COVID-19 UK & Beyond

[woolley]

Every country in the world is in the same situation with PPE other than those that have manufacturing base. Even then they are struggling to up production. I would not defend the government with partisan political intentions because I don't support any political party. I just try to call out unfair criticism when I see it. Pretending that Johnson charts policy on covid and not government scientists is unfair. Suggesting that there should somehow have been a mountain of PPE in the UK when the whole world is scrambling for it is ridiculous. 

Edited April 14, 2020 by woolley

[TheTeapot]

The ONS have published a report, for stats up to the week ending 3rd April. Have a skeet

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathsregisteredweeklyinenglandandwalesprovisional/weekending3april2020

You'd have to say the main point is this

Quote

• The provisional number of deaths registered in England and Wales in the week ending 3 April 2020 (Week 14) was 16,387; this represents an increase of 5,246 deaths registered compared with the previous week (Week 13) and 6,082 more than the five-year average.

Be interesting to see the next one. 

[Freggyragh]

The U.K. has two problems with securing PPE and ventilators:

1. The same pathetic Europhobia behind brexit:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8215383/amp/Desperate-hospitals-forced-crowdfund-vital-PPE-equipment.html

2. Too many of the super wealthy (eg; Mogg, Duncan-Smith, Tice, Martin) who are all flags and patriotism when it means they get to shelter their fortunes from tax, but when the chips are down they’re looking after number one - unlike, say Connor McGregor:
https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2020/4/13/21219958/conor-mcgregor-delivers-1-million-euro-donation-ppe-supplies-masks-ireland-hospitals-ufc-news

[P.K.]

4 hours ago, woolley said:

Every country in the world is in the same situation with PPE other than those that have manufacturing base. Even then they are struggling to up production. I would not defend the government with partisan political intentions because I don't support any political party. I just try to call out unfair criticism when I see it. Pretending that Johnson charts policy on covid and not government scientists is unfair. Suggesting that there should somehow have been a mountain of PPE in the UK when the whole world is scrambling for it is ridiculous. 

Where have I EVER suggested there should have been a mountain of PPE stockpiled?

Oh, I haven't. It's just a poor attempt to ridicule.

Johnson takes advice from his SME's but the "Policy" is his call and his alone. He wanted the job, well he got it...

Look, and as you clearly don't like Baroness Altmann going on the Beeb and telling it like it is reference PPE shortages in UK care homes then take it up with her.

On that note:

 'Are people dispensable?': care home manager tells how third of residents have died from Covid-19

Easter weekend brings a 10th coronavirus death at Wren Hall in Nottinghamshire, where staff feel they are ‘fighting a losing battle’

Anita Astle, manager of the Wren Hall nursing home in Nottinghamshire, is scathing about the level of support she has received from public health authorities. Commissioners “say we’re doing a fantastic job but they haven’t got a clue what this job is like now,” she said.

There has been “no communication with Public Health England”, she said. The epidemic has been “poorly handled from start to finish”.

“Are people dispensable?” she said. “It feels as if people are not worth saving. But that is certainly not how we feel.”

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/14/are-people-dispensable-care-home-manager-tells-how-third-of-residents-have-died-from-covid-19#

[woolley]

22 minutes ago, Freggyragh said:

The U.K. has two problems with securing PPE and ventilators:

1. The same pathetic Europhobia behind brexit:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8215383/amp/Desperate-hospitals-forced-crowdfund-vital-PPE-equipment.html

2. Too many of the super wealthy (eg; Mogg, Duncan-Smith, Tice, Martin) who are all flags and patriotism when it means they get to shelter their fortunes from tax, but when the chips are down they’re looking after number one - unlike, say Connor McGregor:
https://www.bloodyelbow.com/2020/4/13/21219958/conor-mcgregor-delivers-1-million-euro-donation-ppe-supplies-masks-ireland-hospitals-ufc-news

Plenty of philanthropic Brits too. Not everyone shouts about it. Very bad form, don't you know.

[Freggyragh]

Where’s Banks? Tice? Mogg? François? Farage? Martin? Hargreaves? Ratcliffe? The Barclays? Mellon? Dyson? You’d expect these very wealthy  flag wavers to step up and volumteer in a national crisis. How many brexiters have? Only asking, because the red of face seem mostly absent from this fight. Well except for blaming problems on foreign countries and complaining about the pubs being shut. 

[TheTeapot]

37 minutes ago, Freggyragh said:

Where’s Banks? Tice? Mogg? François? Farage? Martin? Hargreaves? Ratcliffe? The Barclays? Mellon? Dyson? 

Rog? 

Anyway, they're all behind the scenes working on propaganda to get the country opened up again before its safe because people are worth less than profits.

Edited April 15, 2020 by TheTeapot

[the stinking enigma]

Apparently they are now going to start testing care home residents and staff... that are displaying symptoms. Bit late in the day for that token gesture I'd think.

[woolley]

3 hours ago, Freggyragh said:

Where’s Banks? Tice? Mogg? François? Farage? Martin? Hargreaves? Ratcliffe? The Barclays? Mellon? Dyson? You’d expect these very wealthy  flag wavers to step up and volumteer in a national crisis. How many brexiters have? Only asking, because the red of face seem mostly absent from this fight. Well except for blaming problems on foreign countries and complaining about the pubs being shut. 

