Westminstenders: No pubs till Christmas?

[RedToothBrush]

Today the news has moved towards acknowledging covid-19 reality: Nicola Sturgeon has explicitly stated that some social distancing will carry on until the new year in all likelihood.

When Matt Hancock asked if this was true for England too, he refused to say yes but he said that Scotland was working from the same framework as England.

In case anyone does still need this spelling out, this means the outlook for the hospitality and leisure industries is bleak.

There are extremely unlikely to be many enjoying a holiday in the sun any time soon, whether it be in Devon or Spain.

We won't be celebrating birthdays in restaurants nor having a pint in the pub.

Conversations on the doorstep from a couple of metres away is as good as it gets.

That means if you can't adapt you may not survive.

To add into the mix changes to customs to those companies who are operating seems insanity. But that's a political not a scientific decision to be made.

Whether reality in this will kick in, in the next six weeks or so before EU budgetary decisions relating to an extension have to be made remains to be seen.

Until then, there is no news but covid-19.

Possibly wrong DD.

Anecdotally a third of A&E doctors in our department have been off sick with a confirmed positive covid19 test.
Surely that is higher than the community rate.
Our trust have been doing tests for staff a long time before many other trusts were as we have a large virology dept.
2 have been seriously ill (ITU) and no one I know personally has died.
I do not know an ITU doctor who has been off sick with a positive test, so my takehome is the A&E PPE is not effective.

We only wear FFP3 masks for aerosol generating procedures, in ITU they wear them all the time.

Thank you @HesterThrale and@ICouldHaveBeenAContender - both very interesting. I do think we will see a surge in people in keyworker roles wanting compensation.

I also saw Shiti Patel has jubilantly declared shoplifting is down. No one told her most shops are shut, clearly Numberwang last week should have been a lesson.

....and not one single antiterrorist attack.

Surely that is higher than the community rate.

Way way higher. About 20% of all cases in Lombardy were healthcare workers ...

David Davis is the (one of the) failed Brexit Secretaries of State

He is hard right and officially thick of mince,
known for an accidental circular firing squad during his time in the SAS TA
Age 70+ and well past his sell-by date - but never had one at 20 either

David Davies is the Tory MP for Monmouth

He is hard right too, but young, energetic and intelligent
He is the one who has been brave enough to stand up to the TRAs and support single sex spaces
but I disagree with his views on almost everything else

Davies is homophobic and a climate change denier. In other words he's a pretty standard issue brexiter.

squid4
Its a no brainer that people having high level repeated exposure to the ill are much, much more likely to pick up an infection than those of us walking in the park.
The Southampton ventilator hoods look good - but probably too late for this pandemic.

What would be the economics of designing them inside and outside the EU - testing wise
would such innovation stay in this country ?

DGR
There was a case in New Scientist years ago of a naturally chimeric person whose kidneys were genetically different, doubling their transplant options !!!

People with genetically different skin and blood to core organs is more common than many transplant teams admit - and affects success rates

"Hard right" covers it
He just has that one good point of standing up to the TRAs
and he is unusual in being intelligent and quite knowledgeable - but often wrong !

Hard left or hard right views are as damaging as extreme religious views in causing otherwise decent, intelligent people to believe in some batshit things

COVID can be even more disastrous in certain emerging and developing countries, with inadequate health services
and / or led by dictators or populists

Lockdown may not be be feasible in many such countries, but neither is ignoring COVID

e.g. In Brazil, where the far right leader Bolsonaro mocks COVID as a threat and has sacked his own health minister
There have been several reports of far higher deaths in cities like Manaus (pop 2.2 million) than the official toll, with mass graves being dug:

go.mumsnet.com/?xs=1&id=470X1554755&url=www.npr.org/sections/coronavirus-live-updates/2020/04/23/842802500/living-through-a-nightmare-brazil-s-manaus-digs-a-mass-grave-as-deaths-mount

Video footage has appeared online showing the collapse of Manaus' burial services and public hospitals.
In one, corpses lie on beds in a hospital alongside live patients undergoing treatment.
Another shows a line of vans waiting to deliver bodies for burial at the Nossa Senhora Aparecida cemetery.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/lula-bolsonaro-brazil-to-slaughterhouse-covid-19-coronavirus

How do we get the media to do some work on the fact that the WTO is hamstrung and will not in any way protect the UK after Brexit ?

Is there a way to manufacture a scandal that will get the issue into the consciousness of the tabloids
in time to change the path we are on ?

Well, according to the suit bought by the Dr's, the dichotomy between WHO guidance and what the govt has provided NHS with wrt PPE looks like a goer.

And the only people who manufactured that are the govt themselves!

It is quite obvious you shouldn't use PPE more than once by anyone's standards.

As an aside it's why I don't think the public should be encouraged to wear masks - many don't understand how to use them or clean them regularly enough. Behavioural change on that scale isn't going to happen when we can't even tell people how to wash their hands thoroughly without a backlash!

Any new drug (for treatment) or vaccine for COVID would require approval to be sold / used widely in the USA (FDA), the EU (EMA) and Japan (PMDA).

From 1 January, unless the Brexit transition period is extended, the UK will need to develop its own successor to EMA

.... Um, anyone know if we've even started ?
Also, the necessary people to staff that agency may well be very busy atm

I expect that approval any new drug or vaccine that had already been proved beneficial would be a v rapid formality around the world,

but someone in the UK would still need to sign it off

Hancock at a pinch ?

However, he can't sign off every new drug or gadget for every possible other disease or injury
We need a UKMA ... or brilliant idea, why not have an extension so we can still use EMA

.... the extension could be another Schlong ......

Did I hear correctly on the news? That WHO says there is no evidence that you develop immunity after you've had the virus? Can any Westminstender virologists comment?

I gather the MHRA (Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency) would have to take on the approval role if we don't get a Brexit extension

In practice, they'd probably just shadow the EMA and automatically approve anything the EMA does
but maybe piss around a few days to pretend otherwise

DrBlackbird After all that you and SongsOfExperience have suffered, it would be infuriating not to then at least enjoy immunity for a year or two

I've read scientists saying you probably would be immune,
but then iirc someone from PHE has said it's possible to catch COVID twice

This seems to be the WHO pushing back against the idea of immunity passports, because the science is not strong enough atm

https://www.who.int/news-room/commentaries/detail/immunity-passports-in-the-context-of-covid-19

Some governments have suggested that the detection of antibodies to the SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, could serve as the basis for an “immunity passport” or “risk-free certificate” that would enable individuals to travel or to return to work assuming that they are protected against re-infection.

There is currently no evidence that people who have recovered from COVID-19 and have antibodies are protected from a second infection.

In practice, they'd probably just shadow the EMA and automatically approve anything the EMA does.

Wouldn't that be a win for the Brexiters? Get the EU to do the work and pay for it, and then rubber stamp the results? It makes a bit of a mockery of taking back control, but since the Brexiters could never tell us what they objected to, they probably won't notice.

Pmk

Did I hear correctly on the news? That WHO says there is no evidence that you develop immunity after you've had the virus? Can any Westminstender virologists comment?

I'm no virologist but you have to look at the context of that comment, which was a discussion of states introducing "immunity certificates" or some such nonsense.

PMK
Following from afar.