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Coronavirus - how is it/has it affected you?

pauljames87 said:
Sorry 37 billion Divided by 66 million is 500k no?
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For some reason inhad a population figure of 77m in my head, but google tells me its 68m.
Even then 68m x 500k is 34000000000000 pounds. Is that billion or trillion? Maybe ive got my illions mixed up, either way its an eye watering amount of zeros and far far more than t+t could possibly cost
 
Beezerk said:
And all those screaming last year for a quality track and trace system would have been told to swivel and just suck it up.
Hindsight is such a wonderful thing, specially when it bolsters your side of the argument.
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We had a good track and trace system, which has been operating for years for other infectious diseases. It was based in PHE, ran at low cost and and used feet on the grounds methods, long known to be essential for effective contact tracing. It could easily and quickly have been scaled up. Instead, in early March 2020, the Govt stopped it doing community testing, at a time when the need for community testing could not have been greater and froze local tracing until the white elephant of Track and Trace came along. It was obvious from the outset that it would be an abject failure, but it was even worse than that. It never ever got even close to contacting anything close to a meaningful proportion of new cases, and as a matter of policy refused to test close contacts. It is not enough to say that Track and Trace did no good, we need to realise it actually did harm. Ironically, most of the tricky outbreaks were still effectively handled by PHE local groups anyway, otherwise we would be in an even worse place.

On budgets, the £37 billion for Track and Trace is approximately 100 times the entire annual PHE budget (around £300 million).
 
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SaintHacker said:
Should probably be a random irritation but its covid related. My son finishes school next week. Ordinarily he would be on study leave but as there's no exams this year he's finished. You would think after missing nearly a year of face to face teaching they might keep the school year going just this once until July to help those that have missed out on so much, but oh no. And teachers wonder why they get so little sympathy each time they call yet another strike ?
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Mrs A has been a teacher for 21 years. Never been on strike or, as far as I can remember, told to by her union. She's 70% part-time but still spends 6 days a week working more hours than I do in my full-time job. "Holidays" are for catching up and getting kids through their coursework. She's not unique in her commitment.
I won't be passing on your comments because the last 12 months have been mentally exhausting for her, helping individual kids get through the year where normally it would be a roomful at a time, and it might push her over the edge.
 
RichA said:
Mrs A has been a teacher for 21 years. Never been on strike or, as far as I can remember, told to by her union. She's 70% part-time but still spends 6 days a week working more hours than I do in my full-time job. "Holidays" are for catching up and getting kids through their coursework. She's not unique in her commitment.
I won't be passing on your comments because the last 12 months have been mentally exhausting for her, helping individual kids get through the year where normally it would be a roomful at a time, and it might push her over the edge.
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Lazy stereotypes as always

My wife's school let go 5 members of staff due to cuts to funding even though working flat out through covid

But it's fine apparently they all strike
 
pauljames87 said:
Very true

However my point which is being lost is that the gov haven't done all they can and have blamed the public at every stage it goes wrong

So I'm prepared to be blamed again
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Not every citizen's decisions have to be made for them.
There is no law against climbing Ben Nevis in February wearing trainers and tracksuit, but most reasonable people would realise that they'd be risking their own life and those of the mountain rescue team.
For reasons I'll never understand, half the country decided to risk christmas with the grandparents, even though a vaccine was in touching distance.
 
RichA said:
Mrs A has been a teacher for 21 years. Never been on strike or, as far as I can remember, told to by her union. She's 70% part-time but still spends 6 days a week working more hours than I do in my full-time job. "Holidays" are for catching up and getting kids through their coursework. She's not unique in her commitment.
I won't be passing on your comments because the last 12 months have been mentally exhausting for her, helping individual kids get through the year where normally it would be a roomful at a time, and it might push her over the edge.
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My wife works in preschool. She is just as qualified as a year R teacher but gets paid a fraction of what tbey do. She worked through the whole pandemic, putting herself in harms way every day to look after key workers children, so please don't lecture me about how hard the poor old teachers have it. I've told her many times to move up to school age but she wont as she loves working with the little ones too much
 
RichA said:
Mrs A has been a teacher for 21 years. Never been on strike or, as far as I can remember, told to by her union. She's 70% part-time but still spends 6 days a week working more hours than I do in my full-time job. "Holidays" are for catching up and getting kids through their coursework. She's not unique in her commitment.
I won't be passing on your comments because the last 12 months have been mentally exhausting for her, helping individual kids get through the year where normally it would be a roomful at a time, and it might push her over the edge.
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I genuinely thought that we had moved past the old 'what a cushy job teachers have, 13 weeks holiday etc etc'. The amount of time spent at home doing lesson plans, marking work etc is staggering, I would even suggest that most in the private sector would baulk at the additional 'out , of hours' work the profession demands with no additional remuneration or time off in lieu!
 
