Covid-19 Virus

Paying £10 to watch our reserves just about scrape past Oxford in the league cup.

 

Japan is an interesting one there

 

I’m 39 and got my jab invite yesterday, they’re really rattling through them.

 

It is.

It makes me wonder if they are deliberately under-reporting to ensure the Olympics go ahead, or whether it is down to societal factors.

 

I think there were similar accusations just over a year ago, before they were postponed

 

The WHO commissioned a report on the pandemic, which has come back with some criticisms of both the WHO and various world governments.

The short of it: an independent panel has concluded this could have been prevented and there were a "myriad of failures".

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-57085505

 

Seeing the news snippets from India, I couldn't help noticing that friends and relatives were either trying to find beds or oxygen, or mourning over someone in their 30s and 40s.

 

I think the fact that we have such a heavy testing program at the moment must be a little comfort for those looking at the numbers. In England we test 900,000 and 1million and finding 2-3k infections every day, whereas France are testing something like 100k a day, and finding 20k infections.

When it looks at serious illnesses, the entire UK has 138 serious cases, whilst Germany has over 5,000 and France has 4,500, so the efficacy of the vaccines is certainly having an effect.

Of course the various different ways of looking at the above numbers means that they can be questioned, but if they are honest they do show a picture.

We must hope that testing alongside this slow relaxation of restrictions can keep the infections down until the full adult population has been vaccinated (and hope that the vaccines remain effective).

I've got a holiday in Spain booked for the family in early July, which was carried over from last summer. I think I'm taking the decision (after full consultation with the family, of course) to just knock it on the head. As much as we really need the holiday I think the expected brinkmanship, the testing, the hassle at the airports, etc, that we may have to go through, even if Spain gets the green light in the end, is probably not worth it.

 

If by "...societal factors..." you mean the Japanese issues of 'shame' and 'blame' you're getting warm. Throw in 'endemic institutionalised graft' and add a dollop of 'completely skewed demographics' and you've got it. A Japanese friend of mine openly says that 'her' government would happily use c19 to 'manage' Japan's wrinkly population...

 

Probably wise.

I'm hoping to go to Spain in the autumn but I've not booked anything yet.

There are too many uncertainties. New variants, government restrictions (on both sides), additional costs (eg testing) etc etc.

I think the rapid vaccine roll out here (and now in EU countries) gives me optimism that things will look a lot better in a few months but I suspect July is probably too soon.

 

Don’t get fooled again.

 

You better, you better, you bet. There's no substitute.

 

Disturbing news about a friend's mother.
This lady,in her 80s but formerly very active and mentally secure had her second jab.
Within hours she was inert,couldn't recognise her daughter and is now in a home with no sign of improvement.
Dreadful.

 

Whilst the WHO continues to be dependant on some countries more than others for its funding, any output from it will continue to be shaped according to politics. It tip-toed around China, USA and and it’s message was just waffle.

 

I agree, but how can that be resolved? Clearly richer countries are more able to contribute.

 

Tiers won't be popular but if there's spikes in places then it has to be combatted.

Forget the 11 deaths, that's the effect of someone catching the virus weeks ago. The figure to watch now is the number of positive test results, that's creeping up slowly this week. Complacency will be the reason why things could get out of hand even with the vaccination programme.

 

Tiers didn’t work at all last time and there’s no reason to think they will now. Leicester and Bolton spent most of last autumn in ever increasing local restrictions and cases still spiralled.

The biggest and frankly inexplicable error was announcing the ban on travel from India but then allowing 4 days for literally thousands of people to come back into the country before the ban kicked in.

As for increasing cases, that was already priced into the relaxation of the rules and so shouldn’t trigger any significant delays.

Vaccination numbers really haven’t hit the heights of March for weeks now. Presumably that’s down the supply issues but it’s slowed noticeably. If they do put back the June date, I think that’s the reason they’ll give.

 

How long is this going to continue? How long are we going to carry on upping restrictions, locking down, reducing restrictions, unlocking, only to repeat the process over and over? Surely we cannot go backwards yet again?

With the level of vaccination and the current numbers for hospital admissions and deaths, why is there such hysteria any time a new "variant" is noticed and there's a few cases? Do we not accept that viruses circulate and people get ill any more? Obviously every death, for any reason, is a sad loss of life, but I personally cannot bare the thought of being locked up again and the mental anguish and financial uncertainty it brings and I'm certain there are thousands if not millions in this country that that applies to even more strongly to than it does for me.

 

The virus might be tripling but the people who are infected with it when they returned to the country most likely came directly from India to a bigger household than the UK average, where there are more younger unvaccinated people than the UK average and then mixed with others in the local community.

If you drop a new variant in a city it will spread faster than the average variant around the whole of the country.

The test will be of it continues to grow but I think the step they have taken to open up vaccines to anyone in hotspots is a good idea

 

I think there will be a lot of pushback if any lifting of restrictions is postponed/cancelled due to this new variant. I think I read yesterday there are 1200-1300 cases across the UK, which isn’t that high in the grand scheme (compared to daily numbers we were seeing last year).

Also seeing a few bits online that scientists do not believe the vaccines in circulation are ineffective against it.

 

Anyone had an experience of the Indian variant? A lady I manage at work apparently had it. Husband works in a school and brought it home. He was generally fine, she (after 1 vaccine dose) was pretty knocked out for a week and spent a couple of hours one evening in hospital and her mum in her 80s who lives with them (both vaccine doses) had mild cold symptoms.

PHE confirmed her husband had the Indian variant so she assumes that's what the rest of them had.

I suppose the moral of the story is - the vaccine definitely seems to have some effect and even if she counted on the 'hospitalisation' numbers for that particular day, the intervention needed was very minor.

 

Got my first jab this morning, Pfizer. Went to the vaccination centre at Lakeside Country Club (where the BDO darts used to be). Impressed at the efficiency of it all. So far so good, just a pretty achy arm but that's it.

 

The 15 minute wait after my jab, I was literally sat on a chair in front of the stage where the darts used to happen!

 

Just got back from my 2nd jab 30 minutes ago, so far so good

 

Did someone yell "ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY!" after they stuck you?

 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/14/india-covid-variant-could-lead-to-third-wave-uk