Westministenders: Peak something

[BigChocFrenzy]

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

"Rich pensioners and those who live on investments will still be going to arts events to see and be seen"

Not the cautious ones
I've pensions & investments and had planned a lot of indulgent outings & trips in my retirement which are now on hold until it is safe again

The economy will not come out of depression if a significant % of the prosperous middle-aged and pensioners stop such indulgences
and also a significant % of worried parents stop takking the kids out to events with crowds

I expect many people will be social distancing until the danger has passed

Well, we can't protect against stupidity I said at the start of this that the elderly I saw on fb were not at all keen to isolate for their benefit and were actively raging against it. It dampened their spirits to see everyone doing it to protect them and social shaming those who didn't. It's not that I mind their brazen kamikaze efforts either, it's more the stress on NHS.

I wonder if probate solicitors have been rather busy over the last few months

Brexit ....

BCF I think pensioners in Germany must be more sensible than the rich ones here - remember Cheltenham had packed crowds despite the science being clear. No evidence of caution then but maybe they have learnt the severity and that the virus doesn't discriminate by now.

Have to say once again, Gogglebox nailed it for me this week. It's refreshing to see them all noting that Boris has only just realised the NHS is the lifeblood of this country when anyone on the street could have told him that years ago.

Poulet I expect 15.000 deaths and the headlines about care homes will have changed minds
It took deaths to bring a reality check here too

If anything, young parents are more worried than the elderly

It does seem to be worries about the child rather than their passing it on to anyone
I've seen this on MN too
It is a natural protective reaction which I would never scoff at

Boris did know that the country held the NHS in high esteem - hence the £350 million a week on the side of the bus. Saying that they would spend that on the buses or housing wouldn't have had the same emotional pull.

I suppose what lovable Boris didn't realise was that he might need to end up in an NHS hospital.

When slowly restarting the economy, we need the highest economic bang for our "risk" buck

That probably means banning crowds of > 50 adults
So most sports events, entertainment shows, trade fairs etc as large groups of adults seem high risk
Also banning foreign holidays and nearly all business trips

We have to avoid getting back into the worst case situation that lockdown prevented

neil_ferguson@neil_ferguson
......
Indeed, if anything, our latest estimates suggest that the virus is slightly more transmissible than we previously thought.

Our lethality estimates remain unchanged.

3/4 - My evidence to Parliament referred to the deaths we assess might occur in the UK
in the presence of the very intensive social distancing and other public health interventions now in place.

4/4 - Without those controls, our assessment remains that the UK would see the scale of deaths reported in our study (namely, up to approximately 500 thousand).

the few drug trials I've read on healthy people seem to only have 10 people at a time

These will be phase 1 "first in human" trials just to make sure that basic safety hurdles are cleared. For obvious reasons you don't do this sort of testing on large numbers of patients.

Peregrina Cummings knew it... Bozo just reads the autocue.

I think travel will be the hardest for the govt to explain.

1. They have planes still coming in unchecked (yes, this isn't an issue until lockdown is lifted - well, other than to the border control who are dying )
2. They may bail more travel companies
3. They haven't let the travel companies pay out in vouchers which means many will go under when refunds are demanded
4. If the rest of the world isn't sure we have done everything possible to keep track of the virus, we may well find a ban from certain countries. I noted this morning that up until a couple of days ago UK was the top country with passengers importing COVID to China (it's Russia today...where are their figures for the world to pick over?!).

How many subjects in later trials, misti ?

@catdoctor

Dick Sibley wrote a letter to The Times a couple of weeks ago that was critical of the Imperial modelling team - it was Imperial that modelled the spread of bovine foot and mouth back in 2001 (which is viral).

Maryn mckenna @marynmck
The chief executive of a MA hospital, outbid for PPE by the feds multiple times, cut a deal, paid extra, hired the trucks — and then was interrogated by the FBI and had to get his Congressperson to intervene to keep DHS from heisting the shipment.

www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMc2010025

This is nuts.

Not just stealing PPE from other nations.

What the fuck is going on in the US?

What the fuck is going on in the US?

Kushner has his fingers in the Strategic National Stickpile. This is what happens when you allow grifters a free rein.

And as Sarah Kendzior likes to keep reminding us “This is a transnational crime syndicate masquerading as a government.”

Stockpile not stickpile.

The state of this.

And now workshy dickhead with a car crash of a personal life has the perfect sick note.

www.thetimes.co.uk/article/f387c7be-8186-11ea-9de8-8714f28a52b2?shareToken=4e590ff844988327361e03ef20f821a5&wgu=270525_54264_15872828753263_597afd34f9&wgexpiry=1595058875&utm_source=planit&utm_medium=affiliate&utm_content=22278
Coronavirus: 38 days when Britain sleepwalked into disaster
Boris Johnson skipped five Cobra meetings on the virus, calls to order protective gear were ignored and scientists’ warnings fell on deaf ears. Failings in February may have cost thousands of lives

But it took just an hour that January 24 lunchtime to brush aside the coronavirus threat. Matt Hancock, the health secretary, bounced out of Whitehall after chairing the meeting and breezily told reporters the risk to the UK public was “low”.

