Will we end up in lockdown again?

[jennyjj01]

Absolute numbers of infections are mostly irrelevant. It’s how many are in hospital and how many are dying that matters.

It’s also important to understand the profile of people in hospital. In North London about 70% of those in hospital with covid are eligible for the vaccine and have chosen not to have it for whatever reason. Chosen.

I beg to disagree.
Change (growth) in number of cases is a leading indicator of death in a couple of weeks. And both ARE on the increase.. It's a marvelous predictive tool. Any fool can see the benefit of bringing cases down. Plus letting cases increase gives the virus more hosts in which to mutate into something unstoppable. Have we not seen all this before?
I'll only concede that letting it rip through the population MIGHT bring us to herd immunity, but at what cost?
JJ

[mikefranks]

Johnson said we wouldn't have a lockdown, then we did.
Johnson said we wouldn't have a second/third lockdown, then we did.
Johnson said people could meet up for Christmas and cases went sky high.

A recent report said he had acted too late more than once (https://committees.parliament.uk/commit ... published/).

Johnson says we won't have further lockdowns; history says he's got it wrong again.

The only caveat to this is that I believe we should be far more focussed on hospitalisations/deaths than cases; theres more than a million people aged over 85, if all of them got it, there'd be thousands of deaths. There's ten million under 14, if all of them get it, deaths would be in the low hundreds.
So if the cases are mostly schoolkids that's far less conerning than if they're older people.

I do agree, we were told many times this and that will not happen, then a 5pm press conference happens and bam, we are in restrictions again! i do hope not

[mikefranks]

Absolute numbers of infections are mostly irrelevant. It’s how many are in hospital and how many are dying that matters.

It’s also important to understand the profile of people in hospital. In North London about 70% of those in hospital with covid are eligible for the vaccine and have chosen not to have it for whatever reason. Chosen.

I beg to disagree.
Change (growth) in number of cases is a leading indicator of death in a couple of weeks. And both ARE on the increase.. It's a marvelous predictive tool. Any fool can see the benefit of bringing cases down. Plus letting cases increase gives the virus more hosts in which to mutate into something unstoppable. Have we not seen all this before?
I'll only concede that letting it rip through the population MIGHT bring us to herd immunity, but at what cost?
JJ

im hearing of more and more people I personally know with covid and unfortunately 2 have passed in the past 10 days.
worrying numbers

[jennyjj01]

I'm trying to avoid being argumentative. Apologies if I'm treading into controversial territory. Moderators, Please edit or erase my post if I overstep.

We preppers are practical folks. If there's an adult in the room, I like to think it's us.
Telling it as I see it, we need some more restrictions, and we need them now, else Christmas will be worse than cancelled.

In terms of infections, we have as many as at the worst of previous waves and the charts are flying upwards as fast as ever. IMHO, we need to look past the counts and look at the up-trends. It looks grim.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274

And the R rate is steadily about 1.2. With the best rollout of vaccines, we are still losing ground and losing lives to this darned thing.

Whatever plan they apply NEEDS to bring R below 1. It NEEDS to bring the hospitalisations and reath rates down. Those charts are not having a bit of a blip. The longer we drag this out, the greater the total impact will eventually be
.
Our leaders have some of the best advice available. They must know by now what steps give maximum bang for our buck. It might be as simple as mandated masks in public indoor spaces, or strongly recommended working from home. They need to judge what steps will be tolerated and apply them. Heck, it wasn't so long ago that we were all virtually under house arrest. Now, 1 in 55 of us is actually infected and incubating and spreading covid! 1 in 55 !!!!

I do hope government will listen to their own teams of medical advisors. They assembled Sage, but seem to be ignoring them.

Sorry. I'll get off my soapbox and back to my prepping for a long harsh winter lock in.

[mikefranks]

I'm trying to avoid being argumentative. Apologies if I'm treading into controversial territory. Moderators, Please edit or erase my post if I overstep.

We preppers are practical folks. If there's an adult in the room, I like to think it's us.
Telling it as I see it, we need some more restrictions, and we need them now, else Christmas will be worse than cancelled.

In terms of infections, we have as many as at the worst of previous waves and the charts are flying upwards as fast as ever. IMHO, we need to look past the counts and look at the up-trends. It looks grim.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274

And the R rate is steadily about 1.2. With the best rollout of vaccines, we are still losing ground and losing lives to this darned thing.

Whatever plan they apply NEEDS to bring R below 1. It NEEDS to bring the hospitalisations and reath rates down. Those charts are not having a bit of a blip. The longer we drag this out, the greater the total impact will eventually be
.
Our leaders have some of the best advice available. They must know by now what steps give maximum bang for our buck. It might be as simple as mandated masks in public indoor spaces, or strongly recommended working from home. They need to judge what steps will be tolerated and apply them. Heck, it wasn't so long ago that we were all virtually under house arrest. Now, 1 in 55 of us is actually infected and incubating and spreading covid! 1 in 55 !!!!

I do hope government will listen to their own teams of medical advisors. They assembled Sage, but seem to be ignoring them.

Sorry. I'll get off my soapbox and back to my prepping for a long harsh winter lock in.

hit the nail on the head!!!

[daylen]

From a personal perspective, I really hope we don't see further restrictions: I've had enough. Being totally selfish about this, the pycholigical and emotional harm this is all bringing to my children, my family, and myself, greatly outweighs the physical risks from the virus.

