Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Ludo*1]

3 minutes ago, The Skelpit Lug said:

A chase for profits at the expense of the elderly in need of specialist care, many at end of life, is what drives care home companies. Staff working under intense pressure before the pandemic and stretched to breaking point is a disgrace. I've said it before, strip the private element out and bring all care homes under SG/Council control. A National Care Service alongside National Health Service (Scotland) and provide the complete cradle to grave service.

Totally agree with this. My missus and my mother both work for major private care home companies (Balhousie & HCOne). The stories I've heard about both over the years, not just during this pandemic are fucking grim.  It's an underfunded sector with absolutely pathetic wages and the elderly are pretty much sacrificing their hard earned money for what amounts to the absolute most basic of 'care' wrapped up as being a specialist care centre. It's fucking grim.

[Gaz FFC]

1 minute ago, Fife Saint said:

Florida have fucked it.

Full of elderly too

[D.A.F.C]

25 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

The whole care home stuff in hindsight might have been an issue but where were these voices in March? The evidence from Italy at the time was that hospitals were going to be swamped and freeing up bed spaces was one of the few options until NHS Louisa Jordan was in place.

So, some say - you should have tested those returning to care homes - given that there wasn't the testing capacity - the DNA of the virus was not made public until 19 January it is expecting bloody miracles to create a release reliable test and to mass produce it. Even now the test is still giving a high level of false negatives - I've seen estimates put as high as 30% - that means one in 4.5 tests marked as negative could have been a Covid-19 carrier. False positives are estimated to be at the 20% mark (1 in 5 tests) - yes testing can help but it is not a magic bullet. The fact that NHS hasn't been run over is because of decisions made in March - never easy and I certainly don't envy anyone who had to make them knowing that it might cause deaths - it was always a weighing up scenario - an overwhelmed NHS and more deaths or an NHS coping but more deaths in the community. It certainly isn't black and white.

Shortages of PPE - again not surprising - the worldwide demand for PPE increased by several factors above the normal demand - manufacturers could not produce fast enough - we even had the sordid spectacle of the US government indulging in modern day piracy for supplies already bought by other Western governments.

Where there is a case to answer is PPE in care homes - not because the Scottish Government were not supplying it quickly enough - but because care homes, in the chase for profits, had not stocked the levels they should have had for a normal situation. These are the same care homes who employed agency staff and thought it was a good idea to move them between different care homes. The same care homes that covered up infections and didn't inform staff or residents. When I see the likes of Robert Kilgour whining about this it makes my blood boil - these people have charged the elderly fortunes for years, using underpaid staff, and cutting corners all in the name of profit.


For me, if there is a fundamental failure it is in pandemic planning itself - that isn't a Scottish Government responsibility but the UK government - it's they who ignored the recommendations of Cygnus - it is they who downscaled pandemic planning.

Beyond this there are structural reasons why the health and care sector could not cope:

* Nearly a decade of underfunding due to Westminster austerity measures
* Unmanageable workloads, leading to stress and burnout and a recruitment/retention crisis
* Lack of investment and training in new technology
* An ageing population and steep increase in demand for health services

Almost all of these have their roots in chronic underfunding driven by HM Treasury decisions.

As I said before, I've no problem with any government being held accountable - but any review of the response to Covid-19 (and there should be one) should not be looking just at the events during the crisis but the landscape beforehand. It should also be based on clear defined data, allowing comparisons - not back of an envelope calculations by journalists and politically opportunistic politicians who are armchair hindsight experts.

I don't think it's been helped either that the scientists themselves have not always been consistent - if you are relying on that advice but there is contradictory advice (SAGE's inclusive advice with children is a good example) then politicians decisions may be flawed.

Let's ask be honest - some attacks on the Scottish Government (and the UK government) are motivated, not by making government accountable, but by sheer political opportunism and mischief-making.

The issues are complex but some of the analysis doing the rounds is simplistic hindsight pish of the first degree.

Stop making excuses for an absolute failure at all levels of government. I’ve already posted the video in here where NS defends mass gatherings and schools that was three months ago. What the SNP has shown is that at their first major problem they’ve been caught out of their depth.

Italy was literally screaming down the tv at our scientific advisors to stop herd immunity yet the Scottish government never argued against it. Following scientific advice that a five year old could see was just driven by money and the economy. The scientists might as well not be there.

