tjagain in some cases I expect you are right.
My own experience, as a self employed barber is that I finished the whole period in a similar financial position to where I would have done anyway (in part due to not spending any money on holidays). And this is after not applying for the last two payments on offer as I was back at work (my choice, it was there for the taking).
I do still have a £6000 covid loan to pay back...
Obviuosly this was based on my previous tax returns. Those that had been ripping off the taxman will have had a lot less.
I have a friend who is a tradesman and he says the self-employed lads that work for him all claimed everything despite working. They said that the wording said 'if you have been affected' so they just went for it.
And a rich **** I know who runs 5 seperate companies took 5 x £50,000 and his account has given him the impression he won't have to pay it all back. Fingers crossed he is wrong!!
I do have a customer who works big tax fraud cases and his is pretty confident that lots of chancers are going to feel the pain...
And a rich **** I know who runs 5 seperate companies took 5 x £50,000 and his account has given him the impression he won’t have to pay it all back. Fingers crossed he is wrong!!
There was a lot of bad advice around this, I've a few accountant friends, and in HMRC, they all say this will be chased.
12th March last year… and he was far from alone in saying this… at that time… even among the Conservative candidates that Johnson defeated to become the UK’s ultimate decision maker (a job he has proven himself entirely unfit for)…
https://twitter.com/politicsjoe_uk/status/1238085538957139968?s=21
It isn’t hindsight. Johnson was slow to understand what was happening. Slow to make any decision. Slow to accept the massive responsibility that comes with the nice title he spent so many years chasing. This was all painfully clear at the time. We had a part time disconnected PM at just the time we most needed an engaged and effective decision maker running the country.
Jokes aside about Croydon - we had exactly the same thing in Sydney: There are particular groups of suburbs which have really suffered from low vaccine uptake (directly measurable) - these are also the same suburbs that have also struggled with low lockdown/social distancing compliance (obviously more difficult to measure).
These suburbs in SW Sydney really drove the delta outbreak - at the point we were having 1,500 cases a day (thats a lot for us), over 1,000 would have been in these "Local Government areas of Concern"
These suburbs are historically cheaper to live in (in one of the most expensive cities in the world) and so have a higher number of people in lower paid jobs who are less likely to be able to work from home, more likely to travel across the city to work (eg, tradespeople), less likely to be able to afford to take time off if they catch covid (and so less likely to get tested) etc etc. The median household size was also larger, often with multigenerational occupants.
As a result of seeing massive spikes in these areas (combined with low vaccination rates), these areas were subject to much more severe lockdowns than the rest of Sydney - these have largely been lifted now. Vaccine supplies (which were constrainned) were diverted from other parts of Sydney and NSW to give priority to these suburbs - loads of pop-up/drop in vaccination hubs were established, weekend vaccine blitzes at sports grounds, that kind of thing.
*treading carefully*
Whereas the socioeconomic factors are relatively easy to understand - I don't really understand the cultural component. These areas are also largely populated by recent immigrants and their families. There was a decent effort (albeit somewhat late) here to start reaching out to these communities through local organisations to provide information about the pandemic and the vaccine in other languages - but I'm not sure that accounts for all the vaccine hesitancy that we saw.
I know that in the UK there was/is concern about low uptake within BAME communities - can anybody explain why this was/is? Is it just about (not) tailoring how information was provided to these communities - or there something else there? Not trying to be controversial, just trying to understand.
*braces for being called a racist/colonialist*
I know that in the UK there was/is concern about low uptake within BAME communities – can anybody explain why this was/is? Is it just about (not) tailoring how information was provided to these communities – or there something else there? Not trying to be controversial, just trying to understand
Lack of trust is the reason generally given. What I find particularly worrying is there has been lower uptake among BAME healthcare workers. How can you work in healthcare and not trust modern medicine?
And whilst there has been a lower uptake among the BAME community I don't think it is so significant as to explain why Croydon, for example, only has 58% double jabbed.
Also, wasn't there quite early on a noticeably higher incidence in infection rates in the BAME community that was flagged as something that needed to be immediately investigated?
And then that urgent investigation just seemed to stall, and then it didn't seem to be reported about at all, and then it just dropped off the agenda entirely.
