Lockdown’s Last Lingerings - (Covid since L2 ended)

[petethemole]

17 minutes ago, Ravenser said:

 

that tends to confirm my suspicion that children are safer and less likely to catch it while in school, in a structured "COVID-safe" environment where contact tracing is easy and obvious , and some kind of self-isolation can be enforced - compared to when they are out of school, hanging round with there mates, and anything could be happening out of sight.

 

It sounds like the worst damage was done when the school was closed

 

From observation, apart from those being picked up by parents a significant number of secondary school and 6th form college students hang out with their mates for a while after school, others huddle together at bus stops and on the top decks of buses.

[Ravenser]

40 minutes ago, petethemole said:

 

From observation, apart from those being picked up by parents a significant number of secondary school and 6th form college students hang out with their mates for a while after school, others huddle together at bus stops and on the top decks of buses.

 

Exactly. If they were out of school they would be getting together privately and doing this all day There is no way that teenagers are going to stay confined to the house, and left to their own devices they visible do not socially distance.

 

 At least while they are on school premises they have social distancing imposed on them by the school, who they interact with is controlled, and there are procedures in place. These act as a permanent reminder of the risks

 

Neither situation is ideal, but I tend to think that keeping them in school is the lesser evil of the two , in terms of infection control

[John M Upton]

Here we go....

 

From 00:01 on Boxing Day, Sussex, Oxfordshire, Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire, those parts in Essex not already in tier four, Waverley in Surrey, and Hampshire - including Portsmouth and Southampton but with the exception of the New Forest - will be escalated to tier four.

Bristol, Gloucestershire, Somerset (including the North Somerset area), Swindon, the Isle of Wight, the New Forest and Northamptonshire, as well as Cheshire and Warrington, will be escalated to tier three.

Cornwall and Herefordshire will be escalated to tier two.

 

The IoW is going to be well annoyed.  And to add to the joy another variant from South Africa has turned up!!

[APOLLO]

1 hour ago, lapford34102 said:

Absolutely,  being stuck out in the wilds on the M20 must be awful. 

 

Could be worse, M6 at Shap Summit or the M62 Rishworth Moor !!

 

Agree a very thoughtful and kind act though, non Christians with a true Christmas spirit - gives us all a bit of hope. Like it or not we all depend on these truck drivers of all nationalities.

 

Brit15

[Bulleidboy100]

I just watched twenty seven people get off the hovercraft at Ryde, Isle of Wight. Having come from Portsmouth - Tier 4 - arriving in Ryde IoW - Tier 1 - how does this work?

[John M Upton]

Travelling for "work" most likely.  Lame excuses are pretty much rendering a lot of the restrictions worthless.

[AY Mod]

19 minutes ago, APOLLO said:

non Christians with a true Christmas spirit

 

Life's heroes and angels often spring from places you wouldn't think to look.

[TheQ]

I see Norfolk has gone from tier 2 to 4, all those Londoners escaping to their second homes here have sent our rates through the roof..

[chris p bacon]

3 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

Travelling for "work" most likely.  Lame excuses are pretty much rendering a lot of the restrictions worthless.

 

Lame excuses... so what does someone like me do.

 

I'm currently working in the Borders which is Scottish Tier 1 (ST1), I came from an England Tier 2 area which moved to Tier 4 after I left, While working here the ST1 area moves straight to ST4 with 'The Border' (even though there isn't one) supposedly closed for travel to England*. by next Tuesday I will have run out of materials as well as clothes and will have to return.

The T4 restrictions actually allow for travel for work or do we presume that all who travel are using 'lame excuses'

 

* There are several roads here where 'The Border' runs down the centre of the road.

[vaughan45]

9 minutes ago, TheQ said:

I see Norfolk has gone from tier 2 to 4, all those Londoners escaping to their second homes here have sent our rates through the roof..

 

Not necessarily, in my part of Norfolk the actions of some of my fellow locals won't assist in slowing the spread, so you only need one case for the genie to be out of the lamp. Personally I think Tier 4 is where the majority of the country should be if we hope to get ahead of the curve.

[adb968008]

1 hour ago, Ravenser said:

 

Exactly. If they were out of school they would be getting together privately and doing this all day There is no way that teenagers are going to stay confined to the house, and left to their own devices they visible do not socially distance.

 

 At least while they are on school premises they have social distancing imposed on them by the school, who they interact with is controlled, and there are procedures in place. These act as a permanent reminder of the risks

 

Neither situation is ideal, but I tend to think that keeping them in school is the lesser evil of the two , in terms of infection control

I’m not talking about teenagers

 

My school I refer to is under 12..

so your argument completely falls over.

