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

[island]

if their airline has broken the law by letting them board.

There is no law currently requiring airlines to refuse boarding to people travelling to the UK without a clear COVID19 test.

One has been published but it doesn’t take effect until 01•FBY•21.

 

[Carlisle]

I agree BJ is fixated on lockdowns - I think his sole motivation now is to salvage some element of reputation, so that he doesn’t go down in history as the PM who messed up Covid. .

Yes, as far as Covid policy is concerned he now just seems to be following the focus groups or whatever mechanisms government employ to gauge popular opinion.

 

[Yew]

Yes, as far as Covid policy is concerned he now just seems to be following the focus groups or whatever mechanisms government employ to gauge popular opinion.

Unfortunately, people like YouGov use leading questions to get the answers they want, today they asked me "do you think Boris was too late introducing travel restrictions", which presupposes that they are necessary , effective and proportionate.

 

[brad465]

More news against handling of this pandemic, a notable increase in people having to borrow money to cope:

Covid: Nine million people forced to borrow more to cope

There is a "widening financial gap" between households because of the pandemic, says the ONS.

www.bbc.co.uk

Nearly nine million people had to borrow more money last year because of the impact of coronavirus, government figures show.

Since June last year, the proportion of workers borrowing £1,000 or more had increased from 35% to 45%, said the Office for National Statistics.

Self-employed people were more likely than employees to borrow money.

There was also a large increase in the proportion of disabled people borrowing similar sums, the ONS added.

This was adding to a "widening financial gap" between households.

Overall, young people and low earners have been worst hit by the pandemic, according to the ONS survey.

Those aged under 30 and those with household incomes of less than £10,000 were about 35% and 60% respectively more likely to be furloughed than the population as a whole.

Meanwhile, higher-paid workers were more likely to be on full pay if they were unable to work.

'Widening gap'​

Gueorguie Vassilev from the ONS said: "Many people took a financial hit in the first months of the pandemic, either being furloughed or working fewer hours.

"What we are seeing now, though, is a widening financial gap between households, where some people are relying on savings or borrowing to make ends meet. Those hardest hit are people on low pay, young people and parents of dependent children."

Parents living with children were almost twice as likely to report a reduction in income as the rest of the population, the ONS added.

This gap gradually narrowed throughout the year as schools reopened. Parents were less likely to have a reduced income during the November lockdown than in the first lockdown, as schools stayed open.

45% of the workforce having to borrow strikes me as a sizeable proportion who can be or already have been convinced about how unsustainable everything we're doing actually is, and maybe also questions how effective furlough is in helping workers get by.

 

[jtuk]

What's interesting about the first dose thing is that AstraZeneca's guidance seems to suggest a 12-week gap is perfectly fine, whereas the Pfizer guidance makes no such suggestion. In either case I suspect it will offer some level of protection, and might even stave off serious illness / death but it really doesn't sound like "protection" in itself.

By that rationale, seatbelts and airbags are useless and we should ban cars

 

[Bantamzen]

More news against handling of this pandemic, a notable increase in people having to borrow money to cope:

Covid: Nine million people forced to borrow more to cope

There is a "widening financial gap" between households because of the pandemic, says the ONS.

www.bbc.co.uk

45% of the workforce having to borrow strikes me as a sizeable proportion who can be or already have been convinced about how unsustainable everything we're doing actually is, and maybe also questions how effective furlough is in helping workers get by.

And once again it is the young & the poor that pay the biggest price for almost a year of restrictions.

 

[DorkingMain]

By that rationale, seatbelts and airbags are useless and we should ban cars

Not sure I'm following your logic here. I'm simply commenting that it would be easy to bury the damage done by increasing the gap on the Pfizer vaccine.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jan 2021 ==

That does sound very much like protection.

Illness is not necessarily a linear process, especially in older people. "He's been hospitalised for ages but has managed to not need a ventilator" is not a success.

 

[PHILIPE]

There were people in North Wales being criticised for driving to look at the floods in contravention of COVID Rules but Boris has travelled from London to Manchester to see the floods. What is the difference ? The "Scarecrow" was out and about yesterday also as though he has itchy feet and is unable to abide by his own Rules

 

[DorkingMain]

There were people in North Wales being criticised for driving to look at the floods in contravention of COVID Rules but Boris has travelled from London to Manchester to see the floods. What is the difference ? The "Scarecrow" was out and about yesterday also as though he has itchy feet and is unable to abide by his own Rules

Have to keep up the old British political tradition of standing around at the scene of a disaster in a hard hat and hi-vis looking concerned

 

[takno]

Not sure I'm following your logic here. I'm simply commenting that it would be easy to bury the damage done by increasing the gap on the Pfizer vaccine.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jan 2021 ==


Illness is not necessarily a linear process, especially in older people. "He's been hospitalised for ages but has managed to not need a ventilator" is not a success.

