COVID19

[jakally]

polls are polls but there as one out today that i enjoyed

67% thought that the UK was underprepared for the pandemic. 67% being a low number i thought given we rehearsed it in 2018 and then did nothing about the conclusions of the war gaming

61% then said they thought the UK government was handling it well. Which i thought was hugely high.

Not withstanding the complexity of the situation and the unpreparedness in 2018-19 we had January warnings ignored, Cheltenham and Liverpool/Atletico going ahead, Boris happy to shake hands with everyone , two weeks dicking around with herd immunity without a vaccine, going into lockdown late only when Macron threatened to shut the borders, slow build up of testing, no strategy yet for track and trace.....and flying half blind into a potential easing of the lockdown in stages from sometime this month onwards

61% handling it well!!

Where was the poll, & are there other similar polls with different results?

[nirvana]

polls are polls but there as one out today that i enjoyed

67% thought that the UK was underprepared for the pandemic. 67% being a low number i thought given we rehearsed it in 2018 and then did nothing about the conclusions of the war gaming

61% then said they thought the UK government was handling it well. Which i thought was hugely high.

Not withstanding the complexity of the situation and the unpreparedness in 2018-19 we had January warnings ignored, Cheltenham and Liverpool/Atletico going ahead, Boris happy to shake hands with everyone , two weeks dicking around with herd immunity without a vaccine, going into lockdown late only when Macron threatened to shut the borders, slow build up of testing, no strategy yet for track and trace.....and flying half blind into a potential easing of the lockdown in stages from sometime this month onwards

61% handling it well!!

The majority of people are not obsessed with blame games and don't believe they know better. Also, it would be a very small minority who were taking anything seriously until March including the Tories and other major parties.

So, they would tend to measure this on the response since then and not what happened in 2018 or in January this year  Mentioning January is a really unrealistic way to appraise Govt response imho - no country in Europe was responding in a serious way at that time and it's much more realistic to attribute what has happened since then with luck (ie the level of infection already in the country) and natural advantages some countries have over others.

Ireland and Sweden both have about the same fatality rate per capita - is Irelands strategy good and Sweden's bad or vice versa, or are they just different with the same outcome so far.

Anyway, the only real point is to say that 'well' is relative and people are smart enough to say 'handling well' without ever thinking ' handling without error or blunder'.

Far too early to be on one's high horse I feel.

[Jon MW]

... Mentioning January is a really unrealistic way to appraise Govt response imho - no country in Europe was responding in a serious way at that time and it's much more realistic to attribute what has happened since then with luck (ie the level of infection already in the country) and natural advantages some countries have over others.
...

To put it another way.

If people think there were factors in January that would justify a full raft of anti-epidemic measures (like lockdown and border closures) - that would mean they would have done the same thing for SARS, MERS and Swine Flu.

These anti-epidemic measures crash the economy and are likely to cause a recession - if we were on our 4th of them this century just how bad a state do you think the country would be in by now? We'd be losing far more lives due to the economics then we would from the pandemics themselves.

[nirvana]

... Mentioning January is a really unrealistic way to appraise Govt response imho - no country in Europe was responding in a serious way at that time and it's much more realistic to attribute what has happened since then with luck (ie the level of infection already in the country) and natural advantages some countries have over others.
...

To put it another way.

If people think there were factors in January that would justify a full raft of anti-epidemic measures (like lockdown and border closures) - that would mean they would have done the same thing for SARS, MERS and Swine Flu.

These anti-epidemic measures crash the economy and are likely to cause a recession - if we were on our 4th of them this century just how bad a state do you think the country would be in by now? We'd be losing far more lives due to the economics then we would from the pandemics themselves.

I think that's well put. Just a zero chance of a decision at that time. From an article I read here's what is reported about Germany in praise of their efforts:

The response that Schwertz and his deputy, Dr Andreas Welker, outlined to me is surely a big reason why. For them, the crisis began in earnest on 27th February, the moment the first confirmed case was reported in a local hospital—a person who had just returned from a skiing holiday in Italy. “We realised people are coming back from Carnival vacation, and there would be more cases,” said Welker. “The numbers were not bad yet, even to the first week of March, but we saw what was happening in China, in Europe, and we took a leap of faith to scale up,” added Schwertz.

