Has Telford's stat got the 90/10% backwards, thats then kind of rounds the same as Aoz, and is shocking but realistic.
As I said the Guardian reported a similar level of non-isolation. The Guardian, however, contextualised it by pointing out that a lot of people who aren't isolating cannot afford to. The level of support the Government is allocating to help people afford to stay at home is pitiful.
There was a report back in September ish that stated that only about 20% of those with a positive test or symptoms fully complied with the self-isolation requirement. And, only about 10% of those who had been contacted by test and trace and told to self isolate because of contact with someone who'd tested positive did so (and, of course, test and trace failed to even call about 30% of the people they should have). So, the figures are the right way round.
It was also reported that 70% said they would fully comply ... so the question is why did so many who intended to self-isolate fail to do so fully? And, of the other 30% would do so if the option was available?
The reports also looked into the common reasons for failing to self-isolate. The common ones were needing to go out to buy groceries, pick up prescriptions or attend a medical facility for non-covid related treatments. AIUI, the third of those would be a valid reason to go out. The first two are largely unavoidable unless everyone had a stockpile of 2-3 weeks food and meds in just in case they needed to self-isolate - and most people are not that organised or forward thinking (and, we'd also been told only a few months before not to stockpile as supermarket shelves emptied). One shopping trip would be enough to fall into the "not fully complying" category. And, that's a long way from simply ignoring the instructions to self-isolate and, say, drive 270 miles to stay with parents and have an eye-test. The reports (at least as reported in the press) didn't clarify how many of the 80/90% who didn't fully comply were in the "one shopping trip" group and how many didn't bother to try to self isolate at all.
Those reports also repeated recommendations made by scientists and opposition politicians for months. That to increase compliance with self-isolation several things would be needed - adequate sick pay for all (especially for those who wouldn't normally get sick pay), support for employers to keep their jobs open so that they didn't risk the sack for not going in, support for home deliveries of groceries and other essentials, even simple daily phone calls to check up on how people were doing and provide much needed contact with others. Instead we got legislation to fine those who didn't comply without support for those who couldn't, and cutting the duration from 14 to 10d. And, even later a miserly payment that would make no difference at all.
Of those in school Year 12 to 24 years old, the highest percentage testing positive was among those who are employed.
(The figure was highest for students back in October: most students who caught Covid within a shared student residence: Report)
Now: how about you provide the facts and figures, sources etc, on which you base your assertion that "the majority of the 90%/80% are not obliged to go to work for the reasons I haved already stated". You have not in fact stated any reasons: you have merely stated unfounded speculations. If you can produce
Students at Nottingham University were very compliant when they had an illegal rave.
You are talking about a rave that was over seven months ago, when we'd just come out of the first lockdown and the Government thought numbers were low enough to run Eat Out to Help Out. There were reports of three or four more raves at that time. It seems the authorities cracked down on them and there've been no reports of any happening that I can find since. There aren't a lot of outdoor raves in the winter as I understand it.
Since you now want facts, figures, sources, etc: how many cases of Covid were transmitted at those raves? For comparison: five hundred cases have been reported at the DVLA alone.
Police action to shut down the raves was immediate. Little to nothing has been done to make workplaces safe.
I don't give assertions. I merely give opinions. Unless one never goes anywhere I have never understood how we can know the date and place of transmissions
I don't give assertions. I merely give opinions. Unless one never goes anywhere I have never understood how we can know the date and place of transmissions
Unless one never goes anywhere I have never understood how we can know the date and place of transmissions
With the English track and trace system, I agree. If instead of sidelining the public health experts their experience and expertise was built on it would be easier. The Scottish system (which does build on pre-existing public health expertise) has certainly identified some individual pubs and the like where transmission occurred.
The simple system is to identify common points of intersection where lots of people who are positive have been - if a lot of people from one place of work test positive then it's very likely that that's a point of transmission, especially if the incidence in the rest of the local area is low. Even the English system can achieve that is there are lots of cases.
