SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

So if you work in a tier 3 are what happens now? I'm classed as non-essential retail currently and I'm furloughed. My area is expected to be placed into tier 3 and I have no idea what any of this actually means.

Retail in tier 3 will all be open.

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https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-winter-plan/covid-19-winter-plan-summary
 
Hi so why does it take that long. if its ready for a small amount of people in December as suggested, why isn't it ready for a larger amount of people in December. I'm guessing its because we don't have enough vaccine in the short term.

I'm not a scientist, so it's just m own opinion.

But I heard on the news there's only 4 million vaccines currently bought by the government, so if you think about how many NHS workers and older people there area in the country, that's not much.

And then there's the logistics of storage, getting people appointments to get the vaccine etc. They can't go ahead and do the majority of the country in a few weeks.
 
Retail in tier 3 will all be open.

Don’t think this is a bad idea really. Retailers have done well to make places covid secure, it’s better to spread the Xmas shopping over a longer period too and avoid the scenario where people travel to open shopping venues and they end up overran
 
I'm not a scientist, so it's just m own opinion.

But I heard on the news there's only 4 million vaccines currently bought by the government, so if you think about how many NHS workers and older people there area in the country, that's not much.

And then there's the logistics of storage, getting people appointments to get the vaccine etc. They can't go ahead and do the majority of the country in a few weeks.

the 5m is just for the moderna one. they've ordered 100m of the Oxford, 60m of the Psizer one, etc
 
Don’t think this is a bad idea really. Retailers have done well to make places covid secure, it’s better to spread the Xmas shopping over a longer period too and avoid the scenario where people travel to open shopping venues and they end up overran

Closing retail over Christmas would surely send a lot of these shops under, too.
 
Which makes me think, what the hell is the point of the tiers if everything is open regardless? Just a fancy name to make people think the government care.

There are a lot of people that prefer operating the principles of informed choice. So the tiering is a simple signal of the level of community transmission in the area which is the information part, while people are free to exercise choice armed with that knowledge. It's clearly very different to the previous implementation but it's not totally worthless if you buy into some foundational principles of what it means to be a free society.
 
Don’t think this is a bad idea really. Retailers have done well to make places covid secure, it’s better to spread the Xmas shopping over a longer period too and avoid the scenario where people travel to open shopping venues and they end up overran

How can it not be a bad idea to have retail and all personal care open in very high alert areas?

Put it this way under these guidelines what framework is there to reduce pressure on local hospitals that begin to struggle? It's idiotic not to have a worthwhile higher tier so i hope there's at least a tier 4.
 
How can it not be a bad idea to have retail and all personal care open in very high alert areas?

Put it this way under these guidelines what framework is there to reduce pressure on local hospitals that begin to struggle? It's idiotic not to have a worthwhile higher tier so i hope there's at least a tier 4.
Exactly, the tier system may as well not exist. You can't go to a football match but you can go to a shop in tier 3...
 
Exactly, the tier system may as well not exist. You can't go to a football match but you can go to a shop in tier 3...

Indeed if they wanted to make the criteria for entering the tiers less strict then okay but changing all the measures within tiers so they're little different doesn't make much sense.

I find Brwned's explanation above a very generous counter point.
 
How can it not be a bad idea to have retail and all personal care open in very high alert areas?

Put it this way under these guidelines what framework is there to reduce pressure on local hospitals that begin to struggle? It's idiotic not to have a worthwhile higher tier so i hope there's at least a tier 4.

For the reasons I’ve posted.

1. Retail is much safer than Pubs so the risk is somewhat negated.
2. People will get in their car and drive however many miles it takes to find a city with shops open. That will just create highly concentrated shopping hotspots.
3. If places come out of Tier 3 down to Tier 2, you’ll again just concentrate the footfall into something less manageable.


It’s basically game theory at this point, predicting public behaviour and limiting the damage.
 
How can it not be a bad idea to have retail and all personal care open in very high alert areas?

