Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[Mrs Miggins]

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.

Well that's very interesting. Perhaps the tube is safer after all.

I just imagine this miasma of disease swirling around down there and it puts me off.

 

[Teaboy]

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 30% 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.

Yes, hopefully just the way a lot of the country seems to be behind London by a week or two. One of the few good things the government did was put the country into shutdown at the same time. It did look initially like they were going to do a phased approach starting with London.

 

[The39thStep]

I'm trying to think of the current world leaders I wouldn't rather have over Johnson. Trump and Bolsonaro. Duterte. Orban. Kim Jong-un. Um. It's a pretty short list.

How do you think Teresa May would have handled it?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

How do you think Teresa May would have handled it?

Better than Johnson, probably. She probably would not have taken two weeks off work in February, for starters.

It is an exceedingly low bar, though. Johnson wasn't asleep at the wheel. He was parked up in a lay-by making out with his girlfriend in the back seat.

 

[The39thStep]

Better than Johnson, probably. She probably would not have taken two weeks off work in February, for starters.

It is an exceedingly low bar, though.

I'm not convinced a May/Javid partnership would have splashed as much cash tbh

 

[Monkeygrinder's Organ]

I think Theresa May would have at least grasped the severity of the situation and tried her best to do something about it. She probably would have done a bad job but she wouldn't have just tried to bluster it away.

 

[robsean]

Strongly and stably?

 

[Petcha]

I'm not convinced a May/Javid partnership would have splashed as much cash tbh

I agree. May would have never loosened the purse strings to this extent.

 

[DotCommunist]

she wouldn't have just tried to bluster it away.

Nothing has changed

 

[Orang Utan]

I think Theresa May would have at least grasped the severity of the situation and tried her best to do something about it. She probably would have done a bad job but she wouldn't have just tried to bluster it away.

busted by the cops trying to run through a wheat field on a non-essential journey

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I'm not convinced a May/Javid partnership would have splashed as much cash tbh

I don't see how they could have done much different tbh. There was no real alternative to the 80 percent pay thing, and before we big that up too much, it's well to remember that many other European countries didn't need such a degree of emergency legislation because that's their system already.

Would have been May/Hammond, btw.

 

[killer b]

I'm not convinced a May/Javid partnership would have splashed as much cash tbh

May's chancellor was Philip Hammond (remember him??)

I'm not sure tbh. I think the money that's been put in place is what was necessary to make a lockdown even possible. How does it compare internationally?

 

[elbows]

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".

Not quite. My point was that I have only got weekly data going back to 1999. Data from much earlier periods should of existed at the time, its just a question of how its been stored since - I'm not convinced I can get it electronically, but if I could attend national archives in person (which is obviously not a viable plan right now) then I may be able to get it manually. I dont know, I have never seen any of the old 'surgeon generals quarterly review' of whatever it was called back then. I think there was a yearly review too but I dont know if weekly numbers are in that, I dont even know if weekly figures are in the quarterly reviews. But I'm pretty sure weekly figures existed at the time, because very occasionally I stumble upon an old paper about influenza epidemics that has weekly figures graphed.

eg:



In any case even if I had all the historical figures, the figure that came out this week for w/e April 10th does not beat the number for the last week in 1999. So this large lack of historical data doesnt actually make any difference from a 'highest since ....' perspective.

Limits to the death registration system are another issue - all of the weekly data is by date of registration, not date of death. And registration service closures over Christmas probably often affect the numbers and increase the spike the week afterwards. In the case of this Covid-19 pandemic, part of the easter holiday probably caused the numbers to end up lower than they would have done, and I dont know how much the system is backlogged by the high volume.

 

[Supine]

Vaccine manufacturing capability has started. A collaboration between universities and pharmaceutical companies.

Construction of the UK’s New Vaccines Centre Starts Well Ahead of Schedule as Timelines are Fast Tracked Due to Covid-19 — VMIC UK

Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre Fast Tracked as Works Progress at Harwell Campus Tuesday 21st April, Harwell, Oxfordshire: Construction work has begun ahead of schedule to build the highly specialist facility that will house the Vaccines Manufacturing and Innovation Centre (VMIC

www.vmicuk.com

 

[The39thStep]

I don't see how they could have done much different tbh. There was no real alternative to the 80 percent pay thing, and before we big that up too much, it's well to remember that many other European countries didn't need such a degree of emergency legislation because that's their system already.

Would have been May/Hammond, btw.

Also true to say that other european countries also have a lesser percentage of state contribution to wages for furloughed workers .but yes I suspect that she would have followed a similar if less bold approach with economic interventions.

 

[elbows]

For the appearance of a workable vaccine, "18 months" (or "18 months at least"!!) is not set in stone.

That length of time is repeatedly suggested in all areas of the media, sometimes phrased as "a year to 18 months before we get a vaccine"

But on here, both elbows and Azrael (also others) have allowed for the possibility that a vaccine might become available sooner than that, given the vast amount of research now going on into vaccine development in various institutions in several countries.

Note the words I emphasised though.
All I'm suggesting is that "18 months" isn't (necessarily) an unchanging given.

I am neither optimistic nor pessimistic about a vaccine. My point has been that there is rather an incredible amount of pressure to find a pharma solution with this one, and that necessity is the mother of invention. But that wont necessarily translate into anything on the vaccine front, it could be something else that shows the initial promise. I just dont know, and I tend to ignore all articles that speculate off into the medium term future.

I might have been more optimistic if the years since SARS in 2003 (or other human coronaviruses being discovered in the 1960s) had actually yielded more fruit - our coronavirus knowledge is still rather crappy on some fronts.

 

[The39thStep]

May's chancellor was Philip Hammond (remember him??)

