A mate works for one of the big media agencies in that there London. They've put everything in place and this Friday they're trialing everyone in the business, throughout the country, working from home. Offices not even open.
Anyone else hear of similar? Seems like a sensible idea if you're the kind of business that can do it (ie: not making cars)
I think the NHS and PHE advice, albeit not 100% satisfactory to many including me, is proportionate as they need to allocate resources where they are most needed.
I went through the 111.NHS questionnaire yesterday and it is clearly focusing on people who have been to infected areas, or those who have had been in contact with people who have tested positive for Covid-19. There are so many uncertainties around those criteria but they have to start somewhere and focus on emergency care for those most in need.
So in my case, the overweight bloke in his late 40s who has a nasty viral thing and a killer headache for 5 days and has recently returned from skiing in France on a plane full of coughing and sneezing people but is otherwise in good health, I am not a priority to them. It's logical. I could have it, I could equally have badger flu or CAT AIDS.
With any measure/system/process there is a conceptual "line in the sand" and people will fall on both sides of it. That's just life.
Without being political this is once again clearly demonstrating how wonderful the NHS is, the dedication of the staff and the fact that it's free at the point of service is going to save lives (as usual).
Thanks to all the NHS staff who are involved.
Point is that our PM rewards loyalty over intelligence
I’m not sure this bodes well for anything, including handling corona
The point is that he's utterly useless and can be 100% trusted not to hold this government or its intelligence operations to any meaningful level of scrutiny, unless he does it by mistake. He's actually found his niche.
Man City / Arsenal game tonight cancelled on the basis that 'a number of' Arsenal players were exposed to the owner of Olympiakos, who has since tested positive, 13 days ago. They are in self-imposed isolation for 14 days from the day of exposure, so can't play tonight, but would have been okay if the match were tomorrow. It seems understandable, but arbitrary. In the mean time they've played two domestic matches.
So, how come if she wasn’t ill enough on Saturday to avoid spreading her ‘knowledge’, she’s now ‘over the worst’ (according to her own tweet)?
Probably a homeopathic "cure" of hers.
@weeksy - I'd be skipping that. I think actually the govt should move to the first part of the 'delay' phase and, while not actively banning, give firm guidelines that unless absolutely necessary people don't travel for more than 2hrs from home. Not much of a hardship, but would slow the rate of spread about the country.
Seems there is a 'super spreader' in Wales, the person that had it in Neath has infected 7 others in the Swansea and Neath areas.
NHS or PHE just because it didn’t give the advice you hoped for doesn’t mean it’s wrong.
That's defensive bollocks
They didn't have any advice. They didn't know what to say. They suggested going to other depts to ask but had no clear policy or even a consistent message.
"Try ringing 111" Where do they get their policies from?
Now we have a government minister who has acquired the virus without any travel to an affected region or contact with a known case, I imagine the advice will be changing soon.
For my part, self-isolate and stay at home if you have fever/cough seems completely logical now, test or no test.
Light-touch from govt. is consistent with what Sir Patrick Vallance said on Monday (from Guardian)-
"Vallance said the aim of the measures to be introduced by the government would be to lower the mortality rate of those in the at-risk group by 20 to 30%. But he said it would be wrong to try to “suppress” the disease completely because it could result in a winter outbreak at a time of maximum pressure for the NHS. He said:
"What you can’t do is suppress this thing completely, and what you shouldn’t do is suppress it completely because all that happens then is it pops up again later in the year when the NHS is at a more vulnerable stage in the winter and you end up with another problem.""
this Friday they’re trialing everyone in the business, throughout the country, working from home. Offices not even open.
Anyone else hear of similar?
we did that last Friday
But ..... by winter you'd hope someone out of the clever scientific lot may have a cure/antidote/solution ?
But ….. by winter you’d hope someone out of the clever scientific lot may have a cure/antidote/solution ?
Vaccine is still an absolute minimum of 12 months away.
Anyone else hear of similar?
Three of our UK offices are closed today for contingency and preparedness tests for mass home-working. Pending the outcome we've been told to expect a full shut down next week. The message is that it's a preemptive action, rather than waiting for confirmed infections. Shits hitting the fan isn't it?
In other news I came down with a 'cold' last night so I'm not going back in til it's all over. Must try not to get distracted by bike washing, the massive list of mechanical stuff to do, or binge-watching netflix.
For my part, self-isolate and stay at home if you have fever/cough seems completely logical now, test or no test.
Agreed.
I heard of someone who has had a dry cough, fever and aches and pains after returning from abroad, who phoned 111 and was told 'if you haven't got bad diarrhoea then you havent got coronavirus so you can carry on as normal. They are self isolating as a precaution. I've not heard diarrhoea being quoted as a needed symptom though, seems differnet to all other advice out there.
Has it been admitted that ND didnt have any previous contact or travel history? In which case why did she get tested? I wonder if there is a shortage of test kits.
