Spat between Chief Minister and Dr Glover

[Roger Mexico]

2 hours ago, Rhumsaa said:

It's a hell of a claim to suggest that RG could have stopped the last two lockdowns

I'm not saying the IOM Gov is right in all of this but also I don't think RG's services are that powerful?

It's more about advice and knowledge I think.  It's fairly clear that the January outbreak could have been prevented with a more rigorous and extensive use of testing, something that Rachel and many others had been advocating for long before. 

It's possible that the same thing would have applied to the February outbreak as well - certainly you would have expected regular testing of Steam Packet staff anyway and certainly after a UK-based crew member tested positive.  But even if the outbreak had started it could have been halted with much speedier action[1] and genomics would have been essential in making sure that that was effective and enabling lockdown to be lifted much faster.

 

[1]  New Zealand had an outbreak at almost exactly the same time.  Auckland was locked down at 6 am the day after the first positive result.  We waited a fortnight until maybe a thousand people were infected.

[TerryFuchwit]

1 hour ago, Annoymouse said:

That’s quite a damning statement, I sincerely hope they have the evidence to back it up.

Well, as much a lot on here won't like, there are two sides to the story.

Edited April 17, 2021 by TerryFuchwit

[Barlow]

You are Ashie and I claim my £5

[Barlow]

18 minutes ago, Roger Mexico said:

It's more about advice and knowledge I think.

Exactly this.

Covid was a dogshit/pothole subject. Everyone could talk about it and everyone seemed to have an opinion, not least the politicians. And if you knew what was best for you, just agree with the politician.

[manxst]

21 minutes ago, TerryFuchwit said:

Well, as much a lot on here won't like, there are two sides to the story.

Of which, you have heard one side direct from the horses mouth, but are going to have to wait months it seems for the other side to get their story (stories?) all together (if at all). Yet it seems that you already take the side of that which has not yet been brought into the open? 

[The Voice of Reason]

13 minutes ago, manxst said: Yet it seems that you already take the side of that which has not yet been brought into the open? 

By simply saying there are two sides to every story.?

[manxst]

21 minutes ago, The Voice of Reason said:

By simply saying there are two sides to every story.?

The poster didn’t ‘simply’ say that though? 

[Roger Mexico]

2 hours ago, John Wright said:

The Department was disappointed that Taxa Genomics, particularly as an on Island provider, did not feel able to respond to the required DHSC governance arrangements. Taxa then took the decision to withdraw all potential services including failing to supply reagent consumables in breach of an agreement it had entered into with the department.

1 hour ago, Annoymouse said:

That’s quite a damning statement, I sincerely hope they have the evidence to back it up.

Like much of this response this was already covered in Rachel Glover's evidence to the PAC.  From memory[1] Taxa Genomics had been supplying the reagents for testing.  After Rachel disengaged, she suggested that if they wanted to continue this, it should be put on a more formal basis.  As has been discussed here, even before the PAC evidence, the DHSC/AG's Office insisted on there being liability clauses that any supplier would not accept and so TG decided not to become their permanent supplier.  Apart from anything else it's not their core business they were only doing it because they had the contacts for their own supplies. 

Before ceasing supply, Rachel checked to see if alternatives had been found and was assured they had been.  Several days later she  was contacted begging for more reagents because this actually hadn't been done and they had completely run out.

Even in its own terms this response, consisting almost entirely of weasel words, doesn't make much sense.  How can you "withdraw all potential services"?  Something that is potential by definition doesn't exist yet - how can it be withdrawn.  Similarly if TG decided not "to respond to the required DHSC governance arrangements" then they can't have been in breech of an agreement that didn't exist.

The whole statement is basically the government having a hissy fit that someone didn't do their own job for them.

 

[1]  Hansard still isn't up yet (I did warn that Committees get published slowly) but the oral evidence is here:

Dr Rachel Glover, Chief Scientific Officer, Taxa Genomics Limited.

[747-400]

3 hours ago, John Wright said:

Dr Glover was invited to become part of the DHSC’s governance structures last year by its medical director and relevant clinical director,

Had not heard this before? Or was it Dr Glover wanted to be advising CoMin directly?

[Manx Yeller]

1 hour ago, Roger Mexico said:

It's more about advice and knowledge I think.  It's fairly clear that the January outbreak could have been prevented with a more rigorous and extensive use of testing, something that Rachel and many others had been advocating for long before. 

It's possible that the same thing would have applied to the February outbreak as well - certainly you would have expected regular testing of Steam Packet staff anyway and certainly after a UK-based crew member tested positive.  But even if the outbreak had started it could have been halted with much speedier action[1] and genomics would have been essential in making sure that that was effective and enabling lockdown to be lifted much faster.

 

[1]  New Zealand had an outbreak at almost exactly the same time.  Auckland was locked down at 6 am the day after the first positive result.  We waited a fortnight until maybe a thousand people were infected.

