It seems like the U.K. may have a better Covid strategy after all

[Warhertisuff]

... at least since the emergence of Delta. I generally supported the restrictions before last summer, but thought that opening up in July was sensible. It's too early to tell
for sure, but at the moment it looks like the right call.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-59378849

@ancientgran Sorry if I wasn't clear - they did offer it (via WHO) to other countries but the decision (by WHO, not the UK) was that by the time it had been shipped and then gone through the receiving country's safety checks it would be out of date. It would have been quite extraordinary for any other decision to be reached.

I am not trying hard to justify it - if you read back I originally agreed with you that it was awful that it was thrown away. Now that I've done my own reading (and not just stopped at the headline) I can see that is was entirely reasonable. I am just tired of people parroting the nonsense the lazy journalists sprout without investigating further or applying critical thinking.

If you absolutely must blame someone for not injecting people with expired vaccine, blame WHO.

I did not say wasting vaccines reflects well on the UK. What reflects well on the UK is (a) having a very organised roll out programme; (b) responding immediately to changes in medical advice; (c) trying to do the right thing by giving it to other countries to use; (d) following WHO advice to rather bin it. Which bit of that do you find so terrible? I'm genuinely interested to know. I really do think we've done enough wrong that we don't need to make up fictitious things too.

This is more interesting (good!) info:

Oliver Johnson @BristOliver
Frequently asked and perfectly reasonable question: hospitalizations are falling but cases are rising. Couldn't this just be lag, and don't we expect to see hospitalizations start going up soon? My answer: no, at least not for a while.

Cases have been going up for 14 days now. People still argue about lag from cases to hospitalizations. SAGE in June used 10 days (as did I at the time, for a quick and dirty sum), but IMO this is conservative - it may well be 7 days or even less.

^And a week is less than 14 days, so by rights, the case rise should be feeding into an admissions rise, but it clearly isn't. But a quick look at age profiles explains that. From @alexselby1770
's graph, we know cases in the over 65s have been falling for a month, and have halved.^

Quite by chance Johnson's narcissism and inability to make decisions seems to be shielding us from the insanity that is mainland Europe.
Mind you, after the changes in leadership in Romania and Austria which appear to have led to the current lockdown madness, I suspect he'll be moved aside in favour of someone more openly totalitarian 😂

[quote RedToothBrush]This is more interesting (good!) info:

Oliver Johnson @BristOliver
Frequently asked and perfectly reasonable question: hospitalizations are falling but cases are rising. Couldn't this just be lag, and don't we expect to see hospitalizations start going up soon? My answer: no, at least not for a while.

Cases have been going up for 14 days now. People still argue about lag from cases to hospitalizations. SAGE in June used 10 days (as did I at the time, for a quick and dirty sum), but IMO this is conservative - it may well be 7 days or even less.

^And a week is less than 14 days, so by rights, the case rise should be feeding into an admissions rise, but it clearly isn't. But a quick look at age profiles explains that. From @alexselby1770
's graph, we know cases in the over 65s have been falling for a month, and have halved.^

@Ecina

Quite by chance Johnson's narcissism and inability to make decisions seems to be shielding us from the insanity that is mainland Europe. Mind you, after the changes in leadership in Romania and Austria which appear to have led to the current lockdown madness, I suspect he'll be moved aside in favour of someone more openly totalitarian 😂

Yes, he's a libertarian at heart.

Not to say I'm a fan, but I would honestly prefer him at the moment to the likes of Gove.

Or Starmer actually.

[quote Patrickthefox]@ancientgran Sorry if I wasn't clear - they did offer it (via WHO) to other countries but the decision (by WHO, not the UK) was that by the time it had been shipped and then gone through the receiving country's safety checks it would be out of date. It would have been quite extraordinary for any other decision to be reached.

I am not trying hard to justify it - if you read back I originally agreed with you that it was awful that it was thrown away. Now that I've done my own reading (and not just stopped at the headline) I can see that is was entirely reasonable. I am just tired of people parroting the nonsense the lazy journalists sprout without investigating further or applying critical thinking.

If you absolutely must blame someone for not injecting people with expired vaccine, blame WHO.

