Westminstenders: Following the EU lead

[RedToothBrush]

Coronavirus poses a particularly Irish shaped question. How the UK responds to Irish plans for ending lockdown and whether Arlene continues to back an all Ireland plan will be fascinating to watch and see justified regardless of which way we go.

The UK for all its new found independence is looking very closely to the success / failure of EU strategies before making our own plan public. Mainly because we've yet to write one.

Johnson hasn't led much. He's delegated. Yet he gets all the praise for doing the sum total of fuck all and never being the bad guy. There always another fall guy to blame.

Economically we are stuffed and promises of a very quick bounce back don't look likely based on public confidence and willingness to return to places like pubs restaurants and shops.

Our ability to adapt to new conditions at short notice has been tested and businesses can not afford to do this again soon.

This is the background to which we go into talks. Both sides need an extension to serve their best interests. Johnson is determined to cut our nose of to spite our face for the sake of his legacy and to keep those paying the back handers and dodging tax happy.

@JeSuisPoulet

Appreciation is nice. I would struggle to hear Tories clapping, this isn't a tory city so I appreciate it
NHS workers absolutely don't need food or gifts when we have secure jobs and so many are struggling
We havehad many PPE donations from companies and schools which has kept our heads above water and are we are very grateful for that
I do not consider myself underpaid, care workers certainly are

My fear about the home online tests is that
people will swab in their mouth or a little bit up one nostril
send it off
get a clear result because they did the test wrong
and think they have carte blanche
and the government will use that dodgy data to release lockdown in the areas it is still needed

squid
That divide the task up approach sounds eminently sensible

Gove doesn't sound Scottish to me.
At all.
And I speak as someone whose middle class Edinburgh accent has faded over the decades.

John Smith was a classic example of the "trusted" accent referred to, I think.
In the current crop, it would have to be Alyn Smith ,

Yes @ListeningQuietly even done by an experienced nurse the swab will give a false negative in 30% of covid cases

Many of our patients are treated as "presumed covid" due to the clinical picture and have 3 or 4 tests until one finally comes positive

Testing with bronchialalveolar lavage (which we do on intubated patients) has a higher hit rate - think the virus is easier to detect lower down the resp tract

Oops, thread moved on while I spent a pleasant moment listening to random Scottish people, including Dr Finlay...
When I was a student, there was a doctor often interviewed on Radio 4, who had just the accent I think people trust. Can't remember who he was, but he sounded a bit like this former head of the BMA (at 1.05 mins)

Listening- maybe the majority of people don't realise the damage to small businesses , especially in the hospitality industry...... but quite a few people do. It's something DH and I talk about a lot.
Our fav pubs, coffee shop (being NZ'wrs we're addicted to good coffee) . Friends I have spoken to over lockdown are also painfully aware.

But if they were able to re-open - we wouldn't go.... not at the moment anyway, and I can't see that happening for months.

On the other hand - some businesses have transformed themselves amazingly. A pub in the next village that doesn't have a village store, or farm shop , has become just that. They do vege boxes, are baking bread , preparing ready meals, and Thursday night they do fish and chips. From what I understand you ring the day before , book your order, pre pay and they give you a time slot to pick up. DH is desperate to have some from them - but can never get through to place an order.

As for festivals - although I am incredibly sad, that they are ones that will go under - they just can't be contemplated as those will be a hotbed if transmission.

On another note - I will be watching the numbers very carefully at the beginning of next week, as Friday was high again (mid 700's) and yesterday was mid 600's, and Saturday/Sunday are generally days that are under reported , with Monday/Tuesday Wednesday picking up that slack.

mrsl
I stopped watching the daily numbers ages ago.
The only ones worth trusting are the ONS weekly.

The demographics of festivals and the demographics of COVID have little crossover
if there are not organised events then we will be back to the rave scene of 25 years ago
which is not a good thing

Gove is an Aberdonian foundling who was having his head shoved down the bogs at the local school when he was rescued and sent to Hogwarts by posh new parents.

BJ meanwhile has no shame. His plans put in place in case he died are what is done whenever the PM gets on a plane.

