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Sorry,my post didn't come across as I intended. I know it can be funded, partly as you suggest, but I doubt this government has the will, and money alone won't produce trained staff now when we need them.
My sis in law is a social worker, does CBT, she finished maternity leave in September & her case load has gone through the roof, her & most of her colleagues want out.
She'll most likely already know this but please tell her that those of us who have been through the mental health system as patients appreciate massively what her and her colleagues do for us under incredibly difficult circumstances with regards to their funding and support. Their daily work does genuinely save lives. If she does want out of the profession then that is fully understandable but I can guarantee there are people who she has worked with that are only here still due to what she and her colleagues have done, her work will not have gone unnoticed.
Sorry,my post didn’t come across as I intended. I know it can be funded, partly as you suggest, but I doubt this government has the will, and money alone won’t produce trained staff now when we need them.
Fully get why you wrote what you did, there are bigger issues to deal with right now but we really do have to keep an eye on medium and long-term issues that are being stored up. Suicides may be less than a tenth of the numbers Covid is claiming right now but eventually (I hope!) those numbers will drop to parity, it's then that we can look at funding and resources to help. I hope this is already being considered by someone somewhere within the NHS but understandably they have much bigger immediate issues to deal with.
Aaaaaaaaaand Melbourne is back in lockdown.
More breeches of their hotel quarantine - 5 day lockdown for a huge area - very strict (same rules as the previous one by the looks of it).
Well, whoever breached that quarantine is going to be popular
18 new cases in the community I think..... but they are expecting it to grow
If they knowingly breached quarantine, it's likely they won't give a shit about what people think about them.
Maybe if local businesses could make a claim against them for lost business that would make people focus their thoughts on not breaking rules.
Sorry, probably better described as a “leak” than a breech. We’ve had a few of these - various gaps have been plugged over the past year
MH needs attention, my experience with the NHS and children's services has been stressful to say the least
Mental Health needs wholesale reform and splitting from PCT financial control for a time to get the finances back on track. Suffolk's MH team have been in special measures for 10 years or more! Things have not improved since my daughter attempted suicide 14 years ago.
No one at the top has been sacked in all that time just "lessons will be learned" platitudes after each blunder.
If they knowingly breached quarantine, it’s likely they won’t give a shit about what people think about them.
Maybe if local businesses could make a claim against them for lost business that would make people focus their thoughts on not breaking rules.
BBC report suggests it's a worker at a quarantine facility who was infected, so not an obvious deliberate breach
Imagine having being able to trace 1000 contacts already and bring in a short hard lockdown while you try and get it under control
BBC article on their site today comparing Aus travel quarantine to the one we will be imposing.
Our one is a bit crap in comparison. Anyone surprised?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-56030384
Horse well and truly bolted anyway but still.
More taxes
Tax takes are massively down. Economies across Europe have shrunk. Consumer spending is down, profits for the majority of businesses have dropped off a cliff. Many businesses are not able to pay their business rates, a good number have ceased trading. National debt is increasing as governments continue to pay out for furlough schemes.
Even when our new normal returns spending won't be anywhere near the levels seen pre-covid. People will be reluctant to join in with mass participation activities. Be that commuting on a packed train into the office, sitting on a plane for business and holidays or attending large concerts or festivals.
It's going to take years before the books are balanced. Austerity is going to be the new buzz word.
This is going to disproportionately hurt younger generations who are going to be paying for this their entire working lives.
Sorry, probably better described as a “leak” than a breech. We’ve had a few of these – various gaps have been plugged over the past year
Perhaps best viewed in context. One of the UKs leaks is Terminal 5 at Heathrow.
Let’s see what the next day or two in Melbourne brings - Sydney’s testing rate is usually 6-8k tests a day, but that spiked to almost 50k a day during our last cluster. Cases went up to about 20 something cases a day for a week, then dropped fairly quickly. Seems to take us 3 weeks to get a cluster back to zero with only small suburb-level lockdowns.
Melbourne have gone waaaay further than Sydney though, they’ve locked down a city of 5 million (I think) because of 18 cases. Let’s see what happens.
It's paywalled, just give us the name of the 'scientists' involved and we'll know the contents.
Assume this is a non-paywalled version of the same press release
We've got loads of booze and cake in and are ready for our 5 day lockdown.
but I'm glad I'm here, with our system, rather than the UK with your whatever the hell it is. Do you have a quarantine yet?
at least the UK can still manage some exports.
On whether to just let it rip through society after 1st phase of vaccinations
There's a two-word answer to that 'debate' and it is long covid, I've just read an e-mail from March for Change which estimates current long covid numbers at around 400,000 people many of whom will be unable to work, exercise or lead a big chunk of their normal lives. So far there's not treatment for long covid. No understanding of the mechanisms behind it. And it impacts people of all ages, even some children.
Summarised as "we know it will cause a lot of infections and a fair amount of long term illness. Are we ready as a society to accept that."
Can't say i like the idea personally as the healthcare cost will likely be bigger in the long run than the cost of the pandemic and will let more variants spread well.
