Jacko wrote:
These efforts by the Secretary of State for Health and his desk-weenies at Public Health England to spread and exacerbate the Covid-19 pandemic..
You are seriously suggesting that the UK government works to increase the number of Covid-19 cases?
What you say about the way France counted the deaths due to the virus is true, but the increase of a third would be difficult to substantiate. We had gone up to deaths approximating 900+ per day, that started to reduce to 700+ per day, then they started reporting the hospital deaths and the care home deaths separately and the figures became 500+ hospital deaths and approx 300 deaths at care homes.
I did not see yesterday’s figure but the overall figure for the day before was 1400+.No explanation was given for the sharp increase and I think I would have to spend all day watching the news to get further information.
Gone seem to be the days when the village mayor sent out e-mails with the complete breakdown of cases, hospitalisations, deaths and recoveries within the department and the region. I can only assume the situation here is very very dynamic.
In case somebody wants to build a steriliser like I posted above, this video covers the dangers of UV in case somebody doesn’t know already
This is interesting
Probably here but behind a paywall.
for the last two weeks spurned UK company Apacor’s offer of one million Wells Bio tests per week (the antigen test currently used in Germany).
This seems to be a “power” issue – PHE wants to keep the tests for their three mega labs. But these aren’t ready yet. Hard to believe but quite possible.
Airborne_Again wrote:
You are seriously suggesting that the UK government works to increase the number of Covid-19 cases?
Actions tend to have consequences, sometimes decisions made by those in power are absolutely baffling.
See for instance London Mayor S. Kahn who said “There is no risk in using the Tube or buses or other forms of public transport or going to a concert.”
Anyone with a few brain cells can see clearly dense public congregation areas carry a risk.
Airborne_Again wrote:
This can account for e.g. the large difference between Belgium and the Netherlands
This was on TV yesterday, in a discussion program. About half of the deaths in Norway have been outside hospitals, on elderly care centers to be precise. Average age of death is 85. There has been lots of talks (in the media) about Sweden “counting” differently. So they did a check. If Norway was to count like Sweden, we would have one more death. This shows that the differences in counting technique has very little effect, negligible, except media created effects 
This is only natural, I mean, it’s not like people dying, and finding the cause is a new thing since corona 
You are seriously suggesting that the UK government works to increase the number of Covid-19 cases?
The less charitable alternative is to say that they are, collectively, too stupid to see the consequence of releasing into old folks care homes patients known to be suffering from an infectious disease which predominantly kills old folks.
Can you think of a more plausible narrative?
Peter wrote:
Some employers will allow it, some won’t. I’ve been employing people since 1978 and can confidently state that some % which is well over 90% even of those who are just sitting on their bum at the office all day (e.g. sales/marketing and actually most “middle management” jobs) cannot work from home productively.
To be honest it depends on the people you’re dealing with. Obviously if you run your own business then you are probably employing at least some people on low-to-average salaries and there are often trust issues – i.e. will they actually do any work?
I work for a multinational and I have four in my team, one in Australia and three in the UK, all home-based. But they are skilled professionals, all quite well-paid compared to the national average (£45k+ in the UK) and basically I can trust them to get the job done. I am not fussy about exactly what hours they are at their computer, it just works. Of course you cannot have people in these roles if you cannot explicity trust their work ethic.
Each to their own about whether working from home is good for them. I’ve been doing it for about six or seven years now and wouldn’t have it any other way.
My girlfriend is a chartered surveyor and it looks like her employer (again, a multinational, but much more conservative in outlook than mine) is going to come out of this realising that all those very expensive desks in London (and Oxford, etc) weren’t really necessary.
I have seen nothing in the media about whether one’s pre-illness lung function has an effect on one’s ability to shrug off Covid-19.
It seems simple and logical to me. If you have better lung function (i.e. are fitter) then you should be better placed to deal with anything that is going to reduce your lung function.
The Guardian is putting out this about NHS staff who have died. Other related articles have angles about the proportion of non-whites dying.
If you look at that link, and look at the people, what leaps out at me is that most of them look like they could not run for a bus. Most of them look like they were at least carrying more weight than was ideal, and a good proportion are outright fat.
It has been politically unacceptable in the UK for some time now to issue health advice along the lines of “stop eating crap, take some proper exercise and sort your life out”, but perhaps that is exactly what is needed here.
My parents (mid 70s) have an exercise bike at home and are taking the lockdown as an opportunity to improve their lung function.
Graham wrote:
I have seen nothing in the media about whether one’s pre-illness lung function has an effect on one’s ability to shrug off Covid-19.
It absolutely is a critical risk factor. Smoking alone reduces the outcome significantly, if you have COPD, Asthma or lung cancer you are also less likely to survive Covid-19.
One of the first and most sensible public health action might have been an outright ban and confiscation of all cigarettes and tobacco products, but then again that would probably have generated rampant mobs of smokers with withdrawal symptoms…
The less charitable alternative is to say that they are, collectively, too stupid to see the consequence of releasing into old folks care homes patients known to be suffering from an infectious disease which predominantly kills old folks.
In hindsight it seems a stupid policy but it was done as a part of a stampede to clear hospital beds for some huge numbers of virus patients. The political, not to mention moral, fallout from hospitals not having enough beds would have been massive – look at what happened in Italy (video reports by doctors of people left to die if over 65, etc).
As always the story is more complicated. Care homes get loads of money. The State minimum is £500/week or so (depending on where) and £1000/week is common. They can damn well afford to buy their own gloves and masks etc, which they should have been doing instead of moaning on the TV. Care homes have always known the risks, in terms of (a) residents who can easily die if they get ill and (b) very low paid workforce which does various other jobs around the place to make a living and is thus susceptible to picking up infections outside the care home.
The name of the game in the care home business is to run them with maximum residents, minimum staff, minimum ventilation (saves heating costs, and people soon get used to the stench of urine) and take advantage of there being enough compassionate people (often of Thai and similar origin) who are willing to look after old people for so little money. I used to know a bloke who had 3 care homes…
It has been politically unacceptable in the UK for some time now to issue health advice along the lines of “stop eating crap, take some proper exercise and sort your life out”, but perhaps that is exactly what is needed here.
Discussing obesity as “not a good thing” has become somewhat possible on the media in the last year or two… this may accelerate things somewhat.
