Covid-19 Virus

Same results for me-a lot of questions to answer though as well !

 

Yes, there were a lot.

 

I don't believe that any members of the Lutrinae family have been found to have contracted the virus, so I'm not surprised. In fact, no mustelids at all.

 

So did I and also negative. I am not so sure that is correct. We know for a fact that Mrs Keighley attended an event in March where several people contracted Covid. I got pretty sick a couple of weeks later.

 

Only REAL men get COVID as opposed to your feeble man-flu

 

Want to know who's on the list of schools closed due to covid in Hertfordshire?

 

u ave 2 b seriously fick 2 fail ne test from kensington tech

 

Matt Hancock claims average distance to get a test 5.8 miles. As the reliably excellent More or Less on R4 points out, this is the average of those who actually took a test. And doesn't include the thousands of people who are offered tests at the other end of the country who thought '**** that' and didn't book (if they were offered a test at all, which I wasn't yesterday).

It's an absolute shambles. Where the **** is Dildo Harding?

Note to Mods - Please don't close the thread for being 'too political'.

 

Over 200k tests are being processed per day, so I agree the average will be skewed by those deciding not to drive 10s or 100s of miles for one, but it's still a huge number of tests being done nationally.

 

FWIW my son's school bus driver reckoned that this morning traffic was "...almost back to normal...".

 

The biggest problem and its going to be cyclical in a bad way is that my other half works for the NHS they have lost half their workers due to their kids being off school (sent home) and cant return without a test. They are testing all patients in her wards but they are not allowed to test themselves which is meaning dangerous staffing levels and no way out of this problem. I cant imagine this is an isolated problem to one small hospital.

 

I think they’re going to end up issuing new guidelines to school. At the moment most paths point to getting a Covid test as a gateway to returning to school, but presumably that’s based on them being available.

 

1251 schools infected. All kids coming home to parents/grandparents. Second wave coming. Shambles

 

My Sons school year 11 are all home now isolating. My Sons mate who he sits next to every day, his Dad just tested positive. It's not good

 

The whole year group is isolating because one child’s parent tested positive?

 

No I said that in a confusing way. A year 11 pupil tested positive. My son is in year 10. They're still in school, the pupil who's father is positive is isolating.

 

It's because of a***holes like this one, the government don't stand a chance.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-54205353

In my opinion, this R0 number is only part of the story. Plenty may have the disease without knowing and inadvertently spread despite sticking to the rules, this one person in Bolton could easily have spread it to 25+ people on his own, which of course has great knock on effects.

 

SAGE reckons compliance with the self-isolation rules is as little as 20%. I imagine it’s not a dissimilar amount for those returning from holiday and breaching quarantine - albeit going on a pub crawl was clearly taking the mickey and I suspect most incidents of breaches are people popping to the shops and back.

We’re 6 months into this and the public are becoming increasingly sceptical and fatigued with it all. It might help the government’s cause if it sought to convince people of the need to do things, rather constantly making threats, devising new rules and and cracking the whip. If it isn’t able to convince people then it needs to explain the consequences that will result and leave it at that. I think a lot of people have spent a few months learning about the virus and have (for want of a less clunky term) carried out their own personal risk assessment and decided it’s something they’re prepared to live with just like lots of other risks.

 

I agree with this. People will have looked at the graph for some weeks and come to the conclusion that the pandemic is all but over and acted accordingly. However, rather than making a personal risk assessment, they really need to make a collective one for the benefit of the whole community. Unfortunately this is very difficult to get across, given human nature.

 

There will always be selfish and stupid individuals who make the battle against Covid harder, but I don't think the government should be absolved of blame. Eat out to help out, re-opening of pubs and reopening of schools with no effective track and trace system in place would always lead to disaster. The media should also shoulder some of the blame "remember how much fun we all had in the office guys??"

 

Pubs and restaurants are businesses, and the heart of many communities. If they hadn’t reopened in July, many would have gone bust. Which would have caused both financial and, very likely, health problems to those working in them.

It’s a balance. And the balance cannot be permanently weighted in favour of the immediate public health consequences.

 

OK, I thought that bit of your post was just referring to schools.

I know someone who works on Covid for a local council. He doesn’t think the track and trace system is nearly as bad as has been painted.

 

I completely agree with you with regards to restarting the economy and getting these businesses back open.

But where's this world class app? And with testing falling apart it's a recipe for disaster.

Get kids back to school, gets businesses back open, but do it when these measures are in place.

 

Yeah, I don’t disagree with any of that.

 

But what if those measures are, say, another year away? Do we keep everything shut until then? Genuine question by the way.

 

Yeah, I take the point. But then I think a lot of people have also considered the economic impact too and, whether it’s palatable or not, that’s part of the ‘collective approach for the benefit of the whole community’ as well. You can’t have a public health system without a functioning economy behind it. It’s a real bind!

 

Be warned, I noticed a lot more people with toilet rolls, pasta and flour on the shop today. Here we go....

 

Anti-mask, anti-vax loons fighting with police in Trafalgar Square today.
http://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...with-police-at-anti-lockdown-protest-12076069

 

I've got no idea, it's definitely a tricky one. Several countries have already developed and released a track and trace (with varying degrees of success, to be fair) so I don't understand why we can't.

I think while we're on the cusp of a second wave, face coverings should be mandatory in all indoor settings. Offices, Pubs, Schools (for teachers and students over 11). Yes it's a bit of a ballache to take your mask off when you're having your beer and put it back on when you're going up to the bar or having a chat. If surgeons can keep theirs on for however many hours then so can we. I had to wear a mask and visor for 10 hours a day, for most of summer. Hated the feeling but if I'm keeping people safe and minimising risk then it's worth it.

Sorry just realised I've gone on a bit of a tangent and a rant there!

 

Maybe it’s some mad, off the scale, Infants School project, like creating the pyramids to quarter scale from household materials.

 

I know there’s a few apps out there but haven’t heard much about how effective they are. And clearly they’re only one part of a proper track and trace system. Doesn’t help that every country has its own counting rules for case/deaths etc so direct comparisons are tricky at best and impossible at worst.

I’m not convinced by the face coverings thing. Aren’t they pretty much compulsory everywhere in Spain and France, including outdoors? Doesn’t seem to be stemming the tide...

 

The overriding problem with masks in my opinion is that they are giving the population a false sense of security. Wearing a mask in the Harlequin for example won't protect you if you touch the handle of an escalator if someone earlier with the virus on their hands had done so too. Having said that, I accept that wearing a mask is a necessity of sorts and I follow that guidance.

I wonder whether it would be more effective to have a complete lockdown, like we had in March to May for one week in every 4 or 5 weeks to manage numbers to an extent, and to continue to do that through the winter. That way offices and schools can continue with some kind of certainty.

 

1 week in every 4/5 sounds reasonable but I suspect the weeks either side would see so many people pushing the limits it would end up being counter productive.

 

I don't disagree with you. In my opinion something has to be done to achieve a working balance until an effective vaccine is available, bearing in mind that for many years we accept the flu as a killer and an otherwise healthy person with it stays in bed for a few days. Covid is not a million miles away from being just a more severe version of the flu (flu is also a coronavirus), and I suspect that like flu it ends up as something that we have to put up with forever with an annual jab.

Of course we are still in the early stage of it and much is to be learnt. Come Easter time I think everything will be much clearer once we have seen a whole winter with it around.