Generic Virus Thread

[tonyh29]

4 minutes ago, Davkaus said:

He didn't even follow the 7 day UK recommendation, did he? 

Do as they say, not as they do.

Depends who says I guess  ... the WHO recommend 14 days which clearly he broke but the UK guideline is 7 and he adhered to that as it was announced at the time he would be self isolating until Thursday 

[MCU]

1 hour ago, StefanAVFC said:

Is the response to criticism of the Tories really 'but Labour' when they haven't been in power for 10 years?

Give me strength.

And thank God for that.

[foreveryoung]

More than ever its proving true the NHS is f*** because of management not money.

Guess all the ppe has gone to Nightingale's.

Now they have graduated all the students early, lucky them, reminds me of Vietnam.

Edited April 3, 2020 by foreveryoung

[StefanAVFC]

Quite staggering.

[bickster]

Just now, foreveryoung said:

More than ever its proving true the NHS is f*** because of management not money.

You are the headline writer at the Daily Heil, I claim my £5.

[snowychap]

To add to the earlier discussion about economic analyses of the shutdown/lockdown (still not very comfortable with it but it's a bit easier when discussed in terms of things like life years saved):

Quote

Why the coronavirus shutdown is worth it

Toby Young’s attempt to measure the costs and benefits of the current coronavirus shutdown fails on a number of fronts. He is right to recognise that lost economic output has real costs, and the trade-offs of any policy have to be considered before we can judge whether that policy is worthwhile, but he makes several important errors that lead him to the wrong conclusion.

...we can attempt a rough recalculation of whether the government shutdown is worth it, from a statistical perspective. If 230,000 lives are saved (the difference between mitigation and suppression in the Imperial model Young cites), with an average age of 79.5, that is around 2,070,000 life years saved. At the statistical life year value of £60,000, that is a total benefit in statistical terms of £124.2 billion, compared to less than £66 billion lost to the economy. We should also add the deadweight losses created by the roughly £120 billion in tax we will have to raise to pay for the additional government borrowing.

But we also have to add three additional factors that add to the case for the shutdown.

One, as discussed above, the net cost of the shutdown is less than £66 billion, since a lot of economic activity would stop with or without the government’s involvement. 

Two, in a scenario where hundreds of thousands of people were dying, the NHS would become overwhelmed and the average age of the people dying would likely fall, so the number of life-years lost is probably an underestimate...

Three, there would be a significant cost to the economy of giving serious medical treatment to the millions of people who needed it, and a serious cost in terms of  human suffering as well.

...

All this suggests that, so far, the shutdown is worth it, and probably would be worth it for some time more, depending on how badly hit the economy turns out to be. Three months would seem to be well worth it if it saves hundreds of thousands of lives, or millions of life-years, and it is right for the government to spend as much as it is to to keep businesses and workers afloat so we can bounce back once this period is over, to minimise the real economic costs of the shutdown. A longer period of shutdown may also be worthwhile if necessary.

...remainder on link

 

Edited April 3, 2020 by snowychap

[Stevo985]

1 hour ago, bickster said:

You are the headline writer at the Daily Heil, I claim my £5.

And this is someone whose wife is working on the front line. Baffling. 

[foreveryoung]

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

And this is someone whose wife is working on the front line. Baffling. 

This is how I know!

Also a friend of my mother sits at home in front of a laptop working 3 days a week giving orders out to front line NHS managers, even before this creation. She earns £120k a year. She hasn't stepped foot in a hospital for 3 weeks.

[HanoiVillan]

3 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

More than ever its proving true the NHS is f*** because of management not money.

The NHS actually does extremely well in international comparisons when it comes to healthcare outcomes/dollar spent. In other words, it's surprisingly efficient.

Hospitals are large organisations, in which thousands of people work. They require organising, which is often a difficult job, and some of the people who do it are paid well for doing so. You can go to any developed country in the world and find managers receiving fairly large salaries for managing hospitals with thousands of employees, it's not a unique feature of our healthcare system.

