Comments by "Helen Trope" (@heliotropezzz333) on "“Lives at risk” as UK government confirms thousands of Covid cases missed in data blunder - BBC News" video.

Andrew C The Tory government set up PHE as part of the NHS re-organisation in The Health and Social Care Act 2012, and it was warned at the time that the new body would not be able to cope with something like a pandemic, but as usual it didn't listen. The government decided to outsource most testing to Serco, rather than fund extra NHS capacity, and Serco subcontracted it to 29 other companies. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3llpX9DVuDM&t=19s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_SvrGwQdqg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=brXZU4iKhfg&t=5s
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What is the scam?
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@fav9925 Same sort of things happened in WW2, well they did in the UK anyway and nobody whined. They just got on with it. There are conflicts of interest all over the place with the UK government handing contracts, without competition to private companies, who give them funds, to test and trace and the company subcontracts the work to 29 other companies and a mess is made of it. How do you know Gates, the BBC and the Guardian are going to profit from vaccines. Gates funds a lot of things from his charity foundations, not for profit.
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@schmeegil2240 *won't say anything or will say fk all (know your language)
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@schmeegil2240 Stupid or misinformed and absorbing conspiracy theories.
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@schmeegil2240 His profit is from Microsoft but he also gives a lot of money to charity which is spent to improve people's lives in the third world without any profit from that. Can you not understand the difference or are you hard of thinking?
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@schmeegil2240 Not articulate either then.
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@schmeegil2240 Even the man criticising Gates didn't say he was making a profit from the vaccine, just that he was making the vaccine and had donated money to the CDC which sounds commendable. The same critic calls Dr Fauci corrupt which is laughable. Income to cover costs so that more vaccine can be made is not 'profit'. Profit is when you charge more for something than it costs to make, and keep that extra money yourself.
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Arran Robeson Yes it's shocking that diarrhoea kills over 2 million a year but the government has been cutting overseas aid in response to demands from their supporters. The fact is they don't care so much about poor babies in other countries dying. They just want to deal with threats to themselves in their own countries. It's not a scam because you think it's the wrong policy or that the government is focussing on the wrong things. The virus has also been killing younger people with conditions and vulnerabilities and even younger people who survive it can have long term health effects. Those are not being counted. The government is also locking down in Labour voting areas more than conservative ones, even when the spread has been worse in conservative areas. Leaked emails have revealed this. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSiUv4g-rR4
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@Kraken54321 Covid is certainly worse than the common cold which rarely kills people. Pneumonia can be a result of Covid as well as blood clotting, strokes and organ damage. Some people get it that badly and other people hardly notice the symptoms but the death rate would be far worse if not for preventative measures to avoid out of control spreading, and good hospital treatment. The death rate is probably understated in the UK because in the beginning only those who were tested had deaths attributed to Covid and tests were only done once people got to hospital. Loads of people died untested in care homes and so were not counted. An independent rough check is provided by the measure of the rise in deaths this year compared to previous years. This is called the' excess deaths figure' which includes deaths from all causes. That had certainly gone up well beyond the declared Covid death figures.
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@Kraken54321 No it isn't unless they've tested positive for Covid. On the other hand people who've had Covid for more than 28 days and die are not counted at all.
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Arran Robeson They've not taken away my freedom and liberty. I choose to co-operate with public health guidance for the benefit of the community. People pulled together like that in WW2 and didn't whine about it.
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@Kraken54321 Yes because that is openly declared as the instruction given to medics in relation to Covid stats. There were thousands who died in care homes though who were never tested for Covid although they showed all the symptoms. The handling of the pandemic and date collection was messed up but as I've said before the independent check figure is the excess death figure in time of Covid compared to previous years. That means deaths from all causes this year compared to deaths from all causes in previous years. Last time I saw that a few months ago the excess deaths were 60,000 when the Covid deaths data was 45,000. This indicates Covid deaths were more likely understated rather than overstated. Since then they've dropped out 5k deaths where patients had tested positive for Covid but died after 28 days.
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@Kraken54321 ???They already know. The government are the ones who decided not to count anyone who tested positive but died after 28 days.
