The next big move would be to remove the age restrictions on booster doses and offer them to everyone 5 months after their second dose. We could conceivably get ~35m people triple jabbed before Xmas. Using my friend's suggestion of 18 weeks would make 41m people eligible by December 20th, getting 35m of those people vaccinated with three doses would be pretty easy IMO and would push us beyond the herd immunity threshold as a nation.
The flaw is that young may push out the oldsters who really may need this to stop hospitalisation.
Not really we've got something like 25m Moderna and Pfizer vaccine doses in the country and there's still another 30m Pfizer doses to be delivered this year.
Strangely, the purchases were made with the aim of having more than one further dose per head of vaccinatable population.....
Has anyone started asking about 5-11 year olds, yet?
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Has anyone stayed in a Paradore? They do seem to have some in spectacular sites (e.g. Alhambra, Ronda).
Granada is fantastic. Land of the “free” tapas. A walkable city, and of course the Alhambra. A fine place to spend a weekend or a month.
My favourite city in Europe. By some distance. Did a good deal on my rented telly when I was a student too.
Yeah, why exactly was ITV Manc called Granada?
according to wiki because it was founded as a theatre company named after the spanish place.
Yeah. Was Sidney Bernstein. Didn't realise they were the NW and Yorkshire, till 1968. But only on weekdays.
This is good, but I’m not sure it will make that much difference to the pressures on the NHS. 7 day average covid admissions are 868 per day. Latest average all cause admissions are from April- August 2021 & are 17,000 a day. So covid likely represents ~5% of daily admissions…
"Latest average all cause admissions are from April- August 2021 & are 17,000 a day. So covid likely represents ~5% of daily admissions…"
Without data on how long people are likely to be in hospital, that statistic could be very misleading.
Imagine if the average stay in hospital for all non-Covid causes was one day, and for Covid it was 30 days. If that were the case (and I'm sure it's not I'm just exaggerating to make my point), then 60% of all the people in hospital would be there with Covid, even though they only accounted for 5% of admissions.
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Has anyone stayed in a Paradore? They do seem to have some in spectacular sites (e.g. Alhambra, Ronda).
Granada is fantastic. Land of the “free” tapas. A walkable city, and of course the Alhambra. A fine place to spend a weekend or a month.
My favourite city in Europe. By some distance. Did a good deal on my rented telly when I was a student too.
Yeah, why exactly was ITV Manc called Granada?
Acording to Wikipedia, "Granada originated as Granada Theatres Ltd, which owned cinemas in the south of England. It was founded in Dover in 1930 by Sidney Bernstein and his brother Cecil; it was named after the Spanish city of Granada, which Sidney had visited on a holiday.".
I’m in a beautiful hotel in Sagres, Portugal - the pousada - and the service is Fawlty Towers bad. I think there are three stuff running the entire hotel and restaurant
And it is busy
This problem is obviously a worldwide issue
Spain has paradores, Portugal pousadas. Does any other country have Government hotels?
Has anyone stayed in a Paradore? They do seem to have some in spectacular sites (e.g. Alhambra, Ronda).
Yes indeed, a strange mix of usually stunning buildings, generally good food, and typically indifferent service. The overall quality of the hotel generally doesn’t rise to the quality of the architecture but they are interesting places to stay, and all different, such that generalising (such as I have just done) is difficult.
One problem with paradores/pousadas is that even tho they often have stunning, historic exteriors, and sometimes impressive public spaces, the actual rooms can be pokey, dark, even dingy, because they were built in 1300 or for defensive reasons, etc. Not much in the way of windows or balconies
The pousada I’m in now does not have that issue. Amazing views and balconies. But it’s less than 100 years old
This is good, but I’m not sure it will make that much difference to the pressures on the NHS. 7 day average covid admissions are 868 per day. Latest average all cause admissions are from April- August 2021 & are 17,000 a day. So covid likely represents ~5% of daily admissions…
My understanding continues to be that the main problem with seriously ill Covid patients is with vaccine refusers (apparently the typical fully vaccinated person who's unlucky enough to die of this thing is now aged somewhere in their late eighties with umpteen different serious health conditions,) but that most of the detected cases are in schoolkids. The former is the main problem, but there's no sign of that causing a massive surge in hospital cases, with the total number of Covid patients in hospital having wobbled around in the 6,000-8,500 range for the whole of the last three months; the latter effectively represents a headlong dash for herd immunity in very low risk teens which, irrespective of one's views on the morality of the topic, may well yield benefits going into the Winter.
