COVID19

[Which Tyler]

https://www.ft.com/content/03e45e35-ab0 ... 6db08a935c

Protective medical equipment made by US manufacturer 3M and bound for Germany was ... confirmed that the consignment had been “confiscated” in Bangkok and never reached Berlin.



They've done the same with supplies destiepned for France too

[Which Tyler]

Remember we expect other deaths to increase that are not covid19 due to health services being swamped. It doesn't mean that numbers are being fixed.

Which is why total deaths is by far the most useful measure for the effects of COVID, with total deaths for the same day (averaged over 5 years) as a comparison

[morepork]

https://www.ft.com/content/03e45e35-ab0 ... 6db08a935c

Protective medical equipment made by US manufacturer 3M and bound for Germany was ... confirmed that the consignment had been “confiscated” in Bangkok and never reached Berlin.



They've done the same with supplies destiepned for France too

What total cunts.

[morepork]

Is VAT on the table?

For decrease? Yes, in the short term.

Good. Increase tax rates at the top end and decrease the burden shouldered by the 90% that inhabit the rest of society. You need a bit of positive water pressure and an open faucet in order for things to trickle down, no?

[Mellsblue]

https://www.ft.com/content/03e45e35-ab0 ... 6db08a935c

Protective medical equipment made by US manufacturer 3M and bound for Germany was ... confirmed that the consignment had been “confiscated” in Bangkok and never reached Berlin.



They've done the same with supplies destiepned for France too

I think the French are doing ok for PPE:

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/e ... 4?mode=amp

[canta_brian]

Horse has bolted for this outbreak it seems, but wastewater detection appears to be a good early warning system for further outbreaks.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586- ... 1-43284621

[Mellsblue]

The reaction of some sections of society to this issue has been incredible*.

*I mostly meant scientists, healthcare workers and volunteers but I also include cretins such as those who think social distancing is going to a beauty spot and standing in a crowd.

[Mellsblue]

We are now tracking higher than Italy and just below Spain.

[Mellsblue]

If there are any FT subscribers on here you cut and paste this, please:

[Donny osmond]

We are now tracking higher than Italy and just below Spain.

See on these charts, am I right in thinking the little star on each line represents when the country went "lock down"?

It's been more or less 2 weeks, I think, since the UK started taking it seriously, based on when we closed the schools and the message started getting out about social distancing. If our line gradient doesn't start showing some movement soon, we're in serious trouble.

Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

[Sandydragon]

We are now tracking higher than Italy and just below Spain.

See on these charts, am I right in thinking the little star on each line represents when the country went "lock down"?

It's been more or less 2 weeks, I think, since the UK started taking it seriously, based on when we closed the schools and the message started getting out about social distancing. If our line gradient doesn't start showing some movement soon, we're in serious trouble.

Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

Yet in the Times today, a member of the scientific committee advising on the response to this is sounding out how quickly we need to release the lockdown controls to get businesses working again. He may have an academic point but when we haven’t got to the peak yet, messages like this risk confusing people, and some people only need the vaguest excuse not to take this seriously.

[Digby]

I don't want people to panic unnecessarily but Ocado have shifted from weekly to bi-weekly deliveries. But we can get through this if we change a couple of those bottles of wine for a spirit

[Galfon]

Lots of harsh lessons learned - scant consolation for those who have lost loved ones, though large numbers of lives lost was inevitable once is isolation had failed; that Dutch waste water finding should be useful for the future.
The uk/us sustained spikes show the consequences of dilly-dallying with a brute like this.
Big credit to Tesco for upping their game early - our local
version went to strict customer control with screens, wash stations, distance guides etc very quickly and shelves are pretty full.

[Donny osmond]

Interesting take from Germany. I imagine there isn't a population in the world who is fully happy with their local response.

The below follows on from hearing yesterday about those German testing figures. They are blanket testing everyone, which may bring some decent data for scientists, but for politicians and the population is skewing the figures somewhat. Countries who only test those with symptoms, for eg, are clearly going to look like they have worse infection rates than countries who test everyone.

https://www.spiegel.de/international/ge ... 4364c43f2e

There is a danger that the lack of reagents could soon mean that fewer tests will be available than there are today. Meanwhile, the number of infections is expected to continue increasing.

