The big Coronavirus thread

shirley_basso

Tin foil hat moment

Does the queen actually have COVID, or are "they" trying to say

a) COVID is still out there and noone is immune from catching it, so stay alert
or
b) The Queen has it and she's fine so crack on

Or maybe she just has plain old COVID

focuszing723

shirley_basso said:

Tin foil hat moment

Does the queen actually have COVID, or are "they" trying to say

a) COVID is still out there and noone is immune from catching it, so stay alert
or
b) The Queen has it and she's fine so crack on

Or maybe she just has plain old COVID

It's more of a 5G protecting crown that she wears.

briantrumpet

shirley_basso said:

Tin foil hat moment

Does the queen actually have COVID, or are "they" trying to say

a) COVID is still out there and noone is immune from catching it, so stay alert
or
b) The Queen has it and she's fine so crack on

Or maybe she just has plain old COVID

A friend of mine's mum, who's 95, and with advanced dementia, caught omicron in her care home. I thought that would be it. She had a bit of a sniffle.

Stevo_666

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

TheBigBean said:

rick_chasey said:

The chief medical officer of Sweden himself said he’d do it differently and probably do some form of lockdown if he did it again

Can't imagine any country would do exactly the same again.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

You don't think there will be a next time? This is the the third novel respiratory virus in 20 years.

Very likely, but it won't be identical and could be something rather different.

rjsterry

Stevo_666 said:

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

TheBigBean said:

rick_chasey said:

The chief medical officer of Sweden himself said he’d do it differently and probably do some form of lockdown if he did it again

Can't imagine any country would do exactly the same again.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

You don't think there will be a next time? This is the the third novel respiratory virus in 20 years.

Very likely, but it won't be identical and could be something rather different.

It's significant that the countries that dealt with SARS were generally better prepared for SARS-COV-2.

Or we could pretend that we can't learn anything and that it's cheaper to cross our fingers and hope it won't happen.

Ben6899

rjsterry said:

DeVlaeminck said:

Hopefully there won't be another that causes this degree of disruption in our lifetimes but yes I guess it's very possible there will be.

Would the last comparable pandemic be Spanish flu ? So 100 years or so - and before that I wouldn't have a clue - but society has changed so much history is probably not much of a guide.

It's fascinating how quickly we have forgotten about TB. We used to have a whole system of separate hospitals for it.

TB is an interesting one. This article is just over 6years old, but still holds salient points...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-34637968

morstar

You’d hope that there are enough generic lessons to be learned to enable us to respond more efficiently next time.

Whilst details can’t be planned for, response mechanisms and good practice can.

pblakeney

morstar said:

You’d hope that there are enough generic lessons to be learned to enable us to respond more efficiently next time.

Whilst details can’t be planned for, response mechanisms and good practice can.

I am less optimistic based on past performances.

morstar

pblakeney said:

morstar said:

You’d hope that there are enough generic lessons to be learned to enable us to respond more efficiently next time.

Whilst details can’t be planned for, response mechanisms and good practice can.

I am less optimistic based on past performances.

At the very least, you’d let your chums know how to frame their supply contract bids to bypass scrutiny.

pblakeney

Scrutiny?
They'd have to have learned that lesson first.

morstar

pblakeney said:

Scrutiny?
They'd have to have learned that lesson first.

Obviously I mean retrospective scrutiny.

morstar

In the narrow window between too soon to tell and too late, it’s done now.

shirley_basso

Like straight out of an episode of Yes, Minister! just as many commentators predicted.

TheBigBean

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

TheBigBean said:

rick_chasey said:

The chief medical officer of Sweden himself said he’d do it differently and probably do some form of lockdown if he did it again

Can't imagine any country would do exactly the same again.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

You don't think there will be a next time? This is the the third novel respiratory virus in 20 years.

Very likely, but it won't be identical and could be something rather different.

