Westminstenders: All bets are off

[RedToothBrush]

We are seeking an extension. Apparently. No prizes for guessing why.

There is no news but COVID news. And that's all there will be for a long time.

Enjoy your stockpile and your sunny uplands it brought.

Keep safe.

SwedishEdith how about rubber gloves? They don't look great but that isn't relevant right now. I have a right hand one in my car.

More than CV-19, What I have seen around me is the consequence of been unable to access GP surgeries etc...
People with with other health conditions unable to access the care they need (eg a friend who developed heart issue and really need an ECG but struggles to see a GP, my FIL who is in the middle of chemo etc...).
There has been talks that we will never quite know who actually died of the CV on the ground that they might well have died of something else but just happened to have the CV.
I think we will have many other people who will die because they can’t access care rather than the virus itself.

But we will only know that when everything has calmed down by looking at how many people died vs how many people we ‘expected’ to see dying this year.

@FizzyLimes, I agree about the full lockdown. This will happen very soon. But I dint think it will be because ‘people don’t realise’ how serious it is as our PM said.
I think this will happen because we have a PM unable to give a clear message to the population (thanks, for example, to the fact he keeps changing his tack on what we should do). And because his attitude is reactive rather than proactive. Which is a shame because the U.K. is in a worst position than many other eu countries re the state of its health service.

@QuestionMarkNow

Boris has never taken responsibility for anything.

I’m probably extrapolating too much, but Italy and the UK will overtake China as the most numbers of deaths.
Boris had the benefit of a 2 week window of opportunity To shut but wasted it, worried about the economy.

History will obviously see him wanting.
When Covid19 is under control / there is a vaccine in a year to 18 months time, hopefully Boris will be kicked out for having blood on his hands.
Rishi Sunak will be PM. We need someone like him. A Tory using socialist principles. It is said he listens and takes advice.
He is following a lot of the principles that Macron has put in place.

How on earth have Boris and Trump got time to do their waffley daily briefings. ? Obviously not really needed to actually run the country.
I don’t even watch. I actively turn over if Trump is on. The TV is on in another room, so I catch it occasionally; just have a catch up in the evening, or it will drive you mad.

I’m expecting Macron to speak to us in about a week to tell us the lockdown is going to be extended for another 2 weeks.

I think people here are starting to realise that our children probably won’t be going back till September. A week ago, that seemed unthinkable.

We thought everything would be back to normal « after Easter»

Bit like the Great War; « We’ll be back for Christmas»

Our shopping habits have had to change.

We live close by to a supermarket and usually only have two or three days of food in at a time - and by days of food I'm talking evening meals only, as we both have breakfast/lunch at work.

We are now working from home, and trying to avoid multiple shopping trips to limit exposure, so are buying a week's worth at a time - plus we need to buy stuff in for two additional meals a day.

I suspect there will be quite a few in a similar position.

Sunday Times

So much for Dom the superforcasting tactical genius.

I note that George Eustice did yesterday's WM Government briefing.

Is it a coincidence that it's a weekend?

BCF your post at 22:47 yesterday v. interesting.
Both DD and I have had “funny” throats for a couple of weeks. A bit sore but not very sore, an impulse to cough but easily overcome. She’s prone to strep throat/tonsillitis and I to bronchitis so we both independently started gargling three times a day with warm salty water.
About ten days ago I felt a little unwell with a sensation of the shivers similar to those one gets with a fever, but no raised temp. That lasted 24 hours. I did wonder if it was a mild manifestation of the virus, what a shame BJ’s made-up “just like a pregnancy test” tests aren’t available...

RedToothBrush

Bcf I listened to yesterdays presser on food supplies. It went further than merely the current shortages and getting food to the vulnerable. When the words 'food security' popped up so my ears pricked up.

There is a massive issue here they are not being entirely honest about.

They dodged questions about the need for rationing.

The press conference was supposed to reassure the public. Unfortunately the take away for me was exactly the opposite.

I listen to these things all the time. I know to listen for key words and phrases and to listen for what they don't so and what they don't say.

Combined with Macron's alleged comments about closing the border which I very much think are serious and not an idle threat, I'm worried.

Fwiw DH spent 2 hours looking at the data last night and believes that a) the government couldn't extrapolate there was a real problem here from it until Sunday night (that doesn't excuse their divergence from what the the rest of Europe were saying and WHO were saying) b) he thinks it possible that people are very very scared here to the point that it may be making a difference in the absence of government action anyway. He needs the data for the next couple of days to see if he's right and has some figures for today to see what trajectory we are heading towards. I'm not going to post here cos a body count game isn't good but I will say if today's figures are at the upper or lower end and whether his theory of fear and mistrust having a limited effect is correct.

