Pity about the Belgian cat. :(

How's shopping in the UK? Calm here, shops empty of non-staff but full of stuff.

I thoroughly approve.

From the country with the most experience with respiratory viruses in general and this respiratory virus in particular? Doesn't seem like a bad idea.

Send them back.

Hoarder!


Hey! Didn't I already say that here about Prince Charles? You know, because he is a shape-shifting lizard!

Well, I definitely thought it.

:mad:

Looks like a small Welsh town has some new leadership:

Hopefully they aren't just mindless sheep (heyooo)

Not quite as adorable, but turkeys have been spotted wandering the empty streets throughout Boston and Cambridge. It's not unusual to see them in the area, but it's less common to see them in the more dense parts of the city.

Spotted my first two of the spring in the suburbs this morning. One used a crosswalk while another waited patiently for traffic to subside.

The welsh will make any excuse....

Robert Peston: Is Michael Gove right that there is a shortage of coronavirus test kit ingredients?

Does Betteridge’s Law apply?

The UK government is applying the same tactics that President Trump and his administration have been using for the last three and a bit years - do anything to deflect criticism from your ****-poor performance including just making stuff up.

If and when someone actually bothers to check out your claim then do some combination of calling it out as fake news, claiming to have been taken out of context or engaging in some kind of Gish gallop.

It's just depressing :mad:

The UK government has IMO done a halfway decent job of implementing lockdown and putting support in place for individuals and businesses (though they took their sweet time for the self-employed). Their logistics operation has IMO been far less successful. They've dragged their heels over ventilators and PPE and completely dropped the ball when it comes to test availability.

If the lie about lack of ingredients is there to save their blushes while they redouble their efforts to get the tests out there then that's pathetic but if they are holding up production then that's criminal.

The Home Office says NHS doctors, nurses and paramedics with UK work visas due to expire before 1 October will have them automatically extended for a year so they can "focus on fighting coronavirus"
Then they can all **** off next year.

I can’t believe a man who lied through his teeth about the EU and then lied through his teeth about no-deal is now lying through his teeth about a pandemic!

Nearly a fifth of all small and medium-sized businesses in the UK are unlikely to get the cash they need to survive the next four weeks, in spite of unprecedented government support.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-52114414

From the NHS PoV I think the government has been doing quite well. There was a sort of reluctance to act that was local because of a 'boy that cried wolf' phenomenon. Everything was hyped up for the last flu pandemic, then it was not as bad as was feared. So that when the alert came out about covid-19 a lot of systems thought that this was just another 'over reaction' and didn't really shift gear. This was not central government's fault it was local systems. I think this probably put in a two week delay, then either central pressure or modelling made everyone realise this was real then things have been moving forward fast. However things are still bureaucratic. The local pulmonology service can create a management plan for covid but it then has to be approved through various committees before it is circulated. Shift changes for staff have to be approved. But we now have eye and orthopaedic surgeons joining us on ward rounds to learn how to manage severe pneumonia. Whole wards are transitioning to units that can deliver advanced respiratory support to infectious patients something that previously only required a couple of beds. Our hospital respiratory isolation beds (negative pressure rooms) were mostly used for non-infectious patients, because we hardly ever needed them, now they are not required because we have whole wards requiring respiratory isolation.

It looks from the figures as if the UK will overtake China in terms of deaths by the weekend; the UK's graphs of cases and deaths are remarkably similar to Spain +8 days. Does the UK have more stringent isolation rules than Spain?

There may be many factors in play.

The rules seem pretty similar to me, shutting non-essential businesses and restricting travel. There may however be a difference in compliance with the rules and/or they may have been imposed at different points in the national pandemic cycle.

Until very recently, the UK was carrying out very few tests (the number is still hardly high in comparison to other European nations) so the number of cases, and perhaps even deaths (if tests aren't carried out on all recently dead people) may be understated quite significantly.

I personally only know of four people who who have reported Coronavirus like symptoms. All have now recovered after 2-3 weeks but none were offered a test.

Thanks; not very encouraging. I noticed your location - the more at risk members of my family are in South Wales (Llandeilo and Swansea). Is the picture in Wales different from the UK as a whole or broadly similar?

Our local health board has the largest outbreak of Coronavirus outside London. We're in South East Wales, it's much less bad elsewhere.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-52093126

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/u...paign=exchange

That outbreak is however likely under-reported because there still isn't routine testing of patients or medical staff.

