Current interview on Andrew Marr is pretty damning, stating neither the ppe nor covid testing for NHS staff is adequate. These are NHS doctors stating this on prime time tv - they must be desperate to get heard.
There's an article in the Sunday Times this morning talking about the government's strategy pivot, a lot of self-exculpation and rival briefings going on, but in brief:
- There appears to be an effort to pin much of the blame on Cummings which has been picked up by much of media Twitter - though he allegedly had a Damascene conversion of his own on the 12th.
- Much infighting over who gets to be in charge should Johnson need to self-isolate.
- Talk has already turned to multiple inquiries.
Are there not existing disaster plans (from the cold war era etc) that state chains of command etc for this sort of thing?
Probably. But our government is formed of staunch traditionalists, for whom the accepted approach is:
1. Wade through slaughter to a throne.
2. That’s it.
There are reports that Cummings originally supported herd immunity, (or let half a million pensioners die), but then switched after the alarming Imperial College calculations. Downing St is fiercely denouncing this story, which I suppose means it's true. It's in the Sunday Times.
Are there not existing disaster plans (from the cold war era etc) that state chains of command etc for this sort of thing?
Probably. But our government is formed of staunch traditionalists, for whom the accepted approach is:
1. Wade through slaughter to a throne.
2. That’s it.
There are reports that Cummings originally supported herd immunity, (or let half a million pensioners die), but then switched after the alarming Imperial College calculations. Downing St is fiercely denouncing this story, which I suppose means it's true. It's in the Sunday Times.
Never believe something until it has been officially denied.
Let's get real. If we don't bang up the vulnerable they - we - will die like flies and destroy the health service. Otherwise it would be time for the old to sacrifice for the young. Can the UK manage the disposal of 2% of its population in three months? If it can, only then can life return to new socio-economic normal.
I'd always assumed that letting the elderly die was part of the Government's plan. It would solve the social care problem for one thing. I guess they then realised the knock on effects. Sorry I'm probably maligning Johnson, Cummings et al, but I bet there were lots of jokes on the topic doing the rounds among them.
I'd always assumed that letting the elderly die was part of the Government's plan. It would solve the social care problem for one thing. I guess they then realised the knock on effects. Sorry I'm probably maligning Johnson, Cummings et al, but I bet there were lots of jokes on the topic doing the rounds among them.
Given the intellectual tenor of the people involved, I have a strong suspicion that they hoped to be proved very clever later by doing something counter-intuitive.
Even in the strictest stay at home orders in the US, there is a caveat that people are allowed to go outside for walks and hikes in parks as long as people stay six feet away from each other. As far as I could tell, at least in the parking area, people were staying six feet away from each other; and the upper trail is quite wide and long so it is possible that there was quite a bit of space between hikers.
Our biggest concern here is students coming back from Spring Break. You have seen pictures of college-age kids partying out on the beaches. While both universities have shifted to online courses, the students still have residences here, either in dorms or apartments throughout the towns. Both universities have sent out emails, tweets and other electronic messages that have told them if they do not have to come back, don't.
The need for facemasks is acute. Local quilters and sewers are now being asked to help provide masks. There are several online instructions that have been put out by local hospitals.
Yes, there has been an exponential increase in the number of new cases in the US, mostly in the big cities and the authorities have started ordering stay in place in those locales. I fully expect Washington State Governor Inslee to issue such an order this week for the whole of the state.
With respect, 6 feet is not as good as staying home.
There was analysis that more authority minded and obedient societies are doing better than individualist ones. Obedience saves lives. In that light, students returning from trips including the USA may not go anywhere here except into immediate isolation. No stopping at a store, for gasoline, nothing. 911 emergency call for noncompliance. Arrest, enforced and fined. Out of province not ordered yet. Needs to be.
News as I write this. Gatherings of more than 5 people are illegal.
The unfortunate thing is that the next 10-14 days of infections are already "baked in". Those people are already exposed and simply won't know it for 5-10 days. Any measures taken now will start flattening the curve two weeks out. My big fear is that people will start social distancing, etc. and will notice that it hasn't slowed anything down two weeks later and will give up.
There's an article in the Sunday Times this morning talking about the government's strategy pivot, a lot of self-exculpation and rival briefings going on, but in brief:
- There appears to be an effort to pin much of the blame on Cummings which has been picked up by much of media Twitter - though he allegedly had a Damascene conversion of his own on the 12th.
