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18 minutes ago, kick it off said:

This is a stark contrast to Raab saying they now have the capacity for 10,000 cases per day. Presuming that each case has 160 contacts each (going by the sage data above) then he appears to be saying that at full capacity (which we are pretty close to with 8000 new cases per day currently), tracers would need to contact a total of 1.6 million people per day. 

You are working on the assumption that the 8000 new infections are unrelated. This wont be the case and you'll probably find that there is a big overlap in contacts.  I suspect that outside of institutional settings where contact tracing should be much easier the vast majority of contacts in a socially distant world will be within a household 

The big question for me is will we get  infections down to a reasonable level before public transport use explodes and london gets back up and running

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Is "herd immunity" still secret government policy and they are hiding it behind a veneer of incompetence?

Are they seriously incompetent and we are going to get "herd immunity" whether we like it or not?

Asking as we have had an age and still have a high level of professional people and companies out there that could have got track and trace up to a quality level standard.

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The public won’t trust the government and Johnson this time if they try to re-tighten lockdown conditions.

Maybe but it is a kick to the gonads for our leftie pals that after this so called fiasco the Tories are still ahead of Labour in latest opinion poll.

BTW where is the leftie furore about the chap who claimed to have seen Cummings make a second visit to Durham admitting he made it up? Why are they not queuing up to hurl abuse in the street at Rosie Duffield for breaking lockdown conditions? Hypocritical barstewards.

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16 minutes ago, Herman said:

Is "herd immunity" still secret government policy and they are hiding it behind a veneer of incompetence?

Are they seriously incompetent and we are going to get "herd immunity" whether we like it or not?

Asking as we have had an age and still have a high level of professional people and companies out there that could have got track and trace up to a quality level standard.

The ridiculous and entirely unprecedented speed at which we are developing vaccines is going to be a factor. A lot of countries will be thinking that they can keep this thing contained/suppressed until that point comes. I think that we are in that category.

I'm agnostic on the enlarged trace and track, I cant prove or disprove its success without data.  I suspect that the basic job is easily 'doable' and the theory is tried and tested. The make or break is the IT. 

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I'm agnostic on the enlarged trace and track, I cant prove or disprove its success without data.  I suspect that the basic job is easily 'doable' and the theory is tried and tested. The make or break is the IT. 

Will you believe the figures? Do you have confidence we will be told the absolutely correct ones?

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If we were in a position of no effective vaccine for 5 plus years many would probably be encouraging the young to party hard whilst barricading the elderly and the vulnerable. There would be losses along the way but on a greater scale more years would be saved than lost... sounds harsh but such a policy would probably survive cold, detached analysis 

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26 minutes ago, Crafty Canary said:

The public won’t trust the government and Johnson this time if they try to re-tighten lockdown conditions.

Maybe but it is a kick to the gonads for our leftie pals that after this so called fiasco the Tories are still ahead of Labour in latest opinion poll.

BTW where is the leftie furore about the chap who claimed to have seen Cummings make a second visit to Durham admitting he made it up? Why are they not queuing up to hurl abuse in the street at Rosie Duffield for breaking lockdown conditions? Hypocritical barstewards.

Not bothered Crafty about whether this is a left or a right issue. I just want a government to tackle this crisis with openness, honesty, transparency but most of all with competence and credibility. Honestly, couldn't give a **** if Johnson's government was to manage this well just because I happened not to vote for them - I would be very pleased and reassured mostly.  Yet this sh1tshow has made mis-step after mis-step. It is the most appalling management I have seen in my lifetime.

I do agree with your first sentence.

 

 

Edited by sonyc
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2 minutes ago, sonyc said:

I just want a government to tackle this crisis with openness, honesty, transparency but most of all with competence and credibility.

Amen to that Sonyc

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1 minute ago, Daz Sparks said:

Amen to that Sonyc

Thank you and I agreed with your earlier post - Sunak has handled the finances and business support with a good degree of surety and inspires some confidence. He has not been matched by many other cabinet ministers.

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3 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

 

Will you believe the figures? Do you have confidence we will be told the absolutely correct ones?

Probably. If you look behind the headlines the data in this is almost always there.  

