The elephant in the room is that the NHS is not fit for purpose and 9 months into this multi billion spend crisis it still isn't and as far as I know, nothing much has been done other than shuffle folk around further delaying treatment for other issues. There seems no shortage of money to be thrown in all directions in the short term for practically no long term gain, I'd prefer to see it invested in the NHS to permanently update it. I had to use a hospital A&E in Wales once and after being used to one of the best hospitals in the UK (Addenbrookes in Cambridge) it was like visiting the third world.
Yeah, imagine the utter lunacy of not understanding the role of schools in this, thank god there are no studies on the relationship between open/closed schools and R numbers. https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2769034 I’m glad that Sage’s own findings stopped any sort of legal threats and knee jerk school openings/closings. That would have been embarrassing. But I’m sure we won’t be told that this is due to the new strain affecting kids more, despite the above two findings showing the huge role schools play well before that strain came to light.
That's because Addenbrookes is a PFI hospital...........you can tell the non PFI hospitals - they are often like visiting the third world.........
The thing is the figures could be way higher. I worked for someone who got poorly after I’d been. Fortunately she rang me to tell me she had tested positive. I then tried to get a test as wanted to inform my customers. Test folk said no, just self isolate no symptoms no test. As my customer had no symptoms when I was there I felt it was rubbish advice. If by the time I registered symptoms my customers may have mixed with quite a few people etc etc. Shortly after my call I decided I may have symptoms and was able to have a test. I tested positive. I then immediately informed anyone I’d been in contact with. They then went through due process. Fortunately all tested negative. However, had they been positive and I had followed initial guidance they could have been spreading it but without any records being taken until symptoms were shown, if they were asymptomatic they could have been spreading it further without adding to positive carriers statistics.
Don’t get me started on the Welsh thing, we’d be here a while. I’m unsure if the NHS issue is due to the effects of continuous improvement (many big companies have failed due to being very efficient at what they do but unable to adapt to disruptive changes so ultimately fail....think newspapers and the internet or blockbusters and video streaming) or because they’ve had budgets cut or not kept apace when so many other support networks have been cancelled e.g. the closure of council owned old people’s homes. Ultimately you are correct, but without understanding cause, it’s hard to map corrective action.
Corrective action could be to double everyone's NI contributions come April. Politics will get in the way of course.........
Seeing this post makes me think "so why should I bother?" thousands of people from all over the globe pouring into the Country yet I can't go up the road to see my daughter who's been furloughed and not been out for a couple of weeks, I'm retired and haven't left the house since before Christmas. Who's the biggest risk to society? They can go and Foxtrot Oscar
You mean the politicians need to sort out those spurious ltd companies or get their friends/family to do so....and then there’s the off shore stuff.... I’m a realist, we will all pay more tax. I’m just incandescent that a lot of that will go straight to the robber barons.
I'm not a denier, but now and again I try and assess what the heck is going on! I'm shut up here for the best part of the year for what? I do have an interest and I don't want to catch it any more than I'd want any flu and/or pneumonia and yes this one seems worse, but how worse is the question isn't it?
But hospital beds in the UK are about 2 per thousand in total (that's all beds - critical care and ICU are a tiny fraction) so if the infection trend is upwards there is a danger of hospitals being unable to cope. Locking down now is to flatten that upward curve so we don't get to that point. Fifteen years ago, by the way, there were twice as many hospital beds per thousand of the population, so we are also maybe paying the price for the halving of hospital capacity and having to lock down sooner...
The village I live in the rate is 192/100,000 given there are about 6,000 living in the wider village area means there should be 12 people with c-19 with broadly aligns with the Govt website saying 15 people tested positive in the last week so the likelihood of me getting close enough to one of them to catch it is pretty small. My local authority area of East Hampshire 378/100,000 (the Govt website for the period to 4 Jan actually suggests this has dropped to 370). However the closest town to me in East Hampshire has a rate of 325 but another town which is less affluent is at 727. draw you own conclusions from that. If you look at the data available through BBC website only gives info to the 31 December. I did a quick look to see whether your assumption re cities might be right? This doesn't support a 10x theory. here goes figures per 100,000 I just chose a few at random. Portsmouth 605 (the Govt website for the period to 4 Jan actually suggests this has dropped to 572) Southampton 584 (the Govt website for the period to 4 Jan actually suggests this has dropped to 542) Bromley 1,046 Brighton 606 Nottingham 346 Leicester 428 Richmond on Thames 629
Those are just the figures for patients reporting symptoms serious enough for them to seek help and subsequently be tested, or those who’ve sought testing as they’ve been in contact or have reason to seek a test such as high risk job roles etc. We don’t seem to know what the likely infection rates that include asymptomatic carriers are, which I would have thought more would be known about by now. Also these figures will be ‘out of date’ due to the nature of reporting, testing and so on. I personally think the actual infection rates will be way higher than what is being reported, and therefore the risk higher than we think. The figures are more a local comparison risk indicator in my opinion.
Or like my father in law thinking a test was a way out of self isolating. There is always going to be a lag in reporting happens in many statistics bandied around whether house prices, rental indices or Covid stats. They are the best we have though.
It's the worse I've ever felt and I've tried my best. Like the most flu like flu with the worse hangover ever. For weeks. And I'm pretty fit (in healthy sort of way!) Enjoy when it gets you.
Most likely my missus from her working in hospital, I normally self isolate by working on roofs and avoiding people in general, aka grumpy git syndrome!
I can confirm all the above I had it in April and for at least three and a half weeks I was completely poleaxed by it and then it took the same again to get back to some sort of feeling normal. I'm generally in good health thankfully but I've never felt so ill and tired for so long. I had literally zero energy, I could fall asleep for 2 or 3 hours just by getting dressed and dragging myself downstairs, any sort of activity caused coughing fits and I had to force myself to eat as I had zero appetite(and couldn't taste or smell anything anyway!). Hope you start to feel better soon and get on the road to recovery
