Worried About Coronavirus- thread 35

[TheStarryNight]

New thread

@IronNeonClasp I've been screaming at the tv for weeks every time they show the flimsy protection they are wearing.

@turkeyontheplate We said the same comment about Gove's speaking Exam voice . The insincerity of the man is glaring.

Relieved it wasn't just me being over cynical and inappropriately anti-establishment and unsupportive of our glorious leaders....

I have been far more impressed by the Scottish offerings too.

Green shoots indeed...... can we just talk in plain English and avoid Messianic delusional parables? I'd rather they just said "It's all shit, we're trying to fix it but we're a bit crap. Sorry". I'd actually respect that.

I agree when they ask about testing they give the same answer about why testing is important, we know that, we want to know where all the tests are!

netherlands are extending school closures at least until early may (officially until 28 april, but that is in the school holidays).

@defthand you said /
Yes, absolutely. Although that 80% mild includes pneumonia for many, so it’s not what we’d call mild in the traditional sense of a case of sniffles.

From Worldometers site they say this / where are your links plz?

80% of cases are mild
Based on all 72,314 cases of COVID-19 confirmed, suspected, and asymptomatic cases in China as of February 11, a paper by the Chinese CCDC released on February 17 and published in the Chinese Journal of Epidemiology has found that:

80.9% of infections are mild (with flu-like symptoms) and can recover at home.
13.8% are severe, developing severe diseases including pneumonia and shortness of breath.
4.7% as critical and can include: respiratory failure, septic shock, and multi-organ failure.
in about 2% of reported cases the virus is fatal.
Risk of death increases the older you are.
Relatively few cases are seen among children.

Robert Peston calling out Michael Gove's blatant lying in the press conference earlier today, when he claimed the lack of testing was due to a shortage of reagents:

Michael Gove said just now that the difficulty in increasing number of #COVID19 tests was due to a shortage of the relevant "chemcial reagents". Well I've just talked to the Chemical Industries Association, which represents the UK's very substantial chemicals industry. It has contacted its members, and they've said there is no shortage of the relevant reagents.

So the Association has now been in touch with michaelgove's office to find out what he means, because it is stumped.

The Association also points out there was an industry chat with a business minister today, who made no attempt to find out if there was a supply problem for the vital ingredients of Covid19 testing kits. So this question of why there aren't enough tests for the virus is an even bigger mystery.

Also, if it turns out there is a shortage these manufacturers are more than happy to increase their production. But they need to be asked, which has not happened.

PS It was Labour MP Bill Esterson who initially spotted this gap between what Gove said and what the industry believes to be true.

amp.theguardian.com/society/2020/mar/31/englands-children-commissioner-calls-for-volunteer-social-workers-coronavirus?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&__twitter_impression=true
England’s children commissioner calls for volunteer social workers
Anne Longfield plans to recruit retired staff to help vulnerable children amid coronavirus crisis

The children’s commissioner for England has called for an army of volunteers to help support children’s social care during the coronavirus crisis in an effort to stop the most vulnerable falling through the gaps and disappearing from view.

Just as doctors and nurses who left the NHS have responded to calls to return to work to help save lives, Anne Longfield would like to see retired social workers and a range of school, nursery and care staff who have been furloughed as a result of the crisis join forces to help keep at-risk children safe.

Her call comes amid widespread concern that many vulnerable children who were offered places at the slimmed-down, emergency schools which remain open to the children of key workers, have not turned up since the schools’ lockdown

@Coquohvan

I don’t think there is a universal definition or agreement on this. But I sure wouldn’t be taking a site like Worldometers as gospel on anything. It is not authoritative.

Most authorities draw the 80% mild claim from Chinese statistics but it’s clear from Chinese studies that their definition of mild includes pneumonia:

“The case definition adopted in China and elsewhere includes further stratification of cases as severe (defined as tachypnoea [≥30 breaths per min], oxygen saturation ≤93% at rest, or PaO2/FiO2 ratio

Robert Peston @peston
.@michaelgove said just now that the difficulty in increasing number of #COVID19 tests was due to a shortage of the relevant "chemcial reagents". Well I've just talked to the Chemical Industries Association, which represents the UK's very substantial chemicals industry. It...

has contacted its members, and they've said there is no shortage of the relevant reagents. So the Association has now been in touch with @michaelgove's office to find out what he means, because it is stumped. The Association also points out there was an industry chat with...

a business minister today, who made no attempt to find out if there was a supply problem for the vital ingredients of Covid19 testing kits. So this question of why there aren't enough tests for the virus is an even bigger mystery. Also, if it turns out there is a shortage...

these manufacturers are more than happy to increase their production. But they need to be asked, which has not happened. PS It was Labour MP @Bill_Esterson who initially spotted this gap between what Gove said and what the industry believes to be true.

