Today the Liberal Democrats have called on the Health Secretary to announce the public health grant amidst the Coronavirus crisis.
Having failed to tell local councils how much the public health grant will be, the Tories have made it all but impossible for councils to ensure our communities have proper healthcare.
Even if it was business as usual this would be shameful, but with the Coronavirus it is nothing short of an abdication of duty. Public health information is vital to lowering the Coronavirus peak, but even more alarming is the inability for local councils to try and address the inevitable gaps in our social care sector getting worse.
Whilst the Prime Minister and Health Secretary are happily touring the TV studios, they are utterly failing at the most basic level to support councils in their vital work.
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42 Comments
https://asiatimes.com/2020/03/why-are-koreas-covid-19-death-rates-so-low/
Korea is offering an extremely excellent approach for democratic countries to handle the disease without Wuhan-style lockdown. Large-scale, aggressive testing combined with early (and more comprehensive) detection and strict medical protocols enable it to effectively contain a very sudden and large outbreak, again, without region-wide lockdowns.
Perhaps the UK should emulate Korea, where new infections are slowing and death rate never gets pass 1%.
By the way, aggressive testing will actually relieve people of panic, because it will ensure the feeling that everyone will be tested and, it will drive down death rate.
I guess the total number of infection cases in Italy is already tens of thousand, given its unsually high death rate for a developed country.
Lib Dems need to up their game. I’d sugguest calling for the cancellation of all large sportting and entertainment events. They could also take a leaf out of the Irish governments book
Coronavirus sick pay scheme will see affected receive €305 per week
New income support plan will cost €2.4bn, with payments available to self-employed
https://www.irishtimes.com/news/ireland/irish-news/coronavirus-sick-pay-scheme-will-see-affected-receive-305-per-week-1.4197894
because if you think offerring sick pay at
The Prime Minister added: “The Health Secretary will bring forward, as part of our emergency coronavirus legislation, measures to allow the payment of statutory sick pay, from the very first day you are sick, instead of four days, under the current rules.
“That’s the right way forward. Nobody should be penalised speaker for doing the right thing.”
Under the current Government rules workers are eligible for £94.25 per week Statutory Sick Pay (SSP).
SSP is paid by an employer for up to 28 weeks and tax and National Insurance will be deducted.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1250747/coronavirus-uk-boris-johnson-coronavirus-statutory-sick-pay-eligibility-coronavirus-latest
because if you think offerring sick pay at £94.25 will stop anyone bar those at deaths door from going to work you really don’t know how Joe and Joesette Blogs live.
We are about to see decisions coming home to roost. If you are living hand to mouth taking time off isn’t an option. I’m aware of people who never take time off no matter how sick they get and they won’t this time for in their cases “No work equals no food”. We have birthed a devil take the hindmost society in the past this has worked well for many of the older amongst us at the expense of the young, now we are about to learn that shattering society for a few trinkets comes at a cost and in some cases it will be a deadly cost.
I’ll leave you with this thought. A young l;ad I know is on his final written warning for being sick two times in a year, one more instance and he has lost his job, what chance of him self isolating if he gets a cough, after all it’s likely to be mild for him, for me quite possibly fatal but hey he has to look after himself.
Meanwhile, our leaders have been spreading falsehoods about current testing, which is encouraging the spread of this disease. The CDC actually instructed hospitals not to test until patients demonstrate severe illness—at which point they’ve probably infected many other people. The guidance has recently changed, but it won’t help much, given the shortage of test kits.
The number of health care workers exposed to the virus is rising rapidly, with implications for the care not just of coronavirus patients, but all others who need urgent medical attention. In Korea, where the authorities have been aggressive in identifying and managing the disease, there is nevertheless a long waiting list for hospitals. The same is true in Italy, which went from zero cases to hospitals at full capacity in the span of one week. We may already be approaching that scenario in major urban centers. Many are comparing this to the flu, but that’s wrong: the coronavirus is 10 times more deadly than flu, even with good health care.