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@Kraken54321 I don't know why they don't collect data on recovery rates. I wondered myself but often things are not done if it costs money and it's not considered essential. There have been films of hospitals filling up with Covid patients earlier in the epidemic. There are some on youtube if you look but journalists only put themselves at risk and get in the way of medics to be doing too much of that. The government usually pumps extra money into the service to deal with Winter flu but there have been occasions in the past when people were lying in corridors or waiting in ambulances outside the hospital because there weren't enough beds so they have been overwhelmed to the extent that patients were not always getting treatment when they needed it. In the time of Covid hospitals were reluctant to take patients from care homes for fear of being overwhelmed. My brother in law was in hospital with Covid earlier this year. My sister was not allowed to visit for fear of contracting Covid but then the hospital told her they would have to send him home to her as 'the government wanted the beds'. Hospitals can easily become overwhelmed in situations where you have a pandemic and seasonal flu at the same time. There isn't the spare capacity in terms of beds and intensive care beds because of the cuts over the years. To be fair though, health ssystems around the world have been in danger of being overwhelmed. I've seen videos of dead bodies in Mexico stored in lorries in the street because the morgues were full and hearses queueing up for the cemeteries. In the time of Spanish flu, in the USA in some places bodies were abandoned on the streets.
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@Kraken54321 I don't think they are collected but you could guesstimate from these figures from countries that do collect them assuming a certain amount of accuracy and honesty https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/
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Arran Robeson How is recovery defined? when people are no longer infectious? When they leave hospital? A lot of people never go to hospital or don't experience symptoms or contact with medics after their test and some continue to have longer term health problems. It's a bit difficult to see how accurate figures can be produced but if you take the world figures for instance, they show that 75% of people have recovered. That percentage may be higher in reality because not all countries collect or publish the data. Most people recover from pneumonia but you wouldn't want to get it. I've had pneumonia and I'd never want to get it again. Same with Covid for many people. Most will recover but you wouldn't want to catch it if you could avoid it.
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Arran Robeson It's not a scam. My brother in law has had Covid and had a stroke during it and has had 2 more since 'recovering'. Just go back to comforting yourself with your conspiracy theories. I've got no time for them.
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Arran Robeson I've tried to explain as best I can. I think you now need to figure it out for yourself.
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Arran Robeson I do get it. I thought I explained already. I'll be more concise or more blunt so that you can understand. Tory governments don't give much of a damn about problems that affect other parts of the world but they do give a damn about things that affect people who might vote for them, and many Tory voters are of an age where Covid might kill them. The same is true more or less about other Western governments, except for Trump's as he only cares about himself.
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Arran Robeson Ha ha. Ever heard of Realpolitik?
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So you don't spread it to someone who might be vulnerable, and so it can be distinguished from other conditions like colds and flu, so that the NHS doesn't get overwhelmed with a virus out of control.
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@808State21 They use the most appropriate tests they have if they have nothing better. Would you prefer them to do nothing? Good luck with the court cases I can't see those getting anywhere.
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@albertjemmett-waite1659 innit yourself.
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@gregp3210 Some infected people will be ill and some will not get symptoms. Those who may not get symptoms would be mostly in the under 30 age group, but they can still spread it to those who may suffer more.
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Andrew C The government was told that PHE when it was set up would not be able to deal with events such as pandemics mainly because that re-organisation involved reductions in geographic links to local areas who are used to dealing with local public health issues and know their areas. In the past local councils had a bigger role in this. It does seem like you'd want to use a database but then who are the people employed to tracks and trace and are they skilled and trained enough in using the appropriate technical means to do it? Serco subcontracted such work to 29 organisations who are probably operating from call centre type hubs, with staff paid at minimum levels, and little knowlege of lcoal areas and communication resources in those areas. There was supposed to be an app issued to help with it, but the government's first app (created by the private sector) didn't work and had to be withdrawn if I remember correctly. The government was warned year after year in recent years of the need to prepare for a pandemic, but they did nothing. Funding and stocks of equipment were cut as part of the austerity programme. A private sector guy was brought in to run the part of the NHS that stores equipment and one of the first actions he took was to run the stock down and sell some of it off.
