Covid vaccine

Quoted from cmackenzie4

Thanks for that stadium, I had seen that but it seems some companies have different policies, I’ve been told to isolate by my employer for 10 days, my son has been told he can go back when his test has come back negative (which it has) and then takes daily flow tests which is different to my employer in that it’s isolate for the full 10 days even though I’ve tested negative. I’m lucky that I still get paid by my employer (network rail)

Quoted from SheepGTFC

proper funny reading some of the anti-vax stuff in this thread, the mental hoops some have to jump through is impressive

Quoted from cmackenzie4

Yes my lad is now aware LH and Stadium he’s informed his employer and now waiting a response from them,

Quoted from Maringer

Any reasonable mask works to some degree, including multi-layer cloth masks and even single-layer masks. Obviously, FFP2/FFP3 is much better than a single-layer mask, but it's still better than nothing in terms of transmitting to other people, which is what masks are most useful for. Dr Axon isn't an expert in the field in which he was quoted and the Sage expert in that field was outraged by the Telegraph article and said it should be corrected. I'm guessing it wasn't.

Anyway, it will be interesting (and disturbing) to see the trajectory from a week or so onwards. Even with a mask mandate before today, infections are up 41.2% over the past 7 days. Deaths are up 48% over the past 7 days, hospitalisations up 39.5%. Providing those rates continue, we'll be double the current rate of infections by the end of the month. The question then, is how many of the infections will be finding their way out of the younger population who aren't generally badly affected and may have very mild symptoms and then on into the more vulnerable populations, i.e. the elderly, immunosuppressed people (including hundreds of thousands of people being treated for cancers), millions of people living with diabetes and unlucky people who seem to be badly impacted due to genetic quirks. The death rate is likely to increase a huge amount yet, unfortunately, and it's amazing that people have become so blase about it all. One slight hope is that a lot of the infections we're seeing now are due to the Euros effect i.e. gatherings related to the football which have now ceased. If they provided a higher bump than there might have been, then perhaps the rate of increase will drop (still not a fall), but it will be difficult to tell until we've seen how much the dropping of restrictions today will increase the rates. Infection rate in the Netherlands increased 800% in a week shortly after they relaxed their restrictions and they were still stronger than ours - people visiting nightclubs/music festivals and the like needed to show negative tests to get in, something which hasn't been required here. The Dutch have now sensibly reversed their relaxation of restrictions. Do Johnson and Javid have the same sense if things go pear-shaped over here as quickly? I tend to doubt they do.

I think the most likely straw which will break the camel's back is the hospitalisation rate. Remember, the justification for the earlier lockdowns was to protect the NHS. We already know that the NHS is under massive pressure - record A&E attendances in recent months in many areas even with Covid rates and hospitalisation so much lower than they now are and with lots of other viruses we normally see more commonly in the winter months running rife. Just over 600 admissions per day average over the past 7 days but if it continues to increase at roughly 40% per week, we'll be around 5,000 admissions per day by the end of August when some think that this wave will be peaking. Bear in mind also that hospitalisations increase in the weeks immediately following the peak.

I personally think there is a high chance that we'll be in a lockdown of sorts before the summer is out, but I suppose that all really depends on how far down people are willing to see the NHS crumble. When you're out on your doorstep clapping again in a month or two, please do consider what the staff are having to deal with a bit more thoughtfully this time. In the interim, I'll keep wearing my multi-layer cloth masks in indoor settings. I don't spend much time in the shops and this will hopefully reduce the risk of me indavertently infecting anyone else.