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politicalbetting.com » Blog Archive » The Tuesday PB Nighthawks

Last night PB made an appeal for help funding the site during the lockdown which has had a dramatic impact on the site’s two main revenue sources – display advertising and affiliate income. The response has been really good with more than 150 PBers making contributions.

Read the full story here

FrancisUrquhart

First in the queue for flour....

geoffw

Second for yeast.

RobD

Nice work, PBers! If you haven't already donated... do it!

MaxPB

Just donated, @MikeSmithson! The internet wouldn't be the same without this place.

Sandpit

Great news about your appeal Mike. You’ll have something from me at the end of the month, so please keep the donate button up!

TimT

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

Foxy

Some of us regulars coughed up (sic) too, but praise to the generous lurkers!

Theuniondivvie

'include one or two well-known figures in public life'

Generous considering the pelters Donald gets on here.

FrancisUrquhart

I wonder what ever happened to the mysterious well know public figure JM ?

geoffw

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

Wouldn't it have to go through the upper respiratory tract anyway before getting further down?

rottenborough

"one or two well-known figures in public life that I did not realise followed the site."

You could make even more Mike with a bit of light blackmail

Jonathan

The original, non redacted version...

150 pb'ers contributed, raising a grand total of £11.90. Thankfully Jordan and Rob Chubby Brown's contribution pushed the total over a tenner.

AlastairMeeks

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

rottenborough

From previous thread:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1252695868567883776

No evidence presented. Views of a self-described left wing sexual health expert who now knows everything about manufacturing supply chains in the 2020s but provides not one example or iota of evidence as to her statements.

This is not journalism.

TimT

geoffw said:

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

Wouldn't it have to go through the upper respiratory tract anyway before getting further down?

The air would, but the virus might not bind in the upper tract. Some things are still chance. With really high initial exposure doses, I'd expect to see both upper and lower tract binding simultaneously. With very small initial doses, I'd expect where it binds to be more random, probably as you imply biased towards upper respiratory tract, but always with a certain degree of randomness.

Nigelb

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

It’s a plausible theory, and does tend to correlate with the symptom descriptions in mild and serious cases.
Be pretty difficult to confirm clinically, though (although the vaccine volunteers will be pretty closely observed for six months, so that might shed some light).

Theuniondivvie

Funny, that's not what these lads say when it comes to embryos.

https://twitter.com/AnthonyMKreis/status/1252593879087448066?s=20

Nigelb

Foxy said:

Some of us regulars coughed up (sic) too, but praise to the generous lurkers!

Certainly not to be sneezed at.

EPG

I hope they're not the kind of celebrities who think 5G causes corona.

geoffw

OGH : Just think how much you could raise with a zimmer walking around the garden.

rottenborough

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

Feels like the vaccine news was dropped in to try and distract from the EU PPE decision.

alterego

rottenborough said:

From previous thread:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1252695868567883776

No evidence presented. Views of a self-described left wing sexual health expert who now knows everything about manufacturing supply chains in the 2020s but provides not one example or iota of evidence as to her statements.

This is not journalism.

Why ever would you think it was?

squareroot2

rottenborough said:

From previous thread:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1252695868567883776

No evidence presented. Views of a self-described left wing sexual health expert who now knows everything about manufacturing supply chains in the 2020s but provides not one example or iota of evidence as to her statements.

This is not journalism.

Paul Mason highlighted too..=.junk.

glw

rottenborough said:

From previous thread:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1252695868567883776

No evidence presented. Views of a self-described left wing sexual health expert who now knows everything about manufacturing supply chains in the 2020s but provides not one example or iota of evidence as to her statements.

This is not journalism.

I wish these people who "just know" what the government has done wrong would STFU and instead offer their services to fix the problem.

Foxy

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

A review of proning from 2017:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6026253/

It is a bit tricky as the patients need a team of 6 to prone them, without disturbing all the lines etc, and they need to be flipped back again in the morning. Not quite as easy as it sounds.

My speculation that nasal or GI infection is better than lower respiratory infection is purely a hypothesis. It might be interesting to see if those presenting with nasal or GI symptoms have a much milder form, but difficult to study in the UK, as only hospital patients get tested, mild ones in the community do not.

Quincel

I'd like to thank Dominic Cummings for the donation that, based on OGH's header above, I am now assuming he has made.

AlastairMeeks

rottenborough said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

Feels like the vaccine news was dropped in to try and distract from the EU PPE decision.

There’s been too much sizzle and not enough steak to keep the press happy. They’ve all gone in different directions tonight and none of them are on-message for the government.

rottenborough

alterego said:

rottenborough said:

From previous thread:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1252695868567883776

No evidence presented. Views of a self-described left wing sexual health expert who now knows everything about manufacturing supply chains in the 2020s but provides not one example or iota of evidence as to her statements.

This is not journalism.

Why ever would you think it was?

I dunno something weird like Carole C is supposed to be a working journalist.

I get Paul Mason, he is now clearly a full time writer and activist. No problem there.

TimT

Foxy said:

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

A review of proning from 2017:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6026253/

It is a bit tricky as the patients need a team of 6 to prone them, without disturbing all the lines etc, and they need to be flipped back again in the morning. Not quite as easy as it sounds.

My speculation that nasal or GI infection is better than lower respiratory infection is purely a hypothesis. It might be interesting to see if those presenting with nasal or GI symptoms have a much milder form, but difficult to study in the UK, as only hospital patients get tested, mild ones in the community do not.

Thanks, foxy, for the reference. I'll forward it to the wife. At her hospital, the orthopedic surgeons are being repurposed for turning patients, as their normal workload is down, and they know how to turn patients.

