First ministers briefing

[Trichford]

Is there one on today? If so what time will it be? Thanks

I'm not that interested in what my neighbours are doing 🤷‍♀️

This thread has taken a turn now so I'll bow out.

Well, I try not to care but I appreciate that what we do affects others. One neighbour saying her DC is upset as his friends (who both have siblings so already have people to play with) are out playing together and he isnt allowed as they are following the guidance. They've been doing this from day 1. So yes, it's none of her business on one hand but affects her child so it sort of also is?

I can see why you'd want to bow out though

I don't think it's about judging behaviour, but we certainly have to factor in the fact that some people have not been choosing to live as strictly in compliance as others. Because it affects us all.

What's annoying me is people allowing their kids to play in the play parks. My 3 year old has accepted that the play parks are closed 'because of the coughs and colds' but it's harder to convince her when others are using them.

This is when it all starts getting rather scary, the problem is that the people who ignore the rules benefit from those who adhere to them.
People feel like the actions of others are jeopardising their safety.
It all comes back to the published numbers in Scotland, which are currently tiny,. Either they are a true representation of cases and lockdown needs lifting quickly or they are not, and the government needs to start testing properly quickly which will provide people with evidence that the lockdown needs to continue.

I think that's what I was trying to say, we are in a half way house, with both sides having valid points but the actions of one group adversely affect the others mental health of the other while the actions of the other group physically help protect the other. In the end no-one is helped by this. There is a real risk of us ended up in a police state which I think suits the SNP agenda.

We've had helicopters searching all night for someone which rumour says fell in to the river after a party/was running from the police and someone commented that they shouldn't have been having a party. Granted they shouldn't, but it's likely that someone has lost their life so.....?

I am angry about the lack of visibility of local cases and differences between institutional settings and community. I am happy to comply but only if I feel it isn’t disproportionate to the risk, and I think it is disproportionate to the risk in most communities now. They need more localised lockdowns enforced by road closures etc if need be to let at least some people back out.

But still completely agree there shouldn’t be parties etc. When I say back out I mean to school, work, some limited leisure activities. No big gatherings, pubs etc. These people are just selfish.

If someone fell in the river because they were drunk I’d judge, lockdown or no lockdown, and yes, I’d say they shouldn’t have got out of control drunk. I’m fed up having irresponsibility excused . It’s not fair on the rest of us - whether that’s the emergency services who have to pick up the pieces, those of us trying to bring up our kids not to misuse drink and drugs, nor regular folk who have to put up with loud noise, swearing , litter, broken bottles etc and antisocial behaviour . Have a good time, sure, but not being able hold your drink needs to become an embarrassment.... It’s pathetic, this behaviour.

God I am ranty today.

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

Great site.

Loads more data than the Scottish government site, funnily enough.

How does that site get info? Given “patient confidentiality “ y know

@SockYarn ooh that site! Is it legit? I’m bookmarking it if so.

It is legit, and pretty good. Looks much nicer on a desktop than a mobile.

@Mumo,

1. in my experience, "at home learning" is equal to exactly ZERO (if you are lucky; it will be negative in most cases). Swinney talks about "mental wellbeing" being foremost for kids. I wonder what he means.
2. can someone tell us WHERE the current cases are coming from? Is it mostly/solely from care homes/hospitals or not?
3. countries with a lot of cases (Italy for example) has not seen a resurgence of cases despite their numbers being worse than the UK.
4. lest we forget, NS didn't want to start lockdown or close schools. She did it when she felt she had to do something and public opinion was (rightly or wrongly, I don't know) demanding action, but she seemed to have re-acted, rather than acted.
5. if it is true that come Christmas there will be a second wave, are you suggesting we stay locked up till next year?

I think people are running out of steam with the lockdown and increasingly feel that it’s disproportionate given it’s harms, and that’s why more and more are ignoring the ‘guidance’. I have to say that given the very low numbers of new infections and an estimated prevalence of 1 in 1000 people being infected I tend to agree that’s its disproportionate at this stage. I suspect that if testing was where it should be (and where we’ve been repeatedly been promised it would be) we WOULD be given more freedom at this stage.

