Westministenders: A Year of Johnson

[RedToothBrush]

So having given the benefit of the doubt...

... whats your reflections?

Good (and yes do have some thoughts on the positive - challenge yourself on this one as its important) and the bad (and yes this is the easy bit but keep it within reason)?

DGR
Interesting that they exclude MS because I know of polio survivors who were covered by employers private health and then kept the policy going when they retired

"COVID is still killing people but in such low numbers that most young people do not know people who have been affected."

this was from Listening and I thought it was a really interesting comment. I agree in so far as number of deaths, i.e. lots of young people won't know somebody who has died from COVID .However, just about every young person will know someone who has been affected surely?

Since everyone over 70 has been asked to adopt extra caution for months and millions have been asked to shield. Surely most young people know at least one person in that age group?

Sympathies to those of you in "extra measures" areas. I know what its like being as I live near enough to Leicester to be included in the local lockdown in the area.

However, just about every young person will know someone who has been affected surely?
Nope.
Look how low the case load has been in many rural areas and provincial towns
I know two people who have definitely had it (including testing)
but none of my kids friends or their families have had it

Affected by the lockdown
and affected by COVID are not the same thing

I totally understand that people need to take steps to protect their mental health. I have always been someone who walked miles and sought out people but I am now finding both incredibly difficult. I could never imagine worrying about developing agoraphobia, or social anxiety, but I am now. My neighbour has always suffered from it so I do know how hard it can be. and since lockdown they have hardly been in their garden. Their partner is doing their best to make outside feel safe and inviting, and family have visited but so far it is still very rare they go out there.

I have not been able to walk for three months as they closed our parks to cars and everybody got a bike, or went running, and all our paths have been packed out. It made the national media. The Pedestrian gates into the park are a clear infection risk, packed with cyclists battling to get their bikes through the kissing gate and every local path is also packed with cyclists and runners who cycle too fast and give no priority or space to walkers. I am sure it is a good thing in general but not good if you are not on a bike and walking a dog or child. I have stopped going on local social media as cycle wars is only one of the many divisions, mask wars, mast wars (5G mast planning applications are going through which is really showing up the looney fringe), church wars (the local right wing evangelicals put their church up for sale, viewings on Sundays) etc etc All that righteous indignation is just too exhausting....just have to accept the world has gone mad....

Am I right in having read that the Leicester lockdown was by ward? I remember reading that they had unlocked the Tory voting wards with low rates of infection but not the Labour voting ones. The great northern lockdown is different in that they have locked down entire Council areas including their rural wards that have few infections? That has to be political?

Ah sorry listening perhaps I misunderstood your post. Just as an example I live in a high caseload area, my parents in a much lower cases one, neither I nor they would claim for one minute to be 'unaffected' though only I know someone who has died from it (not closely fortunately for me), don't think they do and hopefully it stays that way.

Bearing in mind that for northern cities the rural wards must be literally hundreds of square miles of moorland......

We are in a London suburb but still a borough with one of the lowest infection rates in the country. Most young (and old) people here will not know of anyone who been infected, let alone died, hence the low adherence to social distancing (though pleasantly surprised at the 90%+ now wearing masks) and the high incidence of the “its just flu” brigade..... We now have a new social type in shops, strutting round without a mask jeering at the “sheeples” in masks and obviously longing to be challenged 🙄

Emily on the Leicester lockdown, despite what the City Mayor has claimed in the media, the scenario you describe is not what I understand to have happened here.

Initially the extended lockdown applied to the City of Leicester and a large area outside, including I think places like Harborough which is about 13 miles away in the County. The lockdown area has been progressively reduced in size but the whole of Leicester City and i think one or 2 neighbouring boroughs still remain in lockdown.

It is correct that the 3 MPs representing the City, and 52/54 local Councillors (I think) are all Labour representatives, this might be where the "Labour Wards" claim comes from. Out in the County there are many more Conservative MPs and I think the Country Council is Conservative controlled as well. Rather than Labour in Lockdown, Tory areas no lockdown, I understand something rather different to have happened.