And then the 'why is there a lack of trust?' articles appeared and suddenly everyone was mystified by it.
Well it makes no sense at all that a higher incidence of Covid among the BAME community should result in lower vaccination uptake among the BAME community.
Did this lack of trust also result in less face covering, hand washing, and social distancing, among the BAME community?
I'm not suggesting that sense enters into it, but i do think that the lack of progress in pursuing links between ethnicity and infection rates may have given ammunition to bad faith actors in this whole sorry mess.
@batfink - from what i've heard in the Australian context, we've failed to direct information at vulnerable sectors of the population who don't necessarily get their news from Australian sources so may not (amazingly enough) be aware of current situations. Apparently refugees are often scared of health services due to fear of persecution (PTSD?). As for First Nations people i can understand why they would be sceptical of anything offered to them... up here we've been working with Elders to try and improve vaccine uptake.
In Queensland we've currently still only have 2,067 + cases and 7 deaths since the start. We've been heavily criticised for our approach of locking up the state. But by introducing The COVID-19 Emergency Response Act 2020 our Chief Health Officer is able to issue Public Health Directions to assist in containing, or to respond to, the spread of COVID-19 within the community. Yes, the Chief Health Officer, not the politicians. I think that's been a blessing.
We're anticipating the opening of borders before Christmas as vaccination rates get higher. You can probably imagine it being a bit like opening Devon and Cornwall to let in all the holiday makers.
I likened COVID to landing a plane in fog without instruments.
Thankfully, all the experience we're hearing about, primarily overseas, means that hopefully we're in for less surprises.
I'm currently working with our Emergency Departments to prepare - we're expecting a surge in cases and are identifying how we can reduce the impact on vulnerable patients through ED bypass, virtual consults, and pre-entry testing, etc. For the vulnerable, there's considerable anxiety.
In Queensland we’ve currently still only have 2,067 + cases and 7 deaths since the start. We’ve been heavily criticised for our approach of locking up the state
Not by me - ultimately it's been very successful at reducing deaths. Can't talk to the economic cost of that approach, but you've certainly not lost money from lockdowns like Vic (and to a lesser extent NSW) have.
I do think there is a valid question about what happens to QLD and WA when they do eventually re-open..... that their first line of defense has been so successful that perhaps the secondary, tertiary measures aren't in-place/tested. But even allowing for a steep learning curve, the area under that curve is still impressively small.
Biggest question for me is that, without significant motivation (cases/deaths/lockdowns) is it possible to motivate enough people to get the Jab?
Amongst our BAME patients (who make up the majority of our patients) normally reasons for not being vaccinated are: 1. suspicion. Lots of our pts. come from countries where the regimes are less than honest to people, some have also escaped persecution as a minority, and are naturally as a result, wary. 2. Religious sensibilities, mostly Muslims mostly it's to do with FB posts about pork or human product in the vaccine making it haram. Our local vaccine centre is also a Jain community centre and some won't go there. We've made leaflets for local Imams and it made a difference, but lots of folk are still suspicious. 3. Language. There's not a huge effort gone in to making information material in Urdu or Arabic or Farsi. Lots of the BAME community (especially the vulnerable older generations) have almost no English and don't watch or listen to the news at all.
We've managed to get nearly all the most vulnerable vaccinated, but in our area the take-up amongst the Afro-Caribbean communities is shockingly small, and we can't seem to make a dent in it regardless of what we try.
Very interesting Nickc - exactly answers my questions.
Any idea what causing the hesitancy within the Afro-Caribbean communities?
HMRC knew nothing about it until the Chief Exec got a call from the Treasury telling him to watch Sunak’s announcement on the telly in half an hour.
One of the vanishingly few instances of a government IT roll-out going very well indeed. Frontline staff had to download the software on the Monday the scheme went live and 'it just worked'. (The teething issues were very few and mostly cured by, switch it off and switch it back on again).
I do have a customer who works big tax fraud cases and his is pretty confident that lots of chancers are going to feel the pain…
HMRC are recruiting and promoting like there's no tomorrow. I suspect a lot of folk are going to be dismayed come late 2022. Mrs Sandwich is currently doing weekly interviews as a freshly promoted SO. HMRC also seem to have a lot of very keen folk work for them who like puzzles and tracing where the money came from.
