When will this shit end?

[zahidf]

 

[Chef]

3 minutes ago, efcfanwirral said:

 

I hope it gets applied to antibody tests when the time is right and they're definitely accurate.

Not necessarily for immunity reasons which everyone seems to be focusing on, but just for knowing how widespread it has been. 

I think that will be the next big interesting step in terms of data collection and analysis, I know its happening already but to do it on a bigger scale where anyone can have a test. I live in London and based on symptoms back at the end of Feb I couldn't' rule out having had it myself and I have a number of friends in the some scenario. In contrast my parents live in a very rural UK county and they know no one who could say the same. These are patterns we would probably expect but it would be good to know for sure. 

[blutarsky]

1 hour ago, crazyfool1 said:

I will give an example on inept management of a covid test centre ... the army were performing tests at the local test centre in plastic aprons and paper masks ... the local traffic wardens ( including my friend ) were doing traffic management with no Ppe ... day before yesterday one of them is hospitalised with a positive Covid test .... people who he had contact with have been tested and should be isolating but the private parking company have said they should turn up for work and be wait for contact tracers to be in contact before they isolate ... the guy in hospital has all the numbers of people ready but hasn’t been contacted by anyone .. they closed the office for a deep clean but still asked everyone to attend work today and meet outside ... and waited untill yesterday to do a risk assessment on the covid centre .. I’m raging on my friends behalf today !! That company are not only putting lives of the public at risk but my best friend to... as he may not in fact have it !! 

This is the recurring theme for me.

There are lots of lovely examples of businesses/organisations looking after staff, but sadly far, far more examples of people being treated as numbers/drones who need to be put back to work to keep the economy going. The human cost isn't factored into business reopening plans, and the government, by changing the guidance on May 31st, has been complicit in this happening, if not the architects of it. 

I personally have been fighting a battle to avoid returning to work in order to limit the risk of my pregnant wife contracting Covid. This is despite the fact there is ample resource in my workplace for other staff to cover me and prevent me having to physically attend work and allow me to continue to work from home. Fortunately I have just won that battle, for the time being, but many others will not be so lucky. 

It shouldn't have had to come to me presenting research around the increased risk of premature labour and complications in labour among Covid infected mothers to win that battle. 

[steviewevie]

Where do ONS get these figures from? From people self testing?

[Crazyfool01]

20 minutes ago, blutarsky said:

This is the recurring theme for me.

There are lots of lovely examples of businesses/organisations looking after staff, but sadly far, far more examples of people being treated as numbers/drones who need to be put back to work to keep the economy going. The human cost isn't factored into business reopening plans, and the government, by changing the guidance on May 31st, has been complicit in this happening, if not the architects of it. 

I personally have been fighting a battle to avoid returning to work in order to limit the risk of my pregnant wife contracting Covid. This is despite the fact there is ample resource in my workplace for other staff to cover me and prevent me having to physically attend work and allow me to continue to work from home. Fortunately I have just won that battle, for the time being, but many others will not be so lucky. 

It shouldn't have had to come to me presenting research around the increased risk of premature labour and complications in labour among Covid infected mothers to win that battle. 

These managers presumably can be held responsible if something were to happen it’s absolutely farcical carrying out risk assessments after the event of someone being hospitalised with it !! 

[efcfanwirral]

24 minutes ago, blutarsky said:

This is the recurring theme for me.

There are lots of lovely examples of businesses/organisations looking after staff, but sadly far, far more examples of people being treated as numbers/drones who need to be put back to work to keep the economy going. The human cost isn't factored into business reopening plans, and the government, by changing the guidance on May 31st, has been complicit in this happening, if not the architects of it. 

I personally have been fighting a battle to avoid returning to work in order to limit the risk of my pregnant wife contracting Covid. This is despite the fact there is ample resource in my workplace for other staff to cover me and prevent me having to physically attend work and allow me to continue to work from home. Fortunately I have just won that battle, for the time being, but many others will not be so lucky. 

It shouldn't have had to come to me presenting research around the increased risk of premature labour and complications in labour among Covid infected mothers to win that battle. 

I've mentioned my old company before because I'm completely unsurprised but very disappointed in their actions.

