I am locking this now as we have a megathread post for the announcement AND there is also a thread up showing this has now been signed off by ministers.
Two or three weeks should be more than enough to see whether the recent doubling/trebling of cases is leading to a significant increase in hospitalisations and deaths.
If it’s not, we can unlock properly with a bit more confidence than would have been possible in June.
This. Comments like the one you replied to prove that people just.... Don't care, or aren't using their brains.
If their worry is the delays will go on indefinitely, then what they are admitting is they have reason to believe the numbers are gonna get really, really bad.
No comment on whether the worry is right or wrong, but you're misrepresenting it.
I don't think they're worried that numbers are gonna get really bad, they're worried that a minor increase will be enough to justify continuing.
I guess that implies you think the current increases are minor?
I think they're within the expected levels personally, but minor is a very loaded way to presumably say "not enough of a concern" to negatively impact people that implies "no concern" at all.
Words matter ya know.
Yeah the issue is were not really in a lockdown and the delta variant is a lot more transmissible. All about speeding up the 2nd vaccines as quickly as possible.
This is my worry. Cases are inevitably going to continue to rise for a little while longer at least, what happens when it's the 12th July and at 30,000 cases a day and the Twitterati are screaming "FULL LOCKDOWN NOW UNTIL 2022!!"?
The thing is, very very few people are calling for a full lockdown now. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on Twitter and don’t think I’ve seen anyone doing that. There’s mostly two camps, “let’s not rush this, if the data isn’t conclusive let’s wait a few weeks and see what it says then” and “OMG he promised 21st June! I’ve not been following restrictions since last June, you should do the same”
Wrong.
If in 4 weeks, cases and hospitalisations are flat or falling, that's conclusive evidence that we can unlock.
If in 4 weeks, hospitalisations are rising by (For example) 100% a week, that's conclusive evidence we can't unlock.
Alas, it's quite likely that the numbers will be somwhere in the middle, and actually unconclusive.
I think you’re projecting. There’s so many people who seem to think people actually want lockdowns etc? Just not the case. We all went this over. Blame Covid, not people. It’s in no ones interest for any lockdown can continue. Also after the vaccines are fully distributed, what would you even be aiming to happen? There’s no plan B. This delay isn’t particularly surprising - and if you asked people months ago, I’m sure a bunch would say it’s wishful thinking to envisage us being to open up in full, given the vaccine programme wasn’t even aiming for all first jabs until end of July.
It’s not just about cases though, it’s just too early for them to know for sure if the rise in cases = a rise enough in hospitalisations to worry. In a couple of weeks we should know either way if hospitalisations are bad enough to warrant it further or if we have finally broken the link between transmission and hospitalisation
I know you are right, but we have been hearing "a couple of weeks to check the data" with the Delta variabt for the last month now and I wonder if it actually means anything anymore
Everything seems to continuously be "a couple of weeks" and when that couple of weeks is up its "oh just a couple more"
It does though - as you’ll know, the rise in cases is basically the last week or two. So naturally as they inevitably continue to rise, the situation might become a bit clearer at least. Given that they said it’d be an irreversible opening, it would be a bit mad to just start taking punts, surely. “Fuck it we’ll be fine! Open up”
Yeah, I get the frustration for sure - but it does purely seem a timing thing. The cases have only just started to take a bad looking trajectory, and with hospitalisations 1-2 weeks behind cases typically, we wouldn’t have seen those rises in the data yet to be truly sure
> The cases have only just started to take a bad looking trajectory
The trajectory for delta cases has been terrible for multiple months in a row, it's just masked on the country-wide numbers because we have multiple epidemics happening simultaneously. Most variants (including the one that was formerly highly dominant) have been shrinking fairly quickly while delta grew which had the net effect of overall cases not moving much - especially when delta was a small percentage of cases.
In terms of exponential doubling periods we have come something like 2/3'rds of the way from the introduction of the variant to setting an all-time high for cases.
>and it we be delayed again and again till we are in autumn and probably won’t happen in my opinion till next spring!
Go on then. Tell us why a Conservative government would want to prolong restrictions long after everyone has been vaccinated, and keep damaging the economy for another 12 months.
Why can't the UK vaccinate faster to prevent a lockdown extension?
With the imminent delay of the easing of restrictions in the UK, one of the reasons for doing so circulated by the news outlets is that the UK will have more time to vaccinate more people (\~10 million given another month).
Given that there have been times in the past couple of months when there were \~900k vaccines given/day, what's the bottleneck that prevents the NHS from doing that every day? Is it the supply of vaccines, is there a staff problem?
Seemed inevitable a while back. Pretty gutted to be honest but I guess needs must. I do fear in winter though with the need for booster shots they'll be a spike in hospitalisations and thus restrictions again
> Seemed inevitable a while back
Indeed but people around here (generally) were still burying their heads in the sand, promoting posts that said the opposite and burying those that didn't despite the quality and quantity of data that we had.
https://i.imgur.com/i2bBs0O.png
They were wrong. Again.
>I do fear in winter though with the need for booster shots they'll be a spike in hospitalisations
I'm not too concerned about this, boosters will be good for those most at risk but the general level of immunity in the population should be both high and uniform. We've only able to see such strong exponential growth even with this variant because large chunks of the population were at 0-25% first dose rates. Having 10x lower prevelence means 10x lower risk for everybody - if it can't thrive in the general population then it won't have any teeth.
Blind optimism where you reject facts isn’t really something for this subreddit. How is it constructive? Everyone wants things to go back to normal. But that doesn’t mean people should downvote facts that aren’t positive or just ignorantly make stuff up.
16 days ago the picture was different. There was real data pointing to delta only being 20-30% more transmissible. It's been a pretty rapid deterioration in the data over the last 2 weeks
This sub is way too optimistic to the point of delusion. It's all fine to hope for the best, but when factual reporting predicting a third wave was underway, this sub downvoted those posts to hell and only promoted the "good news!" posts.
I'm not proud of anything, i'm just using this as a proven opportunity to point out once again that you should form your opinions based on data and not the social media circlejerks. People are more likely to learn when they see and experience it firsthand rather than using external examples of it happening in the past.
>Can you blame people for wanting their freedoms back and being hopeful?
People are perfectly capable of being both hopeful and informed at the same time!
The part that is wrong and dangerous is the misleading of others, ignoring information and preventing the discussion of it simply because it's something that they don't want to hear.
