How is the Tory government doing?

wanderlust wrote:
I agree with most of your earlier post and perhaps unintentionally you make a good case for stopping all travel abroad however we were discussing the arbitrariness of applying quarantine to the whole of Spain regardless of the situation in the main holiday resorts or elsewhere in Europe or the world for that matter.

I suspect the worry is more to do with applying quarantine to the beach holiday resorts (which aren't showing significant cases for now) and used the excuse as mainland Spain which is (or at least one big part of it is).  Even if the resorts are 'British only' you still can have people from Blackburn, Oldham, even Leicester I would imagine (are residents from there allowed to go on holiday as I don't think the partial lockdown they are under prevents it - although I may be wrong) partying with kids from all over the country where there are currently no significant infection problems.

wanderlust wrote:If as you say, they are having a second wave in Germany why didn't the government apply the same criteria to Germany?

I would guess because not millions are going to Germany in the first place, or to piss it up with loads of others on the beaches.

It would surprise me that by the time Octoberfest comes around that bans are in place to prevent travel because of the same reasoning.

wanderlust wrote:By applying a blanket ruling, doesn't that open the door for other countries applying the same for travel to the whole of the UK, purely based on the situation in Blackburn? 

Yes it could but I doubt many would wish to as they all have their own airlines and travel industry to worry about and I don't think they would currently see any benefit in not travelling here as the tourist spots are mainly London and the cultural stuff down in the South East or Edinburgh/Scotland, neither of which constitutes a big risk AND isn't pissing it up with loads of others (which as I say I suspect the concern is all about for us in respect of the Spain travel ban.

wanderlust wrote:Risky game to play as tourism contributes £67 billion to UK GDP but moreover with the decline of industry the tourism sector was projected in 2019 to grow to £257 billion by 2025 i.e. 10% of GDP so we could really suffer is other Governments follow suit.

And I agree that a lot of idiots won't self-isolate - but the Government won't enforce it.
If covid is going to continue to flare up in hotspots does that mean that we can look forward to quarantine being recommended - and without enforcement it really isn't anything more than a recommendation - by Governments around the world on a regular basis?

Not sure what you are saying in your last paragraph?

The Government has said only essential travel to Spain, which means you can't get travel insurance to go there and the travel industry cheap flights are no longer flying there other than to return people already out there.

I think the idea is simply to stop the idiots going on cheapo holidays in the Sun, catching the virus, returning and not isolating and spreading it around more widely than just the more heavily Asian (there I've said it - not because I'm racist but because it is a fact as the daily positive cases show) populated towns and cities of the north and midland were it is currently present and being dealt with.

From the Spanish perspective - and they know British tourists well - they seem content to let Brits behave like twats as long as the money comes in. They are confident they can manage the risks because their control measures are far more targeted than ours. 

By comparison, our Government's control measures are absolute bollocks - failing track and trace, zero enforcement and what is tantamount to an appeal to the British public to consider others - effectively putting control in the hands of the idiots. And we know British people are idiots which is why we have packed pubs and beaches every time the sun comes out.

People from Blackburn - or Aragon for that matter - are free to travel to Britain's tourist destinations and on arrival will only be subject to the marginal controls our government "recommends" and presumably that is why we have the worst record in Europe.

So the point I'm making is that if you go down the road of quarantining returnees from an entire country based on a localised outbreak as our lot have - which will reduce travel to that country - there is surely a much stronger case for other countries to quarantine returnees from the UK.

And given that we are highly and increasingly dependent on tourism it looks very much like a potential own goal.

What the Government should be focussing on is running a tight ship here in conjunction with a targeted and efficient international travel policy in order to restore confidence and minimise the threat to both our own citizens and foreign visitors.

Natasha Whittam wrote:

Utter waffle.

It was swift and decisive, the chances of people getting the virus in Spain and spreading it round the UK have been reduced. AND THAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT THING.

"Decisive" and unfair re a blanket ban, as the Spanish leader declared. The islands could and should have been treated differently.

