R>1

[d000hg]

10k people a day avoidably succumbing to a long term debilitating condition. Let's hope they work out how to treat it.

They're really suggesting up to 1 in 5 could have serious long-term effects?

On NLUK's question, I suppose the government is quite clearly saying that 20+ deaths a day IS an acceptable cost to ending restrictions. Extrapolating suggests 100 a day is quite plausible for a period. They seem to be using the argument "we told you opening up would mean more deaths" as justification to go ahead, which is quite strange, but ultimately government DOES have to decide how many lives justify shutting down the country for. Someone must have to address that question head-on even though the politicians are going to skirt around it, and report on it.

[mattster]

Long Covid won't be Tory Govt problem because they'll be out of power for a long time, hopefully forever

How so? They're ahead in the polls now, by quite some margin, as hard as that is to believe. Until we get a real opposition, we're stuck with them.

[AtW]

Long Covid won't be Tory Govt problem because they'll be out of power for a long time, hopefully forever

[mattster]

I'm not being complacent, and that is a question that should have a somewhat concrete answer IMO. In the most recent reporting period, about 1% of deaths were Covid: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...ding25june2021

Is that a lot, or insignificant, or neither? What should we be comparing it to?

What about long covid? Looks like an interesting Panorama on it tonight, which I'll try and watch if I remember.
Quote from one of the docs, from an article in the Guardian here:

“It’s hard to escape a prediction that 100,000 new infections a day equates to 10,000 to 20,000 long Covid cases a day, especially in young people. That’s a lot of damage to a lot of lives. And it’s hard to see that we’d have the healthcare provision to deal with it on that scale,” said Danny Altmann, a professor of immunology at Imperial. “All of us working on this could not be more alarmed.”

10k people a day avoidably succumbing to a long term debilitating condition. Let's hope they work out how to treat it.

[d000hg]

My question is what of that 1% could be avoided by people wearing masks and taking care. Reaching that by people trying to make a living and keeping their business/income afloat is completely different to arriving at that figure because people won't wear a mask and respect social distancing when going about whatever they do. One is a balance, the other is inexcusable.

So at what point will it become excusable? There will always be, and has always been, a statistical reduction in disease transmission if everyone wore masks and kept distance in crowded areas. Are you saying 60 million should wear masks to save 20 lives a day? What about 10? 5? 1?

[northernladuk]

I'm not being complacent, and that is a question that should have a somewhat concrete answer IMO. In the most recent reporting period, about 1% of deaths were Covid: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...ding25june2021

Is that a lot, or insignificant, or neither? What should we be comparing it to?

My question is what of that 1% could be avoided by people wearing masks and taking care. Reaching that by people trying to make a living and keeping their business/income afloat is completely different to arriving at that figure because people won't wear a mask and respect social distancing when going about whatever they do. One is a balance, the other is inexcusable. For example, that picture of everyone coming out of wemble in the semi finals. Huge crowd, shoulder to shoulder and hardly a mask in sight. If that added to the 1% then that's unacceptable. Just no need.

[d000hg]

There is that way of looking at it yes. A week and a bit a go it was half what it is now. Next week? The week after? Where is the threshold that X number of deaths a day becomes insignificant? I get if you take the bigger picture as you say it's got some way to go before it goes beyond the average death rate of stuff that's been with us for ever but I don't think we should be complacent about it.

I'm not being complacent, and that is a question that should have a somewhat concrete answer IMO. In the most recent reporting period, about 1% of deaths were Covid: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...ding25june2021

Is that a lot, or insignificant, or neither? What should we be comparing it to?

[northernladuk]

Daily deaths are now in high 20s also which is certainly an increase on single figures. I have no idea in the grand scale of things if 20-30 deaths a day is insignificant compared to, say, number of people who die choking on fish bones or whatever.

There is that way of looking at it yes. A week and a bit a go it was half what it is now. Next week? The week after? Where is the threshold that X number of deaths a day becomes insignificant? I get if you take the bigger picture as you say it's got some way to go before it goes beyond the average death rate of stuff that's been with us for ever but I don't think we should be complacent about it. Time has shown every time someone has rolled out the 'normal death rate' argument the graph far exceed it eventually.

With half the population thinking 19th is too early and rates rising it's going to be an interesting week.

[d000hg]

Daily deaths are now in high 20s also which is certainly an increase on single figures. I have no idea in the grand scale of things if 20-30 deaths a day is insignificant compared to, say, number of people who die choking on fish bones or whatever.

[mattster]

Well yes if cases are growing exponentially so are hospitalisations and deaths, but that doesn't automatically imply both will get very large if the multiplier is very small now. More complicated, the multiplier is probably shrinking because people are still getting vaccinated, and this takes time to catch up.

Whitty/Valance did say at the last news conference that their modelling predicted the epidemic would peak before hospitalisations reached a level that would stress NHS capacity.

Yes. I think we could very well get away with it, albeit it won't feel that way for anyone unfortunate enough to succumb over the next few months. There is undeniably a risk of a new, vaccine escaping variant, but that is possible anywhere in the world. We should also end up with a very good handle on just how effective the various vaccines are, which will be interesting.