coronavirus

[Saintslass]

7 hours ago, Spidey said:

I was a bit suspicious as no data or ranking accompanied it. I was mainly interested as Wigan was listed, as that is where my office is located and they were considering opening it up for returning back office staff

There was a hysterical headline in the Daily Telegraph today claiming something like 35 cities/counties have rising cases and maybe next in line for lockdown.  However, when you look at the list of cities/counties they helpfully include, all these rises the alarmist headline refers to involve massive numbers like from one to four or three to five.  Only about three other towns had what I would say were significant rises but none of them like the one reported in Leicester.

I just read an article on the Gruniad site which is reporting that the textile and food processing industries may be vectors as it was suggested they have not been following social distancing or other covid guidance.  

[Bedford Roughyed]

 

[henage]

12 hours ago, Saintslass said:

There was a hysterical headline in the Daily Telegraph today claiming something like 35 cities/counties have rising cases and maybe next in line for lockdown.  However, when you look at the list of cities/counties they helpfully include, all these rises the alarmist headline refers to involve massive numbers like from one to four or three to five.  Only about three other towns had what I would say were significant rises but none of them like the one reported in Leicester.

I just read an article on the Gruniad site which is reporting that the textile and food processing industries may be vectors as it was suggested they have not been following social distancing or other covid guidance.  

I walk my dog passed the local slaughterhouse quite regular . Lots of the workers are from outside the local area . Lots of cars,mini buses parked up . Come end of shift lots walking out of the factories facility then start packing the transport .  

[Saintslass]

8 hours ago, henage said:

I walk my dog passed the local slaughterhouse quite regular . Lots of the workers are from outside the local area . Lots of cars,mini buses parked up . Come end of shift lots walking out of the factories facility then start packing the transport .  

Abattoirs appear to be particularly good at spreading Covid as a few countries have had outbreaks within them; the biggest one I think is in Germany where over 1,500 employees have tested positive in one over the last few weeks.

Here is the PHE report on Leicester  (pdf)  I can't pretend to understand all of it but I get the gist.  Apparently Bradford, Barnsley and Rochdale are other potential problem areas but all are significantly behind Leicester.

[Wiltshire Warrior Dragon]

Shadow has helpfully highlighted the naivity of using percentages when the sample total is itself small.

I spent much of my career working on rural issues, and there is another aspect of the list of 35, after Leicester, that concerns me.  Five of the local authority areas are predominantly rural counties - Derbyshire, Gloucestershire, the Isle of Wight, Suffolk and Wiltshire; there are six if you add Redcar & Cleveland.

If the problems in, for example, Suffolk are essentially manifesting themselves in, say, Ipswich, what is the point of locking down the whole county?  This shows the arbitrary nature of using whole local authority areas as the basis for this sort of decision making.  

It is depressing how frequently the specific characteristics of rural areas are ignored in processes primarily driven by urban experience.

[Damien]

New Covid-19 dashboard with lots of figures and pretty graphs:

https://coronavirus-staging.data.gov.uk/cases

[Futtocks]

So, at 6am on the morning of the 4th of July, the pubs re-open. Can't see why they'd bother when there's NRL on TV!

Oh, hang on, it's Gold Coast Titans v Cronulla Sharks. A bottle of Coronavirus (with a lemming wedge in the neck) might actually be preferable, after all.

Or just a lie-in 'til the next match at 8:30am...

Oh God, that's New Zealand Warriors v Brisbane Broncos. They're not making this "staying safe" malarkey easy, are they?

[graveyard johnny]

why not open the pubs up from monday onwards? let things ease in gently during the working week- the decision to open back up on a saturday must have been made by terry fu""wit from viz 

[GeordieSaint]

Infections increasing in many places at the moment with little pockets appearing in nations were the virus was under control. Can’t help but feel this is a very dangerous time and mistakes made by governments could see the virus explode again...

[DavidM]

I’ve never drunk so excuse my ignorance , but if you’re standing outside a pub at 6 in the morning you may need to seek help 

[The Hallucinating Goose]

1 hour ago, DavidM said:

I’ve never drunk so excuse my ignorance , but if you’re standing outside a pub at 6 in the morning you may need to seek help 

Couldn't agree more. I've had a walk into the city centre this morning, quite a few pubs open but a lot closed as well, didn't see too many people going in and out but that was probably cos I was paying so much attention to dodging the thousands of people not social distancing. Absolute chaos. If you didn't know there was a pandemic going on you wouldn't believe there was. 

