Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

Rapidly increasing ITU capacity is tricky - the main issue is having enough ITU-trained nursing staff to properly look after someone on a ventilator as it’s a highly specialised job. It’s complicated by the fact that COVID is aerosol generating and you therefore can’t use less invasive (and therefore less resource intensive) forms of ventilation such as BIPAP which would otherwise work well in a lot of the covid cases.
Physical capacity isn’t so hard - there are plans to incrementally cancel non-urgent surgery and use the operating theatres and anaesthetic machines in them as demand requires.
There’s a good article here from an ITU consultant talking through what’s going on behind the scenes, and why it’s such a challenge - https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/03/icu-doctor-nhs-coronavirus-pandemic-hospitals

Am I right in thinking that when you are ventilated you are essentially under general anaesthetic and will die without a ventilator? I’m sure my mate who works in that area of medicine told me that once.

Yep - exactly that.

Thank you for the link - I hadn't seen that article. This quote struck me:

In Wuhan, ICU capacity was increased by over 1,000 beds in two weeks by building a new hospital, but this is not possible in the UK.

Why not? Also struck by the fact the US has 10 times more ICU beds per capita than the UK.

I guess given the lead times (trained staff, specialised equipment etc) it is not possible to solve the problem by chucking money at it?

I'm at O'Hare airport at the moment. Not seen anyone wearing a face mask. I'm going to fill my suitcase with hand sanitizer and toilet roll for sale on the black market.

Terrifying!

Asbestos, please.

Hydrated lime would be better.

This (and having a 10yo human petri dish of my own with a corresponding child's understanding and application of hygiene) is exactly why I'm not bothering with hand gel.

Mixing with other little germ incubators.....at school.

Not in the time frame we need - I know it’s a tired phrase, but this is a direct consequence of austerity. Cutting the nursing bursary, systematically decreasing the number of acute hospital beds (over the long term), underfunding services, the list goes on. All of this means the NHS is continuously running at >95% capacity when it should be at 80-85% to have the slack to soak up things like COVID, and because it’s been going on for years it will take years to rebuild from the damage. Although it does pretty well outcomes-wise given the amount of money spent on it, if you compare the NHS with health systems in comparable countries across a number of metrics (eg ITU beds, Acute hospital beds, physicians per capita etc) it’s lagging a long way behind. All of this is scary when faced with something like COVID, because whatever Rishi Sunak says we can’t pull 5,000 ITU nurses out of our backsides at the drop of a hat.

Cue "nhs doesn't work, better sell it"

Daughter's school here in Amsterdam is closed tomorrow because a parent has tested positive, and other daughter's flatmate at Glasgow University is currently waiting for test results.

What the tories have been doing.

Out of interest, is smoking as prevalent amongst the younger generation in Italy as it seemed to be in southern Spain?

I’m probably going to avoid taking my toddler to soft play for a little while.

Does anyone know why Italy has been hit so bad? Just curious.

See earlier comments up thread about chinese slavery illegally brought in to Italy to work in clothing manufacture.

Reading in the Italian press, during the beginning of people getting ill, looks like the first few victims were old and died of complications from their ailments (ailments not illnesses was used) and that one person who died was old and receiving chemotherapy so other receiving chemotherapy would be falling ill too. At that point I started skipping reading the articles as it felt more like hype.

Then the idea of an area being closed yet still has normal internal flights leaving the airports seems odd to me.

I’m not convinced by the slavery angle. Italian business owners visiting Chinese factories, Chinese fashion buyers visiting Milan, skiers returning from France and Italian expats fed up of the lockdowns and school closures in Asia returning home with the kids for a few weeks are all ways of getting the virus into Italy. These groups are more likely to infect restaurant and hotel staff which is the easiest way to mass infect.

Thanks. Sadly spoke too soon. Temperature back.

The reason why this concerns me (apart from it being boring) is that, with the peak of the pandemic possibly only 7-12 weeks away, I need to be fully fit to handle it. Post viral weaknesses won’t be tolerated. It might not kill me but the chance of death and/or complications will be significantly higher.

Whereas, before, I was “well I’ll get it sometime, may as well get it over and done with”, now I am “wash hands, avoid tube, take meetings by phone and avoid crowds”.

Fingers crossed for you Clive. Hope it’s just regular flu.

In Singapore we are now on week 7, new cases are trickling in. Ministry of Health has been very transparent, updating the public daily and most cases are part of a cluster or imported. Day to day live is starting to get back to usual but still a lot of people working from home.

Business it’s an complete utter disaster. We are looking at a 35% shortfall for the year vs 2019 and that’s us being optimistic about the situation.

I’m glad that the little money I had invested in the stock market was pulled out late January to limit any exposure.

See earlier comments up thread about chinese slavery illegally brought in to Italy to work in clothing manufacture.

I can’t see any citation on that, what @M_V I think want to know what was the official reason to how it spread so fast without any prejudice clouding it (like the claim that kissing cheek and such is one of the reason).

hope your feeling better soon Clive nasty business. keep up the precautions.

Ed, I don’t think that’s yet known.

There a good article from Saturday that covers how it gets through the control measures quite well: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/mar/07/coronavirus-a-disease-that-thrives-on-human-error?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other

A series of small mistakes, not quarantining the right people at the right time causing widespread infection. Not tracking people from infected areas so having infected people walking about for days infecting others before being identified. Nothing about affectionate greetings as that’s a bit of a red herring.

If you're infected you’ll likely have the infection on your hands so just shaking hands and the other person touching their eyes will do it. Imagine all those people at a funeral holding the hands of the daughter before wiping away a tear.

Blood in the financial streets this morning.

Saudi Arabia finding themselves with the opportunity to fuck with their rivals. Being able to extract oil more cheaply than almost anybody else is quite a bargaining chip in times like this.

Yeah - it's savage this morning.

My parents invested a significant amount of money only a couple of months ago. Down at least 7% already.

Luckily they have significant cash savings and other assets but I imagine a lot of people are not in the same boat.