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

Let's play a game. Match the news to the film.

I'll start.

A lot of countries don't start formal schooling until the age of six, so we could delay until then. I still think we should have nurseries, perhaps more on a part time basis, because mixing and being sociable is important for personal development.

Maybe when this is over, we could seriously look at the exam system. If we expect young people to stay in education or training until 18 then why do we need a big set of exams at 16? Let's look towards overhauling the whole GCSE/A level system - at 16 too many subjects studied superficially, at 18 too narrow a focus for many.

Late pmk

SInga EU citizens living in the UK are NOT endangering lives by their choice to emigrate

Neither am I, or other Brits, by emigrating to an EU country

We are only endangering lives if we demand the special privilege to fly abroad

It would be like someone in lockdown demanding the special privilege of hosting a party for hundreds of people
Even after lockdown, this would probably be banned until there is a vaccine

• Merkel has warned that large gatherings will remain banned for the forseeable future, even as she announced relaxing of other measures to start

I've 2 friends who live in S England, but his very elderly parents live in Scotland

They accept this distance was their choice and have rightly not attempted to travel to see them during lockdown
With parents frail and in their late 80s, these 6 weeks lockdown might indeed mean they have missed their chance to see one or both alive again.
They certainly worry about shopping, falls etc

The old conservative practice is dead, because this is an emergency
This will NOT take 10 years of testing - unless there are unforeseen problems in actually finding an effective vaccine

It all comes back to cost doesnt it? How much are you happy to pay for a vaccine that might allow everyone' life to return to normal? Or might save some life?
What do you think is acceptable? a risk of having 1%, 5%, 10% of people who receive the vaccine who are at risk of long term issue/disability? How many deaths from the vaccine will be OK to accept to 'save life'? What sort of help and support will the people who would be getting long term ill effect from the vaccine get? PIP anyone?

The issue is that, wo proper testing, we wont have the answer to that.
Be assured that when the vaccine for the swine flu came out, pharmaceutical compamy said it was safe and tested. Except... it wasnt.
Have a look a medical research and see how flawed it is in the first place.
link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00192-017-3389-1
As much as 90% of the published medical information is flawed according to John Ioannidis, one of the true experts on credibility of medical research [1], and former BMJ editor-in-chief, Richard Smith, has claimed that “most of what is published in journals is just plain wrong or nonsense.”

So can we really trust a pharmaceutical company to create a new vaccine in less than half the time it normally takes?

Add to that the immense trust and optimism on what science can do to solve the current issue and you have the perfect storm to see something being used that is just not good enough.
Its not different that the crap tests the UK has bought from China. They werent trailed and checked. I'd rather avoid that with a vaccine.

A lot of countries don't start formal schooling until the age of six
Finland for one (age 7), with some of the best literacy rates in the world. Many of the teachers have MSc in education.

Even changing intake to Jan to Dec instead of from Sept to Aug would mean that the youngest child in reception would turn 5 within 4 months of starting. How is it possible that it makes sense to have a child in reception waiting an entire year to turn 5 and yet be in the same classroom as someone who just turned 5 on the same starting day? Every bit of research says this is detrimental to attainment and yet it continues. Crazy.

The whole 'big end of the school year' exam was tried in Canada and then stopped. Felt not to be sufficiently indicative of abilities and too heavily reliant on rote learning. Instead, grades are based on smaller 'tests' and coursework throughout the year. However, given that the big overhaul of GCSE's just happened under Gove and Cummings a few years ago, can't see that changing anytime soon.

I always suspected that the changes were revenge against the thicker bullies who made Gove's life miserable at school and he felt his genius hadn't been sufficiently differentiated or appreciated at the time.

Knowing what I know about Gove's schooldays that last paragraph isn't true. He certainly had his own motivations : but based more on what he did get at school, rather than what he didn't.

Anyone at school in Scotland in the late 80s recognises the origin of most of his 'reforms'.

I'm actually not convinced we will see repeated lockdowns because of the human cost of a lockdown. Even if every single country actually introduce a universal wage.
Because to put it simply, we still need to eat, we still need to clothes ourselves, repair homes etc...
None of that can hapen in isolation.
And of course, all that lockdown needs to be funded somehow. People will not have a bottomless savings they can dip into for the next 3 years or whatever. Same with companies (the 3/4 that are still open - some of which havent packed up yet just to be able to give the furloungh money to their employees. The other 1/4 have already closed shop)

Piggywashed but it doesn't sound as though you're not necessarily disputing that he universalised the personal with the reforms. And I wasn't suggesting that he didn't do well at school. Rather I was suggesting that there wasn't enough difference for him between what he attained and what others attained.

