Brexit, for once some facts.

Danidl

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The Scottish ones certainly haven't, especially as the test strips will be manufactured in Stirling.

That type of machine and test is a game changer. Seriously... If everyone taking a flight was required to take one, at check-in time, they could be tested and confirmed safe to travel before boarding time. ..Why O'Leary of Ryanair is not pushing this is crazy. Even if it had as bad as a 90% detection rate, it would cut down on infection rates by 90% in that mode of travel.
 
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Danidl

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Hmm. Might be skimpy evidence, but...

Fears grow that UK is preparing to quit Brexit talks
Concern grows as top EU official arrives in London for emergency talks over UK plans to breach withdrawal agreement
Concern?. It is hard to figure out any other reason than an attempt to jettison any possibility of a trade deal with this news. In fact EU lawyers are stating that even tabling the possibility of legislation is a breach, let alone going ahead with it. What Whitehall fails to realise is that the entire edifice of UK Diplomacy worldwide is in the balance. Even if the proposed changes are intelligent and desirable ( which we don't know), there is a mechanism for negotiations. Bypassing this destroys UK credibility.
 

jonathan.agnew

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Very true. CV19 is a mixed curse and blessing. The number of drunken brawls ending up in A&E has reduced considerably. The amount of air pollution has reduced ..both locally and globally. The amount of fossil fuel burnt reduced . So less respiratory complaints
The number of people choosing to attend hospital appointments way way down. I started having problems when walking about 10 weeks ago ....after 200 metres walking , difficulty with breathing, but then belching and being able to continue repeating every 50 metres .. It makes a 5Km walk rather rough. Curiously not so on the bike. . Not at all wishing to have hospital or GP visit. Anyway finally called my GP, ..as soon as my quarantine up, had a phone consultation and sent to local hospital .next day .two potential diagnosis. Heart obviously and maybe gut hernia or both Triaged in 20 minutes, 2 hour wait in A&E ,then ECG ,bloods , kept overnight on heart monitor, more ECGs .then released(I wasn't expecting that) The assumption is that I won't keel over in the next short while. More heart tests next week. Meanwhile the gut medication prescribed seems to be reducing the tightness in the chest
Same here, I've had rather good service out of the nhs as a patient (telephone consultation, that worked, with gp on short very notice).
My friend has terminal cancer. He's just gone into a hospice for the final stage. When he was first diagnosed about a year ago, he made frequent hospital visits to facilities that were always very busy. Since Covid-19, he's hardly made any visits, and he reports that when he did, the facilities were nearly deserted.

When I was in hospital 6 weeks ago, the whole place was extremely quiet. I was in the lung ward, where only 2 beds out of 8 were occupied most of the time. The previous time (2 years ago) I was admitted to the same ward, it was full, and they did everything to get the patients out as quickly as they could.

What's clear to me is that there must be many thousands of people that need treatment, who are not getting it.

Have you had any dealings with a GP recently? From my experience and the hassle I've had, I can see that a lot of people are going to end up with missed diagnoses, and some will inevitably die prematurely as a result.
 

Wicky

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That type of machine and test is a game changer. Seriously... If everyone taking a flight was required to take one, at check-in time, they could be tested and confirmed safe to travel before boarding time. ..Why O'Leary of Ryanair is not pushing this is crazy. Even if it had as bad as a 90% detection rate, it would cut down on infection rates by 90% in that mode of travel.
Antigen tests don’t amplify their protein signal, so they are inherently less sensitive. To make matters worse, that signal gets diluted when samples are mixed with the liquid needed to enable the material to flow across test strips. As a result, most antigen tests have a sensitivity of anywhere between 50% and 90%—in other words, one in two infected people might incorrectly be told they don’t have the virus. Last month, Spanish health authorities returned thousands of SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests to the Chinese firm Shengzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology after finding the tests correctly identified infected people only 30% of the time, according to a report by the Spanish newspaper El Pais.


And depends if machine can do testing in parallel or series as say 100 passengers x 12 minutes it'll take a quite a few hours to test em all or you turn up 24 hours in advance to check in and get tested - otherwise you'll likely need a few machines (cost?)
 
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Wicky

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My friend has terminal cancer. He's just gone into a hospice for the final stage. When he was first diagnosed about a year ago, he made frequent hospital visits to facilities that were always very busy. Since Covid-19, he's hardly made any visits, and he reports that when he did, the facilities were nearly deserted.

