The problem is, because of the hoarding some items haven’t been available.  So people are going back time after time to try and find the things they haven’t got and buying other things as well, just in case.  Thus supermarkets are rammed and shelves are emptying.  

On the car radio local travel news this morning:  “The M1 is moving well with no problems.  Roads (x, y and z) are heavily congested and slow moving, not due to road works as I reported earlier, it’s due to queues building around Sainsbury’s, Aldi and Lidl!”  

They may as well close for the afternoon then!  

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Pretty sensible post. I was agnostic on the borders right from the start, but I think the UK and EU governments have messed up the Italian outbreak in February. They should either have tested everyone returning from the Italian hotspots (they were very specific) or if that was not possible, then close borders to Italy.

The WHO has been critical of border closures back in January, but with a big caveat: they were asking countries to screen all travellers who had been to infected areas.

I am sure many lessons will be learnt now and future responses will be different. Europe will probably err on the side of over-reaction in the future every time a virus jumps from animals to humans.

  

This is from someone on the front line....

Consultant in acute and respiratory medicine at Northwick Park hospital in north London has passed on this

Hi everyone

Just want to say – I’ve seen quite a few people with Covid 19 since Sunday. The vast majority are fine. They seem to have one week of fever, a few days of dry cough and then sometimes breathlessness on day 8 or 9. Most people are fine to stay at home and recover in about 10 days. If it is going to be bad it is around day 9 or 10 and the breathlessness gets rapidly worse at that point. We have had five patients who needed ITU but they all have heart or lung disease, and are quite elderly. Thankfully children seem to be invincible.

I’ve never known anything like this – but we’re planning for huge numbers of people needing intensive care and working out how to cope. We’ve managed to segregate our whole hospital into unknown (in single rooms), positive and negative areas. We’ve moved a whole intensive care unit and 4 other wards in 3 days flat – this sort of change usually takes at least 6 months to get agreed!

I think we need to worry about our elderly relatives but not our age group or our kids. It seems pretty clear that a large proportion of the UK will get this, hopefully spread out over months rather than all at once like Italy. Once enough people have had it then herd immunity will mean it dies out. So if the frail elderly can hibernate for a few months hopefully we can keep mortality down.

Anyway, if you have any Covid-19 questions, I know an awful lot more about it now than I did 2 weeks ago, so feel free to ask!

BW
Rachel

Dr Rachel Tennant
Consultant in Respiratory & Acute Medicine
Clinical Director for Acute Medicine.

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Shopping precincts are apparently packed around here. I popped to Salisbury's earlier to stock up on essentials. I don't want to feed the panic craze, but these were items I genuinely needed. Suffice to say, the shelves were stripped bare. I've never ever seen anything like it.

There is a palpable sense now London is going into lock down and  suspect this is feeding the frenzy.

Also, the reduced service on the tube has had an unattended consequence. Even though there are considerably less people, the carriages are more packed because there are less tubes.

Its all half measures. If Boris doesn't lock down tonight, its a complete dereliction of duty. To hell with the science.

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It's not just that, there are also those who hoard stuff only to flog then on ebay etc. I have seen hand sanitisers selling for £35.

I wouldn't go to a supermarket this week, I'd wait until next week when things might have settled down a bit (famous last words).

 

145 items sold so far and they probably cost a pound or two. You can buy 2 of them though at the discounted price of £33.94 each! 

https://tinyurl.com/salu4xy

The em from Dr Rachel Tennant suggests there will be over 250,000 deaths IMHO. I think it is in line with the message from government last week about herd immunity. It doesn't seem consistent with the latest guidance and strategy. Mixed messages.

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The lockdown (as far as I am aware) will commence over the weekend.

They are still moving components into place to enforce it - enforcement in London is going to be particularly key and will be assisted by the army.

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I don't think so Brian, they are gradually moving now towards aggressive containment. 

A couple of days ago I saw that Denmark had stopped panic buying of sanitiser gel by pricing one at K5.99 and two for K134.00!  Assume it worked. 