Just think about it: does it stand to reason that the 2nd largest economy in the world (China) just collapsed because the government decided to shut everything down due to a bad case of the flu? Reports suggest that perhaps half of Iranian leaders have been infected, and many have already died. Investors have not begun to reckon with the geopolitical consequences of these developments.
https://wolfstreet.com/2020/03/09/we-anticipate-a-period-of-severe-market-turbulence-that-will-create-new-opportunities-for-patient-investors/
The keywords are “Just think about it: does it stand to reason that the 2nd largest economy in the world (China) just collapsed because the government decided to shut everything down due to a bad case of the flu? “; we have know that for weeks but appear to be like a rabbit in the headlights, unable to make decsions beause it might upset someone.
I cant help feeling that The Governments approach is complacent & too little, too late.
Shouldnt The Libdems be calling for a much more agressive approach ?
Coronavirus COVID-19 Global Cases by Johns Hopkins CSSE
Mobile Version
https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/85320e2ea5424dfaaa75ae62e5c06e61
The worrying thing on this tracker is not the figures for countries that have reportted figures, it is the countries that seem immune or hardly touched like North Korea, Mongolia, the Stans, Turkey and Indonsia ( I could go on). If it is there unreportted and unattacked well it isn’t good.
Frankie, Paul Barker – yes, the party must call for aggressive testing. If we don’t have the capability to test 10k people each day, then 6000, 4000 or even 2000 will be better than current rate, just testing people to the maximum of our current capacity, while push for ramping up testing capacity, by creating strategy to booost domestic test kit production and by importing from South Korea, where the pandemic is slowing down (thanks to aggressive testing and early detection).
The alternative to ramping up testing will be lockdown, like in Wuhan, like in Lombardy.
By the way, frankie, Covid is not lethal, if you look at Korean data, where the government (by the way, the ruling party is a centre-left liberal party) is testing its people very aggressively, the death rate CF-R is below 0.6%, just a little above the flu death rate.
Thomas,
The death rate in Italy us reported at over 5%, probably an exaggeration but you can see why they are clampping down. As for South Korea there are 7513 cases, 54 deaths, 247 recovered, 7212 active. To get your 0.6% figure you have to assume none of the active cases will die, very unlikely.
Source of figures John Hopkins.
It’s darkly ironic that some of the champions of global interconnectedness are now trying to stop even local interconnectedness at sporting events and such.
Regardless of where you stand on the best way to combat Covid-19, how the governments of the world, and particularly the Stock Markets, have so far reacted to the present crisis, could drive a coach and horses through the policies that have continued to thrive in the post 2008 crash decade and beyond.
What has happened to Brexit? The answer would appear to be that public health, or the safeguarding of it, quite rightly wins every time. As my old dad used to say; “Health is better than wealth” – crude but perceptive.
At the start of the Brexit debate I always took the view that, if we hung in there, the EU would be forced by geopolitical circumstances to change. I thought that nascent nationalism would be the catalyst. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps, instead, it might be a new little virus that is just looking for a safe home in which to survive, a bit like those Syrian refugees in some ways. However, in its ability to reach the parts that sympathy for human suffering fails to reach, the former may prove to be the wake up call we all need, especially our so called Leaders. We have so far said no to both in the hope that we can be spared.
As John Donne famously wrote; “No man is an island”. We need to beat the first and resolve the second, so let’s get on with it. And, if the world changes in the process and we are really at last forced to mend our ways, so much the better.
frankie – Italy getting high death rate because its previous “business as usual” approach has caused the disease to go out of control for its current hospital and medical infrastructure capacity. The death rate in Korea will probably not get pass 2% because well, aggressive testing and early detection reduce the chance of undetected cases running around infecting more people, and thus relieving lots of burden from its medical system – in fact, number of new cases in Korea is falling each day. Aggressive testing here means also test folks without symptoms if they are suspected (e.g. simply having close contact with someone who met infected people earlier).
Conclusion: Covid is only deadly if you let it go out of control and thus overloading the healthcare system.
Glenn – South Korea proves that you can control the disease even without going authoritarian (lockdown, total travel ban…) even if there is a large initial outbreak (much larger than Italy), by testing everyone (10000 people being tested each day).
