Generic Virus Thread

[Jareth]

7 minutes ago, Genie said:

It’s a moving target, the tests have to be reliable

They have said several times there are bottlenecks on the raw ingredients of the tests.

They've also managed to put together 2 huge field hospitals in a matter of weeks, a feat that the Chinese were applauded for.

Whether they miss the 100k goal/target shouldn’t be a hang up or a stick to beat them with. 

Sold to us as the 'game changer' - 3.5 mill on the way. Nothing about 'subject to accuracy' - they could have said that up front if not so quick to spin it.

This was immediately shot down by suppliers of the ingredients in the UK

They built cubicles and beds inside an existing building but sold it as on par with the Chinese building from scratch. Also credit the army - not the government on that one.

It absolutely should - they set it - they have sold it to us - they need to stick to it. Where does the buck stop if not them?

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

24 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Or (directed at government and not a snarky reply to you) - they could be transparent about the statistics, the science and the plans they have put in place. They are concocting numbers, as has always been Johnson's team's forte - to cover incompetence. 

I am totally convinced the UK Government has done very well in dynamic and ever changing environment.

I don't think the UK could have chosen a better person to lead the country through this, no matter if your politics, Brexit vies or if you just don't like the bloke.

I suspect even some Labour MP's would agree.  Just my view from what I have seen over the last month or so.  I watch news from Europe / NL / and all over the world constantly and sometimes you don't know what you have.  I have nothing to gain from  this view (I havent lived in the UK since 2000 but honestly,  right man,  right time.  If either of these things are not in place as history as showed us,  people will die and we,  as a nation might lose (the Uk),  that just can't happen).  Almost all countries in the world would swap IMO at the moment (if he was 100% fit of course :-))

(I say "we" as I still include myself as English and always will.  The Dutch don't do this)

+ The medical people the UK have are class.  Compared to the other countries.  Amazing. Witty and the other bloke and the bird.

Edited April 8, 2020 by Amsterdam_Neil_D

[Delphouneso]

39 minutes ago, Awol said:

So the question is are we likely to be in lockdown until the virus is finally stamped out across all of GB,  (potentially a few months away) or does economic reality mean trying to open up the country one region at a time while imposing strict internal restrictions on travel? Could that even work? 
 

 

Might be some staffing issues if they decide to restart the economy in London whilst still restricting travel out of Devon.

[Genie]

8 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

But always, on every subject, they always over promise, under deliver. 

Only the ones you remember, the stuff they hit or over deliver on doesn’t stick in the memory.

 

[chrisp65]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Only the ones you remember, the stuff they hit or over deliver on doesn’t stick in the memory.

 

Such as...

[Genie]

8 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Sold to us as the 'game changer' - 3.5 mill on the way. Nothing about 'subject to accuracy' - they could have said that up front if not so quick to spin it.

Really? I heard the chief scientist mention this weeks ago. He made the point that the tests must be accurate otherwise they’d be very dangerous. 
This was about a week before Spain bought several million dud tests.

 

[Genie]

Just now, chrisp65 said:

Such as...

So you’re suggesting the government have a 100% failure rate of missing every single target they have ever set?

[chrisp65]

Well, I’m perfectly happy to be proved wrong. Nightingale beds, ventilators, gloves, testing kits, business loans.

I’m not trying to promote that some other party would deliver better, we could never know that. I just see and hear every day that they’ve done x, y or z and then know from friends that they absolutely haven’t. Head teachers I know have had to go in to schools to get science goggles. I’ve personally given a GP a box of date expired gloves, because they were better than nothing.

Even yesterday’s death figures were bollocks that you could read and check for yourself on the official NHS public access data. 

There is one thing that has been knocked out of the park, the number of volunteers that have signed up. 

[Jareth]

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

Really? I heard the chief scientist mention this weeks ago. He made the point that the tests must be accurate otherwise they’d be very dangerous. 
This was about a week before Spain bought several million dud tests.

 

Nope, day one we were told clever bods at Oxford had created a test. Next day we were 'buying' millions and its a game-changer - it was not cleared up at that point who from or what had happened to the previous day's news about Oxford. All I'm doing here is calling out spin and PR tactics from a government at a time of crisis - they have numerous opportunities to be straight with people - they choose not to be. 

[snowychap]

29 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

I am totally convinced the UK Government has done very well in dynamic and ever changing environment.

I don't think the UK could have chosen a better person to lead the country through this

You wot?

[Seat68]

36 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

I am totally convinced the UK Government has done very well in dynamic and ever changing environment.

I don't think the UK could have chosen a better person to lead the country through this, no matter if your politics, Brexit vies or if you just don't like the bloke.

I suspect even some Labour MP's would agree.  Just my view from what I have seen over the last month or so.  I watch news from Europe / NL / and all over the world constantly and sometimes you don't know what you have.  I have nothing to gain from  this view (I havent lived in the UK since 2000 but honestly,  right man,  right time.  If either of these things are not in place as history as showed us,  people will die and we,  as a nation might lose (the Uk),  that just can't happen).  Almost all countries in the world would swap IMO at the moment (if he was 100% fit of course :-))

(I say "we" as I still include myself as English and always will.  The Dutch don't do this)

+ The medical people the UK have are class.  Compared to the other countries.  Amazing. Witty and the other bloke and the bird.

