Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Pickman's model]

where's that facepalm smiley?

: facepalm :

but take the spaces out

 

[Pickman's model]

Priorities clear.

i'm in. who else wants to go hunting mps?

 

[Plumdaff]

Well if those comments relate to the first few minutes of what was said, the bit I put in bold was misreporting by the Guardian.

What was actually said points to UK government trying to impose test rationing at a different point in the system, not the Lighthouse lab:

"Indeed over the weekend the health secretary managed to resist a move to limit access to testing slots, mobile testing units and regional testing centres".

Probably we could already guess this was on the cards given the news of recent days, but its very useful to have it confirmed.

It's definitely the case that the Uk government has been limiting slots. In the Rhondda at the weekend the local Health Board and ambulance staff took over a site which had been limited to 60 tests for the day. 'UK is limiting Rhondda coronavirus testing centre to just 60 tests'

 

[two sheds]

: facepalm :

but take the spaces out

Not the same as one in the Like bar though

 

[platinumsage]

No tests of any sort in any of the hotspots:

 

[quimcunx]

Well if those comments relate to the first few minutes of what was said, the bit I put in bold was misreporting by the Guardian.

What was actually said points to UK government trying to impose test rationing at a different point in the system, not the Lighthouse lab:

"Indeed over the weekend the health secretary managed to resist a move to limit access to testing slots, mobile testing units and regional testing centres".

Probably we could already guess this was on the cards given the news of recent days, but its very useful to have it confirmed.

Sounds like they are trying to hide or obfuscate whatever the actual issue is or the full scale of the issues. Surely the long distances werent deliberate in the hope people would just think ah well never mind and not take to the internet in their droves? Is it one big issue hiding behind fake issues or loads of issues.

It's hard to know how much is deliberate and how much is incompetence with this lot.

Did someone say one problem was students staffing labs returning to uni?

 

[frogwoman]

Lol all that debate about which vaccines are the best, herd immunity and whether to lockdown or not, turns out all we needed to do is hand everyone a rifle and send them out into the moors

 

[skyscraper101]

I don't see anywhere that mentions not having repetitive beats and dancing at these "grouse hunts"

 

[Pickman's model]

I don't see anywhere that mentions not having repetitive beats and dancing at these "grouse hunts"

indeed i understand they have 'beaters' as an integral part of the process

 

[elbows]

I'm not that surprised to see that email from Vallance, defensive manoeuvres by people at this level of officialdom have been on occasional display for months now. The collective failure is clear, individual failure regarding lockdown is still a very limited picture.

I went back to check the timing of when I first saw that overt defensive posturing. It turns out that it was about a month before that Vallance email when I transcribed some stuff Whitty said to a committee in the latter part of April. ( #9,242 ).

 

[sheothebudworths]

Today's dashboard message...

Due to an ongoing issue with Microsoft Azure, we are currently unable to update the data. We are monitoring the situation closely and will update the website as soon as the services are restored.

New cases/deaths published elsewhere (Sunday figures and with the ongoing test/processing problems) -



...but then we still have no update on healthcare, after the weekend.

Last data on patients admitted was on the 9th, and last data on the number of covid pos patients was on the 11th.

The data for the number of patients on mechanical ventilation (which was also last updated on the 11th, iirc) is missing altogether for now.

 

[elbows]

They didnt bother with redundancy in their dashboard system then, or actually taking steps to workaround the problem. (following quote is from the Azure status update about this issue).

Customers using multiple Availability Zones, or Zone Redundant services should not experience impact related to this. Impacted customers are advised to activate their service continuity plans and/or migrate their services to other Availability Zones in the region.

 

[elbows]

And yes the ICU data goes up to the 11th, I have the data here in a spreadsheet that I keep updating every few days.

Weekend data quality is often poor even when it comes through, so I'm sort of used to waiting till Tuesday to get a better sense of recent hospital picture.

 

[Wilf]

No tests of any sort in any of the hotspots:

Moonshot, lol.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Today's dashboard message...

