Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[sptme]

Can any legal types tell me, what law could these incompetent wankers be changed with. Criminal negligence? Corporate manslaughter? If there is a public inquiry won't they just choose a one of their mates to be the judge?

 

[Azrael]

Our old friend "misconduct in public office" ought to do the job. Common law offence, so unlimited fine, potential sentence of life imprisonment.

The government would, of course, have to prosecute itself, and not even Grayling could be relied on to accidentally do that (probably). A different government and a bad enough crisis, who knows.

More hopeful is the GMC having a quiet word with the medical doctors who're acting as Cummings' enablers.

 

[LDC]

Can any legal types tell me, what law could these incompetent wankers be changed with. Criminal negligence? Corporate manslaughter? If there is a public inquiry won't they just choose a one of their mates to be the judge?

Isn't there something in the recent emergency legislation/powers about no prosecutions will be allowed for Covid related issues for the NHS about care etc? Imagine that might well extend to other bodies and people employed by them.

 

[Azrael]

This section? If so, looks like it revolves around protecting clinicians from civil claims if the NHS is swamped. Keep jogging, Dom! (But only after you've served your quarantine, full fat WHO version if you please, none of this skinny seven day malarkey.)

 

[zahir]

Coronavirus: UK labs 'can process tens of thousands more tests'

Expert says university and big hospital labs can be used to reach German levels of testing

www.theguardian.com

The UK has the capacity to process tens of thousands more tests for coronavirus but has failed to organise itself properly, a former director at the World Health Organization has said.

Anthony Costello, a global health professor at University College London, called for the UK to make use of testing machines in every university and big hospital around the country, setting up mobile testing units like Ireland, which is testing far more people per head of population.

Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Costello said a policy of mass community testing was essential to identify new hotspots and eventually end the lockdown, as has happened in South Korea.

“We have 44 molecular virology labs in the UK. If they were doing 400 tests a day we would be up to Germany levels of testing and that is perfectly feasible. Public Health England (PHE) was slow and controlled and only allowed non-PHE labs to start testing two weeks ago but that was only after the strategy shift to end community testing,” he said.

“If you look at Korea, they have done 490,000 tests. Their death rate is three per million and they have suppressed the virus.

“I don’t see why we can’t get these 44 labs up and running, finding cases and testing.

“We must go to mass testing and when we remove the lockdown – all the Asian states it was six to eight weeks, even in Wuhan – then we will have a control mechanism which will enable us to wait, without socially distancing the whole country, for drugs or a vaccine for herd immunity.”

 

[weltweit]

Shocking if true zahir they need to get their act together pronto ..

 

[Azrael]

Current inaction's clearly a remnant of the "let it rip" policy. If govt see it as only way to end lockdown, they'll be forced to change tack, especially when their natural supporters loathe the restrictions.

Biggest problem is that, with most key figures locked away in quarantine, there's barely a government at present. The hapless transport secretary was left doing the rounds this morning. That leaves a deputy CMO with a weird prejudice against testing and a Chief Scientist who trumpeted herd immunity.

Gove was making positive squeaks about Germany. He may push it through, especially if he sees a route to relieving Johnson of the burdens of office while his ex-boss enjoys a nice long convalescence.

 

[elbows]

Maybe this will be useful

Hospital deaths falling at fastest rate yet

Deaths from covid-19 in England's hospitals are declining at the fastest rate yet, as the whole South West region sees one death in seven days.

www.hsj.co.uk

Thanks, that ones great for the totals but not the raw data which, at least on Sunday, included dates for each death rather than just the reporting date.

 

[Favelado]

I see lots of reports of refuse collectors noticing all the hoarded food starting to be chucked out, despite claims on here that panic buying hadn't happened.

 

[elbows]

I see lots of reports of refuse collectors noticing all the hoarded food starting to be chucked out, despite claims on here that panic buying hadn't happened.

Did people really claim that? I certainly made a point on the panic buying thread that it was not simply a question of irrational responses and panic buying, but also completely reasonable responses to the situation. I'll never change my mind about that, but thats easy for me to say because my claim did not deny that the other side of things was happening too. I was just sick of people describing the whole thing as stupid panic when actually there are many more reasons than that.