When I was in hospital 6 weeks ago, the whole place was extremely quiet. I was in the lung ward, where only 2 beds out of 8 were occupied most of the time. The previous time (2 years ago) I was admitted to the same ward, it was full, and they did everything to get the patients out as quickly as they could.

What's clear to me is that there must be many thousands of people that need treatment, who are not getting it.

Have you had any dealings with a GP recently? From my experience and the hassle I've had, I can see that a lot of people are going to end up with missed diagnoses, and some will inevitably die prematurely as a result.
That's been the way for while to help avoid folk getting hospital aquired infections.


"The 6 most common types of healthcare-associated infections, which accounted for more than 80% of all healthcare-associated infections, were pneumonia and other respiratory infections (22.8%), urinary tract infections (17.2%), surgical site infections (15.7%), clinical sepsis (10.5%), gastrointestinal infections (8.8%)"

Add CV-19 into the mix and no wonder they prefer to keep as many folk out of wards and convalesce at home.


"Healthcare-acquired infections were most common in patients under the age of two (prevalence among patients between one and 23 months old was 8.2%) and in the elderly (prevalence among patients between 65 and 79 years old was 7.4%; over 80 years old it was 6.5%).

Although the exact reasons are not clear, young children and elderly people:

generally have a greater need for hospitalisation and therefore are in a setting where they can catch an infection
may stay in hospital for longer periods and therefore have a longer time to become exposed to an infection
are more susceptible to infections because they have weaker immune systems"
 

Danidl

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Antigen tests don’t amplify their protein signal, so they are inherently less sensitive. To make matters worse, that signal gets diluted when samples are mixed with the liquid needed to enable the material to flow across test strips. As a result, most antigen tests have a sensitivity of anywhere between 50% and 90%—in other words, one in two infected people might incorrectly be told they don’t have the virus. Last month, Spanish health authorities returned thousands of SARS-CoV-2 antigen tests to the Chinese firm Shengzhen Bioeasy Biotechnology after finding the tests correctly identified infected people only 30% of the time, according to a report by the Spanish newspaper El Pais.


And depends if machine can do testing in parallel or series as say 100 passengers x 12 minutes it'll take a quite a few hours to test em all or you turn up 24 hours in advance to check in and get tested - otherwise you'll likely need a few machines (cost?)
In my earlier life I worked with an automated medical diagnostics wet chemistry machine for bloods ,with a throughput of 90 per hour and a latency of about 15 minutes . Provided the latency is under an hour, or 3 hours for transatlantic , it would be fine. A 50% success rate would be unacceptable, whereas 80% would be marginally acceptable.. 95% would be excellent . Remember it is to reduce the viral load experienced by 150 to 400 people (transatlantic) for a 2 to 6 hour exposure period.
 

oyster

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Fingers

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Have we ever had worse leadership?

I thought Cameron was bad. I cringed at Gideon.

then we had May. And I thought this is the nadir. It can’t possibly be worse.

then we were offered Corbyn.

we ended up with Johnson.

bloody hell. Give me sturgeon.
 

Fingers

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My friend has terminal cancer. He's just gone into a hospice for the final stage. When he was first diagnosed about a year ago, he made frequent hospital visits to facilities that were always very busy. Since Covid-19, he's hardly made any visits, and he reports that when he did, the facilities were nearly deserted.

When I was in hospital 6 weeks ago, the whole place was extremely quiet. I was in the lung ward, where only 2 beds out of 8 were occupied most of the time. The previous time (2 years ago) I was admitted to the same ward, it was full, and they did everything to get the patients out as quickly as they could.

What's clear to me is that there must be many thousands of people that need treatment, who are not getting it.

Have you had any dealings with a GP recently? From my experience and the hassle I've had, I can see that a lot of people are going to end up with missed diagnoses, and some will inevitably die prematurely as a result.
spot on. this covid madness will kill more people than it saves.

The general stats say 40 to 50k of people with cancer will die as a result of not treating them because of covid guidlines.

