COVID-19

I know 2, nobody close thankfully, both people my missus worked with, both in their 40s and on the larger side I would say but nothing else medical that I know about. They weren't close enough to me to affect my day to day thinking in a selfish way though or my outlook on the disease.

I'm not sure about the cut off point being 70 and otherwise good health though. That comes across as heartless to me. If a drunk driver mows into a bus queue of 5 people

One of them is 95
One of them is obese
One of them has cancer with a week to live
One of them has cancer with years to live
One of them is 30 and in good health

Then how many people did the drunk driver kill? I would say 5 but the outlook seems to be that he only killed 1.

And I'm definitely not saying that all the other effects that this have had aren't bad at all. They're all worthy of consideration and it's definitely a balance. But if people are advised of ways to limit the spread and then say "I'm not doing those unless they criminally enforce it" then what do they actually expect the next step to be?

I keep saying it but it comes down to personal responsibility to strike a balance. If people want to go out and socialise but are willing to cut back on their contact with their grandparents and not go out to the shops then I can see the logic in that but it just seems like people want "normality" back regardless of the risks and when thats risks to other people, rather than yorself, I'm not sure that is a good outlook.

 

I don't even know anyone who has tested positive, although I heard of one person in a pub where I do a quiz that might have had it. I know of dozens of people who think they might have had it in December and January.

French deaths are not following new cases up and many parts of France are not suffering a second wave, much like England. Spanish wave 2 peaked 5 weeks ago, judging by when deaths peaked a week ago. It just shows you can't tell from the dodgy new case numbers. Go down to Fatalities and click on "all moving averages". English deaths look like they might be turning down. It might be a blip but cases have turned down in an increasing number of English local authorities and it looks like that might have become a majority of authorities about 8 days ago but it's spreading and turning the overall figure now. Also, and although Scottish cases and hospitalisations are rocketing, you can see in this link that hospital admissions might have peaked in England on September 23rd. They are certainly not following new case figures up, which is constantly making the fatality rate for the virus look lower and lower.

Http://covidtracker.uksouth.cloudapp.azure.com/

 

I disagree, from my experience and the experience of people I know in the industry (all the bars are quite tight knit round where I live + work) it's just a case of a lot of places not being given a bit of slack in the form of things like rent concessions by landlords, and/or expected to contribute more to workers wages despite having 0 ability to open and generate revenue and/or run profitably. I think its massively unfair to the hospitality industry as a whole to say they haven't adapted. The government guidance for hospitality was practically non existent (I had to learn it), so beyond taking details pretty much every place has had to come up with everything on the fly. I can guarantee the vast majority of venues will have spent thousands of pounds making their spaces covid secure. The last statistic on this I saw was that roughly 90% of hospitality/bar/music venues will go to the wall in weeks if more support isn't made available. That percentage is simply too high to bat away as those businesses being obsolete.

If the system was operating at somewhere near a high level of efficiency in terms of contacts reached in time I would absolutely agree with you, however they aren't even reaching people in good time for it to even be worth it in a lot of instances. add that to people with symptoms being told to travel 100s of miles for tests and/or also receiving results so late as to make it pointless and its clear none of this is working how it's supposed to. Also trust is a thing. The govt have spent all summer eroding public confidence to the point that can you really blame people if they don't trust them now?

 

If 90% of the places aren't viable going forward that's a shame but it is what it is? If the virus is long terms do the government prop up that industry forever when there's no prospect of it returning as normal. When things change then companies fail, it's just a sad reality.

The inefficency isn't just in a the system itself though. They're contacting "enough" people but they aren't actually following the advice. Those stats that have been released today are ridiculously low, no system could make up for the fact that 4/5 people with symptoms don't isolate and 8/9 people who get contacted by T&T don't follow the rules. No system can make up for that but we seem to blame the trackers and the testers rather than the people involved.

 

Just had a text message from PH requesting a download of the NHS Covid-19 app

 

4044 new cases reported today - down over 40% in 3 days.

 

English hospital admissions down for 3rd consecutive day.

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare?areaType=overview&areaName=United Kingdom

 

Best yet - deaths in Yorkshire falling again. But how can deaths start falling before new cases and hospital admissions? The latest few day's numbers are odd. In fact, all of September's numbers have been odd - but the government's testing regime is so inconsistent, is that a surprise?

