• 18-24 months until proven otherwise


• Not at all, anything is better than nothing


• We can't, true, but whatever we do now we have more immune people wandering around than the likes of NZ have - it's one of the few  upsides to having that exponential growth earlier on.

Put it another way, I would be astonished if NZ and co managed to keep the virus out for a whole year. Absolutely astonished.

• we don't know this though, there seems to be a lot of conflicting material


• sure, but at what cost


• agreed, but again it's too little and the cost has been very high

The severity of their lockdown has impacted them economically more so than other countries and eventually they are going to need to relax those restrictions in order for the economy to move forward. The big risk is therefore a 2nd wave. In time their approach may well be proven to be the correct one but no one knows and all any of us are doing is guessing. 

Well potentially 100's because when discussing it there is hardly any mention of anyone that's known , I know of three - the nieces father in law who was in the JR and on a ventilator for a week , now off it -  my Uncles Brother who passed away from it but had cancer and the works Finance managers wife was poorly .

But friends or friends and works colleagues the known number of people is low 

In saying the above , its not surprising , Oxfordshire cases is 1,240 - population of the county around 700,000 

Exactly! There should be as much urgency as building the nightingale hospitals for PPE. All this relying on overseas deliveries, that's if/when they come, we need a constant conveyor belt of equipment. We need factories set up in various parts of the country and distributions from there locally. Too many excuses at the moment, the govt need to own this one. Every day they are asked about it, then they talk of 1 shipment from Turkey, which is two days worth! Beggars belief!

Especially as tourism is an important part of their economy.

The countries who may think they have got the lid on it now will have a desperate and ultimately futile struggle to keep it that way if the virus becomes endemic in the rest of the world.

...a stance supported by blinkered pricks

The WHO have been a complete joke from the start.

On the failings of the NHS, the military are getting apoplectic about incompetence in the NHS bureaucracy:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/military-appalled-by-planning-fiasco-over-nhs-protective-kit-jdh369k6r

"Military personnel have criticised the NHS for its “appalling” handling of distributing personal protective equipment. The armed forces are helping with the distribution of equipment and staff have been seconded to help planning across seven hubs.

A senior army source lambasted the health service for its logistics for PPE, alleging that masks, aprons, gloves and other items were being assigned to hospitals without regard to relative need, leading to oversupply in some areas and shortages in others.

..."

Great points.

Also, as [I think] Chichester posted, the care sector has several thousand different providers, with 95% in the private sector... and their ability to source PPE has been of a magnitude even worse than that of the NHS.

There is a serious issue relating to the supply of PPE, though, and that is that it needs to be checked to ensure it meets standards. We all know there is no shortage of unscrupulous arseholes out there who will take advantage of any situation to 'make a quick buck' for themselves and sod everyone else (it seems an inherent and disgusting trait of our national psyche... perhaps Napoleon was right). If the NHS/Govt simply said "OK, send me an invoice" to any company offering to sell PPE, amongst the legitimate companies there'd be a decent proportion of scumbags taking advantage. And unfortunately, they wouldn't be dealt with anything like as properly as the Taiwanese would do.

That to me smacks of an inherent problem in the devolved control structure of the NHS, with individual trusts allowed to operate like separate quasi-business units.

A more centralised (eg, to a regional structure) would simplify control - and enable the doing-away with thousands of unnecessary non-clinical staff and a superfluous non-clinical management layer along with hoards of bean-counters.

Here is a comment from someone who has had to deal with the leviathan:

"Having had the misfortune to deal with the byzantine, accountability free, Kafkaesque nightmare that is NHS commissioning it's absolutely no surprise that it's not up to the huge challenges presented by covid-19. To be fair any system, however slick, would struggle. The sad thing is that I confidently predict that no lessons will be learnt, nothing will change, because "Our NHS, Peace Be Upon It"."

And another:

"Fully support you, my friend designed a gown for patients which afforded more modesty, was cheaper and longer lasting, 2 years to finally get to see the woman in charge of procurement having been recommended by Poole and Bournemouth General Hospitals... 'If it was just about price and quality we would buy but it's not that simple' was her response, she then went through a tickbox list which required a Corporate Monster Co to comply with, he asked why he was not given the checklist on day one, 'that is priviliged information' was her retort.

The private sector who live and die by their efficiency and the cotton wool wrapped bureauocrats in the NHS and indeed most public sectors inhabit the same breathing space as us, however it ends there and they may as well be in another dimension of time and space."

I have worked as a consultant in the Employment Service and "Kafkaesque" does not begin to explain the bureaucratic mindset - I attended one meeting where the then head of department was lambasted by his colleagues for saving money - the reason was that saving money in a departmental budget can lead to reduced budget allocations in future - that is how Kafkaesque it can get!

In other words, people with obvious axes to grind having a dig.

All quoted by another person with an obvious axe to grind.

Of course, if the case fatality rate is 2%, that would put the numbers already infected at 2m(at least by my calculations). Or if the case fatality rate is 4%, that would mean 1m infections. Those figures, unfortunately, are much closer to the mainstream.

I hope you're the one who is right, though!

Which, of course, is utter nonsense.

For anyone who doesn't already know , the rather unreliable Matt Hancock is making a statement in the House

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/uk-politics-52381035

So there is evidence that antibody levels for this virus are quite low so immunity is not likely to last long. This is quite a serious problem for achiving herd immunity of any form. Will our only alternative to literally seal ourselves off from any country that has the virus? The fact this virus mutates rapidly is also of concern. Sooner or later this thing is going to become even nastier.

Well, here is some positive news for a change - private industry stepping up to the mark:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/dream-team-of-f1-engineers-race-to-the-rescue-with-coronavirus-ventilators-mcjqvglgj

"The greatest reward at the McLaren base, near Woking, is usually when one of their cars wins a Formula 1 Grand Prix.

Last week, though, the team experienced an altogether greater satisfaction when the first ventilator that they had helped to make came off the production line en route to save lives in the battle against Covid-19.

McLaren’s futuristic buildings have been completely transformed in the past five weeks of the crisis. Now, in the machine room where they normally build parts for the suspension of F1 cars, they are making manifolds and hose nipples for ventilators.

Next to the machine room, in the gearbox room, they are mass-producing trolleys on which the ventilators can be transported.

This is all a race against time. If you can’t move the ventilator, you can’t use it. So when 15,000 ventilators have been ordered, they need 15,000 trolleys.

...

Dick Elsy, chairman of the partnership of more than 50 companies, said they had squeezed 18 months of business planning into five weeks and were on course to manufacture a ten-year supply of ventilators in only ten weeks.

“We’ve got this fantastic capability in the UK and we should be proud of it — we have squeezed 18 months’ work into a month and now we’re handing over to production lines,” he said.

Using assembly lines around the country they will soon be making 1,500 life-saving machines every week — Penlon ventilators for intensive care and Smith ParaPac devices for ambulance crews.

..."

If this were true, this is pretty much going to become a rite of passage for children to catch in the same way that chicken pox is, and we'll have do deal with it? Unless someone sees a different way out

Although we don’t know all of this for certain yet, I’m in agreement with you. I am worried that this thing will come back in a modified form and prove much deadlier.