Covid-19 the second wave.

[Leon103]

Reported by the BBC

Spanish businessman who acted as a go-between to secure protective garments for NHS staff in the coronavirus pandemic, was paid $28m (£21m) in UK taxpayer cash.
The consultant had been in line for a further $20m of UK public funds, documents filed in a US court reveal.

I wonder who's getting millions for brokering the vaccine purchases.

Not sure the answer I made sure my shares portfolio was moved over to pharmaceutical companies back in March.

 

[Benfleet Brewery]

As I’ve said previously, infection rates aren’t going to reduce too much, if at all, whilst schools colleges and unis remain open. I just walked to the post office at school chucking out time. Lockdown and social distancing, what lockdown and social distancing?

 

[Northern_Brewer]

More good news - according to this new preprint from La Jolla, it looks like the immune system "memory" works pretty well for SARS2, at least in most *but not all* people. So potentially we could be looking at something that's more like eg the traditional approach to tetanus with a booster every 5-10 years rather than an annual flu jab. If nothing else, it would take the pressure off having to jab the whole population within a year. before the first people need boosters again.

 

[Covrich]

More good news - according to this new preprint from La Jolla, it looks like the immune system "memory" works pretty well for SARS2, at least in most *but not all* people. So potentially we could be looking at something that's more like eg the traditional approach to tetanus with a booster every 5-10 years rather than an annual flu jab. If nothing else, it would take the pressure off having to jab the whole population within a year. before the first people need boosters again.

That is good news, it not only takes the pressure of everyone fighting for a jab and silly season for the next few years, it also gives people peace of mind and subciounsously will allow people to go about their business in hopefully a more normal way.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

More good news from van Dorp et al at UCL - it seems the SARS2 in mink is not particularly well adapted to going back into humans. So no ATTACK OF THE KILLER MINK VIRUS.... And there seems to be a couple of common mutations that they acquire in mink pretty quickly, suggesting that they help it to adapt to attacking mink. It also suggests that the original infection in humans may have quickly adapted to humans, so it may be hard to get a definitive answer on the exact original route of transmission.

Also worth noting that there's a bit of a barney about that preprint, as they used some mink sequences before the people who had done the work had had a chance to publish them properly.

 

[Covrich]

Ex dropped boys back says Rugby Hospital where she works and manages is horrific at the minute with patients being sent from Coventry which is really struggling with patients but not Covid but pateints with other problems heart and other illnesses (she went on and on) but have been unable to attend hospital or get care needed as a knock on effect over this year and are now in a much worse hea;lth condition.

So Coventry and warwickshire are being overrun but not directly from covid but the side effects

 

[terrym]

I see there are people making disparaging comments about the bloke who made £Ms by facilitating a PPE deal a few months back. Same people who months ago were making disparaging comments about lack of PPE at the time, fuelled by media 'outrage', in spite of the fact that the world and his wife were also scouring the planet for any company that could supply PPE, and were prepared to pay premium prices for it. So if this bloke located the necessary PPE at a time when it was required, whilst the sum he was paid now does seem outrageous, arguably if we hadn't paid it another country would have paid, and we would have lost out. And perhaps that would have meant lives were lost without the necessary PPE, something else that same people were only too happy to remind us about a few months back.
But to put this bloke's fee into perspective although there is a lot of grumbling about it, no-one really questions the money paid to top footballers who can earn up to £500k per week for kicking a ball about and which has nothing to do with saving lives.
And as far as money required for the new vaccines hopefully to become available soon, companies and perhaps governments have invested heavily in this and expect a return on their investment and risk strategy. And remember there will be some companies who have backed the wrong vaccine and their investment will be lost. But again if we are not prepared to pay the going rate then someone else will pay if the vaccines are in short supply, and this is already happening since I hear there are concerns about the availability of vaccines for countries in the developing world who cannot pay the going rate for mass immunisation.

 

[BeerCat]

That should read Head Dick!

Should swap the word officer for sheep.

