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

Giant Nightingale warehouses rather than small clinics. Rolls-Royce and Burberry rather than the furloughed local firms. Giant RAF transports full of Turkish delight rather than boxes from the local tech college's 3d printers. Etc....

A fixation with big things. Next patient, Dr Freud.

And still no word from Johnson

This isn't the Titanic. We are the Californian, with the captain too buggering lazy to get out of bed. Those distress flares are just some people having a party....

Thanks @JeSuisPoulet! Our first data arrived tonight, I am so excited to start. It'll be 4 months till the dataset is complete, but we are making the data fully accessible to authenticated researchers with updates every 2 weeks via www.covid19dataportal.org/. This is a fantastic European Molecular Biology Laboratory effort spearheaded by the European Bioinformatics Institute/ELIXIR which is located near Cambridge in the UK. Thank fuck we aren't leaving EMBL.

MShip do keep us posted.

Whitty says the likelihood of a vaccine in the next calendar year is incredibly small.

Does he mean 'in the next 12 months' or does he mean 'by the end of 2021'?

It sounded to me (from another thread) as though there are plenty of health staff working in non Covid roles who are currently not hugely busy because lots of other things have stopped, why not use them?

I can't speak for every health Trust in the UK, but in our Trust that is exactly what is being done. We are a mental health and community care Trust and all our staff who can be pulled away from non-COVID services have been. Because acute hospitals have been clearing wards, a lot of patients who would otherwise not have been discharged home are now home - in less good condition than they would otherwise have been. The number of home care packages has gone up massively. We have senior physios, podiatrists, diabetes specialist nurses, speech and language therapists, you name it, people at bands 5,6,7, all doing Health Care Support type work in the community to keep people safe and well supported at home. Redeployment is what I've been doing since March 20th, it has been a massive operation. And we still don't have enough staff, we're recruiting.

Yeah, those 10,000 EU nurses are looking pretty useful right now.

Mship I've heard great things about the European Molecular Biology Laboratory

I'm so glad the UK isn't leaving that too / expelling Hinxton from the UK 👍
I wasn't sure if EMBL just hadn't been mentioned yet
(shush, Boris & co have probably never heard of it and not realised we are in it !)

Germany became the FOURTH country to start human vaccine trials
Lots of activity around the world, which is encouraging

We were firmly told that no hope of vaccine being available for the German public this year,
but with luck might be possible for vulnerable groups in 2021

Also seems that a reliable antibody test is now available, so Germany has started largescale antibody test programs

www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/21/839594202/germany-is-conducting-nationwide-covid-19-antibody-testing?t=1587582083179

contender "this Calendar year" is until 31 Dec 2020

This isn't the Titanic. We are the Californian,

Carpathian, surely ?

Sounding positive on the vaccine front. And the antibody testing.

Anything that offers a potential solution beyond 'try not to catch it' for those more vulnerable.

Bloody hell I wish we had a competent government. It very much feels like everything is on hold until BoJo is back. No one wanting to pick up the shitty stick? Sometimes the worst thing you can do is do nothing.

Bloody hell I wish we had a competent government. It very much feels like everything is on hold until BoJo is back. No one wanting to pick up the shitty stick?

One of the hallmarks of a tinpot dictatorship ...

Mockers has hit on it
big business is being supported at the expense of local UK business
Aldi and Asda are allowed to sell plants and compost - but small garden centres are not
Tesco and Sainsbury's are allowed to sell clothes off the rail - but small clothes shops are not
the Excel centre get paid to produce a capital expenditure white elephant
but the revenue cost (staff) is ignored
THe Navy have warships built by BAE but no maintenance engineers

the whole procurement system in the UK is arse about face

I drove along a smart motorway under construction today
It is being made at HUGE HUGE expense to meet a need that should never have existed
ans certainly does not at the moment (I drove long in cruise control)

Big Ticket items make ministers happy
small ticket items make the system work

The article I read Louise said it was specifically ICU nurses they are short of for nightingale - which is curious as the things I read initially said that they weren't going to use it for ICU.... it was for the less sick patients. But then the screening system 111 is operating seemingly means they are left at home.
But then they also decided they needed ventilators at nightingale- when they initially said it wasn't going to have ventilated patients ...... I get that it is a ever changing situation.
It maybe in the planning they just looked at nurses required generally, not thinking about specific skill sets...... or it maybe that they didn't realise how many staff would be off sick?

