The virus. PPE. Part 1

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If anyone is interested in what's going on in China there's a programme just started on Radio4 about how this pandemic is affecting the Party.
 
Thanks for the messages guys. She had been ill for the last 10 years or so, due to problems with her lungs, and they gave her steroids to cure it which screwed her kidneys. She was having Dialysis 4 times a week and needed oxygen regularly, so you can imagine that as soon as I was told she tested positive I feared for the worst.

She has been a fighter, like me she could be outspoken and said things as they were (a trait we get from our Dad). But, she was my biggest fan when it came to photography, always telling me I should start doing it for a living; I even shot her wedding.

Here's just one of those 11,329.

Smile by Steve Jelly, on Flickr
 
I was thinking of asking the mods if we could have a remembrance and hero thread, for this and just more normal times too maybe. I thought it might be nice for us to have our own little corner of the internet to post short tributes and photos which would live if not forever then for a long time. If there's any interest perhaps we could ask and this could maybe be included.
 
Jelster said:
Thanks for the messages guys. She had been ill for the last 10 years or so, due to problems with her lungs, and they gave her steroids to cure it which screwed her kidneys. She was having Dialysis 4 times a week and needed oxygen regularly, so you can imagine that as soon as I was told she tested positive I feared for the worst.

She has been a fighter, like me she could be outspoken and said things as they were (a trait we get from our Dad). But, she was my biggest fan when it came to photography, always telling me I should start doing it for a living; I even shot her wedding.

Here's just one of those 11,329.

Smile by Steve Jelly, on Flickr
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Really sorry to hear that, may she rest in peace
 
words fail me - they are not enough and can never be. :crying:
 
woof woof said:
Yes, it has a high crime rate but I don't think the flouting and the crime directly relate.

I'm pretty sure it's been reported on the local news that M'bro has the highest flout rate and also and surprisingly the highest infection rate in the region. Who'd have thunk it?

Idiots isn't strong enough a word. I do know what language I'd like to use.

The only sad bit in all this is that these twits aren't just up for Darwin Awards, they're also endangering people who deserve to live.
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Isn't it always thus. Some people seem to revel in bad behaviour. It becomes a badge of honour for them.
 
Jelster said:
Unfortunately, my sister was one of them....
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That is dreadful. You must feel utterly wrecked. Life can be be so cruel and grief is a heavy burden on a long road.
Best wishes.
 
tarric said:
The Queen and Prince Philip moved to Winsor Castle on the 19th of March and Prince Charles and Camilla moved to Balmoral on the 22nd March before the government lockdown came into place, unlike Carrie who moved out of Downing street after Boris was diagnosed with coronavirus against government guidance (see hear https://www.gov.uk/government/publi...-with-possible-coronavirus-covid-19-infection) and then moved again to stay with Boris at Chequers. Now I understand that the Boris Lovers believe any criticism of said deity is treasonous but if you make the rules you should at the very least be seen to be abiding by them.
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Lockdown started 23rd March, no chance either got an early warning?
The Queen stays at Windsor over Easter, which was this weekend so she left London rather earlier than usual and Charles scuttled up to Scotland the day before lockdown, convenient.
No Boris lover, but he self isolated (sort of) then went to hospital when symptoms got worse, which falls in line with guidance, very difficult for the PM to be absent from Downing St, normal worker shouldn't go into work, but the PM?
As for GF she moved out of Downing St on medical advice, should she have ignored that?
So, by all means be critical of Boris but do get the facts correct beforehand.
 
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Bobsyeruncle said:
Probably, but we all knew it was coming....
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Indeed but very few of us had the opportunity to exit a high risk area to a second home, I would have done exactly the same but if criticism is going to be thrown around its only fair all should get it regardless of status or privilege.
 
MatBin said:
As for GF she moved out of Downing St on medical advice, should she have ignored that?
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I take it that's the same medical advice that told her to move to Chequers.:LOL:
 
tarric said:
I take it that's the same medical advice that told her to move to Chequers.:LOL:
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But he is no longer infectious, and shouldn't a pregnant woman be with her partner? And that could have been medical advice, she is more likely to catch something in London than she is at Chequers....
 
