I 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.
This is a consequence of loosening the lockdown for Christmas.
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.
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.
Source: Being in UK.
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.
Wasn’t Kent the first place things started to really kick off and take a turn in mid Nov?
Little weird to be getting to -1 downvotes for something that's a google away...
London and the SE is where the new highly infectious strain originated from and was more or less entirely locked down. Big chunk of population here too...
Source: Being in London during Christmas.
Also from the article:
"London saw wild scenes of a weekend mass exodus before the start of a Christmas lockdown and travel ban sparked by a new, more infectious mutation of COVID-19."
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.
I don't think you're trying very hard, the comment was pretty clear. But in case you are truly confused, no, that is not what parent was saying.
It is absolutely the government’s job to enact policy to slow the spread of deadly disease. It is also the job of governing leaders to encourage and educate citizens on how and why they should comply with these policies. This is where the USA is failing miserably.
We could discuss the tradeoffs and the details, that’s fair, but it’s totally irresponsible of you to say that this massive spike in cases was ‘inevitable’.
I don't see how you arrived at your reading.
Source: am British also (and stayed home and saw no one at all over Christmas and new year, just sayin)
"London saw wild scenes of a weekend mass exodus before the start of a Christmas lockdown and travel ban sparked by a new, more infectious mutation of COVID-19."
The mass travel before the Boxing Day restrictions kind of proves people were away from home, seeing family etc this spreading the virus.
For people living in London, Christmas Day was indeed a lockdown.
I found it quite strange, since if you were staying at home and had zero symptoms, why would they need a test? However, somebody let slip that they were getting tested in order to get confidence travelling home to visit their family... Therefore, while people were locked-down, I think many worked around this.
https://www.gov.uk/government/speeches/prime-ministers-state...
The last minute changes are confusing to all of us. You can help by not citing anti-sources like the NY Post.
You’re inadvertently doing the London thing that Londoners do where you conflate a comment about the whole country to just be about London. London may have had increased restrictions (which I doubt had the level of observance they should have but hey ho) but the rest of the country didn’t. The parent comment didn’t specify London, they were talking generally and, generally, restrictions were loosened for Christmas.
How much of that is the new strain, how much is Christmas, and how much is government decisions (reopening universities, encouraging office workers to work in person, allowing foreign holidays, announcing an end date for the second lockdown before it had even started...) is hard to say.
This is a crying shame.
huh? There were lots of reports about ambulance queues last week already
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/health-42570660
https://www.itv.com/news/london/2020-12-30/ambulances-with-c...
Takes 3 weeks from catching it to hospital - that’s still a few days away
The cases caught from Christmas Day and passed on multiplied to the school return on Monday. That political decision will have killed hundreds needlessly, maybe thousands, just because he didn’t want to back down.