Put it this way under these guidelines what framework is there to reduce pressure on local hospitals that begin to struggle? It's idiotic not to have a worthwhile higher tier so i hope there's at least a tier 4.

tier 4 would be another lockdown
 

Not really. No one who took the vaccine died of Covid 19. The trial varied doses and discovered that using a half dose then a full dose gave 90% of people protection. They will make 2 billion doses next year and you don't have to store it at extremely low temperatures.

It is in fact brilliant news probably the best we have had in the last 10 months. If please, please, please it holds up to scrutiny of the regulating body.
 
The police mainly.

And we haven't been locked down in NSW for ages although we do have restrictions. For example, our local makes you login to an online register, takes your temperature before you enter, Half the tables are removed and you can't stand at the bar. They put a laminate notice on your table that you turn face down when you arrive and they turn face up again after you have left and the table has been disinfected. Stay for the evening and you will see at least 2 visits by the cops.

In Victoria they were handing fines out like confetti and arrested almost everyone at a small anti-lockdown protest. One man who escaped from a quarantine hotel was given a prison sentence. So we are taking enforcement quite seriously. International and domestic border lockdowns have been a major weapon in that you can almost stop new cases being imported (and where they occur they are already in quarantine) and once you have eliminated within a state you can then keep it that way most of the time and work on getting the other states to zero as well. At the beginning of the Victoria outbreak they had over 700 cases in a day, more or less the same as the UK. They have now not had a case for 21 days. Heroic effort from the people of Victoria imo.
I like this form of policing, our police spend most of the time in mcdonalds
 
Not really. No one who took the vaccine died of Covid 19.

This is something I haven’t considered. Anyone know how possible/likely it is that while the vaccine might not build a big enough immune response to hold the virus back completely, it could produce enough of a response to kick start the fight when it does take hold.
 
Not really. No one who took the vaccine died of Covid 19. The trial varied doses and discovered that using a half dose then a full dose gave 90% of people protection. They will make 2 billion doses next year and you don't have to store it at extremely low temperatures.

It is in fact brilliant news probably the best we have had in the last 10 months. If please, please, please it holds up to scrutiny of the regulating body.
They should have led with the 90% number, right?
Overall it looks a whole lot better than it did a few weeks ago. Hopefully approval will be soon and vaccinations can begin right away.
 
This is something I haven’t considered. Anyone know how possible/likely it is that while the vaccine might not build a big enough immune response to hold the virus back completely, it could produce enough of a response to kick start the fight when it does take hold.

These are the early results but if I remember correctly no one on the vaccine (12500 people) was hospitalized even if they did catch Covid. It would be a huge bonus if it holds true and the numbers are suggesting it will but there is still so much we don't understand about the disease.

If you take the vaccine and then don't die of covid even if you catch it, that might be this pandemic sorted in terms of the economic and social destruction. Tantalizingly close but too early for the cigar.
 
Feck, my mum (healthcare emergency worker at A&E) was treating a women on Friday who was displaying symptoms such as dizziness, weakness, vomiting that you can hardly identify with Covid (no temperature, shortness of breath, body aches, coughing). Today she got a call from contact tracing center telling her that patient had Covid and she now has to self-isolate. It's annoying as it was her last shit after she finally decided to call it a day. Now I'm really worried for her developing any symptoms as she obviously in her 50s and has asthma/hypertension and in general is prone to not having it easy once she caches a bug/flu. She's obviously brushing it off but it's very stressful right now for me given how awful/deadly this thing can be. With these vaccines around the corner as well...
 
Feck, my mum (healthcare emergency worker at A&E) was treating a women on Friday who was displaying symptoms such as dizziness, weakness, vomiting that you can hardly identify with Covid (no temperature, shortness of breath, body aches, coughing). Today she got a call from contact tracing center telling her that patient had Covid and she now has to self-isolate. It's annoying as it was her last shit after she finally decided to call it a day. Now I'm really worried for her developing any symptoms as she obviously in her 50s and has asthma/hypertension and in general is prone to not having it easy once she caches a bug/flu. She's obviously brushing it off but it's very stressful right now for me given how awful/deadly this thing can be. With these vaccines around the corner as well...
Hope your mum gets well soon.
 
