Coronavirus

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Danny M, the government in Oz has a completely different plan for the virus than our UK government who plan on herd immunity, in other words the majority of the population will experience the virus at some time in order to build a society with resistance to future waves of the virus. With that plan in operation then we here can look forward to many, many more deaths, albeit spread over a much longer period.
Dave W

[Raphael GolezParticipant @raphaelgolez]

Looking at this from a different perspective, I personally think that the risk of this virus spreading and being highly infective is not totally all from a medical point of view but also deeply embedded within us all. We are highly social, emotional, rational/irrational and highly opinionated species. The virus exploit this area and take it as an opportunity to spread effectively and very fast. In our society today we have become intertwine with each other with globalisation and this is I think is one of the gateway of spread. We are all emotionally charge, we have reasons, we have ideas we have opinions. This all plays an important part why we we are all in this situation. People have choices, people have freedom, we are all entitled to do what is best for us provided we all follow sets of rule and laws. We all need to work together for us to be successfully pulling out from this situation. There are limits to what we can do from a medical perspective, we need cooperation from the rest of the society to make this work.

Raphael

Edited By RAPHAEL VAL GOLEZ 1 on 10/04/2020 11:01:59

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

Posted by RAPHAEL VAL GOLEZ 1 on 10/04/2020 10:35:18:

PKG, there are to many unknowns at the moment. …… I understand you are also a doctor (retired). Are you a surgeon or a medic? .

Raphael

Not a medic or I'd roll my sleeves up and volunteer. Retired Vet so everything from lab work through imaging to pill pushing and cutting. While i did meet a few scary communicable possibilities I can imagine how wearing it is day in and day out. You have my respect.

pgk

[Ian Skeldon 2Participant @ianskeldon2]

I wish the hospital I work in was as well equipped as yours Raphael, Yesterday we went from two patients at the start of shift, to eight at the finish of the shift, throughout the whole time we were doing bloods, abg, cannulation and iv fluids, nebs etc, only ppe available to us was visor with surgical mask, gloves and apron, I hope it will prove to have been enough as I am in my sixties and have a heart condition(s). It is a pity that supply is unable to meet demand at the moment, hopefully it will catch up really quickly.

[CirclipParticipant @circlip]

Thanks for taking the time to give a full account of your daily turmoil's Raphael and then spending your "Rest" time to inform us.

It must be really frustrating to see your efforts frustrated by SOME D**K H***S with less than half a brain cell. After a couple of operations, one requiring ICU confinement, I have nothing but admiration for those on the "Shop floor" of the NHS, pity the clipboard brigade can't be usefully employed cleaning the toilets or emptying waste bins etc.. Bet THEY would be fully cocooned in PPE.

Many thanks, Ian.

[Raphael GolezParticipant @raphaelgolez]

Posted by pgk pgk on 10/04/2020 11:29:38:

Posted by RAPHAEL VAL GOLEZ 1 on 10/04/2020 10:35:18:

PKG, there are to many unknowns at the moment. …… I understand you are also a doctor (retired). Are you a surgeon or a medic? .

Raphael

Not a medic or I'd roll my sleeves up and volunteer. Retired Vet so everything from lab work through imaging to pill pushing and cutting. While i did meet a few scary communicable possibilities I can imagine how wearing it is day in and day out. You have my respect.

pgk

I understand PGK, Being a Vet is very similar to what we do so your insight to this is highly valued to all of us here. Thank you.

[Raphael GolezParticipant @raphaelgolez]

Posted by Ian Skeldon 2 on 10/04/2020 11:43:34:

I wish the hospital I work in was as well equipped as yours Raphael, Yesterday we went from two patients at the start of shift, to eight at the finish of the shift, throughout the whole time we were doing bloods, abg, cannulation and iv fluids, nebs etc, only ppe available to us was visor with surgical mask, gloves and apron, I hope it will prove to have been enough as I am in my sixties and have a heart condition(s). It is a pity that supply is unable to meet demand at the moment, hopefully it will catch up really quickly.