Maybe it's just me, but isn't adopting a policy of doing nothing while half a million people die inherently blameworthy? And the kind of thing that a modern politician shouldn't need "a Damascene conversion" to convince him is a bad idea?
Absolutely bizarre to have a parking lot full. If one person on trail is infected,...The USA numbers show extreme concern 726% increase in one week. Go home and stay there. America's trajectory is to exceed every other country. https://twitter.com/GHS/status/1241154807391342594?s=20
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that America's SARS-CoV-2 infections have already exceeded every other country's and the testing is just now confirming that fact. In other words, that 726% increase wasn't necessarily an increase in infections (though some of it doubtless was), it was an increase in known infections and that modifier makes all the difference.
Here's an interesting natural experiment. The neighboring states of Kentucky and Tennessee both had their first case of COVID-19 diagnosed on the same day. Kentucky's (Democratic) governor responded forcefully. Tennessee's (Republican) governor took the line that all was well and everyone should remain calm. Here's a graphic representation of the results. For those who don't want to click through, Kentucky has a lot fewer cases and has run a lot more SARS-CoV-2 tests. One could argue that they have a lot fewer cases because they ran a lot more tests.
With respect, 6 feet is not as good as staying home.
There was analysis that more authority minded and obedient societies are doing better than individualist ones. Obedience saves lives.
I'm not sure that's the case. We've got examples of authoritarian countries managing well (China, except for the initial secrecy), authoritarian countries mismanaging horribly (Iran), liberal democracies managing well (South Korea, Taiwan*), and liberal democracies screwing up royally (Italy, Spain, USA). I'm not sure there's a broader lesson to learn here other than "competence matters".
*Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not Taiwan is a "country" in the strictest sense of the term.
And speaking of "authority minded and obedient societies", I think we're all dreading what we're going to find out when we start getting reliable information out of North Korea. Their claim to be free of COVID-19 seems highly implausible given that China is their only significant trade partner.
Ventalator part sold for $11,000 was 3D printed for $1. This tells us something about the corporate world I think.
To be fair there are a lot oddities, the manufacturer probably normally needs to sell ones that are extra .99% reliable/sterile/etc... Normally if 10 out of a 1000 die because the part fails that's the problem, today that's ~900 lives saved.
And all the expense that occurs paperworking that (plus it's a lot easier to copy than design, which is why patents exist, and they presumably normally sell only thousands) things do mount up. [Though eye-balling that I'd expect it to be sold for $110, but then you'd want it to last longer, and I haven't a clues...]
Though it's something that needs the legalities sorting out retrospectively... (with a promise that they won't be f'ing stupid, now)
There's an article in the Sunday Times this morning talking about the government's strategy pivot, a lot of self-exculpation and rival briefings going on, but in brief:
- There appears to be an effort to pin much of the blame on Cummings which has been picked up by much of media Twitter - though he allegedly had a Damascene conversion of his own on the 12th.
Maybe it's just me, but isn't adopting a policy of doing nothing while half a million people die inherently blameworthy? And the kind of thing that a modern politician shouldn't need "a Damascene conversion" to convince him is a bad idea?
One would have have thought so -- but as i said above I think that persuaded by their own brilliance they were assuming there was some kind of counter intuitive strategy that would minimise harm.
I'm not sure I buy the timeline in the article anyway -- Cummings' alleged change of mind came before Johnson's initial press conference where he was still implicitly peddling the mass infection line.
It allows both of them to shift blame I suppose - Cummings' will claim that he initially got it wrong but changed his mind and Johnson can claim that he was led astray by a rogue advisor.
And the claque in the press will just repeat either line uncritically.
Accepting for the sake of argument that the UK approach has been wrong: surely any analysis in terms of what 'the Government' wants is simplistic, because what Vallance and Whitty believe or want is completely separate from what Johnson and Cummings believe or want? Vallance and Whitty were both appointed before Johnson and Cummings came on the scene.
Ok, let's fine tune it. Societies with respect for authority which have clear public health strategies for the virus, where people are likely to obey.
I could add that I were this virus, I would love that you are underestimating me right now because of something you read on the internet and heard from some very bad leaders. Who both think they know better than the public health and medical experts.
There was also a chorus of criticism of the herd immunity idea, from epidemiologists, mathematicians, etc. I don't know if this had any impact, but the line seemed to change quickly. Now they are gaslighting that it never happened.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that everywhere else is high. I guess it depends on whether you're the kind of person who sees the mass grave as half full or half empty.
With respect, 6 feet is not as good as staying home.
