Maltaran Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 2 hours ago, ants said: My understanding (from a number of years ago) was that the Labour opposition leader didn't get to choose who would go into cabinet, just what roles they had. That who got the positions was decided as part of the voting which went on around the leadership vote. Only if Labour won and the leader was Prime Minister did they get full control over cabinet positions. I'm probably harking back to Ed Miliband's win, but has this changed or was it never the case? Shadow Cabinet elections were abolished by Ed Miliband. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Which Tyler Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 13 hours ago, Derfel Cadarn said: My wife’s of the opinion he’s very likely “fucked”. Though she works in neurology, not virology or icu. From what I can tell - mortality rate from ICU in the UK is 50%; mortality rate once intubated sits around 70% Johnson is 55 years old, so the age risks are starting to creep up - suffered childhood pneumonia, and current asthma; on top of being a smoker and obese. The odds are not in his favour Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Chaircat Meow Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 14 minutes ago, Which Tyler said: From what I can tell - mortality rate from ICU in the UK is 50%; mortality rate once intubated sits around 70% Johnson is 55 years old, so the age risks are starting to creep up - suffered childhood pneumonia, and current asthma; on top of being a smoker and obese. The odds are not in his favour Really, would have thought being under-60 would mean the mortality rate in an ICU would be lower for his group specifically (presumably it is so high overall because so many are in their 80s). Not sure he is obese (overweight more like) or a smoker either; hadn't heard about the asthma. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Which Tyler Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 15 minutes ago, Chaircat Meow said: Really, would have thought being under-60 would mean the mortality rate in an ICU would be lower for his group specifically (presumably it is so high overall because so many are in their 80s). Not sure he is obese (overweight more like) or a smoker either; hadn't heard about the asthma. IIRC about half of the UK's ICU beds are taken by the under 60s ETA: Sorry, that figure was from Wales, not UK-wide Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isis Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 19 hours ago, Ormond said: Has that actually been tried anywhere before? If you mean specifically for this virus then yes, there are trials happening for this now I think in either S Korea or HK (I'll check from my notes and edit). If you mean this practice generally, then yes, definitely - two best known examples are Rabies post-exposure prophylaxis (they also give the vaccine) and haemolytic disease of the newborn, where a Rhesus negative mother and a Rhesus positive farther produce a fetus which is Rh positive - the mother needs to be given artificial anti D (Rh) to 'mop up' the Rh antigen from the fetus to prevent her own immune system from making its own anti D. Once she makes her own anti D, they would attack any subsequent Rh positive babies she has in utero. The artificial immunglobulin are relatively short lived (it's a treatment). But this is the same process as 'the anti serum' from all those sci fi films. Yes, you can in theory use antibodies from a recovered person to treat someone else. It's a bit crude though. Vaccines are far more effective. Shame they take so long to develop and test. ETA: Here is a story from the Guardian about this therapy: Plasma from coronavirus survivors found to help severely ill patients Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Which Tyler Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 Webinar by the RSM at lunchtime today on " Response to a pandemic "https://www.rsm.ac.uk/resources/rsm-live Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 1 hour ago, Which Tyler said: IIRC about half of the UK's ICU beds are taken by the under 60s ETA: Sorry, that figure was from Wales, not UK-wide Typical Brit, always blaming the imaginary people..... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
A Horse Named Stranger Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 29 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said: Typical Brit, always blaming the imaginary people..... Really now? Everybody knows the Welsh are real, vowels are imaginary. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lessthanluke Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 12 minutes ago, A Horse Named Stranger said: Really now? Everybody knows the Welsh are real, vowels are imaginary. Don't be jealous just because we have more vowels than you. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JoannaL Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 I hope Boris Johnson gets better soon. Just a question about advisors: Does Dominic Raab have his own advisors? Or would the creepy Dominic Cunnings still stay in No 10 even if Boris Johnson is away for 4 to 6 weeks? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mr. Chatywin et al. Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 12 minutes ago, lessthanluke said: Don't be jealous just because we have more vowels than you. Oh yeah? Well even if the Olympics are cancelled, your lot still has one fewer shirtless oiled up bloke than the Tongans. Challenge declared! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamjm Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 13 minutes ago, JoannaL said: I hope Boris Johnson gets better soon. Just a question about advisors: Does Dominic Raab have his own advisors? Or would the creepy Dominic Cunnings still stay in No 10 even if Boris Johnson is away for 4 to 6 weeks? Raab will have advisors at the foreign office but they should keep the same team in Downing Street. Cummings had coronavirus, I haven't heard of him returning yet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Derfel Cadarn Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 Lol... