Corona Virus main thread

[T 190]

32 minutes ago, Aggy said:

I think this is the point. Could we have had more ventilators, more masks, more whatever? Yes very probably. Would it have made much difference? Probably not a massive amount.

The second point is that you can’t predict everything that might happen. The NHS has been stretched for decades. There are competing needs across the board. With hindsight, yes it would have been great to have more ventilators. But if you’d gone to people in the NHS six months ago and said “here’s £x million to invest, what do you want?” I’d guess fifty thousand additional ventilators would probably not have been that high up the list. 

 

I party agree but the point is that you might not have all the resources but you should have a plan of how you are going to deal with that lack of resources. The emergency expert point was that the UK doesn’t have any surge capacity to cope and it didnt have a disaster plan of how it would cope because emergency planners were focusing on. Brexit for the last few years. The question why the UK has a testing problem and Germany hasn’t is valid.
 

The problem with the lack of testing is we could have nhs staff working increasing the problem and we. Could have nhs staff isolating unnecessarily. Also it is is difficult to deal with a problem if you don’t know how big or where it is. And you don’t know who is and isn’t safe to work. You need action and leadership rather than waffle to deal with this. 

[T 190]

13 minutes ago, Barbe bleu said:

Very much this.  I said on the corbyn thread that he was quick to snipe and say that his call to invest in the NHS has  been vindicated.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of investimg in the NHS per se (and I agree that we should invest more) there is little evidence that he would have spent this extra money on the things which people say we need now (thousands of ventilators, millions of PPE sleeves and face masks, testing kits for new strain viruses, antibody re-agents, new monoculture hospitals in conference centres etc)

There would be more doctors nurses and beds though. Ventilators and beds you can  sort within a shorter period of time but overall medical capacity is harder. UK doesn’t have spare capacity to cope with a surge but it was UK society choice. 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

For three years Brexit dominated everything. Certainly for this Nation. Less so for other European countries as they awated the outcome.

I respect what Corbyn said. It isn't just about what could have been done, it is a firm plea for the next minimum ten years of Tory rule, that the NHS will take priority over everything else. Get that sorted, as promised by the Red Bus, and the rest will cut its cloth accordingly.

[Essjayess 307]

563 deaths today...overtaken France...this is what today is about, not the next 10 years.

[sgncfc 1,227]

The current annual budget (2019-20) of the NHS is £134 billion. Just think about that for a minute. £134 billion.

The total amount collected by the UK government in NI contributions in 2018-19 was just under £136 billion. This also funds things like State Pensions but mostly the NHS.

You don't need to be a maths genius to work out what needs to happen if you want an adequately funded NHS - if anyone actually knows what an adequately funded NHS should look like.....

[ricardo 7,395]

20 minutes ago, Essjayess said:

563 deaths today...overtaken France...this is what today is about, not the next 10 years.

Now entering the explosive stage sadly, but we knew what was coming.

[Badger 2,405]

13 minutes ago, sgncfc said:

The current annual budget (2019-20) of the NHS is £134 billion. Just think about that for a minute. £134 billion.

The total amount collected by the UK government in NI contributions in 2018-19 was just under £136 billion. This also funds things like State Pensions but mostly the NHS.

You don't need to be a maths genius to work out what needs to happen if you want an adequately funded NHS - if anyone actually knows what an adequately funded NHS should look like.....

A good place to start is to compare the proportion of GDP spent on health compared to other countries...

[Badger 2,405]

1 hour ago, Aggy said:

But if you’d gone to people in the NHS six months ago and said “here’s £x million to invest, what do you want?” I’d guess fifty thousand additional ventilators would probably not have been that high up the list. 

I agree... but what would they have said in January or February?

 

I have no idea if the 50,000 figure is correct.

[ricardo 7,395]

[Badger 2,405]

1 hour ago, Barbe bleu said:

Whatever the rights and wrongs of investimg in the NHS per se (and I agree that we should invest more) there is little evidence that he would have spent this extra money on the things which people say we need now (thousands of ventilators, millions of PPE sleeves and face masks, testing kits for new strain viruses, antibody re-agents, new monoculture hospitals in conference centres etc)

1. We might have had a fully-staffed NHS, rather than tens of thousands of vacancies.

2. There have been reports that due to the end of the financial year, trusts were having to run down PPE stocks etc.

I think that it is reasonable to assume that a better funded NHS would have been in a better position to take a shock, any shock, but obviously would have had to make very quick adjustments to the particular nature of this crisis.

I don't think that you can blame Johnson for the under-funding of the NHS, as has been stated, it has been going on for decades, but to suggest that a healthier NHS would not have been more easily able to cope seems naive.

[Aggy 755]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

Sorry Aggy, I am not clear what you are saying - are you saying we prepared well when the virus became known about (January) or we did not prepare well?

