The UK response to Covid-19 [MOD WARNING 1ST POST]

theological

Deleted User wrote: »

Next week is an important week for the UK. I wrote here 2 or 3 weeks ago that I thought that daily deaths (low 100s) and infections (1000 ish) would stabilise at this kind of level, that the government have decided that this is acceptable, and that this will be the baseline from which surges are managed. The curve is clearly flattened, and there is nothing to suggest that it steepens again downwards from here.

Its disappointing, as the numbers are not low enough to enable an effective track / trace / isolate process, and not low enough to give other countries the comfort to open up to the UK. The UK is stuck in a kind of no mans land - not bad enough to justify a substantial reversal of recent releases of restrictions, and not good enough to come out of this with any kind of confidence.

We need longer to see what the trend will be. I agree that the death rate is flattening, but it is important to remember that the death rate is based on numbers from a number of weeks ago. Admissions are also flattening. Reported case numbers continue to decline.

The beta dashboard is much better than the regular one. It contains data about hospital admissions also.

A Dub in Glasgo

https://twitter.com/NicolaSturgeon/status/1277558163420721152

Dave0301

Won't be able to watch it until later, but am hearing that tonight's Panorama is fairly scathing of the testing by in place for Covid-19.

Joe_ Public

Scathing though nothing very new in it. Testing data not being shared with nhs trusts or local councils. Contact tracers sitting on their arses doing absolutely nothing - and feeling guilty about it to be fair. They have nearly 1,000 public health officials doing 90% of the contact tracing, a job they are trained for and have been doing for years, and beggars belief they werent being scaled up from the start.

theological

Joe_ Public wrote: »

Scathing though nothing very new in it. Testing data not being shared with nhs trusts or local councils. Contact tracers sitting on their arses doing absolutely nothing - and feeling guilty about it to be fair. They have nearly 1,000 public health officials doing 90% of the contact tracing, a job they are trained for and have been doing for years, and beggars belief they werent being scaled up from the start.

Is it better to have more capacity for when it is needed, or have less and not be able to keep up?

I think the former.

Joe_ Public

theological wrote: »

Is it better to have more capacity for when it is needed, or have less and not be able to keep up?

I think the former.

Yeah, capacity would have been great when there were thousands crying out for it 3 months ago, some of whom likely died for want of it.

Did you watch the programme? Void tests counted as complete. Testers not changing gloves at test centre for entire day, no trained medical personnel on site. Inadequate ppe. Meanwhile testers in Germany under expert supervision, wearing masks, face shields and THREE pairs of gloves.

Not a pretty picture exactly.

fr336

theological wrote: »

The beta dashboard is much better than the regular one. It contains data about hospital admissions also.

Been looking for something like this since March, thanks. Good to see so few on ventilation - under 300 in whole UK. Crazy to think over 100,000 people have had to go to hospital with this in the UK since March. And over half of them didn't come out.

S.M.B.

I genuinely don't know if I want to watch that show, sounds like it could trigger some spiral.

theological

Joe_ Public wrote: »

Yeah, capacity would have been great when there were thousands crying out for it 3 months ago, some of whom likely died for want of it.

Did you watch the programme? Void tests counted as complete. Testers not changing gloves at test centre for entire day, no trained medical personnel on site. Inadequate ppe. Meanwhile testers in Germany under expert supervision, wearing masks, face shields and THREE pairs of gloves.

Not a pretty picture exactly.

I accept your point on past failures on ramping up testing, you'd be preaching to the converted, but that isn't what you raised in the last point..

Let's stick on the point you initially raised.

You are criticising the track and trace service for having too much spare capacity.

Isn't it good to have capacity at this point in time so that it is available when needed?

S.M.B.

theological wrote: »

I accept your point on past failures on ramping up testing, you'd be preaching to the converted, but that isn't what you raised in the last point..

Let's stick on the point you initially raised.

You are criticising the track and trace service for having too much spare capacity.

Isn't it good to have capacity at this point in time so that it is available when needed?

I'm reading it as criticism of having telesales like staff sitting around doing nothing when the majority of actual track and trace is been done on the ground by pre existing public health officials. This is where the scaling up should have been focused.

Joe_ Public

theological wrote: »

I accept your point on past failures on ramping up testing, you'd be preaching to the converted, but that isn't what you raised in the last point..

Let's stick on the point you initially raised.

You are criticising the track and trace service for having too much spare capacity.