Hi Ian, I fully understand your situation. Thank you for your service to all of us. Have you been risk assess by your local occupational health? Please do as I would saw your are in a high risk group. I have to cover several on call duty for my other colleagues as they are deemed high risk and have to be pulled out from the oncall consultant rota.

If I can only send and share our supply here I would send this to your team immediately unfortunately I can't. Please do voice out your ongoing issue with PPE in your trust. They need to protect all of you. What I can advice for now is to double your surgical mask to create more barrier while you wait for the supply of more PPE particularly the FFP3 as you guys do nebs on patient. Please stay safe Ian and look after your self.

Regards,

Raphael

[Raphael GolezParticipant @raphaelgolez]

Posted by Circlip on 10/04/2020 11:44:37:

Thanks for taking the time to give a full account of your daily turmoil's Raphael and then spending your "Rest" time to inform us.

It must be really frustrating to see your efforts frustrated by SOME D**K H***S with less than half a brain cell. After a couple of operations, one requiring ICU confinement, I have nothing but admiration for those on the "Shop floor" of the NHS, pity the clipboard brigade can't be usefully employed cleaning the toilets or emptying waste bins etc.. Bet THEY would be fully cocooned in PPE.

Many thanks, Ian.

Your most welcome Ian. I need to share information here for all of us to be informed on what's going on inside our hospital and this holds true across our NHS. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.

Regards,

Raphael

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Samsaranda on 10/04/2020 10:42:34:

Danny M, the government in Oz has a completely different plan for the virus than our UK government who plan on herd immunity, in other words the majority of the population will experience the virus at some time in order to build a society with resistance to future waves of the virus. With that plan in operation then we here can look forward to many, many more deaths, albeit spread over a much longer period.
Dave W

I don't think that's true Dave. Although 'herd immunity' was discussed early on, and it is the natural consequence of an uncontrolled epidemic, it's not UK policy.

While the UK isn't performing as well as several other countries, we're far from being bottom of the class. There will have to be an accounting for this, but it's too early to conclude anything yet. Four factors stand out:

1. How long it takes for Leaders to accept there's a problem and start tackling it. A common political mistake is to assume their orders will be enacted as soon as their minds are made up after much dithering. Not so, there's always gap between political decision and real-world delivery. It's hard to walk the talk.
2. How long it takes the executive and industry to react. It's a major organisational challenge. Failure to prepare in advance causes major delays.
3. Can the country afford the burden?
4. The extent to which the population trust government decisions or forced to accept them.

Just speculation, but my guess is the UK's big problem will turn out to be inadequate preparation. When planning emergencies, the cheap option is to assume goods and services will be provided just as quickly during an emergency as in normal times. It's risky: most industry does 'Just In Time' provisioning and there are no warehouses bulging with spares and raw materials! Or trained staff and the command, control and communication systems needed to deploy them.

Normally it's financially efficient for business and government to minimise stock, staff levels, and staff-skills. But these are all hard to provide quickly when the balloon goes up.

In the USA, leadership failure looks to be more to blame than here, and neither of us are doing as well as the South Koreans. South Korea's performance is probably down to good preparation and crisp leadership following their run in with SARS. Having recently tasted the whip they knew what to expect.

Dave

[CirclipParticipant @circlip]

Don't forget, it's business policy to rely on "Just in time" deliveries. Problem being, to achieve this, some one some where has to STORE goods

 Had all this carp trying to supply BR on a JIT basis, – – – – with a £10K penalty clause for late delivery.

 

Regards Ian.

Edited By Circlip on 10/04/2020 13:12:28

[pgk pgkParticipant @pgkpgk17461]

There's an article in The Telegraph from the editor of The Spectator claiming that Gov didn't expect the lockdown to be obeyed as well as it has been – they wanted everyone who could work from home to do so but all other workers to carry on. They expected school pupil numbers to drop to 20% not to 2%. Indeed they expected many more folk to ignore their advice hence making it so stark and were suprised by the British public behaving like Swedes and doing what they're told.. With Bojo away no-one is prepared to carry the can and change things.

