Interesting court case on the enforcement of the regulations: (this is in S.Wales)
https://www.bindmans.com/news/neale-v-dpp-the-right-to-silence-citizens-duties-and-coronavirus-regulations
Interesting indeed; the gotcha, as they state, is that if you don’t play ball, they can arrest you, and I’d say the chances of getting the pox at a police station is pretty high. They mix pretty freely, travel several-up in cars, and probably don’t wear masks at work. Something I would chance only if vaccinated, plus a few weeks 
However, I think one can refuse a fixed penalty and not get arrested. No idea of the procedure though.
I think refusing to give your name and address is extremely provocative and will make any police officer anywhere go crazy.
I feel the psychology of lock down is also not understood here.
We know the whole thrust is to signifcantly reduce people interacting. We know it really is this simple. Everytime people come to gether there is a risk of infection.
Therefore every way you reduce interaction you reduce the spread.
It is all very well saying people know this, but they dont, and if they do, they will still end up interacting more than they realise.
By keeping people apart with imaginary or actual rules you limit the spread.
I do think there is a perception Governments are stupid. I know we joke, but lest it be forgotten much of what they do is driven by experts in their own field. A lot of this stuff isnt just made up, as some seem to imagine. We actually have a very good idea of how and when people interact, exactly where and when choke points occur etc., and measures are designed to target these interactions.
Of course, it may also appear course in its deliverance, but refinement of the measures isnt the key. The key is very simple. Do enough to reduce the interactions between people as much as is possible.
It really is this simple.
As to all the partisan views on the vaccines, I think it is fair to say that the UK really does have some of the best people in the world in these fields. We are leading the world in mapping the changes in the viruses mRNA. We are leading the world in many aspects of the research and we are world leaders in the development of vaccines. I dont think this can be disputed, and I dont make these points to be partisan. There is discussion about the gamble taken backing AZ. As much as yes it was a gamble, it was a well calculated gamble. The technology of the AZ vaccine is well tried and tested. We knew that Covid is not like seasonal flu or AIDs in its response to vaccines, and we knew that it should (would) respond in the way it has. I am not diminishing the gamble taken, or the achievement, but equally I think AZ had a pretty good expectation of creating an effective vaccine early on in the process.
I think where some countries were wrong footed is they did not embark on a vaccine solution back in the early part of last year because their national options were limited or non existent. They had to hope other countries were able to develop effective vaccines. Why they didnt place orders much earlier is a mystery. Perhaps they didnt anticipate an effective vaccine solution would become available or perhaps they felt the virus would be self limiting. It would be interesting to know.
I do think we seem very good at making out these decisions and their implementation to be much more complicated that they are, and we get very concerned with the detail. In a sense the decisions where obvious, you have a highly contageous respiratory virus so you come up with various means of limiting person to person contact, you monitor the case load, and impose stricter measures until you get the containment you want. We can obsess over whether 8pm curfew are better at this than closing all retail outlets, but it really doesnt matter, this virus is sufficiently contageous that some impact on the economy is unavoidable if you intend to prevent an overload of the hospitals. Doubtless we will agrue into the future whether it was better to impose Australia style restrictions, the type of restrictions seen in the UK, or the restrictions seen in the States, but all have had significant impact on their respective economies.
dublinpilot wrote:
I don’t think you really need to travel more than 2km to do your exercise
And you don’t really need to eat tasty food as well; “Soylent” will give you all your nutritional needs. But it will be a miserable existence. There is more to a basic need for outdoor exercise than moving some muscle groups.
The 2km limit is particularly harsh on people who live in built up areas, perhaps who are renting tiny flats and have no gardens. It may as well be house arrest. It’s easy to accept something like a 2km limit when you’re wealthy and privileged, or even just live in a nice place (e.g. from my house, I have three beaches of breath-taking beauty within 2km) but urban dwellers don’t have that, and there’s no evidence that having such harsh restrictions on exercise (and exercise is very low risk for spread) have any effect on stopping the spread. I’m really happy I don’t live in Ireland during this pandemic.
1) I am not arguing government should not have done nothing – unfortunately what they have done are the wrong things. There is no evidence lockdowns work as an example. none.
Except of course the fact that they reliably precede huge drops in the numbers of people getting infected and coming into hospital.
