Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[bendan]

Just now, Thereisalight.. said:

Yet the drive through test centres are open from 8am-8pm Mon to Fri and were also open Christmas and New Years Day. You’d think vaccinating the elderly/vulnerable and actually getting on with life would be more important than asking people with no symptoms and who feel perfectly fine to get tested 

Yes, you would, but it took us months to get to that point with testing.

And it's not as if we could possibly have known we'd be giving out vaccines at some point.

[doulikefish]

My mother and neice both got the first dose of the Vaccine on a Sunday so it must be different in each health board area.

My Nieces was done at 7pm in the care home she works in,mothers was at 1445 at the local health centre 

[ICTChris]

Things not going so well in Ireland.

[NotThePars]

Great stuff down south when you've got a governing party petrified of being seen to cave in to those dreaded unions and an opposition party whose one big stand this year has been on reopening schools with zero caveats.

[tamthebam]

Boris is famously not a details person and has a cabinet full of non-entities so it's not a wonder England has shat it.

I don't think our Universities are due back until the end of January but it does concern me that students from the plague ridden South may return to Scotland and possibly cause another spike in infections. Some of said students may also have been sharing households with younger siblings who have had to return to an English school with all the implications that presents.

[doulikefish]

1 minute ago, tamthebam said:

Boris is famously not a details person and has a cabinet full of non-entities so it's not a wonder England has shat it.

I don't think our Universities are due back until the end of January but it does concern me that students from the plague ridden South may return to Scotland and possibly cause another spike in infections. Some of said students may also have been sharing households with younger siblings who have had to return to an English school with all the implications that presents.

Boris was telling Marr this morning that nobody could have foreseen the new strain of the virus in November....as usual Marr never mentioned apart from it being identified in September to him and his cabinet 

[Guest Jedi]

It is indeed depressing when every party, Tories, Labour and SNP are all intransigent in closing schools even for 2 weeks.

[welshbairn]

If they want to prioritise schools they should think about vaccinating the teachers. There's only 50,000 of them, won't take long. The over eighties are mostly shielding anyway, they can afford to wait for a week or so.

Edited January 3, 2021 by welshbairn

[Marshmallo]

Just now, welshbairn said:

If they want to prioritise schools they should think about vaccinating the teachers. There's only 50,000 of them, won't take long. The over eighties are mostly shielding anyway, so they can afford to wait for a week or so.

The fact they aren't doing this is strange given schools have been deemed the highest priority throughout this crisis.

Although the government may view it as implying schools are infection factories, as many of us have been saying for months.

[Todd_is_God]

10 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Things not going so well in Ireland.
 

More proof that lockdowns were a huge mistake IMO.

If only anyone could have predicted that people catching it in the winter rather than the summer would be an issue...

[Guest Jedi]

3 minutes ago, Marshmallo said:

The fact they aren't doing this is strange given schools have been deemed the highest priority throughout this crisis.

Although the government may view it as implying schools are infection factories, as many of us have been saying for months.

And therein lies the problem of vaccinating teachers....can't have govts in England and Scotland continuing to claim that schools are 'perfectly' safe, as they are, and move teachers and other schools staff up the line for a jab.

Edited January 3, 2021 by Jedi

[Mr Waldo]

52 minutes ago, Elric said:

Friends daughter is divorced with a child but with new partner. She works as a credit controller but considers herself to be a key worker so last time kid was sent to school.  Kid also goes and stays with father in different LA every second weekend where she mixes with other children.  There is no possibility that she will be at risk of carrying and spreading the virus!

The SG seriously have to lay out who is a key worker and who is not if the schools are going to be open to key workers children only.

Credit controller?  A debt collector? 

I suppose she sees herself as an essential finance service.  

Edited January 3, 2021 by Mr Waldo

[Guest Jedi]

Also interesting when a professor of virology from SAGE claims that teenagers are 7 times more likely to spread the virus than other age groups....as he did this morning on Marr. He must have got that wrong though (according to politicians of all stripes)

[welshbairn]

2 minutes ago, Todd_is_God said:

More proof that lockdowns were a huge mistake IMO.

If only anyone could have predicted that people catching it in the winter rather than the summer would be an issue...

Doesn't explain why South Africa is spiking in the middle of their summer. Could be the new variant carries more weight than the season.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Basically a tory
 

For someone who is a former teacher he is completely clueless.

Just where are all these extra staff going to come from?

Parroting the same shite as morons like Jo Bisset.

[craigkillie]

It is indeed depressing when every party, Tories, Labour and SNP are all intransigent in closing schools even for 2 weeks.