To manage the looming shortage, lab operators have called for an even stricter decision-making process for who gets tested and who doesn't. Only people who are at risk or showing symptoms should be tested, they argue. "At the moment, we're still testing way too many healthy people," says Borucki. Well over 90 percent of the tests evaluated by Bioscientia come back negative. "We're wasting valuable reagents."

Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

[Banquo]

If there are any FT subscribers on here you cut and paste this, please:

Nails it, less about how good germany have been as that's still playing out; it is spot on about PHE and the NHS (management/clinical strategists).

[Mellsblue]

If there are any FT subscribers on here you cut and paste this, please:

Nails it, less about how good germany have been as that's still playing out; it is spot on about PHE and the NHS (management/clinical strategists).

Are you able to cut and paste for me? I’ve used up my free allocation for the week.

[Banquo]

Even through this dark month of unimaginable shocks, one thing is still guaranteed to make British ministers and officials bristle: mentioning the Germans. “Arrgh,” sighed one senior adviser, stung by unflattering comparisons.

With the pandemic bearing down, Boris Johnson on March 17 called on Britain’s captains of industry to start building ventilators to supplement the country’s stock of 8,000, lightheartedly dubbing the scheme “Operation Last Gasp”. 

But almost a week before the prime minister spoke, Germany had ordered 10,000 from an established manufacturer, adding to its existing 20,000 machines. This week Germany had more than twice as many critical care beds vacant — around 15,000 to 20,000 — as England has in its system overall.

Even more stark is relative performance on testing. The UK and Germany entered the crisis in lock-step, working together on virus tests, some of the first developed in the world. But Germany’s labs ran at more than five-times the NHS rate, completing 918,460 tests versus Britain’s 163,194. 

Only on Thursday did Matt Hancock, the health secretary, declare Britain would “ramp up” efforts by harnessing private facilities — just as the global supply of chemicals and testing equipment was being squeezed. “Germany had 100 test labs at the start, largely thanks to Roche, but we had to start from a lower base,” he said. “We are going to build a British diagnostics industry at scale.”

Experts say it is too early to judge how different policy choices have affected countries during this global pandemic. Germany’s advantages stem from decades of higher health spending, alongside an industrial base better able to scale-up for an emergency. Even with this head-start, German ministers admit they are in “the calm before the storm”; in terms of deaths, the country is on a similar coronavirus trajectory to the UK.


But Berlin’s strategy has nevertheless held up an unforgiving mirror to Britain’s government. This is not just with regard to NHS capacity — tuned more for resource efficiency than resilience — but the quality and pace of decision making. The charge: that Britain’s strategy twisted and turned, squandering precious time. 

“It just wasn't consistent. They tested various strategies and rejected them,” said Martin Stuermer, a virologist at IMD Labor in Frankfurt. “They had this plan to allow life to go on but ensure that elderly people were protected. But then they abandoned that. And they weren't prepared for mass testing. but the main problem was that the government just didn't chart a clear course in this crisis — unlike the German government.”

The implications may soon become terrifyingly clear. UK infections are expected to peak by Easter Sunday.

Mr Johnson was slow to grip the coronavirus crisis. Evidence coming out of China about the disease in February was deemed unreliable and there was a hope it would burn itself out, like Sars in 2003.

There was an element of British exceptionalism to it

Treasury official on UK government strategy
Although Whitehall had started working up contingency plans from the start of 2020, the lack of urgency was summed up by Mr Johnson’s decision to disappear for a week in late February to his grace-and-favour Chevening home. It was only on March 2 that he chaired his first coronavirus emergency meeting.

At this point advisers were envisaging a spread of the virus through Britain — controlled by escalating social distancing measures — with a peak around mid-May to early-June. “Glastonbury should be all right,” one minister told anxious colleagues, referring to the world’s biggest music festival in late June.

Rather than following countries like South Korea in taking immediate draconian action to stop the disease — including the use of mass testing — Mr Johnson’s team thought a more modulated approach would ultimately save more lives and cause less economic harm. 


Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, found a willing ally in Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief adviser, in embracing the concept of “herd immunity”, where the disease passed through healthy members of the population. Mr Cummings referred to the concept in a 2013 blog. 

“There was an element of British exceptionalism to it,” said one Treasury official. 

