Westministenders: The Virus

[RedToothBrush]

Its like living in a Bad Disaster B Movie.

If you thought Brexit on your TV every day was Bad, The Virus is a whole new level.

The 5pm broadcast with Johnson and friends, and the public infomation video with the unblicking Chris Witty (who has such unfortunate mannerism he makes me think he's me a Dr Who alien akin to the Slitheen).

Who knows what will happen. Just that everything has changed and our entire economy is now on life support whilst we figure out how to deal with the crisis and what on earth our exit strategy is.

Johnson has however refused to join a joint EU purchase scheme designed to assist countries through the crisis.

Meanwhile the US is about to go nuts... so what does that do to a trade deal?

More money for the NHS? More hospitals?

Well its possible that might just happen...

Red I was wondering if the causes of deaths were wrong though - so increases in influenza, pneumonia and heart attack related deaths (in line with the flat lining of life expectancy, perhaps)?

But I'm wondering if it has been around for months before, so for your purposes that wouldn't work.

red I've been trying to rough out figures for Italy

• BIG approximation: I don't have figures for individual months and I expect March is usually a bad one

Italy's population is about 60 million,
with normally about 640,000 deaths per year,
so average about 1750 per day

Coronavirus has been killing 600-700 per day,
so increasing the average daily death rate by 35-40% (but will be a lower % for March)
minus whatever is saved by fewer road or work accidents

In the Lombardy region, the total death rate has risen by over 80%, comoared to the same month in 2019, far more than the registered CV deaths

• some local mayors have stated that many CV deaths are being missed, because some of those who died at home were never tested.

I am using FB to stay in touch with gym friends and distant family.
I have about 1/3 of my friends muted for 30 day stretches.
If they are talking sense when they reappear I re engage with them, if not I ignore them for another month.

Linkedin is incredibly useful to me at the moment.

Twitter I've completely given up on
(RTB summarises all I'd ever need to read on it very eloquently )

Instagram - I have never followed a celeb so its mostly cat pictures

This place, I have these threads bookmarked and casually look at some other stuff but the signal to noise ratio is incredibly high at the moment.

I don't see the evidence for CV having been around in significant numbers for some time,
or even that much more than 10% of the population have had it so far
(except maybe the March fgures haven't caught up the % ?)

The UK tests only the few thousand per day most likely to have it

Currently only about 22,000 positive out of 135,000 tested
which is 16%

Your pillow plumping story made me laugh @jesuispoulet!
Thank you for the offer, that would be good although I think my boy would prefer to grab the device! We are actually not too bad, I am quite good at entertaining him it's just a bit boring cause it's all the same stuff and same walks but we will cope. I just feel sorry for him because he was enjoying seeing and touching other babies.

Husband is so good though, he does do his fair share.

Re. The number of bodies in Wuhan I watched a YouTube video of a Chinese billionaire talking about how china have hired thousands of incinerators which can burn 30 bodies a day each. When he does the math it's alarming how many bodies there probably are when you also include the normal incinerators burning a thousand bodies a day. Eek
I'm certain china have lied.

Another thing is..my parents lived and worked in Myanmar for a while and mums old boss emailed her trying to blame people in the UK for spreading it about and basically denying it was china that started it. Mum was saying that mayanmar are desperate to get the backing of China and don't want to upset then in any way

Bcf, I wonder if there is a time lag on this too.

I believe the published data for Italy does not yet cover March.

I wonder if the number of deaths in the UK are too statistically small, so far, to show up in our published data. Each week in the UK we have around 10,000 a week around this time of year. 1% of that is 100. Assuming the margin of error is 2%, you won't see anything until we surpass at least around 30 deaths per day. And it depends on whether other causes of death are remaining stable or changing (less regular scheduled surgery might lead to a temporary reduction in deaths). I think the week by week data in this series is at least 2 weeks behind. It's possible that this week might be the first week that covid-19 could start showing in this particular data series. And it might be another week yet.

m.youtube.com/watch?v=b1D6kMeBFas

This is the Chinese billionaire talking about incinerators

Could also be a cover up for atrocities in their prisons or similar. I don't think we will know the reality of what has happened in China. It's open to speculation which means the truth gets lost easier, as Russia well knows.

