Some VERY good news at last - live music back by the Spring?

[Cuzzie]

41 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Lol! There clearly is lot of negativity - fair enough it's been a brutal year.

As an annoyingly glass-half-full sort of guy - I reckon with the available GP nurses, nightingale hospitals and testing centres geared up for vaccinations we could get the most needy done in a few months - they manage to get the flu jab out don't they without massive difficulty without all this extra resource. The younger / healthier 80% of the population can get on with their lives in the meantime.

Happy to wager a lot of us will be back gigging by May 2020. 

I don’t mind a glass half full approach, but the other half needs to be realistic.

Who do you think staffs the Nightingale hospitals, testing centres, GP nurses?

If a normal hospital is full of patients and running on as much staff as possible as even staff may need to isolate, have leave etc. Even if there are no staff away, they cannot magic up a bucketload of staff for the nightingale, they have to pull main hospital staff out to run it leaving other places stretched and depleted, and knackering staff who are already full time by trying to get them to work overtime.

If you did nothing else but this, yep I get you, but Cancer, Trauma etc work is still carrying on

[mikel]

45 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

Lol! There clearly is lot of negativity - fair enough it's been a brutal year.

As an annoyingly glass-half-full sort of guy - I reckon with the available GP nurses, nightingale hospitals and testing centres geared up for vaccinations we could get the most needy done in a few months - they manage to get the flu jab out don't they without massive difficulty without all this extra resource. The younger / healthier 80% of the population can get on with their lives in the meantime.

Happy to wager a lot of us will be back gigging by May 2020. 

The problem being finding enough staff to run the nightingale hospitals. We are 40000 nurses short to run our regular hospitals as we stand.

[Al Krow]

44 minutes ago, taunton-hobbit said:

Journey back in time a side effect?

Haha - ooops! 

 

[Al Krow]

36 minutes ago, mikel said:

The problem being finding enough staff to run the nightingale hospitals. We are 40000 nurses short to run our regular hospitals as we stand.

And we were 40,000 personnel short in the Battle of Britain. Too much negativity.

There are a ton of folk losing their jobs / on part time work due to Covid-19. I appreciate the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at very low temps and the medics amongst us will be able to correct me: but I'm not sure it would require a huge amount of training to up-skill unemployed graduates / school leavers who are facing a brutal jobs market to administer injections under the supervision of a qualified nurse?  If need be, we can deploy 40,000 military personnel - a plan that is already underway in relation to mass testing. 

If we, as a species, can come up with a successful RNA vaccine (amazing scientific achievement) it's surely not beyond our abilities to work out how to make sure we get it to folk who need it most urgently?

Edited November 10, 2020 by Al Krow

[Dad3353]

38 minutes ago, Al Krow said:

...Too much negativity...

Indeed, it's a refreshing change to read this overflowing 'half-full' glass. There's doubtless more 'stuff' to come, down the road, but Shirley even a little light at the end of this tunnel is a Good Thing..? 

[steantval]

I understand that these guys all around the UK are being drafted in to help with distributing the vaccine.

 

[Lozz196]

3 minutes ago, steantval said:

I understand that these guys all around the UK are being drafted in to help with distributing the vaccine.

 

Well it does have to be kept at low temperatures 

[Al Krow]

He's not wearing a mask - clearly needs to be whipped into shape!

Edited November 10, 2020 by Al Krow

[mikel]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

And we were 40,000 personnel short in the Battle of Britain. Too much negativity.

There are a ton of folk losing their jobs / on part time work due to Covid-19. I appreciate the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at very low temps and the medics amongst us will be able to correct me: but I'm not sure it would require a huge amount of training to up-skill unemployed graduates / school leavers who are facing a brutal jobs market to administer injections under the supervision of a qualified nurse?  If need be, we can deploy 40,000 military personnel - a plan that is already underway in relation to mass testing. 

If we, as a species, can come up with a successful RNA vaccine (amazing scientific achievement) it's surely not beyond our abilities to work out how to make sure we get it to folk who need it most urgently?

Well quite. Excuse me for being a sceptic but recent history would suggest the powers that be have a less than firm hold on either the virus or indeed how to combat it. And I am a glass overflowing guy, but also a realist when it comes to Britain's response to this crisis and the bumbling that has helped it thrive. I live in hope rather than confidence.

[Cuzzie]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

And we were 40,000 personnel short in the Battle of Britain. Too much negativity.

There are a ton of folk losing their jobs / on part time work due to Covid-19. I appreciate the Pfizer vaccine has to be stored at very low temps and the medics amongst us will be able to correct me: but I'm not sure it would require a huge amount of training to up-skill unemployed graduates / school leavers who are facing a brutal jobs market to administer injections under the supervision of a qualified nurse?  If need be, we can deploy 40,000 military personnel - a plan that is already underway in relation to mass testing. 

If we, as a species, can come up with a successful RNA vaccine (amazing scientific achievement) it's surely not beyond our abilities to work out how to make sure we get it to folk who need it most urgently?