Has he just given up with any restrictions?!

Are the cases even dropping sufficient enough to stop lockdown? It hasn't felt like lockdown here the roads have been as awful as ever
 
Not really. No one who took the vaccine died of Covid 19. The trial varied doses and discovered that using a half dose then a full dose gave 90% of people protection. They will make 2 billion doses next year and you don't have to store it at extremely low temperatures.

It is in fact brilliant news probably the best we have had in the last 10 months. If please, please, please it holds up to scrutiny of the regulating body.
After taking a few hours to read up, it seems you are right. But vast majority wont have the inclination to do so and many also wont understand complex statistical data.

They made a huge cock up in communicating these results to a level that disinterested anti vaxxers would understand; that should have been the headline, with all the more nuanced stuff in the report. Massive own goal messing up some brilliant passionate and groundbreaking science.
 
Has he just given up with any restrictions?!

Are the cases even dropping sufficient enough to stop lockdown? It hasn't felt like lockdown here the roads have been as awful as ever
Just got back from our Tesco Superstore: Was jam packed at 4pm on a Monday!
 
Just got back from our Tesco Superstore: Was jam packed at 4pm on a Monday!

Exactly, maybe its full of those that would have been horrified Christmas was potentially cancelled. The pressure that was being put on to allow Christmas didn't help i don't think, I thought they had the support bubble rule so its not like they were making people spend it alone.

I'd have accepted not seeing my family over Xmas if it was a rule as I'd rather They didn't catch Covid...

Was not impressed as my partners went round his parents last week even though they aren't alone... his family seem to think they're immune to the virus his brother has been Bragging how he hasn't been wearing a mask and would lie and say he was exempt if asked. I hate wearing the things but I wear them because there's a reason for it...
 
They made a huge cock up in communicating these results to a level that disinterested anti vaxxers would understand; that should have been the headline, with all the more nuanced stuff in the report. Massive own goal messing up some brilliant passionate and groundbreaking science.

I don't know how else they could have communicated it, but as a broad brush headline the BBC reported it as:


I don't know how else it could be interpreted? Unless 70% from the first dose (which is higher than some flu jabs) is considered a failure?
 
A friend of mine is supposed to start uni in Melbourne in March. Do you reckon Australia will open their international borders by then?

Hard to know. Quarantine hotel capacity is very limited but we will also want to let International students back ASAP as the Uni sector has been hit hard by the loss of income.
 
Yeah right, have you ever been Christmas shopping :lol:

Being outdoors and socially distanced is safer than being inside a shop

Mixing with different people less than 15 minutes, compared to 90 minutes next to someone? Come on, dwell time has been discussed a number of times (as early back as the start of the pandemic) in this thread.

With all the measures that retail have put in place (Coverings/Distancing/Numbers in store), the data on case rates would tend to back this up. The issue has always been household mixing. However every time there's an announcement the same comments of "Why can I do X, when I can't do Y" get rolled out.
 
Mixing with different people less than 15 minutes, compared to 90 minutes next to someone? Come on, dwell time has been discussed a number of times (as early back as the start of the pandemic) in this thread.

With all the measures that retail have put in place (Coverings/Distancing/Numbers in store), the data on case rates would tend to back this up. The issue has always been household mixing. However every time there's an announcement the same comments of "Why can I do X, when I can't do Y" get rolled out.
You won’t be directly sat next to anybody in a stadium. It will be distanced. So you’re not sitting next to random people for 90 minutes are you.
 
You won’t be directly sat next to anybody in a stadium. It will be distanced. So you’re not sitting next to random people for 90 minutes are you.

The Northern Ireland vs Slovakia game wasn't exactly a shining example of this.
 
I don't know how else they could have communicated it, but as a broad brush headline the BBC reported it as:

I don't know how else it could be interpreted? Unless 70% from the first dose (which is higher than some flu jabs) is considered a failure?
The whole world heard 95% and 90% in last 2 weeks. Whatever the dosage nuances are, that's the benchmark most are remembering.
 
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