I think the level we're talking about is more "He's been at home in bed for a couple of weeks but hasn't needed to go to hospital, and certainly hasn't died". It's important to bear in mind that even for the very elderly, most people aren't ending up in hospital or needing heavy medical interventions at all,. If a vaccine doesn't stop a single over-80 from getting or spreading the disease at all, and "all" it does is reduces the chances of them needing hospital/dying from 20% to 5%, that's still "protection", and it's still absolutely huge in terms of the benefit to the health service.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Whatever Pfizer actually think about the delay, they will never tell us, because they will be instructed by their lawyers not to make any recommendations outside the specific case tested by the trials.

From first principles we would not expect the 12 week delay to reduce the effectiveness of the vaccine.

I'm afraid the only way we are going to get any study on single dose effectiveness that is worth a damn is by seeing what happens over the next few weeks.
Making the simplifying assumption that the people who got second doses so far are almost all people who got the vaccine very early, the earliest single dose people left got their vaccine some time before the 20th of December.

In about six weeks the second doses will take off in earnest.

Whats also missing from the narrative is what the expectation is from the level of vaccinations being achieved. No SAGE papers released on the topic and BoJo and Hancock have stopped quoting any data. Remember it was going to deal with 88% of our deaths by the time first dose administered to cohorts 1-4 now there is no benefit until all the over 50's are done and next it will be until this group have had second dose. Furthermore the deliberate lack of transparency on vaccine supplies and whose had which one tells me there plan has been derailed but they need joe public to keep believing otherwise all is lost.

You won't see any pushback from CRG or the likes of Tim Martin / Luke Johnson and others until we are at peak hospital admission which is unlikely before February on current trends.

 

[HSTEd]

W. Furthermore the deliberate lack of transparency on vaccine supplies and whose had which one tells me there plan has been derailed but they need joe public to keep believing otherwise all is lost.

Well there are legitimate concerns given we appear to have obtained far more vaccine per capita than almost any other major economy.
It could cause problems given that many of the vaccine production facilities are not on ground we control.

You won't see any pushback from CRG or the likes of Tim Martin / Luke Johnson and others until we are at peak hospital admission which is unlikely before February on current trends.

I think peak admissions have already happened.
Peak hospital numbers will take a while longer to ber eached though.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

I think peak admissions have already happened.
Peak hospital numbers will take a while longer to ber eached though.

Agreed the daily admission levels are down 5-10% from peak in first week of January which is a positive but length of stays are much increased now with the better treatments available so this will delay the peak for sometime yet and this is main measure govt is concerned with. A high degree of treatment is being able to access oxygen supplies and I wonder to what extent by now they could have enabled the Nightingales to have provided this level of treatment to keep the hospitals available for more severe cases and general treatments.

 

[HSTEd]

Agreed the daily admission levels are down 5-10% from peak in first week of January which is a positive but length of stays are much increased now with the better treatments available so this will delay the peak for sometime yet and this is main measure govt is concerned with. A high degree of treatment is being able to access oxygen supplies and I wonder to what extent by now they could have enabled the Nightingales to have provided this level of treatment to keep the hospitals available for more severe cases and general treatments.

Hospital numbers are still rising, but only by about 30 per day.
Given something like 4000 admissions are occuring each day, I think the peak will be reached soon.

 

[yorksrob]

The current BBC website headline is saying "Too early to tell if lockdown will end in spring"

I'm pretty sure that spring lasts from March until June. I can asure Johnson that my lockdown will be enfing either in or before spring.

 

[chris11256]

The current BBC website headline is saying "Too early to tell if lockdown will end in spring"

I'm pretty sure that spring lasts from March until June. I can asure Johnson that my lockdown will be enfing either in or before spring.

I'm not reading too much into this, Boris has been badly burnt in the past by over promising(beating the virus in 12 weeks, normality by November, Christmas, Easter). So I think he's been muzzled into doing the exact opposite and being pessimistic and worst case with everything.

 

[joncombe]

SAGE now agitating that bars & restaurants (not sure about hotels) should not be allowed to open in May. It is clear to me the only way we are ever going to get back to normal is if the public and business owners simply ignore the restrictions en-masse. The Government is never going to do it. It is always somewhere between 3 and 6 months we are promised "back to normal", but it never seems to get any nearer.

 

[yorksrob]

SAGE now agitating that bars & restaurants (not sure about hotels) should not be allowed to open in May. It is clear to me the only way we are ever going to get back to normal is if the public and business owners simply ignore the restrictions en-masse. The Government is never going to do it. It is always somewhere between 3 and 6 months we are promised "back to normal", but it never seems to get any nearer.

Reading the BBC blurb, it seems that our friends at Imperial College are pushing this as well.

 

[Mintona]

Would be amazed at this point if a pub or restaurant opens this year. I did think that restrictions would completely end in April 2022, now I think it’s more likely lockdown will end then and restrictions in April 2023.

 

[6862]

Would be amazed at this point if a pub or restaurant opens this year. I did think that restrictions would completely end in April 2022, now I think it’s more likely lockdown will end then and restrictions in April 2023.

