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Which Tier Are You In (Part Two)
26/11/2020 by Tiggerlion 99 Comments
I watched the press conference this afternoon. The graphs showed cases, hospitalisations and deaths rise during the period of the previous tier system. During the national lockdown, all three numbers have continued to rise. Only cases have changed and only just in the last week and only by a relatively small amount. There is still a lot of virus out there infecting people. This national lockdown is being released at a point in time when cases are so much higher than the previous one (though testing wasn't as readily available back then). The words being used to describe the graphs told a different story. They said the tier system slowed the spread when it clearly did not. Only Tier 3 seemed to make any difference pre-national lockdown.
Liverpool City Region entered Tier 3 a few weeks before everyone else. Mass testing has been carried in just Liverpool itself and BoJo claims that it is responsible for the reduction in cases in that area. However, the rest of the region has had similar reductions, even where no mass testing has been done, places like St.Helens, Halton and Knowsley. Is it possible, Boris, that imposing Tier 3 early, at a more opportune time, has made the difference, not mass testing? We saw no comparison with Wales, which might have been revealing as they had a three week 'Fire Break' over the half-term.
Is it just me, or is this release too early? Don't we need cases to fall a bit further and for hospitalisations to start to turn, too? Has this been done simply to enable us to get our Christmas shopping done, drumming up the excitement for the Five Days Of Xmas when we are free to share the virus with our nearest and dearest? If so, why not just allow shops to reopen nationally? As from Wednesday, the pubs in London, where cases are rising in some parts, can open but not in Manchester, where cases are falling, feeding the impression that BoJo loves London but hates Manchester, though Andy Burnham is being sanguine this time.
I guess we will pay for this in January. We'll be back in a National Lockdown in February.
Filed Under: Forum Tagged With: Lies Damn Lies And Statistics.
Baron Harkonnen says
You`ve assessed the state of play very well Tiggs. I and I reckon a good majority of the population of the UK have no faith in this government`s mix `n` match approach to the C-19 crisis.
They introduced the first lockdown at least a month too late and have been failing to address the issues since.
The only light at the end of the tunnel is the hope that the promised vaccines work and that a vast majority of the population take the opportunity to have the vaccine.
Will BoJo & Co fuck it up? What do you think?
Which tier am I in? Tier 3, the pubs are allowed to be open half a mile away! I won`t be going.
I don't think the November lockdown was wanted by the government and they were quite happy with the tinkering with the tier system. I think the lockdown came because they could no longer put it off, public demand was against them, as was the science.
Yes, it is too early to release, and now we are back in a tier system which is (supposedly) tougher because just about everywhere has gone up a a tier.
But as far as I can see, the prim difference between 1 and 2 is having people in your house, and having to have a pasty with a pint. To combat the spread of the virus we should be keeping a social distance, so how come hair dressing, tattooing, manicure etc are allowed in all 3 tiers?
The prime difference here (now I'm in Tier 2) means that non-essential retail is open – great just in time for the Christmas rush, and then the world opens up for 5 days (because it can't hurt can it?).
"If we're not careful we will be in lockdown again in January" translates as "we will be in lockdown again in January"
Personal opinion: absolutely f**king ridiculous. The change in case numbers does not support the move. I think the country is more confused (and partitioned) than ever. An economic decision or a scientific one?
Hmm … give me 2 seconds on that thought
Still top of the pops in Hull.
Could have something to do with the people of this city taking no notice of any of the lockdowns, let alone the one that's currently supposed to be in force.
Tears of manly pride, I tell yer. I knew we could beat the world at something.
hubert rawlinson says
We're just outside the top ten so into tier 3 which we would've been in before they brought in the 2nd lockdown.
Just before the 2nd lockdown we had my birthday meal just in case we couldn't go out for one next month (surprise surprise we can't).
I also visited the gym for the first time after the 1st lockdown just before the 2nd one kicked in.
I felt safer eating out than at the gym, but gyms can stay open in tier 3 this time.
Decidedly confused indeed.
Allegedly, the average reading age of a Hull resident is 9.
I would respond to that but I stand under it don't.