The fuller system would be to track backwards from everyone who's tested positive. For each place they've been, then contact everyone else who was there and have them tested. Except where transmission is between people who were together on different occasions then that will pick that up the transmission, including when and where the transmission occurred. It also very rapidly identifies everyone who could have been infected, and if coupled to fully-supported self-isolation can stop onward transmission. This is the sort of tracking that is part of the training of public health professionals. It can be very powerful. Also the genetic analysis of the virus can be very informative about transmission routes. But, these approaches take a lot of time, and become increasingly infeasible as the number of positive cases increases. The UK did it a year ago (do you remember the stories of individuals who had their journey from China to the UK to a skiing trip and back to the UK tracked with the number of people infected on each stage identified? That was the experts in public health doing their job ... if that had been continued the onset of the first wave might have been delayed a little while).
Unless one never goes anywhere I have never understood how we can know the date and place of transmissions
With the English track and trace system, I agree. If instead of sidelining the public health experts their experience and expertise was built on it would be easier. The Scottish system (which does build on pre-existing public health expertise) has certainly identified some individual pubs and the like where transmission occurred.
The simple system is to identify common points of intersection where lots of people who are positive have been - if a lot of people from one place of work test positive then it's very likely that that's a point of transmission, especially if the incidence in the rest of the local area is low. Even the English system can achieve that is there are lots of cases.
The fuller system would be to track backwards from everyone who's tested positive. For each place they've been, then contact everyone else who was there and have them tested. Except where transmission is between people who were together on different occasions then that will pick that up the transmission, including when and where the transmission occurred. It also very rapidly identifies everyone who could have been infected, and if coupled to fully-supported self-isolation can stop onward transmission. This is the sort of tracking that is part of the training of public health professionals. It can be very powerful. Also the genetic analysis of the virus can be very informative about transmission routes. But, these approaches take a lot of time, and become increasingly infeasible as the number of positive cases increases. The UK did it a year ago (do you remember the stories of individuals who had their journey from China to the UK to a skiing trip and back to the UK tracked with the number of people infected on each stage identified? That was the experts in public health doing their job ... if that had been continued the onset of the first wave might have been delayed a little while).
Thanks for all that. I have heard that when infections are really high it becomes far more difficult.
Somebody( Not you ) thinks I should buy a dictionary but how can I look the word up if I can't spell it? I looked through all the 'N's and couldn't find newmonia. What's the point?
Unless one never goes anywhere I have never understood how we can know the date and place of transmissions
With the English track and trace system, I agree. If instead of sidelining the public health experts their experience and expertise was built on it would be easier. The Scottish system (which does build on pre-existing public health expertise) has certainly identified some individual pubs and the like where transmission occurred. infeasible as the number of positive cases increases.
At the moment, we in Sydney are checking-in to restaurants, coffee shops, clubs, supermarkets, and most other stores. So far, not when using public transport - it would be reasonable for trains and ferries, much harder for buses.
@GeeD I am a director or secretary of several community organisations, including local museums staffed by volunteers. Even here in the green zone, we are using the QR code system of check-ins consistently. I think the great advantage of the system is that it was freely provided by the state government, is easy to implement and is confidentially linked to Service NSW, with data then automatically deleted after two incubation periods.
It would probably be possible to link our public transport Opal cards to the Service NSW database with some high-level technological expertise, as there is some tracking of usage already. How that would be funded, and whether it would be well-received by civil liberties groups are questions still to be answered.
Unless one never goes anywhere I have never understood how we can know the date and place of transmissions
With the English track and trace system, I agree. If instead of sidelining the public health experts their experience and expertise was built on it would be easier. The Scottish system (which does build on pre-existing public health expertise) has certainly identified some individual pubs and the like where transmission occurred. infeasible as the number of positive cases increases.
At the moment, we in Sydney are checking-in to restaurants, coffee shops, clubs, supermarkets, and most other stores. So far, not when using public transport - it would be reasonable for trains and ferries, much harder for buses.
There are tools available which makes things a lot easier, and check-ins with QR codes or even just a simple register taking names and contact details (for those without a suitable means to scan QR codes) are one of those tools - for the period when our church was open we had a sign-in/tick sheet so we had a record of members who attended each service plus name and address for any visitors (each sheet covering a month, then kept for a month before shredding). The mobile phone apps are another tool.
