Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Todd_is_God]

11 minutes ago, Glen Sannox said:

And not one question to NS re the woeful vaccine figures. These lunchtime debacles are so staged it’s embarrassing. A question about a spike in Langholm and Canonbie though!!! 

I'm not convinced they are staged, just that the journalists have their questions ready to ask before NS speaks, and are unwilling / incapable of dropping these in favour of asking pertinent questions based on what she says.

Edited January 25, 2021 by Todd_is_God

[Todd_is_God]

3 minutes ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

The schools up here go back on April 19th after Easter. Surely they can't justify the nationwide lockdown until then with infection numbers already dropping to pre Xmas rates?

bUt tEh uNdIscOveRed VaRiAnTs

Edited January 25, 2021 by Todd_is_God

[No_Problemo]

5 minutes ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

The schools up here go back on April 19th after Easter. Surely they can't justify the nationwide lockdown until then with infection numbers already dropping to pre Xmas rates?

I don’t particularly see how it could be justified here. It’s not even the end of January and our numbers are going quickly down. You would think by March the whole country would be sub 100 cases per 100000. 

[MP_MFC]

I'm not convinced they are staged, just that the journalists have their questions ready to ask before NS speaks, and are unwilling / incapable of dropping these in favour of asking pertinent questions based on what she says.

The journalists are either desperate for some sort of gotcha moment off a scripted question based on 'an email we've received from x' or some laughably parochial query about a town in darkest f**k knows where.

They're absolutely useless.

[craigkillie]

39 minutes ago, Jan Vojáček said:

Eeech. NS still seems confident of hitting the February target though, I suspect numbers will really take off with the publishing of this new statistical dashboard she spoke about.

Why would publishing a statistical dashboard help improve the numbers? It's just a way of displaying them.

[superbigal]

4 hours ago, Bob Mahelp said:

I don't detect much in the way of good news at the beginning of ...ho hum...another week.

Every single indicator seems to be pointing both towards an extended lockdown...possibly well into the summer, and the growing feeling that nobody in authority really has any kind of fucking clue of how we're going to ever going to come out of this.

Your detection skills are good.

The evidence however will be hard to ignore.

When I do my daily update in a couple of days that removes last Sundays figures and replaces them with yesterdays.  There will be a substantial reduction in the per 100k rate.

By next Tuesday when Scotgov are to review I predict the Cases per 100K will be around 150 per 100K.  A figure 50% lower than the peak on Jan 4th.  That is not a metric that supports Lockdown and should not be hidden.

Hospitals are not going to be at bursting point bursting  up here either.

England by contrast will likely be around (IMO 330) cases per 100K.   That in itself would still be higher than the Scottish Peak.

 

Edited January 25, 2021 by superbigal

[Todd_is_God]

3 minutes ago, superbigal said:

Your detection skills are good.

The evidence however will be hard to ignore.

When I do my daily update in a couple of days that removes last Sundays figures and replaces them with yesterdays.  There will be a substantial reduction in the per 100k rate.

By next Tuesday when Scotgov are to review I predict the Cases per 100K will be around 150 per 100K.  A figure 50% lower than the peak on Jan 4th.  That is not a metric that supports Lockdown and should not be hidden.

Hospitals are not going to be at bursting point bursting  up here either.

England by contrast will likely be around (IMO 330) cases per 100K.   That in itself would still be higher than the Scottish Peak.

There is only so long ScotGov can hide behind the English problems.   

I like your updates; they are in depth and informative.

However, they don't take in to account anything other than cases, in particular hospital & ICU occupancy levels.

You may find that NS will prefer to keep tight measures in place a few weeks longer than the cases alone suggest is needed because of that, especially with the fear over the potential increased fatality rate of the new variant.

Being looser than England would go against the trend of the last 10 months, and with "Zero Hero" Sridhar in her ear, anything is possible...

[Newbornbairn]

Wife got her letter inviting her in for the vaccination on the 11th - yay!

[101]

1 hour ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

Obviously cant provide stats but experience has shown that the vast majority of rule breakers in Southside of Glasgow arent poor folks but mainly middle class students or recent graduates who think flat parties etc are allowed (but only for them) and speak with the horrific Glasgow Uni accents. 
Actually tend to find compliance amongst the less well off is actually quite good because many have vulnerable families etc and there would be no one left to care for them if they had to isolate, also goes for people in low income jobs who are terrified / cant afford to miss their work. Its quite a lazy stereotype to suggest that some kind of ‘underclass’ is to blame for rising numbers when in reality its not these people you read about breaking rules in the paper, remember Chuckles and Camel came north when ill with covid and some Lord on Rothesay was recently charged with breaking travel rules. But what the elites want you to think is its all the poor’s fault. 

I agree and would only add that when universities returned we saw an enormous peak. I'm generally anti university but without coming across all life of hard knocks if the students are so dim that they don't understand to rules or think they are above them then life will probably be a uphill struggle for all those who don't end up at daddies firm.

ETA, there any many legitimate reasons as to why the spikes may have happened but the anecdotal evidence of flat parties seem to stem from a certain type of student and person. These types. https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.sky.com/story/amp/covid-19-marquess-of-bute-charged-for-alleged-virus-rule-breach-to-visit-namesake-island-12170722

Edited January 25, 2021 by 101

[101]

18 minutes ago, Sherrif John Bunnell said:

The schools up here go back on April 19th after Easter. Surely they can't justify the nationwide lockdown until then with infection numbers already dropping to pre Xmas rates?

