Tiering up the Covid elimination strategy

[dancemom]

Sadly the end was not as close as we thought so new thread required ....

10 children in hospital with (although not clarified due to?) Covid is awful.

However how many children are in hospital due to leukaemia, a broken bone, a car accident, appendectomy, asthma .... i really feel this was scaremongering at its worst and very irresponsible of Humza

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/06/02/nearly-40-per-cent-recent-covid-victims-died-primarily-conditions/

England and Wales but would expect it to be comparative

I wonder if we'll get any clarity on these hospitalised children at FMQs today?

Context is so important- are they in hospital due to covid, because of existing health challenges?

My nephew ended up in hospital with chicken pox, many of his nursery friends developed it as normal, he was the very, very poorly one due to existing immune system condition. Would this be a good enough reason to brief all parents that their children must not catch chicken pox?

The Swinneybot has said today they will provide clarity on the situation, but it really just means they are trying to recover from a scaremongering statement from the so-called Health Secretary which was said without thought. Speak/Tweet first, apologise after is the norm these days.

From Chris Musson on Twitter:

"Asked about John Swinney’s comments suggesting new variants could potentially be more harmful to children and leading to more hospitalisations, the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health said today said it had “seen no evidence of this to date”"

I believe the RCPCH, who once again are having to step in and dispel disgraceful scaremongering. The fact that it's government ministers doing this should be unbelievable (but with this shower, somehow it isn't).

What a shower indeed.

So in summary
Humza tried to scare parents - then got asked for the facts
Swinney tried to back up his pal in a equally vague way about risk to children
Royal college of paeds says nope no data, no greater risk then all information before!

In summary GOVERNMENT MINISTERS are tried to scare parents into not going to softplay and then spin when they get called out!

Disgraceful behaviour!

This is a really awful thing to have done, even for Humza. And they should have the gumption to say he was speaking out of turn and apologise to reassure scared people.

Using children in this way is dreadful.

I note that HY (insert current job title here)
has been active on Twitter today. Nothing about his comments yesterday, no further clarity or reassurance for parents, obvs.

In summary GOVERNMENT MINISTERS are tried to scare parents into not going to softplay and then spin when they get called out!

Absolutely spot on. It's pointed out that under the level system and the whole of Scotland being 0-2 there is absolutely nothing to stop parents travelling to a soft play in the neighbouring authority. Humza thinks 'shit, have to scare parents into staying in their homes' so misrepresents some figures to give completely the wrong impression. Swinney wants to back up his mate and also wants to scare parents into compliance so says that they are 'looking into it' which implies there is some indication of a problem. The RCPCH are forced to clarify, again, that children do not appear to be at increased risk. Disgraceful behaviour from ministers and I really wish someone would call them out on in (but deep down know they're pretty much untouchable).

I say reassurance for parents, but most 8-10yr olds could understand that kind of statement if they heard on the radio, as occurred yesterday.
Looks like the Swinneybot is taking one for the team over this. As Minister for Mysterious Covid, it’s back to him today. That thing where you have an ambitious colleague at work who tramples on everyone in a race to the top. Lands you in the shit and still gets patted on the back by the big boss. We’ve all been there, John.

• 835 new cases of COVID-19 reported
• 31,841 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results
◦ 2.8% of these were positive
• 4 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive
• 8 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 110 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 3,305,812 people have received the first dose of the Covid vaccination and 2,137,618 have received their second dose

So more cases (who may or may not have any symptoms) but fewer people in hospital and ICU. It's looking like the same trend as previous days.

Holy shit.

Fuuuuuck.

It's pretty deflating regardless of the stable hospitalisations, isn't it?

The cases are quite something and almost certainly will be highest in the UK again, but as discussed above I think we're just going to have to work through this while we get our immune proportion of the population up. The only alternative would be to hide away some more (for what, months until we're all doubly vaccinated? The virus isn't going anywhere!) which will probably overall be more harmful to the demographics getting infected now than COVID. Obviously there are no guarantees of anything in life, but with the hospitalisations pretty stable I really do think it's a good indication that COVID isn't doing that much harm.

Yes, I do agree, but I think it's going to be a rough few months for numbers while we work our way through this.

Second jab for me tomorrow so I'm selfishly relieved. I would be happy for the kids to keep being lucky and avoiding it. On the cases by neighbourhood map our town has 4 cases, and that's the highest in months!

@SoMuchForSummerLove

Fuuuuuck.

It's pretty deflating regardless of the stable hospitalisations, isn't it?

What's that passage if you seek you will find?

More places doing testing more likely to find cases especially asystomatic ones!

This virus isn't going away and isn't going back into the box so yep it's going to flare up especially in a area which has less natural immunity going on to break the cycle.

@SoMuchForSummerLove

Fuuuuuck.

It's pretty deflating regardless of the stable hospitalisations, isn't it?

Not really.

@SoMuchForSummerLove

Fuuuuuck.

It's pretty deflating regardless of the stable hospitalisations, isn't it?

🤷‍♀️ Not really.

Great for you guys, I know you're all very much 'fuck cases, they mean nothing' but I'm not and it's psychologically not great to watch numbers going up again.

I think to an extent we've all been trained to fear 'cases' as in the past they have led to strain on hospitals and deaths, but I find it helps to remember that this is the first time we've defined a clinical 'case' in this way, i.e. not even necessarily any symptoms or illness, just a positive PCR test. If we did this same trawling for positive tests in cold/flu season we'd likely see the same kinds of numbers, but we don't usually care if they aren't causing serious illness.

Yes, that's what I mean when I say it feels like it could be a tough few months, there is going to be a tussle between rising numbers of cases and the other numbers, as the link gets more broken. I just find it disheartening, it feels like each time we try to free ourselves from restrictions, a variant comes along that fucks it for us.

I agree it’s hardly fun to watch the cases going up every day and while hospitalisation are fairly stable they have gone U.K. and have stopped going down so I don’t see there’s Much to be cheerful about.

I agree with @Scottishskifun though that a lot of that will be due to extra testing but it’s still doesn’t feel good. It feels
Like we are going backwards. I also can’t help worrying there will be an outbreak at school before we get to the summer holidays and i really can’t be doing with that at all

Gone up not U.K. 🙄