I think nickc covers the main issues really well. There was an excellent series of articles on the BBC website by a doctor in Bradford through much of 2020, and he raised all of these issues.
And then that urgent investigation just seemed to stall, and then it didn’t seem to be reported about at all, and then it just dropped off the agenda entirely.
I seem to recall that further reports suggested poverty was a bigger factor than ethnicity, though sadly more BAME people live in poverty so the two are linked. I certainly noticed that a nearby, less affluent local council area had higher rates than ours, and compliance with pandemic rules was noticeably lower when I had to go there, and both areas are predominantly white - heartland of the former BNP.
I'm technically based at our Leicester office, and a lot of my colleagues are from the BAME community there, which was badly hit. I'm still very uncomfortable finding the right wording to discuss that aspect of the pandemic and possible reasons why the BAME community were badly hit, but my colleagues are happy to sling mud at the behaviour of other BAME groups in a way I simply wouldn't dare, even if I had evidence to support the statements.
genuinely no idea @batfink. We have a strong afro-Caribbean community here in my patch of south Manc. We've been on a local radio talk show hosted by a couple of afro-Caribbean DJs with a phone in and a studio chat about it, we set up a couple of vaccine booths in the local community centre, advertised it way in advance, and no-one came. The community centre manager said to us that he'd never seen the place so empty.
They really seem hesitant for reasons none of us can fathom out. It really stands out in the stats as well.
HMRC are recruiting and promoting like there’s no tomorrow. I suspect a lot of folk are going to be dismayed come late 2022. Mrs Sandwich is currently doing weekly interviews as a freshly promoted SO. HMRC also seem to have a lot of very keen folk work for them who like puzzles and tracing where the money came from.
A lot of colleagues who were on the Covid support teams last year are now on teams going back over the compliance checks. Trust first, check second and all that.
They really seem hesitant for reasons none of us can fathom out. It really stands out in the stats as well.
Stop referring to their hairstyles Nick and they might feel more confident!!
Yeah a quick Google search reveals that vaccine uptake among the African Carribbean community is indeed shockingly high. I knew that it was higher but I didn't realise that it was that high. Surely education/information is the only solution?
Surely education/information is the only solution?
Yes. Spot on. We're trying as a practice and as a PCN, but we're not having much success. If I look at our own stats were at about 77-78% of white British and slightly lower (71%) ****stani/Bangladeshi and Indians fully vaccinated. Chinese around 39% (not many pts at our practice, but heavy concentrations in the city centre) and Afro-Caribbean at about 45% . Speaking with an old boy yesterday I just got a blank "No" no ifs or buts, no considering the options, just a vehement "no" There must be a way in that we've not found but everything we've tried so far as met with limited success, but we'll keep at it
Speaking with an old boy yesterday I just got a blank “No” no ifs or buts, no considering the options, just a vehement “no”
Well it sounds as if he felt very strongly about it, did you not ask him why no?
People who feel very strongly about something often want to share their views.
this is the top rated comment on bbc "Government to make doctor work face to face report"
Excellent, the unavailability of GPs is absolutely shocking. You practically have to beg the receptionists to even speak to a doctor let alone get an appointment, sadly some people aren't forceful enough to fight their case and go undiagnosed.
They wonder why A&E times are through the roof, because that's the only place you can get seen in person. GPs need to get a grip, the pandemic is over.
Pandemic is over folks, only just shy of 500 people have died of covid in the last 3 days with 45,000 reported new cases!
GPs in Australia flipped to "telehealth" appointments pretty quickly (ie: via zoom) - but you can still get in to see a Dr face to face - you just have to wear a mask, confirm no covid Symptoms etc.
The GP service here is partially privatized though (you have public GPs who you don't pay for, and private ones who you do). We choose to go to a private one because they are on the corner of our street and you can usually get an appointment same day - we are not going every 5 minutes anyway, so the (relatively small) cost is not really an issue.
GPS here are paid per appointment (either by you directly, or by the government) - so they are motivated to see people. Rather than in the UK, where the GP funding model does the opposite of that.
I do think there is a valid question about what happens to QLD and WA when they do eventually re-open….. that their first line of defense has been so successful that perhaps the secondary, tertiary measures aren’t in-place/tested.
