Summer Solstice Unlockdown

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Will the UK achieve unlockdown by the Summer Solstice?

Yes, easy peasy
1
2%
Yes, but only because the govt won't want to u-turn
19
42%
There or thereabouts, might be pushed back a couple of weeks
5
11%
No, the numbers won't allow it, and each stage will be delayed adding up to a couple more months of measures
9
20%
No, not a chance, the virus will have another serious wave and relockdown will be required
11
24%
 
Total votes: 45

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by jdc » Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:55 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:14 am
That's pretty good news deaths-wise. And IIRC there's some evidence vaccines themselves can reduce symptoms of long covid (assuming long delta is broadly similar).

Suggests the main risks of reopening might be long-term illness in the poor and young, rather than hospitals and death for traditional Tory-voting groups.

I suppose immunocompromised people can just keep up isolation forever?
The immunocompromised should be vaccinated - it's not a contraindication to covid vaccination, as we're not using live viruses (it is a contraindication for something like MMR where live virus vaccines are used).

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by jdc » Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:02 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:22 pm
A small number of children getting Long Covid?
Good luck finding reliable estimates for prevalence of long covid - especially in children.

We should know more once the CLoCk study's completed: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/185-million ... ovid/26895

Be a while yet, mind.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Herainestold » Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:03 pm

jdc wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:55 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:14 am
That's pretty good news deaths-wise. And IIRC there's some evidence vaccines themselves can reduce symptoms of long covid (assuming long delta is broadly similar).

Suggests the main risks of reopening might be long-term illness in the poor and young, rather than hospitals and death for traditional Tory-voting groups.

I suppose immunocompromised people can just keep up isolation forever?
The immunocompromised should be vaccinated - it's not a contraindication to covid vaccination, as we're not using live viruses (it is a contraindication for something like MMR where live virus vaccines are used).
Many of them can be vaccinated, but it generates minimal antibodies, sometimes none detectable. The only way to protect these people is lockdown and elimination of the virus.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Herainestold » Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:09 pm

jdc wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:02 pm
lpm wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 1:22 pm
A small number of children getting Long Covid?
Good luck finding reliable estimates for prevalence of long covid - especially in children.

We should know more once the CLoCk study's completed: https://www.nihr.ac.uk/news/185-million ... ovid/26895

Be a while yet, mind.
Evidence from the first study of long covid in children suggests that more than half of children aged between 6 and 16 years old who contract the virus have at least one symptom lasting more than 120 days, with 42.6 per cent impaired by these symptoms during daily activities. These interim results are based on periodic assessments of 129 children in Italy who were diagnosed with covid-19 between March and November 2020 at the Gemelli University Hospital in Rome (medRxiv, doi.org/fv9t).
And we know it will be worse with Delta.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by jdc » Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:09 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:03 pm
jdc wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:55 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:14 am
That's pretty good news deaths-wise. And IIRC there's some evidence vaccines themselves can reduce symptoms of long covid (assuming long delta is broadly similar).

Suggests the main risks of reopening might be long-term illness in the poor and young, rather than hospitals and death for traditional Tory-voting groups.

I suppose immunocompromised people can just keep up isolation forever?
The immunocompromised should be vaccinated - it's not a contraindication to covid vaccination, as we're not using live viruses (it is a contraindication for something like MMR where live virus vaccines are used).
Many of them can be vaccinated, but it generates minimal antibodies, sometimes none detectable. The only way to protect these people is lockdown and elimination of the virus.
We can't even persuade one government to maintain a mask mandate. Good luck persuading the entire world to quarantine till it's eliminated.

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Re: long covid

Post by jdc » Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:16 pm

I note you've chosen to present one particular study, of children who were diagnosed at a hospital. Here's what I'd found:
A recent study found that 13.3 per cent of adults with symptomatic covid-19 have symptoms lasting more than 28 days (medRxiv, doi.org/ghgdsv). Long-lasting symptoms were more likely to occur with increasing age and BMI, and were more likely in women than men, although it isn't clear why. Experiencing more than five symptoms in the first week post-infection was associated with a greater likelihood of having symptoms further down the line.

Evidence from the first study of long covid in children suggests that more than half of children aged between 6 and 16 years old who contract the virus have at least one symptom lasting more than 120 days, with 42.6 per cent impaired by these symptoms during daily activities. These interim results are based on periodic assessments of 129 children in Italy who were diagnosed with covid-19 between March and November 2020 at the Gemelli University Hospital in Rome (medRxiv, doi.org/fv9t).