Glad i don't have to make decisions about that
Thats the one..(it wasn't paywalled for me oddly)
Sounds like a great idea, I mean no previously fit healthy person ever suffered debilitating long term affects from covid did they..🤔
Just watch, they'll be a massive turnaround in the 'evidence', and it turns out all the young folks really didn't need to take extra precautions after all. Long covid is all on the head..
On whether to just let it rip through society after 1st phase of vaccinations
I mean you could counter that with let it rip through the old and vulnerable so and its survival of the fittest jab the healthy so I can go back to work and have a holiday. (yes I know that sounds mental.)
It seems some scientists have the luxury of not seeing the impact of their decisions im sure NHS love the sound of potentially thousands of people ending up in ICU again. If we were struggling to get vaccines I could see the sense but it seems the UK Gov have got enough to jab the country 3 or 4 times over.
will be interesting to see if Aus can fix an 18 case problem with 5 days Lock Down, or at least get the lid on so that it can be handled by track and trace protocols.
if the uk is currently at ~9000 cases (per day!), we can fix that in (divide by two, multiply by a thousand, divide by 365...) 7 years. super.
on the let it rip topic - i wonder how the rest of the world would view it from a "great way to encourage mutations" perspective? Does that mean UK lets it rip, the top four groups vaccinated are ok, the working population run a high risk of long covid and our borders are closed from the outside...
big rich
Free MemberWe’ve got loads of booze and cake in and are ready for our 5 day lockdown.
good luck mate - these quick, 5 day lockdowns make sense to me, let’s just hope that it was quick enough and case numbers don’t climb too much: I think the northern beaches cluster ended at 120 cases or something.
on the let it rip topic
It’s just another example of people not seeing that a superficially easier and cheaper answer will create more difficult and expensive/costly problems than other paths.
soobalias
Free Memberwill be interesting to see if Aus can fix an 18 case problem with 5 days Lock Down, or at least get the lid on so that it can be handled by track and trace protocols.
Yeah we’ve done it a few times now in Sydney (see my post further up the page) - let’s see if the Victorian’s can manage not to arse it up this time 🤣
Edit: not with such a large lockdown though, so it should work
Assume this is a non-paywalled version of the same press release
10% of that story appears to be a single scientist saying 'by all means let's have a debate'. The rest is Brexiteer nutjob MPs like Steve Baker demanding early reopening of everything.
The idea of an expert saying 'let's talk about the least worst option in reasonable terms' is fine. As a nation we do need to have an informed debate about the downsides and upsides of reopening, and then someone will have to make a decision about the 'acceptable' level of mortality and morbidity.
At some point the generals will send us out over the top, there's no doubt.
. If we were struggling to get vaccines I could see the sense but it seems the UK Gov have got enough to jab the country 3 or 4 times over.
Thats why I just can't see it happening. We are too close to the end goal, a uturn now would be insane..you'd think.
Luckily I have luxury of living in Scotland, and if Boris agrees to such a ridiculous plan I can't see sturgeon getting onboard with it for 1 moment
I don't know how rate limited the vaccine supply side is, but at about 3 million a week now, in theory we target end of march for groups 5-9, ~15 million, done.
Then, as pointed out a page or two back, the groups 1-4 start to fall due second jab.
If by then, vaccine supply allows 6 million per week, split 2nd does and first dose to under 50's, then the remaining 30 million or so peeps takes to early June, does it not?
Or is that too ambitious for our govt? Or have they learned a lesson, and while that is the optimistic plan, they are keeping the cat in the bag so as not to raise hopes that may come crashing down?
Can’t say i like the idea personally as the healthcare cost will likely be bigger in the long run than the cost of the pandemic and will let more variants spread well.
Glad i don’t have to make decisions about that
It's actually a simple decision to make:
Q: do we want to risk letting the virus have the best chance to come up with a variant that we cannot defend against with medicine?
A: yes: we let it run riot and impose minimal restrictions.
no: we lockdown any outbreaks and control the spread as much as we possibly can.
Australia and New Zealand are going for the No option, the rest of the world is either dithering or going for the Yes option.
I prefer the No.
Batfink - has the Australia vaccination programme started yet? Have any time scales been published?
Q: do we want to risk letting the virus have the best chance to come up with a variant that we cannot defend against with medicine?
I’m hoping the Kent variant(s) have helped the government seriously re-examine their approach, at least for the months immediately in front of us, it does look that way currently.
steveb
Full MemberBatfink – has the Australia vaccination programme started yet? Have any time scales been published?
this is going to sound bad, but I haven’t been paying a huge amount of attention.
The TGA (our equivalent of the MHRA, but far inferior) just approved the pfizer vaccine a couple of weeks ago, and I think we are expecting the first shipment imminently. We have bought 10m doses. Otherwise we have bought the right to manufacture 60m doses of the AZ vaccine in Australia which should simplify things greatly.