Tiggerlion says
Haven't Swale in Kent knocked you off the top spot (partly due to an outbreak in the local jail – cue Thin Lizzy or 10cc)?
We've got a bigger jail than them, a Victorian one too, so I hope those plucky crims can get us back to the top.
Ooh we're up to the 6th placing in the covid charts.
As a 55 year old man I'm off to get a 'remember me this way' tattooed on my forehead because it is allowed.
Haircut first, obviously, and a pint with the mask denying 20 somethings in the Weatherspoons after!
Hairdressers are in the employment of the government.
As are gyms, evidently. (All that huffing and puffing and sweating in confined areas, what could be safer? And then there's gyms. Oho!)
Boris clearly hasn't availed himself of a Downing Street linked hair dresser!
He could go for a 1970s 'Purdy' bob from the New Avengers.
"He's the Gareth Hunt, and I'm just a Gareth Hunt"
Boneshaker says
A vale of tiers.
It's lockdown schmockdown round my way, as the Great British Public knows best and is pretty much ignoring it. Which is what people would have done at Christmas anyway regardless of what nonsense plan BoJo came up with. At least now we can all infect each other with impunity over the festive season 'cos Boris says it's okay.
Here's to the next lockdown.
We're going to a socially distanced gig at the Jazz Cafe on the 9th of December. As soon as the tiers were announced (London for them and Essex for us both in 2) I received an email explaining that the gig could still go ahead, but purchase of a vegan, chicken or beef burger and fries was now mandatory. They don't come with a vaccine side or anything, you just have to eat (or at least order and pay) for them to satisfy regulations.
It's not a huge deal as it means we don't have have a sandwich on the train or find an early dinner in Camden (the show starts and ends early due to curfew) but a bit daft. Anyway, two vegan ones over here when you're ready mate.
SteveT says
@Gatz I am going to an afternoon gig on 19th December also at Jazz Cafe – travelling down by car but their tables are fine so have no concerns and I am supporting the hospitality sector which to be honest I think is really important.
This is the one we're going to
https://thejazzcafelondon.com/event/a-tribute-to-john-prine-2/
I'll be interested to see how they manage distancing of the performers because the other, pre-Covid, times I saw this line-up there were 13 or 14 people on stage at once. I haven't been to the Jazz Cafe for a while, but as I remember the stage isn't large and there is a gantry and a flight of steps by which artists reach and leave the stage, so there aren't even any wings to spread into.
Do let us know how it goes.
Would love to be at it.
We all would.
….what?
Mike_H says
It must be a while since you were there because they've changed it around quite a bit since then. I went to a gig there in January and the gantry and stairs to the stage are gone. The artists dressing room is now at floor level to the right of the stage and further back. A bar at each end of the audience space, stairs up to the balcony and down to the toilets at the back. No idea how the tables will be arranged on the ground level. The balcony tables were really crammed in so they'll either have taken a lot of them out or they'll have a lot them cordoned off. The stage is actually pretty big but there's a bloody great pillar in the middle of it holding the roof up. I went to see an 11-piece band there and even with a grand piano on one side they had plenty of room.
I've just looked it up – Thea Gilmore, 3 December 2013. I remember seeing a piece on the London news about the Jazz Cafe being reopened after a refurb.
Yeah the one I am seeing is the London Gospel community choir- I have seen them before and they are excellent but also large in number.
That John Prine tribute sounds fine though
Update! An email from the ticket agency:
Fortunately, the government has now reversed its decision to make substantial meals compulsory when serving alcohol in live music venues. This would have been an expensive and logistically challenging operation, even for venues that have the means to do it.
This change means that guests on the ground floor are no longer obliged to dine whilst at the venue and so food will now only be available in the mezzanine restaurant once again.
So we'll be having a sandwich or grab something early after all. It's all jolly confusing isn't it?
