A timeline of the UKs response to this pandemic leaves a lot to be desired...

Amazing how nature evolves like that. Mindblowing.

 

I've got a fig tree in Dodworth. I'll do some reading too.

 

But we have a government who's leader more than any other I can think of who just plays to what he thinks will be popular. Right now the after the media cry before the public are convinced they want a lockdown. What I'm reading about care homes today is shocking.

 

they do mate. My wife has been made to use equipment past its ‘use by date’

 

I saw the statement given by the French PM last night. He admitted it was clear they weren't prepared for this. That they hadn't been able to get enough PPE to all care workers. I can't imagine our lot ever been so honest.

 

The thing is mate, in GPs surgeries maybe they will stand for long enough to go beyond the date, but in hospitals where turnover of equipment is far greater it shouldn’t be as much of any issue.

Using stock management then we really should still be able to carry a large amount of PPE equipment with none of it going out of date.

 

I'm still waiting for someone to provide an example of a deadly virus that we have developed natural immunity to - Smallpox - No, Plague - No, TB - No, Polio - No, Malaria - No (although Sickle cell is a form of genetic resistance to malaria).

According to my understanding, the earlier the lockdown starts and the more strict it is, the shorter it is needed. So, the likes of Taiwan, Hong Kong, New Zealand and Vietnam are in a position to recover much quicker than Italy, France, Spain or the UK. Even in Europe, Denmark and Austria got ahead of the curve and are looking at relaxing *in some areas* - although IIRC Austria (and I *think* Italy) is looking at mandatory face masks outside.

It might be counter intuitive, but as an island if we had introduced mandatory temperature/COVID checks/quarantine at the borders in January it would pretty much prevented the initial spread into the country and limited community infections. For a country this size, we should be looking at a few hundred deaths now, not over 11000. Even South Korea, which was overwhelmed in the early stages has only had ~2% of the deaths of the UK.

By procrastinating for an extra 6 weeks before introducing a wishy-washy, partial one (that is being flouted by Prince Charles, Stanley Johnson and others), it has probably extended the need for a lockdown by many months due to the exponential infection rate of COVID-19 (R0 = 5.7 according to the CDC) and killed many thousands of people - and only 6% of those admitted to ICU had health issues likely to lead to a natural death in the next year.

It appears that significant risk factors include being of BAME origin, being male and overweight - all of which are disproportionately reflected in ICU admissions and more likely to die as a result.

 

The earlier the lockdown the fewer the number of new cases per day at the start of the lockdown. The stricter the lockdown the lower the R0 so the faster the decline in new cases per day. So the combination of the two gets you to a small number of new cases each day much sooner.

However, unless you can completely contain and quash the virus (i.e. 0 new cases and 0 current infections), as soon as you release the restrictions the number of cases will increase again until you impose another lockdown. Before long, you're six months in and only a very small % of the population have immunity because only a very small % of the population become infected in each wave.

The UK government didn't impose a lockdown earlier because they just wanted to keep the number of cases needing hospital treatment below the number of critical care beds in order to get through it as quickly as possible without over facing the NHS. This strategy is currently working as intended, but I don't think we yet know whether it was the correct strategy to pursue.

 

You (and the UK government to be fair) have made an assumption there that is not yet proved. There is no guarantee of immunity through infection or how long that immunity lasts, so we could go through the 11000 dead *now* and have a second wave that is just as deadly in a few weeks/months - including many of those that survived the first wave with compromised health (a high % of ICU patients have long-damage and there is evidence of strokes in a significant number of patients).

The other assumption is that there will be a second and third wave, but there is a good chance that the virus will mutate into something less fearsome or an effective treatment will be found in the meantime. If a treatment is found next month, we might have sacrificed tens of thousands of people unnecessarily.

R0 for COVID-19 is 5.7 (CDC). We are an island (technically around 6000 islands - but the point is the same). We have control of our entry points. We *could* have reduced the virus incoming (and still could but *aren't*) through testing/quarantine to close to zero and limited community infections using testing and tracking. Our policy has increased the risk to the high risk population - including thousands of care home deaths in England - and healthcare professionals. People are talking about opening schools because children are low risk - forgetting that parents, teachers and other school staff *are not low risk*.