Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

I’m finding it difficult to contain my anger. Thank you, a very very helpful report and easy to understand.

The failings are on a level of other horrific decisions and failings, enough to warrant a public enquiry. This needs to be known.

They do not model and so ignore standard contact tracing. They do not model and so ignore standard contact tracing. They ignore superspreaders at big events.

I have just sent off an email to Jeremy Hunt with the link. Please let me know if any other MPs. I don’t know who else sits on the committee that was interrogating Vallance. But know Jeremy Hunt has been at the forefront of this.

I also tweeted Anthony Costello, Jonathon Ashton and Devi Sridhar. Most or all of them may be aware but if they are not I didn’t want to leave it to chance.

Edit: also tweeted to bring their attention to it, to Adam Boulton Sky News, Faisal Islam and Cathy Newman at Channel 4 news and Rory Stewart. As I’m not sure exactly how tweeting works still. If I put @adamboultonSKY before my message, do they still see it?? Or at the end? I hope so as I put it at the end.

Is this why our doctors and nurses are infected and sick and passing it onto others in hospital? I’m furious.

 

More confirmation that social distancing will be insufficient. In a town in Italy, they managed to contain the virus by testing asymptomatic people that had contact with symptomatic ones.

Click on the tweet to read the entire thread.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1239774862572277760


Without a positive test, people will also not adhere to social distancing and/or isolation as well they would otherwise (edited).

Translation of a part of the original article here, titled ("we need to change course and test asymptomatic people") https://corrierefiorentino.corriere...ta-ef23a500-669a-11ea-a40a-86d505f82a96.shtml

It says that every inhabitant of Vo' was tested and that 50 to 75% of the infected are completely asymptomatic but highly contagious. With isolation of the infected in Vo' the total number of sick declined from 88 to 7 in 7-10 days. Isolation also appeared to protect against bad outcomes in the infected, as the recovery rate in the infected was 60% in just 8 days.

There's also an article in English:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/wor...-cases-to-zero-1.4205354#.XnGea-EzhVw.twitter

 

Great that she is doing well at school.

The aim of my post was to highlight that the Republic of Ireland has introduced (coronavirus) testing for the public i.e. the advice is to stay at home and phone --- and they will arrange to have you tested. They then try to trace contacts.

The attempt at humour was to reflect on @Jonathan Edwards comment that the UK Government should look at how other countries have responded i.e. test and trace contacts - Jonathan referred to "people who don't speak English at breakfast". The Republic of Ireland has a minority language (Irish) while the primary language is English. So my poor attempt at humour was to look at how another country has responded (Republic of Ireland) and to "joke" that they mostly speak English.

In trouble --- late leaving for work--

 

With a positive test people should be in quarantine / isolation, social distancing is what everyone should be doing.

 

I guess that without testing symptomatic people or contacts, many will underestimate how many infected people there are in the community and how high the risks of transmission is. Additionally, many people won't know if they have had coronavirus or just a bad cold or regular flu. So if they repeatedly get the symptoms of a fever and/or a dry cough, they may stop self-isolating even when affected, and also stop practising social distancing.

 

I've been told that in my town (in Lombardy, Italy) there are now 9 known cases, out of 2500 inhabitants. Some time ago there was only 1. Some aggressive testing would be very appreciated.

 

This situation is horrific, both for the public and for the NHS staff.

Does anyone know of any campaign to get this changed? It's sheer madness.

 

I think this is at the forefront of everyone’s minds now. It is horrific on a scale I never imagined would happen. I see Richard Horton is talking about it and is in contact with NHS staff. I see other prominent people and scientists/doctors talking about it. I don’t know how or what they’re doing though.

Jeremy Hunt brought it up to Vallance yesterday and as usual Vallance had a non-answer and was very good at deflecting any questions.

https://twitter.com/user/status/1240191715568488448

 

If you put the @ at the very beginning of the message then it will only be seen by that recipient. If you put it in the body of the message (a fullstop before the @ serves this purpose in the simplest way) then it is viewable to all. (I think!) Putting it at the end makes it viewable to all too.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1584525723

France threatens to ban British travellers due to Britain’s slow response to coronavirus

 

What a surprise - my niece recently moved there with her family! (Baden Wurttenburg)

 

Additional for routine testing of NHS frontline staff:

https://www.change.org/p/test-front...ed_by_id=93baa130-5010-11e7-b17d-ffbf4fd8fa55

Getting towards 1 million signatories. Nursing Times article mentioning this, from Tuesday
https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/c...ioritised-for-coronavirus-testing-17-03-2020/

They do quite aggressively for cash afterwards, to pay for promotion of the petition, but you don’t have to give.

 

Just heard the issue raised on the BBC news (can't remember which channel or whether it was TV or radio).

 

They were interviewing a man (mid 60's) who took a trip to Japan with his wife and contracted the virus. He came back to Colorado and was put into quarantine, he volunteered to give samples for study. He is STILL testing positive for the virus after ONE month and says 2 weeks isn't long enough to self isolate.

 

Unfortunately, Australia also has a 'nudge unit' although they thankfully don't seem to have as much power as the UK version.

Much of the rationale behind it is based on behavioural economics. Within the more sensible parts of the economics profession, behavioural economics is considered to be nonsense. It combines the worst of economics with helpings of pseudoscience from psychology.

However very few of my ex-colleagues are keen to speak out about it (indeed it very much mirrors the current situation with BPS within medicine).

 

Code:

https://youtu.be/ORk0I2o0WPU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORk0I2o0WPU

 

On the TV news, I keep seeing people in protective gear spraying pavements in some countries with what is presumably disinfectant. I'm wondering why? I can understand cleaning things that people might touch, but why the ground?

 

Can someone explain why Vallance keeps saying the UK will have 20,000 deaths and that would actually be a good thing if that’s all there was, whereas China was able to suppress the virus with around 3,000 deaths, with a population 20 times the number of the UK?

 

Precautionary? If infected delivers etc are placed or dropped on the ground then that could transmit to other surfaces? It can persist up to 9 days on nonporous surfaces.

 

might I suggest that in the UK and maybe elsewhere that high profile people who have managed to infect themselves by handshaking and hugging other high profile people, whether actors, racing drivers, politicians or ex-presidents of Royal Colleges would be well placed to roll up their sleeves and volunteer as front line healthcare workers dealing with infected cases. Since they are immune they have a duty to spare medical workers who are not.