Isn't it good to have capacity at this point in time so that it is available when needed?

No, i think i didnt make it clear or you misinterpreted.

I am only sharing observations from the panorama doc, most of which was known anyway.

They have an army of 25,000 tracers who have almost nothing to do. This, i believe, because they are linked to the private testing centres who are not finding cases or maybe there are no cases to find in the community anymore. Doubt it but who knows.

Meanwhile, the cases in hospitals and care homes are chased up by public health officials who are experts in the field. That operation is what I'm saying should have been scaled up from the start and tracing and testing put in the domain of public health and local councils, instead of feeding the private sector so beloved of this government.

Personally i wouldnt trust this government on any part of it , testing, tracing or whatever. Too many lies and too much incompetence. That's about the only thing its "world beating" at.

A Dub in Glasgo

Restrictions in Leicester to stay for the moment

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1277695393460092930

fr336

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

Restrictions in Leicester to stay for the moment

https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1277695393460092930

They're actually going backwards - non essential retail abs schools closing again. Doubt they'll be the last local lockdown.

theological

Joe_ Public wrote: »

No, i think i didnt make it clear or you misinterpreted.

I am only sharing observations from the panorama doc, most of which was known anyway.

They have an army of 25,000 tracers who have almost nothing to do. This, i believe, because they are linked to the private testing centres who are not finding cases or maybe there are no cases to find in the community anymore. Doubt it but who knows.

Meanwhile, the cases in hospitals and care homes are chased up by public health officials who are experts in the field. That operation is what I'm saying should have been scaled up from the start and tracing and testing put in the domain of public health and local councils, instead of feeding the private sector so beloved of this government.

Personally i wouldnt trust this government on any part of it , testing, tracing or whatever. Too many lies and too much incompetence. That's about the only thing its "world beating" at.

Let's stick to the point.

So is having extra contact tracing capacity a good thing or a bad thing?

I think it is good to have capacity for when it is needed.

Harry Palmr

Scotland's exit from the union must be getting an unspoken turbo boost as people observe the difference in intent and effect. Scotland is still pulling together as England rushes about chaotically and it's not even July 4th yet. It'll be mayhem.

Ribs1234

Any idea what Hancock meant (about the Leicester lockdown) when he said that children were particularly affected by this outbreak? Did he mean in schooling terms or otherwise?

S.M.B.

theological wrote: »

Let's stick to the point.

So is having extra contact tracing capacity a good thing or a bad thing?

I think it is good to have capacity for when it is needed.

You are asking him to stick to some point that you are assuming he made in his original post.

He said nothing about whether extra track and trace capacity is good or bad. His original comment was about the opportunity cost of misplaced track and trace resources.

Strazdas

Ribs1234 wrote: »

Any idea what Hancock meant (about the Leicester lockdown) when he said that children were particularly affected by this outbreak? Did he mean in schooling terms or otherwise?

Apparently, literally affected i.e. they have the virus.

4068ac1elhodqr

Ribs1234 wrote: »

Any idea what Hancock meant (about the Leicester lockdown) when he said that children were particularly affected by this outbreak? Did he mean in schooling terms or otherwise?

Likely just social gatherings (youngsters tend to congregate more).

Also, another factor (similar to modern Sweden), is that of language/communication:

City councillor (Ratilal Govind) said he thought a lack communication with people who do not speak English as a first language could be one factor behind the increasing numbers.
Some 49 per cent of Leicester’s 340,000 population is of Asian heritage or from black backgrounds while in east Leicester that figure is around two thirds.

“I have seen young people getting together, having a few drinks and conversation,” the Labour councillor told the MailOnline.
“They are just social gatherings. With these young people there is a language barrier.
They are speaking their own language and I tell them to disperse in Gujarati.
“There is a lack of communication made worse by the language barriers.”

r93kaey5p2izun

Ribs1234 wrote: »

Any idea what Hancock meant (about the Leicester lockdown) when he said that children were particularly affected by this outbreak? Did he mean in schooling terms or otherwise?

This was the clarification he gave - quoted from Sky News live coverage of the press conference :

Nusrat Ghani asks what factors are behind the outbreaks in Leicester - and why children are particularly vulnerable? Is it a separate strand of COVID, she asks? 

Hancock says children have "very, very low risk of suffering form COVID themselves" but the proportion of children who tested positive and therefore are maybe transmitting it is higher

"That's the reason we've taken the decision we have in Leicester."

