Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Dee Man]

As much as NHS workers are getting all the praise, respect and love of the nation through this, I don't think I'm the only one who has now grown to look at teachers in a completely different light after attempting to home school. We've had the school work prepared and sent to us and it's still a nightmare. f**k that shit. 

8pm doorstep claps, fireworks and pots and pans for teachers next IMO.

[Billy Jean King]

But your extracting 1 year you admit is skewed to compare with. That year is INCLUDED in the average and the UK is still 50,000 deaths above that average. You are extracting a skewed figure for a comparison to suit your agenda. Forget the rest of your economy bluster it now appears C19 has been contributory to the death of 50,000 UK citizens that in an "average" comparitive period would not have died. That's with the measures that have affected the economy. Staggering

Well no, it's impossible to hide excess deaths as all deaths are recorded.
50,000 excess deaths in the UK is broadly similar to the 50,100 excess deaths in England and Wales alone from the last 'bad flu' outbreak in 2016/17 which, despite us having effective flu vaccines already developed, and concentrating it's deaths on an extremely similar demographic as Covid-19, raised not a peep, nevermind a several months long shutdown of the economy and severe restrictions on what people can and cannot do.

[Steven W]

3 minutes ago, Gaz said:

We've been in and out of school as much as is safely possible. We've been measuring up rooms to see how many pupils can fit in at any one time if the 2m social distancing is still to apply. There are various conversations happening both at local and national level.

I would again urge you to refrain from falling for the propaganda that this is an easy time for teachers who are enjoying being sat at home. It's quite the opposite, certainly for all the teachers I know across different schools and local authorities.

Again glad to hear that news. I passed a school today and outside was a group of three or four what I took to be teachers, so maybe they were in doing just that.

To be honest the workload that my son has been set by his teacher has dropped off quite a lot since this all kicked off.

[renton]

15 minutes ago, bendan said:

I think you are misunderstanding this. Removal refers to a single individual becoming no longer infectious, either through recovery or death. R0 is the rate of reproduction for a single infectious case. If that individual recovers quickly, or dies quickly, then all other things being equal, fewer secondary infections will take place. The number of people recovering doesn't make any difference to R0 other than to reduce the size of the susceptible population. We're nowhere near herd immunity, so that's pretty irrelevant right now.

I already noted that I was happy to concede that my definition is a better fit for Re. Given the various pronouncements on falling R value and the general confusion about using R0 when Re is meant, then I'm happy to stand by the point that the R value will continue to fall, and that TTI will not work effectively above a given threshold of infections in the population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6302597/

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/coronavirus-r-number-uk

Another article demonstrating that Re or R is the definition I've been using and probably the one the government means, rather than r0.

Edited May 12, 2020 by renton

[Todd_is_God]

10 minutes ago, Billy Jean King said:

But your extracting 1 year you admit is skewed to compare with. That year is INCLUDED in the average and the UK is still 50,000 deaths above that average. You are extracting a skewed figure for a comparison to suit your agenda. Forget the rest of your economy bluster it now appears C19 has been contributory to the death of 50,000 UK citizens that in an "average" comparitive period would not have died. That's with the measures that have affected the economy. Staggering

Of course I am extracting an extraordinary year to compare it with. This is an extraordinary year. I used that year in particular as it was more recent than the flu season in the 70s where excess deaths were higher, and i have no idea what media coverage of the outbreak was like around that time.

I'm well aware that in an average year these 50,000 people would not have died. Flu season being December to March also means very few Covid-19 deaths fall into those months. The 2016/17 excess deaths in question are not included in April and May's figures.

My point is based around the fact that the Government, media etc would have you believe that this is a unique set of figures, and the worst thing that's happened since the end of the Second World War when in fact there are multiple examples of bad flu seasons causing similar numbers of excess deaths in the last 75 years.

Edited May 12, 2020 by Todd_is_God

[dirty dingus]

[ICTChris]

We could improve public morale by finding the person who did this and executing them live on television before the next public address by the PM.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52616071

Why hasn't this been publicised already, it happened nearly two months ago.

[paranoid android]

1 minute ago, dirty dingus said:

Bricking it. 

[NotThePars]

3 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

We could improve public morale by finding the person who did this and executing them live on television before the next public address by the PM.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52616071

Why hasn't this been publicised already, it happened nearly two months ago.

 

In the meantime we can put the guy harassing Sainsburys workers and bleating about a police state for not accepting cash in the stocks.

[bendan]

12 minutes ago, renton said:

I already noted that I was happy to concede that my definition is a better fit for Re. Given the various pronouncements on falling R value and the general confusion about using R0 when Re is meant, then I'm happy to stand by the point that the R value will continue to fall, and that TTI will not work effectively above a given threshold of infections in the population.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6302597/

Another article demonstrating that Re or R is the definition I've been using and probably the one the government means.

I take the point about Re.

TTI seems appropriate to me with our relatively small number of current cases - other countries have tried to do it with these kind of numbers. I can't see what we gain by waiting, because even if we only broke some of the transmission chains, it would speed up the point at which we could end the lockdown. We're just twiddling our thumbs waiting for a very blunt instrument to do its work.

[renton]

1 minute ago, bendan said:

I take the point about Re.