Oh yes ,he definitely did do that.

John Ioannidis is NOT a "true expert" on medical research

He is a highly controversial contrarian, who doesn't believe that other people are capable of good research

The good points he sometimes raises are drowned out by the crap he sometimes spouts -which is then leaped on by those against vaccination etc

In the coronavirus crisis he has been minimising the danger and the casualties of Coronavirus
and has been a hindrance, not a help

"People will not have a bottomless savings they can dip into for the next 3 years or whatever. Same with companies"

If ending lockdown means we once again face exponential growth and ¼ or ½ million cases, then the economy will stop anyway

People will not go to work, or send their kids to school, if there are a large number of deaths within a few months
So the economy would stop anyway, no matter how macho a minority wish to be

The govt had to shut down schools because staff and kids were staying home anyway

That is why people will take their chance on a vaccine, rather than go bust or die:

Hundreds of thousands dying quickly of COVID
vs
hundreds of thousands dying within 5 years because of a Great Depression
vs
a small number dying from an early vaccine

• and if it is only as dangerous as the worst vaccine so far, that would be a tiny risk compared to the others

It is well documented that in the 2018-2019 Spanish flu, those who locked down first and had the tightest measures after the first few cases,

were the ones who later did much better economically

It is not balancing lives vs economy; it is balancing dying one way vs dying another

We have to tread a very narrow path to avoid further catastrophe
and that means chucking out some old ideas

e.g. It could mean parents being allowed to keep kids home until age 7, if they choose,
while schools remain open for those who choose to stick with the old system - or whose job forces them to do so

There should be free educational programs on TV- more universally accessible than Tinternet - so that shielding home-schoolers have structure and material to use

It should mean that anyone in a shielded category receives a generous UBI, with no means testing, if they cannot WFH

I've no time for vaccine cynics - a tiny % of people have strong adverse affects - which pales in comparison to the lives saved.

Here's the Guardian's take on how this is chancing the way scientists are working (for the better, far more collaboratively from the sounds of it) www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/world-biggest-drug-trial-covid-19-uk

What were those idiots doing in London It's like a mass audition for the Darwin Award.

WRT future research, there is a tiny part of me wondering if this will help the summer born in each year bridge the gap in test results...

Whilst a vaccine will be needed whatever, a viable treatment will also be a game changer the mass trials just starting and whilst the Gilead drug sounds too good to be true its not a pipe dream to expect a better treatment to emerge?

I see that Rishi Sunak has just announced that the furlough scheme has been extended until the end of June. Another sign that this isn't going to be over any time soon.

www.gov.uk/government/news/chancellor-extends-furlough-scheme-to-end-of-june

They can't come out and be honest about how long lockdown will last...

There would be civil unrest.

Better treatment is a major priority,
for people with COVID now and those who will get it before any vaccine is possible

Even after a vaccine, there will always be people who cannot or will not be vaccinated,
or who still catch COVID anyway, so research into better treatment will not stop

Doctors around the world have been exchanging into about what works when and what is to be avoided

End of June is necessary, because even if measures are relaxed after 3 weeks,
it would have to be done gradually, over several weeks until the sensible maximum is reached

And of course, many businesses will have to restart gradually, probably hunt for orders,
it won't be like flicking a switch and suddenly they need all their workers again

Thanks BCF for telling the truth about Ioannidis, saves me the trouble. He's an arse of the highest order and is much hated in the biomedical community.

Pressure from large companies will also have forced their hand, like this warning,
very much "..or else we'll do this ..."

news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-airport-handlers-warn-ministers-of-10-000-jobs-axe-within-hours-11974737

The companies which dominate ground handling services at UK airports have warned that
they will begin axing 10,000 employees within hours unless ministers extend the government's emergency wage subsidy scheme.

Mship His reputation has even extended into the Maths / Physics community

• and we're too geeky to talk much with your lot !

We often don't communicate much with planet earth

• didn't mean to imply we looked down on the biomedical community !