The UK response to Covid-19 [MOD WARNING 1ST POST]

A Dub in Glasgo

splinter65 wrote: »

An analysis by a newspaper? Proof? Really some of you should be ashamed of yourselves wishing and hoping for people to die to fit your agenda.
Marxism. Never ending wishing people dead in the pursuit of “equality”. Uggh. Disgusting.

You need to lie down

bob mcbob

splinter65 wrote: »

An analysis by a newspaper? Proof? Really some of you should be ashamed of yourselves wishing and hoping for people to die to fit your agenda.
Marxism. Never ending wishing people dead in the pursuit of “equality”. Uggh. Disgusting.

How about some official figures from PHE and care homes - do they work for you?

In the week ending 19 April, 651 of the 682 coronavirus outbreaks reported across the whole of England were in care homes, Public Health England (PHE) reported.

Care UK reported 244 Covid-19 deaths in its facilities, a 74% rise in six days, including 18 deaths in a single home in north London where a care worker also died.

Four Seasons Health Care reported a 79% increase in deaths in two weeks, bringing its death toll to 286, while the UK’s largest private provider, HC One, announced a 50% increase in deaths in 10 days, to 616. Bupa, which operates 125 homes, revealed it had lost well over 200 residents with confirmed or suspected coronavirus.

None of the above 1300+ deaths (from 4 care home operators) are in the official figures.

Joe_ Public

It's only really a couple of weeks that there's been much of an official acknowledgement that the daily official figures weren't the full picture and that was only after the ons figures were released and reporters started asking questions. Even now they only mention the non hospital deaths as an afterthought at the briefings, always the last slide with a graph so small you can barely make it out on the screen. It's not they think they can hide them completely but the longer out of sight out of mind, the better. Then things improve, the peak well past and they'll be far more comfortable addressing it, with all the usual government spin and caveats at their beck and call.

Dave0301

Joe_ Public wrote: »

It's only really a couple of weeks that there's been much of an official acknowledgement that the daily official figures weren't the full picture and that was only after the ons figures were released and reporters started asking questions. Even now they only mention the non hospital deaths as an afterthought at the briefings, always the last slide with a graph so small you can barely make it out on the screen. It's not they think they can hide them completely but the longer out of sight out of mind, the better. Then things improve, the peak well past and they'll be far more comfortable addressing it, with all the usual government spin and caveats at their beck and call.

That really annoys me. The fact that they do not add them to the hospital deaths so they remain favourable looking in comparison to other countries.

I know it is impossible to compare exactly like for like at the moment, but there is something decidedly underhanded about it.

Seth Brundle

Coronavirus was widespread in UK at very start of pandemic, says genetics expert
Dr Kari Stefansson is overseeing a project in Iceland to genetically sequence every positive case of COVID-19 in the country.

Prof Stefansson said that in the beginning, almost all of the cases came into Iceland from the Alps, from people who had been skiing in Austria and Italy.

The authorities responded by trying to contain the spread of infection from those high risk countries.

He added: "But as they were doing this, the virus was actually sneaking into the country with people from all kinds of other countries.

"And the most notable there is Great Britain. So it looks like the virus had a fairly wide spread in Great Britain very, very early in this epidemic."

Prof Stefansson said the UK - and the USA - weren't vigilant enough from the start, pointing to Iceland's policy of mass testing.

...but of course, the UK were following the (secret) science! :rolleyes:

Joe_ Public

Dave0301 wrote: »

That really annoys me. The fact that they do not add them to the hospital deaths so they remain favourable looking in comparison to other countries.

I know it is impossible to compare exactly like for like at the moment, but there is something decidedly underhanded about it.

Why they cant at least add the ONS figures to the official total isnt clear. And we also have to remember that while they portray the ONS statistics as some noble exercise in transparency, it's important to note those figures themselves are dreadfully incomplete as we know from care institutions themselves that the true figures are multiples of what the ONS is reporting.

SEPT 23 1989

government backed loan guarantee scheme announced for small businesses today over there

Borrowing Allowed up to 25% of the previous years turnover

Needs to happen over here quickly

Water John

Yes business will need help. Maybe not straight financial grants but if it's borrowing, it must be at very low interest rates linked to special Govn't issued bonds or some similar mechanism. This applies to both the UK and ROI. The ROI probably as part of an EU package.
The reality of this support is pushing the cost of the lockdown out across a number, maybe 5/7, years.
The interest has to be negligible.

splinter65

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

You need to lie down

Don’t you mean I need to go away and leave you with your delusions? Never mind. Maybe they’ll be unseated and let Labour in at the next crisis.