(this May include preventable heart disease too)

but the fact remains. Young and middle aged people will die who could have been treated. If the government hadn’t cocked this up.

disgusting
 
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oldgroaner

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Very true. CV19 is a mixed curse and blessing. The number of drunken brawls ending up in A&E has reduced considerably. The amount of air pollution has reduced ..both locally and globally. The amount of fossil fuel burnt reduced . So less respiratory complaints
The number of people choosing to attend hospital appointments way way down. I started having problems when walking about 10 weeks ago ....after 200 metres walking , difficulty with breathing, but then belching and being able to continue repeating every 50 metres .. It makes a 5Km walk rather rough. Curiously not so on the bike. . Not at all wishing to have hospital or GP visit. Anyway finally called my GP, ..as soon as my quarantine up, had a phone consultation and sent to local hospital .next day .two potential diagnosis. Heart obviously and maybe gut hernia or both Triaged in 20 minutes, 2 hour wait in A&E ,then ECG ,bloods , kept overnight on heart monitor, more ECGs .then released(I wasn't expecting that) The assumption is that I won't keel over in the next short while. More heart tests next week. Meanwhile the gut medication prescribed seems to be reducing the tightness in the chest
Best wishes from us all that you soon get this sorted out my friend :cool:
 
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Barry Shittpeas

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Jan 1, 2020
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Have we ever had worse leadership?

I thought Cameron was bad. I cringed at Gideon.

then we had May. And I thought this is the nadir. It can’t possibly be worse.

then we were offered Corbyn.

we ended up with Johnson.

bloody hell. Give me sturgeon.
Reluctantly, I agree. How did I come to this?
 
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Barry Shittpeas

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I’ve just been reading about the new Coronavirus Sherriff scheme the government is going to set up. No powers, no authority and no pay. That’s really going to work.

The job might appeal to anyone wanting to get stabbed in the face or be kicked to death on a wet backstreet pavement.
 
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oldgroaner

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Great news! the government has concluded and agreement with Japan


Which partner has the most to gain because it is efficiently organised, led and equipped?
 
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flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
53,199
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Great news! the government has concluded and agreement with Japan
I fear this could be an unwitting own goal.

For decades Japan made its cars here in Europe, meaning Britain, to avoid import duty, but Japan and the EU have reached an agreement phasing out import duties. This is why Honda have left and Nissan cancelled plans to build their Infinity cars and the Xtrail here, since it's getting cheap enough with specialist ships to send their cars direct from Japan.

If, as is likely, we've reached a parallel agreement, why wouldn't they send them to us as well, instead of having the costs of making them here?
.
 

vfr400

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Jun 12, 2011
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Basildon
Very true. CV19 is a mixed curse and blessing. The number of drunken brawls ending up in A&E has reduced considerably. The amount of air pollution has reduced ..both locally and globally. The amount of fossil fuel burnt reduced . So less respiratory complaints
The number of people choosing to attend hospital appointments way way down. I started having problems when walking about 10 weeks ago ....after 200 metres walking , difficulty with breathing, but then belching and being able to continue repeating every 50 metres .. It makes a 5Km walk rather rough. Curiously not so on the bike. . Not at all wishing to have hospital or GP visit. Anyway finally called my GP, ..as soon as my quarantine up, had a phone consultation and sent to local hospital .next day .two potential diagnosis. Heart obviously and maybe gut hernia or both Triaged in 20 minutes, 2 hour wait in A&E ,then ECG ,bloods , kept overnight on heart monitor, more ECGs .then released(I wasn't expecting that) The assumption is that I won't keel over in the next short while. More heart tests next week. Meanwhile the gut medication prescribed seems to be reducing the tightness in the chest
Sorry to hear that. I hope you get your problem sorted. personally, I have a fatalistic approach to my life, so health problems don't really worry me, but I can imagine that your situation must be very worrying.

I was kicked out of hospital with lungs full of blood clots and a prescription for blood thinners. After a couple of weeks of being quite ill, I suddenly realised, there was no follow-up arranged, so I rang the GP to see if I needed any further tests or treatment. He told me to ring 999 if I went dizzy or feint. They had washed their hands of my condition and didn't want to see me anymore. I live on my own, so if anything would happen, I'd be in deep trouble.
 

vfr400

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Jun 12, 2011
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I’ve just been reading about the new Coronavirus Sherriff scheme the government is going to set up. No powers, no authority and no pay. That’s really going to work.

The job might appeal to anyone wanting to get stabbed in the face or be kicked to death on a wet backstreet pavement.
Are you going to apply?
 

vfr400

Esteemed Pedelecer
Jun 12, 2011
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I have applied, but my application has been rejected. I’m too unstable to have face to face contact with the public.
That's a shame. It's a good way to put your ebike to use and get fit at the same time. Stab-proof vests are only £17 on Ebay. I got one for my weekly visit to the coop to get my milk, when I have to walk past the primary school.

I would apply myself but I can't walk or pedal far at the moment. I'll probably re-evaluate after Xmas if they still need marshals then, which they probably will.
 

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