Yes, Channel 4 News is breaking the story. The chief medical officer said that as of today 13.5% of care homes in England have a confirmed case. In Scotland it's 33%. The England figures are likely an underestimate due to lack of testing.

None of them are in any way equipped to deal with it and hospitals aren't accepting the patients.

Or else what?

I might start saying that the US states should all become independent, or that the US, Canada and Mexico should form a Union making them the largest trading block.

Views coloured by my political views.

I don’t think the union will survive this. I suspect some more exits.

t really goes to show that when some institutions are actually put to the test they reveal how effete and powerless they really are. It makes you wonder why people put so much faith in them.

It's probably best if you don't stray into areas you don't understand.

I don't see the thread as derailed, it is rather a commentary on the progress of the pandemic as it happens. Welcome to the thread.

It was following an occupation by the Angles in the 5th century, who invaded the parts of East Anglia. In their new land they decided to divide it into two areas, north folk and south folk. Even now, they are noticeably different.

One could say the virus has been overestimated, but such considerations are relative to the mood of the population, how much preserving life, or economic circumstances are valued by the population.

In our decadent Western countries as much as 10% of the population are in "vulnerable groups", the size of this group is larger in such places due to the success of modern medicine. In poorer parts of the world perhaps half or more of such a group would have died already, so the virus wouldn't have so much of an effect on their population.

In terms of an overreaction, I can only see this being the case from the perspective of the economy, as otherwise people are simply being asked to spend some time at home, not a bad thing. And in terms of public health it is a beneficial response. Surely economically, provided economies can be put into hibernation, on life support, temporarily, what harm is done? Economists keep saying it will bounce back afterwards.

Perhaps the vulnerability of our economies is a consequence of narrow minded human behaviour in large populations resulting in an economic house of cards( it certainly feels like this in the UK at the moment) which will collapse at the merest hint of a down turn and that exposing this weakness will be a good thing. Resulting in more robust systems developing. Although historically this sort of progress does not often happen in humanity.

I think the overestimated response was due to political expediency more than anything else, that in our decadent countries such loss of life, in an undignified way, is not to be tolerated.

That was in Ecuador

Thanks for correcting me, I'll correct it.

Oh going back to the north folk and the south folk, it was to do with who lived to the north or south of the river Waveney.

Not me, not ever. Human touch is necessary for life :sparkle:

We should spare a thought or a prayer for the millions of unfortunate souls who will suffer at this unfortunate time.

It is a poignant thought that this weekend commemorates the crucifixion and the resurrection. In a cruel twist of fate nature is acting out this metaphor amongst Christian societies around the world now with the wave hitting many poorly prepared countries this weekend.

Note: I’m still curious to see the figures for deaths in the UK these past two weeks (will be released on April 14).

The death rates of confirmed cases in hospital are published every day. Today (actually the 24hrs up to 5pm yesterday) are 980. The actual figure can only be estimated because all the death certificates won't be tallied until later, also many deaths will be put down to some other cause. But a rule of thumb is probably about double the hospital death rate. The total hospital death rate for the UK is approx 9,000 as of yesterday.

The daily death rate is still going up, but is beginning to level out. I doubt it is going to flatten because the lockdown is quite porous with many people still going to work and interacting on public transport etc. Also there are spikes happening currently in a few places in other parts of the country.

It will be interesting what policy changes there will be if the daily rate goes over a thousand, or fifteen hundred.


Going back to the less developed countries, I saw a scary report on UK Channel 4 tonight from Ecuador it has hit them big time with hospitals and morgues piled high with bodies. I expect to hear sporadic reports like this from many countries over the next few weeks.

Yes I was expecting a bounce back in Wuhan and they've only been out of lockdown for one day.

Yes Norfolk England, the back of beyond.

When I said what price a life, I was thinking of the monetary calculation, rather than how much people value other people's lives.

If we knew then what we know now, I dont think we would have. Some places needed it and some didn't. We took the most conservative approach in the face of the unknown.

We can't know this, firstly because we don't have a developed country which didn't have a lockdown and secondly the less developed countries, which are more vulnerable are behind us in the timeline, so we will have a much better view on this in a couple of months.

