New lockdown in England, including school closures, announced by Johnson, 4/1/21

[takno]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-55602828 project fear gets more unpleasant and laughable.
What really grates here are the 2 "scientists" quoted are on SAGE SPi-B the committee on Behavioural control They are Behavioural Psychologists. Not ones seeing people, but the 7 hours of lectures a week and josticks stereotype would be some i recall at uni! And is coercion lawful even?
It may be the vaccine,if it works will save some 600000 people from dying(1% fatality in the West with ageing population, 0.23% in other places(LSHTM official figures)) so am not totally hostile, but they are so inept as to fail to consider the damage. Or apologize for it, nor show human empathy about it. At this point you could segregate those needing a vaccine, and let the young free. Perhaps there is motivation, to destabilise the country(London Scientists Lefty Remainists), or write a paper on how well it worked? Have SAGE actually taken over the country via a coup with their political lapdogs?
A plea for compassion and how many are saved would be a far greater incentive to us Brits for a few hard months than all this shenanigans

Nobody is actually trying to destabilise the country, even if what they are suggesting runs a real risk of doing that. I have no idea whether these two remarkable idiots are left wing or not, but there isn't a clear left/right divide on lockdown restrictions (or Brexit for that matter), and no particular association between remainers and those who support extra measures. I appreciate that you're angry, but please don't antagonise people who are agreeing with you

 

[Yew]

What's "community immunity"? If you mean letting enough people get infected and subsequently immune to make it more difficult for the virus to spread from person to person, then you need up to 65% of the population to have had it, which is hardly "limit the spread". It would mean over 130,000 deaths.

It's not all or nothing you know, even if you're not up there fully, it still impacts the R value

then you need up to 65% of the population to have had it, which is hardly "limit the spread"

I thought the purpose of all of this was to protect the NHS, not to engage in some sort of sysiphusian battle against a virus?

It would mean over 130,000 deaths.

If you don't protect the vulnerable, maybe, but for all the harms caused by lockdowns, we are heading to something around that number anyway.

 

[yorkie]

I think we've had bits of this conversation before! I don't understand your claim that there is no correlation between lockdowns/restrictions and deaths, because I see here and in many other places that there is a correlation.

Do you have examples of this correlation you speak of?

 

[OxtedL]

Do you have examples of this correlation you speak of?

The November lockdown in England had a pretty clear effect on the numbers - both when it was applied and when it was lifted.

If you had any doubt that restrictions (since March) have been the main driving force of reducing R numbers, the November lockdown should put that to bed straight away. It is extremely visible in both the cases and deaths data.

(My annotations on worldometer graphs showing covid case/death data for all of UK.)

 

[initiation]

I think we've had bits of this conversation before! I don't understand your claim that there is no correlation between lockdowns/restrictions and deaths, because I see here and in many other places that there is a correlation.

Here is a new peer reviewed paper on lockdowns and cases which concludes the following:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484

While small benefits cannot be excluded, we do not find significant benefits on case growth of more restrictive NPIs. Similar reductions in case growth may be achievable with less restrictive interventions.

Perhaps you can point to a recent peer reviewed paper showing that heavy restrictions have a large positive effect?

 

[yorkie]

The November lockdown in England had a pretty clear effect on the numbers - both when it was applied and when it was lifted.

If you had any doubt that restrictions (since March) have been the main driving force of reducing R numbers, the November lockdown should put that to bed straight away. It is extremely visible in both the cases and deaths data.

(My annotations on worldometer graphs showing covid case/death data for all of UK.)

I was more thinking about the approach taken by different countries; there doesn't appear to be a correlation between countries having harsher lockdowns having fewer deaths for example.

There is also some thought that locking down for periods, then unlocking causes more mixing just before, and just after, the lockdowns, thus reducing the effectiveness of the lockdowns themselves, but I am not sure if this phenomenon does exist or not.

