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Coronavirus

Coronavirus - The Poll

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No idea how that happened, the vaccine article was the only thing I read on there :sweatsmile:. Edited the link anyway, ta for the heads up!


Edit: Actually, now I do, the site has infinite scroll so I went down into the next article after getting to the end - oops!
 
Ah good solve. I'll keep the article on Athens architecture for another day :D

I do know of 2 local pharmaceutical companies that have signed deals with AstraZaneca to produce the vaccine. It's moving at amazing pace and the article is reassuring that the injection into monkeys has been extremely successful but would you really want to be the first in human trias for this? Obviously someone has to be but it still seems risky.

Great to see that the vaccine is agreed to sell cheaply during the pandemic. Hopefully Moderna and the rest of the world's trials follow suit if their vaccines win the race.
 
pluk said:
Time to be unpopular (again?), but it's what I think, so...

Mask exemptions for medical reasons are a nonsense. Beyond very small children and those with serious mental capacity issues for which a covering the face would be an obvious choking hazard as they don't know not to breathe it in or crew on it, there should be no exemptions.

I appreciate for some people it'll be uncomfortable, it might be physcologicaly challenging, it might make them feel panicked, it might mean some people don't feel able to do some things they'd like to in an ideal world where a mask might be required for an extended period (like going to a theme park), but whatever hardship they feel they'd be under do you know what it wouldn't be as bad as? Death. Which is the real potential consequence of not wearing a mask.

With the risks involved, exemptions from masks where they are mandated are not a reasonable adjustment when weighted up against a duty to keep other customers safe. Businesses are right to refuse entry.
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I agree with this, especially in the case of Autism. I think people often forget that Autism has a spectrum. Most people have very mild autistic traits, so mild you wouldn't class them as autistic. At the other end I know people that have it so bad they can't talk and have to be kept in a secure building at all times.
Allowing anyone with Autism not to wear a mask is just giving an excuse to half the nation to not wear one. I remember during my ride opp days it wasn't uncommon to see the disabled queue as long as the main queue (low throughput kids ride). Almost everyone was claiming Autism but I'd have only classed about 1 in 10 as being sever enough that they couldn't wait normally.
Where face masks are concerned I'd go as far to say if your Autism is really so bad you can't put a mask on for long enough to enter a shop, buy what you want and leave you probably should be shielding anyway.

Having to wear one all day or children with Autism is a slightly different matter, the above is purely for customers in shops.

Having said that I've been guilty of not wearing a face mask when going to the supermarket. No one likes wearing them and when most people arn't it's very easy to not bother either. I'm not proud of it and intend to wear one going forward.

Very glad to hear there's been positive steps forward with the vaccine trials!
 
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pluk said:
Time to be unpopular (again?), but it's what I think, so...

Mask exemptions for medical reasons are a nonsense. Beyond very small children and those with serious mental capacity issues for which a covering the face would be an obvious choking hazard as they don't know not to breathe it in or crew on it, there should be no exemptions.

I appreciate for some people it'll be uncomfortable, it might be physcologicaly challenging, it might make them feel panicked, it might mean some people don't feel able to do some things they'd like to in an ideal world where a mask might be required for an extended period (like going to a theme park), but whatever hardship they feel they'd be under do you know what it wouldn't be as bad as? Death. Which is the real potential consequence of not wearing a mask.

With the risks involved, exemptions from masks where they are mandated are not a reasonable adjustment when weighted up against a duty to keep other customers safe. Businesses are right to refuse entry.
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I agree in what you Say to some extent, the uk population will use any excuse not to wear a mask and many a place won’t question or ask for proof. Me personally I can’t wear a mask but I choose not to go out and stay at home it saves the hassle of trying to explain why I can’t/not wearing a mask.
 
Matt N said:
Very interesting development... there’s talk that the government may let fans back into football stadiums for the start of the next Premier League season in September, with precautions in place: https://www.thesun.co.uk/sport/1211...140720&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1594723912

Seems sooner than I expected... maybe the government is soon anticipating a move towards level 2?
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Wow if this this goes ahead then I’m really interested to see how they manage it. I go to a lot of games up and down the country and I can say had on heart that it will just be a nightmare to put in place. So many red flags spring to mind straight away from simple things of how they plan to safely let people leave the stadium, how the tickets will be sold, how many people can be let in. End of the day if they go ahead with it then fair enough but it’s too soon even in September for me.
 