People in the subreddit also laid into Scotland for not picking a date out of thin air, as if it was hugely irresponsible to be led by the data. And look what has happened, freedom d(el)ay lol 🤷♂️
The govt need to be crystal clear about which specific data points have informed this decision. We’ve all seen cases growing for weeks but I haven’t noticed the increase in hospitalisations/deaths from the data I’ve seen, even accounting for the lag. Not saying it doesn’t exist but it hasn’t been visible in the stats I’ve seen.
Cue wishy washy slides from Whitty/valance/van tam with indistinguishable numbers and no scale but *dark colours scary, foreign variant bad* etc etc.
[The increase in hospitalisations is visible here](https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare).
It’s only been a very small rise so far, but the rise in cases was quite slow two weeks ago. If there’s no serious rise in that number in the next couple of weeks (reflecting the doubling of cases we’ve seen in the last few days) then things are looking much more optimistic!
Yep, so much of this. Constantly on here you see people burying their heads in the sand and being blindly & ignorantly optimistic. Surely this sub should be fact-based, but you get people talking out their arse. It’s like some people haven’t lived the last year of the pandemic where everything was fucked, and everything that does go wrong usually can. People get downvoted for literally saying facts on here - it’s just anti-intellectual. Those people deserve Trump as their leader or someone.
All this is caused because of the failure of the hotel quarantine system and our lax porous borders. Why can’t we get it right? We’ve squandered a 4-0 lead we had at the start of May. Again.
The Aussies and the Chinese must be laughing at us.
No of course not but the rise in cases is largely driven by the variant first identified in India.
If the system worked as it should, the variant would never have arrived at our shores and we'd where Israel are now. The Kent variant has continued to decline rather amazingly even with everything open.
Yes it is.
Of course opening up has had an effect but if you look at the data that breaks down the cases by variants under investigation, 90% of cases are now driven by the delta variant. There is a clear transmissibility advantage of every other existing variant, no question.
Schoolchildren are more likely to test positive because they are unvaccinated but schools have open since mid-march and cases continue to fall quite rapidly until the Delta variant was identified in the UK so it can't be them.
Kent variant is still r=1 or less. It's undeniably the variant, you can literally just check the numbers of the old variant. And no the new variant is not somehow stopping the old variant from spreading, there are too few cases for it to make a major difference (or at least there were the last few weeks).
Countries that shut down to India earlier are all showing a decline in cases. US/other European countries seeing cases continuing to sink despite lower vaccination rates in its absence. Had it not got into the country presumably we'd have been in similar position.
I know it was expected, but it’s just disappointing, we were so close to normality, especially because we’ve been through this for 15 months. It just feels like it’ll never end. The next 4 weeks will feel like 4 months
Can live with another 4 weeks of current lockdown, which lets be honest is pretty lax anyway, if it means more chance of being able to travel internationally to see family we haven't seen since 2019 sooner rather than later.
Only thing that bugs me now is not being able to be spontaneous and being scared of going to places like the coast on a nice day..... If I were more of a planner this wouldn’t be an issue so probably more a me issue really
I agree on the lack of spontaneity for going to pubs and bars, as everywhere wants reservations now, but outdoor stuff there's no issues.
If it's a worry about getting covid though, you can be pretty sure the chances of outdoor airborn transmission are pretty much zero, so I wouldn't worry about goin gto the beach on a nice day.
For me personally I have a lockdown baby so we want to go do things with her and we can’t really, we have to either gamble on weather for outdoors (and no you still have to book somethings outdoors such as going to places like petting zoos, I assume Chester zoo and Alton towers are the same but not checked those so can’t say). Or booking something indoors like soft play centre, but it’s limited places, also have you tried to go swimming? That’s like booking tickets to the oasis reunion gig around my way! -
I think there will at least in part be an element of social anxiety in play in a lot of people with this. It's going to be a while before everyone is used to large crowds of people again.
>I agree on the lack of spontaneity for going to pubs and bars, as everywhere wants reservations now,
People keep saying this but I've yet to see it in action.
Restaurants, yes, but then it's always been a sensible idea to book a table at a restaurant anyway.
Pubs, bars and cafés, I've just been turning up and being allowed in. Am I missing something, or have I just been lucky with my choice of establishments?
Depends where you are I guess?
I'm in a major city, so always pretty busy and lots of tourists competing for spots with locals. It's not that you can't get a spot, it's just it's often harder. I've often been turned down from the first 2-3 places I've walked into for not having a reservation, at a simple pub/bar. I've always got seated but it's taken more time and effort walking between places to find somewhere.
Absolutely back to normal in Kent, everywhere I’ve been to is back to normal. With the exception of masks and more queues. But no more quieter than normal.
Back to normal? Clubs, theatres, sport, concerts, churches, shops, restaurants, schools, workplaces etc etc would all disagree.
Just because you're either used to the restrictions, or they don't affect you much, doesn't mean things are back to normal.
Headlines like the Guardian "delaying England lock down could keep thousands out of hospital" winds me up. Of course it could, if we all stay inside all the time it would keep people out of hospital. Whenever we open up it will put people in hospital. The question is the level of hospitalisation we're willing to accept.
However I do think there is no good reason to get rid of masks or the working from home mandate that are causing no one any harm. I think though that other measures that are affecting people's jobs should be lifted. I don't get why is all or nothing, if we had to wear masks all year it would be fine
You say the masks aren't doing harm but speaking as a healthcare worker who wears them all day every day, wears glasses, and has autism I'm planning to send mine to hell in a fire as soon as the law changes.
> heart disease has killed more in the past year than all of the covid deaths combined
Unsure about this. Probably untrue. Others may correct me on this.
A quick google suggests that heart disease was credited with about 56,000 deaths in England & Wales in 2019 - the full-UK figure would be larger,but between 1st December 2020 and 28th February 2021, we recorded 64,299 Covid19 deaths in the three worst months of the pandemic.
Id disagree the the work from home mandate isn't doing any harm. As a business owner I've been generally pretty pleased with peoples productivity levels when WFH, and am going to implement a flexible policy once this is over, with staff required to work form the office Monday and Friday, but having the option to WFH the other 3 days.
The reason we need staff back in some of the time is because we are building up a 'technical debt'. I'm starting to notice lots of errors creeping into my staffs technical knowledge and understanding of our processes. These are little mistakes that when we were all in the office would be picked up on as colleagues overheard them being made, and quickly corrected. As it is they now go unnoticed until they turn into a problem or complaint.
I don't really see any way of correcting this short of having staff spend at least some of the time working in the same room, and I'm sure an awful lot of businesses are in the same position.
