Tracks of my tiers

[tinseltitsbumfannythelot]

New thread!

Morning all.

Spread of gastro bug within a community can close wards at a local hospital during ordinary times. They generally close before anyone is spilling out of the door. To reassure anyone, a friend of mine (genuine, not a ‘friend of a friend’ or a FB ‘friend’) is a senior NHS manager (to put it broadly) who is on call for any major incident, for one of the health authorities in central Scotland. They are on two weeks leave at the moment🤷‍♀️ absolutely not on call. I would love to be more specific, but it would be very outing for them. Suffice to say, Police Scotland have leave cancelled. What does that tell you? We’re more about managing the restrictions than our hospitals being at capacity right now...

This BBC article suggests that numbers in hospital in Scotland are high, like they are every year, but (despite the panicky headline ) they aren't likely to be overwhelmed. Obviously people are keeping an eye on things, and there is concern over the new strain, plus post Christmas cases, but there is capacity to ramp up, to increase ICU capacity and so on. Though that will come at the price of reducing care for other things like routine operations and screening, which is happening again in some hospitals.

10 years ago when I was pregnant with DS we were told it was very likely the maternity unit at the hospital would be closed due to a baby glut (is that the right term?!), and we'd have to go to Livingston (21 miles from home) instead of RIE (

Absolutely @Bytheloch things aren't at all as bad as down south and we do have the capacity. We do need to keep the heid though as it could so easily get out of hand.

@NotAnActualSheep baby glut 😂

Usually at least once every winter one if the Lanarkshire A&E units closes its doors and redirects to the other two. It happens that often it barely makes a small article in the papers.

This is a health board who was determined to close one of the A&Es permanently.

The bottom line is across the UK the NHS lacks spare capacity. Every winter there is reports of ambulances qued outside a hospital somewhere.

SG were too busy trying to reach a state on zero covid instead of giving people a chance to live. Zero covid in a country that's pretty much linked by road and rail to mainland Europe and the centres of covid out breaks will never happen.
Aus and NZ managed because they stopped passenger flights, and boats with smallish crews need to sail for days if not weeks to get to them.
They do not have thousands of truckers carrying the virus to every corner.

Even trying to separate Scotland from England is an impossible task.

Yes Ikswobel, sadly there are more patients in English hospitals due to covid now than at the height of the first wave.

It’s nice to think we can control a virus by lockdown, but we can’t

I’m quite despondent now at how we are trying to control nature by denying nature. M

Abd wondering why it’s not working.

And now army being drafted in to help with mass testing🙄

Would be more productive to help fund the vaccine programme to roll out vaccine sooner.

Oxford vaccine ready any day - that's good news. Brilliant news re army, we should be throwing absolutely everything we can at the vaccine roll out.

@WouldBeGood

It’s nice to think we can control a virus by lockdown, but we can’t

And masks on outside🤷‍♀️ This would tip me over. My sanity is only still in tact because I get outdoors so much.

No announcement today by the way. Leaving us to sweat longer.

Army doing mass testing isn't achieving anything, no point unless someone has symptoms. Waste of resources.

The army helping out roll out the vaccine however...

@Bytheloch masks outside would finish me as I just couldn’t go out.

Why no announcement? Aargh, it’s stressful

I do like “baby glut” though 😂

@Outsidemum1 I think those policies are out of date? There’s talk of the named person thing?

It’s a very slick presentation though, they’re good at that.

@WouldBeGood and @Bytheloch

I can’t do mask outdoors I absolutely can’t. I can barely do them indoors. Being outdoors is my ‘safe’ place. And there is no way I could breathe running with one on. I can’t even wear a buff over my face even in minus temperature in the past.

The no announcement thing. Do you mean they aren’t doing a daily update today? Or they are just not announcing any new plans

Where have you heard about masks outdoors?

Just speculating on what she will do

@blowinahoolie agreed about the testing. At this stage it seems so obvious to me that we need to throw everything we've got into vaccinations. Do teachers and TAs earlier than planned to get schools back, but just get up and running to reduce the covid death numbers and hospitalisations.

Once it's just a nasty virus that can't impact the most vulnerable then we can get back to normal life surely as it doesn't really matter how many people catch it. And yes I'm aware of long covid but I'd like to know how many people as a percentage have permanent long term issues and also what the stats are for long pneumonia or long shingles etc.