I did not say wasting vaccines reflects well on the UK. What reflects well on the UK is (a) having a very organised roll out programme; (b) responding immediately to changes in medical advice; (c) trying to do the right thing by giving it to other countries to use; (d) following WHO advice to rather bin it. Which bit of that do you find so terrible? I'm genuinely interested to know. I really do think we've done enough wrong that we don't need to make up fictitious things too.[/quote]
I didn't stop at the headline either. You are very patronising.

I did know that, I just think they could have asked other countries directly. I daresay the WHO have got a bit on at the moment so nothing wrong with being proactive. Going directly might just have speeded things up don't you think?

I'm not sure what a list of other places wasting other vaccines was if it wasn't trying to justify why we wasted 600,000 doses.

The terrible bit is the waste of vaccines. Maybe they should have planned better. The waste was real nothing fictitious about that.

@Ecina

Quite by chance Johnson's narcissism and inability to make decisions seems to be shielding us from the insanity that is mainland Europe. Mind you, after the changes in leadership in Romania and Austria which appear to have led to the current lockdown madness, I suspect he'll be moved aside in favour of someone more openly totalitarian 😂

I suppose you can see the difference in approach as Germany sees Merkel go

We all know the way the get rid of covid and similar viruses.

Everybody home for a year.

No country can do this because the economic and mental price is too high.

Unless someone comes along and states what their country is ready to sacrifice in terms of mental health and wealth and for how long we don't have a systematic way to assess how well or badly anyone is doing.

@ancientgran I'm sorry if I sounded patronising. I've read my post back and yes, maybe I didn't have the best tone.

My original post pointing out what other countries had done was to illustrate there are often reasons for "waste" which are legitimate. And I do think we should look at what other countries are doing to see if we can learn from them.

I don't think we'll agree (I think going to different countries would have been a massive waste of time and would have had serious political consequences - Gavi, Covax and WHO are perfectly appropriate and are after all responsible for coordinating a global response. I think if the UK had offered 600,000 for example to Country A, there would have been lots of criticism that they didn't offer it to Country B, C or D).

Anyway, we both agree that it is a very sad situation when vaccine goes to waste although we obviously have different views as to whether or not the UK could have avoided it. And as I say, I'm sorry if I sounded offensive or patronising - that wasn't my intention.

Yes, he's a libertarian at heart

Oh yeah, sure he is - have you seen the draconian anti-protest laws he is pushing through this week?

Johnson is not a libertarian, he just calls himself one and the hard of thinking parrot it back.

@ExceptionalAssurance

It was fascinating how long that went on. Well into 2021 there were people saying that covid would be stamped out if we all just followed the rules.

There is something to the idea that we get the politics we deserve. If we can't hear difficult things we shouldn't be shocked when we get lies and dissimulation.

Hear, hear @LobsterNapkin. As far as I can work out, most politicians in the public eye just try to calculate what the constituencies want to hear and parrot back the messages. The older I get, the more skeptical I become.

@Sunshinegirl82 so the government potentially gets 26% in NIC from every person employed who isn't self employed ? Thats just NIC not tax, makes you wonder what they are doing with it all !

@herecomesthsun

www.frenchentree.com/living-in-france/healthcare/doctors-fees-to-rise-in-2017/

France has a system of paying a fee for a consultation (I don't know whether there are any exemptions.

According to statista.com, the % of GDP for health in France was 11.1% in 2019

By contrast

"Public healthcare spending as share of GDP in the United Kingdom (UK) 2000-2020. In 2020, the annual spending on public healthcare in the United Kingdom (UK) accounted for 10.43 percent of GDP."

and

"In 2020, Germany spent 12.5 percent of its GDP on healthcare. The total expenditure on health as a percentage of GDP has increased since 1980."

In the UK, we don't vote for parties that aim to spend more on health and education,, we vote for parties that say they will cut taxes (and probably therefore aim to spend less on health).

In France, most health care is covered at 65% by what would be the equivalent of the NHS, but EVERYWHERE, you have 100% choice of who you see, which private clinic you go... At some exceptions : pregnancy, disability, chronic conditions... that are 100% covered by CPAM (=NHS)

The thing is, to cover the 35% left, you have very affordable private insurances (about 20-30€ a month at age 20, could climb up to 80€ for a full coverage of all possible extras on your old age) and if you are working, you benefit from your employer discount, so you will get the best insurance possible (that will give you 800€ for your child birth for example) at 40€ per month for an adult.

