Coronavirus

[RicoS321]

BoJo has it!

 

What's the protocol if he dies? Have we had a dead serving prime minister before? I assume they'd just continue to shuffle his corpse out for the daily updates.

[TheDeeDon]

What's the protocol if he dies? Have we had a dead serving prime minister before? I assume they'd just continue to shuffle his corpse out for the daily updates.

 

Cummings pulls the strings anyway, so we wouldn't notice that much of a difference.

 

[tlg1903]

I'm imagining Cummings going all weekend at bernies with bojo now...

[wee toon red]

What's the protocol if he dies? Have we had a dead serving prime minister before? I assume they'd just continue to shuffle his corpse out for the daily updates.

 

Surely Dominic Raab takes over until such time as the Tories elect a new leader?

 

Edited: While Raab isn't actually deputy PM, as Foreign Secretary he's also First Secretary of State and therefore next in line.

[RicoS321]

Surely Dominic Raab (deputy PM) takes over until such time as the Tories elect a new leader?

 

Jesus. I never thought I'd ever wish Boris a speedy and full recovery

[Kowalski]

Decent site for monitoring numbers. The UK figures are shooting up:

 

https://ncov2019.live/data

[TheDeeDon]

I do wonder if Bojo having it is a bit of spin for when more people realise he fucked up with all his dithering.

 

Far fetched maybe but I trust that lot as much as I would have letting Jimmy Saville look after my kids.

[rocket_scientist]

I don't blame politicians for being "style-aware". It was Blair's administration who introduced the term "spin" but when style becomes more important than substance, then they're fucked. Or they would be if the electorate wasn't so dumb.

 

The fact that they say thank you for each and every question received in the daily briefings isn't a normal expression of gratitude. It's what they've been told to do to try to make them look more human. It doesn't even make sense, thanking someone (already pre-selected) for doing their job, particularly if the question is highly critical and exposes one of their many weaknesses.

[rocket_scientist]

The approval ratings for Trump would be astonishing but for the fact that most of his approvers aren't voting for him, they're voting for themselves. In this snowflake era where people aren't able to admit their mistakes, the truth becomes secondary to their perception of self.

[rocket_scientist]

Just as we were able to identify from the data that England had decided to change their reporting a couple of days ago, there may be a change in this respect going on in the US right now. Astonishingly low percentage increases in the latest numbers today.

 

Edit: ok they've upped the US numbers a bit in the last couple of hours.

 

At the UK briefing today, they said we had over 1,000 dead as of 5 pm last night.

[rocket_scientist]

At this rate, we will exceed 1,000 deaths before next weekend.

 

Now that this has been confirmed, I don't see next week being other than similarly exponential and horrific. The government acted too late and as we saw in the West Midlands yesterday, some people STILL don't understand the seriousness of the situation. Herd Immunity didn't work.

[tom_widdows]

Now that this has been confirmed, I don't see next week being other than similarly exponential and horrific. The government acted too late and as we saw in the West Midlands yesterday, some people STILL don't understand the seriousness of the situation. Herd Immunity didn't work.

 

Id be happy if people understood the difference between 2 feet and 2 metres. 

[RicoS321]

Id be happy if people understood the difference between 2 feet and 2 metres. 

 

It's weird, because they originally said 6ft, but then changed to metres. Not a huge difference of course, but just another thing to confuse the masses. Two metres is difficult in most shops, and impossible on most pavements. I was shopping just now and other than at the tills, the two metre rule wasn't really applied. Which is fine. On a couple of occasions, myself and another customer weren't far away but had our back to one another, thus no risk. Either of us could have made a deal of it, but neither did. It was good to see some basic common sense.

[rocket_scientist]

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/10/doctor-johnson-thousands-deaths-nhs-patient?__twitter_impression=true

[RicoS321]

https://amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/10/doctor-johnson-thousands-deaths-nhs-patient?__twitter_impression=true

 

It's a shame there weren't some proper examples and substance in there. It's not exactly wikileaks level whistleblowing if you see what I mean. Good though, I suspect most doctors would just quit their post. Must have been difficult to put their name to it.

[rocket_scientist]

Data. It's always revealing.

 

Today and of the major disaster areas, the UK 34.25% and the US (now that their numbers are in) 30.25% suffered the worst percentage increases day-to-day.

 

There's now a G7 of countries who have tripped 1,000.

 

Over the next week, I can't imagine that Boris and Trump won't manage to be the top two in terms of the exponential potential. Given the incredible fuck ups by both, it couldn't possibly be surpassed by others, particularly how dumb and stupid our general populations are.

[tom_widdows]

It's a shame there weren't some proper examples and substance in there. It's not exactly wikileaks level whistleblowing if you see what I mean. Good though, I suspect most doctors would just quit their post. Must have been difficult to put their name to it.

 

I think that is one of the many curses of being a junior doctor. If you quit it means you quit medicine for good as no health board will touch you again. In the current situation though the NHS workers at least have the safety net of the media being on their side. We the UK population have always needed junior doctors but they and all their frontline NHS colleagues have been taken for granted and treated like shit. Now as Rocket has said several times 'this shits gotten real' all the bad will, 'Im suing the healthboard for calling me fat', 'They are all workshy scroungers for having the gall to take a day off once a month' and so on is suddenly all forgotten.

 

Theres lots of media stories now about how wonderful the public & businesses are being in their support for NHS workers (free stuff, discounts, how many of the general public have volunteered to help them) however where was this goodwill, generosity and public spirit 3months ago?

