The virus. PPE. Part 1

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sphexx said:
Since we know that many (most/all?) nhs staff have been told not to comment to media, what do you suggest? And what would you propose to do if you did know his/her name to make it clear they would no longer be thanking him/her?
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One less clap on a Thursday.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
One less clap on a Thursday.
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Personally, I’d like to see a collective thumbs down for the government‘s record of NHS funding, every Thursday :).
 
Govt have admitted that if they take both a nasal swab and salival sample from the same person, they're counting that as two tests done in their figures..
 
Bobsyeruncle said:
There's a surprise.....unbelievable.
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I'm sorry to say that nothing seems unbelievable to me where the current cabinet is concerned.

Like our cousins across the Atlantic we have allowed people into office who lack both the ability to perform the basic functions of those positions and the humility to admit their errors.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
Govt have admitted that if they take both a nasal swab and salival sample from the same person, they're counting that as two tests done in their figures..
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It is, of course, a bit of slight of hand on the part of the gov. to present the results like that.
The problem is compounded by the poor standard of journalists that attend the No.10 briefings. Their questioning is not incisive. When the test figures suddenly leap in numbers someone should have asked how they majically found all those extra people to test.
Also, it was known that both nasal and saliva swabs are taken , no one thought to ask why. If it was to confirm a result or because sometimes the virus will only show up in a nasal OR a throat swab then that would be evidence that both swabs were part of the same test, i.e. to establish the presence of the virus.
 
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KitsuneAndy said:
Yeah he can go f*** himself for thinking the health service should be properly funded and should have the right resources.

Hypocrites who voted Tory, then go out clapping like seals every Thursday apparently think their claps magically make PPE appear and Doctors and Nurses are suddenly safe. It's the British equivalent of "thoughts and prayers".
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Seeing as he says he is well paid, perhaps he and others should be paid less, so that the supposedly underpaid, can be paid more.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
Govt have admitted that if they take both a nasal swab and salival sample from the same person, they're counting that as two tests done in their figures..
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My colleague had a test last week, and the same swab was used for the inside of both cheeks, back of his throat and up his nose, so presumably that would be one test?
 
nilagin said:
Seeing as he says he is well paid, perhaps he and others should be paid less, so that the supposedly underpaid, can be paid more.
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So your response to the underfunding of the NHS is what exactly? We spend less than compararable nations. If I recall correctly, the US Federal government spends more per head of population than we do and that’s in a mainly private system .

I use the word system loosely as they don’t really have a “system”. And now people there have not only lost their jobs but in many cases their medical insurance just at a time that it’s likely needed. And US hospitals are going bust because people are not having the profitable elective treatments they usually rely on.
 
sphexx said:
So your response to the underfunding of the NHS is what exactly? We spend less than compararable nations. If I recall correctly, the US Federal government spends more per head of population than we do and that’s in a mainly private system .

I use the word system loosely as they don’t really have a “system”. And now people there have not only lost their jobs but in many cases their medical insurance just at a time that it’s likely needed. And US hospitals are going bust because people are not having the profitable elective treatments they usually rely on.
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It appears to be to give Doctors a pay cut to pay nurses more. Rather than just pay them all better, or ignoring the main issue for the lower-paid frontline staff. At least give them adequate PPE.

One of my friends worked for SERCO at the local hospital and lives with her grandfather. She was disciplined by them for WEARING PPE.
 
sphexx said:
So your response to the underfunding of the NHS is what exactly?
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Stop spending in areas of the nhs where it isn't needed. Far too much bureaucracy and people in positions that just aren't necessary.
It has to be funded, it isn't a money making enterprise, so stop wasting what you do have.
For example, one of my old workmates, his sister worked in administration at a local nhs hospital, her "company car" was an Audi TT.
 
I didn't realise SERCO are involved!!

I can only hope the make a better job of this than they did with the Caledonian Sleeper.

Dave
 
Tringa said:
I didn't realise SERCO are involved!!

I can only hope the make a better job of this than they did with the Caledonian Sleeper.

Dave
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Aren’t they involved with the current contact tracing?
 
Bobsyeruncle said:
My colleague had a test last week, and the same swab was used for the inside of both cheeks, back of his throat and up his nose, so presumably that would be one test?
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"inside of both cheeks"

Bloody hell - as in buttocks ? I hope they did that one after nose and mouth.

Seriously, if the same swab was used to sample from mouth, throat and nose that must count as one test.
 