I thought the SNP had closed schools for 2 weeks?

[DeeTillEhDeh]

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/mrc-global-infectious-disease-analysis/covid-19/report-42-sars-cov-2-variant/
Non peer reviewed pre print from Ferguson and his crew at Imperial.
Under a half dozen different models the new strain is expected to have an additive effect on R by 0.4 to 0.7 (Well, 0.36 to 0.68)
The paper also looked at trying to figure out the R for both the old and new strains through the second English lockdown. It comes to the conclusion that the R for the old strain during that lockdown was 0.92 vs. 1.45 for the new strain, so 0.53 difference in additive effect of R.
Given the tier 4 restrictions up here managed to get R below 1 as well, it seems that the old strain could be controlled with schools remaining open.
The new strain cannot. Where the new strain is not dominant, it will become so as it outcompetes the old stuff. That means at the very least I'd expect Sturgeon to announce schools continuing in online earning until February.
If transmission is raised across all age groups equally as the paper here suggests: https://cmmid.github.io/topics/covid19/uk-novel-variant.html then there might be some scope to get the younger kids and primary schools back in person but you'd expect them to wait and collate a lot more data before going down that route.
The issue is that if the increase in R is closer to the upper end suggested by Ferguson, then closing schools might not necessarily be enough to control transmission by itself. So what then? Strict stay at home order? Curfew? 
If there is to be a return to a full March lockdown, then it has to go hand in hand with a schedule for vaccinations. Even if it means plowing f**k tonnes of money at AZ to guarantee supply. Otherwise it won't stick. I do think restrictions need to stay in place at least until they can get enough of the vulnerable groups vaccinated to bring down hospitalisations. Otherwise we run the risk of crashing the NHS at the point where it is trying to manage a massive vaccination program. The stories coming out of SE England are not exactly cheery.

If they go to online learning until February then Swinney is a goner - it's going to be very difficult for schools to complete SQA supplied assessments - their fault for being so late with decisions and with the issuing of assessments.

It's going to be worse than last year because schools won't have prelims.

An absolute mess that was predicted last April/May.

[Bairnardo]

My uninformed opinion carries as much weight as any of the other chumps on here so here's how I would play it/what I think could be considered reasonable.

4 week lockdown starting tomorrow. Full on, stay in the house March style. Schools closed except for a tight keyworker criteria to avoid grandparents being needlessly exposed.

Vaccinate the living shit out of it. Nights, days, weekends, whatever is needed.

At the end of four weeks, back to the tier system. Ending of full lockdown in 4 weeks needs to be written in stone. Placed in tiers based on that actual numbers.

If we are not in a position to combine increased vaccination with increased measures, then Nicola Sturgeon is welcome to step down for me.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

See this really boils my piss.  Practices way back in March had to collate lists of most vulnerable patients for shielding information with this all sent to boards etc.
Why when knowing a vaccine was coming was an appointment system based on need not ready to be issued immediately.  Sloppy shoddy planning yet again whether it be by health boards or centrally by SG.    I've said it before only the sheer incompetence of Bojo and Co has made our lot look reasonable.
Tomorrow's announcements will include the plan of subliminal recordings of Leitch saying stay home coming through your TV 24/7 whilst on radio Devi will encourage you to believe your on a beach in Bermuda, positive mental attitude.
What tomorrow should announce is schools are shut  until end of January or until x amount of jags have been done.  This of course won't happen and some wishy washy half measure will be in place whilst some homage will be paid to the science about this new fast spreading strain. Alcohol sales will also be banned as people can't be trusted and the opportunity to exercise will be limited to switching the telly on and off.  Meanwhile Mp's of all parties will be free to wander about the country as they please and professional footballers from Ormiston can play against junior giants Armadale in a friendly.   Takeaways will also be shut apart from salad bars to counter lack of opportunities to exercise.  Police Scotland will also launch a dedicated grass line where those who are caught outside without good reason will be fined £200 quid and made to watch Godley videos non stop for a week, how's that for a deterrent.
In one final twist all hospitals will shut as will GP practices, apparently there is a lot of the virus about and those pesky staff who were ungrateful about their taxed windfall cannot be trusted either.  Supermarkets will remain open to allow pensioners to gossip while a mask adorns their chins.
We will reconvene in six months time and see how it goes. Good luck.
 

Dedicated philpy line....

[Guest Jedi]

3 minutes ago, craigkillie said:

I thought the SNP had closed schools for 2 weeks?

Fraid not...1 week (Jan 11th-18th)