Some of the media language now reflects this. eg instead of just 'panic buying' we see 'stockpiling' and references to sensible reasons for shift in shopping patterns, eg:

Coronavirus: Aldi, Morrisons, Waitrose and Asda lift some restrictions

Aldi, Morrisons, Waitrose and Asda ease limits on how many of some individual items people can buy.

www.bbc.co.uk

Aldi, Morrisons and Waitrose are easing restrictions on some of their products which were imposed in the wake of stockpiling earlier this month.

Mr McKevitt added: "It's inevitable that shoppers will add extra items to their baskets when faced with restrictions on their movement.

"With restaurants and cafes now closed, none of us can eat meals on the go any longer and an extra 503 million meals, mainly lunches and snacks, will be prepared and eaten at home every week for the foreseeable future."

I suspect the media were advised to go easy on the stories & images of panic, since dramatic reporting on that stuff is part of what feeds the endless loop of shortages that can be created in such situations.

 

[Chilli.s]

I see lots of reports of refuse collectors noticing all the hoarded food starting to be chucked out, despite claims on here that panic buying hadn't happened.

I guess domestic refuse amounts will be higher with people being at home rather than out too. Refuse collection being very much an essential service.

 

[Favelado]

I guess domestic refuse amounts will be higher with people being at home rather than out too. Refuse collection being very much an essential service.

Refuse of unopened food being a particular issue though - not just the overall amount.

 

[elbows]

ONS deaths data. Has its own form of lag so ends up covering an earlier period.

2h ago 10:00
1h ago 10:50

The ONS has published the first of its new weekly bulletin which will include all instances where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate and will include non-hospital deaths.

A total of 210 deaths in England and Wales that occurred up to and including 20 March (and which were registered up to 25 March) had Covid-19 mentioned on the death certificate, according to new figures from the Office for National Statistics.

This compares with 170 coronavirus-related deaths reported by NHS England and Public Health Wales up to and including March 20.

A quick note on the difference between the figures published by the ONS and those that have been published thus far by NHS England and Public Health Wales:

The ONS death figures are based on the number of deaths registered in England and Wales where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate as “deaths involving Covid-19”. The number includes all deaths, not just those in hospitals, although there is usually a delay of at least five days between a death occurring and registration.

The figures published by NHS England and Public Health Wales are for deaths only among hospital patients who have tested positive for Covid-19, but include deaths that have not yet been registered.

Separate figures from the ONS show that for the 108 deaths registered up to 20 March where Covid-19 was mentioned on the death certificate, 45 (or 42%) were people aged 85 and over while 34 (31%) were people aged 75-84.

A total of 21 deaths (19%) were people aged 65-74, seven (6%) were people aged 45-64 and one death was aged 15-44 years.

 

[andysays]

Also the construction industry is filled with self-employed people (some actually self-employed, but many pushed into self-employment by the big contractors wanting to avoid the commitments that come with employment) and the govt. didn't sort out what they were doing to support self-employed people until after the lockdown I think so there will have been lots of people that needed to keep working until the measures for self-employed people were announced.

Even though the measures have been announced, the payments won't be made until June, so loads of people like the scaffolders I spoke to the other day face three months with no money, and so will need to carry on working.

Not good for them and not good for preventing the spread of the virus.

 

[elbows]

Sorry for the fucking Daily Mail front page, but I feel the need to keep up with how the tory press are judging this governments pandemic response.

From BBC newspapers thing 'Sickening abuse' and 'overzealous' police warning

 

[frogwoman]

Isolation Policy Too Late for Some, as Pandemic Warnings were not taken Seriously - Ungagged!

I wrote a thing

 

[killer b]

I see lots of reports of refuse collectors noticing all the hoarded food starting to be chucked out, despite claims on here that panic buying hadn't happened.

no-one said this. We said that panic buying was being talked up by people eager to blame the public for the crisis, when the bigger strain on the system was people unused to stocking up for a week or so, stocking up for a week or so.

