Day: 9 November 2020

John Waterfield It was the first time we had travelled since the lockdown. It seemed quite a risky venture. All the same we decided to chance it for the sake of getting some October sun. Cheap flights always leave at awkward times, to make you suffer for the economy. Our flight to Catania was at 6am. We got up at 1am, and reached Bristol airport around 3am. We had booked Silver Zone parking, but found the site "Closed because of COVID-19". We were redirected to the main parking area, which proved to be a mile away, and then had to drag our bags to the terminal building. There were no signs, and in the dark it was not at all clear where the terminal building was located. On reaching it, we found it barricaded like a war zone. Barriers everywhere, so you had to thread your way along a narrow passage which was the only means of access left open. Before entering the terminal we passed through a temperature testing tent. The woman on duty did not take our temperature, but did instruct us to put on our masks. Masks stayed on, for two hours of waiting at the terminal and for the three hours’ duration of the flight. It was the first time I had been obliged to wear ...

Whistleblower: 37% of NHS Staff Are Absent "Due to COVID-19" In Yorkshire and North-East An NHS whistleblower has leaked a slide deck dated November 2nd. In the words of the leaker, it's a "pretty standard high level (NHS England) briefing, looking at operational areas and the general picture". It's full of interesting data that I'll be working through over the next couple of days, but the thing which jumped out after a brief perusal was the figure for "regional Covid-related staff absences" in Yorkshire and the North-East – a whopping 37%! As the whistleblower says, "This has to be due to false positives, no way can over 1/3 of staff all have Covid." (The figure is even higher in the Midlands – 40%.) This confirms my analysis, published last Wednesday, of why the 'Quad' took the decision to place England under a second lockdown, in spite of knowing that Covid hospital admissions were unlikely to exceed those during the peak of the first wave, when no NHS trust anywhere in the country was overwhelmed. As I said then, they were just worried about certain hotspots – specifically, those in cities in Yorkshire and the North-East. And the reason for their anxiety was because NHS England's critical care capacity in those areas is now lower than it was in March/April. Why? Because ...