Crucially during this time, Public Health England, a government agency, also advised that mass-testing was not feasible. Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College and government adviser, told parliament it was “very clear from messages from PHE that we would have nowhere near enough testing capacity to adopt that strategy”.

Unlike Germany’s decentralised and at times unwieldy system, the UK chose to concentrate efforts in superlabs, in part to ensure reliability. Sharon Peacock of PHE said it was preferable to “dissipating our efforts into a lot of laboratories”. One senior academic said PHE struggled to delegate one of its core functions; the service had been “hanging around waiting for the next epidemic. That is what they are paid to do,” he said.

But in practice it meant that while Germany broadened its testing strategy to cover all those with mild symptoms — the core of a strategy to test, trace and isolate people infected with the virus — by March, Britain was struggling to scale up. The approach was narrowed to testing only hospital admissions. Only 5,000 of approx 500,000 frontline NHS workers had been tested by Thursday. 


Donald Trump was to say later that if Britain had persisted with the herd immunity approach it would have been “catastrophic”. But that had already become clear to Mr Johnson and his team by the weekend of March 14-15.

New data from Italy confirmed the disease was spreading faster than previously thought, with more patients ending up in intensive care units: Imperial College warned about 250,000 people would have died in the UK without a change of course. Worse still, ministers were advised that even if NHS intensive care capacity was doubled or trebled, it would be overwhelmed three times over.

Mr Hancock, Michael Gove, cabinet office minister, and Mr Cummings now urged Mr Johnson to put aside his libertarian instincts and effectively lock down Britain. “The three of them saw it immediately,” said one Number 10 official. Another official involved in the strategy change said: “When the facts change, you change your mind.”


Restrictions on social life lagged behind some of Germany’s states by a week or so, but the differences with Britain were less pronounced than with some other countries.

More consequential for Britain was the gaping flaw the strategy change exposed in Britain’s preparations. The only exit strategies from the lockdown appeared to be a vaccine or antiviral treatments — still thought to be many months away — or mass community testing to allow restrictions to be eased without triggering a second wave. 

“If you follow a herd immunity strategy, why would you not build treatment and testing capacity? That’s what puzzles me,” asked Devi Sridhar, professor of global health at Edinburgh University. “I think it is because they were taking everything from the flu playbook. In flu you don’t have to chase every case down, you don’t test in the community or medical staff . . . But coronavirus is not flu.” 

To expand treatment, Britain has already doubled its critical care bed capacity this month and aims to acquire up to 50,000 ventilators in total. Some 30 are due to arrive this weekend but 8,000 are expected in the next few weeks. But time is very short. Since the beginning of the outbreak Germany has amassed 10,000. 

Recommended
AnalysisCoronavirus
With Johnson under fire, blame game begins over virus crisis

Mr Johnson appealed to household names such as Airbus, Nissan, Dyson and McLaren to aid the effort. But some established medical equipment makers felt left in the cold. “They’ve overlooked the real manufacturers in the system,” said one person at a medical devices maker who asked not to be named. Ministers insist they have pursued all avenues, engaging with industry since February.

Blame over testing mis-steps is being directed by ministers at the NHS bureaucracy and PHE. “They’re proud of their independence and won’t yield for anyone,” said one minister of health officials. “The same is true for Public Health England: they’re the reason we don’t have more testing. They want to control the whole tedious process.”

For doctors a long way downstream from the decisions in Whitehall, the impression has overwhelmingly been one of dithering and delay caused by theoreticians being left to manage an emergency. 

“To us on the frontline, it feels like this is what happens when you let epidemiologists in charge of the real world,” said an NHS consultant from Hertfordshire on the Covid frontline. “What has never been explained to those working in respiratory care is why there wasn't 'test, test, test', then isolate, contact and trace again, which is the absolute basis of public health and infection control. Now they seem to have reacted, but it's all too late.”

By Alex Barker, George Parker, Laura Hughes, Sebastian Payne, Laura Hughes, Camilla Hodgson, Peter Foster, Michael Pooler, David Blood and Chelsea Bruce-Lockhart in London and Guy Chazan and Tobias Buck in Berlin

[Donny osmond]

[quote]Even through this dark month of unimaginable shocks, one thing is still guaranteed to make British ministers and officials bristle: mentioning the Germans. “Arrgh,” sighed one senior adviser, stung by unflattering comparisons.

