Frightening!

[Workingman]

Today there were 68,053 new cases and 1,325 new deaths - both are records for the pandemic.

The daily average is now 1,176, higher than at any other time. We are now just 167 off 80,000 deaths. If it keeps on like this we will hit 100,000 before the end of the month. I remember when it would have been considered a disaster if deaths went over 20,000.

These figures have really shocked me. I have built up a decent stock of tinned meals and now looks like the time to start using them and limit any form of shopping to the very bare minimum.

[saundra]

It's terrible how quickly this has just spread so quickly isent it WM
What makes it worse is so many have isolated for so long
It's all been pointless to me
I like so many have missed a year of family life

[Workingman]

Saundra, the cases don't worry me so much because they have always been a best guess, we have never known the real numbers infected and probably never will..

Deaths are different. We can play around with the trends, three day, seven day, 28 day stats, and explain them away however we like, but the totals don't change. We are in deep sh1t and we know it. We currently have 79,833 deaths. Let that sink in.

Comparisons with other countries and how they are managing things, or not, are also meaningless. We have our own problem and it is up to us to deal with it.

[saundra]

Tomorrow is another day WM

[Workingman]

More than 1,000 deaths again today and now rumours are out there saying the the lockdown could get tighter. It sounds as though personal contacts are going to be severely restricted and there will be tougher enforcement.

[debih]

But this isn’t really a surprise.

Clinicians always said the second wave would be worse than the first. The one that we thought of as the second wave wasn’t - that was a ripple effect. This is the second wave we have been waiting for.

At work nothing has changed - we never closed our high risk clinic, we just snoozed it for a while. The GP’s are, as expected back in their full PPE (full face breathing apparatus and full suits (all we can see is their eyes) and we have never changed from areas at work that are for clinicians or admin staff - we haven’t been allowed to mix since March.


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[Workingman]

In the second week of October, and because of what was happening in Europe, Whitty and Vallance, CMO and CSO, along with Hancock announced that the second wave was starting in the UK. Since then the government, media and the general public have all been calling it that. The clinicians might have been calling it something else and they might be right, but for all intents and purposes 'second wave' is what it is.

On the 14th of October the tiers system was introduced, but they did not halt the rise so in November Lockdown Lite (L 2.0) was brought in nationally. That served to flatten the curve and appeared to be working, unfortunately the second variant was also in the wild and it is that which is now said to be pushing the steep rise. Whichever way you look at it we are now really in the second wave. However, I do agree, Debih, it is no surprise.

BTW, I am not talking here about tests or cases as they only offer snap shots and have never been a consistent measure, but the facts about deaths and hospitalisations on the government dashboard are pretty accurate. Every stat ever collected is there and it is well worth a look.

[Suff]

If I recall correctly, the entire life of the virus is around 41 days. For people dying now, at the end of the sequence, they were infected back at the beginning of December. The growth of the virus began again around August/September and are now manifesting themselves in tens of thousands of cases a day and thousands dead. I'd say this is the logical conclusion to unlocking in the Summer. A second wave.

We've discussed this a lot here. That staying firmly locked down was warring with loss of jobs and livelihood plus a collapse in the economy. That unlock, allied to the behaviour of the people who simply believed it was over, has resulted in what we see today.

It's not hard to work out. You can't stay locked down indefinitely in Europe, we're too interconnected. So unlocking has consequences. These are the consequences.

It is not just us, Germany was running 1,000 cases per day and admitted that it had lost control, Italy overtook the UK in deaths again (shortly), Spain had a massive increase in cases but is back into reductions again, for a while.

Vaccinations have only just begun. It is going to take months for the size of the vaccinated pool to make a big difference, however it may be enough, just, to prevent a third wave post this lockdown.

Some day, years from now, a group of analysts are going to go over the numbers and the picture won't be pretty. They are going to point fingers and appoint blame. Evidence was, at the end of the Phase2 trials, that the O/A vaccine was safe enough to save lives. Someone is going to count the lives lost against the O/A vaccination adverse reaction figures. Then the blame game will begin. Because if they had released it back in August and done a sanity check alongside the Phase3 trials, then things may have gone differently. Because nothing has changed with that vaccine since the end of Phase 2 trials, just a bit more confidence.

So whilst we cower in our homes and fear the virus, we could have had 40m people vaccinated and be moving on into a whole new situation in the spring. With tens of thousands still alive and an economy growing again. Of course, you say, hindsight is a wonderful thing. Except it is not hindsight. It was said at the time that the caution over the impact of the vaccine was going to cost more lives than the vaccine was ever going to. But the only prominent person who advocated that was treated like a mad dog.

History will judge us and it will not be complimentary. Was he really a mad dog or are the lunatics really running the asylum?

[Workingman]

The benefits, or otherwise, of releasing the vaccine at the end of P2 when there had been concerns over the very small number of contra-indications will go on forever. It never happened so how many premature deaths it would have caused or how many vaccinations could have been safely given is academic.

What we do know is that today we have 1,564 deaths; another new record following the old record of 1,325 set on the 8th.

The interesting thing is that the 'excuse' for the figure is that it includes deaths going back to May which were not included previously for some reason. However, that has always been the case right from the start each day and every day. When the numbers for Mondays and Tuesdays are low they try to explain them away with counting lags over the weekends. It is known as creative accounting.

The kinds of numbers we have been seeing over the past week will be with us for some time yet. The total number of deaths using the 28 day method stands at 84,767, but for the whole period from Jan 1st 2020 where coronavirus is mentioned on the death certificate, even if not contributory, it is 89,436.

Do not expect any easing off of restrictions any time soon.

[Suff]

The benefits, or otherwise, of releasing the vaccine at the end of P2 when there had been concerns over the very small number of contra-indications will go on forever. It never happened so how many premature deaths it would have caused or how many vaccinations could have been safely given is academic.

True, today it is academic. But for future pandemics, we need a better response. Hopefully, when the entire vaccination story has completed and we're through the other end, the analysis will be done and a better decision will be available when the next one hits.

We cannot just assume another pandemic won't hit for another 100 years. Our commerce and travel make it all too likely.