The Tierany of Tiers

[dancemom]

Teirtastic times ahead ....

@SempreSuiGeneris

You need to have a negative test for surgery so wonder if it's related to this?

Don't think so. Just to give an indication. England did 74k Pillar 1 tests on 10/3. Scotland did 18k. On a per capita basis you would expect Scotland to be 10% of England.

Scotland's pillar 1 testing is lumpy whereas England's is much more even so partly this. However Scotland is doing an average of upwards of 10k pillar 1 per day where England is around 65k. Prevalence levels are similar.

Headline testing level figures are obscured by the amount of asymptomatic community testing England are doing. (total tests per day for England at 1.5m versus 25k in Scotland.)

coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/testing?areaType=nation&areaName=Scotland

Just a bit frustrated about all the discussion looking for culprits to blame small relative increases on when the far more likely explanation is lumpy test processing and the distorting effect of small areas.

eg Fallin mentioned above has a population below 3k. One family of 4 testing positive would report as 130 cases per 100k.

This is really interesting @SempreSuiGeneris. As you say, the disparity between Scotland and England testing is quite marked. What does pillar 1 involve? Is that the "workplace" tests NHS staff do routinely, or people being tested coming into hospital for anything, or people being tested when they come down with symptoms in hospital? If as you say, that is what is driving case increases, doesn't that mean that community restrictions are basically pretty pointless? (other than that clinical cases are part of the "community" as well of course!)

By "lumpiness" do you mean the areas with higher cases are only higher because there is more testing there? That would seem reasonable as there doesn't seem to be any particular correlation between the percentage of positive cases in the "hot-spot" councils and elsewhere any more as far as I can see. I agree looking at tiny areas isn't especially useful as it can so easily be skewed by a family group testing positive, as the numbers in the area are so small... its not that covid is especially prevalent in that area - as give it a week and that family "fall off" the numbers, the area goes back down to zero, or close to it. I suppose if an area remains "dark purple" for a long time it suggests that something more transmitty is happening, but, in edinburgh at least, that doesn't really seem to be the case. The purple patches move round the city seemingly at random!

And agree totally on the sport/ fitness. There's a lot of guff spouted by the SG on the importance of keeping fit and healthy, but that is absolutely not backed up with actual support for that, in terms of allowing activities which help people keep fit and healthy! We did have a laugh when the news reported on outdoor swimming pools being allowed to open on Friday... When it was - 1 degrees outside and blowing a gale. Yes, I'm sure people who are already fit and dying to get back to whatever it is they enjoy could do that outside, in some cases. But for us wobbly, unfit folks who do any form of exercise reluctantly, it's not really appealing to expose our wobbly bits to the elements, or to public view!

Yes tests are lumpy by area but more importantly they are lumpy by day in Scotland. So on 10/3 18k tests were processed but earlier in the week it was 10k. Suspect this is because different areas/ hospitals do things on different days and hospital provision is so concentrated in Glasgow especially.

As I understand it Pillar 1 testing is all in clinical settings. Hospital and care workers and patients based on clinical need. Afaik this includes routine testing for staff and inpatients but also pre-admission and treatment testing. Obviously any positives in this environment are likely to generate and uncover lots more whether or not symptomatic and whether or not feeding into and out from the wider community.

I just cannot believe the farce that the Scottish Government got away with all last summer, until bloody September - that pubs were open and you could meet up with strangers in them, yet you could not swim, go to the gym, do a time trial separated by other competitors by 2 minute intervals, go out for a run with your club, etc. I have friends who ride horses, and Scottish equestrian sport has been decimated. They were travelling regularly 3 hours to England to compete as competitive sport wasn't banned there last summer.

Yet people still trotted out the line "Nicola's doing a great job on Covid", while that pub in Aberdeen was directly linked to covid outbreaks right in the middle of it! And there would have been many more examples of it.

Who cares about healthy people wanting to do their sports in Scotland though, as long as the pubs were open and football matches can go ahead? No other country had such a ludicrous set up.

I also wish they'd give more clarity on where the cases are popping up. This is annoying me now that nobody asks and therefore we don't know! It's just making people feel that months on end stuck in with kids at home is not enough.

Agree also re sport and general health, surely now is the perfect opportunity to hammer home healthy eating and exercise. On Andrew Marr today there was discussion about transmission outdoors being minimal so surely it's time to get as much as possible open outdoors and encourage it for mental well-being if nothing else.

I wish a journalist would ask a useful question for once:

First Minister, X area and Y town have spikes this week. Where is the transmission happening? If you don't know why not?

Instead of endless goading about Westminster, football, Salmond, etc. Shine a light on the insanely endless lockdown for once!

