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

Let's face it.

No Govt is going to come out of this smelling of roses...

Regardless.

Amish Adalja of John Hopkins in early March was asked about timing of social distancing measures. He said the negatives of shutting down (for instance) schools early (when a single case is confirmed in the relevant town/city/district) haven’t been presented. Whilst not normal in an influenza outbreak, it may be the best way now. To the best of our knowledge all you do is buy more time and learn lessons earlier in your epidemic. His opinion is one I heard echoed by other epidemic experts. It wasn’t controversial.

I’m not suggesting that will be the outcome, just that it’s possible a vaccine could have a negative outcome. It was to counter what seemed to be positive speculation on your part.

So vaccine aside the world is far better at mitigating C19 now than it was two months ago. For instance how to arrange space and resource, numbers of patients needing x equipment and how to best use staff and rest patients. These are just a few examples. There is also work using existing and new anti-virals.

My point was more that, after preventing people from getting it which seems extremely difficult with drastic measures, remaining under the capacity to treat is perhaps the most important factor.

Which hospital is under capacity?

If there are spare ‘Covid-19’ beds that is just that, a spare bed. Equipment is in demand as are personnel. It’s these that make a bed into an Intensive Care Bed.

The Nightingale hospitals are not intensive care beds where you’d get a first class chance of survival. They’re an overflow car park for cases when the optimum care can’t be delivered.

You don’t want to use those hospitals.

Maybe I’m jumping ahead here, but are you saying outcomes are already improving for those Hosptialised?
I only recall one hospital struggling with capacity so far. Not heard anything too promising on improved treatments either.

That was part of my original question. Are the nightingale hospitals actually functional.

Germany
South Korea
Singapore
New Zealand

One of my partner's ex colleagues just died from Covid-only retired a couple of months ago. Brutal.

Can protective gowns and masks be washed and reused? Or is reusable PPE not a thing? Was it ever?

My local hospital has been using washable, reusable gowns for a week or so now.

There are methods, developed by uk companies, to sterilise FFP3 masks. I’m not sure if they met approval or have been adopted.

Are the nightingale hospitals actually functional.

ExCeL is at least and has discharged a patient (back to a regular hospital).

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-52349221

I see lack of PPE kit and other issues in many other EU countries.

Some issues are also part a judgement call.

There are definitely are cultural differences too, Sweden was fine with very relaxed restrictions though that may change now. In some countries like NL dying of covid when old may be fine for the person involved as long as they can make the choice not to go into hospital, and herd immunity didn't cause the outrage it did in NL when mentioned.

However, a fail with a mark of 5/10 is still better than 1/10 in my book. The UK government has been very lax in some areas and has made political decisions not to work with the EU, has reacted very late, the NHS was already struggling and they were warned a pandemic could overstress it in 2016 etc.

So while many countries made mistakes/reacted late (see Sweden) there are still differences in how it was handled that can be due to incompetence/ignoring science

Sorry to hear that :(

Last weekend it was reported there were only 30 occupied beds. That was an overstatement.

Maybe I’m jumping ahead here, but are you saying outcomes are already improving for those Hosptialised?

Yes. That’s a reasonable assumption. They won’t be getting worse.

I only recall one hospital struggling with capacity so far. Not heard anything too promising on improved treatments either.

Ok put it this way. Would you like to be under general anaesthetic for a week by an anaesthetist monitoring five patients or fifteen?

There are no treatments, but there is a whole lot of care needed.

Muh. Let’s open the pubs.

@miro_o what is your key worker job? Just asking for interest, not in an negative way.

When the history of this is written, the PPE supply chain and globally what is happening with it (let alone the UK) right now is probabaly going to drop jaws.

In the US you have DHS trying to sieze shipments from the States who are disguising deliveries in food delivery trucks.

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/04/hospitals-face-a-white-house-blockade-for-coronavirus-ppe.html

And lets see if that plane full of kit from Turkey ever arrives.

I’m now furloed, not a key worker. I work for the retail sector of a charity.

Horrible, sorry to hear this.

Is there any major work on infrastructure like roads + rail going on during this period? You'd think it's a great opportunity to get stuff done that would normally cause significant disruption, but appreciate it's probably not 'key' or easy to do and properly distanced.

SWR are doing some major work at Guildford but that was already planned - just found the email I sent to my bosses in February asking to WFH 10th - 19th April due to a disrupted journey in. Different time.

Not really, no. Major infrastructure work takes months or years of planning.

Some has slowed down or stopped, eg Crossrail work.

I’d agree that outcomes are unlikely to be getting worse. I’m not sure if I’d agree to better, without some evidence.

Of course but it’s unclear to me the extent of this stretch in capacity and outcomes being worse as a result. Are we at that point? I’ve not seen it reported but I’ve been limiting my news time lately.

Not knowing much about PPE, I couldn’t understand how some of our stocks had expired. Latex gloves was about all I could come up with!?

From a cycle round London yesterday, the answer seems to be yes. Purely anecdotally there seems to be a lot more road works than usual.

I thought this. Even something like resurfacing work but I guess supply chain issues might prevent it.