Coronavirus

[Barrykearley]

Care workers are being sacked due to not having the vaccine. This is apparent in homes in Cheltenham that I have relatives working at. Happening all over the country as well. As of November disciplinary action  was starting to be taken. 
 

Not long and the same will be happening in the NHS - albeit - contract cover workers are currently excluded from such legislation.

[exeterjeep]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-59930206

Ikea has cut sick pay for unvaccinated staff who need to self-isolate because of Covid exposure and in some cases for workers who test positive.

The retail giant acknowledged it was an "emotive topic" but said its policy had to evolve with changing circumstances.

 

[C8RKH]

15 hours ago, gregs24 said:

To the many who have lost aged relatives before their time this would be seen as offensive.

I'm starting to get the feeling you'll find a nuance or excuse to be offended even when none was meant or directed at you. It just seems to be your form of repost at times.

We've ALL lost aged relatives. When you're older, statistically (you like statistics after all) confirm that you're more likely to die. It's just an observation really. In fact when you're older your "expected" to die at some point. The older you are, the more expected it is. Again, just a fact of life.

What's worse than losing an aged relative is, I can assure through personal experience, losing a young child, or a non aged relative (I lost my father when he was 47 to cancer, my wife lost her mother to cancer when she was only 13, etc).

15 hours ago, gregs24 said:

but many if not most would NOT have died if it were not for COVID at this time.

So actually most of those old people who died of COVID were NOT expected to die at this time.

That's just not true and is your interpretation of the current data/situation.  The fact we have had nearly 2 years of a pandemic and actions to curtail it means that we have not had the "usual" spike in deaths caused by things like seasonal flu, colds and complications that they can induce like pneumonia. You can't say what you have said for "certain", you can only summise this.  It's like your statement above "would be seen as offensive" - this implies that EVERYBODY WOULD see it that way. You can't know that so you should have conditioned your response and used "could" or said "some people may". You do not know for certain that every WOULD be offended.  So by all means "have a go" at the OP re their choice of language but be careful with your own.

I'm going to bow out

[NeilP]

Given some of the comments & how figures are presented in the media, this could be an interesting read:

 

http://news.sky.com/story/four-different-covid-death-tolls-how-bad-was-mortality-in-2021-compared-to-2020-12513215

[Barrykearley]

Yet more parties and flagrant breaking of their own rules in Downing Streets garden.

Right there is another reason why the emergency measures placing restrictions on people’s movements should simply have never been allowed to be put into place. Time for people to be able to appeal these ludicrous fines they were levied with for going about their daily lives.

[RobinB5]

On 09/01/2022 at 13:35, SFO said:

https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/does-warwick-s-omicron-modelling-make-restrictions-more-likely-

"The former suggested that hospitalisations could peak at 7,190 a day in January in its most pessimistic scenario; the latter was reported as suggesting that deaths might peak at 5,000 a day in January. Both figures, however, were made on the assumption that Omicron was every bit as virulent as the Delta variant. Since then, several UK studies have suggested that this is not the case..."

[Kimbers]

That people can disagree over nuances of statement and what one thing means or another is actually quite offensive in itself. You know what I find quite offensive? People dying before they should, many with COVID. 

My daughter was rushed into hospital 6 days ago and has since had a major operation, she's still in. I have my Granddaughter who at 8 years old is having panic attacks, nightmares of losing her mom and sleeping about 2 hours a night before waking up crying and shaking until Grandad and Nanny cuddle her, eventually getting a few hours of sleep.

You know who's been looking after my daughter? The NHS, including her Nurse mom and Doctor sister. 

Hospital isn't a great place to be. With so many people in for different and often contagious reasons, cross contamination is going to happen no matter how much they use modern chemicals to clean , sterilise and wash. People make mistakes, its what makes us human and not robots, but it's still the best place to be when you are in a life threatening situation. LIKE MY DAUGHTER!

So please, keep on with the pathetic arguments over semantics or the definitions of COVID delivery. But I promise I will offend you if you keep on, after being told by Bibs and now myself to stop arguing!

This post is to discuss COVID and its effects politely. If you can't F**king do that then don't comment!

 

[gregs24]

8 minutes ago, Kimbers said:

That people can disagree over nuances of statement and what one thing means or another is actually quite offensive in itself. You know what I find quite offensive? People dying before they should, many with COVID. 