[Les Tonks Sidestep]

Designated pathways after a few pints in the local.. 

[Les Tonks Sidestep]

Risk of catching CV-19 when carrying out/taking part in activities published by the Texan Medical Association Covid Task Force

[gingerjon]

2 hours ago, GeordieSaint said:

Infections increasing in many places at the moment with little pockets appearing in nations were the virus was under control. Can’t help but feel this is a very dangerous time and mistakes made by governments could see the virus explode again...

The R rate in London is back above 1 apparently.

There was a time when that might have been an issue.

[redjonn]

Every prediction I've heard is that a 2nd wave is likely, question is more about how big a spike.

So you have to decide do we stay in some form of lockdown for a year or until vaccine and live with the consequences of unemployment, worse deprivation and increased deaths as a result

or take steps as we have been to open up and hope that local shutdown will suffice.

No easy answer and apart from scientists who don't discuss the economic consequences on deprivation and only talk in the narrow window of covid protection I ain't seen anyone discuss openly. Except  Whitty and Powell and government.

I say government in the same way as lumping all officials in as government. e.g when discussing slowness of PHE its government not PHE, etc. That is I'm not being specific just using the simplistic phase government.

[Gerrumonside ref]

Bit of colourful language here (hope it’s okay)

 

[Derwent]

[SSoutherner]

just walked past the bear garden of my local which opened at 12noon - it is rammed, absolutely no room to move at all, outside screens showing the footie, every table full, BBQ going and playground full of kids playing together.

I dread to think what it will be like by 6pm let alone 11pm

[SSoutherner]

1 hour ago, Gerrumonside ref said:

Bit of colourful language here (hope it’s okay)

 

just sent that to my son who is working ina  spoon today (glass collecting 11-3pm half shift only luckily)

[Futtocks]

43 minutes ago, SSoutherner said:

just walked past the bear garden of my local which opened at 12noon - it is rammed, absolutely no room to move at all, outside screens showing the footie, every table full, BBQ going and playground full of kids playing together.

I dread to think what it will be like by 6pm let alone 11pm

They need to add more bears. That'll sort it.

[Saintslass]

1 hour ago, SSoutherner said:

just walked past the bear garden of my local which opened at 12noon - it is rammed, absolutely no room to move at all, outside screens showing the footie, every table full, BBQ going and playground full of kids playing together.

I dread to think what it will be like by 6pm let alone 11pm

I don't know where you live, but around here it is as much a ghost town as it is normally.  

[Saintslass]

I have found Nicola Sturgeon somewhat amusing of late.  She speaks as if it is possible to eradicate Covid 19.  It really isn't.  While I have my doubts about opening pubs for the first time in three months on a Saturday and I have doubts about some publicans and their commitment to social distancing and of course many punters with regard to the same, I do think that England have taken the only realistic approach.  We have to learn to live with the virus.  We could try and be New Zealand but the only way New Zealand (now with at least 20 live infections) can be New Zealand is by entirely closing their borders, which if we adopted the same approach would see mass unemployment destroying us.

Scotland cannot eradicate Covid 19, England cannot, nowhere can.  We have to learn to live with it.  There may be openings and closings again; local lockdowns; closures of workplaces, hospitals, schools, etc, as indeed there already has been, in an attempt to control the spread of the virus.  However, we cannot continue in lockdown forever unless we want mass unemployment.

The one thing I do think the government have neglected is face coverings.  I do think they should have made face coverings mandatory in all enclosed spaces as part of the reopening.  Maybe they will do in due course.

[silverback]

Someone needs to get the message out to stop fumbling with masks,pulling them down to talk or have a fag is madness,all these pubs packed to rafters and thousands handling the masks for every swigg of ale or munch on some chips,we were told at the start to try not mess with them or its a waste of time wearing one. i cant wait for sky news tonight...all hard work done for months detroyed in days for sake of some beer.are glass collectors in hazmatt suits.

[SSoutherner]

37 minutes ago, Saintslass said:

I don't know where you live, but around here it is as much a ghost town as it is normally.  

outskirts of Reading

[Griff9of13]

3 hours ago, SSoutherner said:

just walked past the bear garden of my local which opened at 12noon - it is rammed, absolutely no room to move at all, outside screens showing the footie, every table full, BBQ going and playground full of kids playing together.

I dread to think what it will be like by 6pm let alone 11pm