UK Covid death toll

[baggy1]

Surely that is market driven and not anything else. What fields are they in? And just because they can't sit together, does that mean they can't operate?

Legal Services, Construction Consultancies, Actuaries, Patent Attorneys and the like. They can operate to some extent WFH, but the knock on effects for the legions of young workers who don't have the benefit of a garden room or attic conversion to use as an office look disastrous to me.

That's in direct contrast to our FS operation whereby we are all working from home globally, I see Fujitsu also have said that they will continue to work from home indefinitely now and do away with the offices they use eventually (they have basically a small town of high rise offices in Japan).

If I were advising a company anything it would be to ride it out until the restrictions ease as there might not be a need for alterations. Having said that we have installed new temperature scanners and are operating with restricted numbers in office (I went in yesterday and there were 3 of us and half a dozen workmen making adaptations). We'll be out until October at the earliest globally and don't see the need to go back in.

The market for offices is going the same way as shops I'm afraid, but that is market driven as much as anything.

And probably worth pointing out that very few staff have garden rooms or attic conversions but are coping fine. We've arranged for staff to take chairs where needed and generally everyone is gearing up for longer tern wfh at least on a part time basis.

[hudds]

Fat bastards a high risk (again):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/a...tudy-finds

[Protheroe]

Fat bastards a high risk (again):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/a...tudy-finds

So the minimal chance of dying of Covid is increased by less than a half?

So from spectacularly unlikely to die from Covid to slightly less than spectacularly unlikely to die from Covid.

"High Risk"? Really?

[Malcolm Tucker]

91 per cent of England's inhabitants (that's 51million people) live in neighbourhoods where there hasn't been a single recorded Covid-19 case in the last 4 weeks.

That includes 716,000 Brummies - yet the whole of Birmingham is threatened by further lockdown. Someone wake me up please.

Must be a very clever little virus. How does it know not to cross man made geographical boundaries? 

Or do you think the people are so conscientious that if their pubs, mosques, illegal raves and street parties are all shut down, they won’t think about going a mile down the road to another borough that’s not in lockdown?

There are 2 (TWO) people in ICU across Birmingham's acute hospitals. There is no reason whatsoever for any form of further restriction anywhere in the city.

There are 2 (Two [no need to shout]) people admitted, seriously injured,  to Birmingham hospitals per day due to RTAs. Not forgetting the 30 killed in Brum in a year. Would you suggest we do away with all Road Traffic laws where the accidents occur less?

How many will these road traffic laws put on the dole, you reckon?

[baggy1]

Fat bastards a high risk (again):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/a...tudy-finds

So the minimal chance of dying of Covid is increased by less than a half?

So from spectacularly unlikely to die from Covid to slightly less than spectacularly unlikely to die from Covid.

"High Risk"? Really?

There are over 60k excess deaths this year so far, I take it that you feel these are insignificant and just unlucky.

The reason we have stopped the deaths is because we have introduced mitigating measures, or do you think that it is just a coincidence that they slowed and nearly have stopped since we introduced them.

You also are a bit bored of these measures so you want to get rid of them. If we do that do you think that the spectacularly unlikeliness of dying from covid will stay as low?

[Brentbaggie]

I had bowel cancer last year and had my 6th month scan which showed clear in March. I should have had a second scan at the beginning of September. It's been delayed to the middle of October. I think 6 weeks is not too bad given the circumstances. Hospitals are clearing the backlog according to my specialist but it will clearly take a while. In London they have shifted the operations and cancer teams to isolated hospitals - in my surgeon's case to a private hospital - while scans and analyses remain within the Trust hospitals. This all seems reasonable given the circumstances.

[baggy1]

I had bowel cancer last year and had my 6th month scan which showed clear in March. I should have had a second scan at the beginning of September. It's been delayed to the middle of October. I think 6 weeks is not too bad given the circumstances. Hospitals are clearing the backlog according to my specialist but it will clearly take a while. In London they have shifted the operations and cancer teams to isolated hospitals - in my surgeon's case to a private hospital - while scans and analyses remain within the Trust hospitals. This all seems reasonable given the circumstances.

Thanks for the insight Brent and best of luck with keeping this one at bay - good news on the clear scan last time, fingers crossed.

Backlogs are nothing new and the obvious repercussions from lockdown was the inevitable further backlog. Good to hear that is also getting back to normal.

[hudds]

Fat bastards a high risk (again):

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/a...tudy-finds

So the minimal chance of dying of Covid is increased by less than a half?

So from spectacularly unlikely to die from Covid to slightly less than spectacularly unlikely to die from Covid.

"High Risk"? Really?

In the net....

[baggy1]

Week 34 (to 21st August) figures are out from the ONS and show an increase on the 5YA deaths for the week of about 500 and against 2019 by 600. We've now had a couple of weeks over the average which was preceded by 8 weeks of being under, the net figure for the past 10 weeks is 1,100 under the average for this time of year. The last couple of weeks' increase could be for many reasons as it is difficult to show what effect Covid is having due to changing reporting over the last few weeks, it could also be the beginning of the damage caused by a long lock down. The apparent point is that, early on, there was talk of 'it will average out over the year' and that doesn't appear to be occurring as we approach the next flu season. Overall we have 54k excess deaths in England and Wales compared to the 5YA and 62k compared with 2019.

Over the past week there has been an increase in hospital admissions in Wales with England staying relatively steady, it should be highlighted that both figures are low 83 in Wales and 33 in England compared with 200 and 3,000 at the peak but the Welsh figure should be watched.

Patients in hospital is holding steady at a low number with England below 500 and Wales below 100 but this is where I lose a bit of faith in the Government figures. From their website on the 28th August there were 83 people admitted to hospital with covid and on the same day were showing 41 people in hospital with covid - there could be an explanation that people weren't kept in but if that were the case why report them.

Patients on ventilators jumped in England (again by a relatively small number) from 33 on the 31st August to 59 on the 1st September but the overall figure is still low with only a few dozen across the country.

[baggy1]

Week 35 (to 28th August) so a bit of a lag on figures but unfortunately another week where we have excess deaths in comparison to the same week in 2019 and against the 5YA. After 8 weeks where the deaths figure was below the 5YA we have now had 3 where it is above, and those 3 have almost wiped out any gains made in those 8 weeks. We are now at 62,790 excess deaths against 2019 in England and Wales and 55k excess against the 5YA for E&W. 

Although the media attention has been on cases reported the figures that should be getting attention (hospital admissions and those on ventilators) don't get highlighted as much. Even though the cases are rising steeply it is difficult to understand why that is and why there doesn't appear to be a rise in the knock-on aspects to match (yet). Hospital admissions are at 94 for England for the 5th September and 69 in Wales for the 4th. Both of these figures are higher than recently but compare this with the figures at the start of the peak of 586 in England on the 19th March (figures are low before that possibly because hospitals didn't know what they were admitting) and you will understand that it is one to watch rather than 'it's back!'. The peak of admissions was 1st April at about 3.5k. 

The large jump in cases not being reflected in hospital admissions, ventilator usage and covid deaths (albeit there is a small increase) could be because we are maintaining the measures needed to protect the vulnerable or it could be a weaker strain or it could be down to a change in reporting as the excess death figures are still increasing more than the covid deaths being reported. It's very difficult to identify why but it is a good time to step up the measures to protect those most vulnerable just in case. The excess deaths figure could also be rising again because of other illnesses that are now showing through after lock down has restricted treatment.

Stay safe folks and protect the vulnerable, or as our fucking great balloon of a health minister succinctly and sensitively put it 'Don't kill your Gran' - what a fucking whopper he is.