I've just read an article in the Guardian regarding an interview given by the US Health Secretary Alex Azar who says the reason the USA has so many deaths is because its citizens particularly black Americans and minorities are especially unhealthy! Honestly, you couldn't make it up. So its not Trumps fault then but them damn ethnic. I'm guessing the China and WHO conspiracy theories not going down to well with the American people, wonder how they'll take to this one.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...merica-is-victim-blaming-the-coronavirus-dead
 
jakeblu said:
I've just read an article in the Guardian regarding an interview given by the US Health Secretary Alex Azar who says the reason the USA has so many deaths is because its citizens particularly black Americans and minorities are especially unhealthy! Honestly, you couldn't make it up. So its not Trumps fault then but them damn ethnic. I'm guessing the China and WHO conspiracy theories not going down to well with the American people, wonder how they'll take to this one.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...merica-is-victim-blaming-the-coronavirus-dead
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Seeing as a high percentage of the NHS staff deaths have been BAME that would suggest that they are more susceptible. Add to that health issues and obesity also playing a factor, it all adds up to more likelihood of death.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
Govt have admitted that if they take both a nasal swab and salival sample from the same person, they're counting that as two tests done in their figures..
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Does it also mean if 2 lab staff look at the same test it’s counts as 2 as well? [emoji849]
 
jakeblu said:
I've just read an article in the Guardian regarding an interview given by the US Health Secretary Alex Azar who says the reason the USA has so many deaths is because its citizens particularly black Americans and minorities are especially unhealthy! Honestly, you couldn't make it up. So its not Trumps fault then but them damn ethnic. I'm guessing the China and WHO conspiracy theories not going down to well with the American people, wonder how they'll take to this one.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...merica-is-victim-blaming-the-coronavirus-dead
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Trump has also repeatedly claimed “We have so many cases because we do so much testing”, so easy solution, stop the effing testing and have zero cases :). Of course I know what he probably means but he hasn’teven learned to string words together to make proper sentences most of the time :(.
 
nilagin said:
Seeing as a high percentage of the NHS staff deaths have been BAME that would suggest that they are more susceptible. Add to that health issues and obesity also playing a factor, it all adds up to more likelihood of death.
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There’s no denying that, it’s probably the same the world over, but I don’t see any other administration trying to scapegoat sections of their population to save their political skins.
 
KitsuneAndy said:
Govt have admitted that if they take both a nasal swab and salival sample from the same person, they're counting that as two tests done in their figures..
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How many tests do you 2 samples should be? I'm genuinely puzzled by this comment and the following reactions, because it appears to be 2 separate samples, and that would normally = 2 tests. You can't put both samples into a single tube, run the assay and divide the result by 2 at the end.
 
ancient_mariner said:
How many tests do you 2 samples should be? I'm genuinely puzzled by this comment and the following reactions, because it appears to be 2 separate samples, and that would normally = 2 tests. You can't put both samples into a single tube, run the assay and divide the result by 2 at the end.
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Yes, though they could report separate figures for oral & nasal and another fo number of people tested.

The. real problem is “targets” which are the enemy of real performance in most fields :(. I don’t think any justification was given for the 100k and now the 200k targets.
 
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Retune said:
Good article today with, I think, a correct take on what went wrong with the UK response:

'Did the UK government prepare for the wrong kind of pandemic?'

'The extent to which Boris Johnson’s government stuck to a protocol laid out in its flu pandemic plans is made clear by reviewing the 2011 strategy for responding to a flu pandemic (the most recent published version available). It reads like an extraordinarily precise description of the steps the UK government did (and did not) take in its initial response to Covid-19. Mass gatherings such as football matches and live music events would continue, in part to “help maintain public morale”. There would be no quarantining of international arrivals at airports, though passengers would be encouraged to report any symptoms upon arrival. Face masks would not be recommended for use by the public. There is no mention whatsoever of healthy people being confined to their homes in an attempt to prevent transmission. Perhaps most striking is that the decision to wind down contact tracing on 12 March, widely viewed as an error that has hamstrung the UK’s ability to fight back against the coronavirus, is also alluded to in the government’s flu pandemic strategy. Its first “detection and assessment” phase ( seemingly an analogue for the “contain” phase of the coronavirus response) describes how the focus would shift away from “actively finding” and isolating confirmed and suspected cases, and instead turn to treatment of the disease once there was “evidence of sustained community transmission of the virus”. It even anticipates that detection and assessment could itself be a “relatively short” phase, depending on the circumstances. The flu strategy bluntly concludes: “It will not be possible to halt the spread of a new pandemic influenza virus, and it would be a waste of public health resources and capacity to attempt to do so.”'