It's significant that the countries that dealt with SARS were generally better prepared for SARS-COV-2.

Or we could pretend that we can't learn anything and that it's cheaper to cross our fingers and hope it won't happen.

After the swine flu pandemic, the preparedness report was updated as pandemics continued to be considered a significant risk. I would expect the same to happen again after covid. In particular, I would expect more consideration of the imposition of social restrictions as well as mask use.

rjsterry

morstar said:

In the narrow window between too soon to tell and too late, it’s done now.

Don't be silly, you couldn't get a cigarette paper in that gap.

TheBigBean said:

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

TheBigBean said:

rick_chasey said:

The chief medical officer of Sweden himself said he’d do it differently and probably do some form of lockdown if he did it again

Can't imagine any country would do exactly the same again.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.

You don't think there will be a next time? This is the the third novel respiratory virus in 20 years.

Very likely, but it won't be identical and could be something rather different.

It's significant that the countries that dealt with SARS were generally better prepared for SARS-COV-2.

Or we could pretend that we can't learn anything and that it's cheaper to cross our fingers and hope it won't happen.

After the swine flu pandemic, the preparedness report was updated as pandemics continued to be considered a significant risk. I would expect the same to happen again after covid. In particular, I would expect more consideration of the imposition of social restrictions as well as mask use.

Exactly. There's so much to look at.
An emergency procurement strategy would be a good point to have on the list.

Pross

The obvious one for any future events from my persepctive would be to shut down incoming travel as soon as the danger becomes real. We were far too slow doing that at the start of the Covid pandemic. Being an island should be a benefit in these things. I do appreciate that getting the timing right so that it is a real and genuine threat before taking the financial hit of prevent people entering the country is a huge challenge though.

TheBigBean

Pross said:

The obvious one for any future events from my persepctive would be to shut down incoming travel as soon as the danger becomes real. We were far too slow doing that at the start of the Covid pandemic. Being an island should be a benefit in these things. I do appreciate that getting the timing right so that it is a real and genuine threat before taking the financial hit of prevent people entering the country is a huge challenge though.

That is considered in the 2011 report. It delays things, but not by that much. For example, look at Omicron and how quickly it was spread despite flight bans from South Africa

briantrumpet

TheBigBean said:

Pross said:

The obvious one for any future events from my persepctive would be to shut down incoming travel as soon as the danger becomes real. We were far too slow doing that at the start of the Covid pandemic. Being an island should be a benefit in these things. I do appreciate that getting the timing right so that it is a real and genuine threat before taking the financial hit of prevent people entering the country is a huge challenge though.

That is considered in the 2011 report. It delays things, but not by that much. For example, look at Omicron and how quickly it was spread despite flight bans from South Africa

It depends how brutal you are with it. In most cases, the UK government gave a couple of days' notice they were going to do it, and that inevitably prompts a panicked scramble, to avoid the sort of situations that NZ and Australia had, with people effectively banned from their own homes for weeks or months.

On the other hand, slowing things down - "delaying things" - is sometimes exactly what needs to happen in order to flatten peaks, Somewhere there's a balance between the brutal and the dithering, and there's probably no magic formula for all circumstances, other than it's probably better to be early and harder than late and weaker, until you know what's going on.

kingstongraham

I thought the statement from Johnson sounded relatively sensible (with a few exceptions), but with his immediate attack on Starmer for always being wrong he's making me less sure. It betrays a lack of confidence in what he's saying.

When Starmer has consistently bailed out the government when it has had to make U turns because he couldn't get his own back benchers to be sensible, it really grates.

kingstongraham

I know it's just that Johnson is scared of Starmer, but today's statement could have done without the sneering.

TheBigBean

briantrumpet said:

TheBigBean said:

Pross said:

The obvious one for any future events from my persepctive would be to shut down incoming travel as soon as the danger becomes real. We were far too slow doing that at the start of the Covid pandemic. Being an island should be a benefit in these things. I do appreciate that getting the timing right so that it is a real and genuine threat before taking the financial hit of prevent people entering the country is a huge challenge though.