In other news I came down with a ‘cold’ last night so I’m not going back in til it’s all over.
I did wonder why you daft bastards were still out riding on Monday night, given the torrential conditions
Suddenly it all becomes clear 😉
Has it been admitted that ND didnt have any previous contact or travel history?
I was being charitable and assumed she'd been doing a photo op in a hospital with a sick patient
That’s defensive bollocks
They didn’t have any advice. They didn’t know what to say. They suggested going to other depts to ask but had no clear policy or even a consistent message.
Yeah only one person being defensive. Try reading the the guidelines it’s very clear.
Aye self isolation is great if you have the means to do so. For the rest of us however that's not an option.
Has it been admitted that ND didnt have any previous contact or travel history?
It was reported that the origin was unknown. Whether that just means 'not yet determined' is another thing, but the list of confirmed cases still isn't massive. Wouldn't want to be the one contact tracing through her diary.
It would make sense for the kid to stay off school for a few days but that isn’t the advice
As I suggested many pages back, closing the schools would have a huge effect on transmission vs economic costs, especially Primary schools where most of the kids are not necessarily competent at hand washing or hygiene.
Can’t you use your common sense without waiting for someone else to tell you? The risk you run is infect half the school.
Not nowadays... at least realistically (i.e., do you then send them back to catch the next virus) most primary schools are the major transmission motorway for more traditional corona virus variants. (I'mn not suggesting we don't all spread colds on trains and at work, just that chance is the person you got it from traces back to a primary age kid)
The anti-bac hand sanitiser provided at work is alcohol free but states anti-viral on the label. I have no idea if it’s effective against coronavirus but was basically told to eff off by the H&S bod when I questioned it this morning.
Over in USA, MIT and other universities clearing out undergraduates, telling them to leave by Tuesday and not expect to be back until Autumn term. Switching all classes to online.
Wonder if/when UK follows, I have a kid at Imperial with two European field trips booked.
^^I'd pay to see that implemented in London
They use their feet too to operate the water flow!
Heard mention that Silicon Valley is pretty much all remote working for the moment. That makes a lot of sense for the people that can do that, but I do feel sorry for the techs that need to be on site to fix stuff.
Following on from that daily mail front page, we've had a briefing issued this morning regarding the plans for ramping up testing. They've been discussing options over the past few days. What that means is the head of our "pathology network" arbitrarily decided which lab in the area would take on the testing then gave them two days to "sort it out."
Up until yesterday, we'd tested 60 patients (all negative) by sending samples to a regional Centre. Now they'll be going to the closer lab as the expected sample numbers will increase.
They've said that the chosen Lakb will need to operate 24/7 and the other labs in the area will need to send staff to help keep this operating. The only problem with that is there are not enough staff at the best of times to cope with routine, day to day work in each lab. If this really does take off, routine pathology testing will suffer with samples just being sent out as "not tested."
For my part, self-isolate and stay at home if you have fever/cough seems completely logical now, test or no test.
Agreed. In fact there is a school of thought that, as we move from containment to delay/treat, there is little point in doing any testing other than to track the epidemiology.
If you get mildly ill then self-isolate, if you get proper ill or have preexisting risks then call 111.
Any front line NHS workers care to comment on just how. Much better the NHS would be able to help hundreds of extra sick people in I. C wards or high dependancy units in the summer
Most reports I hear are NHS stretched all year round with zero Extra capacity at any time
So it's irrelevant, if you need to put 50 people on ventilators but have 2, then you have 2.
Maybe in the summer you have 4 available but still nowhere near enough
Don't the army have n c b suits, deco kit, hundreds of empty barracks beds
Alpin and his crew of out of work chippy can build a ward in a week or so to help ease the load
My work finally agreed to cancel a conference we had scheduled for a couple of weeks. 40-50 Finance people scheduled to be in a hotel just outside London for 2 days.
At a wider business level, we've had no WFH guidance yet. Luckily I do work from home already. I do have an office in a hot desk place in Glasgow city centre but I stopped going in a couple of weeks ago.
I watched someone take the communal milk out the fridge a few weeks ago and take a huge swig from the carton. 🤦♂️ No way I'm exposing myself to that level of hygiene at the moment. Coupled with the cough fest that is public transport, I'm staying home as much as possible and limiting exposure to people and public places.
Any front line NHS workers care to comment on just how. Much better the NHS would be able to help hundreds of extra sick people in I. C wards or high dependancy units
Hospital doctor here. I've always thought that although the NHS is stretched and frayed edges can be seen, I would happily recommend treatment here - ultimately we'll sort you out. But I am worried that systematic underfunding of the NHS in the name of 'austerity' is going to be dangerously exposed by this.
