Good piece in the FT about the ventilator challenge

Muddled thinking punctures plan for British ventilator

Non-specialist manufacturers sent off to design new products that clinicians and regulators say were unsuitable for Covid patients

...
“Pretty much all the basic new designs are not going to get through the Covid approval process. The government spin is the ‘clinical need’ changed, but the reality is that it was always misguided to think you could develop and create these ventilators,” the person said. “Starting the process in this way was unwise. It has gradually become more sensible.”
 
https://www.ft.com/content/5f393d77-8e5b-4a85-b647-416efbc575ec

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Our local rag reports plans are afoot to create a single mass-testing site for Kent.

Considering we're already topping the county league tables (and have been for days), I do wonder what's taken them so long! I also suspect that if by some miracle they get it up and running before the lockdown is eased, there will be far, far more cases around than they've found so far.

https://www.kentonline.co.uk/kent/news/plans-for-mass-coronavirus-testing-site-in-kent-225951/

 

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Parliament is back today, with some people zooming in. Any news on Tony Lloyd MP? He was admitted to hospital with coronavirus over two weeks ago and there has been no word since.

Interesting piece on Newsnight last night talking about the peak of deaths being on the 8th April for the UK, however, for London it was the 4th April. The point the Oxford Uni bloke was making was that the peak for infections in London was prior to lockdown so the initial guidance on social distancing etc was working. If true then assuming we can follow those guidelines as best we can e.g working from home then when it comes to easing the lockdown there is a good chance of avoiding a ‘big’ 2nd wave.

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And that's a very good point , and I think that's the concern of the Government . If relaxed to much everyone will be out and all is forgotten on distancing etc .

 

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Data in the link below shows a peak on 4th april, although the neighbouring days were lower and there was another peak on 8th april. This may mean that the peak for infections was close to the rest of the country really and so around the time of lockdown. (Is there any evidence of the average time lag between infection and death?)

https://www.cebm.net/covid-19/covid-19-death-data-in-england-update-2th-april/

Point does remain though that the behaviour of a lot of people changed before lockdown, i think the slides shown at the daily briefings show that use of the underground dropped quite quickly. For all the talk of people in London ignoring the warnings a lot of people i know were not going out drinking. I remember going for a walk round when Londoners were supposedly all flouting the guidance and most bars were almost empty. As lockdown is (hopefully) eased i think people will be more cautious than they were pre-lockdown so hopefully if we really can drive the number of cases down now then the reduced rate of transmission and better ability of the authorities to trace contacts will hopefully mean the unfortunate background number of deaths may be relatively low.

Regarding those 128 fake #NHS Staff accounts posting for 'Herd Mentality' and support of the Govt that were set up by @DHSCgovuk or their marketing agency ...

Posts were sent using Hootsuite, a mass-posting tool. Account registered to 1 person with 4 assigned contributors. pic.twitter.com/r7fRFQaFwG

— John O'Connell (@jdpoc) April 20, 2020

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Agree, unlikely to be a meaningful "second wave" and those wanting to extend the lockdown are being over cautious. 

With Spanish flu, the second wave was worse but medical care was of course very limited back then and there was no social distancing

 

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Air Purifiers?
I woke thinking that in particular NHS 30 year olds should not be dying of the virus unless its the amount of exposure and hits they are getting from the infected patients.
It says on a general website about purifiers that there is no evidence they will stop the virus, but have they been tested? On a Dyson model it says "The fully-sealed 360 filter system combines an activated carbon filter to remove gases, and a glass HEPA filter that captures 99.95% of microscopic allergens and pollutants.2 Using Air Multiplier™ technology, the machine projects over 290 liters of smooth, purified air per second for whole-room purification"

I was wondering if a number of purifiers were set up in wards where there were a lot of people and more chance of getting, whether they would go someway in at least taking some of the virus out of the air.

Up to 510 healthy volunteers between 18 and 55 will be used in a trial to try and find a Covid-19 vaccine.

The trail is taking place in Oxford, London & Southampton with around 187 recruited in Southampton. 3 further sites are likely to be added in the weeks ahead with trials hoped to be completed by late summer.

The study its self will last 6-months those who see it through to the end will receive £235.

Places are still available for those living Southampton at the University of Southampton and for those living in the Greater London Area at the Imperial College London.

https://covid19vaccinetrial.co.uk/volunteer

But ironically we need some virus spread in the community to see if the vaccine works. These volunteers need to get it. In other countries I imagine they will just infect them deliberately like monkeys

 

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Germany has cancelled Oktoberfest 2020 which was due to run in Munich from September 19th to October 4th

During the election there was a sudden surge of pro-Boris Johnson Facebook comments which looked like Russian bots.

I interviewed some of the commenters. They were British pranksters: https://t.co/BThnCtsfNx https://t.co/NG9WeEE0ei

— Joey D'Urso (@josephmdurso) April 21, 2020

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Just tried to volunteer for the Oxford one but its full up 

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Kent is only "topping the league tables" because it is one of the most populous local authority areas. When sorted by cases per head of population, Kent is actually in 83rd place out of 149 in England, so comfortably in the less infected half of the country.

(See table a little way down this page) 
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-uk-tracker-how-many-cases-are-in-your-area-updated-daily-11956258

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I doubt mass events will be allowed before the potential vaccine. 

Excellent news on the vaccine front. Read the whole thread.

https://twitter.com/PeterKolchinsky/status/1252283886417174528?s=19 

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Unlikely is being a tad brave in such an uncertain situation

Re: the lockdown, i guess the next decision day is in two weeks time and we will have to see how things lie then. It would seem there will be some relaxing of the lockdown but we will have to see how much.

Listening to an interview on V Derbyshire, a guy said all the deaths (incl. care homes) in the country in the week up to Good Friday was 18k of which Covid was 6k.
I suppose that stacks up with the 800-900 dying each day. Was a bit surprised at the non covid deaths being 12k but with the measure on average 1,500 die each day before Covid that's about right.
If last week was the height of deaths in this wave, a third of deaths were due to Covid.

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