COVID-19

[Bird on a Fire]

It'll be "interesting" to see what happens here in Portugal this summer if transport and tourism is badly affected. The Lisbon-area economy is hugely dependent on tourism. Large numbers of (mostly foreign) investors have bought up central properties to rent as airbnbs, there are hostels and touristy bars and restaurants everywhere, etc. One bad summer could have serious repercussions.

[dyqik]

It'll be "interesting" to see what happens here in Portugal this summer if transport and tourism is badly affected. The Lisbon-area economy is hugely dependent on tourism. Large numbers of (mostly foreign) investors have bought up central properties to rent as airbnbs, there are hostels and touristy bars and restaurants everywhere, etc. One bad summer could have serious repercussions.

Much of tourism is already going to be affected. People are not booking (or paying the next lump of the booking) now for summer travel.

[lpm]

Here are some numbers on NHS staff:

https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/resour ... in-numbers
https://www.nhsemployers.org/-/media/Em ... raphic.pdf

Women make up 77% of NHS staff, including the majority of GPs and training doctors.

The overall female workforce is about 15.6m people, meaning about 7.4% of working women work in the NHS (which has 1.5m employees).

Taking 1,800,000 single parents per Gingerbread, 1,620,000 women and 180,000 men. Per ONS, 68% of single mothers and 72% of single fathers are in employment. Gives 1,100,000 + 130,000 = 1,230,000 single-parent employees.

Taking the same 7.4% for men as well as women = about 90,000 NHS workers.

As a very broad estimate, suppose parents with children <5 have low employment rates, 5-11 medium and >11 high, closing primary schools would only hit part of this, call it 45,000.

Would need to add in families where both parents work in health. About 5% of total employees are NHS. Going through the same calcs gives another 15,000 cases of two-parent families both working at the NHS with primary school children, if I've done the maths right.

Which implies about 4% of the NHS workforce are going to have childcare problem if I close all primary schools. Not all of the 4% will be frontline rather than accountants or whatever, and not all of the 4% will be unable to solve the childcare problem.

I'm pretty confident this is a sexism issue rather than a resource issue. If we, as a society, value nurses really highly and prioritise them working, while valuing McKinsey management consultants lowly and require them to stay home with their seven year old, then this problem appears to be far less than that of other shortages. We can always go back to the traditional sexist attitudes to childcare after the epidemic.

[mikeh]

Are there any stats for that? How many families with < 11 year old children are:

- single parent who works in healthcare
- two parents who both work in healthcare

I bet the problem looks bigger because of sexism.

I've not got access to the stats anymore but the pandemic planning I did at the two very large acute trusts I worked for highlighted this as a key issue based on information gathered from the workforce. We also saw the impact during days when the schools were closed locally due to industrial action or weather.

Also those parents at home with children are also therefore not working at the supermarket to put your precious bog roll on the shelf, and not in the factory ensuring the bottling of hand gels is going swimmingly, also not driving the delivery lorries to bring the bog roll and hand gels from the warehouse to the supermarkets... and so on.
Widespread closure of schools is a big decision, with huge knock-on effects inside and outside of healthcare. More chance of children popping down the care home or next-door-but-one to see their granny, perhaps?
As far as I can make out, its overwhelmingly the Chief Medical Officer and his team pulling the strings, and thus the response we are seeing is as evidence-based as it can be. Secondary consequences of any major decision are massive. Widespread shutdowns are coming, here in the UK (we've been told that already), but timing is crucial and not quite the, ahem, open-and-shut case some seem to think it is.

[Gfamily]

It'll be "interesting" to see what happens here in Portugal this summer if transport and tourism is badly affected. The Lisbon-area economy is hugely dependent on tourism. Large numbers of (mostly foreign) investors have bought up central properties to rent as airbnbs, there are hostels and touristy bars and restaurants everywhere, etc. One bad summer could have serious repercussions.

We've got our bookings for the ferry to France booked for a couple of weeks over Easter, but my brother has cancelled his plans to come out by train to join us.
No guarantee that we'll be able to travel though, and there's a nagging worry that EHIC could be suspended if everyone's hospitals are being stressed.

[OneOffDave]

Taking 1,800,000 single parents per Gingerbread, 1,620,000 women and 180,000 men. Per ONS, 68% of single mothers and 72% of single fathers are in employment. Gives 1,100,000 + 130,000 = 1,230,000 single-parent employees.

Taking the same 7.4% for men as well as women = about 90,000 NHS workers.

As a very broad estimate, suppose parents with children <5 have low employment rates, 5-11 medium and >11 high, closing primary schools would only hit part of this, call it 45,000.

Would need to add in families where both parents work in health. About 5% of total employees are NHS. Going through the same calcs gives another 15,000 cases of two-parent families both working at the NHS with primary school children, if I've done the maths right.

Which implies about 4% of the NHS workforce are going to have childcare problem if I close all primary schools. Not all of the 4% will be frontline rather than accountants or whatever, and not all of the 4% will be unable to solve the childcare problem.

I'm pretty confident this is a sexism issue rather than a resource issue. If we, as a society, value nurses really highly and prioritise them working, while valuing McKinsey management consultants lowly and require them to stay home with their seven year old, then this problem appears to be far less than that of other shortages. We can always go back to the traditional sexist attitudes to childcare after the epidemic.

From my experience in Sheffield and Cambridge the sector of the workforce that was hardest hit was the HCAs and band 4-5 nurses. More senior nurses tended to have older or adult children. The medics with young children often had a partner in a similar situation so would swap childcare between them and this was similar for the non-clinical managers. Catering, housekeeping and laundry were in a similar situation to the HCAs. In the majority of the households affected, the partner not working in healthcare was the main breadwinner often working in industry. It's not about society prioritising who works but common or garden financial necessity dictating that the highest earner carries on earning. That's an artifact of structural sexism in the economy but not a sexist decision by the NHS

[OneOffDave]

The otehr issue with large scale school closures is that the kids, particularly the older ones aren't going to sit meekly at home for the month plus that they are off school. They'll be out and about with friends etc.