Absolutely. That's why we're working on it now... I anticipate lots more hospital simulations, which are a pretty incredible learning mechanism. One plan here is that we'll aim to rapid test before entry to ED and try to manage any positive cases without risking contamination. We've also had a couple of theatres set aside solely for ENT and COVID+ surgery. Standard stuff no doubt.
Obviously the increased vaccination rate in that time we've bought is some insurance.
Another thought on low uptake of First Nations peoples from listening to Radio National yesterday is that they're often more heavily reliant on f2f communication. Healthcare workers in FNQ are saying that talking to them one-on-one about their concerns and letting them go and yarn with family and friends works. That's not really something that happens quickly or that big advertising campaigns can replicate. I wonder if NITV have had a famous indigenous person to talk on screen with a doctor, etc? Might be a form of proxy.
I was at a meeting this evening where Marc Wadsworth spoke on Black History Month, I took the opportunity to ask him why the high vaccine hesitation among African Carribbean.
He claimed that past history of racist medical experiments on unwitting black and brown people played a part. Certainly the governments of the UK, the US, Australia, and Canada, have all in the past carried out such experiments, as this provides an example :
https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2007/sep/01/india.military
It should be pointed out that although these experiments were clearly racist in nature there were also other experiments in which the unwitting subjects were white British, eg :
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2002/apr/21/uk.medicalscience
I guess generally non-white Brits have more reasons to mistrust though.
Edit : It should be noted that the secret experiments carried out by the British government on the wider population were at the time considered to be probably harmless. Experiments carried out on people with dark skin were not necessarily considered to be harmless.
He claimed that past history of racist medical experiments on unwitting black and brown people played a part. Certainly the governments of the UK, the US, Australia, and Canada, have all in the past carried out such experiments,
I agree that this is probably part of it - but I'm not sure it explains the size of the difference that we are seeing.
I guess time will tell - Psychologist's/sociologists Phds for the next three decades are going to be looking at people's responses to the pandemic.
Just had a meeting with the guy who did this (artwork and narration)... he had Polio as a youngster* so is pretty invested in getting the Indigenous community to get vaccinated!
* In keeping with @ernielynch comments above, Australian Indigenous people have solid reasons to be wary of white authority. When the artist/narrator in that video was young whiter-skinned Indigenous Australians could be taken from their families to be 'assimilated' with the Anglo-Europeans, so his parents pretty much hid him from the authorities and he wasn't vaccinated. His siblings were darker so they were vaccinated.
Makes back on at my school due to high case numbers...I'm off to see where the horse has gone.
Masks back here as well, and trips cancelled, and assemblies stopping. Cases are too high in our kid’s school for that to really help now though… the horse has long since bolted. Half term soon… that might help… or might have helped if we were doing more outside schools to reduce infections.
Guess who’s the only dickhead on the train with a mask on? [ except the staff that is ]
Guess who’s the only
dickheadresponsible on the train with a mask on?
We've apparently had 8 cases at work in the kast 15 days, but no evidence of workplace transmission, still only 10-20% on site, social distancing, masks when not at desks and enough sanitiser to bathe in.
My comment a couple of weeks ago about it being too early to celebrate the dip in hospital and death numbers seems depressingly accurate. Daughter got jabbed yesterday, parents get boosters next week, roll on winter.
Going to the pub tonight but might just be a swift half sat outside still.
Masks back here as well, and trips cancelled, and assemblies stopping
Been that way in Mrs OWG's school for three or four weeks, also no singing which has been a pain since she runs the choirs. Steady 2 or 3 new cases a day for the whole term - it's a primary with around 300 children. Some double jabbed staff have been uncomfortably ill for quite a long time, although none have been hospitalised. My neighbour is a deputy head at a secondary school - he's been off work with COVID for two weeks, says he's never felt sicker in his life. His wife got away with it for a week, now she's come down with it too - also very unwell. This is really not over.
Well it sounds as if he felt very strongly about it, did you not ask him why no?
Yes of course I did. There comes a point at which you just have to respect a pt's wishes though. You can explain and ask them to reconsider and look at evidence, but at the end of the day: Horse, water...all that jazz.
Guess who’s the only dickhead on the train with a mask on?