Twang says
I agree with your analysis Tig and I'm mystified why he did it. I think it's probably a (wrong) political judgement that he had to stick with the 2nd Dec. Maybe also that people will probably largely do what they choose at Christmas so he might as well agree in advance. But I think large numbers of his own MPs are edging ever slightly closer to getting rid of him.
dadwardo says
Junior Wells has kept everyone up with the numbers here in sunny (34 degrees today!) Melbourne. We've just recorded our 28th day in a row with zero cases. Other than vaccination the only way out of this, it'd seem, is to take it completely seriously. Fines for no masks, big fines for breaking hospitality rules, proper track and trace in place. It was bastard hard to stick to it, in all honesty – missed the pub, lost all my social skills, work and focus has suffered – but stick to it we did, and after a hundred days we're coming into proper Aussie summer with a skip in our collective steps. Lockdown schmockdown is exactly right. I'm looking at the numbers going the other way back in Ireland and the UK, and despair.
Weren't there cases in South Australia this week that resulted in NSW closing its borders?
The biggest absence here is a workable track and trace. We spent £ 12 billion on it but that's apparently what it costs for one that doesn't work.
It's all bullshit. This week I went to get some physio at a private hospital that was previously commandeered by the NHS in lockdown one. The doctor told me categorically it was nowhere near the same as the first lockdown and judging by the ease with which my mum is admitted into one of Birmingham's main hospitals that would very much seem to be the case. I really don't know who to believe but it certainly ain't the government. There seems to be no rhyme nor reason – take for example Worcestershire which is in tier 2 yet Worcester itself has one of the fastest rates of virus increase. Kent is one of the UK's worst cases yet towns with a good record are suffering the same fate as Swale. It makes no sense.
I think there are far more cases of younger age groups driving the numbers higher but less ICU occupancy due to better treatment/understanding of the virus. Of the 16 million current cases only 0.6 percent Worldwide are in a serious condition – it seems like a massive over reaction to me and I just know I will get lambasted on here but so be it.
Rishi Sunak has factored in another million people losing their jobs but that really isn't fucking important is it?
And holding up Liverpool as a beacon of success was nothing more than an attempt to get one over Andy Burnham – do you think we cant see through you Mr Bumble?
If you look at hospitalisations, the most accurate and consistently collected data throughout both waves, the numbers in hospital right now are pretty much the same as the peak in April. Those people are pretty sick but are now managed better with a smaller proportion actually ventilated. Still scary though.
@Tiggerlion I fully agree it is scary. It is also scary for those without jobs and potentially losing their houses at some future time.
Just to put this into perspective I am not looking at it from my own position – I have maybe two years of work left and a house with a lot of equity, pension, savings etc but there are people starting out with a new family, new mortgage etc that are going to be scarred by this for years to come. Rishi Sunak announces to all who will listen about how much the govt has done for these people but it is all bullshit. He started off with good intentions but suddenly realised we cant pay back what we have borrowed. If interest rates go up we are fucked.
Those countries that have contained the virus have also been best at keeping business going. Imposing quarantine on incomers, test, tracing and isolating cases and contacts, masks, social distancing and washing hands have all been crucial. The UK has been pretty poor at all of these. Controlling the virus = supporting businesses.
I'm looking forward to the Rugby League Grand Final tonight as a lifelong Saints fan. No supporters allowed in the ground. Did you see the pictures of the crowd at the match in Australia? Packed to the rafters. I'm guessing Australian Rugby League is feeling far more financially secure than ours.
retropath2 says
I'm with Devi on this:
"It is the virus killing the economy, not the restrictions themselves"
So the restrictions have no effect? Sorry @retropath2 but try telling that to 15000 Topshop workers about to lose their jobs and everyone in the hospitality industry who cant work because of restrictions. Clearly nonsense.
So you don't mind if a third wave comes along with a still higher rate of infection? By the time those 3 vaccines are all available in sufficient quantities, it could be spreading faster than people can be immunised. There might not be enough healthy people available who have the skills to administer it. It ought to have been brought under control before immunisation starts, but that's very unlikely to happen now.
Of course the restrictions are having an effect. It's the restrictions right now that are jeopardizing jobs, but the prime cause is the virus repeatedly not being controlled when it could have been.
Each failure has meant further restrictions.
