Corona Virus

Didn't they put a stop to the bell in a ball after the players kicked a Morris Dancer to death?

 

Bloody hell... did I hear that right? test and trace budget raised to 1/5th of the overall annual NHS budget!!!

 

And the PCR test remains so badly specified as to be useless. Most of the asymptomatic positives are now non infectious people who have recovered - Elvis has left the building and taken Covid with him.

 

Qantas just announced “No Vaccine No Flight” for international flights.

I believe other airlines will follow.

 

AND...
Jamaican Airlines have stated
“No woman, no cry!”


I’ll get me coat...

 

Suits me, I'm never going to climb inside another aeroplane anyway.

 

We call them Germ tubes

 

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https://www.youtube.com/user/TomWoodsTV/videos

 

Just to add texture to dry statistics

My local hospitals trust has 13 adult ICU beds split between two hospitals; we currently have 1 spare bed in the trust; in one of our hospitals, 5 out of 7 ventilated patients are Covid patients (not sure about the other)... some of which are imports from hospitals around the country which are already full; it’s a similar situation with the next hospitals Trust northwards and southwards...

 

Wheels within wheels. In my opinion much of the objectivity about Covid has got lost in a mix of money, politics, power and blame avoidance.

We know where the virus sits in the panoply of pathogens - comparable with bad flu in its lethality and with post viral fatigue in quite a few victims. However, the PCR test has a false positive rate, according to some studies, of 90+% so best used as confirming symptomatic diagnosis. Throw in NHS underfunding, long shift patterns, self isolation (40% of the workforce in some places) and political terror at being held accountable and you have localised under resourced and overburdened/demoralised units that simply don’t generate the national numbers to suggest a genuine ongoing epidemic. The clinicians can’t see beyond their own firefight but we know of patient transfers the length and breadth of the country.
I think this is the single most telling illustration of the ‘problem’. This winter, by Public Health England’s own figures, is not one of the worst......and yet the narrative is doom laden. A vaccine provides a fig leaf to restore public confidence but, of course, survivors now have natural immunity just like the original 30+% and collectively we must be on the edge of natural herd immunity. Remember, the numbers going up are ‘PCR cases’ rather than symptomatic admissions which are in line with normal winter conditions. It is probably staff absences (we can’t man the Nightingales) that explain publicised ‘front line’ struggles.



The media have sought sensation over truth at every turn. How many of them actually move further from their computer than me?

 

Modern management systems demand a capacity approach. Where you problem solve and always run on or near capacity. Look at the food shortages when the pandemic fear first hit. Dont store units, instead, flow units, to keep costs down, is the modern management approach
This is carried forward to all systems ( since all out Grad. Student, Business Management, bosses, did the same course at Uni).
Transport, or Food, or Hospital, Education, Manufacture, etc.
So it stands to reason that ICU will be near capacity at this time of year.
More telling, ( although unsurprising and chilling), would be a breakdown of the ages of those currently in ICU beds.
Bearing in mind the prioritising structures in place atm. The older the patients the less "strain" the ICU's are under.

 

So is the 50,800 on top of the 94.000, deaths?

 

Yes. That is the point. The peak of the pandemic predated mass testing.

Symptomatic admissions and subsequent deaths were overwhelmingly Covid related. This winter Covid has miraculously eliminated a whole host of other conditions that harvest us and yet overall deaths are down a bit.

The only reason there are so many deaths are still ascribed to Covid is a test that suggests healthy or otherwise infected patients have it..... some might. Equally we have people complaining their father was labelled a Covid death when terminally ill with late stage Alzheimer’s.

 

I would suggest that this is much more complicated than a JIT manufacturing model. No demand forecasts would have been in place for this and the fact that there is a global requirement for “stuff” would have muddy this even more. A Holt-Winter regressional model wouldn’t sort this out.

 

I have a least two stories from colleagues, involving close relatives with long term, terminal illnesses, ending up with Covid on the Death Certificates.

 

It’s amazing how much inappropriate (not ‘best’) practice has been dumped on organisations not engaged in time phased assembly operations! I once tried explaining to some KPMG ‘consultant’ that they could value a stopped assembly line but running out of ammunition was more serious.