Listening - our local garden centres are open - one doe like plants of the week on Facebook - I gather you call and order - given a pick up time slot and "bay"and all happens while socially distanced.
The other you call up and tell them what you want /need , order over the phone and they deliver.

Some businesses are keeping going - quite imaginatively. Obviously they are maybe having a dip in revenue - but if they can struggle through - they will come out the other side.

www.hillier.co.uk/
www.haskins.co.uk/
www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley/plan-your-visit/shopping-eating/wisley-plant-centre

and yet aldi allow customers to browse

There are lots of local businesses that are actually doing better around us - the farm shops , the butchers, the bakeries.... and even the local stationary store is doing a great job of delivering and people are enjoying shopping locally ..... there is a real sense of community. I hope it stays that way - people keep to the shopping patterns.

BCF - you wrote: "this Calendar year" is until 31 Dec 2020

So, next calendar year is January - December 2021?

Later, Prof Shattock of Imperial said he hopes there will be a vaccine 'before the end of the year' for frontline staff, though it wouldn't be rolled out 'around the world' until next year.

End of this year seems awfully soon, that's all; within 12 months would be by mid-April 2021; 'next calendar year' to me means 'by the end of December 2021' .

mrsl
I'd like to shop local at the pub and meet my friends
I'd like to shop local and support charities by buying second hand clothes
I'd like to shop local by watching a local band in a local small venue
I can't

The Graun has picked up on the veg pickers issue ...
the fact that the farmers do not want the festival crew
even though they are fit and itinerant
but unwilling to pay rent on shitty caravans and buy price gouged food (as the Romanians and Bulgarians have to)

nb
the festival crew number around 20,000 people who are used to hard work and long hours
but they know UK employment law
no wonder fruit farmers do not want them

LOL, wrt that misspelled Pennsylvania MAGA moron (photo, Tue 21-Apr-20 17:13:07, thanks to DGR)

Death it may well be we can only hope

Well I guess listening I - along with a whole lot of people are happy to adapt in the hope others don't die in-necessarily- you have made it perfectly clear that you would happily throw large swathes of the population under the coronavirus bus... it does make you quite closely aligned in attitude to lots of Tories - just a different way if disadvantaging people.

In other news, Gav's much touted 'it's OK, you can do you exams in Autumn' plan is going tits up, predictably:

www.theguardian.com/education/2020/apr/22/schools-and-exam-boards-undermine-promise-to-pupils-of-september-tests

That's putting aside the worry I had that another lockdown would put paid to the anyway.

If you want a piss up in a brewery, don't call the DfE.

'next calendar year' to me means 'by the end of December 2021'

Yep, to me too

We were told here that vaccination 2021 is possible for vulnerable groups if all goes well,
but sounded like only a possibility not a probability

The UK is capable of developing the first vaccine in the world
... and the govt is capable of cocking up the vaccination program so that Brits receive it last
e.g. rollout by Capita

I'd like to shop local and support charities by buying second hand clothes

Shop locally yes. Buying second hand clothes - no. I like to buy the best quality I can afford and then wear them until they drop to ribbons. The exception is kiddies clothes which can be outgrown quickly, in that case they can be recirculated around your friends and even then they should last a few years.

Whitty here is just ruling out a vaccine in 2020
(statement of the bleeding obvious)

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-daily-deaths-in-uk-has-flattened-but-there-will-be-no-sudden-fall-away-in-cases-11977217

The UK is going to have to live with some form of "socially disruptive measures" for at least the rest of the year,
England's chief medical officer has said.

Speaking at the daily government coronavirus briefing on Wednesday, Chris Whitty explained that
an exit from the lockdown and social distance measures imposed since the outbreak required a "highly effective vaccine and/or highly effective drugs".

The chance of having both by the end of this year was "incredibly small"
and until then the UK would need to rely on disruptive social distancing measures, he said.