So, six months on....

I also think they,ll be a vaccine as a lot of powerful people will have money tied up in them, but you keep hearing experts saying its not certain, just wondering if the powers that be have a long term plan...

 

It wouldn't, as they are being exempted from civil liability

 

Lots of interesting posts on this one and even though it's the bbs I can't remember a full blown insult...
However, why this post now?. What's the point? Just asking.

 

Six months ago, our government faced a new disease, a disease that no-one in the world knew anything about. They did not know who would be worst affected, they did not know what the mortality rates would be for each affected group. They did not know if there was any treatment that might ameliorate the effects. All they knew was it had the potential to overwhelm our hospital system. The decision-makers were reacting to advise from people who were also pretty much in the dark. No-one knew whether those decisions would be right. All they knew was that if the disease was as serious as many predicted, then the only action that could work was to reduce the rate of spread and hope that it bought us time for a more permanent solution to be found. Even at the start they were saying that the only lasting palliative was likely to be a vaccine. Even then they were saying that it was likely that cases would spike again in winter.

The first responsibility of any government is to protect its citizens. The government knew that a lockdown would be extremely damaging to the economy. They knew that they were bound to have to borrow huge amounts of money, but what else could they have done. We are now six months down the road, and we all have the hindsight that we have collected over the last six months. There is still no vaccine. There is still no cure, although a smaller proportion of people seem to be dying, suggesting that the medical professionals have learned from the last six months. So given that we all have this hindsight, I now ask what we should have done then and what we should do now. I ask the question because I do not know the answer. There does not seem to be an answer, other than the answer developed at Eyam to cope with the Great Plague. Keep away from others, try to avoid contracting the disease and if you do, try to avoid passing it on to others.

 

Where has the data for Mammograms come from TM? Reason I ask is that it doesn't fit with data I see from Macmillan, NHS Digital and Royal College of Radiologists.

I wonder if it is a bundled figure including both breast screening mammography and diagnostic mammography? Breast screening typically finds cancer in less than 1% of women in the UK and that's mainly the rationale behind suspending the screening programme. Anyone having screening is "medically well", there is no suspicion of cancer. If there is a suspicion of cancer, its a diagnostic test, not screening. Interestingly, research has shown, and is now published on the NHS Breast Screening Website, that something like 4000 women aged between 50 and 70 will be offered treatment and intervention that they did not need as screening finds cancers that will not progress as well as those that do. A key future requirement is for science to try and develop a way of determining which cancers will progress and which will not, there is some early research taking place in my area of work around Prostate Cancer and MRI scans. Effectively people may die with their cancer rather than of their cancer, if that makes sense.

Diagnostic mammography is performed when a woman (or man) has symptoms of cancer such as a lump, discharge etc. This fits more with what you mention further down your post about potential excess cancer deaths - there is a lot of medical debate at the moment about the scale of the problem, but diagnostic tests for cancer (e.g. CT Scans, Endoscopy) were definitely much reduced during the early period of the pandemic, with a significant backlog being created, coupled with a reduction in the number of patients seeing their GP with what are often vague early signs of potential cancer.

Without doubt there will be some measurable increase in cancer deaths as a result, but 35,000 over 5 years is very much worst case scenario (source: Medscape). Maringe et al, published analysis of UK Cancer and Diagnostics in The Lancet Oncology journal in August that suggests that across four cancers in the UK, breast, colo-rectal, oesophageal and lung, there would be around 3600 excess deaths over five years, and this assumes a full year of restricted access to services, and there has been a huge increase in diagnostic testing again, with the Nightingale site in Harrogate being used for scans, NHS services as full as can be (allowing for the reduced capacity caused by longer equipment cleaning times) and tests being done in Private Hospitals under the interim national NHS contract.

 

We now live in a dictatorship.

 

talking ..... ?

 

It’s been produced by the charity Breast Cancer Now, who also estimated the 8,600 deaths figure; it’s been widely reported today including on the BBC and Sky.

 

Probably triggered by the extension of the Coronavirus Act in Parliament today, which was on the 6 month anniversary of its inception. I mainly just wondered if any of the people who argued so passionately for lockdown back then have changed their minds at all...

 

I agree. Do you think lockdown policy has been successful in achieving that goal?

 

Cheers, much appreciated, I've not seen the media on this, been scanning for 12 hours!! I'll have a look at their press release, presumably they've timed it to coincide with National Breast Awareness Month. The 8600 figure is diagnoses rather than deaths?

 

There’s a lot in here I agree with, and a lot I don’t, but to pick up a few things:

1) Sorry if the tone seems aggressive, that wasn’t intended, though I am still upset at the ‘unforgivable’ thing at making an argument that every day is proven to be more clearly correct

2) You state as fact that they spike would have continued spiking’ without lockdown. But with the time lag between infection and testing, and also the further lag on deaths we know that the infection had already reached peak levels prior to lockdown.

3) People often make the erroneous population density argument aboutSweden, but it’s just wrong, as 2/3rds of the population live in three cities, with then vast swathes of empty spaces so the overall density is irrelevant to the spread of disease.

4) Yet again, like many others you make the bizarre argument that British people are ******* yet other nationalities are uniformly adherent to all rules because they are somehow morally superior as a nation. Loads of people on here also said that about the Spanish about 4 months ago yet they’ve had their own second wave and have one of the highest death rates despite (or because of, who knows?) the strictest policies around mask wearing in the world.

5) ‘Possibly hundreds of thousands of additional deaths had lockdown not happened’ is obviously so much utter nonsense that it doesn’t warrant a reply (although I errr, just have....)

 

Yeah, sorry, diagnoses, (I did say that in the OP i think but made a mistake above, sorry!). BBC story is here:

www.bbc.co.uk/news/amp/health-54351262

 

It's no business of yours to ask me 'How I feel about things?'

I find your post abrasive and aggressive - almost blaming those who supported lockdown for the present consequences of the lockdown.
To say we've supported a cause that has cause 'untold damage etc etc' is rubbish because no one asked any of us if we supported the lockdown - it was thrust upon us.

Absolutely no problem with anyone listing the consequences of the lockdown as they see them - people can respond if they wish.

 

The ONS says Covid19 was the 24th highest cause of death in August. Barely 450 of the 34,000 who passed that month.
Data suggests that lockdown gave 8,500 women and 3,500 men death sentences from undiagnosed breast and prostate Cancer.

Meanwhile Covid can infect 170 people without a single one of them knowing and its headline news. Perspective needed.

 

To be fair, the was no time scale placed on any of those predictions. Also, the first one mentions 'economies' in the plural sense - which is partly true as many economies across the world have show signs of recovery, it's just the wnkers in charge of our place keep making a mess of things and that's why ours is fcked.

 

Whether the policy has been successful or not is not a question that I know the answer to, because in order to answer I would have to know what would have happened
a. if we had done nothing
b. if we had instigated a different policy

I do not believe the government would have been right to do nothing, so the question is, what is the alternative policy. Once again, I do not have an alternative and unless any alternative policy exists, I do not know how I can make that judgement.

 

Who came up with that name I wonder!?