The Lemon Fool

Now the BBC news is saying Germany and France are on the brink of a third wave lockdown.

How long before we have the same, given the sloppy border controls here? Or does the success of our vaccine programme so far mean we will never lock down again?

The border controls have tightened significantly in the last few weeks with hotel quarantine for red zone countries and 2 and 8 day testing for all after entering the UK, this must be pre booked before travel. These are now both being enforced much more rigorously than before.

John

redsturgeon wrote:The border controls have tightened significantly in the last few weeks with hotel quarantine for red zone countries and 2 and 8 day testing for all after entering the UK, this must be pre booked before travel. These are now both being enforced much more rigorously than before.

John

Ok that's encouraging. But Are France and Germany Red Zone now? Or are we still playing catch-up as usual?

Qatar just went into red zone but not France or Germany...I doubt they will.

John

Unless the strain causing the 3rd wave on the continent is a new strain that's vaccine resistant then I can't see any reason for another lockdown in the UK. The stated purpose was to protect the NHS from being overwhelmed and with the latest PHE research* showing one dose of either vaccine reduces the risk of hospitalisation by 80% then the chances of it occurring now are remote. No way the public finances or the backbenches, or the general public, would tolerate another one simply to slow the spread of what is becoming, at worst, a minor illness for an increasingly large part of the population.

* https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101 ... 21252652v1

redsturgeon wrote:The border controls have tightened significantly in the last few weeks with hotel quarantine for red zone countries and 2 and 8 day testing for all after entering the UK, this must be pre booked before travel. These are now both being enforced much more rigorously than before.

Why do you say that the ten day self-quarantine is "being enforced much more rigorously than before".

My understanding is that it is still done by spot checks via phone calls, which is hardly rigourous.

Lootman wrote:

redsturgeon wrote:The border controls have tightened significantly in the last few weeks with hotel quarantine for red zone countries and 2 and 8 day testing for all after entering the UK, this must be pre booked before travel. These are now both being enforced much more rigorously than before.

Why do you say that the ten day self-quarantine is "being enforced much more rigorously than before".

My understanding is that it is still done by spot checks via phone calls, which is hardly rigourous.

Read again what I wrote. I did not mention policing of non hotel quarantine. I would agree that is hardly rigorous.

John

redsturgeon wrote:

Lootman wrote:

redsturgeon wrote:The border controls have tightened significantly in the last few weeks with hotel quarantine for red zone countries and 2 and 8 day testing for all after entering the UK, this must be pre booked before travel. These are now both being enforced much more rigorously than before.

Why do you say that the ten day self-quarantine is "being enforced much more rigorously than before".

My understanding is that it is still done by spot checks via phone calls, which is hardly rigourous.

Read again what I wrote. I did not mention policing of non hotel quarantine. I would agree that is hardly rigorous.

Your use of the word "both" there indicated to me that you thought both the quarantine for red countries AND the regular self-quarantine were being rigorously enforced.

The former may be; I would not know. But for the latter nothing has changed from last year, as far as I can see. Other than the new requirement for the 2 tests, and the reduction in the number of days from 14 to 10. It is in effect voluntary compliance.

Lootman wrote:

redsturgeon wrote:

Lootman wrote:Why do you say that the ten day self-quarantine is "being enforced much more rigorously than before".

My understanding is that it is still done by spot checks via phone calls, which is hardly rigourous.

Read again what I wrote. I did not mention policing of non hotel quarantine. I would agree that is hardly rigorous.

Your use of the word "both" there indicated to me that you thought both the quarantine for red countries AND the regular self-quarantine were being rigorously enforced.

The former may be; I would not know. But for the latter nothing has changed from last year, as far as I can see. Other than the new requirement for the 2 tests, and the reduction in the number of days from 14 to 10. It is in effect voluntary compliance.

I would have thought that you were in favour of this common sense approach, I can't see you supporting perhaps wearing an ankle bracelet on your return from the USA.

John

redsturgeon wrote:

Lootman wrote:

redsturgeon wrote:Read again what I wrote. I did not mention policing of non hotel quarantine. I would agree that is hardly rigorous.