There is almost certain to be another wave of infections post-xmas because of the relaxation of the current restrictions. That's if the current approach manages to actually bring the numbers down.
The hard right would have us believe it's the restrictions that are to blame for job losses. The reason there are still restrictions is because our government are clueless, venal and incompetent.
Thegp says
There's a lot of ifs and buts in here based on… well I'm not sure what exactly. Certainly not the science. The second wave is smaller than the first and a third will be smaller still.. study every single pandemic curve since year dot
Even the proper ones that killed many more
There is only one metric that has been collected consistently across the two waves of Covid 19 and that's hospitalisations. The numbers in the second wave are remarkably similar to the first. Testing is being carried out far more frequently during this second wave. Deaths had their issues in the first and cases are being managed much better now, so death is less likely an outcome.
Here is an interesting, albeit brief, article on pandemic waves. The conclusion is that the evidence is unclear but there are at least two pandemics where the second wave was more severe than the first.
https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-epidemic-waves/
dai says
Orange I think, not red and not green.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Here in France we have to fill out bits of paper explaining why we are outside. During the entire pandemic we have had to show our bits of paper but twice. But everyone religiously fills out the bits of paper every time.
Seems to me that in the UK nobody gives a fuck about tiers (apart from the old and vulnerable). I can just see the police knocking on No23 Acacia Crescent on Christmas morn. "Excuse me, there seems to be twelve people in here. Can you explain who is in what bubble? And by the way, what exactly are you doing to that turkey?"
I think mostly they do follow the rules, at least round here they do. People who are sensible at Christmas should be fine, but loud lairy parties can expect a visit from plod.
Same here @Twang everyone wearing masks and socially distancing.
The Covid police are out in force where my mum lives. Knocking on doors asking if the occupants are okay but ostensibly checking how many are in the house and if there are parties
Actually the 6th formers from the boys' school were drifting back into their favourite lunchtime activity, via, hanging about in the square eyeing up girls, eating something revolting and eyeing up girls. First day a large cop told them to disperse. Second day he told them they would all be fined £200 if they did it again. Needless to say, they didn't.
"My dad will pay it, like he pays for everything else, the fackin' mug"
chiz says
It's this constant juggling of lives and livelihoods. Of course we should have locked down earlier, over half term, but the tier restrictions announced today are lockdown in everything but name anyway. The problem is this; no one's going to follow the rules about meeting in the home. They're just not. It was easier in the summer because you could be outside. Now it's Christmas and it's cold and everyone – everyone – is going to bend the rules to some degree. However much you blame the Government – which you should, for prevarication, confused messaging and terrible example-setting – in the end the unspoken truth is that everyone thinks the rules are for someone else. So yeah, a massive third wave in January and another lockdown, which will at least make the post-Brexit riots easier to manage.
Good point. This could be the ultimate dead cat for the January Brexit fuck up.
The lockdown will be in February at the same time as food shortages kick in due to Brexit. At that time, the police can arrest anyone outdoors, let alone gathering into a march.
Pretty much that, yes
I'm getting more convinced that covid will be used as a handy scapegoat for any Brexit bad news.
Oh, they started that months ago. 'It would all have been sunlit uplands if it hadn't been for this pesky virus'
That's why Sunak rolled out furlow so quickly, it was already planned for Brexit. Or am I drifting into the arena of the tin foil hat here?
Rolls out furrow? As in furrowed brows? Plenty of those about, indeed.
Don't know what you could possibly mean …
I imagine Covid 19 as a Bond type villain sitting in his lair surrounded by lots of lovely scantily clad flu viruses gleefully declaring. "Yes Mr Johnson you keep doing exactly as I ask. After confusing them with tiers for fears release the masses 3 weeks before Christmas and bring the students home. Tell them about the vaccine. Us viruses love a false sense of security among our prey. The final piece of my mind bending masterplan is now in place. Give them 5 days of Covid Christmas for me to finish them off. I expect everyone over 70 to die"
Ardnort says
Scotland has 'levels', not 'tiers' because Sturgeon has to be different from England. Anyway, here in Shetland we are in Level 1, and other than for wearing masks and not mixing with other households, could almost say things are fairly, dare I say, 'normal'. We are blessed in having hills and wide open spaces, so earlierk lockdowns didn't feel restrictive.
