Generic Virus Thread

[bannedfromHandV]

Just now, Genie said:

Yes, but you contact the likes of  Matalan and ask them to put you on touch with their high volume, low cost clothing suppliers to knock out cheap scrubs quickly.
I can only assume the Government know these suppliers are based overseas and wouldn’t/couldn’t help, but then with our leadership team I might be giving them too much credit.

I'd strongly suspect they're south eastern Asian sweatshops, so for multiple reasons it's unlikely to be feasible/desirable.

Actual UK clothes manufacturers tend to be high end.

[Genie]

1 minute ago, bannedfromHandV said:

I'd strongly suspect they're south eastern Asian sweatshops, so for multiple reasons it's unlikely to be feasible/desirable.

Actual UK clothes manufacturers tend to be high end.

I bet there are loads of UK based clothing manufacturers that are not high end designer brands. 

[bannedfromHandV]

Just now, Genie said:

I bet there are loads of UK based clothing manufacturers that are not high end designer brands. 

You reckon?

That have the infrastructure and capability to mass produce?

I'm not so sure but can't claim to be ITK.

[HanoiVillan]

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

Yes, but you contact the likes of  Matalan and ask them to put you on touch with their high volume, low cost clothing suppliers to knock out cheap scrubs quickly.
I can only assume the Government know these suppliers are based overseas and wouldn’t/couldn’t help, but then with our leadership team I might be giving them too much credit.

It’s just a strange segment of the market to ask for access to for cheap, disposable clothing.

We're not looking for 'cheap scrubs', we're looking for hospital gowns that have to meet fairly exacting standards before being used in an environment where gaps in PPE lead to dead medical workers.

[Genie]

2 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

You reckon?

That have the infrastructure and capability to mass produce?

I'm not so sure but can't claim to be ITK.

Just googled it and this site lists 54 UK clothing brands. Of course I don’t know about their ability to support this specific request. It just struck me as a rather specific request to want to talk to 2 designer brands. He could have asked for access to any clothing manufacturers who could support with scrubs at short notice. 
 

https://makeitbritish.co.uk/directory/clothing-manufacturers/

[Genie]

1 minute ago, HanoiVillan said:

We're not looking for 'cheap scrubs', we're looking for hospital gowns that have to meet fairly exacting standards before being used in an environment where gaps in PPE lead to dead medical workers.

It was a given that they’d have to meet the requirements of the task. 

[HanoiVillan]

Just now, Genie said:

It was a given that they’d have to meet the requirements of the task. 

Yeah, but I think you're downplaying how difficult that is. If Primark or Matalan or Zara or whoever haven't offered to do this, they're not going to be able to turn it around quickly.

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

Yeah, but I think you're downplaying how difficult that is. If Primark or Matalan or Zara or whoever haven't offered to do this, they're not going to be able to turn it around quickly.

Same could be said for Burberry or Barbour? I know Barbour have started making some so I guess someone from the government is already buying what they can.

Its like saying “we will need to buy some cars to move staff and patients this week, I’ve asked for permission to speak to Bentley and Rolls Royce...”

[Chindie]

In fairness we approached F1 component manufacturers to get them onto making ventilators. You go to whoever has the capacity and can turn around things quickly.

[bannedfromHandV]

13 minutes ago, Genie said:

Just googled it and this site lists 54 UK clothing brands. Of course I don’t know about their ability to support this specific request. It just struck me as a rather specific request to want to talk to 2 designer brands. He could have asked for access to any clothing manufacturers who could support with scrubs at short notice. 
 

https://makeitbritish.co.uk/directory/clothing-manufacturers/

Half of those are knitting companies and the other half seem small artisan type shit.

I don’t think any would be capable of responding to the need.

When was the last time you bought a piece of clothing that wasn’t made in Vietnam or taiwan? 

[HanoiVillan]

7 minutes ago, Genie said:

Same could be said for Burberry or Barbour? I know Barbour have started making some so I guess someone from the government is already buying what they can.

Its like saying “we will need to buy some cars to move staff and patients this week, I’ve asked for permission to speak to Bentley and Rolls Royce...”

Well, as you say, if they've already started making them, then they're further along than companies that haven't even offered yet.

It's possibly worth taking a look at the document I linked last night from NHS trusts, which specifically addresses the gown shortage:

'The shortage of clinical gowns over the past week has been more difficult to address as, to protect staff, the gowns have to meet a high technical specification. The constraints around securing gowns are a good example of the problems national NHS leaders are currently grappling with.

China is the only immediate high-volume source of clinical gowns. Specialised fluid-repellent treatment is needed, very high-volume manufacturing capacity is required and other smaller-source manufacturing countries are placing export bans on gowns. There is massive global competition for gowns, all concentrated on China. National NHS leaders started buying stocks many weeks ago but the delivery has been erratic despite daily freight flights. The Chinese have apparently been delaying consignments to conduct local testing before releasing stocks. There have been instances of stock being mislabelled with gowns seemingly arriving only to find, on opening, that the boxes contained masks. Once actual stocks have arrived, they have to meet stringent safety tests with no guarantee that these will be passed. National leaders, working closely with the Foreign Office and the Department for International Trade, have worked hard to overcome these constraints. But the reality is that, for some trusts, stocks of gowns have started to run critically low over the last week.