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Andrew C I've just looked up the explanation for the missing tests. It said that some test results exceeded the maximum file size that would be accepted by the system so they could not input those results. That sounds like a design fault in the software. PHE say it has been fixed now. PHE won't have been the software designers. That will undoubtedly be a private company. The main errors that lead to this kind of mistake is not sufficiently consulting the end users (or customers) before designing the software. Designers often consult at too high a level, with people who don't know the nitty gritty of the work. I've seen that happen a number of times in the public sector.
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Andrew C P.S Strangely enough competent skilled people are not queueing up to take minimum wage jobs. They are often forced to, but they tend to aim for something better ideally. I used to work in the civil service. They cut numbers and stopped recruiting so they'd take agency staff instead. However a senior person complained to me (in a chat, not formally) that he could not get P.A.s from Agencies that would stay or that could do the work. They were perfectly well qualified and experienced as P.As but if they'd never worked in the public sector before they often could not cope because the job depended not just on their skills but on knowing how the sector worked, what the issues were, what the procedures were who to consult, how to consult them, who to engage with etc etc. You really had to know something about the set up and the history. Also P.As could usually get more pay working in the private sector.
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Andrew C I don't know where you get the spreadsheet info from. Here's where I got the explanation of the problem https://inews.co.uk/news/politics/covid-19-tests-positive-missing-how-testing-uk-cases-meaning-explained-677293 Maybe they used spreadheets pro tem until they could enter the data into the system again. I don't know as I don't know your source. Specialists are always used for computer problems. They don't let old buffers loose on them, but an awareness and understanding of computer systems at the higher levels of organisations is certainly useful otherwise the specialists can pull the wool over an organisation's eyes to hide their own mistakes.
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Andrew C I think you misunderstood me. It's not a specialist job to enter the data but it is a specialist job to fix software problems. I can't say more as I didn't hear the radio 4 discussion or know who was in the discussion but I've a feeling you've got the wrong end of the stick about the cause of this, not meaning to be rude. I'll have to look into it more. Where did you get 'the wrong tool for the job' info from?
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Andrew C Here you are. I've found a source that agrees with you. Seems you are right. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-54423988 The government has announced its intention to abolish PHE and replace it with something else.
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@gregp3210 I had my cancer surgery delayed for 3 months because of Covid. I really feel for anyone who experiences delays in treatment for serious conditions. It's up to the government to give the NHS the funding it needs to catch up, though extra staff cannot be created overnight. I think the NHS is prioritising the most serious cases. In my case 10 NHS Trusts contracted with a private hospital to use their premises to keep non-Covid urgent cases away from Covid ones. Here's another problem that will cause setbacks though it's not Covid related https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54435226
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@realfreedom8932 I hear them talking about deaths but greater infection rates lead to more deaths and blocking of hospitals so other serious illnesses are not treated when they should be.
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@realfreedom8932 The reason it's not overwhelming hospitals at the moment is because of the measures taken to slow down the spread of the virus. If the death rate is better than the cancer death rate, that's because of the measures taken to slow down the spread of the virus. There are countries .e.g in central America, where health services were overwhelmed by it and dead people were stored in lorries on the streets and there were queues for cemeteries . Dementia patients are being protected for the sake of their health and that of their carers. Having said that, I hope care homes find a way to allow visits because of the effect on the quality of life of the elderly without contact with their families.
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Arran Robeson If your question was written in intelligible English so that people understood what you meant, someone might answer you.
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@s m They are also looking at indicators like the number of hospital admissions which are rising steeply now, especially in the North of England and Wales. Deaths is another indicator. Deaths are not rising as steeply, but there is usually a 2 week time lag between the two.
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@s m Presumably Covid is on the certificates because the doctors recognise the symptoms and signs even if there hasn't been a test.
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@s m Not necessarily. Doctors are allowed to state what they believe to be the cause of death, That's normal for normal death certificates where no autopsy needs to be performed. In the beginning tests weren't always as available either. If you remember the government guidance for care homes said that some patients would be sent to care homes from hospital untested and some might have Covid but that care homes would be able to cope. That wasn't true as care homes didn't have the PPE or any other equipment such as ventilators at the time,.
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@s m What proof? There is no 'new world order' only new world chaos and disorder. Some leaders are not capable of creating any kind of order, new or otherwise.
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