I gather that SARS-CoV-2 can live for around 3 hours in aerosol (such as is formed when an infected person exhales). 6 feet away but downwind of an infected person isn't a great place to be, and nor is 6 feet behind someone and following them. You don't want to be breathing the same air as someone else.
That said, walking on a sparsely used trail many yards away from anyone else probably doesn't have any more risk than just living in the same city as other humans.
Unless you're going grocery shopping in a hazmat suit, once you've made your grocery run the largest infection risk, you're done - additional precautions don't really make any difference.
(And as has been noted before, the mean incubation period for COVID-19 is more than 5 days, which means you don't start to see the effect of any precautionary measures for at least a week.)
Incredible scenes in London parks and markets, thronged with people. I guess they feel complacent, or they're stupid. I walked down the street, and I had to step aside to avoid people walking straight towards me.
As you will know, I am a fan of neither Cummings nor Johnson.
However, I think there was not a scientific consensus.
There was and is a genuine fear that suppression strategies are difficult to sustain for long periods (just read the hell thread for a taste of how people are already struggling) and then result in another case surge as difficult to manage as the first one. The idea of keeping cases low enough to offer good quality clinical care, whilst not shutting down society entirely is not in itself immoral.
It fell over for two interrelated reasons, turns out the surge capacity in the NHS is too low (*cough* austerity *cough*), and the data gathered and analysed as the pandemic continued showed covid to be more dangerous than originally modelled.
Dominic Cummings making arseholish edgelord remarks (if that in fact happened) is not the origin of the SAGE committee advice - dickhead though he may be.
The problem with mathematical models, like economic models - is they can’t / don’t take into account people acting irrationally and other social and pragmatic factors. I think choosing the right course of action is not as obvious as it looks with the benefit of hindsight.
I absolutely guarantee if you had tried to lock down the whole of the UK, including schools, all non-essential business etc on the 1st of February - everyone would have gone ballistic and it would probably have resulted in mass lack of compliance, and some level of rioting if the authorities tried to enforce it.
If we are going to go full on paranoid / cynical and assume this is all a political calculation as to what benefits the Tory government and Johnson specifically - I invite you to explain why they’d happily kill off a large chunk of their core vote in such a way as to alienate the children of the dead who would subsequently be voting for the next government.
In Tessie Cohen's Corner Shop yesterday, it occurred itself to me that one other precaution I could take would be to wear latex/vinyl gloves whilst pushing the trolley, whilst picking up the various items, and then picking them up again after the checkout person had handled them whilst registering the bar code.
Does that make sense? It seems so simple, that there must be a flaw somewhere...
As you will know, I am a fan of neither Cummings nor Johnson.
However, I think there was not a scientific consensus.
There was and is a genuine fear that suppression strategies are difficult to sustain for long periods
...
I absolutely guarantee if you had tried to lock down the whole of the UK, including schools, all non-essential business etc on the 1st of February -
We are not necessarily talking about implementing a 'lock down' (which the UK doesn't even have now) on February the 1st, but why the UK wasn't and isn't doing what other countries were doing even a few weeks ago.
If we are going to go full on paranoid / cynical and assume this is all a political calculation as to what benefits the Tory government and Johnson specifically - I invite you to explain why they’d happily kill off a large chunk of their core vote in such a way as to alienate the children of the dead who would subsequently be voting for the next government.
I do not think they went in to deliberately kill the elderly - however policy judgements are not necessarily value free - the same privileging of economics also led to a 'lean and mean' model for the NHS with no surge capacity -- it saves money in the short run but leaves you open to tail risk.
As you will know, I am a fan of neither Cummings nor Johnson.
However, I think there was not a scientific consensus.
This is revisionism. "Herd immunity" is not created by letting a disease run unchecked. It's a medical term of art for the kinds of immunity rates we see associated with effective vaccination programs. For example, letting smallpox run rampant for centuries did not grant any sort of "herd immunity" as the term is understood though it did, after countless generations of suffering, give Old World populations an edge in resistance when compared with New World populations. Not a huge victory, immunologically speaking. I am neither an epidemiologist nor a doctor and even I know this.
I absolutely guarantee if you had tried to lock down the whole of the UK, including schools, all non-essential business etc on the 1st of February - everyone would have gone ballistic and it would probably have resulted in mass lack of compliance, and some level of rioting if the authorities tried to enforce it.
If we are going to go full on paranoid / cynical and assume this is all a political calculation as to what benefits the Tory government and Johnson specifically - I invite you to explain why they’d happily kill off a large chunk of their core vote in such a way as to alienate the children of the dead who would subsequently be voting for the next government.