Joe_ Public

theological wrote: »

Let's stick to the point.

So is having extra contact tracing capacity a good thing or a bad thing?

I think it is good to have capacity for when it is needed.

There are, according to ons figures, in the region of 3,000 daily cases in the uk. Currently somewhere well short of one-third are entering the system for contact tracing. Almost 90% of this tracing is being done by public health officials. The 25,000 recruits are doing on average between them about 0.5 contacts per week.

The point is this is just a shambolic operation that was only ever about numbers and optics than actual efficiency. Those idle tracers would have plenty of work if they were out there diligently tracking down those cases that were harder to find, as a german doctor explained was critical to their efficiency on the panorama doc.

Some good news reported yesterday: according to senior German official, boris johnson has contacted them to ask for help with their app. If true, thats at least a small step in the right direction, just a pity it didnt happen sooner.

theological

Joe_ Public wrote: »

There are, according to ons figures, in the region of 3,000 daily cases in the uk. Currently somewhere well short of one-third are entering the system for contact tracing. Almost 90% of this tracing is being done by public health officials. The 25,000 recruits are doing on average between them about 0.5 contacts per week.

The point is this is just a shambolic operation that was only ever about numbers and optics than actual efficiency. Those idle tracers would have plenty of work if they were out there diligently tracking down those cases that were harder to find, as a german doctor explained was critical to their efficiency on the panorama doc.

Some good news reported yesterday: according to senior German official, boris johnson has contacted them to ask for help with their app. If true, thats at least a small step in the right direction, just a pity it didnt happen sooner.

SMB, I think you can see in this post rather clearly that he is criticising having the capacity to spare.

Joe Public - I still think having people to spare in the event of further outbreaks is the right thing to do. There is nothing to say that we won't need this capacity further on particularly as winter approaches. This just looks like criticising for criticisms sake.

Peregrinus

No, it looks like criticism for having capacity which isn't being used, even though there is occasion to use it right now.

Possible explanation for this are:

- Poor management: The capacity exists, and the need/opprortunity to utilise it has arisen, but for whatever reason somebody isn't joining the dots and deploying the capacity where it can be useful.

- "Potemkin" capacity: There's the appearance of capacity, created by announcements of the recruitment of call centre staff for contact-tracing, but in reality the capacity doesn't exist because, e.g. the staff aren't trained or equipped, or the systems to pass contact details on to staff in a timely fashion haven't been developed or don't work, or whatever.

- The recruits have been trained and equipped to do a different contact-tracing task than the one which actually needs to be done.

And no doubt we could think of other possible explanations. But if it is the case that there are simultaneously (a) surplus contact-tracing capacity, and (b) two-thirds of postive tests not being subject to contact -tracing, on the face of it something is amiss. This is more a cause for concern than for congratulation.

theological

Peregrinus wrote: »

No, it looks like criticism for having capacity which isn't being used, even though there is occasion to use it right now.

Possible explanation for this are:

- Poor management: The capacity exists, and the need/opprortunity to utilise it has arisen, but for whatever reason somebody isn't joining the dots and deploying the capacity where it can be useful.

- "Potemkin" capacity: There's the appearance of capacity, created by announcements of the recruitment of call centre staff for contact-tracing, but in reality the capacity doesn't exist because, e.g. the staff aren't trained or equipped, or the systems to pass contact details on to staff in a timely fashion haven't been developed or don't work, or whatever.

- The recruits have been trained and equipped to do a different contact-tracing task than the one which actually needs to be done.

And no doubt we could think of other possible explanations. But if it is the case that there are simultaneously (a) surplus contact-tracing capacity, and (b) two-thirds of postive tests not being subject to contact -tracing, on the face of it something is amiss. This is more a cause for concern than for congratulation.

Is there "occasion to use it right now"?

If there are only so many cases being reported then it is obvious that only so many are going to go through the tracing capacity. Having walked past a COVID test centre on Sunday it looked like the staff were twiddling their thumbs waiting for cars to come.

I'm all for criticism when I deem it to be fair, but I think bemoaning excess capacity when it could potentially be needed in the future isn't really fair.

Zubeneschamali

theological wrote: »

Is there "occasion to use it right now"?

Yes, only one third of cases are being traced.

