Lockdown #2

[Darlington_Shed]

10 minutes ago, The Stationmaster said:

It will be interesting to see how many people and how much traffic is about

I just ventured out for supplies - in west London the road and pedestrian traffic is massively down from earlier in the week.

[3rd Rail Exile]

22 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Richmond overrun by Crows?

I never knew that!

 

12 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

We have more than a few that's for sure  

 

Many devices auto-corrupt "Covid" into "Corvid"; several users of this site have fallen victim probably unwittingly.  

 

I'd assumed that was an "Aussie Rules"  comment, but recent form seems to suggest the opposite... 

 

 

 

Edited November 5, 2020 by 3rd Rail Exile
Hadn't removed attached images...

[grandadbob]

Rick, I think the suggestion is that it is students from Richmond who are at Universities in other towns that are causing the spike in figures.

 

https://www.swlondoner.co.uk/news/14102020-richmond-borough-covid-19-hotspot-university/

[john new]

From the perspective of one who is risk-averse this news item shows up what the problem is - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-54816207 amongst those who are not taking the overall message of staying safe sensibly. I guess they see it as all a load of tosh why worry!

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, Ravenser said:

The virus was here in vast strength across the whole country before we even realised it , because we had minimal testing. To eliminate it would take a nationwide lockdown lasting far far far longer than Melbourne's 4 months. I think you are talking about 9-18 months of total lockdown, nationwide,  which would destroy the economy totally, and which would be unsustainable in human terms

 

Rubbish.

China completely suppressed their outbreak in 4 months.

Here in the UK we went from estimated 100k cases per day in April, to circa 2000 a week by July. The whole south east/south west of England, went several weeks without a case. (I have the weekly downloads saved on my laptop, from the NHS published data... right down to postcode). The gov.uk website is very informative, if you use it.

The virus typically takes on a average week to pass through a human. So “in theory”, if everyone stocked up for 2 weeks, lockdown for two weeks, at the end of that period you’d have killed the spread and be mopping up the residual...

That is the 4 week lockdown we face. Now if during week 4 of that lockdown we had mass testing in place across the population, we could reduce that even further to virtual minimal... the problem is.. we arent.. 

 

Now 500k tests a day, how do you make it 10 million tests a day on existing infrastructure ?

 

Batch testing.

 

mix a portion of 20 samples together, apply the test. No covid.. all 20 were safe, in 1 single test.

if covid is present, test the 20 samples individually until you find the winner.

 

You might not get to 10 million capacity, with restesting, sample matching time etc, but even if you achieved 5million, its better than 500k. In one week youve tested most of the population, in 2 weeks youve tested everyone, including higher exposure risk twice.

It wont happen though. Thats why this is Lockdown 2 of at least 3 or 4. The vaccine is probably 8 months away from being useful for most of us on the high street.
 

There maybe need for lockdown after mass vaccination, simply to save people from themselves.. it takes 3-4 weeks to build up immunity, if the “invicibles” immediately hit the street after the jab, there is risk of a major spreading event, and one that could allow a mutation evolve to evade the vaccine by people’s bodies hosting it, rather than rejecting it... People need to build the immunity, before going out... which is some weeks after the jab.

 

Edited November 5, 2020 by adb968008

[grandadbob]

Talking of students my grandson is at the University of Sussex in a flat on campus in a "bubble" with 5 others and they haven't ventured out apart from visiting the local Co-op for essential supplies although they're getting most things delivered.

Glad that at least some youngsters are being sensible.

Edited November 5, 2020 by grandadbob

[Gwiwer]

16 minutes ago, Barry O said:

the students may not even know they have it.. it used to be "Freshers Flu"  when I was at Uni.. followed by "Glandular Fever" and "Mumps"  as someone elsewhere IQ does not equate to either Common Sense of awareness of what is going on in your body health wise...

You may have overlooked the other highly-transmissable conditions found among students especially at the start of the new academic year and which require a visit to a certain clinic   

 

23 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Richmond overrun by Crows?

Only becomes an Aussie Rules reference if you use the term Tigers instead of Richmond.  Besides - who won the 2020 Grand Final again, remind me?  

[3rd Rail Exile]

2 minutes ago, Gwiwer said:

Only becomes an Aussie Rules reference if you use the term Tigers instead of Richmond.  Besides - who won the 2020 Grand Final again, remind me?  

 Fair 'nuff! 

 

I did say that recent form suggested otherwise   

[Ravenser]

2 minutes ago, adb968008 said:

Rubbish.

China completely suppressed their outbreak in 4 months.

Here in the UK we went from estimated 100k cases per day in April, to circa 2000 a week by July. The whole south east/south west of England, went several weeks without a case. (I have the weekly downloads saved on my laptop, from the NHS published data... right down to postcode).

The virus typically takes on a average week to pass through a human. So “in theory”, if everyone stocked up for 2 weeks, lockdown for two weeks, at the end of that period you’d have killed the spread and be mopping up the residual...That is the 4 week lockdown we face. Now if during week 4 of that lockdown we had mass testing in place, we could reduce that even further.

