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

i'm hearing- from two well placed sources- that developing a vaccine is proving extremely difficult and some scientists think one might not be possible after initial optimism.
in other news i’m coming down with it - or what i assume is it - again. feel rough. hate the reports of permanent lung damage.
edit aka sod all or very limited immunity, no vaccine; death toll going down actually disguises full enormity of our fucked situation

Is there actually any evidence that the government has ignored scientific advice in phasing in lockdown and social distancing? Usual disclaimers apply - I've never voted Tory, I don't ever plan to, and I'm deeply sceptical of the motivations and personal mores of any Tory government, but before sharpening my pitchfork and igniting my flaming torch I'd like to know I've got more to back me up than Guardian opinion pieces and unattributed sources.

The quote is indeed another example of depressing nationalist exceptionalism. It's a sad sign of the Brexity times than I'm become almost inured to it.

How would you quantify that ? There were different messages from the scientific community
and it was and is something happening in real time, not something you can just collect data
on for a few years, analyse it and draw some conclusions.
You can probably just say that skipping 5 Cobra meetings is not a good look.
Also maybe should have bought some PPE.

This speech on Feb 3rd, where BJ proposes that being the nation to not lock down would be good for business, is also definitely 'not a good look'...

https://twitter.com/PoliticsJOE_UK/status/1251458390028664832

Professor Johan Giesecke, one of the world’s most senior epidemiologists, advisor to the Swedish Government, the first Chief Scientist of the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control, and an advisor to the director general of the WHO, lays out why he thinks:

• UK policy on lockdown and other European countries are not evidence-based
  
• The correct policy is to protect the old and the frail only
  
• This will eventually lead to herd immunity as a “by-product”
  
• The initial UK response, before the “180 degree U-turn”, was better
  
• The Imperial College paper was “not very good” and he has never seen an unpublished paper have so much policy impact
  
• The paper was very much too pessimistic
  
• Any such models are a dubious basis for public policy anyway
  
• The flattening of the curve is due to the most vulnerable dying first as much as the lockdown
  
• The results will eventually be similar for all countries
  
• Covid-19 is a “mild disease” and similar to the flu, and it was the novelty of the disease that scared people.
  
• The actual fatality rate of Covid-19 is the region of 0.1%
  
• At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available
  
  

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfN2JWifLCY

How would you quantify that ?

Well, primarily by comparing the advice received by the government from its scientific advisors with the steps taken by the government to implement that advice, and seeing where and to what extent there was a discrepancy between the advice received and the measures taken.

In any rapidly developing medical emergency there's going to be differences of opinion between scientists with knowledge of the relevant field. The government can't follow the advice and opinions of all of them, because that would be a logical impossibility where the opinions in question are mutually incompatible. I would however hope that the government would follow the advice of the CSO and CMO because that's what they're there for. To date, I haven't seen any suggestion that the government didn't do so, but I'd be very interested to know of any concrete evidence (not involving the donning of tinfoil hats) that suggests it didn't.

Interesting, but it seems to me it also suffers significantly from not being evidence-based either. Saying 'I'm right because I believe you're wrong' is more of a statement of faith than rigorous scientific analysis.

is this before or after herd immunity and "taking it on the chin" got floated as being a really great thing and scrapped? Or Johnson regaled us with handshake anecdotes? Or Johnson senior advocated going to the pub? Byline Times' timeline of the UK response reflects just how shambolic it's been: https://bylinetimes.com/2020/04/11/a-national-scandal-a-timeline-of-the-uk-governments-woeful-response-to-the-coronavirus-crisis/

The fact that the Premier League etc started cancelling fixtures before the government advised it shows that they've been behind the curve even when they had Italy and Spain to look at as a warning-and yet BJ said the following:

12 March 2020: Addressing the “question of banning major public events
such as sporting fixtures” the Prime Minister says that “the
scientific advice as we’ve said over the last couple of weeks is that
banning such events will have little effect on the spread” (Prime
Minister’s Office, 10 Downing Street). The Government announces it
will “no longer try to ‘track and trace’ everyone suspected of having
the virus. Instead, under plans outlined by the Prime Minister and his
medical and scientific advisors, testing would be limited to patients
in hospital with serious breathing problems”

So, the UK seemingly gave up on mass testing even as early as March 12th, and yet Hancock's been pretending ever since that they're on top of it. BJ reversed his position and announced mass gatherings would be cancelled-in a week's time-on March 13th.

The UK's either still in a "it'll be over before Christmas" mode or this is just herd immunity by a different name.

What are those graphs worth if Italy's done three times the testing the UK has?

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1109066/coronavirus-testing-in-europe-by-country/

At least 50% of the population of both the UK and Sweden will be shown to have already had the disease when mass antibody testing becomes available

There was a study done in Austria that does not support that so far.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/10/less-than-1-of-austria-infected-with-coronavirus-new-study-shows

First sentence: "acutely infected".

Oh, I see. I misunderstood that because they then relate it to the goal of herd immunity.
And this part:

The study stands in contrast to controversial modelling by researchers at Oxford University who, in one scenario they examined, suggested most people in the UK might already have been infected with Covid-19.

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.

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.
Seemingly there is much more capacity available so my question is why do we not ease the lockdown. This will lead to deaths, but to say this is immoral misses the complexity to which you allude.

“596 dead. See page 4”.

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I have heard from a well-placed source that the school shutdown was actually put in place earlier than recommended by people advising the government.

School closures round about when they happened were almost unavoidable due to staff shortages round here. Most secondary schools had already sent home multiple years.

Very possibly, I was really just seconding the point that the government will have received various conflicting pieces of advice from various eminent, well-informed people and couldn't follow all of them.

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

Interesting, although worth remembering that 0.1% of the UK population is ~67,000, so we're somewhere around 1/3 to 1/2 of the way there (depending on the death toll in care homes and everywhere else outside hospital).

Isolating the elderly/frail/vulnerable, and maintaining this until there is some other way of protecting them is still an immense problem.

You can wash cloth, but that is not the very best filtering PPE material.

And you have to wash it every time you see somebody else, so that's some laundry if you are in hospital or a care home. EDIT: and the laundry basket has to be completely sealed otherwise you now have a virus loaded and shedding basket...

But they do seem to be OK with cloth masks in USA for going to supermarket/home use the "70% filtering is better than nothing/we really need the best stuff for hospitals" reasoning seems to apply.

And you can wash them. But you have to dump them in soapy water outside your home right away, not bring them in the house and take a clean one every time.

Old skool flu epidemic photos show white cotton masks/aprons that would have probably been worn all day then boiled clean again. during/after the cleaning process it would be difficult to maintain sterility I guess, if not just getting minging blood stains etc in them all, plus the energy and resource required to do that on a use-once and chuck basis. Would avoid running out in an emergency though!

Old skool flu epidemic photos show white cotton masks/aprons that would have probably been worn all day then boiled clean again.

That's true, at the same time they didn't have any disposable PPE clothing at the times, especially during the war were materials are in limited supply.

I have some but I genuinely can't talk about it, I'm not even supposed to know.

Just to make it clear, I'm not taking the piss or making a reference to other shit that has happened in the chat. Of course you have absolutely no reason to believe my word any more than any other news source, so if I was in your position I'd be thinking, "great, this is of no help to me."