The UK Office for National Statistics's latest report estimates that 12.9 per cent of UK children aged 2 to 11, and 14.5 per cent of children aged 12 to 16, still have symptoms five weeks after their first infection. Almost 500,000 UK children have tested positive for covid-19 since March 2020.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7927578/
The office for National Statistics in the UK reported that the highest prevalence of long-COVID after 12 weeks was in those aged 25–34 years (18.2%) and lowest in the 2–11 years age band (7.4%).8 This is in accord with the most recent study from Australia, which followed 151 children (median age 3 years) for 3–6 months who predominantly had mild or asymptomatic infection followed in only 8% with ongoing symptoms.9 However, evidence from other small long-term outcome studies in children suggests that more than a half having at least one persisting symptom 4 months after COVID-19.10 Our experience is that preschool children rarely have long-COVID symptoms but those in the 6–18 age groups are significantly more frequently affected.
https://adc.bmj.com/content/early/2021/ ... 021-321882
The overall prevalence of persistent symptoms was 1.7% (80/4678 children; 95% CI 1.4%, 2.1%), and 4.6% (8/174 children; 95% CI 2.0%, 8.9%) in children who had a history of SARS-CoV-2 infection before persistent symptom onset.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... .full-text

We should know more once the CLoCk study's completed.

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Re: long covid

Post by Herainestold » Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:59 pm

jdc wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:16 pm
We should know more once the CLoCk study's completed.
Well of course.We know that Delta is much worse than any of the variants that came before. The studies that have been published are referring to earlier less lethal variants. We can assume that the results with Delta will trend towards the most severe pre Delta outcomes.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by shpalman » Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:59 pm

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Millennie Al » Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:37 am

bob sterman wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:21 am
You are using a very relaxed definition of effectively vaccinated.

As of now only 63.8% of the adult population have been fully vaccinated (i.e. had 2 doses).
I think we should be counting people who are "2&2" - two doses of vaccine and two weeks elapsed since the second dose as it takes a while to reach its full effect.

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Re: long covid prevalence

Post by jdc » Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:55 am

Herainestold wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:59 pm
jdc wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 8:16 pm
We should know more once the CLoCk study's completed.
Well of course.We know that Delta is much worse than any of the variants that came before. The studies that have been published are referring to earlier less lethal variants. We can assume that the results with Delta will trend towards the most severe pre Delta outcomes.
The results you posted are wildly different to all the others. We've got "12.9 per cent of UK children aged 2 to 11, and 14.5 per cent of children aged 12 to 16, still have symptoms five weeks after their first infection", we've got 8% after 3-6 months in Australia, and 4.6% after 4 weeks from a household cohort study in E&W. Do you think that maybe the >50% result from Rome might have something to do with the fact that it was in children diagnosed in hospital rather than in children in the general population?

The cohort study authors also refer to two UK community-based studies which "have reported the prevalence of persistent symptoms (lasting >4 weeks) following SARS-CoV-2 infection in children as 4.4% using data from a symptom app,3 and 9.8% to 13.0% (depending on age group) in a household survey."

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Herainestold » Tue Jul 06, 2021 2:40 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:37 am
bob sterman wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:21 am
You are using a very relaxed definition of effectively vaccinated.

As of now only 63.8% of the adult population have been fully vaccinated (i.e. had 2 doses).
I think we should be counting people who are "2&2" - two doses of vaccine and two weeks elapsed since the second dose as it takes a while to reach its full effect.
So we should be looking at the vaccination numbers from two weeks ago.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by tom p » Tue Jul 06, 2021 8:32 am

Herainestold wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 7:02 pm
tom p wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 9:26 am
Herainestold wrote:
Sat Jul 03, 2021 11:59 pm


I dont even pay attention to the recommendations anymore. I double mask everywhere, shop at non peak hours, avoid the tube, crowds, pubs.
I have read a lot of memoirs of people who have survived the War, holocaust, killing fields etc. It is the cautious who survive.
How do *you* double-mask?
Are you actually putting on two face-masks?
Medical mask underneath a cloth face mask as recommended by CDC and the Indian authorities
According to recently provided guidance on masking based on two experiments, scientists found that wearing a cloth mask over a medical procedure mask was shown to substantially improve protection against exposure and transmission of the virus by about 95 per cent. The guidelines instructed that the outer cloth mask should push the edges of the surgical mask against your face and fit well on the face, preventing exposure to aerosols made by coughing and breathing. However, the study discourages the doubling of surgical mask over surgical mask, cloth on cloth or surgical mask over an N95 mask.
Sometimes I wear a plastic face visor over everything.

https://www.msn.com/en-xl/africa/other/ ... ar-AALCcSn
Interesting. cheers

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by tom p » Tue Jul 06, 2021 8:34 am

Herainestold wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 2:40 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:37 am
bob sterman wrote:
Mon Jul 05, 2021 10:21 am
You are using a very relaxed definition of effectively vaccinated.

