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Coronavirus

Coronavirus - The Poll

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I always thought that the government would back down over this eventually. They didn't fancy having to pay to retrain a load of nurses and other staff, so they've allowed the staff to call their bluff. Very weak. Can this government follow through with anything properly? They didn't give a damn about those in the private care sector as they knew that those staff were generally more lowly paid and more easily replaceable. From the .Gov website "Since 11 November 2021, all care home workers, and anyone entering a care home, have needed to be fully vaccinated". How would you feel now if you had been forced to get the jab as a carer when you didn't really want the jab but had to to keep your livelihood? Pathetic from our government once again. If they weren't going to follow through with their threat then they shouldn't have brought the regulation in in the first place.
 
During Prime Minister's Questions today, Boris Johnson announced that all remaining legal restrictions will end a month early. This includes the requirement to self-isolate after a positive test result.

They were previously set to expire on 24th March but now it will be some time after MPs return from recess on 21st Feb.

Presumably this will also have an impact on testing since there's little point in testing if you don't have to isolate.
 
What regulations with stay with health care settings? He forgot to meant that.

I do wonder if this announcement is a defection from his problems and to soothe some back benchers

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Alsty said:
During Prime Minister's Questions today, Boris Johnson announced that all remaining legal restrictions will end a month early. This includes the requirement to self-isolate after a positive test result.

They were previously set to expire on 24th March but now it will be some time after MPs return from recess on 21st Feb.

Presumably this will also have an impact on testing since there's little point in testing if you don't have to isolate.
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I think that's a interesting decision. I'm not sure what to make of it myself.
Has any scientists (I mean qualified scientists not Tory loyalists) provided any evidence either way?
My first thought it that there was no point moving the original deadline as that seemed reasonable.
 
I know this day was inevitable eventually, and in the long run I fully support it eventually happening, as we surely can’t live like this forever, but am I the only one who’s getting really nervous about the prospect of things like isolation laws going imminently? I feel like once isolation laws go, we might see a huge uptick in prevalence, and a huge uptick in variants, as well as a huge uptick in hospitalisations and deaths? I know people would probably still isolate if they were knowingly ill with COVID, but I feel like this decision will make asymptomatic testing go down significantly, as well as asymptomatic isolation (due to there being less asymptomatic testing).

I know it’s a stupid worry given we haven’t been properly locked down or even in overly harsh social restrictions for months now, and things haven’t yet gotten overly bad in the hospitals like they were in, say, the winter of 2020/21, but I’ll digress that the complete removal of COVID laws does worry me and raise a number of questions in my head. What if we generate a vaccine resistant variant? What if the prevalence gets so high that hospitals can’t cope with the admissions any more? What if other countries place restrictions on us due to our high prevalence and lack of restrictions?

Am I worrying unnecessarily, or are those legitimate concerns, in your view?
 
Can’t help but think this is a bad move.
We don’t yet know what will happen once immunity from the vaccines wear off. And my personal knowledge from close friends and work colleagues who have been triple jabbed and who have Omicrom is that it certainly is not mild.

Telling positive people not to isolate is just reckless and absolutely crazy.
 
Matt N said:
I know this day was inevitable eventually, and in the long run I fully support it eventually happening, as we surely can’t live like this forever, but am I the only one who’s getting really nervous about the prospect of things like isolation laws going imminently? I feel like once isolation laws go, we might see a huge uptick in prevalence, and a huge uptick in variants, as well as a huge uptick in hospitalisations and deaths? I know people would probably still isolate if they were knowingly ill with COVID, but I feel like this decision will make asymptomatic testing go down significantly, as well as asymptomatic isolation (due to there being less asymptomatic testing).

I know it’s a stupid worry given we haven’t been properly locked down or even in overly harsh social restrictions for months now, and things haven’t yet gotten overly bad in the hospitals like they were in, say, the winter of 2020/21, but I’ll digress that the complete removal of COVID laws does worry me and raise a number of questions in my head. What if we generate a vaccine resistant variant? What if the prevalence gets so high that hospitals can’t cope with the admissions any more? What if other countries place restrictions on us due to our high prevalence and lack of restrictions?

Am I worrying unnecessarily, or are those legitimate concerns, in your view?
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I think there's a rather "convenient" mention of bringing forward the end to the legal requirement to isolate due to today's goings ons (discussion on that for the party gate topic), but overall I'm not nervous about the change.

We've been "stepping down" toward this point for a considerable amount of time already when you think about the changes that've been made over the period of the pandemic. There's a lot, just a few off the top of my head:
  • No requirement to isolate as a close contact
  • Indoor dining/drinking and bar service returning
  • Removing the requirement to take contact details when entering pubs etc
  • Reducing the period of self isolation after testing positive
  • Removal of social distancing
  • Removal of mask requirements
  • No requirement to obtain a PCR test
The key thing to remember is that the only reason we had these legal restrictions was to stop the NHS being overwhelmed while the vaccination campaign progressed. From that point of view, that objective has been met. With warmer weather incoming and hospitalisations related directly to Covid being nowhere near the level they were before, there is now no reason for the restrictions to remain. You could potentially argue that the restrictions are actually doing more harm to the NHS at present, thanks to staff having to constantly isolate meaning it simply can't operate in the way it needs to at present.

You have to remember that ultimately there's very little chance you will get severely ill from Covid now. That's partly thanks to Omicron being less severe, but also thanks to the vaccination campaign. We have seen that a zero Covid strategy (see Australia and New Zealand) is simply impossible to maintain. With mass vaccination centres across the country now winding down, we've also vaccinated everyone who wants to be vaccinated. The free testing programme is costing an absolute fortune, and is a shocking amount of waste when we're supposed to be pushing to be more environmentally friendly. As the saying goes, we now have to learn to live with Covid.