How would you know who contributed what? Most philanthropy is done on the qt. Poor form to shout about it as I posted before.

[mojomonkey]

Quiet or not I very much doubt any of those aforementioned people are doing anything philanthropic. Anywho, you could just donate to this old fella, what a star - https://www.justgiving.com/fundraising/tomswalkforthenhs

Edited April 15, 2020 by mojomonkey

[Manximus Aururaneus]

5 hours ago, the stinking enigma said:

Apparently they are now going to start testing care home residents and staff... that are displaying symptoms. Bit late in the day for that token gesture I'd think.

To be fair, the numbers mean that pretty much any attempt would have been a 'Token gesture'.

There are roughly 150,000 Doctors  and 320,000 Nurses in the NHS - There are 1.2 Million Care workers and a further 1 Million recipients of Care.

[P.K.]

6 minutes ago, Manximus Aururaneus said:

To be fair, the numbers mean that pretty much any attempt would have been a 'Token gesture'.

There are roughly 150,000 Doctors  and 320,000 Nurses in the NHS - There are 1.2 Million Care workers and a further 1 Million recipients of Care.

If it saves just a single life then it would have been worth doing.

[Manximus Aururaneus]

1 minute ago, P.K. said:

If it saves just a single life then it would have been worth doing.

Yes, I would love to live in a world like that too, but unfortunately Inhabit the real one.

[P.K.]

14 minutes ago, Manximus Aururaneus said:

Yes, I would love to live in a world like that too, but unfortunately Inhabit the real one.

Just because it may be impossible that doesn't mean you shouldn't at least try.

Right now thousands of NHS workers are doing everything they possibly can to keep EVERY patient they have alive. Even though they know it's simply not possible.

When you go and tell them they're not living in the real world please make sure I'm there.

It's just something I wouldn't like to miss....

[P.K.]

On 4/11/2020 at 8:18 PM, woolley said:

It is good to be able to take a look at things from an apolitical viewpoint. I would be genuinely interested to read any other views about how or if this could have been handled more effectively, and who should have done what, when. I don't mean banal political rhetoric.

@woolley

For comparison this is how our near neighbours handled it:

In March, while the UK delayed, Ireland acted. For many this may prove to have been the difference between life and death

The choices our governments have made in the last month have profoundly shaped what risks we, as citizens, are exposed to during the course of this pandemic. Those choices have, to a large extent, determined how many of us will die.

At the time of writing, 365 people have died in Ireland of Covid-19 and 11,329 have died in the UK. Adjusted for population, there have been 7.4 deaths in Ireland for every 100,000 people. In the UK, there have been 17 deaths per 100,000. In other words, people are dying of coronavirus in the UK at more than twice the rate they are dying in Ireland. Yet, despite Ireland being your closest neighbour, this has barely been mentioned in the British press.

In Ireland, we consume a great deal of British media. This means that we’ve been watching, with growing despair and grief, British news reports chronicling a national disaster. But for weeks now, long before the death rate accelerated, we’ve been watching and reading your reports with a queasy feeling. We knew of the measures and plans the Irish government was putting in place to protect us and we knew how far your government was slipping behind.

When our taoiseach was closing our schools and universities, your prime minister was still telling you to wash your hands. When our government cancelled St Patrick’s Day celebrations, yours allowed the Cheltenham Festival to go ahead and, with it, a potentially massive multi-day super-spreading event of over 250,000 people. The contrast was disorientating.

Nowhere was the dissonance more marked than on the weekend before St Patrick’s Day. By that point, Ireland had banned indoor gatherings of more than 100 people, but had stopped short of closing the pubs. A video showing revellers in Temple Bar went viral; a public outcry ensued; #closethepubs trended on Irish Twitter; the minister for health commented; and voluntary pub closures began the following morning.

That same weekend, thousands attended a gig in Cardiff. 

I remember watching the video being posted on Twitter that Saturday night and feeling sick to my stomach. How many people were being infected, at that very moment, singing along to the Stereophonics? I say this not to shame the band; their decision to go ahead with the gig was informed by government guidelines. But while their gig was permitted in the UK, it would have been banned in Ireland. I assume there were people in Cardiff who felt the same way I did. The difference was that I was supported by my government. They weren’t.

Pandemics grow exponentially, so that infections seem to rise slowly, and then all at once. Every day counts. A week’s delay in mid-March would yield an outsized effect on the deaths to come in April. This means that the contrasting choices of the UK and Irish governments in March mattered.

Technically, the UK went into lockdown before Ireland, on 23 March, but Ireland was already operating a “delay phase” from 12 to 27 March. I would argue that the crucial difference in approach lies in this two-week period from 9 March, when Ireland cancelled St Patrick’s Day, to 23 March, when the UK government finally initiated a lockdown. Because the Irish government moved quickly, we seem to have interrupted our pandemic’s exponential curve at an earlier point. In mid-March, our models forecast 3,000 new coronavirus cases a day by the end of the month. In reality, we had a daily increase of less than 300, one-tenth of that predicted.

Our government’s measures worked.

Full Story: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/apr/14/coronavirus-uk-ireland-delay