When will restrictions finally end?

[rumoto]

Bad news for the end of restrictions: the Telegraph reports on its front page that the Government is studying to impose a national lockdown from mid January, with the return of shielding and school closures, and it may last until Easter:

https://twitter.com/hendopolis/status/1345850215409078278/photo/1

 

[bramling]

Bad news for the end of restrictions: the Telegraph reports on its front page that the Government is planning a studying to impose a national lockdown from mid January, with the return of shielding and school closures, and it may last until Easter:

Two words - civil disobedience.

 

[brad465]

Bad news for the end of restrictions: the Telegraph reports on its front page that the Government is studying to impose a national lockdown from mid January, with the return of shielding and school closures, and it may last until Easter:

And in Spring and beyond we will also be battling the suicide pandemic, then in many years afterwards it will be the poverty pandemic.

 

[Yew]

And in Spring and beyond we will also be battling the suicide pandemic, then in many years afterwards it will be the poverty pandemic.

But those are in the future, Boris doesn't have to deal with the decades of consequences this all will have, and the proportion he does have, he can say was necessary and popular. The present societal conditions do not seek the good of all, they seek the politically expedient.

 

[bramling]

But those are in the future, Boris doesn't have to deal with the decades of consequences this all will have, and the proportion he does have, he can say was necessary and popular. The present societal conditions do not seek the good of all, they seek the politically expedient.

This is so true, unfortunately. Boris’s sole priority is now to close this down in the way which allows him to walk away with the least possible reputational damage.

Incidentally Peter Hitchens is on tonight’s Sky press preview at 2230. That could be interesting viewing, especially as the presenters on there tend to be quite pro-lockdown.

 

[DB]

Two words - civil disobedience.

What's probably of more concern to the government is the passive non-compliance: people just ignoring the rules and so far as possible carrying on as close to normal as they can.

And that is really inevitable - there are only so many time the on-off-on-off cycle with lockdowns and restrictions can work: compliance decreases each time, and it must eventually reach the point where the credibility of the government (so far as it had any!) is undermined by a sizeable part of the population simply ignoring them.

 

[johntea]

Is anyone really surprised at this point? Boris basically announced it by stealth on Marr this morning!

 

[brad465]

But those are in the future, Boris doesn't have to deal with the decades of consequences this all will have, and the proportion he does have, he can say was necessary and popular. The present societal conditions do not seek the good of all, they seek the politically expedient.

This is so true, unfortunately. Boris’s sole priority is now to close this down in the way which allows him to walk away with the least possible reputational damage.

Incidentally Peter Hitchens is on tonight’s Sky press preview at 2230. That could be interesting viewing, especially as the presenters on there tend to be quite pro-lockdown.

That might be the case for Johnson, but a large part of his party can't say the same for themselves, and they will eventually act further. In the event of a lockdown till Easter happening, getting it through Parliament won't be an issue, but should the lockdown play out with mass non-compliance, further business failure announcements, etc., a revolt is a matter of when not if. Then of course there's the local elections...

 

[Kite159]

Assuming the local elections don't get pushed back (again).

 

[Class 33]

Bad news for the end of restrictions: the Telegraph reports on its front page that the Government is studying to impose a national lockdown from mid January, with the return of shielding and school closures, and it may last until Easter:

Just how can we possibly have lockdown lasting until Easter? With the effect of all these vaccinations kicking in soon, by February the stats should really be coming down, and by March they should be really really low(with exception to possibly cases). There really will be absolutely no justification atall for any lockdowns whatsoever! If the lockdown/s are still going by then, then a hell of a lot of people(including many MP's) really ought to be kicking up a fuss about this and demanding an end to this.

And if lockdown/s do continue(which I really don't think it will) into the early summer, then I'm pretty sure there will be civil unrest up and down the country. Many people just won't stand for all this nonsense dragging on for well over a year!

 

[initiation]

Many people just won't stand for all this nonsense dragging on for well over a year!

At the start of this I would have said the same. We also had "Restrictions can't last beyond October because furlough ends then" and "Once a schools are back that is a return to normality". However here we are with potentially more restrictions about to be employed.

People have rolled over and meekly accepted authoritarian rule over their lives.

 

[brad465]

Assuming the local elections don't get pushed back (again).

I can see the Government shooting themselves in the foot with that, especially in London: while Khan is expected to get re-elected, the Tory candidate Shaun Bailey maybe forced to break ranks from his own party as they'd deny him and his supporters (who'd be equally furious) the chance to get rid of Khan. The same could be said in all council elections, especially as more councillor seats are being contested at once it can greatly swing control, which might get voters more engaged. Independents, the Brexit/Reform Party and perhaps others can really capitalise on a "democracy deniers" narrative.