TTI seems appropriate to me with our relatively small number of current cases - other countries have tried to do it with these kind of numbers. I can't see what we gain by waiting, because even if we only broke some of the transmission chains, it would speed up the point at which we could end the lockdown. We're just twiddling our thumbs waiting for a very blunt instrument to do its work.

It's a question of resource management. The smaller the R value, the smaller your TTI footprint has to be to stay on top of it. If there is no compelling, imperative reason to exit now, rather than 3 weeks down the line, say, then wait the three weeks to get R lower.

You could criticise the government for not using the last 7 weeks to build up test capacity sooner. My guess is that available resources, human and otherwise spent the early part of the lockdown chasing down ventilators, PPE and building the pop up hospital in Glasgow. That was probably the right call given the information at hand. Other countries, more confident of their ICU capacity could afford to spend their time thinking about TTI sooner.

[Paco]

On 04/05/2020 at 10:10, Paco said:

.At this stage the capacity in Scotland is reasonable but it isn’t being used above about 50%, and many people take two tests. So either we’ve not extended testing to enough people, people don’t know how to go about getting a test or the testing centres are too difficult to reach for many - maybe even a combination of all three. These things are all very much under the control of the Scottish government and aren’t remotely affected by issues like supply of cotton buds or lack of lab space. You can’t understand how the virus is affecting your population as a whole by testing 0.08% of them a day. 

I posted this on May 4th when the Scottish Government announced their intention to increase capacity in testing, with the ultimate goal of about 15,000 tests a day by the end of the month to support the TTI strategy  

Yesterday, 4083 tests were completed. The numbers have barely moved in a week despite the backpatting on capacity increases. We’re going to miss this target by a mile unless something dramatic changes.

Why is this not front and centre in Scotland? This is a serious issue - we cannot move forward under the government’s own plans without quadrupling our testing numbers in the next two and a bit weeks. Is it doable? Do we have home testing kits? How many?When will the general public get access to tests? What if we miss the testing target? Are we stuck in lockdown until then? 

I generally like Sturgeon’s leadership on this but there’s a huge difference between sounding good and performing well. Why isn’t this being asked?! 

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

We could improve public morale by finding the person who did this and executing them live on television before the next public address by the PM.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52616071
Why hasn't this been publicised already, it happened nearly two months ago.

Worrying that BTP are launching an investigation only now, its clearly a murder enquiry.

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

We shouldnt be opening schools in scotland before the end of the summer holidays, no chance. But we should consider lengthening the school day in august by 30-45 minutes for kids to get extra tuition and catch up, isn’t a catch all answer but as close as possible to giving the government time to come up with distancing measures etc.

[Todd_is_God]

2 minutes ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

But we should consider lengthening the school day in august by 30-45 minutes for kids to get extra tuition and catch up.

There is no chance the teacher's union will allow that unless there is a roughly 15% pay rise along with it.

Even then I imagine it would be rejected

[Gaz]

11 minutes ago, Inanimate Carbon Rod said:

We shouldnt be opening schools in scotland before the end of the summer holidays, no chance. But we should consider lengthening the school day in august by 30-45 minutes for kids to get extra tuition and catch up, isn’t a catch all answer but as close as possible to giving the government time to come up with distancing measures etc.

Who's going to pay for that?

[Bairnardo]

I'm the EIS rep at my school, so have a bit of knowledge on this. Two things:
1) No, we're not. I myself am having to juggle the equivalent of working a full-time job, under circumstances quite different and quite more difficult than what I've been trained for, whilst caring for my own three children. I don't know any teachers who are enjoying being off. I would far rather be back at school, as would my colleagues both in school and within my union.
2) That's just not true. There is plenty appetite for going back. What there isn't appetite for is going back under a 'business as usual' model. Just this morning we canvassed all staff to ask for their opinions on how going back could be best managed and what precautions could be taken.
Please don't fall for the spin that teachers are enjoying being at home right now. We're not. We're trained to teach kids, and that's what we want to be doing.

Why wouldn't we demand extra pay if we are forced to come in over the school holidays?
Do you work for free for your employer?

You are probably about to face the full force of the "Get on with it, yer paid enough" social media morons and the vile right wing anti Union media this country reveres so much.

Every union rep in those circumstances gets my full and undiluted respect, admiration and support. Stay strong Brother Gaz and keep fighting for what's right for your members.

[Steven W]

14 minutes ago, Bairnardo said:

You are probably about to face the full force of the "Get on with it, yer paid enough" social media morons and the vile right wing anti Union media this country reveres so much.

Every union rep in those circumstances gets my full and undiluted respect, admiration and support. Stay strong Brother Gaz and keep fighting for what's right for your members.

Given that I'm home schooling my son, do you think I should be paid for that? Would be intrigued to hear the teachers unions' opinion on this. (Be under no illusions I'm no right winger)

[Granny Danger]

Work shy public sector employees bleating about their conditions!

[NotThePars]

4 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Interesting to see that in the teeth of a global pandemic where kids are having their education ruined that the first thought of some teachers is their pay packet.

Meanwhile other employees are facing the end of their livelihoods.

Utterly predictable and utterly sad.

Stop signing your posts.