 

Now 500k tests a day, how do you make it 10 million tests a day on existing infrastructure ?

 

Batch testing.

 

mix a portion of 20 samples together, apply the test. No covid.. all 20 were safe, in 1 single test.

if covid is present, test the 20 samples individually until you find the winner.

 

You might not get to 10 million capacity, with restesting, sample matching time etc, but even if you achieved 5million, its better than 500k.

 

 

 

Put very simply, it took Melbourne 4 months to go from just under 800 cases a day to under 5 

 

It is reasonable to assume that to go from 20,000 cases a day to under 5 would take much longer.

 

Assuming you could seal the border to prevent re-infection - which you can't.

 

On your logic, Ireland would be virus-free by the end of its 6 week lockdown. It won't be.

 

China did not have a nationwide outbreak. They had an outbreak in the main city of one province with limited overspill. They sealed off that city. We are not in a position to dig trenches across the motorways with excavators or weld up the doors of apartment blocks as they did.

 

And they also rigorously extracted the infected from the community and put them in isolation hospitals. I think that may have played a big role in their success in  Wuhan

 

 

 

 

[kevinlms]

Australians last in the world table.

 

FWIW in Victoria, we've had 6 double donuts in a row (that is no new cases and no deaths), but of course what would we know?

[adb968008]

And The Size north to south, east to west of Wuhan’s quarantine was ?

And number of people in the affected area of Wuhan is ?

 

Similar to England in both cases.

They had the added issues of no sea borders, so many more cross communication points.

 

i never said Zero, or even under 5.. i said residual. Dont mix words to push a pure Antipodean agenda.. Australia isn't perfect, and theres good reasons why their aggressive response is more than ours, but their approach is noteworthy that could be learned from.
Melbournes slow drag worsened I understand was down to the animal instincts of a security guard and a quarantined female, adding 2 months to the 4  was it  ?

 

fwiw I don't believe China has zero domestic cases either, yes thats hard, but getting it to very low managable numbers, is not that hard. You could take 80% of it off the street in a couple of weeks, and be at 95% in a couple of months. The key is not sitting back and relaxing. We wont learn of a crisis in China until it is a crisis, but in small doses i’m sure they are keeping a lid on it.

 

What China did have, that we had at the start, was a very high degree of compliance by the population.

 

Australias success was down to locking down early, hard travel restrictions and aggressive pursuit of the virus... its a pity we cannot learn from that.  Its worth pointing out that Anzac had hard quarantine rules from animals for decades, so the experience was there already.

 

I will add, its an often joke that Aussies play Rugby for the last 5 minutes more in the game than England, it appears its true for Covid too, thats the bit we are missing, I suspect thats because our government us leaning back on the capacity and quality of healthcare available to offer support to keeping an open economy, both of which may be different to those levels available in Australia, thus requiring a much more aggressive approach their, but allowing an acceptable* number of deaths here.

 

* I dont agree with it though, especially as those deaths can be random people of any age... My class mate from school died 2 weeks ago, leaving a 1 year old child in care, as the mother is in hospital with covid too..Shes on the path back now, but its horrific, and its heart breaking reading this on facebook, amongst my former school friends, of my age, where I grew up. This wave of the virus feels much closer to home than the last one.

Edited November 5, 2020 by adb968008

[Ian Hargrave]

1 hour ago, The Stationmaster said:

Back to Lockdown 2.

 

Mrs Stationmaster requires a new, and effective for once, edging tool to deal with the path across the lawn.   Knowing that garden centres are open I rang our local one a few minutes ago with a couple of questions -

1. Are you definitely open - yes

2. Are you selling gardening tools - yes

 

So locally we have the following situation (we are in Tier 1) - shops selling foods - open; garden centre - open; builders' merchants - open; restaurants, cafés, and pubs - allowed to sell takeaway food and beer; hospital & doctors' surgeries - open; chiropractor - open; bookshop, charity shops, and clothing shops (lots of the latter) - closed but permitted to do click & collect or deliveries; estate agents (plenty of them as well) - closed.

 

It will be interesting to see how many people and how much traffic is about when we pass through the town to the garden centre but I suspect it will be very different from lo Lockdown 1 and not all that much different from the way things were a few days ago.  it will also be interesting to see how many late in the year grockles are still about as they were still noticeable last week. 

Observations here in Middle England suggest you are correct. Much more traffic than during the first stages of  L.1.

Traffic of all kinds...from pedal cyclists to HGV. I ask myself...what lockdown?

[rockershovel]

I seem to recall that Australia’s last few attempts at playing rugby against England, didn’t work out so well for them? They might try playing the preceding 75 minutes as well?

 

Re lorry traffic from the Continent, I don’t believe that tractor exchange was ever seriously considered. I certainly wouldn’t care to attempt such an operation, in conjunction with the JIT (just in time) delivery system it underpins.

