One example? Well as examples go on changed advice it's quite a whopper. We don't know if there have or haven't been others.
This article reports what Vallance said at the time.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/20...-herd-immunity
Here are a few interesting extracts.
“What we don’t want is everybody to end up getting it in a short period of time so we swamp and overwhelm NHS services – that’s the flattening of the peak,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.
“Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely; also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease and we reduce the transmission, at the same time we protect those who are most vulnerable to it. Those are the key things we need to do.”
He added: “This is quite likely, I think, to become an annual virus, an annual seasonal infection.”
“If you suppress something very, very hard, when you release those measures it bounces back and it bounces back at the wrong time,” he said. The government is concerned that if not enough people catch the virus now, it will re-emerge in the winter, when the NHS is already overstretched.
I think the last two sentences are very interesting. Was he right first time?
....it's all downhill from here.
280 deaths
10,308 in hospital
957 on ventilation
23,065 tested positive
45,955 deaths within 28 days of positive test
58,925 with COVID-19 on the death certificate.
I think we all acknowledge that the numbers are too high, and are increasing quickly.
Clearly action is needed - what is holding them back? The longer effective lockdown is delayed, the longer it will need to be in place, resulting in greater economic, social, and non-Covid medical harm.
Yes, it seems there's little other alternative to step things up beyond the "very high" measures we already have in place. Should we be doing stricter local lock-downs? Like the previous full lock-down, but perhaps leaving schools open. And only doing these full lock-downs in areas where it's high.
It's clearly quite a patchy picture nationally. But we seem to need something more that we've got now.
The number of Covid-related deaths in England over the past seven days involving individuals who were under 60 and without a pre-existing condition was zero.
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
Since the middle of July there's been little talk of ethnicity issues re Covid other than a few assertions I've seen and read that BAME are more vulnerable.
I haven't seen breakdown by ethnicity of the casualties. Just age.
Here in Blackburn, as I have previously mentioned, there have been some examples highlighted in the local news of mass rules breaks such as cricket tournaments, weddings with 250 attending.... among a section of our local community particularly back in June/July.
If anyone looks at the tracker showing cases by local area, you can see the Blackburn epicentre for positive tests. It's the centre of town and out 1-2 miles from approx North North West to East South East.
You can also see on tables such as Richard keeps on Twitter that 4 MSOA's from Blackburn with Darwen feature in the national hotspots. All 4 have been in the top 20 at the same time recently.
https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1321858823792037889
We've just lost topspot. But still 4 in the top 30.
In these 4 areas the current rate of positive tests is up to 10 times greater than in others areas of town only 2-3 miles away.
The local hospital, East Lancashire Healthcare Trusts Royal Blackburn Hospital was recently featured by CNN - they allowed the cameras in and interviewed some staff.
Matron in critical care Linda Gregson highlighted some of the difficulties and talked about zoom calls with family members of patients on the CV ward.
At one point she told us “Unfortunately on several occasions we have had to stop the zoom calls because there have been numerous relatives in a room, not social distancing. The other day there were at least 45 in a room.”
It does make me wonder, especially when looking at the chart on Twitter, whether the current uptick is split almost entirely between the University sector, who are largely unaffected themselves, and the South Asian communities.
Richard Taylor
"William Tell could take an apple off your head. Taylor could take out a processed pea."
Sid Waddell
I wish there were clearly defined thresholds for moving between tiers. Here in Derbyshire Dales we are just about to move into T2 despite levels here being around 1/2 those in neighbouring areas also moving to T2. This suggests either we shouldn't be moving or other areas should have moved earlier. I appreciate we are still very luck living where we do but this is the first time that I have felt slightly angry at the restrictions.
Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run