Generic Virus Thread

[chrisp65]

4 minutes ago, bickster said:

You know how Chemical Matt said it was 19 NHS staff that has so far died of CV19...

Well Nusing notes says (and Labels all of them on a map) that it's 27

Nursing Notes

 

In defence of Hancock and the other Ministers, I don’t think they have access to google, newspapers, research staff, the civil service, or the NHS.

[Lichfield Dean]

3 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It wasn’t a pop at you as an individual, I’ve no idea what the detail of your job is.

It was from my own direct personal experience, when I worked in the NHS, in what might be called an admin support role that was heavy on the I.T. / software specialism side.

We had a large department of specialists, but it was deemed politically unacceptable. So the Department was privatised. So most of us left. So they had to use recruitment agencies at a 15% finders fee to bring staff back in. Those staff were then paid by Carillion, who charged what was basically a 12.5% handling fee. I think that particular I.T. Money saving idea cost about £2,000,000 extra over A couple of years. With the added bonus of those with experience left the business, the new recruits didn’t even know there were NHS standards to adhere to and the first hospital that got built by the privatised company had ward doors that were too narrow to get beds through.

Other than that, the whole thing was an absolute triumph of streamlined privatisation and reduced admin..

I’m sure its all a lot more joined up and competitively priced now. 

I was vaguely involved with an NHS software thing about fifteen years back. The tender went to I think IBM (or another standard computing giant such as HP or whatever). They then split it into three or four bits and subcontracted out, keeping about 20% themselves. The subcontract went to a large public sector provider, who then split their bits up and subcontracted again. Eventually it got to my company after the majority of the funds had been sliced off and months of time had passed and we then had about two months and funding for a couple of junior devs to deliver something insanely complicated.

Guess what happened?

Still, all the companies that took their slice of the money before passing the hot potato on did well out of it 

[Jareth]

8 minutes ago, bickster said:

You know how Chemical Matt said it was 19 NHS staff that has so far died of CV19...

Well Nusing notes says (and Labels all of them on a map) that it's 27

Nursing Notes

But Matt Hancock was clear. Must be an error. 

[Mic09]

11 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

It wasn’t a pop at you as an individual, I’ve no idea what the detail of your job is.

It was from my own direct personal experience, when I worked in the NHS, in what might be called an admin support role that was heavy on the I.T. / software specialism side.

We had a large department of specialists, but it was deemed politically unacceptable. So the Department was privatised. So most of us left. So they had to use recruitment agencies at a 15% finders fee to bring staff back in. Those staff were then paid by Carillion, who charged what was basically a 12.5% handling fee. I think that particular I.T. Money saving idea cost about £2,000,000 extra over A couple of years. With the added bonus of those with experience left the business, the new recruits didn’t even know there were NHS standards to adhere to and the first hospital that got built by the privatised company had ward doors that were too narrow to get beds through.

Other than that, the whole thing was an absolute triumph of streamlined privatisation and reduced admin..

I’m sure its all a lot more joined up and competitively priced now. 

Oh, absolutely.

I said 99% of companies can't recruit. I'd say that 80% of those (including NHS) shouldn't have to use recruiters.

And you confirmed my fears. Carillon.

But at the end of the day, I always think that if I walked up to you and tried to sell you a talking dog for a £1000 and you bought it, you are the stupid one. All Carillon did was given a business proposal and some idiot employed by the NHS that agreed to it.

 

Edited April 11, 2020 by Mic09

[bickster]

3 minutes ago, Jareth said:

But Matt Hancock was clear. Must be an error. 

[HanoiVillan]

4 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

Oh, absolutely.

I said 99% of companies can't recruit. I'd say that 80% of those (including NHS) shouldn't have to use recruiters.

And you confirmed my fears. Carillon.

But at the end of the day, I always think that if I walked up to you and tried to sell you a talking dog for a £1000 and you bought it, you are the stupid one. All Carillon did was given a business proposal and some idiot employed by the NHS that agreed to it.

In most circumstances, that would be true. But it wouldn't be true if legislation had compelled me to buy a talking dog from you.

[Mic09]

7 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

In most circumstances, that would be true. But it wouldn't be true if legislation had compelled me to buy a talking dog from you.

Again, absolutely. Westminster is very much to blame.

But nothing is stopping the NHS to build a solid internal team to recruit directly. But, most companies can't do it, they are simply incapable to do so, so I guess NHS isn't alone here.

[Morley_crosses_to_Withe]

15 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

The average number of people that one infected person infects.

