Covid - Plan B & Omicron

[user 43495]

You're accusing Asian descended people of ignoring our rules but you are doing the same. People in glass houses......

I haven't broken any rules.

 

[obscure]

I suggest avoiding the Potteries altogether, if Stoke doesn't get you then Burslem will make you lose all will to live.

Not sure if it was auto correct or the two pints I had that caused that one.

 

[Cheshire Cat]

I haven't broken any rules.

Then neither have they.

 

[DavidDetroit]

I was just at a car dealership up in the suburbs, somewhat wealthy area, picking up a new gas cap for the car. Not one mask in sight besides myself. I really don't care if I were to get COVID but I do care about being the cause of spreading it.
The arenas are packed and virtually mask-less, the commentators all speak like COVID is done and gone--doesn't make much sense when you look at the statistics.
In any case, I see the same points/arguments, straight from the far right, against mitigation, over and over and over. All I can say is that if you lived on an island, completely by yourself with only those that think exactly like you do, that strategy would be just fine.

 

[Graz]

The amusing thing for me is that last time the numbers started to look better (late summer / early autumn 2020) my work was wanting to get all the home workers back in, got us on a rota so the office was at 50% capacity, but within weeks we were being told by the government to work from home again so off we went.

Guess what, they've just decided that they might try and get us back into the office again, I kind of know what will happen next Can see our home working stretching out to 2 years as we started in March 2020.

Anyway I've had my first ever flu ***, probably should have been having them anyway due to being clinically vulnerable, and I expect I'll be getting the call for the covid booster too any time soon. Still trying not to get too exposed and always wear a mask in the supermarket and so on. Why not, not had any sort of cold or anything else since this all kicked off and that's despite having two grubby kids at primary school.

 

[Scrattajack]

I understand our GPs now work 3 days a week.

That's not the complete picture. The average number of hours worked by GPs per week is 40. So put those two together and we see that they're doing a week's work in three days.

Also, while some may well spend the other two days as leisure time (e.g. those who have stayed on past retirement age), others have responsibilities elsewhere (e.g. teaching at medical hospitals, acting as carers for relatives, specialists at a hospital). One example is Rupy Aujla, of 'Kitchen Doctor' fame, who also does shifts at the local A&E.

The real problem is there aren't enough of them and numbers are falling. The misinformation by the usual suspects trying to cover up for dereliction of duty really isn't helpful.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

I don't believe a word of it. It's something that's been cooked up to explain away why the UK now has the highest rate of infection in the world.

Explain "cooked up".

If you're talking about AY4.2 then yes it exists.
Yes it has been spreading in the UK, it's now up to 9% or so of infections.
Does that mean it can explain more than 9% of UK infections? No, definitely not.
Is it more transmissible? Possibly, it's too soon to tell yet, it could have just "got lucky" at a superspreader event. But the best guess from the people who know about these things is that it's probably 10% more transmissible than delta. That compares with alpha ("Kent") being 50-60% more transmissible than "classic" SARS2, and delta being around 50-60% more transmissible than alpha.

So even if it is more transmissible, nobody credible is claiming it's the reason for current UK infection rates. Which are almost all down to the current rampant epidemic in schools.

 

[Marko85]

If you are double jabbed you are protected so what are you worried about?

 

[obscure]

The amusing thing for me is that last time the numbers started to look better (late summer / early autumn 2020) my work was wanting to get all the home workers back in, got us on a rota so the office was at 50% capacity, but within weeks we were being told by the government to work from home again so off we went.

Guess what, they've just decided that they might try and get us back into the office again, I kind of know what will happen next Can see our home working stretching out to 2 years as we started in March 2020.

Anyway I've had my first ever flu ***, probably should have been having them anyway due to being clinically vulnerable, and I expect I'll be getting the call for the covid booster too any time soon. Still trying not to get too exposed and always wear a mask in the supermarket and so on. Why not, not had any sort of cold or anything else since this all kicked off and that's despite having two grubby kids at primary school.

At head offices insistence I am currently back one day a week (which basically means I am in a side office on my laptop doing exactly what I was doing at home but paying £7.90 for my train fair for the privilege). Annoyingly their is no savings for the company of switching to home working the company owns all their offices and warehouses outright so can’t exactly reduce the amount of space to save on rent.