But, those are still tools to be used by people who know what they're doing. You still need people to phone all those contacts and get them test kits or to attend a testing station, you need people who have the skills and time to be able to reassure those they call and answer questions (a call "Mrs Smith, I'm from track and trace and I'm calling to say you've been in a pub where someone who's tested positive was also present. We advise you get a test for coronavirus and self-isolate until you get a negative result" then hang up is not sufficient, much less a text message or email to the same effect, you need someone to take the time to explain the risks, to discuss symptoms and whether the person called has any of them, etc). That takes some training, including some medical background, it takes someone who can be trusted with confidential information, it takes pastoral skills. Recruiting people who'd been laid off from other jobs and giving them a list of names an phone numbers without training to give them those skills doesn't doesn't cut it.
Indeed, which is why Public Health Units need to be at the forefront of the track and trace system, not an outsourced contract to run a call centre without any of those skills required.
Indeed, which is why Public Health Units need to be at the forefront of the track and trace system, not an outsourced contract to run a call centre without any of those skills required.
Unless one never goes anywhere I have never understood how we can know the date and place of transmissions
With the English track and trace system, I agree. If instead of sidelining the public health experts their experience and expertise was built on it would be easier. The Scottish system (which does build on pre-existing public health expertise) has certainly identified some individual pubs and the like where transmission occurred. infeasible as the number of positive cases increases.
At the moment, we in Sydney are checking-in to restaurants, coffee shops, clubs, supermarkets, and most other stores. So far, not when using public transport - it would be reasonable for trains and ferries, much harder for buses.
There are tools available which makes things a lot easier, and check-ins with QR codes or even just a simple register taking names and contact details (for those without a suitable means to scan QR codes) are one of those tools - for the period when our church was open we had a sign-in/tick sheet so we had a record of members who attended each service plus name and address for any visitors (each sheet covering a month, then kept for a month before shredding). The mobile phone apps are another tool.
I did delete your comments about relaying bad news, but totally agree with them.
The State government run QR system that Barnabas Aus refers to is very simple and efficient. It's also being made available free to anyone seeking to join in. The real problem is remembering to log out when leaving a venue. Better to "be" there than not to be registered at all. The manual system you mention has much the same degree of ease from the perspective of the customer/congregant etc (who then has to handle a biro used by someone else), but not from that of the place visited. Any manual data must be logged in by the establishment within a very short period, but still filed away as a back-up. A business might be able to cope, but it's a lot harder when your parish administrator is not on duty and in fact is attending her own church several kilometres away.
French media have been reporting that maritime traffic through Cherbourg (ie. coming from Ireland) has increased massively of late. Nonetheless as a regular purchaser of British goods - English tea, baked beans, orange marmalade and the like - I am finding it noticeably harder to get hold of said items. Imports from the UK are definitely not arriving as smoothly as once they did AFAICT.
1: Who do you blame for this? Who is blocking my Bratwurst ?
In the UK we've lost over 100,000 people from Covid 19 in about a year.
For comparison, in WW2 the UK lost 450,000 (total deaths, military and civilian) in six years.
Not quite correct. The 450K you quote is for 383K military deaths plus 67K civilian deaths due to military action ( bombing etc)
There would have been many more deasths due to other causes.
So what? 100k in a year due to Tory mismanagement of Covid pandemic
vs
450k in six years from war-related causes in wartime
and how many a year due to other causes ?
It's not relevant to my point that Tory laziness and incompetence caused more* (excess) deaths in a year than the annual average excess deaths in WW2 caused by enemy action and any war-related causes.
If you're interested in sdeaths from other causes you find out, then tell us, along with how knowing those numbers diminishes this snapshot of Tory mismanagement.
---
2: If we have more than 450K extra deaths due to covid in a 6 year period , your comparison might be relevant.
*Let's be charitable and admit that not all those 100,000 deaths are directly due to the Tories but only a proportion; how about 'only' 50,000 dead people caused by Johnson and his Tory government? Less? More? If it's 'only' 50,000 excess deaths (with the other 50,000 deaths virtually unavoidable) does this make the Tories look good?
This government have not been killing people. People transmitting the virus have been killing people. Of course the government have made mistakes but we should not be excusing selfish and irresponsible behaviour.
1: Are you alluding to underwear difficulties Telford?
2: I'm taking the WW2 average (excess) death toll in the hope that even Johnson and his mates can't keep up this level of incompetence regarding deaths for six bloody (sic) years. Let's pray he doesn't get the chance.
I had realised that I'd been posting my assessment of Johnson's mismanagement of the pandemic (comparing excess Covid-19 deaths with WW2 deaths) on the Brexit thread when it should be here. You can't remove misplaced posts but I can post here.