 

 

Edited April 8, 2020 by Seat68

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, Jareth said:

Nope, day one we were told clever bods at Oxford had created a test. Next day we were 'buying' millions and its a game-changer - it was not cleared up at that point who from or what had happened to the previous day's news about Oxford. All I'm doing here is calling out spin and PR tactics from a government at a time of crisis - they have numerous opportunities to be straight with people - they choose not to be. 

Found it, from 25th March.

Quote

Boris Johnson has pledged a 'massive increase' in capacity, with the number of checks on suspected sufferers due to rise from under 5,000 a day to 25,000.

However, that escalation could take weeks, and the current process requires hours of lab work.

Meanwhile, the government has been pushing for an antibody test that will show who has been through the disease and emerged with immunity. 

Officials from Public Health England (PHE) suggested today that 3.5million finger-prick tests could get clearance and start being distributed for use within days.  

But speaking alongside Mr Johnson at a press conference in Downing Street this evening, Prof Whitty warned that the 'one thing worse than no test is a bad test'. 

'That technology is quite close and it is being evaluated this week, but it is not there,' he said. 

Link

I remember it very well. He went in to say about the dangers of getting a positive result of negative and vice versa. They had to be certain the tests were accurate before they rolled them out.

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

2 minutes ago, snowychap said:

You wot?

Is that a semi aggressive "You wot?", a hard of hearing "You wot?" or a general dont have another opinion than the prescribed and laid out opinion "You wot?" ? 

[Awol]

47 minutes ago, pas5898 said:

Peak of cases is 7-10 days away which means peak of deaths and ICU treatment is 21-30 days away, then add to that average ICU time is 10-14 days to either recover or pass away. 

After that it will take months and months to go away completely, if at all. 

I strongly believe that there will be a form of "mental" immunity. In other words life will go back to normal for the majority not at risk and it will be socially acceptable for 3, 400 people a day to die as long as life goes back to normal. 

 

So the herd immunity strategy, but with public consent? 

[Awol]

33 minutes ago, Delphouneso said:

Might be some staffing issues if they decide to restart the economy in London whilst still restricting travel out of Devon.

Half of London stranded in their second homes? 

[snowychap]

3 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Is that a semi aggressive "You wot?", a hard of hearing "You wot?" or a general dont have another opinion than the prescribed and laid out opinion "You wot?" ? 

It's an are you really being serious or have you spent the week smoking 'you wot'?

[MCU]

6 minutes ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

Is that a semi aggressive "You wot?", a hard of hearing "You wot?" or a general dont have another opinion than the prescribed and laid out opinion "You wot?" ? 

[Amsterdam_Neil_D]

3 minutes ago, snowychap said:

It's an are you really being serious or have you spent the week smoking 'you wot'?

What makes you so sure it's one of these (or both) ?  What are the symptoms ?

[HanoiVillan]

A large part of the problem is that different parts of the government are passing on different messages, including Public Health England being the absolute worst (they were responsible for 'of course you can book foreign holidays over Easter if you don't have any symptoms' on Newsnight in mid-March, and Sharon something-or-other saying that antigen and antibody tests for the public to purchase would be available for retail in 'days, not weeks' ten days ago, when it's now clear they are months away if they will ever in fact be available). At other times, Hancock and Whitty have had different things to say as well.

Specifically on testing, whatever sympathy people have for the difficulty of obtaining reliable tests in the midst of a global pandemic when we don't have a way to produce them, needs to be tempered by reading the Reuters piece that @Awol posted last night, which reveals the government didn't contact universities or labs for their stockpiles of the necessary chemical reagent until mid-March, and didn't ask them to stay open, instead relying on one single laboratory in north London to provide all the results, which it couldn't do in a timely fashion. There was a point a week or two ago, and it may still be true for all I know, that we were sending tests to Germany because they could supply the results faster.

We keep failing to meet the testing targets that the government is setting, and it seems clear to me the reason for that is that crucial time and institutional effort was lost during that disastrous ten days or two weeks when they became convinced that we'd already lost control, and that the only thing to do was to let the virus rip through the population and try to shelter the vulnerable as best as possible. We're still paying the consequences for that inertia now, and they need to be held accountable for it. The lack of testing has real consequences - we have no real idea of the R0, we don't know whether 2% of the population is or has been infected, or 5%, 10% or 20%, we have no real clue about anything except hospital admissions. This lack of information will hamper good decision-making about when to end the lockdown and how we can procede, and it will make the logical next stage of contact-tracing and testing almost impossible because again, we don't have the tests or the institutional set-up for it.

[snowychap]

1 minute ago, Amsterdam_Neil_D said:

What makes you so sure it's one of these (or both) ?  What are the symptoms ?

Posting what you did.