Note: South Korea has direct pandemic fighting experience from the previous MERS outbreak (and SARS as well).
Britain still has time to do the same, but there are only few days left before it becomes another Italy/Wuhan/Iran. Situations in France and Germany have gone out of control.
Glenn – Korea has proved that aggressive testing can help control the disease without going authoritarian even if there is a large initial outbreak (larger than Italy).
Britain still has time to do the same, but I fear there are only few days left before the disease goes out of control and we become another Italy.
@Thomas – What is the benefit of mass testing? It just provides a snapshot in time. You could test negative then become infected within minutes.
It is invaluable in the early days when it provides accurate data on the rate of spread plus indirect information on the method and potency of infection. This is when individual cases and contacts can be identified and the circumstances of infection understood. It is also useful in specific circumstances for confirming diagnosis.
Once there is a mass problem it is simpler, cheaper and faster to assume a high risk of infection in every interaction and to assume infection has occurred once symptoms appear
Peter – well-directed aggressive testing aim to cover as mamy connections to the initial identified cases (like in Korea) as possible is able to detect a larger proportion of infected cases and isolate them early enough instead of letting them going around and infecting more people. And of course it is not an one-off test. Korea has been doing so for weeks, and their number of new cases is falling recently.
“Once there is a mass problem it is simpler, cheaper and faster to assume a high risk of infection in every interaction and to assume infection has occurred once symptoms appear” – you ignore the fact that Covid can spread during the incubation period, which means, say, if I am infected, I can infect you even though I have no symptoms. The British businessman in France last month is the biggest example.
Once there is a mass problem, things will quickly become like Wuhan and Italy right now, and you will have no choice but to impose illiberal Wuhan-style lockdown.
I don’t know what you think but I do see this pandemic as a race between democracies and dictatorships to prove which model will be superior in handle such a situation. The last thing you want is to vindicate China’s ironfist approach. Italy, unfornately, has to resort to Chinese approach after “business as usual” failed massively, and Lombardy has clearly become Wuhan 2.0. Meanwhile, Korea is getting its outbreak under control.
Note: Korea actually has more direct experience than us, they did learn a lot from their MERS outbreak.
When I said assume high risk with every interaction, I meant assume everyone is infected. Doctors have to do this all the time. It means that unnecessary touching, close face to face breathing and the like should be avoided. Regard every door knob and hand rail as being contaminated. That means don’t touch your face until you have washed your hands. These simple precautions apply whether the people are healthy, incubating or showing symptoms and whether or not they had a test at some stage.
I don’t think this is some sort of competition of the ideologies but cultural differences do affect the spread and governments have to react to the particular problems that they face.
Of course, the best way to avoid the virus is to avoid everyone else by staying at home. But that would quickly bring normal life, the health service, supply chains, the economy and everything else to a halt. The government planned phases have more to do with advice from psychologists than medics to strike a balance between rate of infection and social and economic impact. In other words, avoid panic.
I suspect that Italy has deep rooted social and religious practices that spread the virus quickly before the advice could sink in. Now the ultimate way to force these precautions is by taking drastic action.
The virus will not stop until it runs out of victims it can infect.
Peter – “Of course, the best way to avoid the virus is to avoid everyone else by staying at home. But that would quickly bring normal life, the health service, supply chains, the economy and everything else to a halt. The government planned phases have more to do with advice from psychologists than medics to strike a balance between rate of infection and social and economic impact. In other words, avoid panic.”- This I agree, although I believe that it’s time to restrict unnecessary gatherings, especially large ones (like those Yellow Vest demomstrations for example), and perhaps schools – a perfect ground for Covid to spread – should be closed now. Only works as well as work-related and emergency travels are allowed.
“Doctors have to do this all the time. It means that unnecessary touching, close face to face breathing and the like should be avoided. Regard every door knob and hand rail as being contaminated. That means don’t touch your face until you have washed your hands. These simple precautions apply whether the people are healthy, incubating or showing symptoms and whether or not they had a test at some stage.” – unfortunately most people will not do so, especially children and young people. It simply requires too much discipline.
