Corona Virus main thread

[Creative Midfielder 1,999]

39 minutes ago, Herman said:

Who'd have thought the Mail and Piers Morgan would be the ones holding the government to account?!

Yes indeed, quite a significant departure from their usual stance of blindly supporting the Tories in all circumstances, even including those in which they've totally screwed up.

To be fair though they aren't the only ones holding the government to account, although they may be the only ones that Tory voters and indeed the Tories themselves take any notice of - I think we can expect even more magic money trees to be discovered in the near future 🙂

[Indy 3,307]

11 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

Yes indeed, quite a significant departure from their usual stance of blindly supporting the Tories in all circumstances, even including those in which they've totally screwed up.

To be fair though they aren't the only ones holding the government to account, although they may be the only ones that Tory voters and indeed the Tories themselves take any notice of - I think we can expect even more magic money trees to be discovered in the near future 🙂

CM I’m not blindly agreeing with the government, I don’t particularly like any of the government and I certainly believe the lies the Tories and others delivered to railroad us out of the EU as absolutely awful. 
All I agree with is this was an event not one country was really ready for and the government appeared to react OK. I get by your tone your a Labour supporter no matter what!

As for all the criticism of the government, of course they are accountable as they are in charge and I certainly don’t agree and blindly think they’ve been fantastic in all areas. But I certainly wouldn’t want to be in charge at this time.

People like Morgan areal, very quick to moan as they have a fake need to be heard!

[Mark .Y. 352]

Just a separate point. This must surely be the most incompetent display by our media since I don't know when.

Reading on the BBC website this morning about the various countries who are easing restrictions and it says Spain and Italy have decided against a relaxation of measures - which is blatantly untrue as Spain began construction and manufacturing work last week.

Seems an incredibly bad mistake to make.

[dylanisabaddog 4,947]

17 minutes ago, Mark .Y. said:

Just a separate point. This must surely be the most incompetent display by our media since I don't know when.

Reading on the BBC website this morning about the various countries who are easing restrictions and it says Spain and Italy have decided against a relaxation of measures - which is blatantly untrue as Spain began construction and manufacturing work last week.

Seems an incredibly bad mistake to make.

My specialised subject is tax and I have been texting Radio 5 two or three times a week to point out errors in their programmes. Some of those errors could prove to be quite costly to anyone following their advice. This hasn't just happened recently, it's been going on for years. Not only has the quality of politicians on all sides dropped, so has the quality of our journalists. 

 

[Hillhead 114]

22 minutes ago, Mark .Y. said:

Just a separate point. This must surely be the most incompetent display by our media since I don't know when.

Reading on the BBC website this morning about the various countries who are easing restrictions and it says Spain and Italy have decided against a relaxation of measures - which is blatantly untrue as Spain began construction and manufacturing work last week.

Seems an incredibly bad mistake to make.

Mark you said to me the other day that since construction workers have returned to work in Spain their lockdown is now much less severe than ours. Whether technically true or not I find it hard to agree that's what I'm seeing when I look at the street / parks of anywhere in the UK Vs the empty spaces in Spain. 

If Spain have let construction workers back (some of ours are still working too right?) All things considered I still wouldn't consider their lockdown more sever than ours.

[ricardo 7,395]

An interesting piece on why France has four times as many deaths as Germany

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/17/21223915/coronavirus-germany-france-cases-death-rate

[Yellow Fever 3,804]

35 minutes ago, Hillhead said:

Mark you said to me the other day that since construction workers have returned to work in Spain their lockdown is now much less severe than ours. Whether technically true or not I find it hard to agree that's what I'm seeing when I look at the street / parks of anywhere in the UK Vs the empty spaces in Spain. 

If Spain have let construction workers back (some of ours are still working too right?) All things considered I still wouldn't consider their lockdown more sever than ours.

