Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Paco]

The UK testing system appears to be in serious danger. Over 8% of tests done in Manchester are not getting results, and barely anyone at the UK Government sites are getting results within 24hrs. The site at Rhondda in Wales has been restricted to doing just 60 tests, instead of a capacity of 500, and several regions of England have been unable to book a test at all, not even hundreds of miles away, all week.

[Bairnardo]

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The UK testing system appears to be in serious danger. Over 8% of tests done in Manchester are not getting results, and barely anyone at the UK Government sites are getting results within 24hrs. The site at Rhondda in Wales has been restricted to doing just 60 tests, instead of a capacity of 500, and several regions of England have been unable to book a test at all, not even hundreds of miles away, all week.

Close the border IMO

[Michael W]

Now abundently clear why the dire warnings came out last week from Van Tam and SAGE, coupled with new restrictions. 

Basically, the Government has made a c**t of it again, can't cope and has instead fabricated some unverifiable excuse that the labs have "chaos in their supply chains". 

Edited September 13, 2020 by Michael W

[Szamo's_Ammo]

I keep reading "moonshot" as Moonster.

Boris Johnson pinning hopes on £100bn ‘Moonster’ to avoid second lockdown

Edited September 13, 2020 by Szamo's_Ammo

[Szamo's_Ammo]

I'm surprised there's no talk on here of France smashing their daily infections record yesterday.

A good day for the secondwavers and lockdownphiles.

Is anyone else missing @Todd_is_God?

[madwullie]

28 minutes ago, Szamo's_Ammo said:

I'm surprised there's no talk on here of France smashing their daily infections record yesterday.

A good day for the secondwavers and lockdownphiles.

Is anyone else missing @Todd_is_God?

Me, as a fully paid up lockdownphiliac second waver on seeing this news 

[SlipperyP]

15 hours ago, Andy groundhopper said:

Getting close 59 and I'm a plodding postman for my sins !

Christmas is cancelled you heard here first. and cant steal the fivers.

In  outher news news Thailand, the land of the Free recieved their first local case in over 100 days. A new prisoner....Also a footballer has been tested positive (new signing for Buriram) AFTER he stayed in quarantine on arrival. Which is comical.   Buriram are the Celtic of Thailand, here what happened after he was tested positive.

Quote

Vitit Saritdeechaikul, the provincial health office director in Buri Ram, said on Sunday 42 players and staff members of Buriram United are being quarantined after their return from the club's training ground in Samut Prakan on Saturday.

The group were training in Samut Prakan when a match against BG Pathum on Sunday was cancelled after Uzbek player Akbar Ismatullaev of the Thunder Castle tested positive for Covid-19 last week.

They headed back to Buri Ram on a team bus that did not pull over along the route to keep them socially distanced from the public.

  

[Am Featha Taigh Nan Clach]

• There is no evidence reopening services will cause a second wave
• It was always to be expected cases would rise slightly after restrictions would ease
• The reasons cases are so high is because we're testing far more people
• I wouldn't exactly call it a second wave but it's only younger people catching it. Covid deaths are low
• These old people that are now dying would have died soon anyway
• People die everyday, you don't see flu death figures on the news every day!
• People are going to die and we just have to accept that
• With rising population and finite resources, we needed a good purge anyway!  

 

[Szamo's_Ammo]

That's put my mind at ease.

Time to go get granny and take her for a pub lunch then.

[Karpaty Lviv]

Was just thinking yesterday. In November, I fell really unwell. Thinking back, I had all the symptoms of Covid. It took me well over a week to get better. None of my family ended up ill like I did and when I finally seen the doctor, he just dismissed it as a chest infection (no chance). It was probably flu but I don’t suppose it  could have been Covid? It was a couple of months before it was properly discovered. 

I don’t personally know anyone who has had it. Not that I’m using that as some sort of motivation to become irresponsible or complacent. 

[Frankie S]

The wholly unnecessary background music ban, which doesn’t apply in England, has sucked the life out Scotland’s bars and restaurants, and as long as it stays in place its grim logic will stifle any realistic prospect of reintroducing live music or reopening live music venues. The indicative date for reopening of the live music sector was predictably pushed back from 14th Sept to 5th Oct, and the can will doubtless be kicked even further down the road in a few weeks, ensuring live music venues remain shuttered after furlough ends. 

However, the ban on background music is no longer, as Joanna Blythman claimed in The Herald yesterday, the ‘final straw’ for the hospitality industry in Scotland.  It’s just been relegated to the penultimate straw. According to recent reports, 75% of hospitality outlets were already facing closure due to current restrictions. Just in case these weren’t quite draconian enough, Scot Gov has just introduced a new one - maximum group size of 6, taken from a maximum of 2 different households, which becomes law on Monday. 

Some might think this merely reflects Westminster’s newly-introduced ‘rule of 6’ policy, and we knew Scotland having a marginally more lenient regime than England for all of a day or so would never last, but needless to say Scotland has taken it just that one step further. In England it’s 6 from 6, not 6 from 2. 6 from 3 would have been ok (more restrictive than England, but not so materially different from the 8 from 3 rule that our bars and restaurants have been enforcing to date), but 6 from 2 effectively restricts drinking and eating out to pairs, couples, pairs of couples and families. It ends the brief illusory period of quasi-normality when you could meet a couple of friends or colleagues for lunch, dinner or a drink.

For the 25% of hospitality outlets who thought they might just about struggle through these difficult times, I’ll wager most of them are already revising their cash flow forecasts (and prospects of survival) downwards. it’s hard to see why the science that compels 6 from 6 in England diverges so strongly from the science in Scotland that compels 6 from 2. I’d like to see the workings, though I doubt we ever will. By comparison with our English counterparts, the Scottish hospitality sector is subject to much more onerous restrictions.

