Coronavirus (OLD)

[downquark1]

Originally Posted by Mick

Chancellor Latest: VAT cut on Food, Attractions and Accommodation. From 20% to 5%

Wow that’s massive cut.

I do believe I made some sort of prediction about taxes. Not super accurate but the jist is there.

[heero_yuy]

Most of the benefits are for the restaraunts and take-away trade:

Quote from HMG VAT:

Food and drink for human consumption is usually zero-rated but some items are always standard-rated. These include catering, alcoholic drinks, confectionery, crisps and savoury snacks, hot food, sports drinks, hot takeaways, ice cream, soft drinks and mineral water.

Restaurants must always charge VAT on everything eaten either on their premises or in communal areas designated for their customers to use, such as shared tables in a shopping centre or airport food courts.

In addition, restaurants and takeaway vendors must charge VAT on all hot takeaways and home deliveries, but do not need to charge VAT on cold takeaway food unless it’s to be eaten in a designated area.

I'm sure the devil is in the detail. I can't imagine the public health fanatics would like to see confectionary, crisps etc made cheaper.

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

You are wriggling and annoyingly so. It was professional negligence not to test them. A medical matter.

With the tests that weren’t available, and they had to get them out of hospital very quickly to make beds available?

Thoughtless unprofessional negligent medics not doing tests that weren’t widely available...

Anyone who doesn't support beer getting 15% off for VAT is deeply suspicious as far as i am concerned.

[Carth]

four men went to a pub
went to drown their sorrows
spent 10 quid on a round of drinks
and had some left for tomorrow

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Damien

It's amazing the number of things the Government isn't responsible for. It seems everyone else from the NHS to the opposition are to blame for the bad response to this virus. Not having testing in place wasn't their fault, the slow lockdown wasn't their fault, lack of track and trace wasn't their fault, not much PPE wasn't their fault, the advice given to hospitals wasn't their fault and the high death rate in care homes isn't their fault.

If Boris is responsible for the whole of the UK, how come Sturgeon keeps announcing different rules? Scotland had its OWN separate pandemic plans. Link from 2011. Just as in the US, it is the State Governors that set and announce any rules. The individual states run their OWN health systems. Scotland is responsible for NHS Scotland.

Originally Posted by Carth

four men went to a pub
went to drown their sorrows
spent 10 quid on a round of drinks
and had some left for tomorrow

They weren't Londoners that's for sure.

[denphone]

Originally Posted by Damien

Anyone who doesn't support beer getting 15% off for VAT is deeply suspicious as far as i am concerned.

Even though l am not a drinker l do support it.

---------- Post added at 13:49 ---------- Previous post was at 13:47 ----------

Originally Posted by Damien

They weren't Londoners that's for sure.

More like a tenner for a pint up there.

Originally Posted by nomadking

If Boris is responsible for the whole of the UK, how come Sturgeon keeps announcing different rules? Scotland had its OWN separate pandemic plans. Link from 2011. Just as in the US, it is the State Governors that set and announce any rules. The individual states run their OWN health systems. Scotland is responsible for NHS Scotland.

That’s a very simplistic view - the Federal Government has a huge input re funding, regulations, and resources.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218212/

Federal

The federal government plays a large role in the public health system in the country. It surveys the population's health status and health needs, sets policies and standards, passes laws and regulations, supports biomedical and health services research, helps finance and sometimes delivers personal health services, provides technical assistance and resources to state and local health systems, provides protection against international health threats, and supports international efforts toward global health. The federal government does all of these mainly through two delegated powers: the power to regulate interstate commerce and the power to tax and spend for the general welfare.

Overall, federal activities fall into two major categories: those that are conducted directly by the federal government—assessment, policy-making, resources development, knowledge transfer, financing, and some delivery of personal health care—and those that are contracted by the federal government to states, localities, and private organizations—the majority of direct service programs. (Hanlon and Pickett, 1984)

The major portion of the federal government's health business is conducted through contracts and grants to states, localities, and private providers and organizations. The federal government acts through financing intergovernmental and interorganizational contracts to encourage various public health initiatives, convening participants around an issue, coordinating activities, and developing state and local provider contracts. In return for federal funds, states, localities, and private organizations must follow the federal standards and policies set in the contract. Thus in many programs, the federal government takes an oversight, policy-setting, and technical assistance role, rather than a direct provider role.

