Vaccine rollout in the UK

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by headshot » Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:29 am

I run an outdoor theatre company whose business is reliant on good summers.

We're doing ok this year, but it's a demonstrably poor summer - apart from the two week in July when it was almost too hot to sit outside without significant amounts of shade. August has been awful - mostly heavy cloud, temperatures in the low 20s and quite a significant amount of wet days.

I'd say the cherry picking here is coming from Bob's insistence that higher overall temperatures and a heatwave mean it's been a good summer for outdoor activities. It really hasn't.

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by bob sterman » Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:37 am

headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:29 am
I'd say the cherry picking here is coming from Bob's insistence that higher overall temperatures and a heatwave mean it's been a good summer for outdoor activities. It really hasn't.
I openly said I was picking cherries!!!

But I would say, while it's not been a good summer - I would disagree with lpm's claim that "in Covid terms, we've had a particularly unhelpful summer".

Here's rainfall data for London NW3 - Hampstead Heath (sorry I was wrong about "a little rain" on the 25th - that's the evening it chucked it down).

As you can see there have been long stretches with no rain - and the higher than average rainfall totals come from 2 days when the rain was torrential.
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by bob sterman » Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:42 am

And the daily max temperatures.

It really hasn't been that bad in London...
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:43 am

For people who are flexible on the day-to-day there have probably been enough good days to go to the park or whatever.

But for things that require longer-term planning, like events and holidays, it's probably been an unhelpful summer because people can't depend on it being dry. (Bob - I don't think temperature data is useful, as it can be warm and wet.)

And that's what British summers are going to look like for the foreseeable future, thanks to climate change, so we can at least say the weather is predictably unpredictable, and any strategy that relies on long periods of dryness is likely to be met with a dose of cold water.
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by lpm » Mon Aug 23, 2021 1:26 pm

bob sterman wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:37 am
headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:29 am
I'd say the cherry picking here is coming from Bob's insistence that higher overall temperatures and a heatwave mean it's been a good summer for outdoor activities. It really hasn't.
I openly said I was picking cherries!!!

But I would say, while it's not been a good summer - I would disagree with lpm's claim that "in Covid terms, we've had a particularly unhelpful summer".

Here's rainfall data for London NW3 - Hampstead Heath (sorry I was wrong about "a little rain" on the 25th - that's the evening it chucked it down).

As you can see there have been long stretches with no rain - and the higher than average rainfall totals come from 2 days when the rain was torrential.
We're off-topicing nicely here! I must admit I was thinking more about CO2 than COV in this - my hope earlier in the year was that "staycation" would be normalised in 2021 and people would realise flying for a week in Torremolinos is far inferior to glorious summer days on a Devon beach. I'm firmly of the belief that a week of glorious summer weather in the UK delivers an unimaginably better holiday than a week in the Med, whether you like walking holidays or beaches or exploring cities. But you aren't ever guaranteed a week of summer weather.

Under this lens, I think we should classify the torrential downpour days as just another rainy day. You don't build sandcastles in drizzle either. So as Bob says the quantity of liquid falling from the sky is irrelevant. And I'd say nobody really minds one rainy day on a week's holiday, if you get 6 sunny days you'd still come home saying the weather was great. But 3 or 4 rainy days and you'd be really put off booking a staycation for 2022.

Based on these principles, and assuming Saturday to Saturday one week holidays, and taking Hampstead as a proxy for a staycation, and ignoring 0.1 and 0.2 figures, days rain in the holidays in the week commencing:

29 May = 1
5 June = 0
12 June = 3
19 June = 2
26 June = 3
3 July = 5
10 July = 2
17 July = 1
24 July = 4
31 July = 3
7 Aug = 3
14 Aug = 2

I'd say most holiday-makers would be disappointed with that. Particularly for English schools breaking up for holidays on about 21 July - temperatures haven't reached 25 degrees on a single day since. This hasn't been the weather to create happy childhood memories of holidaying in Britain.
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by Herainestold » Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:44 pm

headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:29 am
I run an outdoor theatre company whose business is reliant on good summers.

We're doing ok this year, but it's a demonstrably poor summer - apart from the two week in July when it was almost too hot to sit outside without significant amounts of shade. August has been awful - mostly heavy cloud, temperatures in the low 20s and quite a significant amount of wet days.

I'd say the cherry picking here is coming from Bob's insistence that higher overall temperatures and a heatwave mean it's been a good summer for outdoor activities. It really hasn't.
Are you taking covid precautions at your events? Have any of them resulted in covid transmissions?
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by headshot » Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:55 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:44 pm
headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:29 am
I run an outdoor theatre company whose business is reliant on good summers.

We're doing ok this year, but it's a demonstrably poor summer - apart from the two week in July when it was almost too hot to sit outside without significant amounts of shade. August has been awful - mostly heavy cloud, temperatures in the low 20s and quite a significant amount of wet days.

I'd say the cherry picking here is coming from Bob's insistence that higher overall temperatures and a heatwave mean it's been a good summer for outdoor activities. It really hasn't.
Are you taking covid precautions at your events? Have any of them resulted in covid transmissions?
Yes. No.

