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

I've been a fan of UBI for years. Makes sense to me.

I agree with Mistigri. But this also calls for a review of the lockdown measures. If the areas where the virus spread are care home, barracks etc... then surely what we should see is those groups being in lockdown and not the entire population??

I’ve been read7g the news today with a feeling of ‘I knew it, I knew it!’ mixed the profound sadness that I am.
ONS is now saying that the number of deaths in the U.K. is actually 75% higher than reported and that half of the deaths happen in care home.
This is confirming some earlier comments that the U.K. is one of the most affected countries in the EU. And the fact we are leaving our elderly died in care home with no (health) care.
I’ve noticed the trend that journals now report the number of HOSPITAL deaths rather than deaths. And there are more and more articles about the collaterals of the lockdown - the impact on health due to cancelled surgeries etc..., the economic impact as 1/4 (Only??) of businesses have closed and 2 millions people are projected to become unemployed etc....

None of it is surprising. I’m just deeply sad about it. There are some Very bleak times in front of us. And I wish there had been some discussion about all of those impact in the first place (I include the WHO in that too, not just at the level of the government and the population/country)

Care homes: underestimation or suppression?

Pondering cock up vs conspiracy - and certainly it turns out that the CQC has no centralised system for collating deaths across the care sector - which has been challenged and questioned before in a different context.

But equally, it does seem like there are attempts to minimise. One hospital trust is reported today not to require covid as a cause of death - pneumonia or community acquired pneumonia is acceptable. This has been challenged by the Good Law Project. (See goodlawproject.org) And a whistleblower is reported to have told C4 News that some medics are listing long term conditions such as dementia even if covid was suspected.

I think the biggest issue is why are those people not hospital.... if they died for respiratory failure in a care home, they mist have been really poorly.
Bar all the discussion about not treating the elderly because you need to make a choice in who to save... What sort of care have they been given at the end of their life? We are talking palliative care there. Is it even there?
I remember the outcry at France allegedly using some ‘euthanasia drug’ in care homes to make people more confortable. What have we done???

And of course, why are they not been tested
(Well I know the answer to that one. The government bought unreliable tests that are now sat in a warehouse gathering dust instead. £2millions wasted.....)

Maybe the govt have decided to channel their inner MN "This too shall pass" rather than trust the science to test?

42% say they are dealing with suspected covid-19 cases. Yesterday the government said just 15% of homes had reported a case.
I saw a care home manager interviewed yesterday. Said they had 3 residents come down with symptoms, all tested but only one positive. Her suspicion was that the tests weren't that accurate. And she wasn't the only one questioning the accuracy too.

What sort of care have they been given at the end of their life? We are talking palliative care there. Is it even there?

This is a huge issue generally. Perhaps, when the immediate crisis has passed this will be looked at?

Yesterday, I happened upon a video someone posted on FB in March sometime, by a French doctor working in China. He clearly said that they used scans as well as tests to identify CV cases, because the effects on the lungs are so clearly identifiable but the tests were agreed to have a high failure rate.

We are not going to be the same country coming out of this. :-(

Just a thought: Johnson has benefited from Brexit being a "sacred cow to be defended at any cost". However if that cow is dead and gone, then what is left but to focus on actual Government policy?

I am wondering how loyal a lot of his voters are feeling at the moment. Especially if they have relatives in hospitals or care homes.

There’s some evidence that testing is only 70% accurate.

But as Professor Woodcock points out, if the current tests can only detect the presence of the virus 70 per cent of the time, “we have a lot of patients waiting for a repeat virus testing/diagnosis”.

www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-how-reliable-are-the-uks-coronavirus-tests

And questionmarknow they've wasted £16,000,000 on tests that don’t work. I thought they sounded too good to be true when it was announced.

Last month, Boris Johnson said they had the potential to be ‘a total game changer’, and said they would be ‘as simple as a pregnancy test’.

metro.co.uk/2020/04/16/uk-spent-16000000-coronavirus-tests-didnt-work-12567736/

Yes, rebranding the VE day celebration as the Free from Covid-19 day, is exactly the sort of thing they will try. Except - if France hasn't eased the restrictions and our death rate is still very high, it might not be politic to do so.

Don't forget what Johnson wants is to stay PM and to try to become a latter day Churchill. He ought to remember that Churchill got booted out after a Labour landslide, when the Labour party had been written off a few years earlier.

As far as I can see there are only 3 ways out of lockdown

1. herd immunity - this does not seem to be possible - studies from wuhan are showing only 2-3% of the population have antibodies and 60-80% is needed for herd immunity
2. vaccine - a way off
3. mass testing with contact tracing and strictly enforced isolation

We did not sort out mass testing when we needed to (despite strong advice from the WHO) and now we are stuck. I remember a month ago all the tory bots repeating "what good would it do to test anyway?"

