[slab_happy]

Is that true? I don't remember the government ever briefing that the 21st June would definitely be honoured.

Oh yeah, the official line has always been "data not dates". But they've been saying that while also hyping up the dates as markers of freedom, and there are clearly a lot of people who feel they've been "promised" that all restrictions will end on the 21st and that it will be a terrible betrayal if that doesn't happen.

I fervently hope that your hunch is right and they're just softening the blow of the delay.

[spidermonkey09]

Times is suggesting a 4 week delay, which would at least be better than saying two weeks and it ending up being extended.

I think that's probably the right course of action but suspect that they will be more or less compelled to open up after that, both to calm the oldies and business owners but also to demonstrate to young people there is some sort of benefit to getting vaccinated. Uptake is brilliant currently in the under 30s but without a quid quo pro I can see why people who were on the fence wouldn't be convinced.

[Oldmanmatt]

Quite a good breakdown of the situation by Sky, today:

https://news.sky.com/story/covid-19-could-the-delta-variant-delay-the-final-step-on-pms-roadmap-12328716

[sdm]

. I agree it hasn't helped not having an effective quarantine system, but the variant would have got in anyway as we have gone over in this thread before.

It might have got in but the crucial thing about having a working quarantine system is that you can delay and slow its spread. It effectively gives you more time to decide whether you want to try to contain it or to just slow it down as much as possible.

Exactly. The number of import events has a huge impact on rate of spread of a new variant and the severity of the outbreak. Limit it to a handful of import cases, and it is possible to prevent/minimise community transmission for some time and keep the rate of growth much lower.

The 3+ week delay would have made the spread of Delta in the UK much more manageable. Every day that you delay rapid growth reduces the rate of growth and the total number of cases because hundreds of thousands of people are getting vaccinated every day. This is the key factor that should have urged caution with the delta travel bans.

It's the same story we've seen countless times during the last 17 months: not taking the correct action when it needed to be taken and having to take more severe action because of the delay. Without the delay in introducing travel bans over delta, we almost certainly would not be discussing delaying the 21 June easing. I would like to think that lessons had been learned for the emergence of the next worrying looking variant but I expect the same mistake will be made yet again.

[spidermonkey09]

Exactly. The number of import events has a huge impact on rate of spread of a new variant and the severity of the outbreak. Limit it to a handful of import cases, and it is possible to prevent/minimise community transmission for some time and keep the rate of growth much lower.

The 3+ week delay would have made the spread of Delta in the UK much more manageable. Every day that you delay rapid growth reduces the rate of growth and the total number of cases because hundreds of thousands of people are getting vaccinated every day. This is the key factor that should have urged caution with the delta travel bans.

It's the same story we've seen countless times during the last 17 months: not taking the correct action when it needed to be taken and having to take more severe action because of the delay. Without the delay in introducing travel bans over delta, we almost certainly would not be discussing delaying the 21 June easing. I would like to think that lessons had been learned for the emergence of the next worrying looking variant but I expect the same mistake will be made yet again.

All true, but it only holds if you believe that preventing it being imported was a reasonable policy decision to make at the time with the facts at the time. A huge number of British citizens are dual Indian citizens. If we had adopted a very strict border policy (like Australia) we would have been effectively locking our own citizens out and preventing them returning somewhere they had a right to be. I don't think that would have been well received by people like me, elements of the media or indeed the people involved!

I say this not to excuse the government but just to play devils advocate; I don't think its as clear cut in practice as it is in theory.

https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1402634844421623809

[slab_happy]

All true, but it only holds if you believe that preventing it being imported was a reasonable policy decision to make at the time with the facts at the time. A huge number of British citizens are dual Indian citizens. If we had adopted a very strict border policy (like Australia) we would have been effectively locking our own citizens out and preventing them returning somewhere they had a right to be.

But you wouldn't have needed the (completely horrifying) Australian policy to delay Delta's arrival. If India had been red-listed at the same time as Pakistan and Bangladesh (when, IIRC, its positivity rates were higher -- we didn't know about Delta specifically but we could see the numbers), that could have bought us crucial time:

https://twitter.com/DevanSinha/status/1399667142321135622 (Sinha's generally pretty sensible so I'd have some trust in his assessment)

The only reason it wasn't red-listed then is because Johnson wanted to go visit Modi and get a trade deal.

I agree with you that trying to hermetically-seal the borders and hope nothing gets in ever isn't viable (or a long-term solution). But we could be in a better position than we currently are if we'd bothered to make our current system work the way it was supposed to.

(Obviously there's a whole issue about the costs of hotel quarantine for people who may not be able to afford it, and how to make that fair, but that's a separate issue.)