I'm not qualified to know the right path the country as a whole needs to take, but I do know that the fear of and lack of real social contact, disruption to learning and business, is making my family more ill than we'd likely get from COVID. We've been fortunate enough to have seen a number of infections in our family with no complications at all. Nothing worse than a normal cold.

At the start of this, I was more than happy to sacrifice some freedoms and comforts for the greater good, but I'm not happy or willing to sacrifice my family's health and wellbeing for others. But that's what's being forced upon us.

I'm sure that any of my family were high-risk, I'd feel differently.

From a prepping perspective, if there was another lockdown, we'd see the supply chain totally break in a huge way. I can prepare for that by ensuring my food and essential stocks are plentiful. Likewise, if there was a work-from-home order over winter, the increase in energy consumption would possibly push the grid over capacity - we're perilously close to that as it is. I can prepare for that by ensuring non-grid heating and cooking methods are available.

I'm also preparing for a drastic change in finance. Even though we have no debt and are fortunate to have some savings and be in full-time jobs, that can change in an instant. Inflation is coming (that would make a good house moto from Game of Thrones!) and I think job losses too - even though there appears to be many jobs at present.

Other than that, I'm not too sure how any of us can prepare.

[jansman]

I'm trying to avoid being argumentative. Apologies if I'm treading into controversial territory. Moderators, Please edit or erase my post if I overstep.

We preppers are practical folks. If there's an adult in the room, I like to think it's us.
Telling it as I see it, we need some more restrictions, and we need them now, else Christmas will be worse than cancelled.

In terms of infections, we have as many as at the worst of previous waves and the charts are flying upwards as fast as ever. IMHO, we need to look past the counts and look at the up-trends. It looks grim.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274

And the R rate is steadily about 1.2. With the best rollout of vaccines, we are still losing ground and losing lives to this darned thing.

Whatever plan they apply NEEDS to bring R below 1. It NEEDS to bring the hospitalisations and reath rates down. Those charts are not having a bit of a blip. The longer we drag this out, the greater the total impact will eventually be
.
Our leaders have some of the best advice available. They must know by now what steps give maximum bang for our buck. It might be as simple as mandated masks in public indoor spaces, or strongly recommended working from home. They need to judge what steps will be tolerated and apply them. Heck, it wasn't so long ago that we were all virtually under house arrest. Now, 1 in 55 of us is actually infected and incubating and spreading covid! 1 in 55 !!!!

I do hope government will listen to their own teams of medical advisors. They assembled Sage, but seem to be ignoring them.

Sorry. I'll get off my soapbox and back to my prepping for a long harsh winter lock in.

hit the nail on the head!!!

Totally agree.

[Smudge]

I'm trying to avoid being argumentative. Apologies if I'm treading into controversial territory. Moderators, Please edit or erase my post if I overstep.

We preppers are practical folks. If there's an adult in the room, I like to think it's us.
Telling it as I see it, we need some more restrictions, and we need them now, else Christmas will be worse than cancelled.

In terms of infections, we have as many as at the worst of previous waves and the charts are flying upwards as fast as ever. IMHO, we need to look past the counts and look at the up-trends. It looks grim.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274

And the R rate is steadily about 1.2. With the best rollout of vaccines, we are still losing ground and losing lives to this darned thing.

Whatever plan they apply NEEDS to bring R below 1. It NEEDS to bring the hospitalisations and reath rates down. Those charts are not having a bit of a blip. The longer we drag this out, the greater the total impact will eventually be
.
Our leaders have some of the best advice available. They must know by now what steps give maximum bang for our buck. It might be as simple as mandated masks in public indoor spaces, or strongly recommended working from home. They need to judge what steps will be tolerated and apply them. Heck, it wasn't so long ago that we were all virtually under house arrest. Now, 1 in 55 of us is actually infected and incubating and spreading covid! 1 in 55 !!!!

I do hope government will listen to their own teams of medical advisors. They assembled Sage, but seem to be ignoring them.

Sorry. I'll get off my soapbox and back to my prepping for a long harsh winter lock in.

I actually disagree, people need to take responsibility for themselves maintain social distancing, wash your hands, use handgel and wear a mask. We don't need the government to interfere, if you're at all concerned and aren't doing any of these common sense measures well...

Covid-19 isn't going away, the powers that be and all their medical advisors are in uncharted territory, who remembers the propaganda in favour of the vaccines at the start?... Yet now we need booster jabs and now we have virus mutations reducing the viability of the vaccines that were originally touted as the key to it all.

[diamond lil]

I'm a mod and I find it very hard not to be political, given the way things are going. And I find it hard to steer a course between forcing people to take responsibility for their own health - ie getting vaccinated and wearing masks etc - and being angry with the govt for their rubbish handling of the whole mess. So I better be quiet or end up having to ban meself

[dizzydays]

Absolute numbers of infections are mostly irrelevant. It’s how many are in hospital and how many are dying that matters.

It’s also important to understand the profile of people in hospital. In North London about 70% of those in hospital with covid are eligible for the vaccine and have chosen not to have it for whatever reason. Chosen.

I beg to disagree.
Change (growth) in number of cases is a leading indicator of death in a couple of weeks. And both ARE on the increase.. It's a marvelous predictive tool. Any fool can see the benefit of bringing cases down. Plus letting cases increase gives the virus more hosts in which to mutate into something unstoppable. Have we not seen all this before?
I'll only concede that letting it rip through the population MIGHT bring us to herd immunity, but at what cost?
JJ

Inclined to agree with JJ - Also, if all the school kids get it the deaths will be in the hundreds in that group. What if they are all hanging out with their grandparents over xmas....