Jelster said:
But he is no longer infectious, and shouldn't a pregnant woman be with her partner? And that could have been medical advice, she is more likely to catch something in London than she is at Chequers....
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Hold on, anyone with a second home in a low risk area could get “medical advice” that they should move there to be safer then?
 
Is it bad in itself that he's gone to chequers to recover? No.

Is it bad in itself that his girlfriend has joined him? No.

The issue though is how the public view it. Why do we wonder that idiots keep ignoring the measures in place, when they don't apply to the politicians?
 
Jelster said:
Thanks for the messages guys. She had been ill for the last 10 years or so, due to problems with her lungs, and they gave her steroids to cure it which screwed her kidneys. She was having Dialysis 4 times a week and needed oxygen regularly, so you can imagine that as soon as I was told she tested positive I feared for the worst.

She has been a fighter, like me she could be outspoken and said things as they were (a trait we get from our Dad). But, she was my biggest fan when it came to photography, always telling me I should start doing it for a living; I even shot her wedding.

Here's just one of those 11,329.

Smile by Steve Jelly, on Flickr
Click to expand...
I'm really sorry to hear that Steve. For what its worth, my thoughts are with you and your family
 
Jelster said:
Thanks for the messages guys. She had been ill for the last 10 years or so, due to problems with her lungs, and they gave her steroids to cure it which screwed her kidneys. She was having Dialysis 4 times a week and needed oxygen regularly, so you can imagine that as soon as I was told she tested positive I feared for the worst.

She has been a fighter, like me she could be outspoken and said things as they were (a trait we get from our Dad). But, she was my biggest fan when it came to photography, always telling me I should start doing it for a living; I even shot her wedding.

Here's just one of those 11,329.

by Steve Jelly, on Flickr
Click to expand...

Sorry to hear this Steve, cant comprehend what you are going through
 
KitsuneAndy said:
Is it bad in itself that he's gone to chequers to recover? No.

Is it bad in itself that his girlfriend has joined him? No.

The issue though is how the public view it. Why do we wonder that idiots keep ignoring the measures in place, when they don't apply to the politicians?
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Because its completely different context. If you go to supermarkets you will often go within 2m of someone round the aisles. Do all of use really just go out for essentials or do we nip to the shop for a paper, or a couple of odds and ends? Those picking stuff up from B&Q as well, or those that do an hour and a half of exercise or go out twice a day. Completely different to having a BBQ on the beach or standing around drinking. Of course the PM will get special permissions/rules, I bet he never ran out of loo roll and pasta, and could still get his hands on bread-flour or yeast if he wanted!

There are probably many similar examples of normal people doing this and not seeing the light of day.
 
cambsno said:
Because its completely different context. If you go to supermarkets you will often go within 2m of someone round the aisles. Do all of use really just go out for essentials or do we nip to the shop for a paper, or a couple of odds and ends? Those picking stuff up from B&Q as well, or those that do an hour and a half of exercise or go out twice a day. Completely different to having a BBQ on the beach or standing around drinking. Of course the PM will get special permissions/rules, I bet he never ran out of loo roll and pasta, and could still get his hands on bread-flour or yeast if he wanted!

There are probably many similar examples of normal people doing this and not seeing the light of day.
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I've been going to the shops once a week for our food shopping. And out for a 1 hour ride on the bike a day, on the road so avoiding parks etc.

Travelling between first and second homes has been specifically mentioned in the briefings, so for them to do this just makes more people feel like it's OK for them to ignore the rules too.

Yes the actual health impact is negligible, but if you expect the public to follow the rules, then the people putting them in place have to be following them just as strictly.
 
Did BoJo go straight to Chequers when released from hospital? Probably.

Let's be honest, if you had a second home and it was in a low hit area, you would want to go there to "isolate" if you could. If a doctor advises you to go, is "travel on medical grounds"?
 