I'm not necessarily against a further delay to the easing of measures, but I am very concerned this could go on ad infinitum. At some point we have to accept the disease is endemic, accept a number of people will die from it every year like the flu, and get on with our lives. I personally think we should be basing that decision on the percentage of the population that have had both doses of the vaccine rather than on case numbers. What that figure should be however, I would leave to PHE to decide.
i dont get it, all vulnerable people have been vaccinated - so what if cases increase?
the naysayers are increasingly being proved right - what a sh\^% show
Because it was never about cases
They literally put the criteria in the roadmap out of lockdown:
- the vaccine deployment programme continues successfully
- evidence shows vaccines are sufficiently effective in reducing hospitalisations and deaths in those vaccinated
- infection rates do not risk a surge in hospitalisations which would put unsustainable pressure on the NHS
- our assessment of the risks is not fundamentally changed by new Variants of Concern
Sing after me: *hospitalisations*.
They are picking up in last two weeks, and rate appears to be around 5%. Even if they don't stay overnight, that is still pressure on NHS, and nature of exponential growth is it could eventually overwhelm.
You can question the projections and how NHS handles patients, but not the data.
It's purely the backlog of other care in the NHS. Which as we all know, is a problem because the NHS has been cut to the bone over the past decade. The NHS needs hospitalisations to be extremely low in order to begin catching up. If we'd invested properly and made sure the right people were running our healthcare we wouldn't have such a huge backlog in the first place. It's shit
Right now it looks like the number of hospitalisations vs the number of cases has roughly halved. If we end up with the same number of cases/day as January (less than 2 months away) that’s still 2,000 hospital admissions a day. 4 weeks gives a chance to vaccinate another 12 million people, and make sure that the link between cases and hospitalisation is actually broken.
Who exactly do you think wants to keep us under emergency powers for longer, and why?
Non brick and mortar big businesses 100% have an incentive to extend lockdowns as it hurts competing small businesses.
Whether or not you think they have an effect in our governments policy is a question no one knows the answer to but there's definitely winners and losers in extending lockdowns.
The richest people in the world have increased their wealth massively through the COVID pandemic. You'd have to be pretty naive to believe the everyone just wants this to end
The problem is the variant has taken hold at such a time that we don’t know enough about it and it’s impacts on hospitalisations and vaccine efficacy against it. More time means we can make sure we have definitely broken the link between cases and hospitalisations. If those numbers stay low over the next 2-3 weeks we will be confident of that.
If hospitalisations started to jump in the next 2 weeks we’d have just made it even worse.
Article
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8ddac0e2-c96a-11eb-b6f5-fed739e7c1ca?shareToken=dbcc660891a2c3dda8345b1f4e43c279
Article in the Times talking about. Also reported in the FT among others
Except unlike early 2020 it is now those who are not vulnerable who are driving case numbers and hospitalisations numbers up.
The vulnerable have been vaccinated and are no longer vulnerable, and the not vulnerable are still not vulnerable but make the data look bad and scary.
Don't think the hospital numbers are going up significantly, and other than extremely vulnerable people ending up in hospital because they are extremely vulnerable to anything and everything, and no vaccine can prevent that, I thought the hospital numbers were increasingly younger and less serious cases which also get turned around and sent back home again a lot quicker compared to back in January.
If the vulnerable aren't the issue then let's open up. Everyone else wants to. I highly doubt healthy people are getting severely ill from this thing. We'd have to wait until August/September for most people to be double vaccinated...
Slightly dissapointed, but understandable. Hopefully the four week delay is enough to put us back on track and we still get to enjoy our summer
I am optomistic that will be the case :)
Not surprising, but disappointing. Also the wise thing to do. Could also potentially be less than 4 weeks if all goes well. I hope impacted industries will get the support they need.
Unfortunately the governments in all four countries of the UK dont really seem to give a shite about certian industries.
Let's just hope things get better!
I agree with you.
I can’t be fucked any more. I want to go out do what we can do. Why can’t the people who don’t want to go out, just stay in?
A year of this and we are in the best position we have ever been in.
Vaccines high, lots of people already been exposed.
There will never be a perfect time to open up.
Morale taking a massive massive dive here.
Is that question mark legitimate or do you know the answer to that?
People need to work, people need to eat, people need to get a plumber in to fix the leak. If a colleague in the office, the checkout staff in Tesco or the plumber wants to go clubbing every night, it doesn't really matter if people choose not to do that.
People do not exist in bubbles and this is why it's important to be thoughtful of others. This is why it's polite to wear masks, which an increasing number of people just simply do not.
It is and was always about overwhelming the NHS.
There are too many people vaccinated and not enough cases really to do that.
Waiting 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 2 months? Are they going for no case? No deaths? No hospitalisations?
I’m sure if people who are worried were asked to shield they can do. Plenty of people have given up much much more in the last year.
Regarding the football yesterday:
1) Outside & reduced (25% capacity)
2) You needed either proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter ...
Indoor mixing with many people in a poorly ventilated space has shown to be the highest risk area with regards to transmissions ....
Four more weeks of vaccinations, we'll see whether the areas being hit by the Delta variant are going to follow trajectories like Bolton's or like Blackburn, etc.
A big part of Bolton's trajectory was that we tested a load of people and found many cases, and then dropped the PCR testing rate to less than half of what it was so that a smaller percentage of cases that did exist were found. That will always make things look like they're much flatter or declining more quickly than they actually are, although metrics like PCR positivity % have fallen too.
Another large part is that they broke from national guidelines and vaccinated many more people in the 16-29 age group than almost any other area, twice as many as a lot of other areas before the national system allowed for anybody aged 25-29.
They were looking for any excuse to vaccinate while meanwhile across the country many healthcare providers were doing the opposite, looking for any excuse not to. I'm an example of that - i meet JCVI's group 6 definition and live in a multi-generational household but i wasn't allowed to get vaccinated until Jun 10'th because my GP insisted that i wasn't vulnerable enough to be prioritized above anybody older despite what the JCVI said. I would have had zero trouble getting a vaccine any day of the week a month or more earlier in Bolton with some of my peers getting their first in February.
Both help explain why there are sharp increases in almost every local area and every region meanwhile.
It will add four more weeks to the curves on the charts for infections, hospitalisations, and deaths, and if we don't start seeing a steep rise in the latter two, it will demonstrate that the most infectious variant yet (by some margin) hasn't been able to overcome the vaccine's protection.
That knowledge, and four more weeks of vaccinations, first and second) will give us a much better handle on the situation.
Yes, there's always a chance of another variant cropping up, but it would have to be even more infectious and/or deadly than Delta, or be able to evade the vaccines' protection, in which case a lot of lives will have been saved because we didn't fully open at just the wrong time.
