If the rate of increase is constant it’s not exponential. Even when applied to moths.
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I’ve seen that swiss cheese model countless times, I behaved extremely responsobly during this pandemic. But it’s absolutely clear that neither the UK nor the German government are making any real attempts to eliminate or go for a No Covid strategy. And so I agree with one of our leading virologists - eventually this will be endemic, there’s no hiding from it in the long run, the only question is if you’re vaccinated or not. Sorry, but I’ve become fairly cynical about all this by now.
And completely annoyed by middle-aged fellas sitting in packed restaurants/pubs complaining about those reckless, immoral kids that want to go partying.
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Maybe don’t openly express that annoyance next month 
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just note on my infographic for my region, the 20-40yo age demographic accounts for 50% of our cases.
Great video again, showing both sides of the argument
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Tonight our government will announce that the clubs and more than one-day festivals will close again since young people (between 15 and 29)are the main sources of spreading the virus now although they generally speaking don’t wind up in hospital or ICU.
Another problem is the people in underprivileged neighbourhoods. 0nly 65% of the people over 65 had their first jab and that is the group who could get a jab since February. There is work to be done to convince those people to get vaccinated.
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Good article from the FT
Living with Covid after the grand reopening
Sooner or later we will have to reclaim normality and what better time than when the number of daily cases doubled in a fortnight?
We must learn to live with the virus. We must take personal responsibility. Freed from the shackles of the law and the sanctions of four-figure fines, the government is to laugh in the face of Covid and hope that it doesn’t laugh back in ours.
I suspect the government is roughly right in its thinking. Sooner or later we have to reclaim normality and what better time than when the number of daily cases is I mean, if we waited until they were lower again it wouldn’t be sporting, would it? And in fairness to the prime minister, we can hardly learn to live with the virus if there’s not much of it about.
But even though I broadly agree with the reopening (I really can’t see the argument for nightclubs but, then again, I never could), the new slogans are already beginning to grate. “Hands, face, space” may have been tiresome but it was at least informative.
What are we to make though of “Learn to live with it”, which, as a piece of advice, boils down to little more than “Stop whining”. Actually, it looks like the message is: “With the most vulnerable jabbed, we are going for herd immunity. Learn to live with it.”
Except the first part was mysteriously left off official communications. The attitude underpinning “Learn to live with it” is essentially “Shit happens”, a brave position since when shit happens to the electorate, it tends to happen to the government too.
Already, trains and shops are sprinkled with people whose idea of personal responsibility is to wear a face mask but not over their nose
Even if the argument is valid, the advice is not entirely helpful. It is not, for example, a line I would feel any confidence advocating in regard to housework. As the plates pile up in the sink, I’m not sure I would do well telling my wife that we have to learn to live with dirty crockery.
We do not generally “learn to live” with burglary. Although, on reflection, that does often seem to be the police’s approach. Nor is home secretary Priti Patel learning to live with illegal immigration or offering people-smugglers the patently sensible advice to show some personal responsibility.
This is where the other asinine slogan comes in. It may indeed be time for us to take back personal responsibility and, for most of this crisis, the true story has been of people trying to follow the rules — those people outside government, anyway. But in my experience, those who need to be told this are the ones least likely to exercise it. Already, trains and shops are sprinkled with people whose idea of personal responsibility is to wear a face mask but not over their nose.
And how ready do I feel to count on the personal responsibility practised by the kind of self-regarding heroes who brag about refusing the vaccine and think their refusal to don a mask places them on a par with Soviet dissidents or the French resistance?
In many cases, personal judgment is entirely appropriate. I do not have to go into a crowded pub if it bothers me (though the staff have no option). I can be as careful as I feel I need to be in social interactions. But many have no choice about using the Tube, and there seems no good reason for removing the mask requirement on public transport.
The problem here is that the responsibility we are asked to take is not for our own person but for someone else. Those who remain fearful are having to rely on those who do not.
So even if you think, as I do, that the government is not wrong to remove most restrictions, it might be a nice example of the responsibility it espouses to accommodate a few lingering rules in those areas where people are dependent on the consideration of others. Yes, it is an imposition, but the existence of government itself is a recognition that unchecked personal responsibility is rarely enough for good order.
Meanwhile, in the spirit of constructive criticism, I’d like to offer an alternative slogan for the new era of personal responsibility: “Covid’s still with us. Don’t be a git.”
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Yeah the last point about how masks are not protecting the wearer but those around him/her is what annoys me.
