Westministenders: Peak something

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Westministenders: Peak something

The story so far

COVID has changed the world for the next few years, like a slowly exploding nuke:

• killed well over 100,000 people
• made many people afraid to leave their home
• caused a Global Depression

Countries locked down because they needed the extra time to

Raise the Line while Flattening the Curve:

1. Flatten the curve of the numbers needing healthcare to a level the system can manage

2. Raise the capacity of their health services and public health systems - their testing and tracking process

Also, scientists desperately needed time to find out more about COVID:
how to avoid it, how to treat it

What happens next ?

Research teams around the world are working to produce a vaccine,
will become hopefully available within the next couple of years

In the meantime, treatment procedures are being developed to better treat COVID sufferers.

Also in the meantime, countries will need to gradually exit lockdown to rescue their economies from complete catastrophe.

Timing & measures for each country will be dependent on:

Death rate after peak,
health service capacity,
testing & tracing capacity etc

....and also what their govt and public deem an "acceptable" level of extra deaths & serious illness.

Possibly some countries will need to cycle in and out of lockdown,
whereas others will be able to accept the death toll with lesser social distancing measures.

The first few countries are already relaxing lockdown,
so the UK will watch, wait and hopefully learn what works and what doesn't

..... then copy these the correct way round

Getting a vaccine is just the start.

I would imagine issuing it to a significant proportion (how many do we need to take it up? 80%?) is going to be a logistical nightmare.

It would be bitterly ironic to see mass gatherings taking place at vaccination sites...

I presume any roll-out would be staged...but how?

Sheilded and over 70's first? Is it possible or indeed likely that there will be a significant number of the Sheilded ones who cannot have vaccines due to being immune suppressed?

Key workers first? That would make sense particularly for NHS and care workers.

I ask again. Is incompetence the new competence ?

I really wouldn't trust this shower of losers to run a bath, let alone a country.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52334848

A government scheme to release prisoners early to help jails deal with coronavirus has been suspended after six offenders were freed by mistake.

The inmates were mistakenly let out of two open prisons in Gloucestershire and Derbyshire, and a young offenders institution in south-east London.

Officials said the men "returned compliantly to prison when asked to do so".

The Prison Service said it had now strengthened its processes.

Justice Secretary Robert Buckland had previously said rigorous checks would take place before inmates were let out on the scheme.

(contd)

Would the corona virus research disappear like the SARS research just got put on hold? There are a couple of differences. Half the world didn't go into lockdown over SARS. More cynically - it mostly affected brown and yellow people - not those of white European stock.

Peter Foster is on fire this morning.And very angry at the Blitz spirit bollocks if this Govt. Long thread but worth reading

I like the comment immediately under Peter Foster's tweet. This is about how the Daily Mail is talking about Romanians to the rescue when two months ago it would have been about low skilled immigrants flooding in.

A telling phrase from he FT article:

Two out of the UK’s three main ventilator makers told the Financial Times their contact with government officials only began in mid-March, around the same time as the general appeal.

You would think they would be the first people to talk to, at the outset. Is the govt really that shit?

That's rhetorical by the way.

Yes, the government really is that shit.

Bodes well for Brexit.

Listening SARS died out because it was far less infectious
and it was stamped out early on, before it could spread very far

COVID spread because it is very infectious, CDC suggesting R0 could be 5.7
and because it is infectious several days before symptoms show up
A horrible combination for exponential growth

Horrible diseases like polio, smallpox didn't die out in the UK because we ignored them,
but because we vaccinated

We just have to look back to February to read all the health gurus claiming COVID "would just be a like a bad cold"

• to see how well that denial has worn

If COVID disappears one day, like the "miracle" that Trump prophesied, then that's great
Result !

But I wouldn't bet the future of the world on whatever genius remark comes out of Trump's head or arse

I want to restart the economy too, but all this denial and minimising actually makes people even more suspicious of those who advocate this and less willing to take the chance.

Relaxing measures will be done as in Germany, France, Austria - very cautiously and gradually - but probably 3 weeks later

We can use these first guinea pigs to try to learn the best approach
If they have to slam on the breaks suddenly, we'll learn from that too

On the up side, Trump may well lose Florida now as that cluster is gonna be MASSIVE
www.cnbc.com/2020/04/17/gov-ron-desantis-gives-some-florida-beaches-green-light-to-reopen.html

Desantis is the mayor in "Jaws"

FT: excellent examination of moral dilemma - to lockdown or not

https://ftalphaville.ft.com/2020/04/15/1586943153000/Why-are-we-really-in-lockdown--/

A fierce debate is under way between those who believe that the current lockdowns in place across much of the world are an overreaction,
and those who believe it would be barbaric to do anything other than try to avoid as many coronavirus deaths as possible.

Those in the first camp who tend, on the whole, to lean towards the right
point out things like the fact many of those dying from the virus would have been likely to die soon anyway;
< Toby Young, IDS, ... >

that the collateral damage from the lockdowns will end up causing more harm than coronavirus itself;

and that the amount of money we are effectively spending on saving each life is completely out of whack with what we would normally consider reasonable.

Those in the second camp who tend, conversely, to lean to the left
argue that to not do everything we can to prevent as many people as possible from dying a grisly coronavirus death would be inhumane;
that we are already exposing our health workers to high viral loads of coronavirus
and that if we were to allow it to spread at a faster rate, an unacceptable number of otherwise healthy workers would die;

and that it doesn’t actually really matter whether the lockdown is enforced or not because people wouldn’t be going about their usual business anyway at this point, so the hit to business can’t be avoided.
(A counter to that last point, of course, is that without a scaremongering campaign from a biased “liberal” media, people might indeed be going about their business.)