One thing that cannot be denied is that lockdowns are not a long term solution, nor do they take important matters such as mental and physical wellbeing into account.

 

[DB]

The November lockdown in England had a pretty clear effect on the numbers - both when it was applied and when it was lifted.

If you had any doubt that restrictions (since March) have been the main driving force of reducing R numbers, the November lockdown should put that to bed straight away. It is extremely visible in both the cases and deaths data.

(My annotations on worldometer graphs showing covid case/death data for all of UK.)

What that baically shows is that when the lockdown is applied the speed of spread slacken, then when it is released it shoots back up at a faster trajectory than before.

End result being pretty much the same as if there hadn't been a lockdown - and graphed over a longer time period it will just show as a brief blip.

 

[35B]

What that baically shows is that when the lockdown is applied the speed of spread slacken, then when it is released it shoots back up at a faster trajectory than before.

End result being pretty much the same as if there hadn't been a lockdown - and graphed over a longer time period it will just show as a brief blip.

Which may be true, but when that “blip” is a large number of lives and maintaining the capacity of healthcare to keep some kind of service going, I suggest that the real world consequences of those graphs is worth considering.

 

[OxtedL]

I was more thinking about the approach taken by different countries. There doesn't appear to be a correlation between countries having harsher lockdowns having fewer deaths for example.

The problem we've had in the UK is that the government have been applying restrictions at the last possible minute throughout the crisis. Both the March 2020 and January 2021 lockdowns have had to use the strongest possible restrictions available, the alternative in both cases being imminent catastrophes in our hospital system. We've had to endure the relatively "harsh" restrictions not because scientists think it's the best way to control the pandemic, but because it's been the only way to get ourselves out the hole we've found ourselves in.

I'm sure science will eventually have some kind of post-mortem for us on what we could have done differently, though no doubt with some controversy.
But countries who are currently living freer lives than us in general have had the strategy of suppressing much lower case rates much earlier.

To be able to keep schools open right now we'd only really need to be a couple of weeks behind our current trajectory.
The difference we're talking about is at the level of e.g. if we'd all stayed away from pubs and restaurants as obediently as people in Sweden and South Korea did throughout the autumn.

then when it is released it shoots back up at a faster trajectory than before.

This is what's known as exponential growth. It's not a property of lockdown or the exit to lockdown.
(There's also an effect here due to the new strain that emerged, which boosted the rate of exponential growth. Again this is not related to lockdown.)

I'll give a more detailed explanation of exponential growth in the context of this thread in case this is useful, although I know I won't change your mind about lockdowns.


In exponential growth, the trajectory of cases is proportional only to (a) the number of cases and (b) the current restrictions in place.

It doesn't matter what restrictions there were immediately before or after, the pandemic will pick up exactly where it left off the last time you had that case rate and those transmission conditions. The more cases, the more quickly things spirals out of control. (*,**,***,****)

(* Except at very low case rates when transmission is much more affected by luck.)
(** I'll also grant you that there's a point about short term increases in mixing just before and after lockdowns, but these have been less important than the raw power of sustained exponential growth.)
(*** There's also a point about transmission conditions getting worse by themselves as we head further into winter conditions - although as mentioned before, you can see quite clearly in the data that the November lockdown was easily able to beat the effect of this during that month.)
(**** Herd immunity also changes the R number/rate of exponential growth, but as the data on the November lockdown also demonstrates, we're still nowhere near a level of herd immunity that's helpful for suppressing the pandemic. )

Exponential growth is the reason we've been needing to act well before hospitals are actually in dire trouble. The difference between hospitals being manageably full vs too full to accept new admissions is measured in days, even at the much lower growth rates we've been able to achieve with social restrictions in place.

Exponential growth at the start of a pandemic (and note that in terms of population immunity we're still at the start of this pandemic, 12 months in) means there are basically just three sensible public health policies in a pandemic while a vaccine is unavailable:

1. Let the disease spread freely - to reach herd immunity as quickly as possible.
2. Try to hit herd immunity without exceeding the capacity of your healthcare system.
3. Suppress the disease like crazy to keep cases as near zero as possible.

