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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Supine said:
Shorter timeframes for repurposed medicines are much easier. Drugs like remdesivir or kaletra have already proven safe in humans so trials to determine efficacy with covid are shorter and can be fast tracked.
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Do you know Supine if these trials are under way?

Supine said:
New vaccines are a different ball game. They simply have to be proven safe before it's safe to prove that they work. There is lots of streamlining with regulators now so world records will be broken in getting vaccines through the regulatory hurdles. They must be proven safe and trials take time. The consequence of getting that wrong would be huge.
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Supine which stages that would normally be done are being missed in these new faster trials / approval programs? and what is the implication of skipping these steps? I mean there must have been a reason to have had these steps in normal trials process for vaccines?
 
Piers Morgan has a rematch with care minister Helen Whately on GMB in a bit. Credit to her for putting herself through it again after the last car crash!
 
maomao said:
Alistair Campbell has been going around suggesting Blair should be brought back as the only person experienced enough to deal with the crisis. As if things weren't bad enough.
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Well he did make some excellent points about completely rethinking the bureaucracy of government, and quickly. And admitted he made some mistakes in the early days of foot and mouth but learned a lot of lessons from it that could be useful right now.
 
two sheds said:
in which case they should have had his name in the headline to make him aware :rolleyes:
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If he's the CEO, yup, definitely. He can guide his groundlings who are actually doing the work.

It's a bit of an odd one, TBF. I don't really get why they're arguing for a 20% reduction rent across the board - presumably it's because furlough is at 80% of your pay, but that's a simplistic way of looking at things. It looks like a lot of these tenants are high earners living in flats that were overpriced to begin with, but they'd have needed to have substantial income just to move in.

Still, maybe it could help other private tenants with less clout. Encourage relatively rich tenants to do a rent boycott, and the tenants who aren't rich will have more backing to keep it going.

Ms T said:
I got the tube today. 3 people in my carriage at Brixton at 1030 and not even that when I got off at Oxford Circus. Central London was deserted. I did get a taxi home though because I wouldn’t have felt safe on the tube at 10pm, purely because it’s so empty.
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That's a point I'd not really considered about quieter tube services. Maybe it's one of the reasons some people are using buses, because at least the driver is there.
 
You might have though Whately would have shown up with the correct figures after last week's mauling by Morgan. Asked the exact same question she tripped up on last week about how many workers had died, she had no idea again... :facepalm:
 
amp.ft.com

UK coronavirus deaths more than double official figure, according to FT study | Free to read

FT estimate has been updated to reflect latest mortality trends
amp.ft.com amp.ft.com

I was talking to a funeral director mate earlier, and from cases they have dealt with, he says 50% are from the care sector & wider community, so he's sure the true death rate is about double what the hospital deaths are, which basically fits in with the FT's estimate.

And, a care home owner told me they now have to login to a website daily to report any deaths, and how many are suspected C-19 cases, so more regular updates on care home deaths are likely to start appearing.
 
cupid_stunt said:
amp.ft.com

UK coronavirus deaths more than double official figure, according to FT study | Free to read

FT estimate has been updated to reflect latest mortality trends
amp.ft.com amp.ft.com

I was talking to a funeral director mate earlier, and from cases they have dealt with, he says 50% are from the care sector & wider community, so he's sure the true death rate is about double what the hospital deaths are, which basically fits in with the FT's estimate.

And, a care home owner told me they now have to login to a website daily to report any deaths, and how many are suspected C-19 cases, so more regular updates on care home deaths are likely to start appearing.
Click to expand...

The report in the FT is a good one and, no doubt, an accurate one.

But even so there is still one bit that says

The ONS data showed that deaths registered in the week ending April 10 were 75 per cent above normal in England and Wales, the highest level for more than 20 years.
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And you may ask yourself, well what happened 20 years ago? The answer, if I'm reading elbows correctly from an earlier post, is that is the time we started counting weekly deaths for the first time. Before that it was monthly, before that quarterly. So it's not just "20 years".

Which is just another reiteration of how the figures, even in this good report, are not really telling us the fuller picture.
 
Artaxerxes said:
Buckle up folks

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Interesting that flu vaccines are only 50% effective but reduce effect of the flu - I wonder whether that's what laid me out a couple of months ago. Also wonder whether that 50% covers new flu strains that aren't yet in the vaccine.
 
planetgeli said:
The report in the FT is a good one and, no doubt, an accurate one.

But even so there is still one bit that says



And you may ask yourself, well what happened 20 years ago? The answer, if I'm reading elbows correctly from an earlier post, is that is the time we started counting weekly deaths for the first time. Before that it was monthly, before that quarterly. So it's not just "20 years".

