Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[elbows]

I don't buy that the government is trying to run the NHS into the ground so they can privatise it. Any government that ruined the NHS would be committing electoral suicide. The one thing that stopped the government from running with a herd immunity strategy from day 1 was the threat of the NHS being overwhelmed.

They can (and are) privatising it anyway regardless.

The plan is far more likely to be to take a risk and get ready to gloat if this wave, by some measures (very much not including positive cases), turns out to be fairly modest compared to the previous ones. And then use that to further the 'return to normality' agenda.

 

[IC3D]

I don't buy that the government is trying to run the NHS into the ground so they can privatise it. Any government that ruined the NHS would be committing electoral suicide. The one thing that stopped the government from running with a herd immunity strategy from day 1 was the threat of the NHS being overwhelmed.

They can (and are) privatising it anyway regardless.

This isn't true, if you are not ill it is out of mind. The majority are fully stockholmed into basic needs and desires until you get ill that is. Id say the only people that care about the NHS are sick or their loved ones. A minority.

 

[elbows]

Polling has told them for many years in all sorts of ways what they can and cannot get away with in regards the NHS. There are some things they are wary of doing because of the NHSs cherished status, but that doesnt stop them taking the piss in other regards.

They are quite prepared to push their luck in terms of the eergency side of care. But there are clear limits in the pandemic that even they were not stupid enough to push beyond. Hence the number of u-turns Johnsons ended up having to perform in the past. If we dont get such u-turns this time it will be because admissions dont reach the levels that cause rapid doom, or if the variations in timing mean they can shuffle patients around the country more. They did a lot of that in the second wave and it didnt quite get the attention it deserved.

 

[Orang Utan]

This isn't true, if you are not ill it is out of mind. The majority are fully stockholmed into basic needs and desires until you get ill that is. Id say the only people that care about the NHS are sick or their loved ones. A minority.

i’m not sure about that. In fact that is certainly not true

 

[IC3D]

An example the

i’m not sure about that.

Ok guess how much we pay for a covid test sent from a ward to the testing service on site?

ETA wrong post

 

[IC3D]

Anyway its £40 and my trust test every patient x3 per week

 

[MrSki]

Anyway its £40 and my trust test every patient x3 per week

I was expecting £20 maybe £30 at a push. Is your on-site service contracted out?

 

[elbows]

Regarding peaks and changes in trajectory, I dont know if these sorts of charts are of interest but I find them useful at times.

 

[Raheem]

I was expecting £20 maybe £30 at a push. Is your on-site service contracted out?

To Matt Hancock's niece, probably.

 

[editor]

Virus takes off

 

[bimble]

Id say the only people that care about the NHS are sick or their loved ones. A minority.

Nah. The nhs was even more important than brexit at the last election, so people claimed anyway, but still we got these lot.

 

[IC3D]

Must be living in a tree if you think that bimble People didn't vote Tory because they valued the nhs. Easy to say in a survey but reality does not reflect that.

 

[bimble]

It’s possible they were all lying when they said they cared about the nhs.
people I think mostly just want it to function & to continue being free at point of use. The rest (public - private contracts, efficiency of) isn’t what most people mean when they say the nhs is important factor for how they’ll vote.

 

[Cat Fan]

By rights, just about everything they've done since 2010 should've caused their electoral suicide but it doesn't stop people being daft enough to vote them in.

True, but allowing the NHS to fail completely would dwarf everything else that's happened.

This isn't true, if you are not ill it is out of mind. The majority are fully stockholmed into basic needs and desires until you get ill that is. Id say the only people that care about the NHS are sick or their loved ones. A minority.

Not true, people care about the NHS so much in this country it's practically a religion. There was a NHS component to the 2012 London Olympics opening ceremony! Not to mention that we all got out our pots and pans to clap for it last year and everyone put rainbows in their windows. It's not like that in every country!

 

[IC3D]

They believe its patriotic in the same nebulous way they clapped for underpaid nurses getting sick or dying while scraping by on low wages. Virtue signaling bimble

 

[Cat Fan]

Must be living in a tree if you think that bimble People didn't vote Tory because they valued the nhs. Easy to say in a survey but reality does not reflect that.

Hiring a bunch of nurses and policemen was basically their main election pledge (aside from Brexit)

How's that going by the way?

Boris Johnson's pledge to recruit 50,000 more NHS nurses is in doubt

Number of nurses coming from EU fell again and coronavirus prevented further arrivals

www.theguardian.com

 

[elbows]

I see a lot more people experimenting with data shown using log scales these days, including myself. And Peston has noticed whats happened with hospitalisations in the youngest two age groups.