2) The excess mortality of COVID (people who would not have died of other causes with the 15 month period these ’’let’s throw shit at the wall and see what sticks’’ measures have been going on) would have been far, far less than what you are being told to keep you quite.
It’s true that covid has been less lethal than I feared at the outset, but neither is it a trifle.
3) your last point is an excellent example of why lockdowns are unnecessary. That being said, people do go out to bars, restaurants and go on holiday when allowed. I see those people when I do it… (spoiler, I’m not dead from doing it…) Wear a mask, wash your hands adapt a reasonable behaviour and you will be fine.
The point being that people would not go on holiday etc… so there would be lots of economic damage even without a lockdown. That’s doubtless true, but despite the palpable fear in the weeks leading up to the first lockdown, this was not enough to halt the first wave whereas the lockdown was.
In reply to one of Graham’s points, my feeling is that a decent proportion of vaccination centre staff should be current in resuscitation techniques. Anaphylaxis is rare, but common enough that I think you would lose people preventably if you didn’t have staff on hand to treat it when it happens.
kwlf wrote:
In reply to one of Graham’s points, my feeling is that a decent proportion of vaccination centre staff should be current in resuscitation techniques. Anaphylaxis is rare, but common enough that I think you would lose people preventably if you didn’t have staff on hand to treat it when it happens.
Sure, but you could just make sure each centre always has say 2x doctors and 2x nurses and the rest volunteers/military rather than 100% NHS personnel.
Whether it’s relevant or not I don’t know, but our vaccination training included extensive time on resucitation, anaphylaxis, signs, symptoms and how to deal with it, including the correct operation of all conceivable types of epi pen. Plus assurance that if they didn’t have their own then a supply would never be more than 10ft away, plus doctors would always be on hand, etc. We were told that anaphylaxis would occur with a frequency of roughly 1 in 1m jabs administered, assuming those at risk had been screened out before reaching us.
The most common question from trainees during our training was “when do it step back and say I can’t deal with this and shout for a healthcare professional?” and the resounding answer was: “the moment anything unexpected happens, but here’s what you do if the 20 healthcare professionals in the building all drop down dead at the same time….”
Sure, but you could just make sure each centre always has say 2x doctors and 2x nurses and the rest volunteers/military rather than 100% NHS personnel.
That would be sensible. On the other hand our local centre is probably smaller than average but probably has only about 8 people actually vaccinating. The rest of the jobs seem clerical. I think the real problem is still a lack of vaccine rather than a lack of volunteers. I hope that you get your chance.
Early on, the number of people with an anaphylactic reaction to the Pfizer vaccine was a lot more than one in a million. The figures in the USA were about 10 per million. I don’t know how successful we have been in identifying those at risk and diverting them towards other vaccines.
Thanks. I hope to get a go too, really just to feel slightly useful rather than any desperate desire to stick a needle into someone. I’ll be nervous when the time comes, if it comes.
If I don’t, then at least I have got two nice t-shirts and a really quite high-quality fleece from St John.Fully agree – supply is obviously the limiting factor, by a long way.
Airborne_Again wrote:
How would you measure population health? You could use at life expectancy as a proxy but then the UK is only slightly worse than Sweden while Italy and Spain are better.
Obesity is one predictor of poor outcomes with COVID, and the UK has one of the worst rates in Europe.
..and here’s something in The Times about it (the article is behind a paywall; here’s the relevant quote):
Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, head of the WHO, said that the link between obesity and Covid deaths was “compelling” as he urged countries to improve public health.
Analysis shows a “dramatic” increase in death rates once more than half a country’s population is overweight, which it says cannot be explained by age, wealth or health systems. In countries where less than half the population is overweight, the risk of death from Covid is a tenth of that in countries above this level, with almost nine in ten Covid deaths in countries with overweight rates above 50 per cent.
No country where less than 40 per cent of the population is overweight has Covid death rates above 10 per 100,000, while no country with death rates above 100 per 100,000 has overweight rates of less than 50 per cent.
In Britain 64 per cent of adults are overweight, including 28 per cent who are obese, the fourth-highest in the world. The country’s Covid death rates, at 182 deaths per 100,000, is third highest, according to data up to last month.
