Leicester facing full lockdown

[Ifailed]

According to the BBC www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leicestershire-53206506.
Anyone living there - how do you feel about this? Personally I would feel terribly trapped, almost like I was being punished, like when teacher's used to keep a whole class behind due to the behaviour of a minority.

@boys3 there have been a few garment factory owners in papers today stating that they closed when lockdown was announced end of March and stayed closed for the whole of April, into the beginning of May before deciding they'd lost too much money and needed to restart.

In May the Government started to push the message that they had never told factories to close, that they weren't on the banned list and if it was not possible to WFH then they should just open up and do what they could to make it safe.

The factory workers have also given statements that they were not furloughed and no sick pay so they went back even though it wasn't safe, that when they displayed symptoms they didn't test because they needed to work. If their factory closed down as some of them were, then they found work at another factory.

You also need to remember that testing was only available to keyworkers and those in hospital/care homes until end of May.

Guardian article explains this.www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/30/some-leicester-factories-stayed-open-and-forced-staff-to-come-in

[quote Babyroobs]Guardian article explains this.www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/30/some-leicester-factories-stayed-open-and-forced-staff-to-come-in[/quote]
Sorry link doesn't appear to work.

www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/jun/30/some-leicester-factories-stayed-open-and-forced-staff-to-come-in

@Babyroobs:

thanks for the link, copied and pasted successfully. The guardian story links into @TorysSuckRevokeArticle50's comment.

Cans and worms spring to mind. Only positive if younger and healthier make up significant proportion of cases they will hopefully not fall badly ill - although that won't have stopped onward spread of course.

What a mess!

I was appalled by this (posted on another thread earlier).... For weeks, the Government have been reporting the blue figures for Leicester, but keeping the red ones secret.

The same is true for every council area, and even senior Public Health officials within Councils only had access to the blue figures with these being used in leadership briefings giving a false sense of security and a feeling that Covid has all but been eradicated in some parts of the country!

This is what worries me. If they aren’t being truthful with the figures (and it appears not) then how can anyone make their own informed risk assessment? No one would know for sure when to be more careful and when the risk actually was minuscule. I have no trust in the Government at this point.

BASTARDS!!

So basically the government are covering up for whatever reasons that may be.

I just wish this bloody Virus would just F off to the other side of F & F off a bit more when it gets there 🤬

I just wish the Government would be more transparent and treat us all like adults. Maybe we would get a handle on the virus then!

These lies are only the tip of the iceberg the domino effect of lies to follow are frightening.

@For1dayonly

You know of more lies? Or you suspect?

I suspect.

That graph is worrying.

*So which immigrants are pp blaming for the Leicester outbreak
if only 2.5% of the population there are of Pakistani origin ?

Indians, who are 28% of the population ?

• nationally, they have a higher average income than whites, btw

White British who are 45% ?
Other whites 6% ?

Who else is there to blame ?*

I’m not trying to blame any ethnic group or immigrants, just pointing out that the collective Mumsnet handwringing over planes full of Pakistanis coming over, is based on ignorance (at best), rather than knowledge of the local area.

Wow the Guardian read is scary, How was lockdown ever going to work? Factories open, flights coming in, furlough fraud that will bankrupt the country. Why weren’t checks put in place?

People are asking who is to blame? Well if you drive through the part of the city with the surge (and it's only one small part) you will see tiny terraced houses with far more occupants than ideal, often multi generational or lots of migrant workers. The parks (even yesterday) have people doing organised sport, spectators gathered, huge picnics with hot food. Ethnically that area is mostly a mixture of Asian and Eastern European with a few Afro Caribbean plus obviously some white British, some recent immigrants but excluding the Eastern European's, most have been resident for 30+

Car ownership is low and the cluster is centred around shops that people walk to - I would look there for my smoking gun.

Further to my message last night, the Government are now publishing all cases data (pillar 1 and 2) on a weekly basis, with this published yesterday:

assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/896777/Weekly_COVID19_report_data_current.xlsx

This graph shows why Leicester was picked:

Sorry, here it is:

If you can’t read that, a clearer version can be found on Twitter @RP131

@Derbygerbil interesting read, Leicester outbreaks is huge compared to other cities, we need to be told why by the government.

Also women have high rate of infections but nearly half the deaths.

In May the Government started to push the message that they had never told factories to close, that they weren't on the banned list and if it was not possible to WFH then they should just open up and do what they could to make it safe.

They were never told "do what they could to make it safe". They were told to follow the guidelines, i.e. social distancing, hygiene, screens. PPE etc. If they couldn't make it safe, then they needed to stay closed.

@Kazzyhoward the guidance has never been that clear and uses the term 'wherever possible' at the end of each piece of guidance. The owners answer will be that it wasn't possible.

"You must maintain social distancing in the workplace wherever possible.
Where the social distancing guidelines cannot be followed in full in relation to a particular activity, businesses should consider whether that activity needs to continue for the business to operate, and, if so, take all the mitigating actions possible to reduce the risk of transmission between their staff.
Mitigating actions include:
• further increasing the frequency of hand washing and surface cleaning
• keeping the activity time involved as short as possible
• using screens or barriers to separate people from each other
• using back-to-back or side-to-side working (rather than face-to-face) whenever possible.
• reducing the number of people each person has contact with by using ‘fixed teams or partnering’ (so each person works with only a few others).
Social distancing applies to all parts of a business, not just the place where people spend most of their time, but also entrances and exits, break rooms and canteens and similar settings. These are often the most challenging areas to maintain social distancing and workers should be specifically reminded.

Leicester outbreaks is huge compared to other cities, we need to be told why by the government.

Looks to be housing density - communities where more than average numbers of people live together, particularly where 3 or more generations live in the same house, i.e. children, parents, grandparents and maybe even great grandparents. Communities where the wider family live close by, i.e. uncles/brothers/cousins living in the same street, hence far more movement between homes than modern average families who tend to spread out more into different areas.

A few other cities with similar demographics heading the same way - Bradford, Barnsley, Rochdale, all with more than 50 cases per 100,00 population (Leicester is 140 cases per 100,000). The average is 10 cases for 100,000!

47 local authorty areas above 10 but double that (103) local authority areas below 10.