However, the unwritten thing is that a lot of NHS productivity is tied up in a lot of things that are important, but could get thrown out of the window in a real emergency. E.g. comprehensive note taking takes ages. Checking and double checking prescriptions. Ensuring that every patient has a nutrition risk assessment, pressure ulcer risk assessment, venous thromboembolism assessment, dementia risk assessment, discharge planning. Making sure patients are rested, fed, taking time for communication with families. A good proportion of NHS staff will be doing managerial / audit / research roles at any one time. Staff members are not at work 100% of their waking hours (this is obviously a good thing in normal times). All of that stuff is important for perfect patient care but if a Wuhan / Italy scenario happens and our backs are to the wall, changes could happen.
As an example, I'm not an ITU doctor but I know how to set up a ventilator and use it - I wouldn't be half as useful as a proper doctor in that scenario but if it's the choice between someone dying of hypoxia I could, in a complete emergency, probably sort someone out.
From the messages coming out of Italy, it sounds as though they are already there - pure 'firefighting'. I've heard that people aren't even being considered for ITU if they are over 65 even if in good health. That really shocked me - the median age of ITU patients here is usually 65-70. At 65, most patients with treatable respiratory failure like this would be treated on ITU. Partly that's because of rationing treatment, but also we know that from the early data coming out of China, the mortality for old people once you get to respiratory failure (and thus need ITU treatment) is incredibly high whatever you do.
This idea about 'flattening the curve' is 100% what we need to do - not only as described to hopefully avoid swamping the NHS but also to delay and learn from what's been done in other places. E.g. who will benefit from ITU treatment and who, unfortunately, will not. There is a lot of talk about emerging treatments to 'switch off' the cytokine storm that appears to implicated in people becoming profoundly unwell; there are clinical trials ongoing of anti-cytokine and anti-viral drugs. I personally don't think a vaccine is likely to be available any time soon but if we can learn how best to treat people before everyone in the UK gets sick, then we can hopefully avoid seeing the horrible mortality figures coming out of Italy (and figures that are not coming out of Wuhan).
(and figures that are not coming out of Wuhan).
As far as I can see the key things are incredibly draconian lockdowns & 100s of 1000s of extra hospital beds to isolate & treat patients
Im not sure how we can hope to replicate that here
Am I over reacting? Pee'd the wife off this morning suggesting we should cancel our Friday date night trip to the cinema. With 2 kids under 5 and no family close by we don't get many chances for a date night, and I'm disappointed too, but I sort of feel that unnecessary social gatherings should be curtailed across the nation, and doing so would likely delay the spread a bit... So I said we would cancel..... That didn't go down well.
Has anyone seen an interview with or talked to anyone that's had it?
Im not sure how we can hope to replicate that here
We can't, and won't even try
Lets face it... loads of people are going to die and it'll be economic armageddon
So we might as well resort to what we do best in this country. Forget stockpiling bog rolls. We should all just bunk off work and go and get pissed, then laugh in the face of it before having a fight outside a kebab house at 3am tomorrow morning
Bloody hell!
> https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
I work from home ~75% of the time ... after reading that, it's going up to 100%
Am I over reacting?
Have a read of that link I posted above. Whether we like it or not we're going to be locked down in some form. We should just get on with it, and you can make a decision to do that yourself now.
Am I over reacting? Pee’d the wife off this morning suggesting we should cancel our Friday date night trip to the cinema.
No, sounds sensible to me. We are thinking about cancelling some social engagments too.
At the end of the day you're going to have a crap time if you are getting concerned every time someone coughs around you. Better off buying a nice bottle of wine and staying at home IMO
edit. @LittleNose agree. I am working at home as much as possible. We've had no direction but I prefer working at home anyway.
Bloody hell!
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca<\blockquote>
Just passed that link to our department head of, hes just said we need to prepare to WFH. Our IT system is truly awful and can only really handle around 5000 users on the VPN, they are advancing very swiftly plans to extend this and improve the system to handle around 20k people, this was a mid year project that has just been pounced upon by our IT managers as extremely urgent and needs completing within the month.
We're still sharing PBE during training sessions. Apparently it's fine because it's been cleaned with a telephone sanitising wipe. 😐
So what are the odds of parliament being told to WFH following Dorries' diagnosis do we think? The realisation they don't need to be there could save us huge millions on the refurbishment of Westminster and billions in expenses and second homes.
I go to the cinema quite often and, unless it's a blockbuster on opening week, the screens are normally 90% empty (often the bit right at the front is 100% empty). So you can probably sit somewhere without people coughing all over you. I would consider that pretty low risk compared to a packed out concert/theatre/pub etcAm I over reacting? Pee’d the wife off this morning suggesting we should cancel our Friday date night trip to the cinema.
I've got tickets to the rugby on Saturday in Cardiff. I have to admit I'm a bit twitchy about it - had a cold for a week and a half and I'm diabetic so could do with delaying getting the virus. Legitimate concern or carry on as normal?
Some weapons grade tool in the office next to us has just returned from fortnight holiday in Italy. Has spent last couple of days feeling unwell and only deemed to say something to boss this morning, having been in the building, toilets, cafe, meeting room etc...
Utter tool.
