Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Szamo's_Ammo]

As for the effectiveness of Track and Trace, conveniently being run by a Tory MP's spouse:

What a shambles.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

As for the effectiveness of Track and Trace, conveniently being run by a Tory MP's spouse:
What a shambles.

Something you and I might agree on - the lack of tendering for anything Covid-19 related has been an utter scandal.

Jobs for the boys is an understatement.

[s_dog]

3 hours ago, effeffsee_the2nd said:

How did we go from doing 20 thousand tests a day 6 or so weeks ago to now around 6k ? That’s pish in anyone’s books nah?

We haven't, we've went from a two week spell of 9-16k new people tested down to around 5-6k. Partly because the reason for the high testing was when the kids had all been back at school for a week or so and everyone caught the cold. Once that tailed off and along with being impacted by the lab capacity issues that have plagued the UK testing, the figures have fallen back. The only question is, how much is the lab capacity affecting it, because you would have expected the numbers to increase with all the university student testing, and it hasn't. 

 

2 hours ago, LongTimeLurker said:

What's the point though in big picture terms? A vaccine isn't just around the corner unless we are very lucky, so any kind of circuit breaker is just a case of kicking the can down the road for a bit. The same issues will still have to be dealt with whenever the lockdown rules are opened up until/unless there is herd immunity. More and more people are seeing through the propaganda now, so maybe try an honest intelligent discussion on this and treat the electorate like adults rather than naughty schoolchildren that need strict control by a nanny state?

Something along the lines of there is more than likely not going to be a miraculous painless exit strategy available just around the corner, the economy and other health issues that have been receiving less attention than they normally would have are also very important as well so we can't keep acting as if COVID-19 is the only issue that matters. Here's what you need to do to be able to get on with something resembling normality while minimising the risks for yourself, the people you care about most and your friends and neighbours. Good luck!

What's the point? Because the alternative is doing nothing different and just letting the numbers of infections continue to grow, knowing that the more the numbers grow, the quicker the infection rates go up. And that in turn will lead to more people in hospital and ultimately more deaths. It is about the Government recognising that a blanket lockdown as we had previously not being an answer, knowing that people still have to live their lives, but try and introduce measures that limit the amount of interactions they are having with others, as that's the only way we have of stopping the virus spreading, or at least, stopping it spreading out of control.

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by s_dog

[renton]

2 minutes ago, Szamo's_Ammo said:

Not sure if that's a particularly great graph to use in terms of debate regarding school transmissions.

According to this source, these were the summer holiday dates in the Netherlands this year:

For 6 out of the 9 weeks covered in that chart, the schools were on holiday anyway.

They also seem have more restrictions in place than the UK free-for-all approach:

That sounds like blended learning to me.

Yeah, it does. However, blended learning will change the time scales for infections, but not necessarily in terms of who got infected from who,presumably other parts of Dutch society wee also under some restrictions, that would normalise infection rates between age groups.

It's not the only study that demonstrates low or limited infections from Schools, indeed PHE did an analysis based on the English schools that did open in June that showed that 50% of infections were from Staff to Staff, 25% from Staff to Student, 23% from Student to Staff and 2% from Student to Student. That study further suggested that school infection rates reflected community prevelance, suggesting that infections were largely imported. The very low student fo student rates further suggest that classrooms aren't good vector chains.

Again though, that's was a limited study involving more social restrictions than are currently place in classrooms.

I am happy to admit that data on school transmission is limited, though other studies in Australia, Ireland and Korea do corroborate the idea of low school transmission, and the data suggesting that children mixing in classrooms  is driving case loads is even more limited, if existent at all.

I do think that if 18 year old students in halls can drive infection rates, then it makes sense to maybe get 16-18 year old in schools into a blended learning environment, as well as making Universties remote learning until at least January. That would probably reduce most of the risk involved with schools without overloading the ability of LAs to provide blended learning opportunities.

Of course if prevelance keeps rising then blended learning would be required for all age groups by the government's own requirements to limit infections being imported to kids.

 

[Guest]

2 hours ago, Wee Bully said:

It’s amazing. Just a few hours ago, this thread was full of knicker wetting over a Sun article suggesting a circuit breaker lockdown.

Now it is “pointless piecemeal tinkering”.

I really feel for the SG here. Go for “targeted”, it’s wrong. Go for “blanket”, it’s wrong.