I live in a quiet corner of Norfolk and in theory we might not have needed such stringent lockdown measures, but I am happy we do, even though I have to stand in line for shopping etc. The point is that if we didn't lockdown in my neighbourhood, we would probably be experiencing infection rates equivalent to London right now, just as the hotspots of London, Birmingham and Manchester are struggling to cope with the wave of serious cases. We should bare in mind the numbers of medical staff falling ill, meaning they can't do their jobs. Any less of a lockdown would have resulted in more infections to medical staff along with more admissions. The whole system is only just managing to deliver the basic respiratory requirements and all elective surgery has been cancelled including all but a handful of cancer patients.

At the end of the day, what price is a human life?

we just need to get you installed as Trump's righthand man and the Doomsday devise will be complete. Mien Fuhrer/Orange one/Orangutan.

Trump is claiming the qudos for saving Johnson, saying that he has personally orchestrated two US drug companies coming over to the UK hospital where Johnson is being treated so they can give him the beautiful drugs, chloroquine, I expect. It's a beautiful thing the way Trump is leading the fight against the ***** virus.

I just heard him saying that the WHO is China centric, and he's going to review US funding of the WHO.

the doomsday machine is terrifying. It's simple to understand. And completely credible, and convincing

And what about our precious bodily fluids, I hear that 5G technology is used to control the virus and weaken the life force?

But what if it's natures doomsday machine and humanity is the weed, her furher?

Johnson has gone into intensive care, I hope he pulls through.

Good article. Indian capitalism is obscene, it is based on brutal exploitation, there's nothing new here though, India has always been structured like that.

The Prime minister has just been admitted to hospital, I hope it's not serious. A spokesman says it is a precautionary measure. His deputy Dominic Raab will step in to the breach.

Old people don't count. When did you say that radical change of policy was again?

23rd March, I meant the lockdown, up until then the policy was just to let the virus spread freely, well apart from hand washing (Lady Macbeth).

Sadly, most of what I've read on the situation in the UK today lends support to un's contentions, dramatic as they are. i.e. It's quite possible that Herd Immunity (which amounts to sacrificing the old and weak for the sake of the young and strong) was never really taken off the table, but is just being done more gradually.

The issue of carehomes has just started showing up on the radar today after deaths in a carehome in Scotland. This might blow up into a storm for the government, but I expect they are confident that most homes are infected now, so they won't have to come to the rescue, just claim that they tried, or blame it on a delay in ppe provision or something.

Until then grab some grace for what others are going through before fingers are pointed.

I hear you and Unenlightened, it is difficult to express compassion when you feel overwhelmed by events, I do feel it, but tend to focus on how events are unfolding.

To be fair, I think you would have to compare the response to other countries (like France, Germany, Netherlands etc.) to see if the UK response would really stand out from other countries. I don't think it would. You can see from other examples that especially in January governments around Europe were totally dismissive about the epidemic, in February few measures were taken and in March the whole thing started in earnest. If the lockdown came for UK the 23rd of March, for Germany that general lockdown came just one day earlier (Bavaria issued it on the 20th of March). Here we had it few days earlier and some Eastern European countries opted for a lockdown also rather early, but I guess the time difference is in days, not weeks.

I can't comment much on the response by other European countries, however in the UK the government changed its response suddenly on the 23rd of March. This has been pointed out by commentators at the WHO and is a commonly held position by commentators now. Up to that point the policy was to allow the virus to spread and develop herd immunity, with a nod to slowing it a bit. Commentators have said that this change of course was due to the projected figures of deaths when the hospitals were overwhelmed being spelled out to the government. I heard someone saying that in London alone a million ventilators would have been needed in April where there were only 2 or 3 thousand ventilators in place.

This shocked the government into action, this is when Brexit fell of the table, which meant the influence of Cummings had been rejected and the UK finally got with the programme. Up until this point the virus was allowed to spread freely around London, Indeed I remarked on this on this thread at the time.

The virus is in the shanty towns of Mumbai now. There's no way back from there, they may be a month behind, but it's going to be gruesome.

with a slow response from the government medical sector than the political leadership. So if you argue that Boris Johnson was slow to react because of Brexit or for ideological reasons, then there clearly should be an obvious mismatch between the medical professionals who's job this is and the political leadership

The view is that the scientific advisors were groomed to bend a little towards the position that a lockdown, like in Wuhan, was not required because as we are all going to get the virus anyway in the long run and herd immunity was in the end going to be the natural way in which the virus would be defeated. You should imagine the scene where the head of public health and one or two scientific advisors are talked round by these right wing spin doctors, given the message that we can't risk a shock to the economy right now with the Brexit talks at a critical stage. Dominic Cummings was involved at that stage and the grooming narrative was probably very sophisticated. Plus his disposition of shouting and bullying people to fall in line.

