Ah sorry, I misunderstood. In that case, I have no idea - unless people are being admitted to hospital at a earlier stage of the illness than they would be in the UK.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Thank you @jojojo for providing balance and context over your last few posts.
After nearly losing my mother earlier this year due to Covid (spent 3 weeks in the ICU) and taking all possible steps to protect her thereafter, reading the rest of the stuff on this page was quite depressing.
I greatly appreciate your contribution to the thread.
After nearly losing my mother earlier this year due to Covid (spent 3 weeks in the ICU) and taking all possible steps to protect her thereafter, reading the rest of the stuff on this page was quite depressing.
I greatly appreciate your contribution to the thread.
That seems like the most likely explanation.
That could also be a factor. VERY anecdotal but two people I know with Covid were told it wasn't serious enough and sent home from hospital in the UK, one of whom later died. In Italy they will admit you immediately.
And that seems like a very unlikely explanation!
Really bugs my how they say 'Ukas' and not 'UKAS' in that article.
How a lab has won work without the correct certification is definitely suspect. Usually you'll be required to submit evidence of certification, so either the government have dropped the ball and not asked to see it, or they knew they didn't have it and don't care.
There's the third option that the lab forged it but that's highly unlikely, UKAS certificates you can just search for on their website to see if they are legit.
Pfizer seek approval for vaccinations of 5-11 year olds in Europe
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/1018/1254448-ema-children-vaccine/
https://www.rte.ie/news/coronavirus/2021/1018/1254448-ema-children-vaccine/
Apparently you can self-certify as a lab, here's the form:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/self-declare-as-a-private-sector-covid-19-testing-provider
If you're not UKAS approved then you are supposed to be in the process of getting approval, and:
So, looks like they were on a fast track to getting the contract, followed by a slow track to getting certification. I expect they got paid on time though.
Wish I could self certify and not have to deal with ISO17025 each year, who do I need to pay/bribe?
What I will say is that UKAS are an absolute shambles of a company. Considering they are the UK accreditation body, the certification bodies beneath them (BSI etc) are so much better in terms of service, technology, procedures and processes. The other month I had to tell UKAS we are moving a lab from one building to another, and they tried to flag that I 'hadn't given them enough information', turns out there isn't anywhere internally or externally that UKAS actually specify what information you need to give them, they went from trying to raise a nonconformance on us, to raising one on themselves.
I had a quick look on the UKAS lab search last night to see if I could see anything about Immensa or Dante, unsuprisingly there weren't any results found.
This might explain why we are so much worse than other countries. New variant AY.4.2 is 10% of UK cases at the moment.
Another one? Christ. When will those unvaccinated realise that this will keep happening as long as there is hosts for it to mutate in (them)?
All of this and yet we are still not even being told to do the basics.
No social distancing and no requirement to wear a face covering.
It is just mind numbingly stupid.
And the latest stats show that children are now some of the biggest spreaders.
I always wear a face mask inside any public space. Takes literally seconds to put one on.
At most it explains 10% of the difference (or 11,1% if you want to look it that way), so not really. Not that I think there is much wrong with UK's situation.
You don’t?
I would have thought you don’t want to be the country with the highest infection rate going into winter
Barely anybody wears a mask now. Went out yesterday and I’d say 80% were not wearing masks & almost everyone no longer keeps reasonable distance. Seems like we’re in for a long winter.
The play was to keep infections low until vaccines and then go back to normal. The only way that can happen is either through more vaccinations or infections. Everybody who wanted the vaccine has already had it in UK. Sure you can do more to educate people but that will take many months or years. I expect other countires to have similarly high case numbers later. The young did their share well, the old can keep shielding if they want to.
NHS England, Amanda Pritchard has confirmed to a HoC committee that 12-15s will be able to get vaccines through the national booking system by halfterm. School based rollout has been going too slowly in most areas, a consequence really of how few school nurses there are now.
Unfortunately she also said that booking texts for boosters for over 50s are going out on time, within a week of the 6 month trigger. Which anecdotally at least isn't true. The discrepancy may be down to patient specific stuff (Pfizer boosters are mostly done at mass vaccine centres, that can exclude some patients who were previously vaccinated in their own homes or at rural centres). Or it may just be wishful thinking on her part.
