Cases have been falling for a few days, new hospitalisations are falling now as well. Deaths will take a week or 2 to start falling meaningfully. Don't read the media, look at PHE surveillance reports.

​​​​​​https://assets.publishing.service.go..._report_w3.pdf

Regardless, I don't see lockdowns easing before summer.

The UK has it even wider than that as far as Ian is concerned - from one country (yours) to another country (ours) as well.

NI has just announced that their lockdown is now continued to 5th March

The government very clearly said they will only review whats going on 15 February, and it won't be all at once. So beginning of March is when they will start to be lightened according to their plan. Everything else than that (lockdown forever, autumn, summer hotels, mutant strains killing us all, it's all speculation so it's a waste of time and just coffeeshop gossip).

I am listening to the govt right now; "priority to vaccinate as many people as fast as possible". Nothing else is under consideration at this stage.

Medical Director of NHS London has just confirmed in the No 10 daily briefing that despite some initial decrease of rate of infections in the London area, admissions to hospitals continue to increase and patients to move up within hospitals in to critical care beds continues to rise in the London area. Unfortunately, the opportunity for the death rate to start to fall is probably a little further out although I am sure we all hope for it to be sooner.
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Travel will be dead for a lot longer than that if all of these companies go bust.

I don't know how ANY politician dealing with this still has a job. They've all failed so miserably, it's absolutely revolting.

Couldn't agree more.

we must be reading different data because the govt data says they have peaked and are starting to fall now.

Who is this Priti person and why is she still employed? Why does she want to crumble all of these companies/merchants in lieu of implementing restrictions that at this point in the game are utterly useless.

Is this the Indian woman I saw on TV on BBC1?

shes Home Secretary. She seemed pretty good today actually refused to fall for the media traps about quarantine hotels haha.

The PHE data is a national picture and shows hospital data on a weekly basis for patients in hospital staying steady and ICU increasing very slightly. The statement the medical director made on the No. 10 briefing was for London, and this was on a daily basis. So both can be right. My partner works in two NHS trusts, one in London and one in the South East region, and they are still both taking in more patients every day than are being discharged or dying.

The fact remains that the NHS is teetering on a knife edge for capacity in many regions of the UK, mainly due to staff resources, but all resources are strained. The numbers are still not going in the direction they really need to be. And even when they do start to decrease, the informed opinion of the scientists is that it will be a much slower decrease on hospital resources than we had in the first wave.

The NHS need us all to stay at home as much as possible, and curtail all travel plans, unless you are prepared to have to undo them.

I'm sorry you feel Priti Patel should not still be employed. (Sorry, running joke...)

She's Home Secretary, and has little to do with setting the restrictions - rather with how they are enforced. The government's MO at the moment seems to be to have a single cabinet spokesperson doing the rounds on one day, usually picked due to relevance to a particular issue. They will appear on multiple news outlets, answer questions on subjects outwith their portfolio, and either toe the line or give a non-answer.

Absolutely no fan of Patel, but I sincerely doubt she is out to crumble companies with Covid restrictions. You keep repeating an assertion that restrictions at this point in the game are useless, but the stats showing falling cases (over 10000 down over last week) would appear to indicate otherwise. Lockdown isn't going to eradicate the virus, but preventing the health service from reaching total saturation will stop an even more significant rise in the death rate (which will be expected to lag the case rate by a couple of weeks).

With the vaccination programme going on in parallel, the idea is delay as many cases as possible so that some form of immunity can become more widespread.

IMO, they're betting an awful lot on the vaccine. And the delay of the second jag is pretty reckless. However, I don't think you can assert that restrictions are pointless, even if their effectivess isn't as strong or quick as you may hope.

I would be tempted to repeat what IAN-UK said in post #828 above here but that would be wrong... very wrong.... so I won't do it.... ;)

Meanwhile...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55764673

Words fail. This is the peak of Covid stupidity.