Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[IC3D]

That is another concern I have about the tracing app that it will be used to dish out fines.
Getting iffy now hiding draconian shit in their befuddled response

 

[Teaboy]

Covid wardens can use reasonable force. Fucking hell

It sounds like people can just name you as someone they were near and you have to self isolate regardless of whether its true or not. No questions asked. Great!

 

[killer b]

It sounds like people can just name you as someone they were near and you have to self isolate regardless of whether its true or not. No questions asked. Great!

there are penalties for doing this maliciously too though.

 

[two sheds]

by the wardens too, if you give them lip?

 

[Cid]

That is another concern I have about the tracing app that it will be used to dish out fines.
Getting iffy now hiding draconian shit in their befuddled response

It can't identify you. Even if you got an alert and decided not to self-isolate (which... don't) you could just delete the app. It will delete any data associated with it. And the alerts given by the app aren't legally enforceable.

 

[andysays]

I imagine she is very grateful there are lots of Alices in Surrey, because she sounds like w complete cunt.

I was going to post a link to that article myself.

She does sound like a bit of a cunt.

"for the good of my own mental well being" is selfish bullshit, but without wanting to be too misty eyed and nostalgic, it's no coincidence that there now appear to be far more selfish cunts around prepared to prioritize their own immediate satisfaction over general social wellbeing than there once were, is it?

 

[frogwoman]

It can't identify you. Even if you got an alert and decided not to self-isolate (which... don't) you could just delete the app. It will delete any data associated with it. And the alerts given by the app aren't legally enforceable.

How are the fines being enforced then?

 

[Cid]

How are the fines being enforced then?

The other contact tracing procedure.

 

[killer b]

without wanting to be too misty eyed and nostalgic, it's no coincidence that there now appear to be far more selfish cunts around prepared to prioritize their own immediate satisfaction over general social wellbeing than there once were, is it?

will need to see some data on this, or I'm afraid you're going in the misty eyed spirit of the blitz corner.

 

[elbows]

Major outbreak of hospital covid transmission at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital.

Coronavirus: Royal Glamorgan Hospital reports eight deaths linked to major COVID-19 outbreak

It follows an outbreak of 82 coronavirus cases, which has caused the hospital to suspend most services.

news.sky.com

I was quite impressed that the authorities there didnt try to hide the nature of the situation behind weasel words, unlike some NHS England hospital outbreaks I could name.

Here is a Guardian version of the story: South Wales hospital cancels most operations after Covid outbreak

 

[Badgers]

Covid wardens can use reasonable force. Fucking hell

What about us 'self titled' Covid Wardens?

 

[editor]

And the selfish twats are off again

Toilet roll panic shopping returns to Brixton as supermarkets say, ‘please shop as normal’

We’ve had a few people contact us to say that they’ve noticed diminishing stocks of toilet roll in their local supermarkets as the threat of an increased lockdown looms – and a tr…

www.brixtonbuzz.com

 

[Cid]

What about us 'self titled' Covid Wardens?

Nah, you have to be designated by a local authority or the secretary of state (it doesn't say which secretary of state in that bit though).

 

[two sheds]

I'm considered something of a local authority in my village



at least I think that's what they said

 

[SpookyFrank]

It sounds like people can just name you as someone they were near and you have to self isolate regardless of whether its true or not. No questions asked. Great!

I was sat next to Boris Johnson in the pub last night and as it happens I'm feeling dead peaky today

 

[Badgers]

Nah, you have to be designated by a local authority or the secretary of state (it doesn't say which secretary of state in that bit though).

Cheers for that but am just going to to plough on and see what happens.

 

[elbows]

I sometimes go on about how hospital Covid-19 demand was suppressed at the peak in a way that probably caused plenty of people to die at home.

Its a subject that doesnt come up in the news much (apart from a few examples at the peak of the first wave) so when I find a little snippet of info I feel the need to highlight it.

Exhibit A. Michael Rosen.

Rosen had been ill with flu-like symptoms in mid-March. He seemed to be getting better, but then he got “bed-breaking shakes” and extreme aches two weeks later. On 28 March, Williams, the mother of his two youngest children, called NHS 111 and was told to keep him away from hospital if possible. As the day progressed, she became terrified. She asked a doctor friend to take a look at him.

“His oxygen level was at 58,” Williams says. “Nearly dead,” Rosen says. “Nearly dead,” Williams replies. “Not quite.” Rosen didn’t want to go to hospital. He had the shivers and was freezing. Williams and their 19-year-old daughter, Elsie, insisted. His respiratory system, liver and kidneys were failing.

Michael Rosen on his Covid-19 coma: ‘It felt like a pre-death, a nothingness’

Earlier this year, the beloved children’s writer spent six weeks on a ventilator with coronavirus. He talks about the magic of the NHS, the mismanagement of the crisis and how his near-death experience has changed him

www.theguardian.com

 

[SpookyFrank]

That is another concern I have about the tracing app that it will be used to dish out fines.
Getting iffy now hiding draconian shit in their befuddled response

Yeah the pole I'm not touching that app with has extended to thirty feet.

 

[LDC]

Yeah the pole I'm not touching that app with has extended to thirty feet.

It might be a concern, but the app can't be used in that way. There's no personal info stored and as someone has said you could just delete it anyway. Fines would come from people being found out through the other parts of the T&T system.

 

[elbows]

In other parts of that Rosen article its not clear whether he has put two and two together in regards what was nearly his own fate, if the family hadnt had a doctor friend/ignored NHS 111 advice.

