First ministers briefing

[Trichford]

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

But many some residents of care homes may not make it as far as an intensive care bed - for various reasons, some entirely reasonable, some not so

I look at the intensive care figure simply to gauge the impact on the nhs. We know that there were 250 beds available for covid patients so it gives a good indication of the general capacity.

Hospitals really need to be getting back to normal, even the covid wards are half empty, other wards are overstaffed and underoccupied. I appreciate that they needed to encourage people to stay away but they did too good a job and people who need to be seen haven't been.

Now, can someone with more brains than me explain the following?:

We are being told that we are behind the infection curve as obviously we had our first case later so would expect that we are also about 2 weeks behind in terms of the infections. Makes sense right?

However, we started lock down at the same time when we presumably had less folk infected and have a generally less dense population.

So, surely we should never have reached the same levels of infection (though maybe the delay in showing symptoms accounts for some of that) as we started the distancing earlier?

So the 2 weeks behind should not really apply or certainly be reduced?

Or have we just not been as good at the lock down as people think and people in rUK did it better?

Well that was a surprise - not! Was hoping to start seeing some others who like me have barely left their homes for the last 7 weeks!

@WaxOnFeckOff, that's exactly what I was wondering. How can Scotland be behind the curve, when we locked down at the same time as the rest of the UK, and had less cases at that point? It doesn't make sense.

I've been musing about this while I was out on my daily constitutional (during which I didn't notice anyone breaking the rules )

I'm not an epidemiologist or a mathematician but even if we were say, 10 days behind the England in the infection curve, as long as R0 is greater than 1, there is still a growth curve to go through before it plateaus. What the "earlier" in effect lockdown may have done is reduce the height of that peak (and plateau).

But I suspect that we'll only really know with hindsight, when we have more complete statistics and have the time to analyse them.

@Rhumba

You might have been hoping to be able to see people, but they've never given any expectation of that at the moment, so I don't understand your surprise.
And you can leave they house by the way (unless symptomatic or positive, of course.

@prettybird, ok I understand that. I still don't quite understand why the R0 is higher in Scotland - if indeed that is the case.

I think it's half guesswork and half witchcraft. If I had to say, I'd say that they actually don't have a clue. So all the stuff about not staying in lock down a moment longer than necessary is actual bullshit. We've not done anything like the amount of testing that we should have done so we cannot say with anything even near any degree of half certainty what the level of infection has been or is.

@jemima I meant that sarcastically. I wasn't surprised just fed up so no need for that comment! yes I know I can leave the house too!

As I understand it (and I’m not an epidemiologist either), the R0 is a measure of the spread of infection, so above 1 means each person spreads to more than one other and you get exponential spread, whereas below 1 means an infected person spreads to less than one other (on average) and infection rates start to drop. I think this is independent of the number of cases. The lockdown should have limited the opportunity for spread whatever the base number of cases at the time, so given that we went into lockdown at the same time across the UK our higher R0 must mean it was less effective in Scotland for whatever reason. This really surprises me given that our population is comparatively sparse.

I wonder if our higher proportion of deaths in care homes compared to rUK (60% vs c. 35% in England I think) and comparatively lower level of testing are factors (last I heard about 50% of U.K. per head of population) - in care homes it’s really difficult to distance anyway, and if you aren’t testing as much to track infection I can see how it might have gotten a bit more out of control up here. Let’s hope we can get a handle on the situation soon as lockdown itself has considerable public health implications.

@Rhumba

Sorry for the misunderstanding. I'm not always good at reading sarcasm, I tend to take the written word as it is.

There's an article here explaining why the R number might be higher in Scotland: www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-52578939

Thanks for the article but it's still not answering anything imo. England also has large amounts of their population living in cities, in flats and has plenty of deprivation. The more I think about it is that only reasons the number can be higher is because its wrong or people have not been adhering to the required measures or probably both.

The figures for fines and arrests are much higher in Glasgow and the west even accounting for population differences so either the police are more diligent in taking action or more people are breaching. As these are the areas of most dense population then it makes sense that the rate of infection is higher.

