Box emptying time, Gandalf!

R

More on the Dyson ventilators, appears all is not as it seems.

and until it gets approval. I read into that Dyson was possibly trying to put pressure on government to give approval by disclosing its ventilator plans yesterday. But a minister to whom I've just spoken tells me it's by no means certain Dyson will get approval

— Robert Peston (@Peston) March 26, 2020

Presumably they need to check they blow rather than suck.

It's extremely unlikely that the lockdown will only last 3 weeks.

Spain has officially said that they won't be using those antibodies tests as they are useless and they will return them. The Chinese embassy in Madrid said that Spain purchased them from a company without a licence. I don't know if ours are the same, but I hope not.

The lockdown isn't just about stopping the NHS from being overwhelmed. It's also about bringing down the number of new infections (breaking the transmission chains or reducing the R0 if you prefer). The idea is (or should be) that if that happens, then by then we should have established a proper test and trace regime in order to contain the epidemic and avoid further lockdowns (like the Asian countries have done).

Apparently we have bought 3.5m 😫

I heard that regulatory approval is more or less a given. FWIW I don't like Dyson or his ludicrously overpriced and overweight vacuum cleaners. His hand dryers are also crap, although he deserves credit for managing to flog a load of them to French service stations. Despite that he should be given the benefit of the doubt at this stage. If he can deliver 10,000 reliable and operationally competent ventilators in April it will be a huge achievement. If he doesn't or it turns out they breakdown frequently or over-inflate patients his business will be finished IMO.  

NHS frontline staff are quite worried about getting ventilators from non medical companies as they need to be properly tested. There was a chap from a British medical tech company on Newsnight last night and he said they had zero contact from HMG! I don't understand why we don't first try the medical equipment companies before asking other manufacturers to produce something they had never done before.

Oh, really sorry to read this.

Does he have a wife and children?

​

London hospitals facing 'tsunami' of coronavirus cases  

Quote

 

London hospitals are facing a "tsunami" of coronavirus cases and are beginning to run out of intensive care beds, a senior hospital figure has said. Chris Hopson, of NHS Providers, which represents hospitals, said while critical care capacity had been expanded hospitals in the capital had seen an "explosion" in demand. A third of the UK cases have been diagnosed in the city. Mr Hopson said high staff absence rates were creating a "wicked combination". "They are struggling with two things. "The first is the explosion of demand they are seeing in seriously ill patients.

"They talk about wave after wave after wave - the word that's often used to me is a continuous tsunami. "We are now seeing 30%, 40% and indeed in some places 50% sickness rates as staff catch the virus or are in vulnerable groups or have to self-isolate. "That's unprecedented." Mr Hopson said that, while extra capacity was being brought in - including 4,000 beds at the ExCel centre in London's Docklands - hospital chief executives were concerned it would be used up "very quickly".

It comes as the NHS has taken unprecedented steps to prepare for the peak, which experts say is just two or three weeks away.

 

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51714498

​

We like his vacuum cleaners: we have a small one and a standard long one and they're both fine. We got the standard one in one of their Black Friday sales, with a load of accessories that mostly sit in a drawer....

I think their hand dryers are brilliant: much more effective than the ones that waft a vague current of cool air over your hands to little effect.

Article suggesting that social distancing may be slowing down the spread of other diseases too

https://qz.com/1824020/social-distancing-slowing-not-only-covid-19-but-other-diseases-too/

There may be some selection bias in the study but unintended consequences of The Great Lockdown will be interesting (if not necessarily pleasant). Decreased road accidents, increased suicides and domestic abuse? I wonder if these are modelled. I have also wondered if it will favour more infectious strains of various diseases.

Bosch developed a 2.5h test with 95% accuracy

https://www.bosch.com/stories/vivalytic-rapid-test-for-covid-19/

95% accuracy can be misleading though.

Say you test 100 people, and 10 have COVID.

90 people test negitive and don't have COVID

5 people test positive and do have COVID

5 people test negitive and do have COVID

Amongst those that have it, half are testing negitive! Which makes the 95% accuracy very poor indeed!

In probability terms its a confusion between P(A|B) and P(A).

I'm not saying this is what is happening, but that we just have to be careful to not get excited by high numbers.

Randox Laboratories?

Owen Patterson owns it.

Sorry, their publication says >95% accuracy, which meets the WHO criteria.

I guess that's better than the 30% accuracy tests that Spain bought from a Chinese company!

I don't know where the idea came from that the UK had ordered the same test kits as Spain.

This is from The Times today:

"The government has ordered 3.5 million testing kits from at least three commercial suppliers. Sharon Peacock, director of the national infection service at Public Health England, told MPs yesterday that validation of the kits was due to be completed this week."

The kits are being evaluated for accuracy at labs in Oxford - mass testing will only commence with those in the reliable diagnostic range.

Local politicians in Italy believe that the number of deaths from covid in Italy could be underestimated. The mayor of Nembro said that his town (population 12,000) has 35 deaths per year, but they have now had 158 deaths since the start of the year and only 31 of them have been confirmed as covid victims. The mayor of  Brescia said that they have started finding an increasing number of dead people in their homes and not all of them are being tested for covid.

Except that you've chosen the worst possible combination.

It could be 90 test negative correctly and 10 test positive, of which half are false positives. The latter group would be isolated but then found not to have it, so you wouldn't have missed anyone.

The other permutations are also possible, so you have anywhere between zero missed cases and five missed cases.

It's quite likely that not every case is being identified because I don't think anywhere is picking them all up.  

It may be that some of the deaths are through neglect due to isolation and the swamping of the healthcare system.

Yes, it could be a side effect of the crisis, but it could also be that they just cannot test enough. The numbers are scary though, the mayor of Brescia said that the number of unusual deaths is now 6 times the official covid number in his area. It also shows why a managed herd immunity policy would be crazy,  if you get it wrong and your NHS gets swamped the downside is just huge.

We know categorically and openly from France that those who die in nursing homes are not currently being included in the COVID-19 stats - it would be no surprise if it were not the same in many regions.

 Not sure why we are hearing so much about Dyson as other manufacturers such as Pro Drive are going to be making them . Also i thought JCB were doing so . 

 My mother in law does not like her Dyson and has gone back to Henry .Can Henry be made into a Ventilator? Good one for Scrapheap Challenge.