This is all good news, right? The light at the end of the tunnel is getting bigger I think. I know there are those pesky variants, but so far it seems that even if they may be easier to transmit the vaccines can handle them until this point.
Above was based on UK figures, we are seeing similar in Canada despite the vaccination roll out being much slower (will ramp up considerably in Q2). Also it seems one dose of the Pfizer vaccine is 90% effective after 3 weeks, this could mean that the vaccination process can be accelerated and we will get control much quicker.
Wonder if there could be some hope for travel, concerts, crowds at sporting events late summer timeframe.
For those visiting from the future, I am talking about the Covid-19 virus that caused a pandemic 2020-2021 (2022?)
I’m not sure we’ll be looking back on this lot and laughing.
There’s plenty of reason to be optimistic now, yes. We’re looking at a sort of slow-motion apocalypse with a) unemployment and b) children being out of school for a year, but…fewer people need fear the reaper and can stick around for more cowbell.
And yes, here comes the sun.
I’m not laughing
I was referring, somewhat self indulgently, to my habit of waking up long-dead threads in the middle of the night for a smug giggle.
Ah, ok
For children being out of school for a year look at the teachers unions. Every time the govt tries to get kids back in the classroom they put a roadblock in the way.
Shameful if you ask me but as they say ooaa
Get back to work, you half-educated skiving teacher person! Stop complaining about being surrounded by thirty little Covid-Carriers and don’t even think about jumping the queue for your jab. Shameful, that’s what it is.
ps my son is a teacher. Caught Covid (no “proof” of course he got it at school but I know for a fact that he was ultra-careful re social distancing etc) and three months later he’s still nowhere near back to normal. Yes, the latest scientific evidence seems to show little evidence of schools spreading Covid but to suggest that for some ideological reason or other Teachers’ Unions are putting up barriers is frankly insulting to an already battered profession.
Actually whilst there is evidence that young schoolkids are less infective and affected by COVID, there is also plenty of evidence that schools act as efficient vectors for community spread.
People do insist that schools only have children in them.
Are they teaching each other? Cooking the dinners? Doing the admin? Cleaning the toilets?
In this narrative none of these children have families either, but just live with people their own age, like in Lord of the Flies.
To be fair, the government ministers making policy only see their kids when it’s absolutely necessary, so they have little to no knowledge of what the little bastards get up to, or how they even manage to survive.
To be accurate, the minister in charge of education is spectacularly stupid, even by the standard of this government of none of the talents. Yes, Gavin ‘thick as mince’ Williamson, for it is he. His bloody tarantula has more idea than he does.
The is exactly what the teachers in this country are doing.
As soon as news broke that Bojo would be announcing a relaxing of some restrictions the teachers Union were there saying schools are not ready to re-open on 8th March. Their argument is an ideological one not based on any knowledge of what measures are being put in place to make schools safe.
My daughter is in last year of university in London – the last year of her course has been blended teaching. Effectively one half day in University every week if she is lucky. For this ‘benefit’ of no one to one teaching her University fees increased. Pardon me if I think the education system in this country is fucked along with the Unions who are supposed to be forging its future.
Steve how do you know that teachers and lecturers are ideological and “not based on any knowledge of what measures are being put in place to make schools safe”? Fees are something previous governments brought in and not the Universities themselves. Most lecturers are not happy with that system.
@BigJimBob I didnt say teachers and lecturers were idealogical I said their Unions were. I think that is glaringly obvious and doesn’t need clarification.
The argument re Universities seems like piffle to me – if students are safe to go in one half day how do we know which day they are safe to go in and which days they are a danger to the lecturers?
Ref the fees I am sure the lecturers are not happy with that system. I am not happy that my daughter has to pay increased fees for a greatly reduced teaching experience either. No doubt they still get their full wages for being there a fraction of their normal time.
@SteveT Seriously, I do think you are being overly judgemental to say Unions are some sort of enemy within here. I genuinely don’t know why it is glaringly obvious they are closing schools for ideological reasons. Schools and Universities were closed due to government decisions not unions. As to your suggestion on lecturers that; “No doubt they still get their full wages for being there a fraction of their normal time.” this is totally incorrect. All teaching is online. This takes way more time than conventional lectures to prepare. On top of that research and research supervision is still ongoing. Most academics I know are currently working upward of 75 hours a week, a number of them are coping with serious stress related medical issues. I too have kids at Uni and I am paying rent for rooms they don’t currently use. I don’t like it anymore than you, but to blame this on academic and teaching unions is frankly inaccurate, unnecessary, and insulting of people breaking their balls to deliver quality in very trying circumstances.
Jesus F**k Steve T
I assume that your curt response means you don’t agree with me. Fair do’s. You don’t live in this country – over the weekend news leaked of the lockdown restrictions that will be announced tonight. One of them is the widely leaked proposal that schools will reopen on 8th March. Almost immediately the teachers Union said that schools would not be ready.
Sorry If you find my comments baffling but how can they make that assertion when they don’t know how the schools are going to reopen, what steps are in place etc etc. It is a knee jerk response once again and schools have had enough time to ensure adequate steps are in place to protect Children and staff to the best of their ability.
The commercial World has had to make changes – is this beyond 5the capability of schools? I know it isn’t because some schools have been very proactive in their desire to teach their kids and have taken the necessary steps.
I think you’ll find that teaching Unions comprise mostly of er…. teachers.
Steve the Unions have not objected to opening per se. They have merely said that this should be a staggered process. So have most scientific experts. And, according to rumours in yesterday’s media, that is what Chris Whitty was recommending and he has been ignored. There are difficulties. Schools have taken steps, but putting 25-40 kids into a single poorly ventilated room with 1-3 adults is problematic. If we go to proper social distancing then there isn’t going to be enough staff. A compromise is being made.
You accuse others of a knee-jerk response, but please look at your post. I am desperately trying not to be confrontational here. I want us to return to some sort of normality as soon as possible, but if things are handled wrongly we will end up in another lockdown and a working vaccine will not be the simple and permanent Get out of Jail card we all hope for.
You mistyped “government not putting any kind of credible plan for getting anyone back in class safely.”
I’m glad I was able to help.
@SteveT
I suggest you have bugger all appreciation of the level of biological exposure to which teachers are subjected on a daily basis, particularly in a primary school setting.
Otherwise I can’t understand why you think it shameful that my wife has no desire to return to the classroom under the circumstances and with the complete lack of PPE on offer.
Apologies @Vulpes-Vulpes – I had mistakenly thought that teachers had been vaccinated as priority workers. Can’t believe that they haven’t been to be honest.
Also can’t believe that schools have no PPE – there are schools here in WM that have remained open and are operating with PPE.
That doesn’t detract from my belief that the Teachers Unions are trouble makers finding any chance they can for conflict.
This isn’t a slight on your wife or any other teacher but those Unions representing them. We have a moral responsibility to ensure our children are adequately educated we also have a duty to ensure our kids match the abilities of children in other countries to ensure we have a future population that can compete internationally.
Whichever way you look at it children education should be a top priority – sometimes I get the impression the Teachers Unions do not share that view.
You keep saying all this without producing a single piece of evidence.
“ On this evening’s PM on radio 4, John Edmunds – who is on SAGE – said “over the autumn the most important route of infections into the home was schoolchildren”.
Oh.