That people unused to stocking up for a week or two might misjudge the amounts of food they need, or how long it will last shouldn't really be a surprise. It also shouldn't be a surprise that binmen might be noticing food waste a bit more this week, primed as they've been by two weeks headlines.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

I see lots of reports of refuse collectors noticing all the hoarded food starting to be chucked out, despite claims on here that panic buying hadn't happened.

Would refuse collectors really be noticing that, though? Kitchen waste is in black sacks for the most part, so unless people are putting their unopened fruit and veg in the recycling bin, that sounds at least slightly made-up.

 

[Raheem]

Smiths to ramp up Covid-19 ventilator output

Good for them. I'm still not going to buy Morrissey's new album, though.

 

[elbows]

Isolation Policy Too Late for Some, as Pandemic Warnings were not taken Seriously - Ungagged!

I wrote a thing

Sorry for picking over detail:

H5N1 bird flu was similarly no laughing matter. H5N1 is related to the strain of influenza which caused the notorious Spanish flu of 1918, which killed over 100 million people. There are two reasons why bird flu never became a pandemic like COVID-19, and they are nothing to do with the fact it was ‘no big deal’ or ‘a fuss about nothing’. Firstly, it never achieved widespread human-to-human transmission in the way COVID-19 has done and is rarely able to be passed any other way than contact with an infected animal. Secondly, H5N1 is so deadly it kills over 50% of people who catch it, within a very rapid space of time, so the epidemic was self-limiting and burned itself out quickly. If it had become a pandemic, the consequences could have been far more catastrophic than this one.

I dont think H5N1 is notably related to 1918 H1N1 pandemic flu. I mean they have the N1 in common, but so does the flu that reemerged in 1977 and the swine flu of 2009. And the devil is in detail well beyond the simple N classification. Nearly everything with notable mortality rates ends up getting compared to 1918 pandemic influenza anyway, because the 1918 thing is such an obvious reference point for bad pandemics.

It was never close to epidemic levels in any human populations, so I could not say 'the epidemic was self-limiting'. However, the term epidemic is fairly broad so its possible my definition of epidemic sets the bar for number of cases too high, not sure.

Its still out there, so I cannot claim it will never be a pandemic.

H7N9 is worth looking into for a similar story, but a bit more recently. I note that some of the incidents of human infection of H7N9 do seem to be referred to as epidemics, hence my caveat with my previous point about H5N1 not reaching epidemic proportions.

 

[frogwoman]

Sorry for picking over detail:



I dont think H5N1 is notably related to 1918 H1N1 pandemic flu. I mean they have the N1 in common, but so does the flu that reemerged in 1977 and the swine flu of 2009. And the devil is in detail well beyond the simple N classification. Nearly everything with notable mortality rates ends up getting compared to 1918 pandemic influenza anyway, because the 1918 thing is such an obvious reference point for bad pandemics.

It was never close to epidemic levels in any human populations, so I could not say 'the epidemic was self-limiting'. However, the term epidemic is fairly broad so its possible my definition of epidemic sets the bar for number of cases too high, not sure.

Its still out there, so I cannot claim it will never be a pandemic.

H7N9 is worth looking into for a similar story, but a bit more recently. I note that some of the incidents of human infection of H7N9 do seem to be referred to as epidemics, hence my caveat with my previous point about H5N1 not reaching epidemic proportions.

Thanks for the feedback, do I need to change it?

 

[frogwoman]

Thanks for pointing it out tho, so the situation is actually worse than I made out!

 

[elbows]

Thanks for the feedback, do I need to change it?

Up to you, if it were me I would probably change the 1918 bit, and maybe fiddle with some other wording so that you arent completely ruling out the possibility of it ever becoming a pandemic. Maybe there is something in the WHO FAQ's you could use instead.

WHO | FAQs: H5N1 influenza

www.who.int

 

[elbows]

A Scottish example of concerns about deaths being underreported.

SNP Government facing claims coronavirus death total is 'much higher'

Critics believe that the lack of testing for Covid-19 is resulting in a 'misleading' picture of the number of coronavirus fatalities in Scotland.

www.dailyrecord.co.uk

 

[zahir]

Doctors being stopped from speaking out.