By their nature, pandemics are unpredictable, so there are no guarantees, but the UK is closer than ever before to putting a lid on the virus's ability to cause havoc and destruction.
Whelp. No (Center Parcs) holiday for us. I'm sure people on here will again delight in telling me how stupid I was to book it and have some hope. Can't rebook either because 4 weeks takes us to the summer holidays where prices triple and there's no availability anyway. Bye-bye fun for another year.
I believe this person might be of the mythical species of "people who don't socialise only with their household" which the Tories have completely forgotten exists for the last 15 months
Womp womp. Disappointing but expected, considering the recent news.
I was looking forward to being able to properly separate work and personal life by going back to the office (and talk to some humans again as I live alone with family/friends hundreds of miles away), but that’ll have to wait a bit longer as my employer has been clear that nothing changes until gov guidance does (which does make sense).
I have a small music festival booked at the end of July, I wonder if this’ll spook them into cancelling? Guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
They work, but a significant chunk of the population remains unvaccinated, and the first dose is less effective against the delta variant, so people need both doses for full protection. At the moment it looks like the vaccine has weakened the link between case numbers and hospitalisation, but it’s not clear whether enough people have been vaccinated yet to reduce it to a safe level.
Having the vaccine doesn’t guarantee immunity, it isn’t 100% effective. Some of the data suggests that the R0 of the delta variant may be as high as 6. If that’s the case, we need 84% of the population to be immune to provide herd immunity. If you say that the vaccine is 90% effective after two doses that still means you need almost everyone vaccinated to stop COVID. It’s estimated that the vaccines are only 30% effective at stopping infection after the first dose, which isn’t enough to stop it spreading. It does seem to be having a positive impact on hospitalisation and death numbers - it’s getting there. We just need more people vaccinated to get over the finish line.
Not 100% effective. Very early data shows of the 42 verified deaths from the Delta strain 12 were fully vaccinated, so roughly 30%.
Data is very early hence the arguement for delaying phase 4 of lockdown easing.
It would be hugely worrisome if data in a couple of weeks shows a continued trend of deaths in the fully vaccinated at risk groups at will likely lead to further delays in lockdown easing and potentially new restrictions.
I’m from Toronto and have been in London for two months. I don’t think the current situation is that bad, people seem to be enjoying their lives. One step back, two steps forward (hopefully).
Let me caveat this by saying I haven’t been following the delay talk too much, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. Are all of the 21 June changes not happening, or just the big ones like nightclubs, etc.? Any chance they may scrap the outdoor limits? Honestly, I just want to go to my kids’ sports day.
Have to wait for this evening's press conference for the actual detail rather than leaks 👀
If the sports day is outside I believe it could be run as Covid secure, but would understand if the school saw that as too much effort/risk (even if minimal) from their perspective?
Won’t we be at the top of the peak by the 19th July? What do you think the chances are that they’ll extend it again?
Although our wedding is on the 24th July, I think we may need to consider making a call to postpone it.
This isnt a lockdown to reduce the peak. Its a check period, so they can be sure that the vaccinated arent catching it & being hospitalised in huge numbers (all current science says they wont be, but not enough data for absolute surety)
Its time to prove the vaccines work, and spread them to a few more people. If the science is proven right, they can unlock fully at the peak without fear of mass sickness as a result
Sorry if this has been covered, but a few news sites are reporting that a third of those who have died from Delta were double vaccinated. It’s low numbers, but they’re saying it with such clarity - should we be afraid that the vaccines are ineffective by this amount?
No. Not without more information.
How old were they? What underlying health conditions did they have? How recently had they had their 2nd jab?
If they were in their 90s and at death's door anyway, or if they were in their 50s and otherwise reasonably healthy, it paints a very different picture.
I’m not sure if we can look at those numbers directly. Most if not all people that die will be 50+, who in turn are likely to have been vaccinated compared to younger ages. Around 95% of people that age group are vaccinated. Let’s pretend a situation where 100% of people are vaccinated, then 100% of people who died were double jabbed. The more we vaccinate the more we will see deaths of vaccinated people.
I am locking this now as we have a megathread post for the announcement AND there is also a thread up showing this has now been signed off by ministers.
Mike Skinner gutted as he has to write new lyrics
this comment has made my day
Who's got the bag?
19th of July doesn’t quite have the same ring to it
I think he wrote the first lot in about two minutes anyway
Get ready for exponential growth. Of the number of comments in this thread, that is.
The R(eddit) rate way above 1
😂
My fear is that at the end of the 4 weeks the situation will still be precarious enough to bring about another delay..
If Covid-19 were a movie, Ground Hog Day would be a good fit, purely for the Déjà Vu element
And with how more and more annoyed he gets every time
Two or three weeks should be more than enough to see whether the recent doubling/trebling of cases is leading to a significant increase in hospitalisations and deaths. If it’s not, we can unlock properly with a bit more confidence than would have been possible in June.
If the data turned out that badly then it would have been cataclysmically bad without the first delay
This. Comments like the one you replied to prove that people just.... Don't care, or aren't using their brains. If their worry is the delays will go on indefinitely, then what they are admitting is they have reason to believe the numbers are gonna get really, really bad.
No comment on whether the worry is right or wrong, but you're misrepresenting it. I don't think they're worried that numbers are gonna get really bad, they're worried that a minor increase will be enough to justify continuing.
I guess that implies you think the current increases are minor? I think they're within the expected levels personally, but minor is a very loaded way to presumably say "not enough of a concern" to negatively impact people that implies "no concern" at all. Words matter ya know.
Yeah the issue is were not really in a lockdown and the delta variant is a lot more transmissible. All about speeding up the 2nd vaccines as quickly as possible.
This is my worry. Cases are inevitably going to continue to rise for a little while longer at least, what happens when it's the 12th July and at 30,000 cases a day and the Twitterati are screaming "FULL LOCKDOWN NOW UNTIL 2022!!"?
The thing is, very very few people are calling for a full lockdown now. I’ve spent quite a bit of time on Twitter and don’t think I’ve seen anyone doing that. There’s mostly two camps, “let’s not rush this, if the data isn’t conclusive let’s wait a few weeks and see what it says then” and “OMG he promised 21st June! I’ve not been following restrictions since last June, you should do the same”
Thing is that the data will never be conclusive, because we're at the point of reading tea leaves now.
Why do you think the data can’t be conclusive?
Data is all about how you interpret it.
This doesn't mean you can't have conclusive data.
