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.

I was surprised to see that very anti-media propaganda post being sent out by a friend of mine.

A few days ago, I was (mildly) surprised than a very old friend was posting that we all needed to stop criticising the government etc etc. I just bit my tongue.

I would have suspected some sort of nefarious activity, but given he's left his wife of 27 years and a few months later "accidentally" bumped into her friend from Uni that he fancied before her, and they are now "a thing", I decided on balance you can't ever really know someone ...

Listening contact tracing doesn't have to find everyone to still have a big effect
Rather like lockdown still works even though a % of people are not compliant

Germany did contact tracing and isolating right from the start, investing massive resources

As the sheer number of cases rose, we were warned the teams couldn't cover them all and were missing more and more cases
However they still covered enough to help in flattening the curve

Germany has 401 administrative areas, each with their own health officers,
so thousands of trained local civil servants who were available and trained for this kind of public health task

In addition a further 20,000 have been recruited
There were job ads here from February for contact tracing
They receive training and are then put in teams led by experienced public health and environmental health officers.

This was all part of the prep for relaxing lockdown in Germany

Drossen, the leading virologist here has warned that cases will probably start rising again with relaxation of measures
We just have to hope linearly, not exponentially and only within "acceptable limits"

Anyway, the mass testing and contact tracing gives Merkel advance warning so she can decide what actions to take

www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52506114
Coronavirus doctor's diary: Take care when you clap for carers

But when people have gone out to clap we've seen interesting little peaks in accident rates that we weren't expecting.

CDC advice on facemasks / coverings

I love the reminder: "make sure you can breathe through it"

... but this was the country where Harvard Medical School and the bleach manufacturers had to frantically issue warnings not to ingest bleach ....

red Thanks for the background on negative tests
All very murky

Assessments of previous serious epidemics have stressed how important it is that the authorities are honest about what is happening and keeps the public informed,
so that people can trust their advice / instructions.

Some leaders and governments have managed this better than others

I suppose when someone's entire career is based on hoodwinking and misleading, then they are not equipped to make the necessary changes now

From BBC live feed:

Today’s figures show testing has fallen to 76,496 tests in the 24 hours up to 09:00 BST on Sunday – a drop of more than a third on the 122,000 tests carried out on 30 April. It comes after the health secretary had previously announced that the UK had met its target of carrying out 100,000 tests-a-day by the end of April

I've just found a tracking element to FB I wasn't aware was on (on the face of it to tailor advertisements) that I thought some of you might like to disable. Check it's off via: Settings, Your Facebook Information, Off-FB activity>view.

Health communication is largely based on trust, which is why I suspect we in the UK will have a huge issue if and when a vaccination comes through. If Bozo et al keep on blaming the science/experts and manipulating data and figures for political ends this will be an ongoing concern.

Red that the number of tests has reduced again is disappointing but so utterly predictable. It’s not that they couldn’t sustain the high level, it’s that they never really got there in the first place.

What other data will they use this week to spin attention away from the high death rate?

This was amusing.

Tom Peck
@tompeck
Today I can announce I have absolutely smashed my target of getting 100,000 girlfriends a day. I have achieved this by posting a very large number of letters to girls.

mobile.twitter.com/tompeck/status/1256261579777196033

twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1256421369472057350?s=20

Hopefully this works - the link that is !

There is a question as to why tests are going down.
Seeing that the number of cases in hospital are going down, I’m wondering if this is not just the fact there aren’t enough people wo symptoms, which really, by the stage in the game is where you want to be!

There is a question as to why tests are going down.

The tests can't go down if they never reached 100,000 in the first place and just fudged the figures to make it look like they did. Actual tests done versus imaginary tests done.

Only testing people when they are ill enough to go to hospital is the bare minimum
Test kits at home are likely to keep giving false negatives

The UK needs mass testing by professionals, to examine how the infection rate is changing,
to help form govt strategy and to organise appropriate resources

Especially if lockdown is to be relaxed, to get early warning of any infection growth, instead of waiting to see how many die

People with mild symptoms should be tested too
NHS staff should be tested
Residents and staff in care homes should be tested
Inmates and staff in prisons should be tested

Like sensible governments elsewhere have managed to do for weeks

Attached is a comparison of tests / 1,000 population
The UK is in the bottom half, needs to do better

Following my recent chance to catch a documentary on Vietnam, I was intrigued to notice it still pervades US discussion (in a way the conflict in NI doesn't seem to have the British )

Dmitry Grozoubinski@DmitryOpines (fmr Australian trade negotiator)

Coming months will see a steady drip of headlines around the theme,

"United Kingdom public learns placing an EU customs border inside its territory involves quite a bit more EU and quite a bit more border than previously advertised."

