How well is the government handling the pandemic?

[patman post]

The government seems to be less and less competent in its handling of the pandemic. Initial slip ups might be understood in coping with a new challenge. But the situation has moved on and there is now a growing perception that government seems to be floundering. Worrying when one realises Covid-19 is still raging in other parts of the world, and could still resurface here...

[Mashup]

<t>Hello all, I hope you're all managing to stay healthy and sane.



Given things seem to be escalating pretty quick at the moment, what do you think of the government's handling of this?



Have they got it right or have the over/under reacted?



Do you think they have a plan or are they flailing about?



And finally, should we extend the transition so we can get this out of the way and then get back to negotiating the future arrangement with the EU?</t>

I chose to give the government the benefit of the doubt despite my reservations in regards to Borus Johnson and his government. Initially they seemed to be doing well, scientists were front and centre, and at least to me the instructions seemed to be sensible and clear. There was some criticism on social media from Labour supporters I know but it was largely just nit-picking and manufacturered drama. I was optimistic that we wouldn't see the kind of scenes we'd seen elsewhere.

As the virus progressed the government seems to have lost control and their overall strategy has become increasingly chaotic and reactive.

To make matters worse there has been the Cummings affair, the publishing of misleading figures, a failure to deliver the app,  a consistent failure to engage with stakeholders, and the apparent general failure to properly plan before making a new announcement.

Now it seems every other day a new failure comes to light or the opposition (or a footballer) has to twist their arm to get them to do something as simple and vital as ensuring children get fed.

As for Brexit that is a complete shambles. It would be best for the UK to extend if only to avoid the double shock of Covid-19 and a no deal Brexit.

However just as the EU has been clear on the conditions of access to their markets and services since the the beginning, the ERG and other hard-Brexit elements within Parliament have been clear they would never accept them so a no deal Brexit remains an inevitability.

[Thomas]

The second part of the 'Scot Goes Pop', Panelbase Scottish  poll. It dealt with views on the virus.

Does the handling of the coronavirus crisis by Boris Johnson and the UK Government make you more convinced or less convinced that Scotland is safer if it remains part of the UK?

More convinced: 20%

Less convinced: 59%



Does the handling of the coronavirus crisis by Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government make you feel more confident or less confident that Scotland will be well-governed if it becomes an independent country?



More confident: 59%

Less confident: 22%



Scots are not enamoured with Boris's handling of the epidemic. Sturgeon, on the other hand, receives massive support

http://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2020/06/scot-goes-pop-panelbase-poll-sensation.html?m=1">http://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2020/06 ... n.html?m=1">http://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2020/06/scot-goes-pop-panelbase-poll-sensation.html?m=1

aye read that on wee jamesies blog moray , but it really just confirms what we already knew.



I know we have discussed stuart campbell in the past , but he does raise a good point when he says this is all very well and good , but the SNP dont really seem to have a plan going forward regarding independence.



Coronavirus seems to have kicked certain issues into the long grass , but they wont remain hidden forever .

[morayloon]

The second part of the 'Scot Goes Pop', Panelbase Scottish  poll. It dealt with views on the virus.

Does the handling of the coronavirus crisis by Boris Johnson and the UK Government make you more convinced or less convinced that Scotland is safer if it remains part of the UK?

More convinced: 20%

Less convinced: 59%



Does the handling of the coronavirus crisis by Nicola Sturgeon and the Scottish Government make you feel more confident or less confident that Scotland will be well-governed if it becomes an independent country?



More confident: 59%

Less confident: 22%



Scots are not enamoured with Boris's handling of the epidemic. Sturgeon, on the other hand, receives massive support

http://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2020/06/scot-goes-pop-panelbase-poll-sensation.html?m=1">http://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2020/06 ... n.html?m=1">http://scotgoespop.blogspot.com/2020/06/scot-goes-pop-panelbase-poll-sensation.html?m=1

[Borg Refinery]

There's a lot of information and research still going on, and there are some people who have tested positive quite a long time after apparent recovery, but, almost always they are not showing symptoms.



One of the things that's not totally clear to most is that the test for Covid-19 tests for particular RNA strands from the virus - a postive test result doesn't necessarily mean that there is viable complete virus there - it could be the remains of dead virus triggering that positive result.  Since the disease is still only a few months in existence, as I understand it we don't really know for sure.



There is also quite some evidence that some people who have Covid-19, especially those who have it quite badly, have what they are calling a "long tail" version of it where they can feel strange symptoms like fatigue or other things for more like 2-3 months or more - again, it's not clear whether this is because their body is taking much longer to kill all the virus or the after effects.



I certainly haven't seen anything that makes me believe that the vast majority of people who've had it are not protected from the symptoms for at least some period of time.  This is also logical because if you have recovered, by definition your body has figured out how to fight it off.

Not to mention weird side effects and symptom illnesses, espesh in kids.



All very odd...