National and NHS trust leaders have been working extremely hard to address these shortages. The remaining national reserve stock of gowns was carefully allocated to those most in need via a series of emergency deliveries over successive days. For some, this was literally just in time. Public Health England has now approved the use of coveralls in place of gowns and a consignment of 200,000 has now been released for use. Trusts have also been helping neighbouring providers to ensure gown stock is shared wherever possible with this mutual aid a key benefit of being in a National Health Service.

But these have been last-minute actions to prevent gown stock from running out, and the stock position for a number of trusts still remains precarious at time of writing.'

(from: https://nhsproviders.org/confronting-coronavirus-in-the-nhs/3-pinch-points-and-problems-and-dealing-with-them)

A number of potential reasons suggest themselves as to 'why Burberry and Barbour, not Matalan or Primark'. Maybe they have access to the specialised fluid-repellent treatment. Maybe they aren't reliant on shipping products or ingredients from China, or are less so. Maybe the sweatshops providing clothing to Matalan and Primark are shut, are in countries with export bans, or are too busy fulfilling orders from other countries.

I doubt any of it has anything to do with NHS workers wanting bling hospital gowns.

Edited April 17, 2020 by HanoiVillan

[Genie]

Just now, Chindie said:

In fairness we approached F1 component manufacturers to get them onto making ventilators. You go to whoever has the capacity and can turn around things quickly.

The likes of the F1 teams and Dyson pitched to the government that they could help.

I know it seems like I’m making more of it than it probably deserves, it just felt odd to request to want to talk to 2 very specific high end designer brands when there are hundreds of other manufacturers who could  potentially support. Why not throw a load of money at current scrubs suppliers to increase capacity?

[bannedfromHandV]

Edit - got it wrong.......not for the first time either

Edited April 17, 2020 by bannedfromHandV

[Chindie]

2 minutes ago, Genie said:

The likes of the F1 teams and Dyson pitched to the government that they could help.

I know it seems like I’m making more of it than it probably deserves, it just felt odd to request to want to talk to 2 very specific high end designer brands when there are hundreds of other manufacturers who could  potentially support. Why not throw a load of money at current scrubs suppliers to increase capacity?

You are.

The capacity for production is likely maxed out at various suppliers (from my own job I actually know this to be the case for a particular piece of PPE), and it isn't really a case of chucking an incentive at a producer in China to turn around more product - they would need more machinery, etc etc, which itself will have its own issues with supplies etc.

So they've turned to manufacturers that aren't likely to be running much volume through their facilities ATM, and can likely switch over to other products easily. The brand name doesn't matter.

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, Chindie said:

The brand name doesn't matter.

Exactly my point. The request wasn’t for help getting supplies, or to appeal for help from the buying team at Number 10 to get him what he needs. It was a specific request to talk too those 2 companies.

He/She wanted to remain anonymous so fees like some kind of political game.

Edited April 17, 2020 by Genie

[Chindie]

1 minute ago, Genie said:

Exactly my point. The request wasn’t for help getting supplies, or to appeal for help from the buying team at Number 10 to get him what he needs. It was a specific request to talk 2 those 2 companies.

He/She wanted to remain anonymous so fees like some kind of political game.

Yes. It's highlighting the extremes needed to go to get basic supplies now. We're having to ask to speak to high class manufacturers. Because we're ****.

[Genie]

7 minutes ago, Chindie said:

Yes. It's highlighting the extremes needed to go to get basic supplies now. We're having to ask to speak to high class manufacturers. Because we're ****.

Yes, it’s someone saying “I’m having to take things into my own hands because number 10 aren’t delivering, but I’m not brave enough to speak publicly for fear of reprisal” which is a double blow for our government.

[trekka]

39 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

Raab C Dipshit couldn’t even remember to silent his mobile phone on the commons health committee live broadcast.

God the guys an effing tool.

 

And that attempt at patriotism with the giant queens head behind him....

I think you'll find that it was Matt Hancock. 

[sne]

China casually added 1290 new people to the death toll in Wuhan over night.

[mjmooney]

Quote

FROM the moment your sperm meets your egg, you join the queue for death. It’s nature’s way of recycling. You can fall back in the queue by eating your greens or washing your hands, but we all get to the front eventually. Even experts have been known to die.
In 2018-2019, there were 541,589 deaths registered in England and Wales, 50,100 more than expected, due to a mixture of cold weather, prolonged austerity and seasonal respiratory viruses. As of 15 March, there were 35 deaths from coronavirus; but pandemics grow exponentially and cases could quickly overwhelm the NHS, social care and funeral services, and cause widespread cancellation of treatment for other conditions like cancer and heart disease.