Yep sorry my fault, just like those beauticians or other people that go on a 1 day Botox and filler course, claim they are trained and royally Bollox people up.

None of the people exercising caution have not got optimism in their voices for the Pfizer, Jenner/Oxford trial etc. to be close and working, and we all hope music is back ASAP.
15 million people does sound like a lot of people to be treated and it’s good, but honestly the logistics are not easy where the system has to also treat as many other things as possible. The knock in effect for other conditions including cancer by this is tremendous, are you going to pull more nurses out of cancer care for example to supervise injections? What’s your supervision ratio for the newly qualified injection technicians?

Time line of the spring is what I would baulk at, if we can get a good summer, that is more realistic, and most people sorted before the next winter bout of diseases hits.

[Maude]

1 hour ago, steantval said:

I understand that these guys all around the UK are being drafted in to help with distributing the vaccine.

 

Not a good idea at all! 

The life of a mobile ice cream salesperson is already stressful enough without burdening them with distributing and administering a vaccine. 

Only the other day I found one laying on the floor of his van, covered in Hundreds & Thousands. 

It turns out he'd topped himself. 

[Al Krow]

As I acknowledged medics will correct me if I have it wrong with how much training it takes to administer an injection - you're the experts on this! But my missus (who happens to be an NHS doctor) reckons a good way to quickly bring additional resources to the front is to get trainee nurses and student doctors involved in assisting with rolling out the immunisation programme - sounds like a good suggestion to me.

Sadly it's already a fact that cancer patients are not being treated right now due to Covid, so this is not either / or.

I'm sticking by many of us being up and playing by May 2021 and wedding season next year is gonna be VERY busy!

Edited November 10, 2020 by Al Krow

[AndyTravis]

1 hour ago, Al Krow said:

He's not wearing a mask - clearly needs to be whipped into shape!

My local ice cream man wings a cig dimp out of his window before he starts serving.

”a 99 please”

’toppings?’

”benson and hedges ash please”

[Dad3353]

I had to learn how to inject myself with daily insulin doses, as a life saver. It took me all of five minutes, a few years ago now, given the right equipment, and I've been doing it ever since with no problems, despite onset of old age. I reckon most ornery folks could get trained up for vaccinating quickly and easily. Here in France, it's the pharmacists that carry out flu shots. Are there no pharmacists in the UK able to assist..? 

[Al Krow]

Fair point! Pharmacists already dispensing flu jabs in the UK. 

That's one-nil to the opticians optometrists optimists 😎

Edited November 10, 2020 by Al Krow

[krispn]

I’d wager everyone in the land want’s this vaccine to be efficacious, efficiently  distributed and safely administered. Cautious optimism is neither half full nor half empty it is simply what it is. Let’s get people safely vaccinated, await for the numbers to tell us it is working and we can get back out to gigging when the time is right. 

[Al Krow]

17 minutes ago, krispn said:

I’d wager everyone in the land want’s this vaccine to be efficacious, efficiently  distributed and safely administered. Cautious optimism is neither half full nor half empty it is simply what it is. Let’s get people safely vaccinated, await for the numbers to tell us it is working and we can get back out to gigging when the time is right. 

Can't argue with that!

2021 is gonna be one helluva party when that happens 😁

[peteb]

7 hours ago, Al Krow said:

And we were 40,000 personnel short in the Battle of Britain. Too much negativity.

 

I do wish that people would stop romanticising WW2 and pushing this dangerous view of British exceptionalism. While the RAF may have had less pilots in the Battle of Britain, they had massive technical and logistical advantages that were expertly utilised to ensure that there was never any real danger of losing that particular campaign. The narrative of ‘the few’ and the ‘plucky British underdog’ was very useful as wartime propaganda, but not 80 years after the event by a later generation who have never known a day’s conflict in their lives. 

If you're interested, see ‘The Battle of Britain’ by James Holland – you can even get an audio version narrated by Al Murray.

Edited November 10, 2020 by peteb

[Al Krow]

1 hour ago, peteb said:

I do wish that people would stop romanticising WW2 and pushing this dangerous view of British exceptionalism. While the RAF may have had less pilots in the Battle of Britain, they had massive technical and logistical advantages that were expertly utilised to ensure that there was never any real danger of losing that particular campaign. The narrative of ‘the few’ and the ‘plucky British underdog’ was very useful as wartime propaganda, but not 80 years after the event by a later generation who have never known a day’s conflict in their lives. 

If you're interested, see ‘The Battle of Britain’ by James Holland – you can even get an audio version narrated by Al 

I'd politely suggest, technical superiority or not, we can and should remember, with gratitude, the sacrifice others have made on our part, not least given the day today is. And it's precisely because of their sacrifice most of us in Western Europe have not had to experience anything similar since (thank God).

The gentle parallel being drawn here is that a global pandemic also takes lives. Over a million so far and counting. And front line staff have literally been putting theirs on the line for our sakes.

Nothing romantic about that either. 

