[tomtom]

My sister had her first dose today.
She’s vulnerable, shielding, NHS staff.
She says they’re starting/doing the NHS staff, frontline and admin.

That’s great OMM.

My parents had their first jab in Kendal today (local GP’s got their shit together and turned over one surgery just for jabs). Then my dad tripped over on the way home and may have broken his wrist 🤦‍♂️

MrsTT has been offered one (she’s a public facing NHS worker - though low risk). She’s not made up her mind whether to take it or not (as in thinks others are more deserved).

Meanwhile R is on the rise and 40k new cases

[Oldmanmatt]

Tell her to take it.
She is also a parent and what ever she does for the NHS, she’s more important than many who will take it.
An avalanche is made of insignificant flakes, take away enough flakes, it’s spindrift. We need the avalche.

[IanP]

Tell her to take it.
She is also a parent and what ever she does for the NHS, she’s more important than many who will take it.
An avalanche is made of insignificant flakes, take away enough flakes, it’s spindrift. We need the avalche.

Agreed.  Also my wife has had message that they will be offering vaccine to some people at Manchester NHS who are working over Christmas - we suspect they may be making sure they use all vaccine stock,

[TobyD]

What would be a better plan, maybe shield the vulnerable and everyone else get on with it?

We've talked about this enough before - use the search function if you want to see views on this one.

More generally:
- Not fucking up test and trace might have been useful
- Not threatening legal action against schools that want to move online in the runup to Christmas and where the parents are on-board with that
- Not sending the students back to uni apart from where necessary for significant lab work (or similar) would likely have been sensible. Fund the unis to charge 1/2 price for the course if this is an issue - much cheaper than the furlough costs from increased restrictions due to increased case numbers. This was proper dumbfuckery - higher cases, the students weren't happy, everybody loses. Apart from large property companies 
- Don't tell people to make plans to see people at Christmas when this is clearly a dumb idea. With that horse having bolted, don't move to T4 on the 26th, do it on the 24th.
- Introduce your fluctuating restrictions earlier, when cases are lower, so that the restricted periods can be shorter and TTI can work more effectively

There's a 5 minute starter... Obviously we can't be sure what the impact of any of those measures would have been, but this gov seems spectacularly capable of fucking things up.

Could this be further summarised as "the government has an appalling optimism bias, and inability to plan effectively more than a week ahead "?

[A.Greenhorne]

MrsTT has been offered one (she’s a public facing NHS worker - though low risk). She’s not made up her mind whether to take it or not (as in thinks others are more deserved).

🤔 reminds me a bit of Mr. Gummer and the infamous beef burger. ‘It’s too hot, the burger is too hot!’

[sdm]

MrsTT has been offered one (she’s a public facing NHS worker - though low risk). She’s not made up her mind whether to take it or not (as in thinks others are more deserved).

If there was someone more deserving, I presume that her refusing to take it would be unlikely to mean they got it instead. It would just go to the next available person on the list.

So I doubt there's any benefit to refusing to take it.

[tomtom]

Stone posted this preprint on FB - that came out last night.

Worth a read.

https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/uk-novel-variant.html?

“ We were unable to find clear evidence that VOC 202012/01 results in greater or lesser severity of disease than preexisting variants. Nevertheless, the increase in transmissibility is likely to lead to a large increase in incidence, with COVID-19 hospitalisations and deaths projected to reach higher levels in 2021 than were observed in 2020, even if regional tiered restrictions implemented before 19 December are maintained. Our estimates suggest that control measures of a similar stringency to the national lockdown implemented in England in November 2020 are unlikely to reduce the effective reproduction number Rt to less than 1, unless primary schools, secondary schools, and universities are also closed. We project that large resurgences of the virus are likely to occur following easing of control measures. It may be necessary to greatly accelerate vaccine roll-out to have an appreciable impact in suppressing the resulting disease burden.”

[stone]

to me a silver lining was them saying that the epidemiological evidence doesn't give any indication of immune escape by the new variant -only of increased transmissibility. Silver lining from a "glass only half full of shit" point of view! -merry Christmas anyway.

[Offwidth]

Wintertree's latest covid plotting:

https://www.ukclimbing.com/forums/off_belay/friday_night_covid_plotting_5-729286

[A.Greenhorne]

More covidian cult curiosities

Sweden - minimal lockdown policy
Currently 2% covid death rate

U.K. cluster fuck - 3% covid death rate

Wait for it.... but the guardian says....
whatever those paying the most and exerting the most force say

[tomtom]

Some homework for you Andy. Do some research and compare Sweden’s death rate to its Scandinavian neighbours (Denmark, Finland, Norway) that all have far more similar societies and environments to Sweden than we do. Post up the numbers and try to explain the differences considering the different nations covid management strategies.

