London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
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Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
#2I believe certain hospitals are already at the stage of queuing ambulances outside and are breaching the four hour wait times.
This is a consequence of loosening the lockdown for Christmas.
Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
#3I believe certain hospitals are already at the stage of queuing ambulances outside and are breaching the four hour wait times. This is a consequence of loosening the lockdown for Christmas.
The lockdown was tightened for Christmas. [1]
1: https://nypost.com/2020/12/20/londons-covid-19-christmas-loc...
EDIT: It's weird that people don't believe me. Here is a BBC article talking about the Tier 4 lockdown that occurred right before Christmas:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55380644
From the article:
"Millions of people across England have been banned from meeting friends and family indoors over the festive season as they enter a new tier-four level of Covid restrictions, while indoor mixing has been restricted to Christmas Day alone for the rest of the country."
Perhaps someone in the comments could show me evidence that London was "loosening the lockdown for Christmas"?
Also I live in London (and did during Christmas, where I cancelled my plans because of said lockdown), and am British.
Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
#4I believe certain hospitals are already at the stage of queuing ambulances outside and are breaching the four hour wait times. This is a consequence of loosening the lockdown for Christmas.
The lockdown was tightened for Christmas. [1] 1: https://nypost.com/2020/12/20/londons-covid-19-christmas-loc... EDIT: It's weird that people don't believe me. Here is a BBC article talking about the Tier 4 lockdown that occurred right before Christmas: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55380644 From the article: "Millions of people across England have been banned from meeting friends and family indoors ov…
Nope. It was wide open for Christmas Day.
Source: Being in UK.
Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
#5Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lockdown was tightened for Christmas. [1] 1: https://nypost.com/2020/12/20/londons-covid-19-christmas-loc... EDIT: It's weird that people don't believe me. Here is a BBC article talking about the Tier 4 lockdown that occurred right before Christmas: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55380644 From the article: "Millions of people across England have been banned from meeting friends and family indoors ov…
Nope. It was wide open for Christmas Day. Source: Being in UK.
Not for much of the country, including London.
Source: living in (what was at the time) a tier 4 area
The issue is the new strain, clearly. Cases were growing even during the November lockdown.
Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
#6I believe certain hospitals are already at the stage of queuing ambulances outside and are breaching the four hour wait times. This is a consequence of loosening the lockdown for Christmas.
Just wait for results of year's end parties. While during Christmas the virus is shared within families, the year end is an occasion to do this with a bunch of strangers!
And it is also ideal delay from Christmas to Dec 31st for most of the people that got infected over Christmas to start spreading the virus but not yet show symptoms.
Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
#7Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lockdown was tightened for Christmas. [1] 1: https://nypost.com/2020/12/20/londons-covid-19-christmas-loc... EDIT: It's weird that people don't believe me. Here is a BBC article talking about the Tier 4 lockdown that occurred right before Christmas: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55380644 From the article: "Millions of people across England have been banned from meeting friends and family indoors ov…
Nope. It was wide open for Christmas Day. Source: Being in UK.
In tier 4 areas, which included London[1], no mixing was allowed over the Christmas period, including Christmas day.
Source: Being in London during Christmas.
Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
#8I believe certain hospitals are already at the stage of queuing ambulances outside and are breaching the four hour wait times. This is a consequence of loosening the lockdown for Christmas.
The lockdown was tightened for Christmas. [1] 1: https://nypost.com/2020/12/20/londons-covid-19-christmas-loc... EDIT: It's weird that people don't believe me. Here is a BBC article talking about the Tier 4 lockdown that occurred right before Christmas: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55380644 From the article: "Millions of people across England have been banned from meeting friends and family indoors ov…
We are probably living in two different worlds. There is reality and there is the world you live in.
In real world it is not the restrictions that save lives, it is people following them. If people ignore restrictions it doesn't matter whether they were or were not tightened.
Actually, if people were sane we would not need restrictions. Everybody would wash their hands, avoid touching their face, wear their mask properly (ie. not faking wearing the mask) and avoid physical contact with other people unless necessary. And all research suggests that would be enough to deal with the virus.
The fact is that Christmas in almost every country resulted in mass movement of people that just have to go and meet their families. And it doesn't matter for what reason it happened, it is just a fact.
So, regardless of whether there were or were not tightened restrictions, there is going to be an inevitable increase in cases.
Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
#9If a mutant strain of COVID-19 becomes twice as deadly, this "merely" doubles the pressure on hospitals. A constant factor like this can be dealt with.
However, an increased rate of spread (R factor) is a change in the parameter of the exponential curve, and cannot be dealt with by any sub-exponential response. The only thing that could possibly work is to change the factor. Rapid vaccination or lockdown. It's impossible to vaccinate the population of London in two weeks, which means a full lockdown is the only option now.
YC News is mostly a forum for software developers, which means that these notions ought to be familiar to most people here. When talking about software algorithms, we all learned about big-O notation. We all learned that Exponential time algorithms are (nearly) the worst case, and will always be worse for large data sets than a linear-time or quadratic algorithm, irrespective of the constant factor.
Essentially the new mutant strain changes the "R" term in Θ(a×exp(R×𝑡)), whereas increasing the lethality is a change in the "a" term.
People are concerned about the lethality getting worse, but they shouldn't be. This change in the infection rate is more scary.
Re: London will be overwhelmed by Covid in a fortnight says leaked NHS briefing
#10I believe certain hospitals are already at the stage of queuing ambulances outside and are breaching the four hour wait times. This is a consequence of loosening the lockdown for Christmas.
The lockdown was tightened for Christmas. [1] 1: https://nypost.com/2020/12/20/londons-covid-19-christmas-loc... EDIT: It's weird that people don't believe me. Here is a BBC article talking about the Tier 4 lockdown that occurred right before Christmas: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-55380644 From the article: "Millions of people across England have been banned from meeting friends and family indoors ov…
Nope, December was pretty free and easy (comparatively speaking) and Christmas Day was not a lockdown. Boxing Day was (sort of) but I know plenty of people breached that and travelled home after Boxing Day.
Source: am British also (and stayed home and saw no one at all over Christmas and new year, just sayin)