EDIT: This as well:

13 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

This is how I know!

Also a friend of my mother sits at home in front of a laptop working 3 days a week giving orders out to front line NHS managers, even before this creation. She earns £120k a year. She hasn't stepped foot in a hospital for 3 weeks.

This is good, no? If your mother's friend is not essential medical personnel, and can do her job managing the hospital in whatever capacity from home, then she should stay there like every other worker and not spread the virus.

Edited April 3, 2020 by HanoiVillan

[Stevo985]

18 minutes ago, foreveryoung said:

This is how I know!

Also a friend of my mother sits at home in front of a laptop working 3 days a week giving orders out to front line NHS managers, even before this creation. She earns £120k a year. She hasn't stepped foot in a hospital for 3 weeks.

She should be working from home if she’s not front line staff. It would be ridiculous for her to go in in the current climate if she doesn’t have to. 
 

Your posts baffle me

[HanoiVillan]

4 hours ago, ml1dch said:

 

 

So, the 'Health' Secretary is out and about rubbing his face, opening a hospital, and oh look, an opportunity to catch up with all your mates!

Good job this is one of those places where it doesn't matter if you spread the virus I guess

[KentVillan]

2 hours ago, foreveryoung said:

This is how I know!

Also a friend of my mother sits at home in front of a laptop working 3 days a week giving orders out to front line NHS managers, even before this creation. She earns £120k a year. She hasn't stepped foot in a hospital for 3 weeks.

Lots of us know people working on the front line, and haven't arrived at the same conclusion as you.

(I agree that there are massive problems with overpaid NHS management. But if you think that's the main problem, you aren't doing the maths properly.)

[Tomaszk]

On 01/04/2020 at 09:36, chrisp65 said:

I’m obviously not going to name sources so feel free to put this in the pile marked anecdote.

Still, this morning there is a lack of basic ppe for frontline health staff. Some are literally casting around friends to see who might have a box of gloves spare or a mask or an apron. 

It’s April now, somebody needs a bloody good kicking after this.

Absolute revolution needed In the fall out from this. Not some shit enquiry followed by a statement saying lessons have already been learnt and measures are now in place blah blah blah. Proper change, from what countries we do business with, to what industry counts as essential, to why we commute and how we want health and social care provided.

State of the economy and the state of the world, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity to recalibrate what we are about.

I fear that at the end of this, we will simply plan how quickly we can get back to exactly where we were.

Excellent post. I also fear your last line.

8 hours ago, markavfc40 said:

It is a disgrace and I can't see how it can be defended.

We can't be far off the point, in fact we are probably already there, where we will have instances of front line NHS staff who refuse to treat people with covid 19 symptoms unless they are given the correct PPE. Imagine doing that job, hearing daily of colleagues dying, in some cases young colleagues, and then being asked to treat and care for people but without basic PPE to protect yourself and therefore others you come into contact with and care for.

These people are well as being nurses, Drs, paramedics etc are somebodies father, mother, husband, wife, child etc. I can't put into words how mad it makes me that we are still failing to get PPE to people on the front line of all this, never mind others caring for people within NHS, in care homes and looking after people in the community etc.

I have no doubt the usual suspect papers will be waiting to hammer these people. "We clapped and now foreign nurses refuses to work"

7 hours ago, DCJonah said:

My wife has had blazing arguments with her dad about it. It blows my mind that he votes tory when his daughter has spent the last 20 years working for the NHS. 

A friend of ours is a GP and I'm pretty sure her husband voted tory and she was contemplating it. 

Amazing. 

If all you're told every time you pick up a paper is Labour are going to take your money and gift it to someone else it starts having an effect. I've had to explain to my mates who certainly don't leap out as being thick why certain companies would favour a tory government.

6 hours ago, Chindie said:

Lest we forget that a fetish retailer was supplying scrubs for the NHS this week.