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by headshot » Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:55 pm

bob sterman wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:37 am
headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:29 am
I'd say the cherry picking here is coming from Bob's insistence that higher overall temperatures and a heatwave mean it's been a good summer for outdoor activities. It really hasn't.
I openly said I was picking cherries!!!
My bad, I thought your post was accusing others of cherry picking.

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by Herainestold » Mon Aug 23, 2021 4:48 pm

headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:55 pm
Herainestold wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:44 pm
headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:29 am
I run an outdoor theatre company whose business is reliant on good summers.

We're doing ok this year, but it's a demonstrably poor summer - apart from the two week in July when it was almost too hot to sit outside without significant amounts of shade. August has been awful - mostly heavy cloud, temperatures in the low 20s and quite a significant amount of wet days.

I'd say the cherry picking here is coming from Bob's insistence that higher overall temperatures and a heatwave mean it's been a good summer for outdoor activities. It really hasn't.
Are you taking covid precautions at your events? Have any of them resulted in covid transmissions?
Yes. No.
Thanks. Glad to hear that. Do people have to be masked at your events?
Masking forever
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Russian socialism will rise again

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by bob sterman » Mon Aug 23, 2021 5:12 pm

headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:55 pm
bob sterman wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 11:37 am
I openly said I was picking cherries!!!
My bad, I thought your post was accusing others of cherry picking.
Well I was saying that too! And was picking some alternative cherries to highlight the problem.

Glass half full - weather this summer seems rubbish - a bit like autumn - so people must be spending loads of time indoors which explains why we're getting > 30,000 cases per day. Come real autumn things won't be much different.

Glass half empty - July wasn't that bad - in London 17 days with no rain. Same as 2020 in that regard. Yet in July 2020 we had < 1000 cases per day in London with pubs, cafes and restaurants open and nobody vaccinated. Now in July 2021 with the same number of dry days - and 60-70% of the adult population double vaccinated - we had 30,000 to 60,000 cases per day.

The fact is - seasonal influences on COVID-19 are not well-understood. And if we make confident assertions about how much worse (or not worse) COVID case numbers will be in the autumn (due to weather effects that seem plausible) we're all going to end up sounding like Comedy Carl Heneghan.

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by lpm » Mon Aug 23, 2021 5:36 pm

Well yes, we don't even have any idea of why UK cases dived from 50,000 to 25,000 a day. It caught everyone by surprise. We don't have a grip on the basics, let alone tweaking it for weather.

The subsequent rise from 25,000 to 32,000, about 5% to 10% per week, feels easier to explain. We can spin narratives about opening nightclubs or football matches. But those narratives are probably just as false.

I'm not convinced seasonality plays much of a role, particularly compared to the timing of school holidays and universities and other major factors. The Sept/Oct 2020 rise in case numbers told a pretty clear story alongside the heat maps. I'd hate to try to unpick autumn from that, but presumably there will be people doing PhD dissertations attempting to map local weather to local case numbers.
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by headshot » Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:18 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 4:48 pm
headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:55 pm
Herainestold wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 2:44 pm


Are you taking covid precautions at your events? Have any of them resulted in covid transmissions?
Yes. No.
Thanks. Glad to hear that. Do people have to be masked at your events?
No. Because it’s not mandated anywhere in the UK for outdoor events so it isn’t possible to enforce, and besides audiences tend to naturally distance around 1m between groups anyway.

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by Herainestold » Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:50 pm

headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 8:18 pm
Herainestold wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 4:48 pm
headshot wrote:
Mon Aug 23, 2021 3:55 pm


Yes. No.
Thanks. Glad to hear that. Do people have to be masked at your events?
No. Because it’s not mandated anywhere in the UK for outdoor events so it isn’t possible to enforce, and besides audiences tend to naturally distance around 1m between groups anyway.
Okay, thank you. I realize how difficult it must be for someone to run any kind of business in these trying times.
Good luck to you.
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Aug 24, 2021 3:07 am

I've got to say, I really miss live stuff and I'd feel a million percent safer at an open air event. The real figure is perhaps less than a million, but I think it's probably a very low risk. And after the tribulations of last year I'm really happy to hear headshot is having a season! :)

The government isn't making it easy for people to enforce their own rules though. A few friends work at an (indoor) music venue, and can't do anything but allow all and sundry through the doors right now. They're not super happy, but should be able to get their second jabs about now.
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by JQH » Tue Aug 24, 2021 7:36 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:58 pm
Don't be surprised if your booster shots get scrapped to save money ten years down the line is all I'm saying. Millennial-led austerity will be all about working-age people, the engines of the economy. Decrepit old boomers will be f.cked.
I'm sure you're right. Just don't expect the generation after you to restore them when you need them.
And remember that if you botch the exit, the carnival of reaction may be coming to a town near you.