Good call on places affected on the mainland but the Tories had the data before the Saturday, yet failed to alert the thousands of UK passngers in time, causing mayhem, distress and financial hardship. Most discovered the truth mid-flight. I wonder what Grant Schapps thinks!

wanderlust wrote:From the Spanish perspective - and they know British tourists well - they seem content to let Brits behave like twats as long as the money comes in. They are confident they can manage the risks because their control measures are far more targeted than ours. 

By comparison, our Government's control measures are absolute bollocks - failing track and trace, zero enforcement and what is tantamount to an appeal to the British public to consider others - effectively putting control in the hands of the idiots. And we know British people are idiots which is why we have packed pubs and beaches every time the sun comes out.

People from Blackburn - or Aragon for that matter - are free to travel to Britain's tourist destinations and on arrival will only be subject to the marginal controls our government "recommends" and presumably that is why we have the worst record in Europe.

So the point I'm making is that if you go down the road of quarantining returnees from an entire country based on a localised outbreak as our lot have - which will reduce travel to that country - there is surely a much stronger case for other countries to quarantine returnees from the UK.

And given that we are highly and increasingly dependent on tourism it looks very much like a potential own goal.

What the Government should be focussing on is running a tight ship here in conjunction with a targeted and efficient international travel policy in order to restore confidence and minimise the threat to both our own citizens and foreign visitors.

Eh?

Tourism to the UK is effectively already dead I would suspect for this season, there's no access from America and not much is happen in London, theatres are closed, you have to book ahead for all the museums and Tower of London type stuff and there's no sport you can go and watch, or shops you can go in without queueing.

Spain only wants us to go there because we spend so much.  I'm sure they do a good job at the hotels, bars and beaches but the problem isn't them it is all our dickheads getting high and pissed and ignoring completely any semblance of social distancing or wearing masks.

Nobody is going to stop coming here unless the virus ramps up in England/the UK again, it's a simple as that really.

And another thing you don't seem to get is that it isn't about having the 'worst' record.  We can't do anything about that as it is gone, history, what we have to concentrate on is the here and now.

In the last week Spain as had more new cases than us - and rising and Germany the same - and rising!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-53566880

They might have to go into lockdown again if they aren't careful, we, for now, actually seem to be in a better place than them for a change.

The game is to stay in front of what's happening now, daily, the best we can than judge us on what as already happened.

Christ I'm certainly not wishing ill on other country's but it might be by using a football analogy that we went a goal down in the first five minutes but over the course of the game (the length of the pandemic) that the other team conceded an own goal (new cases grow quickly and they have to go back into lockdown) and we ended up about equal in the end.

Of course we might end up losing 7-0 but as it stands now we might be a goal down but we currently are the best team on the pitch for the moment - and that's what we have to concentrate our energies on and not the shambolic defending that gave away the goal.

okocha wrote:"Decisive" and unfair re a blanket ban, as the Spanish leader declared. The islands could and should have been treated differently.

Good call on places affected on the mainland but the Tories had the data before the Saturday, yet failed to alert the thousands of UK passngers in time, causing mayhem, distress and financial hardship. Most discovered the truth mid-flight. I wonder what Grant Schapps thinks!

While it's unfortunate that some holidaymakers have been caught up in this, this is a PANDEMIC, everyone who boarded a plane knew what was going on around the world. It's the risk they took.

You are the one who had a pop at the government about mixed messages, but now you've got a clear instruction with a clear message you're not happy.

Nat, I don't dispute that those who risked taking a foreign holiday at this time(including one of Boris' own ministers!) were daft, but I'm correctly pointing out that our government could have been more discriminating as to which parts of Spain required avoidance. It would have been easy to exempt the Balearics, for example, as the Spanish minister requested.

 Of course the message was clear but heavy handed and could have been transmitted more quickly in order to save our tourists much grief by getting the message out before they had set foot on the planes. (presuming that you feel that they deserved to be warned!)

Just to annoy Nat a bit more: Try to defend this:

From the BBC website....

