• ℹ️ Heads up...

    This is a popular topic that is fast moving Guest - before posting, please ensure that you check out the first post in the topic for a quick reminder of guidelines, and importantly a summary of the known facts and information so far. Thanks.

Coronavirus

Coronavirus - The Poll

  • Total voters
    97
rob666 said:
So as long as we know...
We weren't discussing who claims more...I think we are all aware that sickness levels are generally higher in the public sector.
Statements do not have to be factual, or based on facts, as long as the statement is "broad"?
You said that it is only the public sector that gets paid when sick these days.
That is plainly a false statement...however "broad".
The vast majority of employees get sick pay, simple, clear fact.
Are you Boris in disguise Big T?
Click to expand...

Broad statements seem to get you a knighthood these days so I’ll keep them coming.

Did you actually read what I wrote? Sick pay at bosses discretion is not the same as sick pay written into an employment contract.
Majority of SME’s who make up something like 60% of the employment in this country do not have an official sick pay scheme, whether they actually pay their employees when off sick is a different matter.
Anyway this is now going off topic so we can agree to disagree.
 
I read what you wrote...it was plainly false, and I, among others, challenged it.
Obfuscation and misdirection statistics don't change the facts.
To state that only public sector staff get sick pay is wrong.
We can agree you were clearly wrong.
 
I didn’t say only, I said basically.
Maybe it was clumsy language but it is correct to say public sector workers are a lot more likely to get sick pay than private sector workers.
 
I’m slightly weary about posting this, because generally I think we should be listening to experts and professionals during a pandemic, and there have been a lot of people trying to undermine the experts for cynical reasons. However, it is worth saying that ONS (Office for National Statistics) figures for employment are often very unreliable.

Many employment statistics are based on the Labour Force Survey, where they phone up a small sample of people, ask them questions and then extrapolate it to the rest of the population. They do try to make sure the sample’s representative in terms of gender, age etc, but whenever you take a small sample and extrapolate it to the entire population, there’s a margin for error. No one’s compelled to take part, and uptake is about 60%. That’s fairly good, but we’re often assuming that the 40% who don’t participate would have given similar answers to those that do. We’re assuming that people give honest answers. For example, if someone phones you up and asks you how many sick days you’ve had in the last 12 months, we’re assuming that you give an honest answer. Some questions on it are very vague, so there can be a lot of wiggle room in terms of how people interpret a question.

I’m not saying the ONS Covid figures are wrong. I honestly don’t know much about that. But some ONS figures for employment can be very inaccurate when you start digging into how they were gathered and cross check them against other data. Some Parliamentary enquiries have been very damning of ONS figures. The reasons it’s a problem, is because ONS figures are often used to justify controversial policies, such as supporting zero hour contracts.
 
@Funcone I think it's fair to scrutinise any government data, ONS or otherwise. That said, I do typically land in the cock up camp, rather than conspiracy camp when it comes to the figures. Often, the damage comes from wilful misrepresentation of the figures, or an assumption to fill a void left by a lack of data.

The civil service has always been too departmental in its approach. For example, for decades DWP paid benefits to the population without a real understanding of what claimants were earning because DWP & HMRC operated in a vacuum. Checks were done retrospectively, if at all. Now, with the further roll out of Universal Credit (with all its problems), those two departments now share data in realtime because it's necessary for the payment. Change like that can happen, but often only as a by-product policy rather than a determination to improve.

You can usually trace data issues back to the source, with the LFS that you referenced, it is imperfect, but it's pragmatic. The alternative would be a hugely expensive and intrusive data collection from every business in the land. I suspect that there isn't the political will to do that, not least because it'd cost a lot, but also the work involved in doing it and chasing up non-compliance, it would be a minefield.

You might also argue quite fairly that better data on some fronts is not to the advantage of a government, especially if is to be compared to decades of older data that was collected by less accurate means.

In the NHS specifically, Foundation Trusts were brought in to provide greater autonomy, to allow decisions to be made more locally including procurement. Therefore, you had a situation where Trusts were buying all sorts of IT systems that didn't speak to each other that all stored data in different ways, making it extremely hard to provide a national picture. In part, the solution to this was to be the Lorenzo system, which is a textbook example of a disastrous IT deployment.

A lasting win from a the pandemic will be an improvement in NHS IT. Not only things like a functioning NHS app (again, got to where it is as a means to a Covid pass) but an understanding that this sort of stuff can be done which will hopefully spur further innovation in the future.
 
I do like downloading the NHS England data which seems to be more up to date than ons data.

I think we would all welcome fresh live data 24-48hrs old that told you the facts and not just speculating via media etc.

Info I would like:

How many people got covid today
How many people were already in hospital for another illness before they got covid
Age breakdown of the above
If the above had any underlying issues
Any of the above vaccination status ie not jabbed 1/2or 3
Variation of covid if known

I’m sure if we had this level of info we could all take a more measured approach to our personal circumstance.

On the notes previously mentioned on modeling, they were working on worst case scenarios.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
I think the fact that 40% of people don’t participate in the Labour Force Survey is significant. You’d imagine that the people who are unemployed or in the most precarious employment are also least likely to participate, as these people are generally the least engaged when it comes to all kinds of things, from voting to following the news. I do agree that part of the problem is the results from research being used to justify policies without the research being put into context.

A common problem in research is people trying to please the researcher. That’s partly why research into new products often overestimates the demand for them.