John Edmunds is on the lock down forever scale at the top. He’s the scientist equivalent of Laurence Fox. He’s a classic example of someone mired in their brief to the extent that preventing any Covid death at all cost is the objective. Never mind if you destroy a lot of other stuff in the process…
Can you produce any evidence to show that he is wrong? Because thus far, all you have produced is hot air.
Well the herd immunity point is a good start. And now as he realises he’s wrong he’s gone uber cautious. He predicted the Bristol variant would be a huge problem amongst other things you are free to google if you have a mind open enough to do so
You are ducking the question.
Is he wrong on the schoolkids and the autumn?
John Edmunds was actually accused of being a “herd immunity” advocate early in the pandemic. The poor guy seems to be getting it from both sides.
@Sitheref2409 Oh and Sage has also said that the risk of infection in and from Children is extremely low. We can all use quotations for our own arguments. Everyone including the scientists has a different interpretation of the data. I will refrain from making further comment as I have no kids of school age and it has no bearing on me whatsoever. Kids have had the best part of a years education taken from them and are on target to have at least half of another years education taken from them. It is a problem for them and it is a problem for the country. Perhaps I am wrong to care about the future of the country I live in. Pardon me for caring.
An open access paper in The Lancet that summarizes the data up until Dec 2020. It concludes; “In summary, Ismail and colleagues’ study supports the notion that opening of schools despite SARS-CoV-2 circulation in the community is largely safe for children, but secondary schools in particular might nevertheless play a considerable role in transmission between households.”
Read it here:
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30927-0/fulltext
A viewpoint in JAMA reaches related conclusions:
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775875
This is not to say we should not open school. Just that it must be handled in a carefully considered way.
Just to muddle things even more, here’s another SAGE opinion, perhaps best summed up as “we don’t really know.”
But look at the graph and see what happens to infections in the 10-19 age group after schools and universities opened in early September.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/56102610
I have massive sympathy for the teachers situation and all teachers should be vaccinated by now. Their risk is low especially the primary age mind you.
But the teaching unions are quite offensively bad. They are just working on their anti government agenda, they don’t care about the damage to education
@Thegp – apparently the teachers unions are not bad according to everyone else on here.
Unions exist to serve the interests of their members. They’re doing so. You might think that the interests of their members should be secondary to other interests, but you can’t expect them to agree with that.
Kids aren’t the only people in a school and it shouldn’t be terribly surprising that telling an underpaid, understaffed, overworked public sector workforce that their health and safety doesn’t rate that highly in the grand scheme of things goes down badly with that workforce’s unions. I’m not sure I want to be the bloke working safely from home while saying “stop moaning and put yourself, unvaccinated, in a room full of 30 little germ factories for 8 hours a day” to tens of thousands of other people, but maybe that’s just me.
Kids might not be at risk, but as someone said above, it seems that schools are a significant vector of community transmission, and it doesn’t seem at all unreasonable to be exceedingly careful about reopening them.
Our little community transport charity run school mini buses on behalf of the local authority for a special needs school. We have done all we can thanks to some significant fund raising. Perspex screens and ambulance standard air filters now fitted in every bus. Drivers and assistants are all supplied PPE, guidance and support. We had several incidents before Christmas of positive testing for children on our buses teachers and siblings of those on our buses. Thankfully all our staff escaped infection. We are currently running a reduced service for vulnerable children or those who’s parents are key workers. My point? At school anythingresembling PPE social distancing, sanitisation or rules were forgotten or ignored almost immediately back in September. Teachers and assistants were telling our staff how scared they were and some were just unable or unwilling to work in those conditions. The responsibility to keep schools safe lies with everyone in the system from Williamson to parents. Infections will increase after March 8th. Hopefully the vaccines will mean hospitalisations and deaths don’t follow.
Right. My kids’ school, which has about 1200 kids in it, was somehow expected to keep the kids in “year group bubbles” in buildings which are already too small even without such measures. Teachers weren’t given any PPE and social distancing was completely moot in a classroom situation, even with all the kids confined to their seats. When the dreaded bug came to our house – and I can only assume the “it’s just a bad cold” brigade haven’t had it, lucky them – it was definitely brought back by one of our teenagers. None of us knew we had it until probably a week after infection. I dread to think how many people I gave it to in the supermarket or at the post office before the symptoms made us get tests. The kids were fine (a bit under the weather). I bloody wasn’t, and I’m a keen runner in excellent health with very little excess weight. 10 days of total feverish aching misery, thank god minus any severe breathing difficulties. I felt dreadful for weeks after the initial illness. I don’t know about this “long covid” business, but this is a virus that even someone in decent nick needed about a month and a half to convalesce from. I still haven’t got my full sense of taste and smell back, months down the line. It’s NASTY nasty.
And I caught it from a kid, who caught it in school. The point isn’t the kids. It’s who the kids give it to.
Still, hopefully the vaccines mean that serious illness from community transmission will be massively cut, but I don’t blame the teaching unions for wanting that to be crystal clear before all the kids descend again.
I hope you’re ok now…We were carrying kids from different year bubbles on the same bus. 3 siblings from one family. Different years , same bus. No joined up thinking at all…
@Dave-amitri much better now thank you!
I heard today that kids are only 25% likely to show symptoms, but equally only 25% likely to transmit it, it is age dependent of course, but this is lower than other transmittable illnesses, diseases like flu or measles.
I think the way the government has managed the crisis regards schools and teachers is a disgrace, as I know first hand from having school children age and teacher friends.
The first reaction of all the teachers I know is how to get back to teaching pupils. The unions first reaction is not. They are protecting their members at all costs which indeed is their job.
Again, the Unions are not stopping teachers teaching. Point of fact: teachers have been teaching throughout the lockdown, as the definition of “key-workers” in Lockdown 3 includes a significant percentage of the population. The Unions are merely saying this should be a phased re-opening; as are virtually all the medical experts.
True. This is anecdotal, but I went past the nearest primary school on my lunchtime walk yesterday. Of course I wasn’t going to hang around outside a school counting children, but there were certainly many dozens at least enjoy their dinner break.
I work in a school. We are and always have been since the is started about a third full. The idea of social distancing is a laugh.
It is great news that it does look like some control and management is happening. Certainly heading in the right direction, but personally I’m being over-cautious about this and effectively writing off this summer.
All it needs are a few meat-heads to believe having the vaccine renders them immune and transmission free, a couple of big parties and overstuffed Wetherspoons, and then watch as the graph creeps up again
(yes, I am cynical. But bloody worried that headlines like the above will be seen as “Let’s get back to the party” by some factions of society)
Vaccine may make people unable to transmit it, this is unclear I believe. People with symptoms are certainly more likely to spread it because of sneezing, coughing, moist talking etc. I would expect there to be things like “super spreader” events but they will be much less effective as time goes on. And if people are getting less sick because of it then it is less important.
@dai my understanding in UK is that we will still be required to wear face masks for some time after the restrictions are lifted which I think most people will be okay with as it has become the norm.
I also saw a report that it is likely in future that people will be more likely to stay at home with a common cold now than they would ever have been before. It remains to be seen whether this is a short lived effect or a long term change to working pratices.
I take a similar view. I am slightly risk-averse to start with, and now immunosuppressed. So the prospect of mixing with the great unwashed slightly scares me.