I like those "we're not England" decisions, like the bus stations having "stances" instead of "stands" (which to my mind conjurs up the image of a double-decker with one hand on its hip and the other holding a Sobrani cocktail cigarette…
…just me then)
We were so poor but wishing to look sophisticated would colour in Players No6 with felt tip pens to look like Sobranie cigarettes, and hollow out golf tees to make cigarette holders.
But you try and tell the young people today that… and they won't believe ya'.
When I first saw a Sobranie I thought it was the result of an accident involving Ribena.
Sobranie? I remember them and also when we tried of looking effeminate we went for the cool of Gauloise except they made you cough like a motherfucker.
Blue Boy says
It's hard to argue with Manchester being in tier 3, but feels like London should be there as well. The figures in Liverpool of cases and hospitalisations have come down really significantly but I agree with Tiggs that that is probably more to do with it's having gone into tier 3 earlier than anywhere else – essentially it is two weeks ahead of Manchester. Which, sadly, probably means it will also be two weeks ahead when it goes back into tier 3 when we get the inevitable post Christmas rise again. And so it will continue for months.
atcf says
Tier 3 here but to be honest we've been doing click and collect shopping and avoiding other shops / eateries since the first lockdown ended so it really makes little difference. I would kill for a Costa right now (and I was always ambivalent about the place before) but we use my mother-in-law for childcare, and as my father-in-law is high risk we really can't chance anything. I've got to recognise the car of the local Hermes courier though.
mikethep says
Like Dadwardo up there I'm sitting in Queensland leading a pretty much normal life and trying not to feel too pleased about it when my family are locked down in the Vale of Tiers.
The QLD government has been pretty consistent in its approach, although allowing 49,000 pissed-up Queenslanders to watch a footie game was a bit of an outlier. I've given up trying to make sense of what the UK government is up to. The latest wheeze is allowing business travellers coming to UK from higher-risk countries for less than 3 days to dodge self-isolation. The Global Travel Taskforce (chaired by none other than Hancock and Shapps) thinks that business confidence must be boosted. No socialising, mind…that'll work well.
Pfffffttttt….
Sitheref2409 says
Much the same here. Just substitute NT for Queensland.
I get to start refereeing again tonight. Or play hockey on Thursday. Or trivia on Wednesday. Or…
The States is in a worse position than the UK, which is simultaneously hard and easy to believe.
A hard lockdown AND effective test and trace is the only way to go.
Absolutely. Our pillar 2 of test and trace has been rubbish. However, the other key thing is quarantining incomers from abroad. Australia and New Zealand isolated people in specific hotels for two weeks. In the UK, nothing.
Canada has quarantined almost from day 1 (14 days for all arrivals) and the land border with US has been closed since March, apart from commercial vehicles. However we have still had a significant number of cases, generally running at about 1/4 of UK or US per capita, but still higher than our antipodean friends.
Yes. 18m people arrived in UK in the first 3 months of this year before lockdown, and only a couple of hundred were quarantined. Oops.
Lot of good the isolating in specific hotels did – coronavirus went through the roof due to a lot of extra curricular activity. It was allegedly the cause of the Victoria lockdown.
When people stuck to the rules, it worked well. There were some cases of misbehaviour that caused problems but the numbers in Australia are a tiny fraction of ours.
Not having that, @stevet. Yes, you're right about the Victoria outbreak, but the root cause (geddit?) of that was the Victoria government giving the job of policing quarantine to private security firms who in turn subcontracted to a bunch of numpties who didn't have the first idea what they were doing. Everywhere else in Oz it was police and army who did the job, and it worked, as I can testify. It's still working – the only cases in Queensland are people who have arrived from overseas who were detected in quarantine. There haven't been any locally acquired cases for months.
NSW is now police and military as well, and a smooth running g machine it is too.
There may have been early glitches; but I'd rather have a good plan badly executed than a bad plan or no plan at all.