In the sunny uplands of Kent, Nopity Patel's gallant police officers chuck an asylum seeker (and since when was being an asylum seeker a criminal offence?) back into the infamous concentration camp that is Napier Barracks: https://youtube.com/watch?v=ixUNPtYXgfo&feature=emb_imp_woyt
No sign of the Heinous Haystack (the one who unsuccessfully pretends to be a Prime Minister) - maybe his dressing-up box doesn't yet include jackboots?
In the sunny uplands of Kent, Nopity Patel's gallant police officers chuck an asylum seeker (and since when was being an asylum seeker a criminal offence?)
Being an asylum seeker isn't a criminal offence. Evading immigration controls has always been a criminal offence (for at least the last hundred years). If those seeking asylum are to remain in a particular facility while their claims are being processed, then leaving that facility would seem to be evading immigration controls.
In other news of government incompetence. The incompetent chum placed in charge of the test and trace programme has claimed that no one could have predicted that the coronavirus would mutate.
No one, that is, except every virologist and millions of other scientifically literate people who have been saying the virus will mutate (as all viruses do) for a year.
In other news of government incompetence. The incompetent chum placed in charge of the test and trace programme has claimed that no one could have predicted that the coronavirus would mutate.
No one, that is, except every virologist and millions of other scientifically literate people who have been saying the virus will mutate (as all viruses do) for a year.
Well, quite. And the coronavirus mutates a lot more slowly than most RNA viruses (because it has a bit of non-structural protein that acts as a copy-editor in a rather neat way). But "more slowly" is not "zero", and it turns out that there's been quite a lot of Coronavirus reproduction going on in the last year.
In other news of government incompetence. The incompetent chum placed in charge of the test and trace programme has claimed that no one could have predicted that the coronavirus would mutate.
No one, that is, except every virologist and millions of other scientifically literate people who have been saying the virus will mutate (as all viruses do) for a year.
And More or Less this morning fact checked Dido Harding's most recent claims of improvements and found that some had been achieved by changing the way the figures were calculated and some of the so-called improvement came from including work by other agencies.
OK, so per that article, the asylum seekers are in normal conditions permitted to leave the barracks (as long as they continue to reside there), but are having their movements restricted because of Covid. (ie. Covid being rife is precisely the reason not to allow people to leave.)
In a rational world, with Covid rife in the barracks, all its inhabitants would be under strict quarantine orders and not be permitted to spread the virus around. We all know that the British government's handling of Covid and quarantine has been far from rational.
In a rational world, people living in cramped quarters such as these asylum seekers would also be a priority group for the vaccine.
Anyone wants to defend Mr Johnson and his government to me; well, then, show me how my analysis is wrong. Because if it's not, then Johnson is inescapably responsible for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. AND HE STILL WON'T ADMIT THAT HE GOT THINGS WRONG.
YMMV of course, but this is what I think and more importantly, why I think it.
Sitting safe and very comfortable, far from the front lines, caring less than nothing for the deaths his actions and inactions cause. Enjoying his position and the briefings, decision making, high profile (etc). Applauding those on the front line while putting them directly at risk of injury and death.
Sitting safe and very comfortable, far from the front lines, caring less than nothing for the deaths his actions and inactions cause. Enjoying his position and the briefings, decision making, high profile (etc). Applauding those on the front line while putting them directly at risk of injury and death.
More accurately, that would be the popular view of WWI generals. That wasn't a charge laid against them at the time, and when Douglas Haig died in 1928 his state funeral was attended by thousands of veterans who considered him a great leader. It wasn't until the 1930s and later that questions about tactics started to gain public hearing, the epithet "butcher Haig" significantly post dates the war and his death. Modern historians would generally say that the generals cared deeply about the casualties and conditions in the trenches, each battle generally employed new tactics with the aim of reducing casualties (though, in many cases the new tactics didn't have that effect), and they were well aware of mistakes that were made trying their best to avoid repeating them. All the generals spent some time at the front, though of necessity they needed to be behind the front to direct operations during the battles (that was where they had reliable communications). They had all served in previous wars in combat as junior officers, although they hadn't experienced the trenches in those roles.
Which makes the PM who has never served his time on the front line (unlike Whitty, who's worked on covid wards during the pandemic) and seems to show no concern about the people who are working the hospital wards or the families of those who have died, much less willingness to learn from mistakes and try a different approach even worse than those generals.