You can tell with the on-going building of Nightingale Hospitals that easing the restrictions to balance public outcry with economic recovery is their aim.

pgk

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Thanks Raphael.

Best regards Martin

[Roger ClarkParticipant @rogerclark]

I think there's at least another 3 weeks before a relaxation of the 'lockdown' and that's only if the figures support it.

But I think that the 'wrinklies' and shielded will be the last to be paroled, maybe not until there's an effective immunisation or cure in place otherwise it will become a planned culling of the weak!

Roger

[modeng2000Participant @modeng2000]

I hope they don't use this as away of reducing the population to save building more housing.

[Roger ClarkParticipant @rogerclark]

Posted by modeng2000 on 10/04/2020 14:22:27:

I hope they don't use this as away of reducing the population to save building more housing.

Well you never know, we just got to dig in and refuse to leave the bunkers.

[Neil WyattModerator @neilwyatt]

Raphael, Ian and all working to save lives, your work doesn't go unnoticed.

Thanks for finding time to share your thoughts.

Neil

[V8EngParticipant @v8eng]

Posted by modeng2000 on 10/04/2020 14:22:27:

I hope they don't use this as away of reducing the population to save building more housing.

With all these people of breeding age in many countries being locked in for weeks I reckon we will see a baby boom early next year.

Hope they’ve got plenty of Midwives trained.

Edited By V8Eng on 10/04/2020 15:11:26

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

A few simple statistics.

Currently, 83% of terminal casualties have been over 60 years old. That alone has likely saved over 50 million per annum, just in basic old age pension payments. 19% of the population are old age pensioners – over 10 million of us! If half were eventually to succumb, the savings on basic government pensions would go a long way towards the one-off cost of the lock-down, over the coming years.

Then add in the NHS burden of old wrinklies, pensions saved from private schemes (less taxation income, of course) and the figures start to escalate/complicate. We can only see the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of how it may effect the future economy.

No doubt the government has predicted (or can predict) these scenarios by computer modelling – but it would not be made public.🙂 It clearly would not want to make population losses even higher, by overloading the NHS (fewer of the working fraction dying – like how would Boris have fared if he had been unable to be treated in hospital?). Spreading the fatalities over a longer period (the same number of fatalities, eventually?) is the clear stated government strategy.

I am just hoping a cure, or vaccine, becomes available – before I get infected.

[SamsarandaParticipant @samsaranda]

Dave (SOD), if I read your posting right the conclusion that can be drawn is that regimes that are open and liberal, e.g. USA and UK have fared relatively badly in preparing and managing the situation but regimes that are more authoritarian e.g. China, South Korea have controlled the situation much more quickly. The more “liberal” western regimes have always stayed as far away as possible from State Control, hence they relied on private organisations and the free market to step in when needed. Unfortunately in this era of globalisation we were caught without sufficient manufacturing capacity to meet our immediate needs, hence the shortages of PPE which mostly comes from the other side of the world. We in the UK could in future be more prepared but would require the State to control the stockpiling of resources needed; this has been done in the past during the post Second World War / Cold War era, the State had large stockpiles stored around the country but I suppose as this nowadays means a huge financial commitment the risk was taken with “it may never happen”, unfortunately it did.
Dave W

[jimmy bParticipant @jimmyb]

Posted by not done it yet on 10/04/2020 16:05:41:

A few simple statistics.

Currently, 83% of terminal casualties have been over 60 years old. That alone has likely saved over 50 million per annum, just in basic old age pension payments. 19% of the population are old age pensioners – over 10 million of us! If half were eventually to succumb, the savings on basic government pensions would go a long way towards the one-off cost of the lock-down, over the coming years.

Then add in the NHS burden of old wrinklies, pensions saved from private schemes (less taxation income, of course) and the figures start to escalate/complicate. We can only see the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of how it may effect the future economy.