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by shpalman » Thu Aug 26, 2021 10:09 am

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by shpalman » Thu Aug 26, 2021 6:49 pm

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by shpalman » Mon Aug 30, 2021 8:27 am

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by tom p » Mon Aug 30, 2021 2:31 pm

JQH wrote:
Tue Aug 24, 2021 7:36 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:58 pm
Don't be surprised if your booster shots get scrapped to save money ten years down the line is all I'm saying. Millennial-led austerity will be all about working-age people, the engines of the economy. Decrepit old boomers will be f.cked.
I'm sure you're right. Just don't expect the generation after you to restore them when you need them.
Once the boomers are all dead, the pensions timebomb won't be so bad.
It'll just be dealing with the long-term decline that their generation inflicted on the UK through brexit that will be the major financial headache.

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by Bird on a Fire » Mon Aug 30, 2021 4:26 pm

tom p wrote:
Mon Aug 30, 2021 2:31 pm
JQH wrote:
Tue Aug 24, 2021 7:36 am
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Aug 22, 2021 2:58 pm
Don't be surprised if your booster shots get scrapped to save money ten years down the line is all I'm saying. Millennial-led austerity will be all about working-age people, the engines of the economy. Decrepit old boomers will be f.cked.
I'm sure you're right. Just don't expect the generation after you to restore them when you need them.
Once the boomers are all dead, the pensions timebomb won't be so bad.
It'll just be dealing with the long-term decline that their generation inflicted on the UK through brexit that will be the major financial headache.
Nah, pensions will be a pittance compared with climate disasters.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by shpalman » Wed Sep 01, 2021 5:06 pm

not a booster shot though

Well no, the British third jab is actually spelled borcestershire shot.
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by shpalman » Fri Sep 03, 2021 2:42 pm

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by shpalman » Fri Sep 03, 2021 7:18 pm

having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by Woodchopper » Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:33 am

New JCVI statement on vaccinating 12-15 year olds: https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... ember-2021
This advice is not based on assessments of vaccine availability, future supply or costs associated with delivery of a programme. When formulating advice in relation to childhood immunisations, JCVI has consistently held that the main focus of its decision should be the benefit to children and young people themselves, weighed against any potential harms from vaccination to children and young people. In providing its advice, JCVI also recognises that in relation to childhood immunisation programmes, the UK public places a higher relative value on safety compared to benefits.

The available evidence indicates that the individual health benefits from COVID-19 vaccination are small in those aged 12 to 15 years who do not have underlying health conditions which put them at risk of severe COVID-19. The potential risks from vaccination are also small, with reports of post-vaccination myocarditis being very rare, but potentially serious and still in the process of being described. Given the rarity of these events and the limited follow-up time of children and young people with post-vaccination myocarditis, substantial uncertainty remains regarding the health risks associated with these adverse events.

Overall, the committee is of the opinion that the benefits from vaccination are marginally greater than the potential known harms (tables 1 to 4) but acknowledges that there is considerable uncertainty regarding the magnitude of the potential harms. The margin of benefit, based primarily on a health perspective, is considered too small to support advice on a universal programme of vaccination of otherwise healthy 12 to 15-year-old children at this time. As longer-term data on potential adverse reactions accrue, greater certainty may allow for a reconsideration of the benefits and harms. Such data may not be available for several months.

JCVI has considered commentary from stakeholders on the benefits of vaccination on the operation of schools and the educational impact of the pandemic on children and young people. JCVI is constituted with expertise to allow consideration of the health benefits and risks of vaccination and it is not within its remit to incorporate in-depth considerations on wider societal impacts, including educational benefits. The government may wish to seek further views on the wider societal and educational impacts from the chief medical officers of the 4 nations, with representation from JCVI in these subsequent discussions. There is considerable uncertainty regarding the impact of vaccination in children and young people on peer-to-peer transmission and transmission in the wider (highly vaccinated) population. Estimates from modelling vary substantially, and the committee is of the view that any impact on transmission may be relatively small, given the lower effectiveness of the vaccine against infection with the Delta variant.

Delivery of a COVID-19 vaccine programme for children and young people is likely to be disruptive to education in the short term, particularly if school premises are used for vaccination and there is potential for a COVID-19 vaccine programme to impact on the efficiency of roll-out of the influenza programme. Adverse reactions to vaccination (such as fevers) may also lead to time away from education for some individuals.

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Re: Vaccine rollout in the UK

Post by shpalman » Sat Sep 04, 2021 10:39 am

Prof Sir Mark Walport told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme:
It’s uncomfortable but it’s not necessarily a particularly rare situation.

The JCVI looks through a very particular lens, which is the clinical safety of the vaccine for a given population group against the effects of the disease itself.

But what they don’t look at is the wider issues such as education and the harms to that, so the broader harms potentially to children and the knock-on effects to their families – that’s where policymakers come in.

My child and my grandchild’s health is also affected by their social environment, by their ability to go to school, by what happens in the family, and so there are broader factors as well.

All the evidence is the rate of myocarditis, the inflammation of the heart muscle, and of pericarditis is at least the same and probably significantly higher in that same population group if they get coronavirus.[/qyite]
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