italian dave

Government briefing this morning stressing that there is "zero prospect" of a London lockdown. Does anyone else get a feeling that means it's coming, but they just want to avoid what happened in Italy when word got out and everyone fled from Milan to different parts of the country.

Not sure about the first sentence. Different countries are approaching it in so many different ways I don't really know how any estimate would be made. Some (like us so far) only test when someone gets to hospital. Others when people have symptoms. Others when they have the testing kits. And what the trial in Italy showed, when they tested a whole population, was that more than half the people who have the virus show no symptoms. So, certainly feels like understanding who's had the virus will help with the numbers. But what would be even better would be testing not who's had it, but who's got it. That seems to be how S Korea have managed it with relative success, and the town in Italy - despite being close to the epicentre there - managed to reduce new cases to zero.

Doesn't help when the Prime Minister's own father blithely announces on TV that he's still going to go to the pub.

They are sending medical equipment and doctors to Italy. Maybe actions speak louder than words.

In Italy the supermarkets are still open, but access is limited, you have to keep a distance from other shoppers, and trolleys, tills etc are cleaned after every use.

Absolutely. And that article from Italy in my post above suggests that NHS surgeon is spot on. And by the same token, isolating only people with symptoms means that more than half the people who have the virus are still wandering around the place unaware they have it.

I agree, hence my suggestion elsewhere that we won't get a 20-21 season. Apart for a vaccine, the other thing that may affect this is the understanding we increasingly get of the virus. And so far, much of that points to the importance of testing, something the WHO has been banging on about, S Korea has been very good at and we, and the US, pretty poor. Although little pockets seem to have re-occured in S Korea since they got the numbers down, they have been very quick to identify and contain them. There's an interesting article in the Italian press about a small town call Vo', in the North, where they have been testing the entire population. One thing that's highlighted is that 50% or more of people who catch the virus are asymptomatic. That means they take fewer precautions, and may even be doctors or other health workers. And children particularly - so it's not necessarily that they don't catch the virus, just that they don't show any symptoms. So, by identifying and isolating these people they've been able to reduce the rate of spread significantly. https://www.repubblica.it/salute/medicina-e-ricerca/2020/03/16/news/coronavirus_studio_il_50-75_dei_casi_a_vo_sono_asintomatici_e_molto_contagiosi-251474302/ So, what we could get, for example, would be regular testing for whole populations - massively expensive but compared to what the Chancellor announced yesterday...?

With news of the Euros being postponed by a year, and all the talk this morning of how long this will last, I can't help thinking that this season re-start again next March, and we'll just not have a 20-21 season Bit annoying, as I've just bought my season ticket!

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 increased 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 by 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.

Good luck, hope you get a positive response. We are all going to need people like you in the weeks to come. Ludicrous position to be in though: someone, and at a lower level than the health minister, needs to just take the responsibility to make decisions that our outside the norm.

And so, presumably, only counting them in the numbers too?? And at the same time as the World Health Organisation are stressing test, test, test. I believe S Korea have tested something like 1/4 million people.

I think @MarcusX meant 40 years ago; just before we joined the EU, a time I can remember, we were known variously as the sick man of Europe, the poor man of Europe and the dirty man of Europe. Fairly sexist times, as you'll gather! But not far from the truth.

Not on our own....

I think it's safe to say that Corbyn's time of day will be long gone by the time this passes. As an aside, can't help wondering whether the age reportedly chosen for elderly people being required to self isolate has anything to do with the fact that Corbyn is 70?!

Seqirus is an American company. https://www.parliament.uk/documents/post/postpn314.pdf http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2018-12-03-new-vaccines-centre-protect-uk-pandemic-threats https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.com/projects/vaccines-manufacturing-oxfordshire/

I don't think Boris's ban is about players reporting cases and squads being unavailable. It's explicitly about mass gatherings. As I've said above, I don't know how he's going to justify it, given what the medical and scientific officers alongside him said only a few days ago. But it's clearly about crowds, not just about football, and therefore entirely different to the reasons the PL and EFL called off games today and next week. I agree with you completely though about the relaxation coming sooner rather than later, and driven by economic factors more than health considerations. Lockdowns like those in Italy just can't be sustained without the whole economy not just going into recession, but being completely wrecked.

And hope it worked better than it did in January!

That would be astonishing. One week make a conscious decision, stressing that it's based on science and evidence, that will allow 60,000 people to gather together for days. The next week ban all gatherings over 500 for two years. That's not a U turn, that's a triple flip double whammy, or whatever the gymnastic phrase is, of Olympic proportions. I'll look forward to hearing what those scientific advisers, who stand alongside him, have to say when Boris announces that.

True - and that's indoors, which is even worse.

There's two other key stages: Regulatory approval: manufacturers will prioritise the largest markets first, so the EU will be high the list. We've just left the EMA (the EU regulatory body). So accepting their regulation would mean accepting new EU regulation. You'd have thought common sense might prevail in this instance, but the Brexit zealots now in charge have only just confirmed our exit from the EU pandemic early warning system in the name of a 'clean break'. So, the chances are we'll be some way down the list in terms of regulatory approval. Manufacture: the UK has no vaccine manufacturing capacity. So we will be dependent on other countries, and on the various trading blocs etc tp which they belong. Again, we'll be some way down the list of priorities. Never mind, we still won 2 world wars so we can go it alone in the world...

I don't think the EFL are going against government advice. That advice was about the issue of large gatherings. The EFL statement is clear that their decision is about the number of players now testing positive, squads in isolation and so on, it's about the players, not the crowds. Not sure whether it's hit rugby players or teams in the same way yet. And, I suspect, by 3 April when the EFL review it, the government will have banned large gatherings anyway.

Not just France Major. Happening here too. Many care home chains are stopping visits.

On the down side, it means Villa stay up!

Yep, I know, I watched it. My comment about the source was intended to be, in part at least, tongue in cheek, so sorry if that didn't come across. The fact is you can find a video of some expert claiming just about anything you want to on the internet - but I accept that this particular podcast isn't one of the more nutty ones, and the guy speaking has credentials. But the real point I'm making is that he's talking about the way in which the animals are transported, kept, slaughtered etc. Animal welfare. Food hygiene. Your original post - which is what I was responding to - didn't say anything about that - it was simply critical of the Chinese for eating bats and rats. I'm just questioning what's wrong with that - if they are properly treated. Pigs and chickens would transmit horrible viruses to humans if they weren't subject to the food hygiene and animal welfare standards we have in place (currently!). So, in summary, I agree that the hygiene and welfare standards in China are poor (but they're not great in the US either). What I don't agree with is lecturing, or getting on our high horses, about which animals the Chinese eat, or about a record of exploitation of African or Indian countries.

The way I'd read it is that if the EFL decide to call off then it will be a decision based on players, not on crowds and large gatherings. If they come out and say its about large gatherings then they are contradicting the government, the day after the government's announcement. As you say, disputing the government's advice. Politically, not a great thing to do. What they're more likely to do is base the cancellation on the risk to players, and the fact that club squads are starting to be affected by the virus. Mind you, if they do adopt the latter stance, then they won't be playing games behind closed doors.