I am interested in the WHO and Taiwan, however...

This FT article explains the unreliability of all the data currently being reported:

The mystery of the true coronavirus death rate

If I link it’s behind a paywall but putting the title into Google should pull it up.

TLDR:

Nobody knows how many people have contracted CV-19 as only very limited testing - missing mild and asymptomatic cases.

How many deaths would have happened due to existing underlying conditions - ie what are the excess deaths. Prof Ferguson estimates that a half to two thirds of UK CV-19 deaths are not excess deaths.

Different countries are reporting in completely different ways, eg in Italy CV-19 is listed as the cause of death even if a patient was already ill and died from a combination of illnesses - potentially only 12% of Italian deaths have shown a direct causality from CV-19.

Standard of health care available - existing poor standards or an overwhelmed health system will lead to a higher mortality rate.

Yep, red I had started to calculate the UK deaths,
but realised that - thankfully ! - the UK total is still too small compared to statistical variation

Hence why I only calculated v rough figures for Italy

btw, if we do end up with "only" 5-10,000
then BJ will probably be getting it in the neck from many Tory donors
and also that significant chunk of their vote that is SE or micro-business owners

Fascinating to see the social Darwinist / libertarian right and the govt supporters (e.g. C & P) duking it out online, including MN

Although I definitely blame the Tories for running down the NHS and public health services,
they actually made a very brave - but late ! - decision to prioritise lives over the economy.

As posted, the Millenium Bug Catch 22 dilemma:
if you take massive & expensive measures that succeed in avoiding catastrophe, then too many fuckwits claim there never was a serious danger

I suspect BJ will be persuaded to quit a year or so before the GE

• if he hasn't run away of his own accord by then -

for the now standard trick for both parties of a shiny new PM

He may find that after a career of dumping blame on others, he gets buried in it for the only time he actually tried to do the right thing

I wonder if he assumes that the total ruthlessness of the Tory party in retaining power won't apply to him

Cause of Death

If COVID-19 is the immediate cause of death then that should be how it is recorded in every country

• unless they are flouting established international conventions going back decades.

Of course, the volume of CV deaths within a few weeks may have stretched the normal certification process, but no country should have deliberately diverged from international SOP
(Of course China and other dictatorships can and will flout rules as convenient)

If COVID-19 is detected, but is not the immediate cause of death, but only a contributory factor, then it is not recorded as the cause of death.

This is based on long-standing internationally agreed rules for specifying cause of death on a death certificate

WHO guide:
[[https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/40557/9241560622.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y
apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/40557/9241560622.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y]]

England & Wales - same thing, just stated in fewer pages:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/757010/guidance-for-doctors-completing-medical-certificates-of-cause-of-death.pdf

Hmm, I don't agree it was brave. Tories have repeatedly ignored influenza pandemic advice, reports and specialists since at least 2009. At uni we studied this a little and the only article I have found that reflects the repeated negligence is here - no idea on publication source but these are the same sources we used in assignments. I think other papers have started to pick up on more recent events but I posted this one before those and don't feel a huge need to look into it further as the pattern was clear enough - They've failed us all

The FT Article is echoing the same issues raised by the pathologist writing in The Spectator last week:

But there’s another, potentially even more serious problem: the way that deaths are recorded. If someone dies of a respiratory infection in the UK, the specific cause of the infection is not usually recorded, unless the illness is a rare ‘notifiable disease’. So the vast majority of respiratory deaths in the UK are recorded as bronchopneumonia, pneumonia, old age or a similar designation. We don’t really test for flu, or other seasonal infections. If the patient has, say, cancer, motor neurone disease or another serious disease, this will be recorded as the cause of death, even if the final illness was a respiratory infection. This means UK certifications normally under-record deaths due to respiratory infections.

And:

In the current climate, anyone with a positive test for Covid-19 will certainly be known to clinical staff looking after them: if any of these patients dies, staff will have to record the Covid-19 designation on the death certificate — contrary to usual practice for most infections of this kind. There is a big difference between Covid-19 causing death, and Covid-19 being found in someone who died of other causes. Making Covid-19 notifiable might give the appearance of it causing increasing numbers of deaths, whether this is true or not. It might appear far more of a killer than flu, simply because of the way deaths are recorded

Fuck it.

