coronavirus

[Damien]

Did anyone watch Horizon? Very interesting and a little scary seeing how much the UK Covid-19 numbers could be underestimated compared to Italy and Germany due to the much lower numbers of people being tested compared to those countries. I would also make anyone flouting the lockdown watch it to understand the impact of their actions and how staying at home stops the spread.

[Saintslass]

1 hour ago, Damien said:

Did anyone watch Horizon? Very interesting and a little scary seeing how much the UK Covid-19 numbers could be underestimated compared to Italy and Germany due to the much lower numbers of people being tested compared to those countries. I would also make anyone flouting the lockdown watch it to understand the impact of their actions and how staying at home stops the spread.

We're still doing a lot of testing.  Aren't we about 7th in the world, numbers wise?  We're just not testing as obsessively as Germany (the US is now testing the most I believe).  But recently there were complaints in the media in Germany about how the government was basically testing a lot of healthy people.

Besides, Italy has been floored by the outbreak whereas Germany hasn't.  Yet both are testing more than we are.  This does suggest that there is much more to matters than simply testing.

[Damien]

8 hours ago, Saintslass said:

We're still doing a lot of testing.  Aren't we about 7th in the world, numbers wise?  We're just not testing as obsessively as Germany (the US is now testing the most I believe).  But recently there were complaints in the media in Germany about how the government was basically testing a lot of healthy people.

Besides, Italy has been floored by the outbreak whereas Germany hasn't.  Yet both are testing more than we are.  This does suggest that there is much more to matters than simply testing.

Did you watch the programme?

[Bob8]

10 hours ago, Saintslass said:

I hardly think that taking medication to your elderly parents is a 'bad look' for heaven's sake!

The Guardian is just doing it's usual click bait stirring.

Newspaper journalists are allowed to lie and be hypocrits.

Politicians are allowed to lie, but not to be hypocrits.

Scientists are not allowed to lie.

So, a politician giving an excuse is suspicious, particularly as it might have been avoidable. It is unlikely that he does not know that Tesco deliver.

I can also by sympathetic to him going to a second home. It is clearly less crowded there are if he travelled by car, he could have done it isolated. But, the advice given is based on it being easy to police and comprehend. It is a bad look for him to seem to break it.

And, I suspect, you would be less sympathetic if he were a Labour Minister.

[ckn]

Some people wanted to get a hint of capacity usage. This morning, England’s hospitals are at 135% used capacity if you used 1st March 2020 as the 100% capacity baseline (we were 85% used then) 

We’re at about 90% real-time capacity now but more is coming online each day. 

[tim2]

11 hours ago, Saintslass said:

The Guardian is just doing it's usual click bait stirring.

The Guardian, you say...

[Damien]

The Daily Mail is normally one of the staunchest defenders of everything Conservative, maybe not quite at the levels we see of a couple of people on here but close. However throughout the Coronavirus pandemic they have been very critical of the Government and its actions, certainly in the online editions. That has been especially so over the last week or so. That speaks volumes really.

[Les Tonks Sidestep]

12 hours ago, Saintslass said:

I hardly think that taking medication to your elderly parents is a 'bad look' for heaven's sake!

The Guardian is just doing it's usual click bait stirring.

How about him also travelling to his second home before acting as a delivery man?

 

 

[ckn]

1 hour ago, ckn said:

Some people wanted to get a hint of capacity usage. This morning, England’s hospitals are at 135% used capacity if you used 1st March 2020 as the 100% capacity baseline (we were 85% used then) 

We’re at about 90% real-time capacity now but more is coming online each day. 

I posted that as a positive to show the massive and unprecedented effort being made to try to save as many people as possible. But if people choose to go out and socialise today in any sort of decent numbers then there's nothing we can do to make it fit, it's simply not possible unless we flatten that curve.

Can I ask a favour if you're planning to go out socialising? Please get a family member to write "I don't want a ventilator" on your forehead in permanent marker so that the A&E staff know that you're volunteering to give it to someone else instead if we start to run out.

[ckn]

I know cricket isn't known for its responsiveness but... come on...

 

[Bob8]

41 minutes ago, tim2 said:

The Guardian, you say...

I will now confuse @Saintslass by defending him.

Getting out of London and staying out is a bit naughty, as you are moving yourself as a possible vector from one area to another area. But, the actual risk is far less than if he were travelling by train and then moving into a crowded area.

The issue is, if you send out a simplistic message, then you must follow through on the simplistic message.

[tim2]

1 minute ago, Bob8 said:

The issue is, if you send out a simplistic message, then you must follow through on the simplistic message.

My main point was the usual attack on the Guardian, when it's the press in general who are all over the place on this, and largely wrong.

Also, I agree that this (and the Kinnock example) were realistically not risky. But anyone can find a reason/excuse, and when you are in power you have to be squeaky clean or the message is distorted.

[Ullman]

On 08/04/2020 at 19:52, gingerjon said:

Are there even ferries going at the minute?!

Put it this way, I don't fancy our chances of getting our bikes any further than King George Dock on our planned cycling tour of Holland in a few weeks.

P&O suspend mini cruises from Hull but explain why ships will still sail

[Man of Kent]

2 hours ago, ckn said:

Some people wanted to get a hint of capacity usage. This morning, England’s hospitals are at 135% used capacity if you used 1st March 2020 as the 100% capacity baseline (we were 85% used then) 

We’re at about 90% real-time capacity now but more is coming online each day. 

When you say 135% what do you mean? There’s not enough beds? 

[gingerjon]

1 hour ago, Bob8 said:

I will now confuse @Saintslass by defending him.

Getting out of London and staying out is a bit naughty, as you are moving yourself as a possible vector from one area to another area. But, the actual risk is far less than if he were travelling by train and then moving into a crowded area.