"They believe that the move out of lockdown requires a local approach, treating Covid as 100s and 1000s of separate outbreaks rather than one large one: identifying people with Covid 19 in a community and tracing their contacts. Need to do this linking GPs, strong community organisations and volunteers"
This is what I said about a week ago - it needs to be broken up along NHS trust lines (I'd put in road blocks to ensure) so that we can localise it and trace with capacity for all hospitals known. IMO we should have done this far earlier, but I'm glad some sensible ideas are surfacing.

@squid I hope you aren't offended by my posts on virtue clapping, I'm in no way digging at NHS or the vital PPE supplied by well wishers

BCF and Squid with your comments about test, track and trace not being in place and missing results / testing kits this is a thread I think you would be interested in.

twitter.com/jneill/status/1256897439921049605

James Neill -
Face with medical mask
#ProtectTheNHS -
Flag of European Union
Flag of Ireland
Flag of United Kingdom
@jneill
The case of the missing Negatives!

On 1st April Government stopped reporting the number of negative Covid-19 tests.

Why?
A thread...

Let's just check the background: they'd been regularly publishing negative results up until 31st March.

Compare 1st April to 31 March 1/

And here's the page where the test data is published.
The General Notes says negative test results are published daily.

"Data on UK positive and negative tests and data on deaths is updated on this page daily at 2pm or shortly after."

gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-information-for-the-public 2/

So what else happened at the end of March?

Answer: they started Pillar 2 testing.

Pillar 2 tests are mass posted out to households, or undertaken by satellite test centres, and then later returned, checked and analysed by non-NHS/PHE labs. 3/

According to the Gov't, Pillar 2 tests are counted as "done" when they are dispatched to households/satellites.

But they aren't done at all. A test isn't done until it returns a result.

Everyday there are a very large number of tests dispatched but without a result yet. 4/

Latest data says 354,823 Pillar-2 tests have been dispatched - but not necessarily done.

Of which 33,245 have had a positive CV19 result.

BUT we don't know how many were negative!

AND that means we don't know how many are still to be processed. i.e. how many are DONE. 5/

So, the Gov't is suppressing info about negative results to prevent public from knowing the true situation on tests.

If we knew the negative results we could check how many tests are "in the post" and not done.

We can't even check the 100k a day target.

#ClassicDom

/ends.

We aren't doing 100,000 tests a day.

That leaves us vulnerable for a second wave. And why I think we will get one, even if other countries avoid one.

And that will restrict our entry to other countries as we will remain a hot spot which hasn't got covid-19 under control.

Which might be good for those who want to isolate us from Europe and prevent a brain drain at the end of the year and cause resentment and hostility towards Europe, whilst simulataneously indulging their Darwinist sympathies and getting rid of 'drains on the state'...

... also see the United States of America who will have a similar problem and therefore might not be terribly arsed at uk travellers who are barred from Europe.

Aahhhh we're back to young people aren't affected by it - as you are......

But there are also 30 - 40years who go or who work at festivals.

I take the daily figures with a pinch of salt - but they give an indication of trend.

I don't think we have seen a decline in the excess deaths that ONS report yet? Infact they were still going up...... unless I missed one lot?

Oh and the other thing I am looking for is how they are going to swing the "we will be led by science"
As the scientists have been very clear they need to do randomised testing to find out how much is in the community- and they haven't started that yet......before they start lifting lockdown.

I am looking out for it.

@JeSuisPoulet not at all, I have kinda mixed feelings on the clapping

Yes, the test - track - trace thing should have been done months ago. Have an Infectious Diseases friend who is furious that university labs have been shut and contracts given to private firms to test who are not doing it very well by all accounts... He said they hadthe capacity to do large amounts of testing but can't now as various components will have gone off.

Didn't we have a bit of success initially with tracking and tracing?

The first two cases in York, and then those in Brighton.

There are chunks of the country that haven't been hit too badly for it to be effective, even now. It does sound more doable at a local level.

RTB
If they are not tracking the outcome of every test - positive / negative / inconclusive / not returned yet
its an absolute waste of time and money.