Fuascailteoir

Looks like the lack of inital response by the Tories is starting to manifest itself in the border counties with cavan surging past dublin in number of cases per 100,000. The further south you travel the bigger the drop off in cases

kevcos

Two to three weeks back some posters on this thread guaranteed that the UKs NHS would be completed overwhelmed and fail, they said the bodies would be piled in the streets.

That forecast above was certain to occur over the last couple of weeks.

Can those poster please revise their forecast so I know when I really need to start sidestepping the corpses on the footpath? No joking around this time guys.

A Dub in Glasgo

splinter65 wrote: »

Don’t you mean I need to go away and leave you with your delusions? Never mind. Maybe they’ll be unseated and let Labour in at the next crisis.

No, you need to remove the large chips that are resting on your shoulders

A Dub in Glasgo

kevcos wrote: »

Two to three weeks back some posters on this thread guaranteed that the UKs NHS would be completed overwhelmed and fail, they said the bodies would be piled in the streets.

It would be useful if you could link to these posts, thanks

uptherebels

splinter65 wrote: »

The anguished cry of the left....why oh why oh why oh why.
Why did they vote brexit when I wanted them to vote EU
Why did they vote for Trump when I wanted Clinton
Why did the impeachment fail when I thought it would succeed
Why did the Torys vote for Johnson not the other guy no one even remembers
Why is Dominic chief advisor cos I hate him but I don’t know why
Why oh why did the British people vote for Johnson not Corbyn
Why did the Torys win an 85 seat majority (it’s so confusing)
Why did Johnson survive the virus when I wanted him to die and destabilize the government
Why have the NHS not been overwhelmed like I wanted to, again, destabilize the government
Why have they flattened the curve, not enough people have died, I’m sooo disappointed
Why are Oxford Uni striding ahead with the vaccine trials now they’re probably going to win the race, I wanted one of the progressive socialist countries to win...
Why do the Brits appear to be taking it in their stride as it’s a global pandemic and there’s not much can be done about it, I wanted them to be angry and rise up and DESTABILISE THE GOVERNMENT
Oh the misery ...

What a load of nonsense. I stopped reading after the first three why's. I assume the rest of that post was waffle in the same vein. I see you are still carrying that big chip on your shoulder. But rant away.

Enzokk

Seth Brundle wrote: »

Coronavirus was widespread in UK at very start of pandemic, says genetics expert
Dr Kari Stefansson is overseeing a project in Iceland to genetically sequence every positive case of COVID-19 in the country.

...but of course, the UK were following the (secret) science! :rolleyes:

They made the right decisions based on science at the right time as well.


More stories about the PPE and how the UK Government handled it. I guess it is just a follow up to the stories that other media has reported before but it is from BBC Panorama now, so more in depth reporting of the situation.

Coronavirus: UK failed to stockpile crucial PPE

The government failed to buy crucial protective equipment to cope with a pandemic, a BBC investigation has found.

There were no gowns, visors, swabs or body bags in the government's pandemic stockpile when Covid-19 reached the UK.

NHS staff say they are being put at risk because of the shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE).

The government said it has taken the right steps and is doing everything it can to increase stocks.

The investigation by BBC Panorama found that vital items were left out of the stockpile when it was set up in 2009 and that the government subsequently ignored a warning from its own advisers to buy missing equipment.

This corresponds with the Guardian story of the stockpile going down in value almost £300m since 2010. It seems clear that the UK Government didn't replace items as they were either out of date in the stockpile or being used by the NHS before they became useless.

I find this tweet interesting as well,

https://twitter.com/GabrielScally/status/1254868677826134017?s=20

Is this true? Are they counting a single glove as one piece of PPE? So the 250 000 items of PPE from Turkey could have been 75 000 pairs of gloves which they would count as 150 000 pieces of equipment. Who uses one glove? Are there many one armed nurses and doctors in the NHS?

This puts these remarks in some new light for me,

Coronavirus: Jenny Harries criticised for 'patronising' remark about 'exemplar preparedness'

Dr Jenny Harries is facing criticism after praising the UK's coronavirus preparation as "exemplar" and suggesting conversation could be "more adult" when discussing PPE supplies.

Speaking at the daily government press conference on Sunday, the deputy chief medical officer (CMO) said the existence of a "pandemic stockpile" was a "very high quality mark" of preparation.

The UK, she said: "Has been an international exemplar in preparedness. So the fact that there is a pandemic stockpile is considered a very high quality mark of a prepared country in international terms."

Turning to recent concerns about the widely reported lack of personal protective equipment for frontline staff, she suggested that a "more adult" conversation could be had about the supply.