The issue is, if you send out a simplistic message, then you must follow through on the simplistic message.

I have a memory that they were clear at the time of lockdown that if you were split between two homes in any way that you had to pick one and stay there. The only exception was for children who divide their time between parents.

[ckn]

7 minutes ago, Man of Kent said:

When you say 135% what do you mean? There’s not enough beds? 

No, if were to compare the capacity we had on 1st March against usage now, we'd be at 135% usage. Against the newly expanded usage, we're at 85% (ish). And that capacity is increasing each day with more of the community/ITU "Nightingale" hospitals being run up.

It was my way of showing just how many new beds and how much temporary capacity we've created in under a month.

[JohnM]

1 hour ago, tim2 said:

My main point was the usual attack on the Guardian, when it's the press in general who are all over the place on this, and largely wrong.

Also, I agree that this (and the Kinnock example) were realistically not risky. But anyone can find a reason/excuse, and when you are in power you have to be squeaky clean or the message is distorted.

Exactly.  Risky or not, his actions were NOT in line with the regulations. He should be setting an example.  There is always a risk when driving that an accident could add further load on the emergency services, or fuelling up become an opportunity to transmit the virus.

Where would we be if we all started behaving like he did? He must go, as per my Tweet to him. 

[gingerjon]

7 minutes ago, ckn said:

No, if were to compare the capacity we had on 1st March against usage now, we'd be at 135% usage. Against the newly expanded usage, we're at 85% (ish). And that capacity is increasing each day with more of the community/ITU "Nightingale" hospitals being run up.

It was my way of showing just how many new beds and how much temporary capacity we've created in under a month.

The NHS has done a tremendous job with regards to capacity. The people involved, and I assume you're one, deserve a huge amount of praise.

[Damien]

7 minutes ago, ckn said:

No, if were to compare the capacity we had on 1st March against usage now, we'd be at 135% usage. Against the newly expanded usage, we're at 85% (ish). And that capacity is increasing each day with more of the community/ITU "Nightingale" hospitals being run up.

It was my way of showing just how many new beds and how much temporary capacity we've created in under a month.

How many extra beds does the extra capacity equate to?

[Dave T]

4 minutes ago, JohnM said:

Exactly.  Risky or not, his actions were NOT in line with the regulations. He should be setting an example.  There is always a risk when driving that an accident could add further load on the emergency services, or fuelling up become an opportunity to transmit the virus.

Where would we be if we all started behaving like he did? He must go, as per my Tweet to him. 

Yes, just like with the Scottish CMO, you can't have one rule for the officials and another for us. 

We could all travel and do these things that keep us away from people, and therefore are low risk, but that isn't what we are being told to do.

[ckn]

10 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

The NHS has done a tremendous job with regards to capacity. The people involved, and I assume you're one, deserve a huge amount of praise.

At local level, we're shoring up the rest of the NHS to allow the acute bits to concentrate on COVID-19, the aim is to stop a non-COVID crisis of undertreated patients with every other condition.

At national level, I'm concentrating on helping with discharge planning so that people get the best treatment once they're discharged.

[Robin Evans]

Just now, ckn said:

At local level, we're shoring up the rest of the NHS to allow the acute bits to concentrate on COVID-19, the aim is to stop a non-COVID crisis of undertreated patients with every other condition.

At national level, I'm concentrating on helping with discharge planning so that people get the best treatment once they're discharged.

There's a reason the DNs are flogged to death.... way under-resourced

[Bob8]

52 minutes ago, Dave T said:

Yes, just like with the Scottish CMO, you can't have one rule for the officials and another for us. 

We could all travel and do these things that keep us away from people, and therefore are low risk, but that isn't what we are being told to do.

Indeed.

There is the need for a simple and easy to enforce message that overrides a certain amount of accuracy.

Then, there is the need for social conformity and obeying the rules for the sake of unity. This is not trivial.

- It also feeds into how much this is a job for sociologists rather than virologists. THe virus is very simple, it is the complexity of the humans that makes the disease and the contagious nature difficult to model. I much prefer unicellular organisms to you multi-cellular organisms.

[Saintslass]

4 hours ago, Bob8 said:

Newspaper journalists are allowed to lie and be hypocrits.

Politicians are allowed to lie, but not to be hypocrits.

Scientists are not allowed to lie.

So, a politician giving an excuse is suspicious, particularly as it might have been avoidable. It is unlikely that he does not know that Tesco deliver.

I can also by sympathetic to him going to a second home. It is clearly less crowded there are if he travelled by car, he could have done it isolated. But, the advice given is based on it being easy to police and comprehend. It is a bad look for him to seem to break it.

And, I suspect, you would be less sympathetic if he were a Labour Minister.

I would be just as sympathetic if the minister was a Labour minister.  He is perfectly within his rights, legally, to take his elderly parents medication and essentials (the media seem to think that essentials is food but it could be supplements to help his father's condition).  As Andrew Neil said on Twitter, the story had died by paragraph 4 so why did the Guardian bother publishing?  (Neil said that whole sentence btw)

As for the 'second home' thing.  Bedfordshire is his home.  They have a property in London and rent the constituency property.  London for when he is at Parliament, constituency property for when in the constituency.  The Bedfordshire home is where they spend their weekends, and his family were there before the lockdown.  He, like other MPs, are now working from home.  Bedfordshire is his home.  He used to be chairman at the Bedfordshire Conservative Association.  He has a history there.  His family was already there.  He's at home.

Non-stories both of them.  The Guardian is just desperate and hasn't done itself any favours at all.

[Saintslass]

3 hours ago, tim2 said:

The Guardian, you say...

The Guardian ran the story first.  Everyone else is copying.

I don't read the Mail.  I don't read tabloids per se, as I've said on here before.