Thanks. I have read that, but missed the point regarding the report not being published. So the actual detail is not available i.e. what type of infection was considered in the rehearsal, assumptions on how contagious is it, mortality rates etc.
Those countries which have tackled the Coronavirus most successfully appear to have used an integrated approach - using a number of measures simulaneously and quickly. The idea that you could have a measured approach was a mistake. Britain has one massive disadvantage in this - even if the UK did ramp up its testing to the German or Swiss level, it may not have the desired results. The policy here has been one of testing and tracing - ie. every positive test should be followed by a chain of others based on the contacts which a victim has had over the previous days. This is much easier in a country which has both ID cards, and a national registration system whereby every citizen registers his new address with the authorities every time he moves. Put simply Germany knows where everyone lives at any given point in time, whereas Britain doesn't.
I'll try and be short in adding some thoughts and some of them may seem a little controversial, so my create some backlash. I have read many of the documents regarding the planning for a Influenza Pandemic and most countries have adopted different versions of a similar plan. However as also stated in the document you linked above, these plans cover the extent of a Pandemic, but not the severity. COVID-19 seems to almost unique so far in terms of how easily it has been spread and it's severity - seems to be a cross between common flu (ease of contagion) and Ebola (severity and mortality rate). So may countries have not planned for this level of severity. I really do not see huge differences between the approach for handling this Pandemic in most countries (apart from Germany and Sweden) - France is not really all that different from Italy, Spain or UK. What is different is the handling of the approach. Most countries locked down earlier than the UK, because as the government stated they wanted to wait as they knew we would be in lock down for such a long time the risk is at the end people will give up and it will start again. The UK has not implemented such a hard lock down because of the risk to the economy and thus other health impacts and it's interesting that when the Police have tried to police what has been put in place they have been criticised - for example the Chief Constable of Derbyshire for showing footage from a drone of people travelling to the Peak District to walk their dog!. Personally, I think the government has been too soft, I would have shut down the country far harder. What is more difficult to consider are more subtle differences that are more difficult or challenging to consider. For example, certain faith groups have ignored the guidelines, cultural things like how people greet each other, smoking is far more prevalent in some countries - I have heard from colleagues in Milan, that although everywhere else was closed down, hotels and more importantly their bars stayed open and the locals were using them instead and they stayed open for over a week after lock down. But only time will tell how one can compare who was more "successful" in handling this crisis. Regarding things like PPE and Ventilators, it seems that emotion gets in the way of understand the actual situation, the root causes and what needs to be done to resolve it. The 2 groups most impacted by not having PPE is the Care providers and GP's. What seems to be lost is that these groups are not part of the NHS and the NHS supply chain would not have supplied them. I would have thought that Care providers would have very rarely needed to us the type of PPE and what they usually need is freely available. Same with GP's, I have never seen a GP or a practice Nurse use any apart from gloves that are freely available. On a phone in on 5-Live last week, a GP called in a stated that he refused his resources to place orders for PPE equipment. Now cynic might think that as GP's are not directly part of the NHS and responsible of their own costs, that GP was more worried about the cost involved? Do you know that some people do not understand that GP practices are in fact private and charge the NHS for their services? So the NHS is now being asked to take up the supply chain for these and other groups - as stated by the Minister that means going from supplying just over 200 hospitals to 58,000 locations! Even a top professional logistics company would struggle to deploy this quickly and well - just accurately inputting the delivery addresses into the logistics system is a challenge. I have worked on many high volume logistic systems deployments, changes (moving to a new supplier) with my current employer and it is not a trivial exercise. Add to that the real ambition of developing a portal to allow all of these locations to place orders, that is very challenging. No criticism intended, but I doubt the NHS has the resources to pull this together and they need go to companies that do this stuff everyday for help - what good press for someone like Amazon to show they are helping the country. A few years ago after the nuclear power station failure in Japan, electricity was rationed for a while and our company had limited production availability for critical components in Japan. A team was put together to manage this - there were people across the world that could secure cargo space on flights within minutes. Of course the response from those who believe in more state control is that the NHS should be able to do this and those of a differing view that the private sector is far better at logistic supply chains. Personally I think the solution sits somewhere between. For a start all health care, including all social care and hospices should be part of the NHS, but things like box shifting logistics could be managed by professional supply logistics partners. I will agree and disagree as to whether the NHS could have been better prepared for this crisis and will agree that the years of austerity have also had an impact, but I also think that many institutions in this country need to take a good look at themselves, this includes the NHS. One real problem I have is that anyone who criticises the NHS is shot down and for any politician it is suicide. At every election each party promises to spend an extra gadzillion £'s on the NHS, but I would love to see them come up with a real thought through plan. For instance:- - Nurses are fully paid during training - Different levels of nursing qualifications (as back in the day with SEN & SRN) This would also include a proper Care Nursing qualification. - Nurse tuition fees written off over a number of years they remain in the NHS i.e. 25% for each year. - A huge expansion in University Medical schools, including specific entrance exams for really bright working class kids who just have no chance to get 5 A levels at A+ standard. We are totally reliant on foreign doctors and this is no criticism of them, but it must impact their own countries? Sorry, it was a bit longer than I intended and Mrs W_Y is moaning at me to join her for some fence painting.
