Coronavirus in the UK

[Cleoriff]

The BBC have announced that two patients in the UK have been diagnosed with the coronavirus.

No further details have been given other than they are both members of the same family and are receiving specialist NHS care.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51325192

At present, 83 Britons and 27 foreign nationals are flying back to the UK from Wuhan, the Chinese city at the centre of the outbreak.

The flight is due to land at RAF Brize Norton at 13:30 GMT.

The UK passengers will then be taken to Arrowe Park Hospital on the Wirral and quarantined for two weeks.

[welshsteve76]

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@sheepdog wrote:

I'm guessing there is some legal procedure in Parliment to pass into law to why its "delayed" till later in July. The same bizaree timescale is also for Wales. Given it was announced on Monday, its probably not been submitted for debate and planned time for or for a u-turn. 

My opinion on this facemask thing is now ridiculous. How can we - in the peak - are able to go into supermarkets without a mask and now with falling numbers, have to or be fined. Which the Police have already said they're not going to chase people so left to the shops to turn away people. Yet the exceptions are the supermarket workers who have generally ignore social distancing whilst stacking shelves? The ones who are more likely to be carriers? Also, as they've been operating continuously, have the supermarket workers been affected because I only know of small one locally that did close for a couple of days because of Covid19. Questions like this the press aren't asking but are more concerned with political point scoring. 

Let me put another perspective on this: since there were riots and protests recently, has there been an increase in cases or are these figures deliberatly being masked (pun intended)? If there has been no large increase so why the change now? Is it because the Chinese factories are back up to speed and producing masks to sell and WHO have had their strings pulled by governments because they seem to change their minds every 5 minutes? Or maybe that the data is showing that nobody has a clue anymore and throwing anything at it to reduce infections because doing something is better than doing nothing. 

If this is preparation for a second wave late summer, perhaps not opening the borders up till after the summer would have been more prudent. But no, the Brits need to have their summer getaway holiday no matter what. 

Here's another problem I'm seeing. Its the demonisation of not wearing a mask in public. Not in shops but in general public spaces. All this says to me is that social distancing is an absolute failure and we should have worn masks months ago. I dread two things: a hot summer and a very cold winter this year. Both will cause hospitals to be overloaded for all the wrong reasons. 

Since we're now seeing the beginnings of a major problem of job losses and this will lead to bankruptices and worse, an increase in mortgage defaults. The impact on families and homelessness is going to be major for some considerable time. Like it or not, the economy needs to get going just to tick over because even restarting with precautions is costing a lot of money which needs to be recovered to sustain the minimal business cash flow. 

Sorry, rare major rant from me but I'll leave you with this disclosure: I have been given a set of facemasks by my company. I also have a matching black hoodie so yeah, I'm going to have some fun with this. 

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Bang on the money @sheepdog 

I've been saying all along that the reaction to this has been so over the top for something with such a low mortality rate, and which really affect so few people. 

Protect the vulnerable, the elderly and those with underlying conditions which may be affected by ANY respiratory type disease (colds & flus), and let the rest of us get on with normal ife.

The government's fear propaganda has beaten and scared those inclined to believe anything into thinking they will die if they leave their house without becoming a faceless robot.

The science on face masks does not backup this new ridiculous law.  Bozo Boris and his government clowns have simply bowed down to political pressure from Sturgeon and said "Oh ok, we'll do masks then, happy now?".  And all the doom mongers in SAGE are worried their time in the limelight is coming to an end.

You talk to people and hardly anybody knows anyone who has got seriously ill from covid, a lot of people don't now anyone who has had it at all.  Why?  Because the numbers are so low.  Because the "positive" cases and the deaths are being over-inflated by the reporting system being incorrect.  A person who goes to hostpital is tested multipel times.  Each one of these tests counts towards the figures being recorded.  So a person can get tested 3 or 4 times, and that is being counted as 3 or 4 cases, not 1 case as it should be.    

The R rate is another annoyance.  We keep being told the R rate is dangerously close to or more than one in the South West.  A load of rubbish.  The figures are so low that ONE case can have a big impact on the figure.  Incidentally, there has not been a single death in Devon & Cornwall for 18 days now.

This whole thing just does not add up, and makes no sense at all for a disease which really is not anywhere near as deadly as is being made out.  The current figures suggest the death rate v population figure is around 0.06%.  That is VERY low. 

All this talk of second wave in the winter is annoying me.  The NHS cooped perfectly fine with this, and now we have all these huge nightingale hospitals waitng too.