MarqueeMark

Oops, nearly forgot - Moth du Jour: Chocolate-tip

AlastairMeeks

AlastairMeeks said:

rottenborough said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

Feels like the vaccine news was dropped in to try and distract from the EU PPE decision.

There’s been too much sizzle and not enough steak to keep the press happy. They’ve all gone in different directions tonight and none of them are on-message for the government.

Though I see the Times and the Express have also gone with the vaccine.

kle4

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1252683231981338626

It doesn't seem that strange to me.

There might well be something up. But I have written many a carefully and tortuously worded paragraph as a result of 'stuff' being up, and that is not that much of an example of one, or rather if it is it is far from the worse example of such.

mwadams

The more this goes on, the more I wish the political journalists and commentators would get out of the way and let the science journalists take over the reins for a while. Not because the politics of this aren't important, but because we need people who understand where the boundaries of the politics, the science, and the politics of science lie.

Foxy

Quincel said:

I'd like to thank Dominic Cummings for the donation that, based on OGH's header above, I am now assuming he has made.

Have "Downing St sources" revealed anything else?

kle4

MaxPB said:

Just donated, @MikeSmithson! The internet wouldn't be the same without this place.

I'd be yelling on the street corners. Which is not allowed right now, so definitely a public service.

AlastairMeeks

kle4 said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1252683231981338626

It doesn't seem that strange to me.

There might well be something up. But I have written many a carefully and tortuously worded paragraph as a result of 'stuff' being up, and that is not that much of an example of one, or rather if it is it is far from the worse example of such.

I’m sure the First Secretary will clear things up in detail at the despatch box.

rottenborough

glw said:

rottenborough said:

From previous thread:

https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1252695868567883776

No evidence presented. Views of a self-described left wing sexual health expert who now knows everything about manufacturing supply chains in the 2020s but provides not one example or iota of evidence as to her statements.

This is not journalism.

I wish these people who "just know" what the government has done wrong would STFU and instead offer their services to fix the problem.

Nah, they are too busy in a full paid salary lockdown, baking cheese scones, zooming all their metro mates to moan about not being able to visit the second home in Herefordshire, fretting about the delay to the Waitrose delivery of focaccia and making plans to spend a week redecorating the au pair's bedroom for when she returns from Spain.

geoffw

MarqueeMark said:

Oops, nearly forgot - Moth du Jour: Chocolate-tip

That's a moth? I would have thought it's a macaque.

Sandpit

mwadams said:

The more this goes on, the more I wish the political journalists and commentators would get out of the way and let the science journalists take over the reins for a while. Not because the politics of this aren't important, but because we need people who understand where the boundaries of the politics, the science, and the politics of science lie.

That should have happened a month ago.

kle4

AlastairMeeks said:

kle4 said:

RobD said:

rottenborough said:

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1252683231981338626

It doesn't seem that strange to me.

There might well be something up. But I have written many a carefully and tortuously worded paragraph as a result of 'stuff' being up, and that is not that much of an example of one, or rather if it is it is far from the worse example of such.

I’m sure the First Secretary will clear things up in detail at the despatch box.

Should be fun. I like a good very very carefully worded statement, which I suspect is needed.

MarqueeMark

geoffw said:

MarqueeMark said:

Oops, nearly forgot - Moth du Jour: Chocolate-tip

That's a moth? I would have thought it's a macaque.

Funky little chaps, huh?

MaxPB

rottenborough said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

Feels like the vaccine news was dropped in to try and distract from the EU PPE decision.

The EU scheme hasn't delivered anything yet, it's not going to for a while. It's a complete distraction that people are falling for. The question is why the government has ignored legitimate offers if help from UK industry. Why have suppliers been ignored and ended up exporting the very items we're now struggling to get even after they offered them to the government. Why wasn't an industrial procurement and manufacturing assistance plan put in place. Why wasn't overseas procurement difficulty anticipated when we did anticipate it for ventilators.

And so on. There's a lot more questions to answer than whether or not we're in an EU scheme that hasn't delivered anything.

rottenborough

mwadams said:

The more this goes on, the more I wish the political journalists and commentators would get out of the way and let the science journalists take over the reins for a while. Not because the politics of this aren't important, but because we need people who understand where the boundaries of the politics, the science, and the politics of science lie.

But then who would ask the essential daily question: "You went into the lockdown far too late, so why can't it be lifted yesterday?"

eek

eadric said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

The newspaper coverage of this virus is pathologically critical

My favourite is today in the guardian.

‘Who’s to blame for our coronavirus crisis’

Which is a bit like saying, after the Asian tsunami, ‘who’s to blame for these enormous waves knocking over things’

It’s a fucking plague you soap-dodging lefty twats. Plagues ARE a crisis. They never go ‘well’

Why are they becoming evermore hysterical? It’s because they’re dying. Newspapers are struggling to survive in the plague and they’re desperate for clicks. Measured analysis is not clickbait, histrionic accusation might gain a precious if modest advertising boost

Newspapers need new news to sell papers. And with everyone locked at home there is no new news.

Nigelb

AlastairMeeks said:

rottenborough said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

Feels like the vaccine news was dropped in to try and distract from the EU PPE decision.

There’s been too much sizzle and not enough steak to keep the press happy. They’ve all gone in different directions tonight and none of them are on-message for the government.

Yes, the vaccine news (aside from the government cash announcement) isn’t really breaking news, as it’s been known for a while the trial would be starting.
And the PII is scheduled to last for six months, so in terms of what happens next, it doesn’t really figure.

