They do actually supply mechanical parts which are used by the NHS...and have an employer (who also lives in staff accommodation) to deal with those orders. No need to keep the whole shop open. Suddenly, an awful lot of caveats and loopholes into Sunak's breathless promise come to light. Can some employees be furloughed...or must it be all of them. The whole essential worker category is vague. I don't think there will be much enforcement into who stays open or not and I can't see anyway there will be enough quarantining to get atop of this until it literally has ran through the entire population, over months and months.
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
- Thread starter Sasaferrato
- Start date
elbows
Well-Known Member
One thing that's puzziling me is why on the news last night did they say there may be less than 20,000 (a lot still of course) deaths in the uk now?
Obviously this doesn't seem possible compared to other countries and the escalating death rate here as well as these new mega morgues being built
Why give that false hope on the 10 o clock news??
Who said it?
The government said they wanted to keep deaths below 20,000 so its no surprise that there will be some talk around this number. Including talk that involves hope and optimism.
Personally I would not have set a target like that, although I recognise that it is helpful to give some sort of indication to the public as to what sort of scale of things you are anticipating.
I'm not a big fan of premature hope nuggets myself, although I can see why they are considered important, especially during a lockdown when you are trying to encourage people that their actions are making a difference.
I dont have all the numbers that governments have, so it is also possible that I will not spot more genuine and sustainable hope nuggets as soon as they arrive on the scene, I might mistake them for false hope or stuff that isnt based on actual data.
As for the actual number of UK deaths to expect, I dont have a number in mind myself. Especially when Italy and Spain, who are ahead of us, are not really slowing their number of deaths in a way I could draw conclusions from yet.
HoratioCuthbert
Deep seated inconsequence
That’s quite an avatar
it doesn't need to be all employees - you can furlough one at a time as business declines or work runs out.
HoratioCuthbert
Deep seated inconsequence
Awesome
Proper Tidy
Arsed
Olden but golden. Got bored of mason, this one is a holding page
sheothebudworths
Up the bum - no babies!!!
So potentially, workers who have households at greater risk could be furloughed first (but it's purely down to employers to work out how to do that sensibly, if they want to).
The scheme isn't primarily about protecting workers - it's about protecting businesses. And while you might hope businesses would be humane and sensitive in who they furlough first, a lot of them will just be putting their least productive staff out to pasture to start off with.
sheothebudworths
Up the bum - no babies!!!
Essential workers living with vulnerable people has got to be different to vulnerable people living with workers who are either wfh or able to self isolate otherwise.
One of the counter staff was sent home after 3 days in hospital, on Monday - not even sure if the H&S (or whatever body deals with notifiable diseases has been informed)...nor was any decontaminating and cleaning done. Of course, staff member was told (after 3 days in hospital) that he 'probably' had it but wasn't tested. So leaving his employers in an ambiguous position. I swear I am seeing deliberate acts of wilful negligence on so many levels. A continuation, of exploitation and couldn't give a shit, attitudes which has been inculcated into the boss class as being virtuous business ethics. We are not undoing 40 years of laissez-faire economics with some mealy-mouthed exceptionalism and nor will sentimental clapping offer up any fucking reparation for treating working people as expendable rubbish - mere units of profit until they are effectively valueless.
ddraig
kicking against the pricks...
Think it was just in a narrative at one point during the news
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
In many respects yes, but it had a public health infrastructure that was devasted in the '70s along with the rest of local government, and had achieved some remarkable successes, such as the complete suppression of the bubonic plague in 1900.
LeytonCatLady
Well-Known Member
I was in Morrisons earlier and it was announced that currently, all their branches are now only open between 8am and 8pm Mon - Sat, and not open at all on Sundays. No idea if that applies to other supermarkets.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Thanks for the heads up.
LeytonCatLady
Well-Known Member
No problem. Here's a more detailed list I just found. Here's how supermarket opening times have been affected by coronavirus pandemic
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
In what way was local government devastated in the 1970s ?
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Centralization and mergers of existing local authorities , making power remoter, and destroying local autonomy.
Local government as we know it basically started as a Victorian public health measure. All that's been lost. If the old public health departments still existed, testing and contact tracing would very likely have continued regardless of what Whitehall said, and we could be in a much better place.
Subsidiarity's desperately overdue a comeback!
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
elbows - James Forsyth, pod ed at Spectator, is saying that 'government' are saying they now expect the peak to be around mid-April.
Whether that is true, or comes to pass, I don't know, but I'd put good money on JF being correct in that mid-April is what he's being told.
bimble
floofy
Isn't it likely that they're saying the peak will come aproximately 3 weeks after social distancing was enforced because they think that these measures, prolonged to some degree for months to come, will mean that the worst bit will be when everyone who was infected before lockdown began gets sick?
andysays
Love and solidarity
That would make sense.
It also follows that if they'd introduced proper social distancing etc measures 2 or 3 weeks earlier, the peak would have arrived earlier, but been a significantly lower peak
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
FWIW that's fits with what we're seeing in hospital, it seems to have escalated much faster than our briefings even a few days ago were saying.
Athos
Well-Known Member
An effect of the downturn starting earlier would be that the peak is smaller but comes sooner.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
See what I wrote in the NHS workers thread this morning. We're pretty much already at capacity, so I'm not convinced a smaller peak in a few weeks will seem much less bad given the state of things already.
Athos
Well-Known Member
Going over capacity will be bad. But the less were go over, the better, surely?
Yeah of course. (I'm not a doctor/virologist/ppe expert or anything though!)
bimble
floofy
Nothing but an anecdote but this past week / 5 days in my fairly tiny circle of acquaintance a whole bunch of people seem to have come down with relevant symptoms, after weeks of it just looming on the horizon somewhere.
Latest is my sister who suddenly lost her sense of smell yesterday (nothing, not even when sticking her nose over a bottle of vinegar which must be really weird).
A major point of lockdown was to buy time to get in the equipment that's needed wasn't it, so an earlier than expected peak before you've got anything like what you need would be really bad news.
Latest is my sister who suddenly lost her sense of smell yesterday (nothing, not even when sticking her nose over a bottle of vinegar which must be really weird).
A major point of lockdown was to buy time to get in the equipment that's needed wasn't it, so an earlier than expected peak before you've got anything like what you need would be really bad news.
kebabking
Not a Girly Swot, but I like them....
It's the difference between a train crash this morning that kills 50, and a train crash in 2 months that kills 200.
Both are bad things, but one is worse than the other.
If it peaks in April instead of May we will be less ready - but we'll also have less patients presenting with serious symptoms, and therefore fewer deaths.
Both are bad things, but one is worse than the other.
If it peaks in April instead of May we will be less ready - but we'll also have less patients presenting with serious symptoms, and therefore fewer deaths.
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