Due to an ongoing issue with Microsoft Azure, we are currently unable to update the data. We are monitoring the situation closely and will update the website as soon as the services are restored.

New cases/deaths published elsewhere (Sunday figures and with the ongoing test/processing problems) -



...but then we still have no update on healthcare, after the weekend.

Last data on patients admitted was on the 9th, and last data on the number of covid pos patients was on the 11th.

The data for the number of patients on mechanical ventilation (which was also last updated on the 11th, iirc) is missing altogether for now.

Which dashboard is this?

 

[sheothebudworths]

Which dashboard is this?

The actual gov one - the font of all knowledge/info etc, lol -

UKHSA data dashboard

Overall summary of the respiratory viruses in circulation within the UK

coronavirus.data.gov.uk

ETA - ftr, cases and deaths have been updated now. Healthcare has not (and testing had already changed from daily to weekly, the last period actually being 8 days) - and the Azure issue is still highlighted.

 

[Artaxerxes]

Those fucking muppets.

 

[brogdale]

Peak Tory covid policy?

 

[sheothebudworths]

Healthcare updated - numbers, predictably, going up

 

[sheothebudworths]

Covid patients admitted, daily (Wales includes suspected cases, too) -

Date	England daily	Northern Ireland daily	Scotland daily	Wales daily	England total	Northern Ireland total	Scotland total	Wales total
12-09-2020	143	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	114,944	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.
11-09-2020	135	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	70	114,801	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	14,651
10-09-2020	143	3	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	49	114,666	1,609	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	14,581
09-09-2020	136	0	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	56	114,523	1,606	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	14,532
08-09-2020	99	4	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	65	114,387	1,606	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	14,476
07-09-2020	84	0	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	46	114,288	1,602	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	14,411

Current confirmed total of covid patients in hospital -

Date	England daily	Northern Ireland daily	Scotland daily	Wales daily
14-09-2020	782	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.
13-09-2020	661	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.
12-09-2020	633	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.
11-09-2020	600	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	269	42
10-09-2020	553	17	266	48
09-09-2020	539	17	274	37
08-09-2020	519	20	267	35

Confirmed covid patients in mechanical ventilation beds -

Date	England daily	Northern Ireland daily	Scotland daily	Wales daily
14-09-2020	88	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.
13-09-2020	74	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.
12-09-2020	70	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.	N/AData not currently available for this metric.
11-09-2020	63	1	8	7
10-09-2020	62	2	7	7
09-09-2020	64	2	6	8
08-09-2020	64	1	6	9

 

[Sasaferrato]

Lol all that debate about which vaccines are the best, herd immunity and whether to lockdown or not, turns out all we needed to do is hand everyone a rifle and send them out into the moors

I hate to be pedantic, but to hit a grouse with a rifle, you would need to be Annie Oakley.

 

[two sheds]

I hate to be pedantic, but to hit a grouse with a rifle, you would need to be Annie Oakley.

Yeh they cheat with a shotgun that sprays shot all over the fucking place. Sneaky fuckers

 

[brogdale]

Don't go much on your bird....bray, bray, bray....

 

[Sasaferrato]

Age it would seem does not prevent you from naivety.

When I started this thread on the 31st of January, I didn't think that we would be seeing a surge of cases now.

 

[Sue]

Don't go much on your bird....bray, bray, bray....

View attachment 230393

That's very Rupert the Bear. With added dead stuff.

 

[elbows]

I was looking through my notes to see if anything interesting was happening on the date Vallance wrote that email that was in the news today. Looks like it was when the Cummings shit was hitting the fan, and around the same day that Whitty & Vallance were seen leaving Downing Street rather than do a press conference with Johnson. They did attend a subsequent press conference about 4 days later, which is probably the one that left me unimpressed at the way Whitty & Vallance claimed a desire to be kept out of politics as a reason not to comment on Cummings rule breaking.

 

[sheothebudworths]

God, that's even more embarrassing, huh - it was their time to speak, or not - not to send mortified, conflicted, hang-wringing emails about it.