That is considered in the 2011 report. It delays things, but not by that much. For example, look at Omicron and how quickly it was spread despite flight bans from South Africa

It depends how brutal you are with it. In most cases, the UK government gave a couple of days' notice they were going to do it, and that inevitably prompts a panicked scramble, to avoid the sort of situations that NZ and Australia had, with people effectively banned from their own homes for weeks or months.

On the other hand, slowing things down - "delaying things" - is sometimes exactly what needs to happen in order to flatten peaks, Somewhere there's a balance between the brutal and the dithering, and there's probably no magic formula for all circumstances, other than it's probably better to be early and harder than late and weaker, until you know what's going on.

The other element in the report is how timing it is impossible and typically when a country realises it needs to suspend arrivals, it should have done it two weeks before.

briantrumpet

TheBigBean said:

briantrumpet said:

TheBigBean said:

Pross said:

The obvious one for any future events from my persepctive would be to shut down incoming travel as soon as the danger becomes real. We were far too slow doing that at the start of the Covid pandemic. Being an island should be a benefit in these things. I do appreciate that getting the timing right so that it is a real and genuine threat before taking the financial hit of prevent people entering the country is a huge challenge though.

That is considered in the 2011 report. It delays things, but not by that much. For example, look at Omicron and how quickly it was spread despite flight bans from South Africa

It depends how brutal you are with it. In most cases, the UK government gave a couple of days' notice they were going to do it, and that inevitably prompts a panicked scramble, to avoid the sort of situations that NZ and Australia had, with people effectively banned from their own homes for weeks or months.

On the other hand, slowing things down - "delaying things" - is sometimes exactly what needs to happen in order to flatten peaks, Somewhere there's a balance between the brutal and the dithering, and there's probably no magic formula for all circumstances, other than it's probably better to be early and harder than late and weaker, until you know what's going on.

The other element in the report is how timing it is impossible and typically when a country realises it needs to suspend arrivals, it should have done it two weeks before.

If there's one thing that comes out of the UK enquiry, I'd hope it would be that Johnson's early dithering had disastrous results, and was called out at the time (they can cite Cake Stop, if they want).

His later 'dithering', on omicron, was a decent call. It has not helped other governments that they were ramping up draconian mandates to try to curb the rapid rise of omicron, when omicron was essentially what we needed. They've made it harder to retreat, and to take their populations with them next time.

surrey_commuter

briantrumpet said:

TheBigBean said:

briantrumpet said:

TheBigBean said:

Pross said:

The obvious one for any future events from my persepctive would be to shut down incoming travel as soon as the danger becomes real. We were far too slow doing that at the start of the Covid pandemic. Being an island should be a benefit in these things. I do appreciate that getting the timing right so that it is a real and genuine threat before taking the financial hit of prevent people entering the country is a huge challenge though.

That is considered in the 2011 report. It delays things, but not by that much. For example, look at Omicron and how quickly it was spread despite flight bans from South Africa

It depends how brutal you are with it. In most cases, the UK government gave a couple of days' notice they were going to do it, and that inevitably prompts a panicked scramble, to avoid the sort of situations that NZ and Australia had, with people effectively banned from their own homes for weeks or months.

On the other hand, slowing things down - "delaying things" - is sometimes exactly what needs to happen in order to flatten peaks, Somewhere there's a balance between the brutal and the dithering, and there's probably no magic formula for all circumstances, other than it's probably better to be early and harder than late and weaker, until you know what's going on.

The other element in the report is how timing it is impossible and typically when a country realises it needs to suspend arrivals, it should have done it two weeks before.

If there's one thing that comes out of the UK enquiry, I'd hope it would be that Johnson's early dithering had disastrous results, and was called out at the time (they can cite Cake Stop, if they want).