3 months ago if a Nurse posted a video of themselves crying in their car because they'd reached their breaking point I have my doubts it would have made it much further than a facebook feed or a one show episode. Said Nurse would potentially have faced disciplinary proceedings, and eventually been forced out though internal bullying

3 months ago the above article would have made the left leaning papers but the right wing ones would have had so many counter stories from 'other' doctors who said everything was fine. The doctor would then potentially have faced a similar fate to the nurse.

3 months ago the best so many NHS frontline staff could expect would be sporadic box of chocolates/ bunch of flowers from the odd grateful family.

The so called 'super hospital' in Glasgow has lots of Nurses stations but hardly any break rooms, and the break rooms available are 10mins walk from many Nurses stations. Not exactly ideal when each Nurse only gets a 15min break so by the time they are 3/4 of the way to the break-room, they need to turn round and go back to work. Rules state they cant have hot drinks or have/ prepare food at the nurses station so what the fuck are they supposed to do?!

Kudos to the Architects on that one.

 

Tangent: At the end of my 1st year at Architecture school the tutor marking my final project - a kindergarten in Duthie Park - criticised/ chastised me for laying out the building based on information gathered from a former Nursery teacher. According to her it was my job to tell client's what they needed and how they should use a building.

That Glasgow hospital is a fine example of the sort of logic, arrogance and ignorance in the Architecture world which plays right into the hands of people who value price and asthetics over facilities and how a building will be used.

 

There was a doctor who called into 5live a couple of weeks back with his own version of the guardian article and just before he hung up he said something along the following lines.

 

'It is great that everyone is offering free stuff and discounts but when all this is over all I would like is

- a Room where my nurses can sit and have a break

- Free tea or coffee facilities in that room

- Facilities to store and make our own food rather than vending machines with inflated prices that are all to often broken or havent been filled.

- To not have to put up posters in the wards and receptions asking patients & visitors to please not spit, shout at, or assault our staff.'

 

All the rounds of applause in the world will be worthless if, should the virus be beaten, we just let the NHS go back to what it was & still is, which is what the tories & right wing merceneries want it to be.

 

[rocket_scientist]

Great post TW.

 

My son's girlfriend wrote on Friday - instead of a round of applause, please don't vote Tory.

 

My wife on Thursday described the imminent clapping for the NHS a heap of shite.

 

Those are the only two front line NHS workers I know.

[rocket_scientist]

This week, Channel 4 - the best mainstream news media by far - had interviews with a doctor and paramedic. Their identities were hidden and their voices overdubbed by actors. The reason for the cloak and dagger was to protect them as the crime of speaking the truth would have resulted in them getting fired. That's how much the Tories love the NHS. The last ten years have been systematically fucking the NHS by stealth. John Pilger's documentary was only three months ago and unsurprisingly, neither the BBC nor ITV ran with it.

[manc_don]

10 mins from the nurses station? That's fucking awful, who were the architects for that, is that the super campus?  Not really followed much of the architecture back home for a while. Both architects and clients should hang their heads in shame.  Although having worked in mental health care design, i'm surprised there were allowed to do that? Usually processes in place to make sure it's all quite logical.

 

My wife was surprised by my lack of enthusiasm for the "NHS clap". But she's not as cynical as I, but I found the whole thing cringe and a massive piece of political shite.

 

We had our first Corona related death today. Really hope we didn't close our borders too late. Vast majority of cases are still related to international travel.

[rocket_scientist]

In Roma, they had a spontaneous clap from the balconies for actual healthcare staff who had passed through. It was filmed, went viral and everybody went Awww. It was a beautiful thing.

 

Some lassie a couple of weeks later thought it was a good idea to do it here, proposed it, it went viral and Boris got filmed jolly japestering on his front door hours before mild symptoming, he and Piers Morgan describing it thereafter in the most maximum of gushing terms e.g. "deeply moving".

 

Piers is an absolute dick of course but has generally been very good this month in banging the government with fairly-earned contemptuous criticism.

 

Like everything, the original was best and the copies a weak imitation. The video in London which caught the boy having a wank was ironic. He obviously missed the memo although having curtains/blinds open to the extent that he could've been seen was pretty disturbing.

 

 

[tom_widdows]

10 mins from the nurses station? That's fucking awful, who were the architects for that, is that the super campus?  Not really followed much of the architecture back home for a while. Both architects and clients should hang their heads in shame.  Although having worked in mental health care design, i'm surprised there were allowed to do that? Usually processes in place to make sure it's all quite logical.

 

 

IBI Nightingale apparently.

 

Id like to think break rooms were provided every couple of floors in each quadrant but some genius decided those rooms could be better used for something else (which i understand is very common in existing hospitals).

However the design of the A & E Reception makes me doubt that.

 

As for processes and logic being in place, rather than gradually closing the various hospitals this campus was to replace over a couple of years, I understand they just shut those hospitals pretty much immediately forcing hundreds of patients and staff both into a completely new set up with little or no guidance or assistance, and into buildings which were still within the snagging/ defects liability period and fuck me if they havent found some spectacular defects in that place.

 

A common curse of how our wonderful UK works.

Qualifications based on paper (ie book learning and exams to get some letters after your name) all to often trump qualifications based on experience (the person who started in the stockroom and worked their way to the boardroom), and allocating the correct time to plan something, and/or backing down, admitting you made a mistake, and re-thinking things which arent working is seen as weak leadership so all to often change finally comes after years of ineffieciency/ failure rather than weeks or months by which time the damage is permanant.

[rocket_scientist]

Grampian doing well comparatively. So far.

 

https://www.travellingtabby.com/scotland-coronavirus-tracker/

[tom_widdows]

https://www.esquire.com/uk/life/a31915611/coronavirus-timeline/

[Kowalski]

Dominic Cummings now. They’ve done a great job of following their own advice!