So say we go a month with face masks in shops etc, and the death rate and infection rates barely change.  Will the government remove the "law"?  No they won't.  They will think up something else to keep the scare and agenda going.  Has there been any assurance that these laws being passed to control our lives will be removed from UK law once (if) we go back to normal?  No. 

There is another agenda at work here. We are having our civil liberties taken away from us, and are in danger of becoming a faceless, anti-social society of robots (sound familiar?).

[gmarkj]

On a slightly related note, the government have voted against a bill that would have stopped "outside investment" in the NHS - meaning stopping it being sold off to private companies to run like the US.
Source (including list of MPs that voted against it):
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/politics/full-list-of-mps-who-voted-against-the-nhs-being-protecte...
https://twitter.com/HouseofCommons/status/1285314836386242565?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetem...

[Mi-Amigo]

Further to @gmarkj `s post:

The Amendment - Clause 17 - was put forward by Green Party MP Caroline Lucas, who said "We do not want yet more words and nice rhetoric. What we want are some red lines in the negotiations and the way to get them is to write them into the fact of this Bill", and was supported by Labour leader Keir Starmer and a number of other senior MPs.

In addition to protecting the NHS from foreign control, the amendment also contained numerous other measures to protect the NHS, including:

• Ensuring the ability to provide a “comprehensive and publicly funded health service free at the point of delivery” was not compromised by any future trade deal
• Protecting hard-working NHS staff from having their wages or rights slashed by any future trade deal
• Protecting the quality and safety of health and care services
• Regulating the control and pricing of medicines
• Protecting patient data from being sold off
• Protecting the NHS from so-called investor-state dispute settlements (ISDS) – clauses which allow foreign investors to sue national governments for any measures which harm their profits.

But Boris and his gang including the usual suspects - Gove, Hancock, Patel, Raab - voted against the amendment. 

So much for "Protect the NHS" - but. of course, that was dropped by Boris and his gang.

[sheepdog]

The problem with these amendments is that they are intentionally and deliberately designed to be a PR exercise in order to show the government (of the day) in a bad way regardless of what the content is. At first glance it looks like it should be debated but you have to look in detail at the original bill and then look at what the amendment is trying to achieve i.e. talking it out of time.  But the headline is more important to these people than debate. 

Then again, I have no time for Caroline Lucas so no surprise in her intents. 

Personally a couple of those are alarming as it more or less makes the NHS an untouchable giant e.g why should the NHS staff be protected differently under law than the private sector. Note "staff" covers a wide range of titles so specifics here are important. I'd really like to see a definition for "hard working" because that really does mean different things. 

Though the SDS one is rather critical econonmically as its can turn into a never ending court battle. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership

edited for spelling

[gmarkj]

While i agree that it might have been to garner headlines, wouldn't it have been nice if they said we don't agree with some but the part about the NHS being off the table is fine?
This makes for more worrying reading:
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/jul/22/the-tories-new-trade-bill-means-the-nhs-is-now...

[Cleoriff]

@Bambino...at least Trump has cancelled his convention in Florida. You must be delighted!!

[Bambino]

Jacksonville is a long way away from me @Cleoriff, so I really didn't care. In fact, the little evil imp that pops up on my shoulder from time to time was hoping it would all go ahead. It would have meant a lot less of them being around by November.

[Cleoriff]

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@Bambino wrote:

Jacksonville is a long way away from me @Cleoriff, so I really didn't care. In fact, the little evil imp that pops up on my shoulder from time to time was hoping it would all go ahead. It would have meant a lot less of them being around by November.

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Love it.

[pgn]

I was pondering how prepared our auto rescue companies are for the full lifting of lockdown - the AA, RAC, Green Flag and the like. 

Cars that have sat, unused, for weeks or months at kerbside or on driveways, now being coaxed into life and back out onto the roads... flat batteries, rusted discs, swollen brake pads...

And it's not just road vehicles: the FAA has issued a mandatory check for the majority of the Boeing 737 fleet worldwide, if the aircraft is being returned to service after a period of 7 days or more "in storage":  https://www.flightradar24.com/blog/faa-issues-emergency-airworthiness-directive-stored-737/

This bit caught my eye, given the 737 is a two-engine aircraft... 😖

Possibility of dual engine failure

• While losing one engine in flight is a serious emergency, it does happen from time to time. However the AD makes clear that the issue could potentially affect both engines, causing a much more serious dual engine shutdown. And the FAA determined a similar condition is likely to present itself in other aircraft.

[Cleoriff]

So pleased I'm flying nowhere!!