Also, it seems like wearing face masks actually works, even the cloth ones. I mean, in East Asian countries where the disease is still pretty much under control, everyone wears a face mask of all kinds. At least, it (even the non-medical, cloth types) will prevent the ones who wear it from spreading the virus to others – well, anyone of us can carry Covid without knowing so unless being tested.
Also, people travelling from Italy and Continental Europe must be subject to mandatory testing, with or without symptoms. I don’t advocate for total travel bans, however.
I agree with most of what you say. I suspect that it is inevitable that the virus will spread to most of the population for the reasons you give and there is not much the government can do about that. If the government tries to prevent such spreading they could precipitate panic and everything grinds to a halt. If they tell people to let it take its course, then many could die and the health service will be overwhelmed. The objective is to keep the rate of infection at a manageable level.
Children do not have the maturity to take precautions so schools are an efficient way of spreading the virus but closing schools causes massive problems for working parents and increases the panic factor. Luckily, children seem to cope with the virus very well.
Probably the special case in all of this are the elderly especially those with other conditions. They should try to stay at home and away from crowds.
Thomas
I was making a wry observation, not outlining a response.
Peter – “If the government tries to prevent such spreading they could precipitate panic and everything grinds to a halt. If they tell people to let it take its course, then many could die and the health service will be overwhelmed. The objective is to keep the rate of infection at a manageable level.” – that’s why I recommend the Korean approach. You said that Italy has religious and cultural practices that likely worsen the disease, but Korea also has a full-blown cult (I repeat, a cult) whose members always pray and practice their religion close to each other physically, and they did everything to hide away from the government when the disease broke out, but Korea still manage to get the disease under control. The Korean government employs an aggressive testing approach, testing 10k people each day, thus is able to quickly identify and isolate infected people who would otherwise evade detection. Their number of new cases is slowing recently and all of their active cases are mild.
I think we can start a trial large-scale testing on homeless people, because they often spend time in crowded places like soup kitchens and social accommodation, and their immune systems are likely compromised due to hardship, as well as on people travelling from Italy/Iran/China/other European countries both at airports and at the Channel.
Meanwhile, in Britain, many people with symptoms or having contact with suspected cases want to test but get rejected. This will be very dangerous if those people are actually infected with Covid.
The chief medical officer for England has given advice to the parliamentary select committee, chaired by the former Health Secretary. The four CMOs have slightly different local contexts, but do talk to each other, which is comforting because it takes the debate to the ‘expert’ level.
On Sunday the WHO put forward a female spokesperson and mentioned two different levels of mortality risks, which the UK government has not mentioned. PMQ is tomorrow. Following today’s announcement by the Italian PM there is a continuing risk that Boris will waffle and should be closely questioned. He may be tempted to talk about the Olympics and the London mayoral election.
10th Mar ’20 – 3:20pm Dr. Margaret Harris.
Peter – “Children do not have the maturity to take precautions so schools are an efficient way of spreading the virus but closing schools causes massive problems for working parents and increases the panic factor. Luckily, children seem to cope with the virus very well.” – children do cope well, but they will infect each other and then their parents as well – people without symptoms can stilk infect others. So, we don’t really have a choice.
Thomas, we agree that schools will spread the virus internally then externally. I am speculating that the powers that be are prepared to put up with that, provided the spread of the virus remains at a manageable level. It is all about balancing the risk of overwhelming the system against the risk of everything coming to a halt.
Preventing the spread is not an objective because it would take drastic measures. Closing all schools would lead to demands for other closures and panic levels would rise. It would not be long before people refuse to go to work, then there would be no services, food, electricity, etc.
A managed, steady spread of the virus is what they are aiming for. That may surprise people who think that stopping the virus at all costs is essential. People panic too readily, and could do more damage than a dose of the virus, just look at the panic buying and we are still at an early stage.