[Gentleman Jim]

And exams loom large

[lpm]

In the majority of the households affected, the partner not working in healthcare was the main breadwinner often working in industry. It's not about society prioritising who works but common or garden financial necessity dictating that the highest earner carries on earning. That's an artifact of structural sexism in the economy but not a sexist decision by the NHS

We can change the economics of these family decisions easily.

A footballer gets paid £16,250,000 for a 90 minute match, an ICU nurse gets paid £2.54 for a 12 hour night shift (these figures might be slightly out). An ICU nurse is now the most valuable person in society. So make him or her the best paid in society. Swap the salaries.

In practice, do it via the tax code, give every NHS worker a o% tax code, i.e. pay no tax. Or huge overtime payments. Or bonuses.

It makes no sense for me to be better off from working from home without travel expenses. Tax me.

[lpm]

The otehr issue with large scale school closures is that the kids, particularly the older ones aren't going to sit meekly at home for the month plus that they are off school. They'll be out and about with friends etc.

They will all be at home playing Pacman on their ZX Spectrums. Or whatever the latest fashionable game is. We'll all be delighted if teenagers actually go outside.

[shpalman]

I keep on seeing a lot of scary social media posts by medical professionals in the most affected areas. It’s deeply worrying to think that this could be the situation in the U.K. within a month.

Is there any reason to believe that the situation here is different?

https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1237 ... 97538.html

No reason to think we're different, in the UK we're about where Italy was half a month ago.

The thing is, if it develops in the UK as it did in Italy at the beginning with a doubling time of 2 days, then whatever measures get implemented will take about a week to start having a visible effect. And by that time the number of cases will have increased by a factor of 10.

[Bird on a Fire]

The otehr issue with large scale school closures is that the kids, particularly the older ones aren't going to sit meekly at home for the month plus that they are off school. They'll be out and about with friends etc.

They will all be at home playing Pacman on their ZX Spectrums. Or whatever the latest fashionable game is.

Sniffing ketamine and anilingus.

[Bird on a Fire]

Just had an email from my university department (in the north of Portugal, where cases have been concentrated so far) telling us to 'plan work carefully for the next weeks' in case we are hit with minimum-service requirements.

Luckily I live hours to the south, and I work from home anyway.

[shpalman]

Czech Republic has 40 cases, similar to UK in per capita terms.

They are closing schools, banning events >100 people.

Johnson hasn't the guts to do it. He's a wimp. He thinks: if strong measures are successful I won't get thanks, because it will look like a Y2K damp squib, if pathetic measures fail I'll just blame foreigners.

Closing schools strips healthcare of staff

If the parents, who work in healthcare, pick up the virus from their children because it's gone around the school, then that's worse.

[Bird on a Fire]

Czech Republic has 40 cases, similar to UK in per capita terms.

They are closing schools, banning events >100 people.

Johnson hasn't the guts to do it. He's a wimp. He thinks: if strong measures are successful I won't get thanks, because it will look like a Y2K damp squib, if pathetic measures fail I'll just blame foreigners.

Closing schools strips healthcare of staff

If the parents, who work in healthcare, pick up the virus from their children because it's gone around the school, then that's worse.

Especially if the kids also pass it on to their grandparents etc., who then need to go to hospital.

I'd be interested to hear how these kinds of risks are weighed up by professionals (if indeed professional risk-managers are behind these decisions!).

[bob sterman]

Anyone know what the current UK testing criteria are?

Of course relevant symptoms plus travel history to a relevant area or contact with a case will get tested.

But I assume they are not yet testing everyone who calls with just dry cough + fever?

[mikeh]

Anyone know what the current UK testing criteria are?

Of course relevant symptoms plus travel history to a relevant area or contact with a case will get tested.

But I assume they are not yet testing everyone who calls with just dry cough + fever?

Case definitions and testing criteria are here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publicati ... -infection

[shpalman]

Today's number is actually 5883, out of which 5061 are currently infected. So yeah it's still going up exponentially.

I don't remember what my prediction was but today it's 7375 (out of which 6387 are currently infected). The exponential growth predicts about 9000 tomorrow.

Actual number: 9172 (of which 7985 are currently infected). Estimating 11000 tomorrow then. I'm going to work from home for a couple of days.

If these numbers are confirmed then it's only just over 10000 and that would be a smaller increase than in the past few days. But it's possible not all of the labs have communicated their numbers yet.

[Trinucleus]

The otehr issue with large scale school closures is that the kids, particularly the older ones aren't going to sit meekly at home for the month plus that they are off school. They'll be out and about with friends etc.

Or will visit their grandparents ...

[Trinucleus]

That will be the worst of it!! I don't mind self-quarantining but if there is no sport to watch.............................

I'm hoping to self isolate when the Snooker World Championship is on.

[Little waster]

The otehr issue with large scale school closures is that the kids, particularly the older ones aren't going to sit meekly at home for the month plus that they are off school. They'll be out and about with friends etc.

I used to regularly self-isolate as a teenager ... until my eyesight started to suffer.

[mikeh]

New dashboard of the UK cases
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboar ... 484dd4bb14

[shpalman]

If anyone wants the dashboard of Italian cases: http://arcg.is/C1unv

... and the git repository of the data: https://github.com/pcm-dpc/COVID-19

[Bird on a Fire]

The stock market seems to be really, really f.cked [/economic analysis]

[shpalman]

https://www.businessinsider.com/coronav ... ind-2020-3