Re: Coronavirus
 

Pretty much. Luckily, us armchair health policy don’t have to live with our decisions. Most of the policies are based on partial knowledge, modelling, assumptions, previous experiences and yes, best guesses.

Doing nothing was never an option here so the government had to decide what policies to out in place based on what it did know so far. This tends to be very poorly communicated as the government never wants to be found to be wrong. As more information comes in and policies change, the communications are muddled to the point where the public gives up.

On top of this is the publics attitude to risk. There’s no ‘on/off’ switch for risky behaviour. For example, wearing masks reduces but does not eliminate risk. Social distancing reduces but does not eliminate risk. All the mitigating behaviours and barriers will help to a greater or lesser extent and, in some cases can all add up but this is often poorly explained. I saw a paper a while back giving estimates for how much each change reduces the R value for this disease. I think this could be communicated better but then maybe if we said that social distancing reduced R by 0.2 or something, maybe people wouldn’t bother.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Hardly.

JCVI issues advice on the AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine.

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/j...vid-19-vaccine

Re: Coronavirus
 

I think the post you are quoting was referring to schools but happy to stand corrected if I’m wrong.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Exactly my sentiments too.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Or, the populations.....

---------- Post added at 17:19 ---------- Previous post was at 17:05 ----------

Apologies, I must have missed the part where SAGE indicated that moving more of the population to Tier 4 would be enough to suppress the virus.

If you could provide the relevant link showing the above ?

Re: Coronavirus
 

Prof Jonathan Van-Tam implying the NHS has not seen the impact of transmissions which will have occurred recently during households mixing over the festive period.

Re: Coronavirus
 

No Thanks.

T4 is basically lockdown anyway, and now we have to suffer it in the East Midlands again.

Re: Coronavirus
 

I can't see how they can't do a lockdown. Hospitals are overloaded more than last time and it's getting worse every day, it's this critical.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Just for the record, I am tired of all lockdowns, but they are here to stay and at least until May 2021. If the variant is as bad as SAGE says it is, in terms of how contagious it is and a Tier 4 lockdown is not enough, then it obvious this is going to get worse and Boris is not doing what he is being advised to do so by the SAGE experts, it is another delay and he will be forced to enact yet another full national lockdown, when case numbers and deaths rise further.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Not often we agree, but spot on.

The longer we delay implementing a ‘proper’ national lockdown the longer we will need to be in said ‘proper’ national lockdown.

Re: Coronavirus
 

l also agree with you and Mick over this as its quite obvious the worse is yet to come in these coming weeks and months.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Opening schools and Universities will just allow the new variant virus to rip through them. Madness.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Too many activities are being allowed, even in Tier 4. Too many people still insisting on attending large gatherings.

---------- Post added at 18:12 ---------- Previous post was at 18:10 ----------

The Universities problem was more a product of the depraved way the students acted.

Re: Coronavirus
 

Depraved or just young people acting like we did at their age?

Re: Coronavirus
 

When Covid wasn't around.......