COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[Marvin]

Today's media briefing will be interesting. Yesterday the media was very friendly but they need to ask questions today about suppression v herd immunity.

presumably the whole world is going through the same debate behind the scenes?

If the conclusion is mitigation/herd immunity is the way to go, I'd be surprised but people are rational and they know their subject better than we do so one must trust. I would however like some more justification for adopting 1918 strategy in 2020!

 

[Ban-jani]

China, Singapore etc do seem to be returning to a degree of normality. There are reports that reinfection is low. A second wave is apparently less likely as this is not influenza. If we bring in measures like France etc we can support businesses and people. Basically treat this as a one off ‘war’ cost, focus on suppression and be vigilant once we come out of the other side and see where we are with vaccines etc.

I’m not saying this will be over in a few months as it is likely we will have to modify and adapt our behaviour for a long while yet but it is possible to combat this and use the Far East countries as a model as much as we can given the cultural differences.

You are maybe right mate but I think it’s incredibly difficult to know.

China is still in lockdown in a lot of areas, with a huge number of people not yet out and so when they’re released, who knows?

 

[George Hannah]

I’ve deleted the post whilst I re-read the report.

edit: it says at peak, we’d still need 8x as many ICU beds as we currently have. Which isn’t the same as my original post that I’ve deleted.

“In combination, this intervention strategy is predicted to reduce peak critical care demand by two-thirds and halve the number of deaths. However, this “optimal” mitigation scenario would still result in an 8-fold higher peak demand on critical care beds over and above the available surge capacity in both GB and the US”

Doesn’t that mean 125,000 deaths?

I'm not sure their prose style is sufficiently precise - the sentence is ambiguous. If they wanted to say 'no matter what measures are taken there will still be more than 100,000 deaths in the UK' they could have easily done so.

 

[The Light Was Yellow Sir]

this simulitis is a tricky cove!

Isn’t it just.

 

[alexmcity]

Today's media briefing will be interesting. Yesterday the media was very friendly but they need to ask questions today about suppression v herd immunity.

presumably the whole world is going through the same debate behind the scenes?

If the conclusion is mitigation/herd immunity is the way to go, I'd be surprised but people are rational and they know their subject better than we do so one must trust. I would however like some more justification for adopting 1918 strategy in 2020!

I think the rationale was that we couldn't contain the spreading anyway, so better try to protect the vulnerable and hope that the healhy ones will develop immunity which will help during the expected 2nd wave. And this will help save the economy to boot. Problem is that neither the testing capacity nor the ICU capacity are sufficient for such a strategy. Besides, the expected 2nd wave and the expected immunity are based on speculative probablities than hard facts. So, the suppression strategy is the only realistic now, as the ICL study concludes.

 

[aguero93:20]

A big hole that the Government needs to close is testing.

frontline staff in the NHS need testing and they are focusing on priority-testing but they need to move the testing outside the NHS to private labs and use the emergency services, students and other people outside the NHS to get the resources they need. Testing is the way you find asymptomatic people who are spreading it, and you catch the transmission chain earlier. The WHO are highlighting this. No one outside of South Korea seems to be doing this work but it should be the key. I expect the NHS feels it doesn't have the resources to do it but society does. That's a government job to re-allocate.

As I've said before, wartime level of resource allocation. Not happening yet though.

 

[George Hannah]

Well you are getting there. The obvious question then is why did we not use the data from the virus ‘which seems to be a law unto itself’ to begin with? It didn’t start here. We saw the response in China and elsewhere. Their response was based on the actual properties of the virus. We rejected their response as flawed because our modelling based on a generic virus told us it was flawed. Our ignorance of the actual virus allied to our arrogance that we were right and knew better than those currently experiencing the problem is probably a debate for less pressing times.

The learning process is a changing process.

 

[BobKowalski]

They have adapted the strategy by bringing them in sooner, not by bringing in measures unforseen previously.

I didn’t say they were unforeseen. The Govt always had scenarios prepared for more restrictive measures. My point is that they had to bring them in sooner than planned as the strategy was switched from mitigation to suppression as our initial modelling was in error. This was evident over the weekend when the mantra of ‘herd immunity’ was suddenly ditched and why yesterday we were not fully on top of the economic impact of what we were asking people to do nor did we have measures to announce that would mitigate the economic impact.

I have specifically said we adapted our strategy. We adapted it to reflect new data which made our initial assumptions redundant. This is not a criticism. I expect people to change the strategy if the data demands it.

The criticism would be why was not actual data on the virus used in the first place? If we didn’t have access then why were countries and organisations privy to the actual data not heeded more? There could be good reasons for not doing so but that is a debate for later.

 

[Oohvonkyvonky]

I work outside, but next week I am booked on a course which will mean I am in a classroom with about 20 people for a whole week for 7 hrs aday... plus I have never met. My missus is a diabetic and in the 'at risk' group. I have told my line manager that I dont think it would be wise for me to attend, as government are saying dont socialise etc. Well to me being around 20 people is socialising and is not part of my normal work. I was hoping my boss would take us of the course but he isnt really interested in our health.

