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[crumbly65]

Better might be to vote for an operation that promises to properly fund MH - and other - support services, something that would be of great benefit 100% of the time, not just during Pandemics.

Agreed - very well said Gene!

This thread I started by an off-the-cuff remark is interesting.  Our hobby is probably considered a bit "niche" compared to say golf, but provides us with similar opportunities to enjoy our hobby, behave responsibly, socially-distant ourselves, enjoy the open air (where CV-19 transmission appears to be lower), and has minimum risk.

Given last night's announcements regarding the ways out of lockdown, and assuming we all play our part, I look forward to getting out & about and meeting up again before too long.

Onwards and upwards....

[agg221]

Sorry Alec, this is not the place for political discussion but Scotland has achieved lower death rates and lower infection rates than England,

Hi Gene,

I had a chance to look into this a bit further. Not for the sake of argument, but rather because I do not trust headline figures which come from the authorities which have a vested interest in what they choose to tell us and I thought it would be interesting to see what they show about the impact of policy.

It is surprisingly difficult to work this out as a direct comparison as England and Scotland do not publish directly equivalent data, however I did manage to find figures comparing the excess death rates in 2020 vs. the 5yr average for each country. I chose to work from total excess death rates because 1. I could find the data, 2. the infection figures are skewed by testing per head of population and 3. the cause of death is not well recorded in the earlier part of the data set. They also give an overall picture of the impact of measures, combining both the intended and unintended consequences. I had to use 2019 figures for total populations as the 2020 figures have not been published by the ONS yet.

The excess death rate in England in 2020 was 0.105% whereas that for Scotland was 0.116%, so higher for Scotland. There are many possible explanations for this but it would appear that, whilst the approach in Scotland has been more effective in reducing the spread of COVID, it could be regarded as less successful overall.

I do accept the point about lies, damn lies and statistics...

The only thing I would wish to add to this is that the rules do not seem to consider people living alone, the long term poorly or those with mental health issues. The suicide stats are horrifying. No wonder so many people ignore the rules, better to be a criminal than a suicide statistic. Lockdown is probably fine and dandy with a support network around you, family, pets etc. I won't go on..

I entirely agree. This comes back to my point about designing systems to support every individual, rather than just a majority, otherwise the individuals who are failed by the system are not able to comply with it.

Alec

[agg221]

Given the general theme of this thread, but still with reference to the original question, there is further information which is in the public domain but is not very digestible - the summary below comes from notes from a briefing I attended on behalf of my employer this morning which I thought might be of interest.

Lying behind the announcement yesterday is a 40 page document. Some key points from the document are some changes in approach.
1. The approach is uniform (across England) rather than tiered by region.
2. Social impact is prioritised over business.
3. The approach is based on dates. It takes ~4wks for the impact of a change to show up in the data, plus a further week is then given as 'notice' that the steps are going ahead on the planned timeframe. That means each set of steps is a minimum of 5wks apart. If the impact is too great from a set of steps, the next set will be delayed until the rate comes down enough and that will have a knock-on for all further sets of steps.
4. Easing is driven by evidence around sources of transmission, hence the focus on outdoor before indoor.

There are four tests which will drive each set of steps being implemented:
1. Successful deployment of the vaccine.
2. Data relating to hospitalisation and death amongst those people who have been vaccinated.
3. Rate of hospitalisation and death amongst the population that has not been offered the vaccine.
4. New variants which are either more aggressive or against which vaccination is not effective.

The plan is 'forwards only' so once a set of measures is relaxed, there is no plan to re-implement them. This can change of course but it is strongly not the plan. The plan is to move from pandemic to endemic, ie acceptable impact levels.

Masks and social distancing will be reviewed in time for the May and June planned changes (Masks will be reviewed for schools by Easter).

Hope that gives some meat to the bones of the simple chart which has been published. Expect some significant economic measures in 8days time in the budget.

Alec