 

[bramling]

What's probably of more concern to the government is the passive non-compliance: people just ignoring the rules and so far as possible carrying on as close to normal as they can.

And that is really inevitable - there are only so many time the on-off-on-off cycle with lockdowns and restrictions can work: compliance decreases each time, and it must eventually reach the point where the credibility of the government (so far as it had any!) is undermined by a sizeable part of the population simply ignoring them.

I’d say we reached that point some time ago. Did anyone ever count up how many people they were gathering with?

 

[devon_metro]

BBC news was suggesting 30 million would have been vaccinated by the start of April. If that is achieved, what are we protecting? We'd be vaccinating people in their 40s by that point.

 

[Solent&Wessex]

BBC news was suggesting 30 million would have been vaccinated by the start of April. If that is achieved, what are we protecting? We'd be vaccinating people in their 40s by that point.

I would suggest that figure is very wide of the mark if you look at how wishy washy the commitments from the Government and NHS have become about how many vaccine doses will actually be available and when.

 

[DB]

BBC news was suggesting 30 million would have been vaccinated by the start of April. If that is achieved, what are we protecting? We'd be vaccinating people in their 40s by that point.

These 'X number of people vaccineated by X date' mostly seem to be completely plucked out of the air!

What we really need is an official government target. Then halve it to take into account the first cock-up, and halve again for the second one, and that might be somewhere in the right region, assuming they only make two major cock-ups and don't go on to a third and fourth. If Johnson starts claiming that the vaccination programme is "world beating" that should be a warning that something is about to go wrong.

 

[devon_metro]

These 'X number of people vaccineated by X date' mostly seem to be completely plucked out of the air!

What we really need is an official government target. Then halve it to take into account the first cock-up, and halve again for the second one, and that might be somewhere in the right region, assuming they only make two major cock-ups and don't go on to a third and fourth. If Johnson starts claiming that the vaccination programme is "world beating" that should be a warning that something is about to go wrong.

Personally I am optimistic that they will be pressured by the back benchers to chuck the kitchen sink at vaccinations. Getting rid of some of the red tape would be a good first step. I assume it would be more cost effective than a longer lockdown and more furlough payments.

 

[Gadget88]

What I don’t understand is they are closing schools they have been shut for 2 weeks due to Xmas so how can this be blamed for the rise I mean it’s Xmas that’s why we have seen a rise?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jan 2021 ==

Usually it is the case that a surge in cases will mean a surge in hospital admissions and deaths over the proceeding few weeks. But whilst the number of cases is high at the moment, it seems the government, MP's from other parties, the media, etc don't seem to realise that that the effects of all these vaccinations will soon kick in within the next few weeks, which will mean hospital admissions and deaths will soon tumble down! Someone on here mentioned that this could start around mid January, which is only next week! The sooner this happens, and all these restrictions can start being eased, the better. It just can't some soon enough!

In a month or so time, it may be the case that we could still be having a high number of cases i.e. 55,000 or even 60,000+, but the hospital admissions, numbers in hospital, numbers on mechanical ventilator beds will be tumbling week on week. The government, other MP's, SAGE, etc, need to then stop with their fixation on the numbers of cases!

As someone else said on here, the government and other MP's have completely lost the plot on this!

Do you think once all at risk people get the vaccine will they care if healthy people catch it and spread it? Will it be seen as the flu is today?

 

[Andyh82]

Bad news for the end of restrictions: the Telegraph reports on its front page that the Government is studying to impose a national lockdown from mid January, with the return of shielding and school closures, and it may last until Easter:

It doesn’t seem to add anything new though, it’s just reporting what he said on Marr, what Starmer said, and the general way the opinion seems to be going at the moment.

Twitter has once again spent all day with trending topics in support of a lockdown. It’s worrying how many don’t know what “the economy” means though dismissing it as something that isn’t important. I think many think it means fat cat mates of Boris getting fatter, rather than a way to fund the NHS and schools.

 

[The Prisoner]

People might actually be a little more supportive if there was some proper economic assistance to help the vast swathes of businesses that are already on their knees as this "one last push" will kill off so many who have been clinging on for dear life.

Take hospitality where closed wet-led pubs got something like £1000 for missing out on Christmas trade that would have been worth many many times more, and those that were allowed to open by virtue of serving "substantial meals" were closed down with little notice and lost thousands in perishables that ended up in the bin (food and beer). These businesses were banking on Christmas to get something back for the year.

So many sectors have had almost zero assistance - events, the arts, weddings, etc. and people are burning through savings to keep going.