Both camps make reasonable and sound arguments.
And it will take a long time to be sure about who, if anyone, was right (we may never come to a consensus on this).

But there is another consideration that is largely ignored by both camps:
the moral impact of the decisions being made.

How will we feel about our collective selves if we turn our backs on the people we can see dying in front of us in order to achieve some much less measurable and more uncertain future outcome?

Will that guilt be more or less acute than the guilt we might feel in future when we get a better sense of the collateral damage that comes from the lockdowns?

Muddled thinking punctures plan for British ventilator

www.ft.com/content/5f393d77-8e5b-4a85-b647-416efbc575ec

Non-specialist manufacturers sent off to design new products that clinicians and regulators say were unsuitable for Covid patients
< what could go wrong ? Just about everything >
.....
“Pretty much all the basic new designs are not going to get through the Covid approval process.

The government spin is the ‘clinical need’ changed, but the reality is that it was always misguided to think you could develop and create these ventilators”

I've always seen left vs right debates as being largely based on a moral compass. Right wing and you're on your own, survival of the fittest, there is no such thing a society etc, left wing and we're all in this together, fairness, looking out for one another, each pay according to what they can afford etc. Seems like community is only important to the right when their normal modus operandi is interrupted. Then, suddenly, passing bandwagons become attractive modes of transport.

Prolonged lockdown will do long term damage to the mental and physical health of EVERYBODY
Particularly those without the resources / domestic space to cope on their own.

Thread reader link to the story that BCF and SwedishEdith have mentioned: threader.app/thread/1251434219139665920

This lot are beyond incompetent.

SARS died out because it was far less infectious
and it was stamped out early on, before it could spread very far

Not necessarily less infectious, but symptoms were very severe, so there wasn't as much asymptomatic and presymptomatic spread.

I saw a good diagram on twitter showing how once someone starts symptoms, you may have as little as one day to swab and get test results and then trace contacts, to be sure of breaking the transmission chain.

This is why SARS-CoV-2 spreads in a way that SARS didn't.

Prolonged lockdown will do long term damage to the mental and physical health of EVERYBODY

Errr, no it won't. Evidence for this?

Prolonged lockdown will do long term damage to the mental and physical health of EVERYBODY

This is true. But if the virus spreads uncontrollably, people will lockdown of their own accord, if they can. There is good data from the US showing that the formal lockdowns accounted for only a minority of the stay-away from restaurants and bars. By the time lockdown orders were made most restaurants were nearly empty.

Relaxing lockdown and letting the virus circulate essentially results in rich knowledge workers staying home and poorer people and essential workers getting sick and often dying on the front line. People who stay at home don't spend money and nor do people who are worried about whether they are going to be alive next week.

This is not a simple choice between lockdown + economic catastrophe versus herd immunity + a functioning economy. It's a choice between killing some people + having a recession and killing some more people and having a recession.

The countries which do best economically will be those that manage to reopen safely, and handle testing and tracing best.

I also wanted to say that we are focussing far too much on what the Chinese did wrong and not on what they did right.

This is not a moral or political argument but a practical one. The Chinese economy is getting back to (semi) normal, factories are working, businesses are investing. We need to be a lot more critical of the western response and ask why we are doing so much worse than Asian countries. There isn't a simple answer to this (because countries with low case rates are culturally, demographically and politically dissimilar) but there is increasing evidence that many major western nations are simply not very good at dealing with this sort of crisis.

The countries which do best economically will be those that manage to reopen safely, and handle testing and tracing best.
Exactly.

The folks who think Lockdown should go on for months are not looking at the impacts on food supply and the supply of all the essential items.

Supermarkets have had a huge increase in sales because all other venues for food etc are closed
hence why the supply chain cannot refill flour shelves
it is not sustainable - even before the costs rise

There is no reason to think that the supply chain won't adjust, as long as things are produced fairly locally. I imagine the problem with flour is that it needs to be packaged into kilo bags rather than 100 kg ones.

We had an egg shortage here at first, because people were eating 3 meals a day at home. But there was a glut at wholesalers who were selling into the mass catering sector. Once those eggs got redirected into the retail chain, there was a surplus of eggs. I can now get outdoor eggs delivered to my door for 10€ for 30, whereas a month ago they were like gold dust.

Also the U.K. lockdown is not very strict so there is no reason why many companies can't operate as long as they can enforce social distancing. My employer is still operating parts of its U.K. business, though some production lines are shut due to lack of orders. We have problems getting products to customers outside the U.K. due to lack of flights but we are still operating fairly normally in my division.

The big problems are going to be in catering, entertainment and sport where I cannot see any prospect of a safe restart at the moment. A lot of low earners work in those sectors, but lockdown or no lockdown those jobs are not coming back quickly.

The Left are Stupid. The Right are Evil. The Wishy-Washy Centre are Useless.

It's saturday, so those who are in charge of paperclips at weekends get to give the briefing. Jenrick is very sorry about the PPE, but he is trying very hard, and it's difficult that everyone else wants it too.

No admission that this is a strategic failure of a system that did away with stockpiles to save money and let UK manufacturing go to the wall because we can get everything from China with the hard currency we make selling overpriced raincoats and Downton Abbey.

And gosh yes, lots of black and brown people are dying and as Toyah said, It's A Mystery. Like the famous hole in the road, govt is looking into it.

Mistigri
The current tricky food is tinned tomatoes pesky imported things
(luckily I still part of my Brexit stash)
and yeast is in short supply - because far more people are baking at home than ever before.
Its tricky to ramp up the supply of seasonal imported foodstuffs like fruit and veg.