New 4-tier system for England

[island]

I think the final “and” in post 1619 wanted to be an “at”.

 

[6862]

Government do not want restrictions to continue for a minute longer than they are required - The thought they are enjoying this is ludicrous.

I don't think they're enjoying it, but I do think that they want these restrictions to last for as long as possible. After all, if we have any shred of democracy left after all this, Boris and co. will be absolutely finished as politicians. The longer they can keep us all oppressed, the longer they can keep their jobs!

 

[hwl]

One would have to what the Germans considered to be "shielding". Is it the same as that practiced here in which vulnerable residents had things delivered to them ? Without study of the specific actions taken in this country, I don't think we can take the conclusions of the German study at face value.

Please can you repeat the last sentence - I don't see what you're saying.

SAGE / DoH / PHE reviewed the German work and agreed with the conclusions and applicability to the UK.

The US have got lots of doses out to vaccination centres (12+M as of yesterday). The vaccination centres have only got 2.5M into peoples arms against at a target of 20M by the end of the month. The vaccinations may take longer than expected given ramp up times and logistics of getting enough arms lined up to get the jab.

I think the final “and” in post 1619 wanted to be an “at”.

Indeed - edited

 

[DustyBin]

We should not be trying to put timelines on things - We don't have the ability to "control" nature or know how circumstances might change "x" number of weeks / months down the line (heck one of my big criticisms of Governments have been making promises they were always going to break and not managing expectations correctly)

All we can do it make the best decisions at any point in time based on the current situation - Right now that would seem to suggest that there is hope on the horizon but we may need to accept a bit of pain to get there. If we get a few weeks down the line and people who had the vaccine are still getting ill or it mutates again and "escapes" the vaccine then we will need to reassess but we can only play the ball we are currently being bowled.

The economic situation is clearly terrible and there is no easy way round that - I would argue that the economic and health impacts run hand in hand. The economy really isn't going to recover until we deal with the health emergency as you need consumer confidence.

Government do not want restrictions to continue for a minute longer than they are required - The thought they are enjoying this is ludicrous.

I think we agree in terms of not being able to control nature at least, but we do need a clear plan and timeframes. If something really terrible happens, for example the emergence of a new highly virulent strain then fair enough, but we must surely now be in a position where we have a plan B that will allow the majority of people to return to some kind of normality and the economy to reopen fully (or near to). My problem is that the ‘bit of pain’ you talk about isn’t a bit of pain for many at all, it’s utterly devastating and it’s affecting more people by the day.

 

[Darandio]

Right now that would seem to suggest that there is hope on the horizon but we may need to accept a bit of pain to get there.

Define pain. In fact don't bother, i'm sick of hearing the same rubbish about people making sacrifices for the 'greater good'.

Social media is full of it again this morning, people demanding 4-6-8 week lockdowns because of the 'great' news this morning about the Oxford vaccine and completely ignoring the damage being caused. One line I keep seeing getting trotted out is 'Everyone knows someone who has been deeply affected by Covid', too right we do but in my case i'm yet to know anyone personally who has either had it, let alone died from it. But I do know someone who took their own life yesterday because they couldn't face what will inevitably be announced today or in the near future. The majority of people who know someone that has been deeply affected has nothing to do with the virus directly, but the damage associated with decisions made around it.

The real 'pain' that people are being asked to accept here is what is happening to the economy and the ticking timebomb with mental health and cancellation of routine treatments that will end up killing far more than this virus ever will.

 

[VauxhallandI]

Define pain. In fact don't bother, i'm sick of hearing the same rubbish about people making sacrifices for the 'greater good'.

Social media is full of it again this morning, people demanding 4-6-8 week lockdowns because of the 'great' news this morning about the Oxford vaccine and completely ignoring the damage being caused. One line I keep seeing getting trotted out is 'Everyone knows someone who has been deeply affected by Covid', too right we do but in my case i'm yet to know anyone personally who has either had it, let alone died from it. But I do know someone who took their own life yesterday because they couldn't face what will inevitably be announced today or in the near future. The majority of people who know someone that has been deeply affected has nothing to do with the virus directly, but the damage associated with decisions made around it.

The real 'pain' that people are being asked to accept here is what is happening to the economy and the ticking timebomb with mental health and cancellation of routine treatments that will end up killing far more than this virus ever will.

Sorry to hear that news, truly criminal.

 

[Class 33]

Hancock confirming this morning that there will be no Tier 5 or full national lockdown announced today. Good, because we really do not need either of those options. The likes of SAGE and "government scientists" and whoever won't like this, but that's too bad, we can't keep having full national lockdowns, we have to start moving on from all this.

Probably about a dozen or so areas moved up to Tier 4 today though, and no areas moving down a Tier.