How can several other countries with little or no resources stop this so quickly? I get that we are in step with England but there’s so much more we could have done, if the tests are unreliable then test twice. Care homes were allowed to get decimated to keep the hospitals clear. Hospitals were built that never got used.

People have to answer as to why we got everything so badly wrong, the snp are accountable and cannot behind whatabootery and let’s see what happens at the end of it. We’ve just lost 10-0 and are watching the results come in saying well at least we aren’t losing 11-0.

I voted snp and I’m pro independence but this has cost the snp once questions get asked they have zero defence but will try hiding and scapegoating Boris.

[D.A.F.C]

1 minute ago, Snafu said:

The main thing that's bothered me and likely hampered the effectiveness of SAGE is why Dominic Cummings sat in on the meetings. He was/is an overbearing presence that might have been there to make sure the scientific advisors were aligned to government policy and planning on how to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. Very likely this control freak of epic proportions compromised much of the scientific advice to fit rather than giving independent advice to the government and passing this on to the population. Understand why Cummings (the most powerful man in the UK) was not replaceable??

https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/chief-scientific-advisers

https://www.civilservant.org.uk/spads-homepage.html

Problems seemed likely to reappear when Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019 and appointed Dominic Cummings as his Chief of Staff / Spad.  Mr Cummings then insisted that all Spads should in future report to him, and not to 'their' Cabinet Minster.  This immediately removed one of the advantages of employing Spads - that they offered an independent political view of their departments' and wider government's policies.   It also meant that they could no longer easily be dismissed without due process or compensation. 

The pre-Johnson/Cummings legal position was that they were employed to assist a named Secretary of State and so were in effect redundant if that SoS lost their job.  They could also (under UK employment law) easily be dismissed within two years - unless they could show that they had been a whistle-blower, or claim sex/race discrimination etc.  In practice, however, they were ambitious politicos and so were unlikely to damage their future career by claiming unfair dismissal.  Post-Cummings, they are now much more likely to object to being discarded by him, and it looks as though tribunal cases could become commonplace.

Dominic Cummings' first dismissal - of the Chancellor's Spad Sonia Khan - was so abrupt that she did indeed claim compensation for her dismissal. 

Cummings reminds a lot me of this once well known tv character -

'The truth is what I tell the Prime Minister to believe'

He’s arguably responsible for half the deaths. I think the car trip thing is a distraction.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

The main thing that's bothered me and likely hampered the effectiveness of SAGE is why Dominic Cummings sat in on the meetings. He was/is an overbearing presence that might have been there to make sure the scientific advisors were aligned to government policy and planning on how to deal with the COVID-19 crisis. Very likely this control freak of epic proportions compromised much of the scientific advice to fit rather than giving independent advice to the government and passing this on to the population. Understand why Cummings (the most powerful man in the UK) was not replaceable??
https://www.gov.uk/government/groups/chief-scientific-advisers
https://www.civilservant.org.uk/spads-homepage.html
Problems seemed likely to reappear when Boris Johnson became Prime Minister in 2019 and appointed Dominic Cummings as his Chief of Staff / Spad.  Mr Cummings then insisted that all Spads should in future report to him, and not to 'their' Cabinet Minster.  This immediately removed one of the advantages of employing Spads - that they offered an independent political view of their departments' and wider government's policies.   It also meant that they could no longer easily be dismissed without due process or compensation. 

The pre-Johnson/Cummings legal position was that they were employed to assist a named Secretary of State and so were in effect redundant if that SoS lost their job.  They could also (under UK employment law) easily be dismissed within two years - unless they could show that they had been a whistle-blower, or claim sex/race discrimination etc.  In practice, however, they were ambitious politicos and so were unlikely to damage their future career by claiming unfair dismissal.  Post-Cummings, they are now much more likely to object to being discarded by him, and it looks as though tribunal cases could become commonplace.

Dominic Cummings' first dismissal - of the Chancellor's Spad Sonia Khan - was so abrupt that she did indeed claim compensation for her dismissal. 

Cummings reminds a lot me of this once well known tv character -

'The truth is what I tell the Prime Minister to believe'

I have alluded to this in a previous post - contradictory scientific evidence and the role of SAGE.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Stop making excuses for an absolute failure at all levels of government. I’ve already posted the video in here where NS defends mass gatherings and schools that was three months ago. What the SNP has shown is that at their first major problem they’ve been caught out of their depth.