With the pandemic bearing down, Boris Johnson on March 17 called on Britain’s captains of industry to start building ventilators to supplement the country’s stock of 8,000, lightheartedly dubbing the scheme “Operation Last Gasp”. 

But almost a week before the prime minister spoke, Germany had ordered 10,000 from an established manufacturer, adding to its existing 20,000 machines. This week Germany had more than twice as many critical care beds vacant — around 15,000 to 20,000 — as England has in its system overall.

Even more stark is relative performance on testing. The UK and Germany entered the crisis in lock-step, working together on virus tests, some of the first developed in the world. But Germany’s labs ran at more than five-times the NHS rate, completing 918,460 tests versus Britain’s 163,194. 

Only on Thursday did Matt Hancock, the health secretary, declare Britain would “ramp up” efforts by harnessing private facilities — just as the global supply of chemicals and testing equipment was being squeezed. “Germany had 100 test labs at the start, largely thanks to Roche, but we had to start from a lower base,” he said. “We are going to build a British diagnostics industry at scale.”

Experts say it is too early to judge how different policy choices have affected countries during this global pandemic. Germany’s advantages stem from decades of higher health spending, alongside an industrial base better able to scale-up for an emergency. Even with this head-start, German ministers admit they are in “the calm before the storm”; in terms of deaths, the country is on a similar coronavirus trajectory to the UK.

But Berlin’s strategy has nevertheless held up an unforgiving mirror to Britain’s government. This is not just with regard to NHS capacity — tuned more for resource efficiency than resilience — but the quality and pace of decision making. The charge: that Britain’s strategy twisted and turned, squandering precious time. 

“It just wasn't consistent. They tested various strategies and rejected them,” said Martin Stuermer, a virologist at IMD Labor in Frankfurt. “They had this plan to allow life to go on but ensure that elderly people were protected. But then they abandoned that. And they weren't prepared for mass testing. but the main problem was that the government just didn't chart a clear course in this crisis — unlike the German government.”

The implications may soon become terrifyingly clear. UK infections are expected to peak by Easter Sunday.

Mr Johnson was slow to grip the coronavirus crisis. Evidence coming out of China about the disease in February was deemed unreliable and there was a hope it would burn itself out, like Sars in 2003.

Although Whitehall had started working up contingency plans from the start of 2020, the lack of urgency was summed up by Mr Johnson’s decision to disappear for a week in late February to his grace-and-favour Chevening home. It was only on March 2 that he chaired his first coronavirus emergency meeting.

At this point advisers were envisaging a spread of the virus through Britain — controlled by escalating social distancing measures — with a peak around mid-May to early-June. “Glastonbury should be all right,” one minister told anxious colleagues, referring to the world’s biggest music festival in late June.

Rather than following countries like South Korea in taking immediate draconian action to stop the disease — including the use of mass testing — Mr Johnson’s team thought a more modulated approach would ultimately save more lives and cause less economic harm. 

Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, found a willing ally in Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief adviser, in embracing the concept of “herd immunity”, where the disease passed through healthy members of the population. Mr Cummings referred to the concept in a 2013 blog. 

“There was an element of British exceptionalism to it,” said one Treasury official. 

Crucially during this time, Public Health England, a government agency, also advised that mass-testing was not feasible. Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College and government adviser, told parliament it was “very clear from messages from PHE that we would have nowhere near enough testing capacity to adopt that strategy”.

Unlike Germany’s decentralised and at times unwieldy system, the UK chose to concentrate efforts in superlabs, in part to ensure reliability. Sharon Peacock of PHE said it was preferable to “dissipating our efforts into a lot of laboratories”. One senior academic said PHE struggled to delegate one of its core functions; the service had been “hanging around waiting for the next epidemic. That is what they are paid to do,” he said.

But in practice it meant that while Germany broadened its testing strategy to cover all those with mild symptoms — the core of a strategy to test, trace and isolate people infected with the virus — by March, Britain was struggling to scale up. The approach was narrowed to testing only hospital admissions. Only 5,000 of approx 500,000 frontline NHS workers had been tested by Thursday. 

Donald Trump was to say later that if Britain had persisted with the herd immunity approach it would have been “catastrophic”. But that had already become clear to Mr Johnson and his team by the weekend of March 14-15.

