Coronavirus

[SFO]

On 04/01/2022 at 23:47, gregs24 said:

Having a different view is fine if you have evidence to back it up,

Unfortunately, opinion is often presented as evidence or fact .. such as Professor Ferguson's CV19 modelling which has always been way way off - and always OTT pessimistic, almost nonsensical.

Makes no sense to me why the media keeps reporting his view or why anyone listens to him.

IMO, evidence is only valuable if it has been tested vigorously, subject to rigorous analysis or subject to the determination of a jury or judge in a court of law operating independently. 

Edited January 6, 2022 by SFO

[Barrykearley]

He does have form on being a doom

monger

[C8RKH]

Was thinking about all of this last night, always a dangerous thing I know. The fact is I think the impacts of COVID will be with us for many years to come, just like Flu etc. So we need to stop using sticking plasters and develop long term "best practice" solutions to ensure the population is continuously protected as is the NHS and the people who work within it, and external providers like GPs and their practices.

Some questions/observations:

1. Why are we asking GP's to do vaccinations for COVID (and flu) when they are currently so overworked? 

2. Surely the provision of a centralised vaccination service would be both cheaper, and more effective for the NHS as it would allow GP's to focus on providing their GP services to patients with no additional workload due to the vaccinations. Surely a win:win:win for the NHS, GPs and Patients?

3. Rather than paying over worked GPs to perform a relatively simple task (i.e. sticking a needle in someone's arm) opportunities would exist to provide training for employment of people to do the vaccinations as dedicated "vaccineers"!   This could provide working opportunities for single parents and others as shift patterns could be used to provide say "4 hour" working slots at times convenient and on convenient days (i.e. whilst kids are at school, or at evenings when partners could look after kids etc).  Economically this would be cheaper for the Nation, save on NHS resources and reduce further GP workloads. What am I missing here?

 4. Each Health Authority could be funded to create (a) mobile vaccineer team(s) that could visit places of work, care homes, institutions etc to provide "pop up" vaccination centres for those unable to go to central vaccination centres - again a much more effective and cheaper approach

 

By taking a step back and looking at the issues we face, there are opportunities to deliver the herd immunity and population protection services in a much more effective way. Providing new employment opportunities in a flexible "service" that in turn benefits communities, whilst at the same time reduces the burden on current NHS resources, reduces the cost to the NHS of the vaccination programmes, and relieves stressed and over worked GP's and their practices of vaccination workloads. This last point would further benefit ALL patients as it would release GP service capacity back in to the system to allow more patients to be seen for non COVID related concerns.

 

What am I missing? What don't I understand? Why are we not proactively driving efficiency and creating opportunities for people?

[andydclements]

As far as I know GPs aren't employed by the NHS, they are partners/ employees of a practice where the practice is paid by the NHS based on certain criteria, so if a GP practice does vaccinations it may be that they use extra resources to deliver them (admin, initial greeting, cleansing etc). I see no problem with GP surgeries getting paid extra to deliver the jabs, whilst the £10-15 may be more than it costs that's just to incentivise the practices and seems reasonable.

[Bibs]

I can't imagine why we aren't using every resource, including chemists/pharmacies to deliver them. Hospitals should be for more serious conditions and local surgeries/pharmacies should be the initial contact as they are easier to access and much more plentiful. 

[Barrykearley]

For the exact same reason @C8RKH that the dfe didn’t take control of delivering an online national curriculum resource for teaching our kids. It could have been recorded using inspirational teachers and been available on demand. Instead we had a hotchpotch of provision from the seperate schools whom were all struggling with similar issues of never responding to such a requirement.

Cue Sir Kier in a couple of years talking about a failed generation.

[gregs24]

17 minutes ago, C8RKH said:

Was thinking about all of this last night, always a dangerous thing I know. The fact is I think the impacts of COVID will be with us for many years to come, just like Flu etc. So we need to stop using sticking plasters and develop long term "best practice" solutions to ensure the population is continuously protected as is the NHS and the people who work within it, and external providers like GPs and their practices.