It's like the magic 100,000 tests they faked once for a headline.

bob mcbob

Harry Palmr wrote: »

Scotland's exit from the union must be getting an unspoken turbo boost as people observe the difference in intent and effect. Scotland is still pulling together as England rushes about chaotically and it's not even July 4th yet. It'll be mayhem.

Yes I wonder if Boris will give an update next week on the number of people in hospital as a result of his independence day stunt.

A&E on Saturday night will be carnage.

theological

Zubeneschamali wrote: »

Yes, only one third of cases are being traced.

It's like the magic 100,000 tests they faked once for a headline.

Can you explain this figure please?

Is this the proportion of reported cases, or the proportion of estimated cases?

If people don't get tested it is pretty obvious that this can't enter the system.

S.M.B.

theological wrote: »

SMB, I think you can see in this post rather clearly that he is criticising having the capacity to spare.

It isn't clear at all. I've made my point twice already and Peregrinus has done so too.

It's a perfectly valid point but it's like talking to a wall.

The Government could cease Track and Trace operations entirely and divert ALL attention and resources to preparing the NHS for a second wave by adding additional PPE, 111 call handlers and bed capacity. While in theory there would be nothing 'wrong' with this excess capacity can you not agree that it would be problematic.

theological

S.M.B. wrote: »

It isn't clear at all. I've made my point twice already and Peregrinus has done so too.

It's a perfectly valid point but it's like talking to a wall.

The Government could cease Track and Trace operations entirely and divert ALL attention and resources to preparing the NHS for a second wave by adding additional PPE, 111 call handlers and bed capacity. While in theory there would be nothing 'wrong' with this excess capacity can you not agree that it would be problematic.

The government have a stockpile of PPE ready. Bed capacity is sorted with the Nightingale hospitals which are already standing empty. I'm pretty sure they've thought about call handling at this stage also.

I'm happy to engage with valid and justified criticism, but I don't think this is. Having spare tracing capacity is a good thing.

Joe_ Public

First off, nobody said "having spare capacity isnt a good thing" so best put that desperate straw man out of its misery for a start.

Here's the thing. In Germany, i understand they have a total tracing force of 18,000, built around a core team of medical experts supported by a larger team of part time recruits, mostly ex or retired medical personnel, who are kept in reserve and only called up when needed. It is streamlined and efficient, built to do the job required of it and not simply to dazzle people with numbers so they might forget just how useless you are.

Meanwhile, in the uk they have 25,000 people, being paid full time to do nothing and this can be justified on the basis that well, we might need them some time in the future. And it turns out that the people who were already skilled in the job and didnt require training were the best ones to do it anyway and should have been trusted and supported from the beginning.

Just a wild guess, but i bet Angela Merkel never boasted about the numbers or how their tracing system was "world beating". Latest figures i heard on the app was over 15m downloads but they're not happy with that, they understand they need to do better.

S.M.B.

theological wrote: »

The government have a stockpile of PPE ready. Bed capacity is sorted with the Nightingale hospitals which are already standing empty. I'm pretty sure they've thought about call handling at this stage also.

I'm happy to engage with valid and justified criticism, but I don't think this is. Having spare tracing capacity is a good thing.

According to your logic you are saying having even more NHS capacity in preparation for the second wave is a bad thing so.

theological

S.M.B. wrote: »

According to your logic you are saying having even more NHS capacity in preparation for the second wave is a bad thing so.

The logic is just damned if you do and damned if you don't.

If more capacity was built up, you'd have Joe_Public complaining about more resources going to waste.

As I say, if the criticism is reasonable then I'm all for it, but a lot of the criticism on this thread isn't reasonable.

Donald Trump

theological wrote: »

The logic is just damned if you do and damned if you don't.

If more capacity was built up, you'd have Joe_Public complaining about more resources going to waste.

As I say, if the criticism is reasonable then I'm all for it, but a lot of the criticism on this thread isn't reasonable.

Hi Theo,


While your argument can be framed to appear "logical" I cannot believe that you cannot see the flaws in it. People are merely saying it is a mismanagement of resources because there are other more pressing matters that maybe should have been prioritized and taken care of first.




As an analogy, cycling is a good exercise and bicycle lanes make cycling safer. So nobody could argue that in general, all else equal, it is not better to have more cycling lanes than less.

However if the new government decided to ignore the current housing crisis and slashed budgets pertaining to housing and instead used all their resources to add cycling lanes to every single road and laneway in the country, nobody would say that that was an appropriate use of resources.

theological

If you are aware that there could well be a second wave in the epidemic in the autumn and the winter, it is sensible to know that one can scale up contact tracing in the event it is needed.