We'll see I guess. She blames people not taking up the offer quickly enough. However it's certainly the case that the national booking system still says specifically that people should wait for individual notifications. Personally I won't believe that it's old people stalling on boosters until the booking system allows the risk groups who are 6 months + from second dose to book.
Unfortunately she also said that booking texts for boosters for over 50s are going out on time, within a week of the 6 month trigger. Which anecdotally at least isn't true. The discrepancy may be down to patient specific stuff (Pfizer boosters are mostly done at mass vaccine centres, that can exclude some patients who were previously vaccinated in their own homes or at rural centres). Or it may just be wishful thinking on her part.
We'll see I guess. She blames people not taking up the offer quickly enough. However it's certainly the case that the national booking system still says specifically that people should wait for individual notifications. Personally I won't believe that it's old people stalling on boosters until the booking system allows the risk groups who are 6 months + from second dose to book.
Why are school nurses even involved? In Ireland the onus has been on the parents to register their kids and get them to vaccine centres for their jab (the same centres used to vaccinate adults).
Every time I see a Politician they aren't wearing one, saw Sunak visiting a place near me, no mask in sight. It can only be intentional, they know how it is perceived by the public.
It's probably much easier to jab a bunch of kids in one day if they're all in the same place at the same time would be my guess.
It makes sense to basically set up a jab centre for the day where 300 kids already are. Instead of getting 300 parents to take 300 kids for the jabs.
Like Ireland, Scotland used the national vaccine centres and their rollout for 12-15s is way ahead of England. I think the England theory was that normally the school service can handle the flu vaccine rollout for the under 16s, so why not use the same route. The principle was that the staff were used to dealing with under 15s, parental consent forms etc and that it meant that everyone in a year group could be booked in at the same time so less individual absences from lessons.
Of course, flu vaccines normally get rolled out right through autumn term (not in a hurry), they aren't so worried about the 15 minute rest/monitor period, they haven't got Pfizer logistics challenges and they don't have to contend with large numbers of staff/students being absent due to covid. It just didn't add up to a pandemic rollout.
Yeah, it just seems like an obviously bad call. When you’ve all the logistics in place already for adults, it’s so much simpler to use them for kids too instead of trying to come up with a whole new system.
Regarding absences it helped us that we did most of our kids before school started. Another obvious decision the UK got wrong.
This is actually pissing me off a lot right now. This should have been sorted months ago. The UK’s case numbers are ridiculously high, especially in secondary aged kids. That’s contributing to high case numbers everywhere and Ireland is getting dragged along with you. The rest of the EU is in a much better spot. Considering the head start the UK got with the vaccine rollout the current situation is a disgrace.
It makes sense to get the kids vaccinated as quickly as possible. Which this approach is clearly failing to achieve.
A good article about the UK's response to the pandemic, see through the eyes of a British-Italian journalist, Adriana Urbano:
https://www.thelocal.it/20211018/op...always-knew-uks-covid-response-was-a-failure/
Exceptionalism is another way to describe arrogance, ignorance and incompetence
Yes, all of those. I cannot understand the current policy (or lack of it) in the UK. I speak to my family every day, and I'm told "it's as if it's all over now here." The cases are so high, and it's only October.
I hope you shared that for all the mistakes it contains.
A few articles which seem to suggest “Plan B” is looking very much on the cards.
It has to happen. I simply don't understand what the Government thinks the winter will be like for the NHS with no restrictions.
UK has second highest case rate in the world (USA higher) based on that table. What other mistakes?
Very random selection of countries, mind you. And why mention China when there are much closer countries (politically and geographically) with stats that the UK compares very badly with?
There's no doubt that the UK is taking a massive gamble with people's lives - and a sustained one that a chronically under-resourced GP and hospital structure may not be able to cope with. Not because of cases though, they're only a diagnostic indicator now and tell you next to nothing about country by country status.
France for example, is now showing 6483 hospitalised with around 6k cases/day.
UK 7749 hospitalised, cases around 40k/day.
France is in a better place to suppress case numbers from that low case load and bring down hospital rates, but they'll have to do it multiple times unless something else changes. Case rates amongst adults in the UK are basically unchanged since July (following the peak at the Euros) despite the removal of restrictions - the leap has been amongst the under 18s who account for more that half the cases.
