Coronavirus outbreak

[theclaud]

Furlough extended until October. I didn't expect that.

"Workers will, through the combined efforts of government and employers, continue to receive the same level of support as they do now, at 80% of their salary."

 

[kingrollo]

"Workers will, through the combined efforts of government and employers, continue to receive the same level of support as they do now, at 80% of their salary."

Ah right - so employers have choice they furlough workers but pay some of their salary - call them back in, part time or full time ....or I suppose make them redundant.

 

[roubaixtuesday]

32,000 Dead in just over 3 months, no vaccine, no cure - its all about opinions of course, however people can smooth over that is beyond me. It already isn't OK imo.
Im trying to think that something must break in our favour - and we will avoid a 2nd wave - but thats just blind hope at the moment.

Blind hope, and believing something will break in our favour has been govt policy to date. It hasn't worked so well.

Rather, we should:
- Suppress hard (keep the lockdown) until numbers are low enough to test and trace
- test and trace to suppress the virus, which allows loosening of social distancing
- research treatments, vaccines, transmission routes etc.

(this is my recollection of the WHO strategy, not just my own thoughts. Can't find a link right now)

 

[mjr]

I’m increasingly upset at the ‘it’s common sense’ approach. This puts the blame onto the victim. If I catch Covid and, heaven forbid, die, it’s my fault because I didn’t demonstrate common sense and wasn’t alert enough.

See the medium link I posted yesterday. It does seem like part of the move to a "Consumer" story which places the blame on you for choosing bad things which result in your death, away from the previous narrative of a war or battle which the heroic government now risks being blamed for losing due to stuff like the PPE debacle or the testing number-fiddling, and trying to avoid the alternative narrative of a "Citizen" story where we need to work together in the face of a massive common threat and government may be blamed for not working.

 

[All uphill]

Resistant forms of TB in inner city areas (a GP friend of my wife recently caught this). HIV. Malaria (yes, prophylaxis is available but people experience unpleasant side effects). Cytomegalovirus.

I'm also aware of Legionnaires disease, having worked in a building that could have been designed to help it propagate.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

"Workers will, through the combined efforts of government and employers, continue to receive the same level of support as they do now, at 80% of their salary."

Ha! In every silver lining there has to be a cloud. Absolute Tory scum, paying worker's wages until August and then having the bare-faced cheek to expect the private sector to start sharing the cost. Have they no shame?

Mr Sunak confirmed that employees will continue to receive 80% of their monthly wages up to £2,500.

But he said the government will ask companies to "start sharing" the cost of the scheme from August onwards.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52634759

 

[mjr]

Fact is, we have to get out of lockdown. Naysaying kibitsing contributes nothing to the solution.

I agree, but people have been putting forwards alternative plans, including the World farking Health Organisation, and all other plans seem to be being basically ignored in favour of this bull shoot DEFCON-style totem pole with an open-and-pray plan (that looks based on business-friendly dogma more than science) drawn onto a zero-truncated Poisson distribution curve which is very unlikely. Where were the discussions of the alternative plans? Would anyone like to try posting a solid argument against test-and-trace?

 

[lane]

Now you can cycle with a different person everyday but at 2m.

 

[mjr]

Ha! In every silver lining there has to be a cloud. Absolute Tory scum, paying worker's wages until August and then having the bare-faced cheek to expect the private sector to start sharing the cost. Have they no shame?

Where exactly do they think closed businesses are going to find money to share the cost of paying non-workers? The ones who are only part-closed would need to be stonkingly profitable in the rest of their businesses to do so and I suspect most aren't.

 

[PK99]

I read somewhere recently that NHS covid-19 related deaths in the UK broadly reflect the national average. I can't remember where I read it but it seems similar to the findings of this report i just found of a few weeks ago:

https://www.hsj.co.uk/exclusive-deaths-of-nhs-staff-from-covid-19-analysed/7027471.article

I must admit to some surprise at this, but I suppose it does reflect the effectiveness of PPE, and good hygiene protocols, when they can get hold of it.

Long report with some jaw dropping observations:

"However, the NHS is estimated to employ approximately 1.2-1.5 million staff, including more than 120,000 doctors, approximately 300,000 nurses and a similar number of healthcare support workers. A modest estimate of the patient-facing NHS workforce might be 600,000-800,000, which is more than 1 per cent of the UK population and more than 2 per cent of the employed population.