People that break the rules will break rules irrespective of what any government official does. Many will try to justify breaking rules by citing an infringement by someone else. That is obviously a bogus excuse.
No amount of wrong doing by any government representative can be seen as justification for any wrong doing by another person.

This is all about exaggerating the impact of a minor transgression in order to have have a go at someone in government.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
The issue though is how the public view it. Why do we wonder that idiots keep ignoring the measures in place, when they don't apply to the politicians?
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I think you have put your finger on a problem with politicians in general and the current government in particular. "Do as I say, not as I do" is never a good message in any situation. In the current situation it is a particularly bad example to set.
 
arclight said:
People that break the rules will break rules irrespective of what any government official does. Many will try to justify breaking rules by citing an infringement by someone else. That is obviously a bogus excuse.
No amount of wrong doing by any government representative can be seen as justification for any wrong doing by another person.

This is all about exaggerating the impact of a minor transgression in order to have have a go at someone in government.
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But every transgression is minor, it’s the sum of all of these minor ones that make a major one. This is the same as every argument from ”voting in elections” by individuals to “lack of action on global heating” by governments :(.
 
AndrewFlannigan said:
I think you have put your finger on a problem with politicians in general and the current government in particular. "Do as I say, not as I do" is never a good message in any situation. In the current situation it is a particularly bad example to set.
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Its the same regardless of government - a number of senior Labour people have put kids through private schools for example - all parties abused expenses...
 
Studio488commercial said:
The worlds going to s*** and people are debating where our prime minister and his pregnant girl friend are currently living, really who gives a s***.
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Those of us that are on the front line of this give a s*** every time anyone acts in a way that increases the risk of spread, however small.
 
Donnie said:
I hope that it is just a rationalisation of where it's going rather than a complete England only approach. Thing is the report doesnt seem to name these 4 big manufacturers so I take it all with a bit of a pinch of salt at the moment.
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"The National" has run this story today and the initial source was Gompels (who I had never heard of) website which had a statement letting customers know that they had been instructed by Pubic Health England to prioritise customers in England.

From the Gompels statement:

“As such this product has a number of restrictions on who can purchase it. You must be registered and operating in England – apologies to Wales and Scotland, we are told you have different processes for getting emergency supplies.”

The article is here:

https://www.thenational.scot/news/18377192.westminster-tells-vital-supply-firms-not-deal-scotland/
 
cambsno said:
Its the same regardless of government - a number of senior Labour people have put kids through private schools for example - all parties abused expenses...
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Which is why I said "politicians" :)
 
Fuji Dave said:
Not good if true.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52275823
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That is troubling. I can see how the stats. for hospital cases will be easier to collate, but there must surely be stats. obtainable from death certificates that embraces all places where people can die.
When decisions are being influenced by statistics then a basic principle is to gather raw data from as large a sample as possible. Care home data should be readily available.

Because there is little testing of the public at large there is not an accurate assessment of the number of asymptomatic people at large with the virus (who can infect many others).

Another aspect is the need to be alert to the outbreak of any disease in a care home. From early March Covid 19 was added to the list of Notifiable Diseases which requires doctors to inform their relative health authority of all occurrences. Obviously the outbreak of a disease in any establishment should trigger an immediate check on infection control etc.
 
A very good article from Alex Massie that seems to hit the mark well.

Alex Massie
Tuesday April 14 2020, 12.01am, The Times

It seems we are all experts now, which means I’ve had enough of most of you. Everyone knows that the United Kingdom has blundered, let down by its political leaders who have been overwhelmed by this crisis. A thousand people a day are dying from Covid-19 and that doesn’t even include the numbers perishing in care homes. It could hardly be more horrific and it is a fiasco of historic proportions.

So why weren’t we better prepared? One possible answer to at least part of this important question is that the government was listening to its own expert advisers. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies [Sage], which reports to the government, held its first formal meeting about Covid-19 on January 22. It followed a meeting the previous day of the New and Emerging Respiratory Virus Threats Advisory Group [Nervtag] which had raised the threat level posed by the coronavirus from “very low” to “low”. By the end of the month, the risk was considered only “moderate”.

