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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Cid said:
What’s your point though? (Other than responding to spiney). We’ve had to have these rolling lockdowns because of a particular approach that wanted the economy to be determined by market forces as much as possible. They aren’t a product of a pro-lockdown approach, they’re a consequence of an economic philosophy that avoids government intervention until it’s too late.
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My point is simply to consider the possibility that lockdowns might, conceivably, cause more damage than they prevent. Like I said to spiney, I'm perfectly willing to keep an open mind that lockdowns may well have saved more lives and prevented more damage than they cause (through poverty, unemployment, and the like), but equally that the opposite might be true, something he seems to be incapable of even considering for a single second. That's all I'm suggesting people do- keep an open mind. I've never said lockdowns weren't necessary and I've never said we should never have had any.

I also don't think you can just wildly blame capitalism or a particular economic philosophy for the failings- after all, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Japan and a few of the other relative success stories share that same philosophy and they have performed pretty well. Equally some countries that favoured strong, early intervention and tough early lockdowns still had big failures and spikes in cases and deaths later- Peru, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Israel. All I'm saying is consider the possibility that lockdowns as a whole, on a global level (not just here in the UK), might cause more long term death, suffering and poverty than they prevent. Equally, they might not, and I certainly hope that will be the case. Only time and a proper cost-benefit analysis will show the reality in the future.
 
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It gets worse. From the Guardian at 6 pm today, up to a million people may need many years of care for long Covid. Apparently 800 or 900 thousand people have had Covid so far, and 10% may get long Covid.

Senior doctors are braced for up to a million people needing treatment for long Covid after the pandemic, putting huge extra pressure on an already overstretched NHS, the Guardian can reveal.

Long Covid is a significant problem affecting huge numbers of patients that will confront the NHS for many years to come, one of the service’s expert advisers on the fast-emerging condition said.

Signs are already emerging that the health service is having trouble keeping up with the demand for care created by the sheer number of patients who are still displaying symptoms such as exhaustion, brain fog, chest pains and breathing problems months after having Covid.

Doctors fear that staff shortages, the need to tackle the big backlog of surgery that has built up, and existing strain on lung and heart services will limit the care that the NHS can provide.

The boss of the hospital that set up the NHS’s first specialist clinic for long Covid admitted that it was struggling to give patients the speedy and high-quality help they needed. The head of the Royal College of GPs voiced concern that sufferers were facing long waits to get seen.

Prof Helen Stokes-Lampard, the chair of the Academy of Medical Royal Colleges, which professionally represents the UK’s 240,000 doctors, said: “The NHS knows this is a problem. It’s very concerned about this. Long Covid is going to be a very substantial new burden on the NHS. It’s working hard and setting up clinics. But there will be huge numbers of these cases and it’s clearly going to be dealing with this for years, absolutely for years.“ It’s going to be the next challenge that the NHS has to deal with whilst … recovering from the pandemic and whilst desperately trying to deal with the backlog [of diagnostic tests and surgery], with staff that are exhausted.“

People [in the NHS] are very fearful about how they’re going to be able to deliver [the care that long Covid patients need]. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.” Stokes-Lampard is also a member of the taskforce that NHS England has set up to help it respond to long Covid.

The evidence so far shows that 20% of people who have had Covid still have some symptoms of it after four weeks and that 10% are still debilitated by it – sometimes very badly – after 12 weeks. While people who were ventilated in intensive care over the last year are the worst affected, some of those who never went to hospital are also having lingering symptoms.

One of Britain’s leading doctors, speaking on condition of anonymity, said: “Although officially about 4 million people have had Covid, in reality it’s about 8 million or 9 million. If 10% of those people have got something, then it could be almost a million people, and that’s enormous.”

Prof Martin Marshall, chair of the Royal College of GPs, said: “Right now there’s a lot of people in every GP practice that have got long Covid and who will develop long Covid. GPs are seeing growing numbers of people with post-Covid symptoms.” While about 300,000 people in the UK are thought to have long Covid, that is likely to rise, given the severity of the pandemic’s second wave, he said.

Some of the 40-50 patients with long Covid at his own practice in east London have been struggling to get an appointment at the first specialist clinic at University College London hospital, he said.

Prof Marcel Levi, UCLH’s chief executive, said: “It is fair to say that we are struggling to meet the demand of this patient group. We have a clear vision of the ideal pathway we would like to deliver. At the moment, we only have some of the components of that pathway in place, and it is something that needs rapid resource and focus to fill in the gaps.”

