IOM Covid removing restrictions

[Zarley]

47 minutes ago, Will Halsall said:

Thank you John. 

I find these figures (in the teens annually?) absolutely staggering, and a sad reflection of our past governments attitude to mental health. 

For anyone who has half an hour to spare, click on this Radio 4 link, it's my nephew Darran (who works for the Samaritans, and is an absolute inspiration to me); at just under 14mins in, he gives a glimpse of his mental state here on the island a few years ago:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/b0b2jg2t

Thank you for the link. It's well worth listening to the whole thing as the conversation is very informative regarding how to talk with and listen to someone in difficulty. 

Kudos to Darran. It is inspirational to hear about someone who not only got help, but is also now helping others in return. I know of another Manx lad who also turned his life around, with help, then retrained as a mental health nurse and is now helping others daily. 

It's all the more heartening that it's lads. "Toxic masculinity" hurts men and boys when it means they're less likely to talk about their feelings due to it not being seen as a masculine thing to do. It's part of the reason why rates of male suicide are so much higher than the female rates. It needs to change and hopefully more men getting involved in providing mental health care will help that change happen. 

[Numbnuts]

28 minutes ago, Zarley said:

Thank you for the link. It's well worth listening to the whole thing as the conversation is very informative regarding how to talk with and listen to someone in difficulty. 

Kudos to Darran. It is inspirational to hear about someone who not only got help, but is also now helping others in return. I know of another Manx lad who also turned his life around, with help, then retrained as a mental health nurse and is now helping others daily. 

It's all the more heartening that it's lads. "Toxic masculinity" hurts men and boys when it means they're less likely to talk about their feelings due to it not being seen as a masculine thing to do. It's part of the reason why rates of male suicide are so much higher than the female rates. It needs to change and hopefully more men getting involved in providing mental health care will help that change happen. 

You are right pointing out the reluctance for males to talk and admit issues. Luckily , or perhaps not to people around me , I have always been very open , within reason , talking about the many issues I've had. Like its not a weakness but a strength you are facing up to problems in your life. Also I've found it leads to others opening up too about issues they have. Its like , its okay not to be okay so lets do something to improve the situation. I had a brilliant Psychiatrist who was so full of Empathy and a genuine wish to help. So much so she wouldn't sign me off as it was so hard and took so long to get back on the list. Probably the best mental health professional I have ever seen over here. Sadly she moved to the South of England as was Portugese and lost to much time when travelling to see family etc. others I have seen were terrible , one who left me distraught in Costa as he had another appointment to go too. He triggered me then left. We just need a massive overhaul of Mental health services and a clearout of some terrible staff. Lots are really good but to many are incompetent . Crisis management are for sure lacking !! The presence at the Police station though is a positive step!. Hoping these type of changes can be made but not hopeful sadly. I mean we need 70 million for the landing stage !! They will get it but Health services not a chance !  

Edited December 1, 2021 by Numbnuts

[Banker]

24 minutes ago, Numbnuts said:

You are right pointing out the reluctance for males to talk and admit issues. Luckily , or perhaps not to people around me , I have always been very open , within reason , talking about the many issues I've had. Like its not a weakness but a strength you are facing up to problems in your life. Also I've found it leads to others opening up too about issues they have. Its like , its okay not to be okay so lets do something to improve the situation. I had a brilliant Psychiatrist who was so full of Empathy and a genuine wish to help. So much so she wouldn't sign me off as it was so hard and took so long to get back on the list. Probably the best mental health professional I have ever seen over here. Sadly she moved to the South of England as was Portugese and lost to much time when travelling to see family etc. others I have seen were terrible , one who left me distraught in Costa as he had another appointment to go too. He triggered me then left. We just need a massive overhaul of Mental health services and a clearout of some terrible staff. Lots are really good but to many are incompetent . Crisis management are for sure lacking !! The presence at the Police station though is a positive step!. Hoping these type of changes can be made but not hopeful sadly. I mean we need 70 million for the landing stage !! They will get it but Health services not a chance !  

Lawrie says they have put a bid in for more money but they really should be saving some big salaries etc by downsizing DHSC in line with Michaels report.

If it was not for the third sector which I’m involved with some charities then the suicide numbers would regrettably be much higher 

[snowman]

4 hours ago, thommo2010 said:

 

This is how Spanish flu ended - more contagious but milder 

[the stinking enigma]

Did each wave of spanish flu get progressively milder?

[John Wright]

6 minutes ago, Manx17 said:

Has anyone seen Juans post on Facebook . It’s like the blind leading the blind, 

Covid has once again come into full focus as daily cases have hit 145 - highest level since the summer.  This is particularly troubling since Government announced stronger guidance last Sunday, so if people were following it we'd expect to see fewer new cases coming through. 