Maybe they agree with you that the population as a whole isn't willing to give up pub night to save granny's life and that people who are unable to follow a not-terribly-complicated explanation ("disease bad, social distance, don't get or spread it") will likely forget (or never notice) that government policy had deliberately created a mass casualty event.
Or maybe they're just high on their own supply, that "supply" being small government/austerity and the idea that government intervention always makes things worse. There's a similar dynamic in the U.S. where the Republican proposal for economic relief is inadequate to cover the likely economic impact of COVID-19. You'd think that it would be in their electoral interest not to go into November's general election with the country facing both a plague and recession, but they can't see past their intellectual priors.
As you will know, I am a fan of neither Cummings nor Johnson.
However, I think there was not a scientific consensus.
There was and is a genuine fear that suppression strategies are difficult to sustain for long periods (just read the hell thread for a taste of how people are already struggling) and then result in another case surge as difficult to manage as the first one. The idea of keeping cases low enough to offer good quality clinical care, whilst not shutting down society entirely is not in itself immoral.
It fell over for two interrelated reasons, turns out the surge capacity in the NHS is too low (*cough* austerity *cough*), and the data gathered and analysed as the pandemic continued showed covid to be more dangerous than originally modelled.
Dominic Cummings making arseholish edgelord remarks (if that in fact happened) is not the origin of the SAGE committee advice - dickhead though he may be.
The problem with mathematical models, like economic models - is they can’t / don’t take into account people acting irrationally and other social and pragmatic factors. I think choosing the right course of action is not as obvious as it looks with the benefit of hindsight.
I absolutely guarantee if you had tried to lock down the whole of the UK, including schools, all non-essential business etc on the 1st of February - everyone would have gone ballistic and it would probably have resulted in mass lack of compliance, and some level of rioting if the authorities tried to enforce it.
If we are going to go full on paranoid / cynical and assume this is all a political calculation as to what benefits the Tory government and Johnson specifically - I invite you to explain why they’d happily kill off a large chunk of their core vote in such a way as to alienate the children of the dead who would subsequently be voting for the next government.
That rather depends on whether they think they'll be able to blame someone else. They still have 80%+ of the press in their pocket and any tentative questioning from Labour is denounced as "political point scoring". If this goes badly it will turn out to have been the fault of the last Labour government or whoever is currently Labour leader. Probably they'll try and blame the HRA for tying their hands and try to fit Starmer for that noose.
In Tessie Cohen's Corner Shop yesterday, it occurred itself to me that one other precaution I could take would be to wear latex/vinyl gloves whilst pushing the trolley, whilst picking up the various items, and then picking them up again after the checkout person had handled them whilst registering the bar code.
Does that make sense? It seems so simple, that there must be a flaw somewhere...
Some shops are handing out latex/nitrile/plastic gloves to their shoppers as they enter. According to health professionals gloves are not as effective as soap and water but are a decent second-best when that's not a feasible option (like when shopping).
Grasp the outside of one glove at the wrist. Do not touch your bare skin.
Peel the glove away from your body, pulling it inside out.
Hold the glove you just removed in your gloved hand.
Peel off the second glove by putting your fingers inside the glove at the top of your wrist.
Turn the second glove inside out while pulling it away from your body, leaving the first glove inside the second.
Dispose of the gloves safely. Do not reuse gloves.
Clean your hands after removing gloves.
Click through to see handy illustrations of each step. The key is not touching the outside of your gloves with your skin, which is why Step 1 says to grasp the outside of the first glove with your still gloved second hand and Step 4 says to put your (now ungloved) fingers inside the second glove at the wrist to pull it off. At the end of the process you should have the first glove contained inside the "bag" of the second, which will be inside-out so you can't touch the possibly contaminated surface that used to be the outside of the glove.
With respect, 6 feet is not as good as staying home.
I gather that SARS-CoV-2 can live for around 3 hours in aerosol (such as is formed when an infected person exhales). 6 feet away but downwind of an infected person isn't a great place to be, and nor is 6 feet behind someone and following them. You don't want to be breathing the same air as someone else.
That said, walking on a sparsely used trail many yards away from anyone else probably doesn't have any more risk than just living in the same city as other humans.
Unless you're going grocery shopping in a hazmat suit, once you've made your grocery run the largest infection risk, you're done - additional precautions don't really make any difference.
