Guilt Free Railing 16

[WouldBeGood]

The festive special!

As always, all railing welcome, along with good things or humorous asides. No resilience wankery. This is the safe place to let out anything that’s doing your head in.

I'm not surprised at no isolation rule change til the schools are due back!
Why give people some time to actually enjoy the break or god forbid think there is something else going on other than covid!

I can't see her delaying schools thankfully the evidence doesn't support it for causing serious infection. I can see some of the teachers unions being up in arms though (I know these don't represent many teachers own thoughts!)

But how can schools go back when the world and his wife are isolating?

DS due back on the 5th

To say nothing of the fairness of releasing restrictions as everyone goes back to work, a rerun of the summer.

Mine aren't back til 11th. I don't think dry January is looking likely!

@WouldBeGood

But how can schools go back when the world and his wife are isolating?

DS due back on the 5th

I know. There really is no reason why she can't follow the reduction of isolation to 7 days right now. But no, she has to dither and stoke up uncertainty for another week just for the hell of it.

The US has dropped isolation to 5 days.

I can’t be doing with these patronising slogans either #boostedByTheBells and #FloBeforeYouGo sets my teeth on edge. Just when we’d got rid (mostly) of ‘Stay Safe’

Ds would have been boosted yesterday. However he has Covid.

That will also be a problem, actually, @Groovee, so many people are testing positive

Just watching the news and close to 1000 people hospitalised in the last 24 hours in England. And the overwhelming tone on Scotsnet is that we should be following their lead

I think my point really @BlameItOnTheBlackStar is that these measures just don’t stop transmission. In fact they will force people into close contact in houses.

The self isolation rules have even changed in the US where they are very risk averse.

I’m at a loss.

@blameitontheblackstar and the BBC also had the following information on hospital information......

But other factors are likely to have contributed to the increase, including a drop in the numbers being discharged.

Last Christmas the numbers leaving hospital more than halved, as it is more difficult to discharge patients over the festive period.

It means there are likely to be hundreds of patients in hospital who have recovered from Covid but just have not left yet.

The proportion of hospitalisations for what is known as an incidental admission is also growing and contributing to the increase. These are people being treated for something else, but who just happen to have Covid.

Last week these cases accounted for around three in 10 patients in hospital, but the expectation is this will have increased by now.

But the numbers who are acutely unwell with Covid are still going up and it could be the end of January before they peak.

Hospital cases are though rising more slowly than cases, once again showing the Omicron variant is leading to milder illness.

It’s not just on Scotsnet either, it’s across the board. People are fed up of the tone of the SG. Even DP’s feeds are full of anger towards NS and there are a lot of the faithful on there.

@BlameItOnTheBlackStar

Just watching the news and close to 1000 people hospitalised in the last 24 hours in England. And the overwhelming tone on Scotsnet is that we should be following their lead

They said on 6 o clock news last night that most hospital admissions are with covid rather than because of covid in England

I think people are fed up with having their lives dictated nearly 2 years in to find there is no reward no magic disappearing virus or no slow of infection.......because try as you might you cant control highly contagious diseases.
So switch tact bolster health, bolster treatments and stop treating the public like children with divisional language!

@BlameItOnTheBlackStar

Just watching the news and close to 1000 people hospitalised in the last 24 hours in England. And the overwhelming tone on Scotsnet is that we should be following their lead

It's only going to get worse aswell as we're no where near the peak in the UK.

I think the problem is we’ve had no restriction free time here for two years with no benefit

@BlameItOnTheBlackStar the narrative is that as the infection rates are so high in England that the majority of covid patients are found to have covid as an incidental finding and they aren't admitted because of covid. Big difference. The SG know the breakdown of these figures but aren't releasing them. Make of that what you will.

Jason Leitch was telling us to expect a peak in late January into February. He is talking about vaccinations getting done in any time gained. Fair enough.
But no the SNP can't stop a virus however many swallow their propaganda.🤷
We are behind London in terms of an Omicron peak and many of us have had a cautious run up to Christmas (but
not always of our own choice.)
Will we be any better off at the end? Probably due to an unhealthier population, no. So when my young adults want to go out at this point and socialise I say go ahead.

What you reckon we should do @BlameItOnTheBlackStar?

Fair enough to rail against the anti SG railing

All this quoting of figures with no context is doing my head in, to be honest!

I have no idea how many people are admitted to hospital generally every day. A quick Google suggests there are about 1250 hospitals in England, and while many of them wouldn't treat covid patients, surely some of them will have incidental covid admissions. Especially if, as someone was saying, 1 in 10 people in London had covid last week . So 1000 admissions with covid doesn't sound too outrageous to me?

And how long are these 1000 people likely to stay? If just overnight for checks/ monitoring, that doesn't seem as serious as long term patients - though it may be? And if all the medical staff are off isolating that will doubtless make things worse, but I'm not sure if 1000 is a drop in the ocean, or an overwhelming tsunami...

And if Scotland has approximately 10% of England's population, did we have more or less than "close to 100" covid admissions yesterday? Travelling tabby says there are 80 more people with covid in hospital today than the previous day (I know that's not actual admissions, as there may indeed have been delays in discharges etc, but seems fair as a rule of thumb as the actual data doesn't seem to have been published) which seems pretty close to 100 to me.

It's just annoying that all these numbers are quoted without anything setting them against "normal" figures. Similarly deaths etc. How many people die usually in any one day? Apparently in 2019 there were just over 600,000 deaths (granted nearly 700,000 in 2020) so averaged out over a year (which they wouldn't be of course) that's about 1650 per day. And the current UK 7 day average is about 90 within 28 days of covid. So is that more or less than cancer, or heart disease or freak yachting accidents, or one of the many other things that kill people? Of course, covid may well be the "thing" that sees off an otherwise ill person, like pneumonia or general "infection" used to be, and of course it can kill otherwise healthy people, both old and young, but it does seem disproportionate at this stage we are still announcing daily deaths and hospitalisations of this infection, and this infection alone, when by itself it doesn't really seem to mean anything. It may be an additional burden on the health service, of course, though by all accounts flu this year is virtually non existent, so is it taking over the "annoying winter infection" niche that flu used to occupy?! Who knows? Well, I know the epidemiologists will be tracking all this stuff... but does it really need to be announced daily in hushed tones?

I get all of the context. And of course I don't have the answers.

But - it doesn't take a genius to see that 1000 hospitalisations daily and a new record number of cases every day isn't going to end well.

England is an outlier in Western Europe in terms of the lack of restrictions. Not the gold standard. I can't see anything enviable in their approach - does nobody remember Johnson said 'let the bodies pile high'?

I know we are all fatigued but surely we can't now prefer that sort of leadership (and I don't say that in terms of Westminster Vs ScotGov).

I'm going to shut up now as we've been round and round on this hundreds of times now. Sorry, I do mostly lurk but sometimes it spills out

Sweden actually have had less control measures enforced then anywhere in Europe including the UK they are one of the few nations which mostly carried on with a few changes such as dining.

@BlameItOnTheBlackStar I suppose we will see who called it right.

So, one country then. That doesn't have much bearing on us staring at, what, half a million cases a day in a few weeks' time? I know we're all sick of it but we really can't pretend that if only NS would piss off (and I wish she would mainly for women's rights reasons) then things would go back to normal.

I just don’t think any of it works