pillred

1 hour ago, Maesknoll Red said:

I don't think we'll know which way this is going for a while yet, but I really would like to see some end date and plan on getting back to normal and I'd accept that it might have consequences for a few.

You and me both.

18 minutes ago, Maesknoll Red said:

We'll see...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51963486

 

And of course I hope you're right, I'd like to think you are, but can't see it.

I'm not saying everything in the garden will be rosy soon just that things will probably be a lot better than you are expecting due to past experience of other things that were going to kill us all.

3 minutes ago, ChippenhamRed said:

Which bit? And what makes you so certain?

The bit about lasting for decades, and to a lesser extent the civil disobedience, and what makes me so certain, past experience of this sort of thing remember aids, sars, bird flu, mad cow disease, I could go on, all were going to decimate the world what happened? exactly there seems to be no limit to mans ingenuity a cure for this will be found there are already positive news coming from various places as far as vaccines are concerned, stop swallowing all the doomsday scenario stuff it doesn't help and just fuels more panic his post was sensationalist at best and as I said complete BO***cks at worst. 

27 minutes ago, Maesknoll Red said:

It hasn't sounded good for weeks.  I can't see anything but civil disorder and society breaking down if this carries on too long.  It's unprecedented, its going to have effects that last for years, if not decades.  

I know you call yourself the eternal pessimist but that is complete BOLL***S. I predict you will look very silly in 3 months time and you can hold me to that.

2 hours ago, Peter O Hanraha-hanrahan said:

When the Government themselves suggest that there could be as many as 50,000 in the country already effected plus others who’ve had it and recovered, it makes you wonder what the true fatality rate is?

Surely if there could be as many as 50,000 infected and we know the number of deaths then the mortality rate is a lot lower than feared.

Just come back from Sainsburys Portishead, not a single can of beer on any shelf and most other shelves empty or nearly empty and that was at 10:30 utter madness.

Has anybody any theories as to why Germany has 4 times as many confirmed cases as us yet one third of the deaths? there seems to be no logic to it the percentage of cases to deaths seems to vary wildly in some countries. Switzerland for instance also has a similar number of cases to us despite having a fraction of our population, yet there death rate is 25% of ours pro rata.

5 minutes ago, Alessandro said:

200 Deaths - He wrote 20,000 infected, 1% mortality rate. 

Well it reads differently to me, and I'm fairly sure he meant 20,000 deaths not 200 even if he didn't word it very well.

2 hours ago, Alessandro said:

Personally don’t think they got it ‘spot on’ given the policy U-turn and the contradicting advice at times. But happy to agree to disagree.

I guess only time will tell when the dust settles - but I’ll be astonished, and you can hopefully refer back to this and gladly tell me I was wrong, if the death toll at the end of this is only 200 in the UK. 
 

Where does he say it's only going to be 200? he said 20,000.

2 minutes ago, havanatopia said:

I referred to fast tracking by saying months not years. We are some way off having a vaccine available to all... My guess is we could see roll out possibly as early as late autumn... But that would be a world record.

As I said the drugs for HIV seem to work against Covid 19, and as they are tried and already tested should enable them to be fast tracked, as for having enough for all of us well your guess is as good as mine.

12 minutes ago, havanatopia said:

Many countries are close to a vaccine breakthrough including the UK. But then you have to move on to clinical trials, production and roll out... That will take many months, years in normal times.

These aren't normal times though, I expect to see an unprecedented fast tracking of possible vaccines, the Australian use of HIV medicines sounds very promising they are already fairly tried and tested. 

7 minutes ago, daored said:

I completely agree , ones going a masters , so would expect to be relatively well educated !

Educated, and common sense, big difference.

4 minutes ago, elhombrecito said:

Indeed. Article from yesterday, suggests it's very unlikely that somebody could be reinfected, but as with most things to do with this virus, it's a best guess based on previous viruses. 

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/16/the-big-question-over-coronavirus-can-a-person-get-it-twice

One of the most concerning issues since the emergence of the Covid-19 virus has been whether those who have had it can get it a second time – and what that means for immunity.

On Monday, both Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, and Prof Chris Whitty, Boris Johnson’s chief medical adviser, sought to reassure the public. Those who have had the virus once will develop some immunity, they said – and it is rare to get an infectious disease again.

The questions first arose last month, after Japanese authorities said a woman who had had the virus, and been declared virus-free, had tested positive again. Scientists were left confused by the news and and also uneasy.

Prof Mark Harris, an expert in virology at Leeds University, said reinfection in that case was “unlikely”, but added that “there is some evidence in the scientific literature for persistent infections of animal coronaviruses (mainly in bats)”.

