1
Knarfs Knewz / Re: Knarf's Knewz Channel
« on: January 16, 2021, 01:56:35 AM »Hoping you and your family are safe and well.
Just today do I see confirmation I can get my clinical staff vaccinated through what I’d call routine channels. The local medical society is offering the dental society members and their staffs to vaccinate at their hub. Some 4 of us have been able to get the vaccine already by “other means”. None of us has gotten the booster yet. I’m taking Ivermectin.But social distancing in the office has worked. I actually prefer not having people wait in the waiting room.....much quieter this way.
Thanks for that. Half my immediate family have got their first shot of the vaccine. They got it due to being frontline NHS workers. As for social distancing it certainly has an effect in reducing rates. The problem is in highly congested places like London where a good chunk of people use public transport it is not enough. Before tier 4 (which is really national lockdown measures or perhaps as you would call it stay at home orders but just for the local area) we were on tier 3 where social distancing in shops was maintained plus all bars/clubs shut and restuarants were only opened for takeaways. Despite those measures in place we saw exponential growth in covid rates with areas such as Essex and London getting rates as high as 1 in 50 people having the virus at any given time.
It would seem that outside the summer months whenever there has not been actual lockdown measures R values have tended to exceed 1. Now if we had no social distancing then I would expect R rates to be much closer to the natural level. That never happened and I believe social distancing has the biggest impact in reducing rates outside of lockdowns. The problem that can occur though is social distancing by itself may not be enough if other factors are not working for you. Most people in Europe practice social distancing (with masks) and look what happened to the rates in the last few months. The overall point I am trying to make is we should think there is a one size fits all solution. Different countries have differing rates of compliance with measures, population density varies, mode of transport can vary also (do people use cars or public transport as the primary means of movement), proximity to airports particularly international travel, prevailing weather conditions, local variants in the area etc. Once we take all those factors into account then we make solutions that will be relevant. What works with Sweden might work in Norway but not Paris. New Zealand and Australia do well but are relatively isolated compared to most of mainland Europe and even the US so their strategies are not practical to adopt.