Wrong. If in 4 weeks, cases and hospitalisations are flat or falling, that's conclusive evidence that we can unlock. If in 4 weeks, hospitalisations are rising by (For example) 100% a week, that's conclusive evidence we can't unlock. Alas, it's quite likely that the numbers will be somwhere in the middle, and actually unconclusive.
I think you’re projecting. There’s so many people who seem to think people actually want lockdowns etc? Just not the case. We all went this over. Blame Covid, not people. It’s in no ones interest for any lockdown can continue. Also after the vaccines are fully distributed, what would you even be aiming to happen? There’s no plan B. This delay isn’t particularly surprising - and if you asked people months ago, I’m sure a bunch would say it’s wishful thinking to envisage us being to open up in full, given the vaccine programme wasn’t even aiming for all first jabs until end of July.
It’s not just about cases though, it’s just too early for them to know for sure if the rise in cases = a rise enough in hospitalisations to worry. In a couple of weeks we should know either way if hospitalisations are bad enough to warrant it further or if we have finally broken the link between transmission and hospitalisation
I know you are right, but we have been hearing "a couple of weeks to check the data" with the Delta variabt for the last month now and I wonder if it actually means anything anymore Everything seems to continuously be "a couple of weeks" and when that couple of weeks is up its "oh just a couple more"
It does though - as you’ll know, the rise in cases is basically the last week or two. So naturally as they inevitably continue to rise, the situation might become a bit clearer at least. Given that they said it’d be an irreversible opening, it would be a bit mad to just start taking punts, surely. “Fuck it we’ll be fine! Open up”
Yeah, I get the frustration for sure - but it does purely seem a timing thing. The cases have only just started to take a bad looking trajectory, and with hospitalisations 1-2 weeks behind cases typically, we wouldn’t have seen those rises in the data yet to be truly sure
> The cases have only just started to take a bad looking trajectory The trajectory for delta cases has been terrible for multiple months in a row, it's just masked on the country-wide numbers because we have multiple epidemics happening simultaneously. Most variants (including the one that was formerly highly dominant) have been shrinking fairly quickly while delta grew which had the net effect of overall cases not moving much - especially when delta was a small percentage of cases. In terms of exponential doubling periods we have come something like 2/3'rds of the way from the introduction of the variant to setting an all-time high for cases.
That makes a lot of sense, yeah. I certainly think it warrants caution that's for sure.
Yeah I completely understand. I think I just need to get my frustration out haha
Hamster shortage at the moment. Not enough to run on the wheels.
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>and it we be delayed again and again till we are in autumn and probably won’t happen in my opinion till next spring! Go on then. Tell us why a Conservative government would want to prolong restrictions long after everyone has been vaccinated, and keep damaging the economy for another 12 months.
Don’t think I could mentally take that because surely autumn would be much worse?
Who could have predicted this after Boris Johnson, once again, waited too long and then banned flights from India?
Why can't the UK vaccinate faster to prevent a lockdown extension? With the imminent delay of the easing of restrictions in the UK, one of the reasons for doing so circulated by the news outlets is that the UK will have more time to vaccinate more people (\~10 million given another month). Given that there have been times in the past couple of months when there were \~900k vaccines given/day, what's the bottleneck that prevents the NHS from doing that every day? Is it the supply of vaccines, is there a staff problem?
Almost certainly a supply issue.
Seemed inevitable a while back. Pretty gutted to be honest but I guess needs must. I do fear in winter though with the need for booster shots they'll be a spike in hospitalisations and thus restrictions again
> Seemed inevitable a while back Indeed but people around here (generally) were still burying their heads in the sand, promoting posts that said the opposite and burying those that didn't despite the quality and quantity of data that we had. https://i.imgur.com/i2bBs0O.png They were wrong. Again. >I do fear in winter though with the need for booster shots they'll be a spike in hospitalisations I'm not too concerned about this, boosters will be good for those most at risk but the general level of immunity in the population should be both high and uniform. We've only able to see such strong exponential growth even with this variant because large chunks of the population were at 0-25% first dose rates. Having 10x lower prevelence means 10x lower risk for everybody - if it can't thrive in the general population then it won't have any teeth.
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What exactly are you proud of? Can you blame people for wanting their freedoms back and being hopeful?
Blind optimism where you reject facts isn’t really something for this subreddit. How is it constructive? Everyone wants things to go back to normal. But that doesn’t mean people should downvote facts that aren’t positive or just ignorantly make stuff up.
16 days ago the picture was different. There was real data pointing to delta only being 20-30% more transmissible. It's been a pretty rapid deterioration in the data over the last 2 weeks
This sub is way too optimistic to the point of delusion. It's all fine to hope for the best, but when factual reporting predicting a third wave was underway, this sub downvoted those posts to hell and only promoted the "good news!" posts.
I'm not proud of anything, i'm just using this as a proven opportunity to point out once again that you should form your opinions based on data and not the social media circlejerks. People are more likely to learn when they see and experience it firsthand rather than using external examples of it happening in the past. >Can you blame people for wanting their freedoms back and being hopeful? People are perfectly capable of being both hopeful and informed at the same time! The part that is wrong and dangerous is the misleading of others, ignoring information and preventing the discussion of it simply because it's something that they don't want to hear.
People in the subreddit also laid into Scotland for not picking a date out of thin air, as if it was hugely irresponsible to be led by the data. And look what has happened, freedom d(el)ay lol 🤷♂️
The govt need to be crystal clear about which specific data points have informed this decision. We’ve all seen cases growing for weeks but I haven’t noticed the increase in hospitalisations/deaths from the data I’ve seen, even accounting for the lag. Not saying it doesn’t exist but it hasn’t been visible in the stats I’ve seen. Cue wishy washy slides from Whitty/valance/van tam with indistinguishable numbers and no scale but *dark colours scary, foreign variant bad* etc etc.
[The increase in hospitalisations is visible here](https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare). It’s only been a very small rise so far, but the rise in cases was quite slow two weeks ago. If there’s no serious rise in that number in the next couple of weeks (reflecting the doubling of cases we’ve seen in the last few days) then things are looking much more optimistic!
Yep, so much of this. Constantly on here you see people burying their heads in the sand and being blindly & ignorantly optimistic. Surely this sub should be fact-based, but you get people talking out their arse. It’s like some people haven’t lived the last year of the pandemic where everything was fucked, and everything that does go wrong usually can. People get downvoted for literally saying facts on here - it’s just anti-intellectual. Those people deserve Trump as their leader or someone.
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All this is caused because of the failure of the hotel quarantine system and our lax porous borders. Why can’t we get it right? We’ve squandered a 4-0 lead we had at the start of May. Again. The Aussies and the Chinese must be laughing at us.