Peter’s solution is we must keep a stiff upper lip and die in an orderly manner; this indeed does seem to be the government’s preferred solution. The problem is the death toll will be too high, especially too a society unused to large scale death and then the lock down panic will start as seen in Italy. Others solution is to decry globalisation and then as a solution decry globalisation with out of offering a meaningful way forward or even a meaningful way back; they dream of a little village safe from the world but the world is getting more global by the day and so ironically is their little village. The rest of Europe is shutting down and socially isolating, the UK isn’t, neither are the likes of the US and many other countries in denile, time will tell who are most succesful at weathering this storm but I wouldn’t put money on Depeffle and Co winning this race.
Thomas, thinking about the balance point, it is probably related to intensive care beds. If the demand on these is soaring out of control the government will start banning events involving masses of people.
Peter,
If they government take action when intensive care beds run out, it is far to late, give the rate of increase is 33% per day and people tend to take five days to exhibit symptoms. Use that approach and you will see scenes like Italy are now experiencing.
“A managed, steady spread of the virus is what they are aiming for. That may surprise people who think that stopping the virus at all costs is essential. People panic too readily, and could do more damage than a dose of the virus,”
That’s all very well for people who are fit and healthy and are able to fight off this virus.
But when you have a family that suffers from underlining conditions like myself who has Chron’s, High Blood pressure and am just getting over a Pulmonary Embolism and my partner who has Angina, or my Mother who has COPD and my father who also suffers from heart disease and DVT, then there is my young niece who has a mechanical heart valve as she had developed Rheumatic Fever.
Please forgive us for “panicking to readily”
Peter – “Preventing the spread is not an objective because it would take drastic measures. Closing all schools would lead to demands for other closures and panic levels would rise. It would not be long before people refuse to go to work, then there would be no services, food, electricity, etc.
A managed, steady spread of the virus is what they are aiming for. That may surprise people who think that stopping the virus at all costs is essential. People panic too readily, and could do more damage than a dose of the virus, just look at the panic buying and we are still at an early stage.” – perceived inaction can also lead to panic as well. Perhaps panic buying is actually caused by the apparent lack of action from the gov, so people have to to take the matter themselves. OTOH, strong measures will show people that the government are taking it very seriously and only this can match the “we will do everything” from the government.
You can just look at Korea and then compare it to Italy, France and Germany. Italy is now Wuhan 2.0. Meanwhile, the number of cases in France and Germany are rising at a similar rate to that of Hubei you know. On the other hand, Korea has worse initial outbreak than all of these countries, yet they have brought the disease under control. Please, just do some research on how other countries are doing, because Korea is literally a successful real-life case study in action.
“Thomas, thinking about the balance point, it is probably related to intensive care beds. If the demand on these is soaring out of control the government will start banning events involving masses of people.” – by then it is too late. The purpose of mass testing in Korea is specifically preventing intensive care from being overloaded. I want to mention Taiwan and Singapore as well, but focus on Korea because Korea is doing what a liberal democracy is supposed to do, not “business as usual”.
I did not imply that the government would be stupid enough to wait until beds ran out. I just suggested that their actions would be related to intensive care capacity.
I’m just a citizen giving opinions based on what I hear in the news media. Please do not hold me responsible for how the government makes its decisions but they seem logical to me, given the circumstances.
Matt is not alone. If I become infected I have no expectation of surviving because of existing conditions.. But I refuse to indulge in panic buying and will just take the sensible precautions that all of us can take.
I see that Nadine Dorries has just been a confirmed case of CoronaVirus.
How many cabinet members has she been in direct and indirect contact with through the health secretary? She also attended a reception at no10 with Boris Johnson
Will they all now have to follow the governments own advice and have to self isolate?
Maybe now they might have to take this all a bit more seriously and bring forward the delay stage and social isolation that the country needs
Matt,
If we could all die in an orderly manner, not to close together, well that would be grand, the government don’t want the economy upset, they don’t want the horse racing or other events being adversely effected. They also don’t want us to turn up at A&E making negative headlines. So if we could all die quietly, trying not to generate any negative headlines Depeffle and Co would be ever so grateful; they might even have a memorial service for us in the dim distant future.
Matt,
Perhaps Depeffle has self isolated in a fridge, he does have form for that.
@frankie
After months of disagreeing with you, it is kind of refreshing to find common ground even if it is not in such pleasant circumstances.
