2019–20 coronavirus pandemic

[Redirect Left]

It really amazes me some of the stories that come out of people being fined. For example, today an article confirms a woman was fined, after travelling 100 miles to get a McDonalds, driving from Lincolnshire to North Yorkshire.

Now, i am assuming she just gave that as an excuse to cover up something else she was driving around for during lockdown. I fiind it hard to believe someone would actually drive 100 miles for a McDonalds, I'm fairly sure whichever route she took to get to North Yorkshire, there'd have been other McDonalds!

After this is over, I will have to stop saying "avoid it like the plague!", turns out we don't go out of our way to avoid them.

[Chrill]

F1 looks set to cancel the opening race, the 2020 Euros looks like they'll be arranged in 2021 instead, and who knows about our beloved Eurovision Song Contest?

Well this aged like fine wine.

F1 didn't start until July, four months delayed. Euros 2020, The 2020 Olympics, and indeed Eurovision were all cancelled and are set to be held in 2021 instead.

[Redirect Left]

F1 didn't start until July, four months delayed. Euros 2020, The 2020 Olympics, and indeed Eurovision were all cancelled and are set to be held in 2021 instead.

I'm very doubtful the olympics will go ahead in 2021 either, given the new much more infectious strains that have popped up everywhere. Eurovision seem confident they can go ahead this year, although some acts probably will appear via video line.

[Chrill]

Very true. F1 has already postponed their season opener for 2021 also, and it was one of the most successful sports in terms of travelling the world in 2020.

[kamnet]

Eurovision seem confident they can go ahead this year, although some acts probably will appear via video line.

They really should have been able to do that last year.

[Redirect Left]

The UK Government (well, Dominic Raab) have pledged to have offered all over 18s the first dose of a vaccine by September of this year. Although I doubt anyone in the UK really beleives in that.

Our health service, the NHS, are also giving mixed messages on how badly affected certain bits of the population are. For example, I have multiple sclerosis, which in simple terms means my immune system is already stuck in overdrive, to the point where it attacks the brain & spinal cord at semi-random times. My local doctors surgery started by saying it makes me more susceptible to COVID19, and now they're just "no more at risk than anyone else, due to the already max-alert immune system", they've mellowed back out to "probably more at risk". So who knows what the actual truth is, because I do not. Will also be interesting to see how high on the vaccine list i get with my illness given all the mixed advice.

They really should have been able to do that last year.

I think last year they left it too late until they made the call on what to do, so it couldn't be held correctly in any form due to lack of time to arrange what needed arranging for the delivery.

[woodgie]

F1 looks set to cancel the opening race, the 2020 Euros looks like they'll be arranged in 2021 instead, and who knows about our beloved Eurovision Song Contest?

Well this aged like fine wine.

F1 didn't start until July, four months delayed. Euros 2020, The 2020 Olympics, and indeed Eurovision were all cancelled and are set to be held in 2021 instead.

judging by the current state of affairs, they probably won't be held in 2021 either, which is a huge shame.

[Chrill]

I think the Olympics will be hard to arrange, but football is going on across Europe. I still expect the 2021 Euros to be revamped into a one-location setting with an incredibly hectic schedule, probably using the same field 2-3 times per day. I'd argue Germany or France is best suited to this, they have the infrastructure.

F1 will go ahead, they have a strict coronavirus policy that worked fairly well in 2020 (albeit 3 drivers got sick during the season).

Eurovision will, like Redirect Left said, probably have to let some participants perform live in a separate venue in their home country, especially faraway nations like Australia, Israel, and Azerbaijan.

[Redirect Left]

So here we are, lockdown 3. Once again, people are being far too blasé about everything here in the UK.

About 150 people decided a great place to rent out for a wedding party was a closed Jewish orthodox school. In a twisted fate of irony, the former principal of that school, Rabbi Avrahom Pinter, died last year because of COVID19.
There was even a case of police being injured in the rich area of London called Knightsbridge, just around the corner from the rather famous Harrods store, as they tried to break up about 200 people celebrating. So even the rich folks aren't doing things right now.

Despite being told to stay at home and not leave the house for non-essential reasons, as soon as the sun comes out, everyone goes to the beach, this was Brighton last sunday, a seaside resort in south England.
Wales have decided they're having none of it, and keep placing road police on entries to major tourist destinations in Wales. Seen
here is a car patrolling the entry to part of the Snowdonia National Park. Quite a nice picture actually.

You can guarantee these are the people that'll complain the most if lockdown is extended!
I can only hope that people in other countries are taking this more seriously than the UK population seem to be doing so.