1. and 2. were never an option with Covid. In the UK we've done a poor job at 3 due to slow decision making.

For 1: no country in the world has a healthcare system able to cope with this for Covid, at least in a way that would be acceptable to 21st century morality. The death rate right now is troubling - but it gets substantially worse once hospitals exceed capacity, and remember that infections increase at an exponential rate. So if e.g. the number of cases now doubled and took us past the capacity of our hospitals, you'd see the number of deaths more than double. Indeed they would increase very substantially, since there are more life-saving hospital interventions than deaths at present, especially in younger age groups. The implications in terms of number of deaths and people left with long term illness are severe. And we'd still impact our economy in the process as people who are ill become unable to work, adding up to a lot of lost productivity. Sectors like food supply chains would come under stress due to staff absence, and panic buying would actually be a sensible decision rather than just the emotional reaction we saw in March. Every country in the world has ruled this out, for the right reasons.

2 was also never a good option as it would take too long. And as we now have vaccines available it can be ruled out completely.
Running the NHS at maximum capacity we seem to be able to cope with no more than 1-2% of the population having the virus at once, and that's at the cost of e.g. suspending some types of cancer treatment. We need c.50% of people to have had it or to be vaccinated before herd immunity starts to be helpful to us in our present situation, and much higher at 90%+ to return to something like normal life from 2019. Vaccines are a much better way to achieve herd immunity than running the NHS into the ground now that we know a working vaccine is possible.

Which leaves 3.
(NB I'm discussing keeping them near zero and not at zero here as that involves a separate discussion about whether eradication is even possible. This is about being near enough zero that the law of large numbers doesn't apply and bad luck is the governing factor in infection rate)

Why keep cases near zero?
Because once you've ruled out 1&2 you've decided that you have to control the pandemic.
Which means controlling the R number, as we've been told constantly since the summer. If the R number is above 1 you are losing, if it is below 1 you are winning.

The R number is essentially blind to the total number of cases. This is a feature of exponential growth.
But:

• (this is key) if the R number creeps above 1 and you have to introduce heavier handed restrictions, returning back to where you started takes the same amount of collective effort regardless of your case rate. But you may be able to do it with only local restrictions if cases are low enough and the surge in cases can be contained (this was the original logical basis behind the government's tier system - it failed at this purpose once cases got too high for it to be useful.) Measures like contact tracing or even mass testing of an entire population (see Liverpool) become more practical and less disruptive with local containment.
• Fewer essential workers have to take time off work due to illness or self-isolation if the case rate is lower. In general, things run a lot smoother when the case rate is lower.
• Fewer people die if the case rate is lower.

That is to say, once you have decided not to let the infection rate overwhelm your healthcare system, there are no advantages to allowing the case rate to creep higher, and lots of advantages to keeping it lower. Hence, keep it near zero.

The other thing to say about high case rates is that more people having covid means a greater chance of mutations in the virus.
Mutations risk giving the virus an advantage like the ability to spread faster (see the new strain we have at the moment) or worse something that allows it to beat immunity in people who've had the disease or had the vaccine. A vaccine-immunity-beating mutation isn't concerning in the long term as we can tweak the vaccine to beat this. But it's concerning as a short term prospect as there's a worst case scenario where we have to go back into lockdown until a replacement vaccine is available.

So again, the sensible public health decision is that cases need to be kept as near zero as possible to avoid the virus having opportunities to mutate.

To sum up in the context of this thread then, a rational government policy would relax restrictions only when:

• The total case rate is low enough the NHS is safely back under capacity and can remain so for several weeks even if cases started increasing again
• There is evidence that the R number will remain below 1 under reduced restrictions. (possibly influenced by weather, or vaccine strategy)

Under the above strategy, expect only token changes to restrictions before April.
If we find ourselves with any leeway at all, expect schools to reopen first.

