UK Politics - It's a bit glitchy

[Pebble thats Stubby]

2 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

How are airports and the tunnel difficult to close or control? Northern Ireland is difficult I admit but you can keep the main island safe. Although they should have plans to close the Irish border because of Brexit anyway.

Boris has no plans to put a boarder in the Irish sea, he wants to break that part of the withdrawal bill.  he also has no plans for board between Northern Ireland and Rep Ireland.  he will leave that to the Irish so he can blame the EU.

 

however Brexit may indeed sort out not having an effective boarder,  It would be nice though to still get food from the EU while its fresh.

 

[Loge]

15 minutes ago, Luzifer's right hand said:

How are airports and the tunnel difficult to close or control? Northern Ireland is difficult I admit but you can keep the main island safe. Although they should have plans to close the Irish border because of Brexit anyway.

They may be able to keep GB safe from Corona but they'd starve. Closing the borders isn't really an option. Same as on the continent. Even at the height of the first wave in March / April borders were never truly closed. Trucks kept crossing the land borders and airports remained open. And of course that kind of thing is rather useless when the virus has already spread all over the country.

[lessthanluke]

We've now entered Tier 3 in Lancashire. 

With different restrictions than Liverpool... 

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, lessthanluke said:

We've now entered Tier 3 in Lancashire. 

With different restrictions than Liverpool... 

The ludicrous part of this is when places actually want to enter Tier 3 because it means they get more cash from the government. Tier 2 might seem like it's better but in reality its the worst of all worlds. Now restaurants have to decide if groups are from different households or not, and actually their businesses will probably have close as it won't be worth opening. 

Its a nonsense.

[lessthanluke]

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The ludicrous part of this is when places actually want to enter Tier 3 because it means they get more cash from the government. Tier 2 might seem like it's better but in reality its the worst of all worlds. Now restaurants have to decide if groups are from different households or not, and actually their businesses will probably have close as it won't be worth opening. 

Its a nonsense.

It is. 

Liverpool Mayor has been kicking off on social media that Gyms and Leisure sector is staying open in Lancashire but not Merseyside. All very baffling. 

[lessthanluke]

4 hours ago, BigFatCoward said:

Yeah but by the week he could be up to 70 grand in fines. and go fund me isnt going to bail all of those other gym owners out.  It's absolutely shit when you consider risk compared to impact for small business owners like this. 

The GoFundMe is for every gym in the area and it's now over 50 grand. 

[Which Tyler]

51 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

The ludicrous part of this is ...

Its a nonsense.

Quite honestly, that's the last 9 months on loop.

Daily

[Werthead]

There was a surveillance study in August which indicated that 6% of the population of the UK had been infected with COVID-19. They're supposed to be repeating the study at some point "in the autumn" so it'll be interesting to see the level of increase they measure.

So by mid-August the official death toll (which is almost certainly too low, but we'll go with it) was 41,000 on an estimated 4,020,000 infections, or almost exactly 1% (despite all the claims the death rate from COVID-19 is significantly below 1% - which might be true in tightly controlled conditions - it seems remarkably keen to pop back up to 1% when real life statistics and figures are taken into account). This is why simply dropping restrictions or letting the virus rage out of control is unacceptable: if the entire British population of ~67 million was infected, we could expect a minimum total death toll of 670,000. It would be somewhat more, since in such an eventuality, if it was to occur very quickly, hospitals would not have the ability to remotely handle it (141,000 hospital beds in the UK in total at the start of 2020, although this has increased during the pandemic but not hugely) and there would vastly more deaths from people who would have survived with medical intervention, but the resources simply can't reach them.

If the virus was to be allowed to go out of control as it was in March before the first lockdown, and what we might be facing now, then another 40,000 deaths could easily happen. Fortunately, the number of people who are refusing to be sensible or comply with the rules (or just common sense) seems to be vastly lower than what media reports indicate, so the death toll this time around will likely be far, far lower.

