|
Post by slowcoach on May 31, 2020 5:36:27 GMT 2
|
|
|
Post by slowcoach on Jun 2, 2020 14:33:02 GMT 2
UK is easing back on the COVID-19 restrtictions, which must seem odd as it is still at Alert Level 4 and that the test, track, and trace capability due on the the 1 st June is still not functional even at its new much reduced capability level. The Blavatnik School of Government (Oxford University) has published a guide:
which gives scores in the range [0,1] according to how well they meet the WHO's six tests. The guide covers 168 countries/territories the top twelve being: 1 New Zealand 1 2 Cyprus 0.9 3 Rwanda 0.9 4 Taiwan 0.9 5 Seychelles 0.9 6 Gambia 0.9 7 Trinidad and Tobago 0.9 8 Spain 0.9 9 Vietnam 0.9 10 Brunei 0.9 11 Australia 0.9 12 Botswana 0.9and the bottom ten: 159 Moldova 0.3 160 Afghanistan 0.3 161 Benin 0.3 162 South Sudan 0.3 163 Kyrgyz Republic 0.3 164 United Kingdom 0.3 !!!!!!!!!!!!!! 165 Syria 0.3 166 Algeria 0.3 167 Iran 0.2 168 Nicaragua 0.2
ETA: Correction to the numbering.
|
|
|
Post by Baz Faz on Jun 3, 2020 18:52:58 GMT 2
Six days ago the UK launched a test and track system. Is it incompetence it has taken so long? Why did they not use the systems other countries have been using successfully? I don't know. Today it has been revealed that 20% of negative tests are wrong and the person does in fact have Coronavirus.
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Jun 3, 2020 20:25:44 GMT 2
Well, Switzerland's own app was created because the Europe-wide one does not guarantee data protection. it won't be fully operational until the end of the month.
Now that up to 30 people can be in a group (going up to 100 on Saturday), one of a party of four or more HAS to give contact details for tracing purposes. Until now, it was optional.
|
|
|
Post by kuskiwi on Jun 3, 2020 20:43:28 GMT 2
Our app isnt great either. My phones to09p80 old..only yuppies can use it. Daughter has it and used it on the weekend but it's not simple. It's where we have fallen down too..
|
|
|
Post by Netsuke on Jun 4, 2020 3:56:27 GMT 2
The Lockdown restrictions are loosening a little. You can't go and watch a Footy match, but this Saturday (6June), 30,000 persons are expected to take part in a black lives matter protest highlighting black deaths in custody to the steps of Parliament House and also in support of the black lives matter movement in the US.
Considering the COVID19 health risk and the contagiousness of this Coronavirus, the Victorian Premier, Mister Dan should have told the organisers to stay at home and defer their protest to a later date, and those who attend will be fined. The fine being $1652!
Saying people taking part will not be fined is not good enough. You're going to let them protest without social distancing! Shame! Shame, shame, shame!
|
|
|
Post by Voy on Jun 4, 2020 3:58:58 GMT 2
this is exactly why I'm not going down to Portland on Friday to protest the shithead coming to Maine. Much as I would love to show my hate for him, I do love living and want to go on doing it !
|
|
|
Post by slowcoach on Jun 4, 2020 4:46:31 GMT 2
RE: tracing apps
I think that we all need to be careful here. Trace, Test, Isolate (TTI), is a bog standard Environmental Health practice. It had existed in the UK for generations ready to be deployed in such times as these.
In the UK a lot of the fuss over phone apps is legerdemain to hide the uncomfortable truth that a system, staffed by 10,000 or so Local Government Environmental Health workers, many of them highly trained and registered Environmental Health Officers (EHOs), (with law enforcement powers) was disbanded about 10 years ago, the activity taken over by around 250 staff in a handful of regional offices.
TTI is not something new, nor is it something reliant on mobile phone technology, rather more on mobile shoe leather technology, clipboards and local knowledge. It was a well understood and rehearsed interaction between health officials, the NHS, law enforcement, and local government,.