The packages at the start of the pandemic (grants, rates relief, bounce back loans) were actually quite decent when viewed along side furlough.

The problem is that rates are due to start again in April and there has been almost zero assistance since those first measures with the exception of furlough being extended. They need proper support and they need it now - not just a grand here or there when people are losing tens of thousands supporting the effort.

I know money doesn't grow on trees, but when you look at the billions spaffed away on cronyism the monies needed to support business is peanuts in comparison. Do it properly and there might be some support.

 

[DB]

Twitter has once again spent all day with trending topics in support of a lockdown. It’s worrying how many don’t know what “the economy” means though dismissing it as something that isn’t important. I think many think it means fat cat mates of Boris getting fatter, rather than a way to fund the NHS and schools.

Yes, the level of ignorance shown about 'the economy' really is concerning. It might come as a nasty surprise to some of these people when the furlough payments end and their employer goes bust.

 

[Gadget88]

Why are people so anti freedoms? Some people online want concerts and gatherings banned going forward? I think this is worrying as not even our own government want this to last forever.

 

[farleigh]

At the start of this I would have said the same. We also had "Restrictions can't last beyond October because furlough ends then" and "Once a schools are back that is a return to normality". However here we are with potentially more restrictions about to be employed.

People have rolled over and meekly accepted authoritarian rule over their lives.

This.

I am amazed at how the majority of people have rolled over again and again.

Take away wages and I wonder how it will proceed

 

[Cowley]

People might actually be a little more supportive if there was some proper economic assistance to help the vast swathes of businesses that are already on their knees as this "one last push" will kill off so many who have been clinging on for dear life.

Take hospitality where closed wet-led pubs got something like £1000 for missing out on Christmas trade that would have been worth many many times more, and those that were allowed to open by virtue of serving "substantial meals" were closed down with little notice and lost thousands in perishables that ended up in the bin (food and beer). These businesses were banking on Christmas to get something back for the year.

So many sectors have had almost zero assistance - events, the arts, weddings, etc. and people are burning through savings to keep going.

The packages at the start of the pandemic (grants, rates relief, bounce back loans) were actually quite decent when viewed along side furlough.

The problem is that rates are due to start again in April and there has been almost zero assistance since those first measures with the exception of furlough being extended. They need proper support and they need it now - not just a grand here or there when people are losing tens of thousands supporting the effort.

I know money doesn't grow on trees, but when you look at the billions spaffed away on cronyism the monies needed to support business is peanuts in comparison. Do it properly and there might be some support.

Well said. I feel extremely upset when I think about those that you’ve mentioned. All of this has skimmed of the creative businesses that make life interesting while the usual suspects feather their nests due to insider help and information no doubt.
God knows what we’ll be left with once restrictions are finally lifted, I have a feeling that it’ll just be the blandness to be honest.

 

[Tomp94]

Remember when we locked down in November when we were at 18-20k odd cases per day, as the NHS was about to be overwhelmed, and we needed to save a Christmas, Christmas got cancelled for millions with just days of notice bEva use of spiralling cases, and now we need to lock down again because cases are treble at the point of the last lockdown, meaning the NHS is about to be overwhelmed again.... the post doesn’t make much sense, like the lockdowns.

the society destroying measures won’t be ending any time soon

 

[samxool]

Just how can we possibly have lockdown lasting until Easter? With the effect of all these vaccinations kicking in soon, by February the stats should really be coming down, and by March they should be really really low(with exception to possibly cases). There really will be absolutely no justification atall for any lockdowns whatsoever! If the lockdown/s are still going by then, then a hell of a lot of people(including many MP's) really ought to be kicking up a fuss about this and demanding an end to this.

And if lockdown/s do continue(which I really don't think it will) into the early summer, then I'm pretty sure there will be civil unrest up and down the country. Many people just won't stand for all this nonsense dragging on for well over a year!

From multiple people I know who work in hospitals, there are a shocking amount of people in their 50s and 60s admitted due to covid.
God knows when the majority of those age groups will be vaccinated. They're all of the opinion that there's little chance hospital cases will be low enough to end restrictions by February or possibly even March.

 

[Chester1]

From multiple people I know who work in hospitals, there are a shocking amount of people in their 50s and 60s admitted due to covid.
God knows when the majority of those age groups will be vaccinated. They're all of the opinion that there's little chance hospital cases will be low enough to end restrictions by February or possibly even March.

I would guess they won't be vaccinated until early summer. I have heard similar about the age range but removing most 80+ then 70+ cases would make a massive difference. Over the course of the pandemic two thirds of hospitalisations due to covid have been for patients aged 80 or over. Even if its half that currently, removing most of those cases can be done by vaccination in the next few weeks and would ease the pressure. I expect the lockdown to last until the end of the Easter holidays.

