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

The Guardian today talked about HIV thirty years ago and how there was promising talk of a vaccine then, which has still not materialised.

I myself would prefer good testing and effective treatments.

Tomorrow's front pages:

Thanks, BCF. I'm personally not banking on one anytime soon.

HIV is far more complicated and better protected

As posted upthread, the COVID virus is regarded as comparatively straightforward to develop for
It had better be - it is one hell of a lot easier to catch

From Merkel:

Massive test program being ramped up even further.
Second lockdown could happen any time, if testing reveals exponential growth restarting

At least 5 public health staff per 20,000 people must be available to track cases.

(For Germany's 83 million pop, that's over 20,000 trackers.
There have been ads recruiting the extra staff for at least 5 weeks now)

Merkel also announced the establishment of 105 support teams to help district authorities in this contact tracing work.

As posted upthread, the COVID virus is regarded as comparatively straightforward to develop for It had better be - it is one hell of a lot easier to catch

Not according to Professor Roper who worked on the SARS vaccine, or Professor Frazer who helped develop the HPV vaccine.

nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/will-there-be-a-coronavirus-vaccine-maybe-not.html

www.abc.net.au/news/health/2020-04-17/coronavirus-vaccine-ian-frazer/12146616

We will see.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/revealed-private-firm-running-uk-ppe-stockpile-was-sold-in-middle-of-pandemic
Revealed: Private firm running UK PPE stockpile was sold in middle of pandemic
Movianto was also involved in legal disputes with firm that built warehouse to store equipment

So the UK's emergency stockpile for a pandemic was outsourced to a private company

But the saga is likely to put a spotlight on the UK government’s decision to outsource the management of the emergency stockpile. In three years, the stockpile appears to have been stored in three different warehouses. Meanwhile, management of the stock has been passed from a German–owned multinational to an American one.

In the coming months the custody of the UK’s emergency stockpile of PPE will be passed on to a family-run business based in suburban Paris.

I do not know where to start with comment about national security nor sovereignity on this cluster fuck.

For a government so seemingly obsessed with security and sovereignity, they really don't half outlook this where it suits them.

Tatiana - that seemed to be the thrust of the Guardian's comments. They thought an HIV vaccine would be relatively straightforward; for whatever reason, it hasn't been.

However, preventative measures and effective treatments have taken away the absolute fear that there was 30 years ago.

If we don't believe a vaccine is viable then the alternative is pretty grim.

The only other exit strategies are knowledge of disease to manage it better via drugs (which won't protect a lot of those with other health conditions) or the herd immunity strategy - which also has some question marks over it.

Both alternatives have lots of deaths associated with them.

The vaccine scenario is much more pleasant to think about. As long as you pretend not to think about timescales and what that means for those with serious health issues for the next 18 months.

It's this normalcy bias thing raising its head again.

I do not know where to start with comment about national security nor sovereignity on this cluster fuck.

What you need, is to consult Cendrillon on another thread, who says that it was initially privatised under Labour.

To my mind the fact that Labour made a mess a decade and a half ago, does not mean that continuing to make a mess is an acceptable policy. Two wrongs don't make a right.

God, no, don't consult the singing Cinderella.
Last time I saw her, the poor thing had been reduced to spotting typos in posts and suggesting they were indicative of poor grammar.

You realise that this statement was made tongue in cheek?

I don't give a fuck who privatised it!

It boils my piss when people think I'm a raging Labourite. I'm not. I'm well aware of how the mess we are in owes it's roots to all the major parties in some form.

The fact that no one has questioned it and thought wtf in the past 10 years is as bad as the original decision to privatise.

It only highlights the long term failings of political leadership and decision make in the UK.