I have faith that the ONS and NHS are professional.  The government are entitled to their analysis, as am I and anyone else.  The important thing is that we all have access to the primary data.

Do i have access to the primary data is the question to ask.  

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2 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

No. I do not think that is the case. 

 There was no official policy to this effect and from thenwiser reading I did on this it seems that decisions like this were delegated to clinicians in the usual manner.

Hopefully this will come out when there is a Public Enquiry into the Government's handling of this affair. 

A quick google search turns up managers of Care Homes telling of cases where Care Home residents have not been admitted to hospital for various conditions and definite cases where Doctors have been adding DNR notices to residents notes without consulting their families - and don't tell me that these "clinicians" were doing this without guidance from above.

#gov.uk#blood on our hands

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40 minutes ago, sonyc said:

Thank you and I agreed with your earlier post - Sunak has handled the finances and business support with a good degree of surety and inspires some confidence. He has not been matched by many other cabinet ministers.

Ditto, there are several things that have been done well and that is to the government’s and the specific cabinet minister’s credit. On the other hand several ministers have been found wanting and filling the majority of available positions with loyalists has never been a recipe for success in any organization, especially a national government. Compound all of that with a political advisor committed to “deconstruction of the state” and you have the US and UK governments in a nutshell, and why there will be and deserves to be ongoing skepticism and fact checking on almost every action they announce. It’s unsustainable in the long term, but here we all are. 

Edited by Surfer
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44 minutes ago, Trevor Hockey's Beard said:

Hopefully this will come out when there is a Public Enquiry into the Government's handling of this affair. 

A quick google search turns up managers of Care Homes telling of cases where Care Home residents have not been admitted to hospital for various conditions and definite cases where Doctors have been adding DNR notices to residents notes without consulting their families - and don't tell me that these "clinicians" were doing this without guidance from above.

#gov.uk#blood on our hands

Did this happen before?

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9 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Did this happen before?

@Barbe bleu and @Trevor Hockey's Beard, I believe DNR has been happening as a practice well before the pandemic. Having lost my mother in a care home earlier this year (January) DNR was already in place. Before that, her local medical practice had also asked both me (as someone with medical / health power of attorney, but also a direct question by her GP to my mum, perhaps a year before).

So, unless the DNR issue has been re-inforced as the pandemic progressed, I think this practice / notice has been usual practice for some time.

Edited by sonyc

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2 hours ago, kick it off said:

This is a stark contrast to Raab saying they now have the capacity for 10,000 cases per day. Presuming that each case has 160 contacts each (going by the sage data above) then he appears to be saying that at full capacity (which we are pretty close to with 8000 new cases per day currently), tracers would need to contact a total of 1.6 million people per day. each individual tracer would on average be contacting 64 people per day. I've some experience with contacting large numbers of people in a day, when I've had to make bulk phone calls for school about trips etc.... I think 64 per day sounds like a lot, and that's without factoring in time for breaks, having days off etc. It also doesn't include people not picking up their phone, answerphone messages etc etc.

If you work on the basis that each day there will be 1/7 off at any one time (based on having one day off per week), it works out to an average of 75 calls per day for those on duty. If they're having 2 days off per week then it's 89 calls per day for those on duty.

If they're sending out text messages or emails then I guess it's possible, but if they're calling people manually then I'm not convinced it is.

However all that, assumes that an app is in place to provide the tracers with details of those who have been in contact. Without the app, and tracers having to manually work out all contacts then this is absolute nonsense, there's no way it's physically possible.

Raab said it was a "delicate and dangerous moment" but that the testing and tracing mechanism which was in place would keep the pressure down on the virus.

He said it had been operational since Thursday with 25,000 tracers and the ability to track 10,000 cases a day.

Andrew Marr pointed out to him that there were more than 8,000 new cases a day currently, which meant this was "on the edge".

Raab was not able to give a figure for the number of people traced so far.

"We have got the ability for 10,000 cases to track all the contacts they have had and that system is up and running."

To me this sort of basic maths is why I’ve always been suspicious that track and trace was this miracle solution to the pandemic.

New case numbers would have to be significantly lower, probably well under 100 a day for this to be a highly effective system to reduce the spread. 

And that is without considering just how many people are likely to be carrying without any symptoms. Some reports of contained outbreaks such as cruise ships are suggesting that % may be massive.