Siegfried Sassoon's Base Details, and The General, were written in 1918, and strongly express the lions led by donkeys view of the war.
Johnson did nearly die of Covid, as he thought that government advice didn't apply to him and he could safely shake hands with people who were in hospital with it.
And, we can add Grant Shapps to those without a basic grasp of the reality of the world.
I suppose you could say there's some sort of vague and partial point under there, namely that Britain's economy is inextricably linked with Europe's so closing our borders with Europe is impractical.
I wonder why a Brexiteer doesn't want to put the point that way.
I suspect that, for Mr Shapps, Australia is on that part of the map of the world where the words *Terra Incognita* and *Here Be Dragons* are to be found...
And, we can add Grant Shapps to those without a basic grasp of the reality of the world.
I suppose you could say there's some sort of vague and partial point under there, namely that Britain's economy is inextricably linked with Europe's so closing our borders with Europe is impractical.
I wonder why a Brexiteer doesn't want to put the point that way.
It does sort of feel like the people calling for our borders to be closed and the people calling for our borders to be kept open have swapped sides.
Personally, I've been saying for months that we should do a New Zealand and just close them until this thing blows over.
Ah, if only we could - but that would require a more decisive leader than our Lord Protector Of The Happy Fishes.
The stupid thing is, if you linked it in to the Brexit rhetoric about taking back control of our borders it could be spun into a wonderfully positive narrative about Brexit giving us the ability and power to protect ourselves from this plague. If - hell, when - it worked and, like NZ, we went back to living a virtually normal life even as the rest of the world continued to burn then Johnson and the other Brexiters would be raised up as national heroes.
If I can come up with this then I'm sure there must be a government advisor or two that can think of it as well. It just makes the failure to do it so much more incomprehensively baffling.
I suspect that, for Mr Shapps, Australia is on that part of the map of the world where the words *Terra Incognita* and *Here Be Dragons* are to be found...
No. I think he assumes that as it was red in his school atlas, it's his.
And why @Alan Cresswell are you singling out only Mr Shapps as sharing Mr Johnson's lack of grasp of the world? I can't think of anyone in his cabinet who is any different. A Foreign Secretary who hasn't grasped the importance of ports if you live on an island saps many peoples' confidence that any of them know what they are doing. And is there any evidence that the Secretary of State for Education is even educated, yet alone has any understanding of schools or interest in them?
Ah, if only we could - but that would require a more decisive leader than our Lord Protector Of The Happy Fishes.
The stupid thing is, if you linked it in to the Brexit rhetoric about taking back control of our borders it could be spun into a wonderfully positive narrative about Brexit giving us the ability and power to protect ourselves from this plague. If - hell, when - it worked and, like NZ, we went back to living a virtually normal life even as the rest of the world continued to burn then Johnson and the other Brexiters would be raised up as national heroes.
If I can come up with this then I'm sure there must be a government advisor or two that can think of it as well. It just makes the failure to do it so much more incomprehensively baffling.
I quite agree, and one does indeed query the reason for the indecision...it can't be that the *government* is completely ga-ga - or can it?
I suspect that, for Mr Shapps, Australia is on that part of the map of the world where the words *Terra Incognita* and *Here Be Dragons* are to be found...
No. I think he assumes that as it was red in his school atlas, it's his.
And why @Alan Cresswell are you singling out only Mr Shapps as sharing Mr Johnson's lack of grasp of the world? I can't think of anyone in his cabinet who is any different. A Foreign Secretary who hasn't grasped the importance of ports if you live on an island saps many peoples' confidence that any of them know what they are doing. And is there any evidence that the Secretary of State for Education is even educated, yet alone has any understanding of schools or interest in them?
Some of these people went to expensive private schools and then on to top universities and yet seem to know nothing useful. It does not improve the reputation of the relevant educational establishemnts and I'd assume they would originally be happy to see their old students rise to high office then want to hide themselves away in shame and frustration for the very public, ongoing display of their pupils' ignorance and uselessness.
It makes you wonder whether they had to pass exams to graduate (and how low the pass mark was) and what the entry requirements were apart from parents' ability to pay the school fees.
It makes you wonder whether they had to pass exams to graduate (and how low the pass mark was) and what the entry requirements were apart from parents' ability to pay the school fees.
