Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[StoneRoad]

StoneRoad you have a sunbed in your home are you joking?

excuse the partial derail ...
Nope, not joking -I've got one. It's a canopy rather than a double-side toaster, though.
(Only got it because a place that hired them went bust and a mate had one at home they wanted rid of, so I took it in. used it fairly frequently before a trip to the south of France to build up a base tan)

What I will probably do is rig it in the spare room, which may well turn back into a home gym for the winter.

 

[elbows]

Government strategy primarily seemed to hinge upon the idea that this would just go away, or if it didn't then it at least wouldn't be anywhere near as serious as the first time to warrant severe restrictions again. As you say it's disgraceful there were no contingency plans in place for a proper second wave which it looks like we've hit now.

I think it hinged more on the idea that in the main key areas that would be expected to make a huge difference to amount of pandemic death, most of the issues were structural and they knew that they could not magically fix the threadbare systems and respond appropriately to this pandemic given the austerity years and the equally shit funding priorities for decades prior to the austerity years.

So there is a "cant do" mentality as seen in the stuff I posted earlier, in that case the NHS management not bothering with structural changes because they didnt think they could do it. PHE were just the same in regards testing capacity in the early months, much to the frustration of SAGE.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Still loads of people like my father-in-law proud that the UK are "testing more people than anyone else in Europe".

That's like saying I can type 150 words a minute in my own language.

 

[quimcunx]

I've got to the bit where she talks about matching trajectories across countries and us being behind and she says the good news is we are behind and we do have time to step off this curve.

So same as before and the question is have we learned?

For sure a 2 week lockdown a month from now is going to be too late again.

 

[sheothebudworths]

I find the format a bit annoying and unprofessional, and the content sometimes a bit too ranty and piecemeal. And they still have some of that patronizing air to public questions.

That's interesting! I think - it's a lot of expertise, which is not driven by their role/paycheck - and that it's difficult, but also more accessable, when it's done via shoddy Zoom meetings ( ).
I don't doubt that there's such a thing as zero impartial advice but I'm very, very glad there's an opposite to what we have - and I think they've had some obvious positive impacts, while their gov employed counterparts* have clearly not found their voices sometimes (*even when I almost get why they want to stick with it, too, fwiw).
The more voices the better, really - and I would prefer to have some who feel they can shout louder.

 

[sheothebudworths]

They have learnt the lessons about bank staff having the potential to transmit infection between multiple care homes, and announced funding to address some of that this week.

But this is one of those lessons it is hard to believe were not well known long before this pandemic actually happened. And there is obviously quite a difference between announcing stuff and chucking some money at a problem and actually getting the right results.

Yes. And really too late in the midst of one, eh - isn't this week, a bit fucking late?!

 

[SlideshowBob]

Still loads of people like my father-in-law proud that the UK are "testing more people than anyone else in Europe".

That's like saying I can type 150 words a minute in my own language.

The government seem to be promoting this idea that merely trying hard to rectify the current problems we're facing is worthy of commendation - even if they're don't do anything to actually tangibly fix the problem itself. So major cock-ups are instead framed as honest mistakes, even when those avoidable errors have really bad consequences.

 

[cupid_stunt]

It doesn't look like lessons have been learnt there - there's been some very recent stuff in the news about the increase of testing, which was promised to care homes as a priority, still not coming through (iirc that was supposed to be sorted for July and then for, literally, last week?) and now, with the recent total fuck up in testing, care homes are not getting results back quickly (if they even get them) and as a result they are still working while they wait and cases are spreading in care homes again. They need to have adequate supplies of tests - and fast results - it's an absolute disgrace that they are back to this point again.

I was in a Zoom meeting a couple of days ago, which included the owner of a local care home, who is also in a online group of around 300 care homes across the region, she reported they have all been getting tests delivered & collected for at least 2 months now. It's weekly tests for staff, four weekly for residents, the tests are collected twice a week from her home, and results back in 24-36 hours normally.

However, one lot collected last week took 5 days for the results to come back, and some others reported similiar delays for that week. Her guess is this batch was included in those sent to German or Italian labs for processing.