[slab_happy]

Btw, public service announcement:

If you're over 40 and had a first shot of AstraZeneca, it seems to be possible to re-book your second appointment so it's sooner -- down to about an 8-week interval, instead of 11-12 weeks:

https://twitter.com/fact_covid/status/1403071854559039495
https://twitter.com/JamesWard73/status/1401134195200741378

Advantage: you get up to max protection several weeks sooner, and out of that dubious half-vaccinated zone (especially significant with Delta about).

Disadvantage: you potentially lose a notch off that max protection level, because AZ seems to do best with the longer interval between doses.

I don't think there's a "right" answer here, but figured some people might want to be aware that it seems to be an option.

[SA Chris]

I got 1st AZ on 31st March, and got appt for 2nd one today, so just over 10 weeks?

[spidermonkey09]

But you wouldn't have needed the (completely horrifying) Australian policy to delay Delta's arrival. If India had been red-listed at the same time as Pakistan and Bangladesh (when, IIRC, its positivity rates were higher -- we didn't know about Delta specifically but we could see the numbers), that could have bought us crucial time:

https://twitter.com/DevanSinha/status/1399667142321135622 (Sinha's generally pretty sensible so I'd have some trust in his assessment)

The only reason it wasn't red-listed then is because Johnson wanted to go visit Modi and get a trade deal.

I agree with you that trying to hermetically-seal the borders and hope nothing gets in ever isn't viable (or a long-term solution). But we could be in a better position than we currently are if we'd bothered to make our current system work the way it was supposed to.

(Obviously there's a whole issue about the costs of hotel quarantine for people who may not be able to afford it, and how to make that fair, but that's a separate issue.)

Yeah, that seems reasonable. I agree about the trade deal visit, if that hadn't been planned I suspect India would have been red listed at that time. I guess it highlights though, that whatever you or I think about the desire or necessity of the potential trade deal, covid policy decisions are entwined with politics as usual, as has been the case throughout; they can't be wholly separated.

I get very uneasy about the calls to 'shut the borders' from liberal/left leaning people or media, or from the Labour Party as it runs completely counter to my world view. It plays completely into the hands of the nativist and isolationist right wing who think we can wall ourselves off and be safe from all the worlds ills, which coincidentally (for them) all seem to materialise in non-white majority countries  I know nobody on here is saying that (obviously!) but |I think its worth considering whether its a wise position to take, no matter how nuanced we think it is.

[petejh]

Had my first vaccine yesterday, I'm 45 and received the AZ (missed my original appointment from over a month ago). The vaccine card has the date for the second jab booked in for 5th August, so 8 weeks after. Not sure if the rules in Wales are different to England or if they've made it 8 weeks for everyone currently getting jabbed.

[sdm]

Exactly. The number of import events has a huge impact on rate of spread of a new variant and the severity of the outbreak. Limit it to a handful of import cases, and it is possible to prevent/minimise community transmission for some time and keep the rate of growth much lower.

The 3+ week delay would have made the spread of Delta in the UK much more manageable. Every day that you delay rapid growth reduces the rate of growth and the total number of cases because hundreds of thousands of people are getting vaccinated every day. This is the key factor that should have urged caution with the delta travel bans.

It's the same story we've seen countless times during the last 17 months: not taking the correct action when it needed to be taken and having to take more severe action because of the delay. Without the delay in introducing travel bans over delta, we almost certainly would not be discussing delaying the 21 June easing. I would like to think that lessons had been learned for the emergence of the next worrying looking variant but I expect the same mistake will be made yet again.

All true, but it only holds if you believe that preventing it being imported was a reasonable policy decision to make at the time with the facts at the time. A huge number of British citizens are dual Indian citizens. If we had adopted a very strict border policy (like Australia) we would have been effectively locking our own citizens out and preventing them returning somewhere they had a right to be. I don't think that would have been well received by people like me, elements of the media or indeed the people involved!

I say this not to excuse the government but just to play devils advocate; I don't think its as clear cut in practice as it is in theory.

https://twitter.com/HugoGye/status/1402634844421623809

Sudden changes in travel regulations are just the reality in recent times. Nobody is traveling anywhere without considering the chance of sudden developments changing their plans. Our failure to prevent travel from India has now led to other countries introducing restrictions on travel from the UK.

I don't think it needed to be unpopular among the wider population had it been framed as a temporary ban, necessary to reduce our chances of missing the 21 June easing. And explained that if delta had turned out to be less problematic, the ban would be reversed. When it is pitched as a choice between travel to/from India vs future opening up and travel elsewhere, I don't think it would have been a hard sell. My Indian colleagues were the ones most in favour of Indian travel restrictions when delta was emerging.