Time to go down the localised track and trace methods.

squid
I know people at the Crick who are working far more effectively than the PHE labs
and yes, its crazy that the dozens of University labs up and down the land are not being used

It was deliberately stopped and I can't work out why.

There were suddenly a lot of people online around that time saying "what good does testing do" "lets stop testing why bother" - loads on mumsnet

ClashCity
Yup, the York one Chinese student and her mum newly flown in they checked every building they had visited luckily not including the Campus and tested people.
It cost money but it worked.

If you look at where the cases are its clear that one size does not fit all.
Dense urban areas and areas with high BAME need more intensive track and trace than rural areas with lower density.
There is clearly a case for keeping the second homes and holiday lets closed
but those businesses in low risk areas that serve locals should be allowed to open sooner
AND THEN MONITORED

I love the fact that HMP Isle of Wight well the whole island actually is being used to test the App

Squid
I wonder if now people were told
Track and trace plus the app = allowed to get a haircut
they would be more willing ?

I assumed the track and trace stopped because the government adopted their herd immunity strategy Then by the time they realised this would be horrific they had completely lost control of the numbers, so now they have to set up track and trace on a much larger scale.

Cost I suspect Squid that and the will of the govt.
I did a module on epidemiology and infectious disease and have been completely baffled by the govt response: it has been based on mathematical modelling, inventors and IT rather than using our Public Health specialists. Community level testing is a very obvious basic response to disease. There are so many networks being completely ignored and I am not sure it does the big businesses they are roping in to help any favours (I don't think Dyson or Burberry have gained any kudos, rather lost it).

The worst of the JeSuis is that quarantine, and the basic public health measures aren't new. They are tried and tested methods going back decades or centuries even. Why aren't Johnson and Co being called out more from this, instead of the love-fest we are getting for him?

Exactly, it's not new information at all. I'm most disappointed in my peers (admittedly some didn't do the epidemiology module) who aren't posting about it at all because they vote tory because they wan't us all to "focus on the positives in life". I know many of them struggled with the critical aspects of the degree but this, surely is a time when you'd expect some concern from them at least?

it has been based on mathematical modelling, inventors and IT rather than using our Public Health specialists

I was also very surprised to see that leaked SAGE list had no public health specialists on it. Surely they should be leading. Scotland at least has brought in Devi Sridhar to their own expert group; she's been a voice of reason and caution throughout. Unfortunately for all of us she's also female, non-white, and critical of the UK goverment, so there's no way she's getting onto SAGE now.

Not to bang our own drum too much, but the University of Edinburgh got one of their research institutes certified as a test centre and is now running 1000 tests a day. It took two weeks, from what I've heard through the grapevine.

I'm not sure if I've posted this here before or if anyone else has either, but there's also been a preprint suggesting that saliva samples are actually slightly more sensitive than even properly done nasopharyngeal swabs for identifying SARS-Cov2 infected people. If PHE or whoever is in charge of the postal tests has more than two brain cells to rub together, they should be sending out dual saliva and swab tests to a random subset of applicants for comparison.

About the now infamous app

www.businessinsider.com/cybersecurity-experts-uk-government-contact-tracing-surveillance-2020-4?fbclid=IwAR0Vo3JczZim0kCZLaGBEinc-D7Kf619fOyqt1V8FK6Mv5oCunf5M-7cue0&r=US&IR=T

170 cybersecurity experts warn that British government's contact tracing app could be used to surveil people even after coronavirus has gone
"It has been reported that NHSX is discussing an approach which records centrally the de-anonymized ID of someone who is infected and also the IDs of all those with whom the infected person has been in contact," the joint letter reads. The experts argue that this data hoard could facilitate "mission creep," i.e. the government could later use the data for purposes other than tracking COVID-19.

No way they will be able to use that as a way to let people go out.

Many of our patients are treated as "presumed covid" due to the clinical picture and have 3 or 4 tests until one finally comes positive

That says a lot about how unreliable the test is.
But t also raises questions about the results we are getting from the tests sent to households. Non withstanding the issue of doing the test well enough, if there is a 30% error, what does it say about the numbers RTB posted?
Do we have about 10% of the population currently infected? Is it more due to errors in the test?