On February 13 Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer for England, still talked about a UK outbreak as an “if, not a when” possibility. The first UK death from coronavirus was recorded on March 5 but as late as March 9 Sage rejected the idea of a nationwide lockdown. Three days later the threat level was finally raised from “moderate” to “high”. By then the virus was already at large. On March 23 we went into lockdown. Too late, perhaps, but better late than never.

Could an earlier lockdown have saved lives and limited the spread of the virus? It seems almost certain that it would have. Was a week lost amid overly optimistic assumptions? Perhaps. But would you, if you were charged with making this decision, have ignored or overruled the advice you were receiving from some of the country’s leading scientists? No, come on, be honest. I don’t think you would have.

That’s not a criticism of expertise, merely an acknowledgement that expertise exists in a realm of uncertainty. It is the best we have and much better than nothing; that does not make it perfect. Politicians must make a judgment based on the advice they receive and their estimation of what the country will accept. An earlier lockdown was rejected, in part, because the government — and its scientific advisers — thought that the public would not accept such restrictions. Indeed Downing Street has been surprised by the extent to which the British people have put up with, and honoured, their confinement.

There is another data point supporting this suggestion that the government has been paying careful attention to expert advice. That data point has a name: Nicola Sturgeon. Yesterday the first minister reminded the country that she had taken all her decisions “based on the best advice I had”. Those people who do not trust Boris Johnson might reflect that Ms Sturgeon, in general terms, agrees with the prime minister; some who mistrust the first minister might put aside their prejudices and note she is not doing very much that is very different from what is being done elsewhere in the kingdom.

This Scottish government, as an institution, has every incentive to diverge from UK policy wherever possible. That is a matter of instinct and reasoned preference. And yet, in the broad terms of how this crisis is being handled, Ms Sturgeon has not split from a carefully built pan-UK consensus. There has been an occasional difference of emphasis — the Scottish government moved a little faster on closing schools — but the bigger picture has been one of surprising uniformity.

Perhaps this consensus will crumble; it probably cannot hold for ever. And yet, even in the murky world of off-the-record whispering, it is remarkably difficult to pick up murmurings of dissent. The absence of disagreement is unusual and significant. Still, as Ms Sturgeon says: “If the evidence tells us that we need to do something different in Scotland than the rest of the UK, or on a different timescale, we will not hesitate to do that.” That moment is not yet here and this is revealing too.

Much of this crisis is horrific; little of it is easy. The experts disagree too. On the one hand, public health experts insist the lockdown must continue for weeks or even months; on the other, epidemiologists seem more likely to favour an earlier easing of restrictions. These are generalisations, of course; there is a lot of grey between black and white.

Because, bluntly, in the absence of a vaccine a lot more of us are going to have to be infected with the virus before we can get through this. That assumes immunity can be built up or reinfection minimised. “Herd immunity” is a dispassionate term, not a suggestion the public be the subjects of some wild public health experiment and it is, I think, irresponsible to claim otherwise.

If there is a second wave — and most people who know about these things seem to expect one — there may, subject to capacity, be an opportunity to do things differently then. That, to my amateur eye, seems likely to involve emulating Germany’s example of testing and contact tracing, to the extent that is possible. By the autumn you’d think it should be. All the while, those most susceptible to the virus will have to be shielded from it as best can be done.

And as time passes, the indirect impact of the lockdown becomes ever more apparent; Covid-19 deaths are not the only deaths and, even if they are stripped out of consideration, mortality rates appear to be spiking. Then there is the economic fallout, as yet unknowable in the sense we do not yet know if it will be cataclysmic or merely horrific. This is not some reductive choice between saving the economy and saving lives but, rather, a balance that must be found. For now the lockdown is more important.

The public inquiry which must follow this emergency will wish to examine all the decisions that have been made; it must probe for mistakes and weaknesses. Testing capacity and provision of personal protective equipment will, rightly, be part of that. That inquiry must be a full reckoning. We must be better prepared next time.