 

[elbows]

God, that's even more embarrassing, huh - it was their time to speak, or not - not to send mortified, conflicted, hang-wringing emails about it.

Well its much like the classic clip of Chomsky trying to explain to a wide-eyed Andrew Marr how the system filters people so that its those people like Marr with a certain worldview and degree of compliance that end up in the journalistic positions of great responsibility.

In the corridors of power resignations on principal are not completely unheard of, but they arent run of the mill either and even when there are examples they are usually about far more going on than just principal. If Whitty or Vallance or anybody in the various deputy roles were the sort of people who were at all likely to resign at the crucial moment in March when terrible delay etc was messing everything up, well, I dont think they'd have been as likely to end up in those jobs in the first place. For all sorts of reasons including the mindset of sticking to the mission as some kind of duty, even if various powerful forces prevent the job from being done to your ultimate satisfaction.

All of that shit is part of the reason I didnt spend late February and early March expressing my confidence that the establishment would handle the pandemic well, I dont expect to be impressed by officialdom and indeed I wasnt.

Anyway my picture of the exact opinions of various personnel is still very incomplete. There are far more important things for me to comment on than their later defensive moves, but I dont have much info about many of the other things so I end up dwelling on this stuff instead.

So just to add to what I was saying about Whitty defensiveness a whole month earlier than the Vallance email and the Cummings shitfest:

There was an earlier April 19th Sunday Times article which was also highly critical of the pandemic response.

On April 24th Whitty was defensive in a committee as I mentioned earlier (Hunt was probing him).

On April 27th Johnson returned to the press conference podium for the first time since his hospitalisation, and went on about this being the moment of maximum danger and invisible muggers.

Also at that press conference, in response to a question regarding 20,000 deaths being a good result, which was one of Vallances utterances in March, Whitty pointed out that he had never put that sort of number into the public domain. He also made sure to point out that scientists just advise ministers and its the ministers who actually make the decisions. Pointing this out very overtly was a fairly recent trend that I think I first noticed being said very clearly by Hancock in a previous press conference. It seems likely that these officials had asked the elected politicians to make this point clearly, and I think this may have been covered by a subsequent newspaper article but I'm not entirely sure. They probably demanded that because they were already in defensive, buck-passing mode due to negative press coverage, and they might also have had an idea about some government policies planned for the future (messaging and lockdown relaxation detail and timetable) that they werent completely in agreement with and wanted to put some distance between themselves and the elected part of government. But they are still part of the government, and aspects of their roles go beyond advisory.

 

[elbows]

There is also the interesting question, which I have not looked into yet, as to whether the BBC have obtained more emails of that sort, and whether they have a particular project that they are going to use them for.

 

[elbows]

Its hard for my mind not to get carried away with the possible ramifications for the government over the current testing failures, given that the news is only likely to get worse on that front and a whole new catalogue of blame awaits.

Coronavirus: NHS staff off work due to testing shortages, say bosses

Hospital bosses warn that a lack of coronavirus tests for workers is putting services at risk.

www.bbc.co.uk

A lack of coronavirus tests for NHS staff is leading to staff absences and services being put at risk, hospital bosses have warned.

NHS Providers, which represents hospital trusts in England, said staff are having to self-isolate rather than work because they cannot get tests for themselves or family members.

Mr Hopson said trusts need to know more detail so they can plan accordingly, for example by creating their own testing facilities.

"Our recent survey showed how concerned trust leaders were about the impact of inadequate testing on their ability to restore services and it's disappointing that no detailed information on the current problems has been shared," he said.

Meanwhile, the chairman of the British Medical Association has said the government should focus on the current testing system - rather than its "Operation Moonshot" plan which aims to see millions of tests processed every day by using a new type of test which is not yet rolled out.

"Down here on planet Earth, we need a fit for purpose test and trace system in the here and now with capacity, agility and accessibility that doesn't require 100-mile journeys that disadvantage some of the most vulnerable," the BMA's Dr Chaand Nagpaul is expected to say in a speech later on Tuesday.