COVID-19: The Problem with the Track and Trace and Shielding the Over 50's

The track and trace scheme, and the on/of plans to isolate the over-50's are all well and good, but if neither scheme is backed up by a reasonable level of payment, then neither scheme will gain much support.

Boris has said that he expects companies to be reasonable and support those people affected. But what if the company is "reasonable"? What if they don't pay the person shielding or isolating? How can Boris force companies to pay employees that have to isolate or shield?

Basically, he can't. So either scheme is a busted flush.

Because without financial support, people will just continue to go to work. Either they won't declare symptoms, or they will ignore the track-and-trace advice. Over 50' will just take a pragmatic view and continue to work.

Without financial support from the government, you can't expect people to just stop working for two weeks or indefinitely. To make the schemes work you have to have a carrot. Sticks don't work and quite soon you'll have an angry mob on your hands.

Want to win the next election Boris? Have some common sense and sort it out.

COVID-19 Panorama Programme and Community Integrated Care.

Last Thursday the Panorama Programme highlighted the care charity Community Integrated Care and how one of their home for dementia patients coped during the COVID-19 crisis. They lost quite a lot of their residents to the virus. 

Sadly Panorama did the usual lefty thing of Tory government bashing and tugging at heart strings. Plenty of emotional content and not much factual content. Let's have less of the "care workers crying in front of the camera" angle and more of the "fucked up confusion, changing the rules on a daily basis" angle instead.

The Panorama programme completely missed the reasons why care homes failed to prevent COVID-19 infections from getting inside.

In fact the programme blatantly showed on of the big issues during the crisis: whilst NHS hospital staff were doing full-on biological protection in what were effectively hazmat suits, care homes were left to deal with COVID-19 patients using just surgical masks, gloves and plastic aprons.

Where NHS staff were exiting COVID-19 wards and completely stripping off scrubs and PPE, the care home staff were wearing the same clothes walking from resident to resident.

It came as no surprise then that once testing had been established, the majority of care workers and residents in the home being filmed tested positive for COVID-19. The infection prevention was lacklustre at best. But homes can only follow official advice and use the equipment given to them. If they overstep their remit they can (and are) sanctioned. 

And this is where I am at odds with the Panorama programme: they didn't focus on the differences in advice and procedures between the NHS and care homes. Given there were dealing with effectively the same environment (working closely with a number of "patients", both infected and non-infected), why were the advice and infection control procedures so disparate?

The pictures on the news coming out of Covid wards at the time are chalk and cheese different between the advice given to care homes at the same time. 

The NHS had the resources available to protect staff (although there were issues even within the NHS) and patients. In the care sector people were just left to muddle through and deal with it as best they could.

The Panorama programme dealt with the subject of patients being sent to care homes from hospitals without covid testing and in some cases already infected patients being delivered to care homes which then went on to infect other staff and residents. Panorama dealt with the pressure that care homes were being put under to accept these patients, but nothing was said about practices, procedures and advice given to care homes. Yes, this was an issue, but only in limited cases.

In fact Community Integrated Care used common sense and instigated the full PPE policy (albeit only masks, gloves and aprons) and locked down care homes way before they were given official advice, which protected the majority of their homes from infection. The majority of their homes being infected from residents returned back to them infected from hospital visits.

The second thing the Panorama programme failed to investigate was the almost daily changes in official advice coming from official sources. I remember early in the pandemic, there was no advice for a number of weeks. Those homes that took it upon themselves to isolate and protect staff and residents fared best. Official advice at the beginning was woeful.

It was only when the horror stories came out of Italy of care home residents being left to die in abandoned homes that the government and their agents started to get their shit together and start offering advice. In one week the advice changed three times, such was the chaos around care. There was one change at least every week. And I've already blogged about the difference in advice given to different care sectors. Even though they may be doing the exact same job or type of care, residential care homes regulated by the CQC got more robust advice then other care sectors. The only difference I could see was that CQC regulated homes account for the stats about care homes that were being shown on the daily briefings. Unregulated care homes count as stats in the general population.