[Javert]

in addition if you go for herd immunity you are banking on long lasting immunity which is by no means proven - The US Navy has recently found 13 of it's sailors who had CV19 and had been cleared to return to ship have again tested positive.

There's a lot of information and research still going on, and there are some people who have tested positive quite a long time after apparent recovery, but, almost always they are not showing symptoms.



One of the things that's not totally clear to most is that the test for Covid-19 tests for particular RNA strands from the virus - a postive test result doesn't necessarily mean that there is viable complete virus there - it could be the remains of dead virus triggering that positive result.  Since the disease is still only a few months in existence, as I understand it we don't really know for sure.



There is also quite some evidence that some people who have Covid-19, especially those who have it quite badly, have what they are calling a "long tail" version of it where they can feel strange symptoms like fatigue or other things for more like 2-3 months or more - again, it's not clear whether this is because their body is taking much longer to kill all the virus or the after effects.



I certainly haven't seen anything that makes me believe that the vast majority of people who've had it are not protected from the symptoms for at least some period of time.  This is also logical because if you have recovered, by definition your body has figured out how to fight it off.

[papasmurf]

I was watching a YouTube video of a young lady motorcycling around Holland,

Itchy Boots, and The Netherlands is on it's way out of Lockdown. (It isn't the "richer areas."

[BeElBeeBub]

I was watching a YouTube video of a young lady motorcycling around Holland, from Utrecht and around the richer parts of the country. She mentioned that Holland had an "Intelligent lockdown" and after a bit of research it seems this was a fairly liberal attempt to implement the herd immunity model with only the slightest of shielding. For them, the death rate is falling, their deaths are currently 331 per million population, and all the hairdressers and restaurants are reopening as infection rates fall. It will be interesting to see how their economy fairs compared to others when all the figures are known.



Today there were protests in Hyde Park and Piers Corbyn was one of those arrested. It was a mix of "fake virus", "5G what done it" and "gov control" types. The police locked 19 people up and gave others FPT notices as fines.

NL started their measures later than the UK.  Their first measures were on the 6th March but by the 12th they were at a similar level to the UK and they then ramped up to tougher measures than the UK before the UK and hit their maximum lockdown measures at the end of March.



(Data from https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker">https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/resea ... se-tracker">https://www.bsg.ox.ac.uk/research/research-projects/coronavirus-government-response-tracker)



Their death rate is currently half per head of the UKs and their new cases less than 1/3 (data FT tracker https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=nld&areas=gbr&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnj&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=1&values=cases">https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?ar ... lues=cases">https://ig.ft.com/coronavirus-chart/?areas=nld&areas=gbr&areasRegional=usny&areasRegional=usnj&cumulative=0&logScale=1&perMillion=1&values=cases)



I'm not sure the idea they are going for "herd immunity" holds, though it is entirely possible that their lockdown was more intelligent than the UKs



A note on "herd immunity" - the essential idea is there will not be any treatment or vaccine developed so the goal is merely to keep the infections from overloading the health system (at which point the death rate shoots up).  In some diseases the R and IFR rates mean the health system can cope naturally and the gov doesn't have to do anything.  In other cases the government does have to take some action but it is relatively minor eg flu vaccines.  For CV19 even the actions to keep the infections under control would be fairly drastic.  We barely managed to do so with our current actions.



The other option is to try to suppress or eliminate the virus.  This requires actions to make R < 1.  The key thing is that the lower the number of infections the closer to R =1 you can be and still have an acceptable death rate.



A country with 100 cases a day and R=0.9 is in a very different situation to one that has the same R but 1000 infections a day.



Not only is the death rate and load on the health system lower but the the measures to achieve the same R less stringent



The quicker you move to squash the epidemic the less intrusive the long term measures need to be.



Obviously some measures will have to remain in place for a while.  I can't see festivals, pubs, big sport events etc happening.



however you can have shops, holidays, parks, some form of restaurant activity, sports, work etc occurring.



In the case of CV19, the measures you take to prevent the health system being overloaded are not dissimilar to those to squash the epidemic so the economic benefits would be minor (if any).  



in addition if you go for herd immunity you are banking on long lasting immunity which is by no means proven - The US Navy has recently found 13 of it's sailors who had CV19 and had been cleared to return to ship have again tested positive.

[Barry]

I was watching a YouTube video of a young lady motorcycling around Holland, from Utrecht and around the richer parts of the country. She mentioned that Holland had an "Intelligent lockdown" and after a bit of research it seems this was a fairly liberal attempt to implement the herd immunity model with only the slightest of shielding. For them, the death rate is falling, their deaths are currently 331 per million population, and all the hairdressers and restaurants are reopening as infection rates fall. It will be interesting to see how their economy fairs compared to others when all the figures are known.



Today there were protests in Hyde Park and Piers Corbyn was one of those arrested. It was a mix of "fake virus", "5G what done it" and "gov control" types. The police locked 19 people up and gave others FPT notices as fines.