They are a marketing agency who's work can 100% be done from home. Zoom/Teams etc are all available and collaboration can happen remotely. It's the most forward thinking industry for this sort of thing - there are even fully remote agencies now doing well. 

But they've always had this complete aversion to anything other than time in the office. They clearly don't trust staff and put a HUGE importance on face to face meetings (which is why I left, I spent more time talking about work than doing it). 

But they're reopening the office this week to show clients they're open, and because they're missing the face to face collaboration. 

They are saying people can choose to come in or not, but obviously with an ingrained attitude like that people will feel pressure to do so. 

And it's a poorly ventilated open plan office. The meeting rooms are enclosed booths ffs

It's highly unnecessary and sums up everything I hate about presenteeism and old fashioned working values 

"Work from home if you can" eh...

Edited June 5, 2020 by efcfanwirral

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

16 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

Where do ONS get these figures from? From people self testing?

I think they’re sending out tests to random members of the public each week to give them a sample.

[Ozanne]

He’s doing it.

[Homer]

BREAKING: EU negotiations not going well

Barnier live now

[Homer]

He's doing the 'pointing out that Johnson's been lying' thing

[Toilet Duck]

1 hour ago, Chef said:

Some interesting reading from Bristol University about whether infections were dropping before lock down was imposed.

I have seen some (wild) theories that this was some kind of second wave and the 10x average number of 'flu' cases the nhs dealt with at the beginning of the year was not actually flu. I do remember in January a disproportionate amount of people were off work with flu/ cold/ chest infection like symptoms. I know unlikely but who knows, could be positive for the future if there is something in it. 

Usual caveats that there are a number of things that can blow holes in this and the research is not peer reviewed but an interesting discussion piece none the less. @Toilet Duckdoes this seem anything close to feasible to you? 

https://www.bristol.ac.uk/maths/news/2020/peak-lockdown.html  

To be honest, I think the paper makes one huge assumption...namely "...generically it is often very difficult to infer epidemiological parameters from clinical data, without the results being informed more by the prior beliefs encoded in the model than by the data. The exception is when clinical data directly measure the quantity of epidemiological interest. This is the case for deaths with COVID-19 and for fatal disease duration. While not perfect, these data are far less compromised than the data on ‘cases’. Deaths are reliably recorded, clinical grounds for suspecting COVID-19 are clear, and good records are kept for fatal cases". I would argue that reporting of deaths is exceptionally noisy at the moment. Hospitals were fire-fighting at their peak of admissions and we see significant auditing of data and reporting of more fatalities well after they occurred as a result of this (not just in the UK, but everywhere). For me, the most robust measure of what the outbreak is doing is hospital admissions and ICU admissions, which are happening in realtime (and these are the triggers used for implementation of the public health measures). Irrespective of when the "peak" is modelled to have occurred, if people are streaming thorough your hospital door, you are going to have to do something about it. So, I think that the "measure of quantity of epidemiological interest" is not just fatalities, but also the rate of hospital/ICU admissions. I guess the above paper is what happens when a mathematician looks at something purely from a data perspective and doesn't necessarily consider all of the other evidence pointing towards what course of action should be taken (it's also only possible to do this analysis after the fact as realtime reporting of deaths is extremely unreliable). Suggesting that the lockdown wasn't needed will garner attention, but the timeline example I provided of how lockdown prevented breaching the capacity of the Irish health service doesn't solely rely on a model, it's just what actually happened (and what was predicted to happen based on the increasing number of patients arriving in hospital). But, look, this is just how I read the situation, you'll find other academics (better qualified than me) who have a different view. That's the odd thing about academia...it's an abstract pursuit that has very real implications for society. Reaching consensus is the only way to implement what the myriad scientific opinions actually think should happen. Mix in political policy considerations and it's an exceptionally complex (and dynamic) situation to manage. Geography and economics complicate things even further. 