So it seems they had no gowns before this all started in the stockpile, but because there was a stockpile of other items means they were prepared in international terms? What the freaking hell was she talking about? She must have known about the stockpile and what is missing, so why try to sugarcoat this? I have noticed the answers from the non-politicians have become more and more like politicians at the press briefings, I think as the days have gone on and they realized they have made grave mistakes that has cost lives they have gone into self preservation mode, one that politicians are in all the time. So now you have a situation where they are defensive about questions and they make the same empty slogans as the people they are supposed to advise.


Another day another Guardian piece,

The government's secret science group has a shocking lack of expertise

But this isn't a "media hack job", it is from a professor of global health and sustainable development at University College London and a former director of maternal and child health at the WHO and the point he makes needs to be answered.

The success of any advisory group of scientists surely depends on a culture of openness, independence and diversity of opinion. Unfortunately this culture of openness has been conspicuous by its absence when it comes to the government’s Scientific Advisory Group on Emergencies. It’s only through the persistence of Guardian journalists that we can now identify 23 participants in Sage. Of these, 13 are paid government employees, working as ministerial, health or civil service advisers. As such, the presence of their bosses, Patrick Vallance and Chris Whitty, to say nothing of the prime ministers’s most senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, might well influence their ability to speak freely.

Beyond that, what does the membership of this committee actually tell us? We’ve learned from the list of attendees at a crucial Sage meeting on 23 March, leaked to the Guardian, that the group includes seven clinical academics, three microbiologists, seven modellers, two behavioural scientists with backgrounds in disasters and terrorism, one geneticist, one civil servant and two political advisers, one of which is the most powerful prime ministerial lieutenant in recent memory.

The makeup of Sage reflects an oddly skewed and overwhelmingly medical view of science. Indeed, there are many other perspectives that could bring value to a pandemic crisis team. Did Sage consult public health epidemiologists at the frontline of the response to coronavirus in China or Hong Kong, such as Prof Gabriel Leung? Did the group get input from infectious experts at the World Health Organization, such as the epidemiologist Mike Ryan, who leads the team responsible for containing of Covid-19 across the world?

So we have finally been able to get the list of the SAGE attendees, next step will be the minutes to see what influence the 2 No.10 advisers had on the meetings. The problem here is that the UK Government could stop the speculation about SAGE by just being more open and transparent, but the fact that they haven't released any information about it and the information we have has been obtained by the media poses more questions.

As to why it is important to be transparent?

Without testing, tracing those who have come into contact with infected people and isolating these clusters, the virus will flare up again. Future lockdowns will be necessary, and economic recovery extremely difficult. In a month’s time, we could be heading towards 60,000 deaths or more. It’s impossible to tell whether things would have played out differently had Sage included people from public health and primary care backgrounds. But had its membership and details of its decisions been revealed earlier, there would have been a chance for the wider scientific community to offer constructive criticism, maybe in time to save thousands of lives.

Once Cummings and Warner were allowed to attend the meetings this went out of the window. Like everything SAGE is now political, whether the attendees wanted it to be or not.

Joe_ Public

People were looking at what was going down in Italy and wondered, quite reasonably I'd say, whether the same would happen elsewhere.

So great that the nhs never did get overwhelmed but why was this, despite having bigger figures than italy, why did their health system apparently cope so much better? Is it because it's that much better or is it more down to the fact they chose to "protect the nhs" by, among other things, severely limiting other treatments including emergency ones and pretty much leaving the care sector to fend for itself? Italy did not effectively abandon a large sector of its elderly population, for whatever reason, and so the hospitals struggled to cope.

S.M.B.

I think cancelling elective surgery was a sensible move but certain procedures should be operating as normal (screening etc) otherwise there's going to be major issues down the line.

I'm not sure if there'll ever be a means to assess the pros/cons of increasing bed availability for Covid-19 patients by fast tracking patients through the hospitals during the March.

It's great that the NHS hasn't completely buckled under the pressure but it'd be very naive to think that it took it in it's stride.

Seth Brundle

Enzokk wrote: »

They made the right decisions based on science at the right time as well.

What science?
In what way was the initial approach of allowing it to get a foothold across the country scientific?

theological

Seth Brundle wrote: »

What science?
In what way was the initial approach of allowing it to get a foothold across the country scientific?

Even if I ignore the inaccurate description of the UK position being "allowing it to get a foothold".

It is obvious from the start that the UK government have based their response on the medical advice they were receiving from SAGE and the medical and scientific officers.

Enzokk

Seth Brundle wrote: »

What science?
In what way was the initial approach of allowing it to get a foothold across the country scientific?