Starting the next day, the public health authority restructured all its departments towards crisis response—staff that usually worked on dentistry or children’s health were moved to public information call centres or processing testing data. “At first we asked the University of Heidelberg for some medical students to help out—initially there were 11, a week later there were 120,” said Schwertz. The local government seconded 100 staff to public health and opened the coffers for “whatever we needed,” he explained. And indeed, Stefan Dallinger, the district administrator of the Rhein-Neckar region told me: “In the beginning I didn’t know what an FFP2 mask was, but the doctors know best and my job is to back them up, give them the budget to do everything

27th Feb - they swung into action far more effectively from that point of course and we know the results. By mid march they had over 170 labs testing. Their decision to activate many different types of labs, in part facilitated by not having a monolithic health system, was certainly way ahead of what we achieved or even tried to achieve

[jakally]

polls are polls but there as one out today that i enjoyed

67% thought that the UK was underprepared for the pandemic. 67% being a low number i thought given we rehearsed it in 2018 and then did nothing about the conclusions of the war gaming

61% then said they thought the UK government was handling it well. Which i thought was hugely high.

Not withstanding the complexity of the situation and the unpreparedness in 2018-19 we had January warnings ignored, Cheltenham and Liverpool/Atletico going ahead, Boris happy to shake hands with everyone , two weeks dicking around with herd immunity without a vaccine, going into lockdown late only when Macron threatened to shut the borders, slow build up of testing, no strategy yet for track and trace.....and flying half blind into a potential easing of the lockdown in stages from sometime this month onwards

61% handling it well!!

Where was the poll, & are there other similar polls with different results?

Think I've found it - S.Times / YouGov? Can't read it as behind a paywall.

Not entirely surprised by the 61% - I think generally people want to pull together/support the national effort at this stage, & the senior players do come across as putting in a shift which buys them some goodwill.

Once the worst is over, & the media feel more free to take a swing, that number could change significantly.

[jakally]

... Mentioning January is a really unrealistic way to appraise Govt response imho - no country in Europe was responding in a serious way at that time and it's much more realistic to attribute what has happened since then with luck (ie the level of infection already in the country) and natural advantages some countries have over others.
...

To put it another way.

If people think there were factors in January that would justify a full raft of anti-epidemic measures (like lockdown and border closures) - that would mean they would have done the same thing for SARS, MERS and Swine Flu.

These anti-epidemic measures crash the economy and are likely to cause a recession - if we were on our 4th of them this century just how bad a state do you think the country would be in by now? We'd be losing far more lives due to the economics then we would from the pandemics themselves.

I think that's well put. Just a zero chance of a decision at that time. From an article I read here's what is reported about Germany in praise of their efforts:

The response that Schwertz and his deputy, Dr Andreas Welker, outlined to me is surely a big reason why. For them, the crisis began in earnest on 27th February, the moment the first confirmed case was reported in a local hospital—a person who had just returned from a skiing holiday in Italy. “We realised people are coming back from Carnival vacation, and there would be more cases,” said Welker. “The numbers were not bad yet, even to the first week of March, but we saw what was happening in China, in Europe, and we took a leap of faith to scale up,” added Schwertz.

Starting the next day, the public health authority restructured all its departments towards crisis response—staff that usually worked on dentistry or children’s health were moved to public information call centres or processing testing data. “At first we asked the University of Heidelberg for some medical students to help out—initially there were 11, a week later there were 120,” said Schwertz. The local government seconded 100 staff to public health and opened the coffers for “whatever we needed,” he explained. And indeed, Stefan Dallinger, the district administrator of the Rhein-Neckar region told me: “In the beginning I didn’t know what an FFP2 mask was, but the doctors know best and my job is to back them up, give them the budget to do everything

27th Feb - they swung into action far more effectively from that point of course and we know the results. By mid march they had over 170 labs testing. Their decision to activate many different types of labs, in part facilitated by not having a monolithic health system, was certainly way ahead of what we achieved or even tried to achieve

https://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/germany-covid-19-masterclass-testing-tracing-uk

Cheers Nirvana, well worth a read.
I had been wondering how much of the quality/effectiveness of our response lay with government vs health service vs experts etc...
The article implies that a chunk of the difference between us & Germany lies within structure of governance & health service.

[arbboy]

Bad news today boys.  My gran sadly passed away from Covid in hospital today after an 11 day battle.  The one time didn't work.   No one thought it would and she put up an amazing battle to survive that long given her lung conditions.   RIP Gran.

Stay safe everyone.  This shit is for real.   Some people still don't get it.   Most blondes do which is what makes this place so good to talk.

[Marky147]

Damn, sorry to hear that man.

Bad times

[Doobs]

Bad news today boys.  My gran sadly passed away from Covid in hospital today after an 11 day battle.  The one time didn't work.   No one thought it would and she put up an amazing battle to survive that long given her lung conditions.   RIP Gran.