So, the main problem at this stage isn't so much the healthcare system being sunk by Covid as by flu. If the Government is eventually going to be bludgeoned into bringing back masks or worse then it's going to be in response to flu, should it turn out to be particularly bad. And they're certainly right to resist calls to go all in to suppress Covid - firstly because, based on previous experience, the catastrophist models that predict vast numbers of additional cases and hospitalisations are almost certainly well wide of the mark, and secondly because pulling lockdown levers to help ease Winter pressures on the NHS mustn't be allowed to develop into a reflex response made at the first sign of serious difficulty.
The NHS has a Winter Crisis every year. If we keep using restrictions to deal with this then the danger is that they'll also keep being brought in every year forevermore, whilst the ultimate root cause of those problems - the lack of capacity in the system - is never adequately addressed.
Johnson just had vaccinations in his armoury. He threw everything at vaccines because he had no idea what else to do. Almost by accident he won the Covid war.
ALL the other PMs would have been far more cautious over vaccines and would have failed.
Johnson may be idle and feckless, but he bet the farm on the vaccine horse and it romped home.
Whoever off-topiced me for this post, can you explain why it is off-topic?
Although I think the current Govt has been hopeless on Track and Trace and the timing of decisions one should give credit where credit is due and they were very good on the Vaccine and of course there were the Nightingale Hospitals. They weren't needed, but if they had been it could have been the difference between complete meltdown and controlled chaos. Because they weren't needed we didn't really see how good a job they had done and on the face of it, it was good.
The problem of the Nightingales was staffing. This why they had next to no patients.
Is it feasible for there to be a specific new role - entitled Covid nurses or something - and fast-track a bunch of recruits who are trained to be expert in best-practice Covid patient management but lack any wider training? And staff-up the Nightingales with them.
(This could be a random brain-fart, in which case sos.)
Agree. Foxy has much more knowledge than us on how staff was stretched but if we were in in complete disaster mode, even if completely unsatisfactory, an understaffed and under skilled operation is better than just dying at home, a bit like on a war footing. FYI my wife and her medical colleagues all approached her employer about being released to help and it was considered but it was decided they were more useful where they were. If things had got a lot worse things may have changed. She is a doctor but a pathologist, now involved in drug safety and has not been involved with the NHS and patients for decades, but I am sure she could have been useful if it was really needed in a nursing or junior doctor role.
The propaganda at the time was that people with first aid training - like air cabin staff - were being brought in to provide the bulk of the staff for the Nightingales, with a small number of hospital professionals to act in a supervisory role.
Just bear in mind that the Nightingales were for the not-very-sick, so that existing hospitals could deal with the very sick, I think people had it in mind at the time that it was the other way around.
Johnson just had vaccinations in his armoury. He threw everything at vaccines because he had no idea what else to do. Almost by accident he won the Covid war.
ALL the other PMs would have been far more cautious over vaccines and would have failed.
Johnson may be idle and feckless, but he bet the farm on the vaccine horse and it romped home.
Whoever off-topiced me for this post, can you explain why it is off-topic?
That has happened to me on occasions and I hope it is fat fingers and not anything else
Comments
Has anyone started asking about 5-11 year olds, yet?
Didn't realise they were the NW and Yorkshire, till 1968. But only on weekdays.
Without data on how long people are likely to be in hospital, that statistic could be very misleading.
Imagine if the average stay in hospital for all non-Covid causes was one day, and for Covid it was 30 days. If that were the case (and I'm sure it's not I'm just exaggerating to make my point), then 60% of all the people in hospital would be there with Covid, even though they only accounted for 5% of admissions.
https://twitter.com/bbclaurak/status/1451285991768080391?s=20
The pousada I’m in now does not have that issue. Amazing views and balconies. But it’s less than 100 years old
https://www.pestana.com/en/hotel/pousada-sagres/photos
So, the main problem at this stage isn't so much the healthcare system being sunk by Covid as by flu. If the Government is eventually going to be bludgeoned into bringing back masks or worse then it's going to be in response to flu, should it turn out to be particularly bad. And they're certainly right to resist calls to go all in to suppress Covid - firstly because, based on previous experience, the catastrophist models that predict vast numbers of additional cases and hospitalisations are almost certainly well wide of the mark, and secondly because pulling lockdown levers to help ease Winter pressures on the NHS mustn't be allowed to develop into a reflex response made at the first sign of serious difficulty.
The NHS has a Winter Crisis every year. If we keep using restrictions to deal with this then the danger is that they'll also keep being brought in every year forevermore, whilst the ultimate root cause of those problems - the lack of capacity in the system - is never adequately addressed.