I'm not sure tbh. I think the money that's been put in place is what was necessary to make a lockdown even possible. How does it compare internationally?

Tbh I'd completly forgotten aboput Hammond. Across Europe swings and roundabouts I suspect but it would be intersting to find some comparisons by head of pop rather than just numbers.I think Portugals formula for furloughed staff is 66% , half state , half company

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Also true to say that other european countries also have a lesser percentage of state contribution to wages for furloughed workers .but yes I suspect that she would have followed a similar if less bold approach with economic interventions.

May might have gone for a slightly smaller percentage, perhaps - 70%, say - but otherwise, she would have done much the same because she would have had to. It's nothing to do with ideology, after all, just basic maintenance of order (and not being thrown out of power).

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Tbh I'd completly forgotten aboput Hammond. Across Europe swings and roundabouts I suspect but it would be intersting to find some comparisons by head of pop rather than just numbers.I think Portugals formula for furloughed staff is 66% , half state , half company

In Belgium, it's 70%, paid entirely by the state. Employers are free to top that up.

But you're right - 80% is probably about as generous as could have been hoped for.

 

[William of Walworth]

I'm convinced I've also seen recent discussion on here concerning shorter timeframes for vaccine verification -- meaning a shorter timeframe just as a possibility.

Here's your chance to help (if you qualify):

childrens trial list

covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk

Sadly not -- that particular trial appears to be across England only, and I live in Swansea ....

 

[SheilaNaGig]

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.

 

[elbows]

Regarding the FT article that others have already mentioned...

Coronavirus death toll in UK twice as high as official figure | Free to read

I certainly believe in looking at all the excess mortality in the period rather than only the deaths that have been officially attributed to Covid-19. So the exercise they performed where they did this for the period up till April 10th is one I agree with and have done (rather roughly) myself. Unlike the FT I am not prepared to extrapolate this forwards to work out how many deaths there might have been by April 21st. Partly because I dont have a sense of how backlogged the death registration system is, I dont really know quite what size to expect the figure we get next week to be. I'd rather wait for the lag of the actual numbers than try to guesstimate now, and frankly I dont need to know right now, the approximate sense of the scale of things is good enough.

I will quote something from 1951 again (I did so on another thread on Monday) to illustrate why I believe its always been important to use all cause excess mortality for situations like this, rather than deaths directly attributed to the disease.

"The total mortality from all causes during influenza epidemics rises much more than can be accounted for merely by the number of deaths certified due to influenza. This is something that has been noticed for a very long time. Farr commented on it in regard to the influenza of 1847, mentioning, incidentally, that a similar sort of thing had happened during the Great Plague of 1665. It was discussed by Stevenson in the Registrar-General's report on the 1918-19 epidemic, and was studied in some detail sixteen years ago by Stocks."

In terms of numbers of deaths there were 6,000 more deaths from influenza registered in the Great Towns in the first eight weeks of 1951 than of 1950, but the total deaths from all causes increased by 25,000. The weather during the early weeks of this year was not exceptionally cold-as it was in 1947 with the resulting increase in total mortality shown in Fig. 2-so that the increase in numbers of deaths in 1951 must be presumed due in some way to the influenza epidemic. Various suggestions have been put forward from time to time to account for the excess of deaths from all causes that regularly occurs during epidemics of influenza. The explanation that at once comes to mind is that the additional deaths were really due to influenza but were either not recognized as such or, if so recognized, were not stated by the certifier as being associated with influenza. This is not necessarily the whole story, however, and other suggestions that have been made hypothesize an "epidemic constitution" or else a separate epidemic of the secondary bacterial invaders of virus influenza.

from Discussion: Influenza 1951 - SAGE Journalsjournals.sagepub.com › doi › pdf › 003591575104400903

 

[SheilaNaGig]

Strongly and stably?

I initially read that as Strangely and Stabbily.

 

[William of Walworth]

My gut reaction to the bolded bit is that 2 to 3 years is on the outside edge of extreme pessimism -- given the amount of research currently going on.

I've no more knowledge or prediction skills than you, but let's just say that I'm (somewhat) less pessimistic.

Have you learned nothing from the last few months? The safety blanket of what you want to believe isn’t real.

I'm catching up with this thread again right now after my posts from last night, and I've been reading this thread daily, and other very useful/informative ones.
As it goes I have been (and still am) learning a great deal from other posters here.

Not from your post though. Cheap abuse isn't information.

 

[Petcha]

Quite painful... she's completely and utterly incompetent. Prior to this clip she still didn't know how many care workers had passed away despite failing to answer the exact same question a week before. This government...

 

[elbows]

Have they blamed lack of demand for the low number of daily tests yet?

 

[Petcha]

Have they blamed lack of demand for the low number of daily tests yet?

Does anyone know why they can't do the tests on staff in the actual hospitals they work in and instead force them to drive out to distant locations? a) doesn't seem an efficient use of their time and b) not everyone's got a car, particularly in london.

 

[Spandex]

Have they blamed lack of demand for the low number of daily tests yet?

Funnily enough, Matt Hancock is making a statement to parliament right now and has literally just done that.

Prick.

 

[elbows]

Funnily enough, Matt Hancock is making a statement to parliament right now and has literally just done that.

Prick.

Ah, cheers for the info. I'm not watching it, but I thought this sort of thing was coming. I think someone said it in Wales yesterday too.

 

[LDC]

Does anyone know why they can't do the tests on staff in the actual hospitals they work in and instead force them to drive out to distant locations? a) doesn't seem an efficient use of their time and b) not everyone's got a car, particularly in london.

It wasn't very many days ago when our Trust that employs around 8500 people was being allocated 8 tests a day for staff.