I don't "believe" in a vaccine, other than that I have some trust in the judgement of the professionals actually working in the field now

The whole world is going full out for a COVID vaccination, money no object,
whereas there was much less interest in the others mentioned:

SARS didn't really kill people in the West
Ditto MERS
HIV had the rep as the "gay disease"

A vaccine is unlikely to be rolled out even to vulnerable groups before late 2021 and that's if all goes well

So we'll have thousands more deaths, social distancing & economic depression until then
Or hundreds of thousands more deaths & economic depression - & civil disorder

If a vaccine turns out to be much more difficult than expected, then we are screwed

It would be such a disaster that it's difficult to plan or discuss much without raising the MN "scaremonger" klaxon

If the 2nd wave is much worse than the first - as in the 1918/19 pandemic - and has a 3rd wave like then, we are screwed further

We are screwed if additionally the preliminary reports are correct about survivors of serious bouts suffering long term damage to lungs and fatigue
and if people can catch it again

The White House Has Erected a Blockade Stopping States and Hospitals From Getting Coronavirus PPE

A war against all states, or just those run by Democrats ?
Insanity either wy

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/hospitals-face-a-white-house-blockade-for-coronavirus-ppe.html

At the very least, federal authorities have made governors and hospital executives all around the country operate in fear that shipments of necessary supplies will be seized along the way.

In a time of pandemic, having evacuated federal responsibility,
the White House is functionally waging a war against state leadership and the initiative of local hospitals to secure what they need to provide sufficient treatment.

Yesterday, a letter published by the New England Journal of Medicine highlighted the extraordinary measures that had to be taken to secure the delivery into Massachusetts of equipment that had been bought and paid for.

If a vaccine turns out to be much more difficult than expected, then we are screwed

We are getting back to the territory that we visited about three years ago, of Brexit being like the Black Death. This killed of something like a 1/3 of the European population but the end result was that those who survived were more robust health wise, and it's also supposed to have killed of the feudal system.

I think we need a multi pronged approach. There does need to be more research into why some people are getting relatively, and I stress relatively mild, doses, and some not. I have heard of one couple with one partner hospitalised but the other getting over it relatively quickly. I don't know about their underlying health or whether that was a factor.

This was interesting today - nicotine may offer some protection against it.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/22/french-study-suggests-smokers-at-lower-risk-of-getting-coronavirus

So may the BCG vaccine

And all Scandinavian countries, even Sweden, seem to have far fewer deaths than N & W European countries that have similar strategies

Just had a peek at kier starmer on PMQs. I am looking forward to seeing him with Boris Johnson. Also wondering when this will happen?

• after sick leave has been extended ?
• before paternity leave?
• after extended paternity leave?

My bets are he will magically reappear at just the point the tide turns against lockdown - you can see it happening already.

Then he will play the hero and start gradual release to much cheer and pomp. I reckon around the time of the next review.

The problem with that is, of course, its hard to put a spin on high death rates.

There's a growing number of people who have had enough of lockdown. I get it, it's shit. It's mentally, physically and economically a nightmare for many people. Hell, I've had to slap myself round the face metaphorically when reading certain articles pro ending lockdown sooner rather than later and remind myself that if we fuck this up, people will die. And I'm by no means in a terrible situation due to lockdown (ie, not stuck with an abuser, generally good mental health, financially surviving for now etc).

But I want the lifting of restrictions done in a safe manner that will hopefully not cost lives, rather than used as political capital.

Peregrina
Yes, of course.

One thing I can guarantee , having read Caroline Criado Perez's book, is that they will invest heavily into research as to why more men get it than women. If it were the other way round, not so much. And all that energy might result in quicker scientific discovery, ironically.

They may well not invest quite so heavily in untangling the apparent BME link of course

There is some disagreement among virologists and immunology specialists, but I think the disagreement is at least partly about what is a "good vaccine".

A coronavirus isn't going to be like a measles vaccine that you receive as a child and that protects you for life. It may be more like a flu vaccine that you have to get every year and which doesn't protect you 100%. But I am reasonably confident given the number of candidates and the amount of money being spent on the problem that there will be a vaccine.

There's a Chinese vaccine entering trials now, made by a company which had a very promising SARS candidate vaccine, which has produced a good immune response in primates. You can check out the phase 1 clinical trial protocol already on the clinicialtrials.gov site.

It's based on old well-known technology so presumably scaleable. I have to go to work now but the vaccine specialist Florian Krammer has a short Twitter thread about it for anyone interested.

I don't know, this is an honestly naïve question rather than a loaded one but how much energy has been put into trying to find an HIV vaccine?

It's like when people say there is no cure for the common cold : not many scientists are looking for one, for obvious reasons.

Disclaimer : I d not think HIV/AIDS is like the common cold!

I should clarify that it's the SARS-CoV-2 vaccine that has produced a good immune response in primates.