Care homes in England were "thrown to the wolves" at the height of the coronavirus outbreak, a cross-party committee of MPs has concluded. Their damning report calls the government's approach "slow, inconsistent and at times negligent". In particular, it says it was an "appalling" and "reckless" error to allow thousands of patients to be discharged from hospitals into homes without being tested in order to free up beds on wards. About 25,000 patients were discharged between mid-March and mid-April before the government updated its policy to require testing. That update came, the report says, more than two weeks after the medical community was aware of asymptomatic transmission of the virus.  At least 20,000 care home residents in England and Wales have died from Covid-19 since the start of the outbreak. BBC Reality Check has looked closely at what advice homes were given, and when. The Department of Health said it had been "working closely with care homes"

I'm not Nat but what other choice was there?

I keep trying to explain you can only do the best with what you've got at that time.

Covid was here, the priority was bed space at the NHS, there were always a large number of old people from care homes who in effect had been sent there to die and there was no ability at the time to test anything like the numbers of people to see if they were infected let alone use those tests on people who were only weeks away from dying anyway.

It was a choice of the lesser of two evils at the time to save the lives of those taken ill in the community and had beds to go to and had years of life in front of them if they were treated.


It was interesting to note one comment Chris Witty said only a few weeks ago when he said something like 'one of the mistakes we made was not knowing how care homes worked, namely that staff were often low paid, needed to work and were not paid sick pay, resulting in them working shifts in a number of care homes at the same time (I assume that inferred agency workers).  What he was saying was that carers were picking up the virus, getting sick but not only still going into work but also working at the same time in other care homes and spreading the virus (and infecting other agency staff who were themselves working in yet other care homes).  There were of course many care home workers catching the virus and showing no symptoms at all doing exactly the same.

This is what he said -

“This across the board this has been a major problem. Some of this I think comes from the fact we had not recognised what are in retrospect obvious but were not obvious points early on.

“For example, the fact that people working in multiple homes, people who were not paid sick leave – that is a clear risk. These were major risks in social care settings. There are a lot of things we have learnt that we can now do a lot better in social care and I don’t think any of us will look back at what happened in social care and say the ideal advice".

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/coronavirus-care-homes-chris-whitty-boris-johnson-a9630291.html

If you remember Johnson got himself in trouble a few weeks back when he made some reference about how care homes themselves added to the problems of deaths there which looking back now and since hearing Whitty's comment makes sense now.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53315178

Yes I know my first link seems to strongly imply Whitty was having a go at Johnson in the second link but take away the political spin that the paper has added ie -

Professor Chris Whitty has suggested care homes are not to blame for the severe problems they faced with coronavirus in an apparent swipe at Boris Johnson remarks on the issue.

...and Johnson politically want to shift some of the blame away from the government ie -

Boris Johnson has been accused of trying to shift the blame for coronavirus deaths onto care homes.

...and I think the two of them are talking about the same thing namely they thought they were doing the right thing sending the old back to the care homes to die in order to free up bed space in hospitals but never knew/had any idea that care home workers (agency staff) would in effect be the conduit of spreading the virus from care home to care home and wreak such devastation and loss of lives in that sector.

Use the Nightingale hospitals which have been lying virtually empty?

okocha wrote:Use the Nightingale hospitals which have been lying virtually empty?

The Nightingale hospitals weren't even built at the time the old folk were being sent back to the care homes to create the expected bed spaces needed to deal with the virus and the Nightingales were built because even with the enhanced bed space at the hospitals after the oldies had gone there was still deemed vastly insufficient bed spaces to deal with the expected numbers of Covid patients needing treatment.

"Deemed" wrongly! The new hospitals were built incredibly quickly so could have been built and used in a hurry  to care for old folk just as easily as for covid victims..... at the time when the policy was to dump them from NHS hospitals without testing. 

In practice what happened confirmed that covid patients were "deemed" more important than the elderly and vulnerable. Try telling that to the relatives and carers of those who died in care homes ....