Roughly speaking we are – I think – vaccinating 1.5M each week. 15M done by last weekend. Say of the ~65M in the UK, 5M don’t want to/can’t have the vaccine. That means it will take 40 weeks to give everyone their first dose. But the first lot will need their second dose after 12 weeks, so it will take 52 weeks to give everyone two doses. Yes, 52 weeks is one whole year.
Ironically, I get a bonus for 10 years of service – 2 extra weeks summer holiday for that once-in-a-lifetime trip. Bugger.
I’m one of the 1.7M extra who this week were upgraded from Moderate Risk to High Risk and so now officially in Shielding. In practice it will make no difference as I already WFH and have two grumpy teens who keep their distance.
On a slightly more uplifting note: my first jab is due next Friday. Top of a very short list of reasons to be cheerful for having a lifelong chronic auto-immune disease. I get to use disabled loos as well. Um, that’s about it.
Under 16s won’t have the vaccine (yet) so that is probably 10 million less. And as the link states above, one dose may be enough to reduce risk quite considerably. Also it spreads much less in the summer so I am hoping by late summer we have a perfect storm of low transmission and all risk groups vaccinated. It is not going to go away, but may be as risky as, say, flu by then.
Good you are getting vaccinated, no sign of that happening to this fellow sufferer, but Humira is thought to possibly help to fight it if I were to get it.
Can’t you postpone your extra vacation to next year? I carried over a lot from last year and will likely be doing that again.
The plan was to go to visit my best man (in Oz) in early summer as one offspring would be done with A-levels, the other done with GCSEs and we’d have free digs in Sydney. A big family holiday away to make up for all the times I’ve been too ill to go further than Suffolk.
As it happens, my best man might be over here for his (postponed from last summer) 50th – now 51st – birthday party and the kids will both be at school/college until the end of term (or even later).
We’ll just have to wait another two years until the youngest has sat his A-levels and eldest is on short university terms. But my bonus 2 weeks will have expired by then. I might spend it rewiring my garage.
Really, though, we’re all healthy and solvent, so I have nothing to complain about. Plenty have it a lot worse.
Thats interesting. Are people in OZ allowed to fly anywhere other than New Zealand now? My nephew lives in Melbourne and was hoping to come home this summer – he could be best man for a mates weeding but was lead to believe international flights banned for a year or has that changed now?
I don’t know, but his tickets for last June were rebooked last May for this June. He might well have to stump up £5250 for his family of three and spend half of their time in the UK in quarantine.
So I read this weekend that everyone who wants to be vaccinated in the UK will be done by July 31st @fentonsteve, that is actually bloody amazing if it transpires. Looks like Canada will be more like your prediction.
“Offered a vaccine by July 31st”, Dai, not “vaccinated by”.
That means “we’ll send you a text message, telling you can book a jab, by 31st July”. What it doesn’t say is “and then you can repeatedly log on to a website which crashes before you get your booking confirmation”.
The top 4 groups (~17M) currently given their first dose in a little over 2 months are, apparently, a third of the adult population. I don’t know how many are in groups 5 (over 65s) to 9 (over-50s) – due to be offered by Easter – or group 10 (evey other adult below 50).
I really hope they can accelarate the vaccination project, but “offer” strikes me as a bit of wriggle-room.
Anyhow, they seem to be doing something right (probably because it is being run by the NHS, not by Downing St/Whitehall).
I don’t think cynicism over the vaccine programme is remotely warranted. It’s been a stunning achievement, and continues to be.
Yep
It’s certainly going to get interesting politically if the number of deaths and the economic damage in EU countries creep past the UK’s over the next few months.
Hard to overstate how irresponsible Macron et al were over the AZ vaccine, all thanks to some idiot German journalist misrepresenting the data – probably accidentally but that’s no excuse. And now French people, Germans and Italians are apparently hard to persuade to get jabbed. It’s almost like playing politics with something as vital as vaccine confidence has real world consequences. If someone like Trump had behaved identically to Macron et al over this, he’d have been rightly pilloried. But because it’s “liberal” politicians, they get a pass for the same behaviour.
I think the Venn diagram of ‘Macron’ and ‘liberals’ is pretty much two separate sets, with only a teensy smidgen of asymptotic adjacency perhaps.
Fair. He still gets a pass from lots of “progressive” Brits, though.
Is he a liberal? I thought his ideology was, in its entirety, “I’m not those other guys”.
Again, fair.
As I understand it the AZ vaccine is still waiting for approval in the US and SA. Many countries outside Europe are also not using the AZ vaccine on the over 60s.
There’s been almost no reporting in the UK press on the AZ contract kerfuffle, but CNN have been following it and I think there’s a lot more to come out about that.
I don’t disagree, and booking my vaccine appointment went fine. But there’s a few weeks difference between “offered an appointment” and “given a fisrt dose of vaccine”.
I’m an avid listener to More Or Less and have seen (heard) the difference between Govt news and reality and it is a point they raised – simply send all the invites out on July 31st, regardless of how many are left. Also: a pair of gloves = 2 PPE kits, test sent out in post counted as tested, nose & throat swabs counted as two tests, etc.
I remain slightly scepitcal (and very pleased I’m getting my jab on Friday).
My vaccine offer came by email from my GP surgery and was for the following week. A link in the email was to the surgery’s own website with a choice of a few time slots on the offered day. No problems whatsoever. I’m now successfully first-jabbed, with an appointment for the second dose in May.
Agreed. Apart from Israel – with a smaller population – the UK is doing the best for the first jab stats. Hopefully, the second will get done asap. I was a bit worried about the UK being used as a major trial on this issue, but looking at the latest data it does look like it is paying off. My one worry is the possibility that a combination of partial immunity and high community infections provide the conditions for vaccine escape variants.
Skepticism over the Gov’t claims relating to what they will be delivering and appreciation of what the NHS are now achieving are not mutually exclusive.
My point exactly, F8. Vaccine development, procurement, vaccination roll-out: very good, well done.
Timely lockdowns, Christmas, quarantine hotels, track and trace: er, not so much.
Today’s accouncements imply lessons appear to have been learned, finally. I forgot who said “The doors have been swinging in the breeze for months and the horse has already been turned to glue”.
This states first dose by 31st July.
https://www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2021/02/21/969920948/u-k-moves-to-speed-up-vaccinations-with-goal-of-1st-dose-for-all-adults-by-july-
Also well before then deaths should be almost zero.
“The new target also calls for everyone over 50 or with an underlying health condition to get a vaccine shot by April 15”
Regarding your immune system, my doctor informed me that it may be easier to catch the virus, but complications set in when your immune system over reacts when fighting it. Meaning a somewhat weakened immune system may mean less severe cases. Obviously this doesn’t apply to those who are severely comprimised by chemotherapy and suchlike, already fighting much more serious illness.
Both Sky and the BBC report it as an offer to all adults by the end of July
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-56144834
https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-all-adults-to-be-offered-vaccine-by-31-july-under-pms-accelerated-plan-as-ministers-meet-to-finalise-roadmap-out-of-lockdown-12224309
Whatever, it is still impressive and means the “end of the year” statement was extremely pessimistic. Also all over 50s and vulnerable people by Easter? This means serious illness will be just about gone by then assuming no new variants arise that are not covered by existing vaccines.
The equivalent date in Canada for over 50s is closer to September btw, so the UK is doing a very good job indeed. Not always the case but credit where credit is due.
“The new target also calls for everyone over 50 or with an underlying health condition to get a vaccine shot by April 15”
It’s “offered a booking by March 31st” over here, and each group (of 5 years) takes two or three weeks to jab, so that ties up.
