Jimmy_D

Starting to wonder if West Ham will ever beat Brighton in the Premier League lol

That was an example of one that would never have been given by VAR if it hadn’t been given on the field.

Bad game, terrible commentary, worse officiating, but all in all a half decent point.

We’re being absolutely ****ed over by the officials here.

Ahhhhh... unlucky Long there

That should have been a penalty this season...

Fulham pretty limited against us. Changes are obviously affecting us but feels like we still edged that half.

Adams was actually massively unlucky with the spin on the ball there

Won’t be easy with the spine of the team out but we’re still a decent side.

I remember when he played for us at right-back. Merry Christmas everyone ^_^

Indeed. With the data coming through about how kids don't have the same resistance with the new variant, I'd be shocked if schools reopen after Christmas during this lockdown.

Have to be honest, I wouldn't want to be making that call, but locking down would probably be the lesser of two evils. It's a choice between people suffering because of their lives being turned upside down, or people suffering because of a virus. Both have the potential to severely impact people's lives, including causing deaths. There's no good option, but in the case of the virus, the worse it gets, the faster it keeps getting even worse. Locking down was never meant to be a permanent solution, but was meant to buy time for the research to find a way to stop the virus.

Trouble with that is that, for every individual person, the risk is low. Everyone can justifiably make the judgement that they'll probably be ok and get on with behaving as normal. Unfortunately with millions of people making that same judgement, it adds up to a big problem overall. In the USA, for example, they have some lockdown measures, but they also have millions of people making the judgement that the risk is low enough for them to ignore it. It's enough people making that judgement that's adding up to them suffering more than 9-11 every day at the moment. It's likely to get worse there before it gets better too.

Purely on an individual basis, it seems that children don't have the same resistance to it as the more common variant. But it's how fast this thing spreads that has always been the biggest problem with it. Our only weapon until now against this overwhelming the NHS's ability to treat people has been lockdown measures, and this variant directly makes those measures less effective. Right now we're trying to buy enough time to roll out the vaccine before that happens.

It's far more contagious, enough that it's spreading exponentially (ie r above 1) despite lockdown measures that were previously enough to reduce r below 1. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55388846 https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4944

It's not just regulatory approval that's lacking there, it's data to back up the 91% figure, especially on how long that immunity lasts. They will have been looking at it as an option, and if they have the data to back up that it's the best option for saving lives, they'll recommend it.

Too early to tell, those figures have always lagged behind, there's nothing to suggest they won't follow the same pattern unfortunately.

Into Tier 4 then. Looks like the new variant is a bit of a monster, it's not going to be easy to keep it under control, especially if people are starting to get fatigued with following restrictions. I'd be absolutely amazed if they don't extend Tier 4 even further over the next few days/weeks. Hopefully that'll be enough to suppress it. The vaccine is going to be our only realistic way out of this.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-55388846 Decent summary of where we are with the new variant and links to more info.

Oh no Sorry to hear that, this truly has been an awful awful year.

Whether the Christmas relaxation of the measures would have been a good idea or not without this variant... personally I’d have leaned towards ‘not.’ The more contagious variant does exist though, the WHO have been notified of it, and we need to deal with it. https://www.bmj.com/content/371/bmj.m4857

Nothing published as far as I’m aware yet, beyond the figure that Boris Johnson quoted. That figure came from NERVTAG I believe.

Spreading faster IS the problem. A very very significant one. The biggest issue with COVID is that it spreads so fast, and our only effective weapon against that has been lockdown measures. This mutation directly makes those measures less effective. As I’ve said before, there are thousands of mutations, most of them haven’t caused a significant reaction in what we need to do, but this one has unfortunately. Because it’s spreading faster (around 70% estimated), the measures that are in place to reduce spread aren’t enough, the number of people getting sick is leaping up despite them. If we don’t want the NHS to be overwhelmed we don’t have a choice but to tighten it up. Another factor is that we have a vaccine now. That gives us a way out of lockdown and means that there’s a good reason to stop as many people getting sick as possible until it’s rolled out.

Can’t say as I’m surprised about the new measures, as more data comes in about the new variant... it’s not good. Quite frankly they probably don’t go far enough.

Guh. Played well, came up against a decent team, didn’t go our way. Hopefully Ings won’t be too bad and on to the next one.