I would have favoured an immediate hotel quarantine requirement (2 weeks, fully paid by the government*, no exceptions, no advanced warning), with an announcement that a full ban was anticipated shortly if the data was bad and that restrictions would be removed if it turned out not to be a problem. Our plan of waiting over 3 weeks and pre-announcing when changes would be introduced led to over 20,000 people flying back from India after delta emerged. I don't know how many times we imported delta but Australia's stricter testing requirements when they reopened travel led to 50% of passengers on some flights being refused permission to fly.

It should have been made clear that these will be the default measures taken for any country where a troubling looking variant emerges until more is known. Better to reduce travel to a handful of countries than to have greater restrictions imposed on everyone both at home and abroad.

*quarantine should be free when it is caused by recent changes to increase compliance. Cheaper to pay for people to quarantine than to keep paying furlough for the sectors that have to delay reopening.

[slab_happy]

Congrats on your jab!

I don't know if there's been an official announcement (as there has been with re-scheduling second doses for the over-50s), but it looks like they're generally trying to tighten the interval to get more people fully-vaccinated.

Which makes a lot of sense given that Delta seems to take a chunk out of the partial protection you get from a single dose.

Not sure if the rules in Wales are different to England

Some things are devolved, I know -- Wales seems to have been crushing it with their rollout:

https://twitter.com/redouad/status/1397500517446819843
https://twitter.com/itssophiemorris/status/1401867527286931458

[Will Hunt]

An all out ban on travel from India would have been a bad do. The British government owes a duty of care to its citizens and trapping people in a country whose healthcare system is collapsing doesn't fulfill that duty. By all means repatriate people and put them up in a hotel for two weeks.

Hypothetically, if it weren't possible, for whatever reason, to isolate people in hotels then you'd have to ask them to do it at home (possibly multi-generational which is its own problem). That's not going to work unless you get quite authoritarian about it. Targeting those measures at a group who are mostly non-white would go down very badly.

TL;DR it's harder than it looks.

[slab_happy]

Times is suggesting a 4 week delay, which would at least be better than saying two weeks and it ending up being extended.

I think that's probably the right course of action but suspect that they will be more or less compelled to open up after that

Interestingly, some folks not normally noted for their sunny optimism (e.g. Neil Ferguson) aren't pushing for a longer break than that, because longer potentially pushes the exit wave into autumn:

https://twitter.com/JamesWard73/status/1402965632749035530

Rght now, a fair bit of modelling suggests that even if transmissibility is at the really nasty end of the range of possibilities, a 4-week delay (plus possibly some measures like masks on public transport and working from home where possible being extended for a bit longer) might be all we need to minimize pressure on the NHS:

https://twitter.com/JamesWard73/status/1401806768519405569 (big thread of modelling for various levels of transmissibility and vaccine escape)

[Wellsy]

It feels like the borders should be realistically havs been closed but for essential work travel (transport of food and medicines etc) since March 2020. No holidays. The only private reason I can think of is "not seen my family in X months" and even then I'd be thinking maybe you need to pick a place and live there for a while. International travel for private reasons just seems hard to justify to me anyway. People traveling for funerals and weddings? Sorry no. It sucks, but sorry no.

[galpinos]

All true, but it only holds if you believe that preventing it being imported was a reasonable policy decision to make at the time with the facts at the time. A huge number of British citizens are dual Indian citizens. If we had adopted a very strict border policy (like Australia) we would have been effectively locking our own citizens out and preventing them returning somewhere they had a right to be. I don't think that would have been well received by people like me, elements of the media or indeed the people involved!

There are more UK residents/citizens who identify as Asian with a Pakistani or Bangledshi origin combined than Indian origin, both of whom were on the red list despite a lower % of positive cases tested on arrival and no-one shed a tear for them at the time and are ignored in the discussion now.

I can't see how the decision to not red list amber was not driven by the proposed visit and to the PM. that was more important than acting on the evidence and adding it to the red list.

[spidermonkey09]

There are more UK residents/citizens who identify as Asian with a Pakistani or Bangledshi origin combined than Indian origin, both of whom were on the red list despite a lower % of positive cases tested on arrival and no-one shed a tear for them at the time and are ignored in the discussion now.

Good point. Like I say, I agree with a lot of what has been posted above by sdm, yourself and others, but I also think it was a pretty complicated situation and easy one liners like 'just shut the borders' are overly simplistic (I know you aren't doing this). Also I don't think you can take the geopolitics out of it; I detest both the Johnson and Modi governments, along with the fact that we need to be scratching around for trade deals at all, but given the scenario we are in I can see why the government might have thought 'shit, we could really do with gladhanding Modi so hold off for a few weeks to see how bad it gets.' Put it this way, its entirely plausible to me that a Labour government might have made the same call had they been in power, so I think it weakens the argument to lump that decision in with all the other numerous examples of this governments late action and incompetence.