The Plan B business that the NHS bloke etc are talking about would be more about a psychological warning to people to be more cautious. Masks on public transport and in shops, encourage working from home. But also the unwritten rules - don't let the kids visit granny until granny had had her booster. And the request, another round of volunteering and overtime, to run the vaccine centres at full capacity again. Most of those rules were never lifted in Wales and Scotland, but they've had minimal impact on overall numbers - only on timing.
That test lab failure is starting to show up in the UK stats now. For example:
People who were tested by that dodgy lab (and got negatives) in October were asked to test again. As PCR can continue to show positive for weeks, we're now seeing some of the backlog coming through. It'll take another couple of days before we see the real current case rate.
Just how much this has affected case spread in the areas using the lab, we'll see soon.
Across the country this catch-up has added about 10% to the national cases number for the past few days - which unfortunately means the headline figure is unreliable at the moment. That'll settle in a couple of days time and we'll know where we're at again.
London though, looks to be going through another surge.
People who were tested by that dodgy lab (and got negatives) in October were asked to test again. As PCR can continue to show positive for weeks, we're now seeing some of the backlog coming through. It'll take another couple of days before we see the real current case rate.
Just how much this has affected case spread in the areas using the lab, we'll see soon.
Across the country this catch-up has added about 10% to the national cases number for the past few days - which unfortunately means the headline figure is unreliable at the moment. That'll settle in a couple of days time and we'll know where we're at again.
London though, looks to be going through another surge.
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It's simple, the UK can't afford to do anything else. Global trade is now back above pre-pandemic levels but in the UK exports are still 16% behind 2019 levels. The economic recovery is currently the worst of the G7 countries and the real reason is Brexit. For now the government can blame Covid but they know that excuse won't last forever. In the meantime they have to do everything they can to help the economy catch up, and that means everything open and some people that didn't need to die will do so.
Two things:
WFH for those who can needs to start up again ASAP I'd argue...over the past month the trains in/out of the city centre are getting rammed - hardly anyone wears a mask. Not good.
Why are people who get this cold/chest infection - not covid - coming in to work??? Stay at home and get better!
WFH for those who can needs to start up again ASAP I'd argue...over the past month the trains in/out of the city centre are getting rammed - hardly anyone wears a mask. Not good.
Why are people who get this cold/chest infection - not covid - coming in to work??? Stay at home and get better!
Absolutely infuriating. A girl at work came in Monday with a chest infection, her line manager sent her home. She's asked to come in today again "Do you still have a chest infection" "Yes" "No then"
I caught and recovered from covid approx a month ago and my workplace is now offering employees the booster jab. Is it worth getting from my perspective, given I have just (likely) had the delta variant, which I assume this booster is designed to fend off? Or should I hold fire until the next booster comes along to protect against the next mutation(s)?
I don't think it is that simple. I think the UK (government, public health and population) has given up any belief in eradication and is now full steam ahead for endemic. There's an assumption that we'll all be exposed to the virus (now, next month, next year) and we'll either be vaxxed or unvaxxed when we catch it.
The only real difference between the approaches being suggested by most of the key scientists relate to mitigation, not to principle. Mitigation matters most if you can vaccinate more people, or if you have a better vaccine or better treatments coming through, so you can buy time to save lives.
Which is where the arguments are focused: wait for boosters? Wait for under U16s? Wait for vaccine passports to kick in? The English (even more than the UK as a whole) are currently assuming that the U16s will be ok, and that those at risk will either stay home or get a vaccine/booster. Meanwhile, the more people who catch covid now, the fewer immune naive people there will be to infect later this winter.
Grim as it might sound, the assumption is that the bulk of hospitalisations/deaths can only be delayed (aka the curve flattened) not avoided. In this model, only testing (before you go to work, visit granny, get on a bus) is useful on the mitigation side - as it may help other people avoid risks.
It is absolutely brutal for the immune compromised, those who can't take the vaccine, those who got too scared/over-confident to take a vaccine, and those who got vaccinated but are still unlucky.
It's also not great for the rest of us, who maybe can't get routine medical treatment. It must be painful and exhausting for the medical and care staff trying to cope. But does a longer, slower battle really do that much to change that? That's the great unknown, and I really do think it's an unknown at this stage.
TLDR: not just about money.