Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[Wee Willie]

3 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Yes, it was about the NHS in England.  The specific Trusts were in the South East and London.

Is it relevant to the Scottish NHS?

[Donathan]

Yes, it was about the NHS in England.  The specific Trusts were in the South East and London.

What’s the name of the podcast? Would be interesting to give it a listen

[welshbairn]

6 minutes ago, ICTChris said:

Yes, it was about the NHS in England.  The specific Trusts were in the South East and London.

The front page story on the Inverness Courier today is that the scoring system or "triage tool" was on the NHS Highland website, but they claim it was never used and they had rejected it.

Edited October 27, 2020 by welshbairn

[Melanius Mullarkey]

55 minutes ago, Chairman Mao said:

It’s estimated that 10,000 children a day are dying of hunger as a result of the woke middle class leftie lockdown in the west.

It’s no longer some abstract cause. Their political agenda is killing thousands of children around the world.

And they don’t care 

[ICTChris]

7 minutes ago, Donathan said:

What’s the name of the podcast? Would be interesting to give it a listen

It's the Stories of our Times podcast, they publish a new one every day I think this was from Sunday. 

[anotherchance]

Antibodies last a few months. That doesn’t mean you cannot be immune after they’ve worn off.


Your immune system can remember how to rapidly make those antibodies if faced with the same coronavirus again, which provides a second line of immunity.

First line immunity is actually having the antibodies (lasts six months or less)

Second line immunity is being able to rapidly make those antibodies (may last longer)

The media are jumping on this “no antibodies = no immunity” line because it’s a click bait

Exactly.

That’s before you get into things like T cells too, which sound like they may offer some immunity to some degree also.

[Steven W]

24 minutes ago, Donathan said:

I’ve been told that emergency authorisation of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK is imminent, could be as early as this weekend.

lol.

Is that the same person who told you about the tier levels? 

[LongTimeLurker]

5 minutes ago, Donathan said:

....The media are jumping on this “no antibodies = no immunity” line because it’s a click bait

...and the idea that there can be no herd immunity suits certain UK policy makers right now just as new restriction levels are kicking in. If we start seeing a large second wave on deaths in Sweden and New York over the next few months it's time to get very concerned about no lasting immunity even in the absence of  antibodies as those are the locations that are most likely to have achieved something close to herd immunity.

[renton]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/27/covid-vaccine-uk-oxford-university-astrazeneca-works-in-all-ages-trials-suggest

[mizfit]

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/27/covid-vaccine-uk-oxford-university-astrazeneca-works-in-all-ages-trials-suggest

When the daily mail claimed on Sunday that it would be rolled out shortly to front line health workers I laughed and thought it was to sell papers.

If we can start vaccinating the at risk categories before the end of the year we’re on our way to a bit more normality.

[Donathan]

lol.
Is that the same person who told you about the tier levels? [emoji106]

No

[John MacLean]

1 hour ago, renton said:

 

Maybe one reason the Scandinavians are doing better is their overall health outcomes and more equal societies.

An excellent all round analysis but this stuck out for me. 

There is an inherent danger in comparing one country with another without factoring in these things. 

MD in Private Eye continues to provide the best, most balanced, pandemic analysis here and in the recent edition they highlighted the best ways to control a pandemic.

Basically you need: 

A world class track and trace system: we don't though the t&t system in Scotland appears to work better than England's

High levels of existing public fitness to allow people to recover from infection - we don't

A world class health service that can cope with surges in infection without impacting on non Covid work - we don't

A world class welfare state to help long term sick, unemployed and self employed - we don't

We can debate how well the Westminster and devolved governments have handled the crisis and none, IMO, are exempt from criticism but the reason why we have performed so poorly has been the absence of a pre-existing infrastructure to deal with it. 

With the best will in the world there was no way we could have prevented Covid-19 from coming here. And decades and decades of neglecting the welfare state and decades and decades of under funding the health service left us massively unprepared for it. 

We should, IMO, be attacking less the individual leaders  that have handled the crisis with varying levels of competency and more the free market, libertarian ideology that brought us to the position we found ourselves in when the pandemic hit. But I accept that is quite a nuanced argument in a time where nuance and balance are in short supply.  

