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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

D said:
In this country as well, we have significant issues in terms of rural hospital capacity/proximity of rural communities to already overtaxed hospitals. But at least density (or lack thereof) is in the favor of rural communities in terms of community spread. There are lots of seniors affected in urban areas as well.
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Hello D! (Waves)
 
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TopCat said:
Oh dear that rate of increase is terrifying.
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It'll keep increasing for at least a week because of the long incubation period. We'll probably then get months of mini outbreaks. When the government will tell everyone to go back to work some will still be carriers. I totally expect to get it because our office does not have a single window that opens and our air con system is dire.
 
TopCat said:
181 deaths the day before. Oh dear that rate of increase is terrifying.
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And they need to test people more than once anyway. It's well documented that people test negative 5 or 6 times before a positive test, then they can test negative a whole bunch of other times before testing positive again. And so on and so forth.
 
xes said:
And they need to test people more than once anyway. It's well documented that people test negative 5 or 6 times before a positive test, then they can test negative a whole bunch of other times before testing positive again. And so on and so forth.
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Sort of. False negatives are a real issue. Sometimes thats down to timing of when the test samples were taken. And plenty of people still probably test positive on their first test, its not a long drawn out affair for all cases.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
Is it? The initial policy was to allow hundreds of thousands of people to die. But this isn't a case of intentional murder, more manslaughter through criminal neglect and the pursuit of profit and political goals over people (and there's a reason why the highest jail term for manslaughter is life). That's not conspiracy theory. That's standard practice. How many thousands of people have been allowed to die during 'austerity' to line the pockets of the rich?

In this instance, what is the first thought? 'We must do whatever it takes to ensure as few people die as possible', or some variation of 'how do we further our own interests in this crisis?' Again, it is not conspiracy theory to think that govt actions are at least in part driven by the latter sentiment even now. It's actually more like a conspiracy theory to think that they are not, to think that there is suddenly a conspiracy in those in power to act purely for the common good.
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I don't think those in power are acting only for the common good, of course not. But to immediately assume that because some manufacturer you've never heard of before today's MD is moaning because he hasn't won an NHS contract it's because Boris Johnson wants to give it to his mates is pretty crude stuff.
 
Government press conference

Again if we have less than 20,000 deaths we will have done well!

Where do they get these figures from?

20,000 deaths would be 20k individual family disasters.
 
I’m not sure whether this has already been posted but here’s Richard Horton writing in the Lancet.

I asked NHS workers to contact me with their experiences. Their messages have been as distressing as they have been horrifying. “It’s terrifying for staff at the moment. Still no access to personal protective equipment [PPE] or testing.” “Rigid command structures make decision making impossible.” “There’s been no guidelines, it’s chaos.” “I don’t feel safe. I don’t feel protected.” “We are literally making it up as we go along.” “It feels as if we are actively harming patients.” “We need protection and prevention.” “Total carnage.” “NHS Trusts continue to fail miserably.” “Humanitarian crisis.” “Forget lockdown—we are going into meltdown.” “When I was country director in many conflict zones, we had better preparedness.” “The hospitals in London are overwhelmed.” “The public and media are not aware that today we no longer live in a city with a properly functioning western health-care system.” “How will we protect our patients and staff...I am speechless. It is utterly unconscionable. How can we do this? It is criminal...NHS England was not prepared... We feel completely helpless.”
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The NHS has been wholly unprepared for this pandemic. It’s impossible to understand why. Based on their modelling of the Wuhan outbreak of COVID-19, Joseph Wu and his colleagues wrote in The Lancet on Jan 31, 2020: “On the present trajectory, 2019-nCoV could be about to become a global epidemic...for health protection within China and internationally... preparedness plans should be readied for deployment at short notice, including securing supply chains of pharmaceuticals, personal protective equipment, hospital supplies, and the necessary human resources to deal with the consequences of a global outbreak of this magnitude.” This warning wasn’t made lightly. It should have been read by the Chief Medical Officer, the Chief Executive Officer of the NHS in England, and the Chief Scientific Adviser. They had a duty to immediately put the NHS and British public on high alert. February should have been used to expand coronavirus testing capacity, ensure the distribution of WHO-approved PPE, and establish training programmes and guidelines to protect NHS staff. They didn’t take any of those actions. The result has been chaos and panic across the NHS. Patients will die unnecessarily. NHS staff will die unnecessarily. It is, indeed, as one health worker wrote last week, “a national scandal”. The gravity of that scandal has yet to be understood.
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killer b said:
I don't think those in power are acting only for the common good, of course not. But to immediately assume that because some manufacturer you've never heard of before today's MD is moaning because he hasn't won an NHS contract it's because Boris Johnson wants to give it to his mates is pretty crude stuff.
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However, I find it perfectly plausible that neither the never-heard-MD nor the celebrity tory donor should really be getting these contracts to develop sleek, revolutionary new ventilator designs, when even an idiot could tell you that it is far better to work from tried and tested blueprints. And yet one of them is.
 
weltweit said:
Government press conference

Again if we have less than 20,000 deaths we will have done well!