He says it’s impossible to express just how happy he is to be alive and his gratitude to the NHS. “Suddenly, you realise there’s this great logistical thing that I floated up on to the top of. It buoyed me up and saved my life.” Again, he becomes emotional as he talks about how nurses sat by his bed every night, kept a diary, praised him for coughing up secretions, urged him back to life, showed him the same care and love his family would do.

He would not have floated to the top if the earlier part of the logistics chain had gotten its way.

But he is very aware of the issues when they apply to older people:

He is furious at the way older people have been treated by the government. “They thought that by decanting the old people out of the wards and into the care homes they would relieve stress in the NHS. They had some policy that they’ve never fully declared. It’s eugenics, isn’t it? It’s the sense that some people are less entitled to live.”

Rosen mentions the controversialist Toby Young, who suggested people in their late 70s weren’t worth the economic cost it would require to save them. Ironically, he says, just before he caught the virus, he was debating in the Today studio whether 70-year-olds had as much right to live as 20-year-olds. “I said: we can’t live in a society where we think old people are expendable, but it’s clear that thought was going around.”

And the abhorrent Tory agenda:

Yet he despises the government’s hypocrisy – telling us to protect our health service while doing the opposite itself. “The NHS has been targeted in two ways: underfunded during austerity and this constant nibbling away. Privatising.” He considers the appointment of the Tory peer Dido Harding to be corrupt and questions her expertise to run test and trace. “The idea that you’d do it with a bunch of cowboys who’ve run a mobile phone company badly, you just think: ‘Jesus’.”

He says it runs counter to everything the Conservatives preach about education and meritocracy. “The old theory was that you build up expertise by doing GCSEs, A-levels, degree, MSc, PhD and then you might rise to the top – and they might call on you to run an emergency like a pandemic – but no, because Dido will get in there instead.”

 

[Orang Utan]

there are penalties for doing this maliciously too though.

I wish someone would maliciously report me. I could do with a fortnight off from work.

 

[quimcunx]

Any NHS people know what the PPE situation is now? So back in march there was proper PPE. We didnt have that so they changed the definition of PPE to bin bags and ball gags or whatever. Are staff getting appropriate PPE now and are there stocks to get through winter?

 

[IC3D]

Green - surgical mask and gloves covid -
Amber - the above and goggles/apron covid query (all admissions unless isolating)
Red - n95 mask and gown covid +
quimcunx
No idea about stocks.
V few covid admissions atm.
Eta not much covid anxiety were too busy

 

[bimble]

London lockdown looking increasingly imminent. I am so tired of the endless 'will urgenty consider' and don't understand why they cant just decide, make a clear announcement and give everyone a little bit of time to organise their lives.

Urgent talks over London ban on mixing households next week

Even areas that have low levels of virus will be hit under new London curb

www.standard.co.uk

 

[belboid]

Sainsbury’s boss Mike Coupe appointed as head of ‘NHS’ track n trace.

If you’ve forgotten who he is...

Sainsbury's boss sorry for singing We're in the Money - BBC News

 

[elbows]

As far as I know he has been made testing director, not head of the whole thing.

So lots of talk about 20 minute tests and moonshot.

So long as I dont have to ever hear him singing "we're in the money shot" I may yet survive this pandemic.

 

[teuchter]

London lockdown looking increasingly imminent. I am so tired of the endless 'will urgenty consider' and don't understand why they cant just decide, make a clear announcement and give everyone a little bit of time to organise their lives.

Urgent talks over London ban on mixing households next week

Even areas that have low levels of virus will be hit under new London curb

www.standard.co.uk

If they announce things in advance, then the complaint is that it encourages people to get in a load of extra risky behaviour before the lockdown happens.
If they announce at very short notice then the complaint is that no-one has any time to re-organise things.

Perhaps the period of "urgent consideration" is a way of steering between the two.

 

[bimble]

I suppose so. It’s plain from that article that anybody in London who wants to have a drunken swingers party had better hurry up and do it this weekend, so there’s that.

 

[zora]

I sometimes go on about how hospital Covid-19 demand was suppressed at the peak in a way that probably caused plenty of people to die at home.

Its a subject that doesnt come up in the news much (apart from a few examples at the peak of the first wave) so when I find a little snippet of info I feel the need to highlight it.

Thank you for highlighting it. I agree that it has been underreported.

I remember a Question Time sometime in spring, when there was talk of the "we managed to protect the NHS, it didn't get overwhelmed, and we haven't seen the horrific scenes that we saw in Italy", and everyone on the panel nodded their agreement. It fell to a member of the zoom audience to disagree and say that whilst we hadn't seen the horrific scenes, it wasn't because they hadn't happened but because they hadn't been shown.

In all this time, the only two cases I can remember reading about were a man in Wales whose partner said he hadn't wanted to burden the NHS, and a woman in Peckham whose husband called the ambulance service and she wasn't taken in and died in the night. I am sure there must have been many more, and I can't think of anything much more horrific. (Well I can but you get my drift).

Eta: I also wonder sometimes about the stress and horror this must have caused the ambulance personnel

 

[elbows]

Major outbreak of hospital covid transmission at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital.

Coronavirus: Royal Glamorgan Hospital reports eight deaths linked to major COVID-19 outbreak

It follows an outbreak of 82 coronavirus cases, which has caused the hospital to suspend most services.

news.sky.com

8 deaths officially so far from that hospital outbreak:

Covid: Eight die in Royal Glamorgan Hospital outbreak

Planned surgeries have been temporarily stopped at the Royal Glamorgan Hospital.

www.bbc.co.uk

All hospital outbreaks deserve this amount of reporting at a minimum. It hasnt happened with some of the other deadly outbreaks, and I will go out of my way to cover those again soon.