I should say I considered self isolation but no fever and no real cough, just the feeling that I’d like to, so did a form of social distancing instead, which was easy enough under the circumstances, plus careful hand/surface hygiene.

^As a maths / STEM bod, the Coronavirus has been scaring me for several weeks,
because of how exponential growth works^

I followed the Wuhan numbers very closely. When the outbreak started in Italy I knew the game was up here, especially when no travel restrictions or monitoring to Italy over half term was done.

I started buying extra at end of Jan beginning of Feb. DH is now very grateful I'm on the ball and has been very regretful about some of his actions this week.

One of our friends who isn't a stress head has been having anxiety attacks this week too, which has rather helped my position.

There are a lot of people who are coping rather less well than they are letting on.

I am worried about this too.

I'm just grateful for my No-Deal Brexit stockpiling (which is not the same as panic buying) which has meant that I haven't had to buy anything "extra".

Dh had used up most of the cans of soup in the last few months though and Lidl had none - not a single can - yesterday. Fortunately, I have plenty of stock in the freezer, carrots stored in sand in the greenhouse and know how to make my own.

I thought Dom C had gone very quiet.
That Sunday Times article may be the start of a long slippery slope for him !

I really hope some heads will roll after this clusterfuck.
Dunno, though...

The briefings against Cummings from articles written by journalists with very strong ties to the Johnson camp is your clearest indication of the goverment shitting it, and there being outright panic that they've handled things badly and we have a major problem on our hands.

If Cummings was the origin of the initial 'Let-them-die' policy, it remains the responsibility of the people who appointed him and chose to listen to his nerdy smartarsed rantings.

Starmer has the skillset to call BJ to account, if there are a large number of deaths due to govt tardiness and ineptitude

However, that would be after the first wave is past, too late to prevent it,
but maybe would help lessen the damage during the remaining time to a vaccine

I wonder if BJ will bugger off in a few months - he wanted to become PM for shits & giggles, not this

David Lammy**@DavidLammy

This must be the last slogan Dominic Cummings gets to use to govern Britain. If what the Sunday Times reports is true, thousands will die because of his apathy and arrogance. Boris Johnson will have signed it off too. Sickening.

Yeah, but they will cut DC loose in a nano second to save their own necks

I just said exactly the same thing to dh

What will kill off foreign travel - certainly for the plebs - will be the insurance that countries will start demanding goes with it.

Can you quarantine yourself for 14 days if you should develop C-19 (or any novel virus) while you're here ?

No ?

Fuck off then.

There will be a brief flurry of stories about people who are quoted £1,000 insurance for a weekend break, and that will be that. Pretty much the same way it was insurance that did for Concorde. Not technology.

Paul Nuki@PaulNuki (Telegraph)

1/7 ^Official guidance sets out rules for doctors triaging critical care in UK...

• provides "algorithm" to guide doctors
• says patients to be considered by "frailty score"
• data on mortality by pneumonia by age
• advises on cancer/ and dialysis

Sobering reading

2/ In Italy, doctors have reportedly been forced to discriminate between patients based simply on age.
^
The NICE guidance does NOT categorise by age^
but instead asks doctors to score patients on a “clinical frailty scale” [CFS] as they might normally do. #COVIDDーー199
^
< screenshot 1>

3/ Admissions to be made on the basis of “medical benefit, taking into account the likelihood that the person will recover to an outcome that is acceptable to them and within a period of time consistent with the diagnosis,”^

says NICE.
Here's the algorithm: < screenshot 2 >

4/ The triage guidance also provides doctors with mortality data for patients suffering from pneumonia
in critical care beds compared to a regular hospital ward.

This is age banded. < screenshot 3 >

5/ Data banded by age is also provided for critical care patients
with and without underlying heart and lung conditions < screenshot 4 >

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng159/resources/information-to-support-decision-making-pdf-8708913901

6/ Covid-19 patients receiving treatment for cancer or who need dialysismust also be carefully assessed ahead of admission.

“Where decisions need to be made about prioritising patients for treatment,
these need to take into account the level of immunosuppression,”
it says.

7/ @NICEComms
Nice says the guidelines will be updated as more data becomes available.

They have been produced in collaboration with NHS England and a cross-specialty clinical group, supported by the specialist societies and Royal Colleges

.

On testing all the labs that can be freed up in London to work on a test are now being and scientists with the necessary skills are being designated as key workers and organised into shifts. It means I can’t go into self isolation because I have to feed one of them. In the context of Cummings nerdy ranting these are of course not the mathematical modelling and techie geeks he idolises but the biomedical researchers who have been most outspoken against him, Sir Paul Nurse in the lead, and anticipated their research would lose out under his strategy for science.