If you are on benefits, then you will be entitled to Universal Health Care that covers those 35% for you.

So in France you can be on the equivalent of Universal Credit and go manage your health for free in the best clinics in the world if that's your wish.

Also in France many specialists are accessible without a referral.
They used to be all accessible without referrals up until like 15yrs ago.
Even though that you can usually have a nice specialist that will tick the box "referred" even if you were not if your request was reasonable.
And if you were not referred? you will just pay a part of the consultation, not fully.

Also, you have the choice of the specialist, you are the one to make the appointment, and only on the consultation do you need to prove the referral, which means... you can take your appointment at the specialist before the GP even agrees to refer you. Which means you can see them extremely quickly.

When I was a child I didn't have just a GP, I had an oto-rhyno-laryngologist we were going to when we had any ear or respiratory infection, same for the ophtalmologist (in France you have a check every year by an ophtalmologist, only ophtalmologists can prescribe glasses) or the psychiatrist, you do not need any referral...

Now it's less usual to see directly specialists but still quite normal.

I don't think anyone outside of France imagine how much here the CPAM covers. I have a back issues (discopathy), I was prescribed a medical memory foam mattress (double bed) and I didn't pay a penny, delivery included.

That's why French people living in the UK really complain a lot of the NHS, because it is by no mean the same level of care and full coverage, as the French system tends to be more preventive (giving the right bedding to someone with a bad back, physio and orthetics prevent them from having it deteriorated and them abusing painkillers, or down the line needing surgery and on and on) and yet more flexible.

I miss my French GP like no one in France.

@ExceptionalAssurance

I remember people complaining on here because friends and relatives of GPs had got early vaccination through doses that would otherwise have gone to waste because of the storage rules.

In France you had one of our doctor appointments service online on which the unused doses of each injection center were advertised and people of any age could go and get vaccinated so it would not go to waste. It was also encouraged for people to go queue at the end of vaccination sessions to make sure each vial was used. I know a few young people who got vaccinated early this way.

@rrhuth

Yes, he's a libertarian at heart

Oh yeah, sure he is - have you seen the draconian anti-protest laws he is pushing through this week?

Johnson is not a libertarian, he just calls himself one and the hard of thinking parrot it back.

Well you're a charmer aren't you?

You remind me of the dearly departed Nanny. In fact....🤔🤔🤔

SemynonA

The French health care system is by far the best I have ever experienced.

I have experience of the UK and Canadian systems as well. They don't come close.

I reserve judgement, the tables can turn easily with this virus

[quote frumpety]@Sunshinegirl82 so the government potentially gets 26% in NIC from every person employed who isn't self employed ? Thats just NIC not tax, makes you wonder what they are doing with it all ![/quote]
Only from the earnings between the lower and upper threshold. No NIC is paid on the first, circa £9k, and much less on the earnings over circa £50k (basically all the eer's nic and reduced to just 2% for ees nic). So lots of part timers and those on minimum wage contribute very little NIC.

And there's no NIC on benefits (even taxable benefits are exempt), pensions, interest, investment income, foreign income, etc.

It's basically mainly a "tax" on average earning workers.

As to what govts do with all the tax/nic money, that's easy. A huge amount is lost to waste and inefficiency.

But in Germany that 14% goes directly into a health insurance pot. Here in the UK it also goes towards state pensions, statutory maternity and sick pay, and some other employment benefits, so seems much more thinly spread. It isn't just paying for healthcare.

I'm just wondering when the vaccine passport will be introduced in the UK.

There will need to be some sort of justification for the U turn.

I'm curious about what that will be and how they'll frame it .

They will possibly introduce a few individual rules that will amount to the same thing while claiming to have kept their word on this.

I'm just wondering when the vaccine passport will be introduced in the UK

It already is in the UK - in Scotland, Wales and soon in NI too.

I'm just wondering when the vaccine passport will be introduced in the UK.

The sooner the better.

@ktel1

I'm just wondering when the vaccine passport will be introduced in the UK.

There will need to be some sort of justification for the U turn.

I'm curious about what that will be and how they'll frame it .

They will possibly introduce a few individual rules that will amount to the same thing while claiming to have kept their word on this.

Have they said they definitely won’t? They said not yet iirc

Not that I think they will just that there’s no keeping word etc

Also parts of U.K. have it already