As I said earlier, the main conduit for the virus coming into the country was air travel at this point and no restrictions at all were implemented, no checks, nothing, this went on for I think a couple of weeks. Until commentators politicians and the public were demanding action to reduce this influx and nothing was done by the government. Then the action taken was an advisory that anyone coming in from countries with many infections, or people with flu like symptoms, should look to stay at home for a week on their return. No checks, nothing. This was followed by the government putting out a plea for everyone to wash their hands frequently. Again no checks, no restrictions at airports. The policy right up to the partial lockdown was please wash your hands, nothing else.

I realise what you are saying about preparedness etc. I think the issue was lost in the attempts to recover from the subprime mortgage crash of 2008. The austerity hollowed out the health service, which became more and more strained until it is now on its knees in many respects.

I don't think that the reason had anything to do with Brexit. Besides, I think Johnson hasn't been a similar early denier like Trump was on this issue. If you've followed the discussion here we've talked about the similar policy that Sweden is still following on herd immunity option. They aren't leaving the EU.

On the surface Johnson sounded rational at the beginning, although there is no denying his response was quite low key, for a long time flights were not restricted, passengers weren't checked, the only message was if you have arrived from an infected area, or you have flu like symptoms, make your way home (while interacting freely with the population) and stay there for a week. Followed by a week of saying wash your hands, wash your hands, oh and masks are ineffective.

All quite benign stuff, a balanced moderate approach. But look beneath the surface, the new government which was elected with an 80 seat majority in December literally was the Vote Leave campaign team. The group who hoodwinked the public into voting to leave by claiming there would be hoards of Eastern Europeans and Turks flooding into the country, as Turkey was supposedly about to join. That the migrants already here were the cause of the crisis in our struggling public services, forcing house prices up due to a housing shortage and pushing wages down. The team which masterminded a blizzard of biased and false social media posts, adverts and targeted messages during the last few days before the vote in 2016.

These were the people who had just got their feet around the table in Downing Street as the virus emerged. They were poised to have an almighty row with the EU during the negotiations and make an all out assault on the British constitution to remake it in the image of some Machiavellian fantasy of Dominic Cummings. Cummings had spent 30 years as a radical anti EU campaigner to get to this position. It was the crowning glory of his carrier and just as he reached his goal rumours started spreading about some new virus on the other side of the planet.

It kept getting in the way and the government tried to ignore it to begin with like the spectre at the feast, it warned of global pandemics and social an economic collapse. They had to stay focussed on their modus operandi, to talk the economy(which was struggling) into a good place, to spread the optimism of "make Britain Great again", to negotiate tirelessly and win a great new trade deal with the EU in just a few months. To pull us through a teetering crisis, which the Brexit debacle had become. A Herculean feat.

This was what was going on under the surface when the government adopted its moderate response to the pending outbreak of the virus. Their first concern was to keep the economy on track, so everyone would carry on as normal while we would prepare for heard immunity, which would naturally minimise the impact of the virus in the country. Then the theatened pandemic chaos would go away and they could keep to their Brexit course. If they took hard measures to keep out the virus from the beginning, they risked crashing their whole modus operandi and the economy at the first hurdle. The government would collapse, Brexit would be lost and socialists would get their hands on No10. A total political disaster right at the beginning of Johnson's term in office. He would become a national laughing stock and the privelidged classes would face the wrath of a socialist government.

It was certainly a small price to pay, to lose a few hundred thousand of the countries most vulnerable and old people to preserve all this. Indeed, if all the old people die it would help the Brexit utopia by eliminating the pending social care funding crisis.

Why would'nt Johnson follow the kind of draconian lockdown adopted by countries like China and South Korea?

Plus I admit to not totally grasping the Brexit stuff.

Not many people do, well except the people who still want it to happen, but they've got their heads firmly stuck down some rabbit hole somewhere.

And so I talk to myself also, living out my own myth.

So you are a mystic after all ;)

There is a popular myth in the UK, that the EU is the enemy, that Britain is great and that we must take back control immediately whatever the cost. Indeed the team assembled to fight for the leave vote during the EU referendum in 2016, namely, Vote Leave, is now in power in No10.