If I'm to take the slightly bemusing bike example, it would be like realising that there is a strong possibility that the uptake of cycling in the autumn would be so great because more and more people need to get to work, or that there is going to be a potential for a mass influx of cyclists

I'm yet to see what these "more pressing matters" are. The ones that have been mentioned by others already seem to be sorted capacity wise.

Joe_ Public

theological wrote: »

The logic is just damned if you do and damned if you don't.

If more capacity was built up, you'd have Joe_Public complaining about more resources going to waste.

As I say, if the criticism is reasonable then I'm all for it, but a lot of the criticism on this thread isn't reasonable.

Again with the straw manning. Writing my replies now as well as interpreting them.

If you can find where i explicitly stated excess capacity was a bad thing, then point to it and I'll instantly retract and we can all get on.

The point is and has been very simple, if 25,000 people are sitting on their butts with nothing to do, then there is a breakdown in the system somewhere. The response that all is good because we might need them in the winter is pretty abject with all due respect.

According to your off cited kcl tracker, there are currently 120,000 or so people with c19 in the uk. Daily new symptomatic cases are running at 2,300 or thereabouts.

And yet, positive cases are returning at less than half that and a smaller fraction again are being registered for tracing. Why is this the case? Why are you passing empty testing centres when there are hundreds of new people showing symptoms every day?

Last week Keir Starmer pointed these facts out at pmqs and Boris Johnson lied that the "vast majority" of cases were being traced before embarrassing himself again by not knowing other countries had launched apps.

But, hey, look, we have 25,000 tracers, more than any other country in the world. Thousands of extra critical care beds (without the staff to actually cater for them but never mind). A billion zillion tests every day. The system is dysfunctional but the figures are world beating, that's all that matters.

Dave0301

Joe_ Public wrote: »

According to your off cited kcl tracker, there are currently 120,000 or so people with c19 in the uk. Daily new symptomatic cases are running at 2,300 or thereabouts.

And yet, positive cases are returning at less than half that and a smaller fraction again are being registered for tracing. Why is this the case? Why are you passing empty testing centres when there are hundreds of new people showing symptoms every day?

From the man himself on number of people tested.

https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1277863090080698369

Donald Trump

theological wrote: »

If you are aware that there could well be a second wave in the epidemic in the autumn and the winter, it is sensible to know that one can scale up contact tracing in the event it is needed.

If I'm to take the slightly bemusing bike example, it would be like realising that there is a strong possibility that the uptake of cycling in the autumn would be so great because more and more people need to get to work, or that there is going to be a potential for a mass influx of cyclists

I'm yet to see what these "more pressing matters" are. The ones that have been mentioned by others already seem to be sorted capacity wise.

Hi Theo,


If they were paying 25,000 people to sit at a desk and twiddle their thumbs for 6 months, perhaps they could have instead decided to pay 5000 to twiddle their thumbs and organised the other 20,000 to do 6 months training as some kind of nurses aid or similar. Perhaps trained them in hygiene so that they could go into hospitals in 6 months to take charge of cleaning and disinfecting and allow the fully trained nurses to take care of patients. Or even trained them to go into nursing homes and look after the older people in a safe manner.


By September then you'd have an extra 20k people with useful skills. Rather than an extra 20k people who know how to answer a phone and know how to contract trace 1 person ever 2 weeks. (You can keep the 5k others over the Summer as a kind of glorified FAS scheme if you really want to for whatever reason)






(As for cycling analogy, that's up to you. If Boris Johnson opined that it would be a good idea to close Beaumont and use the money to put cycle lanes on all the backroads in Co. Longford, you'd no doubt say it was a genius idea in combating corona...)

Acosta

Dave0301 wrote: »

From the man himself on number of people tested.

https://twitter.com/Haggis_UK/status/1277863090080698369

It's a congested leaderboard, but Hancock has to be in the running for biggest twat of the pandemic.

Seth Brundle

Acosta wrote: »

It's a congested leaderboard, but Hancock has to be in the running for biggest twat of the pandemic.

