The private care home thing is a tricky one, there must be some good ones, but many are terrible. I think it’s quite easy for some owners to cut corners big time which allows for them to make lots of money, but means when something happens they’re left (if they’re still about) totally unprepared
I think it is a huge shortcut of thoughts to think that private (or otherwise) elderly care homes should any bit more prepared for this than everybody else. A real preparation of the scale needed to make any effect at the care centers would have to be started years up front, and would have costed trillions. It would never happen, not even today when we know a bit more.
Thus, the only way to protect the elderly was to stop the spread of the disease in the common population. To get that R number below 1.0 as quickly as possible is what has shown to produce a real effect.
LeSving wrote:
Thus, the only way to protect the elderly was to stop the spread of the disease in the common population. To get that R number below 1.0 as quickly as possible is what has shown to produce a real effect.
With respect, that is also a shortcut of thoughts, R0 across the general population is not relevant, once the disease in introduced into the residential care environment. This environment is a combination of the general health system and the residential care system which are closely intertwined by there nature. Only one infection is required in that environment which is essentially the care system that by its very nature will support a high level of transmission. Unless of course some other measures are taken, which are perhaps not easy measures.
The flu in the past has ripped through residential care environments without having much effect in the general population.
Peter wrote:
The UK NHS (and obviously every other country’s “NHS” too) loses over £1BN/year to staff theft, which works out to about £1000 per employee and is a business that would impress Pablo Escobar in its scale and efficiency
My understanding is that the £1bn figure in the UK is the total cost of all kinds of fraud, theft, unnecessary waste and any sort of unintended loss including prescriptions being written for things that people really should just buy in a pharmacy. I read that actual staff theft was thought to be about £100m.
I am not sure of the degree to which this is widespread, but I have seen first-hand the practice where nurses and others who are generally seen as being underpaid do not ever have to purchase common over-the-counter medicines (say ibuprofen or Gaviscon or whatever) for themselves because friendly doctors write them a hospital prescription if they want it, and unlike prescriptions from a GP these do not incur a charge. I once politely enquired of someone doing it how justifiable this was, and the response was a mixture of clamming up and pretending it wasn’t happening and a defence that they deserved it as a perk because they were underpaid. You can always have a justification in your mind, but it’s still theft really.
Jacko wrote:
The problem is that some of our fellow European citizens are so desperate to draw a moral equivalence between the Chinese regime and the USA that they close their eyes and ears to the most brutal and effective mass-murdering regime the world has seen since European socialists stopped making people into soap and lampshades.
You’re really persistent in trying to prove your case using non-existing arguments. First of all, I haven’t noticed that anyone tries to make this equivalence. Second, nazis are not socialists, regardless the name of their party, like East Germany before reunion wasn’t democracy regardless “Democratic” in country’s official name.
During war in Vietnam US army killed over a million Vietnamese while British Empire is responsible for deaths of more than 10 million Indians (some sources claim 35 million) in course of some 100 years. Stalin killed more than 14 million people in Soviet Union while Pol Pot killed more 2 million Cambodians. Does this prove that communist gladly kill their own people while democracies enjoy killing members of other nations? I believe this is pointless discussion and definitely doesn’t belong in this thread and probably doesn’t belong to this forum at all.
Yes; that stuff is irrelevant.
Normally I would move it to the usual place but it has some other stuff mixed in, so the only other option is to delete it all, which I am sure nobody wants.
Keep it polite and relevant.
I am not sure of the degree to which this is widespread, but I have seen first-hand the practice where nurses and others who are generally seen as being underpaid do not ever have to purchase common over-the-counter medicines (say ibuprofen or Gaviscon or whatever) for themselves because friendly doctors write them a hospital prescription if they want it, and unlike prescriptions from a GP these do not incur a charge.
The easiest method of obtaining drugs without either charge or prescription is to marry a GP with a doctor’s bag handily available in the household. 
@Peter, I find this nation blame game unedifying and perhaps it should be moved, some of it has descended into jingoism and/or paranoia. While this is a real feature of the climate, I am not convinced this thread is the place; it no longer is the interesting discussion about the facts, what they mean and what we should do about it.
Nobody, with the exception of Singapore, Korea and to a lesser degree, Hong Kong and maybe Japan, have covered themselves in glory. And blaming a particular place for the emergence of a new virus which goes from ‘hmm, what is this?’ to international pandemic in less than two months is not helpful; it is like blaming a particular tree for the lightning strike and ensuing forest fire.
I have moved the last one and will move or delete any more that turn up.
Cobalt wrote:
blaming a particular place for the emergence of a new virus which goes from ‘hmm, what is this?’ to international pandemic in less than two months is not helpful; it is like blaming a particular tree for the lightning strike and ensuing forest fire.
Not really, and the Chinese are currently trying to re-write history if you see some of their official statements and responses to questions. It went pandemic in 2 months because nobody told anyone what was happening 2 months earlier still, and they kept saying that “its all OK” initially even when the virus was known to exist. Remember that the guy that broke the news from China to the outside world was immediately arrested – he’s now dead BTW…
For sure, western governments were perhaps slow to realise what was going on, but if the info you are basing your decisions on is from a place where the real story is being surpressed and a politically happy version is being repeated, then the decisions arent going to be very good. It was only when the situation in Italy was understood that any really informed decisions could be made, and by then it was too late. Go back 200 odd pages and read about the Cruise Ship “experiment”…
Regards, SD..
skydriller wrote:
but if the info you are basing your decisions on is from a place where the real story is being surpressed and a politically happy version is being repeated, then the decisions arent going to be very good.
I think cobalt’s point is that blame in this context is essentially pointless, and simply emotive, that is entirely distinct from reviewing the facts, or even the “made up facts” in the context of a discussion to understand something better. I am fairly sure this thread is not about trying to understand politics or different ideologies better 