My daughter was rushed into hospital 6 days ago and has since had a major operation, she's still in. I have my Granddaughter who at 8 years old is having panic attacks, nightmares of losing her mom and sleeping about 2 hours a night before waking up crying and shaking until Grandad and Nanny cuddle her, eventually getting a few hours of sleep.

You know who's been looking after my daughter? The NHS, including her Nurse mom and Doctor sister. 

Hospital isn't a great place to be. With so many people in for different and often contagious reasons, cross contamination is going to happen no matter how much they use modern chemicals to clean , sterilise and wash. People make mistakes, its what makes us human and not robots, but it's still the best place to be when you are in a life threatening situation. LIKE MY DAUGHTER!

So please, keep on with the pathetic arguments over semantics or the definitions of COVID delivery. But I promise I will offend you if you keep on, after being told by Bibs and now myself to stop arguing!

This post is to discuss COVID and its effects politely. If you can't F**king do that then don't comment!

 

The NHS consists of over a million fantastic people and provide us with one of the best health services for free at point of use. Few other countries come close and most fall very short. 

[C8RKH]

The NHS is fantastic. It ranks around 11th in terms of outcomes delivered, but significantly it is behind peers on areas around outcomes for people with potentially fatal illnesses, bettered in this respect by most of our western counterparts, Australia, Israel etc.  No doubt that sentence will provoke outrage that someone has dared to say the NHS is not wonderfully brilliant. But the facts are the facts and the "Outcomes" are what matter, not the Inputs!  According to most leading independent observers, the NHS is falling down the league table and is approaching relegation (to use a football analogy) when  you look at health outcomes through intervention. That's just a fact backed up by people's beloved statistics.

The NHS would be much better if:

1. Funding was increased to make available more nurses, doctors and beds - note, the issue is we need more of these things to drive capacity, not to pay more for each of them!

2. The NHS took real responsibility for its operations and spending and stopped the waste to channel spending where it is needed at the front line - some of this "waste" could be used to provide better funding (pay) for nurses and other front line staff - note: this specifically excludes GP's, Surgeons, Consultants etc whom are currently paid on average 4x (often much more) the average nurses salary.

3. We stopped "the NHS is so wonderful and everyone who works in it is a saint" rhetoric and realised that the issues with the NHS are more than just political (i.e. the media, politicians and doctors using it as a political football to score goals) and require a thorough root and branch review of how the NHS operates, how resources are used and allocated, how future demand for resources is identified (and funding put in place importantly in advance) and how OUTCOMES are delivered that improve peoples lives and their chances of survival. If we are honest, the way the NHS is structured has not changed, fundamentally, for nearly 70 years. Yet the needs of society HAVE changed in that time (70 years ago the most common causes of death were infections and heart conditions, today it is Cancer, suicide and heart conditions). The people who have stopped a lot of the change needed have, ironically, been medics! The analogy of turkeys voting for Christmas is so apt.  The BMA, the Royal College of Surgeons, the Royal College of Nurses etc, are all as interested in preserving their slice of power as they are in driving better outcomes.

4. We accepted that the NHS and associated services such as GP surgery's, were never designed, are not optimised, to cope with and manage a pandemic like we have with COVID.  Their services have been found wanting (not through their fault) and a lot of the decisions and actions that have been taken have been done quickly, with the best of intentions, but not necessarily with the best of outcomes (shall we debate the nuances around the success and value of the investment in setting up the Nightingale facilities for instance?).

47 minutes ago, Kimbers said:

This post is to discuss COVID and its effects politely. If you can't F**king do that then don't comment!

I think you need to consider your statement and follow your own advice. Also, when you are debating something as emotive as this, the NUANCES are actually very important IF you want to get to the facts and avoid obfuscation etc. Frankly I am more scared of getting Cancer than I am of getting COVID and I am more likely to die, statistically, from Heart failure, cancer or suicide than I am from COVID. The point that your post highlights very well @Kimbers is that the hysteria that is being peddled about COVID is doing as much harm, if not more harm, to peoples health (mentally and physically) than the disease itself. So again, this is why the nuances need to be debated, analysed and understood, to STOP the hysteria so evident in your post.  No one on here is doing a Novak and denying the seriousness of the situation re COVID.