I've taken quite a lot of exams in my time, as have a large number of other shipmates, and the thing that most of them had in common was their susceptibility to bullshit. It's relatively hard to bullshit your way though a maths or physics exam, but a very basic level of knowledge plus good exam technique will help you bullshit your way to a low B or so on a lot of exams.
That same ability to bullshit leads to the production of superficially plausible reports that, at first glance, might resemble the product of actual competence, but on closer inspection turn out to be unmitigated bollocks.
It makes you wonder whether they had to pass exams to graduate (and how low the pass mark was) and what the entry requirements were apart from parents' ability to pay the school fees.
I've taken quite a lot of exams in my time, as have a large number of other shipmates, and the thing that most of them had in common was their susceptibility to bullshit. It's relatively hard to bullshit your way though a maths or physics exam, but a very basic level of knowledge plus good exam technique will help you bullshit your way to a low B or so on a lot of exams.
That same ability to bullshit leads to the production of superficially plausible reports that, at first glance, might resemble the product of actual competence, but on closer inspection turn out to be unmitigated bollocks.
Damn right and that's probably it. Have any of them passed an actual exam in science (esp physics) or is it all bullshitting in vivas (?) literature essays, vague intro to economics, plus some latin and ancient greek history?
Sitting safe and very comfortable, far from the front lines, caring less than nothing for the deaths his actions and inactions cause. Enjoying his position and the briefings, decision making, high profile (etc). Applauding those on the front line while putting them directly at risk of injury and death.
Mr Johnson has already expressed how very sorry he is for all the deaths, The Generals would be entitled to blame the enemy for the deaths
Boris does indeed like to go on about how sad he is, and many of us find that to be one of the more aggravating things about him - making it sound like the most important thing in this crisis is poor Bozzie's feelings.
Sitting safe and very comfortable, far from the front lines, caring less than nothing for the deaths his actions and inactions cause. Enjoying his position and the briefings, decision making, high profile (etc). Applauding those on the front line while putting them directly at risk of injury and death.
Mr Johnson has already expressed how very sorry he is for all the deaths, The Generals would be entitled to blame the enemy for the deaths
Until he expresses some honesty about how badly things have been done, and thus a willingness to learn and do things differently, it is literally irrelevant how sorry he is.
Comments
It was also reported that 70% said they would fully comply ... so the question is why did so many who intended to self-isolate fail to do so fully? And, of the other 30% would do so if the option was available?
The reports also looked into the common reasons for failing to self-isolate. The common ones were needing to go out to buy groceries, pick up prescriptions or attend a medical facility for non-covid related treatments. AIUI, the third of those would be a valid reason to go out. The first two are largely unavoidable unless everyone had a stockpile of 2-3 weeks food and meds in just in case they needed to self-isolate - and most people are not that organised or forward thinking (and, we'd also been told only a few months before not to stockpile as supermarket shelves emptied). One shopping trip would be enough to fall into the "not fully complying" category. And, that's a long way from simply ignoring the instructions to self-isolate and, say, drive 270 miles to stay with parents and have an eye-test. The reports (at least as reported in the press) didn't clarify how many of the 80/90% who didn't fully comply were in the "one shopping trip" group and how many didn't bother to try to self isolate at all.
Those reports also repeated recommendations made by scientists and opposition politicians for months. That to increase compliance with self-isolation several things would be needed - adequate sick pay for all (especially for those who wouldn't normally get sick pay), support for employers to keep their jobs open so that they didn't risk the sack for not going in, support for home deliveries of groceries and other essentials, even simple daily phone calls to check up on how people were doing and provide much needed contact with others. Instead we got legislation to fine those who didn't comply without support for those who couldn't, and cutting the duration from 14 to 10d. And, even later a miserly payment that would make no difference at all.
I don't give assertions. I merely give opinions. Unless one never goes anywhere I have never understood how we can know the date and place of transmissions
Please buy a dictionary.
Please.
The simple system is to identify common points of intersection where lots of people who are positive have been - if a lot of people from one place of work test positive then it's very likely that that's a point of transmission, especially if the incidence in the rest of the local area is low. Even the English system can achieve that is there are lots of cases.