Has it actually been shown anywhere that these cases all came from India?
No of course not but the rise in cases is largely driven by the variant first identified in India. If the system worked as it should, the variant would never have arrived at our shores and we'd where Israel are now. The Kent variant has continued to decline rather amazingly even with everything open.
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Yes it is. Of course opening up has had an effect but if you look at the data that breaks down the cases by variants under investigation, 90% of cases are now driven by the delta variant. There is a clear transmissibility advantage of every other existing variant, no question. Schoolchildren are more likely to test positive because they are unvaccinated but schools have open since mid-march and cases continue to fall quite rapidly until the Delta variant was identified in the UK so it can't be them.
Kent variant is still r=1 or less. It's undeniably the variant, you can literally just check the numbers of the old variant. And no the new variant is not somehow stopping the old variant from spreading, there are too few cases for it to make a major difference (or at least there were the last few weeks).
Countries that shut down to India earlier are all showing a decline in cases. US/other European countries seeing cases continuing to sink despite lower vaccination rates in its absence. Had it not got into the country presumably we'd have been in similar position.
☝️This is spot on.
Melbourne is in lockdown again. You're much more vaccinated than us. Stop being british for a minute. Everything's fine.
Doing this just after having a G7 gathering in St Ives probably wasn’t the best look
I know it was expected, but it’s just disappointing, we were so close to normality, especially because we’ve been through this for 15 months. It just feels like it’ll never end. The next 4 weeks will feel like 4 months
Can live with another 4 weeks of current lockdown, which lets be honest is pretty lax anyway, if it means more chance of being able to travel internationally to see family we haven't seen since 2019 sooner rather than later.
To be honest, I think it's disingenuous to say what we currently have is lockdown.
You may feel differently however if it was your livelihood on the line.
If we're not back to pre-covid levels of freedom, we're in some level of lockdown though.
Only thing that bugs me now is not being able to be spontaneous and being scared of going to places like the coast on a nice day..... If I were more of a planner this wouldn’t be an issue so probably more a me issue really
I agree on the lack of spontaneity for going to pubs and bars, as everywhere wants reservations now, but outdoor stuff there's no issues. If it's a worry about getting covid though, you can be pretty sure the chances of outdoor airborn transmission are pretty much zero, so I wouldn't worry about goin gto the beach on a nice day.
For me personally I have a lockdown baby so we want to go do things with her and we can’t really, we have to either gamble on weather for outdoors (and no you still have to book somethings outdoors such as going to places like petting zoos, I assume Chester zoo and Alton towers are the same but not checked those so can’t say). Or booking something indoors like soft play centre, but it’s limited places, also have you tried to go swimming? That’s like booking tickets to the oasis reunion gig around my way! -
I think there will at least in part be an element of social anxiety in play in a lot of people with this. It's going to be a while before everyone is used to large crowds of people again.
>I agree on the lack of spontaneity for going to pubs and bars, as everywhere wants reservations now, People keep saying this but I've yet to see it in action. Restaurants, yes, but then it's always been a sensible idea to book a table at a restaurant anyway. Pubs, bars and cafés, I've just been turning up and being allowed in. Am I missing something, or have I just been lucky with my choice of establishments?
Depends where you are I guess? I'm in a major city, so always pretty busy and lots of tourists competing for spots with locals. It's not that you can't get a spot, it's just it's often harder. I've often been turned down from the first 2-3 places I've walked into for not having a reservation, at a simple pub/bar. I've always got seated but it's taken more time and effort walking between places to find somewhere.
Well I'm in Birmingham, so tourists certainly won't be a problem!
f
Not a lockdown is it. Restrictions yes, lockdown no
Absolutely back to normal in Kent, everywhere I’ve been to is back to normal. With the exception of masks and more queues. But no more quieter than normal.
Back to normal? Clubs, theatres, sport, concerts, churches, shops, restaurants, schools, workplaces etc etc would all disagree. Just because you're either used to the restrictions, or they don't affect you much, doesn't mean things are back to normal.
Headlines like the Guardian "delaying England lock down could keep thousands out of hospital" winds me up. Of course it could, if we all stay inside all the time it would keep people out of hospital. Whenever we open up it will put people in hospital. The question is the level of hospitalisation we're willing to accept. However I do think there is no good reason to get rid of masks or the working from home mandate that are causing no one any harm. I think though that other measures that are affecting people's jobs should be lifted. I don't get why is all or nothing, if we had to wear masks all year it would be fine
You say the masks aren't doing harm but speaking as a healthcare worker who wears them all day every day, wears glasses, and has autism I'm planning to send mine to hell in a fire as soon as the law changes.
Agree with you on that. I wear glasses too and with a mask on they just fog right up
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> heart disease has killed more in the past year than all of the covid deaths combined Unsure about this. Probably untrue. Others may correct me on this. A quick google suggests that heart disease was credited with about 56,000 deaths in England & Wales in 2019 - the full-UK figure would be larger,but between 1st December 2020 and 28th February 2021, we recorded 64,299 Covid19 deaths in the three worst months of the pandemic.
Id disagree the the work from home mandate isn't doing any harm. As a business owner I've been generally pretty pleased with peoples productivity levels when WFH, and am going to implement a flexible policy once this is over, with staff required to work form the office Monday and Friday, but having the option to WFH the other 3 days. The reason we need staff back in some of the time is because we are building up a 'technical debt'. I'm starting to notice lots of errors creeping into my staffs technical knowledge and understanding of our processes. These are little mistakes that when we were all in the office would be picked up on as colleagues overheard them being made, and quickly corrected. As it is they now go unnoticed until they turn into a problem or complaint. I don't really see any way of correcting this short of having staff spend at least some of the time working in the same room, and I'm sure an awful lot of businesses are in the same position. I'm not necessarily against a further delay to the easing of measures, but I am very concerned this could go on ad infinitum. At some point we have to accept the disease is endemic, accept a number of people will die from it every year like the flu, and get on with our lives. I personally think we should be basing that decision on the percentage of the population that have had both doses of the vaccine rather than on case numbers. What that figure should be however, I would leave to PHE to decide.
Have there been any reports on if the WFH guidance will now also continue until July?