Read what care home staff said at the time. The people at the sharp end weren't even consulted, just as has been the case with so many decisions made by this government....e;g. the travel industry last weekend.

I don't understand why you and Nat continue to try to defend the cold-hearted, unapologetic actions of this blundering government.

okocha wrote:"Deemed" wrongly! The new hospitals were built incredibly quickly so could have been built and used in a hurry  to care for old folk just as easily as for covid victims..... at the time when the policy was to dump them from NHS hospitals without testing. 

In practice what happened confirmed that covid patients were "deemed" more important than the elderly and vulnerable. Try telling that to the relatives and carers of those who died in care homes ....

Read what care home staff said at the time. The people at the sharp end weren't even consulted, just as has been the case with so many decisions made by this government....e;g. the travel industry last weekend.

I don't understand why you and Nat continue to try to defend the cold-hearted, unapologetic actions of this blundering government.

Eh?

okocha wrote:About 25,000 patients were discharged between mid-March and mid-April 

London Nightingale was the only one opened during that time (3rd April) and as I've said they were build for overspill Covid patients after the bed spaces freed up from sending the old folk (many terminally ill already) back to the care homes.

Italy's health service been overwhelmed by the virus - see the link below from mid March, hence why the government did what they did at the time in freeing up hospital bed space and building Nightingale hospitals as fast as they possibly could.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-51980665/inside-an-italian-icu

This was a 'war' situation a tsunami was arriving imminently and action HAD to be taken immediately.

There was no time to consult anybody and it became a choice of who to save and who to let die - read this link

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20200428-coronavirus-how-doctors-choose-who-lives-and-dies

I'm under no illusions that at my age and state of health I would be one of those not given treatment if there were two patients with Covid and only one could be saved - but what else can you do about it, I've lived my life, isn't it better that someone had the chance to live theirs? (Not that I'd be happy doing it though but I'd have no say in the decision).

This is really frightening stuff and it isn't a thread to be playing games on.

No one wants to die but you've really got to save as many lives as you can and that meant saving the NHS for everyone even if it meant sacrificing the old and end of lifers like me to do so.

There's a saying about sometimes that you simply have to cut off a hand to save the body, this was one of those times.

Sluffy wrote:I'm not Nat but what other choice was there?

Exactly what the report says - test them before they are stuck back in a concentration of highly vulnerable people.

wanderlust wrote:

Sluffy wrote:I'm not Nat but what other choice was there?

Exactly what the report says - test them before they are stuck back in a concentration of highly vulnerable people.

Did you not bother reading anymore than my opening line of the post because if you had you would have seen this -

Sluffy wrote:I'm not Nat but what other choice was there?

I keep trying to explain you can only do the best with what you've got at that time.

Covid was here, the priority was bed space at the NHS, there were always a large number of old people from care homes who in effect had been sent there to die and there was no ability at the time to test anything like the numbers of people to see if they were infected let alone use those tests on people who were only weeks away from dying anyway.

You can't carry out tests if you haven't got sufficient stuff to do the tests with in the first place can you?

QED

Sluffy wrote:

Did you not bother reading anymore than my opening line of the post because if you had you would have seen this -



You can't carry out tests if you haven't got sufficient stuff to do the tests with in the first place can you?

QED

So if you don't know whether or not the old biddies have contracted Covid or not, is better to:
a) keep them in hospital where you know they'll be relatively safe until you do know?
b) move them to a safe "holding environment" until they can be tested?
or c) move them into a care home with 100% vulnerable people?

Well, Sluffy, if you genuinely believe what you write, I have nothing more to say to you.

wanderlust wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

Did you not bother reading anymore than my opening line of the post because if you had you would have seen this -



You can't carry out tests if you haven't got sufficient stuff to do the tests with in the first place can you?

QED

So if you don't know whether or not the old biddies have contracted Covid or not, is better to:
a) keep them in hospital where you know they'll be relatively safe until you do know?
b) move them to a safe "holding environment" until they can be tested?
or c) move them into a care home with 100% vulnerable people?