 

4,5,6,7,8,9,10 year olds do not hang out in neighbourhoods or on buses around this part of London. Just to add child care, after school clubs are completely extinct too, even if you wanted them, they are gone... if we werent working from home i’m not sure what we would do, as 3pm is quite impractical for London commuters.

 

Kids can catch it... end of, ive first hand experience of seeing it, 12 times, including in my own daughters class, I have the letters from school to back it up.

Parents can pass it to other parents, children, dogs cats, minks and lions, it can spread back the other way too.

The current path seems to be parent to child, hence the school was able to react first, but where dozens were caught prior, 12 were caught at school.. you only need 1 not to be caught sooner to mass infect,

 

The only reason Its not spread in school was rapid reaction. Thats not strategy, thats roulette, you only need to bet red and not black once.

if this new strain affects kids, youve just reduced the number of black dots on the wheel, but you are still betting on black.

 

maybe you can explain that away.

Edited December 23, 2020 by adb968008

[Tricky-CRS]

19 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

Travelling for "work" most likely.  Lame excuses are pretty much rendering a lot of the restrictions worthless.

 

Yesterday I drove from NE Cheshire to Near Blackpool to survey a sub-station ready for an up-grade I went from Tier 2 to Tier 3 and teamed up with people from Blackpool, Manchester and at least myself from Cheshire. My LAME excuse is I have no choice the boss arranged it, the client wants the work doing, the substation needs upgrading or your lights go off or I loss my job. Personally I would have preferred to sit at home safe and sound on 80% but that isn't always an option.

[John M Upton]

Let me explain my approach re 'Lame excuses'.  There are of course many who are travelling for legitimate work reasons but by the same measure there are a lot who are coming up with all sorts of creative interpretations of the regulations (or just plain ignoring them altogether) when on the very rare occasion someone in authority asks them where they are going and why.

 

Without any form of consistency both in enforcement and also regulations, this is just going to continue to rumble on in the same fiasco manner it has for months now.

[Fenman]

22 minutes ago, TheQ said:

I see Norfolk has gone from tier 2 to 4, all those Londoners escaping to their second homes here have sent our rates through the roof..

I don’t think so. North Norfolk district (which includes most of Chelsea-on-sea) has an infection rate of ~100 per 100k. West Norfolk, where only the Queen has a holiday home (which, contrary to tradition, she isn’t using this holiday) has a rate of ~200 per 100k. 
 

And after a visit to King’s Lynn for emergency dental work yesterday, it seems to be much more likely that the spread is caused by local people engaging in emergency Christmas shopping in wildly over-crowded shops. 

Meanwhile Norwich (which has very little tourism — bizarrely, I think, but that’s for another thread) also seems to have a high infection rate and a high incidence of the super-transmissible variant. 
 

It’s handy to blame everything on That London, but doesn’t seem justified in this case. 
 

Paul

[Reorte]

Been in tier 3 for a while, still am. No sign (yet) of an increase in cases around here at least, but the fall's fizzled out too.

[Neil]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

 

Of course we could, in that needs must when the devil drives, but I read JU to be talking about affects on children far beyond affects on their academic progress.

 

Unless you see it close-up, the affect on their mental wellbeing of school closures is hard to believe. ...

 

4 hours ago, Reorte said:

Also even just on the academic considerations human beings aren't machines. You can't just learn whenever the opportunity arises and have the same outcome after x amount of schooling. To work effectively it needs to work alongside the mind developing. This is especially true of the most basic stuff at the youngest ages, in order for the lessons to really take hold and become instinctive, if you want them to read and write without having to think about it for example.

 

I am aware of this, I have trained as and worked as a teacher. I'm also kept regularly up to date with my primary school age grandchildren's progress. However saying that something can't be done when it may have to be done doesn't get us very far. A quick google shows that on average UK children start school sooner than many continental European countries. We should also remember that there isn't a cut off point for learning, most of us will be able to drive and most of us will have learned in our late teens. For most of us the mechanics of driving have become automatic even though we didn't learn this particular skill at school. We learn at university, the Open University, night classes, apprenticeships and in service training. The point I'm trying to make is that closing schools could be done, it could be done in a way that wouldn't damage educational attainment and compromise the students future prospects. The emotional stuff maybe a little harder to tackle but school or no school the pandemic will have some negative effect.

 

Proper planning can mitigate some of the worst of the effects. We (and by we I mean government) can ensure that children have at least one decent meal a day while off school. Those without a decent means of accessing on line learning can be provided for and if they can on line they can also go some way to maintaining friendships and social interaction on line too. I can't pretend that this would be ideal but if we're forced into closing schools then things like this can help.

[Nick C]

~167 here, which puts us about a third of the way up the list (average for England is 317). And therefore straight into Tier 4 

[Pete the Elaner]

42 minutes ago, Fenman said:

I don’t think so. North Norfolk district (which includes most of Chelsea-on-sea) has an infection rate of ~100 per 100k. West Norfolk, where only the Queen has a holiday home (which, contrary to tradition, she isn’t using this holiday) has a rate of ~200 per 100k. 
 

