SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

My office colleague found out last Wednesday he had contact with someone who tested positive. He then got tested and was also positive.

Result was on Saturday, he said he spoke to test and trace that day but no one has contacted anyone else from our office.

We are all now self isolating. But it shows how ineffective Serco test and trace is.

As an aside I had raised the issue of our company not following government guidance for working from home, they agreed but too late, changed practice 1 day too late to avoid this debacle. Face palm.

I'm Health and safety manager at my place and last Friday I had a call from a staff member who was called by test and trace and told he was a close contact of a positive case.........14 days later!
14 fecking days later.
There are multiples of similar things I hear. Daily.

So it's not working in Ireland either
 
Netherlands with another 7300 cases, huge amount for a country of 18 mill, one of the highest in the world per capita.

All restaurants and coffee shops will be closed from Wednesday, only takeaway or delivery allowed. No sale of alcohol after 8pm. Mandatory mask rule indoors.
 
I'm Health and safety manager at my place and last Friday I had a call from a staff member who was called by test and trace and told he was a close contact of a positive case.........14 days later!
14 fecking days later.
There are multiples of similar things I hear. Daily.

So it's not working in Ireland either

Yeah, there are problems with the process and the technology but ultimately the systems across all countries don't have enough people to deal with thousands of cases and hundreds of thousands of contacts per day. There's just not enough people for that now and the amount of people required to deal with that just isn't feasible. The system is supposed to work in situations like Korea's where cases are at >100 cases per day and things get pushed to the limit when they're at 500.
 
I'm Health and safety manager at my place and last Friday I had a call from a staff member who was called by test and trace and told he was a close contact of a positive case.........14 days later!
14 fecking days later.
There are multiples of similar things I hear. Daily.

So it's not working in Ireland either
Who runs the test and trace in Ireland?

It is crazy. The whole point of lockdown was to get test and trace working. Instead, our government gives it to Tory friend, private company, Serco, but calls it NHS test and trace. People are not being contacted until it is too late.
 
Who runs the test and trace in Ireland?

It is crazy. The whole point of lockdown was to get test and trace working. Instead, our government gives it to Tory friend, private company, Serco, but calls it NHS test and trace. People are not being contacted until it is too late.


Its the HSA but not sure who its outsourced to for labour force.
 
Yeah, there are problems with the process and the technology but ultimately the systems across all countries don't have enough people to deal with thousands of cases and hundreds of thousands of contacts per day. There's just not enough people for that now and the amount of people required to deal with that just isn't feasible. The system is supposed to work in situations like Korea's where cases are at >100 cases per day and things get pushed to the limit when they're at 500.
I said it at the very beginning - outsource to
Call centres, they are trained and can bang out thousands of calls a day. They have done other medical type work before so why not this? In ireland they have been training civil servants and taking them a few from each department, it’s nowhere near enough
 
It feels like the biggest problem with this virus is how to handle it rather than the actual infection. There are so many issues and problems to be solved just in the management side of things, coming up with a universal plan that suits everyone feels like a bridge too far at times. There are so many conflicting approaches and bits of advice and stats that it spins my head. What works in one area wont work in another area, what works for some people wont work for others, what works in one hospital may not work in another.
Currently watching world supply lines stretched to the limit and delays with goods being shipped or air freighted becoming more frequent. This feels like a 5 year war in some ways.
 
I said it at the very beginning - outsource to
Call centres, they are trained and can bang out thousands of calls a day. They have done other medical type work before so why not this? In ireland they have been training civil servants and taking them a few from each department, it’s nowhere near enough

This.
I work for a state funded organisation.

Some of my team were taken for temp reassignment. But sent back a couple of weeks later.
 
At the end of May I interviewed for a job with the NHS, developing software for the Blood and Transplant Unit. The recruiter who contacted me about the job had placed a couple of others there and was close to one of the lead devs who told him they were ready to release something which they’d been working on since long before COVID but could really help in the fight. He said that as far as he knew, release had been delayed for a ”more convenient moment” which had been translated to him as “saved for when the government needs some good news”. I’ve no idea what it was or if it’s been released yet but if they really do delay stuff which could actively help save lives, for political wins, they’re even more psychopathic than I thought. And that’s saying something.
 
At the end of May I interviewed for a job with the NHS, developing software for the Blood and Transplant Unit. The recruiter who contacted me about the job had placed a couple of others there and was close to one of the lead devs who told him they were ready to release something which they’d been working on since long before COVID but could really help in the fight. He said that as far as he knew, release had been delayed for a ”more convenient moment” which had been translated to him as “saved for when the government needs some good news”. I’ve no idea what it was or if it’s been released yet but if they really do delay stuff which could actively help save lives, for political wins, they’re even more psychopathic than I thought. And that’s saying something.