This was despite the publication that day of an alarming study by Chinese doctors in the medical journal The Lancet. It assessed the lethal potential of the virus, for the first time suggesting it was comparable to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, which killed up to 50 million people.

Unusually, Boris Johnson had been absent from Cobra. The committee — which includes ministers, intelligence chiefs and military generals — gathers at moments of great peril such as terrorist attacks, natural disasters and other threats to the nation and is normally chaired by the prime minister.

Johnson had found time that day, however, to join in a lunar-new-year dragon eyes ritual as part of Downing Street’s reception for the Chinese community, led by the country’s ambassador.

It was a big day for Johnson and there was a triumphal mood in Downing Street because the withdrawal treaty from the European Union was being signed in the late afternoon. It could have been the defining moment of his premiership — but that was before the world changed.

That afternoon his spokesman played down the looming threat from the east and reassured the nation that we were “well prepared for any new diseases”. The confident, almost nonchalant, attitude displayed that day in January would continue for more than a month.

Johnson went on to miss four further Cobra meetings on the virus. As Britain was hit by unprecedented flooding, he completed the EU withdrawal, reshuffled his cabinet and then went away to the grace-and-favour country retreat at Chevening where he spent most of the two weeks over half-term with his pregnant fiancée, Carrie Symonds.

^Johnson with Symonds in a selfie posted on social media in February
It would not be until March 2 — five weeks later — that Johnson would attend a Cobra meeting about the coronavirus. But by then it was almost certainly too late. The virus had sneaked into our airports, our trains, our workplaces and our homes. Britain was on course for one of the worst infections of the most insidious virus to have hit the world in a century.^

Last week a senior adviser to Downing Street broke ranks and blamed the weeks of complacency on a failure of leadership in cabinet. The prime minister was singled out.

“There’s no way you’re at war if your PM isn’t there,” the adviser said. “And what you learn about Boris was he didn’t chair any meetings. He liked his country breaks. He didn’t work weekends. It was like working for an old-fashioned chief executive in a local authority 20 years ago. There was a real sense that he didn’t do urgent crisis planning. It was exactly like people feared he would be.”

Personally I have never been told what were the risks associated with giving a vaccine to my kids. Have you?? Bar the ‘oh there might be a bit a fever’.

I know you were addressing DGR, but I can answer your question @QuestionMarkNow.

Five DCs, all got their full quota of required shots (US).
Every single time, I was told all the possible side effects and given a CDC handout with detailed information including potential side effects, and asked to sign an informed consent, which I did.

Vaccination is evidence-based medicine.

Ive aways had to sign for consent here too misti seem to remember being given leaflets too.

My kids have had all their vaccinations including some I paid for privately like Men B.

I've copied and pasted that article onto my fb wall, thanks.

It never ceases to amaze me how people make excuses for that utter twat....like someone I know who works in the NHS, a former foodbank recipient...it's INSANE!!!!

"It's the desperate people who live from paycheque to paycheque who will pay for the reopening of the economy".

But it's their kids who will pay the price longer term for not reopening it.

Their children will pay in the short term if their parents die.

People shouldn't be forced by financial necessity into working in public facing roles which will increase their chances of becoming infected, but this is exactly what will happen if shops, restaurants, hotels, pubs, gyms, and schools are opened without massive testing being made available to everyone who wants a test.

No idea what to do re: schools going back.

I think it unlikely tbh.

However, ds1 is year 12 and ds2 is year 6.

Ds1 is asthmatic as is dh.

They are both missing school badly.

I think pensioners in Germany must be more sensible

Blimey yes. They will have been raised on tales of Wiemar and the wheelbarrows of cash you left outside the cafe then when you came back, someone had stolen the wheelbarrow and left the money.

Germans are savers to a fault.

How many subjects in later trials, misti ?

Rule of thumb, phase 1 is tens of people (safety + dose ranging), phase 2 is hundreds (does produce a clinical effect?) and phase 3 usually up to the low thousands (is it effective versus placebo and best available treatment? is the risk-benefit assessment positive?).

(I moonlight as a medical research translator: clinical trials pay for my student daughter's Paris flat).

My guess is that we will cautiously open up towards the end of May after watching the other countries do it. There will be a second wave of infection, but hopefully the field hospitals will soak up the extra patients. I am increasingly alarmed at the secondary deaths being caused by untreated heart attacks, cancelled cancer appointments and the like. Whatever happens next,the NHS will be scrambling to make up for lost time.

I am also pondering how the hell businesses like cafés, cinemas and airlines will keep their staff safe.

Ive aways had to sign for consent here too misti seem to remember being given leaflets too.

Of course. But consent is different when you are being given something that hasn't been fully tested and approved. Consent given for a routine vaccination or a surgical operation in no way ressembles the consent that must be taken from people who participate in clinical research, which involves hours of medical time per patient.

So there are important ethical considerations in rushing the research process, you have to balance individual interests with public health interests.

People shouldn't be forced by financial necessity into working in public facing roles which will increase their chances of becoming infected, but this is exactly what will happen if shops, restaurants, hotels, pubs, gyms, and schools are opened without massive testing being made available to everyone who wants a test.