The nuances are important. The first part of my post here is not blowing smoke up the arses of the NHS saying it is all wonderful and saintly. However, it is also not "bashing" the NHS, IF, you read it and understand the nuances!

So yes, let's be respectful, but lets also have less of the morale indignation and easy outrage that seems to be used to attack people who do want to understand the nuances, who are prepared to challenge the "propoganda" (but not deny the issue), and who do believe it is important to understand, for instance, how many people are actually dying from COVID (not many) versus how many people are dying from something else with COVID present, but not the cause of death (very many). It should not be hard to understand why that nuance is important to understand and how it is driving decisions that are crushing the economy, destroying jobs and livelihoods and creating an even harsher outlook for our young people as they try to embark on their careers etc in adult life. What will the lack of jobs, wealth, travel, opportunity do to their mental health in the future? (especially given the supposed impacts that the restriction in travel brought on by something as small as Brexit was supposed to have had, from listening to some even on here, on them?). To make the point, "nuance" is bloody important!

[Barrykearley]

The MET are now investigating the garden party at Downing Street.

Is this another classic example of blatant incompetence on behalf of the MET whom were clearly present on-site that day? Or just they are more happy to use their powers to bully private unprivileged individuals whom they can bully and fine more easily?

sadly Labour are just using this as a point scoring exercise rather than representing the rights of the electorate.

[LotusLeftLotusRight]

When are big corporations finally going to get their act together when it comes to dealing with phone calls from their paying customers? It’s been 2 years now and still the default response is “due to unexpectedly high call volumes, blah, blah, blah”. You can then write off the next hour listening to horrendous music and never-ending recorded messages telling you to use their website, which is more often than not why you’re having to phone them in the first place! I get that they might be working from home, but that doesn’t render them incapable of picking up the phone, unless they’re walking the dog or mowing the lawn. I am sure these companies have just cut the numbers of staff and bollocks to the customers. If they’re still being taken by surprise by high call volumes after 2 years, then they’re in the wrong business.

[eeyoreish]

Agreed! Seems to be the standard level of 'service' today... Lost count of the number of times me or the current Mrs H have got to the front of a queue only to be cut off. Presumably a handy way of shortening the queue!

Generally, like most folk, I'm only on the phone because I can't do or get the info I need from their website 🙄

[pete]

Spot on spent most of the day getting more wound up trying to get through to 2 banks, an electric company, and virgin media . Result got through to none of them. Worse thing that happened was these automated answering systems. Should be reported for calling it customer service which it clearly isn't.

 

[PaulCP]

Try getting through to the DVLA. My licence expired last week and the application was sent and received by them in early Oct.

First of all, when you call you are likely 4 times out of 5 to be greeted with an extremely rude and abrupt recorded message of “All lines are busy, try again later, goodbye!”

Then, when you do get through you get the very long next recorded message which tells you, in addition to the usual Covid crap of “unprecedented high volume of calls”, that you can use their website to do all sorts of things. Well not so I’m afraid, my licence is an annual medical licence and they can’t deal with this type of licence on line.

Then, after almost a hour of listening to their repetitive inane music I get through to a guy who gives me the usual spiel of “we have a huge backlog and we have not yet written to your consultant for confirmation that he supports your application, but you can continue driving under section 88 rules provided that you meet the criteria”

Yes I know that, I did it last year but the first obstacle was realised today when our Lexus went in for service and I couldn’t get a courtesy car due to not having a current valid licence according to the DVLA website.

I do have some sympathy for DVLA staff since they are dealing with crap old Govt systems and I know that the medical side of the DVLA still have use manual systems. Not easy when you are working from home. However, If they have such a huge backlog because of Covid and crap systems why is the Govt not extending expiry dates on licences by 6 months like they did back in 2020!

 

[gregs24]

Interesting data coming out of France. 280k cases today which in reality means double or more than that when you consider how many asymptomatic cases there are with omicron. Population is almost identical size to the UK.

21k hospitalisations there on the 10th which is higher than the UK and still rising fast, but most significant 3751 in intensive care compared to 857 in the UK. This means it is very likely the death rate will be higher.

What I find interesting is that those figures are at or even above the UK worst case predictions, and the UK is close to the best case scenario in the modelling.

