Lockdown #2

['CHARD]

20 minutes ago, Bernard Lamb said:

The only sign of any change under Lockdown 2 in this part of the world is that the groups of young men no longer gather in the local Spoons but have moved a hundred yards along the road to Greggs. They are probably different young men but they all look the same to me.

Bernard

 

A Greggs/ Spoons diet will render them utterly indistinguishable (not to say undistinguished).

[melmerby]

Department of Transport figures show that there are about 3 times as many vehicles on the roads as there were at the start of Lockdown #1

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/transport-use-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-pandemic

 

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, Bernard Lamb said:

The only sign of any change under Lockdown 2 in this part of the world is that the groups of young men no longer gather in the local Spoons but have moved a hundred yards along the road to Greggs. They are probably different young men but they all look the same to me.

Bernard

 

Young men lead busy social lives; a group of them have only to gather, as you do, on the verge of one of the industrial estates, than the driver of a German saloon car with blacked-out windows will pause to exchange pleasantries, as it might be. 

 

PC Plod formerly disapproved of this modest social intercourse, but seems to have lost interest in it entirely, now. Certainly none seem to feel their former urge, to avoid his beady eye..

 

[Ravenser]

Government statistics on travel here

 

Travel statistics

 

The patterns make very interesting reading - a substantial drop in the 10 days of increasing alarm before the first lockdown, then steadily down to  very low levels (it wasn't like pressing a switch on 23/3)

 

Private motoring has dropped significantly under lockdown 2 , but HGVs are almost unaffected and light commercials only mildly down . Given that "the school run" is continuing  under the present lockdown leisure motoring must be well down.

 

Rail travel seems relatively unaffected by lockdown - but it's never reached even 40% of pre-coronavirus levels, and is probably now under 30%. The Tube has taken a sharper knock, and London buses, though not really affected by the lockdown, are still below half of normal traffic

 

Given that most people in inner London travel by tube and bus, not car, tube at 17% of normal and buses at under 50% represents a drastic reduction in mobility in Greater London

 

Air traffic has never reached more than 15% of normal, and will now be very much lower. I doubt there has been any significant immigration into Britain since March - and I doubt there will be until at least next summer

 

As far as vaccines are concerned , the one just announced as effective should cover the vast majority of the really vulnerable population. That should avoid the vast majority of deaths and a majority of hospitalisations.

 

At that point, we should have reached a stage where the NHS can just about cope with hospitalisations under any realistic scenario, and mass carnage is off the table. So full lockdowns , with all their costs, come off the table - provided we are moderately careful for the rest of the winter and can get through to Easter, when the weather will start to be in our favour and the vaccine should be being rolled out widely. This , with luck, will be the final full lockdown.

 

You would hope the vaccine would stop transmission , not just stop you getting ill. If you are measuring effectiveness by a trial based on "who gets symptoms" you can't - methodologically - demonstrate that it prevents asymptomatic infections, or transmission. But it has to be a decent bet.

 

Removing a third of the population from the pool of possibly infectious must cut the transmission rate

 

Beyond that , we have any other vaccine that comes through to vaccinate the rest of the population - AstraZeneca's efforts being the most obvious. That at least will not require a cool-chain at -70 degrees C to distribute it 

 

I can't see any reason why the whole population wouldn't be vaccinated, one way or another. After all - measles kills only a very small proportion of those infected. But we vaccinate against it, routinely - and I think there'd be a huge outcry if it was announced that measles vaccinations were to stop "because it's a very mild disease and not work the effort of vaccinating against".

 

And I'd call a disease that puts many in hospital , and may put you in intensive care, or leave you unable to walk more than a hundred yards for many months quite a serious disease. In normal times, I think most people would be willing to take a vaccine to avoid that. Nobody can prove it's completely safe until it's actually been rolled out , but on the reasonable assumption there aren't significant side effects once it's been given to hundreds of thousands, I can't see that people will ultimately be reluctant

 

 It's impossible to be certain of long term ill-health or long-term immunity with a disease that's been identified for only 10 months. But that cuts both ways . You can say "there's no evidence these problems will be ongoing " - but then there couldn't be such evidence . Equally you can say "there's no guarantee these people will ever recover fully" - and that would also be true at present . In due course we will find out: but we can't assume the surprise awaiting us must be pleasant

 

 

Edited November 12, 2020 by Ravenser

[melmerby]

27 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

Government statistics on travel here

 

Rail travel seems relatively unaffected by lockdown - but it's never reached even 40% of pre-coronavirus levels, and is probably now under 30%. The Tube has taken a sharper knock, and London buses, though not really affected by the lockdown, are still below half of normal traffic

 

Avanti WC are about to remove 33% of services to Birmingham & Manchester.