What is frustrating is that we did experience that two month period in June-August 2020 when we were having our cake and eating it. The R number remained below 0, the death toll dropped like a stone right down to 0 on several days, and we didn't have a lockdown and we had a moderate return to normality. The question is identifying what factors led to that "sweet spot" and keeping us there indefinitely until a vaccine becomes available, which on current evidence will almost certainly be next year.

Quote

The NHS never came close to breaking, nowhere near, and that was at its absolute peak. 

The NHS as a whole, countrywide, did not, but several individual hospitals did. Weston-super-Mare Hospital shut to new admissions in May for several weeks after their A&E department was overwhelmed by COVID cases, Hillingdon Hospital in London closed in July, two Royal Glamorgan Hospital wards closed a couple of weeks back and a ward at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow was closed this week. My local hospital - where I used to work - was touch and go for a few weeks in April as well (when ~150 patients died from COVID-19 in the space of a few weeks).

[Heartofice]

Quote

 Weston-super-Mare Hospital shut to new admissions in May for several weeks after their A&E department was overwhelmed by COVID cases, Hillingdon Hospital in London closed in July, 

Actually no. In both of these cases the hospitals were not overwhelmed with COVID cases. What actually happened was there was an outbreak amongst the staff and so they had to close. That is a very different situation to the one you and I are describing, and is in fact a failure of conducting proper processes to protect staff. The hospitals themselves were not overwhelmed. 

[Fragile Bird]

13 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Actually no. In both of these cases the hospitals were not overwhelmed with COVID cases. What actually happened was there was an outbreak amongst the staff and so they had to close. That is a very different situation to the one you and I are describing, and is in fact a failure of conducting proper processes to protect staff. The hospitals themselves were not overwhelmed. 

I hate to tell you this but when staff are being knocked down like flies so much so that a hospital has to shut down because of lack of staff, that is part of being overwhelmed by the virus.

[Werthead]

11 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Actually no. In both of these cases the hospitals were not overwhelmed with COVID cases. What actually happened was there was an outbreak amongst the staff and so they had to close. That is a very different situation to the one you and I are describing, and is in fact a failure of conducting proper processes to protect staff. The hospitals themselves were not overwhelmed. 

Weston-super-Mare Hospital's closure to new patients was in fact down to "a high number of patients with coronavirus," so yes, it was down to that. They later reported a "significant proportion of staff" had contracted the virus during this time and tested positive, but only after the closure began.

Obviously as outbreaks continue and certainly in the advent of allowing the virus to rage unchecked through the population, the same situation would recur and more hospitals would also need to be closed by outbreaks among staff even if their bed capacity was not maxed out.

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said:

I hate to tell you this but when staff are being knocked down like flies so much so that a hospital has to shut down because of lack of staff, that is part of being overwhelmed by the virus.

And yet its not the same thing that was implied by the previous post. So thanks.

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Obviously as outbreaks continue and certainly in the advent of allowing the virus to rage unchecked through the population, the same situation would recur and more hospitals would also need to be closed by outbreaks among staff even if their bed capacity was not maxed out.

Again, this phrase 'rage unchecked' is often pulled out, like the phrase 'rip through', as if that is what is being suggested. There are a range of measures to take from doing nothing to locking everything down, and everything in between. The question is where on that scale is the right place to be to find the correct balance. 

My perception is that locking everything down is unnecessary and damaging to many other areas of society.  Even if you don't lock down everything, measures like mask wearing and handwashing and social distancing are all happening. It is really unlikely that deaths and hospitalisations would ever get close to the start of the epidemic when we didn't know what was going on and we were at a point where it really was being left unchecked. 

[BigFatCoward]

I obviously dont wish to impact the staff, but I cant help but take a little joy in the wetherspoons tosspot posting a big loss. 

[Fragile Bird]

7 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

And yet its not the same thing that was implied by the previous post. So thanks.

No, you said the NHS never came close to breaking down, and Werthead agreed but pointed out there were hospital that did shut down, and you answered back that it

 

27 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

.. is in fact a failure of conducting proper processes to protect staff. The hospitals themselves were not overwhelmed. 