I’d hate to think this was just another example of oneupmanship from Scot Gov, further differentiating the ‘caring, safety-first’ SNP from the ‘reckless’ Tories, at the expense of the rather-too-easily scapegoated hospitality industry.

’Pubs v schools’, ‘close the pubs’ - this sort of facile thinking and sensationalist rhetoric has not only been mirrored by the overwhelming negativity towards the sector emanating from Holyrood, it’s been fuelled by it. Reductive adversarialism is the SNP’s modus operandi, so we shouldn’t be surprised to see it peddling more simplistic claptrap.

The stigmatisation of the young, positing them as antithetical to the interests of the elderly, is a profoundly destructive narrative that should be resisted, but Sturgeon seems worryingly keen to pitch her tent in this reactionary minefield.

Where is the evidence that well-run hospitality outlets are the driver of the recent uptick in cases? Should be easy enough to produce as we’re the sector that’s been obliged to institute a track and trace system on behalf of the government these last couple of months. I suspect it doesn’t exist, or we’d have heard all about it by now.

Enforce the (mainly sensible) regulations where they’re not being observed. Crack down on the cowboys, but don’t make it impossible for responsible operators to trade profitably, as is happening now.

Hospitality is the fourth largest employer in the U.K., well it was before Covid at least, but the First Minister has rarely missed an opportunity to scapegoat it. Sturgeon’s puritanical worldview has certainly come to the fore of late, and we’re constantly reminded that we’re trading under tolerance, and each new restriction, however arbitrary, should be met with equanimity as we’re lucky to be trading at all.

Her barely-concealed antipathy towards the sector is likely to bear fruit, as very few pubs, particularly small independent operators (I’m sure Tim Martin will be fine), will be left standing at the end of all this.

I’ve voted for the SNP for years, and for Independence, but it’s a monolithic party in a near one-party state, and the complete absence of credible opposition ensures there is little effective scrutiny and they rarely get held to account. There are few voices of criticism as, despite growing discontent within the business community, relatively few people are prepared to stick their head above the parapet and criticise the First Minister (as she constantly reminds us in her daily party political broadcast, ‘now is not the time for politics’). I’ve a feeling that might be about to change.

[Qos91]

Was just thinking yesterday. In November, I fell really unwell. Thinking back, I had all the symptoms of Covid. It took me well over a week to get better. None of my family ended up ill like I did and when I finally seen the doctor, he just dismissed it as a chest infection (no chance). It was probably flu but I don’t suppose it  could have been Covid? It was a couple of months before it was properly discovered. 
I don’t personally know anyone who has had it. Not that I’m using that as some sort of motivation to become irresponsible or complacent. 

I had a really bad virus around November into December too. Couldnt taste or smell anything for weeks and had the worst cough I'd ever had. The cough lingered for months.
Almost everyone at my work got ill around the same time. Some of them quite bad.

Chances are it probably wasnt Covid if theyve never proven it was around in the UK back then but seemed to be very similar symptoms.

[dirty dingus]

34 minutes ago, Karpaty Lviv said:

Was just thinking yesterday. In November, I fell really unwell. Thinking back, I had all the symptoms of Covid. It took me well over a week to get better. None of my family ended up ill like I did and when I finally seen the doctor, he just dismissed it as a chest infection (no chance). It was probably flu but I don’t suppose it  could have been Covid? It was a couple of months before it was properly discovered. 

I don’t personally know anyone who has had it. Not that I’m using that as some sort of motivation to become irresponsible or complacent. 

Think Inverclyde was riddled with it, I know a load of folk that had it(claimed to have had it)and at least 6 dead, mainly old folk from around the scheme. Maybe why our cases have been really low compared to the rest of the west in recent times.

[Szamo's_Ammo]

Pretty sure I had it in December 2018. I've never felt that unwell before. It was awful.

[Marshmallo]

48 minutes ago, Karpaty Lviv said:

Was just thinking yesterday. In November, I fell really unwell. Thinking back, I had all the symptoms of Covid. It took me well over a week to get better. None of my family ended up ill like I did and when I finally seen the doctor, he just dismissed it as a chest infection (no chance). It was probably flu but I don’t suppose it  could have been Covid? It was a couple of months before it was properly discovered. 

I don’t personally know anyone who has had it. Not that I’m using that as some sort of motivation to become irresponsible or complacent. 

Yeah would imagine you were the first person in the world who had it, defo

[superbigal]

Competitive football back in St Andrew's

[Mark Connolly]

27 minutes ago, Szamo's_Ammo said:

Pretty sure I had it in December 2018. I've never felt that unwell before. It was awful.

Yeah, I had a small bout of it the day after my 21st birthday. Took me a couple of days before I was right.

[NotThePars]

My ma was saying the student halls she works in had the polis called in last night after people were alleging there were 150 students having a massive party 

[Szamo's_Ammo]

7 minutes ago, Mark Connolly said:

Yeah, I had a small bout of it the day after my 21st birthday. Took me a couple of days before I was right.

That was syphilis, Mark.

6 minutes ago, NotThePars said:

My ma was saying the student halls she works in had the polis called in last night after people were alleging there were 150 students having a massive party 

Do these students not realise they aren't barins anymore, where slabbering over each other is fine in classrooms as The Virus doesn't spread there?

Yellow card for halls of residence.

[Mark Connolly]

Just now, Szamo's_Ammo said:

That was syphilis, Mark.

Really? That's another one I can tick off the list then.