[Streetwalker]

Well Ive just applied for the self employed corona handout , thanks very much that will do nicely .

One thing that I did notice though was that it asked have I been adversely effected by the Virus , Was my business effected ,was I self isolating ? And questions such like to make the claim .



Nowhere was there a box to tick  or a place where you could write that I was following government guidelines to stay at home ,protect the NHS, save lives . It appears I should have been working all along if I could have done so .

[BeElBeeBub]

Note on the "lockdown is causing excess deaths"



https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/covid-analysis-excess-deaths-updated-15th-may/">https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/co ... -15th-may/">https://wintoncentre.maths.cam.ac.uk/covid-analysis-excess-deaths-updated-15th-may/



TLDR;



By analysing the male/female ratio of the non CV listed deaths they conclude that there are excess non CV deaths, but only in the older (65+) age groups.



For the younger age groups they find no evidence of excess deaths, in fact they find a reduction in the expected deaths amongst young males (theorised to be primarily due to the fall in risky behaviours eg speeding etc)



It is assumed the extra non-CV deaths in the older age groups are caused by lack of medical attention for other conditions due to the health system's focus on CV.



A&E admissions are down by a significant portion (40% IIRC). Some of those admissions would have been due to things no longer occuring eg industrial accidents, road accidents and alcohol related injuries (10% of all A&E visits are due to excess alcohol consumption).



However that still leaves a significant number of "missing" A&E visits coupled with a significant number of extra deaths.



What is difficult to tell.right now is how many of those extra non-CV deaths were avoidable is the organisation and messaging had been different.

[BeElBeeBub]

With all the discussions on testing numbers and testing targets, we are missing another elephant in the very crowded elephant ant room which is the amount of time taken to get a test result.  Test and trace cannot work if the testing cycle is "2-5 days" which seems to be the current average and sometimes longer.  Nobody seems to be asking them about that.

The focus on "100k" is, as you say, missing the elephant in the room.



The real metric is the overall capacity of the test,trace and isolate system.



The aim of such a system is to "squash" any outbreaks before they become bigger than the system's ability to handle,



If we have the capacity to identify and isolate all the contacts of (say) 500 people (which would probably involve tracing and contacting 10-20 times that number within 24 hrs of the initial identification) then we can squash any outbreak as long as we catch it before 500 people a day are being infected.



If we can only do that with 100 people, a smaller outbreak can overwhelm the system.



At the point where the TTI system becomes overwhelmed we need to introduce other measures such as lock downs (or intermediate states).



The bigger the capacity of the system, the more efficient the system (say the turnaround was 12 hours not 24) the looser the lock down measures need to be.

[Javert]

With all the discussions on testing numbers and testing targets, we are missing another elephant in the very crowded elephant ant room which is the amount of time taken to get a test result.  Test and trace cannot work if the testing cycle is "2-5 days" which seems to be the current average and sometimes longer.  Nobody seems to be asking them about that.

[BeElBeeBub]

Maybe we are looking at different sites.

the link is to the ONS, which is the most accurate (and also most delayed) source.



Any other source you are using - eg the government's "Covid Dashboard" (where I assume you sourced the 27,510 from) is not showing the accurate figure.



To be fair to the government, the "daily" figures cannot ever be fully accurate as the number of deaths and their causes always takes time to be registered.



Which was exactly the point that I was making.



When we were posting in late April the official figure was in the mid 20's yet the actual figure was already over 30k and the excess deaths were at the 40k mark.



As of today the official figure is around 32k but in reality it is probably already over 40k and the excess deaths are probably already over 50k we just won't know for sure until the end of the month.



The good news is we are definitely over the peak.  The bad news is the deaths are likely to fall at a much slower rate than they rose (around 4 times as slow).  If we go to a tighter lockdown, it will fall faster (as they have in other countries).  The problem is we seem to be loosening the lockdown.  As long as the R value doesn't go above 1 the deaths will still fall, but slower than they would otherwise.



An R value of around 1 when there are 100 deaths a day is very different from an R value of 1 when there are 1000 deaths a day.

I have taken a macabre interest in this business and my figures for 1 May are 27,510. However I am happy to meet in the middle. One of the foxes on my allotment has had cubs and is keen on boiled eggs. So I will buy £20 of free range for them. Feel free to do the same.

[BeElBeeBub]

Funny that, they also have Tory blue for "good". Must be a thing out there, Tory = blue = good.  :roll:  :roll:

It's entirely possible that the choice of Tory blue was entirely accidental.



The speech and supporting material were recorded before cabinet had met. It was presented to them as a "fait accompli"



In addition it's reported that the new "stay alert" slogan wasn't signed off by any outside experts and the whole thing seems very amateurish (the "equation") so it's very possible it was drawn up by no10 alone.



And let's be honest, this is exactly the sort of stunt some of them would pull