When a hospital’s “proper processes” break down in the middle of a pandemic, what exactly do you attribute as the reason for that happening? Sudden stupidity? Management deciding “we have a pandemic, let’s stop using our infection prevention procedures”?

Ir is it because they were overwhelmed by the pandemic because of reasons that occur during a pandemic, like it was a novel virus, like there were PPE shipments that didn’t come in, like staff who had never experienced a pandemic before? Really, you comment was nonsense.

[Heartofice]

17 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Ir is it because they were overwhelmed by the pandemic because of reasons that occur during a pandemic, like it was a novel virus, like there were PPE shipments that didn’t come in, like staff who had never experienced a pandemic before? Really, you comment was nonsense.

These points are relevant, like reports of staff not following processes, not wearing masks and not doing what they were supposed to. It wasn't the case that the number of infections was so high that the hospitals were overloaded, it was poor management and planning and behaviour meant that staff were not properly protected. 
The point is, that was at the beginning of the outbreak when you expect problems like that to arise, the same thing is highly unlikely to happen now, the case numbers are far less likely to come close to those at the start. 

[Fragile Bird]

5 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

These points are relevant, like reports of staff not following processes, not wearing masks and not doing what they were supposed to. It wasn't the case that the number of infections was so high that the hospitals were overloaded, it was poor management and planning and behaviour meant that staff were not properly protected. 
The point is, that was at the beginning of the outbreak when you expect problems like that to arise, the same thing is highly unlikely to happen now, the case numbers are far less likely to come close to those at the start. 

You completely miss the point. You can’t say “these things are not part of being overwhelmed by a pandemic” which is what you are doing when you say the hospitals were not shut down because of the number of Covid-19 patients. Do you think with 20,000 cases a day (and possibly rising), there won’t be  future shortages of PPE and inexperienced staff?

[Heartofice]

6 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

You completely miss the point. You can’t say “these things are not part of being overwhelmed by a pandemic” which is what you are doing when you say the hospitals were not shut down because of the number of Covid-19 patients. Do you think with 20,000 cases a day (and possibly rising), there won’t be  future shortages of PPE and inexperienced staff?

The circumstances you mention, like lack of PPE were not the product of too many cases. PPE in particular was due to poor planning  and processes in acquiring it, the UK government had planned for a very different type of pandemic when it created stockpiles. Also if staff had been properly trained and processes set in place then those issues wouldn’t have arisen. The problem wasn’t the number of cases it was the lack of preparation for a brand new type of virus, one that wasn’t a type of flu.

It almost certainly wouldn’t happen again if lessons have ( we all hope) have been learnt. On top of that, as I keep saying, the number of hospitalisations and deaths won’t come close to the numbers we had at the beginning.
 

So then, the aim to reduce numbers doesn’t seem to have anything to do with protecting the NHS, and if it’s isn’t about getting test and trace  in place.. what is the overall aim. That is all I’m asking.

 

[Derfel Cadarn]

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

I hate to tell you this but when staff are being knocked down like flies so much so that a hospital has to shut down because of lack of staff, that is part of being overwhelmed by the virus.

Plus staff burnout. They can have all the beds in the world, but the NHS is understaffed. Many stafff are on thr verge of burn-out after a busy spring and summer. Now they’re coming into an autumn and winter potentially worse than spring, all the while even more stretched as staff fall sick with covid.

[mormont]

3 hours ago, Werthead said:

The NHS as a whole, countrywide, did not, but several individual hospitals did. Weston-super-Mare Hospital shut to new admissions in May for several weeks after their A&E department was overwhelmed by COVID cases, Hillingdon Hospital in London closed in July, two Royal Glamorgan Hospital wards closed a couple of weeks back and a ward at the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital in Glasgow was closed this week. My local hospital - where I used to work - was touch and go for a few weeks in April as well (when ~150 patients died from COVID-19 in the space of a few weeks).

It's worth noting also that this was at a time when huge amounts of NHS capacity were being redirected towards dealing with the virus, which is not sustainable.

But never mind, I'm sure if hospital staff just remember to wash their hands, those silly beans, we'll all be fine.