Coronavirus

[Legends-Lounge]

I'm not entirely sure why people need to provide the virus with a Political leaning - I doubt it has much concept of what Socialism or Far Right Ideology actually mean.

Ignore the UK if you like, the bulk of the Western world, the NATO type countries, have all largely got one thing in common.  None of them used a plan.  Therefore, they all fucked up.  Russia appears to have followed our path.  The single common factor here is all of the Govt's felt they could just react.

Now, I'm not saying the rest of the world got it right - some countries have thus far appeared to escape through more luck than judgement.  That may catch-up to them in time, it may be the next Pandemic that they are more susceptible to.

Basic principles here though, the bit you absolutely can harangue all those Govt.s with is a complete and abject failure to plan and enact plans quickly.  Hindsight won't really tell us whether it would have made any difference, but delays have certainly not helped the matter.  Anyone who argues that any of the major Govt's have done anything on purpose, regardless of whatever side of the political aisle they are formed, is mad.  In Europe, maybe Germany look like they carried out something pre-meditated.  Sweden has taken a distinctly different approach, but even they were reacting, debating.

It will be a while before we know if the approach taken by Asian countries was effective or just lucky, but you can at least see they meant it.  Even they have lessons to learn - maybe because the past couple of Pandemics that hit them were smaller outbreaks and didn't have the risk of a second wave.  The world has had plenty of test runs to get plans in place, yet, the majority of us have been flailing around.  The absurdity is that the basic approach is pretty narrow - everyone has sort of done the same things in the end, just too slow.

Largely agree with you, however, ‘what Socialism or Far Right Ideology actually mean.‘ Should read ‘what Far Left or Far Right Ideology actually mean.‘ Also I doubt every country is actually open, honest and up front with their numbers and are they including nursing home type institutions in their numbers? There will be an in-depth enquiry into this whole affair from our relationship with China to providing our own PPE equipment etc.

[pauld]

There will be an in-depth enquiry into this whole affair from our relationship with China to providing our own PPE equipment etc.

Like the Russia report?

[pauld]

Had the US locked down 1 week earlier, it could have prevented 60% of the deaths from Covid-19; had it done so two weeks earlier, 90%.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/opinion/covid-social-distancing.html

That is why delay and dither are so costly: the infection rates, and so deaths, are exponential. Delaying by a week costs thousands of lives. We had 3 weeks' warning

[RobertT]

Had the US locked down 1 week earlier, it could have prevented 60% of the deaths from Covid-19; had it done so two weeks earlier, 90%.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/opinion/covid-social-distancing.html

That is why delay and dither are so costly: the infection rates, and so deaths, are exponential. Delaying by a week costs thousands of lives. We had 3 weeks' warning

Probably longer - all this deflecting by suggesting China ddn't tell the whole story misses the point - assume and plan for the worst.  Everyone should have assumed it could spread and it would come.  Waiting until Italy had a public problem was a good month or more late already.  In fact, the potential learning point here is around how much effort we put into classifying cause of death.  The fact we are now finding potential victims or carriers back in December, in Europe, means we could have identified the risk much earlier.  Not should, could.  As it is, we get lazy (by we, all Nations) and pop down Pneumonia and if it's in winter we assume Flu.  Not suggesting we'd get so sophisticated we'd always spot Patient One, but we should always be looking, at least if we want to reduce the risk of this happening again.  The problem is it takes decades for the next big one to pop up and we all go back to ignoring them.

[StfcRusty]

Reports indicate that Boris Johnson will announce the phases of easing lockdown on Sunday with the first phase potentially starting as early as Monday.

Today we had 649 more deaths announced and 6,111 new coronavirus cases.  Our testing has reduced to 69,463 tests, well short of the Government's own 100,000 per day target and the lowest in the last week.

Given that context, what do you think about plans to ease lockdown?   

[singingiiiffy]

Reports indicate that Boris Johnson will announce the phases of easing lockdown on Sunday with the first phase potentially starting as early as Monday.

Today we had 649 more deaths announced and 6,111 new coronavirus cases.  Our testing has reduced to 69,463 tests, well short of the Government's own 100,000 per day target and the lowest in the last week.

