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Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

Jeez.

That's a moderate version of this sort of thing. Here's Cameron's former speechwriter expressing a more robust perspective, including biometric ID cards.

We need Big Brother to beat this virus - Clare Foges - The Times (archived version)

The health secretary has suggested that, down the line, immunity passports may be used to prove the status of those who have overcome the virus. Yet wouldn’t these be too vulnerable to forgery or theft? Far better to have an unforgeable, untransferable, unique document. ID cards would also provide a much richer source of data with which to trace the infected; South Korea’s comprehensive national identity system has been an important part of its success.

The creation of a national ID card system would not exactly be fast work, but who knows how long this crisis will continue or if future pandemics will occur? Besides, this a good idea beyond the current crisis; a stone to kill multiple birds, from voter fraud to welfare abuse, identity theft to illegal immigration (once citizens need a card to access bank accounts, housing and healthcare it will be much harder to melt into anonymity).

Just the start of a long debate I'd imagine.
 
The recriminations and defensive positioning were certainly in evidence during the part of the committee questioning of Whitty that I transcribed. And other bits too, but it was too time consuming to do more than I did. There was one bit where he went out of his way to make it clear that vaccinations were the only context in which he would go on about herd immunity, for example. Anyway, the bit I transcribed, from earlier today:

Jeremy Hunt:

On the 5th of March professor Whitty you told the health select committee that it was important not to lockdown too early. And I just wondered, did you continue to advise that we should not be locking down right up until 24th March when we did do our national lockdown?

Whitty:

Well I think that well firstly the answer is no. Secondly what we did, and I think its, you know people kind of have again a rather 'theres a pre lockdown stage and theres just lockdown' - actually multiple things happened in stages all the way through that month. As SAGE advised that different things are brought in, starting with the ones that have big impacts but almost no negative downsides. People may laugh at things like washing hands, actually they work a lot more effectively than many of the more draconian measures that people think of. But the first of those was individual isolation followed by household isolation and shielding, then into strong recommendations about people working from home, and then on into closing schools, pubs and clubs and so on and then onto final lockdown. There were various points along the way, each one of which was advised by SAGE that that was the thing to do. And the difficult question with this was firstly what is the right combination to do, and the second was what is the exact timing by which this should happen?

And I note in the last week that I am my colleagues have been berated by one set of professors in one newspaper for going too late, and another professor in another newspaper for doing too much too early. And in reality we will in due course have to go back and look over this and say exactly whats the best way to do this, sort of have to do a post-action review and say exactly how do we do this. But what we did was we did this phased, staged approach all the way through basically March, from quite early on in March, through to final lockdown on the 23rd.

Hunt:

So I suppose my last question on this, chair if I may, is the thing I think that is difficult to understand is that on that point on the 24th of March, the analysis showed that the number of people with the disease was doubling every 5 days. So if you had done that two weeks earlier you would potentially have more than halved the number of people who got the disease and I just wondered what the rationale was for not going a bit earlier with the heavier measures, given what we saw came later?

Whitty:

Well I think this is one of the ones where I can give an incredibly long answer that will take the rest of this session, going through the discussions that were in SAGE. I think this is an area where it is unbelievably easy to be facile if I'm honest, and I'm not saying you're doing this, but I'm just saying some of the commentary in the press, you think, actually, have you thought this through? And to go back for example to the previous question about 'have you thought through the downsides of a lockdown too early', just in narrow health terms, leaving aside anything else. Getting this right, between going too early and going too late was a very difficult judgement call. This thing moved actually very fast, you talked about a doubling time of 5 days, actually by the time that it was moving quickly in the UK it was in fact shorter than that, so it moved really quite quickly. There was a point at, you know, the path that was followed was one we were predicting. The speed of upswing was a bit faster than I would have predicted if I'd been asked on the 5th March, not by a huge amount but by enough to be appreciable. And I think thats clear from SAGE, I think even SAGE datas already out there, it will be from other ones. The difference was one of a relatively small degree, on this, in that window of time between early March and late March. And this will be gone upon over multiple times but I think that the end of the epidemic is the time frankly to do this properly and in a technical way and in a non-partisan way.
 
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It is a wonder Whitty Hancock Vallance etc have any time to do their work, the amount of time they spend giving evidence or appearing on No 10 broadcasts.
 
It is a wonder Whitty Hancock Vallance etc have any time to do their work, the amount of time they spend giving evidence or appearing on No 10 broadcasts.

Those are important aspects of the job, ones that are done too little in this country, not too much. Its a thing called accountability, and my complaint would be in regards the amount of time and effort spent trying to be slippery and relatively unaccountable to the public in settings where they should actually be accountable.
 
Masks

Healthcare workers should wear them - because they have an effect

China, Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea public wear them, why if they don't have an effect?

My mask protects you, your mask protects me, simple logic ..