As of now only 63.8% of the adult population have been fully vaccinated (i.e. had 2 doses).
I think we should be counting people who are "2&2" - two doses of vaccine and two weeks elapsed since the second dose as it takes a while to reach its full effect.
So we should be looking at the vaccination numbers from two weeks ago.
to know how many are protected, yes

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:18 am

Well as the ripping up of protections doesn't happen for two weeks, we can simply take the data up to Sunday 4 July for the level of protection at full unlocking on 19 July.

Which was:

Full two doses: 33.7 million

- for context there were about 32m people in the Cohorts 1-9, so everyone of these groups were offered full protection plus a chunk of the 40-50 age group

First dose only: 11.6 million

- the adult population of the UK is about 53m (nobody's too sure how many EU workers and entrepreneurs have left this f.cked up little island). So about 7.7m adults and 14m children will be unvaccinated+2wks on 19 July. But based on take up rates, it means only about 2m adults wanting the vaccine are still waiting, most of who will have appointments and will be first dosed by 19 July. Most centres are offering walk-in services now.

Hence there will be 5-6 million adults who will have declined the offer of a vaccine and it will be a long grind over the coming years to get these vaccinated (approx 15%(?) might well have some protection via previous infection). Given it's an endemic global disease, nearly every single one of these people will catch Covid during their lifetime, unless they die of something else first - and it could be a million of these people who catch it during the coming months.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by tom p » Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:37 am

There are ~129k hospital beds in the UK.
For every 1.3% of that million you reckon might catch it in the coming months that need hospitalisation, then that's 10% of all hospital beds in the UK taken up. Sure, it might be that all of them only need it for a few days & it's spreadout over half a year. Then only 1-2% of all hospital beds in the country would be occupied with these people at any one time, but they have to be in a special ward kept away from everyone else. Nurses going in and out would need extra PPE & so on. The NHS is already stretched to breaking point and normal services have been delayed for a loooong time already. This is an unnecessary additional burden.
Either as a society we say that if you refuse a vaccine & you catch COVID, then f.ck off and die (literally), or we treat those people, at the expense of others who need treatment.
Retaining as a minimum limited, pragmatic, measures such as masks on public transport, reduces the chance of fast spreading of the disease and would slow down any rates of catching it & minimise the chance of the unvaccinated catching it and getting ill.
Allowing outdoor public gatherings in the summer, then that's a question of personal choice as to whether or not you attend them. That's a different sort of risk to having to go to work (or having to work on public transport).

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Tue Jul 06, 2021 9:45 am

I'm not arguing that their policy is right. It's more that the UK government was obviously f.cking up in March 2020, August 2020, Sept 2020, Oct and Nov 2020, and December 2020. A small child could see the UK government was f.cking up last year, assuming the small child had learned adding up (learning taking away would be useful for said child, but not essential).

It's not at all clear they're f.cking up now. It's more a 50/50 - we could get away with it, we might not. If I was in my rightful position of ruler of this country I'd be playing it safe, but there are good arguments against being over-cautious. Whitty's argument in this link isn't clearly wrong and having the 3rd wave during the summer school holidays is probably better than having it in autumn. They don't seem to be articulating what they'll do when schools go back in September, however, which will still be a time of very high case loads.

The Scotland data will be a good indicator of how the summer plays out. Their 3rd wave is seeing colossal case numbers. Scotland schools shut around 23 June - two weeks ago - so now is the moment when the curve should start to bend. If there isn't a drop off in the acceleration of Scotland cases in the coming few days then the UK is probably f.cking up.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Jul 06, 2021 10:16 am

This Whitty guy doesn't seem very smart. If you delay the wave to a time when more people are vaccinated, you'll get less transmission, illness and death.

I get the impression that these politics types have decided that because they personally have received two vaccines, then they can proceed as if everyone else has the same privilege.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by bob sterman » Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:19 am

Here's the quote from Whitty - where he sets us all straight - us naive folk who thought modern medicine and healthcare was all about making us immortal...
Whitty wrote:At a certain point, you move to the situation where instead of actually averting hospitalisations and deaths, you move over to just delaying them. So you’re not actually changing the number of people who will go to hospital or die, you may change when they happen.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Hunting Dog » Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:42 am

hmmm, the health service seems to spend quite a lot of money just delaying deaths - given that logic about not bothering with things that only change when the deaths might happen we could give up on most cancer treatment...

