Westministenders: Crisis, which crisis ?

[BigChocFrenzy]

Main crises facing the government:

. Negotiating a Brexit deal with the EU
. Coronoavirus
. Floods
. Allegations of some ministers - and Cummings - bullying civil servants
. More trouble threatened from Turkey / Syria

Unfortunately with all these parallel crises, we have a workshy lying arse as PM
and the worst collection yet of incompetents in Cabinet
who seem to have decided on a strategy of bullying their civil servants to avoid hearing any facts that don't fit with current Tory party ideology

Never let a good crisis go to waste ?

Stunning level of personal monitoring by the Chinese state - will they just give that up once the crisis is over

'The new normal': China's excessive coronavirus public monitoring could be here to stay

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/the-new-normal-chinas-excessive-coronavirus-public-monitoring-could-be-here-to-stay

Experts say the coronavirus has given the Chinese government a pretext for accelerating the mass surveillance

Over the last two months, Chinese citizens have had to adjust to a new level of government intrusion.

Getting into one’s apartment compound or workplace requires scanning a QR code, writing down one’s name and ID number, temperature and recent travel history.
Telecom operators track people’s movements while social media platforms like WeChat and Weibo have hotlines for people to report others who may be sick.

Some cities are offering people rewards for informing on sick neighbours

Chinese companies are meanwhile rolling out facial recognition technology that can detect elevated temperatures in a crowd
or flag citizens not wearing a face mask.

A range of apps use the personal health information of citizens to alert others of their proximity to infected patients or whether they have been in close contact.

Anyone on this thread who still thinks that coronavirus has been overhyped needs to go and read this translation of the experience of an Italian doctor in Lombardy.

twitter.com/silviast9/status/1236933818654896129?s=21

Hospitals emptied of all other cases, filled with patients with interstitial pneumonia, being treated by doctors in states of extreme exhaustion, unable to see their own families for risk of infecting them, many dealing with the loss of people close to them.

It makes me so angry that people are prepared to consider inflicting this on others, because they are not personally in an at-risk group.

Louise You really should engage brain before getting cross, it will do wonders for your blood pressure. The Spokeswoman for a U.K. pressure group is being quoted in a London newspaper. She would no doubt have a similar local story to tell in the Birmingham Mail or the Bradford Telegraph and Argus.

Actually I was glad to see the Chinatown restaurants back to being packed the last two weekends, hopefully not because the paranoid are now avoiding Italian restaurants.

@LouiseCollins28
Why are you sceptical?
You just need to have an understanding of numbers and patterns to see this is potentially terrible. Just because something like this hasn't happened in our lifetimes, doesn't mean it can't.
Unfortunately Bozo's "dither and delay " to borrow his own phrase means the UK will be slamming the stable door after the horse has bolted.

On the up side, it appears we are listening to experts. So long as they are British.

The Telegraph still seem to have close links to BJ, their former columnist. hence often seem to have an inside track

Yes, I wonder what they've got on him?

You've misunderstood I fear. As I said, my getting cross is with the chancellor who is wasting his time on this nonsense when he should be prepping the Budget or (if Corona is as bad as feared) focusing on vastly more important population outcomes than the bottom lines of hotels and bars in London.

Why am I sceptical? asks mrslaughlan,

First, I'm still not sure if the numbers that are being reported of cases in the UK are accurately the numbers infected with the virus today or the number who have had it since whichever arbitrary point someone decided to start counting from.

Second, the number of people who have died in the UK from corona is currently 4....How many people die in the UK each day having contracted Pneumonia say? I wouldn't accurately know but it is reported to kill 30,000 people a year, so that's approx 82 a day, every day.

Third, what is actually being done to combat this? Not rumours, not scare stories what is actually happening? Has air travel into the UK been stopped? No; Has the channel tunnel been closed? No; have Army medics been mobilised; No. Have hospitals cancelled lots of routine work? Not that I know about. Whether our government should be doing those things is an entirely different question, fact is, to date, they aren't. Were our government acting as the Italian one is, I'd be more worried than I am.