 

What I don’t understand about lockdown, is what is intended to ensue? What is achieved by a cycle of local suppression, followed by re-infection from abroad? 

 

 

[PenrithBeacon]

I think that this is a very much more liberal lockdown with more businesses being permitted to open for example.

Then there is a general tiredness with the whole thing particularly with young adults who are being told that the consequences for them are much less severe than for the elderly such as myself.

Personally I've put myself into just the same regime as last March. Better to be safe than sorry

[alastairq]

Oh well.....?  

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54818615

[simontaylor484]

51 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

 

Put very simply, it took Melbourne 4 months to go from just under 800 cases a day to under 5 

 

It is reasonable to assume that to go from 20,000 cases a day to under 5 would take much longer.

 

Assuming you could seal the border to prevent re-infection - which you can't.

 

On your logic, Ireland would be virus-free by the end of its 6 week lockdown. It won't be.

 

China did not have a nationwide outbreak. They had an outbreak in the main city of one province with limited overspill. They sealed off that city. We are not in a position to dig trenches across the motorways with excavators or weld up the doors of apartment blocks as they did.

 

And they also rigorously extracted the infected from the community and put them in isolation hospitals. I think that may have played a big role in their success in  Wuhan

 

 

 

 

Do we actually know they controlled the virus there. 

[kevinlms]

9 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

I seem to recall that Australia’s last few attempts at playing rugby against England, didn’t work out so well for them? They might try playing the preceding 75 minutes as well?

 

Rugby? Who cares, I'm not in NSW or Qld. No one outside those 2 states show any long term interest. OK, you'll have some escapees from those 2 states, or from Wales/Northern England, in Victoria.

[rockershovel]

5 minutes ago, kevinlms said:

Rugby? Who cares, I'm not in NSW or Qld. No one outside those 2 states show any long term interest. OK, you'll have some escapees from those 2 states, or from Wales/Northern England, in Victoria.

 

... it’s a reference to an earlier post, about Australian conditions generally...

 

[kevinlms]

5 minutes ago, simontaylor484 said:

Do we actually know they controlled the virus there. 

You mean in China? No reason to expect not. China (and other authoritarian state as you see fit) can't entirely block news (especially BAD news), look at the news from Hong Kong for many months, the Chinese didn't manage to block that news.

['CHARD]

12 minutes ago, alastairq said:

Oh well.....?  

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-54818615

 

The evil of the fur trade causing untold suffering.  Disgusting.

[rockershovel]

Inbox is FULL of emails from just about anyone I’ve bought anything from online, traders are definitely much more ready this time. 

[admiles]

3 hours ago, Taz said:

As under EU’s Everything but Arms initiative we already trade quota and tariff free with the 49 least developed countries in the world I’m wondering what will change to improve said trade from January?

 

And that's before we get into GSP, EEA, ACP and ETFA agreements to name but a few.

 

Very hard to better a tariff free trade deal we already enjoyed as members of the EU. It'll take us decades to even get back to where we were, let alone better it.

 

The problem is the average "Joe" on the street simply doesn't understand (or want to understand)

this.

 

Hey Ho

[kevinlms]

20 minutes ago, rockershovel said:

 

What I don’t understand about lockdown, is what is intended to ensue? What is achieved by a cycle of local suppression, followed by re-infection from abroad? 

 

 

You start by shutting your borders and when numbers get very low, then open up slowly. No good flinging doors open, because as has been proved many times, when it's crowded NO ONE takes any notice of 'rules'.

[rockershovel]

Just now, kevinlms said:

You start by shutting your borders and when numbers get very low, then open up slowly. No good flinging doors open, because as has been proved many times, when it's crowded NO ONE takes any notice of 'rules'.

 

I agree. Problem is, HMG don’t appear to agree as well. 

[Nick C]

3 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

 

I am sorry but I totally disagree with you on premium products, whilst I agree when we talk about highly advertised designer labels. Grade A produce is often far better value than the cheaper brands. in both taste and longevity. Wine is quite the same, buy a good quality wing and drink less if on a budget. But I am not saying buy the most expensive,

 

We all look for bargains, but they must also be of good quality, if not they are not a bargain. Once bitten twice shy,  equally though buying cheap could be dearer in the longer term

 

Those in the EU are subject to the EU's protectionist prices, they just bump up everyone else's price to match theirs, they have no choice !! Now I am more than happy to buy products from countries within the EU, subject to the same rules I put on those made elsewhere. Quality at an affordable price.

 

My wife used to work for a wine merchants - I can assure you that when it comes to decent wine, there's very little correlation between cost and quality - a decent mid-range bottle will beat a top 'name' hands down. There's huge snobbery when it comes to wine, so people will turn their nose up at a fantastic Portuguese/Eastern European/New World one and instead pay more for a poorer French/Italian/Spanish wine just because it's a "vintage"

 

Much the same with many other products - frequently the only difference between the branded version and the supermarket own brand is the label; made on the same production line in the same factory...