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It just gets better and better for the UK - which is a relief because early January had some grim sickness and death numbers. Check out the data on the UK Gov

It just gets better and better for the UK - which is a relief because early January had some grim sickness and death numbers. Check out the data on the UK Gov dashboard if you've not seen it: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/ Also - we are all in lockdown, which helps.

CodeGlitch 6y ago
Not sure why you're being down voted. It's not like you said anything incorrect or controversial. Anyway I agree with you.
- CodeGlitch 6y ago
  Now I'm being downvoted? Wtf HN
  - lucb1e 6y ago
    I don't see anything in particular to agree or disagree about. Dashboard link, saying lockdown helps against the pandemic, things looking up for the UK... yeah I'd also be curious how this is objectionable. The trouble is that talking about votes is discouraged in the guidelines. Not sure I agree, but that discussion is pretty meta, so we'll just have to keep guessing until someone provides the reason why this was deemed harmful to the thread.
  - dang 6y ago
    You were breaking the site guidelines, so the downvotes are correct. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (note the second-last). Comments like the two you posted here are particularly off-topic because once users have fixed the situation with corrective upvotes, such complaints become uncollected garbage. That is, they linger on, even though they're false in addition to off-topic. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=uncollected https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
- simonswords82 6y ago
  Yeah I keep meaning to ask dang why I get pummeled with down votes whenever I comment on something.
  - jariel 6y ago
    The majority of votes on HN I believe are instinctive - someone liked or didn't like what you said, or the tone or whatever and that's it. Often there isn't much rhyme or reason. Clearly there are low/high value comments, or flame-wars but generally that's not it. Apparently, PG himself was fond of voting for disagreement/agreement, but even he I don't think quite has seen the degree of arbitrary voting. You will notice that people in the moments after your comment are much more likely to hate on it arbitrarily than later on when you might see some upswing. If you comment on anything even remotely controversial, that even hints at something like Brexit, EU nationalism, Transgender etc. - expect to see a lot of volatility. It's really quite an interesting phenom to see. Frankly it's pointless to meander about it and after much speculation I would say just don't worry about it - and - don't put too much stock in any kind of 'points system' it really doesn't matter that much at all. The Oxford vaccine is doing well, the UK is way ahead due to the locality of it all, which is great, because they need the help what with having a considerably higher death reate. I would recommend you see here [1] for a really good breakdown of vaccination and other COVID data. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
nine_zeros 6y ago
That's pretty good. Is the vaccination drive going on in full speed?
- pityJuke 6y ago
  Very much so, the UK is currently only behind the UAE and Israel in vaccine rollout per 100 residents* [1]. * for major countries (incidentally, the UK territory Gibraltar is 2nd in the world if you include minor countries), and only considering the first dosage, which in fairness, appears to be the correct for this specific vaccine. [1]: https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker/ https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker/
- mprovost 6y ago
  Yes, there have been over 10 million vaccinations so far. They did over 900,000 last weekend alone.
sterlind 6y ago
That R number is pretty good. I hope it holds up!
throwaway2245 6y ago
"Better" is doing a lot of work here. The UK (in particular, England) is currently reporting the second highest new death rate per capita in the world, still higher than it was at any point in 2020. It continues to report 1000+ unnecessary deaths per day. And, is it still the case that the UK has 50% more excess deaths than it is reporting in the daily coronavirus figures? A mystery...
- twoslide 6y ago
  Agreed, important to keep in mind the UK has highest per capita mortality of any large country. But this is good news for the government’s gamble to increase spacing between doses to 3 months
- bluGill 6y ago
  Note that deaths are very lagging. It can be a couple months between being exposed to COVID and death, maybe even more as medical science has learned about treating COVID over time. It is reasonable to assume that everyone dieing today got COVID before there was a vaccine, though there have been a few deaths by now that could have been prevented if the first vaccines were not given to someone else (if that person who got it would have got COVID and died instead is not something we can answer) Deaths will start to stop soon, COVID infections are already dropping in many countries, with vaccines being part of the reason (but only part - again we cannot know how much)
  - fy20 6y ago
    The UK only treats deaths within 28 days of a positive test as a 'COVID death'.
    - bluGill 6y ago
      Interesting. I know that in my community the spike in covid deaths lags the new positive count by almost 2 months. I'm not sure how they decide something is a COVID death, I just watch the daily new positive and daily deaths numbers.
- 6y ago
harry8 6y ago
Here's another way of framing it: Having messed this up so very badly doing idiotically risky things from the start the latest big risk taken by the UK government didn't actually backfire as badly as the previous ones. Others have pointed at the current per-capita deaths. This completely ignores the long-term effects to survivors accross the population. It can be a challenge to see how the UK government could have dealt with this worse. It's a highly educated population that has put the brakes on the most destructive policies from the very start. I really hope the wider population comes to an appreciation of "asymmetric risk" from this the way "metal fatigue" entered popular usage with the aeroplane disasters of I think the DC-10.
- nicoburns 6y ago
  To be fair to the UK government, their vaccine strategy has been spot on: lot's of investment and early. They've messed up basically every else, and still are. But I think they do deserve some credit for that.
  - harry8 6y ago
    >to be fair ...taking a flyer on an utterly unproven vaccination strategy was a huge, huge risk and had it not come off there would be no vaccination strategy. Relying on being lucky doesn't seem like a "spot on" strategy to me. "We gambled everything on red it and came up so we deserve credit for the strategy." edit: This is in relation to the additional time between first and second jabs that was untested in the strategy - for which this result suggests we no longer need to be concerned that the vaccination might be reduced in protection as we were before this data came in.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      When they do badly you say it's because of their incompetence. When they do well you still say it's because of their incompetence. At every turn they’ve had credible expert advice telling them to do contradictory things. They’ve had to use judgement. If only they had the sense to use hindsight, like you.
Traster 6y ago
I'm sorry but "better and better" is a pretty ridiculous way to characterize the situation in the UK. We're under pretty much the most strict lockdown conditions, and deaths peaked to a ridiculous level in a totally predictable and preventable way due to the christmas fuck up.