 

[Yew]

With the more transmissible new variant, winter being better for transmission it may be even less effective.

Recent studies have cast significant doubt onto this new 'more transmissible' variant, to the point where I don't think we can take that assertion at face value.

 

[DustyBin]

Define pain. In fact don't bother, i'm sick of hearing the same rubbish about people making sacrifices for the 'greater good'.

Social media is full of it again this morning, people demanding 4-6-8 week lockdowns because of the 'great' news this morning about the Oxford vaccine and completely ignoring the damage being caused. One line I keep seeing getting trotted out is 'Everyone knows someone who has been deeply affected by Covid', too right we do but in my case i'm yet to know anyone personally who has either had it, let alone died from it. But I do know someone who took their own life yesterday because they couldn't face what will inevitably be announced today or in the near future. The majority of people who know someone that has been deeply affected has nothing to do with the virus directly, but the damage associated with decisions made around it.

The real 'pain' that people are being asked to accept here is what is happening to the economy and the ticking timebomb with mental health and cancellation of routine treatments that will end up killing far more than this virus ever will.

I totally agree (see my post above yours).

Sorry to hear of your bad news incidentally.

 

[hwl]

Recent studies have cast significant doubt onto this new 'more transmissible' variant, to the point where I don't think we can take that assertion at face value.

One study has but the data isn't all that recent (indeed even that was refresh of some work they published in June with new data) and the lead author of that study last night retweeted new data from other researchers that disagreed with his previous work (which just looked at changes in transmission due to individual mutations not combinations of mutations we have seen in practice which is what the latest other work has looked at).

The majority of new work suggests the new variants are more transmissible.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

Yep, hospitalisations down 20% & deaths down 35% in the last week in Bradford.

I have sympathy for your areas as you have been under the restrictions for sometime but unless you can seal yourself off from the marauding southern made variant you will soon be in the same situation as us and perhaps going for tier 4 now may give you a better chance to have some spare capacity to cope. London should have been in tier 3 at start of December but govt as usual doesn't follow advice than has to double down when it finally realises it should have done but the damage is done with hospitals now filling up. Thing this time round is they can treat people better but it needs 10-14 days on average and with the daily rate of admissions increasing simple maths tells you they will run out of beds let alone staff and even oxygen which has to specially processed for medical use.
So call on your local leaders to erect road blocks and post sentries and you may have a chance but you also have to accept to being in a controlled environment akin to a lockdown in all but name.

Define pain. In fact don't bother, i'm sick of hearing the same rubbish about people making sacrifices for the 'greater good'.

The real 'pain' that people are being asked to accept here is what is happening to the economy and the ticking timebomb with mental health and cancellation of routine treatments that will end up killing far more than this virus ever will.

This is highly relevant but to deal with it means a change of strategy whereby there is a societal acceptance that not everybody can be saved and actually we are going to use the Nightingales as hospices - going to be difficult one to sell especially with the vaccine on horizon I would suggest as this lot thrive on being too optimistic and with the Oxford vaccine being home grown as well they will use as an excuse to ratchet up further now i suspect. Anyhow I am at least seeing a lot more MPs raising mental health now when they get opportunity in Commons.

 

[duncanp]

Hancock confirming this morning that there will be no Tier 5 or full national lockdown announced today. Good, because we really do not need either of those options. The likes of SAGE and "government scientists" and whoever won't like this, but that's too bad, we can't keep having full national lockdowns, we have to start moving on from all this.

Probably about a dozen or so areas moved up to Tier 4 today though, and no areas moving down a Tier.

Anything that annoys SAGE or government scientists has got to be a good thing.

To use a Brexit analogy, it's about time the government "took back control" of the management of the COVID-19 pandemic, and reminded these self important know alls that their role is to advise the government, not decide policy.

No doubt Professor Pantsdown will be all over social media tonight and the broadcast media tomorrow complaining that the government decision is wrong, and that we need Tier 99 immediately to "save lives", "protect my reputation the NHS" and "keep people safe".

Excuse me while I go and throw up now, as the very mention of those three phrases makes my stomach turn.

 

[Darandio]

Hancock confirming this morning that there will be no Tier 5 or full national lockdown announced today. Good, because we really do not need either of those options. The likes of SAGE and "government scientists" and whoever won't like this, but that's too bad, we can't keep having full national lockdowns, we have to start moving on from all this.

Probably about a dozen or so areas moved up to Tier 4 today though, and no areas moving down a Tier.

So going off other announcements that things won't be announced, expect this to be reversed within 5 days.

 

[Nicholas Lewis]

One study has but the data isn't all that recent (indeed even that was refresh of some work they published in June with new data) and the lead author of that study last night retweeted new data from other researchers that disagreed with his previous work (which just looked at changes in transmission due to individual mutations not combinations of mutations we have seen in practice which is what the latest other work has looked at).