 

Yes, and it’s total tripe. The introduction of some limited mask wearing and new travel testing from 4 am yesterday, is hardly going to show up in figures until the weekend or more likely next week.

[Nomadic Raptor]

They have asked people to be more vigilant so more people are getting tested which makes more positives I guess

[Numbnuts]

3 minutes ago, Nomadic Raptor said:

They have asked people to be more vigilant so more people are getting tested which makes more positives I guess

If you can get through !!! 111 once again is gridlocked . Thats a surprise right . We might have enough operators by late next week if lucky. 

[AcousticallyChallenged]

1 minute ago, offshoremanxman said:

There’s an element of truth there. But what we haven’t had is people obsessing about daily suicide rates the way they have about daily covid deaths and infection rates. Perhaps if the DHSC published a monthly suicide dashboard for all the covid statto’s to obsess about we’d have a much wider perspective on things.

Ah. But, what would the death rates be from COVID without the restrictions? Remember, most of our restrictions were to keep it out before there was an effective vaccination. 

That seems to be something conveniently ignored in this hypothesis. 

Working backwards from excess death data per the ONS, we’d be looking at 185 excess deaths from 13 March 2020 to December 2021. https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/articles/coronaviruscovid19/latestinsights

Excess deaths is an interesting metric because it’s looking at the overall impact rather than just deaths of/with COVID. Note that that the excess deaths figure is also lower than the number of deaths with COVID. 

Sums are: 

122,372 excess deaths in England

Population of 55.98 million. 

Assume a population of 85000 here. 

We get 185 and a bit. 

Have we got any statistics for excess deaths over the average on the Isle of Man? 

[AcousticallyChallenged]

I think what is scary here, is that even in crisis, reaching out for help can be fruitless. 

I’ve heard of people still waiting weeks and beyond for help after attempting suicide out of sheer desperation on discovering the “non-priority” waiting list. 

[John Wright]

20 minutes ago, John Wright said:

Yes, and it’s total tripe. The introduction of some limited mask wearing and new travel testing from 4 am yesterday, is hardly going to show up in figures until the weekend or more likely next week.

Actually, I’d really expect it to take 2-3 weeks. A bubble like today has knock on transmission effects anyway.

On a separate note I went for my third primary jab. Had to get form changed from booster to third. Then after my vax the nurse handed me a card with booster stamped on and I had to get him to change the card for one stamped third.

Who knows what will show on my NHS App!

[Roger Mexico]

5 hours ago, Danoo said:

I'm pretty sure the increase won't just be seen in the IoM figures. The action taken by governments around the world the past 18 months pushed a lot of people over the edge.  

And you'd be completely wrong.  The ONS looked at suicides in England and Wales for the period April to July 2020[1].  They comment:

The latest available evidence shows that suicide rates did not increase during the early stages of the pandemic, which is contrary to some speculation at the time. Instead, we found suicide rates to be lower between April and July 2020 - the first wave of COVID-19 in England and Wales - when compared with the same period in previous years.

Our findings are consistent with other studies, which found no increase in suicide in the seven months that followed the first national lockdown in 2020. They are also comparable with research covering other countries - such as the United States, Germany, Japan and Australia - which found that suicide numbers have remained largely unchanged or declined in the early months of the pandemic compared with the expected levels based on the pre-pandemic period.

As John says, in a small place like the Isle of Man the numbers of a rare event such as suicide will vary a lot from year to year.  You need to look over several years and the average number of suicides is around 10, which is roughly comparable to the same population in England.   Twenty does look high, but it's not massively outside the normal range and you'd need to look at the actual causes of those suicides to see if there was some consistent factor there related to Covid.

(We seem to have a panic around suicide about once a year and I always point all this out and no one takes a blind bit of notice).

 

[1]  Suicide statistics need to be quite retrospective because a death can only be declared to be a suicide after an inquest and in many cases, where facts aren't clear, this will take some time.  So a year to 18 months is the minimum before you can be sure of getting reliable figures (and those will still be slightly provisional)

[747-400]

27 minutes ago, Manx17 said:

What a crazy statement he has made. 

And he is Chair of the PAC. Thought he would have learnt something about viruses with all the witnesses they interviewed. 

Embarassing. 

 

Edited to add: at least some of his followers have common sense and corrected him. 

Second edit: another black mark for referring to GMP. 

Edited December 1, 2021 by 747-400

[Banker]

41 minutes ago, Numbnuts said:

If you can get through !!! 111 once again is gridlocked . Thats a surprise right . We might have enough operators by late next week if lucky. 

Apparently there’s loads ringing up asking are the vaccinations still proceeding because of COVID, can I change my appointment because of Covid, when am I getting my appointment etc etc which is blocking the lines 

[the stinking enigma]

I'd have thought they may have anticipated this possibly happening. There should be like a general inquiries number advertised as such.