CodeGlitch 6y ago

Not sure why you're being down voted. It's not like you said anything incorrect or controversial. Anyway I agree with you.

CodeGlitch 6y ago
Now I'm being downvoted? Wtf HN
- lucb1e 6y ago
  I don't see anything in particular to agree or disagree about. Dashboard link, saying lockdown helps against the pandemic, things looking up for the UK... yeah I'd also be curious how this is objectionable. The trouble is that talking about votes is discouraged in the guidelines. Not sure I agree, but that discussion is pretty meta, so we'll just have to keep guessing until someone provides the reason why this was deemed harmful to the thread.
- dang 6y ago
  You were breaking the site guidelines, so the downvotes are correct. Please review https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html (note the second-last). Comments like the two you posted here are particularly off-topic because once users have fixed the situation with corrective upvotes, such complaints become uncollected garbage. That is, they linger on, even though they're false in addition to off-topic. https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sort=byDate&type=comment&query=uncollected https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&sor...
simonswords82 6y ago
Yeah I keep meaning to ask dang why I get pummeled with down votes whenever I comment on something.
- jariel 6y ago
  The majority of votes on HN I believe are instinctive - someone liked or didn't like what you said, or the tone or whatever and that's it. Often there isn't much rhyme or reason. Clearly there are low/high value comments, or flame-wars but generally that's not it. Apparently, PG himself was fond of voting for disagreement/agreement, but even he I don't think quite has seen the degree of arbitrary voting. You will notice that people in the moments after your comment are much more likely to hate on it arbitrarily than later on when you might see some upswing. If you comment on anything even remotely controversial, that even hints at something like Brexit, EU nationalism, Transgender etc. - expect to see a lot of volatility. It's really quite an interesting phenom to see. Frankly it's pointless to meander about it and after much speculation I would say just don't worry about it - and - don't put too much stock in any kind of 'points system' it really doesn't matter that much at all. The Oxford vaccine is doing well, the UK is way ahead due to the locality of it all, which is great, because they need the help what with having a considerably higher death reate. I would recommend you see here [1] for a really good breakdown of vaccination and other COVID data. [1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

nine_zeros 6y ago

That's pretty good. Is the vaccination drive going on in full speed?