There’s very little government can now do to influence the outcome of the trials - and an awful lot they need to do to navigate the next year that we’ll be waiting for a vaccine.

Gallowgate

eek said:

eadric said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

The newspaper coverage of this virus is pathologically critical

My favourite is today in the guardian.

‘Who’s to blame for our coronavirus crisis’

Which is a bit like saying, after the Asian tsunami, ‘who’s to blame for these enormous waves knocking over things’

It’s a fucking plague you soap-dodging lefty twats. Plagues ARE a crisis. They never go ‘well’

Why are they becoming evermore hysterical? It’s because they’re dying. Newspapers are struggling to survive in the plague and they’re desperate for clicks. Measured analysis is not clickbait, histrionic accusation might gain a precious if modest advertising boost

Newspapers need new news to sell papers. And with everyone locked at home there is no new news.

People still buy newspapers???

CatMan

Theuniondivvie said:

Funny, that's not what these lads say when it comes to embryos.

https://twitter.com/AnthonyMKreis/status/1252593879087448066?s=20

It's well known that American pro-lifers don't give a shit about life after birth.

rottenborough

eadric said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

The newspaper coverage of this virus is pathologically critical

My favourite is today in the guardian.

‘Who’s to blame for our coronavirus crisis’

Which is a bit like saying, after the Asian tsunami, ‘who’s to blame for these enormous waves knocking over things’

It’s a fucking plague you soap-dodging lefty twats. Plagues ARE a crisis. They never go ‘well’

Why are they becoming evermore hysterical? It’s because they’re dying. Newspapers are struggling to survive in the plague and they’re desperate for clicks. Measured analysis is not clickbait, histrionic accusation might gain a precious if modest advertising boost

"Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky."

Albert Camus, 'The Plague'.

TimT

eadric said:

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

My stepmother has a mad yet brilliant theory about proning

Where does this virus come from? Bats

How do bats sleep? Upside down

LOLs. Sounds like my grandmother some moons ago when she was still with us. After describing the research I was doing, she declared "Modern medicine is a lot more up to date than it used to be!"

Sunil_Prasannan

Gallowgate said:

eek said:

eadric said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

The newspaper coverage of this virus is pathologically critical

My favourite is today in the guardian.

‘Who’s to blame for our coronavirus crisis’

Which is a bit like saying, after the Asian tsunami, ‘who’s to blame for these enormous waves knocking over things’

It’s a fucking plague you soap-dodging lefty twats. Plagues ARE a crisis. They never go ‘well’

Why are they becoming evermore hysterical? It’s because they’re dying. Newspapers are struggling to survive in the plague and they’re desperate for clicks. Measured analysis is not clickbait, histrionic accusation might gain a precious if modest advertising boost

Newspapers need new news to sell papers. And with everyone locked at home there is no new news.

People still buy newspapers???

Don't you know there's a bog roll shortage?

Yokes

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at how the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Foxy

TimT said:

geoffw said:

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

Wouldn't it have to go through the upper respiratory tract anyway before getting further down?

The air would, but the virus might not bind in the upper tract. Some things are still chance. With really high initial exposure doses, I'd expect to see both upper and lower tract binding simultaneously. With very small initial doses, I'd expect where it binds to be more random, probably as you imply biased towards upper respiratory tract, but always with a certain degree of randomness.

There is some evidence that nasal immune responses get impaired with age, so perhaps a tie in with older patients getting less upper respiratory symptoms, and worse lung disease.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29878083

There was also this very interesting paper in Nature, on nasal replication of the virus:

s41586-020-2196-x_reference.pdf

One implication of this is that nasal infections are more mild, but spread more easily.

Antibodies were detected in the second week, and so may provide some resistance to the lower respiratory symptoms. Only a minority of these patients were significantly unwell, but those were the ones with sputum positive samples in the second week.

squareroot2

Sunil_Prasannan said:

Gallowgate said:

eek said:

eadric said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

The newspaper coverage of this virus is pathologically critical

My favourite is today in the guardian.

‘Who’s to blame for our coronavirus crisis’

Which is a bit like saying, after the Asian tsunami, ‘who’s to blame for these enormous waves knocking over things’

It’s a fucking plague you soap-dodging lefty twats. Plagues ARE a crisis. They never go ‘well’

Why are they becoming evermore hysterical? It’s because they’re dying. Newspapers are struggling to survive in the plague and they’re desperate for clicks. Measured analysis is not clickbait, histrionic accusation might gain a precious if modest advertising boost

Newspapers need new news to sell papers. And with everyone locked at home there is no new news.

People still buy newspapers???

Don't you know there's a bog roll shortage?

There wouldn't be if you stopped the print of the Sun Star Mail and Express.. Few woild miss them.either imho.

GIN1138

Just sent Mike a donation.

RobD said:

Nice work, PBers! If you haven't already donated... do it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQRW0RM4V0k

Theuniondivvie

eadric said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

The newspaper coverage of this virus is pathologically critical

My favourite is today in the guardian.

‘Who’s to blame for our coronavirus crisis’

Which is a bit like saying, after the Asian tsunami, ‘who’s to blame for these enormous waves knocking over things’

It’s a fucking plague you soap-dodging lefty twats. Plagues ARE a crisis. They never go ‘well’

Why are they becoming evermore hysterical? It’s because they’re dying. Newspapers are struggling to survive in the plague and they’re desperate for clicks. Measured analysis is not clickbait, histrionic accusation might gain a precious if modest advertising boost

I've had it on pretty good authority from certain parties on here that someone is definitely to blame for the virus.