(And as has been noted before, the mean incubation period for COVID-19 is more than 5 days, which means you don't start to see the effect of any precautionary measures for at least a week.)
Cars are great virus transportation which is where the nature trail discussion began. People driving and parking. Then walking. They transport whatever with them.
Re compliance. The questions for the Canadian PM Trudeau included if I understand things some version of martial law under the War Measures Act or other coercive powers. Otherwise here individual provinces run their own public health measures. It may take this yet in some jurisdictions/countries if people don't grow a brain, understanding that your individual autonomy does not supercede the society's. Individual rights need to be curtailed sharply.
Unless you're going grocery shopping in a hazmat suit, once you've made your grocery run the largest infection risk, you're done - additional precautions don't really make any difference.
Then you touch everything with your tainted hands, put all of the tainted food away, touching cabinets and cupboards and pantry doors and shelves, then sit down on chairs in your tainted clothes.
According to the Guardian the Germans think that it's a combination of the early cases being younger than in other countries, together with a much more active testing program meaning that they pick up a lot more mild cases. Also they've started with more capacity in their health service. The German health officers are being pessimistic about the death rate staying down.
As you will know, I am a fan of neither Cummings nor Johnson.
However, I think there was not a scientific consensus.
This is revisionism. "Herd immunity" is not created by letting a disease run unchecked. It's a medical term of art for the kinds of immunity rates we see associated with effective vaccination programs. For example, letting smallpox run rampant for centuries did not grant any sort of "herd immunity" as the term is understood though it did, after countless generations of suffering, give Old World populations an edge in resistance when compared with New World populations. Not a huge victory, immunologically speaking. I am neither an epidemiologist nor a doctor and even I know this.
... which neatly illustrates why I think people need to distinguish between Vallance/Whitty and Johnson/Cummings.
AFAICT, the reference to herd immunity came from Vallance. By the time it reached social media, it seems to have turned into 'we don't need to do anything, everyone will be immune given enough time because of herd immunity'. Now, out of the available options:
a.) Vallance doesn't know what herd immunity means;
b.) Vallance is a sociopath who would happily thin the herd;
c.) Vallance communicated badly and/or didn't anticipate how the media would run with his comments,
I find (c) infinitely more likely than either (a) or (b), as I am neither a conspiracy theorist nor a Twitter user.
Cummings, otoh, appears to revel in his image as a pantomime villain. I have no idea whether it is real, or an elaborate kayfabe, or whether he has in time 'become the mask'.
Ventalator part sold for $11,000 was 3D printed for $1. This tells us something about the corporate world I think.
According to follow-up reporting in The Verge, much of the original story was exaggerated. The Italian volunteers who did the 3D printing say the part was not $11,000, and they were not threatened with infringement. The manufacturer says:
Just to confirm that recent reports from Italy are totally incorrect, we were contacted at the end of last week for manufacturing details of a valve accessory but could not supply these due to medical manufacturing regulations, we have categorically not threatened to sue anyone involved. The valve is an accessory supplied as part of a CPAP Hood system which alone costs a few euros.
Our Italian company has been doing their utmost to supply the hospitals at this time and have been supplying these free of charge in many cases to use with the CPAP Hoods. It is very disappointing that in the current climate this incorrect information is circulating, our focus as a company is to be able to supply the hospitals that require these and many other vital products and we are making every effort to ensure we can do so.
As you will know, I am a fan of neither Cummings nor Johnson.
However, I think there was not a scientific consensus.
This is revisionism. "Herd immunity" is not created by letting a disease run unchecked. It's a medical term of art for the kinds of immunity rates we see associated with effective vaccination programs. [...] I am neither an epidemiologist nor a doctor and even I know this.
But how do you know it? Wikipedia (referencing a text on epidemiology) suggests that the term is not limited to the effects of vaccination campaigns:
Herd immunity (also called herd effect, community immunity, population immunity, or social immunity) is a form of indirect protection from infectious disease that occurs when a large percentage of a population has become immune to an infection, whether through previous infections or vaccination, thereby providing a measure of protection for individuals who are not immune.
Miss Manners would advise 18 button white cotton gloves - I suppose one could then chuck’em in the wash having degloved..
Good idea. I have a pair of white cotton gloves (not 18 button, unfortunately) that we wear in choir sometimes. I'll have to get them out.
So you’d wear them on arrival remove carefully without touching the outsides as above, and chuck them in the laundry hamper. If you’re shopping weekly, it’s maybe doable. But if you touch your face and mouth with the gloves, you’re not better off than touching your face with a hand you’ve not cleaned.
