UK Politics: Drawing Priti Patterns

[Maltaran]

4 minutes ago, The BlackBear said:

Nice use of whence, can you get a thou in there?

Thou art banished from whence thou came?

Does that make any grammatical sense?

Whence means from where, so from whence is grammatically incorrect. Otherwise good.

[Werthead]

This infographic from Newsnight showing the UK's response to the pandemic is startling. Compared to almost every other country in Europe, we are doing sweet fuck all to stop it spreading.

Lots of local institutions making their own decisions though: shutting down the football season for a month, several universities are closed from today etc.

54 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

It's pretty much inevitable that we'll all have to self isolate at some point.

I'm between rotating roles at my university job and have been freelancing for a few weeks, so I can extend that indefinitely at this point, although it'll get a bit tight after a few months. I do have housemates at the same university so they're being careful. It looks like the most favoured contingency plan at the moment is to shut the university at the end of next week at the latest and just not reopen after the Easter break, putting all exams and assessments into an online context.

My stepmother is recovering from leukaemia and doesn't have a properly functioning immune system at the moment, so has effectively turned her house into an isolation bubble. Dad has to go through a vigorous hygiene check every time he comes back from the shops.

My mum lives in Spain, but fortunately in an isolated spot unaffected (so far) by the outbreak, and the community has done a good of rallying around and being careful with visitors etc, so hopefully they should be fine.

[Derfel Cadarn]

So Boris is throwing the oldies under the bus after all. Since most fatalities will be the elderly with underlying health problems, maybe the logic is they’d be too dead or frail to vote in five years anyway.

I’m immune-compromised (medication due to Crohn’s Disease). Just got a call from my doctor telling me to come off the meds as my white blood cell count is 0.1 below the threshold. He said normally he would tell me to carry on, but with what’s going on, to come off them.

I hope Morrisons restocks its toilet roll soon, because if my Crohns kicks off once the azathioprine has left my system...

[Heartofice]

5 minutes ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

So Boris is throwing the oldies under the bus after all. Since most fatalities will be the elderly with underlying health problems, maybe the logic is they’d be too dead or frail to vote in five years anyway.

Is he?

[Derfel Cadarn]

3 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Is he?

They’re part of the ‘herd’ arent’t they?

[Heartofice]

1 minute ago, Derfel Cadarn said:

They’re part of the ‘herd’ arent’t they?

Not really making a ton of sense.

[Werthead]

14 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

Not really making a ton of sense.

Johnson's position is that the country should have a manged exposure to the virus to build up herd immunity in the general population, which will prevent second and third wave outbreaks, which a lot of experts are predicting in other countries once they start easing restrictions. This is why the seasonal flu, despite being fairly contagious, only has a relatively minor impact each year because the bulk of the population has built up immunity to it over decades. The problem with coronavirus is that it is extremely infectious in a population with no herd immunity.

Johnson and his chief medical officer seem to be suggesting that we manage the outbreak and expose people to the virus to build up that immunity, which will be better in the long run. The problem is that the virus is so contagious that managing it in this way is almost impossible, and that elderly people and the immunocompromised will definitely be exposed. Because they are so at risk from the virus, they will die in significantly large numbers. There's also a nontrivial number of fit, young and healthy people who need hospital treatment to survive the virus. If the NHS is overwhelmed, a large number of those people will die as well. The current death total ceiling in a country without health care being available to everyone (such as overwhelmed Iran and parts of Italy) appears to be around 4%. If five million people are infected, 200,000 would die.

To build up herd immunity, about 40 million British people would need to be exposed to the virus. At the maximum ceiling, that would be 1.6 million deaths. Even if the death rate was at that of the normal flu, that would still be 40,000 deaths.

Boris's strategy is not without an underlying logic, but it will inevitably kill a lot more people. Every other country in the world seems to have realised this, which is why they have gone for shutdown and containment.

[Heartofice]

13 minutes ago, Werthead said:

Boris's strategy is not without an underlying logic, but it will inevitably kill a lot more people. Every other country in the world seems to have realised this, which is why they have gone for shutdown and containment.

Time will tell on whether that is ultimately true or not. The UK position seems to be that a lot of the measures being taken elsewhere will have little to no effect in containing the spread and in the long term could make things worse. For instance, school closures could in fact expose far more vunerable people to the virus as elderly people inevitably end up spending more time looking after the children sent home from school. 

Also, to be clear, it isn't true that the strategy is for everyone to get the virus at the same time and build up immunity that way. As you say, it should be managed. The difference being that the UK believes that if everyone without the virus self isolates now, before the peak that you'll end up getting rebound effects, people losing interest and not changing behaviours to curb the spread over the long term. The point is to try and flatten the curve and spread out the timeframe over a much longer period. 

Which is why I think comments like 'throwing oldies under the bus' is just another daft thing being said. 

https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2020/03/how-big-risk-government-taking-not-ordering-lockdown-combat-covid-19

 

Quote

The science underpinning the UK’s thinking is that, bluntly, they don’t believe that the containment measures that are currently keeping the virus in check in South Korea and Singapore are sustainable – and that the measures being announced in other European countries will similarly fall short. The implicit logic of their statement yesterday is that stories about how effectively South Korea has tackled the outbreak will give way to stories about its recurrence in that country.

 

[Heartofice]

 

[Which Tyler]

MoreThey're not supposed to be sustainable. They're supposed to flatten that curve, and keep the infection rate manageable.

We're taking... No measures, just some general advice and told to carry on as we have been, whilst watching that exponential curve continue in an exponential way.

