Pandemic
3rd (and final) Lockdown. Vaccination is here
The cases I had averaged on earlier page 2 (memory link here) not knowing really that I should call R=1.5 instead 150% are not so daft now. I have now by repeated efforts realised more what this exponential curve is. Summary: We are being fooled to have to consider science as our ally. We are not meant to understand it instead and have it altered without shame by experts. It is like living proof our memories suffice to nothing in the important social realm of leaders and led.
After an education last year we now are informed of no time factor in working out the risk to the population. How blasee. There still is a time factor involved or else we cannot come out of lockdown at a certain number of cases by prediction. That time factor is based on if R= >100% (over time) or at least something vastly superior to 1.2% (over time). 100% is merely a new case from each old case, ie a doubling.
If 800,000 of the population are already infected and the rate is 1.2% the next day as a time period is 809,600 people. This is the daily figure of concern in December which we are striving to get back down to now. We have been double or triple that most days of January since the 3rd peak. With vaccinations, lockdown, prior cases who will no longer catch the virus (potentially a lot of the NHS and carers and supermarket workers) it is what they say. The real possible rate of 100% is ominously easy to ignore becasue it is being managed by isolation and social distancing. It is managed and we are managed. But nearly 4 million cannot pass on the infection now through already having it and as others also stated it may be more like double as tests do not cover us all. 10% or R=10 could still easily exist in this ongoing fairly severe third lockdown.
What is the worry and why is the figure being high still important. Since as first predicted there really have not been many deaths (Deaths 108,520 for perhaps double the tested positive number of 3,851,273 ), figures on the government site on jan 31st, the worry is basically the infections themselves. That is what concerns society as a whole. They are rapid, the deaths are not so many but they are so many too from a virus that is new. It is painful to discuss but has been pored over many times in many ways. Double the positives who may not all have been found and divide by the dead who mostly will have been and the mortality is 1.41%. If a variant is more deadly and herd immunity is not achieved or not effective the figures are of course in better hands than mine but explain why too. They are emergency scales. They could be fed back for learning rather than dumbing up (or is it down). I had been remembering the mortality as 1 in 2,000 so even reading this again makes me concerned, nearly 30 times higher. I suppose I was instinctively including the chances of catching the virus.
I am not sure how to understand the details except by studying them, many are merely waiting to return to normality. The dumbing up of waiting to drive your car again is in the announcement of today and what I have just written. Figures are still extremely or alarmingly high. As I state and research again to a fuzzy brain again daily infection rates are 2 to 3 times higher than the worst of the first peak, worse than at the start of this third spike just gone until we get back to significantly less than 10,000 new cases a day.
At the PM’s Downing Street briefing today Professor Chriss Whitty, England’s chief medical officer stated the figures are above the first peak in april (note 2). The BBC online headline to the speech he made is “Covid: UK 'past this peak' but infections still 'alarmingly high'”.
Also on a good front he says that over 90% of people over 75 have now been vaccinated and that the combined figure for first and second vaccinations has now surpassed 10 million.
Also I heard talk to whether the young should now get theirs since they need school and social contact. Partly this is also as they are now noted as catching the virus in very high numbers (note 3). This is the first time I have heard it discussed. Perhaps it shows practical forward steps are now underway but also how so many people have now have been affected in their social lives. An article this monthly past (note 4) also appeared which ventured into the ethics of policy for children, especially with younger children. It questions both whether children get the vaccine as emergency use for mental health issues and also that they do not get to make the choice.
It is early days with testing and some countries are not passing the vaccines onto the population for lack of results. Also the larger World Health Orgainisation discussion has been introduced in the news about priority groups. Maybe we need now to consider other countries before completing the vaccinations here. (note 3 (inews.co.uk)). It is the start of the political event I think and will now become truly stressful for most of us. This is under control and under the radar but the long-term. briefing yesterday (now 6th feb) that the over 50's should be vaccinated by mid-may, I don't remember if this was both shots.I think honesty from the news would be helpful and feel many pundits are themselves fooled by not asking sympathetic questions. The questions today were about whether the vaccine meant transmission of the virus was less. This was from the commentator and not a primary school child and makes actual help from the community very difficult. It reminds me of all the problems I have getting heard in work in general.
Months have still to go for containment. Proper sensible conversation could help at a community level where having something to say has not counted for too long. Because all that matters is who says it, chasing fears around by the highly respected should even more now be replaced with explaining. Those who dicate get away with stupidity in our names and intelligence is put second unless in the right or who cares wrong hands. I hear a carer on the radio stating she can and will talk all day about knowing everything about what to do now. Fom experience she says we should all only do the experts say. These experts it turns out are not her, even partially. They could be the latest press release from an expert or spokesperson. She will not budge an inch either unless having decided an expert is speaking. There was a lot of fear in her voice really. The speed of the conversation suggested no fear in what she was saying but to have no need to know anything was all that was needed to show she was running away form her duties which were complicated now. Said radio carer would die for anyone, for everyone. It seems she misses the point about trying to prevent the virus. She can be excused by over reliance on her experience, for not being expert. Entitlement to run her own corner with only the help of experts should mean she learns and is able to account for her knowledge yet it sounded quite a lonely place a the moment. Not that you could do anything to help unless you were a doctor or nurse or carer who was listening to the experts.