 

Yes - The media seem to not fact check or have any knowledge that one countries lock-down is different to another. Many of their 'relaxed' lock-downs can still be tougher than ours!

The other thing I should of commented more on a day or two ago was the 'WHO - No evidence of post-infection immunity (or similar words)' - trailed as though vaccination won't work. Of course there's little current evidence as yet but antibodies have been detected hence a normal immune response and a vaccine should be possible.  It was just totally scientifically illiterate and ignorant reporting.

A total lack of basic scientific literacy throughout government, the media and indeed the civil service. What a mess.

[It's Character Forming 1,164]

49 minutes ago, ricardo said:

An interesting piece on why France has four times as many deaths as Germany

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/17/21223915/coronavirus-germany-france-cases-death-rate

A really useful piece.  On the number of deaths, I'm surprised at just how big the difference in average age is between the two countries and given how much more serious covid is as you get older, that clearly explains most of the difference.

 

Also makes it clear how important testing is, although a bit harsh to be so critical of France for lack of testing given they don't have the capacity to produce the tests and Germany does.

 

One of the big lessons of this whole thing for me is that we need to look at having capacity to produce a lot of this stuff ourselves, because when a real crisis comes like this, ideas of European solidarity etc go out the window and people look after themselves first, and only look after others as/when they're ok to do so.  I guess there's also a question about raw materials which inevitably will need to be imported but overall I think we need to look at essentials for various types of crisis and look at having the capacity to produce a lot more of them ourselves than we do now.

 

Looking ahead there is also a risk of us getting too focused on pandemic preparations, the likelihood is the next big crisis will actually be something different altogether. 

 

I do find the criticism of the UK being too focused on Brexit as a bit annoying TBH.  For the last few years we've been told repeatedly that Brexit would be a major hit and it was clearly the most likely problem to hit home (for a comparison to covid obviously you have to go back about 100 years) so it was reasonable to have that at the top of our priorities for crisis preparations.

[Mark .Y. 352]

1 hour ago, Hillhead said:

Mark you said to me the other day that since construction workers have returned to work in Spain their lockdown is now much less severe than ours. Whether technically true or not I find it hard to agree that's what I'm seeing when I look at the street / parks of anywhere in the UK Vs the empty spaces in Spain. 

If Spain have let construction workers back (some of ours are still working too right?) All things considered I still wouldn't consider their lockdown more sever than ours.

Both construction and manufacturing have gone back to work. I watched Spanish TV on the morning it began and the police were at public transport hubs giving out free face masks.

I agree that their use of open spaces is still restricted and they have been very harsh on the children who were told to stay indoors - that now being lifted from 27th April.

There are very few construction sites open in the UK, I did provide a link the other day but can't remember where it is now.

With their construction and manufacturing industries back up, I would say that their lockdown is now less restrictive than ours.

 

[Pugin 601]

On the question of pre-planning and preparation, I worked for the organisation that was tasked by the Government to store Tamiflu and all associated non-pharmaceutical supplies at various strategic sites, because the Dept of Health believed that after the Avian and swine flu outbreaks early this century, a flu pandemic was inevitable. A huge sum was spent in maintaining this fallback resource for 10 years, but, needless to say, it was never needed.  It is possible to argue that the whole exercise was a complete waste of time and money, as Tamiflu is not a vaccine and it's not a cure for flu. 

I have little doubt that subsequent Dept of Health policy was coloured by this experience, along with the strangulation of funding.

 

 

 

 

[Barbe bleu 829]

1 hour ago, ricardo said:

An interesting piece on why France has four times as many deaths as Germany

https://www.vox.com/2020/4/17/21223915/coronavirus-germany-france-cases-death-rate

My quick take on the main reasons for the difference is that unlike the other large European nations germany managed to control the disease during the 'contain' phase of its plan. The UK, france, italy and spain did not.

One of the reasons it was able to pass the phase 1 test is that it was able to produce a high number of antigen tests very quickly and could resource the trace and track efforts appropriately. 