pityJuke 6y ago
Very much so, the UK is currently only behind the UAE and Israel in vaccine rollout per 100 residents* [1]. * for major countries (incidentally, the UK territory Gibraltar is 2nd in the world if you include minor countries), and only considering the first dosage, which in fairness, appears to be the correct for this specific vaccine. [1]: https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker/ https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-vaccine-tracker/
mprovost 6y ago
Yes, there have been over 10 million vaccinations so far. They did over 900,000 last weekend alone.

sterlind 6y ago

That R number is pretty good. I hope it holds up!

throwaway2245 6y ago

"Better" is doing a lot of work here. The UK (in particular, England) is currently reporting the second highest new death rate per capita in the world, still higher than it was at any point in 2020. It continues to report 1000+ unnecessary deaths per day. And, is it still the case that the UK has 50% more excess deaths than it is reporting in the daily coronavirus figures? A mystery...

twoslide 6y ago
Agreed, important to keep in mind the UK has highest per capita mortality of any large country. But this is good news for the government’s gamble to increase spacing between doses to 3 months
bluGill 6y ago
Note that deaths are very lagging. It can be a couple months between being exposed to COVID and death, maybe even more as medical science has learned about treating COVID over time. It is reasonable to assume that everyone dieing today got COVID before there was a vaccine, though there have been a few deaths by now that could have been prevented if the first vaccines were not given to someone else (if that person who got it would have got COVID and died instead is not something we can answer) Deaths will start to stop soon, COVID infections are already dropping in many countries, with vaccines being part of the reason (but only part - again we cannot know how much)
- fy20 6y ago
  The UK only treats deaths within 28 days of a positive test as a 'COVID death'.
  - bluGill 6y ago
    Interesting. I know that in my community the spike in covid deaths lags the new positive count by almost 2 months. I'm not sure how they decide something is a COVID death, I just watch the daily new positive and daily deaths numbers.
6y ago

harry8 6y ago

Here's another way of framing it: Having messed this up so very badly doing idiotically risky things from the start the latest big risk taken by the UK government didn't actually backfire as badly as the previous ones. Others have pointed at the current per-capita deaths. This completely ignores the long-term effects to survivors accross the population. It can be a challenge to see how the UK government could have dealt with this worse. It's a highly educated population that has put the brakes on the most destructive policies from the very start. I really hope the wider population comes to an appreciation of "asymmetric risk" from this the way "metal fatigue" entered popular usage with the aeroplane disasters of I think the DC-10.

nicoburns 6y ago
To be fair to the UK government, their vaccine strategy has been spot on: lot's of investment and early. They've messed up basically every else, and still are. But I think they do deserve some credit for that.
- harry8 6y ago
  >to be fair ...taking a flyer on an utterly unproven vaccination strategy was a huge, huge risk and had it not come off there would be no vaccination strategy. Relying on being lucky doesn't seem like a "spot on" strategy to me. "We gambled everything on red it and came up so we deserve credit for the strategy." edit: This is in relation to the additional time between first and second jabs that was untested in the strategy - for which this result suggests we no longer need to be concerned that the vaccination might be reduced in protection as we were before this data came in.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    When they do badly you say it's because of their incompetence. When they do well you still say it's because of their incompetence. At every turn they’ve had credible expert advice telling them to do contradictory things. They’ve had to use judgement. If only they had the sense to use hindsight, like you.

Traster 6y ago

I'm sorry but "better and better" is a pretty ridiculous way to characterize the situation in the UK. We're under pretty much the most strict lockdown conditions, and deaths peaked to a ridiculous level in a totally predictable and preventable way due to the christmas fuck up.