50,000+ deaths - again.

[Workingman]

Second time around. Most of those will have been as cases in the system when lockdown 2.0 started, so a close watch will be kept on the daily rising figure for a week or more. It first has to flatten and then to show signs of dropping otherwise lockdown will have to be extended or the tier system reintroduced.

The current rolling average for any seven day period is 375 deaths, that would be a total of 65,000+ dead by Christmas.

A lot now depends on how effective the lockdown is working. Fingers crossed.

[Workingman]

When I first posted this just a week ago there were 50,385 deaths, today the number is 52,745. If this rate keeps up there will be 57,465 dead by the end of lockdown on 2nd December and 63,365 by Christmas.

Dress it up however you like and it is not looking good. Even if we start vaccinations in December the numbers will keep on rising and we will have 80,000+ dead by the end of January if we are not careful.

We desperately need a rethink.

I do understand that people want to bury their heads in the sand over this, but it is real.

Wash your hands, stay apart, don't mix and stay safe. Sod Christmas and New Year, it's a few days in your three score years and ten and there will be others. A Happy Christmas 2020 could kill you: think on.

[Suff]

Two or three things screwed Christmas.

The end of the last lockdown as if Covid had gone away, even though it clearly had not, just to keep businesses running over the summer and people sweet with summer holidays.
The caution over vaccine testing which occurred when adverse reactions were seen.
The re-opening of schools and universities without a clear idea as to how they would control the virus that was clearly transmitting invisibly

Now we are where we are. If we lock down till Dec 20th, we can have Christmas. But the upshot of unlocking for Christmas is that the critical vaccine times of Jan and Feb will be right in the middle of an increasing virus curve again. Perhaps vaccination will stop it. Perhaps it won't.

If we wanted Christmas we needed a vaccine mid October. It could have been done but nobody wanted to take the risk. Now we are where we are and nobody is happy.

One day, someone is going to go through the results of the vaccine, how it worked to stop the pandemic, when it/they could have been started and just how many people died before because we didn't start on it. Hopefully that will filter back into policy when dealing with a pandemic. After all, in the UK, if we try to avoid a 1 in a million serious adverse reaction, likely to impact 67 people in the UK, but 20,000 people die as a result, this is not a good balance.

Of course the risk is that it is not a 1 in 1 million but 1 in 100,000. But, even then, that is an adverse reaction for 670 people. Even at 1 in 10,000, that is 6,700 adverse reactions. More people have died since September than would be impacted from adverse reactions to the vaccine. We are geared to zero risk but in a situation where the risk of not vaccinating is higher than the risk of vaccinating, pragmatic decisions need to be taken. They have not. We have already tested more than 10,000 people on the Oxford Covid vaccine. We have had one adverse reaction which was also recorded for the fully certified MERS vaccine back in 2010. That adverse reaction responded to treatment.

As ever, time will tell.

[Gal2]

Sod Christmas and New Year, it's a few days in your three score years and ten and there will be others. A Happy Christmas 2020 could kill you: think on.

I agree with this WM.

I can't see the point in lightening the restrictions for any length of time, unless you want a huge spike in January.

[Workingman]

When I first posted (11th Nov) we had 50,909 deaths and I predicted 65,000 deaths by Christmas. The figure has now risen to 56,533 and will reach ~60,000 by the end of lockdown 2.0 if rates stay the same.

The current scenario, barring some miracle, is that we will be touching deaths of 70,000 at the start of the five days of Christmas, and that is with millions of us being in Tier 3 from the end of the fake lockdown we are now in.

We cannot blame the government for any of this. The pressure not to miss a few hedonistic days out of our three score years and ten is coming from us as we pretend to have been overcome with religious joy in December. Hypocrites, most of us.

[TheOstrich]

We cannot blame the government for any of that. The pressure not to miss a few hedonistic days out of our three score years and ten is coming from us as we pretend to have been overcome with religious joy in December. Hypocrites, most of us.

We will reap what we sow, and it's about time people started to understand this. I just hope to goodness this upcoming mass vaccination programme works.

[Suff]

All the press went gaga over the vaccines pushing hardest for certification. But it turns out that the moderna one doesn't necessarily stop transmission.

The vaccine doesn't need to be out to everyone, but it does need to stop transmission. If we can get half the people not transmitting, then we have a very good chance of seeing the virus off in short order whilst the vaccination campaign ramps up.

Moderna may be fine for those shielding, but is less value for the general population.

Hopefully our medial Xperts will make a balanced decision. Such as going in hard on the Oxford one.

[Workingman]

I am not that bothered which vaccines become the chosen ones, but I am bothered about their roll-out and administration.

It is said that people in care homes and the over-80s as well as care home workers, NHS front line staff, and health and social care staff are a priority and that they could get their doses via their GP surgery, a hospital or care home. This could start about Christmas following MHRA approval. That's fine.

However, it is rumoured that the rest of us could get the jab through vaccination hubs which are being set up around the country. Really? Where around the country? How far away? How long the queues? It all sounds a bit wishy-washy when developed plans should already be in place. If GP surgeries, the obvious choice, are not up to the job then we need smaller hubs on our doorsteps - at local shopping centres, supermarket car parks etc.. There is already some quite major resistance to having the vaccine in some quarters, whether we like it or not, so every attempt must be made to make getting vaccinated as easy as possible. It's not rocket surgery.