Where do they get these figures from?

20,000 deaths would be 20k individual family disasters.
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20k is the equivalent of a bad 'ordinary' flu year. It's not unreasonable to put that as a figure indicating 'not catastrophic'. But it's a weird thing to aim for. A good 'ordinary' flu year is more like 2,000. Could have aimed for that if they'd prepared better. Now it's impossible. As we're all going logarithmic nowadays, I'd put 2k as a good result, 20k as a not catastrophic result, and 200k as a catastrophic result. After all, a bad ordinary flu year is actually very bad.

There is also politics in play here. It's not exactly aiming at 20k. It's more likely that 20k is going to happen on latest projections, so spinning that as success. If they'd started preparations two months ago, maybe they could have 'aimed at' 2k.
 
Raheem said:
However, I find it perfectly plausible that neither the never-heard-MD nor the celebrity tory donor should really be getting these contracts to develop sleek, revolutionary new ventilator designs, when even an idiot could tell you that it is far better to work from tried and tested blueprints. And yet one of them is.
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Yep. Basic, reliable, easy to make, easy to use, quick to be made available. This isn't rocket science.
 
littlebabyjesus said:
20k is the equivalent of a bad 'ordinary' flu year. It's not unreasonable to put that as a figure indicating 'not catastrophic'. But it's a weird thing to aim for. A good 'ordinary' flu year is more like 2,000. Could have aimed for that if they'd prepared better. Now it's impossible. As we're all going logarithmic nowadays, I'd put 2k as a good result, 20k as a not catastrophic result, and 200k as a catastrophic result. After all, a bad ordinary flu year is actually very bad.

There is also politics in play here. It's not exactly aiming at 20k. It's more likely that 20k is going to happen on latest projections, so spinning that as success. If they'd started preparations two months ago, maybe they could have 'aimed at' 2k.
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But total worldwide deaths so far are only 29,881*, and even Italy is only at 10,023 ..

*with caveats that this may actually be lower than reality.
 
weltweit said:
But total worldwide deaths so far are only 29,881, and even Italy is only at 10,023 ..
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'only'? It's at nearly 1,000 per day at the moment. Italy is going to end up considerably over 20,000 (it has roughly the same population as the UK, so we can use the same figure). It has reached the UK's 'good flu' year figure in the last three days.

And that's not even taking into account the fact that the real figure is bound to be higher than the official figure, sadly, because the health authorities are overwhelmed.
 
Can also consider those numbers int he context of the latest Imperial College report, which tookk their previous work on mitigation and suppression modelling estimates and applied it to regions of the world.

If someone fancies having a stsb at estimating when UK rates were at 0.2 deaths per 100,000 population per week, and when they were at 1.6 deaths per 100,000 population per week, that would help us determine where in this chart the UK would be estimated to fall. I didnt do a proper calculation, I have a vague stab at it and decided that the uk rate changed quickly and that we are only talking about a matter of days timing difference. But I didnt check my sums at all.

Screenshot 2020-03-28 at 17.18.08.png


By the way, according to a small record I kept of certain UK claims, they have been talking about limiting it to 20,000 or less deaths since somewhere around 11th-15th March.

edit - my timing was a little off with regards the 20,000 claim, that date range I gave was for the shitstorm 'herd immunity narrative and plan went down badly'. It looks like it was the following Monday 16th, when the Imperial College report on having to go for suppression instead arrived, that was also the original source of the 20,000:

Imperial’s researchers presented their latest analysis after the prime minister’s press conference at 10 Downing Street on Monday. Modelling a scenario similar to the new measures — including social distancing of the whole population, home isolation of cases and household quarantine of their families — might bring total deaths down to about 20,000 if they were observed strictly, said Azra Ghani, a member of the Imperial team.
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(Quote from Subscribe to read | Financial Times )
 
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I am infected with cronic hep c viris and awaiting liver skan and took my self out of work a week ago as a precaution and as my workplace is classed as an essential buisness the store manager has already been on the phone to me threatning not to pay me unless i can get an exeption note off the doctor. My company i work for is band q and a low wage earner and thats how they treat you. No customers allowed in store but staff still expected to work doing shelf filling and the like. Worked there for a lot of years and i would like to take unpaid leave untill this lockdown is over and will see when he phones me again on monday to pressure me again to return. I am 62 and my wife says stay away if i feel scared and that they cannot lay me off with whats going on but i do not trust the company.Band q an essential buisness ffs.My doctor has told me hep c is not on the list to excuse you from the workplace and really said nothing else when i phoned. What you saying folks??
 
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Shit really sorry to hear that, bumpkinbeans. Employer and doctor are both cunts. I say stay away if you don't feel safe going in. Hope your boss does the right thing.
 
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