Peter Foster @pmdfoster

‘Twill.

@BorisJohnson has chosen to leave chunk of the U.K. behind in special status with EU as price of buccaneers’ #brexit

• he’s just never really levelled with the wider public that that’s what he’d done.

The media in Ireland in the last week have been focusing on the length of time it takes to get a test result for community based tests. Apparently we are pretty good at the number of tests carried out but it is taking too long to get the result back for this to be of any practical use in contract tracing. One of the things they are working on is getting the results back within 3 days before the measures start relaxing on 18 May.

Much is the focus in the UK is on the number of tests - is the result timeline ok in the UK?

DG Big differences in scale

the USA had the draft
(although the richest kids could avoid that, but not most ordinary kids)

and they lost 58,000 soldiers, compared to about 1,400 British soldiers in NI (including accidents & suicides)

BorisJohnson has chosen to leave chunk of the U.K. behind in special status with EU as price of buccaneers’ #brexit
- he’s just never really levelled with the wider public that that’s what he’d done.

A significant number of Remainers worked that out. As for the Brexiters, well, let's say those of the Little Englander persuasion neither know nor care about N Ireland.

Re: testing... following on from DH's story of ending up in hospital on Friday (he's safely back home atm). My fever and cough returned last Tuesday so I greeted the paramedics on Friday wearing a mask and explained that this was may still be a Covid household.

They ended up taking him to the 'covid free' part of the hospital A&E and then was taken on to a 6 bed ward. At no time was he ever tested. Okay, so you'd think that we would be negative now after all these weeks, but here was an opporutnity to get those testing number up. Yet, no test and confidently putting him in the covid free part of the A&E?

the conflict in NI doesn't seem to have the British
Though there is still mileage in decrying the left as 'ira sympathisers'?

(Vietnam did have the double embarassment hit for the MAGA base, a defeat followed by a decade or so of shunning the vets - though there was no US equivalent of the UK mainland atrocities until 9/11.)

There is a question as to why tests are going down.
Seeing that the number of cases in hospital are going down, I’m wondering if this is not just the fact there aren’t enough people wo symptoms, which really, by the stage in the game is where you want to be!

The U.K. is still reporting over 4000 confirmed cases a day, so there is plenty of opportunity to test contacts of known cases.

And there are still plenty of anecdotal reports of people, including healthcare workers, who need a test but can't get one. In some places you can't book a test unless you have a car - wtf is that about?!

The Telegraph is reporting that parallel teams and home working will be 'the new normal' and has a quote of

^"The real new is - you're going to be working from home for a long time to come" said a source close to the blue print. "This isn't back to normal life".

Workers will be asked to come into the office at different times and stagger their lunch breaks.

The FT has a similar story saying hot desking to be curtailed, staff canteens to remain closed, no socialising during breaks, limit the number of people using a lift, floor tape to mark out 2m spaces, other retailers to protect staff with plastic screens, people encouraged to shop alone, retailers to have outdoor queuing where possible.

This is being discussed with unions. But the burden to small companies is being thought of as problematic and might stop some from reopening straight away.

It also says that the government is making the point that any changes to workplaces, schools and public transport will be gradual.

Guardian saying target of 1st June for a staggered return to school. Y6 likely to be first.

So no sudden end to lockdown however it goes.

Just told DH. His company are moving premises sometime next year. He's said he now thinks he won't be going back to the office until the new one has been built. So even if DS goes back to school, I'm stuck with DH at home indefinitely. This has good and bad points.

www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/03/publics-trust-in-science-at-risk-warns-former-no-10-adviser

So the former chief scientific adviser has felt the need to set up a parallel SAGE, because he thinks it is compromised, notably by having 16 out of 23 members who are gvmt employees.

Not a v good sign, really...

If all that killed off open plan offices, I would have been very happy if I was still working.

@Focalpoint a few weeks back I remember asking a nurse friend about test turnaround time as we were very slow at the start. She is based in Surrey (affluent area) and said their hospital was down to 6hr turnarounds, although she was aware other parts of the country were still around the 3 day mark. I don't know if they have sped up - using Universities would help here as previous posters have pointed out.

Late PMK