I've just taken to lobbying my MSP about travel restrictions. And folk out with Glasgow not being able to use Glasgow's facilities.
Probably pointless but made me feel better while I wrote it.

Oh, that's odd, re the lack of review today. I thought it was usually Tuesday the update was given to parliament. But I suppose as Parliament is in recess, there isn't that option. They are reconvening temporarily tomorrow though to debate brexit (again...) and a ministerial briefing on covid is scheduled in there too, so I suppose that will be it.

I confess I may have changed my opinion slightly on the deal/ no deal thing looking into it a bit more last night and may have been a bit harsh re a vote against being effectively a vote for no deal. It seems even if BJs enabling act wasn't supported by Parliament, he would have other options to ratify the deal without parliamentary support, just a bit messier and not so convenient for him... and he'd have to go back to the EU cap in hand to delay stuff while that was put in place. But it wouldn't necessarily revert to the "no deal" option everyone was planning for before Christmas eve, unless the EU refused the delay/ extension to the transition period - as there is a signed deal waiting to be put into action. So the parliamentary vote is itself a bit of rhetoric really. I still don't blame anyone opposed to brexit for supporting it, though, just to get the fucker over and done with, as it's not going to change - it is still the only deal we can get at this stage. But if it isn't supported, it would embarrass BJ, which can't be a bad outcome, even if it is childish to want that.

@WouldBeGood i really don't think masks outdoors are on the table. Sadly what is - I suspect- is removal of ability of people to meet outside and groups of teens being allowed to gather. And again in a swift volte face from everything I've said earlier, that might make sense - if done for the absolute minimum amount of time whilst they push on with rolling out the vaccine.

The SG has demonstrated that it's good at being cautious- and to be fair based on where we are right now I think we're in a better place than England as we know what's happening to schools until the 18th and our cases haven't exploded like England.
What the SG is less good at doing is easing restrictions when they are no longer appropriate, but I'm hoping that the lure of a May election will encourage a bit less caution once the vulnerable and elderly are vaccinated.

I’m resigned to being incarcerated for months.

I think it’s pointless, but the sunken costs fallacy along with the Canute mentality of governments means it’s inevitable.

Mass testing serves no purpose other than to terrify. Every resource should be chucked at getting the vaccine out.

[quote rookiemere]@blowinahoolie agreed about the testing. At this stage it seems so obvious to me that we need to throw everything we've got into vaccinations. Do teachers and TAs earlier than planned to get schools back, but just get up and running to reduce the covid death numbers and hospitalisations.

Once it's just a nasty virus that can't impact the most vulnerable then we can get back to normal life surely as it doesn't really matter how many people catch it. And yes I'm aware of long covid but I'd like to know how many people as a percentage have permanent long term issues and also what the stats are for long pneumonia or long shingles etc.[/quote]
Yy to all- out vaccination. I'm really hoping the oxford/ astra zeneca one gets the go ahead before friday, as they are suggesting, because that would really speed things up - rather than waiting until the next batch of the Pfizer one makes it to us from Belgium.

If that is rolled out, I don't see anything to stop teachers from jumping the queue, even though I don't think there is any clinical need. But in terms of public confidence and giving teachers something they are asking for, I can't see any harm, as long as its not taking anything away from the clinically vulnerable other than the physical slot to get the jag! It doesn't seem that the real disruption to education is being caused by teachers falling ill in droves, but rather the requirement for them, and their pupils to self isolate for 10days even if they're not ill, but having come into contact with someone who may or may not be ill themselves. I don't know if the vaccine will stop that requirement - particularly in the short term? It may make teachers less concerned about getting seriously ill, but the data I have seen suggests that they aren't any more likely to test positive than any other professions, and from that are at risk of serious illness only in line with their age and other vulnerabilities. So, yes, vaccinate CEV teachers before otherwise healthy working age people, but the added benefit of vaccinating young, healthy teachers to getting education going again seems negligible to me. But then, I may well be missing something, and have been known to change my mind on these things!!

I don't know if vaccinating teachers (I'm a teacher) would do much to get schools back sooner though? It's the teens that they worry about I think who may take it home and spread it into the community