We’ve also bought 50m doses of the novavax vaccine
Rollout will be like:
It’s on the second slide. Most interesting is that quarantine workers are going to be the very first vaccinated
There’s a two-word answer to that ‘debate’ and it is long covid, I’ve just read an e-mail from March for Change which estimates current long covid numbers at around 400,000 people many of whom will be unable to work, exercise or lead a big chunk of their normal lives.
Even without long covid (I don't think, fingers crossed etc) it's an absolute shit of and illness with a long recovery from even the mild case I had
on the let it rip topic – i wonder how the rest of the world would view it from a “great way to encourage mutations” perspective? Does that mean UK lets it rip, the top four groups vaccinated are ok, the working population run a high risk of long covid and our borders are closed from the outside…
I haven't seen an alternative strategy anywhere. Name a European country that intends to maintain restrictions once their cirteria on hospital admissions and prevalence in the community are met. The strategy is much the same everywhere, has any country got a strategy that involves vaccinating under 18s yet? Is there even a vaccine that is homologated for under 16/18?
Britain won't be isolated and cut of by a strategy of let it rip once the over (insert age here)s have been vaccinated, by all accounts it wil be the norm.
On a personal level I have been pretty much dependant on my inhaler(s) since March last year but I'm now at 7 continuous days without using any off them, with strenuous exercise every day. I may have just had unusually bad seasonal allergies and asthma which have taken 10 months to calm down, if I've had long Covid it's slowly, slowly improving. I'll find out when the tree pollen fill the air in March. Back to square one or just normal seasonal allergies/asthma.
I haven’t seen an alternative strategy anywhere.
They are on this page.
Name a European country that intends to maintain restrictions once their cirteria on hospital admissions and prevalence in the community are met.
None. I don't think any European country is on top of this yet. And not many of them are islands, so have different options to (most of) the UK anyway. Despite having more options, we're still doing worse than most European countries though... and I don't think that's just down to dumb luck.
Today is a good day. Ive received clearance to start my first Covid Volunteer vaccinator shift next week. Feeling slightly nervous if I'm honest.
We have been told we are eligible for vaccination as Health care workers. I can book at several local sites, with a choice between those that give AZ and Pfizer jabs? Aware I'm very lucky to get any, but I need to choose somewhere, so which would you go for?
There’s a two-word answer to that ‘debate’ and it is long covid,
The problem with long covid is that for most people it's not all that dramatic. Ie they feel tired, they can't breath properly, they have no energy etc
When 1000 people are dying every day the government has to do something about it. But when tens of thousands of folks are just 'feeling a bit shit for months on end' the government can probably turn a blind eye.
I'm not saying long covid isn't serious, it's nasty and it terrifies me. But unless it's reflected in numbers of deaths or hospitilizations this government won't give a shit about it.
has any country got a strategy that involves vaccinating under 18s yet?
Israel.
Even without long covid (I don’t think, fingers crossed etc) it’s an absolute shit of and illness with a long recovery from even the mild case I had
This. A disease with largely unknown morbidity, is not the time to just take the brakes off. As I have said multiple times, deaths are the headline figure because they are the hardest (and easiest to measure) endpoint. But disease burden is key here. Notably across the age range. Medical care has done a great job in preventing mortality in the middle aged, but this has not been recognised sufficiently. It's all deaths deaths deaths.
I think relaxation with protection by vaccination, schools return and so on is not unreasonable, but we will have Tiers for some time. Again clear and honest communication.
Sorry, probably better described as a “leak” than a breech.
One of the sources of the leak was reported as security guards having intimacy with the convicts quanrantined. Might just be urban rumour, but clearly quarantine is errr hard. (Sorry)
I posted a few weeks back on the suicide question, can't locate it now. As managers at work we've all been asked to do a MH first aid course which I did before Christmas, to give us some info and resources to use with staff if we need to. The covid-suicide question came up, and the course trainer response was that they didn't expect rates to rise currently, specifically because people are looking out for each other, there are schemes in place to shore up those that are at risk, and help is being made obviously available.
The impact can only be measured once we get back to 'normal' - then when jobs and livelihoods are lost but there's no furlough or allowance top ups, when people are struggling with the long term effects on their physical health, when people are coming to terms with the loss of parents, partners, friends..... that's when the need will truly come. Will help be available then, which is when it'll really be needed.
It won't be in the hundreds of thousands (I hope!) but I wouldn't be surprised if rates don't increase massively.
Pfizer without any hesitation, Dantsw. More chance of maintaining immunity as the virus mutates.
Edit: Unfair request to Mr Smith. I should have typed 16/18 twice.
One of the sources of the leak was reported as security guards having intimacy with the convicts quanrantined. Might just be urban rumour, but clearly quarantine is errr hard. (Sorry)
Lol - that was reported by me on here for the first lockdown. Obviously haven seen any evidence - but this was certainly in the press over here as what caused the “leak” last time. Not sure what the leak was this time around tbh
I agree with Ed. Choose Pfizer, if given the choice. But no one should turn down the AZ if that's what they're offered.