I havent heard that one @mikethep – still have to quarantine although number of days has shortened to 5 IF you take a test and it is negative.
Sounds pretty sensible to me
Paul Wad says
Tier 3 for the South Riding. It has been pretty bad in Barnsley and Sheffield though, with too many people not prepared to do as they were politely asked. A couple of weeks ago Barnsley's A&E department put a plea out for people to only go there if they absolutely needed to, which is kind of the purpose of an A&E department, but having worked in plenty of them I know full well that at least half the people in the waiting room at any given time shouldn't be there. I can't imagine how difficult it's been for them during the pandemic, particularly with A&E attendances having doubled in the 20 years or so since I last worked in one.
Speaking to a Paremedic who attended to my nym after a nasty fall he told me that they get call outs to tune someone's tv or change their channel.No wonder the NHS is under pressure
At the Royal Free we once had someone ringing for an ambulance from the waiting room, thinking they could just walk out onto the street, get in an ambulance, travel the 50 yards or so to the ambulance entrance and jump the queue. I was half tempted to wander round to one of the crews and ask them to drive out of the ambulance bay, pick them up and bring them to the ambulance entrance, because they would have then been triaged by the nurse in charge, who would have determined, like me, that theirs wasn't a case that should even have been in the department, given them a low priority and sent them back round to the waiting room to me, where they would have gone to the back of the queue again!
Mrbellows says
Could you explain the tier system for those of us that aren't familiar with it?
Guardian is your friend, as always. It's unreasonable to expect an ordinary human being to explain it.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/nov/23/boris-johnson-new-three-tier-system-covid-restrictions-england
Gary says
Tier 1 = Pints
Tier 2 = Pints with chips
Tier 3 = No pints
That's what I was after. Thank you, Gary. Thank you, Mike.
thecheshirecat says
Tier 2, like most of England, so no change here. But we appear to be being circumnavigated by the virus, or at least by the tiers. Before lockdown, all the Dad's Army arrows on the map were pointing from Merseyside and firebreak Wales. Now the dangerously red colours on the map are threatening us from the east, like hordes from the Peak District and armies of clayheads. Next stop Shropshire, I guess.
That reads like a John Wyndham novel. Bravo!
3 here in South Staffs, the Field of Lich. On a weeks R'n'R ahead of going back to the coal face, the main interest being the sad tale of a friend of the wife, who died. Cancer, not Covid. Her widower needed cheering up and now he, his son and a dozen friends all have Covid. Grim.
Hamlet says
I live in Merseyside, and I'm willing to bet anyone at least, ooh, 20p that we'll be moved up to tier 3 after 2-3 weeks. People in pubs don't socially distance – even when it's just a meal, there's always some big-mouthed bugger with his mush in your grill when you're trying to walk to the loo (that's not a saucy euphemism, by the way).
I thought the PM's comment yesterday, concerning how the tier system was there to prevent another national lockdown, was darkly amusing. My parents are in a tier-3 place, and, for their lives, there is no distinction whatsoever between tier 3 and national lockdown. Indeed, millions of people are now worse off than before lockdown 2.
My main concern is that people are now far more likely to take matters into their own flabby hands and have house parties; one of my neighbours had two during the first lockdown. The police didn't bother then, so I doubt they'll bother now.
Whatever happens I think future lockdowns will be not as severe as the first one. Pretty sure most stores will remain open unlike first time around. Schools may stay open, partly because if kids are at home then parents have to be too including many who work in health care. Big difference between Canada and UK is that for universities everything here pretty much is online. Student accommodation has to be one of the top ways to spread it whether with symptoms or not. Hard to find an easier way to spread it. I have sympathies for those missing out on real student life though, will be an important year that they don't get back.
Another lockdown in Feb? What is the expectation for vaccines by then. Here we are going to be later than UK as we have no vaccine manufacturing capability, but I heard today that they hope to get 3 million vaccinated by end of Q1 next year, about 10% of population. Mainly at risk groups and health care workers.