Nonsense. He's played a blinder when compared to his leader who thought it was fine to not just shake hands with people who had the virus but to actually tell the world that he thought that was ok to shake hands with those people.
Then the idiot somehow managed to catch the virus.
:rolleyes:

RobMc59

Seth Brundle wrote: »

Nonsense. He's played a blinder when compared to his leader who thought it was fine to not just shake hands with people who had the virus but to actually tell the world that he thought that was ok to shake hands with those people.
Then the idiot somehow managed to catch the virus.
:rolleyes:

Dominic Cummings has got to be amongst the favourites

Acosta

Seth Brundle wrote: »

Nonsense. He's played a blinder when compared to his leader who thought it was fine to not just shake hands with people who had the virus but to actually tell the world that he thought that was ok to shake hands with those people.
Then the idiot somehow managed to catch the virus.
:rolleyes:

Well yes. It's BJs to lose, but as I said it's a congested leaderboard. But Charlie Brooker could do a hour long special out of Hancock interviews alone since this began.

A Dub in Glasgo

https://twitter.com/RP131/status/1277982556667797505

Enzokk

theological wrote: »

SMB, I think you can see in this post rather clearly that he is criticising having the capacity to spare.

Joe Public - I still think having people to spare in the event of further outbreaks is the right thing to do. There is nothing to say that we won't need this capacity further on particularly as winter approaches. This just looks like criticising for criticisms sake.

This is a interesting strategy, attack what the poster didn't say. Are you sure you want to go down that track? This criticism isn't just for its own sake though, if you have people not doing anything now how do you expect them to be up to the task when it becomes critical in a few months time?

theological wrote: »

The government have a stockpile of PPE ready. Bed capacity is sorted with the Nightingale hospitals which are already standing empty. I'm pretty sure they've thought about call handling at this stage also.

I'm happy to engage with valid and justified criticism, but I don't think this is. Having spare tracing capacity is a good thing.

Did we ever find out why the Nightingale Hospital only had around 50-100 patients in total? I still wonder how you can add 4000 beds in London alone that would need acute care and therefor more nurses per patient than in a ward. This at a time when there is a shortage of nurses in the NHS. So I still wonder if the reason the Nightingale was left mostly empty had more to do with staff than fewer cases.

This sort of comes back down to the contact tracers argument, its great to have an extra 10 000 extra beds, but what use are they if staff isn't available to allow you to fill the beds? Let us not forget the UK changed their procedures on PPE because of the stock levels they had and not with safety and best practices in mind.

So while it is great to have so many available tracers, are they really useful when they will be needed or are they only something for the government to use to shield themselves from criticism, like you have done on here now?


As for some other interesting bits, this twitter thread on the numbers and how the numbers being released doesn't show the whole picture,

Thread

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1277960112691273728?s=20

Basically again the UK Government is using numbers in a way that seems more intent on misleading people than present the clear picture.

And another story, Johnson has said he wants to do a job much like Roosevelt during the Great Depression to rebuild the UK economy with a plan to spend £5bn on the economy. I am sure we will hear how great this is and how big it is and how it is the biggest and best plan and measures of any country, much like how no other country in the world has a working tracing app (he lied, there are apps out there being used right now).

https://twitter.com/Geoelte_Spinne/status/1277927545669902336?s=20

But can Merkel do push-ups and speak in Latin?

theological

You can see using the data as to how many intensive care beds were required at the peak on the BETA coronavirus dashboard on Public Health England.

In a crisis with unknowns it would have been unwise and negligent not to ensure capacity in the event that the spike was worse than it was. We would have had posts from people on here berating in the opposite direction. Hence my comment about the government in many cases being damned if they do and damned if they don't.

There are a lot of fair criticisms that can be made, and criticisms I'd join with you on. But criticising the government for freeing up too much capacity isn't a reasonable criticism.

Joe_ Public

One stat i recall from early on that stays with me was Germany having more spare critical care beds than the total number of critical care beds the UK had in its entire system. Again no one is suggesting that the extra capacity wasnt a good and very necessary thing and the UK was paying for long standing historical failures that placed it in a poor position. According to nhs data, 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes between 17 march and 16 april, many thousands without being tested, and the criteria for hospital admission was stiffened. That definitely helped with the capacity issue anyway, if only seeding an even deeper crisis elsewhere.

CelticRambler

Enzokk wrote: »

Did we ever find out why the Nightingale Hospital only had around 50-100 patients in total?

Yes, we do: they couldn't find enough doctors and specialist nurses to treat any more than that, mainly because those with the right training - believe it or not - were already working flat out in existing ICUs. In the time it took the government to realise that even temporary hospitals need qualified staff, the regular hospitals had figured out how to re-purpose operating theatres, day-care facilities and store rooms.