This does boil my piss somewhat. Did two journeys yesterday, six hours of hard cycling between, yet managed to still be one of only a tiny minority of people respecting Northern Rail's polite request to continue wearing face coverings to protect other passengers and their staff.
I know it's not compulsory, but how can anyone look train staff in the eye after showing them they basically don't give a shit about the safety of the conditions they have to work in?
British common sense and values = 'Your health (and my own) is worth less than the mild inconvenience and discomfort of wearing a small piece of cloth over my face'.
Mask compliance on TfW trains over last weekend was awful despite being law, also being run to ridiculous capacity levels with strangers standing centimetres away from each other near the doors, instead of adding a fourth carriage.
I caught something on the outward leg of my journey that started to present symptoms ~48 hours later, two negative LFTs on Tues and Thurs suggests it's a cold, I've passed it on to family I was staying with and my better half since coming back home. Still struggling to wake by 0900 and when I do feeling really groggy, could sleep all day. Most exercise I've done since coming home on Monday evening is walking between rooms, need to do something more today to decide if I'm fit to return to work tomorrow.
Now on another train. Not in Calderdale. Everyone wearing masks. Every single person. Quite a contrast.
An update on the positive LFT, negative PCR situation…
https://twitter.com/dgurdasani1/status/1448929331326169089?s=21
Basically, we’re now officially doing what Edukator (and others perhaps) suggested… a positive LFT overrules a negative PCR.
Lab in Wolverhampton may have issued up to 43,000 incorrect PCR negatives in recent weeks and test site in Berkshire asking anyone who got a negative PCR test recently to get another test.
If you add those 43,000 tests onto the current official figures then we're at the beginning of the next wave. Just as we go into the winter flu season, perfect timing.
What's the latest on the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine? I heard that it's a lot more effective than was first thought, is that true or have I misunderstood?
Masks were back on in school Friday after a face to face parents evening Thursday, oh and visitors are banned, unless it's parents and kids coming for open morning visits to my lesson Friday! You couldn't make it up. All set against a backdrop of the local testing centre being on national news for giving false negatives!!
I've currently got COVID.
Caught it off my sister's family, her son caught it at primary school in Fife. Supposedly almost all of his class have it.
Sister and her husband have it relatively bad - up all night, itchy skin, head colds etc
I seem to have a light dose, just seems like a bit of a stuffy nose when I'm sleeping but clears up during the day.
Could be because a low initial infection - I was outside the whole time I was there as my dad and I were building a patio lean-to thing for them. Only went in for lunch... My dad didn't catch it either.
So, that was the Saturday. I was in a van with my pal on the Monday and another pal Tuesday morning, just before I found out my sister etc had it later on the Tuesday. Neither of those guys caught it from me and my girlfriend's PCR came back negative and so have her LFTs we've been doing (I'm blowing positive there!). So seems I'm not too infectious?
Anyway, girlfriend and I are self-isolating til the end of this week.
FWIW everyone mentioned (other than my nephew) is double jabbed. Glad I got mine as seems I'm one of the lucky ones as far as catching this goes.
Hope you and everyone else shake it off quickly.
Still not sure how I'm dodging this bullet. The local wave from schools seems to have subsided, though obviously still a lot of it about.
This thread seems to answer questions I've been pondering.
https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1449801652207239176?t=7PR24pDV9Jb_Gp9YbjJjjQ&s=19
That is a very good thread.
I've been away from this thread for a while but dipping in now and again.
Seems to me like the latest stats say that prevalence is as high as ever - I know the more you test the more you find, but numbers saying 1/60 levels in the community at present. Deaths are high - 100+ per day is getting on for 1000 a week and 50K a year particularly as we aren't in the indoor season which is non-negligible, but vaccines are clearly playing a part.
That's all old news.
What's interesting to me, and the point of the post, is that vaccines don't seem to be having a marked affect on the case rates, just on the severity and outcome. So using vaxxed or not as a qualifier to allow or prevent people from going about their lives - is it worthwhile?
Just let the unvaxxed take on whatever risk it entails, it's predominantly their problem. We can advise against, just as we can advise against smoking or eating too much salt, but in the end it's a choice. And as a civilised nation we'll pick up the pieces when it goes wrong (risk being if it goes too far wrong then everyone pays as a result of overcrowded hospitals, etc.)