SaintHacker said:
My wife works in preschool. She is just as qualified as a year R teacher but gets paid a fraction of what tbey do. She worked through the whole pandemic, putting herself in harms way every day to look after key workers children, so please don't lecture me about how hard the poor old teachers have it. I've told her many times to move up to school age but she wont as she loves working with the little ones too much
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There was no lecture, simply pointing out that the "lazy stereotype", as someone described your post, doesn't fit all teachers. For sure, there are some, but they don't all deserve to be tarnished.
 
RichA said:
Not every citizen's decisions have to be made for them.
There is no law against climbing Ben Nevis in February wearing trainers and tracksuit, but most reasonable people would realise that they'd be risking their own life and those of the mountain rescue team.
For reasons I'll never understand, half the country decided to risk christmas with the grandparents, even though a vaccine was in touching distance.
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The Govt makes lots of decisions for citizens, including how much you can drink before driving or how many paracetemol you can buy at the garage at one time. The people regularly show that they need decisions taken for them.
 
SaintHacker said:
For some reason inhad a population figure of 77m in my head, but google tells me its 68m.
Even then 68m x 500k is 34000000000000 pounds. Is that billion or trillion? Maybe ive got my illions mixed up, either way its an eye watering amount of zeros and far far more than t+t could possibly cost
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See my 'correcting' post! UK's concept of Billion was changed to 1,000,000,000 (aligning with US and the rest of the world) in 1974 (by Harold Wilson)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion
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Foxholer said:
pauljames87 said:
Sorry 37 billion Divided by 66 million is 500k no?
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Not these days...It's 500 - well actually more like 575
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pauljames87 said:
Very true

However my point which is being lost is that the gov haven't done all they can and have blamed the public at every stage it goes wrong

So I'm prepared to be blamed again
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Again, with hindsight. I believe more in the truism of Theodore Roosevelt 's words about "the critics", than I do about journos and those with political agendas who always find some Body or authority to blame instead of conceding that in this sort of situation the populous have a responsibility to themselves and society to behave sensibly .
This was an unprecedented and dangerous situation thrust upon every Country, and every one of those critics , and every one of us , would have dreaded to be the ones in authority ,charged with making the decision to try to sort it out.
So why this rush to hammer those on whom it fell?
 
Swinglowandslow said:
Again, with hindsight. I believe more in the truism of Theodore Roosevelt 's words about "the critics", than I do about journos and those with political agendas who always find some Body or authority to blame instead of conceding that in this sort of situation the populous have a responsibility to themselves and society to behave sensibly .
This was an unprecedented and dangerous situation thrust upon every Country, and every one of those critics , and every one of us , would have dreaded to be the ones in authority ,charged with making the decision to try to sort it out.
So why this rush to hammer those on whom it fell?
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Because it wasn't taken seriously enough and it's been admitted it could have been avoided if dealt with correctly

But everyone seems fine with that, it makes me uncomfortable
 
RichA said:
There was no lecture, simply pointing out that the "lazy stereotype", as someone described your post, doesn't fit all teachers. For sure, there are some, but they don't all deserve to be tarnished.
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Having (originally) married teacher. My best man married a teacher, my youngest daughter is a teacher and my middle daughter works in school admin…. Bluntly, if 2% are as you described I’d be gobsmacked. Unpolitely, you’re a million miles off. And that’s as unpolitely as I dare be…
 
Swinglowandslow said:
Again, with hindsight. I believe more in the truism of Theodore Roosevelt 's words about "the critics", than I do about journos and those with political agendas who always find some Body or authority to blame instead of conceding that in this sort of situation the populous have a responsibility to themselves and society to behave sensibly .
This was an unprecedented and dangerous situation thrust upon every Country, and every one of those critics , and every one of us , would have dreaded to be the ones in authority ,charged with making the decision to try to sort it out.
So why this rush to hammer those on whom it fell?
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Because they made obvious and repeated major mistakes despite being advised what to do by internal and external experts. Those mistakes cost many lives. But I guess you are saying 'Gee, that is just how it goes'.

And it was not hindsight, it was foresight based on the horror playing out in Italy and Spain on out TVs and historical strategies for dealing with contagion.

This situation was unprecedented in terms of scale, although not in nature, and there is a well trodden path to try to tackle it. The first and bleeding obvious step is top try to stop the contagion getting into the country. Fail. The next one is to test widely to determine how much there is. Fail. Need I go on? You don't let mathematical modelling lead policy. You don't embark on a herd immunity strategy unless you know the contagion very well.

This country had a pandemic exercise a few years ago, under the same Govt party, and did nothing with the report. Other countries acted more on the UK exercise than the UK did.

People in power are there because they choose to be. They must accept the responsibility of dealing with major crises. This lot have abjectly failed and continue to do so. Delaying putting India on the red list in order to do a trade deal is a shameful abdication of responsibility for which sacking isn't close to good enough. Likewise choosing known Covid deniers to get advice on an autumn circuit breaker was cynical and negligent.
 
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