I'm making a lemon drizzle cake.

yoikes I am going to get DD2 to make ginger cake.

www.rte.ie/news/2020/0331/1127452-tanaiste-ni/

rte.ie
Warning of 'squandering' island advantage with Covid-19
3-4 minutes

A professor of Public Health University of Bristol has said the island of Ireland needs to work as one unit in the fight against coronavirus.

Gabriel Scally warned that we risk squandering the geographical advantage of living on an island, because of different health policies being adopted on both sides of the border.

Prof Scally, who led the inquiry in the CervicalCheck controversy and was born and grew up in Belfast, said it would be nonsense to have restrictions placed on people coming off planes in Dublin, if similar restrictions are not imposed in Northern Ireland.

Speaking on RTÉ's Today with Sean O'Rourke, he said it is regrettable that Northern Ireland is continuing to follow the advice from Whitehall.

He said he believes that the advice from London is "seriously flawed" but added that health in Northern Ireland is a devolved power and they could choose to follow their own path.

He said that there is a hope and a chance that we can stop the virus properly but it has to be on the basis of stopping the importation of new cases.

He called for a harmonisation of measures on the island of Ireland and cited the example of self-isolation, which in Northern Ireland is seven days but in the Republic it is for 14 days.

While community testing of defined potential cases continues in the Republic, community testing was halted in Northern Ireland in mid-March.

It comes as Tánaiste Simon Coveney is to discuss ongoing efforts to cope with the coronavirus pandemic with Northern Ireland Secretary Brandon Lewis and Stormont's first and deputy first ministers, Arlene Foster and Michelle O'Neill.

Their teleconference is due to take place at midday.

It will be the first time for Mr Lewis to take part in discussions about co-operation between the administrations.

There are ongoing strains in Northern Ireland's power-sharing administration.

It looks east to London, it sees some variations in policy decisions taken in Dublin.

As a recently formed, five-party devolved government, it is not yet functioning cohesively.

The Tánaiste will confirm what Taoiseach Leo Varadkar stated yesterday, when he dismissed the notion of closing off borders.

Read more: Latest coronavirus stories

Speaking on RTÉ's Claire Byrne Live last night, Mr Coveney said the advice is the supply lines need to be kept open and Irish citizens need to be allowed to come home.

He said he does not think anyone wants to close the border with Northern Ireland and the Government has no intention of doing that.

Vital goods flow north and south, and east and west.

Dublin's port and airport are important in Northern Ireland's supply chain.

The UK authorities helped to repatriate some stranded Irish citizens.

In the coming days Northern Ireland will get access to some of the Personal Protection Equipment, sourced in China and transported back to Dublin by Aer Lingus.

There may be further north-south contacts involving the Taoiseach as well as the Tánaiste later this week.

From today's discussions, it is likely that four participants will reiterate their commitment to co-operation that makes practical sense.

Additional reporting Tommie Gorman

Lemon Drizzle v Ginger
oooooh, tricky !!!!

Quick sourdough question. Our sourdough starter (5 days) was huge this morning when we got up. Later less than half remains. Bits stuck on the jar sides, all the way up to the top. Everyone denies having removed any. It's bubbling but less so than yesterday. Any ideas?

Oh, and thank you for all the Brexit & CV info (as always).

I wouldn't even wedge a door open with ginger cake 🤢

It’s supposed to rise and fall - when it falls you feed it again.

That's ok, yoikes - more for us! . DD2 has a citrus allergy, so no lemon drizzle for us. Which is a shame, because I love it. However, we also do killer banana/chocolate cake. And cookies. And spiced apple cake (but I forgot to buy Bramleys).

Has anyone seen the AIBU thread about whether Corona will kill off the EU? So much wishful thinking in one place...

Has anyone seen the AIBU thread about whether Corona will kill off the EU? So much wishful thinking in one place...

You could have saved a few letters by saying "dim" instead.

Yes, because those countries hit hardest are going to flounce at not getting more aid from countries like Germany who have also been hit

Because going it alone and getting nothing is so much better

I do wish Hungary could be expelled / persuaded to leave the EU though
It's changed over the years from being an odd cuckoo in the nest to now as much of a dictatorship as Putin's Russia