Which is just another reiteration of how the figures, even in this good report, are not really telling us the fuller picture.
Click to expand...
Ah! That would explain it. That said, a monthly total is probably more revealing here, given that deaths ramped up over a couple of weeks from low to high but have since plateaued. We will have at least a month's worth of very high weekly figures, which will presumably add up to a record month going back a lot longer. April taken as a whole will make for extremely grim reading.

The rough rule 'take the deaths in hospital, double it and add a bit' was also noted in Italy a couple of weeks ago when they released figures for all deaths in March. That adds weight to this - it's probably a decent rule of thumb.
 
Last edited:
Whately on LBC says she didn't know about Exercise Cygnus.
She worked previously in the healthcare division of MacKinley according to Wikipedia and both of her parents were Doctors and she is the Care minister.
Barefaced liar in my view, another Tory minister holding plebs in contempt.
 
In this uncertainty, countries that are actively working to contain this virus and keep numbers as low as possible are buying time to build a more informed policy response while also protecting their economies and societies. Others, by letting the virus spread slowly through their populations (only flattening the curve instead of completely stopping the spread), are just gambling with people’s lives, and will be caught in cycles of lockdown/release that will destroy the economy and cause social unrest, as well as increased Covid-19- and non-Covid-19-related deaths.
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www.theguardian.com

Crunching the coronavirus curve is better than flattening it, as New Zealand is showing | Devi Sridhar

Countries that are actively working to contain coronavirus are buying themselves time, says Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
 
zahir said:
www.theguardian.com

Crunching the coronavirus curve is better than flattening it, as New Zealand is showing | Devi Sridhar

Countries that are actively working to contain coronavirus are buying themselves time, says Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh
www.theguardian.com www.theguardian.com
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It beggars belief that a country as small as NZ has come up with a better strategy than 'Great' Britain. I know all the arguments about how australia and nz are so much smaller population wise but regardless they seemed to figure it out so much faster than us. I blame the scientists here. Channel 4 showed a clip of that chief medical officer giving a presentation a month ago, smiling and joking that he would be up before a select committee if he was wrong about the strategy. Shocking. Damn right you fucking will.
 
I'm finding this week probably the toughest so far. Obviously the death toll is massive and at or around the peak (hopefully) which is grim enough in itself but its also just the growing realization of what a total mess of it our government has made and how they seem to have very little idea of how they are going to come out of lockdown or deal subsequent waves. This is just being highlighted by how much more competent other governments seems to be and how jealous I am of their citizens who will slowly be getting some freedom back.

I'm working from home at the moment and have been going out for an evening walk most days. Yesterday it was as busy as I've seen it since the lockdown started. In fact the only way you could tell the lockdown was still on because there is still less traffic (but lot more than there was just a few days ago) and the pubs were shut. It would have been impossible to tell otherwise.

I won't be going out at that time again. I need another strategy. As lbj said upthread it feels like the country will just stumble out of lockdown in the same way we stumbled in with the government being reactive without much clue on how to manage it all. I feel another ramping it up to blame the people coming on. I almost expect the government to launch a special 'grass your neighbour' hotline soon.
 
Teaboy said:
I'm finding this week probably the toughest so far. Obviously the death toll is massive and at or around the peak (hopefully) which is grim enough in itself but its also just the growing realization of what a total mess of it our government has made and how they seem to have very little idea of how they are going to come out of lockdown or deal subsequent waves. This is just being highlighted by how much more competent other governments seems to be and how jealous I am of their citizens who will slowly be getting some freedom back.

I'm working from home at the moment and have been going out for an evening walk most days. Yesterday it was as busy as I've seen it since the lockdown started. In fact the only way you could tell the lockdown was still on because there is still less traffic (but lot more than there was just a few days ago) and the pubs were shut. It would have been impossible to tell otherwise.

I won't be going out at that time again. I need another strategy. As lbj said upthread it feels like the country will just stumble out of lockdown in the same way we stumbled in with the government being reactive without much clue on how to manage it all. I feel another ramping it up to blame the people coming on. I almost expect the government to launch a special 'grass your neighbour' hotline soon.
Click to expand...
One of the main reasons I watched that doctors webcast last night was to find out what they know about government plans. I got the answer I feared I would get. They know exactly as much as I know, ie fuck all. There is no plan.
 
Semi-good news on hospitalisaiton figures. They're falling, most sharply in London, which is showing a curve similar to those I've seen in better-managed countries like Switzerland, down now by around 25% from peak. Bit concerning that other areas are not falling as much/at all, but hopefully that's just a bit of a time lag, London being the first, and hardest hit, area.

TUESregional_trans_NvBQzQNjv4BqqVzuuqpFlyLIwiB6NTmJwfSVWeZ_vEN7c6bHu2jJnT8.PNG
 
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