Consultant cardiologist on lack of testing and protection of medical staff within hospitals. grim.
Reads fairly true to me. Especially the shortage of PPE.
I don’t understand why the government is not doing everything to get PPE and test kits to hospitals? Couldn’t you use the army? Surely it’s come hell or high water...
I think PPE is just unobtainable. I hope there is some strategic government reserve somewhere, it would be reassuring! Otherwise that warning time was squandered.
My department WhatsApp group is beginning to get a bit windy!
I am slightly confused by the Icelandic paper, and unclear exactly who they have been testing. Half the infected cases had picked it up abroad, which shouldn't be the case if it was prevalent through local spread.
I don't think it says anything about local spread. What it does suggest is that many asymptomatic cases might exist that don't display any or extremely mild symptoms. Hence, if they infer one percent of the population carry the virus but only 0.05% of the total population (20 times less) in the at risk group carry the virus it is evidence of many mild cases (the iceberg effect Gideon mentions).
Yes, but unless a very high proportion of Icelanders have been overseas in the last month we have an unrepresentative sample.
So encouraging, but I am not sure if possible to extrapolate, even within Iceland.
To be fair, if I was from Iceland I'd spend an awful lot of time abroad.
It's beautiful! Great arts and music scene as well.
Very high suicide rate. Not fun apparently for everyone to live there although yes for a tourist for a couple of weeks it's great.
Cold, isolated, some people will hate that but it's perfect for me. If I had the chance to live anywhere else it would be Iceland.
And the point is that lockdown, etc., quickly lower the number of true new cases. Italy will almost certainly be seeing lower true new infections already, it's just going to take some time before the official numbers reflect that, because of the 7-10 gap between infection and recognition of the issue.
Robert - before you cite that guy as an authority, please watch the interview of him and John Edmunds together. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions about who is more trustworthy
I have absolutely no idea if this is a reasonable representation - I lack the knowledge to make that call - so post it only for interest and certainly not in support of any given position.
He says the RIGHT thing to do, as an individual, is panic - ie react over cautiously. The more people that do this, the lower the risk to the system as a whole.
I met Taleb in 2007 at a conference in Japan. He explained to me that every twenty or so years, every major banking sector has a crisis that wipes out all the profits made in the previous two decades. He was very compelling.
His advice saved my customers hundreds of millions. I just wish I'd sold all by banking shares, and not just 90% of them.
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My department WhatsApp group is beginning to get a bit windy!
Robert - before you cite that guy as an authority, please watch the interview of him and John Edmunds together. I will leave you to draw your own conclusions about who is more trustworthy
https://twitter.com/Channel4News/status/1238573667002523648