International News Covid-19 .....

[Essexyellows]

In PMQs earlier our glorious leader dropped hints that some elements contained his 'road map'proclamation regarding easing lockdown restrictions , on Sunday, will take effect as from Monday

And it has to be held over to prevent the stupid amongst the population going "balls out" on a Bank Holiday weekend.
Business & work first.................if it is safe to do so.
Wait 3 weeks, measure the impact.
Let folk out further for longer, exercise etc.
Wait 3 weeks, measure the impact.
Schools...... social distancing/rotas in place.
Wait 3 weeks, measure the impact.

Its going to be a long walk to freedom. ;-)

 

[QR]

Busy working old fruit.

A. There is little clinical reason to swab people who are asymptomatic.

B: In the same way that people were "making PPE" (mostly destined for the bin or punting out to lower risk areas) they have promised care home staff swabs. Now that might find a few asymptomatic carers and then it might be deemed "worth it" but it mostly to pacify those who don`t understand how the swabs work or who think 1 in 100 is worth it.

Back to reality........ early on hospitals discharged patients to care homes without double testing (swab & bloods) now we double test and get the results before discharge. That will make more difference than swabbing carers just to make them feel happy.

Well that the l last time I watch Newsnight! I bet the care home boss they had on once wore a red shirt!!!

 

[Victor1986]

Sorry Essex , I have - they are all fully equipped units with all the staff, catering facilities of a normal unit. You're right that only anaesthetised folk have been taken to them so far but they could have taken anyone unwell from Covid. One is being "opened" in Exeter next week - I would just like to know why we are where we are on this?

 

[ZeroTheHero]

You don`t have any idea of how slow and laborious the public sector is do you? Just one link in the chain not at work or "busy" can easily delay things 24/48 hours.
Imagine how the more liberal folk would have reacted if HMG had just gone full on lock down, shut down everything with no discussion, some tidy emergency legislation ,Civil Contingencies Act would have done, they would all be "frothing" about civil liberties and ex-pats who can`t get home. ;-)

So it is the inefficiency of the public sector that has caused the delays, rather than the mad initial idea of 'herd immunity'? While even Italy with it's famously clunky and politically riven public sector and political system managed to act quicker in two of those categories? And Greece - a shambolic country as empty of money as my wallet - has been better on every score? It was YOU who posted the figures

And if it's not the public sector it's 'the liberals' - your particular bugbear - who would have been 'frothing' and therefore our caring government had to do things slowly so as to not upset them. LOL - actually LOL!!! I am certainly on the 'liberal' end of the spectrum, and would not have objected to 'locking down' a week earlier, and would not object now to more severe punishments for those who are endangering others. Claiming that some amorphous group of people caused delays because they 'might' have done X or Y is ridiculous.

The truth is that the people in power in this country did not take the whole matter seriously enough early enough and no amount of blaming others (the public sector, 'scientists', 'liberals') will reduce the frankly awful figures that this government is having to announce every day.

 

[Navegante]

It's simple. If the Govt had said, sod science, we'll go down the Sweden route, and it was 10 times worse tham now, the Scientists can point and go yep, we told you so.

Clearly it's not that simple. The Swedes ARE following scientific route.

Unlike almost every other country, the scientists are in charge there! Unlike UK where they advise.

In this case, the Swedish scientists have proposed a different way to handle the situation.

Sadly, looking at the death rates, their situation is not exactly jättebra.

 

[Navegante]

Imagine how the more liberal folk would have reacted if HMG had just gone full on lock down, shut down everything with no discussion, some tidy emergency legislation ,Civil Contingencies Act would have done, they would all be "frothing" about civil liberties and ex-pats who can`t get home. ;-)

You're confused. Look at the liberal utopias in the Nordics & NZ. They locked down hard & early, with their liberal folk thinking more about the collective good to society over their individual needs.

Contrast to the good ol' US of A, where the ones getting triggered and protesting in the streets have been 'patriots' demanding freedom from the unconstitutional stay-at-home orders!

 

[YellowTaxi]

Im pointing at Germany.

Same number of cases. We have four times as many deaths.

 

[YellowTaxi]

The Public sector can work very well and very fast. Look at the furlough scheme.

 

[QR]

You don`t have any idea of how slow and laborious the public sector is do you? Just one link in the chain not at work or "busy" can easily delay things 24/48 hours.

Slow compared to what? Ever tried getting a quick responce from BT?!!! The public sector move at lightning speed in comparison*.

*other than where it's outsourced (don't get me started).

 

[RyanioBirdio]

You're confused. Look at the liberal utopias in the Nordics & NZ. They locked down hard & early, with their liberal folk thinking more about the collective good to society over their individual needs.

Contrast to the good ol' US of A, where the ones getting triggered and protesting in the streets have been 'patriots' demanding freedom from the unconstitutional stay-at-home orders!

Indeed. It wouldn’t have been the ‘lefties’ kicking up the biggest stink if we’d locked down hard and fast. The only people I’ve seen or heard saying we wouldn’t have stood for a swift and aggressive lockdown as a country are the same people pointing at everyone else as soon as they’ve said it and going, “Because you would’ve been upset if we did.” It’s just more nonsense peddled by people who have long since realised it’s easier to turn things into an argument than it is to leave yourself open to having your entire viewpoint systematically stripped down to the bone. It’s boring.

