actually have a higher take-up of vaccine than the national average? If so that's contrary to what a lot of people are saying up here, namely 'it's the indians and pakistanis, they won't take the vaccine'.
While it's true that AZ is less effective against the variant it seems, I'm going to stick my neck out and say that the movement of people between India and the UK is going to be significantly higher than it is between India and Israel (or indeed India and any other Western country other than the USA).
You could at least tag your fellow spurs fan, when you are talking about him.
Worth noting that B117 (which originated in the UK) has become the dominant variant in Israel, so they’re not exactly watertight when it comes to importing foreign variants. Although now they’re basically fully vaccinated it makes it extremely difficult for any new variant to get a foothold, never mind dominate.
We do have some real life effectiveness data coming out of Israel re Uk and SA variants (B117 and B1351) which is generally reassuring. We can’t be 100% certain but it does seem a reasonable assumption that the vaccine resistance we’ve seen from B1351 will be similar with the Indian variant (B16172) because they have the same mutation that theoretically helps them evade the vaccine.
I assumed that was never going to happen - just a date to keep morale up.
Don’t blame me, I’m in Islington and have already had my Moderna shot.
Yep. The idea that there was poor take-up amongst the risk groups and it was because of vaccine rejection by ethnic minority communities was a con.
The main reason why vaccinated percentage was noticeably low in the worst affected parts of the town was because the average age was lower in those areas. The virus raced through the 11-40 group in those areas basically.
Some of the hospitalised had been fully vaccinated, 5 out of 47 (as of last Friday) were in that category. At the time when this thing took hold in Bolton, only the over 60s were in that group.
The hospitalised group are between 18 and 101, with the majority in their 30s and 40s.
South mate
That's how I read it, and the situation, thanks.
For people not in the northwest the opinion of average joe on the street at the moment is very worrying indeed, 'it's the asians that brought it in, they're spreading it in the mosques, it's because of eid', and worse that I wouldn't print. I think the press, and politicians, need to be aware of this and be very careful how they phrase things, and try to defuse the worst. I'm not saying they should lie or ignore any actual facts, but they do need to consider the effect of how they present them.
Gah. My memory’s fecked.
Weren’t cases always going to rise as UK opened up. I get there’s a need to delay full relaxations until we know full impact and that’s sensible but increase in cases is surely what everyone expected, including new variants that were always going to spread at most among unvaccinated groups.
Absolutely. And the plans for reopening are based on models which takes this expected rise in cases into account. The tricky bit is when predicted parameters change. Such as a new variant which is much more transmissable than the variant which was dominant when these plans were made. It was always inevitable that case numbers would rise as society reopened (so we shouldn’t freak out when that inevitably happens) The tricky bit now is accurately predicting exactly how high those numbers will get.
How quickly did the Kent variant become dominant?
To me it seems there’s a need to reassess what success means as online I see a lot despairing at rise in cases when this could never end without that happening. That said now the new variant is seemingly dominant a 6-8 week wait from this point on to see what’s the impact on hospitalisations and deaths seems sensible
I'm just next door to RBKC in H&F and that's even further left.
My brain is struggling with that graphic- so basically it's a younger population with a low jab rate or we have loads of refuseniks?
Nah Mike did live in West for a bit, he just pretends he didn’t now he’s part of the Islington Metropolitan Elite... which as far as I can tell just means he gets to tell other people who live there that they’re elite for living there
H&F median age about 5 years younger than RBKC. Both of them have terrible jab uptake. Dunno if it’s because the rollout has been terrible or loads of refuseniks. Presumably the latter?
Holy abbreviation overload Batman.
I think it must be the latter. I had my jabs in Feb and May and the rollout has been good from what I've seen and heard.
That's really odd. Maybe it's not as full of affluent and like-minded people as I thought
Can’t help you with London boroughs but the WHO are trying to make abbreviations for the variants a bit less complicated (also seem worried about stigma from being associated with a new variant, which seems a bit OTT*)
*Over The Top
It might be the gin but I actually laughed at the explanation for OTT, so cheers!
I think there’s value to that idea actually, these things have power amongst idiots. Look at the increase in violence against Asian Americans with the former idiot in chief coming out with “China virus” and “Kung flu” every five minutes.
Even if it’s passive these things can plant seeds, I’ve seen/heard comments about the “Indian variant” that aren’t great.
We shouldn’t even be considering lifting all restrictions until the majority of adults have had their second jab.
Just delay it until late August.
Just delay it until late August.
I'd love to know per country, who has refused the vax and why.
Then give me addresses of people close to me so I can shoot them
Then give me addresses of people close to me so I can shoot them