UK Politics: Life in the Johnsonian Dystopia

[Isis]

27 minutes ago, Heartofice said:

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.

I have asthma. I would call it the mildest chest infection I've ever had. It was weird in that I had no URTI symptoms, it just went direct to shortness of breathe and back/shoulder pain. I just felt mildly short of breath for about a week. Then on days 7 and 8 I felt notably more wheezy in the evening. On day 8 I took my salbutamol inhaler for the only time during my illness. I don't think it helped. It's more of a mental coping thing really - for asthmatics. And then, thank goodness, on day 9 I went back to being slightly wheezy again. Both times I had the flu as a younger person were FAR worse than this.

However, it affects people differently. All you can do is try to remain calm. This includes making sure you feel prepared for being ill. Keep your meds and prescriptions up to date. Make sure you have a plan for food supply etc. This will take some stress out of being ill. Luckily I had done about a week of prep for everything I felt I needed (meds, toiletries, booze, food, bathing products from Lush* etc) before I got sick and was unable to go out. If you panic, as an asthmatic, you will be more likely to wheeze. Stress itself can make asthma worse. My asthma is well controlled now but I have had the odd stress-related episode in the past. So have a plan and be calm.

*I bathed to relieve the muscular soreness in my back while I was sick and I was totally validated by my emergency Lush shop as their physical shops shut a week after that and they have also closed their online store.

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

54 minutes ago, Isis said:

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?

Non-existent would be the correct answer. It's become clear to me that my hospital was lying through its teeth, and honestly I think most are (US, can't speak for the UK). People just don't want to report the real data because it's so damning. We're still in CYA mode rather than admitting systemic failures and adjusting. 

At least that's my view from here in Middle America... 

[DaveSumm]

The last two days, the official DHSC tweet that has the daily figures has included ‘Daily People Tested’, which is helpful. Or would be, if they were correct. The figures released yesterday claimed 9000 people had been tested, when the cumulative figure showed it was 4000. Today, they claim 12000 when the cumulative shows 19000. I hoped it was a one off error that would come out in the wash, but no amount of juggling to figure out which figure is wrong arrives at a consistent conclusion. So basically, we have no idea how many people have been tested the last two days.

[williamjm]

11 hours ago, Isis said:

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.

For the longer term strategy did the course have any predictions about the prospects of a vaccine in a year or two? It's hard for me to tell since opinions on the Internet seem to vary widely being optimism and pessimism and I've no idea how to tell which is more realistic. Or does nobody know what we can expect until we get more data?

[Isis]

1 minute ago, williamjm said:

For the longer term strategy did the course have any predictions about the prospects of a vaccine in a year or two? It's hard for me to tell since opinions on the Internet seem to vary widely being optimism and pessimism and I've no idea how to tell which is more realistic. Or does nobody know what we can expect until we get more data?

Standard answer is a vaccine takes 12-18 months if all goes well. Scaling up is an issue. Funding for that is an issue too. Fortunately there were (I think) four candidates ready to go.

One thing they can do is not really bother with waiting to see how successful the vaccine is in a trial setting and just start using it as soon as they know it's safe. 

But we can certainly expect to see the country who gets there first serving their own population first. So, it might be a longer wait for some countries than others. 

[Heartofice]

Look guys, watch Contagion. The answer is that all we need to do is wait for a reckless scientist to inject herself with the vaccine to test it, declare its safe and then we are all saved, bar a lottery to figure out who gets it first. Easy.

[Prue]

22 hours ago, Isis said:

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.

As far as I understood it, once the virus has already spread in a country, it will only be stopped when at least 60 - 70 % have become immune either by surviving the infection or being vaccinated. As long as there is no vaccine or cure, the goal is mainly to avoid that the health care capacity is overhelmed, by slowing the spreading by a lockdown. Then when the lockdown is lifted again, the numbers will rise again and more people get immune, but more people die. But as long as the number of people in ICUs don't overwhelm the system, that is accepted, in order to avoid the economic collapse. When the numbers rise too sharply again, we will need another lockdown to 'flatten the curve', while we wait for the cure or vaccine. 

Acceptance for several lockdowns in a row will not be very high, so maybe that's why politicians evade talking about that and hope for a fast miracle cure or vaccine....

 

[The BlackBear]

The BBC's Brexitcast/Newscast/Electioncast/Coronavirus-Newscast podcast (they keep renaming it) has been stressing the need to get bloodtests certified, which can tell you if you have antibodies (meaning you've had it and are immune.) One Heck of a Target is the episode, it is now a week old of course.

Fergus Walsh took an, as of yet uncertified test, which came back positive. If this is true it's got both good and bad ramifications. On the good side more people may be developing immunity than we realise. On the other these people could be unknowingly infecting people while they're carrying the virus.

No one really seems to know what proportion of people are Asymptomatic, as with who requires hospitalisiation, it just seems like a total roll of the dice.

[ljkeane]

11 minutes ago, The BlackBear said:

Fergus Walsh took an, as of yet uncertified test, which came back positive. If this is true it's got both good and bad ramifications. On the good side more people may be developing immunity than we realise. On the other these people could be unknowingly infecting people while they're carrying the virus.