When Vallance was asked on Monday if the Japanese case meant herd immunity was no longer achievable, he replied that some people do catch infectious diseases a second time, but that it is a rare occurrence. There was no evidence to suggest that it would occur with the coronavirus, he added.

Prof Whitty explained that with diseases, even if there is no long-term immunity, there is normally some short-term immunity.

Prof Jon Cohen, emeritus professor of infectious diseases at Brighton and Sussex Medical School, said: “The answer is that we simply don’t know [about reinfection] yet because we don’t have an antibody test for the infection, although we will have soon.

“However, it is very likely, based on other viral infections, that yes, once a person has had the infection they will generally be immune and won’t get it again. There will always be the odd exception, but that is certainly a reasonable expectation.”

Thanks for the comprehensive answer, should put a lot of peoples minds at rest.

6 minutes ago, bcfcredandwhite said:

It’s affecting football because it’s stopped it. 
I can’t see any football matches taking place until 2021 to be honest. Apparently this virus can be caught again, so as long as there is someone on the planet with it, it will just cycle around and around until the boffins find a cure. 

Heard a so called expert yesterday on Breakfast news and when it was put to him about re infection said it would only be in exceptional cases as the bodies immune system in the vast majority of people would not let that happen.

3 minutes ago, italian dave said:

I'm not for a minute claiming to be an expert on this, but as I understand it health spending in the U.K. has increases over the past decade, as it has over the past 70 years , whether you measure that before or after inflation. There have been a few short periods, 2010/11 ish being the last, where that didn't happen, but overall upwards. However, it's gone up be less in the past decade than it had before that.

The problem is that tells only a small % of the story.

Over the same time we've grown older, we live longer, we get more illnesses in old age etc etc. When the welfare state was introduced after the war I believe that the average person lived for three years after their state pension age. That's an issue for pensions, but it's also a hell of a lot of hip replacements not to mention longer term illness.

In addition, we've got far far better at treating people, but at a cost. I know a little about cystic fibrosis, for example. 20 years ago if you had CF you'd probably die by the age of 20, and you'd have few drug options beyond anti-biotics. Nowadays, you might live twice that long (with all the hospitalisation that involves) and there are specialist drugs now coming on the market. One, Orkambi, was the subject of a recent campaign to get approval for its use by the NHS, and there are second and third generations now being trialled. They cost literally hundreds of thousands of pounds per patient each year. 

So, just keeping up with inflation, or even a little above it, is way way short of what's needed.

Lastly, it depends what you spend on, as well. The government recently announced capital funding for new hospitals. That's all well and good, but if you keep revenue funding (day to day spending) at its current levels, as we are, then you won't have any nurses or doctors to work there.

The US as a whole spends more on healthcare per capita than just about anywhere else, but has some of the worse outcomes because their system is completely disfunctional.

We spent, in 2017 (latest data apparently) just under £3000 per person, which is around the OECD average, but less than the old EU15 average. 

Have run out of likes but thankyou for taking the time to answer my question, put like that it's easy to see how we have got to this.

1 hour ago, Red-Robbo said:

I think the core problem PR is that demand has been rising even faster than spending because of our ageing population. There are subsidiary problems caused by cuts in social care - frail elderly patients "bed blocking" because there is no care package in place to look after them in their own homes. It's one of the things De Pfeffel promised to fix in his election manifesto, yet a huge budget was unveiled recently with zero proposals on the issue.

That is cheering news indeed, DC. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for the explanation, it can be a bit difficult getting to the truth where the NHS is concerned.

2 minutes ago, NOTBLUE said:

Apparently for every pound spent on the NHS in 2010, 86p was spent in 2019.

That might explain it then, whenever you hear anyone from the government discussing the NHS they give the impression the budget has gone up year on year, sounds like they're massaging the figures a bit. 

4 minutes ago, Red-Robbo said:

 

Tough one for you there, LB. I guess everyone, bar undertakers, is braced for a downturn. And even undertakers might not be that happy at having a job that precludes "working from home" and social isolation.

I'm not particularly going to criticise Johnson for the way his government has dealt with the virus. I'm not sure what I'd do in his position. Probably the same, but take a leaf from Macron's book and start cancelling future and past tax debts for small businesses and making other measures to keep firms alive while this de facto lockdown goes on. Macron has the advantage that the French weren't stupid enough to privatise all their utilities, so he's been able to order that these are provided for free as well.

Where I think the chickens will come home to roost for the Conservative Party is the way the crisis is exposing the damage done to the NHS by 10 years of austerity and the death of a thousand cuts. We have much lower numbers of ICU beds than the rest of Western Europe. In fact, even Russia and China have more beds per million than we do. And other aspects of the health service, from ambulance numbers to blood analysis laboratory workers have been similarly run-down leaving an NHS that is now highly unlikely to cope for very long at all.