New data from Italy confirmed the disease was spreading faster than previously thought, with more patients ending up in intensive care units: Imperial College warned about 250,000 people would have died in the UK without a change of course. Worse still, ministers were advised that even if NHS intensive care capacity was doubled or trebled, it would be overwhelmed three times over.

Mr Hancock, Michael Gove, cabinet office minister, and Mr Cummings now urged Mr Johnson to put aside his libertarian instincts and effectively lock down Britain. “The three of them saw it immediately,” said one Number 10 official. Another official involved in the strategy change said: “When the facts change, you change your mind.”

Restrictions on social life lagged behind some of Germany’s states by a week or so, but the differences with Britain were less pronounced than with some other countries.

More consequential for Britain was the gaping flaw the strategy change exposed in Britain’s preparations. The only exit strategies from the lockdown appeared to be a vaccine or antiviral treatments — still thought to be many months away — or mass community testing to allow restrictions to be eased without triggering a second wave. 

“If you follow a herd immunity strategy, why would you not build treatment and testing capacity? That’s what puzzles me,” asked Devi Sridhar, professor of global health at Edinburgh University. “I think it is because they were taking everything from the flu playbook. In flu you don’t have to chase every case down, you don’t test in the community or medical staff . . . But coronavirus is not flu.” 

To expand treatment, Britain has already doubled its critical care bed capacity this month and aims to acquire up to 50,000 ventilators in total. Some 30 are due to arrive this weekend but 8,000 are expected in the next few weeks. But time is very short. Since the beginning of the outbreak Germany has amassed 10,000. 

Mr Johnson appealed to household names such as Airbus, Nissan, Dyson and McLaren to aid the effort. But some established medical equipment makers felt left in the cold. “They’ve overlooked the real manufacturers in the system,” said one person at a medical devices maker who asked not to be named. Ministers insist they have pursued all avenues, engaging with industry since February.

Blame over testing mis-steps is being directed by ministers at the NHS bureaucracy and PHE. “They’re proud of their independence and won’t yield for anyone,” said one minister of health officials. “The same is true for Public Health England: they’re the reason we don’t have more testing. They want to control the whole tedious process.”

For doctors a long way downstream from the decisions in Whitehall, the impression has overwhelmingly been one of dithering and delay caused by theoreticians being left to manage an emergency. 

“To us on the frontline, it feels like this is what happens when you let epidemiologists in charge of the real world,” said an NHS consultant from Hertfordshire on the Covid frontline. “What has never been explained to those working in respiratory care is why there wasn't 'test, test, test', then isolate, contact and trace again, which is the absolute basis of public health and infection control. Now they seem to have reacted, but it's all too late.”



Sent from my CPH1951 using Tapatalk

[Banquo]

Does read like Moreporks view....that you are in control of events, and can manage through theory and modelling. You aren't and you can't.

[Mellsblue]

Thank you.

[Son of Mathonwy]

How much do you want to put it up by to cover the cost of this?

It's not going to cover the cost of this, obviously. Nor is scrapping HS2.

But I'd put the top rate up to 50% at least, and consider 55% or 60%.

Tax take will obviously go up in the long term, nobody thinks otherwise - it wasn’t really a question worth asking. However, there needs to be targeted cuts in the short term.
It was more a point as to which big ticket items will get the chop due to the huge levels of borrowing we’ll be saddled with when this ends.
Good job we didn’t go on a borrowing splurge in the last couple of years.

I thought it was a point worth making, since no one else was saying it.

Targeted cuts on those suffering most and targeted increases on those unaffected or profiting from the virus. Never was an increased take from Amazon more deserved.

Shame we didn't have higher taxes on the rich in the last couple of years.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Even through this dark month of unimaginable shocks, one thing is still guaranteed to make British ministers and officials bristle: mentioning the Germans. “Arrgh,” sighed one senior adviser, stung by unflattering comparisons.

With the pandemic bearing down, Boris Johnson on March 17 called on Britain’s captains of industry to start building ventilators to supplement the country’s stock of 8,000, lightheartedly dubbing the scheme “Operation Last Gasp”. 

But almost a week before the prime minister spoke, Germany had ordered 10,000 from an established manufacturer, adding to its existing 20,000 machines. This week Germany had more than twice as many critical care beds vacant — around 15,000 to 20,000 — as England has in its system overall.