 

[obscure]

I see there are people making disparaging comments about the bloke who made £Ms by facilitating a PPE deal a few months back. Same people who months ago were making disparaging comments about lack of PPE at the time, fuelled by media 'outrage', in spite of the fact that the world and his wife were also scouring the planet for any company that could supply PPE, and were prepared to pay premium prices for it. So if this bloke located the necessary PPE at a time when it was required, whilst the sum he was paid now does seem outrageous, arguably if we hadn't paid it another country would have paid, and we would have lost out. And perhaps that would have meant lives were lost without the necessary PPE, something else that same people were only too happy to remind us about a few months back.
But to put this bloke's fee into perspective although there is a lot of grumbling about it, no-one really questions the money paid to top footballers who can earn up to £500k per week for kicking a ball about and which has nothing to do with saving lives.
And as far as money required for the new vaccines hopefully to become available soon, companies and perhaps governments have invested heavily in this and expect a return on their investment and risk strategy. And remember there will be some companies who have backed the wrong vaccine and their investment will be lost. But again if we are not prepared to pay the going rate then someone else will pay if the vaccines are in short supply, and this is already happening since I hear there are concerns about the availability of vaccines for countries in the developing world who cannot pay the going rate for mass immunisation.

The issue is that the government completely set aside any kind of standard procurement policy. Of course if they had actually succeeded and obtained PPE of acceptable quality that would have being one thing (and even then procurement policy exists for a reason) but as was demonstrated on multiple occasions some of the contracts I,e. for gowns from Turkey turned out to be unusable.

Then of corse their is the blatant cronyism contracts being awarded to companies with close links to senior government figures (generally preferred supplier lists are supposed to be for companies with a long track record of providing goods and services not because they are recommended by a minister). Their is a reason the national audit office are now raising questions over how the government handled COVID related contracts.

 

[Rodcx500z]

I bought my own ppe a face mask, am i in the clear

 

[trueblue]

I see there are people making disparaging comments about the bloke who made £Ms by facilitating a PPE deal a few months back. Same people who months ago were making disparaging comments about lack of PPE at the time, fuelled by media 'outrage', in spite of the fact that the world and his wife were also scouring the planet for any company that could supply PPE, and were prepared to pay premium prices for it. So if this bloke located the necessary PPE at a time when it was required, whilst the sum he was paid now does seem outrageous, arguably if we hadn't paid it another country would have paid, and we would have lost out. And perhaps that would have meant lives were lost without the necessary PPE, something else that same people were only too happy to remind us about a few months back.
But to put this bloke's fee into perspective although there is a lot of grumbling about it, no-one really questions the money paid to top footballers who can earn up to £500k per week for kicking a ball about and which has nothing to do with saving lives.
And as far as money required for the new vaccines hopefully to become available soon, companies and perhaps governments have invested heavily in this and expect a return on their investment and risk strategy. And remember there will be some companies who have backed the wrong vaccine and their investment will be lost. But again if we are not prepared to pay the going rate then someone else will pay if the vaccines are in short supply, and this is already happening since I hear there are concerns about the availability of vaccines for countries in the developing world who cannot pay the going rate for mass immunisation.

Footballers are not paid out of the public purse.

 

[terrym]

The issue is that the government completely set aside any kind of standard procurement policy. Of course if they had actually succeeded and obtained PPE of acceptable quality that would have being one thing (and even then procurement policy exists for a reason) but as was demonstrated on multiple occasions some of the contracts I,e. for gowns from Turkey turned out to be unusable.

Then of corse their is the blatant cronyism contracts being awarded to companies with close links to senior government figures (generally preferred supplier lists are supposed to be for companies with a long track record of providing goods and services not because they are recommended by a minister). Their is a reason the national audit office are now raising questions over how the government handled COVID related contracts.

I think you might be under the impression that government ministers were singlehandedly responsible for obtaining PPE. That's not the case. 'The goverment' issue a directive and a budget to go with it and its then up to the army of civil servants in the supply chain, in this case NHS managers, to go out and carry out the plan. Its true that the standard procurement norms were probably chucked out the window, and substandard kit was bought. But whose fault is that? The procurement professionals who should have known what they were buying and set up audit checks along the way to ensure the spec was met, or a government minister who is only usually advised on what is required by the teams of civil servants who are in turn paid to identify a need. And this is a not political statement, its how the process works whoever is in power.
Finally on all large government sponsored contracts the National Audit Office will get involved sooner or later, and this is no exception, and not is unusual.

 

[terrym]

Footballers are not paid out of the public purse.

You've selectively missed the point I was making.

 

[trueblue]

You've selectively missed the point I was making.

Just can't see the relevance of what a footballer earns compared with what the tax payer is giving to this middleman.