His later 'dithering', on omicron, was a decent call. It has not helped other governments that they were ramping up draconian mandates to try to curb the rapid rise of omicron, when omicron was essentially what we needed. They've made it harder to retreat, and to take their populations with them next time.

I think we could be more charitable on the "later dithering on omicron" as he may have taken on board an early cake stop suggestion of buying a TV which would have allowed him to follow the news in S. Africa and act accordingly.

Of course TV was not around in 1919 but acceptance of it's existance could be incorporated into future pandemic planning.

We were always 3-4 weeks behind italy so would argue travel restrictions could have helped manage the spread

wallace_and_gromit

surrey_commuter said:

We were always 3-4 weeks behind italy so would argue travel restrictions could have helped manage the spread

My recollection is that we were "2 weeks behind Italy", but could be wrong.

I read during summer 2020 that the vast majority of first wave cases in the UK derived from strains already in continental Europe e.g. Spain, Italy, Austria and France, or put another way, the countries where Brits were likely to have been on HT hols. So "closing the borders" in any meaningful fashion would have meant tens of thousands of Brits stranded on the tarmac / holiday resorts, which was never politically a goer. I'm not sure it would be a politically acceptable even now.

Of course, we could have closed the borders to travellers from other countries, which might have looked impressive, but wouldn't really have achieved much. Per the comment above, once it's in, it's in.

pblakeney

Could have closed the borders to non-residents and quarantine for residents returning.
Doubt it will ever happen.

briantrumpet

pblakeney said:

Could have closed the borders to non-residents and quarantine for residents returning.
Doubt it will ever happen.

They did the quarantine thing end of August 2020 for France (and I did it). Didn't seem unreasonable in the broad-brush sense, though it was fairly daft in my individual sense, as the UK had much higher cases than where I'd been. But they'd given several days' notice, so thousands came flooding back to avoid the quarantine. Rather defeated the whole point of it.

pblakeney

briantrumpet said:

But they'd given several days' notice, so thousands came flooding back to avoid the quarantine. Rather defeated the whole point of it.

The notice is where it falls down. Realistically you need zero notice, but that will annoy people with travel plans more than a little.

briantrumpet

pblakeney said:

briantrumpet said:

But they'd given several days' notice, so thousands came flooding back to avoid the quarantine. Rather defeated the whole point of it.

The notice is where it falls down. Realistically you need zero notice, but that will annoy people with travel plans more than a little.

Indeed, and that illustrates very nicely where public health and politics intersect/collide.

Jezyboy

I seem to remember border closures around the delta variant were also quite dither-y

I sort of feel that for much of the time, border closures were pointless as we generally had higher case rates, suggesting you'd be safer mixing with people who were returning from a different country, than mixing with people who'd spent the last 2 weeks in the UK.

Jezyboy

wallace_and_gromit said:

surrey_commuter said:

We were always 3-4 weeks behind italy so would argue travel restrictions could have helped manage the spread

My recollection is that we were "2 weeks behind Italy", but could be wrong.

I read during summer 2020 that the vast majority of first wave cases in the UK derived from strains already in continental Europe e.g. Spain, Italy, Austria and France, or put another way, the countries where Brits were likely to have been on HT hols. So "closing the borders" in any meaningful fashion would have meant tens of thousands of Brits stranded on the tarmac / holiday resorts, which was never politically a goer. I'm not sure it would be a politically acceptable even now.

Of course, we could have closed the borders to travellers from other countries, which might have looked impressive, but wouldn't really have achieved much. Per the comment above, once it's in, it's in.

"We are not 2 weeks behind Italy. It's rubbish to look at their numbers and then find the UK equivalent of positives and say that is how far behind we are. Both countries had patient zero at a similar time however Italy went weeks before catching up with contact tracing this patient. We knew all patient zero contacts (Brighton) very quickly."

I wonder what happened to that particular poster.