I haven’t mentioned January. 
 

 

[Badger 2,405]

7 minutes ago, ricardo said:

I don't suppose that you have a graph of deaths per capita? You would expect countries with larger populations to grow more quickly if you are just look at total deaths.

[Badger 2,405]

Just now, Aggy said:

1 hour ago, Badger said:

Sorry Aggy, I am not clear what you are saying - are you saying we prepared well when the virus became known about (January) or we did not prepare well?

I haven’t mentioned January. 

I'm still unclear about what you are saying...are you saying we prepared well when the virus became known about or we did not prepare well?

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

First increase in 3 days for new cases. Just as statistics give a bit of hope, a new day dims that hope. The number of deaths is  alarming but unfortunately will tell us nothing about how the virus is continuing to spread.

[Aggy 755]

44 minutes ago, Badger said:

I'm still unclear about what you are saying...are you saying we prepared well when the virus became known about or we did not prepare well?

I think you’re having a different conversation to me (or being deliberately obtuse). 

Yesterday I made a post referring to stats relating to early lockdown vs later lockdown. My post didn’t refer to equipment once, or whether we had enough of it. Your response to my post was ‘how can I defend the government not having stocked up on safety equipment etc.’. 

This morning I responded to a post which said some countries were more prepared than others. The post I responded to didn’t refer to any particular timeframe, didn’t mention January and didn’t mention being better prepared “in response” to the pandemic breaking out. It referred to countries being prepared. 

My response was to query whether you can ever be fully prepared for every possible pandemic that might ever arise. I used the example of ventilators, which are required currently, but if the pandemic had been something which didn’t affect your lungs, then extra ventilators are pointless. I didn’t at any point refer to how well stocked we are with protective equipment or how the government reacted to the outbreak of coronavirus.

So from my post relating to lockdown timing you somehow managed to accuse me of supporting or defending a lack of equipment. From my post saying it’s impossible to predict and prepare for every possible disease that might break out, you again accused me of defending the government’s response to coronavirus and the actions it took in respect of getting equipment to help with coronavirus after the outbreak.

Perhaps you could explain how you got from my posts to your statements?

Edited April 1, 2020 by Aggy

[sonyc 5,517]

1 minute ago, keelansgrandad said:

First increase in 3 days for new cases. Just as statistics give a bit of hope, a new day dims that hope. The number of deaths is  alarming but unfortunately will tell us nothing about how the virus is continuing to spread.

The graphs Ricardo has given show you how the trajectory is going with percentage rates.

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

The graphs Ricardo has given show you how the trajectory is going with percentage rates.

The graphs are for deaths. Its the new cases that will show the progress of the virus. 

 

[Mark .Y. 352]

9 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

First increase in 3 days for new cases. Just as statistics give a bit of hope, a new day dims that hope. The number of deaths is  alarming but unfortunately will tell us nothing about how the virus is continuing to spread.

I think our "new cases" number would probably expect to peak over the weekend or maybe Mon/Tues at latest

[sonyc 5,517]

2 minutes ago, keelansgrandad said:

The graphs Ricardo has given show you how the trajectory is going with percentage rates.

The graphs are for deaths. Its the new cases that will show the progress of the virus. 

 

http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/?fbclid=IwAR3NwJw4O1cYpHrgEfGgVb4ZqFx7lQTsmWKyqcGXIgq5krxW0HskhPkTCug#e

 

Here you go K

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

Here you go K

Thanks

[sonyc 5,517]

3 minutes ago, sonyc said:

http://nrg.cs.ucl.ac.uk/mjh/covid19/?fbclid=IwAR3NwJw4O1cYpHrgEfGgVb4ZqFx7lQTsmWKyqcGXIgq5krxW0HskhPkTCug#e

 

Here you go K

The graph for Europe (number 1) show a flattening of new cases in Italy happening about now (maybe in a week or two). What might happen after that is anyone's guess. If you (and me) want some hope then it will flatten and decrease on the same wave meaning it will reduce to nil in 2/3 months. But we don't know.

Edited April 1, 2020 by sonyc

[Mark .Y. 352]

• Commentary updated: 1 Apr 2020
• The graph shows daily increase in confirmed cases per million inhabitants, plotted on a log scale, against time. A Holt-Winters moving average filter with constants α=0.5 and β=0.5 has been applied to smooth the curves as differences are very noisy. This is a moderate amount of smoothing and it imposes a about a days lag, but it does extract trends fairly well. The curves are not offset, today is Day 0 for all curves.
• Generally, trends are easier to see on a cumulative plot, as changes are inherently more noisy. However, this view is better to see whether a country has peaked or not.
• The daily increase in cases appears to have peaked in both Lombardy and in Italy as a whole around March 21st.
• Switzerland appears to be on a plateau, which may be a sign than it is peaking.
• Spain, Austria, the Netherlands and the UK all hint at peaking the last few days. From comparing the cumulative curves, I'm not yet convinced any of these countries is actually peaking. I would expect the UK to not peak for nearly two weeks. There's no clear model for Spain, so it may be peaking already. Today's Spanish data point was higher than yesterday's but the trend has been level for five days. Of the four, Austria looks the most likely to have peaked, but it will require a few more days to be confident in this.
• The very rapid increase rate in the US appears to have tailed off, but I suspect it has some way to go before peaking.