[GarryG]

So here we are, lockdown 3. Once again, people are being far too blasé about everything here in the UK.

In Australia they get fined .. so what they don't pay the fines and still go break the rules again and again. Jail is only answer for those who disobey. Get same sentence that we would get if we walked the streets threatening people with a knife or gun.

Any reading this who have that don't car attitude .. remember this .. if you get the virus and go home to your parents they will get the virus from you and they will most like DIE from it. Your grandparents will definitely DIE from your stupidity. Some of your friends who have existing health issues will most likely DIE because of you.

[Redirect Left]

Boo, this thread is still relevant, that is bad news.

The UK is seeing a large amount of mutations, probably due to the large amount of infections, with each new host offering the chance for the virus to evolve further and mutate. This probably happens far more than we note, because a lot of mutations will essentially be an evolutionary dead-end. However, the UK is producing quite a lot of mutations that are becoming quite a force to control. Scientists are now thinking it's possible, to some degree, that a single person in the UK, who became chronically infected with COVID but has so far, or at least for a long period of time, survived the infection to the point where it mutated several times in one host.
So basically, please stay inside, and don't become a superspreader or worse, a super mutation source.

[Chrill]

Perhaps you can confirm, Adam, that a lot of UK residents have only received one of the two doses of the vaccine? My absurdly limited understanding of viruses would claim that that is absolutely a risk for mutations.

[Redirect Left]

Perhaps you can confirm, Adam, that a lot of UK residents have only received one of the two doses of the vaccine? .

That is accurate, yes. The UK for some absurd reason is spreading the two doses up to if not slightly more than 12 weeks apart, instead of the tested 3-6 week delay.

The government make the details of how many vaccines have been done public info, its available here https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ it also says new daily infections and deaths there.

Basically about 13 million first doses, but 0.5 million second doses. How this'll affect the long term outlook, I darent think about.

[Chrill]

Cheers for the clarification.

We have administered about 400,000 first doses and roughly 60,000 second doses, so the number of first dose receivers is small but the number of second dose receivers is not far behind. 3-4 weeks between administrations are the norm here, my wife got her first shot a week or so ago and will get her second in two weeks!

[Challenger007]

Perhaps you can confirm, Adam, that a lot of UK residents have only received one of the two doses of the vaccine? .

That is accurate, yes. The UK for some absurd reason is spreading the two doses up to if not slightly more than 12 weeks apart, instead of the tested 3-6 week delay.

The government make the details of how many vaccines have been done public info, its available here https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ it also says new daily infections and deaths there.

Basically about 13 million first doses, but 0.5 million second doses. How this'll affect the long term outlook, I darent think about.

The interval between the first and the second vaccination is so long due to the shortage of vaccine doses, it seems to me. If there were enough vaccines, then the vaccination would be carried out at the manufacturer's recommended interval.

[Chrill]

The interval between the first and the second vaccination is so long due to the shortage of vaccine doses, it seems to me. If there were enough vaccines, then the vaccination would be carried out at the manufacturer's recommended interval.

In that case, do not administer the first dose to so many people. Save enough doses to guarantee a second dose within 4-6 weeks.

[Challenger007]

The interval between the first and the second vaccination is so long due to the shortage of vaccine doses, it seems to me. If there were enough vaccines, then the vaccination would be carried out at the manufacturer's recommended interval.

In that case, do not administer the first dose to so many people. Save enough doses to guarantee a second dose within 4-6 weeks.

I do not know even. These are all government decisions, I just suggested a possible reason for such a delay in receiving the second dose of the drug.

[kamnet]

It's really a question of how much you want to try to knock this down. The first dose by itself is 65-80% effective in blocking infection or reducing the side effects. The second dose is what boosts it to 90-95%. If the priority is to reduce the likelyhood that any one individual gets sick, you schedule two doses on schedule. If the priority is to reduce how much of the population is going to get sick, spread out the doses as much as you can until you can get production up enough to give a second dose.

[GarryG]

Some stupid idiots here in Australia are protesting against the vaccine.

Seems like they must like their elderly parents and other getting ill and possibly dying.

[Chrill]

In Sweden, the excess mortality for 2020 was reported to be 8%. In pure numbers, that's about 9000 people that were not "scheduled" to die in 2020. Of those, over 100% are attributed to covid-19 (that means that we had fewer deaths excluding coronavirus, for example less traffic related deaths in 2020).

This added up to 2020 being the year with the smallest population increase Sweden has seen in 15 years. Marriages were also down almost 25%, attributed to being able to gather your loved ones and therefore postponing the ceremony.