41–50 of 75 posts
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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".
It's frustrating that all the valid criticism of SAGE and the scientific leadership of the UK (frankly they should all resign) is blunted by blatant propagandising over austerity and wider political beef. I cannot see the link between austerity and the disastrous herd immunity policy yet all of these articles in respected medical journals bring it up. These are supposed to be academic journals, not newspapers. It tot…
https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/70-years-of-nhs-s...
>If the government failed in its duty to protect the public, it also failed to protect staff in the NHS and social care by not delivering sufficient amounts of personal protective equipment (PPE) of the right specification, again deviating from WHO advice The government is currently telling anyone who will listen that hospitals have all the PPE they need. However, local nurses and doctors are co-ordinating with volun…
The lack of PPE is a world-wide problem. The UK imported tonnes of the stuff for Turkey, but it was deemed to be not fit for purpose. Other countries have been asking for water-proof coats, that can be used as washable over-garments. I don't think any government is going to come out of this scoring 100%.
That problem is made worse in the UK because of the lack of planning and political disruption to NHS infrastructure.
See for example the fucking shambles of Movianto[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/14/coronavirus-uk...
We used to have NHS Logistics Authority, which changed to NHS Logistics, which was sold off to DHL Supply Chain (but managed by NHS Business Services Authority) and that was a disaster so we now have NHS Supply Chain. This waxing and waning of ideology (centralised control vs localism; NHS provision vs private provision) causes huge amounts of waste and harm in the NHS. It's also not as simple as tories=bad, labour=good. Selling it off to DHL happened under a Labour government; bringing it back under NHS Supply Chain happened under a Conservative government.
It's frustrating that all the valid criticism of SAGE and the scientific leadership of the UK (frankly they should all resign) is blunted by blatant propagandising over austerity and wider political beef. I cannot see the link between austerity and the disastrous herd immunity policy yet all of these articles in respected medical journals bring it up. These are supposed to be academic journals, not newspapers. It tot…
Looking at the graphs in this article there does seem to have been a fairly dramatic change in spending on the NHS as a percentage of GDP after 2010 or so: https://www.nuffieldtrust.org.uk/news-item/70-years-of-nhs-s...
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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 whe…
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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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The lack of PPE is a world-wide problem. The UK imported tonnes of the stuff for Turkey, but it was deemed to be not fit for purpose. Other countries have been asking for water-proof coats, that can be used as washable over-garments. I don't think any government is going to come out of this scoring 100%.
Letting Cheltenham festival (13-16 March) and other sport events go ahead with 10s thousands of people visiting should criminally punished
People say the festival is outside so it's lower risk. That's ignoring the fact that people take trains to get here and they take buses to get from the town centre to the race track. They also meet in cafés, pubs and betting shops, although this year that was far quieter than previous years.
Letting it go ahead was a baffling choice.
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The UK response has been terrible in all respects. Please don't sugar coat it.
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…
The number of acute beds in the NHS was overwhelmed! They were converting operating theatres into ITUs; they dropped the nurse to patient ratios from 1:1 to 1:6; they cancelled elective surgeries to cope with the surge.
The other thing they did is to tell care and nursing homes that elderly people with covid would not be admitted to hospital and would have to die in the home. They also discharged elderly people with suspected covid back to those homes.
Here are some of the most basic things no one seems to have figured out yet:
- As of today, there have been 23,953 deaths in England. Of those, exactly 33(!) involve someone - Why is the transmission rate in London so low now (R = 0.4, - Why weren't the Nightingale Hospitals (field hospitals) needed? Were we just wrong about the need for ventilation? Was the lockdown super effective? Or something else?
- How many people are currently immune? Different studies in place the immunity rate in London anywhere from 10% (tests) to 29% (statistical models). Several studies suggest that there is significant cross-immunity with preexisting coronaviruses causing much slower spread, but it's too early to know for sure and that could be totally wrong.
- Why do some scientists think this will be a serious, on-going epidemic and others think the disease will "burn itself out" [3]? Is that based on science or wishful thinking? Because the difference in the best course of action would be significantly different if we knew the answer with a strong degree of certainty.
- Why do some places with lax lock downs have lower death rates than places with severe lock downs? Why aren't we seeing big upticks in deaths in the US where they are just willy nilly opening the economy? Is it just lagging indicators or are we not totally sure yet how this disease spreads in the community?
- How soon will we get an effective therapeutic? Will we really have a somewhat effective vaccine from Oxford in September or might we never have a vaccine? Will it matter anyway as immunity builds up in the population? How long are people immune?
- What is the actual cost of locking down in terms of lives lost as a side effect in the long term due to economic, social and psychological effects? Is it minuscule or significant?
Again, there will be plenty of time to bash the UK government after this is over. But it seems very early to be proclaiming that anyone has any idea what the right course of action was. This epidemic could totally vanish this year or it could go on for years. No one has any idea.
[1] https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas...
[2] https://www.mrc-bsu.cam.ac.uk/now-casting/
[3] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/05/16/coronavirus-coul...
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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 war…
The UK however has only just started testing people outside hospital, and has only just started including deaths outside hospital in its figures. (And even then, not all cases confirmed by tests are included. We have a complex system of "pillars" and only some of those are included). Yet, despite not including all deaths, we're still 4th in the table.