Covid-19

[ParisGal]

PG, have they not had to close quite a lot of schools again though? I thought I saw that somewhere.

Several, but as a % not that many, I think. I'll check. I don't follow incredibly closely as it doesn't affect me personally and I don't have many friends here with children - my close friend lives in eastern France where the first hotspot was, so her young kids' school hasn't opened at all yet. I don't know in reality how many schools have opened and to what extent.

:::::

Looked it up - 70 schools out of 40k primaries that reopened have since re-closed. I can't see yet how many primary schools there are normally.
ETA 50k, so only 80% of primaries have reopened at all.

In my region, they say about 40% of students have gone back for the 1st two years of "college" (secondary), and between 30% and 80% (!) of primary children.

[Ella77]

Ah, ok, thanks. That’s very few.

[Heebie Jeebie]

I'm another who finds this utterly fascinating. I'm mostly so fascinated that I forget to get upset or scared, with just the occasional flash of a reminder into the early days when it seemed to be accepted that loads of the population was going to die and that was that.

[Montana]

I wonder if it's mainly about how exposed you are to CV and how real the threat feels, and Public Sector By Marriage would put you in this category.

I think also, perhaps, how much you are exposed to the consequence of economic downturn i.e. (initally anyway) more likely to be made redundant in the private sector than the public. And probably/possibly middling white collar workers first to be pruned...?

[emma_p]

Ah, so I've been spouting a load of bollocks about vaccines and immunity then. Sorry

Is this not quite a pessimistic article? I have read something else that suggests we are likely to get *a* vaccination relatively quickly that will help minimise the extent of the virus but not stop it all together. I think that - combined with good hygiene, testing and tracing - could help return us to some semblance of normality.

I don't know that it is. S was in a zoom meeting with the cmo and he said he thought it was highly unlikely we'd have an effective vaccine by the end of this year.

[Ella77]

They’ve all been saying it on Radio 4, how we’d be lucky to see an effective vaccine within a year. And then you have to make it, then decide who gets it and in which order. That’s tricky enough without fucking Brexit and everything else making the logistics harder.

[Ruby]

By "relatively quickly" I meant next year.

[Ella77]

This all fucking sucks .

[Zoomer]

Over here lockdown has been semi-relaxed for almost a fortnight. The total number of new cases each day has been very stable (relatively); between 200 and 700 since 7th May. Except for weird blips, that's a rate we hadn't seen since 12th March.

Numbers of COVID-19 patients in ICU has reduced every day since 9th April, and in other hospital wards has reduced every day since 15th April.

I presume it's still a bit too early to see the effects of relaxing the rules if the incubation period is 11-14 days, but it seems like people have relaxed quite a lot in all ways outside of business practice.

There's been no Covid deaths at all in my department for the last week, I've just seen. And the number of people in ICU has gone from 15 to 11. There's around 1.2m in the department, for reference.

[emma_p]

Dominic Cummings has to resign now, right?

[sally maclennane]

Nothing will make him resign, these fuckers have no shame.

[Kleio]

I agree with Sal unfortunately.

[Ella77]

Nothing will make him resign, these fuckers have no shame.

Correct.

[Mountain Goat]

Yep.

[emma_p]

It’s worse than Catherine Calderwood though, surely!

[sally maclennane]

It is, and that Professor Ferguson dude but I still don't think he'll go. He's above all these "rules".

[Chicky]

Ugh, I don’t want him anywhere near me. I’m proud of my neighbours* for shopping him though. Odious wanker.

*i don’t actually know where his parents live but I bet it’s not far

[Estrella]

We’ve had lockdown rules loosened since early May, with extra restrictions lifted a week ago, plus Prep, Yrs 1, 11 and 12 back in school for two weeks and this is the latest update on cases from our Premier.

Major difference is that we have had our international borders closed since mid-March and internal state border closed too. International travel isn’t likely to resume at least until the end of the year. Statistically the majority of our cases were imported or as a direct result of contact with someone who had been overseas. In Queensland at least (NSW is different) there is very limited community transmission.

[smalex]

My sisters husbands friend works for Reu...teurs (not sure what that brings to the story but I'll relay it as I was told it ) and lives a few doors from DC in London, says hes had groups of people coming and going the whole time.

[sally maclennane]

I am absolutely stunned that DC is the sort of person who thinks he can do what he likes