 

[elbows]

If you want to know how well care homes will do in a second wave then as well as the testing issues that are fairly well focussed on, people need to ask whether the 'NHS reverse triage' pandemic policy is still in place in largely unchanged form. Because if it is, then even a really massive, routine, robust testing system for that sector might not be enough to prevent what happened last time from happening again. Let alone a sticking plaster of broken testing promises.

 

[elbows]

Yes. And really too late in the midst of one, eh - isn't this week, a bit fucking late?!

Although there is some stuff that should have come much earlier, some of the thing that will be required for the autumn-winter period are reasonable to announce and put in place now. But the timing of some stuff is probably out of whack with the epidemic curve timing we actually face, since its reasonable to think that various increases we've seen in September were things they had modelled to occur in October.

Its going to be the same foul mix as last time, where some failures are of timing, others of ambition, others of priority, others of the detail. The wrong things at the wrong time, inadequate things at nearly the right time, maybe even some of the easier things that they actually can pull out of a hat at short notice, such as furlough v2.0, at the right time.

 

[sheothebudworths]

I was in a Zoom meeting a couple of days ago, which included the owner of a local care home, who is also in a online group of around 300 care homes across the region, she reported they have all been getting tests delivered & collected for at least 2 months now. It's weekly tests for staff, four weekly for residents, the tests are collected twice a week from her home, and results back in 24-36 hours normally.

However, one lot collected last week took 5 days for the results to come back, and some others reported similiar delays for that week. Her guess is this batch was included in those sent to German or Italian labs for processing.

Yes, I've read some fairly recent stuff about how it's starting to wrong again (just when they need it not to) - for sure some care homes who've recently had a spread which was (probably!) down to some very late positive test results of staff coming back (like, a week) in which time they continued working (as advised), with a follow on of a spread to residents.
It's great that it had been working but utterly shit that it's broken now, when they need it (and when reopening schools and encouraging people back to work should have factored into that, as a priority).

 

[elbows]

A lot of the summer success was indeed a temporary illusion afforded to them by the vastly reduced number of cases, a reduction achieved by lockdown etc. If you dont pursue policies which keep the levels of infection down to that sort of level then the illusion inevitably ends at some point, and that point seems to have been reached on the earlier side of expectations. And there have been clues for months from countries like the USA, Spain, France etc that good times would end sooner rather than later.

 

[two sheds]

wtf

Hospitals told not to test staff or patients for Covid-19

Exclusive: NHS told not to use labs unless testing tsar has approved funding despite widespread shortage

www.independent.co.uk

worldbeating

 

[Cloo]

Government strategy primarily seemed to hinge upon the idea that this would just go away, or if it didn't then it at least wouldn't be anywhere near as serious as the first time to warrant severe restrictions again. As you say it's disgraceful there were no contingency plans in place for a proper second wave which it looks like we've hit now.

Sadly I think you're spot on - 'oh well, the first bit will be the worst, so we'll just manage after that'. Which is spectacularly reckless given that was spring and we've got a whole winter to get through when this novel virus has existed for barely a year

 

[Sue]

There is no fuckup so fucked up that it cannot be made worse by the presence of a load of management consultants. FFS . (Apologies to BB.)

Troubled test-and-trace system drafts in management consultants

Guardian learns ‘hundreds’ of consultancy staff ‘on standby’ for ‘back-office’ roles with other firms contacted for help

www.theguardian.com

 

[scifisam]

wtf difference is closing pubs earlier supposed to make? Apart from re-instating the 11:05 Fight Time when all the drunks got ejected simultaneously.

Yep. Pubs are already allowed to refuse service to people who seem too drunk to buy more. Although drink does lead to less social distancing, it's more at the "probably shouldn't be buying another drink" stage.

Like you say, there did used to be an 11pm fight time - wasn't it the police who were one of the main supporting voices (apart from pub owners) behind extending opening times? I'm fairly sure the ambulance service and so on were in favour too, because having people leave at different times made their services easier to cope with demand. Fighting isn't exactly covid-friendly but the other non-covid factors also still apply.