Group 6 (unhealthy 16-64) is 7.8M people so would have taken 5 weeks, at the previous rate of 1.5M per week, from mid-Feb. So there has to be a scaling up of jabbing capacity to meet the target.
As I say, I don’t know how many are in the otherwise healthy under 50s, but I’m guessing a lot.
I would assume that as long as there are sufficient vaccines available then rates will increase. As hospitalizations go down then more medical staff and locations will become available to concentrate on vaccinations I would expect.
Problem in Canada where hospitalizations are still relatively low is getting hold of enough vaccine supplies. We currently have no vaccine manufacturing capability.
“Offered” is used because some people refuse. Initially, the centre thought 75% would be a decent uptake but, so far, it’s in the high nineties. However, as we go down the age ranges, the more people are refusing. Women of child-bearing age are proving to be a bit of a problem, for example, and I’m sure you are aware of certain BAME groups having their doubts.
As far as appointments are concerned, sites only have their supply confirmed a week in advance and Pfizer has to all be used within three and a bit days. Now more working age people are qualifying for the vaccine, the short notice is also giving some people an issue. Fortunately, many sites are open at weekends.
The largest group, by at least five-fold, is the current one, group six, as it includes younger people with underlying conditions, including all diabetics and those with a BMI of more than 40.
The rate of vaccination is likely to change as soon as the second doses start in April. The teams doing it will have to work twice as hard to keep up with the target of first doses.
It’s going to be a long year.
A friend of mine started work at a health authority yesterday, a new admin job needed to help with the vaccination roll out, so they are recruiting extra people to help. She had previously not worked in the health service.
I believe it was that the vaccine was ordered at the right time and in accordance with the manufacturers preferred conditions that meant that the UK got a good supply early on whereas the EU made demands (Pfizer to be liable for any serious side effects) and stalled on approval which meant less stock getting through, and that’s made the difference more than the NHS being involved, although many would prefer that narrative. The infrastructure is in place here in Sweden but deliveries have been held up.
Yep. Hancock, rather unfortunately for anyone who wants to view everything through the lens of party politics, appears to have played a blinder with regard to early investment in vaccine r&d. His own civil servants were on background in the press as late as October / November mocking his focus on vaccines and belief that they’d come sooner rather than later.
Agree with DF and HP above.
Given that a lot of folk would be eviscerating the govt if Hancock’s early spread buying of vaccines policy backfired, it seems a bit churlish to moan because they got lucky.
Mrs A and me were vaccinated this week which is great but I certainly won’t be changing my behaviour in the slightest until the second dose, even if there ARE some relaxations in the current rules.
After stuffing this up so well to date, the Govt FINALLY appears to be taking a more cautious approach to what happens and when, but there’s too much history of fuck-ups for me to trust that they won’t revert to type and move too quickly.
I work in a business that supports the hospitality industry so getting pubs and restaurants open again is essential to my work but I’d rather see financial support continue for longer and be sure (or at least as sure as anyone can be) that reopening won’t help lead us back into higher numbers infected, hospitalised etc. From the inside, I can tell you that most pubs are resigned to being closed for some time yet and will grin and bear it as long as the grants and the furlough support payments continue. They also expect a big positive rebound whenever they can re-open fully, although the worst case is being told they can re-open with limited numbers. Unless your business is predominantly food-led you have no chance of turning a profit without normal footfall.
What evidence there is about being vaccinated does seem very positive but like Rigid, we are pretty much writing off the next 4 to 6 months as “more of the same” just in case.
Looks like my 1st Jab will be at the start of April (just 7 million in the queue in front of me!) but I think 4 to 6 months is a reasoably optimistic view and one I share. While I’m not actually making any plans to go anywhere I’m expecting the situation to be a lot better than it was last summer so would like to think there’s an outside chance of some gigs I’ll feel comfortable going to from July. I’m not expecting either of the tickets I have for (rearranged) May gigs to be happening…. mind you we’re about a month from the anniversary of the start of the first lockdown and at that stage I was expecting to go to summer gigs last year!
Given the thousands who died after people went doolally the last time governments lifted restrictions too early think any talk of gigs by summer’s end is fanciful at best.
While I loathe lockdowns and the harm they cause as much as everyone else, think we all need to remember the doctors, nurses who’ve been working flat out since last March and need rather than want an end to this misery far more than the rest of us.
Well said sir
Don’t think anyone is forgetting them. And the main purpose of lockdowns is not to overwhelm the health service. As cases go down and vaccinations increase things will gradually improve for everybody in the health profession.
I am not as optimistic. I think they will be under less pressure from COVID. But I worry about the backlog of everything that got paused
Yes, that’s a good point. Hopefully they will recruit more staff and increase pay. I am lucky to be working 100%, raise my taxes I don’t mind.
I don’t mind my taxes rising either if we can ensure a better equipped NHS for the future. I am not so sure the hospitals are as challenged this time around as in the first lockdown. I had to visit Burton hospital recently and they said they had much better capacity this time around.
I do get the impression that the government are controlling the news better after more experience. According to them trade with Europe is at near normal levels after Brexit – I can tell you categorically that is bunkum. Still all this Covid gloom has enabled them to hide the Brexit news. Great – well done chaps.
I doubt any tax increase will be going to the NHS, more like paying off the furlough bill and refilling the coffers after the drop in tax revenue.
Also, I’m pretty sure I heard that while the numbers of trucks going through Dover has gone back up, a lot of them are only carrying goods one way which isn’t the same thing as trade being the same, which is what the government were trying to pass it off as.
@davebigpicture in the first few weeks of January truckers from the EU were bringing cargo into the country but going back empty and picking up loads in Belgium, Holland and France to take to other parts of the EU. They didn’t want the hassle of UK loads being stuck due to docs not being correct.
UK warehouses quickly became full to bursting and many large freight forwarders suspended their inbound services from Europe.
The situation has improved a little but the volumes are nowhere near what the govt have advised the news media.
All the current signs are positive of course, but if anyone can snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, it’s this (UK) government. Having apparently learned nothing over the past 2 waves, pressure is building to start opening up everything again (not that this lockdown has been worthy of the name), almost certainly leading to a third wave, which of course is exactly what happened with Spanish Flu a century ago. Models suggest a relaxing of lockdown in early March (actually anything much before Easter) would lead to a 3rd wave (smaller than the 2nd, but bigger than the 1st) throughout May & June, with all the ripple effects that will entail… sorry if that sounds unduly cynical or pessimistic, but it’s literally only a week ago that we were still having the same number of deaths as at the *peak* of the first wave, so any talk of coming out of lockdown is hugely premature, especially while we’re conjuring up our own vaccination strategy to cover up a lack of stock…
Today I got an email from my favourite Bristol venue informing me that the gig (Lau: Unplugged) for which I bought tickets roughly one year ago, and which was originally slated for June 3rd 2020, which had been postponed already, first until until November 3rd 2020, and then again until June 24th 2021, is now once more postponed and is now planned to take place on February 17th 2022.
If this carries on, I may not live long enough to see this lot. I’ve already blown three of their gigs though circumstances beyond my control (once, admittedly, due to the fact that I bloody forgot I had the tickets until the day after the gig).
So for us I’m afraid that nothing will be deemed to have returned to normal until we have finally been to see Lau play unplugged at last.
