Coronavirus

[Wetherby whaler]

We’ve just never been exposed to this level of data before. Look at this, pretty normal, if low year, and excess winter deaths are still well up to 1,500 daily. Look at the late 1950s, it’s insane! I understand that on average, in a boring year, taking in summer too, about 1,500 people die every day.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...017to2018final

[Fellbeast]

We’ve just never been exposed to this level of data before. Look at this, pretty normal, if low year, and excess winter deaths are still well up to 1,500 daily. Look at the late 1950s, it’s insane! I understand that on average, in a boring year, taking in summer too, about 1,500 people die every day.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulat...017to2018final

For crying out loud. This is an exceptional year despite now two lockdowns and loads of restrictions when not locked down. The death and infection figures would’ve otherwise been far far far worse. Stop being so nonchalant about 60,000 lost lives

[Mike T]

Love the race - just hope I can get myself to the level where I can put myself through it again

Did it twice, don't know why - it is so much tougher than you would expect. Where I am in the field makes it a lonely experience towards the end, with lots of doubt as to the route. And those narrow trods - I kept falling to one side or the other.

[Witton Park]

Did it twice, don't know why - it is so much tougher than you would expect. Where I am in the field makes it a lonely experience towards the end, with lots of doubt as to the route. And those narrow trods - I kept falling to one side or the other.

Same here - I was 3.5 - 4 hours on the occasions I did it and from CP4 up to the Calf I rarely saw another person except the marshalls.

[Witton Park]

For crying out loud. This is an exceptional year despite now two lockdowns and loads of restrictions when not locked down. The death and infection figures would’ve otherwise been far far far worse. Stop being so nonchalant about 60,000 lost lives

It was an exceptional Spring. It isn't an exceptional Autumn.

You can have 10 lockdowns, if they are largely ineffective, they will achieve nothing. You cannot say with any certainty that without them it would have been far, far worse, because you cannot find any data that points to a lockdown changing the direction of travel of the stats.
The Liverpool chart I put up yesterday shows that.
The Northern Hemisphere graphs all look the same - you can more or less overlay the growth and decline of 1st and 2nd waves over each other.

[Witton Park]

Today's numbers -

501 deaths [5,655 in the last 14 days]
16,409 in hospital
1,430 on ventilation
22,915 tested positive
330,059 cases in 14 days
53,775 deaths within 28 days +ve test
63,873 with COVID-19 on the death certificate.

were read out on the BBC News in less than a minute, and with far less interest than is associated with the weather report.

We have become numb to this ongoing disaster.

The Government seem a lot more confident in the new Lateral Flow Test. They are prepared to discuss it's accuracy. I think Hancock stated it was 99.7% in the Commons and they've always been reluctant to put a figure on the PCR Test.

I would expect clinicians to want to know definitively what they are dealing with. I've heard calls for the LFT to be used now in hospitals as a priority.
If they did do that, I expect we would see a difference.

Martin Daubney - a Men's Health Campaigner, ex MEP has just lost his uncle to Cancer. The family knew it was coming.
He's in your stats Mike.

I think the combination of unreliable tests and inappropriate declaration of COVID is inflating those figures.

I suppose that might be balanced off in 2021 as many people will die of Cancer and other conditions, that have gone untreated this year, but will not include Covid on the death certificate, because the cause of death is going to be delay in getting the treatment they needed.

[Fellbeast]

It was an exceptional Spring. It isn't an exceptional Autumn.

You can have 10 lockdowns, if they are largely ineffective, they will achieve nothing. You cannot say with any certainty that without them it would have been far, far worse, because you cannot find any data that points to a lockdown changing the direction of travel of the stats.
The Liverpool chart I put up yesterday shows that.
The Northern Hemisphere graphs all look the same - you can more or less overlay the growth and decline of 1st and 2nd waves over each other.

You’re possibly ‘glossing over’ the massive successes that lockdown has achieved in countries like Australia, New Zealand, China, South Korea...

The U.K. experience of lockdown has always been too late, too short and too relaxed (not closing access to overseas travellers etc). Equally quoting Sweden as an example of a country ‘not needing lockdown’ that has only one major city, very expensive alcohol, with not much in the way of binge drinking culture a la UK, with a population far wider spread out, with much better investment in social and community care, a people more inclined to follow rules and that are culturally less inclined to clump together and still has covid deaths at or about the same rate as America (and far higher than all of it neighbours who did utilise lockdown) is clearly not a great example

[Travs]

Same here - I was 3.5 - 4 hours on the occasions I did it and from CP4 up to the Calf I rarely saw another person except the marshalls.

The year i did it, 2018, i did 3:11 but it was zero visibility throughout. Was 32nd/115 which i expect was more to do with the poor visibility and it being a slow year. There were certainly a lot more than 31 in front of me when i left cp3, and they all seemed to take what i thought was a poor route...

I'd also done the Weasdale Horseshoe the day before, which made it quite a taxing weekend!!

anyway... is that Coronavirus still going on?!? i asked my brother if he was going to the pub to watch the Cov vs Birmingham match tonight... completely forgot the pubs were shut... own little world working at home...

[Witton Park]

You’re possibly ‘glossing over’ the massive successes that lockdown has achieved in countries like Australia, New Zealand, China, South Korea...

The U.K. experience of lockdown has always been too late, too short and too relaxed (not closing access to overseas travellers etc). Equally quoting Sweden as an example of a country ‘not needing lockdown’ that has only one major city, very expensive alcohol, with not much in the way of binge drinking culture a la UK, with a population far wider spread out, with much better investment in social and community care, a people more inclined to follow rules and that are culturally less inclined to clump together and still has covid deaths at or about the same rate as America (and far higher than all of it neighbours who did utilise lockdown) is clearly not a great example

I'm not glossing over them. But apples and oranges. I try to look at areas that are more comparable and see what has worked and what hasn't.

I suggested way back in the Spring on here that there was probably increased community resistance in the Far East and South Korea with Japan - two countries - different approach - largely unaffected.

Western Europe so far there are few countries unaffected - really only Finland and Norway and remoteness might be a reason - but different approaches seem to yield the same outcome.

I was listening to an Aussie lady on the radio yesterday. She can't go back home. They have completely closed down along with NZ.
I recall in the UK listening to the Commons debates in April. Raab was inundated with enquiries from all sides of the house - can we please get our citizens back.
Labour, SNP, LibDem as well as Tories.
I wonder how they would have reacted had Raab taken the Aussy route and said no. They can stay where they are indefinitely.
I'm not sure the Aussie/NZ policy would work for us but maybe it would have. But I think it would have to have been done in January for it to have been effective in the UK - and then how would we have handled Ireland?

We are where we are, and without lockdown, with advise, I can't see we would have done worse. We might have done far better as resources could then have been more focussed on the vulnerable.

[Fellbeast]

I was listening to an Aussie lady on the radio yesterday. She can't go back home

Australian citizens can apply to be exempt from travel restrictions to Australia but have to go into quarantine for 14 days on arrival. Non-citizens like me, who wants to visit his daughter and two grand daughters, can’t. The sooner everybody starts abiding by the rules and the sooner the vaccines get distributed, the sooner I can visit Australia!