Covid-19 has now officially killed over 20,000 people in the UK. The word to pay attention to in that sentence isn’t ‘20,000’ as you might think, but ‘officially’. You see the reported deaths are only those of people who have died in hospital and have been tested for Coronavirus.
As most people aren’t tested even when they have extreme symptoms, even when they die, we can be sure the figure is much higher than 20,000.
Care homes, as you might expect, are proving to be huge petri dishes for this virus and because of the vulnerability of the residents and because of the impossibility of explaining social distancing and regular handwashing to people with dementia, once it gets in it spreads like wildfire. It hasn’t helped that testing hasn’t been available for residents or staff and that staff in many care homes either haven’t had adequate PPE or have been told not to use it in case it ‘scares the residents’. We’ve also heard that elderly residents in care homes will not be transferred to hospital even if they have extreme symptoms. As if this isn’t bad enough, when elderly patients are discharged from hospital without family or their own home to go to, care homes have been told they will have to take them in. This applies even if they have been tested positive for coronavirus.
The Office of National Statistics and Care Quality Commission have reported that over 5,000 residents in care homes have died due to Covid-19 and Covid-19 related causes. Of course as tests are so few and far between, unless Covid-19 has been diagnosed post-mortem, then these statistics are the result of a lot of educated guesswork. I don’t imagine them to be too far wrong though.
Let’s think about these statistics for a moment. As of the 25th April deaths in England alone had reached 21,284. Remember these are just deaths occurring in hospital and with a diagnosis. Deaths in care homes up to the 24th April (so a day earlier) were reported by the ONS and CQC as 5,281. Again this figure is just for England.
To be clear, 5,281 isn’t the total number of deaths in English care homes (that figure is over 7,000) but just those considered to be related to corona.
All this has been widely reported. You can read more here, here and here.
England has a population of about 56 million. Over 400,000 elderly people live in English care homes. That’s equivalent to about 0.7% of the population. If we refer back to the death figures then we can see that around 20% of all corona related deaths have been in care homes. Even taking account of the fact that care homes for the elderly by their very nature have elderly residents and that the elderly are more likely to have complications with coronavirus and die, that’s still a shocking figure. Even more shocking, is that it’s not being counted in the official figures.
Pressure is mounting however, for it to be included in the daily figures and for more testing.
Other news this week has been that planes containing hundreds (possibly thousands) of Romanian fruit pickers are to land in England in the coming weeks. Of course this has got the Brexiteers in uproar claiming British workers should be doing those jobs. And of course what they mean by that is other British workers and not themselves.
It was pointed out time and again during the Brexit campaign that there are jobs that British workers just won’t do. And if they did do, the cost of our fruit and veg would need to be a lot more expensive. The Eastern Europeans who come here every year to work in our fields are exploited. There’s no other way to put it. So if Brexit means Britain has to raise standards for seasonal agricultural workers and pay them a decent wage in order to encourage British workers, thus ending the exploitation of foreign workers, then this would be a good thing. (Did I just say there might be something good about Brexit?! Don’t worry, I’m about to counter it.)
Even with raised standards and higher wages we wouldn’t be able to find the British workers. We have very low unemployment and even if wages were raised for fruit pickers, they’re still going to be very low. So why would anyone give up their full-time job, particularly if they had job security and a decent wage, to go and do a seasonal job for minimum wage and no security? Add to that that most people don’t live near a fruit farm and so would have expensive travel costs or need to move away from their families paying accommodation costs near their place of work in addition to the costs of their home and, yeah, well, you can see why it’s never going to happen.
Why am I banging on about this in a post that’s supposed to be about life in the time of coronavirus? Well, in addition to all the usual concerns with bringing in seasonal workers there are lots of additional ones now.
Moving workers around, particularly between countries, at this time when we’re all being told to stay at home to stop the spread and flatten the curve seems counter-productive. The workers haven’t been tested, but will be expected to go into quarantine for two weeks when they get here. All well and good, except they could pass or catch the virus during their transit, they aren’t being provided with comprehensive health insurance in case they do become ill, they could return home and take the virus home with them and they’re not being paid for their time in quarantine.
This article in The Conversation is a good one to read and the attached video about the exploitation of Eastern European fruit pickers in Britain is well worth watching too. If you were still trying to argue that British workers could and should be doing these jobs and think they’d do them without any uplift in working pay and conditions and that there would be no reason for food prices to rise, then this should put an end to your argument.