The initial lockdown did apply to a far wider area than those now understood to be the primary hotspots of the infection. In fact, I think if they confined lockdown to just the areas where infection was highest, then locking down the whole of Leicester City probably isn't necessary (and perhaps never was). That the government/local leaders chose not to do a partial lockdown around the hotspots is I'm sure due in part to the demographic makeup of those areas and how it would look if they, and only they were subject to continued restrictions. The whole of Leicester and wider lockdown was mandated in part to avoid that situation developing and turning nasty. That is the political decision that has been made I believe.

I find that amazing Emily - in DH office they had 2 people infected (which given how small their office is - so quite high) and hospitalised. They are both 30's and 40's and are recovering. He had 1 business associate who has had it , hospitalised and ventilated. He has resigned his position as he is expecting it to take a year to recover from. I think he's in his 50's. All fit and healthy before.
I have one friend who has had it - but that's the only confirmed local case (we're in Hertfordshire ) I know . She was sick in March and only now feels she is getting back to normal.

Louise And that would certainly be the issue if they locked down the Bradford wards with high infections. However I suspect (I don’t know Leicester well) that the issue is much more pronounced in the Pennines because of the geography, towns like Bradford, Oldham, Burnley etc are concentrated in valleys and give way very quickly to vast swathes of open rural moorland punctuated with small affluent commuter / rural towns / villages. Bradford for instance has 14 wards amongst the 10% most deprived wards in the country and 1 in the 10% most affluent, and inbetween them is Ilkla’ Moor ......

It all just emphasises the need for a locally based public health response...... instead of tone deaf crashing about by an incompetent government

Mrs Laughan I know. I agree it is weird. The only people I know who have had it are else where in the country. Talking to neighbours the same is true. It was here. In care homes and hospitals, a lot of old people lost their lives. A District nurse friend got co opted to move bodies from the morgue to the refrigerated trailers that had been hired at the main hospital and was broken hearted by the number that were her patients. However it is rare to have family locally, all my neighbours come from elsewhere, ironically two from the same town / city oop north, but also of course from outside the U.K.. Many of my peers from university settled here, obviously from all over the country. A famous novelist labelled these suburbs the “bubble of complacency” And even COVID couldn’t burst it.....

mrslaughan "red fermipan" yeast on Amazon (available elsewhere too). It's 500g, vacuum packed, about £6. When we opened ours I transferred to a kilner and keep it in the back of the fridge. It's lasting well. I've just ordered another one to sit in the cupboard. Second Shipton Mill for flour deliveries though they were very hard to get at the time so wise to order sooner than you need it, it stores well.

Stocks are definitely low for things. We have been having work done at home - the builders have had difficulty getting plaster and having to run around for it. We have had difficulty choosing new furnishings, with this that and the other being out of stock. Delivery times have gone to pieces. This is not by any means being back to normal.

@ListeningQuietly

DGR Interesting that they exclude MS because I know of polio survivors who were covered by employers private health and then kept the policy going when they retired

TL;DR but many things "exist" right up until you try to use them. Equal rights, for example.

And it's not that people with MS are excluded (because that would be illegal). But any condition that is deemed to be "as a result of the MS" is excluded. Bearing in mind health insurance policies are administered by administrators, not doctors. So that's pretty much everything then. Because if it ain't the MS causing it, it'll be the medicine for the MS. Or the medicine for the side-effects of the medicine for MS.

Painful shoulder ? That'll be from using a wheelchair. Why do you use a wheelchair ? Oh, you have MS. In that case we can't cover you for that.

(Gives away another T-shirt).

mrslaughan I saw a graph this morning plotted infections , and they marked on it when pubs opened . There has been a steady uptick in infections since. Indy sage yesterday they talked about the dropping of social inhibitions that go hand and hand with alcohol consumption.

Exactly. A man interviewed on the news yesterday was sad at having to cancel his family Eid gathering at short notice, and thought that pubs also pose a risk.