A mate who runs a venue says they can do socially distanced gigs from May but no festivals, tours or large live events until 2022. My daughter has ticket for My Chemical Romance outdoors in July but no word of if that is even being considered yet. On the dull corporate side, there are a couple of possible jobs in the pipeline but I suspect that they will be pretty low key if they go ahead at all.
I have (had) tickets for about 5 shows
Billie Eilish – cancelled
Ringo Starr – cancelled
Rolling Stones – not sure
Wilco – delayed a year until late August
New Order/Pet Shop Boys – delayed a year until Sept
Last 2 are outdoor shows, Stones and Wilco are the other side of the border so those shows will also depend on that situation
All the other gigs for which my noticeboard had tickets pinned up have been postponed into the later part of this year. Thus far the Lau gig is the only one to officially have been slipped to 2022.
My James Grant at Union Chapel has recently been postponed to March 2022. We’re not even in March 2021 yet.
Ben Watt just cancelled his tour in quite a pissed off sounding email and said he’ll be back at some point. You can hardly blame him TBH, the gig has been regularly rescheduled and was original in March last year!
Yeah, I remember he was due to play the Portland Arms around the time of our birthdays. Given that he also has a (much more than mine) suppressed immune system, I can’t say I blame him. I assume by the time it is safe for him to tour again, he’ll have another album out.
Tracey mentions this in the current New Statesman.
Go and buy your own copy, skinflints!
I have an Osees gig with @contraryarticle scheduled for early June in Bristol which has been rescheduled twice so fully expect a third change.
Also A randy Newman gig in Glasgow that was going to be a long weekend with my wife which will no doubt be cancelled or postponed.
And then I read that the Euros can be held in England in June because of 5 minute lateral flow tests – if they are held and my Black Deer festival at the end of June can’t go ahead I will be very slightly irritated.
You going to Black Deer too, if able, @steveT. Posh tent again?
My vainglorious hope is that, if they get rid of any closed marquee stages, festivals have a glimmer of possibility, with everything thrown open to the elements.
I won’t be too surprised, though, if June is too soon, but hoping Wickham in August might make it
@retropath2 no posh tent this time – a cheap room at the Premier Inn in Tunbridge Wells but I am pretty sure it will be cancelled not least because many of the US artists are unlikely to visit.
All the talk is mass testing for attendees, appreciating a negative lateral flow is even less proof than a negative standard swab, but old codgers like us, and the audience at festivals is usually on the mature side, at least the sort that get mentions on AW, so most will have had at least one vax. The issue with touring americans, probably pretty essential at a festival billing itself as americana, is that they may not have had their vaccines………
I’m staying firmly on the cautious side. My heart bleeds for those who are taking the biggest financial hit. I can’t imagine the stress and worry this has caused. I’m worried about schools and universities reopening. I use a nit analogy. We’ve all been there as parents. Every time you think you’ve got rid of the buggers they’re back with a vengeance. It was relentless. Covid is an invisible, more dangerous and comb resistant nit.
It’s very easy to forget about people that are more silently suffering. Both my wife and I have been in full time work (often doing overtime as well) working at home in a very controlled environment so have only suffered because of the severe restriction to our freedom. I’m in daily contact with my colleagues via skype meetings and calls so am not about to go mad. Most of my colleagues are in the same boat, we often discuss how much better off we are because we can’t spend our money… but we have to be very careful because there are also colleagues in households where not only are there four or five adults there all the time getting on each other’s nerves but only one income where there used to be one each.
I agree @johnw my wife and are both essential workers and have worked full time and work for companies who have done very well during this pandemic.
However the effect on mental health and on relationships should not be underestimated. I am lucky because I consider myself to be mentally strong but a normally staid and placid relationship with my wife has been tested a couple of times because there is only so much time you can spend together, We both work in our offices mainly full time (I will work from home one day per week) but if we were in each others pockets every day morning to night it would have been very testing. There are a lot of people who don’t get the luxury of a break from each other – add into that mix a couple of kids being at home too and the stress must be pretty extreme.
Things appear to be heading in the right direction, which is obviously good news. However, when I drove along the seafront in my small South Coast hometown yesterday the sun was shining, every car parking space was taken and there were as many people about as at the height of a normal summer’s day. There wasn’t a mask to be seen anywhere, including in the huge queue outside the ice cream parlour where the notion of social distancing didn’t seem to exist. Thank God I have my first vaccine appointment next week, as the stupidity of the Great British public never ceases to amaze me.
Current advice is to wear a mask outdoors if it’s difficult to social distance.
From a Huff Post article but I head the same on a Radio 4 programme
Professor Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, agrees that “masks do have value, but they are no replacement for proper social distancing”.
“Masks are also ineffective if they get wet and need to be replaced as per WHO technical guidance,” he adds. “The problem is that if you wear a mask outside and it is raining, your mask gets wet very quickly. If it is cold your mask gets wet from your breath moisture. This may not matter if you are outdoors, but if you are then moving indoors with a wet face mask this is likely to be bad news.”
For this reason, Professor Hunter is “strongly against” wearing masks outdoors, unless you have to be in a crowd. “The examples that Chris Whitty gives of huddling around a market stall and being in a large queue are probably the only such situations when this may be justifiable,” he says.
“But it is much better to avoid those situations and go shopping at your outdoor market when it is not busy if you can.”
Agreed, but no masks AND no social distancing is surely a recipe for disaster, and I saw plenty of evidence of both today.
If people are going to wear masks in shops, they should continue to have the INALIENABLE HUMAN RIGHT to have their noses sticking out the top of them so that we can all know what thick, irresponsible cunts they really are. We voted to take back control , after all.
That must be a regional thing because face mask wearing in the West Midlands and Lichfield where i live is very well adhered to.
We’re going to have to do a very difficult thing, and stop blaming the Government for killing granny and start taking some responsibility ourselves. I know its difficult because everyone’s been so patient and careful, and we’re all losing our minds in lockdown, but if this gets fucked up yet again it’s our fault, not Johnson’s. Spring’s coming, the graphs are going in the right direction and everyone wants to believe it’s all over. It’s not, not until about July. I think the PM will say as much on Monday and if we all start overruling him, that’s on us.
If this was day one, I’d agree but while I appreciate all countries are different, there are some obvious examples of governments that have dealt with things better than our own. The reason our government still deserves some blame is that we really didn’t need to be where we are now. The only reason they’ve largely avoided a difficult aftermath of the xmas debacle is that it coincided with the new strains so is hard to separate.
Kinda yeah, kinda naw.
Each person bears the responsibility of their own actions.
However, the signalling and tone from the government has given implicit permission to behave like pricks, and when you do that, a significant %age of the population will indulge. I can tell you from looong experience in HR and refereeing that once you let people act like asses, on a long leash, it is nearly impossible to pull the leash back in again. Genie is out of the bottle if you will forgive all the metaphors.
Compare it to here: the government absolutely did not fuck about, and compliance is pretty good. Scott Morrison is a dick on many issues, but he and the respective State/Territory Heads have been pretty good on this.
Yes, but if the government told me to behave like a prick I’d ignore them. Only pricks take a vague bit of government messaging as a green light to behave like pricks.
A lot of people will still be screaming ‘yeah but Dominic Cummings…!’ as we plunge into lockdown 4 in May. It should be possible to believe the Government fucked up massively and individuals within it ignored their own advice, and still realise that someone has to be the adult in the room, if it’s not the PM or his ex-adviser.
