50k cases per day

[Chedney Honks]

Just putting a marker in the sand.

Maybe skip a few tiers now cunto

[Pinball]

I spy with my little eye something beginning with 'L'.

[BlodwynPig]

I've had it with this.

[Fambo Number Mive]

It's scary that we have a vaccine yet we're still allowing mass spread. People still not distancing or wearing masks properly where I am. More of Oxford turning purple. Tier 4 seems to be making little difference.

Planned tier review tomorrow. Need full lockdown with proper support and enforcement. Put pressure on Twitter to shut down accounts peddling rubbish about covid or the vaccine.

[Pinball]

Full lockdown and speed up the vaccine roll-out.

[Chedney Honks]

I built a Gatling gun out of my attic window. Need to hunker down now til summer.

[peanutbutter]

We're roughly at the point now where the measures taken just before Christmas should be starting to make a dint on the numbers, right? Are they kinda banking on holidng off and using ANY kind of drop in numbers to justify doing nothing?

[Chedney Honks]

FRIGSPONENTIAL CUNTDOWN VOL. 2

[Alberon]

The government will do anything to avoid calling whatever they do as a lockdown, but that's what Tier 5 will be.

The tiers are assessed every week and I think the ministers are meeting tomorrow. Expect Tier 4 to expand.

[Jasha]

Watching Brooker's screenwipe last night will clips announcing 2 thousand new cases, seems so innocent now looking back

[olliebean]

It's scary that we have a vaccine yet we're still allowing mass spread. People still not distancing or wearing masks properly where I am. More of Oxford turning purple. Tier 4 seems to be making little difference.

Indeed. Doesn't seem to be being mentioned, but the more we allow it to spread the more chance it has to mutate into something that the current vaccines don't work on.

[jobotic]

This is terrifying, not least the complacent dismissive statement at the end.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/29/nhs-could-face-horrendous-choices-over-who-gets-coronavirus-care

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

Tier 4 seems to be making little difference.

Covid-19 cannot co-exist with shops and schools open over the winter time, the transmission points are too many. The big play about coming out of November to 'drive cases down and lower tiers' was so clearly going to fail, but we allowed the government to get our hopes up.

We either accept a widespread outbreak even with restrictions in place and gamble on the health service managing, or we do an actual lockdown, not the one in November, one with an actual curfew, essential shopping only, maximum capacity in stores and proper monitoring of distancing in queues. Only the latter will succeed stopping transmission points and buy us time, probably 6-10 weeks, for the weather to improve and for the vaccination program to be rolled out.

Obvs we need to get the vaccine out asap, but even when that happens the government will then be pursuing a strategy of allowing transmissions to increase manifold. The virus, especially any highly infectious variant will seek out any weak points in our defences and we may find the vaccine not as strong as we hoped, and any natural immunity gained from contracting the virus weak and short-lived.

For what it's worth I would be completely in favour of a full lockdown lasting the entirety of January with people only allowed out to shop and exercise, no meeting anyone outside your household, and a 10pm curfew, with obvious exemptions for single people and the most vulnerable.

[Shoulders?-Stomach!]

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/belgium/

I noticed Belgium went into a proper 2nd lockdown earlier than the UK. By mid-September they'd let cases get out of control again just like us, but spiralled more quickly.

No gold stars for that of course, but, it's interesting how keeping their November restrictions in place through December has kept a ceiling on the infection rate and deaths have been gradually falling, but probably most important capped. Not an amount of deaths anyone is happy with of course, but in terms of crisis management that has an element of control to it.

I reckon the UK government have decided that keeping deaths on or around 15,000 a month through the winter is 'manageable', which is what they care about more than the lives themselves. Their ability to keep control of the situation though is highly dubious as is their willingness to make tough decisions.

[Zetetic]

Possible that Belgium's "cases" are being constrained by testing capacity at this point. (This is also probably true of parts of the UK, though.)

Wonder if other in-person workplaces were also more of a problem in early December than we want to believe. (Based partly on looking at Google Mobility Reports, although their retail estimates seem extremely optimistically low.)

Hospitalisation is now massively fucked in multiple parts of the UK. Long-term effects of the first wave on the workforce were bad - I dread to think what this is going to do, when both the demand is greater and the people exhausted.

(And, of course, despite the thing itself being concentrated in South East England, it will be the deprived periphery of Britain that suffers most a few years down the line.)

[idunnosomename]

i knew the tories would want to kill everyone eventually but who knew they'd get cracking so quickly!

[Pinball]

We need full lockdown with immediate effect (fuck New Year celebrations they are dead; close schools they are infection chambers), and roll out the vaccines more quickly, as in military commandeering stadiums NOW. This is a national emergency killing more people than the Blitz. I wish adults and not clowns were in charge to do the necessary.

[Zetetic]

In fairness, barely anyone actually died in the Blitz and it went on for ages.

Edit: And most clowns are adults, for what it's worth.

[idunnosomename]

um 40k+ people died in the Blitz which is quite a lot for 8 months, but against 71k covid deaths in the UK yeah of course it's worse. but not as bad as the actual war

[Zetetic]

um 40k+ people died in the Blitz which is quite a lot for 8 months

A few nights of RAF terror bombing.
Bad morning in Warsaw.
Bad hour in Stalingrad.
Bad minute at Hiroshima, depending on your perspective.

Not really then, for 8 months in the 1940s.[nb]Which seems an comparison, given the way it's cited as an example of Anglo-British stoicism in the face of an enormous threat, by contrast with their neighbours.[/nb]

[Zetetic]

The Blitz was about 7x as deadly as British drivers at the time.

(And British drivers, collectively, at the time were about 5-6x as deadly as they are now.)

[Pinball]

So do you accept that Covid UK deaths are worse than Blitz UK deaths? As for 'RAF terror', I'm on the side of the RAF, TBH, and am grateful to those (and other) heroes that the Nazis didn't win the war. Do you consider the RAF terrorists? :-o

[chveik]

In fairness, barely anyone actually died in the Blitz and it went on for ages.

Edit: And most clowns are adults, for what it's worth.

I think the constant threat of bombing (which can't be quantified by number of deaths) is part of the hardship it represented.

frankly this type of hot take would make sense in gammon company but here it seems a bit silly.

[Zetetic]

"Bombing of German cities simply for the sake of increasing the terror" being Churchill's description at one point. "Area bombing" if you prefer.

So do you accept that Covid UK deaths are worse than Blitz UK deaths?

There's more of them, clearly.

[Pinball]

There's more of them, clearly.

So we have factual agreement on this point. Excellent.

[Zetetic]

frankly this type of hot take would make sense in gammon company but here it seems a bit silly.

And yet we are in company rolling out the Blitz as a marker of interest.

(Unless you were referring the clowns claim.)

I think the constant threat of bombing (which can't be quantified by number of deaths) is part of the hardship it represented.

Less constant than the threat of being run over (or indeed of contracting the 'ViD) but I do appreciate there's a difference in quality.

[idunnosomename]

the allies did far worse on Germany with "strategic bombing" than the Blitz did yes. and the nuclear bombs on Japan were the most despicable showing of muscular imperialism in the history of mankind. but still. the Blitz was bad.

[Pinball]

And yet we are in company rolling out the Blitz as a marker of interest.

And in company of you calling the RAF terrorists, dude. In WW2, I'm on the side of the UK. You?

[Zetetic]

On the purpose of RAF area bombing, I am apparently in agreement with Churchill.

[chveik]

And in company of you calling the RAF terrorists, dude. In WW2, I'm on the side of the UK. You?

if we really have to pick a side, I'd have to say the Soviet Union