It'll be interesting to see what Boris ends up doing in practice.

 

[jtuk]

The problem we've had in the UK is that the government have been applying restrictions at the last possible minute throughout the crisis. Both the March 2020 and January 2021 lockdowns have had to use the strongest possible restrictions available, the alternative in both cases being imminent catastrophes in our hospital system.

Well, that was the feared alternative at least, but there lacks any real evidence it would actually have happened

 

[DB]

This is what's known as exponential growth. It's not a property of lockdown or the exit to lockdown.

I know what exponential growth is, thanks.

If you look at any lockdown graphs they show the same - it's quite clearly a product of lowering the spread a bit by the lockdown, so the graph dips and then shoots up to where it would have been anyway - i.e. nothing has been gained.

And to those who say we have to do this to control hospital admissions, the logic doesn't add up - it will actually lead to more hospital admissions in a shorter time period, which is allegedly what it's trying to avoid.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 10 Jan 2021 ==

Well, that was the feared alternative at least, but there lacks any real evidence it would actually have happened

And if was judged to be such a risk, they had all summer to do something to prepare, and failed to do so.

 

[abn444]

He’s making the point that all of these deaths is an incomprehensible number - at what point do we as humanity recognise how big a number that is? We aren’t connected to these people in anyway, so what will it take for us to be able to comprehend the severity of this.

Well someone had better not tell him how many people die every day even before covid, otherwise he might never leave his house again. He seems to have forgotten that living has a 100% death rate

 

[TheBeard]

Here is a new peer reviewed paper on lockdowns and cases which concludes the following:

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/eci.13484

Perhaps you can point to a recent peer reviewed paper showing that heavy restrictions have a large positive effect?

Deeply disturbing that according to the above it has been estimated to push Half a Billion people into poverty. Not sure how many the alternatives would have but perhaps there would have been a less severe alternative which would have helped had it been constant since May? Say no foreign hols, very light on the pubs and eateries. Nothing is popular here but, well.

 

[yorkie]

It doesn't matter what restrictions there were immediately before or after, the pandemic will pick up exactly where it left off the last time you had that case rate and those transmission conditions. The more cases, the more quickly things spirals out of control. (*,**,***,****)

But in order to retain low levels of the virus you have to lock down early and for a long period of time; if people who are pro-lockdown had their way we'd have been locked down since February 2020 until Summer 2021 with a set of measures designed to keep R at less than one throughout that entire period. As soon as we unlocked, cases would have risen, and you would have then locked us down again when cases started to rise a little bit.

I'd also like to point out that the pro-lockdown lobbyists have been incredibly lucky that we have found vaccines so soon. They had no exit strategy other than hope for a vaccine. Now the vaccine has arrived, they got lucky as they can now say "lockdown until there is a vaccine"; had we not had a vaccine, locking down forever would clearly not have been viable, so they would have been forced to admit defeat.

I'd also argue that locking down in the warm Summer months was utterly pointless; as we saw elsewhere the virus was going away for the Summer months as Coronaviruses typically do. We wasted a lot of money and harmed mental & physical wellbeing totally unnecessarily. Locking down at this time of year is a more arguable case, but we should never have been locking down at a time when other countries had no lockdown and were experiencing the virus slowly dissipating.

During the Summer people kept saying that people gathering was going to create a "second wave"; I said all along that if this is a Seasonal virus (which I long suspected it was, even when WHO were strongly denying it) then any resurgence would happen in the Winter. I was right.

 

[DB]

I'd also like to point out that the pro-lockdown lobbyists have been incredibly lucky that we have found vaccines so soon. They had no exit strategy other than hope for a vaccine. Now the vaccine has arrived, they got lucky as they can now say "lockdown until there is a vaccine"; had we not had a vaccine, locking down forever would clearly not have been viable, so they would have been forced to admit defeat.

