Summer Solstice Unlockdown

[lpm]

The UK roadmap is to completely unlockdown by 21 June.

(They're calling it "no social contact limitations", so could still mean other requirements such as wearing masks etc).

Step 1: 8 March: schools; 29 March: rule of 6 for outdoor meetings. Minimise travel and no holidays.

Step 2: 12 April Outdoor pub gardens and food. Non-essential retail, hairdressers, gyms, libraries. Funerals for 30, weddings for 15. Outdoor attractions. Households could go on holiday to self-contained accomodation.

Step 3: 17 May Indoor pubs and food. Rule of 6 indoors. Indoor attractions and sport. Hotels. Outdoor/indoor events, festivals & sports - but for restricted capacity. Possibly international travel.

Step 4: 21 June No legal limits on any social contract. Remaining businesses can open, including nightclubs. No longer need to work from home. Probably international travel.

As a reminder, all groups 1-9 will be first dosed by 15 April (1 May effective immunity) and all adults by 31 July (15 Aug effective immunity). There will still be millions adults unvaccinated at the 21 June date.

[headshot]

"Back to normal by spring" is what they said in November.

I can't help but think they've worked backwards from that date to hit their arbitrary target.

[lpm]

Full PDF of plan now published. Worth a read.

https://t.co/ZPaSQR0dXb?amp=1

[OffTheRock]

The last option ought not to be an option because vaccine roll out, while simultaneously feeling like the most likely option because Boris.

[Herainestold]

The last option ought not to be an option because vaccine roll out, while simultaneously feeling like the most likely option because Boris.

It seems that every country except Israel and maybe Australia (because it is just getting started), feel that their government has screwed up the vaccine roll out.

[Martin_B]

The last option ought not to be an option because vaccine roll out, while simultaneously feeling like the most likely option because Boris.

It seems that every country except Israel and maybe Australia (because it is just getting started), feel that their government has screwed up the vaccine roll out.

Can we blame Boris for our vaccine roll-out, then?

[Herainestold]

Presumably if Boris wasn't in charge the UK would be ahead of Israel in the vaccine race.

[Sciolus]

The strategy seems to be carry on running hot, hope the vaccines control symptomatic cases and maybe spread as well, and hope to hell that having loads of virus circulating in a half-immunised population doesn't encourage new mutations to take hold.

[lpm]

We'll be lucky to stay at 5,000 cases per day.

For context, the Excel f.ck up kept reported cases at 6,000 for a few days, with the number jumping to 10,000 per day when the problem unwound. This sort of level is perillously close to the cliff edge. A couple of doublings and...

We need to be under 1,000 - when a couple of doublings still leaves room to save the situation.

[bob sterman]

We'll be lucky to stay at 5,000 cases per day.

Indeed.

One hope I have is that if the vaccines can reduce transmission signficantly - and a lot of transmission was previously happening in healthcare settings - then they will have a substantial effect on overall case numbers because people who tend to spend a lot of time in healthcare settings (NHS staff and older people) will have been vaccinated.

[OffTheRock]

The last option ought not to be an option because vaccine roll out, while simultaneously feeling like the most likely option because Boris.

It seems that every country except Israel and maybe Australia (because it is just getting started), feel that their government has screwed up the vaccine roll out.

It's not about screwing up the vaccine roll out. That's going well, which is why the last option shouldn't be an option. But Boris is in charge of everything else to so f.cking the unlockdown up seems almost a certainty.

[lpm]

The great race begins: virus vs vaccine.

Schools unlocked with 7-day average officially at 5,889. Given the lags of a week or two, it's probably fallen to about 4,000 today - a bit better than the 5,000 I forecast.

Will it fall from here? Stay around the same level? Start going up? About half the UK population has some sort of immunity, either from the illness or the vaccine. That's going to drag R back, counterbalancing schools pushing it forward.

Still looks 50/50 to me.

[bob sterman]

The great race begins: virus vs vaccine.

Schools unlocked with 7-day average officially at 5,889. Given the lags of a week or two, it's probably fallen to about 4,000 today - a bit better than the 5,000 I forecast.

Will it fall from here? Stay around the same level? Start going up? About half the UK population has some sort of immunity, either from the illness or the vaccine. That's going to drag R back, counterbalancing schools pushing it forward.

Still looks 50/50 to me.

Yup - on the side of the virus is the fact that the group of adults interacting most closely with the kids (parents, teachers) are not in the segement of the population with high vaccination rates at the moment (e.g. > 70s).

So I think case numbers will trend up - but perhaps not hopsitalisations and deaths to a great extent.

[Bird on a Fire]

No kids and very few parents will have been vaccinated yet. I don't see what's going to be different this time around.

ETA as bob says

[Grumble]

The great race begins: virus vs vaccine.

Schools unlocked with 7-day average officially at 5,889. Given the lags of a week or two, it's probably fallen to about 4,000 today - a bit better than the 5,000 I forecast.

Will it fall from here? Stay around the same level? Start going up? About half the UK population has some sort of immunity, either from the illness or the vaccine. That's going to drag R back, counterbalancing schools pushing it forward.

Still looks 50/50 to me.

Yup - on the side of the virus is the fact that the group of adults interacting most closely with the kids (parents, teachers) are not in the segement of the population with high vaccination rates at the moment (e.g. > 70s).

So I think case numbers will trend up - but perhaps not hopsitalisations and deaths to a great extent.

I think all we can aim for right now is that it becomes endemic but controlled

[Sciolus]

The good thing about Johnson's roadmap is that it's changing one parameter* at a time, so if cases go up again over the next few weeks we can confidently attribute it to schools. Likewise with later stages. Since we still don't have a good grasp of what encourages spread and how much, this is a really useful experiment.

*Well, two, because there's the weather as well.