An English lockdown in November?

[cromwell]

I though I had exhausted my stock of outrage, but I haven't.

This afternoon Whitty and Vallance will be summoned before the Science and Technology select committee to explain the 4,000 deaths a day forecast. That should be good.

But the Telegraph has revealled today that the 4,000 deaths a day graph was produced by the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Modelling (SPI-M).
Guess who is a member of this group?
Our old chum Professor Neil Ferguson, some of whose wildly inaccurate forecasts are listed here.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/articl ... dodgy.html

Ferguson admitted that the graph showed a situation whereby the tiered lockdown system had had little effect. In fact infections in Liverpool have halved since October 7th.

So let's be clear. We are shutting down the country, putting hundreds of thousands out of work, increasing deaths by suicide, cancer and heart attacks, delaying the operations of people in great pain, and at least partly on the advice of a man who in private industry would have been sacked many years ago!

I'm sorry, but this really is an absolute scandal and it is passing virtually unremarked. Why is this clown being listened to?

[Workingman]

I still don't get it.

Just like the puppy a lockdown is not just for Christmas, or it shouldn't be. If cases and deaths are rising, and they are, then a lockdown, if it is going to work, should be to bring the numbers down to, hopefully, manageable levels regardless of the time of year.

The twin problems are that lockdowns, if properly done and enforced, do bring down the cases somewhat but at the expense of knackering the economy. Whereas lockdowns 'lite' as we have now bring down the numbers more slowly while appearing to do less damage to the economy, but the long term effect is not that much different.

There is growing evidence that the three tier system was beginning to work, but in a headlong rush to "save" Christmas we have ditched it. There are no guarantees of that wish being a success, though.

There are other options / methods but the media and PTB do not want to go there - shush.

[TheOstrich]

This mass testing in Liverpool - is it voluntary, or will they be coming for you?

I sincerely hope not the latter - that would be the thin end of a very large authoritarian edge.

[Suff]

I must admit a part of me thinks Johnson wanted to do to Sturgeon what she did to him in the spring. Back in the spring he desperately didn't want to lock down and shaft the economy. Sturgeon locked down and forced him into it.

Right now Sturgeon desperately doesn't want to lock down because the Scottish economy simply can't take it. But if she doesn't, it means English workers will get furlough and Scottish workers won't because they'll be on a tiered system.

What goes around comes around....

[Workingman]

Sturgeon locked down and forced him into it.

Eh? Sturgeon did not have the legal powers for a unilateral decision to lockdown Scotland earlier that the rest of the UK, that is why Scotland locked down on the same day as the rest of the UK.

Section 19 of the Coronavirus Act 2020, passed on 25th March, two days after lockdown, did, however, confer those powers to the devolved nations.

Whatever the rights and wrongs it is time for these people to stop fighting like rats in a sack and grow up and work for all of us. Bloody pathetic the lot of them.

[medsec222]

Boris Johnson is damned if he does and damned if he doesn't. UK is not the only country struggling with lock downs. Where is the spirit of lets beat this thing together? One by one MPs rise up on the attack. I am not surprised Bojo did a runner when he saw Theresa May get up on her feet. The job is a poisoned chalice and in my opinion Boris will not see it through to the full term. He will need to watch that it does not take a toll on his health - his blond mop is already diminishing.

[Workingman]

Just out if interest, today there are 25,177 new cases and 492 new deaths meaning that deaths have doubled in about a week. The previous doubling, from 101 to 200 took about two weeks, and the one before, from 50 to 101, also took about two weeks.

A brand new lockdown from Dec 3rd anyone?

[cromwell]

I think that was always the plan, see my earlier post.
They have done this already "Oh lockdown is only for x" but it turns out to be y.
Either that or we get two days off and then it's back to lockdown.

[Workingman]

Quite!

A quick look at the numbers of deaths is interesting. The seven day average by 15 July had dropped from 1100 to 30. It stayed below 30, even hitting single figures. till 27 Sept when it then started to rise.

From that point on the figures started to double every 12 to 14 days. That remained roughly the case for a while then the the days between got fewer, 12, 10, and now this week it is 7.

Lockdown Lite starts in a few hours. There is a lag between action and result of between two to three weeks so we will not know how lockdown is working till, at best, 20 Nov, but possibly the 25th. If the current rate of doubling continues we could well be into the 1100 per day figure long before the lockdwn ends.

Don't be too quick to bet on a Happy Christmas.

[Suff]

Looking at Frances figures there are peaks. France was averaging around 200 per day then it doubled to around 400 per day. But in each level there have been peaks. In the 200's peaks of over 500. In the 400's a peak over 800.

Looking at the UK, the background figure, on a daily basis was 200's, then 300's, now, after a drop off at the end of October we are in the 400's.

Hard to use the averages figure when death reporting can be delayed by as much as a week. But if you look at the graph, the curve is pretty clear.



Hype for the vaccine is ramping up. Will we get it before Christmas, won't we, will there be enough, won't there?

Changed days from Vaccine in the Spring...