Given that context, what do you think about plans to ease lockdown?   

depends on the stages of easing, havent checked the graphs for a while so not sure how historical today's death total is.

the number of new infections is too high for track and trace we need another 2/3 weeks of lockdown ideally. just having an end date might motivate everyone to stick with it. will be hard seeing the rest of europe seemingly open and trying to persuade our lot to behave

[Bogus Dave]

Deaths still going down if you track them by date they happened rather than date they were announced. This is just England, not the Uk as a whole. But some of the deaths included in today’s ‘daily’ figure actually happened in March

In terms of hospital deaths, were not far off daily volumes being the same as when lockdown was introduced

I don’t know why the trend isn’t talked about by the government and the media in the way it’s shown in this chart, as it’s far more useful at providing context. The data is in the nhs England updates every day, but the only way to be able to visualise it is by stalking some guy on Reddit who maintains this chart

[theakston2k]

Probably longer - all this deflecting by suggesting China ddn't tell the whole story misses the point - assume and plan for the worst.  Everyone should have assumed it could spread and it would come.  Waiting until Italy had a public problem was a good month or more late already.  In fact, the potential learning point here is around how much effort we put into classifying cause of death.  The fact we are now finding potential victims or carriers back in December, in Europe, means we could have identified the risk much earlier.  Not should, could.  As it is, we get lazy (by we, all Nations) and pop down Pneumonia and if it's in winter we assume Flu.  Not suggesting we'd get so sophisticated we'd always spot Patient One, but we should always be looking, at least if we want to reduce the risk of this happening again.  The problem is it takes decades for the next big one to pop up and we all go back to ignoring them.

They reckon October now and came into Europe with athletes from the world military games.

[Batch]

Had the US locked down 1 week earlier, it could have prevented 60% of the deaths from Covid-19; had it done so two weeks earlier, 90%.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/14/opinion/covid-social-distancing.html

That is why delay and dither are so costly: the infection rates, and so deaths, are exponential. Delaying by a week costs thousands of lives. We had 3 weeks' warning

Probably longer - all this deflecting by suggesting China ddn't tell the whole story misses the point - assume and plan for the worst.  Everyone should have assumed it could spread and it would come.  Waiting until Italy had a public problem was a good month or more late already.  In fact, the potential learning point here is around how much effort we put into classifying cause of death.  The fact we are now finding potential victims or carriers back in December, in Europe, means we could have identified the risk much earlier.  Not should, could.  As it is, we get lazy (by we, all Nations) and pop down Pneumonia and if it's in winter we assume Flu.  Not suggesting we'd get so sophisticated we'd always spot Patient One, but we should always be looking, at least if we want to reduce the risk of this happening again.  The problem is it takes decades for the next big one to pop up and we all go back to ignoring them.

think we were also a bit complacent/slow given mers and SARS were quite effectively shut down

[BambooToTheFuture]

think we were also a bit complacent/slow given mers and SARS were quite effectively shut down

Yet there is also still no vaccine for either of those too. Don't need to tell you that we wouldn't want a pandemic of either of those. Especially MERS.

However, in research news (I personally keep track of these; they change rapidly but it is interesting some of the ideas fielded) an "engineered virus" could be a virus vaccine to fight SARS-CoV2. Its name? PIV5.

[StfcRusty]

Probably need to grease a few greasy palms on the way out, usual stuff.

The real reason that PPE shipment was “delayed“:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52569364

[Batch]

Probably need to grease a few greasy palms on the way out, usual stuff.

The real reason that PPE shipment was “delayed“:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52569364

FFS

[Batch]

think we were also a bit complacent/slow given mers and SARS were quite effectively shut down

Yet there is also still no vaccine for either of those too. Don't need to tell you that we wouldn't want a pandemic of either of those. Especially MERS.
.

I didn't say they aren't scary deadly. just that they were effectively contained.

with all the health scares over the last decade that were nowhere near as bad as they could have been,  its easy to see why 'a wait and see' attitude may have delayed us for a bit.

[singingiiiffy]

considering people are making them at home its surprising how gowns could fail standards. of all medical quipment it appears to be one of the most basic

[Bogus Dave]

I don’t think the ones people are making at home would meet the required standard for front line staff either