They are doing it by just removing 1 timetabled train per hour from each which leaves a rather uneven 20min + 40 min gap between trains.

 

When I travelled on a couple of NXWM buses about three weeks ago they were pretty full, especially as I was travelling outside the "rush" hour.

Edited November 12, 2020 by melmerby
missing text

[woodenhead]

37 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Avanti WC are about to remove 33% of services to Birmingham & Manchester.

They are doing it by just removing 1 timetabled train per hour from each which leaves a rather uneven 20min + 40 min gap between trains.

 

When I travelled on a couple of NXWM buses about three weeks ago they were pretty full, especially as I was travelling outside the "rush" hour.

This is because they cannot completely recast the timetable, come May I expect they will do something more permanent - they expect it to be a long time before they need the three trains per hour again.

 

Now this must blow a hole in the plan for 800 derivatives on Liverpool services - you've suddenly got a bigger WCML fleet than you need leading up to Phase 1 of HS2 if the drop in numbers remains sustained for a couple of years.  Do they now need to think about what has been ordered and potential adjusting it down?

[john new]

49 minutes ago, melmerby said:

Avanti WC are about to remove 33% of services to Birmingham & Manchester.

They are doing it by just removing 1 timetabled train per hour from each which leaves a rather uneven 20min + 40 min gap between trains.

 

When I travelled on a couple of NXWM buses about three weeks ago they were pretty full, especially as I was travelling outside the "rush" hour.

 

I am not surprised. Despite it being free for me off-peak I have used a bus twice since March, pre-lockdown one I used it a lot. Luckily most things I need are walkable distance, apart from the big weekly grocery shop. That we are now doing less frequently but with the converse of bigger loads so it still is the car as previously. Any longer haul trips I would have used a train for we just aren't making.  Our buses are running fairly full but local factors partly influence that, on street parking is so scarce around here that if you haven't got your own drive (we have) you struggle to park when you get back so bus ridership is high and the service accordingly almost at London levels.

 

What with the need to mask (uncomfortable fairly quickly) and the mixing with other people, however low the risk actually is with distanced seating but the bus windows shut, why would you chose to use public transport at the moment unless you really have to?

[woodenhead]

Throw in the cost too - I've just put in what would have been a standard business journey from Manchester to Maidstone - could have been done on Advance tickets for under £200 - now £430 Anytime with no Advance on offer even a week forward.

 

That would certainly discourage business travel let alone leisure.

[The Stationmaster]

Interesting comparing varying sources although the areas they cover aren't directly comparable.  So District Council wise ours rate has risen again to 137 but on another site the rate in te two itself is showing at 55 - which in fact is down from 996.5 for our ward a couple of weeks back.  But as always the different sites seem to have differing date sets so you don't really know.

 

Road traffic has definitely reduced a bit although the town centre car parks seems as busy as ever.  The weekend (Saturday) was definitely quieter in the town but quite a lot of shops are open still.

 

The ward my daughter works on in Oxford deals only with elective orthopaedic surgery patients and is remaining very busy indeed.  In the first lockdown elective work stopped and the ward took over orthopaedic trauma patients as the Trust created additional high dependency beds in its other hospital  partly by moving out orthopaedic trauma work - that hasn't this time round.

[Bernard Lamb]

1 hour ago, john new said:

 

I am not surprised. Despite it being free for me off-peak I have used a bus twice since March, 

Free at all times for me on most local services.

You have used the bus two times more than I have.

Most buses seem to have at most 3 people on them and often that includes the driver.

Bernard

[monkeysarefun]

Our national broadcaster here has a tame extreme rightwing spokesperson on economic matters  (they need to have them to ensure they are showing 'balance') who pops up every few days to spout nonsense.

Her current argument goes along these lines:

 

Australia now has no local cases of transmission, so we wasted our time going into lockdown and closing our borders because the virus obviously didn't end up happening here very much so all we did was cause pain to the economy.

 

She is apparently an economics professor, given her accent I assume she taught at Trump university. I notice that she hasn't been in any rush to head back home at the moment.

 

Oh yes, her latest rant is how the world needs to condemn Australia for its compulsory forced quarantining of all arrivals because 'locking people up' without charge is something that only 3rd world dictatorships do.  No love, disagreeing with the results of democratic elections, refusing to concede  in elections that you've clearly lost, firing people who's advice you don't agree with, installing your friends and family into positions of power and filling the defence and security organisations with cronies and yes men is something that only 3rd world dictatorships do!

Edited November 12, 2020 by monkeysarefun

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

Throw in the cost too - I've just put in what would have been a standard business journey from Manchester to Maidstone - could have been done on Advance tickets for under £200 - now £430 Anytime with no Advance on offer even a week forward.

