Dancing with tiers in my eyes, Weeping for the memory of a life gone by

[dancemom]

New thread, a very appropriate title I feel ...

I agree with @StarryEyeSurprise. The Tory Brexit fiasco has caused eminently foreseeable chaos, which they were warned about time and time again.

Huge numbers of European lorry drivers and hospitality staff can no longer ply their trade here. Covid is a convenient thing for Boris to blame this on.

But there are huge driver shortages in Europe too.

@StarryEyeSurprise

@ scottishskifun there's been huge distribution issues , caused by visa changes. I don't know why you can't accept this but you appear to have blinkers on. Yes, refineries have fuel.

I said that there was haulage issues, but this didn't cause a fuel crisis the media and panic buying caused it.

Part of the haulage is people leaving (especially the way they were treated in lockdowns), delays in HGV driving tests, companies out paying each other which takes drivers away from riskier or more tricky haulage AND visa issues. But to purely say its brexit is incorrect there are many factor contributions.

Don't get me wrong, the issues are certainly caused by a lot of head burying and mismanagement. That's not because of Brexit per se, just poor management and planning as per usual.

I'm glad we agree on something @WouldBeGood :) EU nationals made up half of flexible hauliers and the new visa system is so poor that many didn't return post lockdown. The UK Government were warned that their system would likely create issues yet here we are. Anyway , the removal of Erasmus, free train tickets ( things which will affect my child) annoy me more. Oh and the fact the PM lied about £340 m a week being made available for the NHS when in reality he's increased taxes. After spending billions on weapons. That's me for tonight.

😃@StarryEyeSurprise

Plus I won’t be able to fill up my car with wine to bring home 😱

In our NHS health board we were told to turn off the covid app when working so I don't think many absences are due to staff being pinged. Plus as nearly everyone is double and now triple vaccinated, we just book a PCR and are normally back at work the next day.
I deal with absences in community staff and there really haven't been many cases of covid amongst staff for months. The absences we've had have pretty much all been stress and anxiety. Would imagine acute is much the same.
Winter is going to be fun

We were told monitors had to show over 1500 before anything would happen.
Average, very busy room will be less than that. I'm shocked to hear of fancy machines but glad someone is getting something done!

It’s not Scotland wide if it’s not in my authority. I know that sounds rude but I’m not sure how else to put it. We get regular updates and ventilation and monitoring are never mentioned. If the union were genuinely going to do something about this they would have in August when it was all supposed to have happened for the return to school.

I didn't realise things were so bad down south.

@StarryEyeSurprise

I didn't realise things were so bad down south.

They're not yet the rate in England is still nearly half of where Scotland reached a peak in September. England are having a wave just as we did.

The same map for Sept put most of Scotland into black BTW!

Would be interesting to see the age profile for English cases.
It's rife in schools.
I know when we had really high cases here last month the under 19s (mainly unvaccinated) were the biggest group by far

@StarryEyeSurprise you must have been waiting for some time to get a map where England looks worse than Scotland but your patience has paid off! England's cases are currently rising, mainly in school children so not 'important' unless it bleeds through to the older age groups (no sign yet, and boosters will help with this too). There are already signs that it may be turning again though as more people gain immunity, and overall they seem to be pretty much in equilibrium. It's still nothing compared to Scotland's most recent peak (see chart). We're still paying the price of that massive peak in terms of deaths, which are much higher. Even the most ardent nationalist much accept that at best COVID levels are pretty much the same across the UK, with ebbs and flows (some more extreme than others), in spite of differences in approach.

Yes indeed. And at least the higher cases in English schools are with no mask wearing and therefore minus the harms of mask wearing. Unlike the spike in Scottish schools even with mask wearing.

@mibbelucieachwell

Yes indeed. And at least the higher cases in English schools are with no mask wearing and therefore minus the harms of mask wearing. Unlike the spike in Scottish schools even with mask wearing.

Yep. It’s almost as though masks in schools do fuck all to reduce community spread….

Is there a differentiation between primary and secondary ages for cases?

@Mistressiggi

Is there a differentiation between primary and secondary ages for cases?

The best Travelling Tabby has is before and after 10 years of age, with the older cohort (10-19) having significantly higher cases in England. Scotland has a different split (+/- 14) but showed similar higher spikes in the older cohort during the last wave. It probably reflects natural resistance in younger children to COVID infection.

It really does look like masks in schools don’t make a difference.

I think the waves and falls go on independent of any mitigations.

@WouldBeGood it really is hard to come by any real world evidence that Masks in schools make a significant difference as a control measure. The UK has unintentionally set up a reasonably good real world experiment, where populations with essentially the same vaccination levels are either more restricted (Scotland) or less (England). There are undoubtedly some caveats, I think you'd be mad not to look at the respective nations over the last three months or so and see whether the Scottish package (aka 'Plan B' in England) significantly reduces spread. It doesn't seem so - peaks rise and fall regardless in both nations. It might be the case that there's a marginal benefit to masks in certain situations, but it really looks to be swamped by other factors and certainly isn't enough to hold back the tide, so I think you really have to ask if it's worth the harms that it causes.

One of mine has a teacher with very strong accent, DD thinks she's from china, and can't understand what she's saying through the mask.
And I suspect it's likewise for the teacher too if English is not her 1st language 🤷🏼‍♀️

• 2,768 new cases of COVID-19 reported
• 41,556 new tests for COVID-19 that reported results
◦ 7.1% of these were positive
• 26 new reported death(s) of people who have tested positive
• 51 people were in intensive care yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 890 people were in hospital yesterday with recently confirmed COVID-19
• 4,294,116 people have received their first dose of a COVID-19 vaccination and 3,883,886 have received their second dose

About the same as last Wednesday.

Hope you're fully recovered from the covid dancemom

Slowly getting there thanks @mibbelucieachwell

The breathlessness seems to have subsided and the aches and pains too but the fatigue is taking longer.

Yes agree @WouldBeGood and @Y0uCann0tBeSer10us about masks at school appearing to make no difference.

Why it's almost as if wearing the same mask all day long from bus into school to bus home and spending the day in close proximity with the same people, means it doesn't work. Who'd have thunk.

It's possible it reduces infection rates marginally, but really in schools I remain unconvinced. Plus DS 15 plays contact rugby and hangs out with his pals at the weekend.

I've got more faith that his one covid vaccine will stop him getting it than anything else.