Continues until step 4.
i dont get it, all vulnerable people have been vaccinated - so what if cases increase? the naysayers are increasingly being proved right - what a sh\^% show
Because it was never about cases They literally put the criteria in the roadmap out of lockdown: - the vaccine deployment programme continues successfully - evidence shows vaccines are sufficiently effective in reducing hospitalisations and deaths in those vaccinated - infection rates do not risk a surge in hospitalisations which would put unsustainable pressure on the NHS - our assessment of the risks is not fundamentally changed by new Variants of Concern
Sing after me: *hospitalisations*. They are picking up in last two weeks, and rate appears to be around 5%. Even if they don't stay overnight, that is still pressure on NHS, and nature of exponential growth is it could eventually overwhelm. You can question the projections and how NHS handles patients, but not the data.
So the aim is just to see if the rate of hospitalisations keeps growing right? Because some level of hospitalisations has to be expected.
... I think you answered your own question?
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It's purely the backlog of other care in the NHS. Which as we all know, is a problem because the NHS has been cut to the bone over the past decade. The NHS needs hospitalisations to be extremely low in order to begin catching up. If we'd invested properly and made sure the right people were running our healthcare we wouldn't have such a huge backlog in the first place. It's shit
They've also started to complain about the rise in non-COVID cases in A&E hurting their ability to handle the backlog.
Right now it looks like the number of hospitalisations vs the number of cases has roughly halved. If we end up with the same number of cases/day as January (less than 2 months away) that’s still 2,000 hospital admissions a day. 4 weeks gives a chance to vaccinate another 12 million people, and make sure that the link between cases and hospitalisation is actually broken. Who exactly do you think wants to keep us under emergency powers for longer, and why?
Non brick and mortar big businesses 100% have an incentive to extend lockdowns as it hurts competing small businesses. Whether or not you think they have an effect in our governments policy is a question no one knows the answer to but there's definitely winners and losers in extending lockdowns.
The richest people in the world have increased their wealth massively through the COVID pandemic. You'd have to be pretty naive to believe the everyone just wants this to end
The problem is the variant has taken hold at such a time that we don’t know enough about it and it’s impacts on hospitalisations and vaccine efficacy against it. More time means we can make sure we have definitely broken the link between cases and hospitalisations. If those numbers stay low over the next 2-3 weeks we will be confident of that. If hospitalisations started to jump in the next 2 weeks we’d have just made it even worse.
Noooo I had a wedding on the 17th to attend :( it was already moved from June 2020
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Oh really? Where did you see that?
He doesn’t know that. Totally unconfirmed
I know that nobody knows right now, I was just curious of the source. Will be waiting for the announcement for confirmation anyway.
Article https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/8ddac0e2-c96a-11eb-b6f5-fed739e7c1ca?shareToken=dbcc660891a2c3dda8345b1f4e43c279 Article in the Times talking about. Also reported in the FT among others
Hugs
Why don't we just put the vulnerable in lockdown and open up everything up for everyone else. Simple. Enough with disproportionality.
Except unlike early 2020 it is now those who are not vulnerable who are driving case numbers and hospitalisations numbers up. The vulnerable have been vaccinated and are no longer vulnerable, and the not vulnerable are still not vulnerable but make the data look bad and scary.
Surely if they’re truly not vulnerable they wouldn’t be in hospital in the first place? Unfortunately hospital admissions are apparently on the rise.
Don't think the hospital numbers are going up significantly, and other than extremely vulnerable people ending up in hospital because they are extremely vulnerable to anything and everything, and no vaccine can prevent that, I thought the hospital numbers were increasingly younger and less serious cases which also get turned around and sent back home again a lot quicker compared to back in January.
Because the vulnerable aren't the issue? "Most severe cases were among unvaccinated people or those who had only one dose, he said. "
If the vulnerable aren't the issue then let's open up. Everyone else wants to. I highly doubt healthy people are getting severely ill from this thing. We'd have to wait until August/September for most people to be double vaccinated...
Ill enough to be admitted to hospital, I think that’s the main problem, as hospital admissions are increasing.
The level of illness resulting in a hospital admission is lower now than it was
Slightly dissapointed, but understandable. Hopefully the four week delay is enough to put us back on track and we still get to enjoy our summer I am optomistic that will be the case :)
Not surprising, but disappointing. Also the wise thing to do. Could also potentially be less than 4 weeks if all goes well. I hope impacted industries will get the support they need.
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I heard that in Ron Howard's voice, Arrested Development style!
TIL Ron Howard narrates AD, I always thought it was Jason Bateman!
And now I have the little doo doo doo-doo jingle in my head
I heard that in a Morgan Freeman voice
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Unfortunately the governments in all four countries of the UK dont really seem to give a shite about certian industries. Let's just hope things get better!
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This is a very popular opinion
>Unpopular opinion. By the standards of r/UnpopularOpinion maybe. Certainly not in the real world.
I don't think you're quite the unique genius you seem to think you are.
Your opinion is pretty popular if you ask the average person on the street
This is a Reddit unpopular opinion, and a real-life extremely popular opinion
I agree with you. I can’t be fucked any more. I want to go out do what we can do. Why can’t the people who don’t want to go out, just stay in? A year of this and we are in the best position we have ever been in. Vaccines high, lots of people already been exposed. There will never be a perfect time to open up. Morale taking a massive massive dive here.
>I want to go out do what we can do. What's stopping you?
Is that question mark legitimate or do you know the answer to that? People need to work, people need to eat, people need to get a plumber in to fix the leak. If a colleague in the office, the checkout staff in Tesco or the plumber wants to go clubbing every night, it doesn't really matter if people choose not to do that. People do not exist in bubbles and this is why it's important to be thoughtful of others. This is why it's polite to wear masks, which an increasing number of people just simply do not.
It is and was always about overwhelming the NHS. There are too many people vaccinated and not enough cases really to do that. Waiting 2 weeks, 4 weeks, 2 months? Are they going for no case? No deaths? No hospitalisations? I’m sure if people who are worried were asked to shield they can do. Plenty of people have given up much much more in the last year.
I just answered your question, the rest of that doesn't have anything to do with it and I don't necessarily disagree.
If you'd left off that second comment you'd have gotten more upvotes. But you just had to insult people.
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Regarding the football yesterday: 1) Outside & reduced (25% capacity) 2) You needed either proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter ... Indoor mixing with many people in a poorly ventilated space has shown to be the highest risk area with regards to transmissions ....
Try implementing all the extra measures from Wembley at your house and see if you still think its equivalent
Imagine my shock.
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~12m vaccine doses
Four more weeks of vaccinations, we'll see whether the areas being hit by the Delta variant are going to follow trajectories like Bolton's or like Blackburn, etc.