Completely unacceptable. But Diane Abbott, lol.

It's pathetic it really is. I have no doubts the people finding it funny are comfortable financially through this.

1 hour ago, Stevo985 said:

She should be working from home if she’s not front line staff. It would be ridiculous for her to go in in the current climate if she doesn’t have to. 

Your posts baffle me

A general point is the NHS doesn't have enough funding and the funding it does have isn't being spent well enough. I don't know about this particular poster's situation, I haven't followed, I can imagine a lot of frustration is there.

It's a problem everywhere though, every big business has tits who don't know how a computer works sitting on a computer all day, sending one email and earning £120k. I'm sure the NHS would still run OK if she **** off and five/six nurses were in her place. 

[tonyh29]

4 minutes ago, Tomaszk said:

It's pathetic it really is. I have no doubts the people finding it funny are comfortable financially through this.

 there are 341 pages in this thread and  countless jokes (  though bizarrely  it seems to have taken a Diane Abbott joke for VT to deem an unacceptable line has been crossed , go figure ) 

 I don't believe anyone’s financial situation comes  into it , I think it’s a bit of gallows humour used as a mechanism in amongst a crazy world we are currently living in , but the numerous posters  posting jokes or even liking them might offer a different view or screenshot of their bank balance 

[KentVillan]

2 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

 there are 341 pages in this thread and  countless jokes (  though bizarrely  it seems to have taken a Diane Abbott joke for VT to deem an unacceptable line has been crossed , go figure ) 

 I don't believe anyone’s financial situation comes  into it , I think it’s a bit of gallows humour used as a mechanism in amongst a crazy world we are currently living in , but the numerous posters  posting jokes or even liking them might offer a different view or screenshot of their bank balance 

Agreed, it's a complete myth that the "humour vs. fear" equation depends on whether you're right wing or left wing (and before you say it, I've never voted Tory in my life). People react in different ways in situations like this, it's silly to assume that it's all about ideology.

[Tomaszk]

32 minutes ago, tonyh29 said:

 there are 341 pages in this thread and  countless jokes (  though bizarrely  it seems to have taken a Diane Abbott joke for VT to deem an unacceptable line has been crossed , go figure ) 

 I don't believe anyone’s financial situation comes  into it , I think it’s a bit of gallows humour used as a mechanism in amongst a crazy world we are currently living in , but the numerous posters  posting jokes or even liking them might offer a different view or screenshot of their bank balance 

Yeah humour is good through most things I agree.

Mocking any member of parliament as a way to defend the handling of this? I don't think that's funny.

[Seat68]

The british are known for gallows humour and seemingly by the last 5 pages, also not having a sense of humour. 

[Awol]

1 hour ago, Seat68 said:

The british are known for gallows humour and seemingly by the last 5 pages, also not having a sense of humour. 

The party approves of jokes, and has  approved jokes. The afflicted shall never be mocked - unless they contract COVID-19.

[Awol]

As predicted Americans are told they should all wear masks in public. Interesting to see how long PHE holds out for against this obviously correct advice.

 

[pas5898]

15 hours ago, Jareth said:

The BBC are running this story

Coronavirus: How NHS Nightingale was built in just nine days

It's entirely misleading - I mean it was incredible logistics to get it set up (thanks Army), but they are couching it in the same terms as the hospitals which were built in Wuhan, literally from the ground up. The other day we had a nurse on TV selling this exact line - she clearly had PR training - but it's another example of spin, at a time of crisis. How can this go on?

I know a few people who worked on NHS nightingale and will be doing the same for the NEC. 

Whilst the media were briefed to post pictures of the army and gurkhas, the majority of the  work was done by labourers like electricians, flooring guys, carpenters who were recompensed for £20 per hour, no expenses or travel. (they would have done it for free anyway). 

The army were used as grafters, and apprentices essentially. 

Edited April 4, 2020 by pas5898
Can't spell.