 

That would certainly discourage business travel let alone leisure.

 

Business travel has long since transferred its custom to short-haul air flights plus, if required, hire cars from the airport. I haven’t made more than very occasional business rail trips in years, and my experiences from Yarmouth, Hartlepool and Plymouth have done nothing to attract me back. 

[melmerby]

2 hours ago, john new said:

 

 

 

What with the need to mask (uncomfortable fairly quickly) and the mixing with other people, however low the risk actually is with distanced seating but the bus windows shut, why would you chose to use public transport at the moment unless you really have to?

No distancing on NXWM buses but must wear masks as required by the regs and the windows must stay open(!)

However the windows were shut and many weren't using masks.

I had to use the bus as my car was being serviced but never again on NX buses until this is all over.

 

Might go on the privately operated service (a different route), they are probably more concientious with the regulations..

 

 

Edited November 12, 2020 by melmerby

[Nick C]

3 hours ago, woodenhead said:

Throw in the cost too - I've just put in what would have been a standard business journey from Manchester to Maidstone - could have been done on Advance tickets for under £200 - now £430 Anytime with no Advance on offer even a week forward.

 

That would certainly discourage business travel let alone leisure.

257 miles according to Google,  so at 40p/mile (which I assume is still the standard business reimbursement rate) that's £102.80 to drive...

[PatB]

4 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

Our national broadcaster here has a tame extreme rightwing spokesperson on economic matters  (they need to have them to ensure they are showing 'balance') who pops up every few days to spout nonsense.

Her current argument goes along these lines:

 

Australia now has no local cases of transmission, so we wasted our time going into lockdown and closing our borders because the virus obviously didn't end up happening here very much so all we did was cause pain to the economy.

 

She is apparently an economics professor, given her accent I assume she taught at Trump university. I notice that she hasn't been in any rush to head back home at the moment.

 

Oh yes, her latest rant is how the world needs to condemn Australia for its compulsory forced quarantining of all arrivals because 'locking people up' without charge is something that only 3rd world dictatorships do.  No love, disagreeing with the results of democratic elections, refusing to concede  in elections that you've clearly lost, firing people who's advice you don't agree with, installing your friends and family into positions of power and filling the defence and security organisations with cronies and yes men is something that only 3rd world dictatorships do!

Must be an East Coast thing. As a WA resident I don't think I've come across her. We just get the entertaining and quite centrist Alan Kohler, and two or three second-stringers with outlooks sufficiently neutral that I've no idea who they are. 

 

The trouble with successfully managing, or better still avoiding, a crisis, is that there are always those who come out of the woodwork afterwards to assert that there was never a problem to start with. Existence of examples to the contrary worldwide doesn't seem to put any sort of dent in their view. 

[monkeysarefun]

1 hour ago, PatB said:

Must be an East Coast thing. As a WA resident I don't think I've come across her. We just get the entertaining and quite centrist Alan Kohler, and two or three second-stringers with outlooks sufficiently neutral that I've no idea who they are. 

 

The trouble with successfully managing, or better still avoiding, a crisis, is that there are always those who come out of the woodwork afterwards to assert that there was never a problem to start with. Existence of examples to the contrary worldwide doesn't seem to put any sort of dent in their view. 

 

 

Gigi Foster.

 

She made waves on a "Q and A"  episode about the virus a few months ago saying that we need to weigh up the cost of having dead people vs the cost to the economy of shutting things down, because we'd be better off if we were like Sweden.

 

Also often bangs on about how the US is better than Australia because they don't have quaint things like paying low-paid workers weekend penalty rates. 

 

 ABC radio Sydney has her on - we invariably turn her off when they announce her so I miss her other great ideas and pontifications.

[rockershovel]

6 hours ago, Nick C said:

257 miles according to Google,  so at 40p/mile (which I assume is still the standard business reimbursement rate) that's £102.80 to drive...

 

No, it’s £205.60, assuming you intend to return at some time. I used to reckon that business rail travel was about the same cost as off-peak rail travel, booked in advance. 

[Hal Nail]

17 hours ago, 'CHARD said:

 

A Greggs/ Spoons diet will render them utterly indistinguishable (not to say undistinguished).

I was involved in a pro tennis tournament during the first lockdown for 6 weeks. One player, Billy Harris, played 42 days straight, which is pretty impressive. Even more remarkable was his 42 consecutive Spoons fry ups. Breakfast of champions, evidently.