But there are not enough to go around in UK, hence gov and even WHO falls short of recommending them for the public. They don't want production to be redirected from health workers.

Patently masks work, if not health workers wouldn't wear them.

gov could encourage the UK production of lesser (but still useful) masks for public use, which would transform their potential practical advice for the public, if public masks were widely available they could be used in public and would likely reduce transmission.

Make your own by all means.
 
I don't think the masks we are buying en masse are suitable for medical use, so it may not be true that medical personnel are being denied PPE by consumer action
 
New York doctors have been treating some Covid-19 patients by lying them prone on special mattresses and giving them oxygen, instead of going for full Alien Facehugger-style intubation.

Warrington hospital in Cheshire has come up with its own alternative using fairly inexpensive CPAP machines meant for treating sleep apnea. These devices have an internal fan to pump out air for pressurised breathing. The hospital modifies them so they deliver oxygen.


Obviously these won't do it for everyone.
 
Tbh I can see Cummings and the data monkey bloke being on the SAGE thing as possibly benign - these are people good at messaging and getting information/ideas across to the public - surely that’s a fairly crucial thing needed in responding to this situation? The simple ‘stay at home, protect the NHS’ message smells like their work. Not sure it’s a bad thing to have them pushing messages out there if the messages are beneficial.

(of course, alongside this there is a fairly determined operation to ‘protect the government’ with spin, fake on-message twitter accounts and so on, but that might not be interfering with the science/response)
 
I don't think the masks we are buying en masse are suitable for medical use, so it may not be true that medical personnel are being denied PPE by consumer action
Have you got some OU? Do you wear one when in public?

All I am railing against is the practicality which says, not for the public because we might not have enough for health care workers, and that this is medical advice. It isn't medical advice, it is pragmatic practical advice based on there potentially not being enough to go round.
 
Have you got some OU? Do you wear one when in public?

All I am railing against is the practicality which says, not for the public because we might not have enough for health care workers, and that this is medical advice. It isn't medical advice, it is pragmatic practical advice based on there potentially not being enough to go round.
waiting for some to be delivered - taking ages though cos they're handmade in the US
 
Surely any face covering will help reduce the spread? Doesn’t have to be some surgical grade shit, just something that reduced the velocity of expelled breath or sneezes.

if they make masks compulsory, just wait for the Faragist bellends to weaponise this in their ongoing weird thing about burkas, “you can’t tell if they’re wearing a mask under that thing”. 5 points for the first person to spot this argument in the wild.
 
Surely any face covering will help reduce the spread? Doesn’t have to be some surgical grade shit, just something that reduced the velocity of expelled breath or sneezes.

if they make masks compulsory, just wait for the Faragist bellends to weaponise this in their ongoing weird thing about burkas, “you can’t tell if they’re wearing a mask under that thing”. 5 points for the first person to spot this argument in the wild.
its the balance of practical use and false confidence. If we start going out twice as much cos we think we are protected/protecting with masks, then we're probably in exactly the same place as we are now
 
A negative result on an antigen test would suffice to return to work.
Not the if the test is shite. Plus we don't fully understand if or how long for that a positive antibody test might produce any immunity.

PCR viral throat swab testing is said to be around 80% accurate

And you might get "false" positives in the sense that genetic material from the pathogen is detected but no viable pathogen is present therefore the person is "positive" but not infectious. And that could go on for say three weeks post infection? So do you make all those people isolate? I mean you could?
 
This thread's discussion has moved on wildly :cool: since I was chatting about a possible return to Civil Service work, involving, perhaps, testing and tracing and related data processing. Rumours had genuinely reached me .....

But!
Today's update ......

In my part of the CS, we're (almost all of us) remaining off work until the official lock-down period is next reviewed.
That is Thursday 7th May (so, in effect, Monday 11th May is the very earliest they can now bring us back)
With a fair chance of extension beyond this.

So apologies to all for my thinking that the rumours we'd go back sooner were true :oops: :oops:
 
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Not the if the test is shite. Plus we don't fully understand if or how long for that a positive antibody test might produce any immunity.

PCR viral throat swab testing is said to be around 80% accurate

And you might get "false" positives in the sense that genetic material from the pathogen is detected but no viable pathogen is present therefore the person is "positive" but not infectious. And that could go on for say three weeks post infection? So do you make all those people isolate? I mean you could?
Yeah 80% is really useless. Do you know if they have hopes to improve it?

I mean 80% isn't completely useless, but it depends what they're aiming for. Put it this way, the New Zealand government or the South Korean government would consider it to be useless in terms of public policy.
 
Not sure this is the best thread for this news, so apologies if this is being already discussed elsewhere.
But after May 7th, the Welsh Government are now planning a traffic light system for reducing lock down restrictions.
Coronavirus : "Traffic light" system to lift lock-down in Wales

Drakeford (First Minister) is really hedging his bets though. Quotes are his :
BBC said:
Ending lockdown could be in phases, "like a traffic light in reverse".
There would be a move from red - some "careful and controlled" relaxation - to green, which would be "much more like the lives we had before the crisis hit".