There is also a remarkable correlation between the cumulative UK deaths from covid-19 in the UK population and among health and social care workers. Accepting a lag of one to two days, the ratio is very close to 1:200 so the deaths among health and social care workers are approximately 0.5 per cent of all deaths, suggesting they are not overrepresented.

Although there are caveats to this estimate — explained below — and every death is one to be mourned, the data does not clearly show that healthcare workers are dying at rates proportionately higher than other employed individuals or even the population as a whole. Again, this is cautiously reassuring.

A modest estimate of the patient-facing NHS workforce might be 600,000-800,000 which is more than 1 per cent of the UK population and more than 2 per cent of the employed population

The distribution of deaths by occupation among nurses, healthcare support workers and doctors is broadly consistent with employment ratios. Distribution of deaths by geographical region correlates well with known regional distribution of cases."

....
"Our report shows that a significant number of health and social care workers are dying during this pandemic. Overall the rate of deaths appears to be largely consistent with the number of healthcare workers in the population and the distributions by occupation and geography are largely as expected. However, individuals of black and minority ethnicity are notably over-represented in the data and conversely those working in the high risk specialties of anaesthesia and intensive care appear to be under-represented, most likely through good practice.

To further understand this data, there is an urgent need for a central registry of deaths among health and social care workers to establish facts, enable robust rapid analysis and to explore whether social or employment inequalities are impacting on the rates of infection of these staff during the conduct of their duties and causing avoidable deaths"

 

[tom73]

I think that's probably right - and I certainly don't have the stats to disagree. Our two friends were exposed to Covid through aerosolising procedures before this was recognised as dangerous. One was a GP and the other a general surgeon. Most HCPs understand the risks of getting infected at work but have been surprised by the contagiousness of Covid. Those who have been caring for Covid patients have also experienced death and a very unpleasant dying process of their patients. I suppose the double whammy of infection and psychological trauma has affected quite a number. I don't want to belittle the earlier poster's experiences but was keen to say that there are numbers of HCPs who have had a very different time dealing with the virus.

We may never know if it could have been a lot different as unlike other work related deaths they are not being investigated by HSE.
One of the deaths we know about has been but only due to a lot of fuss from others that got too loud for management to ignore.

 

[mjr]

Now you can cycle with a different person everyday but at 2m.

1m cyclist dynamic envelope + 2m clearance + 1m cyclist dynamic envelope + 1.5m minimum overtaking clearance + 2m car width = 7.5m

UK Design Manual for Roads and Bridges standard single-carriageway road width = 7.3m

Basically, motorists can no longer legally overtake cyclists on a standard UK A road unless the cyclists go single file, even if they drive right up to the right edge of the road. This could get interesting.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Where exactly do they think closed businesses are going to find money to share the cost of paying non-workers? The ones who are only part-closed would need to be stonkingly profitable in the rest of their businesses to do so and I suspect most aren't.

Or you could look at where he said companies could bring people back part-time but continue the furlough, which is an excellent idea both for the economy and the mental health of people who will have been locked indoors for 5 months by then.

We're talking about a Tory government paying 7 million worker's wages for 5 months at 80% and continuing in some form for another 3. At least.

 

[Low Gear Guy]

I read somewhere recently that NHS covid-19 related deaths in the UK broadly reflect the national average. I can't remember where I read it but it seems similar to the findings of this report i just found of a few weeks ago:

https://www.hsj.co.uk/exclusive-deaths-of-nhs-staff-from-covid-19-analysed/7027471.article

I must admit to some surprise at this, but I suppose it does reflect the effectiveness of PPE, and good hygiene protocols, when they can get hold of it.

At a first glance it looks like the health worker fatality rate is similar to the overall population. However, if you exclude pensioners and those in poor health you will find that hospital workers are at substantially higher risk.

 

[theclaud]

Ha! In every silver lining there has to be a cloud. Absolute Tory scum, paying worker's wages until August and then having the bare-faced cheek to expect the private sector to start sharing the cost. Have they no shame?


https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52634759

Feel free to go off on one, by all means - all I did was quote Sunak's words...