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It really has to happen in the next 24hrs. These constant delays are making things worse. We have been behind the curve in the decision making process ever since we refused to close down our borders.

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But she says "it seems clear a large proportion of the UK will get this". I realise that can be interpreted in different ways but surely it suggests 40% or more?

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True, but this could be just her opinion or perhaps just the earlier plan from London.

From Italy:
‘ Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte has appealed for common sense and one minister says a “complete ban on outdoor activity” must be considered.

French Interior Minister Christophe Castaner has said “some people think they’re some kind of modern-day hero when they break the rules - but they’re imbeciles, and a danger to themselves”.’

I can think of a certain person on here falling into the imbecile category. I also wonder what the thousands complaining about tube overcrowding today are actually doing on the tube. Their jobs must be ‘essential’ I guess. I admit you must balance criticism with the fact that many of these probably won’t see any money for weeks without working.

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This below is what the editor of the lancet wrote and we also know that the CSO said something similar on friday. The epidemiology modelling guidance then changed over the weekend though, which seems to have coincided with the sudden noises from the govt last weekend that 'we misunderstood and herd immunity is not our plan' etc.

"The scientists advising ministers seemed to believe that this new virus could be treated much like influenza. Graham Medley, one of the government’s expert scientific advisers, was disarmingly explicit. In an interview on Newsnight last week, he explained the UK’s approach: to allow a controlled epidemic of large numbers of people, which would generate “herd immunity”. Our scientists recommended “a situation where the majority of the population are immune to the infection. And the only way of developing that, in the absence of a vaccine, is for the majority of the population to become infected.”

 Medley suggested that, “ideally”, we might need “a nice big epidemic” among the less vulnerable. “What we are going to have to try and do,” he said, was to “manage this acquisition of herd immunity and minimise the exposure of people who are vulnerable.” Sir Patrick Vallance, the government’s chief scientific adviser, suggested that the target was to infect 60% of the UK’s population."

As I said in an earlier post, if they’re aiming for some kind of lockdown in London, logically they’ll do it after Friday, when commuters have gone home to various parts of the UK.  The population will have depleted and will be more manageable for the city in the event of a major outbreak.  

Also, commuters with the virus can self isolate at home and use their own local health authority if needed.  This spreads the load of the NHS.

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I trust all good Londoners to spread the goodies to suburbia and the countryside. 

Precisely the picture.

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China will provide two million surgical masks, 200,000 other masks and 50,000 testing kits to help the EU tackle the coronavirus, EU commission president Ursula von der Leyen said. "China has not forgotten that in January, when China was the centre of the outbreak, the EU helped. We donated more than 50 tonnes of protective equipment," she said, adding that the EU, being at the pandemic's centre today, needs equipment.

From The Telegraph:

"

Regional authorities in Germany have threatened to order curfews if people do not start taking government advice to remain at home seriously.

“If people do not restrict themselves voluntarily, then in the end a Bavaria-wide curfew will be the only way to deal with this. Everyone has to be clear about that," Markus Söder, the regional prime minister for Bavaria said. 

Michael Müller, the mayor of Berlin, issued a similar warning for Germany's capital after police broke up a series of "coronavirus parties".

Non-essential shops and nightlife have been closed across Germany. People have been advised to leave home only to go to work or run essential errands, but there is no curfew.

"I cannot and will not rule out taking further measures in the coming days," Mr Müller said. "The question of a lockdown can play a role. That can be decided quickly.  In that case, the parks and gardens will be closed.""

 

Astonishing - had not come across the term "coronavirus parties" before.

 

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I know of several people from here who have already fled today to various parts of the UK.

My bedroom overlooks the railway station - I can pick off Londoners as they arrive here by train one by one  



[joking]

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There have been a few both in Europe and the US, some had a requirement that you had to wear a fake hazmat suit.

Or it could just be another of the fake emails ‘from the frontline’ that keep appearing on social media.

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It doesn't mean necessarily it's true, but the person is and the wording was fine too. She is not far from Brian I guess.

https://www.rcplondon.ac.uk/about-rcp/whos-who/people/dr-rachel-tennant