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The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

bmj.com

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Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#21

Post by SiempreViernes »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #13
Angostura wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, in many repects it's been pretty good. The respects that it has been very poor at was: * Being complacent about the country's testing capacity * stopping testing outside of hospitals once the containment phase was deemed over * PPE logistics. (tough global problem) * Support for care-homes. * Westminster's lack of care when it comes to coordinating the loosening of lock-down with the devolved countries It was a…

Yet we still have the worst death rate in Europe. Why was Germany so much better off than us.

Probably it's closely connected to hygiene practices in the care-homes.

Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#22

Post by rvz »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #13
Angostura wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, in many repects it's been pretty good. The respects that it has been very poor at was: * Being complacent about the country's testing capacity * stopping testing outside of hospitals once the containment phase was deemed over * PPE logistics. (tough global problem) * Support for care-homes. * Westminster's lack of care when it comes to coordinating the loosening of lock-down with the devolved countries It was a…

Yet we still have the worst death rate in Europe. Why was Germany so much better off than us.

Not only they tested early, they have the capacity to test ten if not hundreds of thousands of people a day and have laboratories spread across the country working with the government, rather than against it [0]

Sure the UK was slow at testing but there are still ways of getting a private testing kit for yourself in the UK. Thus, it's very easy to blame the UK government for the high death rates and slow response when you have people risking their own health by ignoring government advice across the UK and not taking their own responsibility to be socially distant, i.e clapping for carers whilst being very very close together.

Therefore in the UK, it's everyone's fault for not taking this pandemic seriously enough (All the UK media outlets comparing it to the flu and SARS 2003 death rates), unlike other countries locking down their borders and testing very early.

[0] https://www.thelocal.de/20200429/german-coronavirus-testing-...

Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#23

Post by CodeGlitch »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #13
Angostura wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, in many repects it's been pretty good. The respects that it has been very poor at was: * Being complacent about the country's testing capacity * stopping testing outside of hospitals once the containment phase was deemed over * PPE logistics. (tough global problem) * Support for care-homes. * Westminster's lack of care when it comes to coordinating the loosening of lock-down with the devolved countries It was a…

Yet we still have the worst death rate in Europe. Why was Germany so much better off than us.

This is my theory (I of course welcome feedback!):

The UK has had a health crisis for 20+ years, and that is obesity / poor-diet / little-exercise. We are one (it not most?) obese country in Europe, and we are seeing people with diabetes and heart-conditions to be people at most risk of COVID-19. It will take a generation to put this right - and my hope is that people in the UK will realise they need to sort their health out in case COVID-XX comes around.

Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#24

Post by cstross »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #18
GEBBL wrote: post #8

And at the end of all this, you guys have Brexit. The UK is teetering on the cliff edge.

People are still bitter about this aren't they? I voted remain but it's time to move on. The idea of a "cliff-edge" is yet to materialise.

The "cliff-edge" hasn't materialized because the UK is in a negotiated transition period during which nothing changes. That ends on December 31st, 2020. On January 1st, new arrangements are supposed to come into force -- except they haven't been agreed yet, apart from a customs barrier within the UK (between Northern Ireland and the mainland).

Meanwhile -- before COVID19 -- Sterling devalued by about 20%, the government began borrowing heavily to cover a yawning revenue gap, an economic slowdown cost the UK economy more than the gross total of all UK payments into EU funds since joining in 1974 (many of which were redistributed right back in the UK), and we have a prime minister who, when told that the Confederation of British Industry was worried about his Brexit policies, famously said "f*ck business".

Remember February/March, when everyone was sitting paralysed in the oncoming headlights of COVID19, wondering if it was going to be bad and if it was going to be necessary to make any changes? That's where we are with the end of the Brexit transition period, right now.

Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#25

Post by butler14 »

It's a reasonable opinion piece and I agree with a lot of it -- particularly not having Cummings in SAGE meetings and the embarrassing state of PPE, but;

"he floated an approach to “build up some degree of herd immunity” founded on an erroneous view that the vast majority of cases would be mild, like influenza"

as far as anyone knows, they are. the (limited) data we have is making a strong case for that.

and in any case, 'some degree of herd immunity' wasn't the policy, it was (and still is) an inevitable outcome

we'll need to wait on Roche's antibody test to have a robust sense of how succesful our delayed lockdown (or sweden's complete lack of lockdown) worked

Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#26

Post by SiempreViernes »

TLightful wrote: post #15
Angostura wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I absolutely agree the situation is likely to be uneven. So this is a tough one. Most organisations will have general rules about not bad-mouthing the organisation publicly and running comms through s comms office. I absolutely agree people should be able to whistle-blow, but if you were managing a hospital you'd probably be wanting people not to go grumbling to the press.

Transparency is key right now. Your "grumble" is likely someone else's "professional concern".

Arguably accuracy is more important than transparency, and people in general have a strong tendency to interpret a single account of "we're all out of PPE" as "there is a general shortage".

Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#27

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

CodeGlitch wrote: post #18
GEBBL wrote: post #8

And at the end of all this, you guys have Brexit. The UK is teetering on the cliff edge.

People are still bitter about this aren't they? I voted remain but it's time to move on. The idea of a "cliff-edge" is yet to materialise.

In fact we're living in the real world where most countries can see that the UK is about to slit its own throat in pursuit of a tabloid fantasy - which has been promoted by naive internal interests who are being taken advantage of by hostile foreign actors waiting to pick over the bones of whatever is left after the dust settles.

Brexit makes as much practical sense as 5G COVID conspiracy theories. And they appear to have been promoted and astroturfed by the same sources, which should be a bit of a clue - as should the UK's utter failure to deal effectively with the pandemic.

Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#28

Post by jansan »

arethuza wrote: post #20
tonyedgecombe wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yet we still have the worst death rate in Europe. Why was Germany so much better off than us.

Isn't the answer at the moment "we don't know" - I'm no fan of the current government but I don't think it helps blaming them before someone has analysed the relevant facts.

Exactly. There is still a lot that we do not understand. And scientists have not impressed either, with theri lack of knowledge about spreading of the virus.

What I find remarkable is that eastern European countries like Hungary, Poland and Czechia have done remarkably well during this crisis. Also, countries like India and Sri Lanka have barely been affected. What are the reasons?

Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#29

Post by TheOtherHobbes »

butler14 wrote: post #25

It's a reasonable opinion piece and I agree with a lot of it -- particularly not having Cummings in SAGE meetings and the embarrassing state of PPE, but; "he floated an approach to “build up some degree of herd immunity” founded on an erroneous view that the vast majority of cases would be mild, like influenza" as far as anyone knows, they are. the (limited) data we have is making a strong case for that. and in any c…

You've just written off 50,000 excess [1] deaths in the UK and 90,000 deaths in the US as "limited data." And also repeated the lie about "herd immunity" somehow being a thing that magically happens because of exposure, and not because of vaccines. (It doesn't. Ask any surviving polio victims how "herd immunity" worked out for them.)

[1] Excess meaning those people would not have died for some time yet - decades for those front-line workers who were in their 30s/40s/50s.

Re: The UK’s public health response to Covid-19

#30

Post by dijksterhuis »

tonyedgecombe wrote: post #13
Angostura wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nope, in many repects it's been pretty good. The respects that it has been very poor at was: * Being complacent about the country's testing capacity * stopping testing outside of hospitals once the containment phase was deemed over * PPE logistics. (tough global problem) * Support for care-homes. * Westminster's lack of care when it comes to coordinating the loosening of lock-down with the devolved countries It was a…

Yet we still have the worst death rate in Europe. Why was Germany so much better off than us.

You're looking at the total number of deaths, not the death rate per capita.

Every country has a different population size which means the total number of deaths needs to be normalised in order to be comparable.

Belgium has the highest death rate per million population in Europe - 79.25

The UK is 4th in Europe behind Belgium, Spain and then Italy.

https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/data/mortality

The fact we're 4th does warrant some concern as Spain and Italy were hit hard before us.

But then all these death statistics are compiled using different definitions anyway, so there's no useful direct comparison right now.

Belgium, for example, include all suspected covid deaths in their figures whereas the UK does not.

So probably best not to jump to conclusions until some thorough and rigorous global modelling/analysis has taken place.

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