Some questions/observations:

1. Why are we asking GP's to do vaccinations for COVID (and flu) when they are currently so overworked? 

2. Surely the provision of a centralised vaccination service would be both cheaper, and more effective for the NHS as it would allow GP's to focus on providing their GP services to patients with no additional workload due to the vaccinations. Surely a win:win:win for the NHS, GPs and Patients?

3. Rather than paying over worked GPs to perform a relatively simple task (i.e. sticking a needle in someone's arm) opportunities would exist to provide training for employment of people to do the vaccinations as dedicated "vaccineers"!   This could provide working opportunities for single parents and others as shift patterns could be used to provide say "4 hour" working slots at times convenient and on convenient days (i.e. whilst kids are at school, or at evenings when partners could look after kids etc).  Economically this would be cheaper for the Nation, save on NHS resources and reduce further GP workloads. What am I missing here?

 4. Each Health Authority could be funded to create (a) mobile vaccineer team(s) that could visit places of work, care homes, institutions etc to provide "pop up" vaccination centres for those unable to go to central vaccination centres - again a much more effective and cheaper approach

 

By taking a step back and looking at the issues we face, there are opportunities to deliver the herd immunity and population protection services in a much more effective way. Providing new employment opportunities in a flexible "service" that in turn benefits communities, whilst at the same time reduces the burden on current NHS resources, reduces the cost to the NHS of the vaccination programmes, and relieves stressed and over worked GP's and their practices of vaccination workloads. This last point would further benefit ALL patients as it would release GP service capacity back in to the system to allow more patients to be seen for non COVID related concerns.

 

What am I missing? What don't I understand? Why are we not proactively driving efficiency and creating opportunities for people?

Sounds very sensible. After all the vaccinator teams now exist.

It already exists in schools and has done for years. Pharmacists have given flu jabs for years.

GP's don't have time, however could do vaccinations that require certification such as foreign travel (Rabies, Yellow Fever etc)

To be fair a lot of GP teams are not involved in COVID vaccination as they simply don't have time as you say.

11 minutes ago, andydclements said:

As far as I know GPs aren't employed by the NHS, they are partners/ employees of a practice where the practice is paid by the NHS based on certain criteria, so if a GP practice does vaccinations it may be that they use extra resources to deliver them (admin, initial greeting, cleansing etc). I see no problem with GP surgeries getting paid extra to deliver the jabs, whilst the £10-15 may be more than it costs that's just to incentivise the practices and seems reasonable.

GP practices get paid based on metrics set by the NHS

The actual sticking the needle in the arm bit is only about 25% of the vaccination process, and to be honest getting GP's to do it is a waste of their skills long term. All hands to the pump at the moment, including anybody who has ever held a syringe in their life!

3 minutes ago, Bibs said:

I can't imagine why we aren't using every resource, including chemists/pharmacies to deliver them. Hospitals should be for more serious conditions and local surgeries/pharmacies should be the initial contact as they are easier to access and much more plentiful. 

For COVID we are.

[C8RKH]

33 minutes ago, andydclements said:

As far as I know GPs aren't employed by the NHS, they are partners/ employees of a practice where the practice is paid by the NHS based on certain criteria, so if a GP practice does vaccinations it may be that they use extra resources to deliver them (admin, initial greeting, cleansing etc). I see no problem with GP surgeries getting paid extra to deliver the jabs, whilst the £10-15 may be more than it costs that's just to incentivise the practices and seems reasonable.

You are correct, contrary to the publics perception they are private contractors (or 3rd party contractors) to the NHS. That's slightly missed my point and the figures are higher re the payment.

My point is why ask GP's and their practices to do more, at a time when they are over worked, over stressed and not able to cope with the volumes?  This leads to other issues like less appointments for patients outside of COVID related matters etc.

It seems pointless to keep loading the pressure on GP's when GP's are telling us they cannot cope with the workload.

[PaulCP]

42 minutes ago, Barrykearley said:

Cue Sir Kier in a couple of years talking about a failed opposition party and leader 

I’ve corrected the last sentence for you Barry 👍

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

41 minutes ago, gregs24 said:

All hands to the pump at the moment, including anybody who has ever held a syringe in their life!