[galpinos]

There are more UK residents/citizens who identify as Asian with a Pakistani or Bangledshi origin combined than Indian origin, both of whom were on the red list despite a lower % of positive cases tested on arrival and no-one shed a tear for them at the time and are ignored in the discussion now.

Good point. Like I say, I agree with a lot of what has been posted above by sdm, yourself and others, but I also think it was a pretty complicated situation and easy one liners like 'just shut the borders' are overly simplistic (I know you aren't doing this). Also I don't think you can take the geopolitics out of it; I detest both the Johnson and Modi governments, along with the fact that we need to be scratching around for trade deals at all, but given the scenario we are in I can see why the government might have thought 'shit, we could really do with gladhanding Modi so hold off for a few weeks to see how bad it gets.' Put it this way, its entirely plausible to me that a Labour government might have made the same call had they been in power, so I think it weakens the argument to lump that decision in with all the other numerous examples of this governments late action and incompetence.

I'm not denying it's not complicated and that there are multiple factors in play but the bare faced lies that the government have come out with as justification for their decision making (re infection rates/positive test rates) makes me think their decision making is not as transparent and justifiable as it should be and, imho, we are paying the price.

Re Labour, I don't really care, they are not in power and aren't making these decisions. There are plenty of reasons for having a pop at Labour but a hypothetical scenario isn't one of them

[spidermonkey09]

That wasn't a pop at Labour (I think they'd be doing a better job); just trying to illustrate that I don't think the challenges/fuck ups of pandemic response government are unique to this government. As you say though its a hypothetical so impossible to prove either way.

[Paul B]

Had my first vaccine yesterday, I'm 45 and received the AZ (missed my original appointment from over a month ago). The vaccine card has the date for the second jab booked in for 5th August, so 8 weeks after. Not sure if the rules in Wales are different to England or if they've made it 8 weeks for everyone currently getting jabbed.

It seems to depend on where you go to get jabbed here at least. I had Pfizer at Blackburn hospital and was told I could go online to book my 2nd (+11wks was the earliest I could get). I tried cancelling and re-booking when the news came out that you could reduce the period to 8 weeks but it didn't seem like an option (perhaps because of Pf vs. Az).

Peewee went to one of the surge clinics near to us both and had the Pfizer where they automatically booked his 2nd jab for 8 weeks.

[Will Hunt]

I booked my jab as soon as it was available (I was up early because kids and saw the announcement that it went live at 7am) through the main online booking thing. I tried to get in for the first available slot but, when it moved onto booking the second jab it fell in the same week that I'll be on holiday. I tried to scan 5 days forward or 5 days backward but the website didn't show any available dates, so I booked the first jab a week later.
I know this has happened to other people so it seems to be by design/a regional decision/a fault with the whole system rather than just something at my end.

[T_B]

So Tim Spector reckons symptoms from Delta variant are headache, sore throat, runny nose and then fever. Not cough. So all those young people filling the pubs who think they’ve got a headache/summer cold aren’t going to bother getting a test as there’s nothing from the gov, nor media about this.

FFS.

[JohnM]

Just had my first experience of going into a city in the UK (Preston) since covid hit the UK to get my day 5 test to release test. If that is anything to go by no wonder it was such a shit show in the UK. The place I got tested was so unhygienic and somewhere I would have thought would take the most precautions. There were 5 staff, none wearing masks, all coughing into their hands. There were numerous members of the public in there, half of which didn't bother to wear a mask. Even though I had to register online I had to fill in a form with all the same details with a pen used by everyone else. I had to do the test in some kind of broom cupboard at the back of the pharmacy myself crammed in with a member of staff wearing no mask who observes everyone going in there to get tested in a tiny room with no ventilation. I have never felt so at risk of actually catching covid than going for a test that I had to privately pay for because the UK government have insisted I need 4 tests costing me £400. What is the point? I have already tested negative twice in the past week and yet I still need 2 more!

[spidermonkey09]

So Tim Spector reckons symptoms from Delta variant are headache, sore throat, runny nose and then fever. Not cough. So all those young people filling the pubs who think they’ve got a headache/summer cold aren’t going to bother getting a test as there’s nothing from the gov, nor media about this.

FFS.

That list of symptoms is so broad its effectively useless surely. Particularly given its hay fever season.

[T_B]

That’s in order of most common. Headache wasn’t even a symptom associated with the Alpha variant and loss of taste/smell is no longer relevant.

You think it would be pointless to communicate this?