 

[The Ham]

From multiple people I know who work in hospitals, there are a shocking amount of people in their 50s and 60s admitted due to covid.
God knows when the majority of those age groups will be vaccinated. They're all of the opinion that there's little chance hospital cases will be low enough to end restrictions by February or possibly even March.

There's about 15 million over 60's, if we assume that those over 60 make up 2/3rds of those being hospitalised (with most of the rest being over 50, as that would tally with what's been highlighted in the quoted post and is a very much worse case compared to the post after it which suggested 2/3rds of hospitalisations were over 80's) then to get everyone on that group to be vaccinated by the end of February would be about 1.75 million vaccines delivered a week (although this figure would likely need to be higher due to the need to start to deliver second doses and to show for the ramping up from the current rate of vaccination).

However it may well be that we get to the same point with less than that if the 2/3rds being admitted to hospital weren't the over 60's but were the over 65's, over 70's or over 75's.

However, end of February was suggested as when we should start to see cases to be coming down quite a lot, but that is then balanced out by the need for a few weeks for the vaccine to be giving the best protection.

However even at a 50% rate of protection for the 2/3rds most at risk we'd see cases fall by 1/3rd of what they otherwise would be. However hospitalisation rates could actually fall further than that if having been in the unlucky 50% to contact the virus the vaccine then provides a further 50% reduction in hospital admissions.

If that's the case then hospital admissions could be at half the rate that they otherwise would be (even allowing for the 1/3rd of hospitalisations being unvaccinated).

However the level of protection could well be higher than that which would reduce the rates further.

However even at 25,000 a day we'd have reached the point where we'll have seen at least 10% having had a positive test result for Covid-19 by the end of February. Add that to the 22% over 60's and it's likely that during March that we'd get to about 1/3rd of people having been vaccinated or having got protection having had it already (I know that there'll be lots getting the vaccine who will have already tested positive and that the level of protection isn't 100%, but then there's quite a lot who are asymptomatic who would easily balance that out).

However it's likely that those in urban areas (those at the highest risk of infection and therefore the highest R values) would actually be those who would be the most likely to be around more people with protection (bearing in mind some areas have seen above 1% of the population infected in the last week, so getting to 10% having had it may have already happened). As such that's going to further reduce the rate of spread.

Whilst that's not enough to stop it spreading (that's typically at the 2/3rds mark) it would certainly slow it down. In that if the R value with no restrictions is 3 then typically for every 3 people it tried to infect 1 would have protection and so the growth curve would look much flatter.

R value of 3 then after 10 weeks 1 case becomes 59,000.

R value of 2 then after 10 weeks 1 case becomes 1,024.

Now whilst that's not enough to get the number of cases falling that's with no other restrictions.

With other restrictions an R value of 1.4 becomes 0.93 and so cases would start to fall. With the potential for the rate of hospitalisations to be falling quite a bit faster in percentage terms than the number of cases.

As such, whilst March would likely still be rather optimistic (however it's certainly not beyond the realms of possibility) for removing of all restrictions it's certainly likely that we could see many areas moving down the tiers.

Right now many would be reasonably happy to be in tier 2 (rule of six but with no mixing of households inside) and there being the ability to see that they could reach tier 1 (rule of six) in a few weeks with more vaccinations.

March would likely start to bring better weather and therefore slightly lower case numbers anyway as well.

 

[hwl]

From multiple people I know who work in hospitals, there are a shocking amount of people in their 50s and 60s admitted due to covid.
God knows when the majority of those age groups will be vaccinated. They're all of the opinion that there's little chance hospital cases will be low enough to end restrictions by February or possibly even March.

I'm hearing the same from friends involved in critical care of Covid patients in hospital currently.

With the new variant expected to be 99+% of new cases by the end of the month, the impact of removing restrictions will be greater than many people expect given experience of the older strains, hence expect higher case rates in younger age groups who haven't been vaccinated for quite a while.

It will also take quite a bit of reduction in get hospital covid cases before the most urgent operations can resume in sufficient quantities in many places.

 

[bramling]

What I don’t understand is they are closing schools they have been shut for 2 weeks due to Xmas so how can this be blamed for the rise I mean it’s Xmas that’s why we have seen a rise?

== Doublepost prevention - post automatically merged: 3 Jan 2021 ==


Do you think once all at risk people get the vaccine will they care if healthy people catch it and spread it? Will it be seen as the flu is today?

This is what a lot of people have yet to wake up to. The government doesn’t give a toss if the average under-50 gets it. If one were really cynical then it could be said they only care about elderly people because they have a higher propensity to vote.