In terms of variants, we're not going to minimise the chance of those occurring through maintaining restrictions in the UK when the majority of the population has been vaccinated. The world needs to be turning its attention to other poorer countries. We need to ensure that they have the resources and jabs to vaccinate as much of the global population as possible. That's the only way you minimise (you will never 100% prevent) the chance of such variants cropping up.
 
Matt N said:
I know people would probably still isolate if they were knowingly ill with COVID, but I feel like this decision will make asymptomatic testing go down significantly, as well as asymptomatic isolation (due to there being less asymptomatic testing).
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Surely when legally having to self-isolate ends, free mass testing will also end, and possibly COVID tests will only really be taking place in hospitals to help protect the already vulnerable patients. You simply won't know if you're asymptomatically positive for covid as there won't be tests as we currently know there to be. If you're sick, I'm sure there'll be the option to buy tests from somewhere, but really I don't think it will be any different to any other illness.

Having had COVID back in December, I'd say for 1-2 days I was ill enough to ordinarily decide not to go to work, but for the other 8-9 days of isolation, I would have normally just struggled through like having a cold. That's how this will end up.

That's how I see it anyway!
 
GaryH said:
Can’t help but think this is a bad move.
We don’t yet know what will happen once immunity from the vaccines wear off. And my personal knowledge from close friends and work colleagues who have been triple jabbed and who have Omicrom is that it certainly is not mild.

Telling positive people not to isolate is just reckless and absolutely crazy.
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I had omicron and the wife had delta, I still felt ill but nothing like the wife was.
Omicron from my experience is a lot milder.
 
Matt N said:
I know this day was inevitable eventually, and in the long run I fully support it eventually happening, as we surely can’t live like this forever, but am I the only one who’s getting really nervous about the prospect of things like isolation laws going imminently? I feel like once isolation laws go, we might see a huge uptick in prevalence, and a huge uptick in variants, as well as a huge uptick in hospitalisations and deaths? I know people would probably still isolate if they were knowingly ill with COVID, but I feel like this decision will make asymptomatic testing go down significantly, as well as asymptomatic isolation (due to there being less asymptomatic testing).

I know it’s a stupid worry given we haven’t been properly locked down or even in overly harsh social restrictions for months now, and things haven’t yet gotten overly bad in the hospitals like they were in, say, the winter of 2020/21, but I’ll digress that the complete removal of COVID laws does worry me and raise a number of questions in my head. What if we generate a vaccine resistant variant? What if the prevalence gets so high that hospitals can’t cope with the admissions any more? What if other countries place restrictions on us due to our high prevalence and lack of restrictions?

Am I worrying unnecessarily, or are those legitimate concerns, in your view?
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I wouldn't worry. Restrictions now are almost non existent as it is. LFT's are so inaccurate (I put one under a tap and it came back positive) that lord knows who's out there with it anymore. Self employed people won't be testing and isolating either and haven't for a while, many never did in the first place unless they became to ill. I don't think this will change anything at all.

I'm sure some people test and isolate to be responsible citizens, but I know there's still a lot of people out there using isolation .... for other reasons shall I say. I'm looking forward to returning to BAU absence management after 2 years.
 
Let’s hope we really are at the end of the pandemic and COVID is just becoming endemic, and a part of everyday life that we can deal with without needing to worry about restrictions… it does feel increasingly like we might be getting there now, in the developed world at least.

For what it’s worth, my local vaccination centre has now substantially reduced slot offerings for the next few weeks and announced it’s closing for good on 31st March 2022, so whatever vaccine demand is still out there is clearly low enough that it can be dealt with without the need for the dedicated centres. That must be a positive sign, right?

Also; if you don’t mind me asking @Matt.GC, what is BAU absence management?
 
Matt N said:
Let’s hope we really are at the end of the pandemic and COVID is just becoming endemic, and a part of everyday life that we can deal with without needing to worry about restrictions… it does feel increasingly like we might be getting there now, in the developed world at least.

For what it’s worth, my local vaccination centre has now substantially reduced slot offerings for the next few weeks and announced it’s closing for good on 31st March 2022, so whatever vaccine demand is still out there is clearly low enough that it can be dealt with without the need for the dedicated centres. That must be a positive sign, right?

Also; if you don’t mind me asking @Matt.GC, what is BAU absence management?
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BAU stands for 'business as usual'. In this context, it's presumably referring to absence procedures as they were pre-COVID.
 
Jonathan said:
BAU stands for 'business as usual'. In this context, it's presumably referring to absence procedures as they were pre-COVID.
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Ah… that makes a lot more sense; thank you for clarifying! I was expecting it to be some fancy workplace absence management protocol that I didn’t know about…
 
Matt.GC said:
LFT's are so inaccurate (I put one under a tap and it came back positive) that lord knows who's out there with it anymore.
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LFT's are very accurate if you use them properly following the instructions, including not eating or drinking for 20 minutes before testing so the sample isn't contaminated by food and drink. False negatives around 10% of the time, false positives practically zero. They are not designed to test tap water so I'm not sure what relevance you think your observation has?

Anyway, doesn't really matter now!
 
pluk said:
They are not designed to test tap water so I'm not sure what relevance you think your observation has?
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That if you actually want a positive result for some free time off, no questions asked you can get one. For another couple of weeks anyway.
 
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