First ministers briefing

[Trichford]

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

You can't drive through monkeys anymore, at least you couldn't last time I was there, maybe about 9 years ago?

They have chimp island where you all go out on a boat, packed like sardines!

You can drive through the lions and then another enclosure with deer/antelope, you can walk through other bits and they have a raised platform for seeing the elephants etc.

I watched NS yesterday and she was just so negative. She seems determined to keep up the doom and gloom.

I think she needs to get a grip and start showing some positivity

And I think she needs to rethink blended learning.. Its not going to be enough to get ds through his national 5s.. He needs structure and proper teacher interaction to keep him on track

7 day rolling average of new infections per day down to 32

32 people per day just doesn't seem to justify this level of lockdown to me. So I must be missing something about this disease which makes it a while lot more serious than it seems? That's what I just don't understand, and what makes me feel royally pissed off about blended school in August. 32 people out of 5 million.

I know 9 people died, I am so lucky no-one in my family was one of those 9. I'm not disregarding them at all.

But I am pissed off. And my patience is running out.

I keep wondering if come August they will announce that schools can go back as normal and the SNP will enjoy a massive popularity surge. But then we'll have had all this worry, teachers will have reorganised entire schools and it would be for nothing. So probably that won't happen.

But my kids miss half their schooling for 32 infections a day? Seriously?

We need to see that there is a plan in place, both for the schools, and for employment. When the furlough scheme ends, the likely unemployment figures I was reading this week were terrifying

Maybe they need some kind of system whereby those who need to shield and those who want to continue to shield have the facility and opportunity to do so and the rest of the population can start to go about it's daily business, hand washing, distancing as appropriate and large crowded events and contact sport remain off the cards for now?

No idea how it would work. Maybe have Wednesdays where the vulnerable and shielding can roam at will and all us potentially infectious folk stay at home?

Kind of like a zombie apocalypse where the zombies have a day at home.

And at the moment, I don't see guidance in place for either

If teachers use this pandemic to campaign for a pay rise because they worked so hard I'll be fucking raging
At the risk of making the pp actually self combust, we got the third year of our three year staggered pay rise in April this year.

@Noworrieshere I feel like I say the same thing as this every day. It feels completely disproportionate to me too which I wrote to my MSP about although it was wasted effort.

32 people per day just doesn't seem to justify this level of lockdown to me

I think the issue is partly that without mass population testing no-one has any idea how many people are actually infected. Those 32 presumably are in the care worker so routinely tested, or had symptoms got tested categories. There will be many more infected people but unless we know how many we need to loosen lockdown painfully slowly - we are so close to tipping back over into a runaway pandemic again.

without mass population testing no-one has any idea how many people are actually infected

But if you look at graphs showing the positive and negative cases on the same day the number of positive cases is tiny. But I'm not a scientist, what do I know? That's why it's so frustrating

it really does all come back to testing. Extended lock down due to lack of testing and economy is fecked. Care home situation, lack of testing, many lives lost. Now we have the coming scandal where people have caught it in hospital as patients being admitted were not tested - and still are not routinely unless they have symptoms (so I believe).

I think Noworries, that the lack of testing overall going back to the beginning means that we don't actually have any idea how much of the population has potentially already had it and therefore have any indication of the potential immunity.

We think we've all had it but there is no record of that anywhere where it could be added to figures and none of us were tested including DH who is front line NHS. That will be repeated across the entire country.

I'm sure we were promised that there would be GP practices or similar groups who would all undergo testing to then try to extrapolate the results of that across the country.

But if you look at graphs showing the positive and negative cases on the same day the number of positive cases is tiny. But I'm not a scientist, what do I know? That's why it's so frustrating

The problem is we have literally no idea how many people are asymptomatic and infectious, or have symptoms but are putting them down to a cold / hayfever etc. We really need a large cross section of the population to be tested so we can extrapolate to the whole population - I have no idea why this hasn't been done yet, especially with all the spare testing capacity.

