Makes sense. Construction work is often outside and well ventilated. Warehouses are big, airy spaces. Visits to pubs restaurants and cafes are temporary. An office is all day long. Edit: No idea why FT doesn't quote properly, but that's FT's problem.

Double edit: I've just thunk that one through a bit. It's worth bearing in mind you can go to an office at the moment. You cannot go into a restaurant or cafe other than very briefly for takeaway.

In Scotland with the new rules of two weeks ago you cannot now even go into the takeaway, they have to serve you at the door.

in practice in England some shops let you as you want to see what they have fresh at that time (e.g. itsu), while others where its more fixed (e.g. Starbucks) they serve you outside

I am sure that sensible minds will already be turning to injection efficacy in over 65's.

As far as I can see there is a live ongoing experiment going on in the UK that started in early December with a few million or so very elderly people getting a jab (of phizer I presume) and with AZ now also rolling out. If the severe COVID illness and hospitalisation and death rate in these target groups starts to reduce, which is the whole point of the grouping exercise, we should be starting to see results about now.

At the end of 2020 there was a news item that the average age of a COVID death was 82, which is also about the average age for a non-covid death. As soon as this starts to widen then we will have evidence that all is going well.

... declaring an interest as I am in the cohort!

That is understood and is what almost all takeaways were doing before. However it has now been cracked down on to reduce contact in Scotland, which has often (so far) led the way. In NI my local chippy has been serving from the door from March last year - but if you don't know what fish and chips looks like you are in the wrong "plaice"

I have absolutely no doubt that AZ is collecting what data it can from the UK live experiment. However, you have to bear in mind that the UK is generally using both Pfizer and AZ "off-label" in that doses are being applied in a different way from the approved methodology. So any results that are obtained need to be split both between Pfizer and AZ, and between correct dosage and UK emergency dosage - and the latter looking at the myriad different timescales that were used. Of my 12 elderly relatives who have been done, all but 2 have been given Pfizer and 3 have been correctly vaccinated.

Not much use for the UK, but Pfizer is getting excellent statistics from Israel and "taster" results (very encouraging) are beginning to emerge. Obviously it will be a month or two still before ours do.

Are you referring to the timing between doses? If so this is not correct. Both are being given within the limits of the approvals by the MHRA.

It looks like HMG's balancing act in the next few months will become increasingly fraught. Clearly the infection rate is falling fast, with most surveys giving an R rate of about 0.6 (REACT is saying 0.9 but it's methodology tends to lagging the real world), and the number of cases and hospital admissions falling sharply. They are keeping up the fear part of the messaging, desperately keen that people don't start treating the vaccinated, and partially vaccinated, as immune. Hence the drip feed of carrots. I'm really not sure that they will be able to suppress people until mid March, let alone May.

They only really have the manpower to stop movement at the border and I wonder if Pritti's tough talk is a recognition of that fact.

they can get away with the lockdown until the weather starts improving in March, which is coincidentally when they plan on releasing it anyway !

it's still worth remembering that it's not all fine.

As of yesterday, the UK had 36,931 patients with Covid in hospital, of whom 3,937 on ventilation (I assume in ICU).
Italy, which is the only country I know how to get data from, has 20,788 patients in hospital and 2,288 in ICU. The UK's population is 10% larger than Italy's, so there's that, but the numbers are almost 50% higher especially for gravely ill patients.

We're very much not out of the woods yet and, with about 11% of the population partially vaccinated (I'm still skeptical about that 12 weeks lag) we won't be for long. Opening up now risks repeating a second December cock-up...

sources
https://lab.gedidigital.it/gedi-visu...agi-in-italia/
https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

I'm not sure anyones suggesting we are out of the woods yet, but certainly en route. Removing emotion, is having 36k patients in hospital going to have any real impact on hospital figures in 6 weeks time? Infections are half of what they were a couple of weeks back and the over 80s/care home residents make up 2/3 of the deaths, for which over 80% have been vaccinated, which should fully reflect by early March

Just realised I don't know the answer to this... does a vaccines efficacy mean the % it protects against hospitalisation, death, or catching Covid in the first place?

Yes so those people vaccinated and protected should not be getting ill and should no longer be having to go to hospital. I think it takes at least 2 weeks for some protection to be achieved after the first dose so it isn't immediate. But as you note, this should start having an effect on reducing hospital numbers.

What is unclear is whether even if vaccinated you can still transmit the virus to others, if this is the case then it would be even more advantageous.

JVT confirmed that it does, they just don't know to what extent yet so are playing it safe. Their releasing lockdown timetable makes sense, 3 weeks after everyone in the top 4 risk groups get the jab and have had the chance to acquire quite a bit of immunity.

The "R-rate" hides a range brave assumptions and unreliable statistics. The R number itself coves a range of statistics from R0 through to RZ: all are defined by temporal and regional parameters , all are characterized by some degree of heroism in their application. It's probably best to accept values at or above 1 as bad news, values below 1 as better news.

"Real world" is a difficult concept here. The more robust R numbers cover large populations, and are lagged to previous weeks. Contemporaneous estimates, and projection estimates, are more troublesome. Region-specific calculations can suffer from thin data.



Of course, this confusion allows pundits to select the R value that best suits their agenda.



While it's certainly good news that daily hospital admissions have fallen significantly from their recent peak, it's probably worth noting those admissions remain well above the levels of the first peak, while hospital bed occupancy is at a troublesome 150% of that peak. Bed occupancy, and the number of patients on ventilators, are falling, albeit much more slowly than admissions.

A drop in demand for hospital beds and ventilators will take some of the extreme pressure off the health services. Sadly, the drop in demand will be an immediate signal for the more excitable in BJ's party to cry for freedom. But such demands would ignore lessons offered from previous whack-a-mole releases.: they should be resisted to allow health service personnel an opportunity to take breath, and the service itself to take stock and regroup for (likely) future shocks.


We clearly see this in quite a different way. Those who have received doses of the the vaccine are not immune from the disease. They are protected from infection but not immune from it: they can get sick, and they can transmit the disease while unaware they are infected. It seems to me important that those vaccinated should be made aware of this.


Are you suggesting civil unrest ?

Polls on the level of public support for Covid restrictions have been consistently high. Of course we all grumble, some skirt regulations, but I guess we understand why restrictions have been imposed, and by and large we comply. A recent survey suggested only round 7% strongly opposed the imposition of the current lockdown.

The vaccine protects from serious illness pretty much 100%. If that happens with all the at risk people vaccinated, then there will be essentially no deaths or hospitalisations and this will no longer be an issue regardless of infection numbers. If the at risk are protected, no one really cares about young healthy people getting it as long as they don't fill the hospitals. The main issue was the young people giving it to elderly anyway as they were not protected, that has changed now.

It's not about civil unrest, it is about whether measures are followed or not. Right now really no incentive to go outdoors with the weather, March onwards that will change, but that's when restrictions are scheduled to be released so I don't see too many issues, the only argument will be how quickly to release them.