swill453 wrote:onthemove wrote:swill453 wrote:Yes it's fascinating indeed. Just why are Germany/Austria/Netherlands seeing such a huge acceleration right now, while France/Spain/Italy aren't? Is it just a matter of time before they get it too?
Spain and Italy had it bad early on, so they are probably a bit like the UK - closer to now just being endemic with most people either vaccinated or already exposed, so some degree of immunity now, one way or the other.
So your prediction is that Spain and Italy
aren't going to see a spike similar to Austria/Germany? .
That's my prediction
swill453 wrote:That's brave...
If you say so.
swill453 wrote:
I'm not even confident I could say whether the UK is going to go significantly up, significantly down, or generally maintain the current plateau.
Explaining past patterns in this pandemic is doable. Predicting the future much less so (obviously).
Scott
Britain has largely been going sideways for a while now in number of cases. And that's with few restrictions.
I was on holiday last week with my mum and a friend, and I couldn't help notice that my mum, who has previously been religious about wearing a mask everywhere, was now going into shops without even thinking about putting it on, and she is very much of the 'pro' mask wearing brigade.
And I suspect this is probably going to be fairly common now. People are already getting back to normal. And it isn't resulting in any major up tick in cases.
The few remaining things that people are doing - like working from home (like I'm still doing), I suspect many will want to try to keep doing this from now on, irrespective of covid.
A colleague I work closely with has been very open with our line manager that he doesn't want to go back into the office - he's bluntly pointed out to the boss that there are plenty of jobs now advertising permanent WFH with perhaps just occasional office visits - he's just stopped short of giving them an ultimatum, but he's made his position very clear.
I haven't been quite so blunt, but I have expressed a strong preference to keep working from home. I mean even before covid, with flexitime, and the job often being head down concentrating, there were many days when I could arrive in the office, do a day's work, then leave without ever having said a word to anyone, leaving me even pre-covid wondering what the point of spending 90 minutes a day commuting was!
What I'm basically saying, is that I suspect now that most people are already into the pattern that they'd prefer to remain going forwards.
Those who
need to be in the office or workplace are probably already back, particularly since the furlough scheme ended, and those still working from home could probably quite reasonably keep working from home.
My employer has had essential people in the office all throughout the pandemic - we're seen as an essential company, so were never closed down. But in essence, if any colleague who was really fed up working from home and really wanted to go back into the office, our business is such that they could have found an excuse to go back into the office already if they really wanted to. Though this is because the business involves working with physical stuff as well, not just virtual stuff, so pretty much anyone could find an excuse to need to go in if they really wanted to.
I think in other businesses where the nature of the business might not give such flexibility - e.g. because there's no obvious 'excuse' to go in ... perhaps because the nature of the business is purely virtual, etc ... then I think that will be down to management.. the managers who really want people back in the office will already have pressured them to return by now. Those still happy to have people working remotely probably will be thinking about what they can save on office space going forwards
.
Anyway, in summary, I'm not sure what is likely to change now to break us out of the sideways covid case trend, into a strong upward trend.
To be honest, I believe that the government is now quietly just letting people adjust back to normal, after a year and a half of being scared bleepless about an invisible enemy. Scientists now accept that covid ain't going away, it's going to be endemic, and we're all likely to catch it at some point, just hopefully now with the vaccines and prior infection, the consequences should now be milder.
Basically, the government is now just quietly letting people come to terms with this new reality, and so far, the sideways trend in cases while people - like my mum - are already letting their guard down, leads me to believe that this really does look like the end game (transition to endemic) for covid in the UK.
I think the few remaining alarmist articles we see, or alarmist comments, are just from people still being swept along by the prior hysteria. People just going with the flow, who haven't realised the flow is changing.
Plus perhaps a few politicians not wanting to be seen as reckless in the eyes of those people still being swept up by the prior hysteria.
Give it a few more months, and I suspect while there'll inevitably be a small rise in cases over winter - and no doubt alarmist headlines about the NHS being on its knees, which let's face it, was par for the course every winter even before covid - but in a few months time (by jan / feb) I think there'll be very few people still believing covid is still any major ongoing concern.
The arguments then, will be about what extra level of funding the NHS will need on an ongoing basis to cope with the ongoing endemic covid that the NHS will always likely to need to deal with from now on, that it wasn't dealing with prior.
(see link)