Italy was literally screaming down the tv at our scientific advisors to stop herd immunity yet the Scottish government never argued against it. Following scientific advice that a five year old could see was just driven by money and the economy. The scientists might as well not be there.

How can several other countries with little or no resources stop this so quickly? I get that we are in step with England but there’s so much more we could have done, if the tests are unreliable then test twice. Care homes were allowed to get decimated to keep the hospitals clear. Hospitals were built that never got used.

People have to answer as to why we got everything so badly wrong, the snp are accountable and cannot behind whatabootery and let’s see what happens at the end of it. We’ve just lost 10-0 and are watching the results come in saying well at least we aren’t losing 11-0.

I voted snp and I’m pro independence but this has cost the snp once questions get asked they have zero defence but will try hiding and scapegoating Boris.

I have not absolved any government from blame - I just think there should be a proper analysis of the whole handling of Covid-19 - not a back of a fag packet calculation. That is not just events during the crisis but the whole landscape beforehand, including pandemic emergency planning, NHS resourcing and funding, and the running of care homes.

 

I am not personally surprised that after 10 years of austerity and chronic underfunding of the NHS and public services that there have been problems.

 

The other thing that is clear, after the track and trace fiasco, is that how the Government awards IT contracts needs seriously overhauled. It's not the first time a major IT project has been a disaster after being awarded to their pet businesses.

 

[D.A.F.C]

Jenny Harries did some amount of u-turns.

I really fail to believe that it was just her being completely so inept.

Listened to her on BBC five live defending mass gatherings and telling an immuno suppressed mum who was in tears to send her kids to school as it was perfectly safe.

She reassured her several times that the science was sound.

How can it be safer to mix with more people during a pandemic?

Something stinks the scientists are going to get flung under the bus.

 

[D.A.F.C]

Just gets better

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Alan Sugar really is an insensitive obnoxious twat.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/alan-sugar-coronavirus-comments-lockdown-jeremy-vine-video-a9573171.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Facebook#Echobox=1592499679

 

 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

It’s almost as if the scientists have been briefed on a party line by an unelected bald man.

Edited June 20, 2020 by Melanius Mullarkey

[Derry Alli]

KelvinGrove, an hour ago. 

[Marshmallo]

Aye Kelvingrove looks absolutely bouncing.

I went out a wander around Strathbungo earlier and it was decent as well. Good few places doing takeaway pints.

[Jacksgranda]

27 minutes ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

It’s almost as if the scientists have been briefed on a party line by an unelected bald man.

Leave me out of it, squire.

[welshbairn]

4 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

 

 

 

FTFY 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

FTFY 

I seem to have an issue with GIFs from the app.

[welshbairn]

Just now, DeeTillEhDeh said:

I seem to have an issue with GIFs from the app.
 

I wouldn't know how to do it on a phone, but if it's Giphy you have to right click and new tab it one or twice before it works on a laptop.

[jimmy boo]

33 minutes ago, Mr. Alli said:

KelvinGrove, an hour ago. 

Wanky students. Nothing new there.

[tamthebam]

13 hours ago, Tynierose said:

No we will hear some rhetoric about the science says and wait a week until its revealed thousands more people will lose their jobs and then go with 1m like everywhere else.

No doubt at some point like Germany etc there will be another outbreak of cases.  You then manage it sensibly like they're doing as there is no vaccine, get on with life and re establishing your economy and normality.

Worth remembering that it's around a 0.07 mortality rate in Scotland, 

 

 

Good news if you have Sean Connery in the Dead Pool

[jimmy boo]

England going to 1M so when will our supreme leader follow suit? The usual 2 week delay?

[madwullie]

I mean it's pretty clear doing things more slowly than England is giving the results that NS seems to want. 

The question is is it entirely necessary. I don't see why she doesn't come out and explicitly say what her targets are - if it's NZ style suppression, for eg she needs to explain how we will manage with an open border to England. If its something else, well, then she should set out what they are. 

Getting as low as possible so we can open as quickly as possible might have some more support if they'd outline targets. I mean what would be so wrong with saying if we can get to x, y and z then the schools will open as normal, failing that we run with the blended model until we can

 

Edited June 20, 2020 by madwullie
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