MattW

geoffw said:

MarqueeMark said:

Oops, nearly forgot - Moth du Jour: Chocolate-tip

That's a moth? I would have thought it's a macaque.

I thought it was a demonstration of proning :-)

FrancisUrquhart

eadric said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

The newspaper coverage of this virus is pathologically critical

My favourite is today in the guardian.

‘Who’s to blame for our coronavirus crisis’

Which is a bit like saying, after the Asian tsunami, ‘who’s to blame for these enormous waves knocking over things’

It’s a fucking plague you soap-dodging lefty twats. Plagues ARE a crisis. They never go ‘well’

Why are they becoming evermore hysterical? It’s because they’re dying. Newspapers are struggling to survive in the plague and they’re desperate for clicks. Measured analysis is not clickbait, histrionic accusation might gain a precious if modest advertising boost

I presume on Guardianista land it is racist to blame the Chinese government?

RobD

GIN1138 said:

Just sent Mike a donation.

RobD said:

Nice work, PBers! If you haven't already donated... do it!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQRW0RM4V0k

OGH when seeing his paypal account: "A surprise, to be sure, but a welcome one".

rottenborough

eadric said:

rottenborough said:

eadric said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

The newspaper coverage of this virus is pathologically critical

My favourite is today in the guardian.

‘Who’s to blame for our coronavirus crisis’

Which is a bit like saying, after the Asian tsunami, ‘who’s to blame for these enormous waves knocking over things’

It’s a fucking plague you soap-dodging lefty twats. Plagues ARE a crisis. They never go ‘well’

Why are they becoming evermore hysterical? It’s because they’re dying. Newspapers are struggling to survive in the plague and they’re desperate for clicks. Measured analysis is not clickbait, histrionic accusation might gain a precious if modest advertising boost

"Everybody knows that pestilences have a way of recurring in the world; yet somehow we find it hard to believe in ones that crash down on our heads from a blue sky."

Albert Camus, 'The Plague'.

Finished that book yesterday, it is quietly excellent. A small masterpiece

Not as good as Tiger King, tho

It (Camus that is) is a brilliant work of literary art. And the parallels with our situation are uncanny at times.

Theuniondivvie

kle4 said:

MaxPB said:

Just donated, @MikeSmithson! The internet wouldn't be the same without this place.

I'd be yelling on the street corners. Which is not allowed right now, so definitely a public service.

Yelling on street corners is a pretty good way of getting folk to avoid you like the plague. Having a modesty saving article of clothing absent also helps.

FrancisUrquhart

MaxPB said:

rottenborough said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

Feels like the vaccine news was dropped in to try and distract from the EU PPE decision.

The EU scheme hasn't delivered anything yet, it's not going to for a while. It's a complete distraction that people are falling for. The question is why the government has ignored legitimate offers if help from UK industry. Why have suppliers been ignored and ended up exporting the very items we're now struggling to get even after they offered them to the government. Why wasn't an industrial procurement and manufacturing assistance plan put in place. Why wasn't overseas procurement difficulty anticipated when we did anticipate it for ventilators.

And so on. There's a lot more questions to answer than whether or not we're in an EU scheme that hasn't delivered anything.

Well the "suppliers" have overwhelmingly turned out to be middle men chancers with no track record,.

But the why didn't the government go all WWII,any factory that can make stuff we will buy, now that is a really good question.

NerysHughes

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Exactly

MattW

eadric said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

The newspaper coverage of this virus is pathologically critical

My favourite is today in the guardian.

‘Who’s to blame for our coronavirus crisis’

Which is a bit like saying, after the Asian tsunami, ‘who’s to blame for these enormous waves knocking over things’

It’s a fucking plague you soap-dodging lefty twats. Plagues ARE a crisis. They never go ‘well’

Why are they becoming evermore hysterical? It’s because they’re dying. Newspapers are struggling to survive in the plague and they’re desperate for clicks. Measured analysis is not clickbait, histrionic accusation might gain a precious if modest advertising boost

That piece is written by the Political Correspondent and the Lobby Correspondent...

Foxy

eadric said:

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

My stepmother has a mad yet brilliant theory about proning

Where does this virus come from? Bats

How do bats sleep? Upside down

Well we all know that cod liver oil is good for arthritis because it oils the joints.

Is the bat virus a respiratory one? Or a gastro one?

RobD

NerysHughes said:

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Exactly

On the other hand, "Tories mastermind plot to kill off their electorate" will have the papers flying off the shelves.

MaxPB

FrancisUrquhart said:

MaxPB said:

rottenborough said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

Feels like the vaccine news was dropped in to try and distract from the EU PPE decision.

The EU scheme hasn't delivered anything yet, it's not going to for a while. It's a complete distraction that people are falling for. The question is why the government has ignored legitimate offers if help from UK industry. Why have suppliers been ignored and ended up exporting the very items we're now struggling to get even after they offered them to the government. Why wasn't an industrial procurement and manufacturing assistance plan put in place. Why wasn't overseas procurement difficulty anticipated when we did anticipate it for ventilators.

And so on. There's a lot more questions to answer than whether or not we're in an EU scheme that hasn't delivered anything.

Well the "suppliers" have overwhelmingly turned out to be middle men chancers with no track record,.

But the why didn't the government go all WWII,any factory that can make stuff we will buy, now that is a really good question.

Have an intern reading the emails and another one making phonecalls to assess the legitimacy. It's not a big job really.

FrancisUrquhart

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Some things appear to have been well organized and seamlessly deployed e.g. food parcels. Nobody hears about them from the media, cos well, they are working. Same with the volunteer schemes.