The danger now is that they will try to use this as a template for changing epidemic plans in the future.

 

[brad465]

Amidst all the speculation about toughening up rules, the Telegraph's front page is speculating if they are tightened they'd be going for the following:

- Stopping exercise with one other person (i.e. has to be alone or within one's household/support bubble only, like in March)
- Masks in workplaces and possibly some outdoor settings like Supermarket queues, but no mention of blanket outdoor wearing (yet)
- Their primary focus at the moment though is to try and better enforce current rules, especially around workplaces and supermarkets potentially being rather lax about them.




I could probably just about manage with most of that, given I almost always cycle alone, work from home at the moment and masks when queuing for shops will either be only a short addition or already happening when in a shopping mall, although I accept there will be others who won't like this, especially those who still have to physically go to work.

Given as I've said earlier up thread that the latest ONS survey is suggesting infections are have just peaked in London and the South-East and among school ages, if we can hold off maybe another week for more data, combined with increasing numbers of vaccine immunity kicking in, I believe what's already in place will be enough. Anything they do introduce though from here also needs to go no later than when schools return, otherwise intolerance will accelerate.

 

[philosopher]

Amidst all the speculation about toughening up rules, the Telegraph's front page is speculating if they are tightened they'd be going for the following:

- Stopping exercise with one other person (i.e. has to be alone or within one's household/support bubble only, like in March)
- Masks in workplaces and possibly some outdoor settings like Supermarket queues, but no mention of blanket outdoor wearing (yet)
- Their primary focus at the moment though is to try and better enforce current rules, especially around workplaces and supermarkets potentially being rather lax about them.

This is from the original March / April Lockdown UK wide regulations:

The Health Protection (Coronavirus, Restrictions) (England) Regulations 2020

These Regulations require the closure of businesses selling food or drink for consumption on the premises, and businesses listed in Part 2 of Schedule 2, to protect against the risks to public health arising from coronavirus, except for limited permitted uses. Restrictions are imposed on...

www.legislation.gov.uk

Restrictions on gatherings
7. During the emergency period, no person may participate in a gathering in a public place of more than two people except—

(a)where all the persons in the gathering are members of the same household,

(b)where the gathering is essential for work purposes,

(c)to attend a funeral,

(d)where reasonably necessary—

(i)to facilitate a house move,

(ii)to provide care or assistance to a vulnerable person, including relevant personal care within the meaning of paragraph 7(3B) of Schedule 4 to the Safeguarding of Vulnerable Groups Act 2006,

(iii)to provide emergency assistance, or

(iv)to participate in legal proceedings or fulfil a legal obligation.

So even the original lockdown permitted gatherings of two people for exercise or for other permitted reasons such as essential shopping from different households. However at the time this fact was not advertised. I guess it is another example of the advice being stricter than the law.

 

[kristiang85]

The thing is, if two of you are exercising together how can it be proven that you are not in the same household or support bubble? That's just unpoliceable so pointless.

Any kind of mask wearing outdoors is a token gesture that doesn't have any effect, and will just annoy people more and make them less compliant with more useful measures.

They don't need to do anything more, as it will just either have no benefit or negative effects elsewhere - it's crazy.

 

[DB]

The thing is, if two of you are exercising together how can it be proven that you are not in the same household or support bubble? That's just unpoliceable so pointless.

It is also in theory sentencing people who live alone and don't have a "support bubble" to solitary confinement for the "crime" of simply existing.

 

[Yew]

will just annoy people more and make them less compliant with more useful measures.

It honestly feels like some people don't understand this idea, ineffective measures reduce goodwill and hence compliance with effective ones. Especially if it feels like the Govt is making them up on the spot.

 

[Mag_seven]

The thing is, if two of you are exercising together how can it be proven that you are not in the same household or support bubble? That's just unpoliceable so pointless.