Stay safe everyone.  This shit is for real.   Some people still don't get it.   Most blondes do which is what makes this place so good to talk.

RIP Your gran.  

Hope the rest of the family remain well.  

[RickBFA]

Bad news today boys.  My gran sadly passed away from Covid in hospital today after an 11 day battle.  The one time didn't work.   No one thought it would and she put up an amazing battle to survive that long given her lung conditions.   RIP Gran.

Stay safe everyone.  This shit is for real.   Some people still don't get it.   Most blondes do which is what makes this place so good to talk.

Sorry to hear that Arbboy.

Awful news.

[TightEnd]

Sorry to hear that. All the best to you and your family

[jakally]

Bad news today boys.  My gran sadly passed away from Covid in hospital today after an 11 day battle.  The one time didn't work.   No one thought it would and she put up an amazing battle to survive that long given her lung conditions.   RIP Gran.

Stay safe everyone.  This shit is for real.   Some people still don't get it.   Most blondes do which is what makes this place so good to talk.

Sorry to hear that Arb.

[arbboy]

Cheers guys thanks for listening i appreciate it.   She had a lovely blessed life with her husband of 70 years until grandad died last year and her close family.  She was very well looked after in her late years thanks to my mum and her carers.   She never had to leave her house which is what she always wanted.  She adored her house and garden.   She had dementia at 92 so didn't have too long left but it's never easy losing an adorable gran.  She was known as the queen of her little village and everyone loved her.   She moved into her house with grandad in 1971 when they wanted to escape the steel works and Corby which brought them to England after the war.  They were very prudent with their money having been through the war and worked so hard for everything they had like most people from their generation.

It was a brand new estate then and they were the first people to move into the new estate in the village.  Grandad often told me about the time he signed up for the house without Gran knowing as a surprise and he couldn't believe he signed up for a £3k mortgage when he was on £18 a week wages at the steelworks at the time.  At the time i had £3k in cash in my wallet and jokingly offered him it for the house.   She died as the last survivor of the originals from the estate and i joked with her next door neighbour today when i told him the bad news that he now has the title of the longest resident in the estate as he moved in the year i was born in 1975.   Most people could only dream of the 40 year retirement she had.  It's sad but it was her time to go.  RIP gran.

She only caught the virus because she was forced to enter hospital after a minor fall and infection at home and caught it then.   Isolating really is the key as tough as it seems.  The older you get the more likely you are to have to go into hospital though and then you massively increase your chances of getting it.   That's why hospital numbers outside of covid are slumping because no one, quite rightly, wants to go anywhere near a hospital at the minute.   Just makes the work the heroes do who work there day in day out even more brave.   They are risking their life every day to earn nowhere near enough to look after our families.  

[nirvana]

Cheers guys thanks for listening i appreciate it.   She had a lovely blessed life with her husband of 70 years until grandad died last year and her close family.  She was very well looked after in her late years thanks to my mum and her carers.   She never had to leave her house which is what she always wanted.  She adored her house and garden.   She had dementia at 92 so didn't have too long left but it's never easy losing an adorable gran.  She was known as the queen of her little village and everyone loved her.   She moved into her house with grandad in 1971 when they wanted to escape the steel works and Corby which brought them to England after the war.  They were very prudent with their money having been through the war and worked so hard for everything they had like most people from their generation.

It was a brand new estate then and they were the first people to move into the new estate in the village.  Grandad often told me about the time he signed up for the house without Gran knowing as a surprise and he couldn't believe he signed up for a £3k mortgage when he was on £18 a week wages at the steelworks at the time.  At the time i had £3k in cash in my wallet and jokingly offered him it for the house.   She died as the last survivor of the originals from the estate and i joked with her next door neighbour today when i told him the bad news that he now has the title of the longest resident in the estate as he moved in the year i was born in 1975.   Most people could only dream of the 40 year retirement she had.  It's sad but it was her time to go.  RIP gran.

She only caught the virus because she was forced to enter hospital after a minor fall and infection at home and caught it then.   Isolating really is the key as tough as it seems.  The older you get the more likely you are to have to go into hospital though and then you massively increase your chances of getting it.   That's why hospital numbers outside of covid are slumping because no one, quite rightly, wants to go anywhere near a hospital at the minute.   Just makes the work the heroes do who work there day in day out even more brave.   They are risking their life every day to earn nowhere near enough to look after our families.  

Sounds like a good life and I'm sure sharing some of this is as good for you as for us reading it - a life worth celebrating

[DungBeetle]

Sorry for your loss Arb.