And after a visit to King’s Lynn for emergency dental work yesterday, it seems to be much more likely that the spread is caused by local people engaging in emergency Christmas shopping in wildly over-crowded shops. 

Meanwhile Norwich (which has very little tourism — bizarrely, I think, but that’s for another thread) also seems to have a high infection rate and a high incidence of the super-transmissible variant. 
 

It’s handy to blame everything on That London, but doesn’t seem justified in this case. 
 

Paul

 

It is easy to blame a particular group but that doesn't help anybody.

 

Some seem to be blaming those who live or work in the city.

Some are blaming students.

Some are blaming those who flaunt the rules.

Some are blaming the government.

 

Reality is probably a mix of these & more. Some may be avoidable (enough to still be a problem), but we all need a limited amount of interaction even if this is just a weekly food shop (even a delivery is not risk-free), or stopping at a filling station on the way to work.

We just all need to be responsible for ourselves & the more people who do, the better. It is really easy to abandon precautions/restrictions because others are not bothering, but this is the worst thing we can do.

 

It is not just a UK problem either. Just check other figures: France, Germany, Spain, Italy & the US are all suffering at least as badly.

[Nearholmer]

Yes, well, there isn't a Tier 5 yet in England, but if there was I think we'd be in it: headline rate 658/100k.week, but that is five days out of date, and as of today it is >800/100k.week.

 

The rate of increase has been astonishing. As Pete says, blaming doesn't help, and TBH it doesn't even furnish a believable explanation.

 

About the only crumb of comfort is that there are hints in the numbers that the rate of rise may be slacking-off slightly, but equally that could be late-arriving figures (we tested on Sunday, have 2:4 results back negative and await the other 2:4).

 

 

Edited December 23, 2020 by Nearholmer

[John M Upton]

Well the reaction in Sunny* Sussex is that everyone seems to have jumped in their cars and gone shopping!  The local Co-Op looks like it has been looted and there are people desperately trying to get haircuts!!!

 

[*Sunny - in fact it's hissing down....]

[vaughan45]

Well at least there is only one more day of madness, followed by National Infection Day Christmas Day before the move to Tier Four, then a short wait to follow the infection charts, I wonder who will get to no. 1.

 

Just had a text from HMG/NHS advising that as I am in the extremely vulnerable group and moving to Tier 4 on Saturday, I should be reconsidering my Christmas Day plans. No need, out of an abundance of caution the plan is for it to be just SWMBO & me on Christmas Day. Having had to deal with one death this year, I rather not have any more.

Edited December 23, 2020 by vaughan45
Correction

[rocor]

7 hours ago, stewartingram said:

Talking of those "do as we want" people:

Local TV news this morning showed a press release from Cambs Police, that they wouldn't be having roadblocks, or entering people's houses to break up gatherings, they would only respond to mass gatherings taking place (my words, I can't remember the precise wording of what was said). 

Does anyone else agree that this press release - and the tv station reporting it - was irresponsible? No policing = take no respect for the law in my opinion?

 

Stewart

 

What else are the police expected to do?, they hardly have the resources to send out a patrol every time someone decides to get on the blower to the rozzers because they have seen someone turn up at a neighbours house with an overnight bag.

[John M Upton]

Does anyone know if Opticians and Dentists are still open under Tier 4 conditions?

 

As per usual the official Government advice is hopeless.

[Pete the Elaner]

16 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

What else are the police expected to do?, they hardly have the resources to send out a patrol every time someone decides to get on the blower to the rozzers because they have seen someone turn up at a neighbours house with an overnight bag.

 

They could not broadcast the fact they won't do anything.

They are effectively saying you shouldn't do this...but if you do, don't worry because you'll definitely get away with it.

[boxbrownie]

20 minutes ago, John M Upton said:

Does anyone know if Opticians and Dentists are still open under Tier 4 conditions?

 

As per usual the official Government advice is hopeless.

It’s quite clear if you look......from the UKGOV site....

 

“Travelling out of a Tier 4 area

You must stay at home and not leave your Tier 4 area, other than for legally permitted reasons such as:

travel to work where you cannot work from home

travel to education and for caring responsibilities

visit or stay overnight with people in your support bubble, or your childcare bubble for childcare purposes

attend hospital, GP and other medical appointments or visits where you have had an accident or are concerned about your health

to provide emergency assistance, and to avoid injury or illness, or to escape a risk of harm (such as domestic abuse)”

 

Whether your optician is open or not is down to the optician, not the Government, they have the choice.

Edited December 23, 2020 by boxbrownie