Doctors claim they have been gagged over protective equipment shortages

Exclusive: Staff on frontline of pandemic warned not to speak out about concerns over lack of protective gear

www.independent.co.uk

One GP has been barred from working in a community hospital in Ludlow after making comments about the lack of equipment, while another in London said they were told to remove protective equipment they had purchased themselves.

NHS England confirmed it was controlling media communications, which it said was part of its national emergency incident planning to ensure the public received “clear and consistent information”.

One intensive care doctor, who asked to remain anonymous, raised concerns with their managers about a shortage of protective masks after being told they would have to use less safe surgical masks. They claimed they were later warned in a meeting with trust bosses that their social media profiles would be watched.

The doctor said they were told: “If we hear of these concerns going outside these four walls, your career and your position here will not be tenable going forward.”

 

[weepiper]

Scientists in Edinburgh are recruiting for a vaccine trial

Coronavirus: Vaccine trial to start at Scottish university

SCOTTISH scientists are at the forefront of researching a vaccine to combat the coronavirus outbreak, it has emerged.

www.thenational.scot

 

[lefteri]

Did people really claim that? I certainly made a point on the panic buying thread that it was not simply a question of irrational responses and panic buying, but also completely reasonable responses to the situation. I'll never change my mind about that, but thats easy for me to say because my claim did not deny that the other side of things was happening too. I was just sick of people describing the whole thing as stupid panic when actually there are many more reasons than that.

Some of the media language now reflects this. eg instead of just 'panic buying' we see 'stockpiling' and references to sensible reasons for shift in shopping patterns, eg:

Coronavirus: Aldi, Morrisons, Waitrose and Asda lift some restrictions

Aldi, Morrisons, Waitrose and Asda ease limits on how many of some individual items people can buy.

www.bbc.co.uk

I suspect the media were advised to go easy on the stories & images of panic, since dramatic reporting on that stuff is part of what feeds the endless loop of shortages that can be created in such situations.

there was a guy on ‘more or less’ on r4 this morning from an organisation that monitors 30,000 people’s shopping habits

he said that only 6% of people had been stockpiling hand sanitizers and that the rate for other items such as pasta and loo rolls was more like 3 or 4% - he concluded that the extreme shortages were down to much larger numbers of shoppers just buying an extra one of those items

 

[planetgeli]

They think Gwent, Wales (the bit to the left of most of you) is heading to be on a par with Italy. 300 cases they have no idea of why they're happening.

Coronavirus: Why are the Gwent valleys a hotspot?

Why are there more cases of coronavirus in the Aneurin Bevan health board area?

www.bbc.co.uk

Fairly interesting article about Gwent, the possible reasons for it being a hot spot, other hot spots, and the transmission that is going from East to West meaning I'm not going to be living in an outlier much longer.

 

[SheilaNaGig]

there was a guy on ‘more or less’ on r4 this morning from an organisation that monitors 30,000 people’s shopping habits

he said that only 6% of people had been stockpiling hand sanitizers and that the rate for other items such as pasta and loo rolls was more like 3 or 4% - he concluded that the extreme shortages were down to much larger numbers of shoppers just buying an extra one of those items

I think he also said that while people were only buying one or two extra items on a shopping trip, they were making an extra 2 or 3 trips to the supermarket in that same week (the week the bars closed, then everything else).

That's exactly what I did, now that I reflect back on it. It seemed sensible at the time, and now that I'm digging into the store cupboard it still feels like a sensible thing to have done. I've not thrown any food out, but I suspect that some who are doing so were previously more likely to eat out, eat takeaway, eat at work etc so not accustomed to buying for cooking. It's obviously stupidly wasteful and foolish, but I reckon a lot of it was honest mistake rather than looting and hoarding.

 

[Epona]

The BBC daily news updates are starting to wear a bit thin.
Today they are banging on about the tradition of policing in this country, and how some forces haven't been acting in line with what we expect.

Which tradition is that exactly?
The one where they wade in with batons and riot shields and then the BBC shows clips of the footage in the wrong order to deliberately misrepresent what happened?