Federal contracts can take the form of seed money for researching and developing new programs, such as Community Mental Health Centers, or they can be support for ongoing activities, such as the Early Periodic Screening, Detection, and Treatment Program. Contracts can be made with agencies to operate specific public health programs or to support general agency activities.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Mick

Chancellor Latest: VAT cut on Food, Attractions and Accommodation. From 20% to 5%

Wow that’s massive cut.

Great news, totally support it.

---------- Post added at 13:58 ---------- Previous post was at 13:57 ----------

Originally Posted by denphone

More like a tenner for a pint up there.

The bus fares are cheaper though.

[Mr K]

Good news - half price meals in restaurants

Bad News - same day the Deputy Chief Medical Officer says we should lose weight to fight the virus !

I'm sure the left and right hands know what they are doing !

[denphone]

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

Great news, totally support it.

---------- Post added at 13:58 ---------- Previous post was at 13:57 ----------


The bus fares are cheaper though.

The thing with London buses is you wait ages for one to come and then three come along at once.

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Hugh

With the tests that weren’t available, and they had to get them out of hospital very quickly to make beds available?

Thoughtless unprofessional negligent medics not doing tests that weren’t widely available...

The tests WERE available. It's just that they were kept for just people showing symptoms. No different to many other countries, and that DOES include South Korea.

In South Korea as in Italy, an early case of COVID-19 was identified when a medical officer followed their intuition, rather than the official guidelines, on testing.

...
Like the patient named Mattia in Italy, the woman had no known links to Wuhan, the Chinese province where the disease was first identified. And as in Italy, the doctors’ decision to recommend a test went against guidelines at the time to test people who had been to China or been in contact with a confirmed case, said Korea Medical Association’s Choi Jaewook.

Even Germany and South Korea had shortages of PPE and testing kits.


An independent report placed the UK, 2nd best prepared for a pandemic.

But even as the risk of such outbreaks increases, no country — the United States included — is fully prepared to respond to a deliberate or accidental threat with the potential to wipe out humanity, according to a report assessing the efforts of 195 countries.
...

Thailand, for example, is the only non-high-income country to rank in the top tier overall — sixth highest overall after the United States, United Kingdom, the Netherlands, Australia and Canada.

Another independent report found that the NHS had a £100m stockpile of items ready for a pandemic. Although it didn't say what items.

Link

It says that in the last few years the government spent £424 million on stockpiling Tamiflu in case of a flu pandemic. However, there is little agreement as to how effective the drug is, particularly in preventing complications and deaths from flu.

From 2007 report by British Thoracic Society.

In the event of a pandemic, the following additional care
settings may have to be considered as the threshold for hospital
admission rises:
treatment of patients in the community (who would
normally receive care from a GP) by other healthcare
professionals (nurses, paramedics, pharmacists, etc) following
treatment guidance laid out in this publication and using
prescription-only medicines according to Patient Group
Directives
treatment of patients in their own homes or in temporary
intermediate care facilities by a GP, following treatment
guidance laid out in this publication when, under normal
circumstances, such patients would have been admitted for
hospital care

A "What If" article from 2018.

As history attests, deaths probably would not be evenly distributed across populations. The Spanish flu saw a 30-fold mortality difference in various countries. In India, for example, the virus took out 8% of the population, while less than 1% died in Denmark. Similarly, during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic, deaths in Mexico exceeded those in France by a factor of 10.
Experts believe the disparities were influenced by a number of factors, including a population’s prior exposure to similar influenza strains and genetic vulnerabilities of certain ethnic groups (New Zealand’s native Maori, for example, were seven times more likely to die after contracting the 1918 flu than the global average).

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Carth

four men went to a pub
went to drown their sorrows
spent 10 quid on a round of drinks
and had some left for tomorrow

Where’s this?

Positive steps from Sunak, but this is just the beginning.

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Hugh

That’s a very simplistic view - the Federal Government has a huge input re funding, regulations, and resources.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK218212/

The operational side of things(which is the one that matters) is set at State level. Are you denying that NHS Scotland doesn't exist? And isn't run by Scotland?


Link

But the majority of Americans still cannot get tested, as interviews with doctors, patients, and dozens of state public-health officials reveal. While the most stringent federal guidelines are gone, a chaotic patchwork of rules now governs who can and cannot get a COVID-19 test. In many states, symptomatic patients still cannot get tested for the coronavirus unless they meet certain limited criteria—even if their doctor wants to test them.