Agreed, the January lockdown could easily have been prevented if the government had actually brought in the 3 test strategy earlier as many including Dr Glover were asking for. I believe it could actually have been prevented if when they brought the rule in, they had applied it immediately rather than saying it was only for those arriving after a specific date in the future

For this lockdown, Dr Glover was very clear on twitter saying that at the start of the outbreak, since it was the new strain, we should be testing school children and be more cautious since it was a more transmissible strain. Instead all we got from our leaders was that the strain doesn't make any difference (which has been blatantly proved wrong) and the whole nonsense around it's all ok as it's all part of the same cluster. If, and it's a big if, they had listened to Dr Glover, we would have been locked down earlier and so, in my opinion, would have got it under control a lot quicker.

[Boris Johnson]

4 hours ago, buncha wankas said:

I doubt it, she was on the team at the time last year but didn’t see the chink in the armour.    At the end of the day all this self promotion on social media is free publicity for her business.  

Like all that free publicity on the island is going to drum up loads of new business for her company.

New business from who exactly and doing what? 

Would you say the same if NASA got a load of coverage on the island?

We all need space rockets as much as we need genomics..............

Edited April 17, 2021 by Boris Johnson

[John Wright]

11 minutes ago, Manx Yeller said:

Agreed, the January lockdown could easily have been prevented if the government had actually brought in the 3 test strategy earlier as many including Dr Glover were asking for. I believe it could actually have been prevented if when they brought the rule in, they had applied it immediately rather than saying it was only for those arriving after a specific date in the future

For this lockdown, Dr Glover was very clear on twitter saying that at the start of the outbreak, since it was the new strain, we should be testing school children and be more cautious since it was a more transmissible strain. Instead all we got from our leaders was that the strain doesn't make any difference (which has been blatantly proved wrong) and the whole nonsense around it's all ok as it's all part of the same cluster. If, and it's a big if, they had listened to Dr Glover, we would have been locked down earlier and so, in my opinion, would have got it under control a lot quicker.

My simple analysis is that the three test wouldn’t have made much difference. It was testing all the household and separate isolation that would have helped avoid lockdown 2 and locking down a week earlier would have reduced lockdown 3.

[Boris Johnson]

9 minutes ago, John Wright said:

My simple analysis is that the three test would have made much difference. It was testing all the household and separate isolation that would have helped avoid lockdown 2 and locking down a week earlier would have reduced lockdown 3.

Remember John. Alf was saying it was costing too much to do testing. £400K was quoted somewhere.

WHO said TEST, TEST, TEST

IOM Gov said TOO EXPENSIVE

Manx solutions to Manx problems?

Edited April 17, 2021 by Boris Johnson

[code99]

1 hour ago, Roger Mexico said:

It's more about advice and knowledge I think.  It's fairly clear that the January outbreak could have been prevented with a more rigorous and extensive use of testing, something that Rachel and many others had been advocating for long before. 

It's possible that the same thing would have applied to the February outbreak as well - certainly you would have expected regular testing of Steam Packet staff anyway and certainly after a UK-based crew member tested positive.  But even if the outbreak had started it could have been halted with much speedier action[1] and genomics would have been essential in making sure that that was effective and enabling lockdown to be lifted much faster.

 

[1]  New Zealand had an outbreak at almost exactly the same time.  Auckland was locked down at 6 am the day after the first positive result.  We waited a fortnight until maybe a thousand people were infected.

I absolutely agree with you Roger Mexico. Thank you for another well-reasoned post.

My understanding of Dr Glover’s genomic testing technology is that it would have been a massive help in assisting the DHSC (the IOMG) to both identify and link cases. Testing of any kind has been beneficial, but Dr Glover’s capacity to identify the individual genome of each infection quickly would have been especially useful. As far as I understand it, the Liverpool genome testing service only identifies the strain of Covid that the infected person has, but does not attempt to link individual cases. In comparison, Dr Glover’s method provides much more granular and therefore potentially useful information.  

Another, albeit not very glamorous, method for identifying the location of Covid is to do sewage testing (this has been mentioned on MF previously). The antipodeans have been doing this type of scientific testing for a while. For example, a couple of days ago in Australia (Greater Melbourne to be precise) they discovered traces of Covid in sewage. This enabled their health authorities to issue an alert, and to ask people in defined locations to come forward for testing, regardless of whether they had symptoms or not. As a result of this approach, the Australian lockdowns have been highly targeted and focused. This sort of ‘location testing’ could be used next time we have an outbreak to perform more specific track and trace/ lockdowns.

One of my big complaints about our government’s approach is that because they only use limited scientific inputs in their fight against Covid, even though they describe each lockdown as being ‘short’ and ‘sharp’, in reality they are neither. Because of their lack of scientific tools, the IOMG are forced to use crude/ blunt/ blanket lockdowns, sometimes lasting many weeks across the whole community, to bring each outbreak under control.

IMHO, going forward, the policy of 'on again/ off again' whole community lockdowns will become socially and economically unsustainable.

[Twitch]

45 minutes ago, Boris Johnson said:

Like all that free publicity on the island is going to drum up loads of new business for her company.

New business from exactly and doing what? 

Would you say the same if NASA got a load of coverage on the island?

We all need space rockets as much as we need genomics..............

Yes we’ve tried this already with pushing the island as a centre for Space activities. All that publicity and....we never quite made the final frontier did we.