It makes the things that have gone wrong harder to understand e.g. even if they did think these antibody tests would work. It appears they haven't even drawn up a list of where to put all the drive-through testing centres, like you know, just in case, we did go with widespread anti-gen testing. How hard it is for a couple of civil servants to knock together a list of 200 car parks around the country and phone up the owners and say we are having that for testing.

Compare that to the field hospitals, they already had all the main venues sorted, what kit they needed, how much personnel to put them together.

TimT

Foxy said:

TimT said:

geoffw said:

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

Wouldn't it have to go through the upper respiratory tract anyway before getting further down?

The air would, but the virus might not bind in the upper tract. Some things are still chance. With really high initial exposure doses, I'd expect to see both upper and lower tract binding simultaneously. With very small initial doses, I'd expect where it binds to be more random, probably as you imply biased towards upper respiratory tract, but always with a certain degree of randomness.

There is some evidence that nasal immune responses get impaired with age, so perhaps a tie in with older patients getting less upper respiratory symptoms, and worse lung disease.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29878083

There was also this very interesting paper in Nature, on nasal replication of the virus:

s41586-020-2196-x_reference.pdf

One implication of this is that nasal infections are more mild, but spread more easily.

Antibodies were detected in the second week, and so may provide some resistance to the lower respiratory symptoms. Only a minority of these patients were significantly unwell, but those were the ones with sputum positive samples in the second week.

"One implication of this is that nasal infections are more mild, but spread more easily."

My understanding from conversations with flu experts during the whole Yoshi Kawaoka/Ron Fauchier gain of function thing, is that this is the general case with flus. The nasal infections spread more, as they induce sneezing, but because of their location, do not cause the severe symptoms.

Had the pleasure of sitting between these two at a dinner at the time. Fascinating personalities.

FrancisUrquhart

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

MaxPB said:

rottenborough said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

Feels like the vaccine news was dropped in to try and distract from the EU PPE decision.

The EU scheme hasn't delivered anything yet, it's not going to for a while. It's a complete distraction that people are falling for. The question is why the government has ignored legitimate offers if help from UK industry. Why have suppliers been ignored and ended up exporting the very items we're now struggling to get even after they offered them to the government. Why wasn't an industrial procurement and manufacturing assistance plan put in place. Why wasn't overseas procurement difficulty anticipated when we did anticipate it for ventilators.

And so on. There's a lot more questions to answer than whether or not we're in an EU scheme that hasn't delivered anything.

Well the "suppliers" have overwhelmingly turned out to be middle men chancers with no track record,.

But the why didn't the government go all WWII,any factory that can make stuff we will buy, now that is a really good question.

Have an intern reading the emails and another one making phonecalls to assess the legitimacy. It's not a big job really.

Well the basis of the Telegraph story, it seems that is exactly what happened. The lady who runs a property development company phones up and says if you will pay me a load of cash upfront, I can get you some Chinese PPE.

Google her company, google her, erhhh, thanks, don't phone us, we will phone you.

I know she did get some, but no idea how legit it was. Just because a European country bought some, it isn't the first time they have bought a load off the back of a lorry, given it to front line staff and found a couple of weeks down the line, it is fake.

Nigelb

Encouraging animal data on the Chinese vaccine (and no ADE):

Rapid development of an inactivated vaccine for SARS-CoV-2
https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.04.17.046375v1.full.pdf
The COVID-19 pandemic caused by SARS-CoV-2 has brought about an unprecedented crisis, taking a heavy toll on human health, lives as well as the global economy. There are no SARS-CoV-2-specific treatments or vaccines available due to the novelty of this virus. Hence, rapid development of effective vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 is urgently needed. Here we developed a pilot-scale production of a purified inactivated SARS-CoV-2 virus vaccine candidate (PiCoVacc), which induced SARS-CoV-2-specific neutralizing antibodies in mice, rats and non-human primates. These antibodies potently neutralized 10 representative SARS-CoV-2 strains, indicative of a possible broader neutralizing ability against SARS-CoV-2 strains circulating worldwide. Immunization with two different doses (3 g or 6 g per dose) provided partial or complete protection in macaques against SARS-CoV-2 challenge, respectively, without any antibody-dependent enhancement of infection. Systematic evaluation of PiCoVacc via monitoring clinical signs, hematological and biochemical index, and histophathological analysis in macaques suggests that it is safe. These data support the rapid clinical development of SARS-CoV-2 vaccines for humans...

MaxPB

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Some things appear to have been well organized and seamlessly deployed e.g. food parcels. Nobody hears about them from the media, cos well, they are working. Same with the volunteer schemes.

It makes the things that have gone wrong harder to understand e.g. even if they did think these antibody tests would work. It appears they haven't even drawn up a list of where to put all the drive-through testing centres, like you know, just in case, we did go with widespread anti-gen testing. How hard it is for a couple of civil servants to knock together a list of 200 car parks around the country and phone up the owners and say we are having that for testing.

Compare that to the field hospitals, they already had all the main venues sorted, what kit they needed, how much personnel to put them together.

I actually think it's because the cabinet office and Gove were in charge of the Nightingale hospital rollout and the ventilator schemes. Testing and PPE were in the DoH which is not fit for purpose, starting at the top.

RobD

FrancisUrquhart said:

MaxPB said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

MaxPB said:

rottenborough said:

AlastairMeeks said:

It’s a rum night when the most favourable newspaper headline for the government is in the Independent.

Feels like the vaccine news was dropped in to try and distract from the EU PPE decision.