It was also 11pm crowded onto buses and the tube, 11pm waiting around for taxis, 11pm starting at 7pm rather than 8pm leading to more crowding onto buses at that time...

Either shut them early (for the restaurant part, and because not as many people get trashed at 9pm on a weekday) or don't let them open at all - having them all shut at the same time late in the evening is daft. Let's allow people to get drunk and then make them all crowd together, great idea.

 

[scifisam]

(Sorry for the post burst but thought it was better to split them up, VP style).

Which is why shops can't/won't enforce it on customers. In most German states everyone in any enclosed public space must wear a mask, those states that don't mandate it, everyone does anyway and you will be yelled at by staff and public alike if you enter without one. Not fucking hard, is it.

I think Germany has better provisions for workers in general, though. More breaks, and, at the moment, more support for workers who can't wear a mask (or at least not for their whole shift). Here, workers go in or get fired.

It is also a cultural thing - Germans shout at you for not waiting for the crossing light to be in your favour even if the road is clear.

And there have been anti-mask protests in Germany, too. Anecdotally from German speakers it's more former DDR citizens that are protesting. I'd assume that's due to less trust in the government rather than them just being badly-behaved Ossis.

 

[scifisam]

I am kinda surprised that testing is (still) free and can't help feeling sceptical that there is likely to be some 'fastracking' for a price...And an agenda to determine test allocation. The private healthcare priorities (and political ideology) has determined the painfully brutal response to this pandemic Predatory disaster capitalism - lacking morality, decency, justice or integrity naturally appeals to the heartless, selfish, arrogant or stupidly vacuous. - they are a despicable bunch of inadequates.

You can pay for private tests - that's one of the reasons lots of actors have tested positive. Only one of the reasons - I think sometimes it was because one person on their set fell ill with covid and everyone else was required to be tested as a matter of course either by the country they were filming in or the insurance companies underwriting the production, who tend to be pretty risk-averse.

TBF on the people accessing private tests, if they have access to a private testing facility and don't use it, it would be worse than not being tested.

I don't think there will be pressure to make general covid tests fee-based, even under this govt. Retailers wouldn't be able to cope and their owners are major donors to the Tory party. I think it was Hancock who said something about people getting more tests because they were free, but he's known to be in favour of a US-style system, and those people tend to think people only get healthcare because they feel like it, not because they have to.

 

[scifisam]

The big issue in the North east is that the regulations & guidelines for the local restrictions allow for various types of paid-for childcare - childminders, nannies, nurseries etc - but not informal childcare. Loads of people taken off furlough or told to stop working from home now have to choose between losing income/job or breaking the law.

Especially people with more than two kids under 11 so they can't get tax credits for the third kid and paid childcare is even less of an option. Another way in which seemingly unrelated Tory changes have made the situation worse than it should have been.

 

[Humberto]

10 years of Bullingdon Club

 

[scifisam]

Something I saw on the news the other day when I accidentally watched it was interesting: the Co-Op group has reported extremely good quarterly profits. Part of it is due to many of their stores (including Nisa, which they own) being in suburbs and non-central areas, but some of it was also due to an increase in profits in their funeral department.

The funeral profits only went up by 3.5%, but that was because of covid restrictions on attendance, hearses, etc. Without that, their funeral profits would have increased by 22%. I think that's a pretty good indication that death rates overall have increased, and it'd be a fucking huge coincidence if it weren't due to covid. I don't know what their increase in funeral profits was last year, but I bet it wasn't 22%.

Co-op delivers for stakeholders during Covid-19 crisis

About the Co-op, annual reports, board members, ethics and values.

www.co-operative.coop

 

[elbows]

I dont really understand the need to look for such clues about the amount of death though.

Total number of deaths every day from all causes are available. Here for example is a somewhat out of date graph showing total deaths per day for England & Wales. At the peak twice as many people as usual were dying every day. Source of the underlying data was a monthly ONS report that I havent looked at for quite some time. Next time I do I will post a link to the latest version.