The amber zone would see more restrictions lifted and, if the virus is not re-emerging, Wales could then move to the green zone, he said.

Asked when Wales might enter the red zone, the first minister said: "I hope we will be in a position to do that at the end of the current three-week lockdown period".
"We will have to have had hospital admissions falling consistently for 14 days," Mr Drakeford told BBC Radio Wales Breakfast with Oliver Hides.

"They have been falling over the last week so it's not impossible that we will get to that point and in that case we can move into the red zone."
 
Yeah 80% is really useless. Do you know if they have hopes to improve it?

I mean 80% isn't completely useless, but it depends what they're aiming for. Put it this way, the New Zealand government or the South Korean government would consider it to be useless in terms of public policy.

Problems with false negative PCR tests were an issue all over the place as far as I know. Countries that did a lot of testing and tried to be thorough ended up testing the same patients quite a lot if they didnt get positive results but still suspected Covid-19 anyway.

However I am out of date on this, and more recently there was the thing that suggested lower test quality happening sometimes with the PHE tests in this country, whatever that letter was the other day that suggested they were trying to move to commercial tests as a result. But beyond that, there was a broader issue, I'm just a bit rusty on this and whether things have evolved.
 
Not sure this is the best thread for this news, so apologies if this is being already discussed elsewhere.
But after May 7th, the Welsh Government are now planning a traffic light system for reducing lock down restrictions.
Coronavirus : "Traffic light" system to lift lock-down in Wales

Drakeford (First Minister) is really hedging his bets though. Quotes are his :

Different countries are dressing it up in different language, and some are more prepared to discuss some detail with the public than others (England is shit, no surprise). But the approaches amount to about the same thing everywhere from what we've heard so far. Its not a surprise, no other really obvious ways forward exist, and all manner of wiggle room, triggers and relaxations can be part of the mix.

One of the things the likes of Whitty have been going on about recently is that the vitally important R0 (which needs to be kept below 1) is currently being measured using hospital, intensive care and death data. He was on about how they need to get a particular test-based surveillence system going that can enable them to measure the R0 by this other means, that suffers from leg lag than the hospital/death indicators. They will have a first result from this in days that gives them a baseline (rather than the rate), and then subsequent data will be used to judge the rate of transmission, R0 at various moments in time from then on. So although a lot of these lockdown relaxing systems are currently using hospital and death data as a key indicator that tells them they can proceed to relax something (or the reverse, demonstrating a need to get stricter again), they will probably be modified to make use of more timely and detailed data as systems to collect it finally come online.
 
Yeah 80% is really useless. Do you know if they have hopes to improve it?

I mean 80% isn't completely useless, but it depends what they're aiming for. Put it this way, the New Zealand government or the South Korean government would consider it to be useless in terms of public policy.
What is the efficacy of the NZ and SK PCR tests? I'm not sure that this is a UK thing rather than a base rate effectiveness for this type of test?

In the UK we are mainly doing nose or throat viral swabs. Ideally you want to be doing nasopharyngeal aspirates (aerosol generating procedures....extreme PPE and training required!) Or nasopharyngeal swabs - again bit more intimate, bit more specialist equipment +special bendy swabs).

Soon we're looking at people self testing at home, there will be increased variation in the technique used and therefore this will also (probably detrimentally) impact the efficacy of the testing.

But no test is 100%
 
The disgusting Sun has been circulating that traffic light thing for more than a week now

eJoqCBK.jpg
 
What is the efficacy of the NZ and SK PCR tests? I'm not sure that this is a UK thing rather than a base rate effectiveness for this type of test?

In the UK we are mainly doing nose or throat viral swabs. Ideally you want to be doing nasopharyngeal aspirates (aerosol generating procedures....extreme PPE and training required!) Or nasopharyngeal swabs - again bit more intimate, bit more specialist equipment +special bendy swabs).

Soon we're looking at people self testing at home, there will be increased variation in the technique used and therefore this will also (probably detrimentally) impact the efficacy of the testing.

But no test is 100%

Yeah I think its been an issue everywhere, its part of the reason why the number of tests conducted is far higher than the number of individual people tested. There was some UK-specific (PHE test-specific) issue too at some point, but I've not seen all that much about it and they seemed to think the commercial tests were less prone to at least one of the issues that affected PHE at some point.
 
The disgusting S*n [corrected for you ;) ] has been circulating that traffic light thing for more than a week now

eJoqCBK.jpg

That's ridiculously over-specific! :mad: Particularly with dates.
I'm very critical generally of Mark Drakeford here in Wales, but he was being much looser about timings for the Welsh traffic light system -- he was even avoiding saying that the red phase would start after May 7th ......
 
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