The EU scheme hasn't delivered anything yet, it's not going to for a while. It's a complete distraction that people are falling for. The question is why the government has ignored legitimate offers if help from UK industry. Why have suppliers been ignored and ended up exporting the very items we're now struggling to get even after they offered them to the government. Why wasn't an industrial procurement and manufacturing assistance plan put in place. Why wasn't overseas procurement difficulty anticipated when we did anticipate it for ventilators.

And so on. There's a lot more questions to answer than whether or not we're in an EU scheme that hasn't delivered anything.

Well the "suppliers" have overwhelmingly turned out to be middle men chancers with no track record,.

But the why didn't the government go all WWII,any factory that can make stuff we will buy, now that is a really good question.

Have an intern reading the emails and another one making phonecalls to assess the legitimacy. It's not a big job really.

Well the basis of the Telegraph story, it seems that is exactly what happened. The lady who runs a property development company phones up and says if you will pay me a load of cash upfront, I can get you some Chinese PPE.

Google her company, google her, erhhh, thanks, don't phone us, we will phone you.

It's funny you never see the price mentioned in these stories. I certainly doubt they are doing this at cost (even at current cost).

Benpointer

eadric said:

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

My stepmother has a mad yet brilliant theory about proning

Where does this virus come from? Bats

How do bats sleep? Upside down

Whenever we were 'chesty' as kids we'd have the foot of the bed raised up on books overnight to 'help us clear our lungs'.

Probably totally pointless but it felt right at the time.

Foxy

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Some things appear to have been well organized and seamlessly deployed e.g. food parcels. Nobody hears about them from the media, cos well, they are working. Same with the volunteer schemes.

It makes the things that have gone wrong harder to understand e.g. even if they did think these antibody tests would work. It appears they haven't even drawn up a list of where to put all the drive-through testing centres, like you know, just in case, we did go with widespread anti-gen testing. How hard it is for a couple of civil servants to knock together a list of 200 car parks around the country and phone up the owners and say we are having that for testing.

Compare that to the field hospitals, they already had all the main venues sorted, what kit they needed, how much personnel to put them together.

I think the things that worked have done so, because they were in the Pandemic Flu plan, the things that haven't are because it is a different virus to the Flu. Hence the failure on testing (not needed for Flu) and specific forms of PPE (long sleeved gowns and respirator hoods) not stockpiled for flu, but sorely needed for Coronavirus.

Theuniondivvie

A thread.

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1252701841135226880?s=20

Shades of Trump's America.

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1252701845367263232?s=20

Anabobazina

Seems to be a major fucking cock-up of epic proportions on our pisspoor testing rate.

dixiedean

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Some things appear to have been well organized and seamlessly deployed e.g. food parcels. Nobody hears about them from the media, cos well, they are working. Same with the volunteer schemes.

It makes the things that have gone wrong harder to understand e.g. even if they did think these antibody tests would work. It appears they haven't even drawn up a list of where to put all the drive-through testing centres, like you know, just in case, we did go with widespread anti-gen testing. How hard it is for a couple of civil servants to knock together a list of 200 car parks around the country and phone up the owners and say we are having that for testing.

Compare that to the field hospitals, they already had all the main venues sorted, what kit they needed, how much personnel to put them together.

Wrt car parks. I can think of a few dozen new build sports stadiums which won't be overburdened with customers parking any time soon.

RobD

Anabobazina said:

Seems to be a major fucking cock-up of epic proportions on our pisspoor testing rate.

Apparently the current level is ahead of schedule for meeting 100k capacity. Getting the tests done on the other hand...

Benpointer

Theuniondivvie said:

A thread.

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1252701841135226880?s=20

Shades of Trump's America.

https://twitter.com/lewis_goodall/status/1252701845367263232?s=20

This can't be right - competition is always the right answer, surely?

TimT

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Some things appear to have been well organized and seamlessly deployed e.g. food parcels. Nobody hears about them from the media, cos well, they are working. Same with the volunteer schemes.

It makes the things that have gone wrong harder to understand e.g. even if they did think these antibody tests would work. It appears they haven't even drawn up a list of where to put all the drive-through testing centres, like you know, just in case, we did go with widespread anti-gen testing. How hard it is for a couple of civil servants to knock together a list of 200 car parks around the country and phone up the owners and say we are having that for testing.

Compare that to the field hospitals, they already had all the main venues sorted, what kit they needed, how much personnel to put them together.

Often in crises, I wonder whether some of this patchy performance is down to limited CPU time of key people. They are forced to ration their focus either on the most urgent or the most important things, so naturally certain things fall between the cracks, even though they are important.

Shouldn't be the case with a professional civil service, of course, but ...

FrancisUrquhart

Anabobazina said:

Seems to be a major fucking cock-up of epic proportions on our pisspoor testing rate.

They put all the eggs in the basket of antibody testing.

The problem now is that even if they have expanded capacity, too slow with opening drive-throughs (I mean how hard can it be to send a few squaddies to tape off a car park), and I think there is a lot of confusion of who can actually get one.

I told a story early today of somebody I know who works for the NHS, but isn't front-line. Their line manager didn't even know who was eligible and after an "discussion" and a day wasted they got together the forms. But not getting tested until tomorrow. So that's 2 days wasted.

Anabobazina

Can we replace the Tens with Newsnight?

Not perfect but far, far, better than any of the other shite on telly news since this shit kicked off.

Foxy

TimT said:

Foxy said:

TimT said:

geoffw said:

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

Wouldn't it have to go through the upper respiratory tract anyway before getting further down?

The air would, but the virus might not bind in the upper tract. Some things are still chance. With really high initial exposure doses, I'd expect to see both upper and lower tract binding simultaneously. With very small initial doses, I'd expect where it binds to be more random, probably as you imply biased towards upper respiratory tract, but always with a certain degree of randomness.