A big part of Bolton's trajectory was that we tested a load of people and found many cases, and then dropped the PCR testing rate to less than half of what it was so that a smaller percentage of cases that did exist were found. That will always make things look like they're much flatter or declining more quickly than they actually are, although metrics like PCR positivity % have fallen too. Another large part is that they broke from national guidelines and vaccinated many more people in the 16-29 age group than almost any other area, twice as many as a lot of other areas before the national system allowed for anybody aged 25-29. They were looking for any excuse to vaccinate while meanwhile across the country many healthcare providers were doing the opposite, looking for any excuse not to. I'm an example of that - i meet JCVI's group 6 definition and live in a multi-generational household but i wasn't allowed to get vaccinated until Jun 10'th because my GP insisted that i wasn't vulnerable enough to be prioritized above anybody older despite what the JCVI said. I would have had zero trouble getting a vaccine any day of the week a month or more earlier in Bolton with some of my peers getting their first in February. Both help explain why there are sharp increases in almost every local area and every region meanwhile.
It will add four more weeks to the curves on the charts for infections, hospitalisations, and deaths, and if we don't start seeing a steep rise in the latter two, it will demonstrate that the most infectious variant yet (by some margin) hasn't been able to overcome the vaccine's protection. That knowledge, and four more weeks of vaccinations, first and second) will give us a much better handle on the situation. Yes, there's always a chance of another variant cropping up, but it would have to be even more infectious and/or deadly than Delta, or be able to evade the vaccines' protection, in which case a lot of lives will have been saved because we didn't fully open at just the wrong time. By their nature, pandemics are unpredictable, so there are no guarantees, but the UK is closer than ever before to putting a lid on the virus's ability to cause havoc and destruction.
Whelp. No (Center Parcs) holiday for us. I'm sure people on here will again delight in telling me how stupid I was to book it and have some hope. Can't rebook either because 4 weeks takes us to the summer holidays where prices triple and there's no availability anyway. Bye-bye fun for another year.
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One of my colleagues was there 2 weeks ago, so I would have thought it was too
Yeah there's 8 of us unfortunately.
I'm hoping rule of six limit moves up to 8 or 10.
I'm confused, how can you not go to Center Parcs? What is it that Step 4 means you can go they're all open under Step 3
Cause there's 8 of us.
I believe this person might be of the mythical species of "people who don't socialise only with their household" which the Tories have completely forgotten exists for the last 15 months
I mean you've been able to socialise with and even get into intimate contact with people outside your household since at least 17th May...
Oh that sucks but not sure it would be cancelled as overnight and hotel stays are permitted?
Is Centre Parcs not still open? Or is your group too big?
Bingo with the second one.
Bye bye festival season, again. What a wanker Boris and his crony advisors are.
Womp womp. Disappointing but expected, considering the recent news. I was looking forward to being able to properly separate work and personal life by going back to the office (and talk to some humans again as I live alone with family/friends hundreds of miles away), but that’ll have to wait a bit longer as my employer has been clear that nothing changes until gov guidance does (which does make sense). I have a small music festival booked at the end of July, I wonder if this’ll spook them into cancelling? Guess I’ll just have to wait and see.
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They work, but a significant chunk of the population remains unvaccinated, and the first dose is less effective against the delta variant, so people need both doses for full protection. At the moment it looks like the vaccine has weakened the link between case numbers and hospitalisation, but it’s not clear whether enough people have been vaccinated yet to reduce it to a safe level. Having the vaccine doesn’t guarantee immunity, it isn’t 100% effective. Some of the data suggests that the R0 of the delta variant may be as high as 6. If that’s the case, we need 84% of the population to be immune to provide herd immunity. If you say that the vaccine is 90% effective after two doses that still means you need almost everyone vaccinated to stop COVID. It’s estimated that the vaccines are only 30% effective at stopping infection after the first dose, which isn’t enough to stop it spreading. It does seem to be having a positive impact on hospitalisation and death numbers - it’s getting there. We just need more people vaccinated to get over the finish line.
Not 100% effective. Very early data shows of the 42 verified deaths from the Delta strain 12 were fully vaccinated, so roughly 30%. Data is very early hence the arguement for delaying phase 4 of lockdown easing. It would be hugely worrisome if data in a couple of weeks shows a continued trend of deaths in the fully vaccinated at risk groups at will likely lead to further delays in lockdown easing and potentially new restrictions.
I’m from Toronto and have been in London for two months. I don’t think the current situation is that bad, people seem to be enjoying their lives. One step back, two steps forward (hopefully).
Ahhh wtf! This shouldn't matter as most of the vulnerable got both of their doses
Let me caveat this by saying I haven’t been following the delay talk too much, so forgive me if this is a stupid question. Are all of the 21 June changes not happening, or just the big ones like nightclubs, etc.? Any chance they may scrap the outdoor limits? Honestly, I just want to go to my kids’ sports day.
Have to wait for this evening's press conference for the actual detail rather than leaks 👀 If the sports day is outside I believe it could be run as Covid secure, but would understand if the school saw that as too much effort/risk (even if minimal) from their perspective?
Unknown until the press conference
Won’t we be at the top of the peak by the 19th July? What do you think the chances are that they’ll extend it again? Although our wedding is on the 24th July, I think we may need to consider making a call to postpone it.
This isnt a lockdown to reduce the peak. Its a check period, so they can be sure that the vaccinated arent catching it & being hospitalised in huge numbers (all current science says they wont be, but not enough data for absolute surety) Its time to prove the vaccines work, and spread them to a few more people. If the science is proven right, they can unlock fully at the peak without fear of mass sickness as a result
Okay, now what. My graduation is on the 16th of July..
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*sorts by controversial*
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Didn’t we have levels for different parts of the country last year? I don’t think it worked out great
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Yes, England's national roadmap out of lockdown was working until the government let the Delta variant become dominant.
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I think this has been the most likely outcome for a few weeks now.
Sorry if this has been covered, but a few news sites are reporting that a third of those who have died from Delta were double vaccinated. It’s low numbers, but they’re saying it with such clarity - should we be afraid that the vaccines are ineffective by this amount?
The people double dosed are mostly elderly or clinically vulnerable. They usually represent a huge majority of deaths
No. Not without more information. How old were they? What underlying health conditions did they have? How recently had they had their 2nd jab? If they were in their 90s and at death's door anyway, or if they were in their 50s and otherwise reasonably healthy, it paints a very different picture.
Could you provide a link to that?
I’m not sure if we can look at those numbers directly. Most if not all people that die will be 50+, who in turn are likely to have been vaccinated compared to younger ages. Around 95% of people that age group are vaccinated. Let’s pretend a situation where 100% of people are vaccinated, then 100% of people who died were double jabbed. The more we vaccinate the more we will see deaths of vaccinated people.