FACEPALM

@pocketem

I think it’s pretty clear at this point that in England we are deliberately not testing. I suspect the Telegraph was correct when they said the gov was pursuing a policy of herd immunity by stealth. Fits with their obsession with antibody tests instead.

France +7,578 cases +499 deaths.

What’s going on over there? Is this because they’re including nursing homes in the data?

They’re short of ffp3 masks in Italy now. A friend of mine is a nurse there and wearing a surgical mask which he tapes to his face with surgical tape to try and make it airtight!

France weren’t including nursing home figures as of a couple of days ago, not sure if they are now.

Sorry to be dense but are we on course for an Italy because that press briefing was so confusing?

I think the government even said quite early on that there was no point in ‘community’ testing’. We’ve never been testing enough.

Shocking strategy and goes against WHO advice and what the countries who are more successful at treating this are doing....
It’s definitely deliberate.

Yep the press conference was confusing as they kept harping in about ‘green shoots of hope ’ despite an increase in the death rate.

As we’ve seen laid out on here we are tracking against Italy. Though Joe public won’t have that info so they are doing a bit of smoke and mirrors. I wish they’d be more honest like Nicola S. We’re not stupid!

Well I hope social services aren't planning to force supervised children into school or be going round from house to house infecting them.

@VivaLeBeaver

I read that they were intending to include nursing home stats going forward, but I’m not sure from when. I think this might still be too early. If so, those numbers are worrying. France definitely doing an Italy.

I’ve been reading the accounts of an ICU doctor in New York. He’s a good writer. Today he turned his hand to writing something from a patient’s perspective:

www.reddit.com/r/medicine/comments/fsfka7/3_days_of_inpatient_care_in_new_york_the_story_of/

Sebastian Payne @SebastianEPayne
Is the UK still going for herd immunity? Fascinating read from @alexwickham et al on why the UK is lagging behind on testing.

“The person familiar with Whitty and Vallance’s thinking said they believed it privately remains a long-term objective."

www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/alexwickham/uk-coronavirus-testing-explainer?__twitter_impression=true
Even The US Is Doing More Coronavirus Tests Than The UK. Here Are The Reasons Why.
The British government keeps saying it's "ramping up testing", but it now lacks both testing kits and dedicated lab capacity thanks to its original strategy to tackle the pandemic

The government has publicly insisted that herd immunity is not the UK’s policy. But the person familiar with Whitty and Vallance’s thinking said they believed it privately remains a long-term objective.

They said they thought the government would continue to prioritise increasing intensive care unit capacity to prevent the NHS from becoming overwhelmed, rather than widespread testing of the population, because they had accepted that a large percentage of the country will become infected in the next 12 to 18 months, before a vaccine is found.

The focus on testing NHS staff rather than communities, and on producing an antibody test rather than mass manufacturing more COVID-19 tests, were evidence of this, they argued.

Sorry to be dense but are we on course for an Italy because that press briefing was so confusing?

Our death figures are loosely tracking Italy's still. Until that rate slows then yes. We are on track for similar to Italy.

PHE do not come well out of that article.

I'm really trying not to get into tin foil hat territory but austerity has always struck me as eugenics by stealth along with the scaling back of the NHS, and I am also of the mind that the lack of testing is part of the herd immunity by stealth approach too. Isolating the old and vulnerable seems like a noble approach, until you run up against the problems of food distribution, the difficulty of accessing NHS care for anything that isn't CV19 related and issues with prescriptions and medication. If you are trying to advocate for the vulnerable and isolated, the overall pressure on the system makes it difficult as there is a hierarchy of needs, and I am sure that people like my terminally ill Mum who will, inevitably, die anyway, will, if this goes on for too long, become collateral damage. I don't want the earth, I just don't want her to suffer any more than is inevitable.

That said, she is still being visited three times a week for draining, and they have taken blood to see if her current condition is being impacted by low sodium levels after she researched and found her altered taste buds which makes everything revolting and makes her nauseous so she can hardly eat anything other than eggs, could be a sign along with rapid weakness of such a deficiency - it has been observed in other cancer cases. We are very grateful they took her seriously and are looking at home care to help her. We hope to have the results and some sort of game plan tomorrow, fingers crossed.

In two weeks time, it might not be possible for any of this if staff are re-deployed. I'm on hot bricks. CV19 is the last of her worries - a fall from weakness and lack of nutrition are far more pressing.

@defthand
I don’t think there is a universal definition or agreement on this. But I sure wouldn’t be taking a site like Worldometers as gospel on anything. It is not authoritative.

You thinking, there isn’t a universal definition or agreement on this, is your thinking/opinion.
I’d listen to Worldometers stats, over a random poster on the thread.

No offence intended to you, so much false posts and made up statements on here already been called out on, from posters thinking their experts in this.
I’ve already mentioned on here that China’s numbers listed, are absurdly low.

@OldQueen1969 so sorry to read about your mother. Best wishes.

Thank you @ Coquohvan - much appreciated x