Eh?

a) - the beds are urgently needed for Covid patients, so they can't stay in hospital.
b) - what safe holding environment - the Nightingales weren't built (and they were for Covid anyway) where is this safe holding environment you talk about which has 25,000 beds and support staff that are needed?
c) - where else was there to go - their beds and support staff were still there at their care homes (they hadn't been discharged from there) and if it wasn't for the cross contamination from patient to patient, care home to care homes by asymptomatic carers/agency staff (no ones blaming them by the way as no one knew at that time that the virus worked in that way), then the bulk of the problem in care homes simply would not have occurred.

Stop think political and start thinking reality.

What would Corbyn have done - exactly the same because it was the right thing to do based on everything that was known at that time - it's as simple as that.

okocha wrote:Well, Sluffy, if you genuinely believe what you write, I have nothing more to say to you.

At least that will stop some of the unnecessary and damaging games that have been going on, on here.

Sluffy wrote:

Eh?

a) - the beds are urgently needed for Covid patients, so they can't stay in hospital.
b) - what safe holding environment - the Nightingales weren't built (and they were for Covid anyway) where is this safe holding environment you talk about which has 25,000 beds and support staff that are needed?
c) - where else was there to go - their beds and support staff were still there at their care homes (they hadn't been discharged from there) and if it wasn't for the cross contamination from patient to patient, care home to care homes by asymptomatic carers/agency staff (no ones blaming them by the way as no one knew at that time that the virus worked in that way), then the bulk of the problem in care homes simply would not have occurred.

Stop think political and start thinking reality.

What would Corbyn have done - exactly the same because it was the right thing to do based on everything that was known at that time - it's as simple as that.

Eh? (sic)

I wouldn't be stupid enough to speculate what Corbyn or anyone else would have done (although I suspect it would have been more humane) but I do know that prior to the 15th April, the Government instructed care homes to test returning patients on arrival - without the care homes necessarily having the required kit - and care homes were instructed to isolate those testing positive in those care homes - regardless of whether they had the staff or kit to do it. see here.

 
The Government had actively cleared out NHS facilities and moved the responsibility for both testing and isolation of the elderly to the ill-equipped private sector.

If the beds were being freed up for covid patients why did the government not instruct the care homes to ship those testing positive straight back to hospital?

Make no mistake - the government instructed care homes to keep known covid patients in care homes regardless of their capacity and not to bring them to hospital.

Point is that where possible prior to April 15th , they actually were tested (by the care homes) and the government itself claims many were. But the same government also denied hospital care to those who did test positive  - and simultaneously put hundreds of thousands of other people at risk as the care home death rates confirm.

IMO they are murdering bastards but that's just my opinion as opposed to the cold hard facts above.

wanderlust wrote:

Sluffy wrote:

Eh?

a) - the beds are urgently needed for Covid patients, so they can't stay in hospital.
b) - what safe holding environment - the Nightingales weren't built (and they were for Covid anyway) where is this safe holding environment you talk about which has 25,000 beds and support staff that are needed?
c) - where else was there to go - their beds and support staff were still there at their care homes (they hadn't been discharged from there) and if it wasn't for the cross contamination from patient to patient, care home to care homes by asymptomatic carers/agency staff (no ones blaming them by the way as no one knew at that time that the virus worked in that way), then the bulk of the problem in care homes simply would not have occurred.

Stop think political and start thinking reality.

What would Corbyn have done - exactly the same because it was the right thing to do based on everything that was known at that time - it's as simple as that.

Eh? (sic)

I wouldn't be stupid enough to speculate what Corbyn or anyone else would have done (although I suspect it would have been more humane) but I do know that prior to the 15th April, the Government instructed care homes to test returning patients on arrival - without the care homes necessarily having the required kit - and care homes were instructed to isolate those testing positive in those care homes - regardless of whether they had the staff or kit to do it. see here.