There is some evidence that nasal immune responses get impaired with age, so perhaps a tie in with older patients getting less upper respiratory symptoms, and worse lung disease.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/29878083

There was also this very interesting paper in Nature, on nasal replication of the virus:

s41586-020-2196-x_reference.pdf

One implication of this is that nasal infections are more mild, but spread more easily.

Antibodies were detected in the second week, and so may provide some resistance to the lower respiratory symptoms. Only a minority of these patients were significantly unwell, but those were the ones with sputum positive samples in the second week.

"One implication of this is that nasal infections are more mild, but spread more easily."

My understanding from conversations with flu experts during the whole Yoshi Kawaoka/Ron Fauchier gain of function thing, is that this is the general case with flus. The nasal infections spread more, as they induce sneezing, but because of their location, do not cause the severe symptoms.

Had the pleasure of sitting between these two at a dinner at the time. Fascinating personalities.

Yes, I am sure that I am not the only one musing along these lines.

Masks may well reduce spread in such condition, but there is also the implication that those young or lucky enough to only get the nasal form may well be fairly frequent. This would build minimally symptomatic herd immunity.

We need an accurate antibody test to be sure.

Good night all.

RobD

eadric said:

Foxy said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Some things appear to have been well organized and seamlessly deployed e.g. food parcels. Nobody hears about them from the media, cos well, they are working. Same with the volunteer schemes.

It makes the things that have gone wrong harder to understand e.g. even if they did think these antibody tests would work. It appears they haven't even drawn up a list of where to put all the drive-through testing centres, like you know, just in case, we did go with widespread anti-gen testing. How hard it is for a couple of civil servants to knock together a list of 200 car parks around the country and phone up the owners and say we are having that for testing.

Compare that to the field hospitals, they already had all the main venues sorted, what kit they needed, how much personnel to put them together.

I think the things that worked have done so, because they were in the Pandemic Flu plan, the things that haven't are because it is a different virus to the Flu. Hence the failure on testing (not needed for Flu) and specific forms of PPE (long sleeved gowns and respirator hoods) not stockpiled for flu, but sorely needed for Coronavirus.

That’s informative. Thanks

Pb is great for this. Getting little nuggets of very useful information from people with expertise

I get far more useful info from PB than I do from mainstream media. I’ve basically given up reading columnists on this subject (and there is no other subject). Whether it’s the Mail or the Guardian I read their fatuous opinions then think; you know less than me. And I am well informed because of good old PB

*this message was brought to you by the committee to reimburse Mike Smithson*

PB is great because it's a combination of useful insight, anecdote, and a distilling of the more interesting news stories from a wide array of sources.

FrancisUrquhart

The other big thing missing from the testing regime. You need to prioritise. It really should be that the likes of front-line NHS staff can blast up, wave their badge and get the test done without messing about. Then a medium priority, who can book certain slots. And then any spare capacity, the plebs can queue to get one.

Ideally, we want South Korean system of automatic prioritisation and booking, but that is asking a bit much in the middle of an outbreak.

isam

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

They might have destroyed the economy though, and forced half the country’s restaurants & pubs out of business

geoffw

TimT said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Some things appear to have been well organized and seamlessly deployed e.g. food parcels. Nobody hears about them from the media, cos well, they are working. Same with the volunteer schemes.

It makes the things that have gone wrong harder to understand e.g. even if they did think these antibody tests would work. It appears they haven't even drawn up a list of where to put all the drive-through testing centres, like you know, just in case, we did go with widespread anti-gen testing. How hard it is for a couple of civil servants to knock together a list of 200 car parks around the country and phone up the owners and say we are having that for testing.

Compare that to the field hospitals, they already had all the main venues sorted, what kit they needed, how much personnel to put them together.

Often in crises, I wonder whether some of this patchy performance is down to limited CPU time of key people. They are forced to ration their focus either on the most urgent or the most important things, so naturally certain things fall between the cracks, even though they are important.

Shouldn't be the case with a professional civil service, of course, but ...

So we should professionalise our civil service then?

Luckyguy1983

I don't think PPE has been a particular failure of the Government - Central Government has now had to step in because of the failure of NHS Trusts to procure the necessary PPE. They were clearly given the resources to do so, and clearly just getting on the blower to the usual guy to say 'can we have 10 times our usual order please' was not going to work.

It needed a lot more work with suppliers, a lot of imagination, compromises on materials etc. Few seem to have managed that. It speaks to me of a public service where the culture is to be robotic, unimaginative, and a bit hopeless.

Anabobazina

FrancisUrquhart said:

Anabobazina said:

Seems to be a major fucking cock-up of epic proportions on our pisspoor testing rate.

They put all the eggs in the basket of antibody testing.

The problem now is that even if they have expanded capacity, too slow with opening drive-throughs (I mean how hard can it be to send a few squaddies to tape off a car park), and I think there is a lot of confusion of who can actually get one.

I told a story early today of somebody I know who works for the NHS, but isn't front-line. Their line manager didn't even know who was eligible and after an "discussion" and a day wasted they got together the forms. But not getting tested until tomorrow. So that's 2 days wasted.

Yup, it’s as much about the bureaucratic logistics and amateurish organisation as it is about access to kit, is the Newsnight narrative.

TimT

Foxy said:

eadric said:

TimT said:

@ Foxy FPT "Americans do love to think they invented everything. Proning was first used decades ago, and was widely used in Italy earlier this year, but reading the US press it sounds as if they pioneered it a fortnight ago!"