So by all means keep insisting the government should have moved more quickly. But as recently as a month ago the experts were telling the government a lockdown was either impossible or not required. The government listened to them. What they know now is not what they knew, for sure, then. If our politicians have blundered, they may have done so for the right reasons. This is little comfort amid the wreckage but it still matters.
 
myotis said:
"The National" has run this story today and the initial source was Gompels (who I had never heard of) website which had a statement letting customers know that they had been instructed by Pubic Health England to prioritise customers in England.

From the Gompels statement:

“As such this product has a number of restrictions on who can purchase it. You must be registered and operating in England – apologies to Wales and Scotland, we are told you have different processes for getting emergency supplies.”

The article is here:

https://www.thenational.scot/news/18377192.westminster-tells-vital-supply-firms-not-deal-scotland/
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I have bought from Gompels for the last 10 years for work (toilet rolls, bin bags, cleaning materials etc) for a non care environment.

In the early days of panic buying they initially locked out any new customers to protect their existing customer base.

As they still got overrun( 14 day fulfilment time instead of order by 4pm for next day!!!!) they then cut again to only shipping to care providers to manage their demand and fulfil essential orders only.

They then appear to have restricted again, whether by government decree or simply their decision as a private company I don’t know.

They also use a carrier I know to be very cheap forEngland and very expensive for outlying areas, such as Highlands, on what are generally bulky low value items.
 
myotis said:
Yes, I think you may be correct, and although not a supporter of an Independent Scotland, I do think that Nicola Sturgeon (at her daily briefings) is coming across as far more competent and in control of the situation than the UK lot: Boris, Hancock, Rabb etc, which can't be doing the SNP any harm.
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Sturgeon has just addressed reports of supplies of PPE going to England and not Scotland at her daily briefing.

She said that the Scottish Government were investigating and that the Scottish Chief Medical Officer would be speaking to Hancock. She also said that if it were true, then that would be "unconscionable and unacceptable".

EDIT: Scottish CMO has just said that Hancock has cancelled planned phone between themselves, so she has written to him stating that she has not given her permission for supplies to be diverted from Scotland to England.

First Journalists asks "Is there a war going on between the nations and are we being treated as second class?"

Briefing is still going on, so there may be more to add.
 
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arclight said:
That is troubling. I can see how the stats. for hospital cases will be easier to collate, but there must surely be stats. obtainable from death certificates that embraces all places where people can die.
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There are, that's why the official figures come from the Office of National Statistics, as do all official UK statistics. But they rely on death certificates that come from all sorts of sources and have all sorts of delays before they enter the records and become available to the ONS.

The hospital cases can go into the system almost immediately and act as an "indicator" of trends, even if they don't have the exact numbers. Decisions will (or should) be made using ONS figures, although there have been issues in the past with Governments (of all persuasions) using data before the ONS considered them to be robust. There is a historical "tension" between the ONS and Government.
 
Mozthecat said:
They then appear to have restricted again, whether by government decree or simply their decision as a private company I don’t know.
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Well, they were clearly blaming Public Health England. Had it been the Government and part of a UK strategy to make sure supplies went to places they were most needed, then this is something that would make sense, but, as of the time of the Article, the Department of Health hadn't commented.
 
Jelster said:
So why weren’t we better prepared? One possible answer to at least part of this important question is that the government was listening to its own expert advisers.
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That's an interesting assertion.

If the government had listened to its expert advisers in 2016, when Exercise Cygnus showed the gaping holes in the UK's preparations for dealing with novel and fast moving infections, the country might have been prepared for the current situation.

If the government had listened to its expert advisors in 2017, when the Cabinet Office reported a high risk of pandemic flu resulting in 20,000 to 750,000 UK deaths, the country might have been prepared for the current situation.

If the government had listened to its expert adviser Prof Sir Ian Boyd in 2018, when he warned that previous advice on pandemic preparations had not been properly implemented, the country might have been prepared for the current situation.

...so blaming "its experts" for giving poor advice sounds rather like yet another case of being economical with the actualité.
 
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