Agreed on the care home crisis, absolute disaster, and so predictable

I reiterate my observations from the other day - now being reported in the media - that people are dying in the community without testing and without medical help. Cardiac arrests in the community are at least double, triple the usual number. COVID or non COVID patients not seeking help for serious illness - not sure - probably both.

I don't feel any of our numbers are even worth pouring over they are such an underestimation. Looking at excess deaths might be the only way to get an idea of what's going on.

Hospitals are "coping" though it's disingenuous to say we have excess capacity. My hospital has 180% ITU occupancy - we have room for more because we've cancelled everything - this is not a normal situation.

I fear the british version of "coping" is "we are happy to tolerate lots of people dying and won't complain".

What a mess.

On nights this weekend wish me luck!

False positives are high with the swabs, the alveolar lavage is more accurate from intubated patients
In hospital we often retest 2-3 times before getting a positive

SORRY - false NEGATIVES are common
Not false positives

I admit that my assumption is that we will cycle in and out of milder and milder lockdowns for about a year (the Covid legislation runs out next May)
So businesses will start back up - with social distancing - in a few weeks
Allocate testing resources to the NHS and care homes

Schools back at Half term on restricted syllabus with no 'attendance' stats collected

With the absolute provio that with increased testing, Lockdown can return at 24 hour notice if the curve starts to rise.

That way people can make a living and will be responsible for their own outcomes
and there will be tax revenue to pay for the vulnerable.

Personally I'll be back on aeroplanes the day I'm allowed to (for family reasons) but I accept that the fares will be higher and the flights fewer.

squid
I reiterate my observations from the other day - now being reported in the media - that people are dying in the community without testing and without medical help
Not just of Covid .... heart attacks and strokes are killing people who "do not want to bother the doctors" .... huge numbers of council OAP flats round here .... deaths most days ....

THe only data set I'm looking at are the ONS death certificates

Yes I think a lot of people are taking "Stay at home, protect the NHS" in entirely the wrong way

Perhaps I am cynical (I am ) but:

Re the irony of the Stay Home wrappings on all newspapers today:

It's window dressing!

They want us all to be exposed, just in slow numbers that the NHS can cope with.
There will be no herd immunity otherwise.
The vaccine is too far off - the economy wont last that long.

So, Govt message:
yes, buy your newspaper, as We are 'seen' to be saying the right thing.

And the people standing cheek by jowl on Westminster Bridge, applauding the NHS (then potentially clogging up beds 14 days later)

Argh. Need more coffee, I think!

I've been a fan of UBI for years. Makes sense to me.

Wrong colour government to introduce such a dangerous socialist policy, it will probably be us disabled that bail the country out again, I'm sure I just about could humanly exist on less, because the thought of the wealthy having to stump up more taxes for the economy after all this is just to hard to swallow

B Johnson needs to go. He is where he is entirely through his own foolishness, and is of no practical use at a time when the country needs leadership.

My choice for replacement; Jeremy Hunt.
He came 2nd in the Leadership ballot, and the last thing we need is another Tory leadership contest.
He also for good or worse, probably has a better understanding of the NHS than any other minister, senior Tory.

I believe that it was Hunt alone who was highlighting Government failings at the start of this pandemic.

Boris is a busted flush and this is not the time to accommodate his idiosyncrasies.

I am as well, Old Lace. If there's anything the past 3.5 years have taught me, it's that this particular group of people now in power have come a long, long way spouting crowd-pleasing slogans and then not showing the slightest interest in planning to deliver a materially positive outcomes for the crowd. It doesn't fill me with confidence.

Now we're watching the chickens coming home to roost at a time Johnson and Cummings didn't expect and hadn't planned any messaging for. The EU can't be blamed for this the way they were planning for the Brexit fallout. And they must be thinking of the way they successfully blamed the entire global credit crunch on Labour, too. Some part of them must be remembering that as successfully as the credit crunch crisis was navigated at the time, the outcome was still the final push to convince a lot of voters to give Cameron a shot.

Flights abroad for holidays should be banned until we have a vaccine and the COVID threat level indeed is more at the "very bad flu" level

Business flights should be banned unless they can be justified as being necessary not just convenient

In any case, more countries may insist on 14 days quarantine for new arrivals - paid for by the fliers - and comprehensive insurance to cover all costs
in which case only the very wealthy would be allowed in

Yes, countries like Italy rely on tourism - but I expect until people have been vaccainated and there is herd immunity, that Italy won't risk a rerun of their earlier catastrophe

I would accept flights abroad being restricted. I do hope there will be some provision giving to those of us who have our entire families overseas, though. For some of us a "holiday" is not just a jaunt for sun & sand.

Banning flights is counter productive - the planes are in the air anyway carrying freight and moving people around the world for work.
Seeing family is not a 'holiday'.

The stupid stuff is that huge crowd clapping for carers in central London last night.

Waiting for the whole world to be vaccinated is a fools errand and not an option for any country.