And the difference is? Two major factors, firstly the UK has had a much higher background delta wave for several months before omicron and also a very effective booster roll out. Both of these things result in much better immunity to both infection and subsequent illness. Three doses of vaccine result in orders of magnitude higher levels of antibodies compared to 2 doses and /or natural infection.

 

[Dave Eds]

And the link to substantiate this is where?

[Barrykearley]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-59960689
 

yet more discriminatory behaviour by governments.

[C8RKH]

16 hours ago, LotusLeftLotusRight said:

When are big corporations finally going to get their act together when it comes to dealing with phone calls from their paying customers?

Bang on the button. It's disgraceful how many (curiously it would seen the majority of the financial services organisations!) are hiding behind COVID some two years.  CEO's need to be sacked for not putting in place the operational support to fix this. But they won't. Instead they'll get a bonus for increasing efficiency through cost reduction

 

12 hours ago, PaulCP said:

I do have some sympathy for DVLA staff since they are dealing with crap old Govt systems

They're not actually. They have spent a fortune on upgrading their systems which is why, to be fair, it is now so easy to do the mundane stuff like apply for SORN, check MOT status and dates, pay your road tax etc.

The real issue is that many, especially in the Public Sector, are hiding behind a bull shit "unprecedented call volumes" screen. Absolute pish to be honest.

[C8RKH]

11 hours ago, gregs24 said:

Interesting data coming out of France. 280k cases today which in reality means double or more than that when you consider how many asymptomatic cases there are with omicron. Population is almost identical size to the UK.

21k hospitalisations there on the 10th which is higher than the UK and still rising fast, but most significant 3751 in intensive care compared to 857 in the UK. This means it is very likely the death rate will be higher.

What I find interesting is that those figures are at or even above the UK worst case predictions, and the UK is close to the best case scenario in the modelling.

And the difference is? Two major factors, firstly the UK has had a much higher background delta wave for several months before omicron and also a very effective booster roll out. Both of these things result in much better immunity to both infection and subsequent illness. Three doses of vaccine result in orders of magnitude higher levels of antibodies compared to 2 doses and /or natural infection.

 

What impact is population density having as this is a disease that is spread, as I understand it, through close proximity to infected people?  France has roughly the same population as the UK, but twice the land mass and is therefore generally less densely populated (obviously, cities are cities wherever they are).  Has there been anything done around looking at the impact of population density on the spread of the disease?  For instance, I am always amazed how here in Scotland we seem to have such high rates, yet we only have 10% of the population of the UK in 27% of the land mass and population concentration is further reduced due by the smaller size of our principle cities (excluding Glasgow) which by rest of UK standards are much less densely populated.

For instance, are those cases in France, in the main, centred around urban populations or statistically is it more broadly spread?  I think when looking at stats for infections other factors like this need to be included to ensure you are comparing on a similar basis, or am I smoking something I shouldn't be?

 

[gregs24]

2 minutes ago, C8RKH said:

What impact is population density having as this is a disease that is spread, as I understand it, through close proximity to infected people?  France has roughly the same population as the UK, but twice the land mass and is therefore generally less densely populated (obviously, cities are cities wherever they are).  Has there been anything done around looking at the impact of population density on the spread of the disease?  For instance, I am always amazed how here in Scotland we seem to have such high rates, yet we only have 10% of the population of the UK in 27% of the land mass and population concentration is further reduced due by the smaller size of our principle cities (excluding Glasgow) which by rest of UK standards are much less densely populated.

For instance, are those cases in France, in the main, centred around urban populations or statistically is it more broadly spread?  I think when looking at stats for infections other factors like this need to be included to ensure you are comparing on a similar basis, or am I smoking something I shouldn't be?

 

COVID-19 death rate vs. Population density, Jan 11, 2022 (ourworldindata.org)

Very poor correlation on here, but you also need to consider other factors such as weather / humidity / mobility etc. Transmissibility is only over fairly short distances, if everybody in London was 2m apart all the time then transmission would be drastically reduced - but we already know that from social distancing measures. You can have 9 million people 2m apart and have no more risk of transmission than 5 people 2m apart, but what you do have is a greater number of potential hosts if transmission does occur.