The UK's pandemic response plan called for testing to be abandoned as soon it had fulfilled its primary task of confirming that community spread had set in. So significant numbers of EHOs were no longer needed and only small scale test facilities would be required.
What happened in the UK, happened by design. Unfortunately the design called for a 'flu pandemic and a SARS pandemic turned up instead. When the consequences of this became evident and the need to switch to a TTI strategy became urgent, the UK was weeks, in fact a couple of months away from having the infrastructure to handle TTI in any form (old style with or without mobile phone app) so while attention was switched to watching out for the app, the real deficit in the basic TTI structure was being plugged, (or so I thought). In the end TTI known in the UK as TTT test, track, and trace (the government is squeamish about the isolate component) was launched without the app component. Unfortunately it was also launched without an adequate test component, and without successfully recreating the original TTI system the government had abolished ten years previously.
ETA: Here is part of an exchange during Prime Minister's Questions (PMQs) yesterday in the UK Parliament:
This I think shows how divorced the propaganda has become from fair representation of the facts. The standing start characterisation is more or less true but it neglects to mention that the standing start was owing to the previous system having been demolished. I trust that both of these politicians are aware of this and suspect each has his own reasons for glossing over this.
|
|
|
Post by Netsuke on Jun 4, 2020 9:33:49 GMT 2
The standing start characterisation is more or less true but it neglects to mention that the standing start was owing to the previous system having been demolished. I trust that both of these politicians are aware of this and suspect each has his own reasons for glossing over this. Yes, commonly known as CYA - Cover Your Arse!
|
|
|
Post by shrjeff on Jun 4, 2020 9:53:27 GMT 2
we went out this morning and most everybody was masked!
|
|
|
Post by Baz Faz on Jun 4, 2020 10:35:37 GMT 2
The masks we ordered arrived a couple of days ago. Almost nobody here wears them as a matter of course but we have stockpiled them as a precaution. With this government's usual incompetence they will probably announce with 48 hours' notice that masks are compulsory when travelling, shopping or going to a pub. At which point there will be panic buying and no masks will be available.
|
|
|
Post by Baz Faz on Jun 4, 2020 10:42:25 GMT 2
Hairdressers have been closed for 10 weeks or more now. However on Wednesday there was a police raid at Barber Bob's just round the corner from us. Bob was in his barber shop but said he was just doing some decorating. Oh yes? And this man with his head half trimmed? Anyway the full story is in the local newspaper. We are shortly recording it for the Talking Newspaper for the Blind. I must be away to the recording studio (aka our bedroom).
|
|
|
Post by Netsuke on Jun 4, 2020 14:03:26 GMT 2
Hairdressing salons weren't closed here.
I went to my hairdresser on Tuesday for a colour and cut. $170 poorer, and I'm a new woman!
I so love that "I've just been to the hairdressers" look when you come out of the hairdresser's shop.
|
|
|
Post by outside cat @wino on Jun 4, 2020 14:07:32 GMT 2
Re phone app....mine is so old it did not load....
|
|
|
Post by Voy on Jun 4, 2020 15:03:18 GMT 2
the whole wearing of masks thing has become totally politicized - wear one and you're a liberal, don't and you're a Trumpster.. shit.
|
|
|
Post by shrjeff on Jun 4, 2020 18:53:06 GMT 2
the whole wearing of masks thing has become totally politicized - wear one and you're a liberal, don't and you're a Trumpster.. poop. something about darwin awards? here masks are mandatory... the Netanya volunteer unit director and secretary came by to give us a present: masks with the Netanya municipal logo and the phrase "one city, one heart" with a chocolate candy heart... it may be wishful thinking on my part but it seems that people are more compliant... which may be due to the relaxing of regulations followed by a resurgence of infections and bibi threatening to renew the closure if people aren't more compliant voluntarily...