Apart from planes bringing in fruit pickers this week, we were also supposed to be getting planes flying in from Turkey bringing us lots of PPE. Three RAF planes were on standby to go to Turkey to collect the order and at one point we were told the PPE was winging its way to Britain only to find out the planes hadn’t even left for Turkey. After delays with ‘paperwork’ we finally got one plane load on Wednesday. In the meantime British manufacturers have been questioning why the government isn’t taking them up on their offers to make PPE.
Each evening the government does a press briefing led by different ministers. Following the briefing, members of the press, via video link, can ask questions. The answers to these questions are often fudged, there’s lots of waffle and sometimes a completely different question to the one asked is answered. This, more than any well answered question, tells us what the situation really is. Unfortunately, it’s that we’re right to think our government was woefully unprepared for the impacts of this pandemic despite being able to use China and Italy as means of vicarious hindsight, and that they’re struggling to get to grips with catching up.
We’re five weeks into lockdown now and it’s been six weeks since it all started being treated seriously and places like pubs and gyms were shut down. Schools were closed to all but a few children at the start of lockdown, but even the week prior to that, many year groups of children weren’t attending because there weren’t enough staff in school. Now the press are started to agitate for the schools to re-open. Fortunately, so far this is one thing the government are getting right and they’re saying schools won’t be re-opening until the scientists say it is safe to do so.
Anyone who knows the slightest thing about children knows exactly why they’re considered super-spreaders. Even with older children it can be difficult to get them to remember (and act on) our new rules of social distancing and hand washing. Younger children? – no chance. But we do have to start considering the future and what a return to school will look like. In our over-crowded classrooms it won’t be possible to have all children back in at once until it’s completely safe.
In the meantime supply teachers are being shafted by their agencies and umbrella companies who seem resolutely opposed to furloughing them even though they have no work for them. I’m assuming this is because they won’t make any money out of it and doing something to be altruistic, even if it isn’t really altruistic because at some point there will be work again and they’ll need these teachers to work for them, just isn’t something they can comprehend.
The woolliness of the government guidance left a lot to be desired at the start, but as unions, the media, supply teachers themselves and MPs sought clarity and the government obliged, things became much more straightforward. Still many agencies have refused to furlough their workers instead taking to making up their own rules for who is eligible.
Some supply teachers have now been told they will be furloughed but many have hit a second problem. Often supply teachers are paid through umbrella companies and it is the umbrella company and not the agency who is the employer. Although a supply teacher agrees a daily rate with their agency for each day they work, the umbrella companies document it on their payslips as minimum wage with a bonus to bring it up to the agreed rate. When the government introduced the furlough scheme it was to cover 80% of the employee’s basic wage. Bonuses weren’t included. As a supply teacher usually only has 6.5 hours per day recorded regardless of how many hours they work, they often don’t have work every day and have thirteen weeks of school holidays a year when they don’t get paid, 80% of what has been recorded as their average earnings at minimum wage is very low. Again, with pressure, the government have clarified that when they say ‘bonus’ they only mean discretionary bonuses and not ‘compulsory bonuses’which have to be paid to the employee regardless (how can it be a bonus if it has to be paid?) Of course most umbrella companies have decided to ignore this and if they are furloughing are still doing so at national minimum wage. The battle goes on.
I’m just grateful I have my union work this year and so don’t have to worry at the moment about how I’m supposed to pay my bills.
I’m getting quite used to working from home all the time and having meetings online or via conference call. Some days have been really busy and I feel like I’ve spent 12 hours sitting at my desk, but other days have been very light and I’ve been able to sit outside and enjoy the sun. I just wish I’d been able to get myself some nice chillout style garden furniture before all this started.
A funny thing popped up in my Facebook memories this week. Ten years ago in 2010 the world was in a different kind of lockdown. That one was caused by the eruption of Eyafjallajökull in Iceland. I’d been walking in Luxembourg and had gone to Antwerp to fly home only to find myself with a bonus week’s holiday in Antwerp courtesy of my airline.
So in 2010 the world was stopped because of a volcano. In 2020 it was stopped because of a plague. Of course I’m now wondering what it’ll be in 2030. At the moment my money’s on an alien invasion.
How has your week been? Are you still working, furloughed or struggling to get any income? And what do you predict for 2030? Share you thoughts in the comments below.
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