The vaccine seems like good news until you remember that this government will farm it all out to mates who don't know what they're fucking doing (besides raking it in). It might even get so bad that the Conservatives drop to a miserable 41% in the polls.
Does anyone know how many vials of the Pfizer vaccine are ready to go? If there are millions prepped where are they being stored? How will they be transported at minus 80? How will they be stored at minus 80 when they get to wherever it is they'll be administered? It's a manufacturing, distribution and logistical mountain to climb and I suspect the reality is we're still at base camp. My mistrust of Johnson and Co makes me believe that he has gone too soon again and will blame everyone else when we are still waiting for the vaccine in March.
Government Procurement Tenders out for Extra Cold Fridges. Michael Gove knows a bloke who has a mate who once worked at Hotpoint. It should be fine …
There are other vaccines that don't need to be stored at such a low temp and my understanding is that the Pfizer one can live for a while at higher temperatures before being used. I inject myself weekly with Humira that must be stored in the fridge, can still be used after a couple of weeks at room temp.
In a word, not a clue, and 'we' were initially asked to manage the roll-out, since seemingly rescinded. All information culled from press conferences and Twitter as per….
The UK has ordered 40 million doses of the Pfizer vaccine, enough for 20 million people. Stability is a problem. It has to be stored at -80 degrees and lasts just five days in a standard vaccine fridge. Also, when mixed, each vial containing five doses I believe, it has to be used within minutes, which is a problem for the housebound.
The Oxford one is fine in a standard fridge and my understanding is that 5 million doses are already made with 100 million on order. Safety shouldn't be a problem with the MHRA as it uses tried and tested technology but efficacy may be an issue.
The UK has only got 5 million Moderna on order. That one is similar to Pfizer's but lasts longer after it has been defrosted.
All three have to satisfy the MHRA first.
johnw says
While not wanting to detract from the rest of your points, 3million is far nearer 5% than 10% and that's just England. It's about 4% of the UK as a whole.
Canada=35 million, not UK
Most of East Anglia (apart from the cities) has lower than average (and falling) infection rate, but is in Tier 2.
My parish has a lower rate than Bodmin. Bodmin is in Cornwall, which is in Tier 1.
"Led by the science" my arse.
Same here is South Oxfordshire.
For the last few weeks we have been at 40-60% of the national average but have now gone from Tier 1 to Tier 2.
The thing that has not attracted comment is the random decision that three whole days is your limit in your Christmas bubble, with a day either side for travelling. If you are adhering to an exclusive bubble, after the first few hours it makes no odds how long you are in it – three, five or ten days.
On top of that, it focusses all the associated travel onto the same days. Not much fun for those sharing the motorway network, but even less for the many – always forgotten – without access to cars, who would be scrabbling for limited space on the coach and rail network. Led by science?
Seeing this in updates and the phrase "Christmas bubble" made me assume this was a contribution to the fart thread.
And now I've trivialised your very well-considered post. Sorry.
Worse. The rules have also been set with that very middle class assumption that your work is suspended over weekends and bank holidays. So, the five days is set – the same five days for everyone. No consideration for those who may be on shifts around Christmas and who would like a different 5 days with family. Well, fuck you key workers. God, this is getting me angry.
Tier 2 in Devon, which has surprised most people down here. The infection rates in Plymouth, Torbay and Exeter are on the rise…a bit….but are falling everywhere else in the County and are amongst the lowest in the country, so the local Tory MPs are up in arms. Cornwall is Tier 1, so it is party time across the Tamar.
Interestingly, the government's argument against refining the tiers further could be used against having tiers at all: people might live and work in different tiers, they may shop in different ones, have relatives in different ones, and may visit pubs and restaurants in different ones. Still, Rutland, with a population of 40,000 is regarded as a single entity, as is the whole of Kent where the population is 1.5 million.
It's almost as if they've made up the reasons (based on public reaction) after making up the rules but we know they'd never be shallow enough to do that! There are behavioural scientists on the Sage panel – they must be going spare!
I've enjoyed the one on Sky News. Witty, dry and constantly banging on about consistency of message. Terrible camera on his laptop, though. He's always a blur.