Appreciate that, thanks. I've heard that medical personnel aren't being tested to any great extent, but wasn't sure if it were true. Hope you stay safe, and that SE Wales calms down.

... and this isn't even a one-week old tweet.

Already better mannered and more civic minded than the locals I see.

Yes, but as it's Gove spouting off that's a given. The problem is organisation of use of the PCR machines.

Official figures say only 47 confirmed cases in Redcar and Cleveland.
Someone died just a few streets away from us in New Marske. She was 45 and healthy.

Christ, I'm embarrassed to be part of this country these days. The rest of Europe have every reason to be glad to be rid of us.

Grew up in Thornaby, was chronically ill until we moved up the dale to Barnard Castle. Tough growing up around there, wonder if that was a factor. :o

Very worrying either way.

New Marske is far from a tough place to grow up. Person who died was up on the 'posh' estates.

Just saw and Interview with your Prime Minister;
God, i envy you finns your national leader.
She even speaks Engllsh much better then the POTUS.

Major media houses beholden to the ruling party have now found scape goats in a Muslim organization that had conducted a major event in mid February. Despite the fact that large gatherings both religious (Hindu and Christian) and secular (Namaste Trump) took place around and after the same time and even as late as early March. However, the collective rhetoric has been modified to villify the Muslims. The BJP government has consistently been vilifying the Chinese ( resulting in the harassment of Indians from North Eastern states who the "real" Indians love to call "chinki") and now Muslims to hide their own incompetence and lack of foresight in handling the crisis.

Well, as long as they've got someone to blame other than their own incompetence.

I wonder what will happen when there's a spike in their home countries and their government asks the nurses to come home...

Even Leo is impressing people, for once.

There is a genuine shortage of reagents. They are ramping up manufacturing in their factories but the whole world is competing. A lot of these machines for PCR testing use proprietary kits, so it is not easy to go and buy off the shelf bulk orders of reagents. Although people seem to think it is easy to do more tests, the tests must be accurate, and there must be appropriate records QC, and data handling. Since they are dealing with a potentially fatal infection there has to be appropriate infection control systems in place, and disposal of the tested material.

The standards can be reviewed here.
https://www.england.nhs.uk/coronavir...atories-v1.pdf

For a brief, gloriously happy, moment, I misread that as "self-immolates".

Boris says
So, that's OK then.

Well, great British spirit, and great foreign medical personnel (who will then be packed off home once their one year visa extension has expired) :rolleyes:

Nadine Dorries a government minister tweeted


Nadine Dorries
@NadineDorries
1. Journalists and media need to be more balanced. Testing, is not a cure, it won’t cut the number of deaths, it won’t make people feel better or stop them catching #coronavirus it will only tell you if you have or have had it There is no cure. Tests will allow

2. us to know who has antibodies and is immune/non contagious, but we don’t yet know how long those anti bodies will last for. The best we can hope for is that it will allow #NHS workers to get back to work if they know they have had it and have antibodies to protect them.

3. I’m already hearing from constituents who are alarmed at the situation re tests, believing media hype and that testing with a positive diagnosis = a miracle cure. There is as yet, no treatment, no cure, no vaccine and no amount of tests will alter that fact..#InThisTogether

Just let that sink in for a moment.

Nadine Dorries........

......Government minister......

We are all completely ****** :mad:

Sounds like she's trying to distract from the government's complete bungling of testing by blaming the media and claiming things from unnamed people.

Who believes that a positive diagnosis is a miracle cure ? :confused:

How very Trumpian.

Yes Nadine, testing is not a panacea but without testing we have no idea about the spread of the disease or how (in)effective the lockdown and social distancing measures are. Quit whining about the press and get your collective fingers out w.r.t. testing.

There is testing. So your comment that 'without testing' just illustrates how people misunderstand the situation. To repeat there IS testing at present. All people with clinical symptoms are being tested. That is how we know about the spread of the disease, how else do you think we know we have the disease in the UK? The key issue about the effectiveness of the lockdown will not be determined by some laboratory test, but the outcome looked for is a fall in hospital attendances and death.

More PCR tests will allow well but symptomatic healthcare staff to return to work once their illness has resolved rather than being in prolonged isolation. Having more tests is not going to mean social distancing can stop.

There does seem to be an almost mythical aura around testing. Yes it will be better to have more tests, tests with a faster result, but it is not going to make any great immediate difference to what happens or what we do.