It's The Sun, I wouldn't trust that as a reliable source.

I've been looking at the daily infections in the UK and I'd say they've plateaued off. It's a bit concerning as they don't seem to be dropping anymore since the start of this month.

corona_ukinfections_july.jpg

[Source: Worldometers]

I'd say we don't have a second spike (yet) but since pubs, restaurants etc were allowed to reopen the R-rate seems to be about 1 on average, although I'm sure this is actually just skewed by some areas having much higher instances than the average. The government need to work out how to get this down again before it starts going in the wrong direction.
 
It is worth noting that you'd expect to see a rise after lockdown restrictions ease, and so far we've only seen some small fluctuations. Germany for example, still sit on average at 3-400 infections per day since their lockdown eased and there's been little change in that since they hit that point. That low number as you mentioned is easily skewed by clusters of outbreaks as we've seen in some cities and in some businesses such as the farm in Herefordshire. For example, up here in the north east we're only seeing around 10 cases per week.

In terms of R rate, that's becoming less and less relevant as an accurate representation of the situation as the number of cases is now so low. Patrick Vallance said today that it shouldn't be used as a justification for amending lockdown measures now, and instead the government should be looking at location, number of people and how containable it is - in other words, local lockdowns like we've seen in Leicester and amendments in Blackburn.

Ultimately I don't think we'll see much of a drop now in terms of cases per day and 5-600 is around where we'll be hovering at in the medium term. Remember around 4000 cases per week is only about 0.006% of the total population, it's a tiny amount in the grand scheme of things. Unless we saw a massive rise UK wide I don't think there's anything too much to worry about at the moment as long as people remain cautious.
 
RoyJess said:
This government message of all this in a nutshell...

"Stay At Home And Save Lives"

pause...

"Go Out To Work And Save The Economy"
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Yep, exactly as it should be as the situation changes. Would you rather no one went back to work ever so we can all die a slower starvation type death instead?
 
Yup, fact of the matter is that something has to give. We just can't keep throwing money at the situation when realistically it's not going to go away for at least the next year or so.

We have to get back out and about and into work, businesses especially in cities rely on that. Is there a risk in that? Of course there is, but that risk just has to be managed.

Don't forget as much as the government can say "get out to work", companies won't just be inviting people back at once - for example I'm looking at September minimum at the moment. Those businesses will be risk assessing and reviewing who they can have in as safely as possible. It's not in the government's interest, and certainly not a business's to have an outbreak spiralling out of control again. As I said in my last post, there will be localised rises in cases, but as long as they're jumped on quickly then we shouldn't get back to the situation we had in March.
 
I think we've reached breaking point where if we don't open in a managed way, a lot more people are going to loose their jobs. I think many businesses are reaching the end of their financial reserves now.
 
We are down to 66 death from covid today.
With the right IPC in place covid can be controlled. We just need people to support it.

Sent from my SM-J600FN using Tapatalk
 
Yeah I understand that things need to reopen, I agree that it needs to happen. We can't be in lockdown forever and a balance needs to be struck.

I felt that 600 new infections per day was still a bit high to open things up fully and ideally we would've got it down more first, but having just compared today's new daily infections per million population, the UK is actually doing pretty good:

Today's daily infections per million population:
  • 3.8 - Italy
  • 6.9 - Germany
  • 8.2 - France
  • 9.5 - UK
  • 11.5 - Sweden
  • 17 - Switzerland
  • 29 - Spain
  • 178 - USA
  • 193 - Brazil
Spain is pretty high for Europe which is a worry, but other European countries seem similar to us.

[Edit] Got my sums wrong for Brazil
 
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That's not too bad considering the mess we were in from not locking down early enough.

I'm fairly positive about things at the moment. There's much more awareness about what to do and away from the relatively small scale incidents the media LOVE to report on, the lifting of lockdown was relatively calm considering all the shouts of it going to be a disaster.
 
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The question i have is. How many of the new cases are from the small scale incidents reported by media of social distancing fails?

Would be interesting to see if it is a high percentage.

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Interestingly, Boris Johnson is apparently going to announce tomorrow his tentative plans to return the country to near-normality post-COVID: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...n-Britain-near-normal-coronavirus-crisis.html

His plans cover various things, including how to make the NHS ready for winter, how to get people back into the office and how to gradually remove social distancing, will span over a 9-month period, meaning that Boris’ plan is currently for near-normality to have returned by approximately April 2021.
 
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