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3 minutes ago, Monty13 said:

To me this sort of basic maths is why I’ve always been suspicious that track and trace was this miracle solution to the pandemic.

New case numbers would have to be significantly lower, probably well under 100 a day for this to be a highly effective system to reduce the spread. 

And that is without considering just how many people are likely to be carrying without any symptoms. Some reports of contained outbreaks such as cruise ships are suggesting that % may be massive.

Agree with this. Never expected the UK to be trying to make this work at the numbers being reported now. Certainly as we are having to set up new structures to handle this. 

If the new cases numbers were in 3 figures (and at the lower end), I believe it is an excellent process (properly embedded) for future management whilst the economy is re-established. 

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2 hours ago, Crafty Canary said:

The public won’t trust the government and Johnson this time if they try to re-tighten lockdown conditions.

Maybe but it is a kick to the gonads for our leftie pals that after this so called fiasco the Tories are still ahead of Labour in latest opinion poll.

BTW where is the leftie furore about the chap who claimed to have seen Cummings make a second visit to Durham admitting he made it up? Why are they not queuing up to hurl abuse in the street at Rosie Duffield for breaking lockdown conditions? Hypocritical barstewards.

Rosie Duffield has apologised and resigned - for her partner coming to visit her at her home. Cummings drove 300 miles, left his residence to drive to a hospital when he says he had covid symptoms, had a day trip out stopping off at more than one location, he and his wife both ‘forgot’ to mention the trip in public comments before  they were caught out, and he has not so much as suggested he might have been in the wrong. In fact, he said he doesn’t care what it looks like to everybody else. And Rosie Duffield and her party have had no input into the legislation or the guidance.

 

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3 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

To the wider politics of this an important question would be around the funding available to this part of PHE and how that impacted on staffing, resourcing and training.  If the department is largely unchanged since 2009 it's a little unfair to blame either Boris or the Tories. If it is changed since that time this would be on their watch but whose precisely would need to be determined.

Whoah there @Barbe bleu, lets not invent too many stories so you trip yourself up in your increasingly desparate attempts to exonerate Johnson/Cummings.

It is pretty unlikely that the department remained unchanged from 2009 seeing as it didn't come into existance until the 1st April 2013 as part of the Lansley reforms.

Tories are caught bang to rights on this one. They centralised when those countries that have successfully dealt with this devolved. They then underfunded the NHS and slashed local government funding. Guilty as guilty can be on this charge.

Edited by BigFish
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29 minutes ago, sonyc said:

@Barbe bleu and @Trevor Hockey's Beard, I believe DNR has been happening as a practice well before the pandemic. Having lost my mother in a care home earlier this year (January) DNR was already in place. Before that, her local medical practice had also asked both me (as someone with medical / health power of attorney, but also a direct question by her GP to my mum, perhaps a year before).

So, unless the DNR issue has been re-inforced as the pandemic progressed, I think this practice / notice has been usual practice for some time.

My point is that since the start of the pandemic DNR has been added to presidents' case notes without asking anyone.

My Mum had a DNR in place, which was signed off by both me and my Sister. This is a very different situation than adding it without consulting the family. One resident in my Mum's Care Home was in her late 60s and perfectly sound of mind, but had mobility issues and preferred the ease of living there rather than looking after herself. Is it Ok to have a DNR on her file just because she is in a Care Home?

I'm sorry, but this smacks of panic and a lack of thought about the consequences. The government mantra was "must clear hospitals and keep them clear for covid patients from the community".

There are over 400,000 people living in Care Homes, which means that a large number of families have at least one relative in a Care Home. The sacrificing of Care Home residents by this Government - largely due to their lack of planning and tardiness in dealing with the outbreak- has and will continue to anger a lot of people.

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11 minutes ago, BigFish said:

Whoah there @Barbe bleu, lets not invent too many stories so you trip yourself up in your increasingly desparate attempts to exonerate Johnson/Cummings.

It is pretty unlikely that the department remained unchanged from 2009 seeing as it didn't come into existance until the 1st April 2013 as part of the Lansley reforms.