Even more stark is relative performance on testing. The UK and Germany entered the crisis in lock-step, working together on virus tests, some of the first developed in the world. But Germany’s labs ran at more than five-times the NHS rate, completing 918,460 tests versus Britain’s 163,194. 

Only on Thursday did Matt Hancock, the health secretary, declare Britain would “ramp up” efforts by harnessing private facilities — just as the global supply of chemicals and testing equipment was being squeezed. “Germany had 100 test labs at the start, largely thanks to Roche, but we had to start from a lower base,” he said. “We are going to build a British diagnostics industry at scale.”

Experts say it is too early to judge how different policy choices have affected countries during this global pandemic. Germany’s advantages stem from decades of higher health spending, alongside an industrial base better able to scale-up for an emergency. Even with this head-start, German ministers admit they are in “the calm before the storm”; in terms of deaths, the country is on a similar coronavirus trajectory to the UK.


But Berlin’s strategy has nevertheless held up an unforgiving mirror to Britain’s government. This is not just with regard to NHS capacity — tuned more for resource efficiency than resilience — but the quality and pace of decision making. The charge: that Britain’s strategy twisted and turned, squandering precious time. 

“It just wasn't consistent. They tested various strategies and rejected them,” said Martin Stuermer, a virologist at IMD Labor in Frankfurt. “They had this plan to allow life to go on but ensure that elderly people were protected. But then they abandoned that. And they weren't prepared for mass testing. but the main problem was that the government just didn't chart a clear course in this crisis — unlike the German government.”

The implications may soon become terrifyingly clear. UK infections are expected to peak by Easter Sunday.

Mr Johnson was slow to grip the coronavirus crisis. Evidence coming out of China about the disease in February was deemed unreliable and there was a hope it would burn itself out, like Sars in 2003.

There was an element of British exceptionalism to it

Treasury official on UK government strategy
Although Whitehall had started working up contingency plans from the start of 2020, the lack of urgency was summed up by Mr Johnson’s decision to disappear for a week in late February to his grace-and-favour Chevening home. It was only on March 2 that he chaired his first coronavirus emergency meeting.

At this point advisers were envisaging a spread of the virus through Britain — controlled by escalating social distancing measures — with a peak around mid-May to early-June. “Glastonbury should be all right,” one minister told anxious colleagues, referring to the world’s biggest music festival in late June.

Rather than following countries like South Korea in taking immediate draconian action to stop the disease — including the use of mass testing — Mr Johnson’s team thought a more modulated approach would ultimately save more lives and cause less economic harm. 


Patrick Vallance, the UK’s chief scientific adviser, found a willing ally in Dominic Cummings, Mr Johnson’s chief adviser, in embracing the concept of “herd immunity”, where the disease passed through healthy members of the population. Mr Cummings referred to the concept in a 2013 blog. 

“There was an element of British exceptionalism to it,” said one Treasury official. 

Crucially during this time, Public Health England, a government agency, also advised that mass-testing was not feasible. Neil Ferguson, a professor at Imperial College and government adviser, told parliament it was “very clear from messages from PHE that we would have nowhere near enough testing capacity to adopt that strategy”.

Unlike Germany’s decentralised and at times unwieldy system, the UK chose to concentrate efforts in superlabs, in part to ensure reliability. Sharon Peacock of PHE said it was preferable to “dissipating our efforts into a lot of laboratories”. One senior academic said PHE struggled to delegate one of its core functions; the service had been “hanging around waiting for the next epidemic. That is what they are paid to do,” he said.

But in practice it meant that while Germany broadened its testing strategy to cover all those with mild symptoms — the core of a strategy to test, trace and isolate people infected with the virus — by March, Britain was struggling to scale up. The approach was narrowed to testing only hospital admissions. Only 5,000 of approx 500,000 frontline NHS workers had been tested by Thursday. 


Donald Trump was to say later that if Britain had persisted with the herd immunity approach it would have been “catastrophic”. But that had already become clear to Mr Johnson and his team by the weekend of March 14-15.

New data from Italy confirmed the disease was spreading faster than previously thought, with more patients ending up in intensive care units: Imperial College warned about 250,000 people would have died in the UK without a change of course. Worse still, ministers were advised that even if NHS intensive care capacity was doubled or trebled, it would be overwhelmed three times over.