Other types of care such as domiciliary care or supported living were not given the same level of advice or support. My wife manages a number of homes that provide different forms of care. She was working to one set of guidelines for her registered home and a completely different set of guidelines for her other care homes. Despite them doing essentially the same job. That's how fucked up the advice was and still is.

And that's just advice. The debacle around getting hold of PPE is another saga entirely. Private care homes left out in the lurch, care homes in general left out of government initiatives and even when government -sponsored free PPE was available, the emails looked like a scam from some completely non-healthcare-related company.

The government deny care was an afterthought, but the evidence suggests otherwise.

But in my book, by concentrating on emotions Panorama spectacularly failed to score any point against the government. 

How's about playing back Chris Whitty's first few visits to the daily Covid-19 briefings when he went on about herd immunity when it wasn't a given there was any immunity against covid? How's about contacting care providers and asking for the emails that changed on almost a daily basis? How's about checking the difference between registered care homes and other forms of care?

And still the bollocks continue to be dropped: currently the plan is to test every care home worker for COVID on a weekly basis. Residents get tested every 28 days. 

Except currently not one testing kit has been delivered, so homes cannot meet the weekly target. Where's Panorama on that spectacular clanger?

It just shows that the BBC is run by children who fixate on one point and spectacularly miss attention to other details. They could have made one hell of a damning documentary if they had a clue about the subject they were filming.

Emotional Politics.

It seems that emotional politics has begun to override factual politics.

By that I mean no longer are decisions made based on cold hard facts. It seems statistics (not the most accurate science) and emotions are now dominating the political arena.

Look at Black Lives Matter for instance. On the face of it a laudable statement. But hold on: the BLM movement are not dealing in facts. Otherwise the fact that more black people are killed by black people than any other ethnic group would be front and centre of their efforts.

BLM deal in emotions. They only surface when they can use a white on black crime to incite the black minority into action. On the back of which mainly white Antifa-types pile on and start trouble, causing riots.

Riots in the cities of American is now the new norm. Although I will qualify that: Riots in DEMOCRAT-RUN cities is the new norm.

The Democrat led city councils have sided so much with the rioters they have withdrawn any opposition to them. The Police have been withdrawn and now the Mayor of Portland has stood in solidarity with RIOTERS! You can't make it up. Well, you could, if you were writing some dystopian novel about how America descended into chaos and civil war...

But BLM is only one organisation that uses emotions and not fact to further it's agenda.

Extinction Rebellion are another clownworld outfit that deal in emotions instead of facts. They say the world will be dead in 12 years (why it's always 12 years I dunno, maybe because everyone is programmed to accept 10-year timeframes, but 12 years seems that bit closer but not quite close enough).

Greenpeace used to deal with straight science. But now they've jumped on the emotional bandwaggon.

All the pressure groups have changed tactics and moved from facts to emotions: BLM, Climate, Race LGBTQ+ issues, trans rights, it's all about victimhood or how those affected FEEL, rather than how they are directly and factually affected.

It's interesting to note though, that all of these organisations are left-leaning. They are also in the majority supported financially by the same people. The ultra-rich.

Their members are also in the majority middle-class young people, a minority telling the rest of the population how to live their lives through manipulation of pressure groups that largely outweigh the influence their membership would have under normal circumstances.

Back in the day they would have been crushed by the establishment, the Police would have gone in cracking heads and cleared them away from the streets. Now they are indulged, because the people that finance them also have influence in government.

There is a reason for this insanity. There has to be, because there is no other explanation.

The elite, the ultra-rich want these people to succeed. They want their agendas to be government policy.

So, look at all the various pressure groups. What is the common denominator?

Authoritarianism.

Every single one of these organisations I have mentioned want people to be forced into certain behaviours. No pressure via the ballot box, no majority decision, these organisations use the media, protests and if necessary riots to put pressure on governments to adhere to their minority view.

It's subversion of the ballot box, it's subversion of democracy, it's totalitarian and authoritarian in it's goals. It is Fascism writ large.

"But we are far left" "But we are Communist", "we are socialist" these people cry. We cannot be Fascist because they are right of centre.

These people really need to understand history. Fascists come from both extremes of the political spectrum.