What's this all about Pop Tart? Genuine question, I don't read the nationals.

Shelley Tasker until recently, worked as a healthcare assistant at a hospital in Cornwall. She made national news headlines today (5th Nov.), when it emerged that she had resigned from her post, because claims that NHS hospitals are being overrun by Covid patients and are at breaking point, are grossly untrue. Shelley said the claims are "lies."

Taaking time out today to listen to her radio interview but here is a comment from someone who has

"Well done, this brave woman has started the turning tide and will be on the right side of history"

We shall see.

Note to Robert Jenrick MP / Pop Tart, Cornwall being the West Country of course, And this.

A Conservative MP has told talkRADIO he believes there are "lies, damn lies and Covid statistics," adding that "it seems to be you can prove anything with a Covid statistic."

Speaking to Julia Hartley-Brewer, Peter Bone said the government is "using selective ones to prove their case.

“We’re not getting a balanced range of different statistics so that you can make a balanced decision on what’s the right thing to do."

Ahead of the vote on the new lockdown measures, the Conservative MP told talkRADIO it is "like sending troops into action. You never know if it’s the right thing or wrong thing to do.

"We don’t know if we’re going to kill more people by voting for the regulation or against it.

“If we haven’t got the facts to look at, maybe they haven’t got a case for these restrictions."

This begs the question, just what HAVE these backbench MPs been looking at this past year.

Genuine answer
I'll need more evidence than a health care assistant who has resigned challenging NHS communications across the country because her ward isn't full in Cornwall.
Healthcare assistants need no medical qualification or for that matter any knowledge of economics.

She may have a point that Cornwall didn't need to shut down given their lower numbers. I don't particularly disagree but equally, the point the government are making is that the rates are much higher elsewhere and if they don't include Cornwall then the rates will rise there.
Also part of the reason for the national lockdown was that councils were challenging their tier system. Can't have it both ways.

I'd add that Cornwall relies heavily on tourism from other parts of the country. As the other areas are locked down because they do have full hospitals, I'd imagine, but don't obviously know, that many people are in a better position because of the financial help given by the government in lockdown. No lockdown means less financial support.
She's in a lucky position that she can resign from her job while in lockdown. As she's a part time photographer, she'll be supported financially by the government.

I've seen quite a few interviews where an actual senior medically qualified person has shown how busy their wards are. Especially in the North of England.
So I don't put much faith in Shelley's campaign. (She's protested at the hospital before)

Devon and Cornwall seem to have been "unlucky" to be included in the National Lockdown as their Covid cases HAVE been lower then many other parts of England but, it's either go with the local restrictions, which dont appear to have been too successful or, go with the far "simpler", one size fits all, national restrictions.

As for whether it's right, again, I agree, nobody quite knows.
Mind you, if "nobody" follows the guidance, we will keep on yo-yoing in and out of lockdown until an effective vaccine is found.
Perhaps, if people weren't so desperate to have a week in the sun AND there was effective testing and quarantine for those returning to the UK we might have kept on top of the numbers.

I have listened to her interview and just as you tend to disregard her testimony because she is only a healthcare assistant or because you believe she has no medical or knowledge of economics I put it to you that she can at least count and compare what she is being told and what she can see.

She claims (for those who haven't heard the interview) that up to the pandemic breaking she had lots of work across three hospitals including Treliske hospital, then the pandemic broke, so they waited and waited for the patients and deaths to begin. As we all were, Remember the news at the start of all this.
She claims she had very little work in the three weeks at the so called height of the “pandemic”.
She also agrees with the 99.9% survival rate.

She didn't mention the lockddown but rather the figures she saw with her own eyes against what she was being told. She does not need qualifications or knowledge of economics to be able to count and make comparisons.

Let say Carter had been claiming 9,000 attendances (yes, I know he wouldn't) but you came on here and claimed there were no more than 4,500 in the ground. Would we dismiss your claim by saying you are not a rugby league professionals and have no knowledge of economics? I bet most on here would most likely believe you over the CEO of the club or even the club (no offence intended) accountant.

I can assure you I would rather listen to the experience of people on the ground rather than the (no disrespect to Carter) paid professionals who have a vested interest in towing the party line. (like a large salary or just the fear of being struck off as some have been simply for speaking out) You do tend to find whistle blowers are those with less to lose than those on huge salaries or a mortgage and 3 kids to support.
That is not to say I disbelieve them all, but you see what I'm getting at.