[Cuzzie]

8 hours ago, peteb said:

I do wish that people would stop romanticising WW2 and pushing this dangerous view of British exceptionalism. While the RAF may have had less pilots in the Battle of Britain, they had massive technical and logistical advantages that were expertly utilised to ensure that there was never any real danger of losing that particular campaign. The narrative of ‘the few’ and the ‘plucky British underdog’ was very useful as wartime propaganda, but not 80 years after the event by a later generation who have never known a day’s conflict in their lives. 

If you're interested, see ‘The Battle of Britain’ by James Holland – you can even get an audio version narrated by Al Murray.

 

6 hours ago, Al Krow said:

I'd politely suggest, technical superiority or not, we can and should remember, with gratitude, the sacrifice others have made on our part, not least given the day today is. And it's precisely because of their sacrifice most of us in Western Europe have not had to experience anything similar since (thank God).

The gentle parallel being drawn here is that a global pandemic also takes lives. Over a million so far and counting. And front line staff have literally been putting theirs on the line for our sakes.

Nothing romantic about that either. 

As someone who’s Grandfather won the Military Cross in WW2, and close friends recently and currently active in the military this day does not go unnoticed, but I do not think the post by @peteb denigrates this, with no disrespect to those that fought and currently fight we can speak about war in a non romantic way

I have also lost a family member in the first wave of the pandemic.

Compare a pandemic with a pandemic, there are plenty examples in history to compare it to.

Again, I think we all hope for some kind of normality

[Bassfinger]

On 09/11/2020 at 19:12, Phil Starr said:

This is fantastic news, there are two other vaccines which are looking good and should be reporting soon and 10 in phase 3 trials altogether. 

To put this into perspective if the vaccine does turn out to be effective at 90% and Pfizer delivers on 50M doses this year and over a billion next year we are going to be well on the way to the old normal. 90% would mean we'd achieve herd immunity with 75% of the population vaccinated. With an end in sight it makes real sense to look after each other with sensible hygiene and infection control. It would be really beyond sad to lose people when the end is in sight like the poor souls that died in Nov 1918. 

Let's not rush our fences but having predicted the pandemic in Jan and a vaccine by Dec I'd tentatively expect us to be gigging again this time next year and probably by late summer. Let's hope this research stands up but it is looking good. I confess I was tearing up when I heard the news.

We've been here before with herd immunity.  After two months only 4% of people of coronavirus sufferers still have antibodies.  That's  why herd immunity isn't happening, simply because not long after having it the once you become succeptible to catching it again.

As for the OP premise, fingers crossed that is the case. I fear, however, that its may be many years before there are as many venues to play due to so many closing their doors permanently.

Edited November 11, 2020 by Bassfinger

[Al Krow]

@Cuzzie really sorry to hear about your family loss in the first wave; that's a very high personal cost you have had to pay to this wretched virus. 

[Phil Starr]

1 hour ago, Bassfinger said:

We've been here before with herd immunity.  After two months only 4% of people of coronavirus sufferers still have antibodies.  That's  why herd immunity isn't happening, simply because not long after having it the once you become succeptible to catching it again.

As for the OP premise, fingers crossed that is the case. I fear, however, that its may be many years before there are as many venues to play due to so many closing their doors permanently.

I think that's unduly pessimistic. As of last week there was only one confirmed case worldwide of someone definitively catching a second dose. There will have been more but very few people have been reinfected to date. That's normal for viral infections. Don't forget that immunity is more complex than just the antibodies and you wouldn't expect the body to go on making unnecessary antibodies. In any case we already know that vaccination produces better immunity than the disease. That's true generally of vaccines and specifically of this one and the Astra Zeneca one (probably of the others but I've not seen details). 

The reality is that all we need to do to eliminate COVID is to get the R-rate down below zero and hold it there, that is an extinction event. For that we need roughly 65% 0f the population immune. So with a 90% effective vaccine we need 70% coverage and the population becomes immune. 

As to venues opening up that depends upon political will. There is going to be a huge demand for the things we've missed and those hospitality businesses that have survived will do well. Let's hope that the government has a plan for repairing the economy driven by public support. We all need those jobs whoever is in power.

[oldslapper]

I think it’s time for optimism.

I’ve invested early and bought shares in Mothercare and STD treatment companies. Buying my dream rig in 12-24 months I reckon.

 

[mikel]

11 hours ago, peteb said:

I do wish that people would stop romanticising WW2 and pushing this dangerous view of British exceptionalism. While the RAF may have had less pilots in the Battle of Britain, they had massive technical and logistical advantages that were expertly utilised to ensure that there was never any real danger of losing that particular campaign. The narrative of ‘the few’ and the ‘plucky British underdog’ was very useful as wartime propaganda, but not 80 years after the event by a later generation who have never known a day’s conflict in their lives. 

If you're interested, see ‘The Battle of Britain’ by James Holland – you can even get an audio version narrated by Al Murray.

Exactly. Still banging on about the war? Whatever your personal glass is we need to be realistic. If the vaccine is safe and efficacious, can be rolled out quickly and is available to those in need then great. But pardon me for being cautiously optimistic, too many false dawns recently.