Well maybe not just anybody… 🤪

[march]

Farmers will do it - we can stick needles in anything (other services available), the bed side manner may be a bit basic at times but we get the job done 👨‍🌾🐮 (sorry - couldn't find the emoji for a farmer with his arm up the back side of a cow for some reason)

 

[Bibs]

[Barrykearley]

[oneshot]

They were at one time suggesting vets could do COVID vaccinations. I was talking to our cattery vet and he said they had been warned they may have to but it never materialised.

[gregs24]

9 hours ago, oneshot said:

They were at one time suggesting vets could do COVID vaccinations. I was talking to our cattery vet and he said they had been warned they may have to but it never materialised.

I can assure you some of us have!

Just to bring the nutters back up ..

 

[Colin P]

Rather indicates the level of intelligence of their target audience when they feel the need to include an explanation of what infertile means (which presumably means that the author had to look it up).

[eeyoreish]

Endorsed by David Icke 👍

[andydclements]

4 hours ago, Colin P said:

Rather indicates the level of intelligence of their target audience when they feel the need to include an explanation of what infertile means (which presumably means that the author had to look it up).

I was thinking that perhaps if they need that explaining, then not having children might not be a bad idea (but not suggesting forced/involuntary sterilisation).

[C8RKH]

5 hours ago, Colin P said:

Rather indicates the level of intelligence of their target audience when they feel the need to include an explanation of what infertile means (which presumably means that the author had to look it up).

I wonder if that had worried Prince Philip before he allegedly was killed by COVID?  Wow, what utter nonsense.

[gregs24]

Coronavirus and the social impacts on Great Britain - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)

ONS survey data on behaviour. Seems people have responded to Government advice (rather than mandates) which is nice to see.

[ChrisJ]

COVID-19: Sajid Javid directly challenged on mandatory coronavirus jabs by unvaccinated NHS doctor | Politics News | Sky News

 

[Barrykearley]

Fret not @ChrisJ when they sack that Dr in April/May for not having the mandatory jab - he will be able to get another job paid twice what he’s getting currently via an agency contracted to the nhs that aren’t bound by these rules 👍

[gregs24]

On 13/12/2021 at 14:15, SFO said:

Has there been "explosive" growth in number of CV19 cases in London? 

looking at national case numbers, in the last 7 days, cases increased by 11.9% and testing increased by 12.6% - seems to me, the more you test, the more you find. over the same period, hospitalisations up 3.7%. 

Omnicron death - put out there with no detail, IMO purely to scare the public. No analysis of whether the death sheds any light on virulence. is it a death due to CV19 or as a result of CV19? Age, underlying health conditions? It's not as there hasn't been any deaths from Delta ...

10 omnicron patients in hospital .. out of tens of thousands of estimated cases ... again, remind me why we a panicking as if no one has been vaccinated and/or vaccines are wholly ineffective against hospitalisation and death 

I still think this is all part of Boris's plan to divert attention from his omni shambles No 10 operation 

As promised I return to this. 

Nothing much to add as the figures speak for themselves. The warnings were appropriate, have been heeded according to data and clearly there was not an over reaction or fearmongering / panic.

Cases have now translated into admissions, but it looks like death rates may not be as bad as was feared but still increasing.

[Barrykearley]

Funny isn’t it how the new omicron variant has made other variants like delta almost completely disappear according to politicians and media. Scare death variant1.0 replaced by variant2.0. Keep scaring folks -  be afraid - the politicians will save us.

[gregs24]

5 hours ago, Barrykearley said:

Funny isn’t it how the new omicron variant has made other variants like delta almost completely disappear according to politicians and media. Scare death variant1.0 replaced by variant2.0. Keep scaring folks -  be afraid - the politicians will save us.

Stop being silly.

It isn't rocket science that omicron has replaced delta in the same way delta replaced other strains. That is how it works where the more transmissible strains overwhelm the less so. Luckily omicron is less virulent than delta or we would be right up the creek. So nothing to do with media or politicians - just reality

Once again not sure why you are scared - this is progressing exactly as suggested it would so the warnings were entirely appropriate and realistic. There is no story here for you to spout your rhetoric about.