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From that Racing Post link, it states 568 cases in the country so far. That’s 568 out of a population of 70 million.
AP posted that on the 8th. By yesterday (the 12th) that had risen to 3137 cases, a greater than fivefold increase in FOUR days. Exponentiality is not our friend here.
Mike
Vaccination, masks, absolutely nothing can stop the spread of Covid.
What they do is slow the spread down.
tbh If it wasn’t for the time of year I’d say don’t bother.
But slowing it is important this time of year because Winter is the time when both Covid and other ailments are at their worst. Therefore a danger of hthe NHS being overwhelmed – no room in hospitals etc – if it is not slowed.If the spread can be slowed enough then we can have a normal Christmas.
If the spread can be slowed enough to get through most if not all Winter without it reaching peak then the peak will be lower.ie The more Omicron can be slowed the fewer people die.
Yes, you can catch covid from a vaccinated person, but the important thing to bear in mind surely is you’re FAR more likely to catch it from an unvaccinated person… And mask wearing – done right – makes that difference even bigger..
It’s all about percentages and I know you all love percentages.
Value Is Everything“Therefore a danger of the NHS being overwhelmed”.
No there is not. That is media scaremongering.
The NHS dealt with the situation last year in an adult population that was almost completely unvaccinated. Now that situation is totally changed. And currently only 5% of NHS beds are occupied by Covid patients.
I am absolutely tired of this talk about the NHS. On the one hand we are told it is in crisis. On the other hand we are constantly reminded it is The Envy Of The World. It cannot be both. And nowhere else in the world has copied it.
Saying we must Protect the NHS is an inversion of the truth. Protect it from what? Sick people?
The NHS is there to serve us, not the other way around. We should not be restructuring our society, putting our lives on hold and drastically curtailing our civil liberties because senior managers in the NHS cannot plan for an increase in respiratory virus cases in the winter. It is not exactly an unforeseen event.
There is no way out of this crisis if we are constantly going to implement emergency measures every winter when there is a new viral strain.
And vaccine passports do NOT work. If anything they may be completely counter productive.
Before anyone inevitably jumps on me, I am aware of the good work the NHS does from direct experience of it. But that does not mean it is perfect (several of our European neighbours provide far better health care), nor does it mean we should serve it without question.
I agree with a lot of that post CAS. As a heavy user of the NHS (sorry, “OUR” NHS, of course
), I find the fawning adulation over the service childish in the extreme and frankly a bit mad. To me, clapping for the NHS makes no more sense than clapping for the DVLA. Furthermore, British people seem to believe that there are only two options – the NHS or the American system. This is obviously nonsense as our European friends show.However, presuming the government are crying wolf regarding it being overwhelmed this winter is not necessarily correct. The NHS just about coped last year (at the expense of millions of delayed procedures), but Omicron is vastly more transmissable than the Alpha variant that caused that wave and it’s possible that things could get very bad, very quickly.
I think a few added safety measures plus pushing out boosters is a proportionate and sensible move as things stand. It needs to be permanently reviewed. Hopefully, Omicron will be mild and shortlived, but let’s see what we’re dealing with first.
Mike
I was puzzled by Luck’s view on it. You can’t think COVID passes are a good idea on the one hand and then dispute showing an ID on the other. COVID pass is worthless without checking someone’s ID independently of the COVID pass.
Surely?
The bigger question is
Will newmarket ask me for my covid pass in the summer. When we have hopefully all calmed down, omicron will be binned as not dangerous
Dont worry ferguson and whitty will be back with another modelling for the latest variant next november
Are we going to have a papers please society
I bloody hope not
Snap Corm
No blinking way are we going back to nazi germany in the 40’s
Hopefully johnson will be gone by then
Good luck to Kempton if they plan to inspect the credentials of all of the twenty thousand that usually turn up on Boxing Day.
Get there in time for the first race and you might just get into the course in time for the feature.
CAS,
You’re right about the NHS not being the best health service.
But it is not “scaremongering” to say the NHS could be overwhelmed.
That does NOT mean the HHS / hospitals will definitely or even probably be overwhelmed.
…Just that even if there is just a small say 5% chance of being overwhelmed we surely have to allow for a near worst case scenario.Yes, we have the vaccine now but that vaccine (although “effective”) is less effective against Omicron than it was against Delta… And Omicron is also far more transmissible than Delta. So it is not the same as last year.
Waiting to find out just how big a danger the NHS / hospitals actually is in will be too late.
Yes, I hope and even BELIEVE at some point in the near future these measures will be dropped as soon as we do know more about Omicron, but “believing” is not enough here. We must act just in case.
Value Is EverythingDon’t know if someone else has posted this, if so then sorry for repeating
News that the UK government will require those attending certain kinds of public gatherings in England to provide Covid certification from this Wednesday was to some extent drowned out last week by coverage of illicit Christmas parties at the heart of Westminster.
More details are due to emerge at the start of the week as to just how certification will be implemented but the broad outlines can be discerned: outdoor unseated gatherings of 4,000 or more people will trigger its use; and the NHS app or a paper certificate will be required to prove either double vaccination or a negative lateral flow test taken less than 72 hours prior to entry.
The Racecourse Association has been preparing for such an eventuality since the countdown to a return of crowds began in the spring.
In France, the practical implications of such a step on racecourses have not been huge, as the system has been in place since July. One of the main reasons the French health pass has not been a controversial addition to the raceday experience is that it is in such widespread use across the rest of society, with the presentation of the QR code to be scanned when going into a bar or restaurant a banal fact of everyday life.