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Jun 4, 2020 19:20:29 GMT 2
In Switzerland, almost nothing is mandatory. From the beginning, the government has sought the population's cooperation.
|
|
|
Post by slowcoach on Jun 5, 2020 4:27:28 GMT 2
I am getting a bit confused as to what is permitted and what not. Different regions are at different stages in the "deescalation", and regional interpretations differ at each stage.
What is clear is that more people are out and about, and there is more traffic on the main roads.
Mask wearing is not compulsory outdoors, but shops, etc., can insist that on their use.
|
|
|
Post by kuskiwi on Jun 5, 2020 5:18:49 GMT 2
Mask wearing (well until I hear otherwise officially) is still optional however after seeing some wearing masks, fiddling to hold them in place, having them hanging from the chin, pushed up over a mustache, etc etc can see why there is doubt as to whether they are suitable in all circumstances with the exception perhaps of public transport or where social distancing is impossible.
|
|
|
Post by Netsuke on Jun 5, 2020 8:33:25 GMT 2
Mask wearing isn't a big thing here either. If it became enforceable and compulsory, I would be loathe to wear one. ...Having my nose and mouth covered, would lead me to panic and I think I'd be hyper- ventilating and would not do well.
I can see the headlines now.....
"Masked Woman has Panic Attack" Fights Police, pulls out hair and rends clothes in public!
|
|
|
Post by Baz Faz on Jun 5, 2020 11:24:41 GMT 2
On Wednesday Britain had more deaths from coronavirus than the whole of the European Union (27 countries) combined.
|
|
|
Post by Netsuke on Jun 9, 2020 8:29:38 GMT 2
I've come to realise my three top hobbies are:
1. Eating in restaurants. 2. Going to nonessential businesses. 3. Touching my face.
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Jun 9, 2020 11:15:31 GMT 2
Here, although the official message is very positive, and number crunchers are coming out of the woods informing us that one of the areas that suffered most from the pandemic "only saw 7% of its population contracting the virus", almost everybody is expecting a second wave at some point in the near-ish future.
Heard something the other day and will try and find the clip to show you as trying to explain does not make sense. Clearly, I haven't absorbed what the guy said.
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Jun 9, 2020 11:22:11 GMT 2
Here:
|
|
|
Post by slowcoach on Jun 9, 2020 13:43:55 GMT 2
I listened but I am not much the wiser. He did indicate that it was still early days in the pandemic and that it wasn't going to go away all by itself any time soon. Beyond that I am not sure he made any unambiguous predictions, which is probably fair enough.
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Jun 9, 2020 20:42:31 GMT 2
ah, you reassure me. To make sure I had put the right video on, I listened to it again when I linked it on here and it still felt clear as mud to me.
|
|
|
Post by Netsuke on Jun 10, 2020 4:02:50 GMT 2
After listening to the video, I came to realise three things:
1. There are a lot of idiots over there who gathered together by pools and beaches.
2. Perfume can be smelled four supermarket aisles away from the perfumed person.
3. I could inhale your Coronavirus germs at the supermarket even if you're four aisles away from me, ergo I could die.
What a depressing thought. I shall now return to my naive state of simplicity and unsophisticated little world. And NO MORE videos!
|
|
|
Post by slowcoach on Jun 10, 2020 6:30:41 GMT 2
Netsuke, I am not going to get involved in an argument with an expert but: the spread of a smell over a distance of many metres has a lot more to do with vapours, i.e. individual molecules, than with aerosols, which though small but hugely greater in size than a molecule.
Aerosols have a tendency to hit the dirt locally, vapours can and do travel many kilometres, as any dog will vouch.
The transportation of odours is not I think a good analogy for the transportation of a virus particle.
|
|
|
Post by auntieannie on Jun 10, 2020 12:40:11 GMT 2
i agree with slow.
|
|
|
Post by slowcoach on Jun 10, 2020 13:21:49 GMT 2
And I agree with Annie!
|
|