Tories are caught bang to rights on this one. They centralised when those countries that have successfully dealt with this devolved. They then underfunded the NHS and slashed local government funding. Guilty as guilty can be on this charge.

Read my message again. 

The big clue is the word 'if'. My post was in neutral terms.  It was a genuine question/line of examination. 

I was suggesting we can see the relative importance of contact tracing in the budget etc it is given. I'm not talking about the PHE budget overall (or the former HPA budget). Indeed my post clearly says "this part of  PHE". If tories slashed the contact tracing budget that says a lot but if it is broadly the same you can hardly pin it on Boris, he is the one who inherited the system not the one who set it up.

Your prism is way off. You need to stop seeing everything as a fight. It's not 'them' and 'us' to everyone, some people are capable of independent and enquiring thought

You have been called out for compensating already so I'll not repeat it , but I will ask you to put your bias and prejudice aside and deal with posts as they are written. 

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1 hour ago, Aggy said:

Rosie Duffield has apologised and resigned - for her partner coming to visit her at her home. Cummings drove 300 miles, left his residence to drive to a hospital when he says he had covid symptoms, had a day trip out stopping off at more than one location, he and his wife both ‘forgot’ to mention the trip in public comments before  they were caught out, and he has not so much as suggested he might have been in the wrong. In fact, he said he doesn’t care what it looks like to everybody else. And Rosie Duffield and her party have had no input into the legislation or the guidance.

 

Don’t forget that she also hasn’t doctored a blog to make it appear that she had warned about a coronavirus epidemic a year ago when the original blog made no mention of coronaviruses.

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4 hours ago, Barbe bleu said:

The full quotation is:

The minutes from Sage said:

     “Currently PHE can cope with five new cases a week (requiring isolation of 800 contacts).

    “Modelling suggests this capacity        could be increased to 50 new cases a week (8,000 contact isolations) but this assumption needs to be stress tested with PHE operational colleagues"

What we dont know is how many contact tracers PHE had so we don't really know how effective the extra resourcing will be.

To the wider politics of this an important question would be around the funding available to this part of PHE and how that impacted on staffing, resourcing and training.  If the department is largely unchanged since 2009 it's a little unfair to blame either Boris or the Tories. If it is changed since that time this would be on their watch but whose precisely would need to be determined.

 

42 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Read my message again. 

The big clue is the word 'if'. My post was in neutral terms.  It was a genuine question/line of examination. 

I was suggesting we can see the relative importance of contact tracing in the budget etc it is given. I'm not talking about the PHE budget overall (or the former HPA budget). Indeed my post clearly says "this part of  PHE". If tories slashed the contact tracing budget that says a lot but if it is broadly the same you can hardly pin it on Boris, he is the one who inherited the system not the one who set it up.

Your prism is way off. You need to stop seeing everything as a fight. It's not 'them' and 'us' to everyone, some people are capable of independent and enquiring thought

You have been called out for compensating already so I'll not repeat it , but I will ask you to put your bias and prejudice aside and deal with posts as they are written. 

The point is that Public Health England can be largely seen to have failed in the crisis because it is too centralised. PHE was created to centralise its competency for ideological reasons by the Tories as part of the command and control/privatising agenda. It has been left in place under various Tory administrations since. That you didn't know this or pretend not to know this speaks volumes.

So to answer your so called "question/line of examinantion"

1. PHE did not remain unchanged from 2009 because it didn't exist until 2013

2. Existing track and tracing is done by local public health professionals with local authorities

3. Tories have slashed local government spending.

The theme here is Tory mismanagement. It is little wonder that the UK was singularly ill-equiped with the pandemic.

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So now that your if has been answered I can only assume that you fully agree and accept that the problem is down to the government. 
 

if the government isn’t responsible for governing the country then perhaps you can explain who is responsible for governing the country. Who’s responsible for one of the worst death rates in the world. Who is responsible for ignoring expert advice and preparing for Brexit rather than a pandemic? Who is responsible for running down PPE stockpiles? Who is responsible for the lack of testing ? Who is responsible for the lack of test and trace?  Who is responsible for the poor communication?  Who is responsible for Boris not attending Cobra meetings? Who is responsible for Boris and the governments poor performance?  Who is response for Cummings vists to Durham and Barnard Castle?  Because it seems according to the hard right the government is not responsible for any of this so it is not clear what the government is responsible for anymore and if not what is the point of them?  