Your use of the word "both" there indicated to me that you thought both the quarantine for red countries AND the regular self-quarantine were being rigorously enforced.

The former may be; I would not know. But for the latter nothing has changed from last year, as far as I can see. Other than the new requirement for the 2 tests, and the reduction in the number of days from 14 to 10. It is in effect voluntary compliance.

I would have thought that you were in favour of this common sense approach, I can't see you supporting perhaps wearing an ankle bracelet on your return from the USA.

Yes, people should be allowed to use their judgement. With two vaccinations and three negative tests, I do not believe that my return will be the cause of a third wave.

I think the UK approach is a nuanced balance of prudence and respect for civil liberties, certainly.

redsturgeon wrote:

Lootman wrote:

redsturgeon wrote:Read again what I wrote. I did not mention policing of non hotel quarantine. I would agree that is hardly rigorous.

Your use of the word "both" there indicated to me that you thought both the quarantine for red countries AND the regular self-quarantine were being rigorously enforced.

The former may be; I would not know. But for the latter nothing has changed from last year, as far as I can see. Other than the new requirement for the 2 tests, and the reduction in the number of days from 14 to 10. It is in effect voluntary compliance.

I would have thought that you were in favour of this common sense approach, I can't see you supporting perhaps wearing an ankle bracelet on your return from the USA.

John

I seem to remember him implying he might try to escape from a hotel if necessary

I give Lootman the intelligence to know whether he's a danger or not, but the trouble with allow people to make up their own mind about these things is that they can rationalise almost anything if they want to. e.g. a trip to Barnard Castle, a trip to the west country with a prescription.
And as for me? I rationalise things too - a trip to go shopping when I could have it delivered. A walk by the sea when I could walk nearer home.

Arb.

Arborbridge wrote:I seem to remember him implying he might try to escape from a hotel if necessary

I give Lootman the intelligence to know whether he's a danger or not, but the trouble with allow people to make up their own mind about these things is that they can rationalise almost anything if they want to. e.g. a trip to Barnard Castle, a trip to the west country with a prescription.
And as for me? I rationalise things too - a trip to go shopping when I could have it delivered. A walk by the sea when I could walk nearer home.

I think I might have said that I did not believe the compulsory hotel quarantine could be enforced, unless the inmates were physically tackled and restrained if they attempted to walk out. I am not sure I ever claimed that I would do that. Although unless one visits a motley basket of mostly obscure countries, it is not necessary anyway.

I do not think it is the generally informed, educated, prudent and reasonable constituency of Lemons that are the problem here.

It remains to be seen if all these arrival restrictions will be removed prior to the mooted May 17th return of travel.

Lootman wrote:I think I might have said that I did not believe the compulsory hotel quarantine could be enforced, unless the inmates were physically tackled and restrained if they attempted to walk out. I am not sure I ever claimed that I would do that. Although unless one visits a motley basket of mostly obscure countries, it is not necessary anyway.

I do not think it is the generally informed, educated, prudent and reasonable constituency of Lemons that are the problem here.

It remains to be seen if all these arrival restrictions will be removed prior to the mooted May 17th return of travel.

Well, I'm with you really. If I landed from Germany after a week away and was told I couldn't isolate at home but had to pay goodness knows how much to be in a hotel room, I would find that deeply irritating - particularly if they swung that into force while I was on holiday!

Maybe you didn't suggest you would abscond - but your robust arguments sounded like you might like to try

Arborbridge wrote:Maybe you didn't suggest you would abscond - but your robust arguments sounded like you might like to try

What, having paid to be in there?

Mind you, he could give the room to a homeless person - well I suppose it would have to be a similar looking man - for two weeks

V8

88V8 wrote:

Arborbridge wrote:Maybe you didn't suggest you would abscond - but your robust arguments sounded like you might like to try

What, having paid to be in there?

Mind you, he could give the room to a homeless person - well I suppose it would have to be a similar looking man - for two weeks

You could try subletting the hotel room via Airbnb to get your money back, I suppose. Airbnb has profile pictures for its members, so you could find someone who looks a bit like you.

Meanwhile, Vietnam has also experienced a third wave in January which was their biggest one to date. I've attached the link below.
At its peak, Vietnam's 3rd wave got up to a 7-day average of 43 cases per day, but they've now got it down to 3 cases per day.