The damage done in other deaths could exceed those of COVID19, and the damage that blended learning will do is openly acknowledged, and I don’t accept that it’s necessary as a blanket policy for all age groups and all regions. For instance the borders have virtually no cases but are locked up, unable to treat patients for other conditions. Nursery age children are predicted to have pretty much negligible effect on spread (acknowledged by Scottish advisors) yet are lumped in with primary and secondary aged children and prevented from going to childcare, despite the difficulties this presents for working parents and the inevitable detrimental effect on restarting the economy. With predictions that it’ll take 3 years to even get the economy back to where we are, it’s entirely appropriate that all these policies are properly scrutinised, but they just aren’t being and that’s incredibly frustrating.

I am happy to comply but only if I feel it isn’t disproportionate to the risk, and I think it is disproportionate to the risk in most communities now

This is exactly the same as me. It feels disproportionate now. I'm assuming the risk is still very real though? It must be be.

It’s telling that they equate better mental health with not being obliged to learn. That isn’t necessarily true for lots of us, many people (and hence kids) are stimulated by and enjoy learning and achieving. It confirms what I have suspected , unfortunately, for a while, which is that their mindset isn’t geared to supporting those with high potential. And that is so sad, because we desperately need that talent to stay and be nurtured in Scotland.

t feels disproportionate now. I'm assuming the risk is still very real though? It must be be.

Did you look at the travelling tabby graphs? It shows that infections peaked around 18th April and have been falling steadily since. (411 infections on 18th April, 29 yesterday). The graph is showing a steep downward trend. Every graph for NHS regions showing a steep decline. We've moved from deaths doubling every 2.1 days at the end of March to every 40 days.

Over the last week, just 13 cases in Edinburgh and 13 in Glasgow - cases, not hospital admissions, not ICU, not ventilated. People who tested positive.

As a comparison, there were 16,153 deaths from cancer in Scotland in 2018. 44 a day.

But cancer is a "risk" we live with and take steps to mitigate without the world grinding to a halt.

You can't "catch" cancer from other people

Well, it's hard to get an full indication of the level of transmission and how many cases there actually are as we are not testing enough.

What we do know is that very few people are now being admitted to hospital or into ICU with it - all good. However, there are many more people that are going to die, have their lives compromised or become of great cost to the NHS because other services have not restarted.

I absolutely think it was the right thing to do initially as we didn't know what to expect, but, from what I can see, we should have restarted a lot of services at least a month ago and should have been encouraging people with worrying symptoms to seek help sooner than we did.

Hospitals are sitting half empty and staff with nothing to do while we have a handful of covid cases and much of the country is living under heavy restriction. In the meantime plenty of folk dying or suffering from non-covid illnesses.

If someone fell in the river because they were drunk I’d judge, lockdown or no lockdown, and yes, I’d say they shouldn’t have got out of control drunk.

We are talking about a 21 year old lad here, probably lost his life, I've grown up with alcoholics, it's not nice but there is usually a reason. However, in this case, just a young man, little older than my own has more than likely lost his life.

I know it's frustrating but I do think some compassion wouldn't go amiss.

Another nugget from the travelling tabby site is that only 1.3% of tests were positive yesterday. We are testing - there just aren't enough people infected.

@prettybird the point is that cancer is already a huge burden in Scotland and while cancer treatments are delayed, diagnosis pathways aren’t working properly, screening (and so early detection) is suspended, and people have been so terrified by COVID that they don’t want to go to the GP to get that lump or suspicious cough checked, the death toll can reasonably be expected to rise even higher this year. The prevalence of COVID19 is currently pretty low, meaning the chances of infection are pretty low, and it has always been the case that the majority of people infected won’t be seriously affected by it. Yet we all remain in lockdown, even in regions with little to no local transmission, and other health problems aren’t being dealt with. On a societal level I would question whether the balance of harms is being accurately considered at this point.

Absolutely @SockYarn. Since there are now only 16 people with confirmed COVID in ICU in Scotland I suspect this will be zero within a week or so. The deaths will continue to fall as the numbers in hospital fall every day.

16 now in ICU, I remember 160 odd not all that long ago. It’s brilliant that it’s come down so far

@ Arkadia

Quite offensive as a parent and teacher to say home learning= none or negative but ok we'll leave it there.
The UK will have more deaths than Italy ( our death rate is higher too and we're still seeing highet daily deaths than whole of EU combined) and Italy's schools will not open until September. Spain - September also.
As a result of England's lockdown easing, the R rate is too high now in some areas for schools to open even with 6 in a class. So this has been cancelled at the last minute (ie today) instead of opening this Monday.
Nicola did want to close the schools - that's why she did it? Strange comment -she's spoken at length about why she did it.
I'm sorry you feel 'locked up'. As we can go out for walks as much as we like, I just don't feel the same.