A declassing of society with the business classes taking their share of service class work is long overdue. I cannot see the both sides of both people’s opinions but feel it is better that we do not separate into supposedly entitled groups. (Theme of management) I have the fortune and mostly the misfortune to have done both sides of the work, to also have suffered management by those who live rather than believe in their job. Few see that another role is also theirs by their own motivation rather than social position. Motivation is not enough, genuine training rather than leadership alone seems to explain follow the leader society, but forgiveness and apologies can level things a lot. Working for someone else to get the credit for success, to fix their mistakes and be conned to thinking this is a team effort when the reason is usually between control and reward psychology on a mass scale. Learning for me is about being wrong, not being delegated blame for effort by those entitled to pass off their errors. I know I am more critical than is fair, on me. If criticism was not a prelude to a feud I think my brain would not have so many blocks on expression. I certainly receive enough problems to think it only just to try and start fixing them at a human level.
Selflessness is a feature of work at the moment. It is not to be forgotten how genuine and helpful it is but like the call for men to serve in war, the certainty that carers have the right approach does not question who or what they really are. The economy is in a state with being largely on hold. A quite low pay yet massive sector is slightly well off relative to the amount of work coming its' way at the moment. It is a job helping people that is already highly chargeable and adminstrated. There should be volunteers at any place they want and are wanted really, but the contracts for health already have more appearance of duty and service than most and more cost and legislation involved. Conditions are not likely to improve based on praising duty, yet the amount of work with better organisation is very high under such focus, potentially.
To bother checking the figures of what is happening by law and lockdown is to understand. I like to be aware and responsable. Being told what to do really gets on my wick since I do what I am told. I am not in the majority who do it because everyone else is with the reason that I am one of them. My reward never comes these days for that. When it is who you know and not what you know, for the uneducated and proud, rule is majority of social communication.
Today I saw a lot of tiredness to this lockdown as many people especially old were so close chatting and in the supermarket. I had to not go in to shop in both I visited as too busy. Asking to leave one was difficult as all the old fella wanted me to say was can I get out please. Saying it is too busy so I will come back was wasting his hearing(one week ago). There is no need for information for many these days even with a lockdown. It is still perfectly fine just to get on with who you know and no further information is needed. The tiredness comes as the political state of things will now test us. Mental health and children are being discussed, border issues are in the news and quarantines seem very far cry but niggly. A local population on any single day can completely disregard social distances as the usefulness of information is so low. As the interest to take part is so bluntly unneccesary why bother at it. It is best to not mess with another persons's job where who you know is more important than training that is actually useful.
The Radio 5 morning show (04-02-2021- Adrian Chiles) had local MP (conservative) Myriam Cates saying that she was for a quick opening of lockdown but not before the ICU’s in the hospitals could cope. Effectively this is the backbone of the whole lockdown from day one, “Protect the NHS”. It still is the way to save people’s lives based on not being overwhelmed. She notes that by mid-February all the vulnerable groups will have been vaccinated, also that until now over 70’s have accounted for over 80% of deaths.
I hope having slogged on with the R rate to be able to consider the theme of change in separate diaries when back at work. This them I touched upon in these pages. This will maybe go to the God angle. I have felt a presence again this year, which is oddly a way of being less important yet more reflective. There certainly could be a big question here as none of this would have seemed likely and though it is human agency is still really quite remarkable. It needs tempering however with how religious scientific communities rarely are technical partners. This is a technically managed crisis at least in terms of explanations and vaccines. Nature itself has been a frequent theme and our very biology is out to cure. Just look to it’s amazing evolution but just as science is in the driving seat for the benefit of the whole of society the information credibility is stretched and just as school is out.
Will the parents who cannot do it start to learn to use laptops or will it be a case still of who you know matters most. The motor trade will roar through further complaints that we could have learnt if keener to go green. It will change those backlogs quickly into bankable assets again. Class rule under lockdown is pretty stable. I find the space to think, but communication being open is not a business opportunity unique to me. Currently we are part of the massive connectivity prevalent in the world today. Being a subject in an economy now with giant leadership issues to alter all commerce post-lockdown, the nature of obeying a set of parameters is going to be stretched by personal decisions needing to be highly marketed. The value of intelligence is higher for me than ever but perhaps are marketable too are shortcuts and anti-knowledge leadership cults from the community to big business.