The majority of new work suggests the new variants are more transmissible.

See this piece of work here which used data upto 18/12 and it postulates it at 56% more transmissible. Im no medic at all but I know that respiratory virus are more transmissible across Dec/Jan in the Northern Hemisphere and im not seeing how they've factored that in. Trouble is you can't get away with the rise in admissions which is the real crunch point now.

 

[DustyBin]

See this piece of work here which used data upto 18/12 and it postulates it at 56% more transmissible. Im no medic at all but I know that respiratory virus are more transmissible across Dec/Jan in the Northern Hemisphere and im not seeing how they've factored that in. Trouble is you can't get away with the rise in admissions which is the real crunch point now.

Do we know how many admissions are as a result of covid and how many just happen to test positive on arrival (or soon afterwards)? I don’t recall seeing any stats for this.

 

[hwl]

See this piece of work here which used data upto 18/12 and it postulates it at 56% more transmissible. Im no medic at all but I know that respiratory virus are more transmissible across Dec/Jan in the Northern Hemisphere and im not seeing how they've factored that in. Trouble is you can't get away with the rise in admissions which is the real crunch point now.

That ones one of the multiple new pieces of work I was alluding too in the second line of my comment, several studies coming in the range 50% - 70% more infectious.

The latest estimates suggest the older variants will effectively be extinct by the end of Jan.

 

[MikeWM]

Do we know how many admissions are as a result of covid and how many just happen to test positive on arrival (or soon afterwards)? I don’t recall seeing any stats for this.

I don't think that is ever mentioned, but it is certainly a key question. Given the PCR test is currently - to be polite - rather over-sensitive, it does seem a key question how many people 'in hospital with Covid' are actually in hospital *due* to Covid, and how many are in for some other reason entirely and don't need any treatment for Covid whatever, even if they've had a positive test. (Obviously there will also be a third category where the two things overlap).

 

[Yew]

See this piece of work here which used data upto 18/12 and it postulates it at 56% more transmissible. Im no medic at all but I know that respiratory virus are more transmissible across Dec/Jan in the Northern Hemisphere and im not seeing how they've factored that in. Trouble is you can't get away with the rise in admissions which is the real crunch point now.

That paper seems less interested in determining whether the variant is more transmissible, and more interested in applying speculative modelling for the situation where it is.

They seem to infer the increase in infectivity from the numbers being higher than their model would predict; Occams razor suggests that the simplest solution is that their model is wrong.

I don't think that is ever mentioned, but it is certainly a key question. Given the PCR test is currently - to be polite - rather over-sensitive, it does seem a key question how many people 'in hospital with Covid' are actually in hospital *due* to Covid, and how many are in for some other reason entirely and don't need any treatment for Covid whatever, even if they've had a positive test. (Obviously there will also be a third category where the two things overlap).

Indeed, with Covid is important for the clean/dirty hospital principle, however, it's not as useful in all circumstances.

 

[Bantamzen]

I have sympathy for your areas as you have been under the restrictions for sometime but unless you can seal yourself off from the marauding southern made variant you will soon be in the same situation as us and perhaps going for tier 4 now may give you a better chance to have some spare capacity to cope. London should have been in tier 3 at start of December but govt as usual doesn't follow advice than has to double down when it finally realises it should have done but the damage is done with hospitals now filling up. Thing this time round is they can treat people better but it needs 10-14 days on average and with the daily rate of admissions increasing simple maths tells you they will run out of beds let alone staff and even oxygen which has to specially processed for medical use.
So call on your local leaders to erect road blocks and post sentries and you may have a chance but you also have to accept to being in a controlled environment akin to a lockdown in all but name.

Some of these areas have been in some form of higher restriction for pretty much the entire time. So if we were to be moved into T4 that will just confirm that even with lower rates, we must still be penalised because of somewhere else. With the exception of Liverpool, the government have made no attempt to ease things in the North of England even though many areas have seen significant drops. Put simply if this happens, forget compliance if we just chucked into higher tiers regardless.

 

[brick60000]

I’m interested to see when whatever is announced today takes effect from...hoping that it isn’t from tonight, as I can very much see my local area being plummeted into tier 4....

 

[MikeWM]

The only announcement we should be hearing is 'we tried something totally unprecedented to try to save lives, unfortunately we can all see that it is failing, so we're going back to the traditional approach to pandemics [ie. something rather like Great Barrington].'

Of course what we will hear is 'we tried something totally unprecedented to try to save lives, unfortunately we can all see that is is failing, so clearly the solution is to do the same thing some more'.

 

[Crossover]

I'll tell you what if West Yorkshire goes to tier 4 there will be a lot of anger. Rates are way below the national average having been amongst the highest in the country a couple of months ago. So moving from T3 to T4 would be literally a kick in the nevers.