But on the whole at the moment I am reminded of late February early March last year and well this time time last year with rising cases and hospitalisations plus a government claiming everything is fine. Now honestly I hope that maybe just maybe this time they are right, and we won’t be stuck going into another full lockdown in December/January but it wouldn’t surprise me.

 

[The Baron]

That's not the complete picture. The average number of hours worked by GPs per week is 40. So put those two together and we see that they're doing a week's work in three days.

Also, while some may well spend the other two days as leisure time (e.g. those who have stayed on past retirement age), others have responsibilities elsewhere (e.g. teaching at medical hospitals, acting as carers for relatives, specialists at a hospital). One example is Rupy Aujla, of 'Kitchen Doctor' fame, who also does shifts at the local A&E.

The real problem is there aren't enough of them and numbers are falling. The misinformation by the usual suspects trying to cover up for dereliction of duty really isn't helpful.

The real problem is not how many hours they work or how many of them there are but not seeing Patients face to face. Virtually every other industry has gone back to as normal as is possible and see customers face to face.
Who wants to ring up and have a inferior diagnosis over the phone( and missing illnesses), they are servants to the general public and need to show some understanding of they situation instead of hiding behind phones and computer screens

 

[Scrattajack]

The real problem is not how many hours they work or how many of them there are but not seeing Patients face to face.

Remote consultations are more time-efficient, so increasing face to face would result in fewer appointments. There aren't enough GPs and we have a surge in demand. There are difficult decisions to make though I agree face to face is the ideal.

 

[The Baron]

You may be right that they are more efficient but they miss diagnose and whats more miss serious illnesses that can only be found by face to face,
So its efficiency against true diagnosis try and explain that to the people who have had serious illness missed until it is well advanced and yes it has been happening.

 

[Scrattajack]

Or explain to people why they didn't get seen at all and had their illness missed.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

So they say. It all seems rather vague to me. And a drug rushed through so quickly too; I can understand why amid all the panic but on average a new drug is tested for about 6 years before being approved for use. Anyhow I regard it as a matter of personal choice and for me in my own circumstances so far i remain unvaccinated.

Covid-19: Two vaccine doses are crucial for protection against delta, study finds

The two dose regimen of the Pfizer-BioNTech covid-19 vaccine is 88% effective against symptomatic disease caused by the delta variant, while the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine is 67% effective, research has found.1

The study, funded by Public Health England, estimated the effectiveness of vaccination against symptomatic disease caused by the delta and alpha variants in people aged 16 or over between 5 April and 16 May 2021. It found that although two doses of either vaccine offered good protection against delta, a single dose of either vaccine was only around 30% (95% confidence interval 25.2% to 35.7%) effective against the variant.

In the UK the two doses of the covid-19 vaccines have been given at an interval of around 12 weeks to maximise effectiveness while getting a single dose to as many people as quickly as possible. However, some people have been given the vaccine earlier, depending on availability and infection rates.

In England an estimated 84 600 deaths and 23 million infections have been prevented as a result of the covid-19 vaccination programme, up to 6 August.2

The researchers analysed data from the national vaccination register, extracted on 17 May. Just over 19 000 sequenced cases were included, of which 14 837 were caused by the alpha variant and 4272 the delta. The interval between vaccine doses ranged from 21 to 106 days, although most people had an interval of around 10-12 weeks.

The study, published in the New England Journal of Medicine, reported that for the alpha variant the two dose regimen of the Pfizer vaccine was 93.7% effective while AstraZeneca’s was 74.5% effective.

In a linked editorial professor of pharmacoepidemiology Stephen Evans and professor of biostatistics and epidemiology Nicholas Jewell from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, wrote, “The key results are encouraging but emphasize the necessity of the second vaccine dose by showing a markedly lower effectiveness against the delta variant than against the alpha variant among persons who received only one dose of either vaccine.”3

They also pointed out that the two vaccine brands were used in different ways over time and were available in different healthcare settings and to different age groups at different times, making valid comparisons of effectiveness between the two difficult.

Covid-19: Two vaccine doses are crucial for protection against delta, study finds | The BMJ

 

[The Baron]

Or explain to people why they didn't get seen at all and had their illness missed.

You could always get to see a doctor at my surgery before Covid, you will not convince me they are not hiding behind it.
I have personal experience of it doctors not seeing and diagnosing over the phone with 2 family members 1 who was told 4 times it was nothing serious - guess what when he got to see a doctor and they did the proper tests stage 4 cancer, daughter in law diagnosed breast cancer after having to insist to see a doctor so it is happening.