They used their test & trace system to trace the January outbreak, and traced it down to 2 people - the first being an airport worker responsible for taking infected passengers arriving from abroad to quarantine facilities, and the second being a factory worker who'd got it from a Vietnamese national who later travelled to Japan and tested positive for the Kent variant of the virus.
I don't know how much Vietnam's test & trace system costs, but willing to bet it's a lot less than £22 billion.

In total, Vietnam has now had 35 Covid-related deaths since the start of the pandemic in 2020, from a total of 2,572 cases.
Vietnam's total population is 98 million (compared to our 67 million) with very similar population density.

On vaccinations, Vietnam received 117,000 AstraZeneca doses on February 24th and started vaccinating on March 8th.

https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus/ ... rmed-cases

This is also an interesting article about Taiwan and Vietnam. As the piece point out, one country is a communist authoritarian state, the other is a liberal democracy, but they have both used a similar and very successful approach to combating Covid. (It also mentions they'll be amongst the first countries to reach "herd immunity" because their vaccination programme is set against a background of very little infection in their countries.)

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/What-Ta ... ce-in-2020

zico wrote: I don't know how much Vietnam's test & trace system costs, but willing to bet it's a lot less than £22 billion.

This £22 billion used for this comparison troubles me. If it refers to the UK spending then one needs to distinguish between testing and tracing. We had the "Kent" variant of which you speak. The huge testing bill was affected by this, which happened in Kent not in a suburb of Ho Chi Minh City. Our tracing is only effective when the numbers involved are sufficiently tiny that our tracing resources can cope.

zico wrote:
This is also an interesting article about Taiwan and Vietnam. As the piece point out, one country is a communist authoritarian state, the other is a liberal democracy, but they have both used a similar and very successful approach to combating Covid. (It also mentions they'll be amongst the first countries to reach "herd immunity" because their vaccination programme is set against a background of very little infection in their countries.)

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/What-Ta ... ce-in-2020

I was a little surprised by the comment that these countries will "amongst the first countries to reach "herd immunity" because their vaccination programme is set against a background of very little infection in their countries." as I wouldn't have thought that low rates of infection would affect the level of vaccination required to reach herd immunity. In fact the article says that herd immunity will be reached sooner because of their effective system of mass vaccination, which makes much more sense to me.

Dr John says the recent plummeting prevalence in the UK is now stopping and levelling off. Tim Spector notices the same.

Looks to me as though a reversal might be next on the menu what with kids being back at school and close neighbours France and Germany in 3rd wave - perhaps knocking the guvverment "road map out of lockdown" right off course.

Tim Spector suggests otherwise, probably because of the vaccine. I hope he is right, he seems to know more about this stuff than me

Gersemi wrote:

zico wrote:
This is also an interesting article about Taiwan and Vietnam. As the piece point out, one country is a communist authoritarian state, the other is a liberal democracy, but they have both used a similar and very successful approach to combating Covid. (It also mentions they'll be amongst the first countries to reach "herd immunity" because their vaccination programme is set against a background of very little infection in their countries.)

https://asia.nikkei.com/Opinion/What-Ta ... ce-in-2020

I was a little surprised by the comment that these countries will "amongst the first countries to reach "herd immunity" because their vaccination programme is set against a background of very little infection in their countries." as I wouldn't have thought that low rates of infection would affect the level of vaccination required to reach herd immunity. In fact the article says that herd immunity will be reached sooner because of their effective system of mass vaccination, which makes much more sense to me.

Agreed
- the HIT being ..whatever level it is... just needs that many people with trained immune systems so the pandemic can't grow and it dies out
- if you were to accept previous infection as sufficient training then having the virus rip through would be the quickest way to get there (probably needs mass graves though)

I do reckon that would be much easier to get to something approaching "normality" wrt restrictions and life in general if you are vaccinating while there is no virus circulating
- you also have a bit more discretion as to how you roll out the programme
- and you don't have to worry about the frail picking it up on the way to a jab session
but at the end of the process you still want xx% of your population to have been jabbed

- sd

EDIT: fore spelink