Expecting BoJo to be the adult in the room was always going to lead to trouble. So here we are.
This is what “take back control” actually means: “you’re on your own”.
Lockdown 4 would be the absolute death knell for lots of businesses.
Just wanna point out that my prediction here was accurate to within 10 days. Hear me, Children, hear me.
Dont know about other countries, but in the UK and possibly Europe
, I wouldn’t be too optimistic about summer or possibly even autumn concerts, bar the odd ‘socially distanced’ show and / or possibly some outdoor events. Partly since it seems to me that there are still far too many uncertainties and practical difficulties ( including travel) to encourage promoters to take the risk.
One of the key barriers to overcome will be to ensure enough people get vaccinated. Seems that many people assume that is a given, but it remaIns to be seen what happens when one gets to younger age groups, who don’t feel the same peril, aren’t thrilled at the prospect of potential side affects, and are far more ethnically and culturally varied.
The things is the young people won’t be in danger (in almost all cases) and anyone in danger that they could pass it on to will have been vaccinated. Travel is an issue if there are imbalances between the vaccination rates for the different countries, but that may be overcome with vaccination certificates and/or rapid testing
That only stands up to scrutiny when vaccines are near to 100% effective. We can’t can’t surely have a situation where the vulnerable are vaccinated but then go abroad and bring back a strain that the vaccine is only 50% (or less) effective against. We’d end up with a load of ‘granny killers’ again. Even if our life within the UK gets back to near normal I can see foreign travel restricted with continuing quarantine measures when returning from some countries.
Agreed.
Still very early to start claiming the vaccines will solve everything – especially for people in poorer countries where vax roll-outs have barely started.
The fact that many of these countries have populations far bigger than Western nations spread across vaster, more diverse geographic areas adds to the problem.
As someone said on The BBC’s Newsnight the other evening, none of us are safe until all of us are safe.
Or, as Tony Blair said, if there’s COVID anywhere, there’s COVID everywhere.
The same is sadly also true of Tony Blair himself
Yes, it’s my understanding that vaccine effectiveness tends to be lower with the very groups most in need of protection, e.g. elderly and other people with reduced natural immunity.
But at the moment cases are decreasing faster in the higher age groups that have already had the vaccine.
The company I work for has just had a whole department of 12 go home with Covid and I can tell you the company did everything to minimise the risks. Face masks everywhere in the building mandatory except when sitting at your own desk. Sanitising touch points four times per day, only one person in the kitchen, toilet at one time. Desks socially distanced. Dividers between desks, sanitisers, no hot desking. Still the outbreak occurred. Thankfully all of those who got it all had mild symptoms and according to a couple I spoke too not much more than a strong cold. I guess they were lucky.
Hot Desking. Jesus Christ allmighty. If there’s one good thing to come out of this pandemic it might just be the end of this fucking stupid idea, a structural corporate invitation to pass on disease – not just Covid – mandated and embedded within the workplace by companies who pay attention to accountants above anyone else, and who really care fuck all about providing their workers with personalised, comfortable places of work they can make their own.
Ironically our office (where I am still working) was recently renovated to pack us in much closer together in order to release some space that could be leased to another company. This was planned before the pandemic obviously, currently we have about 5 or 6 people here daily when there is (just about) room for 50 odd. All comes down to money, the future could be 50% here on any given day, the rest encouraged to work from home in a kind of rotation policy (except I need to be here just about every day)
Hear hear. The longer term plan at my place of work is for people to work from home most of the time and attend the office in person one, maybe two, days a week, so long as there is a justification and we’re not just going into the same building to stare at our laptops. This is a hugely welcome change of emphasis from the previous direction of cramming more and more people into the same place while claiming that it would achieve more collaborative working. There aren’t many upsides to Covid, but this is one of them.
https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/19/how-the-beach-super-spreader-myth-can-inform-uks-future-covid-response
I post this to look at the other point of view. I have been in favour of uber caution and am wary of looking at the optimists , but. We are still learning about this virus as we go. The science has often been based on experience and expectations borne from different diseases. No vaccine for anything is ever 100%: there will always be the vulnerable. The point and purpose is to make the majority of people the vulnerable then are in contact with, unable to pass it to them. Not eradicate the virus. Can’t be done, as the flu and measles show. Smallpox still exists, it is just that nobody has been able to catch it for a long time.
I made a few comments about that here at the time, basically the same as that expert is saying. I was in the minority compared to quite a few “holier than thou” statements from others here.
As for people still dying and going “back to normal”, it is a fact that the old and frail are vulnerable to any bug that is going around. We are probably at a normal level of deaths now for the time of year, but flu cases are way down. Going forward I think vulnerable people will remain more wary which may end up with a decrease in deaths from other ailments. People staying home from work when sick and avoiding physical contact with others is general good advice.
I realise Covid is far more serious than regular bugs before people get on my case.
Some people on here sound as though they never want to come out of lockdown… almost gleefully pointing any danger to relaxing anything…
25% of the population have been vaccinated and we’re in a virtual lockdown for another month yet at least. Add to that existing immunity, seasonality… seriously we need to start transitioning to some sort of normality
I understand the fear but you literally cannot live like this indefinitely
No-one is asking them to “indefinitely”. With 75% of the population still unvaccinated a further month seems a precaution worth taking. Unless the constant hopping in and out of lockdown is the normality you refer to.
Agree with Fortuneright.
If another month’s extension of the existing restrictions will enable us to eliminate full-on lockdowns by lowering the R rate to a point where outbreaks are easy to spot and control, then surely it’s a price worth paying
Yes @Thegp I wanted to start a thread to give a more positive slant on things. I understand that there is still some danger out there, but it seems a lot of people want to wallow a bit and point out the many deficiencies that are now getting to be old news, however tragic that has been.
I agree with you Dai, there’s a lot to be optimistic about now and the real risks are vastly diminished.
It’s a fascinating social experiment how people react to extreme stress. Some are looking for a way out and some are looking for any way to stay in.
I can’t see anyone looing for ways to ‘stay in’ indefinitely. What I see is conflict between those who want to abandon restrictions without any precautions, and those who wants to make things as safe as possible (primarily through vaccination) first, but do it as soon as possible.
Social experiment? It’s not a bad index for common sense by the look of it.
Re: RetroPath above
The worrying thing is how the whole “let’s get shot of lockdown and go back to the way we were” schtick is exactly the same as what was being said less than a year ago.
While case numbers are indeed falling, it won’t take much to drive them back up again. Let’s also not forget that, as of yesterday, 533 people a day were still dying from COVID in the UK alone
I’m not sure what the comparative figures are but at some stage, especially at this time of year it would be good to know how many people are dying of covid as opposed to with covid. eg. My 92 year old mother fell last week and needed an op on her hip. Coincidentally, despite having had jab 6 weeks earlier, and showing no symptoms, she’d just been tested positive. Fortunately she didn’t become a statistic but if she had, it might have been a misleading one.
Pretty sure – and I’m quite happy to be corrected if I’m wrong – that the UK counts anyone who’s died within 28 days of being diagnosed with COVID (Assume this excludes those who’ve died in accidents, been murdered or taken their own lives, etc)
Hope your Mum is OK btw. I lost two elderly relatives (one of who I was very, very close to) last year although neither had COVID.