Got to be other easements then as well. Outdoor hospitality and outdoor entertainment would be my rather optimistic hopes. But surely to f**k by April things will be looking better.

[Paco]

The Scottish Government are not going to loosen restrictions while there are record numbers of Covid patients in hospitals.

The objective of lockdown is not to get case rates down per se, it’s about hospital capacity. They are of course linked but low case numbers simply means hospitals will improve over time - it doesn’t mean they improve right now.

I don’t see anything more than maybe primary schools opening before the start of March. If you’re expecting more I think you’re setting yourself up for a disappointment.

[Glen Sannox]

Unless they can at least treble these abysmal vaccination figures, an ease of restrictions will not be anytime soon.

[Elixir]

More risible vaccine figures  

[welshbairn]

25 minutes ago, mizfit said:

Low figures don’t concern me on a Sunday.

If it’s low figures any other day then I’ll be bemused.

GP's will never agree to work on a Sunday, it could change when the mass vaccination centres get rolling.

[Marshmallo]

Sunday is a day of rest so to vaccinate 11k on a Sunday is really good actually.

[superbigal]

Just now, welshbairn said:

GP's will never agree to work on a Sunday, it could change when the mass vaccination centres get rolling.

I hope the teachers all get their vaccinations fairly soon after the 50+ are all done.

I do hope they are all scheduled at the weekend. 

I expect the EIS would object 

[Guest]

4 hours ago, pandarilla said:

There's no doubt many of the super rich have been massive dicks during this, and deciding to f**k off to wherever they can to avoid it.

And yes, there's an element of 'making your own rules' that applies to lots of people.

But denying that there's problem with a load of arseholes who are the drugs of society is just weird. It's like doing argumentative gymnastics to hide the issue.

My local asda is a good indicator, as it's in a shitty area, and the 'i don't give a f**k brigade' can be seen fairly regularly.

Interesting that of the supermarkets that said they would enforce mask wearing, asda was the biggest one that refused.

Personally I believe the biggest problem is that everything is all half hearted as usual, if we're being serious about this virus and the restrictions then we should really be throwing the book at people for blatant and repeated breaches.

Fining a junkie or the son of a Billionaire £200 is really not going to do it (for differing reasons) and it's really no deterrent at all, we really need to start making an example of people and if that means jail time then so be it, otherwise arseholes from all social and economic groups will continue to take the piss and do as they please.

[Jan Vojáček]

25 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

Why would publishing a statistical dashboard help improve the numbers? It's just a way of displaying them.

I don't think they'd be keen to highlight the publishing of a statistical dashboard if it was going to make it easy to see how poor the numbers are. Hence, perhaps, why there isn't a dashboard out at the moment covering the vaccinations that have taken place so far.

I could be being cynical. Or overly optimistic. But I can't see Nicola standing there tomorrow and talking about dashboard being launched when we've vaccinated 12,000 people. It'll be launched and the numbers will be decent.

Imo. 

Edit: Tl;dr - It won't improve the numbers. But I think it's a sign that numbers are going to improve.

Edited January 25, 2021 by Jan Vojáček

[WhiteRoseKillie]

53 minutes ago, virginton said:

It doesn't provide an idea of 'the scale of the problem' here at all. The majority of people in the country are not actually using food banks or 'having to choose between isolating and eating'. That measure of absolute poverty - by a developed country's benchmark of course - is still a very small minority of the population. It shouldn't be there at all but it is not the reality for the majority of those who admit - even in survey data - that they are not complying with self-isolation requirements. Absolute poverty (or fear of this) is not driving society-wide reluctance to self-isolate.

There is quite clearly a much larger section of the population for whom taking two weeks out on SSP would be a huge relative dunt to their income, but not actually sufficient to tip them over the edge into destitution. And of course, anyone who has access to credit can absorb that short term hit and recover their losses over time. Does that mean that you might not get your fortnight in Benidorm this year? Well that's just tough. This is the most critical restriction of the entire pandemic response, and so 'but ma lifestyle!11!!' excuses simply cannot be tolerated.

Or you could continue cosplaying your hopelessly wrong 'the vast majority of people live on the breadline!!!' hot take and then wonder why nobody buys what your beloved, 1970s dinosaur politicians keep selling to them. Because the reality in the UK is in fact much more tiered and complex than your tragically one-dimensional analysis. 

Thanks for playing anyway. 

So, what's an acceptable number of starving kids to avoid you having to take a "dunt" to your (no doubt five-figure) income to ease their deprivation?

 Carry on with your pathetic edgelord shite all you want, but hunger and, yes, destitution is a very real issue for more and more people in this country* - eating is not a fucking lifestyle.

* And if you think it's bad now, it's only going one way.

Why the quote marks in the bolded bit, btw? I don't think I've seen anyone post that on here, let alone me. Don't let the truth get in the way of a good whine, though, wee man.

[super_carson]

4 minutes ago, superbigal said:

I hope the teachers all get their vaccinations fairly soon after the 50+ are all done.

I do hope they are all scheduled at the weekend. 

I expect the EIS would object 

They can fire it into my eyeballs at 3am on a Sunday for all I care.