UCLH’s service, which opened in May, has already seen more than 1,300 patients. It expects about 1,000 new cases to present in the coming weeks. Access is restricted because of “workforce and resource constraints” and the team’s “significant backlog of other activity”, said Dr Melissa Heightman, the respiratory consultant who runs the clinic.

Stokes-Lampard and Marshall said that while NHS England’s creation of more than 60 specialist long Covid clinics was a good start, it would have to expand the care that was available.

Doctors are also worried that it is not yet clear how the NHS will be able to successfully treat those with long Covid, given its sheer array of symptoms and ongoing emergence as a condition.

Stokes-Lampard said: “It’s incredible that the NHS has set up and got going a network of new services in recent months. But the problem is that the services at the moment are only set up to assess people; there is no treatment known. It’s kind of still hitting a dead end because we don’t yet know how best to treat people. So we’re in a difficult situation as healthcare professionals.

“The diagnosis [of long Covid] is only part of the journey. It’s all about treatment and cure and actually we haven’t got many treatments and we haven’t got many cures. That is a concern.”

Long Covid poses a serious challenge for doctors to diagnose because so many of its symptoms, such as fatigue and pain, are also symptoms of so many other ailments, said Marshall.

Prof Andrew Goddard, president of the Royal College of Physicians, said: “It seems very likely that long Covid will place significant demands on the NHS moving forwards and given that many patients with long Covid did not get hospitalised and/or were relatively young, it shows the importance of vaccinating as much of the adult population as possible.”

NHS England said it planned to expand long Covid services this year and was still exploring what treatments worked best.

An NHS spokesperson said: “Long Covid is still a new condition, but dozens of NHS clinics across the country are rising to the challenge of understanding and treating it, bringing together expert clinicians to provide comprehensive assessments for thousands of patients, with more set to open over the coming months.

“We expect that there will need to be a substantial further expansion in support for long Covid patients during 2021. Covid and its long-term consequences are entirely new, but – through our network of clinics – the NHS is carrying out research and sharing learning about how best to treat and rehabilitate patients experiencing ongoing debilitating symptoms.”
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cupid_stunt said:
Everything continues to go well, fingers crossed for the next couple weeks, with the schools going back on Monday.

Vaccinations - 1st dose just over 20.982m & 2nd dose over 963.8k.

New cases - 6,573, down -34.4% in the last week, and down a massive 3,412 on last Thursday's 9,985, bringing the 7-day average down to around 6,686 - a figure we've not seen since last Sept.! :cool:

New deaths - 242, down -33.6% in the last week, and down 81 on last Thursday's 323, bringing the 7-day average down to around 255 - a figure we've not seen since last October! :thumbs:
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Yesterday's figures were late, but worth waiting for.

Vaccinations - 1st dose just under 21.36m & 2nd dose over 1m. Should be interesting to see the increase in daily jabs over the coming few weeks, as vaccine supply increases.

New cases - 5,947, down -34.8% in the last week, and down 2,576 on last Friday's 8,523, bringing the 7-day average down to 6,317. A whopping 992,812 tests were reported, although that figure includes the rapid lateral flow tests, but still bloody impressive.

New deaths - 236, down -32.9% in the last week, and down 110 on last Friday's 346, bringing the 7-day average down to 240.
 
existentialist said:
Could get interesting if the slow clappers are out at the same time as the fast ones.

I wonder if ANYTHING can make a difference where these slimy Tory bastards are concerned...?
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As for your second point - only the public loss of their "private" and "party" funding, 'cos mammon is their motive, the greedy objects
perhaps a serious outcry of objections, and a well-orchestrated media campaign leading to loss of seats in HoC ...
 
MJ100 said:
My point is simply to consider the possibility that lockdowns might, conceivably, cause more damage than they prevent. Like I said to spiney, I'm perfectly willing to keep an open mind that lockdowns may well have saved more lives and prevented more damage than they cause (through poverty, unemployment, and the like), but equally that the opposite might be true, something he seems to be incapable of even considering for a single second. That's all I'm suggesting people do- keep an open mind. I've never said lockdowns weren't necessary and I've never said we should never have had any.
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I'm very willing to consider that, but given the modelling of the likely death toll if there had been no lockdown, and the absence of evidence that the lockdowns have caused anywhere near the deaths and damage of that scenario (even extrapolating wildly into the future) it's quite an easy thing to dismiss as currently not a concern, and given the types of people continually going on about it it's reasonable to be skeptical of the motives of someone that repeatedly raises it. If evidence comes up to the contrary then I'd be very willing to change my position.
 