 

[An Ankoù]

they are servants to the general public a

While I agree with the gist of your post re doctors, I think you're wrong to say they're servants to the general public. Perhaps they should shake off the yoke of NHS work and all become private practitioners in the full sense of the word.
Now they're considering industrial action! There's something very seriously wrong when a genuinely caring profession (mostly) is driven to such measures. Every single one of them has more intelligence than the collective brain-mass of the entire government (jokingly so called) so it might be a good idea to listen to them.

 

[An Ankoù]

Explain "cooked up".

It means "fabricated". In the context of the duplicity of the present "junta", I won't call them a government, it seems overwhelmingly the more likely explanation.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

It means "fabricated". In the context of the duplicity of the present "junta", I won't call them a government, it seems overwhelmingly the more likely explanation.

I'm no fan of this lot, and honestly, it really isn't the most likely explanation. If they were to cook something up, it would be something with a lot more than a 10% advantage over delta. And honestly, nobody here is really talking much about AY4.2.

Yes, scientific truth gets used as propaganda to hide the mistakes of politicians - we saw that clearly last year when they seized on alpha ("Kent") to justify the rollback on all their unrealistic "promises" to "save Christmas". But that's not happening at the moment with AY4.2, it's still "cases can double and we'd still be cool with that".

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Labour is calling on the government to bring in its Plan B measures to tackle Covid in England, including advice to work from home and compulsory masks.

Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves also told the BBC the vaccine programme was "stalling" and needed to work better.
But Chancellor Rishi Sunak said the data did not currently suggest "immediately moving to Plan B".
The measures, which aim to protect the NHS from "unsustainable pressure", also includes mandatory Covid passports.
Plan A, which is currently in place, involves offering booster jabs to the most vulnerable, a single dose to healthy 12 to 15-year-olds and encouraging unvaccinated people to get jabbed.
The NHS Confederation and the British Medical Association are among the groups who have called for some restrictions to be reintroduced in England, amid rising cases.
Meanwhile in Wales, ministers are to consider whether to extend the use of Covid passes for a wider range of venues.

Ms Reeves told BBC One's Andrew Marr Show: "I think the first thing is the government have got to do more to make Plan A work.
"If the scientists are saying work from home and masks, we should do that. So get A working better because the vaccination programme has been stalling, and introduce those parts of Plan B.
"But there are also things not in A or B that need to be done, like paying statutory sick pay from day one and also better ventilation in public spaces."
Asked whether Plan B should be introduced now, she said: "Yes, but let's not let the government off the hook with Plan A either."
A Conservative Party spokesman said it was the third time Labour had changed its position on Plan B in four days.

Appearing on the same programme, Mr Sunak was also asked whether it was time to bring in the government's back-up plan.
"We're monitoring everything, but at the moment the data does not suggest that we should be immediately moving to Plan B, but of course we will keep an eye on that and the plans are ready," he said.
The chancellor also said reintroducing the furlough scheme was "not on the cards because we don't envisage having to impose significant economic restrictions in the way that we had to over the last year".
He added that the vaccine rollout was the "first line of defence" and the booster campaign was the best way to protect people through the winter.
More than 325,000 booster jabs were given in England on Saturday - the biggest daily figure for boosters yet, NHS England chief executive Amanda Pritchard tweeted.
Prof Adam Finn, a member of the government's Joint Committee on Vaccination and Immunisation (JCVI), said the vaccination programme by itself was not enough "to bring things under control".
"We do need to have people using lateral flow tests, avoiding contact with large numbers of people in enclosed spaces, using masks, all of those things now need to happen if we're going to stop this rise and get things under control soon enough to stop a real meltdown in the middle of the winter," he told Sky News' Trevor Phillips On Sunday.
Asked if the government should move to Plan B now, he said: "Well, some kind of Plan B."
The Liberal Democrats said it looked "increasingly likely" Covid restrictions would have to be reintroduced because of the "government's bungling and inaction".
Dr Katherine Henderson, president of the Royal College of Emergency Medicine, told the programme emergency departments were "already struggling to cope", with large queues of ambulances waiting outside hospitals.

Full article - Covid: Labour calls for Plan B measures in England

 

[Chippy_Tea]