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:55 am

We can't forget we are in a global pandemic. A kick-ass disease has arrived to kill people and we shouldn't try for perfect defences. We are sharing the planet with respiratory viruses and as a society we don't hide away - because that leads to other bad health outcomes such as unemployment and poverty.

Fundamentally the UK f.cked up so badly in 2020 that we've had far longer national lockdowns than nearly every other country. In fact are we world's number one for time spent in lockdown? Other countries went with earlier, tougher lockdowns; some went with local lockdowns; some went with stricter isolation. The inevitable result is the UK has trashed its economy badly and almost certainly we've damaged public health for a generation.

Whitty know he lives in the UK with UK-specific incompetence and problems, and is trying to articulate the optimal policy for a f.cked-up country. Nothing he says would or should apply to competent countries like Australia or Germany or Vietnam. For example Whitty know the Conservatives won't ever pay people to properly self-isolate and will use test & trace to divert funds to donors. It's a doctor's job to deal with the patient they have not the ideal patient they'd want. Chris Whitty is a doctor looking at the UK and isn't wasting time imagining how much healthier it would be if only it had looked after itself properly. He's setting an exercise and diet regime he thinks will work for this specific patient, not some optimal scheme. It's clear from his comments that he foresees problems in the coming winter and so would rather get a wave of patients through the hospitals this summer.

I suspect the UK has to "live with the virus" and all it's deaths, hospitalisation and illness because it simply isn't capable of doing anything else under Johnson, a corrupt government and an economy hit by Brexit-damage multiplying the lockdown-damage. We instead need to rely on our strengths - a world-class vaccine rollout and an NHS with workers who will break themselves to cope with ten thousand Covid patients across the summer.
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:14 pm

Germany to end restrictions by the end of August
https://cn.reuters.com/article/health-c ... SL5N2OI1GE

That ties in with it being about 5-6 weeks behind the UK in vaccinating people.

It appears to be the same logic. To summarize, the lockdowns were a temporary measure to buy enough time to vaccinate the adult population. Once that task is complete there isn't a justification to restrict everyone.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by snoozeofreason » Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:34 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 10:16 am
This Whitty guy doesn't seem very smart. If you delay the wave to a time when more people are vaccinated, you'll get less transmission, illness and death.

I get the impression that these politics types have decided that because they personally have received two vaccines, then they can proceed as if everyone else has the same privilege.
This bit makes very little sense either.
Witty wrote:There is quite a strong view by many people, including myself actually, that going in the summer has some advantages, all other things being equal, to opening up into the autumn when schools are going back and when we’re heading into the winter period when the NHS tends to be under greatest pressure for many other reasons,
If the plan was to unlock in July, and then lockdown again in September, then there might be some point to that. If we were only going to have a few months of freedom, then it might be better to have them during the summer than the autumn. But the plan is to unlock in July and stay unlocked in September. This means that, when schools and universities go back, the levels of Covid will be higher than they would be if we had delayed unlocking until that point (and levels of Influenza will also be higher), so we can expect that, over the autumn, the NHS will be under greater pressure, not less, as a result of an early unlocking.
In six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them. The human body was knocked up pretty late on the Friday afternoon, with a deadline looming. How well do you expect it to work?

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Woodchopper » Tue Jul 06, 2021 12:48 pm

Some modelling by James Ward
https://twitter.com/JamesWard73/status/ ... 99623?s=20
With those assumptions, my new model base case looks like this, with a peak of hospitalisations around 12k per week (c. 40% of the January peak), and around 10k deaths in total in the exit wave.

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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by Herainestold » Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:34 pm

lpm wrote:
Tue Jul 06, 2021 11:55 am

I suspect the UK has to "live with the virus" and all it's deaths, hospitalisation and illness because it simply isn't capable of doing anything else under Johnson, a corrupt government and an economy hit by Brexit-damage multiplying the lockdown-damage. We instead need to rely on our strengths - a world-class vaccine rollout and an NHS with workers who will break themselves to cope with ten thousand Covid patients across the summer.
What happens when NHS staff start leaving in droves for better prospects in Australia, America, and the EU?
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Re: Summer Solstice Unlockdown

Post by lpm » Tue Jul 06, 2021 1:46 pm

That's the advantage of being red listed by all civilised countries - our overseas nurses will be trapped here.
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