The science. Stop asking for the science, it has been followed and that is all we need to know. :rolleyes: Lefty liberal elite asking questions like this when people are dying, how dare you! :eek:

Edited to add:

theological wrote: »

Even if I ignore the inaccurate description of the UK position being "allowing it to get a foothold".

It is obvious from the start that the UK government have based their response on the medical advice they were receiving from SAGE and the medical and scientific officers.

See, they have been following the advice from the scientists. Any questions from here on forward is redundant, because scientific advice has been followed from scientists.

Seth Brundle

theological wrote: »

Even if I ignore the inaccurate description of the UK position being "allowing it to get a foothold".

It is obvious from the start that the UK government have based their response on the medical advice they were receiving from SAGE and the medical and scientific officers.

So you've deflected and not described how their initial response to the virus was in any way scientific but merely told us that "SAGE told us to" :rolleyes:

theological

Seth Brundle wrote: »

So you've deflected and not described how their initial response to the virus was in any way scientific but merely told us that "SAGE told us to" :rolleyes:

I didn't think I would have to spell this out but since The Guardian have revealed to us that the membership of SAGE include over 20 scientists with specialisms in areas relevant to the virus then their advice is obviously based on science.

I'm happy for you to demonstrate otherwise.

Seth Brundle

theological wrote: »

I didn't think I would have to spell this out but since The Guardian have revealed to us that the membership of SAGE include over 20 scientists with specialisms in areas relevant to the virus then their advice is obviously based on science.

I'm happy for you to demonstrate otherwise.

You're still not telling us how the UK's initial response was in any way scientific (apart from "a team including some scientists said so").
Stop bluffing!

kevcos

A Dub in Glasgo wrote: »

It would be useful if you could link to these posts, thanks

Save your thanks, no chance that I'm trawling through 4k posts to link you some sensationalist BS.
Regardless why you'd want a link to them is beyond me.

Joe_ Public

theological wrote: »

I didn't think I would have to spell this out but since The Guardian have revealed to us that the membership of SAGE include over 20 scientists with specialisms in areas relevant to the virus then their advice is obviously based on science.

I'm happy for you to demonstrate otherwise.

Not all areas relevant to the virus it would seem, though it did have a government spin doctor and a data guy on it apparently so there is that.

https://twitter.com/globalhlthtwit/status/1254093715750207490?s=20

Zubeneschamali

theological wrote: »

Even if I ignore the inaccurate description of the UK position being "allowing it to get a foothold".

That is inaccurate as it was far, far worse than allowing it to get a foothold. The position was to let it burn through the UK until herd immunity stopped it, after 60 or 70% of the population caught it.

This would have killed between a half million and two million people depending how and where the NHS collapsed.

S.M.B.

You could argue the scientific merit of SAGE and the makeup of it's members but surely you can't argue that their advice for a period of time was to "allow it to get a foothold" by moving from a contain strategy to a mitigation strategy?

Enzokk

ONS figures are out again,

Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional: week ending 17 April 2020

https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1255056329275834370?s=20

https://twitter.com/ChrisGiles_/status/1255057161190850560?s=20

So if I am reading the first tweet correctly, that is more than double the deaths than average recorded in hospitals. I assume the chart will again be updated today at the press briefing so the UK all deaths figure will move forward a bit again.

This doesn't include the deaths that has tested negative for Covid-19 though. Then you have to factor in deaths that could have been avoided due to people not going to hospital due to the crises, as the government has been at pains to tell people to still go to hospital. I doubt they would be doing this if it wasn't a area of concern they have identified.

Seth Brundle

S.M.B. wrote: »

You could argue the scientific merit of SAGE and the makeup of it's members but surely you can't argue that their advice for a period of time was to "allow it to get a foothold" by moving from a contain strategy to a mitigation strategy?

I'm stating that there appears to be no reputable science behind the initial response by the UK which allowed the virus to get a foothold.
If there was then they would proudly state it rather than hiding behind the usual "scientific advice" bluster that is being repeated here by some

myfreespirit

Dr. Gabriel Scally was speaking on the Sean O'Rourke RTÉ radio programme just now about the contrast between the UK government response to CoViD-19 and the Irish government approach. In particular, he was sharply critical of the UK government in terms of their transparency.
His statement "The (daily UK government) press conferences are staged displays... with people not answering questions honestly." is quite illuminating and corroborates what many commentators on this thread have been saying for a while now.

Yet, we have a good few posts on the thread defending this dishonesty and attempting to deflect from it. The virus pandemic can't be defeated by covering up failings and pretending that everything is going to some (non-existent) plan.