 

[trueblue]

Just returned from Tesco's 1st time I have been in any shop since lockdown 2 started. It seems essential items include tinsel and all other xmas items along with everything else the sell. The place was busy with some trolleys looking like it was a xmas shopping trip. No social distancing and although most people wore masks I saw loads of the masks pulled down or noses sticking out. I can see this lockdown having little effect when some things are just allowed to carrying on as normal, why are garden centres open for example.
In contrast just before this lockdown I went into a small card shop to buy my wife a birthday card and they had someone on the door allowing just a few people in, you had to wear a mask and sanitize your hands yet this guy is not allowed to open despite offering safer shopping than any supermarket.

 

[obscure]

I think you might be under the impression that government ministers were singlehandedly responsible for obtaining PPE. That's not the case. 'The goverment' issue a directive and a budget to go with it and its then up to the army of civil servants in the supply chain, in this case NHS managers, to go out and carry out the plan. Its true that the standard procurement norms were probably chucked out the window, and substandard kit was bought. But whose fault is that? The procurement professionals who should have known what they were buying and set up audit checks along the way to ensure the spec was met, or a government minister who is only usually advised on what is required by the teams of civil servants who are in turn paid to identify a need. And this is a not political statement, its how the process works whoever is in power.
Finally on all large government sponsored contracts the National Audit Office will get involved sooner or later, and this is no exception, and not is unusual.

Do I think that Michael Gove personally signed the PO for a purchase of gloves for some random hospital in the Midlands or similar, of course not. Do I consider it problematic when contracts are awarded without open tender to companies with links to the current ruling party, and that said ruling party seems to see no issue with this yes.
The report is available here: https://www.nao.org.uk/wp-content/u...-procurement-during-the-COVID-19-pandemic.pdf
One of the areas of controversy that has emerged from the NAO report was the use of a two tier system with a priority track and more precisely how companies ended up on this:

Fewer than 250 sources for these leads were recorded: 144 leads came from
the private offices of ministers, including referrals from MPs who had gone
to ministers with a possible manufacturer in their constituency and where
private individuals had written to the minister or the private office with offers of help; 64 leads were direct from MPs or members of the House of Lords not in government; 21 leads were from officials, such as a Department of International Trade network that was looking for sources worldwide, and the private office of the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Health & Social Care; and three leads were from other identified sources that did not fall into the categories above.

Their isn‘t a particular smoking gun, and I doubt anything was actually criminal but on the whole much of the process seems mismanaged, with routine disregard for the need for proper documentation and process to minimise conflicts of interest.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

No social distancing and although most people wore masks I saw loads of the masks pulled down or noses sticking out.
I can see this lockdown having little effect when some things are just allowed to carrying on as normal, why are garden centres open for example.

As i have said many times in the various covid threads my son works part time at a large supermarket staff are not and never have been allowed to tell members of the public to observe the one way system or instruct them how to wear masks they were told this from the start by both the union and company they are shop assistants not the police, if people are too stupid to observe the instructions "carrying on as normal" what can the supermarkets do?

 

[trueblue]

As i have said many times in the various covid threads my son works part time at a large supermarket staff are not and never have been allowed to tell members of the public to observe the one way system or instruct them how to wear masks they were told this from the start by both the union and company they are shop assistants not the police, if people are too stupid to observe the instructions "carrying on as normal" what can the supermarkets do?

Not blaming the staff at Tesco's at all but I think smaller shops could probably offer a safer environment. If Tesco's can sell xmas goods then why can't small independents many of which rely on this time of the year to earn a living.

 

[marshbrewer]

Not blaming the staff at Tesco's at all but I think smaller shops could probably offer a safer environment. If Tesco's can sell xmas goods then why can't small independents many of which rely on this time of the year to earn a living.

But what's the practical alternative? If you want to lock down, I am assuming the idea is to only have shops selling essential items open. So what do you do if thise shops also sell non essential stuff - have the ridiculous situation like they had in Wales where isles were taped off and shops had to define exactly what was essential?

 

[Chippy_Tea]

Not blaming the staff at Tesco's at all but I think smaller shops could probably offer a safer environment. If Tesco's can sell xmas goods then why can't small independents many of which rely on this time of the year to earn a living.

I get what you are saying and it does seem unfair and although jjsh said it was ridiculous to tape off isles i think the government should have insisted it was done, Tesco Metro in the next town closed the whole upstairs department Electrical, Games and CD's etc it wouldn't have hurt for them to have done this again bearing in mind the harm they will be doing to local small shops and their staff.