Re gloves, yes, I have a small packet, sold by my local Pharmacy, where the lady at the till was wearing some, and I do know how to remove them (I remember from my previous employment in the NHS!).
Not the best option, but reducing risks even just a little is worth it, no?
Even if removal is handled badly, it should require a double transfer, which if it is not a better transfer medium than skin-surface, should still reduce the odds (especially if you are not knowingly touching contaminated surfaces in the first place).
Laundering ought to destroy any virus (at least as well as soap).
The obvious way it would increase the risk would be if it negates hand washing, so you put them on, touch the infected surface, wash hands, put them back on and then touch your face.
Or various more subtle variants of the above. This alone I could see as being worryingly easy, that if I were told made it bad practice I could believe, otho I could also believe that contact areas of fabric gloves are reduced enough to offset a lot as well (and nitrile you should be able to wash while wearing enough to get the best of both worlds, though there may be other reasons that's a bad idea?).
But if you touch your face and mouth with the gloves, you’re not better off than touching your face with a hand you’ve not cleaned.
Miss Amanda has been known to put a gloved hand (usually holding smelling salts) to her face, but she knows better than to do it during these troubled times.
Comments
- There appears to be an effort to pin much of the blame on Cummings which has been picked up by much of media Twitter - though he allegedly had a Damascene conversion of his own on the 12th.
- Much infighting over who gets to be in charge should Johnson need to self-isolate.
- Talk has already turned to multiple inquiries.
Probably. But our government is formed of staunch traditionalists, for whom the accepted approach is:
1. Wade through slaughter to a throne.
2. That’s it.
There are reports that Cummings originally supported herd immunity, (or let half a million pensioners die), but then switched after the alarming Imperial College calculations. Downing St is fiercely denouncing this story, which I suppose means it's true. It's in the Sunday Times.
Never believe something until it has been officially denied.
I thought we were an anarcho-syndicalist collective!
Ventalator part sold for $11,000 was 3D printed for $1. This tells us something about the corporate world I think.
Given the intellectual tenor of the people involved, I have a strong suspicion that they hoped to be proved very clever later by doing something counter-intuitive.
Our biggest concern here is students coming back from Spring Break. You have seen pictures of college-age kids partying out on the beaches. While both universities have shifted to online courses, the students still have residences here, either in dorms or apartments throughout the towns. Both universities have sent out emails, tweets and other electronic messages that have told them if they do not have to come back, don't.
The need for facemasks is acute. Local quilters and sewers are now being asked to help provide masks. There are several online instructions that have been put out by local hospitals.
Yes, there has been an exponential increase in the number of new cases in the US, mostly in the big cities and the authorities have started ordering stay in place in those locales. I fully expect Washington State Governor Inslee to issue such an order this week for the whole of the state.
There was analysis that more authority minded and obedient societies are doing better than individualist ones. Obedience saves lives. In that light, students returning from trips including the USA may not go anywhere here except into immediate isolation. No stopping at a store, for gasoline, nothing. 911 emergency call for noncompliance. Arrest, enforced and fined. Out of province not ordered yet. Needs to be.
News as I write this. Gatherings of more than 5 people are illegal.
The unfortunate thing is that the next 10-14 days of infections are already "baked in". Those people are already exposed and simply won't know it for 5-10 days. Any measures taken now will start flattening the curve two weeks out. My big fear is that people will start social distancing, etc. and will notice that it hasn't slowed anything down two weeks later and will give up.
Maybe it's just me, but isn't adopting a policy of doing nothing while half a million people die inherently blameworthy? And the kind of thing that a modern politician shouldn't need "a Damascene conversion" to convince him is a bad idea?
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that America's SARS-CoV-2 infections have already exceeded every other country's and the testing is just now confirming that fact. In other words, that 726% increase wasn't necessarily an increase in infections (though some of it doubtless was), it was an increase in known infections and that modifier makes all the difference.
Here's an interesting natural experiment. The neighboring states of Kentucky and Tennessee both had their first case of COVID-19 diagnosed on the same day. Kentucky's (Democratic) governor responded forcefully. Tennessee's (Republican) governor took the line that all was well and everyone should remain calm. Here's a graphic representation of the results. For those who don't want to click through, Kentucky has a lot fewer cases and has run a lot more SARS-CoV-2 tests. One could argue that they have a lot fewer cases because they ran a lot more tests.