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...rnment-prepare-for-the-wrong-kind-of-pandemic
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sphexx said:
I think that’s right and to some extent it absolves the govt and blames the scientific advice (hello, all you Grauniad haters :)) though doesn’t explain why they went with a purely “flu” plan when it obviously wasn’t ”flu” :(. The real fault (again) lies with missed opportunities to plan for different kinds of diseases possibly because govt was obsessed occupied with another project which we won’t mention:(.
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I read this article which is a more comprehensive overview than the Guardian article above which was a good read. It is lengthy but it's outlining historical political reasons for the way we've come to where we are with COVID-19.

https://www.thefullbrexit.com/covid19-state-failure

If it's getting too long a read scroll down to 'COVID-19. The chickens come home to roost'

I've quoted your post too, Richard, as it's in the ball park of my post.

Why I despair: The daily briefings are supposed to inform us about what measures are being taken and for the most part I've come to the conclusion that it's an exercise in obfuscation, deception and in some instances a hair's breadth away from lies. It's nothing less than rearguard action against a catastrophic failure of seeing COVID-19 for what it is and the evidence was there to see if not so clear in China because of the Party's attempts at a cover up and issuing misleading numbers then certainly..Italy and Spain,the two countries that most of our news coverage concentrated on. An enemy is defeated by knowing it. General 'Monty' Montgomery had a biography of Rommel with him in the desert and on the basis of 'know your enemy' it played a part in Rommel's defeat. Not looking in the right direction reminds me of the successful Japanese attack on Singapore from the hinterland not the sea where all the defensive guns were pointing. There was a more to it than that of course.

For me this is the scandal, not that HMG was geared up to tackle a 'flu epidemic..as far as I understand a different type of virus to corona. It was having seen that it wasn't a 'flu virus (A/B) and carried on as if it was. I expect someone will pull me up on this but the suggestion at the start that herd immunity would sort it was a dreadful strategy in the light of what it was doing in Italy and Spain. A disease as deadly as COVID-19 cannot be given full rein in the belief that eventually natural immunity would protect the population. Ie. those fortunate enough to have survived. I lost confidence in the thinking as soon as I heard that this strategy was being considered. They envisaged that 60% of the population..40 million.. would contract the disease but the majority would survive with immunity. What I thought was, what if you're wrong..?..it's too late then. Also, just how many people were the government/advisors prepared to see die ?

If I'm doing nothing I might listen/watch a briefing but what's the point ? Since the numbers were first issued we thought the number of deaths was accurate until it became clear that Care Home deaths were not included and neither were COVID-19 related deaths in any other setting other than hospitals. From March 2nd to May 1st 12,526 COVID-19 related deaths occurred in Care Homes..that's 27% of all Care Home deaths in that period and would add significantly to the totals that ministers were giving out at the briefings. Sending patients back to Care Homes from hospitals (in for non-COVID related treatment) without testing beggars belief yet this was government policy or guidance...same thing. Test on the way in but not on the way out :banghead:


By the way. I don't think Boris Johnson looks well. I think he's come back too soon. .I've watched a few tv interviews with people who have been through what he went through and this COVID-19 leaves its mark for a good while.
 
sphexx said:
Yes, though they could report separate figures for oral & nasal and another fo number of people tested.

The. real problem is “targets” which are the enemy of real performance in most fields :(. I don’t think any justification was given for the 100k and now the 200k targets.
Click to expand...

The original target was plainly someone panicking and quoting an OTT figure thinking "this is so much overkill they should be amazed & stop giving me flack".

TBH a test is a test is a test - it makes no difference to the lab/infrastructure capacity how many people. The thing I don't understand is why the test centres aren't completely rammed with people wanting to be tested, other than a substantial part of the popluation not thinking testing is important.
 
JohnC6 said:
I read this article which is a more comprehensive overview than the Guardian article above which was a good read. It is lengthy but it's outlining historical political reasons for the way we've come to where we are with COVID-19.

https://www.thefullbrexit.com/covid19-state-failure
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That's a very different article to the other piece. They seem to be blaming everything on 'neoliberal elites', who are of course the arch enemies of Lexiters like these guys.
 
