Apparently, our “Ally”, the USA has paid cash to purchase mask shipments destined to other countries. Has the hour of wolves and shattered shield finally arrived?
A couple of days ago I found out that a lady who died in Harrogate hospital last week from this is (was) living down the valley from me. She was 91, her daughter and son in law are in intensive care too (mid 60s), the daughter is on a ventilator and may have suffered brain damage from oxygen starvation. This has definitely gone from stuff on the news to **** people I know are dying much quicker than expected. The United States is nobody's friend, not even to itself.
But the difference is that our goverment's initial strategy was based on the scientific advice at the time and when that changed they changed their strategy. Trump's strategy was based on ignoring the CDC, blaming foreigners, blaming Democrats, telling everyone to carry on and ignore it and now finally doing something vaguely like what he's advised to do as long as he gets to call the shots and screw everything up.
Bear in mind at the start of the crisis Germany placed an export embargo to stop ventilators and other medical supplies being exported to Italy and the rest of the EU.
There was failing of the scientific advisors and government not to heed the warnings from China in January and, more latterly, Italy. Similar hot air from both sides of the Atlantic. Here, now we are playing catch up it's been more bluster about ventilators, testing and PPE. FFS some Ministers said we didn't initially take part in the EU bulk buying of medical equipment because we weren't part of the EU anymore, then it was "oh no, we missed the email - that would have been good, oh real shame we didn't know....". Everybody knew about it. Every day it's "oh we'll have a gazillion tests by, err, sometime and the frontline staff will get loads of PPE"... Blustering about it for weeks and nothing is getting done. Another daily update and another vague date on what vaguely may happen. Pull your finger out BoJo et al.
Not really disagreeing but, based on nothing whatsoever, i suspect the government following scientific advice is kind of partly true, partly not. What i recon happened is they looked at the scientific advice that showed those not at risk only suffered a 0.1% mortality rate (or whatever it is) and decided to go with the herd immunity thing, then some scientific adviser told them that 0.1% was only if they had full healthcare and with the amount of expected cases the NHS wouldn't cope. That heard immunity would overwhelm the capability of the NHS to cope and that 0.1% mortality rate with proper healthcare would actually be 2-3% because we couldn't care properly for them all, at least that's my 2 cents for what it's worth.
Anyone notice that they announced a "new record" daily death toll of 569 for the UK. Of course that is awful, but it is only 6 more than yesterday.
We need to also keep on top of self-isolation. According to the WHO the 7 days is not adequate enough, worldwide the contagious period average is longer. We need to already plan for avoiding a second wave.
Approaching the end of a second week doing 12-hour days of frantic planning and staff training (psychological first aid). Tomorrow doing my first drop-in session for medical and nursing staff. And then working Saturday. Novelty is wearing off now. Can I go back to my ordinary stressful job working with cancer patients, please?
As if people aren't stretched enough some shitesters are going round the north east setting fires to fields and woods. Fire service need a clap too.
well that didn't take long [both for someone to be charged and for a charge to to get thrown out] - https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/coronavirus-fine-police-lockdown-travel-newcastle-marie-dinou-a9444186.html
That's in no way black and white. I don't understand why the woman didn't simply tell the police the information they requested.
In ordinary circumstances she had no need to. However, everyone of us is a potential biological threat at the moment whether we realise it or not so she should be compelled to say.
It was based on scientific advice from several years ago (assuming a slow-spread like H1N1, SARS or MERS), but not updated by the scientific advice at the time: hence the swathe of doctors and epidemiologists immediately and loudly yelling at the government that things needed to happen months before (i.e. to start PPE, ventilator and chemical precursor production rampup in Jan/Feb) the government actually got its finger out. Or in other words, they had a bit of paper from a while ago that said "do nothing", and decided to clutch it and ignore the problem for as long as possible, because dealing with problems is expensive.
I'm guessing scientific advice for the past decade or two has been: Scientists: "Evidently at some point 'the flu' or a pathogen is going to mutate, probably in foreign land, likely Asia due to its large population and various cultures and levels of poverty, and make it to these shores and kill some people. We should either get the NHS in pristine condition or have a plan so it can be prepared within weeks for an incredible overcapacity. I know there's austerity and we're all in this together, but we're in a unique position to know this is going to happen well in advance to-" Politicians: "So you're saying we should build ANOTHER train line."
I guess there's not a lot of votes in announcing a stockpile of face masks or more money for researchers.