This is why reasons and evidence would be useful.
I don’t know, but when someone is confirmed as having Covid, do they try to work out where they got it from? In some cases, you probably could.

DGR
Painful shoulder ? That'll be from using a wheelchair. Why do you use a wheelchair ? Oh, you have MS. In that case we can't cover you for that.
That is really shitty.
The person I knew who'd had polio was covered for after effects of the polio and the wheelchair use.
But insurers are notorious for not paying out ...

Hester
I don’t know, but when someone is confirmed as having Covid, do they try to work out where they got it from? In some cases, you probably could.
The local Authority public health teams do exactly that - for all notifiable diseases
but were actively and deliberately excluded from the COVID response by Hancock.

Its why Germany flattened their curve so well - local experts used accurate test data to trace, contact and isolate

remember that the UK still has 247,000 test results from March and April that have no identity or location data attached to them .....

I only know 1 person who has caught Covid19, whilst working in London.
She then passed it to her husband.
They have both since recovered, and is now back to work again.

I do not know anyone who has died.

This article shows very clearly why many people will not know anybody who has died or been seriously ill
news.sky.com/story/the-coronavirus-divide-why-five-groups-are-dying-more-than-they-should-12000643

Don't know anyone who has had it other than my aunt in Ireland (she recovered).

6 deaths from covid in my town (I think all who died were already in hospital or the care home).

Still think dh and dc may have had it back in December/Jan. We'll never know.

Think I might take ds1 to college for his 50% on site though (assuming it happens).
Public transport worries me even with masks on.

I'm still not sure if ds2 will start secondary school in Sept....I might have to have a chat to him to prepare him for further home ed.

We are Leicestershire not Leicester but seeing how the Govt handled that lockdown I'm not filled with confidence.

They could announce schools are staying closed the night before they are due to go back!!

There is something about the timing of the Govt announcement yesterday thats really bothering me but I can't quite verbalise it.

[quote ListeningQuietly]This article shows very clearly why many people will not know anybody who has died or been seriously ill
news.sky.com/story/the-coronavirus-divide-why-five-groups-are-dying-more-than-they-should-12000643[/quote]
-People from deprived areas
-People in low-paid or low-skilled occupations
-The elderly
-People with underlying health conditions
-Those from black and ethnic minority communities

Far be it for me to start a tinfoil hat movement, but it's very hard to read that list and not realise it correlates 100% with the sections of society the Tories (in the UK, I'm other countries have their equivalents) would never miss here.

There is something about the timing of the Govt announcement yesterday thats really bothering me but I can't quite verbalise it.

It probably allows insurers a(nother) way to avoid paying out, or something similar.

Meanwhile, this popped up on my FB ...

On this day, 29 July 1962, fascist Oswald Mosley attempted to march through Manchester. However he was attacked by anti-fascists who knocked him to the ground, and had to be rescued and escorted by 250 police, who were unable to prevent the fascist being pelted with tomatoes, eggs, coins and stones. Following the march Mosley attempted to speak but he was drowned out by a crowd of 5000 anti-fascists who forced police to call off the meeting after just seven minutes. Clashes between local residents and Blackshirts continued for some time, and the police arrested 47 people.

I agree with the point about localised responses Emily. I can see the potential problems you describe in Bradford, not an area I know well but I can see that the local geography does play a part. Some of Leicester is very deprived, some of Leicestershire is very affluent.

My dad's neighbours had it (early on in Lockdown so during the period that people weren't being tested but they didn't feel well & lost their sense of smell & taste). Another friend (ICU nurse) tested positive and was off work a while although has made a full recovery. One of the women in my club's women's rugby team had to self-isolate (plays for Scotland and at least one of them got it when they travelled to Italy but never played because the game was postponed). Another two friends got it badly (he's a surgeon but ended up being hospitalised, partly because he recently had half his lung removed so when he got pneumonia they were very worried) after she caught it in London, brought it back to Glasgow and passed it on to her dh but both have since recovered.

On the negative side, my best friend's FIL died of Covid in a nursing home in Wales