In terms of whether this was the first wave or a second one, it's kind of immaterial. The threat to life and our health services was real, irrespective of whether the virus had circulated previously. For what it's worth, there was a particularly nasty RSV infection notified before Christmas and I suspect this is what most people caught (and not SARS-CoV-2). If they did, then two waves of this virus has led to less than 10% of the population developing antibodies to it, so most of the population is still susceptible. I had something nasty before Christmas (I was also in China at the end of November 😧), but in all honesty, I really don't think it was this virus (I guess I'll find out when I eventually get a serology test!). There are encouraging signs from countries that have opened up a bit more over the last few weeks (apart from Iran). Spikes in cases are in predictable locations and in theory, it's still possible to contain once numbers get really low again....just needs to be done correctly! (though if what @crazyfool1 has described is widespread, then someone needs to get a hold of things and quickly!). 

[Crazyfool01]

Which bit @Toilet Duck ? The contact tracing delays ?  Or the forcing people to return to work ? 

[Toilet Duck]

Just now, crazyfool1 said:

Which bit @Toilet Duck ? The contact tracing delays ?  Or the forcing people to return to work ? 

Both!

 

Edit: I think there is a duty of care for employers to ensure that when employees return to work, it's under the safest conditions possible. For the next while, this will mean limiting people in the workplace and using alternative means to have meetings etc. Face-to-face interactions can be built into that (but not at 100%). I'd love to go back into the university, there's absolutely a loss of collegiality that happens when everyone is working remotely...but I wouldn't do it under unsafe conditions...thankfully my institution is very proactive in terms of adapting our workplace (thermal scanners, in house testing etc). It's a massive logistical challenge and I appreciate not every business can go to the lengths we do, but there are some straightforward precautions that can be implemented (for example, we don't wait for the HSE (our version of the NHS) contact tracing, we do our own as soon as a suspected case is identified). 

Edited June 5, 2020 by Toilet Duck
further thoughts!

[EasyUserName]

43 minutes ago, blutarsky said:

This is the recurring theme for me.

There are lots of lovely examples of businesses/organisations looking after staff, but sadly far, far more examples of people being treated as numbers/drones who need to be put back to work to keep the economy going. The human cost isn't factored into business reopening plans, and the government, by changing the guidance on May 31st, has been complicit in this happening, if not the architects of it. 

I personally have been fighting a battle to avoid returning to work in order to limit the risk of my pregnant wife contracting Covid. This is despite the fact there is ample resource in my workplace for other staff to cover me and prevent me having to physically attend work and allow me to continue to work from home. Fortunately I have just won that battle, for the time being, but many others will not be so lucky. 

It shouldn't have had to come to me presenting research around the increased risk of premature labour and complications in labour among Covid infected mothers to win that battle. 

The whole issue of working / companies during this situation is very complex. 

I sit on the opposite side to you, to a degree - I am responsible for organising work, managing schedules and staff. 

I'm not commenting on your personal situation, but I thought it might be interesting to add my feedback into the mix.  We have mostly shut-down, with only a very limited amount of work being carried out.  This could comfortably be said to be "essential" work and cannot be done from home.  This has clearly reduced the turn-over to around 10% of "normal".  Much of the company is on furlough.  There are a few people who did not qualify unfortunately, and some who are "needed" due to their skills. 

The first thing to note is that most of the people at our company on furlough seem unaware that there is a cost attached to the company, and that it is not "free".  Aside from the holidays being accrued (an unrecoverable cost of around 13% of a salary) there is a company national insurance issue for us too.  Due to the size, this cannot be claimed (for reasons that I can go into if people want but it is very technically boring).  We also pay pensions in a way that is slightly higher than the minimum, meaning that for us there is an unrecoverable cost of about 25% of a salary.  This is running at around £3,000 per month in unrecoverable costs to have people on furlough.  This has to be paid for on the much reduced turn-over, meaning the company is making a loss each month currently (of course there are all the other fixed costs to add to the mix here). 

 

Some of the work that we do is restarting, and it is an essential part of the restarting process of these other business that it is carried out.  I am finding some resistance from people about coming off furlough.  I do understand about the risk of exposure, but it is a bit of an unsolvable problem here.  This work must be done.  There is no way to make it 100% exposure free as it involves leaving your house to do it.  I have no doubts that some of the people I manage feel that they are battling me.  I understand some people have specific issues, but I can say from personal experience that others in the company I work for are not so charitable about having to go to work whilst others are not.  We have a childcare issue with one person, and it is causing some resentment on a level I've not heard of before. 