The fuller system would be to track backwards from everyone who's tested positive. For each place they've been, then contact everyone else who was there and have them tested. Except where transmission is between people who were together on different occasions then that will pick that up the transmission, including when and where the transmission occurred. It also very rapidly identifies everyone who could have been infected, and if coupled to fully-supported self-isolation can stop onward transmission. This is the sort of tracking that is part of the training of public health professionals. It can be very powerful. Also the genetic analysis of the virus can be very informative about transmission routes. But, these approaches take a lot of time, and become increasingly infeasible as the number of positive cases increases. The UK did it a year ago (do you remember the stories of individuals who had their journey from China to the UK to a skiing trip and back to the UK tracked with the number of people infected on each stage identified? That was the experts in public health doing their job ... if that had been continued the onset of the first wave might have been delayed a little while).
Thanks for all that. I have heard that when infections are really high it becomes far more difficult.
Somebody( Not you ) thinks I should buy a dictionary but how can I look the word up if I can't spell it? I looked through all the 'N's and couldn't find newmonia. What's the point?
At the moment, we in Sydney are checking-in to restaurants, coffee shops, clubs, supermarkets, and most other stores. So far, not when using public transport - it would be reasonable for trains and ferries, much harder for buses.
It would probably be possible to link our public transport Opal cards to the Service NSW database with some high-level technological expertise, as there is some tracking of usage already. How that would be funded, and whether it would be well-received by civil liberties groups are questions still to be answered.
But, those are still tools to be used by people who know what they're doing. You still need people to phone all those contacts and get them test kits or to attend a testing station, you need people who have the skills and time to be able to reassure those they call and answer questions (a call "Mrs Smith, I'm from track and trace and I'm calling to say you've been in a pub where someone who's tested positive was also present. We advise you get a test for coronavirus and self-isolate until you get a negative result" then hang up is not sufficient, much less a text message or email to the same effect, you need someone to take the time to explain the risks, to discuss symptoms and whether the person called has any of them, etc). That takes some training, including some medical background, it takes someone who can be trusted with confidential information, it takes pastoral skills. Recruiting people who'd been laid off from other jobs and giving them a list of names an phone numbers without training to give them those skills doesn't doesn't cut it.
Beat me to it.
A teething child in the house will do that to you.
I did delete your comments about relaying bad news, but totally agree with them.
The State government run QR system that Barnabas Aus refers to is very simple and efficient. It's also being made available free to anyone seeking to join in. The real problem is remembering to log out when leaving a venue. Better to "be" there than not to be registered at all. The manual system you mention has much the same degree of ease from the perspective of the customer/congregant etc (who then has to handle a biro used by someone else), but not from that of the place visited. Any manual data must be logged in by the establishment within a very short period, but still filed away as a back-up. A business might be able to cope, but it's a lot harder when your parish administrator is not on duty and in fact is attending her own church several kilometres away.
I had realised that I'd been posting my assessment of Johnson's mismanagement of the pandemic (comparing excess Covid-19 deaths with WW2 deaths) on the Brexit thread when it should be here. You can't remove misplaced posts but I can post here.
https://youtube.com/watch?v=ixUNPtYXgfo&feature=emb_imp_woyt
No sign of the Heinous Haystack (the one who unsuccessfully pretends to be a Prime Minister) - maybe his dressing-up box doesn't yet include jackboots?
O how ashamed I am to be *English*...
Being an asylum seeker isn't a criminal offence. Evading immigration controls has always been a criminal offence (for at least the last hundred years). If those seeking asylum are to remain in a particular facility while their claims are being processed, then leaving that facility would seem to be evading immigration controls.
https://theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/03/police-filmed-carrying-asylum-seeker-into-kent-barracks-against-his-will
No one, that is, except every virologist and millions of other scientifically literate people who have been saying the virus will mutate (as all viruses do) for a year.
Well, quite. And the coronavirus mutates a lot more slowly than most RNA viruses (because it has a bit of non-structural protein that acts as a copy-editor in a rather neat way). But "more slowly" is not "zero", and it turns out that there's been quite a lot of Coronavirus reproduction going on in the last year.
And More or Less this morning fact checked Dido Harding's most recent claims of improvements and found that some had been achieved by changing the way the figures were calculated and some of the so-called improvement came from including work by other agencies.
That's not true.
The Prime Minister may well soldier on but it won't in any way be for the UK.