EDIT: Should probably add to this, that therefore if the R0 = 1, then the disease will be stable, ie it will not disappear but it will not break out. If it is below 1, the disease will gradually die out. If it is more than 1, it will spread unless measures are taken to contain it.

5.7 is quite high for an R0, but not unbelievably so (measles, for instance, has an r0 of 18).

I suppose it’s the fact it has no vaccination or feasible course of therapy that’s makes 5.7 feel somewhat unsettling. 

Whilst you’re correct about the R0 of Measles, it has a higher R0 but a lower mortality rate and there’s a vaccination for it. 

 

[Mozzavfc]

38 minutes ago, OutByEaster? said:

What's an RO?

 

Its basically how infectious a disease is

[HanoiVillan]

13 minutes ago, Morley_crosses_to_Withe said:

I suppose it’s the fact it has no vaccination or feasible course of therapy that’s makes 5.7 feel somewhat unsettling. 

Whilst you’re correct about the R0 of Measles, it has a higher R0 but a lower mortality rate and there’s a vaccination for it. 

 

Yes, absolutely - sorry, I wasn't very clear, I wasn't trying to compare the two diseases directly. For all the reasons you mention, Covid-19 is infinitely more concerning than measles.

[andyjsg]

My client for development work is the NHS or at least my client provides some web based applications to certain specialist sections anyway. Fortunately it was my app originally so I got to choose how and what was developed. We have also done another app for the cabinet office and the application we replaced was awful and they had paid hundreds of thousands for it and we replaced it for about 30k and is now used widely. But as others have mentioned employing decent developers is very very hard, I’ve employed 6 and so far kept 1.

 

[HanoiVillan]

20 minutes ago, Mic09 said:

Again, absolutely. Westminster is very much to blame.

But nothing is stopping the NHS to build a solid internal team to recruit directly. But, most companies can't do it, they are simply incapable to do so, so I guess NHS isn't alone here.

We may be talking at cross-purposes? 'The NHS' is a massive organisation, split into hundreds of parts. Many, many roles are recruited directly - jobs.nhs.uk is currently advertising 9,813 vacancies.

I agree with your other point, that most companies are bad at recruitment.

[HanoiVillan]

Former director of the World Health Organisation:

Not sounding great.

[Seat68]

2 hours ago, Mic09 said:

I also work in IT recruitment 

Must remember to start liking more of @Mic09 posts. You never know.

[StefanAVFC]

Something about Diane Abbott and numbers

 

[blandy]

3 hours ago, villa4europe said:

*cough* trident *cough*

This misses the point completely. Now I'm on balance against us (anyone) having a nuclear arsenal, but...

The whole point of a deterrent, for that's what it is, is that it is working the whole time. There's always a sub at sea. Always. It's like a flu jab - you might not actually need the jab, but having one means (the theory goes) you are protected in the event that some nasty germ were set on attacking you. Or it's like insurance, or burglar alarms or locks on doors.

At some point you have to spend money on defence. I know no one likes it, compared to hospitals, especially right now, and that's understandable. We've seen all of a sudden that there is money available. It doesn't have to be an either/or situation.

[bickster]

1 hour ago, HanoiVillan said:

Former director of the World Health Organisation:

Not sounding great.

Common problem, as I stated earlier, my missus basically had to tell her boss (who was working from home) to sod off, when it was suggested she couldn't. "You're a key worker, you're allowed to go to work" was the response. My missus pointed out that she was sharing space with a team of 10(ish) district nurses, 7 of whom already had CV19 and then pointed out that the government said that if you can work from home, you should.

Her Boss is a idiot. My missus told her she was working from home and if she didn't like it, she was a) contacting the union and b) looking forward to the disciplinary hearing.

[Seat68]

Lad Bible aaking questions, next question please from *looks at notes* Nuts magazine. 

[StefanAVFC]

1 minute ago, Seat68 said:

Lad Bible aaking questions, next question please from *looks at notes* Nuts magazine. 

eeeeehhh

I struggle to find a problem with this. it started as a bit of a joke, but now they have a huge audience, mostly young men and they do some decent stuff.

Better than the BBC/ITV asking the same questions every day and not getting any proper answers tbh.

[Mic09]

33 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

We may be talking at cross-purposes? 'The NHS' is a massive organisation, split into hundreds of parts. Many, many roles are recruited directly - jobs.nhs.uk is currently advertising 9,813 vacancies.

I agree with your other point, that most companies are bad at recruitment.

I'm referring to IT only. 

But just because the position is advertised online it doesn't mean that 5 agencies aren't working it.