As an example if you put 30,000 people in a football stadium with 1 shedding COVID case almost all the people present would not be at risk, just the ones immediately around the case. If you put that one person in a theatre with 1000 people indoors then far more people would be at risk. If you put 100 cases in the 1000 seat theatre then almost everybody would be at risk. So number of cases makes a huge difference as does the environment. Population density needs to be carefully thought about as well. France is twice the size of the UK but there are large parts of the country where virtually nobody lives, most live in cities as with the UK so probably very little difference.

Other papers here explaining in more detail

Spreading of COVID-19: Density matters (plos.org)

Temperature and population density influence SARS-CoV-2 transmission in the absence of nonpharmaceutical interventions | PNAS

[gregs24]

10 hours ago, Dave Eds said:

And the link to substantiate this is where?

Not sure if this was directed at my post but if it was:

The peak in a pandemic wave is actually not dependent on infecting everybody. The Rt or R0 is the rate of transmission, this is expressed as greater or less than 1. If greater than 1 the disease wave is growing, if less than 1 it is contracting. There are two major influencers of this. Firstly the transmissibility of the virus in a naïve population (if you like the maximum spread it can achieve) and secondly the impact of vaccination and other mitigating preventative measures on spread. This can be clearly shown in the response to lockdown measures in 2020 and the impact of vaccination. When the R0 drops below 1 the wave will contract quickly because of a lack of available hosts. There will still be people who do not catch it, but effectively the route to them is blocked by somebody else higher up the chain who didn't pass it on. Don't underestimate the significance of breaking this chain (even if only partially) on numbers of cases when spread is logarithmic.

In the UK with high levels of circulating delta this Autumn (similar to SA) and a rapid booster roll out (by two weeks post booster you are 80% less likely to be ill with omicron and less likely to shed) the virus will run out of hosts much more quickly, but also the rate of climb will be slower. France was at least 2 weeks behind the UK initially, but rapidly overtook us in the last week or so. The rate of climb of cases is MUCH steeper, because more hosts are available (less natural immunity and less boosters). So the vaccine booster roll out slows the growth and reduces the peak as well as helping reducing severity of cases.

As regards data - SA data strongly suggest all of the above and so does UK data compared to some European countries including France. Peer reviewed analysis will not be available until the omicron wave is over and full data can be examined.

[PaulCP]

1 hour ago, C8RKH said:

 

They're not actually. They have spent a fortune on upgrading their systems which is why, to be fair, it is now so easy to do the mundane stuff like apply for SORN, check MOT status and dates, pay your road tax etc.

The real issue is that many, especially in the Public Sector, are hiding behind a bull shit "unprecedented call volumes" screen. Absolute pish to be honest.

I have no doubt that the majority of their staff are trying it on but only some of the easy stuff have had systems upgrades.

Don’t forget that we are dealing with govt/public sector IT people here, they only do the easy bits and even then, in many cases, still manage to fcuk things up whilst delivering exceptionally bad VFM for the cash that they spend. You only have to look at many of the gov.co websites which ask you to accept cookies every time you press “continue” to change to the next page, ordering LFT test online being a prime example.

However I can assure you of one thing, all of the medical side of the DVLAs work is still manual, with the exception of them having a database that they can upload received documents into Dropbox style. They don’t even have the advantage of an extremely bad IT system. e.g. you can download medical forms that need completing but you can’t complete them online, you have to manually fill them in and then post, not even a facility to complete manually and upload😠

[ChrisJ]

1 hour ago, PaulCP said:

you can download forms that need completing but you can’t complete them online, you have to manually fill them in and then post, not even a facility to complete manually and upload

This is something that really pisses me off in this day and age.

My work does this with internal stuff. I keep saying make the PDFs editable - we have the software to do this, but no. Won't even use the cloud for collaborative tools. Everything has to be saved on the server so only one person can open it at a time.

[C8RKH]

The main point with using PDF's is that you "can't" edit them, otherwise, why not just use a standard word document?  PDF are usually used as a document of record because they can't be edited.  You can attach things like dates and signatures to them of course but once done it is not easily reversible, again, hence their use as a document of record.

Your work would seem to using the wrong document format for the wrong role.

[ChrisJ]

Maybe I didn't explain that properly - although I'd have thought that Pauls description was clear - forms that need completing. e.g.; We have a holiday form. We have to print it off, fill in the missing details (dates and who you are), scan it back in and send it to HR. Who then prints it off again and get's it signed.

You can use PDFs to do this as in this example: PDF Form Example (foersom.com)