In Ireland, the Digital Covid Certificate is a requirement for gaining entry to indoor hospitality – as it is across much of the rest of Europe – while on racecourses it has been the case that everyone can gain access but only the vaccinated can step indoors (in a country with a 92 per cent vaccination rate this does not appear to have caused a huge number of problems).
The process of having a certificate scanned on the way into an event may quickly become second nature for part of the English racing public who are already embracing many of their old habits; since October 1 every Premier League football ground has required fans to have a certificate ready for inspection if asked, the same date that the Scottish government introduced a requirement at gatherings which exceed the 4,000 limit.
It cannot be helpful to the racing authorities and other organisers of large events that they are being asked to shoulder more of the burden in informing their customer base about a measure that many people will not have encountered before.
And there are two sets of data which might suggest not every racegoer has joined in the rush to embrace life the way it was before Covid-19 arrived.
The first are the BHA’s figures for racecourse attendance, which have yet to recover to 2019 or 2018 levels in the period since the beginning of August.
The average across all types of meeting in Britain – including the seven tracks following different guidelines from the devolved governments in Edinburgh and Cardiff – since August 1 is 2,892, down around 15 per cent from the 3,404 figure for the same period in 2019.
With this particular sample period it should always be borne in mind that the position of Glorious Goodwood can have a major impact and all five days fell in July this year, whereas in 2019 the festival ran until August 3.
Perhaps more revealing are the statistics for jumps meetings between August 1 and December 11. The average gate has dropped from 3,103 to 2,525, a decline of 18 per cent.
Whether watching on television or experiencing it first hand, we have all revelled in the return of atmosphere on track brought about by the return of crowds, while the financial prospects for racecourses have picked up from their bleakest low tide during lockdown and racing behind closed doors.
But it is pretty clear that a percentage of racing’s former loyal public do not yet feel confident to join in the fun again. Many of us have friends or family who remain cautious, especially those whose age makes them especially vulnerable to the virus.
YouGov is among a number of polling firms that have tracked public attitudes to coronavirus in a variety of countries since the pandemic started. The company’s figures for the UK show that at the very peak of the first wave in March 2020, 61 per cent of the public were either “very” or “somewhat” scared about contracting the virus.
Only once since then – in January this year – has public concern returned to that level. But even when the flow of news has generally been positive, it has never fallen below a third of the adult population.
And since the last lockdown measures were lifted in late July this year, the number of Britons who fall into that category has remained stubbornly between 38 and 42 per cent, a figure that is unlikely to fall and may even rise while headlines about the Omicron variant are flying around.
Put bluntly, around four in ten of us remain concerned about catching Covid-19, even at a time when a high percentage of the population is doubly vaccinated and many have already had their booster shot.
The introduction of Covid certification should not be portrayed to potential racegoers as anything other than a minor inconvenience, hopefully one that will not place an extra burden on those without a smart phone or access to a printer.
It may even introduce that extra level of security required to entice some people back on track, safe in the knowledge that they are mixing with a ‘pre-screened’ segment of the population.
But the polling data and the BHA’s own figures on attendance show that Britain – in common with many other countries – was a long way from forgetting about Covid-19 even before the unwelcome arrival of Omicron
You've got to accentuate the positive.
Eliminate the negative.
Latch on to the affirmative.
Don't mess with mister in between.Omicron is more transmissable but on current evidence the symptoms are not as severe. There is no need to reach for panic measures. How many people with omicron are in hospital and seriously unwell?
Are we going to do this next winter when another new strain inevitably emerges?
This is a state control thing
Yes if johnson is in we will be locked down every time he can get away with it
Vax passports are fundamentally wrong , as they exclude the people who made other choices
We are a free nation
We are free to chose
We did not elect the govt AND THE opposition , to imprison us and take away our freedom to live as free people
Rummy would like us all to meekly obey. And btw you gov is owned by Nadeem Zahawi. Current gov minister and the front man for all things BorrisSo how on earth will Kempton proccess boxing day. Or Cheltenham proccess 70 000 mad racing men trying to get in
Its abs madness. On a variant with no proofof being deadly
Do you want to be free to turn up and attend a race meeting without hassle or not???
“Yes if johnson is in we will be locked down every time he can get away with it.”
As you acknowledge later on, the so called Opposition is of the same mindset. If anything, their only objection throughout the last two years is the government should have acted harder and faster.
If Starmer was in charge, we would probably be in a full lockdown now. Sturgeon and Drakeford are pushing for it in Scotland and Wales. Two countries which had mask mandates and vaccine passports in place when England did not but have worse infection rates.
Correct Cork on all fronts
Two left wing authoritarian regimes
Who are acting way out of their devolved powers
Why oh why are the people accepting it , they are all free peopleAt least they were
The contempt one feels for the Johnson juanta is multiplied by ten to describe tbe useless dont stand for anything Starmer
Being johnsons toad is a problem for the country but makes them less electable than ever
We are free people
Try and remember that
Never relinquish it to the tyrants or bedwetters
And btw you gov is owned by Nadeem Zahawi. Current gov minister and the front man for all things Borris
This is complete nonsense. Zahawi was one of the founders of YouGov but left 12 years ago. It is a publicly-owned company anyway. Unfortunately, the first Omicron death has been recorded today.
And I see that insane canard that we are ‘turning into Nazi Germany’ based on some modest restrictions has reappeared..
Mike
), I find the fawning adulation over the service childish in the extreme and frankly a bit mad. To me, clapping for the NHS makes no more sense than clapping for the DVLA. Furthermore, British people seem to believe that there are only two options – the NHS or the American system. This is obviously nonsense as our European friends show.
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