Go Caving Now !

Alex

Well-known member
Yep, tell me about it! Luckily I got two trips planned this weekend, though not the ones I wanted to do. I still want to do Broken finger and Strangle (even just a reccy) but looks like it's not this year at least. But maybe weather and lock down will hold off until at least the weekend afterwards.

If I can't do strangle I will find the nearest swamp and crawl through that for a similar experience from what I heard lol. I do thing I am a little mad to want to do these trips!
 

mikem

Well-known member
Although Porth yr ogof is in Powys, so not affected, the dinas silica mines & will's hole are in Rhondda cynon taff, so currently officially locked down (the border apparently runs along the hepste).
 

Alex

Well-known member
Well the Ease gill situation just got complicated if you are not allowed to socialise in Lancashire. Does that mean you have to ignore each other once in a certain part of the cave system? But caving itself is a sport anyway and if club trip an organised sport so except. It also says in private homes or gardens, a cave is neither. It's so bloody confusing I will just continue caving me thinks, it's not like they can fine you underground, and I don't think we would be breaking the rules either.

It's not good news for club huts and as we know things are going to get worse with the clown posse in charge.
 

mikem

Well-known member
The Leck Fell road is definitely within Lancaster Borough, fortunately the one to Bull Pot Farm isn't. Interestingly Blackpool has not been included.
 

JasonC

Well-known member
mikem said:
... Interestingly Blackpool has not been included.

... because the inhabitants of, and visitors to, Blackpool are renowned for their social restraint and sober adherence to regulations.

Personally, I would focus not on what is "allowed", but what is safe and sensible.  The two seem to be drifting further and further apart recently.
 

Steve Clark

Well-known member
There is a very low adherence to any of the guidance in Blackpool. You only have to watch the schools emptying out in an afternoon. The place is heaving. The lack of care probably extends to actually getting tested if people show symptoms too.

No testing = No Statistics.

I've sent one of our lads from Blackpool to Southport for a test this week (fortunately negative). No local testing available. I imagine a lot of people just aren't bothering.

We will know in a few weeks when the seriously ill arrive at hospital. They're getting prepared. New incoming A&E control room being commissioned now and a temporary morgue extension built. The hospital are organising their own testing, independent of PHE for patients, staff & their immediate families.
 

pwhole

Well-known member
There's a testing centre only 50m from my place, ironically, but it does seem awfully quiet whenever I walk past. It's not a drive-in one, so clearly for locals only, but I'm a bit baffled why it seems so quiet. I'd quite like a test, if only as it would help me decide what was safe for me to do if I have it but I'm asymptomatic. If up to 60% of infected people don't show symptoms, that means only a minority of infected people get tested even if every one of them does it. Hardly seems practical in a pandemic.

I get the impression that the numbers of tests (and thus the backlogs in processing) are going up precisely for that reason - folks just want to know if they have it or not as they have many contacts to manage (school, relatives, work etc.), and whether they are asymptomatic if they do have it - as at least it makes it clearer who you can hang out with. Nobody, basically. But at least you'd know, instead of hoping you don't.
 

crickleymal

New member
NHS labs underutilised, private ones swamped.

https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-tests-stuck-nhs-labs-unused-a4548616.html?fbclid=IwAR3lcdI4Qm_SKdNUom1UpBZDkmRdrS2HftirP9iRBMHACcewEoocWWarR6Q
 

pwhole

Well-known member
Well it turns out that the testing centre round the corner from me will now only accept appointments, though it was accepting walk-ins until last Monday. I'll be strolling past shortly to I'll have a look, but it was still awfully quiet last time I did. I do wonder if there's such a logjam in processing that they're throttling the appointments to allow them to catch up?
 

Graigwen

Active member
pwhole said:
Well it turns out that the testing centre round the corner from me will now only accept appointments, though it was accepting walk-ins until last Monday. I'll be strolling past shortly to I'll have a look, but it was still awfully quiet last time I did. I do wonder if there's such a logjam in processing that they're throttling the appointments to allow them to catch up?

I think it is difficult to understand the present situation because as well as weak Government communication there are multiple other factors in play. The testing centre east of me has been closed for conversion to a lorry park ready for January. Last week a centre to the west of me was only accepting persons for testing with codes, yet on at least one day people turning up with codes they had been issued with were turned away as they were "the wrong codes" - presumably this is some kind of software problem. I can understand why straight line distances rather than road distances were being used to allocate centres, but is a gross software error not to recognise bodies of water such as the Solent or Irish Sea. Also suggesting some kind of software problem is the suggestion made anecdotally that while people in A are being sent to B, people in B are being sent to A.

It is certainly not an easy situation to deal with, but we don't seem to be dealing with it deftly.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-kent-54158100?fbclid=IwAR2evb_10m6Ggs0pIFfjm5QXfugeeo0injr8WLBhxRicGGwBJrkdX3VAn6w
 

Fjell

Well-known member
The problem was opening up testing to anyone who felt like it. A large number are getting tests with no symptoms "just in case". I know some who told me so only this morning.

Over 200,000 tests a day is a lot compared to other countries, but it's not millions. It can't be run like this with this technology. Soon huge numbers will be getting colds etc.
 

pwhole

Well-known member
One problem there though is that we've been told that up to 60% of infected people can be asymptomatic, so obviously that's the majority. If only people with symptoms are tested, all the others are just wandering around unknowingly infecting more people. I just met up with a friend who's a teacher, with a partner who's a teacher at another school, and their child is at a different school again - and two teachers at their daughter's school have tested positive even though they didn't have any symptoms - the school paid for the tests privately. So now they have to decide whether to pull their daughter out of her school - but if they do, one of them has to stop teaching to look after her. But if the school hadn't paid for the tests, none of them would have got tested due to no symptoms, and probably infected everyone.

So logically it makes sense for everyone to get tested ASAP - but they can't process that volume, obviously. In the meantime, social distancing and hygiene (and a really boring social life if you're single) is all we have.

Speaking of Blackpool and its 'illuminations' - I can think of all sorts of poetic ironic responses for that description. But this is why I don't feel guilty for calling total strangers stupid - many of the public are so retarded it's staggering to think that they're allowed to get in cars to drive there. Rabbits are smarter than these assholes.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/sep/20/health-official-urges-people-not-to-flock-to-heaving-blackpool-covid
 

darren

Member
Fjell said:
The problem was opening up testing to anyone who felt like it. A large number are getting tests with no symptoms "just in case". I know some who told me so only this morning.

Over 200,000 tests a day is a lot compared to other countries, but it's not millions. It can't be run like this with this technology. Soon huge numbers will be getting colds etc.

It would of course help if the government told the truth about test numbers.

https://fullfact.org/health/question-time-testing-figures/

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08rlmn8

If you remove people being retested and people undergoing multiple tests in hospitals we average 82,000 new people being tested each day.

Of these a proportion are antigen tests which say if you have ever had Covid. They don't say if you have it now.

So realistically, each day, around 50,000 Covid diagnostic tests are available to people who haven't previously tested for positive for Covid. Of these some will be wasted due to operator/patent error. If they have to use 2 testing kits on 1 person because it was dropped on the floor it counts as 2 tests.

It would be helpful if the government stopped treating this as a game with false targets and promises. Blaming the general public/parents/teachers is nasty and cowardly. Everyone know this was coming in September, why are we so unprepared.

 
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