@louisecollins28
You should be scared that the UK government aren't doing those things. You actually should be really pissed off.
The UK is roughly - on a covid19 timeline - where Italy was 2 weeks ago.
What we need is leadership - which would involve difficult and unpopular decisions- which has never been our PM's strong suit. I would love to be proved wrong, but I don't think I will be. Anyway time will tell.

louise You think the Chancellor should not be concerned with an industry that employs 2.9m people, the fourth largest employer in the country and accounts for 4% of GDP at a time when it is already badly affected by the virus paranoia? During the SARS crisis in Hong Kong the hospitality sector saw a 75% decrease in revenue, and it was a virus that it was incredibly hard to catch in the wider community. I think that is a pretty serious threat to the economy in all our towns and cities however this epidemic plays out.

Second, the number of people who have died in the UK from corona is currently 4....How many people die in the UK each day having contracted Pneumonia say? I wouldn't accurately know but it is reported to kill 30,000 people a year, so that's approx 82 a day, every day.

Lots of people die in the U.K. every day. But globally, health services are designed to cope with normal volumes of illness and people who get ill at least have the chance to get correct treatment and a chance of recovery. They might still die, but hopefully not because there is no doctor or no bed for them.

If hospitals are saturated with coronavirus cases, two things will happen (we know this already because they have happened in Wuhan and Lombardy, and the U.K. has less critical care capacity than the latter and probably than the former):

• many coronavirus patients will be left to die because doctors do not have the facilities to treat them, or because those facilities will be given to younger/fitter people who have a better chance of surviving

• people who are seriously ill with other pathologies will struggle to get treatment and some will be harmed or die as a result

As far as the number of cases and deaths is concerned:

• cases are underestimated. Based on the South Korean experience (the only country outside China to have done proper testing), once you start looking you'll find cases everywhere.

• it takes time for coronavirus to kill (often 2-8 weeks). Come back and tell us how low the deaths are in a month.

One of my colleagues here in France is working on a vaccine for COVID-19.

He has written a long, furious account of how, in 2003, after SARS, he began working on a European project on coronaviruses. They began finding results.
But the focus is currently not on primary research, because it's long, uncertain and therefore doesn't bring in cash.
By 2006, SARS had been forgotten, interest had waned and funding was slashed.
They wrote to the European Commission saying that they had to carry on with such projects to prepare for another such epidemic, in vain.
They tried to carry on, but with limited funding and - here in France anyway - ever scarcer staff and resources. He spent hours writing up applications for project-based funding, instead of doing actual primary research. A project would have been short-term and insufficient, but better than nothing. The applications were all rejected, including a joint French-German one.
He paid thousands of euros of his own money to attend conferences where the fees were extortionate and his university couldn't afford to fund him. He did so in order to keep abreast of work in the field, sometimes eating an apple and a sandwich while colleagues working in the pharmaceutical industry got a free nosh-up.

Now a call has come for researchers to start urgently working on coronaviruses and COVID-19 in particular, for which there is funding from a magic money tree.

He is incredibly angry at how many deaths could have been avoided if they'd worked continuously between 2003 and now and built on the results they were just starting to find.

Numbers are most certainly underreported - Whitty stated today that up until today only those in ICU exciting pneumonia like symptoms have been tested. This means only the most acute cases are being identified. As of tomorrow anyone in hospital or being admitted with pneumonia Like systems will be tested. So I would expect cases to jump as those tests broaden.

"cases are underestimated"

Epidemiologist Prof Neil Ferguson Iimperial College) estimates that there are
3 x as many UK cases as have been found
and 10 x as many in China

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NeilFergusonn_(epidemiologist)

Also that Italy has probably 100-200 cases for each death, at least 50-100,000

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/italy-coronavirus-deaths-infections-093740345.html

mrslaughan I am not sure that is true , I think they added in testing people in ICU with pneumonia recently.