 
The Government had actively cleared out NHS facilities and moved the responsibility for both testing and isolation of the elderly to the ill-equipped private sector.

If the beds were being freed up for covid patients why did the government not instruct the care homes to ship those testing positive straight back to hospital?

Make no mistake - the government instructed care homes to keep known covid patients in care homes regardless of their capacity and not to bring them to hospital.

Point is that where possible prior to April 15th , they actually were tested (by the care homes) and the government itself claims many were. But the same government also denied hospital care to those who did test positive  - and simultaneously put hundreds of thousands of other people at risk as the care home death rates confirm.

IMO they are murdering bastards but that's just my opinion as opposed to the cold hard facts above.

Thank you for the link but did you actually read it before posting - I don't think you did!

What it says is that no tests were being done by the hospitals prior to returning patients to care homes and that care homes were not required to test 'new admissions'.

It doesn't say they HAD to accept Covid positive cases though - indeed this is a quote from your own link -

He told Sky News: "I know that in my particular area, all of the care homeowners have been asked if they will take COVID-19 positive patients.

"And I know that absolutely, everybody said NO, and there would be a very good reason for that. That would be tantamount to importing death into care homes.

This is what the The Public Accounts Committee reported yesterday about it -

The decision to allow hospital patients in England to be discharged to care homes without Covid-19 tests at the start of the pandemic has been described as "reckless" by MPs.

The Public Accounts Committee said there had clearly been an "emerging problem" with official advice before it was "belatedly" changed in April.

It accused ministers of being slow to support social care during the crisis.

The government said it had been "working closely" with the sector.

The committee said around 25,000 patients were discharged into care homes in England between mid-March and mid-April to free up hospital beds.

After initially saying a negative result was not required before discharging patients, the government later said on 15 April all patients would be tested.

In a highly critical report, the cross-party committee said the initial decision to allow untested patients into care homes was an "appalling error".

Speaking to the BBC, committee chair Meg Hillier acknowledged there had been limited data about the virus when early decisions were made; however she said there was also a long-term lack of understanding at the health department about how the care sector works.

"The fact that there are people on low pay not taking sick leave, moving from home to home were things that were risk elements - if you had better understanding of any impact of any disease on a care home you would have understood the implications," she said.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-53574265

This is exactly what I said yesterday and as you clearly didn't believe me then maybe you will now believe those that have scrutinised the records and investigated what actually went on namely when the decisions were originally being made there was 'limited data' about the virus and a lack of understanding how the care sector worked - ie agency staff moving frequently from care home to care home.

It's there in black and white by those who have scrutinised what actually happened and why.

As for your point about sending positive cases back to hospitals maybe they did after the government advice changed on the 15th April, I'm not aware care homes were prohibited from doing so?

Mistakes were made, I don't think anybody is saying differently but when the decisions were first made they were based on what knowledge was known about the virus at the time, the urgent need to save the NHS from the expect tsunami of cases and the lack of knowledge about the care home working practices of employment of agency staff working in multiple care homes at the same time.

The cold hard facts don't support your view that the government are murdering bastards but I strongly imagine your wellspring of knowledge 'social media' most certainly does!


Oh, and by the way,

Eh
/eɪ/
exclamation
used to represent a sound made in speech, especially one used to express inquiry, surprise, or to elicit agreement.
"‘Eh? What's this?’"

https://www.google.co.uk/search?ei=Li4iX-uMFPiU1fAPu4uCqAQ&q=eh+definition&oq=eh&gs_lcp=CgZwc3ktYWIQARgAMgQIABBDMgoIABCxAxCDARBDMgUIABCxAzIHCAAQsQMQQzIICAAQsQMQgwEyBQgAELEDMgIIADIICAAQsQMQgwEyCAguEMcBEKMCMggIABCxAxCDAToHCAAQRxCwAzoFCAAQkQJQptgHWKreB2Dy8QdoAXAAeACAAUqIAZIBkgEBMpgBAKABAaoBB2d3cy13aXrAAQE&sclient=psy-ab