Another problem is that the terms aren’t always defined. For example, there’s no legal definition of a zero hour contract, and what counts as a zero hour contract is open to a lot of interpretation.

To be fair, the media in general tends to take the findings from research without giving any details about the methodology. You see it a lot of with psychology studies, where the media reports stuff because it sounds interesting, but things like the sample size are really important. A very small study might not have much validity, but if the results sound interesting it gets reported. I think it’s particularly problematic though when dubious findings are being used by politicians to justify extreme policies.

I think a general rule of thumb is that if a piece of research sounds unlikely, it’s worth digging into. That doesn’t mean we should just ignore it, but unexpected results shouldn’t be taken at face value. I’m in a bit of both camps regarding cock up vs conspiracy. I suspect some of this data would be questioned harder if it disadvantaged rich people, rather than poor people. I agree that you can’t force people to take part in surveys or make them give honest answers. But if it becomes clear that data has little validity, you wonder whether there’s much point in collecting it at all. Although I suppose you could argue that if the methodology remains consistent over time, it might help you to spot trends, even if the specific numbers are ‘wrong’.
 
monkeyboy said:
I do like downloading the NHS England data which seems to be more up to date than ons data.

I think we would all welcome fresh live data 24-48hrs old that told you the facts and not just speculating via media etc.

Info I would like:

How many people got covid today
How many people were already in hospital for another illness before they got covid
Age breakdown of the above
If the above had any underlying issues
Any of the above vaccination status ie not jabbed 1/2or 3
Variation of covid if known

I’m sure if we had this level of info we could all take a more measured approach to our personal circumstance.

On the notes previously mentioned on modeling, they were working on worst case scenarios.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Click to expand...

That data exists but it won’t ever be daily. Hospitals use clinical coders who go through patient notes on discharge and code the various demographics and reasons for admission and treatments completed but it’s done in batches and not in real time. Obviously a lot of this is starting to be done automatically as patient notes move digital but different Trusts are in different stages of implementing these technologies so there will always be a lag.
 
  • Like
Reactions: Tom
9 million adults in the UK apparently yet to come forward for a single jab. What do we make of that? Whilst I believe in pro choice it is rather worrying how many sceptics we have. I know quite a few unfortunately.

70% of the nation are now fully vaccinated (1st and 2nd jabs)
 
My nephew is breeding, so chose to not get vaccinated due to concerns for the unborn child's development.
Couldn't really argue, but it amuses me that he had covid over Christmas...for the second time.
Looks like the vaccines and boosters are doing the job!
 
rob666 said:
My nephew is breeding, so chose to not get vaccinated due to concerns for the unborn child's development.
Couldn't really argue, but it amuses me that he had covid over Christmas...for the second time.
Looks like the vaccines and boosters are doing the job!
Click to expand...

One of my colleagues at work has done the same thing and I can kind of understand it.

However I had an interesting discussion with another colleague on the phone yesterday. We were talking about getting fit and losing weight for new year as you do and he told me his Mrs has had some random weight loss injection but they still wont get covid jabs. I had to laugh.
 
From 11th January, the requirement to get a follow-up PCR test following a positive lateral flow test is being scrapped for those without symptoms: https://apple.news/A4jgJBgIYRzCTMqzY3oV8YQ

This means that people with positive lateral flow tests only need to isolate for 7 days following the date of their lateral flow test as opposed to from the date of their PCR, which should hopefully ease NHS pressure (from things like staff absences).

What are our thoughts on this?
 
Matt N said:
From 11th January, the requirement to get a follow-up PCR test following a positive lateral flow test is being scrapped for those without symptoms: https://apple.news/A4jgJBgIYRzCTMqzY3oV8YQ

This means that people with positive lateral flow tests only need to isolate for 7 days following the date of their lateral flow test as opposed to from the date of their PCR, which should hopefully ease NHS pressure (from things like staff absences).

What are our thoughts on this?
Click to expand...

Lateral flow tests only have 0.3% false positives so the confirmation via PCR was pointless anyway. Makes sense not to spend money on a test that isn't actually needed.
 
Matt N said:
From 11th January, the requirement to get a follow-up PCR test following a positive lateral flow test is being scrapped for those without symptoms: https://apple.news/A4jgJBgIYRzCTMqzY3oV8YQ

This means that people with positive lateral flow tests only need to isolate for 7 days following the date of their lateral flow test as opposed to from the date of their PCR, which should hopefully ease NHS pressure (from things like staff absences).

What are our thoughts on this?
Click to expand...

Only I in 40 tests are proving to be inaccurate now I have heard so making everyone do an extra PCR test does seem to be excessive. If you test positive on a lateral flow there's a very good chance you have it. I don't think it's worth taking the extra steps to try and find the 1 in every 40. They should just isolate as precaution and they wouldn't know they don't have it anyway.
 
BarryZola said:
Will probably make it easier for any skivers now as they can just fake a positive lateral flow test and get 7 days off, no questions asked.
Click to expand...

My work have asked us to take tests every single day but have yet to actually ask for any proof that this is happening.

I don't know what they do when someone says they've tested positive though. Would imagine most companies would tell people to work from home.

Would just save me money on petrol more than anything.
 
That's true. But for those who cannot work from home and get full-sick pay, it would be like a free weeks holiday, if you're that way inclined.
 
...and would put you at the front of the queue for redundancy at the start of the next recession.
Most employers score sickness highly for redundancy points, perfectly legal, apparently.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top