England also has large amounts of their population living in cities, in flats and has plenty of deprivation
Yes, but Scotland may well have higher proportion of the population in these circumstances.

Plenty of people are already ignoring the lockdown.

If Boris says something different from Nicola then people will listen to one and not the other.

One of the very few times I agree with Nippy is keeping the lockdown.

So Scotland is a couple of weeks behind England and we started the lockdown at the same time as the rest of the U.K.

Our rate should be decreasing like the rest of the country, since we had a lower number of infections to begin with.

I think folk are ignoring the lockdown.

I am totally puzzled by this Scotland behind England business as well, no matter how well people try to explain it to me. It doesn't seem to me that people here are not as good at lockdown, there are people breaking the rules all over the place. When I speak to family in various parts of England our stories are much the same really.

So someone somewhere is not telling the truth or not testing properly. It seems to me that with the fairly low level of testing going on in both England and Scotland there must be a fair bit of guesswork going on. I know there is statistical modelling but that involves educated guesses as well as hard facts. Do both countries use the same models? I guess not. If we are calculating on different assumptions then we will get different results. That's the only reason I can think of for the difference.

And I guess I would rather err on the side of caution, even though I am finding lockdown really tough now.

Yes, but Scotland may well have higher proportion of the population in these circumstances

I'd be happy to look at any stats, but I don't think that's enough to explain the difference.

I know it's hard to tell and lots of Scotland landmass is unpopulated, but the difference in density is so huge between England and Scotland it would be hard to imagine that circumstances of living are so hugely different as to explain the difference in the R Number.

www.statista.com/statistics/281322/population-density-in-the-united-kingdom-uk-by-country/

I don’t really buy the argument about dense population either - there are some very densely populated areas in England too.

The point about being behind the curve and therefore having lower levels of herd immunity is interesting and a bit worrying though. I know that ‘herd immunity’ became almost a dirty word, but I don’t actually see another way out of this. It doesn’t look as though we’ll be able to stamp covid out completely because it has a long incubation period and such a high proportion of asymptomatic cases, so if we’re ever going to go back to socialising we need people to be immune. This could be via vaccine (which could be years away, if at all), or by catching the disease, and if we still have a much larger proportion of susceptible people than rUK it suggests we could be waiting a long time to get the number of immune people up to safe levels. All the while cancer screening programmes are suspended which will itself cost lives (the whole point of early detection is to improve survival rates), and cancer referrals aren’t going through.

Indeed, my BiL got admitted to hospital mid week with what is likely to be terminal cancer (he has nodes in several areas of his body we are just waiting on the results of a biopsy but they have indicated that it's likely to be cancer and likely to be untreatable). Can't entirely blame covid lockdown and NHS changes, but he's definitely avoided "being a bother" for quite a few weeks. We are all gutted and unable to go and see him obviously.

So sorry to hear that @WaxOnFeckOff.

Thanks, it's not been a good week, neighbours on either side have both lost a parent this week, both from cancer though, not covid. One really worried about how he is going to attend the funeral as his mother lived 5 hours drive away, his step father needs help but is also elderly and shielding. So down and back in a day is not really feasible as he needs to assist stepfather who is now refusing to answer the phone! Obviously all the hotels etc are closed. They are also not able to have a funeral car other than a hearse. looks like he might have to drive down and sleep in his car and he'll need to use that to get his step dad etc to the funeral.

Sorry to hear your news waxonfeckoff

My Dh attended a funeral remotely via a video link last week, it was so sad but brought some comfort and closure in these difficult times.

I think the Scottish government need to look at the R number, excluding care homes.

It’s awful that the infection rate in care homes has reached over 70% and that even after lockdown a care home moved staff from south of England up to highlands (they have now apologised for this, even though I believe this was within guidelines).

When this has passed, I am hopeful that the Scottish government will look at their policy on social care for the elderly and how it has impacted our communities.

Sorry to hear that WaxOn.

Anyone see GMB this morning? Piers gets it. England only information deliberately told as UK wide. FM's of devolved nations hearing about Boris' plan and next steps via papers as refused to talk to them about it to form agreement across the four nations.
Just beyond scunnered.