I think one of the problems with they've apparently had with developing an antibody test is distinguishing between the antibodies for Covid 19 and antibodies for other widespread types of coronavirus, which are basically types of the common cold. So if this test isn't yet verified as working it's possible he just tested positive for having had a cold in the last year or so.

[Maithanet]

5 hours ago, Prue said:

As far as I understood it, once the virus has already spread in a country, it will only be stopped when at least 60 - 70 % have become immune either by surviving the infection or being vaccinated.

I've heard this 60% figure repeated several times.  But one thing I don't really understand is the impact of lower than 60% herd immunity.  If COVID19 has a R0 of 3.0 in normal times, but only 1.4 if we take moderate social distancing/testing measures (no large gatherings, work from home when possible, aggressive handwashing, etc), then wouldn't a herd immunity of 30% in your city push that R0 from 1.4 to 0.98 (1.4 * 0.7 = 0.98)?  I know that's oversimplifying, but to me that sounds possible.

And I can't help but wonder if (give the vast underreporting of cases) we might be getting to a meaningful level of herd immunity in a few of the hardest hit areas like Madrid, New Orleans and NYC.  NYC metro has ~20 million people, and NY+NJ has 200k confirmed cases between them.  If testing is only catching 10% of cases, then the metro area would be getting near 10%.  Couldn't that make a potentially meaningful difference on the spread of the virus?

EDIT:  Oops, I thought this was the COVID thread not the UK thread.  I'll repost there. 

[Heartofice]

Could it not be that extreme measures and social distancing prevent herd immunity? If we are all locked away we won’t be catching it if we are doing it properly.

Im not sure what the R0 of where we are right now is, but if it was less than one then surely we wouldn’t get herd immunity without relaxing and then probably reactivating measures 

[Guest]

On 4/8/2020 at 6:22 AM, Tywin et al. said:

Non-existent would be the correct answer. It's become clear to me that my hospital was lying through its teeth, and honestly I think most are (US, can't speak for the UK). People just don't want to report the real data because it's so damning. We're still in CYA mode rather than admitting systemic failures and adjusting. 

At least that's my view from here in Middle America... 

This. So much this.

I know someone who works for one of the largest private hospital/medical office systems in Oklahoma, so I've been seeing their internals emails/letters being sent out to employees, and they only yesterday released their guidance on prepping for the coming surge. And of course the guidance is muddled and confusing. So it seems like there will be a lot of hospitals, and probably a higher number of rural/county health systems, who were hoping this would either pass them by, or that it wouldn't be as bad as expected.

Well, here we are.

And our governor is already acting like we're about to hit our peak, when in actuality that's not supposed to happen for another 3 weeks or so (probably longer because Oklahoma was literally the worst state at testing for like 3 weeks).

[Fragile Bird]

Well, Boris is out of intensive care and in a regular ward again. Good news.

[Chaircat Meow]

25 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well, Boris is out of intensive care and in a regular ward again. Good news.

Yes, really good to hear. 

 

[BigFatCoward]

It's pretty clear that cowbag Priti isnt trusted. Everyone and their dog have been wheeled out to brief. She is the home secretary FFS. 

[Werthead]

10 hours ago, The BlackBear said:

No one really seems to know what proportion of people are Asymptomatic, as with who requires hospitalisiation, it just seems like a total roll of the dice.

There was that Chinese study which they thought the totally asymptomatic could be as high as 44%. I believe there was a German study that thought that was way too high and they thought it might be more like 30%.

A third of people being completely asymptomatic would still be a huge problem though, from the POV of them being able to infect others without realising it and sitting around for weeks or months at home when they could be safe to go out, although there is also the suggestion that asymptomatic patients may not have been exposed to a lot of the virus and may not have as many antibodies.

Quote

Do we know what % of the population are expected to get it?

No, the modelling is all over the place and without knowing the precise percentage of asymptomatic cases, or engaging in universal testing, it's much harder to pin down a figure. There was that suggestion that if we carried on business as normal they expected 60-70% of the population to be infected and the idea is that social distancing could reduce that significantly and maybe extremely significantly depending on how long it goes on for and how effective it is.

There's also the time scale: do you mean this year, in the next two years, before a vaccine is developed etc? 

[Spockydog]

Not gonna link, but the Daily Mail are today calling for Britons to:

Quote

...do their duty by harvesting the country's fruit and vegetables for £15-an-hour. If we don't get these fruit and vegetables picked people will have less choice in the supermarkets and fewer fruit and vegetables on the shelves."

 

[Maltaran]

28 minutes ago, Spockydog said:

Not gonna link, but the Daily Mail are today calling for Britons to:

 

And their commenters are saying that anyone on benefits should be rounded up and forced to do this.

[Which Tyler]

11 minutes ago, Maltaran said:

And their commenters are saying that anyone on benefits should be rounded up and forced to do this.

It's the Daily Mail
Comments section

 

Did you expect anything less?

Of course, this was also going around a couple of weeks ago:

 

[Spockydog]

I guess all the criminals in Cambridge are doing their civic duty and complying with the lockdown. This has freed up local police to perform vital community tasks such as patrolling supermarket aisles, checking peoples shopping baskets for non-essential items.