Well wishes to you and all of your loves ones 🙂
I mean, Libdem MPs should grab this chance to distinguish themselves. This is the greatest opportunity since Brexit, from a political standpoint.
Economies run as much on sentiment as anything. Panic will become a self-fulfilling movement if it is not stopped. One of the roles for governments is to provide surety and ease pessimism.
So far, the government is failing in this regard. It should be saying we will do whatever it takes to stop a recession. It should be saying it has as much fiscal capacity as is necessary to provide income and employment support and insulate the economy from the obvious demand impacts.
The reality of the gig economy is being exposed. This complex economic shock is also exposing the structural weaknesses of economies that have evolved under neoliberalism to be dependent on consumer debt and casualised, precarious work. Many workers are now without the usual buffers that have helped people risk manage in times of job loss.
While some eulogise the ‘freedoms’ of the ‘gig economy’ and young people like to think of themselves more as entrepreneurs than as workers as they weave through traffic on around on bikes delivering food to those who can no longer be bothered interrupting their reality TV viewing to venture to the shops, the harsh reality of their insecure positions could well be exposed by the coronavirus.
An increasing number of workers are now dependent on casual work hours as their main source of income. These hours are the first call by firms seeking to adjust their costs as their sales fall. Most of these workers are low-paid and have little or no savings. Once they lose their hours, rents become impossible to pay and the precariousness of their true position in society becomes obvious.
They might think of themselves as entrepreneurs but they will require substantial income support from government to survive the hours losses.
It is also not just the workers that lose their jobs, ie hours of work, as a result of the spending collapse that will need support. The government should introduce legislation to ensure that all workers, irrespective of their current status, have sick pay and other leave entitlements, so they are income protected from health failure during the crisis, and at the same time ensure they can afford to self isolate when they are unwell and so keep the spread of the virus to a minimum.
Please would colleagues read and share the article viral expertise here with the link, this is a matter of importance and feedback welcome
http://www.ustinovforum.com
https://www.ft.com/content/dd416102-5d20-11ea-b0ab-339c2307bcd4
South Korea clearly stands out in testing its people. The good news is that the NHS is also planning to ramp up testing from 1500 to 10000 people per day.
Well on the plus side for Peter the Tories have found the magic money tree on the downside the governments policy on coronavirus isn’t likely to make him feel good
https://mobile.twitter.com/GenevieveRobert/status/1237382441834291200
Just in case this was missed from the Guardian
A retired intensive care doctor claims the government plans to increase coronavirus testing are “way too late” after he and his friends were repeatedly refused tests despite falling ill following an Austrian skiing trip…………..
“I’ve never been so ill. I was hoping they would just test me anyway and to prove I’ve had it. My friends have all phoned NHS 111 and they’ve all been told several times that as they haven’t been to an at risk area they can’t be tested and they should even self isolate.
These people are saying they are as ill as they’ve ever been, and they still can’t do a test.
The reason we’ve got relatively low numbers in this country at the moment is because they’re only been testing about 1,500 a day. I think the infection has been widespread for a month now.
They may be upping the testing but they haven’t put Ischgl on a high risk list, despite knowing about this for days. It is a massive cluster. Six of us have been back in Chichester going about their daily life. I suspect we’ll find a big cluster in Chichester two weeks.
The increase in testing is way too late. I think it was obvious six weeks ago that we should have been doing surveillance screening. Lives are at risk here.”
Only economic illiterates use the phrase “magic money tree”. Sadly for the Lib Dems this includes several MPs!
The budget wasn’t too bad! Better than I expected. So some credit where it is due. On the negative side the Tories, like many in the Labour Party too, are hung up on the idea that capital spending is good and can be funded by so-called borrowing * whereas current spending is not so good and has to be funded by taxation revenue.
The snag with this approach is it means that we build lots of schools and hospitals but keep them empty because we don’t want to spend money to staff them with doctors, nurses and teachers.
* The pound is an IOU of government so I’m always curious about how they can borrow them back. Think about that in the context that you’ve given someone an IOU for a bag of sugar!