I can only hope this isn't true, not what you are saying, but what you were told. It can't be true can it? It would be a massive political win whenever it was used. What is a political win compared to thousands of lives? It would be mass murder.
 
At the end of May I interviewed for a job with the NHS, developing software for the Blood and Transplant Unit. The recruiter who contacted me about the job had placed a couple of others there and was close to one of the lead devs who told him they were ready to release something which they’d been working on since long before COVID but could really help in the fight. He said that as far as he knew, release had been delayed for a ”more convenient moment” which had been translated to him as “saved for when the government needs some good news”. I’ve no idea what it was or if it’s been released yet but if they really do delay stuff which could actively help save lives, for political wins, they’re even more psychopathic than I thought. And that’s saying something.

I wouldn't be surprised. The entire project I'm on was shelved for months because it was politically sensitive and the government didn't want to risk it going badly before the election. With staff pay and compensation to suppliers that decision will have cost tens of millions at least, especially we've had to pick it up again during COVID. Staying in power is the most important thing to these people.
 
This.
I work for a state funded organisation.

Some of my team were taken for temp reassignment. But sent back a couple of weeks later.
I know people who were trained up, ironically all in one big hall, but have never been used after. It’s a bit of a shambles really
 
Who runs the test and trace in Ireland?

It is crazy. The whole point of lockdown was to get test and trace working. Instead, our government gives it to Tory friend, private company, Serco, but calls it NHS test and trace. People are not being contacted until it is too late.

Serco doesn’t have anything to do with the app. Not blaming you, as it’s something I’ve read everywhere too.
 
C
Not a vaccine. That’s a treatment. Similar to what the orange maniac was injected with.

EDIT: Talking about the pause to the Eli Lily study. The J&J trial is a vaccine. Which makes two phase III vaccine trials paused so far. Not ideal but not necessarily a deal breaker.
cheers thanks for that.

on a side note down here its election time and a bunch of ads we have running use "the orange man" name as a tool to jokingly frighten people into voting. Its a shit ad to be fair but you get the idea.

 
C

cheers thanks for that.

on a side note down here its election time and a bunch of ads we have running use "the orange man" name as a tool to jokingly frighten people into voting. Its a shit ad to be fair but you get the idea.



Heh. I like it. For some reason I find a kiwi accent makes everything 20% funnier. Probably subconsciously thinking of Flight of the Concords and Taiki Waititi films (definitely spelled his name wrong).
 
Serco doesn’t have anything to do with the app. Not blaming you, as it’s something I’ve read everywhere too.
Not the app, no, Serco test and trace consists of the teams of people (supposedly) tracing contacts, speaking to people and informing those who need to self isolate etc.
 
Update on case loads for the last 7 days, NI over double than England. East Mids increases all concentrated around Nottingham:

EkOfP8NWAAYdCnA
 
NI closing bars and restaurants for 4 weeks and schools for 1 week prior to half-term.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-54533643

It's notable how the "so everything's alright in London, eh?" conspiracy theories and general claims of unfairness haven't really transpired in NI's case. Probably helped by the Republic being a bit more stringent in similar scenarios anyway. It equally doesn't make sense to them why Derry went from ticking along rightly to an explosion of cases without any significant changes in behaviour, or a big uni to blame it on, but the majority just accept that's part of the random nature of virus transmission.
 


Do the police not have powers to arrest? It seems like peacefully protesting climate change gets you straight in the slammer so i struggle to understand police inaction here.

These things are going to happen so i can't even get angry at it anymore. Cities need to have plans in place to disperse them quickly.
 
Over 6.5k cases, 115 people died yesterday. Real numbers are probably higher than that. Officially we are still at only 40% capacity currently in use but more and more doctors are telling media that there are basically no open beds anywhere anymore and it's just government lying.

In the meantime, half of our population is laughing at that saying we're scared of a mild flu.
 
Do the police not have powers to arrest? It seems like peacefully protesting climate change gets you straight in the slammer so i struggle to understand police inaction here.

These things are going to happen so i can't even get angry at it anymore. Cities need to have plans in place to disperse them quickly.

Any realistic manner of dealing with a crowd of that size would be deemed unethical.
 
Liverpool council now reporting that ICU capacity is at 90% for all the hospitals in their local authority. Wouldn't surprise me if some hospitals there are declaring critical incidents in the next couple of days, if they haven't done already.
 
Any chance they'll double half term to 2 weeks and that will be the 'national circuit breaker'?