I hope you're wrong but fear you are right.

 

[Bantamzen]

Would be amazed at this point if a pub or restaurant opens this year. I did think that restrictions would completely end in April 2022, now I think it’s more likely lockdown will end then and restrictions in April 2023.

If that were the case you could kiss goodbye to them all, and all the jobs in them & their supply chains. However we have a solution, its called vaccines.

 

[Bertie the bus]

SAGE now agitating that bars & restaurants (not sure about hotels) should not be allowed to open in May. It is clear to me the only way we are ever going to get back to normal is if the public and business owners simply ignore the restrictions en-masse. The Government is never going to do it. It is always somewhere between 3 and 6 months we are promised "back to normal", but it never seems to get any nearer.

Using the number of people in hospital in January as a reason for restrictions remaining until May is yet more proof that we should hold some of these people in utter contempt. Unfortunately as Dr Baguelin is a scientist many will think we should just do as they say.

 

[Mintona]

If that were the case you could kiss goodbye to them all, and all the jobs in them & their supply chains. However we have a solution, its called vaccines.

Study just come out that the effect of the vaccine is vastly reduced against the South African variant. Perfect reason to keep everything closed.

 

[takno]

Would be amazed at this point if a pub or restaurant opens this year. I did think that restrictions would completely end in April 2022, now I think it’s more likely lockdown will end then and restrictions in April 2023.

What would be your thinking on the justification for that? If everybody's vaccinated by September, deaths are floating around zero, and the world's more coherent governments have all reopened for business, how do you believe the UK would successfully sell such a radical plan as keeping these things closed?

Why would they even want to? By September the government will have successfully destroyed all the sectors it doesn't want to bring back, with larger Conservative-supporting corporations having had ample opportunity to pick over the carcasses, and the surviving businesses will all be in permanent hock to vulture capitalists. The good people who now own the country will want to start squeezing some profit out of the place sooner or later. Anyway, Boris is bound to be back on the dating scene sooner or later, and he'll need restaurants for that.

 

[roversfan2001]

Would be amazed at this point if a pub or restaurant opens this year. I did think that restrictions would completely end in April 2022, now I think it’s more likely lockdown will end then and restrictions in April 2023.

Lockdown until April 2022?! I assume that's a typo as even April 2021 would be excessive.

 

[yorksrob]

Study just come out that the effect of the vaccine is vastly reduced against the South African variant. Perfect reason to keep everything closed.

That'll be the next thing.

You can guarantee it will be found to be endemic here within the next two weeks.

 

[6862]

Lockdown until April 2022?! I assume that's a typo as even April 2021 would be excessive.

Just because something is excessive it doesn't mean they won't do it to us.

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 21 Jan 2021 ==

That'll be the next thing.

You can guarantee it will be found to be endemic here within the next two weeks.

I think the original poster is referring to a recent report that the vaccine is likely to be less effective against the new variant - not a prediction but 'news'.

 

[Bantamzen]

Study just come out that the effect of the vaccine is vastly reduced against the South African variant. Perfect reason to keep everything closed.

Let me put this bluntly, we cannot afford to keep everything shut. We are already over half a trillion further into public spending deficit, over 800,000 jobs have been sunk and millions more are on a knife edge. And those lost jobs and furloughed staff mean lost tax revenue, money that is needed to plug the massive deficit which is now the same or even more than GDP (which will likely sink). And that money is also needed to fund public services, including the NHS. Put simply the longer the lockdown, the more at risk the NHS is, which could see future cutbacks or worse the loss of a free at the point of service system. When the cure becomes worse than the illness, you stop the cure.

 

[roversfan2001]

Just because something is excessive it doesn't mean they won't do it to us.

That has become clear over the past 10 months. But there's a limit as to what the public will take and when hospital admissions and deaths plummet in the spring there will be absolutely no justification for any more draconian restrictions. Doom mongers can continue to predict that we'll be in lockdown for upwards of a year, it doesn't mean it will happen.

 

[6862]

Let me put this bluntly, we cannot afford to keep everything shut. We are already over half a trillion further into public spending deficit, over 800,000 jobs have been sunk and millions more are on a knife edge. And those lost jobs and furloughed staff mean lost tax revenue, money that is needed to plug the massive deficit which is now the same or even more than GDP (which will likely sink). And that money is also needed to fund public services, including the NHS. Put simply the longer the lockdown, the more at risk the NHS is, which could see future cutbacks or worse the loss of a free at the point of service system. When the cure becomes worse than the illness, you stop the cure.

If our leaders were rational thinkers or remotely sane they would take this approach. But we are ruled by dictatorial maniacs, and they won't avoid a chance to keep us locked away for as long as possible. They don't care about the economic or mental effects of their measures. So even though the cure is definitely worse than the illness, they will continue it. I too suspect that we will not leave lockdown until May at the earliest and I suspect the tier restrictions are here to stay for another year at least. Yes there will be nothing left, but remember that nothing matters except Covid.