We had the ‘privileged’ position of watching multiple other countries show what this thing was starting to do. That’s all any remotely sane human being would’ve needed explaining to them - this is what it is doing and if we don’t do this then it is going to do it to us. The problem is that it would’ve meant being straight up, honest and truthful, and having a grown up and honest conversation with the entire country, and we don’t do that in Britain. We never have in my lifetime, but it’s particularly hard to do when you’ve spent the last four or five years purposefully trashing the place and flooding the streets with s**t. Once you go down the route this lot have, you can never come back from that. That’s the danger with lies, propaganda and manipulation of the scale we’ve seen in recent times. It ends up costing lives, because you’ve spent years telling everybody that nothing bad can happen and that it’s funny when people are worried that it might not be true, so when an actual crisis comes along nothing happens. Well I don’t think this has been funny at all. The only people who find this amusing are sick in the head.

People can say whatever they like. The league table doesn’t lie, as the saying goes. There’s no argument beyond that, only desperation.

 

[Navegante]

The problem is that it would’ve meant being straight up, honest and truthful, and having a grown up and honest conversation with the entire country, and we don’t do that in Britain.

Be a good chap: keep a stiff upper lip and sweep it under the carpet.

 

[Gary Baldi]

Clearly it's not that simple. The Swedes ARE following scientific route.

Unlike almost every other country, the scientists are in charge there! Unlike UK where they advise.

In this case, the Swedish scientists have proposed a different way to handle the situation.

Sadly, looking at the death rates, their situation is not exactly jättebra.

Indeed, and as such, the science can be very different depending on the local culture and the local scientific culture, let alone cultural biases too. Even Japan and Sweden's approaches are kind of similar, but vary as for example. the population density and environment is vastly different. There is nothing wrong on that at all. I'd much rather a more locally focused approach than a one size fits all approach.

I'm not saying Sweden took the best approach. but if the end point is the same amount of mortalities with the other metrics, then the scientific approach of lockdown vs herd immunity vs <something else>, etc is a worthy point to review. We also need to see what happens to countries where a more rigorous lockdown took place (Bulgaria, Greece. Hungary) and what happens when/if another outbreak occurs.

And then we have to have a more rigorously critiqued modelling software - we can all see how relying on a model that one person wrote years ago is perhaps not the best approach to managing pandemics.

 

[Sheik djibouti]

Be a good chap: keep a stiff upper lip and sweep it under the carpet.

Not forgetting finding someone to blame....there's always finding someone to blame to divert attention from the true culprits.....I mean that toerag of a scientist, having it away with a MARRIED woman...he's the absolute villain of this whole sorry affair. . . .what an absolute first class c*nt.

Can you imagine anyone in High Office conducting themselves with such impropriety....

 

[Essexyellows]

Sorry Essex , I have - they are all fully equipped units with all the staff, catering facilities of a normal unit. You're right that only anaesthetised folk have been taken to them so far but they could have taken anyone unwell from Covid. One is being "opened" in Exeter next week - I would just like to know why we are where we are on this?

I know Manchester is a "step down" facility for Cov-19 patients and Excel/Birmingham are fully ventilated only, not sure about the rest that are mushrooming across the country. The "problem" is that a lot of Cov-19 patients in ITU also require dialysis and cardiac support so can`t go to a Nightingale and staffing them also takes clinical staff away from their respective Trusts/Workplace.
The NHS successfully increased capacity across many hospitals by reducing routine work and upgrading existing bed space and wards which has reduced the (current) need for them. Better to have them "stood down" and ready than playing catch up.
Impressive job organised by the Government, NHS, Military and private sector to be fair.

 

[Victor1986]

Yes, I agree. Numbers just announced do not seem to be going down much though. It will be interesting to see what Boris says on Sunday.

 

[Briggsy]

Even using your table EY, it shows that we have been pretty slow off the mark!

Events suspended - Slowest apart from Italy
All schools closed - Slowest
Non-essential shops closed - Slowest apart from Italy
Non-essential movement banned - Slowest
Land borders - we don't have any, but air borders? Apparently not important?

It might only be a day or two in some cases - but given that we could see it coming, we had the opportunity to make our timescales shorter then almost anyone else - not longer!

Whereas Belgium acted quickly on all those, yet their death rate per million is far, far worse than the UK's.

 

[SteMerritt]

I know Manchester is a "step down" facility

I think you'll find Manchester is a "Step On" facility ?

 

[Sheik djibouti]

I think you'll find Manchester is a "Step On" facility [emoji6]

"You know you talk so big man, you're twisting my figures man!"

 

[ZeroTheHero]

Whereas Belgium acted quickly on all those, yet their death rate per million is far, far worse than the UK's.

Indeed. But I don't think anyone is saying that in this case the two things are causally related - that their death rate is worse BECAUSE they acted quickly? The illogical result of that is to think that doing nothing would have been better than doing anything - which it plainly isn't. And I don't think anyone is saying either that all the precautions we have taken and are still taking haven't saved any lives?

I don't know the situation in Belgium at all, but maybe having a major Eurostar hub hasn't helped (see also London and Paris)?

 

[Essexyellows]

Don`t be using things like deaths per million........... we wouldn`t be "the worst in Europe"........ despite it being a more scientifically accepted measure than just counting dead people.