I told my wife about two weeks ago that the UK was using proning. Her hospital has only had 4 confirmed cases, but they were unaware of that approach at the time.

Re protective potential of upper respiratory tract or GI tract infections, I have no evidence to support this, but I could understand how early presentation of the virus to the immune system from sites other than the lower respiratory tract would launch a better immune response before viral loads in the lungs got too high, thereby preventing onset of the worst symptoms.

My stepmother has a mad yet brilliant theory about proning

Where does this virus come from? Bats

How do bats sleep? Upside down

Well we all know that cod liver oil is good for arthritis because it oils the joints.

Is the bat virus a respiratory one? Or a gastro one?

Generally in zoonotic diseases, the proximate virus does not cause disease in the reservoir species population. I don't know the specifics of the bat ancestor in the case of COVID, but I'd be surprised if it were pathogenic in bats.

There is a very interesting theory as to why so many fever-inducing zoonotic viruses come from birds and bats - to do with the elevated body temperatures caused by flying resulting in the virus and the host both having to evolve good genome repair kits, and the virus having to evolve good temperature tolerance.

Anabobazina

Rosena!

Foxy

RobD said:

Anabobazina said:

Seems to be a major fucking cock-up of epic proportions on our pisspoor testing rate.

Apparently the current level is ahead of schedule for meeting 100k capacity. Getting the tests done on the other hand...

It is not just about numbers though. It is about testing the right people at the right time and doing something useful as a result.

Nigelb

Newsnight interesting.

Care home director, of a chain with over ten thousand employees: “we haven’t had a response from government”.

Benpointer

Luckyguy1983 said:

I don't think PPE has been a particular failure of the Government - Central Government has now had to step in because of the failure of NHS Trusts to procure the necessary PPE. They were clearly given the resources to do so, and clearly just getting on the blower to the usual guy to say 'can we have 10 times our usual order please' was not going to work.

It needed a lot more work with suppliers, a lot of imagination, compromises on materials etc. Few seem to have managed that. It speaks to me of a public service where the culture is to be robotic, unimaginative, and a bit hopeless.

You're spouting your ususal Tory twaddle again @Luckyguy1983.

The idea that multiple competing NHS trusts were ever going to be the right way to procure a massive uplift in PPE is for the birds.

What was clearly needed was a co-ordinated centrally driven programme. We should be on a war footing for this.

FrancisUrquhart

Foxy said:

RobD said:

Anabobazina said:

Seems to be a major fucking cock-up of epic proportions on our pisspoor testing rate.

Apparently the current level is ahead of schedule for meeting 100k capacity. Getting the tests done on the other hand...

It is not just about numbers though. It is about testing the right people at the right time and doing something useful as a result.

Bill Gates made the point, especially for priority workers, must have the test performed and result back within 24hrs with this disease.

TimT

geoffw said:

TimT said:

FrancisUrquhart said:

eadric said:

Yokes said:

There is one overriding story, the saintly NHS has not been overwhelmed and by the looks of it will have plenty of capacity spare for a while. Remember how much some people marvelled at the Chinese built their field hospital in quick fashion? Yeah well Britain did it pretty fast too when it was under the gun

The rumours about Kim Jong Un being rather ill are interesting. The most interesting thing about it is the fact that the US are driving the detail of what might be up. Its either total mischief or they do have some decent intelligence and are trying, as is the way US intelligence often works, to push North Korea into a rebuttal through putting Kim on the telly, outputting some other response or no response (thus providing verification either way), by pushing out some specifics.

Yes, this occurred to me today

Amongst the hysterical criticisms, the British government is doing... ok.

No one has been refused treatment. Civil order has not broken down. Old people in ICUs are not being left to die without ventilators. No one has been welded into their apartment. We seem to be flatttening the curve with a somewhat less severe lockdown than Spain, Italy or France.

It’s not a wild success story, but it’s certainly not a catastrophe, in context.

Of course this is not headline news. Old rich country does ok in Global disaster.

Some things appear to have been well organized and seamlessly deployed e.g. food parcels. Nobody hears about them from the media, cos well, they are working. Same with the volunteer schemes.

It makes the things that have gone wrong harder to understand e.g. even if they did think these antibody tests would work. It appears they haven't even drawn up a list of where to put all the drive-through testing centres, like you know, just in case, we did go with widespread anti-gen testing. How hard it is for a couple of civil servants to knock together a list of 200 car parks around the country and phone up the owners and say we are having that for testing.

Compare that to the field hospitals, they already had all the main venues sorted, what kit they needed, how much personnel to put them together.

Often in crises, I wonder whether some of this patchy performance is down to limited CPU time of key people. They are forced to ration their focus either on the most urgent or the most important things, so naturally certain things fall between the cracks, even though they are important.

Shouldn't be the case with a professional civil service, of course, but ...

So we should professionalise our civil service then?

It has been considerably undermined by the invention of the SPAD, in my view.

rottenborough

Anabobazina said:

Rosena!

She didn't get any answer to a letter she sent to Hancock. He's dropped the ball there - get someone in the office to write something at least.

Anabobazina

Nigelb said:

Newsnight interesting.

Care home director, of a chain with over ten thousand employees: “we haven’t had a response from government”.

Best news programme by a mile since this kicked off, IMO. Emily is a trooper - there every bloody night.

FrancisUrquhart

A rapper from London who travelled to Syria to join the Islamic State group has been arrested in Spain.

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-52374784

Did he claim he went there as part of his daily exercise regime?

Benpointer

Interesting to see how the US small business loans programme has been hoovered up by large corporates.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/business-52363531