And, to address your point of rates of infections as she states. They are doing more and more testing (with this flawed testing method) so higher figures but that does not equate to hospital admissions. i.e. The majority are asymptomatic cases, not ill, not in hospital wards, let alone at deaths door. How many rugby players tested positive have been hospitalized, how many deaths. Most are back playing the toughest sport in the world within two weeks.

And that's what she is saying, hospitals, in her experience, are not being overwhelmed yet the public were being told they were and this backs up many such reports from around the country. This is just one.
After all, I am being accused of lies and being a conspiracy theorist so I can't do fairer than report this woman's testimony backed by the MSM whether you or I believe it or don't believe it.

Thankfully it appears the MSM are more and more breaking cover and reporting these true life experiences as opposed to politicians and there supporters. especially the Times and Telegraph (so I'm told.)

Seriously, that is all just blah.
She talks about her experience in a hospital not the actual admissions in the hospital.
The evidence in other hospitals refute what she is saying.

The attendance figures are often discussed and tge people who come on and try to estimate tge crowd by eye are usually laughed at because that it just impossible to that level if detail.
Just the same as this lady, with no access to actual admission lists, or even the view in other wards in her own hospital, is estimating that a world wide pandemic and country wide NHS statistics are not accurate.
I'd prefer to take the agreed statistics from NHS (not the government estimates) and the actual pictures in the magic telly box that shows actual people in actual hospital.

I think your elevating this lady to a level she has never claimed is hers to reach.
Evidence from other hospitals was not her remit, just the three hospitals she has worked in before and during the “pandemic.”

It's funny how folk can turn.though, a few weeks ago you were perhaps clapping in the street and painting rainbows in honour of front line health workers yet some of these same workers are now simply talking “blah”

Other than her own personal experience she has an opinion, just like you.

I have watched Trinity at Belle Vue since 1962 and if I cannot tell the difference between 4,500 and 9,000. Ok then, if you say so and it fits your argument. I can't prove I know the difference between the ground being packed to the rafters and half empty. So be it.

I guess this lady with little to do for the three weeks at the “pandemics” height and her own eyes are not worthy of note because of what you once saw on the telly from a hospital other than this ladies hospital. So be it.

Could you please publish on here these “agreed statistics” you speak of and perhaps something to compare them with such as previous admitions from previous years. Numbers in isolation are pretty worthless as my Outer Mongolian visitor to Belle Vue and Old Trafford demonstrated.

I would hate to get the wrong statistics. Maybe your MP can help.

The blah was referring to your words not hers.

And telling the difference between 9k and 4.5k is not the issue. What you can't do is look at a crowd and tell me it's 4,500 people with any level of accuracy. All of which is irrelevant to the point here.

You are using this ladies opinion to back up your own. I am saying she can at best tell us what is happening in her ward. Doesn't back your point up at all.

Good save.



But I compared 9,000 to 4,500 not 4,500 to, lets say 6,059.

You came back with

Rather pedantic are you not? Sorry, I should have said around 4,500. Shall we say plus or minus 500?

Anyway, the point was I do not need to be a RL professional or an economist to make my assumption.

And I agree, but where did I say her experience backs up my whole argument? Any more than your night in front of the TV backs up your argument.

Those figures please..

I have no figures to back up. The NHS and national statistics office publicised their numbers.
You put this lady up as a challenge to them.
I said I don't see her as more knowledgeable than the original source.

There isn't really a discussion here unless you can give more evidence or at least opinion.

You really are good at steering a discussion Miro.
I don't agree with your covid opinions but I'd happily sit in a pub and discuss the world with you if that day ever comes back.
I'll probably need a beer and a white board to keep going.

If I’m in the pub at the same time as you and Miro I hope the social distancing as increased

Thought not.

So lets get this straight. Robert Jenrick MP states that hospital IC units are filling up in the West Country. This he states in the interview with Julia Hartley-Brewer on Talk Radio. She guts him by disagreeing and humiliating him by throwing his own government / NHS statistics in his Tory mush statistics which he evidently had no knowledge of .

You defend him by saying she has the wrong guy I give you evidence that he isn't the wrong guy and then I produce a health worker from the very same West Country who kinda backs up Ms Brewer from her first hand knowledge of hospitals in Cornwall, as west as west can be.

You defend Jenrick, dismiss Ms Tasker obviously disagree with Brewer yet you produce nothing, nada, zippo, to back up your posts.

You do not know the figures yet you quote their existence to back up your failed argument, just like your pal the Tory MP Jenrick.