['CHARD]

1 minute ago, Hal Nail said:

I was involved in a pro tennis tournament during the first lockdown for 6 weeks. One player, Billy Harris, played 42 days straight, which is pretty impressive. Even more remarkable was his 42 consecutive Spoons fry ups. Breakfast of champions, evidently.

 

The breakfast of a certain breed of music festival-goers the length and breadth of the land.  

[Reorte]

15 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

Business travel has long since transferred its custom to short-haul air flights plus, if required, hire cars from the airport. I haven’t made more than very occasional business rail trips in years, and my experiences from Yarmouth, Hartlepool and Plymouth have done nothing to attract me back. 

A few years ago I was regularly having to travel between Manchester and Basingstoke for work and did that by train, having persuaded them that I could get advance tickets that cost less than the hire car. Not the most pleasant experience but neither is slogging up and down the motorway.

[woodenhead]

14 hours ago, Nick C said:

257 miles according to Google,  so at 40p/mile (which I assume is still the standard business reimbursement rate) that's £102.80 to drive...

 

7 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

No, it’s £205.60, assuming you intend to return at some time. I used to reckon that business rail travel was about the same cost as off-peak rail travel, booked in advance. 

But what a drive that would be, all that M6, no thanks - though of course it may be a bit quieter these days.

 

Given the TOCs have no incentive to fill trains and the Government actively discourage travel it is no surprise that any cheaper travel is curtailed at the moment.  Luckily I have no need to make the trip, all done over Microsoft Teams these days, had an exam 4 weeks ago on Teams, another one on Tuesday with a remote invilgalator watching me on my camera.

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

 

But what a drive that would be, all that M6, no thanks - though of course it may be a bit quieter these days.

 

Given the TOCs have no incentive to fill trains and the Government actively discourage travel it is no surprise that any cheaper travel is curtailed at the moment.  Luckily I have no need to make the trip, all done over Microsoft Teams these days, had an exam 4 weeks ago on Teams, another one on Tuesday with a remote invilgalator watching me on my camera.

 

The M6 is an awful road, the services are the worst I know.. oh wait, some of the ones on the M5 are pretty sordid too. 

[caradoc]

On 12/11/2020 at 06:04, rockershovel said:

we should CERTAINLY have closed the borders at an early stage, especially to countries with high infection rates, as a number of countries did; we ARE, after all, an island.

 

Given the way the virus rapidly spread worldwide that would certainly seem to have been the right thing to do; But even for an island nation, how practical would it actually have been ? Remember the outcry from British citizens 'stranded' abroad when flights started being cancelled, IIRC the number was tens of thousands; Could we really have just said to all these folk, you're not getting home until this virus is vanquished, which, 8 months on, is no closer than ever. And would the virus not have been here already anyway ? 

 

[rockershovel]

1 hour ago, caradoc said:

 

Given the way the virus rapidly spread worldwide that would certainly seem to have been the right thing to do; But even for an island nation, how practical would it actually have been ? Remember the outcry from British citizens 'stranded' abroad when flights started being cancelled, IIRC the number was tens of thousands; Could we really have just said to all these folk, you're not getting home until this virus is vanquished, which, 8 months on, is no closer than ever. And would the virus not have been here already anyway ? 

 

 

I’d be most interested to see a proper account of the numbers of British nationals abroad at that time of year. Around 16th May, Professor John Aston, the Home Office’s Chief Scientific Advisor, provided evidence to MPs about his department’s estimates, saying: “The numbers for April I can tell you are that up to the 26th April from aviation there were 95,000 arrivals, of which about 53,000 were UK citizens.

 

There was also a clear option that anyone able to demonstrate a permanent, documented U.K. address could return, be isolated at that address for two weeks. After all, 53,000 is a number equivalent to the crowd at a single Premiership football match, arriving at several known entry points at known times, over a period of at least four weeks. 

Edited November 13, 2020 by rockershovel

[The Stationmaster]

19 hours ago, rockershovel said:

 

Business travel has long since transferred its custom to short-haul air flights plus, if required, hire cars from the airport. I haven’t made more than very occasional business rail trips in years, and my experiences from Yarmouth, Hartlepool and Plymouth have done nothing to attract me back. 

Has it?  Pre Covid my son occasionally travelled to Paris on business and always went by train because he could. get on with work more easily on the train and it suits getting him to his destination in Paris.  He does however fly to further destinations and the only reason he doesn't use the train to/from Geneva is because it is more expensive than the air fare.

 

Similarly travelling around Pre-Covid I certainly hadn't noticed any decline in business travel over recent years,  In fact travelling to/from Bristol Parkway my distinct impression over the past couple of years was that business travel by rail had actually increased.  Maybe it has changed over distances where air is competitive on door-to-door times and, more particularly, on cost but that isn't really new