[petejh]

Along the same lines as the above, here's a link to the risk assessment tool described by this week's More or Less on Radio 4.  It gives a probability for a guest at a gathering of a selected size in a particular area being Covid positive (based on background prevalence rates - with a background assumption on how many cases there are for every one detected).

https://covid19risk.biosci.gatech.edu/

I guess how accurate the figures are is arguable but what seems significant is how much higher the probabilities are for the USA compared to almost everywhere else.  I knew it was bad there but I didn't realise how much worse than the UK it was.

Useful tool to visualise the risks (providing the assumptions are correct..). If you apply it to the UK, and view going to the climbing wall as going to an 'indoor event with either 50 or 100 people' (for e.g. the Beacon in N.Wales has imposed a max capacity of 91), then at 50 people I get 25% chance of there being at least one covid-positive person present. At 100 people there's a 40% risk. That's at 10:1 actual cases to reported cases. At 5:1 the risks are 12% for 50 people and 25% for 100 people.

Then the person with covid may or may not be a super-spreader...
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/k-overlooked-variable-driving-pandemic/616548/

[Offwidth]

New legal action against government lead covid appointments.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/nov/21/boris-johnson-acted-illegally-over-jobs-for-top-anti-covid-staff

[fatneck]

Tier 2 for the 'Pool!

[tomtom]

Tier 2 for the 'Pool!

Good to see.

It’s interesting as here in Manc the cases have come down nearly as much as in Liverpool (from 800-1000 per 100k to about 250 yesterday) but the narrative and treatment is quite different from Liverpool. Can’t help but wonder if this is a bit of punish Burnham going on etc...

[mrjonathanr]

Obvs. Divide and rule tactic with lots of trolling praise for Anderson. As he said, like vipers’ teeth.

[tomtom]

Vaccine approval today - rollout imminent. All great news.

[sdm]

Yep great news.

Hopefully they don't drop the ball on the rollout, just like they've dropped nearly every other ball this year.

[tomtom]

Yep great news.

Hopefully they don't drop the ball on the rollout, just like they've dropped nearly every other ball this year.

Yes - when I heard Hancock saying 800 000 doses on their way for next week I thought great! but....

At least they are heading to Hospitals and Doctors surgeries rather than Serco offices (though I bet they have a hand in some of the other 'centres')

[Wil]

I think it's interesting that we're rolling out the vaccine in a similar way to how we roll out flu vaccines. When we do that we're trying to protect the vulnerable, not necessarily create herd immunity (and maybe with many different strains that's not possible anyway).

It's an interesting problem to theorise. On the one hand you vaccinate people who face high consequences from Covid, on the other you vaccinate people with a high risk of contraction or spread (or some mix of both). I've no idea which is preferable, but someone somewhere must have run some numbers on it, alongside speed of the programme, number of available vaccines etc.

Then you've got the large scale Prisoners' Dilemma going on - how many people will refuse the vaccine and hope that the immunity of others protects them?

[Offwidth]

One of the early considerations is vaccinating those most at risk of death or serious long term health damage: be that due to age, underlying health conditions, working on the covid front line or whatever. The added benefit is this will rapidly reduce pressure on the NHS from those most likely to get seriously ill with the virus. Herd immunity will take just as long whatever the order of sub-groups we prioritise.

[Anti]

Presumably there's an awful lot more people who aren't at any significant risk too, so doing the lower number, higher risk group at first makes most sense?

[sdm]

My layman's guess on how to get the most benefit from a vaccine is that some sort of pincer movement might be most effective:

Start off with the most vulnerable and health/care workers etc. Then roll out to a mixture of the vulnerable and those who are at the highest risk of contracting and spreading the virus.

There should be more benefit to vaccinating healthy 20 year olds in public facing jobs and students than there is from vaccinating a 40 or 50 year old who can work from home.

[T_B]

If a vaccine’s commercially available then I won’t be waiting. No doubt the Gov is counting on a few million travellers buying it (I know I am. Well, a few hundred would do initially...), so they don’t have to fork out.

[Wil]

Herd immunity will take just as long whatever the order of sub-groups we prioritise.