I'm not sure that's the case. We've got examples of authoritarian countries managing well (China, except for the initial secrecy), authoritarian countries mismanaging horribly (Iran), liberal democracies managing well (South Korea, Taiwan*), and liberal democracies screwing up royally (Italy, Spain, USA). I'm not sure there's a broader lesson to learn here other than "competence matters".
*Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether or not Taiwan is a "country" in the strictest sense of the term.
And all the expense that occurs paperworking that (plus it's a lot easier to copy than design, which is why patents exist, and they presumably normally sell only thousands) things do mount up. [Though eye-balling that I'd expect it to be sold for $110, but then you'd want it to last longer, and I haven't a clues...]
Though it's something that needs the legalities sorting out retrospectively... (with a promise that they won't be f'ing stupid, now)
One would have have thought so -- but as i said above I think that persuaded by their own brilliance they were assuming there was some kind of counter intuitive strategy that would minimise harm.
I'm not sure I buy the timeline in the article anyway -- Cummings' alleged change of mind came before Johnson's initial press conference where he was still implicitly peddling the mass infection line.
It allows both of them to shift blame I suppose - Cummings' will claim that he initially got it wrong but changed his mind and Johnson can claim that he was led astray by a rogue advisor.
And the claque in the press will just repeat either line uncritically.
I could add that I were this virus, I would love that you are underestimating me right now because of something you read on the internet and heard from some very bad leaders. Who both think they know better than the public health and medical experts.
These are also, for the moment, all the countries with more than 5,000 known cases of COVID-19. The listing is:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]).
But then again, perhaps he just saw the polling for any government that allowed a six figure death on their watch.
That's one way of looking at it. Another is that everywhere else is high. I guess it depends on whether you're the kind of person who sees the mass grave as half full or half empty.
I gather that SARS-CoV-2 can live for around 3 hours in aerosol (such as is formed when an infected person exhales). 6 feet away but downwind of an infected person isn't a great place to be, and nor is 6 feet behind someone and following them. You don't want to be breathing the same air as someone else.
That said, walking on a sparsely used trail many yards away from anyone else probably doesn't have any more risk than just living in the same city as other humans.
Unless you're going grocery shopping in a hazmat suit, once you've made your grocery run the largest infection risk, you're done - additional precautions don't really make any difference.
(And as has been noted before, the mean incubation period for COVID-19 is more than 5 days, which means you don't start to see the effect of any precautionary measures for at least a week.)
However, I think there was not a scientific consensus.
There was and is a genuine fear that suppression strategies are difficult to sustain for long periods (just read the hell thread for a taste of how people are already struggling) and then result in another case surge as difficult to manage as the first one. The idea of keeping cases low enough to offer good quality clinical care, whilst not shutting down society entirely is not in itself immoral.
It fell over for two interrelated reasons, turns out the surge capacity in the NHS is too low (*cough* austerity *cough*), and the data gathered and analysed as the pandemic continued showed covid to be more dangerous than originally modelled.
Dominic Cummings making arseholish edgelord remarks (if that in fact happened) is not the origin of the SAGE committee advice - dickhead though he may be.
The problem with mathematical models, like economic models - is they can’t / don’t take into account people acting irrationally and other social and pragmatic factors. I think choosing the right course of action is not as obvious as it looks with the benefit of hindsight.
I absolutely guarantee if you had tried to lock down the whole of the UK, including schools, all non-essential business etc on the 1st of February - everyone would have gone ballistic and it would probably have resulted in mass lack of compliance, and some level of rioting if the authorities tried to enforce it.
If we are going to go full on paranoid / cynical and assume this is all a political calculation as to what benefits the Tory government and Johnson specifically - I invite you to explain why they’d happily kill off a large chunk of their core vote in such a way as to alienate the children of the dead who would subsequently be voting for the next government.
Does that make sense? It seems so simple, that there must be a flaw somewhere...
We are not necessarily talking about implementing a 'lock down' (which the UK doesn't even have now) on February the 1st, but why the UK wasn't and isn't doing what other countries were doing even a few weeks ago.
I do not think they went in to deliberately kill the elderly - however policy judgements are not necessarily value free - the same privileging of economics also led to a 'lean and mean' model for the NHS with no surge capacity -- it saves money in the short run but leaves you open to tail risk.
This is revisionism. "Herd immunity" is not created by letting a disease run unchecked. It's a medical term of art for the kinds of immunity rates we see associated with effective vaccination programs. For example, letting smallpox run rampant for centuries did not grant any sort of "herd immunity" as the term is understood though it did, after countless generations of suffering, give Old World populations an edge in resistance when compared with New World populations. Not a huge victory, immunologically speaking. I am neither an epidemiologist nor a doctor and even I know this.