But hey, at least they had a 4000 spare-bed capacity in a deeply flawed environment, and a few thousand people sitting around waiting to push trolleys if ever they were needed.

fr336

Anyone nervous for the weekend? Well not the weekend itself but two weeks down the line. I don't trust us as a nation (the UK) to not mess things up completely. I'm talking about packing into bars, some bars not taking proper precautions, the list goes on. We will be more like the US than Ireland or Europe.

Timberrrrrrrr

fr336 wrote: »

Anyone nervous for the weekend? Well not the weekend itself but two weeks down the line. I don't trust us as a nation (the UK) to not mess things up completely. I'm talking about packing into bars, some bars not taking proper precautions, the list goes on. We will be more like the US than Ireland or Europe.

All my local bars have pretty much the same thing as this on their FB pages

To accommodate the new government guidelines, we've had to make a few changes to control a temporary limited capacity and alcohol consumption.

These include new temporary opening hours and a booking system!

Walk ins are welcome but we cannot guarantee entry if capacity has been met, so please book a slot in increments of 2 hours for a maximum of no more than 4 people! You can do this by using the "book now" button at the top of our facebook page. (Please wait for confirmation before arriving!)

Temporary opening hours

Monday - Thursday, 2pm - 11pm
Friday - Saturday, 2pm - midnight
Sunday - 2pm - 11pm

(Last orders will be called 30 minutes before closing)

Hi Everyone,

We are so happy to be able to re-open on Saturday and can't wait to see you all. We have missed almost all of your faces so everyone will be welcome 🀣🀣🀣🀣🀣🀣🀣🀣.

Things will look a little different however and we really hope you guys understand why we are making. a few changes.

Firstly, we will now be operating a one way system around the pub. Customers will enter via the bar door, and the lounge doors are exit only. The Beer Garden will be having a face lift and will also have a lot more benches in pace.

Our opening hours have changed slightly and these will be kept under constant review depending on the current situation.

The toilets are open on a one in one out basis, so please respect social distancing when using the toilets to keep everyone safe.

The juke box, bandit and pool table are all off limits I'm afraid, however we will try and get background music playing throughout the day.

Please remember that we are not experts in public health and are just following the guidelines as best as we can. Bear with us, and if we have made any glaring mistakes, we will make the changes as soon as we can.

In the meantime, we can't wait to see you all, and look forward to having a beer with you and putting the world back on track.

See you Saturday..........

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After their fiasco that is Leicester, and the proposed newdeal, that is an old deal; and not a great deal,
would expect Liverpool to be next city due for the lock (possible also Chinese village style mortar brick stacking on some B-roads).

The NW was always a poor performing area for the R rate, and after the reds nearly burned down their Liver building as part of recent celebrations, imagine there was also plenty of lock-ins around the same time with punchbowls of home made alcho brew (handgel and mouthwash).

Ideally any ferries from the 'Pool will be restricted if/when numbers flare up.

theological

fr336 wrote: »

Anyone nervous for the weekend? Well not the weekend itself but two weeks down the line. I don't trust us as a nation (the UK) to not mess things up completely. I'm talking about packing into bars, some bars not taking proper precautions, the list goes on. We will be more like the US than Ireland or Europe.

I don't know why you have this pessimism. I think people extrapolate isolated events and make assumptions that they characterise the behaviour of the majority in the UK when they just don't.

I do trust British people to be sensible in the vast vast majority of cases, and I think the police will be able to enforce this.

Any bar that doesn't put clear measures to ensure that they are working in a COVID secure way should be closed.

Accumulator wrote: »

After their fiasco that is Leicester, and the proposed newdeal, that is an old deal; and not a great deal,
would expect Liverpool to be next city due for the lock (possible also Chinese village style mortar brick stacking on some B-roads).

The NW was always a poor performing area for the R rate, and after the reds nearly burned down their Liver building as part of recent celebrations, imagine there was also plenty of lock-ins around the same time with punchbowls of home made alcho brew (handgel and mouthwash).

Ideally any ferries from the 'Pool will be restricted if/when numbers flare up.

On what basis? Due to a small minority being incredibly foolish?

We've seen this type of comment again and again on this thread during previous rounds of easing, and previous rounds of spot the distance on the beach, and it hasn't caused a flare-up.