 

If you want to manage the exposure (a valid, but unproven theory) then some form of management is required - were simply not bothering.

Yes, some actions are more controversial / complicated than others, but that's no reason to not do any of them.

 

If we continue to take a hands-off approach, we'll catch up with, and overtake, Italy.

To get herd immunity (assuming it can exist for COVID19 - which we don't know) then we need 60% of the population to be infected - which is way lower than for anything else we know about, and we can't manage it that accurately. Unmanaged leads to estimates of 80%+ coverage. Let's compromise and call it 70% of 67 million = 47 million.

Of which about 1% will die, whatever happens (470,000)

19% (9 million people) will need hospitalisation, and will likely die without it. Of that 9 million, about a quarter (2.18 million) will need intensive care. 100% of those will die without care, whilst a good proportion of the remainder will die of complications without care.

There are approximately 167,000 hospital beds in the UK. That's total, not just intensive care. Most of them are already occupied.

Now okay, that 9 million people won't all be needing a bed at the same time, left with only minimal (current standards) of intervention, it'll likely take 3-4 months to reach the other side of the peak, whilst each patient may need 4-6 weeks of care. So each bed can provide for about 3 cases, maybe 4 if we're lucky. Which brings us up around 500,000 cases cared for, or about a fifth of those needing intensive care. The other 4/5 die. As do some of the 6.82 million who need hospitalisation. As does everyone suffering with anything that isn't COVID19. And that's assuming that all 167,000 beds can be made into intensive care beds (which they can't)

The above is the situation if people self-isolate once symptomatic, with a few arseholes refusing to do so. Or the status quo as it's otherwise known.

 

The measures other countries (and other states in China) took are designed to slow the rate of infections, so that the curve flattens but lengthens, 12-16 months, rather than than 3-4 months. Which means that each hospital bed can provide care for 12-16 patients, not 3-4. Or 2-3 million of the 2.18 million who need them.

 

Of course, you can also build new capacity in hospitals, with time. With time, you can also train more medical staff, and obtain more equipment (buying what the Chinese feel they can spare) etc etc. And I'm sure that'll happen, but as of yesterday, it isnt.

 

 

All of that price, by the way, is on the gamble that herd immunity happens (we don't know if it will) and that the virus mutates slowly (we do t know if it will) and that warmer weather slows transmission rates (we don't know yet if it will). If all of that comes to pass, the hope is that we get over the short sharp shock, and the survivors can get on with rebuilding the country whilst the rest of the world is still yet to reach its peak.

The rest of the world though, will have suffered less death, less mental scaring for the survivors, and have a much better chance of delaying things long enough for a vaccine to be found and produced (about 18 months, starting 1-2 months ago)

 

[Which Tyler]

Now it is worth noting that I'm sure we will be putting I to action some measures to flatten the curve, just not yet.

It's just that our judgement of when to do it different, and later from just about everyone else's.

 

That article that's been posted a few times on exponentiality of infections suggests that with what we know of COVID19, 24 hours delay, leads to 40% higher infection rate, with a peak that's both higher AND longer

[BigFatCoward]

Maybe they are just hoping for a windfall of inheritance tax, and a massive reduction over the next few years in the dependency on the NHS, due to the most elderly and vulnerable being already dead?

 

 

[Werthead]

We've just had 202 new confirmed cases in one day. That puts us on the same curve as Italy around 28 February. Daily case increases are not as bad as Italy (Italy jumped from 300 to over 600 in one day, we're doing a bit better than that) but we're not far behind.

Two weeks from today we could be where Italy is now. Maybe not quite as bad, and significantly less if we implement some of the more urgently needed measures today.

[Which Tyler]

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/coronavirus-news-nhs-eu-health-authorities-latest-covid-19-a9398051.html

[Maltaran]

Three reasons why the UK might not look like Italy

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51858987

Looks like they reckon part of Italy's problem is that the outbreak is concentrated in the north, whereas here it's fairly evenly spread and so you have lots of hospitals dealing with some cases instead of a few hospitals being overwhelmed.

[Maltaran]

All the local elections due in May have been postponed until next year (including the London mayoral election).

The Electoral Commission had proposed postponing till the autumn, but I guess they figured this would be easier.

[Which Tyler]

1 hour ago, Maltaran said:

Three reasons why the UK might not look like Italy

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51858987

Looks like they reckon part of Italy's problem is that the outbreak is concentrated in the north, whereas here it's fairly evenly spread and so you have lots of hospitals dealing with some cases instead of a few hospitals being overwhelmed.

Which buys us what? 48 hours?

[Raja]

I've picked a fabulous time to move to the UK

I'll be taking two flights to get there. At least they're cheap

[Pebble thats Stubby]

I'm seeing several places showing an Old Quote from Boris (just as he started his campeign to become Mayor.)  Re Jaws Film

Quote

 

The real hero of Jaws is the mayor," Mr Johnson said last year in a speech at Lloyd's of London.

"A gigantic fish is eating all your constituents and he decides to keep the beaches open. OK, in that instance he was actually wrong. But in principle, we need more politicians like the mayor - we are often the only obstacle against all the nonsense which is really a massive conspiracy against the taxpayer."

 

This is an old report on the quote from the Torygraph  https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1557765/Boris-Johnson-inspired-by-Jaws-mayor.html

 

makes you wonder if he thinks Coronavirus is like lots of really tiny sharks, and we must all go to work to keep the economy going.

[DaveSumm]

If this is true, could be game changing. Let’s hope they can ramp up production extremely quickly.
 

https://www.channel4.com/news/rapid-covid-19-self-testing-kit-set-for-uk-release