In fact this myth was so important that it was going to be worth the loss of a million or so people from Corona so that we could stay on track with Brexit and surge ahead with a strong economy. Hence the herd immunity debacle, which was the official UK policy at the beginning of March. Even now this myth is so strong that the government is still insisting that the UK will leave the EU come what may in December, after the transition period, even though there evidently won't be any reasonable opportunity for an amicable trade deal to be agreed during this period. So even now that we are going into a recession equal to the Great Depression, we are still going to jump of a cliff afterwards, because the EU is so bad.

The only reason why we are not continuing at full pace with unfettered heard immunity strategy is that the experts told the government that if the hospitals become overwhelmed the death toll would be much higher than if measures were taken to reduce the peak. Something which they couldn't live down when it became exposed in the media.

Fortunately they have finally woken up to reality, Dominic Cummings has run away and they are beginning to knuckle down to dealing with a serious crisis.

Myths are powerful indeed.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-coronavirus-china-republicans/2020/04/03/baa149de-74fc-11ea-a9bd-9f8b593300d0_story.html

It's pure fabrication, let's say the Chinese shouted it from the rooftops right at the beginning, no administration in the west would have done anything to mitigate the pandemic. We know this because they had the opportunity to halt its spread after the Chinese did alert the world and they didn't take it. If they had grounded all flights at the beginning it could have been stopped. But they were caught napping, just as they would have been if the Chinese hadn't tried to cover it up.

Yes, the militants in No10 put a hard Brexit before the health of the nation. The economy was key to that, because there was a risk that if the economy unraveled Brexit could be cancelled, or worse Corbyn could get in and deliver a soft Brexit and level up the country.

I would describe it more as sort of allowed it to happen, looked the other way.

I listened to an interview on radio4 earlier today with a careworker caring for 65 elderly people in a carehome. She said in a calm accepting voice that over two thirds were showing symptoms now and that she has some protection equipment and that there was help available if needed. The assumption was that they would all die peacefully there, rather than waste resources in the local hospital.
This state of affairs was accepted by the interviewer, an interviewer who wouldn't let such an issue pass her by ordinarily.

Have an insincere apology with your data. Mix it with the news that care homes can only test 5 people (Most carers move between homes) and only when someone has symptoms, and old folks are being encouraged to sign non-resussitation forms and not to expect to be taken to hospital, andI wonder if you are drawn to the conclusion I have reached, that government policy is to spread the virus amongst the old and not treat them.

Yes, this is the hidden policy of the UK government. It kills three birds with one stone, clears out all the geriatrics and health compromised, solves the looming social care funding crisis, and removes the biggest pressure on the health service. "Just get it done"

It clears the way for a rip roaring independent GREAT Britain, Singapore on Thames. This is what those people voted for in December.

Your area looks a bit damp for my liking.

Nice, reminds me of New Zealand, I've done lots of tramping there.

100,000 is an extremely low figure for a country like the US whose medical system is extremely disjointed and given the freedom of movement people have.

Yes, to keep the figures this low, the whole US will need to go into lock down immediately. It looks like this is not going to happen for maybe a week or so. Once the virus has got a widespread foothold it is very difficult to prevent the spread because it becomes pervasive. This is what happened in London during the few days before the lockdown, the spread would have been exponential and infect large numbers in just a couple of days.

I see the same mistakes being made all across the US.

It's high transmissability might be related to its long life on inanimate objects. We'll know after more research, I guess.

Yes, this occurred to me, it can apparently last up to 72 hours on a hard surface. I also think it is very sticky like it's covered in Velcro. So if it gets onto door handles, hand rails and key pads which large numbers of people touch regularly. It will spread far and wide rapidly.

Yes, I am aware of what is going to happen, not just in India, there are many large cities around the world totally unprepared and under resourced. The wave of panic which will come before the infection could be equally as destructive.

Yes, I'm envious, perhaps as much of the climate, as the landscape. There is nice landscape here, but it's often not warm, or dry. I feel as though we have been living in a mud bath for the last six months.

Lions lead by donkeys.

563 deaths in UK in the last 24hrs, it's been exponential for the last two days. Also 4,300 new cases (recorded) over last 24hrs. Fortunately no sign of the ventilator beds being overwhelmed yet, it could happen in the next few days if this degree of increase continues. There is a 4,000 bed temporary hospital (the Excel centre) coming online in the next couple of days. I think they only have 500 ventilators though, due to the shortages.