[Steven W]

1 minute ago, Donathan said:

No

Hope so.

I've been advocating throwing caution to the wind on this thing. So that would do that to some degree

[Inanimate Carbon Rod]

40 minutes ago, Donathan said:

I’ve been told that emergency authorisation of the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine in the UK is imminent, could be as early as this weekend.

Whats your source? I need something positive to hope for, im on the verge of a Kevin Keegan here. 

[LongTimeLurker]

2 minutes ago, mizfit said:

When the daily mail claimed on Sunday that it would be rolled out shortly to front line health workers I laughed and thought it was to sell papers.

If we can start vaccinating the at risk categories before the end of the year we’re on our way to a bit more normality.

...definitely looks like the UK's exit strategy, if accurate. Hopefully corners don't get cut too much on checking it is actually safe.

[dirty dingus]

1 hour ago, paranoid android said:

Not content with Carol and Denise from Loose Women, Covid deniers are now citing Richard Madeley as a legitimate source of factoids.

Ruddy hell!  

I but they all just disciples of snooker loopy Peter Ebdon.

[Britney Spears]

1 hour ago, Chairman Mao said:

It’s estimated that 10,000 children a day are dying of hunger as a result of the woke middle class leftie lockdown in the west.

It’s no longer some abstract cause. Their political agenda is killing thousands of children around the world.

And they don’t care 

Ooooh. Myyy. Gooosh! So nice to hear from you! This is such a great post!!!

But, you know, when I was on The Mickey Mouse Club we used to have a saying. "False words are not only evil in themselves, but they infect the soul with evil".

LOL!!! Right? !!!

I think it was Mariah Carey that said it first. Like. Wow!!! Riiiiight?!!

You go ahead and have a GREAT day now!!!

[Donathan]

Whats your source? I need something positive to hope for, im on the verge of a Kevin Keegan here. 

Can’t say but I should stress that this weekend is at the absolute earliest, hospitals in England are being told to prepare for vaccine rollout to healthcare workers from Monday. Could be later, but there’s a lot of optimism in the industry that (a) The Oxford vaccine is going to win the race, (b) it works as well if not better than hoped, © it can provide protection for 1-2 years

[Stellaboz]

Probably the best opening post ever on any forum. Gold. 

[Todd_is_God]

1 hour ago, ICTChris said:

I listened to a SUnday Times podcast last night about the treatment of patients during the March and April waves, it was quite revealing.  They found that many health boards followed point based guidelines to assess which patients should be admitted to hospitals and intensive care.  They found that the scoring systems that some hospitals were using essentially made it impossible for people who were over 70 to be treated in intensive care.  A significant number of health boards also worked with GPs to get elderly patients to agree to be treated at home if they contracted Covid, which in reality would mean many of them would die.  One family whose father died of Covid related sepsis in hospital said that the ward he was on was a death ward, a phrase used by an auxillary nurse they met while visiting him.  While they had some final moments with him a patient in the next bned died and they had to fetch the nurse as there was no-one there.

An interesting point was that the scoring syste was developed by a group called MEAG - the Moral and Ethical Advisory Group.  They are a group of religious leaders, academics and scientists who advise the government on these issues.  They produced carious documents about scoring systems that were provided to Chris Whitty.  One person the investigation spoke to said that an early version was "Nazi-like" in how stark it was about who shouldn't be treated - underlying conditions, age, sex, family responsiblites were all takeninto account.  The advice and scoring that they produced was never officialy published but seems to have found it's way into some hospitals and was used to assess potential admittees.

Now, it's clear that in the event of the NHS being at full capacity decisions on how to prioritise treatment need to be made and it is not going to be pleasant.  What I found interesting about it was that this wasn't supposed to have happened in Britain.  It was in Northern Italy where they were triaging patients at the door, sending over 60s home etc.  All our governments have priased how the NHS coped and Johnson and Hancock have even said that everyone who needed care got it.  Well, that might not be quite true. 

@Cyclizine will be along in a minute to claim this is "Offensive and categorically untrue."