The average age of infection is similar a function of the number of community tests carried out I think. If we had done as many and as early we would have a similar level

I am not convinced that NHS funding is massively relevant and this (bias alert) does give that some suppprt.  Its resourcing of the primary intervention (ie stopping the spread before it happens) that is the failure for us. 

 

[Creative Midfielder 1,999]

1 hour ago, Indy said:

All I agree with is this was an event not one country was really ready for and the government appeared to react OK. I get by your tone your a Labour supporter no matter what!

As for all the criticism of the government, of course they are accountable as they are in charge and I certainly don’t agree and blindly think they’ve been fantastic in all areas. But I certainly wouldn’t want to be in charge at this time.

People like Morgan areal, very quick to moan as they have a fake need to be heard!

Well I'm not a Labour supporter at all never mind 'no matter what' so let's put that to one side, especially as the criticism from me, and a great many others, isn't about party politics it is about the competence or incompetence of the government.

So back to the government, its not true to say that not one country was ready for this - they may represent a minority but it is very clear that both in Asia (e.g. South Korea, Singapore, Taiwan, Hong Kong) and in Europe (e.g. Germany, Portugal, Iceland) there were countries who were much better prepared, much more alert to the danger, took much quicker action and as a result have dealt far better with this crisis than the UK.

In this country there was a government review (Cygnus) in October 2016 of our preparedness to handle a pandemic whose findings were apparently so scary in terms of our lack of prepareness and the horrific consequences if we were to be hit by a pandemic (such as this one) that this report has never been made public, although not, it appears, horrific enough for the government to actually take any action - not a single one of its recomendations has been implemented. That IMO is gross incompetence, in fact it's worse it is gross negligence.

I'm afraid I can't agree with you either that the government 'reacted ok' - they wasted a crucial 6-8 week window when they should preparing for the crisis and indeed actually acting decisively whilst our infection numbers where still very low. They never really got going properly with testing and tracking which was the only viable option which might have prevented a huge number of deaths and even when they realised the spread was rapidly increasing they still only came up with the utterly stupid 'herd immunity' strategy which provoked such outrage and that had to do another u-turn but still lost more valuble time before going into lockdown - and it is all that lost time that is why many experts are now predicting that the UK's outcome will be the worst in Europe which I would say is unforgiveable given the many missed oportunities to do much better.

If you think my criticisms harsh, then that is probably not because of my political views but more because I have two daughters both working our Covid wards (in different hospitals)  who have both been asked/expected to treat Covid without proper PPE and who reguarly report that what is actually happening on the front line is a world apart from the daily fairy tales we get from the politicians and senior NHS staff.

So I believe I've been pretty fair and for clarity all my criticisms are around the medical/public health aspect of the government's response. The financial aspect in terms of trying to preserve jobs and businesses I agree has been ok.

[Hillhead 114]

11 minutes ago, Mark .Y. said:

Both construction and manufacturing have gone back to work. I watched Spanish TV on the morning it began and the police were at public transport hubs giving out free face masks.

I agree that their use of open spaces is still restricted and they have been very harsh on the children who were told to stay indoors - that now being lifted from 27th April.

There are very few construction sites open in the UK, I did provide a link the other day but can't remember where it is now.

With their construction and manufacturing industries back up, I would say that their lockdown is now less restrictive than ours.

 

Thanks.

I too saw that clip of the police handing out the masks I think it was aired in sky news. I'll accept what you say about the workers as I have no idea (and the various news outlets don't make it any clearer either) 

[Rock The Boat 1,332]

16 hours ago, T said:

Agreed we need a government selected based on ability rather than political ideology unless people think nationalism more important than lives. That the advisors were thinking of quitting and Fergisons comments about the government are damming and then they tried to do a hatchet job on him In the spectator are all out of the Trump playbook. 