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/deaths?areaType=region&areaName=Yorkshire and The Humber

 

This is how crazy the situation is, I've been getting text from the NHS & my doctors with the usual info social distancing/isolating, yet the wife who is type 2 diabetic and overweight has recieved nothing then this morning as yourself she's recieved a text asking her to download the T&T app, and I've recieved nothing.

 

All sorts of odd things in the numbers now.

Rocketing cases for weeks

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases?areaType=region&areaName=Yorkshire and The Humber

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/cases?areaType=region&areaName=North East

And a 7-fold rise in hospital admissions from Sept 6th to the 23rd

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/healthcare?areaType=nhsregion&areaName=North East and Yorkshire

Yet deaths now trending down since the 20th after only a modest rise

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/deaths?areaType=region&areaName=Yorkshire and The Humber

https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/deaths?areaType=region&areaName=North East

A freak of statistics or something else? Are all the new infections in September school and university students?

 

This will bump the figures up nicely.
https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/18753979.man-faces-10-000-fine-holding-marquee-wedding-farm---300-guests/

Instead of stopping any more getting in they should have ringfenced the whole place and arrested every single bloody one of them. The bride and groom should also be held responsible for knowingly flouted Covid rules.

This is just totally unacceptable after all the info given out.

The landowner should definitely be fined and, if he made more than £10K for hosting the event, he should have to repay that as well.

 

Panorama- Track &Trace exposed tonight

 

I have seen that in the north east it will be illegal to meet non household members in a public place.

We are crossing the line to compete bullshit here. Once again no discussion in parliament, just an announcement.

Just think about that, it is illegal to meet with someone outside your household inside a public place and this was agreed without scrutiny behind closed doors and dropped on people with 2 days notice.

 

I would add to this that what comes down the line elsewhere usually end up coming full circle.

Bradford are on 160 per 100k. The North East is at 240 in Newcastle but many areas hit with this are actually less than Bradford like Gateshead and Northumberland.

This is certainly now the track, so with crap weather on the way you either stand in the rain to see family members or your risk a £100 fine. A totally disproportionate action to an issue here.

 

Very easy to say when it isn't your job or industry. Those people will all have to find new jobs or otherwise be supported through benefits etc etc, so long term just letting them all collapse is ridiculous as the government will just be paying for them that way anyway. Nobody was doubting a lot of places will go to the wall but to let an entire sector be destroyed is insane. These are viable businesses with the proper support in place. This is also precisely what I mean about targeted support. There are businesses and sectors who can and have operate without issue in this environment, stop giving them support and redirect it to sectors that need subsidising or cannot open at all.

No they aren't they aren't reaching enough people for it to be effective. They haven't even reached 50% of contacts given in bradford (42.5%), which isn't enough. Also comes back to trust. Trust in government is the most important commodity in a pandemic (not saying that form myself, pretty much every epidemiologist says this) and in low levels of co-operation with this system we see why. I personally don't trust the app because of how little I trust the govt and I'm sure that won't be an uncommon view.


It's all good blaming people but thanks to the huge national effort in March we all got this under control. Govt ministers are on record in a couple of articles saying the thing that shocked them was the high level of compliance. People in Britain are happy to play ball and follow the rules provided they aren't having the piss taken out of them.

 

This must be what sovereignty feels like haha

 

Don't forget to 'protect yourselves and others' by downloading the contact and trace app. Unless you work for the police, who are being told not to download it, 'for security reasons'.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.bbc.com/news/amp/technology-54328644

'Some officers have also been told they may not need to obey self-isolate alerts generated by the app when downloaded to their personal phones.
Lancashire Constabulary has told staff to call the force's own Covid-19 helpline instead'

Good to see consistency.

 

You don't know what sector I work in so how can you say that?

So the government pay everyone in an industries bills and wages in a certain sector for 1, 2, 5, 10 years because its obsolete? If nightclubs never come back do people who happened to work there in 2020 get money off the government for life? If you happen to own a nightclub you get your bills paid forever? Seems cushy to me.

And why aren't they reaching the contacts? Because people aren't giving the correct details or picking up the phone to them when they ring.

They could do better of course but the majority of people aren't isolating THAT is the issue. You could contact 100% of people and it still wouldn't work. Let's not make excuses for people refusing to do things that would stop the spread.