I agree with MrsL
In South Korea they were testing 10,000 people a day who might have been exposed
hence why they found the huge numbers of less sever cases

In the USA they are not testing at all so only those who are hospitalised show up as having it

and Russia are not testing at all so magically have no cases

The Korean data set seems the most useful for actually predicting the percentage who will need treatment

With all the kerfuffle, I only just noticed this gem about Prince Andrew:^
^
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/09/prince-andrew-will-not-voluntarily-cooperate-epstein-investigation-lawyer-sayss^
^
the Manhattan US attorney Geoffrey Berman said:^

“Contrary to Prince Andrew’s very public offer to cooperate with our investigation into Epstein’s co-conspirators, an offer that was conveyed via press release,

Prince Andrew has now completely shut the door on voluntary cooperation

and our office is considering its options.”

Frumpty - that's what I am saying - they have been testing routinely those in ICU - but not until they get there....I rewound it on the news because I didn't quite believe what I was hearing.
It certainly fits with the story of a local family - whose father/gf died in Milton Keynes over the weekend. He was initially on an open ward and wasn't tested until he reached ICU - where he died shortly after arriving. 😳

LQ - I think you are an economist reader? Very good article this week - which I think is where I learnt the stunning fact that the USA had only tested 145 people total as of last Friday - which is ...... frightening.

which is ...... totally outrageous and irresponsible

MrsL
Yup I read that article over the weekend.
Its why I think Covid will go out of control in the US
but as DGR rightly teased me, getting rid of blacks, poor and homeless is pretty much GOP policy .....

Yes BCF - various US attorneys have been making rumblings about this over the past couple of months.
I think Randy Andy (such an unfortunate nick name given current events) has tried to carry off a Boris (lie lie lie) unfortunately- not as effectively

The Korean data set seems the most useful for actually predicting the percentage who will need treatment

The Korean population is much younger than for eg the Lombardy population. The case fatality rate is going to be determined by the age of the people who get ill, and how much spare critical care capacity you have to treat them.

Hence very high death rates in Lombardy (older population, not enough healthcare resources) compared to South Korea (younger population and possibly a better resourced response), and also the much higher death rate in Wuhan early in the epidemic (when healthcare resources were manifestly inadequate) compared to the fatality rate in greater China.

It looks like those two factors can result in a case fatality rate that varies by an order of magnitude.

LQ - which is why Tories are not doing more to prevent an outbreak baffles me - it could essentially wipe out a huge proportion of their voter and brexit base...... which makes me sound more cheerful about this than I am.
A lot of concern in this household - not even that old , but asthmatics and DH and DS v vulnerable to chest infections/ pneumonia like ill-nesses.

Mistigri
Indeed. I'm rather a population pyramids geek and many countries are not easily comparable
BUT
the Korean data, combined with the WHO report on the 50,000 Chinese cases
will allow the predicted case load to be nuanced to take into account demographics and universality of health care

hence why the graphic in the back of the Economist is interesting
www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2020/03/07/tourism-flows-and-death-rates-suggest-covid-19-is-being-under-reported

Remember that suppressed Russian report before the GE ?

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/09/russia-network-britons-enemies-vladimir-putin-report

Russia has been accused of hiring a network of British politicians and consultants to help advance its criminal interests and to “go after” Vladimir Putin’s enemies in London,

MPs who drew up the Russia report suppressed by Boris Johnson were told.

In secret evidence submitted to parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC), the campaigner and financier Bill Browder claimed

Moscow had been able to “infiltrate” UK society by using well-paid British intermediaries.

Some had “reason to know exactly what they are doing and for whom”,

Browder told the committee.
Others “work unwittingly for Russian state interests”,
he said.

The alleged intermediaries include politicians from both Labour and the Conservative parties, former intelligence officers and diplomats, and leading public relations firms.

Collectively, they form what Browder calls a “western buffer network”.