Thanks.. she seems as well as can be expected…i may even be able to go and visit her in March!
I think you’re right about the way they count the deaths but I’d like to know what percentage would likely have died anyway. I don’t know if that data is available.
I think in the worst months last year deaths were something like 20-30% higher than normal, some months were actually slightly less than normal.
I think you mean the excess death rate.
Figures should be easily available online, but not sure how much of a delay there’d be.
Most recent figures are from Feb 2
Rate is apparently 20% higher than normal
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/feb/02/uk-excess-death-toll-since-start-of-covid-pandemic-passes-100000
Flippantly, @johnw ,100%, if you wait long enough, but I see what you are driving at. But a point is missed if, within that statement, you are saying the terminal cancer patient or elderly dement who died a week or however long ahead of otherwise, courtesy the additional burden of Covid as being sleight of statistics. If it hastened and contributed to their death, it counts.
And, responding to @dai , I bet I was one who was holier than thou in response to your posts a year ago. That’s the thing about this wretched virus, it can make us all have to revise and revisit opinions almost weekly. I don’t want to see crowds gathering and seeming to be at risk, first to themselves and then to the rest of us, but, if the confounding truth might be they weren’t, then maybe we have to think a little harder about what and how anything opens, just as much as when.
And excess deaths is an even better way of comparison, as that includes the recognition of non Covid excess mortality: folk delaying and denying their cancers and coronaries any attention or hospital attendances. A lot of them. The ambulance service have seen a surge of DOAs or just plain found deads as cause for call.
Currently, the league table of deaths is as follows:
1. Deaths with Covid mentioned on the certificate (that is Covid contributed to the death in the opinion of the doctor).
2. Deaths within 28 days of a positive test. (Bear in mind testing wasn’t that available in the first wave.)
3. Excess deaths compared to expected.
Yes. Excess deaths are the lowest. There is a lot of worry that people are dying of cancer and heart attacks because services aren’t available. There may be some, but the numbers aren’t showing through, yet. There are fewer other infectious disease deaths because of the social isolating and fewer RTAs etc. Young people are gaining a lot, death-wise, in the pandemic with fewer stabbings and bad drugs. I remember when the hospital doctors went on strike in Isreal some decades ago. The health of the nation improved! Hospitals are dangerous places.
No doubt, there will be a huge analysis in the BMJ at some point this year. We’ll know the answers soon enough.
Sadly I know of people who have gone into hospital with relatively minor issues and then never come out (alive).
I have lost an aunt and a sister in law in exactly that way. Both went in for routine stuff and contracted Covid on site.
Things are not the same as a year ago. So a different response is fine. Millions vaccinated, millions more immune. We also know natural impact of seasonality, minimal risk of catching outdoors. Better hospital treatments if you are unfortunate enough to be in
No need to live in fear
Thank you for your reassurances. (Emoji as you see fit.)
I keep a friend on Facebook because he posts the vaccine conspiracy theories here’s his latest post.
https://www.thewelcomemovement.com/doctor-says-covid-vaccine-will-kill-you?fbclid=IwAR1kFYIcJdaLh9XPRU8f4PRwfaiX6wUcp_kVELo-iVZOxljtqmVGVhMveIg
Sounds like your friend has been watching the C4 series Utopia (Hopefully the 2013 original rather than last year’s apparently rather anodyne remake)
I note that ‘Dr’ Tenpenny, like Trumps main clinician when he had Covid, is an osteopath.
Have we heard from Dr Gillian McKeith yet?
“Yurrr poo STINKS” – that was her catchphrase.
My favourite stupid comment was on FaceBook – someone was holding what was, very obviously, an adaptor for pumping up a football and claiming that it had come out of his sister’s arm when he very gently stroked her arm after she had had her first jab.
Brilliant.
Didn’t hher stint on I’m a Celeb kill off what was left of her credibility after it came out that she got her “medical degree” out of a lucky bag?
It was in “holistic medicine” IIRC. A load of old hippie shite, in other words.
I used to take a black marker pen with me to the supermarket, if I saw her ‘products’ I would black out the word doctor.
Hours well minutes of fun.
I used to do this when the Radio Times made any reference to that so-called “Emperor” Rosko.
He’s not even a baronet.
I’m sure I read somewhere that Kid Jensen is called Adult Jensen now. Or I might have dreamt it.
Don’t get me started on David “Diddy” Hamilton….
Guys…. after 21st June we’ve got this to look forward to.
No limit on the number of life events you can have.
I’m planning a wedding, moving house and an earthquake on the same afternoon. Party on!
I know some brides are already preggars on the day of their nuptuals, but is it possible to get married, give birth, buy a car and move house all on one day, do you think?
And… hear a Bowie album for the first time.
Of course, many things can be achieved in a day, or night, owing to the Fabulous Incident Randomiser that is drunkenness… eg having a near-fatal accident, eating your own jacket in the solemn belief that it is a particularly well-cooked takeaway, losing a Scrabble grudge match with representatives of the the Algerian navy and having to escape on a pedalo while hastily disguised as Roger de Courcey, and mysteriously and for the only time in your life hitting a top C with your own flatulence.
And that’s without leaving your own front garden.
Well then, the english, what do we think to the roadmap. Black Deer won’t think so much, I expect, running 18 – 20/6/21, unless they distance and test a smaller audience. Wickham, late August, already saying green light.
Given the understandably cautious gradual unlocking proposals Bojo explained yesterday, seems likely the UK govt would want to run some test events before green-lighting any sort of concert/festival.
10,000 civil servants in a field, with the Parliamentary House Band playing? (Unfortunately, Pete Wishart, ex-the scottish band, and MP for Perth and North Perthshire is unavailable, as he is running a similar event in Edinburgh for wee Nicola.)
A fund-raiser for her legal fees?
Despite the very cautious roadmap, there’s a light at the end of the tunnel that I don’t think we’re being over optimistic in aiming for. It also gives a bit of clarity as to what there’s no chance of doing yet so the May gigs are definitely off (hopefully merely postponed again). I was surprised I didn’t see any mention of travel from other countries because that’s what visiting artists need to know about in order for tours and venues to fill their calendars up – after all, if the expectation is that nobody from the US can visit before, say, August, promoters would be better off filling their July diaries with UK acts rather than end up with another raft of cancellations.
I’ve been acting like I’ve “got it” for years. It’s convinced no-one.
I have been living in Moscow since the beginning of the year. Huge City, 12 million people, very similar to London. Except, there’s no lockdown here, kids are in school, all shops restaurants, bars are fully open, and fully populated too. Theatre and Sport is currently running at 50% capacity. There is some working from home but I’d estimate 90% of people are in work judging by what I see and hear. I am out and about in the City every day using public transport, we visit Malls, Museums, Shops, Bars and Restaurants, and whilst masks and gloves are mandated indoors, that’s about it.
Covid is certainly a thing here, there are daily cases and deaths running around UK current levels, and Vaccination is underway but nowhere near the UK rate, but there hasn’t been the massively high rates or explosion of cases, hospitalisations and deaths that we are constantly warned about in the UK if lockdown was eased. I wonder why not ?
Of course there’s the suggestion that numbers are suppressed, testing isn’t as widespread and generally you can’t trust the Russians to tell the truth, but the evidence here to me speaks for itself. So far no one I know socially or work with has caught it, we – not yet vaccinated- socialise regularly and it just isn’t a problem ( touch wood etc). With the vaccination programme so far advanced in the UK, for the sake of education, mental health, the economy and just general wellbeing, surely it’s time to open up in the UK. Waiting until 21 June earliest is unacceptable.