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/feb/02/no-limits-to-our-cruelty-towards-asylum-seekers
OK, so per that article, the asylum seekers are in normal conditions permitted to leave the barracks (as long as they continue to reside there), but are having their movements restricted because of Covid. (ie. Covid being rife is precisely the reason not to allow people to leave.)
In a rational world, with Covid rife in the barracks, all its inhabitants would be under strict quarantine orders and not be permitted to spread the virus around. We all know that the British government's handling of Covid and quarantine has been far from rational.
In a rational world, people living in cramped quarters such as these asylum seekers would also be a priority group for the vaccine.
We're screwed then.
Indeed.
I have completed (for now) my series of blogposts looking at the Covid numbers.
This is an analysis of government decision-making around timings of lockdowns.
http://alienfromzog.blogspot.com/2021/02/covid-19-and-how-johnsons-government.html
It is not pretty-reading.
Anyone wants to defend Mr Johnson and his government to me; well, then, show me how my analysis is wrong. Because if it's not, then Johnson is inescapably responsible for tens of thousands of unnecessary deaths. AND HE STILL WON'T ADMIT THAT HE GOT THINGS WRONG.
YMMV of course, but this is what I think and more importantly, why I think it.
AFZ
Sitting safe and very comfortable, far from the front lines, caring less than nothing for the deaths his actions and inactions cause. Enjoying his position and the briefings, decision making, high profile (etc). Applauding those on the front line while putting them directly at risk of injury and death.
Which makes the PM who has never served his time on the front line (unlike Whitty, who's worked on covid wards during the pandemic) and seems to show no concern about the people who are working the hospital wards or the families of those who have died, much less willingness to learn from mistakes and try a different approach even worse than those generals.
Johnson did nearly die of Covid, as he thought that government advice didn't apply to him and he could safely shake hands with people who were in hospital with it.
I wonder why a Brexiteer doesn't want to put the point that way.
It does sort of feel like the people calling for our borders to be closed and the people calling for our borders to be kept open have swapped sides.
Personally, I've been saying for months that we should do a New Zealand and just close them until this thing blows over.
Alas, Ms Ardern is otherwise engaged, and not available for secondment to Old Brexshitland.
The stupid thing is, if you linked it in to the Brexit rhetoric about taking back control of our borders it could be spun into a wonderfully positive narrative about Brexit giving us the ability and power to protect ourselves from this plague. If - hell, when - it worked and, like NZ, we went back to living a virtually normal life even as the rest of the world continued to burn then Johnson and the other Brexiters would be raised up as national heroes.
If I can come up with this then I'm sure there must be a government advisor or two that can think of it as well. It just makes the failure to do it so much more incomprehensively baffling.
And why @Alan Cresswell are you singling out only Mr Shapps as sharing Mr Johnson's lack of grasp of the world? I can't think of anyone in his cabinet who is any different. A Foreign Secretary who hasn't grasped the importance of ports if you live on an island saps many peoples' confidence that any of them know what they are doing. And is there any evidence that the Secretary of State for Education is even educated, yet alone has any understanding of schools or interest in them?
I quite agree, and one does indeed query the reason for the indecision...it can't be that the *government* is completely ga-ga - or can it?
So have lots of sensible people, myself included.
Some of these people went to expensive private schools and then on to top universities and yet seem to know nothing useful. It does not improve the reputation of the relevant educational establishemnts and I'd assume they would originally be happy to see their old students rise to high office then want to hide themselves away in shame and frustration for the very public, ongoing display of their pupils' ignorance and uselessness.
It makes you wonder whether they had to pass exams to graduate (and how low the pass mark was) and what the entry requirements were apart from parents' ability to pay the school fees.
I've taken quite a lot of exams in my time, as have a large number of other shipmates, and the thing that most of them had in common was their susceptibility to bullshit. It's relatively hard to bullshit your way though a maths or physics exam, but a very basic level of knowledge plus good exam technique will help you bullshit your way to a low B or so on a lot of exams.
That same ability to bullshit leads to the production of superficially plausible reports that, at first glance, might resemble the product of actual competence, but on closer inspection turn out to be unmitigated bollocks.
Mr Johnson has already expressed how very sorry he is for all the deaths, The Generals would be entitled to blame the enemy for the deaths
Until he expresses some honesty about how badly things have been done, and thus a willingness to learn and do things differently, it is literally irrelevant how sorry he is.
AFZ