This systematic neglect may already be reflected in our death rate per infection which, if you look at the tables in this excellent data site, seem very high compared to much of the world.

Spain has just nationalised all private hospitals and clinics. We should consider doing likewise.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

If you believe the government (I know I know) they say they have increased spending on the NHS above the rate of inflation for the past ten years. If that's the case where the hell has all the money gone? and why are they always saying they need more? I would be genuinely interested to hear from someone that knows about these things.

50 minutes ago, Markman said:

look at ebay - it is quite depressing

If not entirely predictable.

15 minutes ago, Mr Popodopolous said:

If countries coordinated better early and aggressively did so, for example had those returning from anywhere else been stuck in quarantine or isolation from the get go and had aggressive tracing and testing started early and continued across the board, might this have been suppressed significantly? 

Feels too late now but an interesting counterfactual. I'm convinced most- if not all- countries have made significant errors on this.

I think hindsight is a wonderful thing but with it it's difficult to argue that allowing people to just enter the country from infected areas was a huge mistake.

10 minutes ago, Dr Balls said:

The political ramifications of this pandemic are going to be huge either way. Politicians will eventually be judged on how they managed this. We are only a couple of weeks in to it and it has got a long, long way to run, so life is not likely to be quite the same again. The comment about having just lived through the summers of 1914 and 1939 seems very apt. You may not like or want my prescriptions but enormous financial and political interventions will be needed and many countries have already started to make them.

As for Bojp, I don’t feel sorry for him at all. He has spent most of his life bluffing his way through and looking after No. 1. Suddenly he is in the biggest worldwide crisis of the last 75 years and there is no easy way out of facing up to his responsibilities as prime minister, unlike his usual personal modus operandi with wives, lovers and children. No wonder he looks tired and is aging rapidly before our eyes. There really is nowhere to hide any more. No more disappearing off to the Caribbean for a couple of weeks. With great power comes great responsibility, or did no one tell him that?! At least he seems to have wisely decided that experts are a good idea after all...

I certainly don't feel sorry for him, but to blame him in any way until we know how this will pan out is pure speculation, as you say let history be the judge what he has done, is doing may well turn out to be a masterstroke let's hope history will be kind otherwise, well it doesn't bear thinking about.

8 minutes ago, Dr Balls said:

The pandemic will cause more chaos in the world than any event since the Second World War and it will be more universal. The loss of life may well be of a similar order once the virus hits the third world, which is saying something considering how many died during that conflict. Out of 8 billion people, with 75% catching it, even with only a 1% mortality rate that equates to 60 million deaths worldwide. If that doesn’t call for somber contemplation nothing will!

Radical solutions will be needed. Forget Universal Credit for those laid off from their jobs or whose business collapse. Also there is no point just bailing out big businesses in the way that the banks were in the financial crash of 2008, where all the money went to the richest, and all the pain was borne by the rest of us for years to come, this time we need a universal income at least in the short term. The money needs to go to the people not the “fat cats”. In the meantime, we need funds, so taxing Facebook, Amazon and Google fair amounts across all countries has to come too.

This will truly be a shock to the neo-liberal Western financial system, one for which it is ill-prepared, as it hates market intervention. However only governments working for their populations and working together can sort this out.

As for food, considering as a country we import 50% of it from overseas (mostly from the EU that we left 6 weeks ago) we are in big trouble if the supply lines start drying up. Rationing may be a last resort but it’s no longer unthinkable if this situation continues until next year. 

We are in truly unprecedented times, and as I mentioned before, Boris should have been more careful about what he wished for. He might have hero worshipped Churchill but now he is being asked to deal with something which is potentially far more difficult and complex. And all because he wanted to be “World King” as a kid...

50% of what you say is quite a reasonable argument the other 50% is complete political point scoring B***Ocks I will leave you to decide which is which.

16 minutes ago, BS4 on Tour... said:

Really don’t wanna get into any political shite on this, but how is advising people to avoid crowds in pubs, theatres, restaurants etc an example of Boris ‘protecting his mates’ ?

It seems to me to be a case of damned if he does and damned if he doesn't, people and they know who they are on here appear to be looking for a convenient scapegoat.

The first vaccine is to be tested on human volunteers in the US, let's keep our fingers crossed it works.

11 minutes ago, lenred said:

Calmness in adversity is not solely a British National trait.  It’s a saying from WW2 (where it had true meaning and purpose) that some clever marketing people have subsequently made lots of money from, but to suggest it’s an actual national stereotype is simply not true I’m afraid and the evidence is clearly being seen by the actions of many of our selfish compatriots unfortunately.  

Yes maybe it's an older person kind of mindset (that's me include)  maybe not so true now, annoys the hell out of me all this hoarding and stuff.