If there is any upshot, I was listening to the news on the radio whilst driving mid-morning and they reeled off a list of potential Tier 4 areas, and Yorkshire wasn't mentioned. Not getting my hopes up, but maybe we will escape it for now

 

[NorthOxonian]

If there is any upshot, I was listening to the news on the radio whilst driving mid-morning and they reeled off a list of potential Tier 4 areas, and Yorkshire wasn't mentioned. Not getting my hopes up, but maybe we will escape it for now

Can you remember if they mentioned anywhere in the North East? Last time I checked Hartlepool was an issue but most of the region seemed relatively okay.

 

[Kite159]

So going off other announcements that things won't be announced, expect this to be reversed within 5 days.

Won't be announced today....
... instead it will get announced tomorrow or on Saturday

 

[Bantamzen]

If there is any upshot, I was listening to the news on the radio whilst driving mid-morning and they reeled off a list of potential Tier 4 areas, and Yorkshire wasn't mentioned. Not getting my hopes up, but maybe we will escape it for now

Can you remember if they mentioned anywhere in the North East? Last time I checked Hartlepool was an issue but most of the region seemed relatively okay.

Fingers crossed that most of the North is left alone, although the BBC seem to think parts of the North West will be getting sent to T4.


Edit: There will be another episode of "Yes Prime Minister BoJo"* at 5pm today. No word yet on who will be flanking him, but I'm sure we can all make educated guesses.

(*AKA a Prime Minister press conference)

 

[dgl]

My prediction is that the New Forest and Isle of Wight will be moved up to tier 4, while Dorset, BCP, Wiltshire and BANES are moved to tier 3. I know Dorset doesn’t have particularly high case rates but it would be absurd having a ceremonial county with a large urban area in tier 2 while a neighbouring national park is put into tier 4, even when Wiltshire is the only tier 2 county to border a tier 4 area at the time of writing. Also, where is the justification for leaving BANES in tier 2 when the rest of Somerset gets put into tier 3?

Further north, I reckon that North Yorkshire and Cumbria will move up to tier 3 while some local authorities around Manchester and Leeds are put into tier 4.b

It could be come very interesting in some places where borders between counties are within towns, Dorset has at least two of them, in Shaftesbury and Yeovil, Yeovil being particularly interesting as there is an out of town shopping place, Babylon Hill, in the small section that is Dorset. I wonder if in the event Somerset goes in to tier 4 and Dorset stays in a lower tier would said shops still be allowed to open?

 

[island]

It could be come very interesting in some places where borders between counties are within towns, Dorset has at least two of them, in Shaftesbury and Yeovil, Yeovil being particularly interesting as there is an out of town shopping place, Babylon Hill, in the small section that is Dorset. I wonder if in the event Somerset goes in to tier 4 and Dorset stays in a lower tier would said shops still be allowed to open?

Yes. The tier system is a straight local authority based system.

However, if an area goes into tier 4 its residents then become ineligible to leave home without reasonable excuse.

 

[Sprinter153]

Does anyone else feel absolutely sick to the stomach on the day these announcements take place?

The uncomfortable feeling of knowing that within hours I could be plunged back into a kind of isolated purgatory is hard to describe. The best I can do is to say it’s like being locked in a vice and worrying about unseen hands turning the screw tighter and tighter.

I should be feeling a bit more optimistic. I’m ‘extremely clinically vulnerable’ and have been told to expect a vaccine appointment in mid to late January but I am totally unconvinced that the vaccines are going to be the panacea that we’re encouraged to believe they are.

Sorry to lower the mood!

 

[Crossover]

Can you remember if they mentioned anywhere in the North East? Last time I checked Hartlepool was an issue but most of the region seemed relatively okay.

I’m afraid not. Lancashire was mentioned as well as areas further south (possibly the Birmingham area won’t escape it this time around) but I can’t recall the others.

Does anyone else feel absolutely sick to the stomach on the day these announcements take place?

It is certainly a little bit of a nervy time wondering what new restrictions will be imposed

 

[Ianno87]

Does anyone else feel absolutely sick to the stomach on the day these announcements take place?

The uncomfortable feeling of knowing that within hours I could be plunged back into a kind of isolated purgatory is hard to describe. The best I can do is to say it’s like being locked in a vice and worrying about unseen hands turning the screw tighter and tighter.

I should be feeling a bit more optimistic. I’m ‘extremely clinically vulnerable’ and have been told to expect a vaccine appointment in mid to late January but I am totally unconvinced that the vaccines are going to be the panacea that we’re encouraged to believe they are.

Sorry to lower the mood!

It's the dangling and leaking/speculation of little bits of information beforehand that does it for me...