---

[Disco Dales Jockstrap 1,891]

49 minutes ago, Badger said:

A good place to start is to compare the proportion of GDP spent on health compared to other countries...

Best I could find Badger:

This last one below is interesting. Germany and France clearly fund their health systems very differently to ours and we are often compared unfavorably to them. I know someone on here said the Germans have some kind of private schemes you have to pay into? Not really sure to be honest. I think we do need to look at different ways of funding our health care system, especially as the demands from an aging population and the need for mental health support is only ever going to get greater. But would a government ever be so brave enough to suggest such a change? I very much doubt it.

OTBC

 

[Van wink 2,994]

Germany has a partially insurance based system. Its very successful but heaven forbid anyone mention something like that here.

Edited April 1, 2020 by Van wink

[Yellow Fever 3,783]

10 minutes ago, Mark .Y. said:

• Commentary updated: 1 Apr 2020
• The graph shows daily increase in confirmed cases per million inhabitants, plotted on a log scale, against time. A Holt-Winters moving average filter with constants α=0.5 and β=0.5 has been applied to smooth the curves as differences are very noisy. This is a moderate amount of smoothing and it imposes a about a days lag, but it does extract trends fairly well. The curves are not offset, today is Day 0 for all curves.
• Generally, trends are easier to see on a cumulative plot, as changes are inherently more noisy. However, this view is better to see whether a country has peaked or not.
• The daily increase in cases appears to have peaked in both Lombardy and in Italy as a whole around March 21st.
• Switzerland appears to be on a plateau, which may be a sign than it is peaking.
• Spain, Austria, the Netherlands and the UK all hint at peaking the last few days. From comparing the cumulative curves, I'm not yet convinced any of these countries is actually peaking. I would expect the UK to not peak for nearly two weeks. There's no clear model for Spain, so it may be peaking already. Today's Spanish data point was higher than yesterday's but the trend has been level for five days. Of the four, Austria looks the most likely to have peaked, but it will require a few more days to be confident in this.
• The very rapid increase rate in the US appears to have tailed off, but I suspect it has some way to go before peaking.

---

Useful and hopefully confirms what we already guess.

A tough lock down will help stop the virus spreading but there's a 10 to 14 day delay  - but it's a long haul.

Even after that the actual number of new cases may not fall but plateau. Even no 'new' cases doesn't mean it's gone away (China)

[Van wink 2,994]

7 deaths in Norfolk 

[ricardo 7,395]

Interesting charts DDJ.👍

[Badger 2,405]

26 minutes ago, Aggy said:

My response was to query whether you can ever be fully prepared for every possible pandemic that might ever arise. I used the example of ventilators, which are required currently, but if the pandemic had been something which didn’t affect your lungs, then extra ventilators are pointless. I didn’t at any point refer to how well stocked we are with protective equipment or how the government reacted to the outbreak of coronavirus.

So from my post relating to lockdown timing you somehow managed to accuse me of supporting or defending a lack of equipment. From my post saying it’s impossible to predict and prepare for every possible disease that might break out, you again accused me of defending the government’s response to coronavirus and the actions it took in respect of getting equipment to help with coronavirus after the outbreak.

I agree that you can't have loads of kit sitting around "for every possible pandemic that might ever arise" although having adequate stocks of PPE would be a start and probably applicable to many pandemics. Having recognised our inability to be fully prepared, it becomes all the more necessary for the govt. to respond quickly to anything that arises.

My particular concern is that I agree with the criticism of Jeremy Hunt and the Lancet amongst others that the govt responded to slowly to the information that was emerging from China. I am still not clear whether you think this is the case or not?

[ricardo 7,395]

1 minute ago, Badger said:

 

My particular concern is that I agree with the criticism of Jeremy Hunt and the Lancet amongst others that the govt responded to slowly to the information that was emerging from China. I am still not clear whether you think this is the case or not?

This is true although probably no slower than everybody else. Germany certainly quick off the mark on testing but most of the other European countries at a similar or even slower rate than the UK.

 

[keelansgrandad 6,679]

Confirmed case in Cornwall is 81 with 16 deaths. That is a very high percentage and probably shows the age demographic of the County. Or, it has to be considered, the lack of facilities at Treliske Hospital.