Covid-19 and Politics

Status
Not open for further replies.
I have been hearing more about the Annan-Gretna cluster, although it's been difficult to verify this from press reports.

I'm told that the problem started with a healthcare worker who works in England but lives in Scotland and brought the virus back from work. Well no border closure would have prevented that because people would be allowed to cross the border to go to work. However (and this bit is in the press reports) "illegal gatherings" were involved, allegedly indoor house parties, and that's where the virus was spread around a number of people in the community in Scotland.

Who is this genius, working in a hospital in a relatively high-prevalence area, who then goes home to a low-prevalence area and illegally mixes with people indoors? I don't suppose he or she will be prosecuted for this, but dammit if it was up to me there would be charges brought.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
So they changed the method to make the figures look lower to reassure the party goers?
Click to expand...


As I understand it the opposite is the case. The outcry over the previous deceptive reporting method caused by the Leicester outbreak (which didn't show at all in the published figures, only in the ones they weren't publishing) has prompted a wholesale overhaul and they're not only going to do it right from now on, they're allocating all the historical unreported cases to their correct dates so that the historical figures are also correct.
 
Pixel42 said:
I haven't been able to find the figures for yesterday. Even the BBC's summary page, updated daily, doesn't include them for the first time ever AFAIK, though it looks like they've added them to the graphs. By eye, yesterday's deaths seem to be slighter higher than Wednesday's, which was 176.

ETA: Actually I'm not sure they have had added Thursday's figure to the graphs. They repeat that Wednesday's figure was 176 but even that's buried in the text. In previous updates there's been a graphic near the top of the page giving, aot, the previous day's number of deaths and new infections. That graphic seems to have been removed entirely.

E again TA: The global Covid tracker I use doesn't have any UK numbers for yesterday either, only the cumulative numbers.
Click to expand...

Nor does the ECDC data

Just a negative 29726 cases
 
I think the negative number is the result of the elimination of the double counting I mentioned earlier. Some people had tests on both pillar 1 and pillar 2 and because of the shambolic recording and reporting system they were double-counted when the two groups were combined. That has now been corrected.
 
Shambolic from start to finish.

Have you been listening to BBC More or Less?

It's been utterly damning every week.
 
jimbob said:
Shambolic from start to finish.

Have you been listening to BBC More or Less?

It's been utterly damning every week.
Click to expand...

About the testing, and the lateness of the lockdown, indeed.

The most recent (the 14th in the 7 episode series :) ) seemed fairly optimistic about the current situation in terms of dealing with the disease.
 
I do hope so. The situation in England scares me. Opening pubs while there's still free circulation of virus and no effective contact tracing in operation. I do not want that on our southern border and the very mention of the border controls necessary to protect us from it are causing British nationalists to go into meltdown. The obvious way out is for England to suppress the virus too, it just doesn't look all that likely from where I'm sitting right now.
 
Rolfe said:
I do hope so. The situation in England scares me. Opening pubs while there's still free circulation of virus and no effective contact tracing in operation. I do not want that on our southern border and the very mention of the border controls necessary to protect us from it are causing British nationalists to go into meltdown. The obvious way out is for England to suppress the virus too, it just doesn't look all that likely from where I'm sitting right now.
Click to expand...

A number of my Tory friends and acquaintances here in Wales are lamenting the fact that the Welsh government isn't following in lockstep with Westminster and claiming that it's a terrible flaw with devolution.

I, on the other hand, see it as an excellent argument in favour of devolution even though Westminster is doing its best to undermine the efforts of the devolved parliaments to keep their people safe. :mad:
 
It's interesting that Wales has quite a lot of cases at the moment but the situation is quite different from that in England. The Welsh cases are almost all related to three nasty outbreaks associated with slaughterhouses or meat packing plants and are being hunted down and quarantined and the outbreaks contained. That's how you do it. England is opening up with too much infection to be able to contain clusters in that way.