I dont want to fill this very informative thread with politics but to respond to your post it is worth reminding that Cummings has long identified the lack of specialist expertise in both the civil service and the political body, and wants to change this so that we have more emphasis on experts and specialists in government instead of the career generalists that we have now. 

Its unfortunate that the Corona virus has put a lot of this work on hold but it has highlighted the need for expert resources to replace the generalists. Of course, none of this has anything to do with nationalism or political ideology. 

[Rock The Boat 1,332]

4 hours ago, Herman said:

Who'd have thought the Mail and Piers Morgan would be the ones holding the government to account?!

Forget about Piers Morgan. This guy chases every populist cause going in exchange for clicks and likes. Its the worst kind of self-serving, virtue-signalling, career building and you shouldn't be taken in by what he is trying to achieve. 

[wcorkcanary 4,334]

1 minute ago, Rock The Boat said:

Forget about Piers Morgan. This guy chases every populist cause going in exchange for clicks and likes. Its the worst kind of self-serving, virtue-signalling, career building and you shouldn't be taken in by what he is trying to achieve. 

And  he made Ronaldo  cry.

[ricardo 7,395]

A massive daily spike in Singapore, thought they had it under control, not good news.

[Barbe bleu 829]

47 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

 They never really got going properly with testing and tracking which was the only viable option 

 Please excuse the analogy. 

I feel that Italy, France, Spain, UK and Germany all set out with the same finish line in mind in what they knew would be a race with many hurdles.(I'm ignoring the small countries for now as they provide for an unfair comparison).

Germany cleared the first hurdle with a well executed 'contain phase'.  The rest of us crashed into it.  So whereas germany was able to maintain a nice rhythm down the rest of the track the remainder have been looking to recover ever since and it's made each successive hurdle all the harder to clear. 

47 minutes ago, Creative Midfielder said:

In this country there was a government review (Cygnus) in October 2016 of our preparedness to handle a pandemic

I stand to be corrected here but the scenario in Exercise Cygnus began with thousands already infected.  It was in other words, an NHS led exercise than assumed containment had failed. That's fine and important but this was training for the third or fourth hurdle.   We had already lost the race when we hit hurdle one.

What we really need to know is what training and planning we did for the first and second hurdles. 

If you want to understand why germany is winning this race there is no point thinking about ventilators and PPE  and COBR meetings not attended wont prove to be hugely relevant and even lockdown timing is secondary.  What you need to look at is how we (comparatively) bungled the first obstacle.

[Bill 1,788]

16 minutes ago, ricardo said:

A massive daily spike in Singapore, thought they had it under control, not good news.

"a daily spike"

thank god it was not a rise

Edited April 20, 2020 by Bill

[Yellow Fever 3,804]

1 hour ago, Barbe bleu said:

 

If you want to understand why germany is winning this race there is no point thinking about ventilators and PPE  and COBR meetings not attended wont prove to be hugely relevant and even lockdown timing is secondary.  What you need to look at is how we (comparatively) bungled the first obstacle.

It's a reasonable analogy.

However - as to the 5 missed 'early' cobra meetings.  

Whereas I fully understand why the 'Prime' Minister may not go to them all - if he doesn't attend it indicates that he believes he has higher priorities elsewhere - and that he is not 'focussed' on it (and hence the meeting may not get the attention it deserves). 

That may wash for say one or two but five ? Clearly his leadership, indeed understanding of the impending threat, was missing. He failed.

With failed unfocused leadership it's not unsurprising we then crashed into the first hurdle. 

Edited April 20, 2020 by Yellow Fever

[T 190]

1 hour ago, Rock The Boat said:

I dont want to fill this very informative thread with politics but to respond to your post it is worth reminding that Cummings has long identified the lack of specialist expertise in both the civil service and the political body, and wants to change this so that we have more emphasis on experts and specialists in government instead of the career generalists that we have now. 