 

I know this doesn't relate directly to your situation but I can see how someone would say that we're uncaring, and that they're fighting us.  I contrast this with the people who did not qualify for furlough, who due to their economic situation are unfortunately desperate to work  even at the risk of exposure, and I can't help but generalise that I find people's attitude depends a lot on if they are getting government support care of furlough, or not.

 

At the end of the day, the situation is rubbish for everyone, but as this business slowly goes under (some £10,000 in unrecoverable furlough costs soon + the other losses) it starts to drift into that morally difficult area of what value does risk to life have?  When does the human cost really run up against the economic costs?  (I mean really and not just cosmetically, as in economic costs mean no jobs and all that entails).

 

I didn't mean to hijack your comment, as your situation seems unfair, but who knows what is happening in the company unless you're on the other side of the desk. 

 

 

 

 

 

[squirrelarmy]

47 minutes ago, Ozanne said:

He’s doing it.

Where was Starmer a couple of years ago? It’s clear that Corbyn was far too disliked by the general public to ever have stood a chance of being elected. You have to wonder if Starmer was in charge pre election then we may well have a different government in power right now. 

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

16 hours ago, gigpusher said:

Although there cases were much more regional to begin with and far less widespread than here and having colleagues in Spain I can tell you being able to go out and exercise vs not being able to is quite a big difference!!

I’m quoting you as you mention Spain, but this is more to make a general point about Spain and their figures

Spain recently retrospectively removed any Covid deaths from their figures that had not had a PCR test. So their figures now only show Covid deaths that had a positive test. They have 16,000 additional excess deaths above their average allowing for the official Covid deaths that are unaccounted for, which would bring them to around the 40,000 deaths.

At the end of May they changed the way they report deaths, they now only include the deaths on the day they occurred (Unless they are reported within 36 hours) and there is a significant lag in reporting them. As a result their figures will constantly be revised up but retrospectively, meaning they can largely report 0 deaths each day even though that isn’t true, people will have died on that day, but unless the death was recorded in the previous 36 hours (the vast majority aren’t) they will never feature in their daily stats.

We like most countries simply report the deaths recorded each day based on them being reported that day, regardless of whether the actual death happened within 36 hours or two weeks.

In short they are manipulating their figures to present a much better picture than actually exists, both with regards to total figures and daily numbers.

This conveniently coincides with them opening up tourism again.

The change in how they report deaths has also made their R rate impossible to calculate and it hasn’t been published since. 

 

 

Edited June 5, 2020 by Deaf Nobby Burton

[Crazyfool01]

21 minutes ago, Toilet Duck said:

Both!

 

Edit: I think there is a duty of care for employers to ensure that when employees return to work, it's under the safest conditions possible. For the next while, this will mean limiting people in the workplace and using alternative means to have meetings etc. Face-to-face interactions can be built into that (but not at 100%). I'd love to go back into the university, there's absolutely a loss of collegiality that happens when everyone is working remotely...but I wouldn't do it under unsafe conditions...thankfully my institution is very proactive in terms of adapting our workplace (thermal scanners, in house testing etc). It's a massive logistical challenge and I appreciate not every business can go to the lengths we do, but there are some straightforward precautions that can be implemented (for example, we don't wait for the HSE (our version of the NHS) contact tracing, we do our own as soon as a suspected case is identified). 

thats exactly what these guys did ... they were working closely with this guy .. sharing radios and restrooms and decided that they should get tested and isolate .... but work demanded they go in the following day knowing this .... just received this message from my friend .... its horrendous !! 

Before my colleague left Musgrove he asked his doctor about Test and Trace, and was told officially that it's not in operation yet.
I've got a long wait

[Memory Man]

10 minutes ago, EasyUserName said:

who knows what is happening in the company unless you're on the other side of the desk. 

 

Companies do have the option to be open, honest and transparent with their employees about what the financial situation is. Are they being?

On the other hand, as horrible as it sounds,  if an employer was to say if you don’t come back it will be redundancy time, then some will go back.

at this point in time i wouldnt be wanting to get on public transport. If you can get to work without it and have no other issues i reckon you should probably go back

[gigpusher]

5 minutes ago, Deaf Nobby Burton said:

I’m quoting you as you mention Spain, but this is more to make a general point about Spain and their figures

Spain recently retrospectively removed any Covid deaths from their figures that had not had a PCR test. So their figures now only show Covid deaths that had a positive test. They have 16,000 additional excess deaths above their average allowing for the official Covid deaths that are unaccounted for, which would bring them to around the 40,000 deaths.

