For help, advice and discussion about stuff not related to aviation. Play nice: no religion, no politics and no axe grinding please.
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#1861483
eltonioni wrote:The risk of dying on a ventilator, especially if you are young and fit, is vanishingly small. Probably on a par with trouser related deaths.


The only figure we have is that as of the end of Dec 2020 the total number of people who died in England of covid 19 who were under the age of 60 and had no underlying illnesses or other conditions was just 388.
I have asked PHE to update the figure via a freedom of information request to which they have declined to supply me with the figure.
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1861494
We’ve rehearsed this many times. Deaths are not really the issue. It’s the hospital capacity soaked up by COVID Patients and not available to other patients as a result that matters.

COVID patients are often long stay, which has had a massive impact on backlogs elsewhere
#1861495
johnm wrote:We’ve rehearsed this many times. Deaths are not really the issue. It’s the hospital capacity soaked up by COVID Patients and not available to other patients as a result that matters.

COVID patients are often long stay, which has had a massive impact on backlogs elsewhere

Here you go.

https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/s ... -activity/
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1861509
The Daily Mail front page now quotes a Minister as saying "It's all over bar the shouting" cretins :twisted: :roll:

It's a global Pandemic the clue is in the word "global"
#1861547
Some pertinent fairly up-to date UK graphs in here:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-57984170

.. while this item has headline 'Covid: UK cases fall for seventh day in a row':

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57981899

UK Government (only for England, of course, although other nations may follow) said ('Senior cabinet ministers are to discuss ') to be planning to allow double-jabbed travellers from EU and USA, although 'amber', to enter (England) without quarantine:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57992929

I note no mention of Canada, whose vaccination rates are now better than US ones! And USG still has an 'advisory' for its citizens against travel to UK, AFAIK
By johnm
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1861549
UK Government (only for England, of course, although other nations may follow) said ('Senior cabinet ministers are to discuss ') to be planning to allow double-jabbed travellers from EU and USA, although 'amber', to enter (England) without quarantine:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-57992929


This is what the Guernsey Bailiwick did and it lasted less than a month before compulsory tests on arrival were introduced and a positive test implies quarantine.
#1861554
Australia: 'Sydney extends lockdown as other Australian cities reopen':

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-australia-57993337

NSW: 'vaccines, rapid tests to get NSW's Year 12s back in classroom' (senior secondary; all schools are currently closed with 'remote learning', at what should be start of spring term; although nurseries are still open):

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-28/ ... /100329316

Sydney school 'staff member' suspended for attending 'anti-lockdown' protest:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-07-27/ ... /100327996
#1861567
I am a simple soul, but reading through this thread can be a depressing experience. I have some simple questions for those who still appear to oppose the general relaxation of restrictions that have been uniquely (and very expensively) imposed in modern peacetime:

1) Now that the majority of those who were claimed to be at risk of suffering serious complications from Covid have at least been offered the vaccine (those refusing take their own chances), how can opposition to opening up still be justified?

2) If vaccination doesn't provide a measure of protection from serious health issues due to Covid (and therefore hospitalisation) what was the point of the roll out? Surely minimising the consequences rather than infection itself was the goal?

3) If we don't open up society and the economy now, with vaccinations rates as high as they are, then precisely what else are we waiting for before we do? Total eradication doesn't seem plausible.

I am genuinely interested in why some still seem opposed to relaxation. We cannot live the rest of our lives without at least some measure of risk. Opening up society doesn't force people to reduce their own self-protection measures if they feel more comfortable maintaining them.

What am I missing?

PW
flybymike, Flyingfemme, GrahamB and 1 others liked this
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By flybymike
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1861568
Here’s a chirpy little article specially written just to depress johnm and keep him happy.