Edited by T
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Trust: the government has earned it or not. And for many, and perhaps a majority now, it has clearly not. This does not auger well for public response to future government instructions. 

The Government says it reached 200,000 testing capacity yesterday. The PM promised to deliver this by the end of the month - No 10 clarified within hours he meant capacity rather than actual tests, which stood at 115,725 yesterday.

Edited by Surfer

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1 hour ago, Trevor Hockey's Beard said:

My point is that since the start of the pandemic DNR has been added to presidents' case notes without asking anyone.

My Mum had a DNR in place, which was signed off by both me and my Sister. This is a very different situation than adding it without consulting the family. One resident in my Mum's Care Home was in her late 60s and perfectly sound of mind, but had mobility issues and preferred the ease of living there rather than looking after herself. Is it Ok to have a DNR on her file just because she is in a Care Home?

I'm sorry, but this smacks of panic and a lack of thought about the consequences. The government mantra was "must clear hospitals and keep them clear for covid patients from the community".

There are over 400,000 people living in Care Homes, which means that a large number of families have at least one relative in a Care Home. The sacrificing of Care Home residents by this Government - largely due to their lack of planning and tardiness in dealing with the outbreak- has and will continue to anger a lot of people.

Then, I don't know if DNR has been added. If so, its scandalous. Agree about the whole of the care homes management. Yet another example of the outcomes of progressive nature of privatisation I fear, especially so in the field of health. It won't be forgotten in 4 years time....When people feel as angry as they do, it lasts long in the collective psyche.

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19 minutes ago, T said:

.... the government is not responsible for any of this so it is not clear what the government is responsible for anymore and if not what is the point of them?  

The answer is to be the ones in power. Same in the US, the “center right” party acts  as if it does not want to do anything, just retain power at the next election and undo whatever rules they can as “government cannot solve any problem” 
 

The shift we need to make is to “explain” to our governments that corporation’s wellbeing relies on having access to the public / markets, not that the public should do what the corporations want. It is in fact what the core of the Brexit promise was to “take back control” , so the majority should be on board with that thinking. 

If Facebook etc want to access the UK market then it needs to follow UK market access rules, not the other way around. And parties need to become publicly funded as maintaining free speech does not mean bribery should not be rooted out. If we don’t do these things we will continue to have these kinds of issues where governments will act for their financiers only. 

Edited by Surfer

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33 minutes ago, BigFish said:

 

The point is that Public Health England can be largely seen to have failed in the crisis because it is too centralised. PHE was created to centralise its competency for ideological reasons by the Tories as part of the command and control/privatising agenda. 

So if I were to do research I would find that public health was previously a local authority duty but was centralised by a conservative administration with the creation of the PHE?

But at the same time it is decentraliszed because as you say below:

33 minutes ago, BigFish said:

. Existing track and tracing is done by local public health professionals with local authorities

I cant really argue with the statement because it has to one or the other doesnt it?

Do you want some time to formulate a  proper reply?

I'm not saying that you are right or wrong.  The 'if' was a clue that I did not know.  If I am to take any  notice of you I want to be sure that you start with the facts and draw a conclusion from them rather than work the other way

 

Edited by Barbe bleu

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A pleasure to read the last few pages on this thread with discussion in abundance but something tells me it could end anytime this evening.

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19 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

So if I were to do research I would find that public health was previously a local authority duty but was centralised by a conservative administration with the creation of the PHE?

But at the same time it is decentraliszed because as you say below:

I cant really argue with the statement because it has to one or the other doesnt it?

Do you want some time to formulate a  proper reply?

I'm not saying that you are right or wrong.  The 'if' was a clue that I did not know.  If I am to take any  notice of you I want to be sure that you start with the facts and draw a conclusion from them rather than work the other way

 

If I were I  charge I'd probably set up a two tier process. Reporting at a local level for immediate action and intervention with timely referral upwards for the more strategic view. 

In this sort of case I would suggest that contact tracing should be a function of the strategic body (it is across every LA) but with timely referral downwards for local action (closing this school or for other localized responses including addition contact analysis of appropriate.

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