Its unfortunate that the Corona virus has put a lot of this work on hold but it has highlighted the need for expert resources to replace the generalists. Of course, none of this has anything to do with nationalism or political ideology. 

When he was being criticised at the time I thought it actually sounds like a reasonable point given my professional background view that expertise matters.  i understand the problem with Cummings is he is a bright guy but doesn’t work long term as he runs people up the wrong way which means doesn’t get results. It is relevant in the sense that clearly the UK has a logistical problem and I suspect they don’t haven’t the expertise to deal with such a difficult problem. I m not keen on any ideological dogma be it say public versus private but prefer what  works best in practice. Clearly some things are working and some not. 

[Herman 9,793]

1 hour ago, Rock The Boat said:

I dont want to fill this very informative thread with politics but to respond to your post it is worth reminding that Cummings has long identified the lack of specialist expertise in both the civil service and the political body, and wants to change this so that we have more emphasis on experts and specialists in government instead of the career generalists that we have now. 

Its unfortunate that the Corona virus has put a lot of this work on hold but it has highlighted the need for expert resources to replace the generalists. Of course, none of this has anything to do with nationalism or political ideology. 

One of his first appointees was a eugenicist. How did that work out? 

[Herman 9,793]

Denmark's novel approach. Any Danish company registered in an offshore tax haven will not get any bailout money. 

[T 190]

I agree test track isolate does seem to be the key on the way in and out of this. Poor as it is that Boris didn’t attend these critical cobra meetings given his confused ramblings i doubt it matters whether he attends or not. 

[Barbe bleu 829]

19 minutes ago, T said:

When he was being criticised at the time I thought it actually sounds like a reasonable point given my professional background view that expertise matters.  i understand the problem with Cummings is he is a bright guy but doesn’t work long term as he runs people up the wrong way which means doesn’t get results. It is relevant in the sense that clearly the UK has a logistical problem and I suspect they don’t haven’t the expertise to deal with such a difficult problem. I m not keen on any ideological dogma be it say public versus private but prefer what  works best in practice. Clearly some things are working and some not. 

I'm with you on this T.   I can see  nothing wrong with saying that civil servants should be experts in their fields and that divergent thinking should be encouraged.  Much better than having it staffed with identikit PPE graduates that move department just at the point they begin to understand the job they are being asked to do.

 

 

[sgncfc 1,233]

4 hours ago, Indy said:

this was an event not one country was really ready for

That's not true though - several Asian countries with previous experience of SARS etc were ready. I said this on here about 6 weeks ago - if we were ever going to "follow the science" we should follow the science from those countries with experience of how to deal with an epidemic. The UK govt didn't do that - it decided to follow it's own science, which took some weeks to produce useable data; data which was already available from Asia but which for some reason wasn't deemed suitable.

This is of course exactly what Germany did - they followed the models of the successful, knowledgeable Asian countries with experience of what to do. Test, identify, isolate, trace. The smokescreen which the UK govt is now creating around Germany (they have better testing etc) is just that - a smokescreen, designed to deflect criticism for their 3-4 weeks of inaction and our PM's posturing, shaking hands with everyone he could find and allowing Cheltenham and the Liverpool v Atletico match to go ahead when thousands were already dying in China and elsewhere and Italy was struggling to contain.

We now have a Health Secretary spreading his own fake news (100,000 tests a day by the end of April when we don't have either the capability or the manpower) and making promises he can't keep, and a chancellor announcing policies which can't be supported by any systems or infrastructure (the business loan scheme; the extension of furloughing to staff employed in March etc).

A bit like FIFA/UEFA telling everyone that their contract which was due to expire on June 30th is extended for as long as necessary, Except it isn't under UK law, but don't let that get in the way of the soundbite.

So I really do hope that our media - who have been tame parrots since this all began - do start to grow some, and begin to ask proper questions. And no, I am not a Labour supporter.

The fact is that the UK govt has proven to be incompetent buffoons from the PM downwards, and a lot of people have died because of that who shouldn't have.