That's a ridiculous approach from your boss and the training company! This is the recommendations from ACAS https://www.acas.org.uk/coronavirus
You could just say someone in your family has it - Then you wont be obliged to go?!

 

[George Hannah]

Yeah you’re not wrong.
Grim times ahead mate.

 

[SWP's back]

They have adapted the strategy by bringing them in sooner, not by bringing in measures unforseen previously.

Because the modelling the experts we were told to trust was fundamentally flawed.

 

[Chippy_boy]

Pretty much.

Option1 : It’s lockdown now, destroy the economy, loads of people die and get ill, with the risk that it all happens again once the lockdown ends.

Option2 : Or... don’t fully lockdown yet, the economy is almost completely fucked, more people get ill and die initially but it might mean less do in the 2nd wave. When we eventually do fully lockdown, the economy is fucked.

That’s our two options.

I hear where your coming from mate but I think it's a bit different in fact.

The numbers of people who die is very strongly determined by the extent to which the NHS' ICU capacity is overloaded. Nearly everyone who needs ventilator support and who cannot get it, will die. What they have realised (and was obvious to many of us) is that had they carried on with Option 2, the NHS would be completely overwhelmed and the numbers of people dying would be off the scale. They talked about 250,000 *if* we had enough capacity, which of course we do not. So the numbers would be much higher than 250,000 - something in the region of half a million - with 14,500 people dying per day at the peak.

So Option1 becomes the only option. We have no choice. There are no circumstances where more people will die under Option1. This idea that Option2 might be better in the long run, has been shown to be wrong. It's SO bad in the short term, it cannot possibly be better.

And regards Option1, we may well have several "waves". After each wave is under control, we can ease off on measures and then if the numbers start to pick up again, we need to lock down again. We are going to have to get used to this for the next 18 months, because there is no alternative which does not leave half a million people dead.

 

[The Northern Baptist]

What’s the deal with high blood pressure. My mum is on medication for it but doesn’t have HBP whilst on the medication.

Im reading though that it’s the actual HBP medication that increases the risk. Anyone got anymore solid intel on this?

 

[Chippy_boy]

Some positive news landed in my inbox this morning. An IT Service Provider that we use in China has resumed normal operations so it sounds as though they have emerged from the other side. They have been in lock down since the start of Feb. Hopefully an indication as to where we can be in a similar amount of time....

B&Q said only the other day mate that 95% of their supply from China is back on track now. How the Chinese will stop the outbreak taking hold again, remains to be seen, but they are sufficiently confident that they have dismantled the hospitals and sent used ventilators to Italy, so you have to assume they think they have it under control.

 

[hello]

i know you’ve been defending the government, and I think it’s all too easy to criticise; they’ve got a ridiculously difficult job to do at the moment, but the ventilator situation is absolutely disgraceful.

Not increasing ventilator capacity in Jan and not ramping up test capacity were very poor shows, even if they didn't need them they could have used to test/treat other countries patients if they went full tilt and have over capacity. taking these actions 8-10 weeks later is piss poor. The rest of it you can argue either way, its immensely tough judgement calls with too many unknown variables, but to not start increasing capacity till now is as you say disgraceful.

 

[TheRemainsOfTheDave]

Today's media briefing will be interesting. Yesterday the media was very friendly but they need to ask questions today about suppression v herd immunity.

presumably the whole world is going through the same debate behind the scenes?

If the conclusion is mitigation/herd immunity is the way to go, I'd be surprised but people are rational and they know their subject better than we do so one must trust. I would however like some more justification for adopting 1918 strategy in 2020!

Where do you get this idea from?

https://history.blog.gov.uk/2018/09/13/the-flu-that-wasnt-spanish/

Sounds like it was just ignored at the time.

 

[BlueRockape]

Getting really serious here now 600€ fine for more than one person in a car at the super market

 

[marco]

What’s the deal with high blood pressure. My mum is on medication for it but doesn’t have HBP whilst on the medication.

Im reading though that it’s the actual HBP medication that increases the risk. Anyone got anymore solid intel on this?

your correct,high blood presure on its own does not increase risk,its the medication,maybe worth you malking a phone call to the surgery to brief you up so your 100%

 

[domalino]

The criticism would be why was not actual data on the virus used in the first place? If we didn’t have access then why were countries and organisations privy to the actual data not heeded more? There could be good reasons for not doing so but that is a debate for later.

This report was compiled a few days ago, I don't know how long it would have taken them to get the data sorted and put into the model, but remember that as of a week ago there were only 21000 cases outside China.

The Netherlands and Sweden are both still following mitigation approaches. We'll see if they change now.

 

[Claytop]

Does anyone know what the deal is with 'healthy' over 70 year olds? From the press conference yesterday and the guidance online it says anyone over 70 should self isolate for 12 weeks but didn't Hancock say they meant over 70 and with an underlying condition?