Yeah we can definitely trust Putin’s government to tell the truth, and anecdote is definitely the same thing as data.
I’m glad to see your degree in Epidemiology didn’t go to waste.
In Russia the idea of anybody British surviving anything at all is unacceptable.
Are you a bot?
Not a bot, a real person and been on the Afterword and previously Word forum since the beginning. I’m not trying to agitate anyone, just a genuine personal experience and questioning the UK lockdown. or isn’t that allowed here? There is data, and I did reference the fact that noone trusts it, but I have more than anecdote too, I have the evidence of my own experience and that of friends and colleagues, as well as my work which gives me various data particularly with regards to schools. and again I can confirm that the education system hasn’t ground to a halt , that shops restaurants and social life aren’t filled with people dying in the streets. It’s an easy response to dispute everything here as propaganda, and I have no interest either way except for my own and family’s heath and wellbeing, both here and in the UK. There is independent news and data here too and it’s just lazy to dispute it all and trash any opinion. Strange really as everything else Boris has done during the pandemic has beens lammed as too little too late or just wrong. But when big bad Russia maybe took the right approach then we rush to defend our Govt?? I understand lockdown scepticism is frowned upon, but my point was just to contrast my actual real life 2 month experience against the previous 6 months I spent in the UK.
Some thought that certain variants are more prevalent in different countries, meaning that it can spread more easily in e.g. the UK, Italy, France etc. Also different genetic make-ups, age of population and different levels of immunity perhaps dependent on previous diseases that were unnoticed.
Life expectancy in Russia is about 72 years, or 9 years less than the UK. As in India, I can’t help think this makes a significant difference to death rates compared to the UK when the bulk of fatalities are in people over 80.
In terms of population density, its 9 people per Km squared in the Russian Federation and 275 people per Km squared in England. Moscow is, of course, a big and densely populated city. But unless it’s changed since I worked there, large multi-generational families living together weren’t common, certainly compared to English cities
Good point about the life expectancy, I hadn’t thought of that. In terms of large multi generational families living together here, I have no idea, but I wouldn’t have said that was massively prevalent in the UK either outside of some Cities. What I do see here is packed Trains and Buses, Bars and Shops with people of all ages and dispositions, many masked but most not bothering with their noses being covered, all mixing in close proximity and doing all of the ‘deadly’ things we will avoid doing in the UK even past lockdown now we’ve become so conditioned to the potential consequences . My point really was having spent most of 2020 in the UK in lockdown, to come to a City patently not under any form of lockdown and not see/hear/read about/experience the disastrous consequences we’re told would happen in the UK, it just struck me as strange and puzzling.
I think you might be surprised at the number of multi generational households in the UK. As it tends to be associated with individual cultures and (more so outside cities) cultures in the UK tend not to mix socially, it’s something that often doesn’t get talked about. For example, I probably work with people living in multi generational households but as it’s normal for them, it wouldn’t necessarily come up in conversation. Many of the covid hotspots towards the end of last year were centred around areas where multi generational living was prevalent. I don’t know whether there was actually a direct link made because often it was coupled with a high percentage of manual workers who weren’t able to work from home and so were far more at risk.
It’s interesting to compare other countries performance and I imagine many of are envious of those living in countries where life is returning to some sort of normality but there are so many factors involved, only yesterday it emerged that the US and UK may have performed badly partly due to the levels of obesity.
I came across this today, relating to one of President Putin’s recent meetings :
‘During this conversation, the president disclosed how he met with a foreign acquaintance of his, who was surprised by busy Moscow, in comparison to other “locked down” European cities.’
Unfortunately it doesn’t say what his response was.
I’m more interested in what someone called Lord Ted (assuming it refers to Dexter) thought of England’s batting in india yesterday?
The constant sniping in the press is ridiculous. Memories of goldfish. I read criticism of England not having enough spinners selected, but Root bowled himself (along with Leach) and took an incredible 5-8, doubt anyone else in the side could do better than that. India are just better in such conditions. always have been and probably always will be.
I agree. Picking one spinner and the balance of the side hardly caused the top to score a total of 140 in 2 innings did it? Roots golden start to the year covered up the fact that our batters on the whole are fairly ordinary…
In the words of Rod Stewart, I don’t want to talk about it.
God save the queen.
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-royals-queen/dont-be-selfish-get-a-covid-shot-says-uks-queen-elizabeth-idUSKBN2AP2ZR
@lordted
Genuinely interested in what living in Moscow is like? Still have images of empty shelves in shops, being hauled to the Lubyanka for eating more than your turnip ration, freezing weather etc.
You have one image correct, it’s really really cold. There has been at least 1 metre of snow in the past month, and this year the temperature has barely got above zero at all, with lows below Minus 30. You know the saying, in the UK ‘it’s too cold to snow’ , well that’s been disproved here. So I’m really looking forward to the Spring and Summer. Other than that it’s a massive Modern International City, with a transport system and infrastruture that goes with it. All the International brands are here as well as local, there’s all sorts of Shopping Malls, Restaurants and Bars. Irish Bars seem pretty popular for some reason. Shelves are consistently full although fruit/veg availability is more seasonal here than the UK, and there are no queues, 24/7 Supermarkets are everywhere. Locals are friendly, English is mostly understood although a smattering of Russian definitely helps. There’s plenty of Museums and cultural sights, Soviet style architecture to discover, loads of Parks and open spaces, and very little crime ( it’s a ‘well managed’ city in that respect ). Lots of Sport played, professionally and enthusiastically in Parks, although is mostly skating and skiing at the moment. The skating rink in Red Square was being taken down today which I think might be a good sign, weather wise. Apparently its a big cycling CIty in the Summer too.
The Covid situation is genuinely puzzling, see my posts above. Masks and Gloves are mandatory in public indoor areas, except Bars and Restaurants, but otherwise you wouldn’t know theere was a pandemic.
Sounds like Canada (apart from the speaking Russian bit, although 5 of my colleagues do)
Thanks @lordted
Does sound an interesting city. I nearly went 15 or so years ago when my football team got drawn against Torpedo Moscow. Really long train journey sounded a bit of an adventure but unfortunately it was prohibitively expensive. One day hopefully
I nearly went about 20 years ago, in my broadcast equipment days. A bit of kit was misbehaving and needed “encouraging with a gentle tap from a slipper”. One of our salesmen went, kit was repaired, his local minder got him absolutely smashed on vodka, and everyone was happy.
About a month later our salesman was watching Panorama and watched his new Moscow friend being sent to a Seberian clink for running a protection and drugs racket.
@LordTed I visited Moscow 4 years ago and it is one of the best Cities I have visited. The people were great, the architecture is magnificent and contrary to popular western opinion there was open criticism of Putin.
I hope you enjoy your stay there – fabulous place – shame about their leader. However ours is nothing to write home about.
Putin doesn’t care about criticism as long as demonstrations don’t start disrupting things. As things stand, with him and his cronies in control of the media etc. he’s got the job for life as long as things in Russia are going OK. I’m inclined to think that Putin is pretty much a blank canvas with no actual policy, goals, ideals or anything. He just reacts to situations as they arise to keep himself up there and he’s very good at it. The shit will hit the fan in Russia when he’s gone.