Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Scosha]

There is no way the public will comply with these rules where possible after 21st June when hospitals are empty and a HUGE amount of the population are vaccinated. These restrictions were to “protect the NHS” and “save lives” well, the NHS is now protected and less people are dying (and this will only reduce even more), due to the impact of a highly successful vaccine. 
I still take comfort from the likes of Whitty etc saying we’ll need to live with this going forward. We’ll get there! 

[Michael W]

I get paywalled by the article so can't read it. However this from yesterday did set off thinking the backsliding was starting pretty early:

Not quite the slam dunk promised, then. Being Johnson I have no expectation it'll actually happen anyway but it's just yet more open statements to enable the inevitable u-turn. 

Come summer all of the priority groups should be fully vaccinated and probably the vast majority of the non-priority groups will have had at least one dose as well. If we're still insisting on masks and enforcing distancing in pubs at the point, then we may as well fucking give up, franky. An absolute nonsense. 

I, too, can unfortunately see the Coronavirus Act being extended as it expires just before we start to enter respitory virus season, which will no doubt usher in restrictions once more. 

Edited April 27, 2021 by Michael W

[Left Back]

Sky News running a story that the Indian government are deliberately hiding the real death toll.

[anotherchance]

19 minutes ago, Elixir said:

Once 90%+ of adults in the UK are vaxxed, and it becomes increasingly clear that they continue to utterly piss on the virus and associated vArIAnTz, there's going to have to be some very creative manipulation as to why every single restriction isn't in the bin.

That said, it's inevitable that the Coronavirus Act will get renewed again in September before winter and the inevitable bed shitting when respiratory virus season returns. I think once we make it through next winter relatively unscathed it will become politically toxic to continue, and at that point we'll start to get the 'old normal' back.

I reckon there's a load of carrot and stick going on from Sturgeon at least - need to keep a bit of fear (of both variants and restrictions) in order to try and minimise vaccine hesitancy as we approach the younger age groups. I don't think it's a particularly pleasant tactic given the impact the messaging has on people, but I do get it.

 

[effeffsee_the2nd]

Sky News running a story that the Indian government are deliberately hiding the real death toll.

Or just too many to count?

[Left Back]

10 minutes ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

Or just too many to count?

I assumed that families were burying/cremating their dead without informing officialdom, which led to the discrepancy between actual and reported.  The story is that crematorium officials have been instructed to “massage” the figures.

[Michael W]

41 minutes ago, Left Back said:

Sky News running a story that the Indian government are deliberately hiding the real death toll.

There's been a lot of this talk from Indian doctors on social media recently as well. Their estimate is that the real number of cases per day is between 500k-900k.

Unfortunately we are seeing the sad consequences of pandemic mismanagement in a developing country here all to clearly. There have been several deaths occurring because hospitals ran out of oxygen. 

From a selfish perspective, this is also  bad news for vaccine supplies. I'm nor sure how much of our supply is from India, but try explaining to your population that vaccines are being exported whilst this goes on. Safe to say we ain't getting anything any time soon. 

[Left Back]

2 minutes ago, Michael W said:

There's been a lot of this talk from Indian doctors on social media recently as well. Their estimate is that the real number of cases per day is between 500k-900k.

Unfortunately we are seeing the sad consequences of pandemic mismanagement in a developing country here all to clearly. There have been several deaths occurring because hospitals ran out of oxygen. 

From a selfish perspective, this is also  bad news for vaccine supplies. I'm nor sure how much of our supply is from India, but try explaining to your population that vaccines are being exported whilst this goes on. Safe to say we ain't getting anything any time soon. 

We had 10m ordered from India.  We’ve had half of that.  Agree with you we won’t be getting the rest but not the end of the world.

I don’t think India’s problem at the moment is vaccines.  They need to do something like lockdown to stop transmission.  Probably easier said than done though.

It will get a whole lot worse before it gets better as they don’t seem to have started any mitigation so christ knows where the peak will be.

[EH75]

2 minutes ago, Left Back said:

I don’t think India’s problem at the moment is vaccines.  They need to do something like lockdown to stop transmission.  Probably easier said than done though. 

Yeah I don't know how realistic a lockdown is over there. I'm not sure they can afford the levels of government support that western economies have been dishing out, and that's before you even get to the issue of the conditions some people live in. High levels of poverty with lots of poor people living in close proximity who already have poor access to health care. I presume there is also a much higher instance of multi generational households which has obvious problems. 

So aye, I think essentially this is going to just have to rip through the population naturally over there to a much greater extent than we have seen so far in most other countries. A shite state of affairs to say the very least. 

[Michael W]

11 minutes ago, Left Back said:

We had 10m ordered from India.  We’ve had half of that.  Agree with you we won’t be getting the rest but not the end of the world.

I don’t think India’s problem at the moment is vaccines.  They need to do something like lockdown to stop transmission.  Probably easier said than done though.

It will get a whole lot worse before it gets better as they don’t seem to have started any mitigation so christ knows where the peak will be.

Fair enough, not as bad as feared then! 