At the end of May they changed the way they report deaths, they now only include the deaths on the day they occurred (Unless they are reported within 36 hours) and there is a significant lag in reporting them. As a result their figures will constantly be revised up but retrospectively, meaning they can largely report 0 deaths each day even though that isn’t true, people will have died on that day, but unless the death was recorded in the previous 36 hours (the vast majority aren’t) they will never feature in their daily stats.

We like most countries simply report the deaths recorded each day based on them being reported that day, regardless of whether the actual death happened within 36 hours or two weeks.

In short they are manipulating their figures to present a much better picture than actually exists, both with regards to total figures and daily numbers.

This conveniently coincides with them opening up tourism again.

The change in how they report deaths has also made their R rate impossible to calculate and it hasn’t been published since. 

 

 

And yet their lockdown was so much more strict. Trying to report all of this in real time is problematic for any country especially when a lot of countries have not done sufficient testing to determine what the cause of death. Also, there is a huge spike just in excess deaths which to me still give an indication of how well a country has been able to handle a pandemic. If you can only handle COVID by stopping all other health treatment and instead of COVID deaths you get more cancer, cardiac, stroke deaths etc then it is still down to that countries health system being inadequately prepared. 

[Neil]

13 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

You have to wonder if Starmer was in charge pre election then we may well have a different government in power right now. 

I doubt it. He was the anti-brexit guy, and people largely voted on brexit.

[Deaf Nobby Burton]

1 minute ago, gigpusher said:

And yet their lockdown was so much more strict. Trying to report all of this in real time is problematic for any country especially when a lot of countries have not done sufficient testing to determine what the cause of death. Also, there is a huge spike just in excess deaths which to me still give an indication of how well a country has been able to handle a pandemic. If you can only handle COVID by stopping all other health treatment and instead of COVID deaths you get more cancer, cardiac, stroke deaths etc then it is still down to that countries health system being inadequately prepared. 

If you look purely at health services, Spain and Italy had far stricter lockdowns simply because they had to. Despite acting earlier than us, both Spain and Italy’s health services where overwhelmed at points during the pandemic, that didn’t happen in the U.K. We went into lockdown with half the deaths that Italy did when they went into lockdown, they where overwhelmed before they acted so they had to act with maximum force.

The sad reality is our governments aim was not to prevent loss of life but to make sure the health service wasn’t overwhelmed at any point, therefore we did not need as strict a lockdown as Spain or Italy to achieve that aim. 

[squirrelarmy]

6 minutes ago, Neil said:

I doubt it. He was the anti-brexit guy, and people largely voted on brexit.

In that case where was Starmer pre Brexit? Maybe if he was in charge of Labour then they might have actually put up some opposition to the vote instead of sitting on the fence. 

[Ozanne]

22 minutes ago, squirrelarmy said:

Where was Starmer a couple of years ago? It’s clear that Corbyn was far too disliked by the general public to ever have stood a chance of being elected. You have to wonder if Starmer was in charge pre election then we may well have a different government in power right now. 

Starmer only been an MP since 2015, he quickly rose up the ranks and was the Shadow Brexit Secretary up till March. The main issue with what you suggest is that he was a lead player in Labours Brexit plan. 

[Ozanne]

Just now, squirrelarmy said:

In that case where was Starmer pre Brexit? Maybe if he was in charge of Labour then they might have actually put up some opposition to the vote instead of sitting on the fence. 

He was Director of Public Prosecutions hence why he’s been Knighted. 

[Homer]

Re the original question, looks like the summer is wiped out. Just got an announcement from Moondance, which is a relatively small one-dayer supposed to be on 30th Sept (surely the last date a festival could really go ahead!):

"Due to the COVID backdrop, it has become apparent that mass gatherings will not go ahead this summer and we have therefore had to make the difficult decision to postpone the Moondance x Sunbourne Festival until Saturday September 18th 2021."