Mr Hancock, Michael Gove, cabinet office minister, and Mr Cummings now urged Mr Johnson to put aside his libertarian instincts and effectively lock down Britain. “The three of them saw it immediately,” said one Number 10 official. Another official involved in the strategy change said: “When the facts change, you change your mind.”


Restrictions on social life lagged behind some of Germany’s states by a week or so, but the differences with Britain were less pronounced than with some other countries.

More consequential for Britain was the gaping flaw the strategy change exposed in Britain’s preparations. The only exit strategies from the lockdown appeared to be a vaccine or antiviral treatments — still thought to be many months away — or mass community testing to allow restrictions to be eased without triggering a second wave. 

“If you follow a herd immunity strategy, why would you not build treatment and testing capacity? That’s what puzzles me,” asked Devi Sridhar, professor of global health at Edinburgh University. “I think it is because they were taking everything from the flu playbook. In flu you don’t have to chase every case down, you don’t test in the community or medical staff . . . But coronavirus is not flu.” 

To expand treatment, Britain has already doubled its critical care bed capacity this month and aims to acquire up to 50,000 ventilators in total. Some 30 are due to arrive this weekend but 8,000 are expected in the next few weeks. But time is very short. Since the beginning of the outbreak Germany has amassed 10,000. 

Recommended
AnalysisCoronavirus
With Johnson under fire, blame game begins over virus crisis

Mr Johnson appealed to household names such as Airbus, Nissan, Dyson and McLaren to aid the effort. But some established medical equipment makers felt left in the cold. “They’ve overlooked the real manufacturers in the system,” said one person at a medical devices maker who asked not to be named. Ministers insist they have pursued all avenues, engaging with industry since February.

Blame over testing mis-steps is being directed by ministers at the NHS bureaucracy and PHE. “They’re proud of their independence and won’t yield for anyone,” said one minister of health officials. “The same is true for Public Health England: they’re the reason we don’t have more testing. They want to control the whole tedious process.”

For doctors a long way downstream from the decisions in Whitehall, the impression has overwhelmingly been one of dithering and delay caused by theoreticians being left to manage an emergency. 

“To us on the frontline, it feels like this is what happens when you let epidemiologists in charge of the real world,” said an NHS consultant from Hertfordshire on the Covid frontline. “What has never been explained to those working in respiratory care is why there wasn't 'test, test, test', then isolate, contact and trace again, which is the absolute basis of public health and infection control. Now they seem to have reacted, but it's all too late.”

By Alex Barker, George Parker, Laura Hughes, Sebastian Payne, Laura Hughes, Camilla Hodgson, Peter Foster, Michael Pooler, David Blood and Chelsea Bruce-Lockhart in London and Guy Chazan and Tobias Buck in Berlin

It's reminiscent of our generals' handling of the First World War. Criminally negligent.

But is it just negligence?
The lack of focus on testing. The complete absence of contact tracing. The total lack of a record of those showing symptoms. The total lack of checks - even of temperature - of arrivals to this country.
Can these really be down to incompetence alone?

I think they're still aiming for a herd immunity solution, but:
1) they don't want to be seen to be doing it,
and
2) they really just want to flatten the curve a bit.

[Galfon]

International co-operation is being tested..
Turkey reportedly holds onto ventilators set for Spain:
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/worl ... 47216.html
Also, reports of US grabbing masks produced in Thailand destined for Berlin.
Sgb behaviour not limited to the bog-roll aisles at the local supermarket, clearly.

[Galfon]

I think they're still aiming for a herd immunity solution, but:
1) they don't want to be seen to be doing it,
and
2) they really just want to flatten the curve a bit.

Prof. Medley, (pandemic adviser to govt.)
'Describing a trade-off between harming the lives of the young versus safeguarding the wellbeing of the elderly, the scientist said the Prime Minister had a 'big decision' to make on April 13 when the lockdown will be reviewed.'

The lock-down will help allow the nhs to keep functioning (i.e. save lives in toto) , but overall many will 'lose loved ones before their time' - there is a pretty unsubtle message that to protect the economy and avoid unrest, the old and vulnerable ( not exclusively..) can be left for nature to take it's course.Politically, one of many risks BJ is facing.

[morepork]

Antigenic drift. Vaccine design just got harder:

https://www.ucdavis.edu/coronavirus/new ... rus-spread

I hope they are wrong.