There's lots of people mischief making and trying to make political capital out of this, however the reality is that almost every Government in Europe (including westminster) are more or less following the same medical advice and matching each other from a policy perspective. Yes, there are slight variances in timing of announcements but for the most part all countries and Governments are singing from the same hymn sheet as it were.

As such if people want to criticise NS and the SG then they should be equally critical of BJ and WM and all the rest who are following identical advice and policy, however that wouldn't suit the agenda of many...

[John MacLean]

I get right fed up by people who reference the restrictions we've been under in terms of intervention by a nanny state. 

It's just utter libertarian nonsense. Not least because we're looking at approaching 70 years since we last had anything like a functioning nanny welfare state designed to protect the most vulnerable in society.  

A fit for purpose welfare state wouldn't have prevented the virus arriving here but we might have had a healthier country, better equipped to deal with it. 

We could have avoided the severity of the first Lockdown because our NHS wouldn't have been in danger of being overwhelmed. How good would it have been if we had had a well funded, state of the art National Health Service that instead of banging pots and pans for we could look at with genuine pride. 

People would be less afraid of losing their jobs because the state would be there to protect and not punish. 

Typically it is invariably the people that decry the nanny state that are also the people who cite Sweden as a great example of how to deal with Covid-19 but ignore the fact that their welfare state allowed them to take the approach they did. 

It's the libertarian, let the market decide and don't impinge upon people's 'freedom' approach that left us so vulnerable and it is the same libertarian, don't need face masks, open things up and just look after yourself approach that makes recovery so fucking difficult. 

It's not been too much state intervention that we've had over the last couple of generations but not enough. 

Ach, I'm just a grumpy old man fed up to the back teeth of all of this and the levels of utter selfishness that I encounter on a daily basis. And to think I was told that this was no longer a public health crisis. 

 

Edited October 6, 2020 by John MacLean

[Squirrelhumper]

23 hours ago, invergowrie arab said:

What a mewling pile of shite.

Nobody said opening the schools would be safe.  It's managed risk.

 

 

They are managing very badly, just ask any teacher.

SG promised the world to education sector and have delivered very little.

Dress it up however you want.

[Squirrelhumper]

23 hours ago, Honest_Man#1 said:

To then cancel this with a circuit breaker that’s weeks too late, just so that it means schools aren’t affected (whilst still pretending schools aren't an issue), would be a huge slap in the face to everyone involved.

Think most folk with a brain can understand the irony here.

Arab obviously missing one.

[Squirrelhumper]

21 hours ago, eindhovendee said:

You'll do what the fucking Tories tell you do, you won't need to plan for anything.

You'll like what afterthoughts they come up with for Scotland because not enough of you decided you could run your own country and would rather be run by someone who couldn't give a f**k for anyone outside Greater London.
 

Preaching to the wrong person here. pal.

[LongTimeLurker]

1 minute ago, s_dog said:

What's the point? Because the alternative is doing nothing different and just letting the numbers of infections continue to grow,....

They are almost certainly going to do that again once any temporary circuit breaker measures are lifted and things revert to doing nothing different. There is no quick easy fix on this other than reaching herd immunity either by letting things run their natural course (keeping schools, pubs, workplaces open means that will almost certainly be what unfolds over the next few weeks) or through a vaccine (which may be a very long way off).

[Have some faith in Magic]

When pubs were closed before they were all on payment holidays for sky sports and the likes. 

Not much chance of this happening this time. That is a huge expense to many pubs, 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

They are managing very badly, just ask any teacher.
SG promised the world to education sector and have delivered very little.
Dress it up however you want.

I won't start another argument but the experience will undoubtedly differ from school to school.

The experience I've faced on Dundee - and others might confirm - despite the apprehension of returning - is of a relatively controlled and safe environment.

I would suspect that some of our pupils general hygiene has improved as a consequence of this - more conscious of wiping down, clean hands etc than before.

It would be interesting to know what others have experienced.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

They are almost certainly going to do that again once any temporary circuit breaker measures are lifted and things revert to doing nothing different. There is no quick easy fix on this other than reaching herd immunity either by letting things run their natural course (keeping schools, pubs, workplaces open means that will almost certainly be what unfolds over the next few weeks) or through a vaccine (which may be a very long way off).

Until we get a vaccine I can only see a tightening of more practical measures being effective - temperature checks, face masks outdoors possibly etc.

[Squirrelhumper]

19 hours ago, madwullie said:

Is there evidence that schools are "major contributors to spread"? 