 

[scifisam]

I dont really understand the need to look for such clues about the amount of death though.

Because people are sceptical about some sources, including the govt. Some conspiraloons might also think the Co-Op is in on it - the same ones who think Tom Hanks smuggles toddlers in Wayfair cupboards - but there are lot of others who aren't as far gone as that. The Co-Op is an added source of an increase in deaths, and it's from a relatively trustworthy organisation.

I'm sorry, but to me and probably most people who don't work in an area that requires graphs daily, that's the reality. The proliferation of graphs has lead to a kind of a version of semantic satiation where they just look like pictures, and even if you make you effort to look at them, it takes a lot longer to parse them than it does to understand, via words, "the co-op has buried way more people than usual."

 

[Looby]

Something I saw on the news the other day when I accidentally watched it was interesting: the Co-Op group has reported extremely good quarterly profits. Part of it is due to many of their stores (including Nisa, which they own) being in suburbs and non-central areas, but some of it was also due to an increase in profits in their funeral department.

The funeral profits only went up by 3.5%, but that was because of covid restrictions on attendance, hearses, etc. Without that, their funeral profits would have increased by 22%. I think that's a pretty good indication that death rates overall have increased, and it'd be a fucking huge coincidence if it weren't due to covid. I don't know what their increase in funeral profits was last year, but I bet it wasn't 22%.

Co-op delivers for stakeholders during Covid-19 crisis

About the Co-op, annual reports, board members, ethics and values.

www.co-operative.coop

They’re also increasing their presence in the funeral market, buying up independent firms all the time. I’m not convinced at all that their profit increase is related to excess deaths but I’d be interested to see what my funeral business friends think.

 

[cupid_stunt]

Sadiq Khan is 'extremely concerned by the latest evidence' on covid spreading in London, and it looks like London is heading towards a local 'lockdown'.

It is "increasingly likely" that lockdown restrictions will soon be needed to slow the spread of coronavirus in London, the capital's mayor has warned.

Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said he was of the "firm view" that action should be taken before the virus spirals out of control.

In a statement, he said he had held an emergency meeting with London council leaders, the Government and Public Heath England to discuss the next steps.

Mr Khan added: "The Prime Minister has said that we are now seeing the start of a second wave of Covid-19 across the UK.

"Londoners should also know that I am extremely concerned by the latest evidence I've seen today from public health experts about the accelerating speed at which Covid-19 is now spreading here in London.

"It is increasingly likely that, in London, additional measures will soon be required to slow the spread of the virus.

"We will be considering some of the measures which have already been imposed in other parts of the UK."

UK cases hit four-month high for second day in a row

www.telegraph.co.uk

 

[TopCat]

100, 000 cases a day by November if this carries on like it is.

 

[cupid_stunt]

100, 000 cases a day by November if this carries on like it is.

Well, the ONS survey tends to estimate infection at twice those that test positive under pillars 1 & 2, i.e. the daily reported figures, so would be around 7,000 a day now.

If that continues to double every 7-8 days, we will be over 100k a day by mid-October.

 

[TopCat]

Well, the ONS survey tends to estimate infection at twice those that test positive under pillars 1 & 2, i.e. the daily reported figures, so would be around 7,000 a day now.

If that continues to double every 7-8 days, we will be over 100k a day by mid-October.

Oh dear. By the time it gets really cold the numbers will be mind boggling.

 

[LDC]

Well, the ONS survey tends to estimate infection at twice those that test positive under pillars 1 & 2, i.e. the daily reported figures, so would be around 7,000 a day now.

If that continues to double every 7-8 days, we will be over 100k a day by mid-October.

Hence it looks like we'll get more restrictions sooner rather than later. I hope.

 

[Cloo]

Sadiq Khan is 'extremely concerned by the latest evidence' on covid spreading in London, and it looks like London is heading towards a local 'lockdown'.

UK cases hit four-month high for second day in a row

www.telegraph.co.uk

I'll guess I'll ask my brother about that, seeing as he's head of the mayor's team on coronavirus response!