[A.Greenhorne]

Haha your patronisation is such a turn on. Comparing Sweden to Sweden. It’s total yearly deaths being lower this year than 7 of the past 10 years and compares well with the other 3. I’ll continue my homework on Denmark etc

[tomtom]

Haha your patronisation is such a turn on. Comparing Sweden to Sweden. It’s total yearly deaths being lower this year than 7 of the past 10 years and compares well with the other 3. I’ll continue my homework on Denmark etc

Well you keep coming back so clearly it is 💋 - all the numbers you need are on here  https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

Now no messing about - it’s a five min job and you’ve already taken an hour!

[A.Greenhorne]

I can’t even be arsed to look

[A.Greenhorne]

I promise I’ll do my homework if you help me understand the Sweden vs Sweden stats.... honest

[A.Greenhorne]

Denmark vs Denmark in contrast to Sweden has seen its highest total death rate in the last 10 years if you could help me understand why they are doing a better job at looking after their population?

[Oldmanmatt]

Oh.

Wow.

Well, that’s that.

All those prior posts, data, and figures discussing exactly this can be ignored.

Because, obviously, the population of Sweden didn’t do anything at all to mitigate, so that won’t have had any knock on efffect for other causes of mortality. Clearly, despite Sweden having double the population of Denmark, the fact that that population is spread over ten times the land area (even allowing for concentration within urban areas, this means much less transfer between urban concentrations) and that it’s a “true” Scandinavian country, without land borders with and much lower daily movement between it and “mainland” Europe than it’s little neighbour to the south (1/10 the land area, 1/2 the population,  part of mainland Europe, bordering badly affected countries with even denser populations, daily, constant and heavy cross border traffic and trade (probably, for the sake of this exercise, better considered a region/county of Europe, rather than a seperate country) and earlier to be infected).

Of course, this is even more relevant to the UK, with only six times the population of Sweden (almost seven times, really) BUT ONLY HALF THE LAND AREA of Sweden and...

I dunno.

I just opened my pad because I woke up before the rest of the house and read this little exchange, already had the rough numbers in my head, because this argument has been done to death on numerous forums and Dan’s points fall under examination repeatedly, even the Swedish authorities regret many aspects of their approach. Because they’re “natural” advantages over many other developed nations should have/were expected to have, given them greater protection than they did and they’re “actual”, comparable, Scandinavian neighbours, did much better, with a little more in the way of regulation.

However, do toddle along with your apple in one hand and your orange in the other and randomly shout in the faces of strangers that they are clearly the same thing and that is, obviously, that they are both Aardvarks.

[A.Greenhorne]

Jeez Matt wipe the spittle from your maw for a minute.

Denmark reports a lower Covid death rate than Sweden but a higher percentage overall mortality rate and a mortality rate that has risen over 10 yrs (opposed to Sweden’s which hasn’t). Total mortality seems to me a good measure of what’s going well in the bigger picture. If Sweden managed well without the more extreme measures, then it seems they’re doing something right?

[tomtom]

Afraid Andy it’s a back around for your homework.

No presentation of data - sourcing or analysis. The arm waving is fine - as long as it’s backed up by some evidence and discussion of the counter arguments.

[A.Greenhorne]

I’m not waving an arm it’s a question I don’t know the answer to. So asking you lads. I’m not great at maths so only really understand simple answers.

[A.Greenhorne]

If that translates as ‘fuckwit’ then I guess I’m a fuckwit.

[andy popp]

Denmark reports ... a mortality rate that has risen over 10 yrs

Except, focusing only on your argument about Denmark, this isn't really true. Working with data from the official Danish statistics bureau, there were 54,368 deaths in 2010 and 53,958 in 2019 (so far as I could see they've not yet published official data for 2020). There have been some slight fluctuations around that, with a number of years a little lower and one (2018) a little higher. So, in absolute numbers I would call that as good as flat. In terms of rate it's worth noting that between 2010-2020 Denmark's population grew by about 4.3%.

[A.Greenhorne]

Ah yeah that makes sense, I chose Denmark as it was suggested I pick a country surrounding Sweden and they seemed a good bet due to better covid statistics than Norway or Finland

[andy popp]

Ah yeah that makes sense

It's not that it makes sense so much as it's factually correct. For what it's worth, a study by the University of Southern Denmark found that total death in the first half of the year were probably lower than would have been expected in a "normal" year (fewer road traffic deaths, fewer workplace accidents etc.). Another report suggested that still held true in mid-October. I don't know what the end of year figures will show. 

[A.Greenhorne]

Maybe comparing total mortality between Norway and Sweden would be a better comparison?