Yes, but we don't need herd immunity to benefit from slowing the spread by immunising key spreaders. The question is whether that could be more effective than immunising those most at risk first.

In terms of strain on the NHS immunising Care Home residents may have no real impact. Some may be otherwise healthy, but a large number won't be suitable for hospital treatment and will remain in their homes. They will probably receive treatment, but not to the extent of people kept in hospital or in ICU.

[tc]

Excellent quote today from a Polish writer whose name I can't spell:
"Any vaccine should be tested on the politicians first. If they survive, the vaccine is safe. If they don't, the country is safe"

[Offwidth]

All time record covid daily deaths and all time record hospitalisations in the US reported today.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/02/health/us-coronavirus-wednesday/index.html

[duncan]

Excellent quote today from a Polish writer whose name I can't spell:
"Any vaccine should be tested on the politicians first. If they survive, the vaccine is safe. If they don't, the country is safe"

Except politicians are usually a rather narrow cross-section of society so wouldn’t be an effective way to evaluate safety of a new health technology 

[Offwidth]

A guardian story from a friend and ex colleague on why the government dithered  with SAGE advice in September, due to conversations with fringe herd immunity backers.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/dec/14/herd-immunity-boris-johnson-coronavirus

Also there is some worrying news today about a faster spreading mutation of C19 in the SE (at least it will be taken seriously now the rise is in the capital). Wintetree on the other channel did some plotting to show the spectacular spread from the new data over the last week (scroll down to his 16.24 post)

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/friday_night_covid_plotting__3-728848

[mrjonathanr]

Also there is some worrying news today about a faster spreading mutation of C19 in the SE

looks like it has plenty of company:
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

[tomtom]

New York Times article on the cronyism in the UK’s pandemic spending.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/17/world/europe/britain-covid-contracts.html

[Nigel]

New York Times article on the cronyism in the UK’s pandemic spending.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/12/17/world/europe/britain-covid-contracts.html

Interesting - thanks TT. All the stuff that has been previously referenced on this (or one of the others, I forget!) thread - e.g. links to Tory donors / peers / MPs, overpayment, firms with no prior experience / assets, ignoring of domestic manufacturers, appaling mismanagement of our PPE stockpile, even mention of the Ayanda scandal. Its often useful to dip into the US papers as they don't have the same "allegiances" as our domestic press - have we seen this stuff in many UK papers / broadcast media? As a result will they get away with it? Yes, obvs. As I linked elsewhere, it was widely reported in the US papers that Russia have teamed up with Oxford / Astrazeneca to try to improve each other's vaccine. Here - nothing. Even though its actually good news! In general we are poorly served by the UK media, hence the polls - Tories still ahead.

[tomtom]

Being generous - you could say the UK media sometimes can’t see the wood for the trees.

But really the UK press should be holding the governments toes to the fire over this.

[mrjonathanr]

Okay, so with £22bn spent and the full expertise of Dido Harding and Public Health England at its disposal, the government has failed to produce a mass testing programme capable of seriously reducing transmission.

Gavin Williamson clearly believes that secondary schools lacking physical space, training and sufficient staff to run a normal timetable will somehow be able to achieve this feat for free.

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/education-55318628

They have not been offered training, extra staff whether skilled or otherwise, or extra funds to buy in expertise though may get some costs reimbursed ‘if reasonable’, apparently. And releasing  the statement 2 hours after term has ended and staff are no longer together- cute.


Can anyone tell me how all this is to be achieved?   

[tomtom]

You forgot the slashing the laptops for disadvantaged children scheme...

[Offwidth]

Being generous - you could say the UK media sometimes can’t see the wood for the trees.

But really the UK press should be holding the governments toes to the fire over this.

The Good Law Project has been working hard on this topic for months; taking legal action against the government in several areas of poor governance in procurement.

https://goodlawproject.org/update/jobs-for-mates-jr/

As for the press, mostly disappointing but the increasingly impressive independent Byline Times has been making the best efforts. However the BBC News channel did have an interview with Jolyon Maugham of The Good Law Project, who excoriated the government in probably the most extraordinary interview I've ever heard on the channel.

https://bylinetimes.com/