I think her point would be that the reason the infections are so low is because of lockdown. She's terrified to lift it because we just don't know what will happen. Supposedly the R number in Liverpool has gone above 1 again.

But if the infection rate (with tests) wasn't drastically falling (which it is) and this wasn't an accurate picture overall of what was happening then we would be seeing hospital cases also increase as a result. If people were seriously ill with it (whether we knew about it or not) then the hospital admissions would remain steady or increase. That's not happening so we can deduce that infection rate is falling.

True the infections may not be 100% accurate or anything like that but there is a clear correlation between infections and numbers in hospital.

Numbers in hospital now are broadly in line with the numbers on 30th March just after lockdown. Big difference being there were 94 confirmed in ICU back then; only 16 now. So our position must be very similar to the point lockdown was put in place.

So to predict in May that schools can only go back part time almost 3 months later is frankly ridiculous. Probably puts us back to a position we were in in January.

Did we have problems then? No.

That's not happening so we can deduce that infection rate is falling.

True the infections may not be 100% accurate or anything like that but there is a clear correlation between infections and numbers in hospital.

The infection rate is falling while we are in slightly modified lockdown, which massively reduces the chance of transmission. If lockdown is completely lifted the situation could change very quickly.

I also think there is a very clear reason why Sturgeon isn't using graphs in her daily death count briefing. None of us remember numbers - number of tests, number of positive tests, number in hospital, number in ICU, deaths - that she reels off each day. She'll say something like "646 people in hospital, 16 in ICU" and people think shit that's awful, 650 people in hospital. But she doesn't say "but that's half of what it was on 6th May, which was 1204 in hospital and 79 in ICU".

Showing line graphs or whatever lets you see the trend SO clearly. It's in the westminster briefing, but you have to seek it out in Scotland. If all you watch is Nicola and Reporting Scotland, you just get numbers chucked at you.

It's not in their interests to show the graphs.

There are lots of outstanding questions for me:

The testing - why wasn't it and isn't it happening?
The care homes - testing again and the release of patients into them with no testing?
Why are the stats worse than rUK when we locked down earlier in the cycle?
Why didn't they start getting other parts of the NHS up and running weeks ago?
What happened to the adult conversation?
Why aren't the stats being shown?

many others and I'll let you have your own on education as I'm really not close enough to it.

I think they ARE testing, but the numbers of those testing positive are very low.

I'd be interesting in knowing daily numbers excluding care homes. What is happening in the care homes is, imo literally, criminal, but I'd be interested in the levels of community transmission. But if we knew that we'd not stick to the rules.

They aren't testing in any way even close to what they promised or what is required. Ignoring the fact that numbers presenting with symptoms are low and therefore testing in this area is naturally decreasing, they promised regular testing of staff in care homes and they aren't achieving anything more than a small proportion of that.

I am doing my best to assist the DC in their education ,while still working full time, well I should say we ,as my DH and I are sharing the load.

I am getting up at 5 and going to bed at midnight ,and working at weekends,
Am knackered and its no life, but their education is so important

We need to all the DC back to school and everyone else back to work

@SockYarn I agree re the stats. Albeit they announce daily deaths I am fairly certain this is deaths registered in last 24 hours and not deaths that occurred. Why can we see the deaths as they occurred for NHS England (yes we have to look them up but they are there) but not Scotland. There may have been days without deaths or 1 or 2 deaths by now and the others are going back to April and spread throughout May. Who knows as it's not shared.

And if our government focused on improving the health of our country in general with our high drug and alcohol rates and one of the worst for heart disease as well as the poverty COVID wouldn't have been half as deadly. Not much talk of tackling it at grass roots just blame the 'deadly' disease.

Pootle I've been thinking about that too. More needs to be made of the fact that obesity is a risk factor. Could it be another reason for the UK's high numbers? But after the whole obesity causes cancer debacle I think they're scared to address it.