Maybe they agree with you that the population as a whole isn't willing to give up pub night to save granny's life and that people who are unable to follow a not-terribly-complicated explanation ("disease bad, social distance, don't get or spread it") will likely forget (or never notice) that government policy had deliberately created a mass casualty event.
Or maybe they're just high on their own supply, that "supply" being small government/austerity and the idea that government intervention always makes things worse. There's a similar dynamic in the U.S. where the Republican proposal for economic relief is inadequate to cover the likely economic impact of COVID-19. You'd think that it would be in their electoral interest not to go into November's general election with the country facing both a plague and recession, but they can't see past their intellectual priors.
That rather depends on whether they think they'll be able to blame someone else. They still have 80%+ of the press in their pocket and any tentative questioning from Labour is denounced as "political point scoring". If this goes badly it will turn out to have been the fault of the last Labour government or whoever is currently Labour leader. Probably they'll try and blame the HRA for tying their hands and try to fit Starmer for that noose.
Some shops are handing out latex/nitrile/plastic gloves to their shoppers as they enter. According to health professionals gloves are not as effective as soap and water but are a decent second-best when that's not a feasible option (like when shopping).
Always use the proper technique when removing gloves.
Click through to see handy illustrations of each step. The key is not touching the outside of your gloves with your skin, which is why Step 1 says to grasp the outside of the first glove with your still gloved second hand and Step 4 says to put your (now ungloved) fingers inside the second glove at the wrist to pull it off. At the end of the process you should have the first glove contained inside the "bag" of the second, which will be inside-out so you can't touch the possibly contaminated surface that used to be the outside of the glove.
Re compliance. The questions for the Canadian PM Trudeau included if I understand things some version of martial law under the War Measures Act or other coercive powers. Otherwise here individual provinces run their own public health measures. It may take this yet in some jurisdictions/countries if people don't grow a brain, understanding that your individual autonomy does not supercede the society's. Individual rights need to be curtailed sharply.
Then you touch everything with your tainted hands, put all of the tainted food away, touching cabinets and cupboards and pantry doors and shelves, then sit down on chairs in your tainted clothes.
Many. Although we tend to go through them fairly quickly due to health conditions.
... which neatly illustrates why I think people need to distinguish between Vallance/Whitty and Johnson/Cummings.
AFAICT, the reference to herd immunity came from Vallance. By the time it reached social media, it seems to have turned into 'we don't need to do anything, everyone will be immune given enough time because of herd immunity'. Now, out of the available options:
a.) Vallance doesn't know what herd immunity means;
b.) Vallance is a sociopath who would happily thin the herd;
c.) Vallance communicated badly and/or didn't anticipate how the media would run with his comments,
I find (c) infinitely more likely than either (a) or (b), as I am neither a conspiracy theorist nor a Twitter user.
Cummings, otoh, appears to revel in his image as a pantomime villain. I have no idea whether it is real, or an elaborate kayfabe, or whether he has in time 'become the mask'.
According to follow-up reporting in The Verge, much of the original story was exaggerated. The Italian volunteers who did the 3D printing say the part was not $11,000, and they were not threatened with infringement. The manufacturer says:
Good idea. I have a pair of white cotton gloves (not 18 button, unfortunately) that we wear in choir sometimes. I'll have to get them out.
So you’d wear them on arrival remove carefully without touching the outsides as above, and chuck them in the laundry hamper. If you’re shopping weekly, it’s maybe doable. But if you touch your face and mouth with the gloves, you’re not better off than touching your face with a hand you’ve not cleaned.
Not the best option, but reducing risks even just a little is worth it, no?
Note the weasel words.
Even if removal is handled badly, it should require a double transfer, which if it is not a better transfer medium than skin-surface, should still reduce the odds (especially if you are not knowingly touching contaminated surfaces in the first place).
Laundering ought to destroy any virus (at least as well as soap).
The obvious way it would increase the risk would be if it negates hand washing, so you put them on, touch the infected surface, wash hands, put them back on and then touch your face.
Or various more subtle variants of the above. This alone I could see as being worryingly easy, that if I were told made it bad practice I could believe, otho I could also believe that contact areas of fabric gloves are reduced enough to offset a lot as well (and nitrile you should be able to wash while wearing enough to get the best of both worlds, though there may be other reasons that's a bad idea?).