 

[zahir]

The effect on the NHS




Also from that thread:

 

[Wilf]

Operation 'Let's Make Sure Everybody Gets Covid' proceeds apace I see:

Covid inquiry: The UK pandemic in numbers

Explore the data on how the coronavirus pandemic unfolded in the UK.

www.bbc.co.uk

It was only on the 6th when they announced their devout hope that 100000 a day would get it. From memory it was only about 32000 then, so today's 48000 is a good start - about 50% up. Well done!

 

[bimble]

'The need to isolate after exposure to a confirmed Covid case will be dropped for fully vaccinated people in England from 16 August.'

I get why they want to do this (can't have millions of people isolating instead of going to work) but have they actually attempted to explain their reasoning on public health grounds - as in, if you've vaccinated it doesn't matter if you've been in contact with a confirmed case because .. . ?

 

[gentlegreen]

I want to remind you all that we are still in Step 3 this weekend, so please remember to follow the guidance when you’re out and about or seeing friends and family....

Take care,
Marvin Rees, Mayor of Bristol

I suppose he has to say something ...

 

[cupid_stunt]

Now he speaks out, somewhat bloody late.

Boris Johnson could be forced to order new Covid lockdown curbs in five weeks, Chris Whitty has warned just days before Monday's "Freedom Day".

The Chief Medical Officer sounded the alarm over a potential "scary" growth in hospitalisations which could leave the NHS "in trouble again surprisingly fast" once restrictions are lifted.

The top medic said if hospital admissions begin doubling and the jabs rollout was not "topping out" the pandemic, in "five, six, seven eight weeks' time" the Prime Minister may need to "look again" at restrictions.

He said that the doubling time for hospital cases was "around three weeks" and while the number of hospitalisations was "mercifully much lower", it was "not trivial".

He said: "We've still got over 2000 people in hospital, and that number is increasing.

"If we double from 2000 to 4000, from 4000 to 8000, to 8000 [from 8000 to 16000] and so on, it doesn't take many doubling times till you're into very very large numbers indeed."

Chris Whitty warns UK could be plunged back into restrictions in just 5 weeks

Speaking ahead of "Freedom Day", the Chief Medical Officer said a spike in hospitalisations could leave the NHS in "trouble again, surprisingly fast"

www.mirror.co.uk

 

[cupid_stunt]

Lucy Frazer, Solicitor General for England & Wales, asked on Sky News about what Chris Whitty is saying, replied, 'if we get into a situation that is unacceptable, and we do need to put back further restrictions, of course it's something the government will look at.'

It's almost like they are getting us ready for yet another U-turn.

 

[Supine]

We all know that if Boris says irreversible he actually means the opposite.

 

[existentialist]

We all know that if Boris says irreversible he actually means the opposite.

The original compulsive liar.

 

[bimble]

behold, the most popular comment on the dm's report about covid football case numbers & what whitty said:

 

[wtfftw]

Yeah. People I know just want to go back to normal -they don't personally know anyone that died, everyone got it mildly, they didn't have it, anyway we're vaccinated now...

 

[glitch hiker]

If, moving forward, people are compelled to face to face WCA or JC+ meetings will they have any right of refusal? I'm going to assume not. But it seems outrageous to force people into unsafe conditions like that. The local WCA office here has the pokiest waiting room. Social distancing would be impossible.

Even though I'm vaxxed up and not exceptionally vulnerable, I find the idea of being forced to expose myself to this existential risk unreasonable. It shouldn't have come down to this

 

[glitch hiker]

Lucy Frazer, Solicitor General for England & Wales, asked on Sky News about what Chris Whitty is saying, replied, 'if we get into a situation that is unacceptable, and we do need to put back further restrictions, of course it's something the government will look at.'

It's almost like they are getting us ready for yet another U-turn.

I think Boris would actually prefer some restrictions, or to at least keep where we are (which isn't ideal either), it's just he didn't want to lose to Labour and thus have the 1922 committee breathing down his neck.

The cranks rule the roost over at Tory Towers

 

[bimble]

I think Boris would actually prefer some restrictions, or to at least keep where we are (which isn't ideal either), it's just he didn't want to lose to Labour and thus have the 1922 committee breathing down his neck.

The cranks rule the roost over at Tory Towers

yep this, i think its mostly just internal party stuff thats driving things (covid recovery group and all that). Maybe if he hadn't purged everyone that wasn't a rabid brexiteer (tend to be optimists) shortly before the pandemic but too late for that now.