They think the Annan-Gretna cluster is under control now. It has transpired it originated in Carlisle hospital where there was nosocomial (hospital-acquired infection) spread. There was an interview with the matriarch of one of the affected famlies in which she insisted that her family had always adhered to the guidelines but they were getting local abuse for spreading virus. As was delicately hinted by the medical response, if virus comes into your family from another family, you have not been properly adhering to the guidelines.

Race to stop Carlisle hospital virus spreading in Scotland

New cross-border coronavirus case links Scots to English hospital

It's being reported that there are 11 cases in D&G associated with the cluster, although I'm not seeing that many in the D&G reported statistics. They think they're done contact tracing, the 11 people and their contacts are isolating, and three workplaces that became involved in the cluster are being tested wholesale (including a seafood processing plant).

It seems that virus was spreading in Carlisle hospital, a member of staff (or possibly more than one) who lives in Scotland brought it back home over the border, and then some careless behaviour apparently involving illegal gatherings spread it into additional families and three workplaces. The health authorities think they have it contained now, at least on the Scottish side. I presume the Cumbrian authorities are sorting out Carlisle hospital.

Let's hope this acts as a salutary warning to some people.
 
Last edited:
Colossal shambles over the so-called 'green list' of non-quaranting countries entering the UK. This morning Grant Shapps announced that the USA would not be on the list (for obvious reasons) and neither would Greece until the arrangement is reciprocal.

Late afternoon we hear that Greece will be on the green list.

Piss up ... brewery ... anyone?
 
GlennB said:
Colossal shambles over the so-called 'green list' of non-quaranting countries entering the UK. This morning Grant Shapps announced that the USA would not be on the list (for obvious reasons) and neither would Greece until the arrangement is reciprocal.

Late afternoon we hear that Greece will be on the green list.

Piss up ... brewery ... anyone?
Click to expand...

"What's that Mr Johnson? Your father Mr Johnson? Yes, of course he has to be able to get home to go to the pub Mr Johnson. I'll sort it out immediately Mr Johnson."
 
Rolfe said:
That's interesting, but of course there could be any number of reasons for people not feeling well. The modellers in Scotland, who are not known for their over-optimistic forecasts shall we say, think there are only about 1,500 people in the country in the infectious stage of the virus at the moment.

This map is interesting.

... map sniped just to reduce space, please refer to the original post...

I wonder if Wales is going to have to lock down Merthyr Tydfil. Some other bits of England are looking a bit dodgy too. Is that Bradford, Sheffield and Manchester standing out?
Click to expand...
Probably not Merthyr. The cases are primarily dure to the issues with the packing plant, and is being dealt with seperately.
 
Yes, I had read that. That's the difference, when you've got cases down to a manageable level and you've got a working test-trace-isolate system going, you can get in there and control a cluster without having to apply the hammer to the entire town. In England they're opening up when cases are still way above a manageable level even if they had a decent TTI operation, which they haven't.

I don't know what Carlisle is doing about its hospital cluster, but the bit if it that spilled into Scotland appears to be eleven cases and they think they have it walled off. We're opening up quite a bit now, but they've told the area round Annan and Lockerbie they have to stay in the existing stage for another couple of weeks. I hope we don't have to revert anywhere to lockdown again but you never know.
 
Listening in horror to the BBC news this morning. At the moment they're interviewing people from the travel industry. The message seems to be "Sure being on a plane is risky, but don't be a wuss".

I'd like to see the interviewer be a bit more challenging. "Will you feel a personal responsibility if someone dies after catching Coronavirus on a flight ?"

Otherwise it's just cheerleading the lifting of lockdown restrictions whilst spreading the message that it's your fault if you catch it. :mad:
 
Why would the department of health give a quarter of a billion pounds contract to procure face masks to a financial services and investments company based in Mauritius?

A CEO that has close ties with cabinet minister Liz Truss?

Surely not.
 
Captain_Swoop said:
Why would the department of health give a quarter of a billion pounds contract to procure face masks to a financial services and investments company based in Mauritius?

A CEO that has close ties with cabinet minister Liz Truss?

Surely not.
Click to expand...

Pure coincidence I'm sure. :rolleyes:
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Back
Top Bottom