JohnC6 said:
I read this article which is a more comprehensive overview than the Guardian article above which was a good read. It is lengthy but it's outlining historical political reasons for the way we've come to where we are with COVID-19.

https://www.thefullbrexit.com/covid19-state-failure

If it's getting too long a read scroll down to 'COVID-19. The chickens come home to roost'

I've quoted your post too, Richard, as it's in the ball park of my post.

Why I despair: The daily briefings are supposed to inform us about what measures are being taken and for the most part I've come to the conclusion that it's an exercise in obfuscation, deception and in some instances a hair's breadth away from lies. It's nothing less than rearguard action against a catastrophic failure of seeing COVID-19 for what it is and the evidence was there to see if not so clear in China because of the Party's attempts at a cover up and issuing misleading numbers then certainly..Italy and Spain,the two countries that most of our news coverage concentrated on. An enemy is defeated by knowing it. General 'Monty' Montgomery had a biography of Rommel with him in the desert and on the basis of 'know your enemy' it played a part in Rommel's defeat. Not looking in the right direction reminds me of the successful Japanese attack on Singapore from the hinterland not the sea where all the defensive guns were pointing. There was a more to it than that of course.

For me this is the scandal, not that HMG was geared up to tackle a 'flu epidemic..as far as I understand a different type of virus to corona. It was having seen that it wasn't a 'flu virus (A/B) and carried on as if it was. I expect someone will pull me up on this but the suggestion at the start that herd immunity would sort it was a dreadful strategy in the light of what it was doing in Italy and Spain. A disease as deadly as COVID-19 cannot be given full rein in the belief that eventually natural immunity would protect the population. Ie. those fortunate enough to have survived. I lost confidence in the thinking as soon as I heard that this strategy was being considered. They envisaged that 60% of the population..40 million.. would contract the disease but the majority would survive with immunity. What I thought was, what if you're wrong..?..it's too late then. Also, just how many people were the government/advisors prepared to see die ?

If I'm doing nothing I might listen/watch a briefing but what's the point ? Since the numbers were first issued we thought the number of deaths was accurate until it became clear that Care Home deaths were not included and neither were COVID-19 related deaths in any other setting other than hospitals. From March 2nd to May 1st 12,526 COVID-19 related deaths occurred in Care Homes..that's 27% of all Care Home deaths in that period and would add significantly to the totals that ministers were giving out at the briefings. Sending patients back to Care Homes from hospitals (in for non-COVID related treatment) without testing beggars belief yet this was government policy or guidance...same thing. Test on the way in but not on the way out :banghead:


By the way. I don't think Boris Johnson looks well. I think he's come back too soon. .I've watched a few tv interviews with people who have been through what he went through and this COVID-19 leaves its mark for a good while.
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Some people have longstanding respiratory impairment.
 
JohnC6 said:
I read this article which is a more comprehensive overview than the Guardian article above which was a good read. It is lengthy but it's outlining historical political reasons for the way we've come to where we are with COVID-19.

https://www.thefullbrexit.com/covid19-state-failure

If it's getting too long a read scroll down to 'COVID-19. The chickens come home to roost'

I've quoted your post too, Richard, as it's in the ball park of my post.

Why I despair: The daily briefings are supposed to inform us about what measures are being taken and for the most part I've come to the conclusion that it's an exercise in obfuscation, deception and in some instances a hair's breadth away from lies. It's nothing less than rearguard action against a catastrophic failure of seeing COVID-19 for what it is and the evidence was there to see if not so clear in China because of the Party's attempts at a cover up and issuing misleading numbers then certainly..Italy and Spain,the two countries that most of our news coverage concentrated on. An enemy is defeated by knowing it. General 'Monty' Montgomery had a biography of Rommel with him in the desert and on the basis of 'know your enemy' it played a part in Rommel's defeat. Not looking in the right direction reminds me of the successful Japanese attack on Singapore from the hinterland not the sea where all the defensive guns were pointing. There was a more to it than that of course.

For me this is the scandal, not that HMG was geared up to tackle a 'flu epidemic..as far as I understand a different type of virus to corona. It was having seen that it wasn't a 'flu virus (A/B) and carried on as if it was. I expect someone will pull me up on this but the suggestion at the start that herd immunity would sort it was a dreadful strategy in the light of what it was doing in Italy and Spain. A disease as deadly as COVID-19 cannot be given full rein in the belief that eventually natural immunity would protect the population. Ie. those fortunate enough to have survived. I lost confidence in the thinking as soon as I heard that this strategy was being considered. They envisaged that 60% of the population..40 million.. would contract the disease but the majority would survive with immunity. What I thought was, what if you're wrong..?..it's too late then. Also, just how many people were the government/advisors prepared to see die ?