In Gravity right now in Brexit stronghold Maidstone and it’s packed. Apart from staff, I see 2 mask wearing adults out of approx. 70. I didn’t know the mask wearing mandate was already over…
A video of an interview of our new Health Minister with Bloomberg just last these days that is what I was saying about opening up with a middle path. I think that is what I was saying that would be more comfortable for most people at least in Singapore.
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. I wish our ministers here in UK spoke so transparently about the road map ahead instead of reverting to rhetoric. It’s actually embarrassing watching this and comparing to our ministers.
He mentions Australia but the Aussies are so far behind Singapore because of the catastrophic vaccination procurement by the federal government.
They’ve made such a mess of the next 6 months because of that . My parents got their first AZ jab this week. My old man enters his 70’s soon.
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I think that is why this virus is so difficult for governments to handle. I cannot agree with how the UK and US is reopening (although I kept saying, that reopening is the end game, its the how that is the difference now), but I also do not envy what the different governments have to handle especially in big countries with so many different regions and people.
But its really important to give yourself space to reopen, learn, close if necessary, reopen, learn until we get there one day. I heard Boris Johnson saying that this is by means the end of Covid and he is right but then the actions seem not to tally by reopening almost everything with no restrictions. That is why I am concerned from a person who is very far away from the UK. Of course I am sure on the ground in the UK, there would be a split in opinions.
Vaccination is definitely the key. But like in the interview, the Minister mentioned that we would be lucky to achieve anywhere near the standard definition of herd immunity because vaccination, even in a country where we trust the government quite a fair bit, would not likely go above 80% of population. So its about allowing the population to learn how to live with the virus as endemic, step by step, package by package and at the same time protection the population as we go through the learning curve.
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I actually had not read much into the problems of OZ’s vaccine purchase. Was it they started negotiations too late?
In Taiwan, some of the political adversaries of the current government are pointing to the fact that they were too relaxed and overconfident when they were able to keep out the virus for the good part of the last 1.5 years. However, when they were sitting in a good place, they did not bother to quickly look at the long term solution which is the vaccine. They then brought out the example of Singapore when last year in March, when both Taiwan and Singapore are still held up as the gold examples in Asia for virus containment, Taiwan was happy to continue with its border restrictions while Singapore looked ahead and started Vaccine procurement and secured the first order confirmation with Moderna as early as June even before phase 3 started and in August, secured Pfizer and Sinovac.
So you are right, as of now, only vaccines will be the true long term reopening guarantee, and even then, it needs to be done package by package.
And hope your parents continue to stay safe as they get vaccinated!
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Here is an article that touches on some of the problems in Aus:
What they don’t really go into is how containment and a brilliant test and trace system has actually worked against them with the vaccine rollout.
Here in the UK the government and its people have seen the dark days of this pandemic. It’s easy for a leader to be convinced to take a risk and push a vaccine through earlier than every other country. Just as it is to convince a citizen to take that vaccine to ensure 150,000 more lives aren’t lost, or to get back to normal life again, to see holidays again.
Australia hasn’t had this. How can you relate to the death and carnage that’s happening on the other side of the world when you are living in a bubble where life is as normal as it gets in a global pandemic? How do you convince the leader of the country to show urgency in the vaccination procurement (backing the one fucking horse??! Come on!!!) and ensure that the rollout occurs promptly?
How do you convince a population to take a vaccine, where due to the virus not existing in the community, that poses a far greater risk to themselves from blood clotting than not taking at all ? How can they see the bigger picture of saving lives if no lives of their countrywomen and men are being lost? How can a vaccine show the path to normalcy if normalcy pretty much already exists?
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We have been reducing since last week because of the fact so many people have their jab(s) so I will no longer bore you guys with the numbers. 
Hoping that I can get into the UK by the end of August without going into quarantine but if not we will do it. We have been postponing twice and that is enough, will be in Plymouth and Harrogate in a total of four weeks.
Looking forward to playing golf and an occasional 
pint in the local pub.
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Is that the queue for the bus out of Warrington?
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Sadly, no. The Postern Gate, my old watering hole at college.
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Understand what you are talking about, that is pretty much what Taiwan and to a certain extent, Vietnam, is facing now. That the relative normalcy they had for the last 1.5 years had pretty much them lagging behind in the vaccination rates. However, surely normalcy is relative. Would not the Aussies see business especially in the tourism sector related industries getting hit? People losing jobs? Like airlines retrenching people and going bust? Surely that is more than just being normal normalcy and they would have seen something is wrong. But maybe like you said, the relative normalcy has make it so much more difficult to convince them of the vaccines which is by all means, is true that there are alot of unknowns still. Like I said, even in a country like Singapore where trust in government is pretty high, we are still not expected to go beyond 80%, I can imagine in countries where trust in institutions can vary alot.
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