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MJ100 said:
My point is simply to consider the possibility that lockdowns might, conceivably, cause more damage than they prevent. Like I said to spiney, I'm perfectly willing to keep an open mind that lockdowns may well have saved more lives and prevented more damage than they cause (through poverty, unemployment, and the like), but equally that the opposite might be true, something he seems to be incapable of even considering for a single second. That's all I'm suggesting people do- keep an open mind. I've never said lockdowns weren't necessary and I've never said we should never have had any.
Click to expand...

Again, when we went into lockdown, there was no choice. You cannot have a functioning society when the health service is in collapse. Even leaving aside the astronomical death rate.

I also don't think you can just wildly blame capitalism or a particular economic philosophy for the failings- after all, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Singapore, South Korea, Japan and a few of the other relative success stories share that same philosophy and they have performed pretty well. Equally some countries that favoured strong, early intervention and tough early lockdowns still had big failures and spikes in cases and deaths later- Peru, Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, Israel. All I'm saying is consider the possibility that lockdowns as a whole, on a global level (not just here in the UK), might cause more long term death, suffering and poverty than they prevent. Equally, they might not, and I certainly hope that will be the case. Only time and a proper cost-benefit analysis will show the reality in the future.
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I'm not wildly blaming anything... An emphasis on free-market ideology is a specific thing within capitalism. And it has a specific presentation here (and in much of Europe); it is combined with a sense of national superiority, with high levels of inequality after years of austerity, with cronyism. In contrast the East Asian/Asia Pacific countries - despite often sharing those problems - seem to have had something of a wake-up call related to the SARS pandemic. Their pandemic modelling changed... It became clear that major public health interventions would be the only strategy to prevent the extreme long-term economic and social distress eventually experienced by much of the rest of the world.

In those countries lockdowns were used strategically, they were used to bring levels down before the implementation of strategies that become viable with lower levels of disease - test and trace, regional lockdown etc. Many of them still had to learn difficult lessons; South Korea has had periodic outbreaks, Australia has had to turn to severe local lockdowns, Japan has had difficulties related to nationalism, and related to constitutional limits on the extent of lockdowns. But it has been nothing like its been here... I have friends in SK, NZ, Australia and China. Their quality of life has been far, far better than ours has. And their economies - generally - have performed better.

To sum up... We had no choice but to implement lockdowns. A failure to capitalise on any gains, and a desire to reopen as quickly as possible, with arbitrary targets and schedules, caused us to have to repeat that and use other restrictions. Lockdown is not one thing, it is a tool that can be used in different ways. That was how we used it. If, in the final analysis, it does cause more death, mental health problems etc, then we have to have that in mind.
 
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existentialist said:
I don't imagine he was paying for the fuel, so from his point of view, the cost is nil.
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Really? Even if it's not his own helicopter and he's just a pilot on someone/ some company's payroll, you would imagine that one couldn't just take an aircraft for an unauthorised stroll like if it was a company van you've used to give your aunt a lift to Ikea of a Sunday afternoon.
 
Bit of an idiot admitting he went for a sandwich though. "I saw this Facebook post where someone was hanging off the side of a cliff and I went to rescue them - the Facebook post has disappeared now though.

I got the sandwich to give to them build up their strength."
 
Given that ME/CFS is a umbrella diagosis made on the absence of any findings from any tests that means another cause for the symptoms can be found, and for many people with long covid actual damage (hopefully some or all of which will get better) can be shown to have occurred through a variety of tests I'm not sure that's at all true or useful tbh.
 
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cupid_stunt said:
Yesterday's figures were late, but worth waiting for.

Vaccinations - 1st dose just under 21.36m & 2nd dose over 1m. Should be interesting to see the increase in daily jabs over the coming few weeks, as vaccine supply increases.

New cases - 5,947, down -34.8% in the last week, and down 2,576 on last Friday's 8,523, bringing the 7-day average down to 6,317. A whopping 992,812 tests were reported, although that figure includes the rapid lateral flow tests, but still bloody impressive.

New deaths - 236, down -32.9% in the last week, and down 110 on last Friday's 346, bringing the 7-day average down to 240.
Click to expand...

Yet another cracking day on the figures. :thumbs:

Vaccinations - 1st dose just under 21.8m & 2nd dose under 1.1m.

New cases - 6,040, down -34% in the last week, and down 1,394 on last Saturday's 7,434, bringing the 7-day average down to 6,118.

New deaths - 158, down -34.1% in the last week, and down 132 on last Saturday's 290, bringing the 7-day average down to 221.
 
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