If I'm doing nothing I might listen/watch a briefing but what's the point ? Since the numbers were first issued we thought the number of deaths was accurate until it became clear that Care Home deaths were not included and neither were COVID-19 related deaths in any other setting other than hospitals. From March 2nd to May 1st 12,526 COVID-19 related deaths occurred in Care Homes..that's 27% of all Care Home deaths in that period and would add significantly to the totals that ministers were giving out at the briefings. Sending patients back to Care Homes from hospitals (in for non-COVID related treatment) without testing beggars belief yet this was government policy or guidance...same thing. Test on the way in but not on the way out :banghead:


By the way. I don't think Boris Johnson looks well. I think he's come back too soon. .I've watched a few tv interviews with people who have been through what he went through and this COVID-19 leaves its mark for a good while.
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Agree. Regardless of whether it was actually considered for a strategy, “herd immunity“ was certainly talked about in public and yet, as far as I know, nobody at the time, and arguably even now, could have been sure that any sort of immunity would result from being infected :(.
 
ancient_mariner said:
The original target was plainly someone panicking and quoting an OTT figure thinking "this is so much overkill they should be amazed & stop giving me flack".

TBH a test is a test is a test - it makes no difference to the lab/infrastructure capacity how many people. The thing I don't understand is why the test centres aren't completely rammed with people wanting to be tested, other than a substantial part of the popluation not thinking testing is important.
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I suspect that a sort of "war weariness" has set in. The media is full of Covid19 morning, noon and night (and all through the night if you listen to 24/7 talk radio type stations). We are bombarded with the bad news, but most of us not at a sharp end don't know anyone who has died. At the same time we are all blighted with the damned virus because it has wrecked our normal way of life.
Every day we are bombarded with reports that X millions have Covid19 and X hundreds of thousands have died etc. etc. That sort of news has a time limited impact. Three people dying is a tragedy, but three million people dying is a statistic.
Perhaps many of us are now super saturated with the problem and the thought of going for a test and actually taking part in this business is just too off - puting.
(All just my thoughts and supposition, of course).
 
sphexx said:
Agree. Regardless of whether it was actually considered for a strategy, “herd immunity“ was certainly talked about in public and yet, as far as I know, nobody at the time, and arguably even now, could have been sure that any sort of immunity would result from being infected :(.
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That is exactly my understanding. I recall the No10 scientists talking about the theory of herd immunity, but at no time did I hear them say that it was proposed to achieve it by any means other than vaccination. Back then there was no proof at all that people who recovered from Covid 19 could be sure of not becoming reinfected in which case herd immunity could not be obtained by letting nature take it's course.
This aspect of the Covid 19 story was probably another chapter written by the poisonous pens of the press.
 
arclight said:
That is exactly my understanding. I recall the No10 scientists talking about the theory of herd immunity, but at no time did I hear them say that it was proposed to achieve it by any means other than vaccination.
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Have a look at the video below. It's quite clear Vallance is talking here about naturally acquired herd immunity. At this stage they were thinking that (as with pandemic influenza models) the virus would inevitably sweep through the population, and they would only attempt to 'mitigate' this by 'flattening the curve' so that the NHS was not overwhelmed and protecting the especially vulnerable. In this scenario, there would still be perhaps a quarter of a million deaths, but not the half a million that would be expected if nothing at all was done. That the virus could be stopped in its tracks by aggressive testing, tracing and isolation wasn't even considered. They only changed their minds when a revised model suggested the NHS would indeed be overwhelmed by the number of hospital admissions. This triggered the belated lockdown and the even more belated efforts to ramp up testing and tracing capacity.

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XRc389TvG8
 
ancient_mariner said:
How many tests do you 2 samples should be? I'm genuinely puzzled by this comment and the following reactions, because it appears to be 2 separate samples, and that would normally = 2 tests. You can't put both samples into a single tube, run the assay and divide the result by 2 at the end.
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Yes it is two tests, but when I have both eye tested at opticians it counts as one eye test bit two. Maybe to be clear they should say we tested x number of people rather than number of tests
 
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