I think keeping skiing shut for the whole ski season is pretty awful as well. There could be no better socially distanced sport. Your skis basically keep you apart from other unless you have a crash 😀. And you wear ski masks just because it cold. It’s fully outside. We don’t have gondola or apres ski to spread germs.
Best snow season is ages and they aren’t allowed to make any money!

@UnderHisAye yes! Totally agree, I've stopped watching now as the repetitive questions does my head in! Not once do they ask where cases are or what it's down to

@Icannever

I think keeping skiing shut for the whole ski season is pretty awful as well. There could be no better socially distanced sport. Your skis basically keep you apart from other unless you have a crash 😀. And you wear ski masks just because it cold. It’s fully outside. We don’t have gondola or apres ski to spread germs. Best snow season is ages and they aren’t allowed to make any money!

Oh I know! What is the point of living in a country full of stunning scenery, mountains, lochs and forests if you're not allowed to access it? No other country in Europe has an internal travel ban now, and certainly not for months on end.

Its not just covid. 20 years ago we were banned from accessing the countryside due to Foot and Mouth, due to the obsession with having a vaccine free UK herd. So thats 3 years out of the last 21 years that the Scottish countryside has been out of bounds.

Thats just becoming a bit too frequent. Thats nearly 15% of years that access within Scotland has been severely curtailed.

Absolutely agree with all comments re sport. My outdoor sport still isn't allowed (it's not a contact sport in the traditional sense but you cannae socially distance). There was a discussion on one of the sport FB groups about waiting for easing and someone chirpily said it's ok, just a few more months will be worth it to reduce the risk and then we can get back to it. Someone else responded that the "delayed gratification" argument only worked if there was a quantifiable change in risk to be "won". Whereas actually the risk would be minimal now and will be minimal in however many months' time it becomes allowed.

[quote fluffyugg]@UnderHisAye yes! Totally agree, I've stopped watching now as the repetitive questions does my head in! Not once do they ask where cases are or what it's down to[/quote]

Me too I just wait for @dancemom update now! There's absolutely no other useful information

I get too angry listening to the questions and non answers. My kids have banned me from the radio

I wish they would answer questions at the daily briefing from the public even routed via the journos. They all ask pretty much the same questions.

A daily coronavirus briefing but they cannot be bothered to even formulate a response to national governing bodes of sports who have spent money preparing covid-safe guidelines and risk assessments.

I thought the whole point of devolved government was to bring government closer to the people? Not to run a PR campaign for politicians?

@latissimusdorsi I feel so special 😊

And on that note ...

•	484 new cases of COVID-19 reported
•	16,261 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results – 3.3% of these were positive
•	2 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive (noting that Register Offices are now generally closed at weekends)
•	40 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19 up two 
•	461 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19 down 16 
•	1,888,697 people have received the first dose of the Covid vaccination and 160,038 have received their second dose

Additionally

562,995 new vaccinations registered in 🇬🇧 yesterday

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿 457,632 1st doses / 38,640 2nd doses
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿 21,574 / 3,788
🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 29,169 / 7,372
NI 2,486 / 2,334

Half million vaccines in a day. Amazing absolutely amazing.

Boris isn't without faults but he managed to get the vaccine program right.

Thanks @dancemom
You are much appreciated

If England’s doing 457,000 vaccines in one day should we not be doing 45,700?
And why is wales doing so many more than Scotland?

@Icannever

If England’s doing 457,000 vaccines in one day should we not be doing 45,700? And why is wales doing so many more than Scotland?

Yes, I know that there were supply issues and that was a reasonable excuse for a reduction in progress a few of weeks ago but according to the press we are sitting with about 800k doses. Obviously I don't know if that is true or not but as we are supposed to be getting the doses at the same time as rUK and NS hasn't been screaming that we haven't had our share, that would seem at the very least semi believable.

Is it stocked up for a big pre election push? Sometime to do with now doing the 2nd doses for those in the initial very slow rollout? Spidey senses tinkling though...

@Icannever

If England’s doing 457,000 vaccines in one day should we not be doing 45,700? And why is wales doing so many more than Scotland?

^^ this

The line about supply really doesn't wash. We are vaccinating at half the rate of England right now and are abysmal compared to Wales. That needs explained.

It's frustrating as every day matters in the vaccination programme.

where do I find details stats for smaller areas. I can only find the stats per council areas.. nothing more detailed

sorry if i'm being thick

I think they are back to the slow strategy of care home/over 80 focus but in my area that means stopping the vaccination centres. Ours was closed whilst they did care homes second doses and they are now on the over 80s which in our area isn't done at the vaccination centres.

I have no idea why its not possible to run both alongside especially when they have more staff now hopefully they will ramp up again.
I don't think it's supply despite this being given as a reason as the other nations aren't having issues I think it's an excuse rather then just say the strategy we went for means a few weeks of slow!