I never claimed that there wasn't testing :confused:

I merely stated that without testing we'd have no idea about how far the disease has spread and how effective, or otherwise, the steps taken by the government are.

Anecdotally I know of only four people who have had Coronavirus like symptoms which have been severe enough for them be quite unwell, but not to require hospitalisation. These people weren't offered a test and so they have no idea whether they have had Coronavirus which in turn means that their friends and acquaintances have no idea whether they have been exposed.

Whatever the result of the test on the symptomatic individual the friends and acquaintances would be in the same position. If household members they should be in isolation for 14 days. If not then their behaviour should not change. A negative test in the symptomatic individual does not mean they have not been exposed to someone else with the illness. A positive result does not mean they will have been infected by that individual. A negative test in the symptomatic individual does not exclude they have covid-19 if symptomatic they should still isolate. The only useful result (arguably not that much use) is a positive in a symptomatic individual. The positive result means taking the same action as a negative.

You are attributing some mythical value to the result of a test which it does not really have.

If only there had been some kind of warning, so that governments could have started early in having tests made.

True, if they could have had some warning back in January that there was a pandemic approaching they could have taken early steps. Mind you let's not forget that we've left the EU, so still some good news.....

Our local testing lab was apparently having to synthesize some of the reagents themselves. Until they got this internal production of these reagents up and running the number of tests they were performing only a couple dozen tests per day. Now they are doing ~500 per day, which is respectable given they are servicing ~1.2 million people.

Assuming it's the same reagents, there could be some truth to the shortage but the real problem is the insistence on buying the reagents instead of making them themselves.

Actually PHE had started developing the test early; they are co-authors (Maria Zambon) on the WHO / European test that is being widely used. The time course is that China first alerted WHO of an outbreak of a new respiratory illness on 31 December 2019. They downloaded the gene sequence on 10 january confirming that the cause was a novel corona virus. PHE and collaborators had already started on a test. What they had done was use SARS to develop a range of primers (choosing highly conserved regions by comparing with bat coronavirus), some of which primers they hoped would be able to detect SARS CoV 2. What they managed to do was in the absence of any clinical isolates, no actual samples of the virus they were able to go through the sequence of SARS CoV 2 and select out 3 candidate primers they had taken from SARS that they hoped would be usable. They then validated that using SARS, they then had to industrialise the process. The methodology was announced on 23 January. Initially the only site able to test was PHE VRL Colindale which could do 100 tests a day, by 10 February it had been rolled out to regional laboratories. The first UK case was on 12 February*.

So you may be snarky, but you are wrong to assume that they had not been prepared and developing a test from the first alert out of China. They had developed a test despite having no sample of the virus. The test was available and had been set up around the UK before the first case of covid-19 presented in the UK. This was extraordinary. Commercial companies are only now beginning to be able to offer tests nearly two months after PHE.

ETA
* First case of in UK transmission, imported cases had been diagnosed at the end of January.

Unfortunately with commercialisation many laboratories have lost the ability to manufacture reagents. You do of course need the raw products which may also be in demand, and the equipment to synthesise then QC your in-house reagents. This is not kitchen chemistry.

Excusing government incompetence and blaming it on everything and everyone else? Never!

I see UK equivalent of Trumpistas are here too.

You really think that there's no difference between knowing whether you, or someone you have had recent contact with has had Coronavirus or not ? Talk about mythology.

South Korea's (so far) comparatively successful programme to contain Coronavirus has been based on testing, tracking and isolation. The UK simply isn't doing enough testing.

But hey, I'm just an armchair quarterback on the internet.

OTOH, the real experts are also unhappy about the lack of testing:

I appreciate that when testing actually gets somewhere near the planned level then numbers of cases are likely to jump which will be uncomfortable for all involved but better that than being largely ignorant of the extent of the pandemic in the UK.

Good to see the government taking testing seriously by moving from their target of not achieving 25,000 tests to a new target of not achieving 100,000 tests.

Boris doesn’t seem to have the ‘British’ Coronavirus which the govt says requires 7 days isolation. He seems to have the ‘global’ version that needs 14 days as recommended by WHO and all other countries.

NHS England, 11th March: We'll test 10,000 a day
Boris Johnson 18th March: “We’re moving up to 25,000 a day.”
Matt Hancock, today: We'll hit 100,000 tests a day

The government still hasn't hit the 10,000 tests