We’ve now had six consecutive days of reduced Covid ‘cases’ (aka 24,950 positive tests for Covid) – precisely the kind of good news the extraordinarily patient and now largely vaxxed-up UK has surely been waiting for. Nonetheless, the nation’s Optimism-Deniers are still spinning even the most upbeat news into a narrative that could see us hurtling towards the seventh circle of Hell on a handcart with go-faster stripes... and they can’t all be behaviourial scientists on SAGE, surely?

What does it say about us, collectively, that so many people are busy hunting the 'Whatabout?' monster, facing down good news with bad? We have vaccines, case numbers are falling, hospitalisations are dramatically fewer, yet as Location, Location, Location presenter Kirstie Allsopp tweeted on Monday:

“ The number of people who, very clearly, do not want this drop in the number of Covid cases to be true is quite staggering. What is wrong with people? Is that they like the control/the drama/the restrictions and know that they will lose all this as we learn to live with Covid?”

Responses included: “I want it, I just don’t trust it. Yet... Have the numbers really dropped, or are we just missing loads of cases?” I stepped back from replying “even if we were, ‘case’ numbers are a pretty meaningless stand-alone statistic unless they are linked to hospitalisations and deaths” (because we’re all experts now, right?) and chose instead to visit a friend’s gorgeous Open Garden, in aid of our local hospice.
This fear of a clearly-signposted escape route from the pandemic makes it appear as though we’ve learned nothing, and achieved even less, over the last 18 months – that the end of July 2021 is simply a simulacrum of March 2020. In truth, things couldn’t be more different as we move away from the scary “unknown-unknowns” of a newly identified epidemic to a process of living with an endemic virus.

I see plenty of people on social media and in real life who, prior to Covid, probably never gave the NHS a passing thought until they needed it, but who are now obsessing daily over the health service’s own prospective health... next winter. Though I have a sneaking suspicion that the future of the NHS will be dealt with by people whose day jobs aren’t in retail management, marketing, academia, sketch-writing or, indeed, journalism.
Our collective inability to believe in our own success kicked off early in the vaccine roll-out, when the Government’s messaging began to back-pedal furiously from the idea that vaccinating the most vulnerable and the over-70s would set everybody else free from restrictions, reaching the point where we have now entirely forgotten how to celebrate good news without adding endless panicky “Whatabout...?” caveats.

And the extraordinary irony of the back-pedaling was that it didn’t come about as a result of a colossal statist failure, but as a by-product of its roaring success. While responding to the triumph of the vaccine roll-out by rolling-out the barrels would have been entirely appropriate, instead we cowered.

While many people take baby steps towards a world in which they again feel safe, I took heart at the supermarket checkout yesterday when the small talk was almost thrillingly banal: “Does this relentless rain mean we’ve had the best of summer?” “Mind you, hasn’t it been wonderful for the garden?” ...and though that novelty will surely wear off, I hope that our collective inability to enjoy how good it feels to succeed wears off even faster.
We can clearly do success – a world-beating vaccine, a Euros final and a clutch of gold medals already in Tokyo are proof of that. But can we collectively, proudly “own” our successes? Unless it involves sticking a flare somewhere the sun don’t shine, it would seem we’ve all but forgotten how to positively spin our positivity. Yet, to re-purpose a hackneyed phrase, if not now, when?

The Negativists will say “sometime... maybe... somewhere over the (NHS) rainbow”, however for those of us who doggedly remain Optimists, stumbling across a signpost reading ‘Here Be Dragons’ is often less of a dire warning than it is an invitation. Frankly, when even Professor Neil “doom-stats” Ferguson is now saying that “the UK will be looking back at the pandemic” by the autumn, one can only assume that the PM is still urging us to “be very cautious” and not “jump to premature conclusions” simply because he wants to remain PM.

It’s high time the Optimism-Deniers stepped away from the frontline (and downed their metaphorical flame-throwers; this isn’t a “war”, it won’t be “won” or “lost”) and the die-hard Optimists stepped up. Let’s start properly living in the glorious sunlit uplands of Here and Now – aka summer 2021 – where the only caveat is that yes, of course, it may well rain.
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