No doubt the government has predicted (or can predict) these scenarios by computer modelling – but it would not be made public.🙂 It clearly would not want to make population losses even higher, by overloading the NHS (fewer of the working fraction dying – like how would Boris have fared if he had been unable to be treated in hospital?). Spreading the fatalities over a longer period (the same number of fatalities, eventually?) is the clear stated government strategy.

I am just hoping a cure, or vaccine, becomes available – before I get infected.

Hardly a case of money being saved.

We will pay for this, for a long time.

[Martin KyteParticipant @martinkyte99762]

Posted by not done it yet on 10/04/2020 16:05:41:

A few simple statistics.

Currently, 83% of terminal casualties have been over 60 years old. That alone has likely saved over 50 million per annum, just in basic old age pension payments. 19% of the population are old age pensioners – over 10 million of us! If half were eventually to succumb, the savings on basic government pensions would go a long way towards the one-off cost of the lock-down, over the coming years.

Then add in the NHS burden of old wrinklies, pensions saved from private schemes (less taxation income, of course) and the figures start to escalate/complicate. We can only see the ‘tip of the iceberg’ of how it may effect the future economy.

No doubt the government has predicted (or can predict) these scenarios by computer modelling – but it would not be made public.🙂 It clearly would not want to make population losses even higher, by overloading the NHS (fewer of the working fraction dying – like how would Boris have fared if he had been unable to be treated in hospital?). Spreading the fatalities over a longer period (the same number of fatalities, eventually?) is the clear stated government strategy.

I am just hoping a cure, or vaccine, becomes available – before I get infected.

The most accurate bit was the 'simple'

Even if you take someone on a state pension some of that will come back in tax and virtually all of it will be ploughed back into the economy.

For goodness sake don't lets start commodifying people.

When the rubber hit the road with this pandemic government stepped up to the plate and very definitely put people first. The NHS is treating everyone alike irrespective of age, race, wealth etc. Don't respond and say what about Boris. I'm sure that was done on his worth to others not him as a person.

Everyone is of worth.

regards Martin

[Tony Pratt 1Participant @tonypratt1]

Well said Martin!!

Tony

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

Posted by jimmy b on 10/04/2020 16:39:06:

Hardly a case of money being saved.

We will pay for this, for a long time.

It wasn’t meant to be taken as a ‘money saver’, just that it may not cost as much as the headline figure in the long run – at our cost. Think about it.

The economy, in the longer term would benefit by some billions per annum – fewer outlays for the ageing population and a higher productivity per capita (maybe no more per working age capita). I hope it doesn’t come to that, but just read the government’s strategy on ‘controlling’ the virus. Pandora’s box might well already be wide open. We will see.

[not done it yetParticipant @notdoneityet]

For goodness sake don't lets start commodifying people.

Let’s not forget the alternatives put forward re hospitals not accepting coronavirus patients from care homes, that those over 75 would not be prioritised for ventilator use if the NHS were swamped.

Yes, we all have worth (some more than others) but potential prioritising exists. All the same, I’ll rest my case.

[SillyOldDufferModerator @sillyoldduffer]

Posted by Samsaranda on 10/04/2020 16:13:48:

Dave (SOD), if I read your posting right the conclusion that can be drawn is that regimes that are open and liberal, e.g. USA and UK have fared relatively badly in preparing and managing the situation but regimes that are more authoritarian e.g. China, South Korea have controlled the situation much more quickly. …

Apologies if it read that way, not my intention at all. While China is non-democratic and authoritarian, South Korea is a fully paid up western style democracy. You may be thinking of North Korea, which is an incompetent communist dictatorship run by a bizarre family dynasty.

My view is the style of government doesn't matter much when managing a pandemic. It's about timely delivery of effective action rather than politics. In this case, competence matters far more than loyalty to a Right or Left belief system. I suggest UK government has fully accepted the need to be pragmatic rather than insist on normal Conservative measures. I suspect governments main problem is flooring the accelerator only to find there's no petrol in the tank. Politics doesn't help when there are no masks, ventilators or tests to be had…

Dave

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