Agreed vaccines aren't the problem, but they are down a hole and may as well try to vaccinate as many as they can. The 5m not consigned to us is an utter drop in the ocean for a country of India's population though. 

They made an arse of it by allowing large scale religious festivals attended by millions across the country to take place. No one wants it but they need to lockdown  as it's out of hand by the sounds of it. Even if they do it's going to be grim for a good few weeks yet minimum. 

Edited April 27, 2021 by Michael W

[strichener]

2 minutes ago, Michael W said:

Fair enough, not as bad as feared then! 

Agreed vaccines aren't the problem, but they are down a hole and may as well try to vaccinate as many as they can. The 5m not consigned to us is an utter drop in the ocean for a country of Indian's population though. 

They made an arse of it by allowing large scale religious festivals attended by millions across the country to take place. No one wants it but they need to lockdown  as it's out of hand by the sounds of it. Even if they do it's going to be grim for a good few weeks yet minimum. 

In communication with a company in Jaipur and they are locked down.  The guy I was talking to has half his workforce off with COVID and is telling me that the oxygen situation is even worse than it is being reported.

[Lyle Lanley]

Lockdown for all camels it is. 

Edited April 27, 2021 by Lyle Lanley

[s_dog]

That's the scary thing about India, the numbers of infections have shot up in the past 3-4 weeks. We all know there is a lag between cases > hospitalisation > death, so how bad are the numbers dying going to get? Brazil was terrible, this is horrific. They need any kind of help that is available, and lots of it, but even much of that may be too little, too late.

[Left Back]

6 minutes ago, EH75 said:

 

So aye, I think essentially this is going to just have to rip through the population naturally over there to a much greater extent than we have seen so far in most other countries. A shite state of affairs to say the very least. 

Currently at 350,000 cases per day (low estimate probably).  With an R0 of roughly 3 it doesn’t bear thinking about where they’ll be in a couple of weeks.

[RossBFaeDundee]

2 minutes ago, Lyle Lanley said:

 

Profound stuff right there.

[Lyle Lanley]

3 minutes ago, RossBFaeDundee said:

Profound stuff right there.

Think we should just lockdown the entire country for the camel variant as we just don’t know. 

[ICTChris]

The last outbreak of a novel coronavirus pre-Covid was MERS around ten years ago and that infected humans who had been in contact with camels. It was far deadlier than COVID but much less contagious resulting in a smaller outbreak. There were a couple of cases in the UK though and a major outbreak in South Korea, which is one reason why they had beefed up things like contact tracing and hotel quarantine ahead of the current pandemic.

I haven’t read whichever article politics for Ali links to so maybe Sridhar said all that.

[Michael W]

13 minutes ago, strichener said:

In communication with a company in Jaipur and they are locked down.  The guy I was talking to has half his workforce off with COVID and is telling me that the oxygen situation is even worse than it is being reported.

Grim. Think we are too far gone now to avoid a catastrophe there, but hopefully the lockdown puts a stopper on the rises. 

2 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

The last outbreak of a novel coronavirus pre-Covid was MERS around ten years ago and that infected humans who had been in contact with camels. It was far deadlier than COVID but much less contagious resulting in a smaller outbreak. There were a couple of cases in the UK though and a major outbreak in South Korea, which is one reason why they had beefed up things like contact tracing and hotel quarantine ahead of the current pandemic.

I haven’t read whichever article politics for Ali links to so maybe Sridhar said all that.

She did, having done the usual copy and paste job on border closures and variants. 

[Lyle Lanley]

2 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

The last outbreak of a novel coronavirus pre-Covid was MERS around ten years ago and that infected humans who had been in contact with camels. It was far deadlier than COVID but much less contagious resulting in a smaller outbreak. There were a couple of cases in the UK though and a major outbreak in South Korea, which is one reason why they had beefed up things like contact tracing and hotel quarantine ahead of the current pandemic.

I haven’t read whichever article politics for Ali links to so maybe Sridhar said all that.

Quote

Coronaviruses are usually spread by bats, but can also infect camels (like Mers), birds, cats (like Sars), mink, tigers, lions, pangolins and many other mammals. All it takes to set off the next pandemic is for these viruses to recombine and infect a human through usual respiratory mechanisms. While scientists can continue chasing specific viruses, a better strategy is to create a vaccine that can protect against numerous coronaviruses. This isn’t science fiction: it’s already happening, with positive results from early trials. But delivering such a vaccine will require investment in scientific research, forward thinking, and planning for manufacturing and distribution across the world.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/apr/27/britain-safe-covid-19-world-vaccinated-end-pandemic

[strichener]

13 minutes ago, s_dog said:

That's the scary thing about India, the numbers of infections have shot up in the past 3-4 weeks. We all know there is a lag between cases > hospitalisation > death, so how bad are the numbers dying going to get? Brazil was terrible, this is horrific. They need any kind of help that is available, and lots of it, but even much of that may be too little, too late.

Tbf, I think the lack of healthcare in India is probably resulting in deaths happening much quicker from the point of infection.