In WW1 the soldiers were described as "lions led by donkeys"; at the moment we are sheep led by headless chickens.

[Barbe bleu 829]

16 minutes ago, T said:

I agree test track isolate does seem to be the key on the way in and out of this. Poor as it is that Boris didn’t attend these critical cobra meetings given his confused ramblings i doubt it matters whether he attends or not. 

Agreed again. 

If and when therw is an Inquiry I hope that this is where the focus is.  If you want to understand why 12,000 more people died here than in Germany this.is where we should look. PPE shortages are incredibly emotive but the public (as opposed to private) health significance is potentially much mich lower.  

To the second point Boris is clever and lazy. A potentially perfect combination if you want the experts to just get on with it without interference.

 

 

[sonyc 5,539]

5 minutes ago, sgncfc said:

That's not true though - several Asian countries with previous experience of SARS etc were ready. I said this on here about 6 weeks ago - if we were ever going to "follow the science" we should follow the science from those countries with experience of how to deal with an epidemic. The UK govt didn't do that - it decided to follow it's own science, which took some weeks to produce useable data; data which was already available from Asia but which for some reason wasn't deemed suitable.

This is of course exactly what Germany did - they followed the models of the successful, knowledgeable Asian countries with experience of what to do. Test, identify, isolate, trace. The smokescreen which the UK govt is now creating around Germany (they have better testing etc) is just that - a smokescreen, designed to deflect criticism for their 3-4 weeks of inaction and our PM's posturing, shaking hands with everyone he could find and allowing Cheltenham and the Liverpool v Atletico match to go ahead when thousands were already dying in China and elsewhere and Italy was struggling to contain.

We now have a Health Secretary spreading his own fake news (100,000 tests a day by the end of April when we don't have either the capability or the manpower) and making promises he can't keep, and a chancellor announcing policies which can't be supported by any systems or infrastructure (the business loan scheme; the extension of furloughing to staff employed in March etc).

A bit like FIFA/UEFA telling everyone that their contract which was due to expire on June 30th is extended for as long as necessary, Except it isn't under UK law, but don't let that get in the way of the soundbite.

So I really do hope that our media - who have been tame parrots since this all began - do start to grow some, and begin to ask proper questions. And no, I am not a Labour supporter.

The fact is that the UK govt has proven to be incompetent buffoons from the PM downwards, and a lot of people have died because of that who shouldn't have.

In WW1 the soldiers were described as "lions led by donkeys"; at the moment we are sheep led by headless chickens.

Your WW1 analogy is pertinent in that NHS workers are being called the "frontline". It's a little chilling.

[Barbe bleu 829]

3 minutes ago, sgncfc said:

 

This is of course exactly what Germany did - they followed the models of the successful, knowledgeable Asian countries with experience of what to do. Test, identify, isolate, trace. The smokescreen which the UK govt is now creating around Germany (they have better testing etc) is just that - a smokescreen.

I've got to disagree.  I think that Germany and the uk had the same plan it's just that , for whatever reason, they executed it much better and have reaped the benefits ever since.

Our plan was published on 3 March but in reality will be much older.  In it you can see that we did want to contain this thing. Thats no different to any other nation

[sonyc 5,539]

@sgncfc...agree with you...I think the media on the whole have been poor, likewise the Labour opposition. It has been difficult though to get facts out of those press briefings, especially when it is handled remotely/digitally. The gravity is missing somehow in this format and it seems as if you can say anything in reply. My two sons keep saying "he hasn't answered that question".

And that comment about 84 tons of PPE! I just knew it was a filler and was not at all surprised when the plane didn't arrive. Which NHS manager needs to know there is 84 tons on the way!  Or 400k items. They just want to know what is arriving and a date and who is delivering. Agree with NHS spokesman on R4 this morning who was incredibly mild in his questioning of government messages like this.