Estimates of how many extra deaths Covid-19 will cause in the UK range from 50,000 (ie similar to 2018-19) to 500,000 (ie a doubling of annual deaths). It all depends on how well we manage the risks. The government’s policy is to abandon containment and promote herd immunity, with Public Health England now anticipating the crisis could last a year, infecting 80 percent of the population and leading to 7.9m people needing hospitalisation. This would likely put the deaths at the upper end of the estimates, and intensive care services would have to be strictly rationed.

Hand-washing: a roaring success
The government’s scaling back of community testing has fuelled further uncertainty. One solution comes from Graham Medley, Professor of Infectious Disease Modelling at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. We should all assume we already have the virus and behave as if we’re infectious until further notice. Wash your hands and keep your distance from the elderly (unless they need help getting on and off the commode. Then wash your hands again). 

The hand-washing campaign at least has been a roaring success. Early figures suggest it may have delayed the surge of Covid-19, and is likely to have reduced the incidence of seasonal influenza, food poisoning, hepatitis A, threadworm and pubic hair in Caesar salad.

Alas, 40 percent of the world’s population do not have access to the miracle of soap and water in their homes, and that is where the virus will eventually hit hardest. They’re used to death. More than 4,000 people a day die from TB and 1,200 from malaria. But because it doesn’t crash the economy, hit pension funds or disrupt holiday cruises, it gets virtually no publicity.  

For the UK public at large, the risk of a coronavirus death remains low. The predicted range is that out of every 100 random Brits, 99 won’t die from Covid-19 this year (worst scenario) to out of every 1,000 people, 999 won’t die from Covid-19 (best scenario). Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s “many of you will lose loved ones before their time” speech was hardly Churchillian (“We will lose thousands on the beaches”). Those at highest risk are in their eighties, unsurprising since the average life expectancy in the UK is 80.96 years. Those who die may have died from something else in the not too distant future. 

If M.D. (58) got seriously ill with Covid-19, I’d join the queue for a ventilator but accept it if a 40 year old jumped ahead of me.

?That’s how rationing in the NHS has always worked. If I make it to 80, I would neither want nor expect to have prolonged intubation on ITU for severe respiratory distress. Overtreatment of the elderly when they are seriously ill often just extends suffering. Before we all demanded to live forever, pneumonia was known as “the old man’s friend” (with a dose of morphine?on top).

Experts have been predicting another pandemic for decades, but politicians refused to listen, preferring to run the NHS on near 100 percent bed occupancy, with fewer beds and intensive care facilities than most other countries. Indeed, over the last 30 years, the number of NHS hospital beds has halved. We have not built extra capacity into the system and we will soon find out if we can. 

All eyes will now switch to the overall death figures. The Office for National Statistics provides a weekly tally for those with a strong stomach. The week ending 10 January 2020 was the worst of the year so far, with 14,058 deaths. But it’s fallen every week since to 10,816 in the week ended 28 February. Deaths are actually lower this year than the average for each week over the previous five years. I like to think it’s the handwashing. 

Many counties have taken much stricter measures than the UK, based on roughly the same evidence, which shows how uncertain the science is. We will only find out who got it right after the event. In the UK, many older people may say “bollocks” to 14 weeks of lockdown and go about what’s left of their one wild and precious life. All adults should already have made an advanced care plan (eg via Compassion in Dying), so doctors know in advance whether you want a shot at recovery or end of life care. 

M.D. works in the world of post-viral fatigue and so is expecting an increase in workload further down the line. Evidence suggests that if you’re fearful and anxious when and after you contract a virus, it makes the symptoms and long-term sequelae worse. And the UK is currently bingeing on fear.

Down the corridor, my anaesthetic colleagues have started their spike in workload. The Chinese and Italian experience is that staff working in intensive care may be at increased risk of serious illness and death. This may be because repeated exposure to high doses of the virus from intubation and other intimate procedures takes its toll. It may be that the best protective equipment wasn’t available. And it may also be that the stress and fear of working intolerably long hours with a relentless workload of critically ill infectious patients also damages the immune system and makes you more susceptible. By any projection, we are not well equipped to deal with a surge in demand. ITU staff need the best equipment available. And the right to refuse to treat.

GPs and other community carers are doing home visits to people likely to have Covid-19 without any protective equipment at all, or with cut price garb that looks like they work behind the counter in Greggs. How virus-tight they are remains to be seen, but they are causing much nervous hilarity.

Laughter is the best medicine – unless of course you have syphilis, in which case it’s penicillin. There are no effective drugs yet for Covid-19 and the best ways to boost your immune system are not the nonsense new age supplements doing the rounds (there’s a $200 magic yoghurt pill you can shove up your arse) but laughter and sex. The second drug my GP surgery ran out of (after paracetamol) was Viagra. The best position for reduced transmission and improved lung function is the wheelbarrow. Just don’t go past your mum’s house. Enjoy your isolation. Look out for others. Try not to fall down the stairs. Don’t get caught in a bog-roll scrum (it’s the ideal breeding-ground for viruses).  And remember it’s the simple pleasures, not the big scares, that give purpose and meaning to life. Coronavirus may yet teach us to behave in a kinder, gentler, less consumptive way. 

M.D.

Private Eye