It might be unpoliceable but that didn't stop Derbyshire Police

 

[DB]

It might be unpoliceable but that didn't stop Derbyshire Police

The general pubic reception to that story is pretty clearly on the side of the women - it would appear that even many fervent Locktivists think it was a step too far.

 

[Yew]

It might be unpoliceable but that didn't stop Derbyshire Police

Rumour is that they're trying to come to arrangement with Dickens's estate to police the Spirit of Christmas Past.

 

[kristiang85]

It is also in theory sentencing people who live alone and don't have a "support bubble" to solitary confinement for the "crime" of simply existing.

Quite. And depression, which will inevitably be the result, weakens the immune response. Which isn't what you need when there's a virus going around...

 

[Yew]

Quite. And depression, which will inevitably be the result, weakens the immune response. Which isn't what you need when there's a virus going around...

It doesn't go on the Covid numbers however..

 

[DB]

It doesn't go on the Covid numbers however..

What happens if they get sectioned as a result of self harm or suicide attempts though? Covid test on confinement to the mental hospital, and therefore a "Covid hospital admission"? I certainly wouldn't put it past them to do this.

 

[Solent&Wessex]

I note The Times has the following on it's Monday front page...

Ministers had agreed earlier to toughen enforcement of the rules amid fears that poor compliance will mean the lockdown failing to bring infection rates under control. This will focus on retail and the exemption to the government’s “stay at home” order that allows people to exercise once a day.

So it seems they have already decided to target the exercise allowance. As a single person living alone getting out for a walk in the open countryside surrounding my house is important to me. Even better when one friend comes along as it gives the chance of a bit of company. But as I am surrounded by moors I can often walk for hours without seeing another person if I choose the right routes.

The paper goes on to suggest that Supermarkets could be legally obliged to enforce mask wearing and social distancing, so expect to see queues outside round supermarkets in the rain and ice for hours on end again and armies of over zealous staff recruited to police social distancing etc.

 

[kristiang85]

I've reached that sad point where I look forward to my trip to the supermarket, as its something to do and is a decent walk (the one I go to anyway). It's about the only variation I get in my week now beyond my usual exercise walks.

If I have to queue again like last summer, but this time in the cold and rain, and am barked at by overzealous staff and herded by black and yellow tape, then even that becomes an activity to dread.

 

[Bikeman78]

I note The Times has the following on it's Monday front page...


So it seems they have already decided to target the exercise allowance. As a single person living alone getting out for a walk in the open countryside surrounding my house is important to me. Even better when one friend comes along as it gives the chance of a bit of company. But as I am surrounded by moors I can often walk for hours without seeing another person if I choose the right routes.

The paper goes on to suggest that Supermarkets could be legally obliged to enforce mask wearing and social distancing, so expect to see queues outside round supermarkets in the rain and ice for hours on end again and armies of over zealous staff recruited to police social distancing etc.

I wouldn't worry about it. I could cycle around all day without seeing a Police officer, even though my journey to work goes past a Police station. This will be impossible to enforce. The chances of being stopped twice in one day is basically zero.

Regarding supermarkets, keeping apart is very difficult. The aisles are barely two metres wide. My supermarket does not have a one way system, but even if it did, people don't all shop at the same speed so they overtake each other.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 11 Jan 2021 ==

I've reached that sad point where I look forward to my trip to the supermarket, as its something to do and is a decent walk (the one I go to anyway). It's about the only variation I get in my week now beyond my usual exercise walks.

If I have to queue again like last summer, but this time in the cold and rain, and am barked at by overzealous staff and herded by black and yellow tape, then even that becomes an activity to dread.

For the record, queuing for supermarkets has never stopped in Cardiff, and presumably that applies elsewhere in Wales too.

 

[_toommm_]

So what is the actual law with regards to exercise? I could happily walk 20 miles in a day, but would the police really take umbrage if they caught me 10 miles away from home on a round trip?