This is England for last week. Assume we'll be very similar.

[renton]

1 minute ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

5 minutes ago, LongTimeLurker said:

They are almost certainly going to do that again once any temporary circuit breaker measures are lifted and things revert to doing nothing different. There is no quick easy fix on this other than reaching herd immunity either by letting things run their natural course (keeping schools, pubs, workplaces open means that will almost certainly be what unfolds over the next few weeks) or through a vaccine (which may be a very long way off).

Until we get a vaccine I can only see a tightening of more practical measures being effective - temperature checks, face masks outdoors possibly etc.

How about permanent social bubbles? A fixed combination of households designed to prevent too much mixing between people once they allow social interactions indoors again. Not sure how you police that, right enough.

Try and limit people to one hospitality venue per outing? Again, probably more trouble than it's worth...

[renton]

Just now, Squirrelhumper said:

This is England for last week. Assume we'll be very similar.

That's number of incidents though, it doesn't say anything about how large the clusters in each incident was, or what demographics were showing up positive in each cluster.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, school age children were contributing only 8% of total positive cases.

[Squirrelhumper]

8 minutes ago, Have some faith in Magic said:

When pubs were closed before they were all on payment holidays for sky sports and the likes. 

Not much chance of this happening this time. That is a huge expense to many pubs, 

If pubs are forced to close again, plenty just won't open back up.

My after work local, The Admiral in Glasgow hasn't opened since March and it was a busy, busy pub. Just no passing trade now with no live music, no offices open and no way to attract custom.

Viable business gone overnight.

[LongTimeLurker]

Just now, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Until we get a vaccine I can only see a tightening of more practical measures being effective - temperature checks, face masks outdoors possibly etc.

Things were so messed up back in March that there's a good chance there is relatively little pain left on getting to herd immunity. Time will tell basically. The science is far from definitively settled on that. Doing all the sensible things is the best way to look after numero uno and those closest to you through all of this.

[Squirrelhumper]

1 minute ago, renton said:

That's number of incidents though, it doesn't say anything about how large the clusters in each incident was, or what demographics were showing up positive in each cluster.

Meanwhile, in Scotland, school age children were contributing only 8% of total positive cases.

Many of their parents have positive cases?

How many teachers?

[Guest Bob Mahelp]

5 minutes ago, s_dog said:

We haven't, we've went from a two week spell of 9-16k new people tested down to around 5-6k. Partly because the reason for the high testing was when the kids had all been back at school for a week or so and everyone caught the cold. Once that tailed off and along with being impacted by the lab capacity issues that have plagued the UK testing, the figures have fallen back. The only question is, how much is the lab capacity affecting it, because you would have expected the numbers to increase with all the university student testing, and it hasn't. 

 

What's the point? Because the alternative is doing nothing different and just letting the numbers of infections continue to grow, knowing that the more the numbers grow, the quicker the infection rates go up. And that in turn will lead to more people in hospital and ultimately more deaths. It is about the Government recognising that a blanket lockdown as we had previously not being an answer, knowing that people still have to live their lives, but try and introduce measures that limit the amount of interactions they are having with others, as that's the only way we have of stopping the virus spreading.

 

That in itself is a complete contradiction in terms. I'm not for the 'do nothing and let the virus take its course' approach, but what we have at the moment are half-baked plans to contain something that simply can't be contained without complete isolation. 

Simultaneously, the plans are devastating the economy. The fall-out hasn't even begun, as hundreds of thousands of jobs are hanging by a thread in the hospitality, travel and various other sectors....and by the looks of it Sturgeon is going to hit the restaurant and pub sector again this week. 

That's without even beginning to consider the cost to people's mental and physical health, as forced isolation leads to anxiety and depression issues, and the NHS seems incapable of prioritising any other illness other than covid-19.

Instead of looking at other countries and copying best practice in testing, tracing, furlough and everything else, the UK (and I include Scotland in this) has bounced between not giving a f**k and introducing the world's most draconian measures. We're reacting to events, not being pro-active, and we're failing drastically. 

Sturgeon's announcements are looking every more desperate. Stating that there won't be more serious lockdown measures, and then (as looks likely) hitting the hospitality sector once again looks like a political decision based on the easiest way out. 

For restrictive measures to work, people have to believe in them. IMHO both Johnson and Sturgeon are a few weeks away from completely losing the trust of the populace, and at that point they'll either have to get more draconian, or change tack completely.