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Werthead Posted April 7, 2020 Share Posted April 7, 2020 This study is predicting a dire outcome for the UK, with an estimate of 66,000 deaths by the time the pandemic runs its course (which they are projecting will be a return to relative normalcy by mid-August). This is significantly higher than the ceiling they are projecting for Italy and Spain. The methodology of the system is questionable, as they seemed to be using figures from the pre-lockdown plan and based on us going into lockdown "too late" (which is true from an absolute POV but not from a relative POV, as other countries went into lockdown later than we did or around the same time; we locked down two days earlier than Italy on the same cycle projection, IIRC) and are assuming that more stringent measures will not be taken as they have been elsewhere. The government advisors have disputed the figure, saying it is tracking at more than twice their projections (although that itself is newsworthy; 33,000 deaths would still be almost half again higher than the government's target of 20,000). Most bizarre is their very conservative projection for America. With a haphazard approach to lockdowns and the situation spiralling out of control there, it's unclear why they believe that the USA, with almost five times our population, will only have 10,000 more deaths in total. That seems extraordinarily optimistic. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
williamjm Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 2 hours ago, Werthead said: The government advisors have disputed the figure, saying it is tracking at more than twice their projections (although that itself is newsworthy; 33,000 deaths would still be almost half again higher than the government's target of 20,000). It's a bit unclear but I think they might be saying that the model is predicting twice the rate of daily deaths currently, not the eventual total count. Their website at https://covid19.healthdata.org/united-kingdom predicts 1233 deaths for the 7th April whereas the official figure is 786. Of course, the official figures aren't telling the whole picture but the graph suggest they're basing their past data on the official death counts for previous days. The more I look at it the more confused I am about it. The top graph seems to suggest we ran out of ICU beds on the 23rd of March. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ants Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 19 hours ago, Maltaran said: Shadow Cabinet elections were abolished by Ed Miliband. Thanks. So I was remembering it correctly, it has just been changed since then. Seemed a crazy approach to me. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maltaran Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 3 hours ago, ants said: Thanks. So I was remembering it correctly, it has just been changed since then. Seemed a crazy approach to me. It only applied when Labour was in opposition, a Labour PM could choose his own Cabinet. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Isis Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 UK's best case scenario of 20K is out the window now. I think it'll be somewhere between 20 and 50. I've finished the free COVID-19 online short course (run by my employers), finished reading the 'bombshell' Imperial paper and generally digested the UK modelling results. I really don't think the UK science mitigation vs suppression dudes were very clear* about what their work meant. There is a such a thing as science communication! I can only guess these people were not allowed to speak the truth to the media? I certainly wasn't clear on what I was being told by the government (around mid-March) and I've got a masters in medical microbiology (studying epidemiology, infection control, viral disease, immunology etc, you know, all the cool stuff) and work in a national PHE diagnostic lab. So if I didn't get it, what chance did most non-scientist people have? In case anyone else was in the same boat as me: mitigation meant reducing the number of cases using minor interventions (stuff like making the over 70's stay home and banning mass gatherings) but lots of people would still get sick; suppression meant lockdown (many 'extreme' measures at once) in order to stop transmission as quickly as possible. The government seemed to act like this was a choice between two viable options HOWEVER both the Imperial and the LSHTM models (and this was pre-lockdown modelling, actually I think it was pre-March, even) showed that choosing mitigation meant that the NHS would get overwhelmed (ICU capacity breached) by the second week of April. Loads of preventable deaths. Coming soon. Choosing suppression meant NOT overwhelming the NHS by mid April and indirectly causing the preventable deaths of thousands of people. Some people were like: oh, but if you suppress then as soon as you stop suppression then the cases will start to rise again. That's true. But there was only one other option - don't suppress and see LOTS of people dying of respiratory failure outside of hospitals because the hospitals will all be overrun. We have avoided the utter horror option by going into lockdown and things will stay stable as long as we stay locked down. But we do still need a strategy to exit lockdown. *obvious reason for why they weren't - because one of the two options involved a very rapid total nightmare for the UK and I guess they still wanted to hide this fact from the population. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The BlackBear Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 My partner's sister appears to have it, she's relatively healthy but does have asthma. It's pretty worrying. Do we know what % of the population are expected to get it? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Heartofice Posted April 8, 2020 Share Posted April 8, 2020 How severe is her asthma though? I know a couple of people with very mild asthma who had it and it wasn’t a factor for them. I also have mild asthma. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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