Sorry w_y, there are huge differences between countries on how they have tackled this crisis. The European countries which have succeeded best on this are all high testers, in some cases involving blanket testing (ie. without symptoms and done randomly). The highest tester is Luxembourg which has tested on a ratio of 46,272 for every million population, followed by Norway (23,332 for every million), Switzerland (21,954), Austria (16,086), Italy (15,935), Germany (15,730 - altogether 1,317,887) and then Spain on 7,593. There is no coincidence that these countries now have falling numbers of new cases and deaths. By contrast the UK is one of the lowest testers at 4,934 per million. I agree that lockdowns should have been much earlier - the first rule in epidemics is to cordon off completely the area where it first occurs. I cannot understand that Germany has closed most of their borders but left those with the Netherlands and Belgium open
Basically w_y I think you have just about agreed with everything that has been said on here. Care home, hospices, surgeries I would agree should be a properly funded part of the NHS. My wife trained as a nurse, and during training was paid in effect for the time she spent on the wards. To actually want to charge people to work seems quite bizarre. We have a Roumanian doctor at the local hospital who is there because there is insufficient funding for her to have a post in her own country, so it is not always a case of taking away from somewhere else that needs them. I agree that far more training could be done, but why charge the students for the education that the country needs, and if they are successful will be clawed back via a proper tax system. My daughter who spends one day a week in the operating theatre in Oxford, told us yesterday of the difficulties that they are having with PPE equipment for their own safety. Patients who are to have operations are now classified as to how likely they could be infected with the virus, and the equipment used is different for different possibilities. It appears to be quite random as to who is likely to be infected and who isn't because they have not all been tested, but the protective gear is very different, and she is far from happy. Testing in Switzerland where my son in law works is far more thorough, and the people living there are no longer under the strict regulations that were brought in very quickly. I think that the UK government has been seen slow to react because they have put so many functions of the NHS out to private companies that they don't have proper control any longer. As an aside, our hamlet here has just been visited by the gendarmerie to make sure everyone is alright. First time they have been seen in five years or more.
This type of testing and contract tracing only works after a total lockdown, because it's impossible to trace contacts before that - how do you trace the contacts of someone who has travelled on public transport through a huge city like London. What I also struggle to understand (I must be a bit thick) is even if you test the whole country and know who is contagious, they have to stay in lockdown anyway to stop spreading. So testing in itself does not stop the spread unless it goes together with lockdown
I wasn't referring just to testing in itself w_y. This is what I meant by an integrated approach where methods are used simultaneously. Most European countries were far too slow in bringing in a lockdown - and also this lockdown appears to mean different things in different countries.
Sad to see that Tim Brooke-Taylor has died from the coronavirus. A genuinely funny man, that many people described as thoughtful and kind.
I should add here that there were some European leaders who believed in developing a kind of herd immunity. As if the idea was to infect as many people as possible ! Just how many would have to die before the projected 60% infection is reached ? Apparently the Dutch and Swedish governments still believe this fairy tale. Bojo believed it at one time and Angela Merkel still does - though, fortunately, Merkel has been largely sidelined on this in Germany. It must be self evident that a disease which only has a reproduction rate of 1:2.5 is beatable, simply through lowering the rate of infection. I cannot understand why Austria brought in the compulsory wearing of masks on public transport, and in shops, but nobody else cottoned onto this obvious step.
Good to have you back.. I am sure you will pick any of us up for biased posting!! I myself think we need some sort of unity govt at this time.. To move away from party partisanship in this crisis.
I agree with cologne about the misrepresentation of this effects of this virus by many politicians and media (almost entirely in America thankfully), but several people in this country have put out if one is a “fighter” you’ll pull through, or that it affects everyone the same, when it clearly is worse for people with more exposure to it who suffer most (as well obviously as those with pre-existing conditions, as we would have expected). The latter point emphasises the need for correct PPE and the failure to take criticism from Op. Cygnus is a massive failing by the previous Conservative government, many of whom make up the current Tory regime. This is the biggest problem for me. OK, schools should have closed a week earlier than they did, but it’s the classifying of the Cygnus result that appalls me most. Metaphorical heads should roll for that. A political admonition is not enough. Even now, a sincere apology, “We’re sorry, we thought we were acting in the national interest, but we got it very wrong, and the result of that mistake has cost a lot of lives” would go a long way to helping the situation, but modern politicians don’t have the necessary integrity.
I hope that now Johnson has himself received a bed and treatment from the NHS he thinks back to this interview.
I agree that an integrated approach is required following the start of a lockdown and even then we are seeing some differences in the overall results, country by country. But what we hear from the media in the UK is the reason that Germany is in a far better position than the UK and others is because they have a mass testing regime, but as you state I think it's more complex and things like countries that are used to be more compliant to government requests and are used to having national identity cards are more likely to have a lower graph profile. But what I think is really interesting is Sweden, no one seems to have an answer to the reason their approach seems to be working so far - I fear it's a false dawn
Sweden are often so advanced in their approaches to many things, so this was really baffling. Is there a StockholmHorn who can advise as to what the hell they were playing at? Unfortunately, you sort of expect the yanks to make a hash of it because their current president is a very stupid and dangerous man (not their first either). But not the Swedes.
Couldn’t overly respond earlier, I was cooking and before that was our annual Easter Egg Hunt. It’s a bit of a tradition and Mrs Andy and I expect to be doing it for the rest of our naturals. Tim Brooke-Taylor was a comedy hero. I loved The Goodies as a kid, but his brilliant quick wit in “I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue” was magnificent. One line that comes to mind was in The Goodies. He was wearing his Union Flag waistcoat, eulogising about the monarchy, and advising Bill and Graeme that he was to be bestowed an Earldom to add to his OBE. Bill pointed out that would make him an ‘earlobe’.
Sweden's approach isn't working w_y. Logically you can only compare them to their immediate neighbours ie. Norway and Denmark - both of which are showing falling numbers of new cases (which Sweden isn't). Also the death rate in Sweden is 89 per million inhabitants, compared to 24 in Norway and 47 in Denmark. I don't see any evidence of any dawn in Sweden in fact they are doing significantly worse than those countries around them.
