Would that it were an April fool!

Assuming the pics are recent look how poorly equipped some of the NHS staff are. It appears some are still having to use surgical masks rather than FFP3. 

I agree Brian. All the government do is pat themselves on the back and claim they have ordered millions of items. Yet, they don’t appear to be reaching the right places

Interestingly, we got a large delivery of PPE direct from China yesterday. Varadkar phoned Xi to personally thank him. I doubt he brought up the subject of Tibet or the Xinjiang Uighurs during that conversation. 

On a different note here is another nice practical infographic on various ways of killing the virus on surfaces etc. Credit to Compound Interest.

Click the image to open a larger version in a new window.

https://i2.wp.com/www.compoundchem.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/Four-ways-to-destroy-coronavirus-v3.png?ssl=1 

No he wasn't - at the time he no doubt believed that to be the case. Being wrong or misinformed is not the same thing as being "liars".

But I have given them the solution - the Danish boiling method - I just hope they are following it up.

A lot of the deaths in Birmingham and London are from immigrant background people, who tend to live in large multi-gen families in crowded conditions, just like Italy

The 13 year old boy who died has been named as Mohammed something, sounds Somali. 

Richard - I think you should apply for government advisor status 

Internal Swedish documents have been leaked to the press - their hospitals are at or near full capacity even though the number of ICUs have secretly been expanded 3x.

They have lowered the protection guide lines and doctors and nurses are to work without masks if none are available

Their plan to build "nursing" homes for the elderly, is a euphism for hospices and they have instructed the quality of care will drop to that which it is necessary to accept. You will have to google translate the following:

https://www.aftonbladet.se/nyheter/a/BRK34E/sa-ska-stockholm-hantera-overfu lla-sjukhus--om-en-vecka

Note that the documents are some days old, so the "in one week" scenario they describe is actually in 2-3 days from now.

But we keep being told that this is coming. Its been many weeks.

Contagion is being repeated again on ITV2 tomorrow night, not sure how tasteful that is! Following 9/11, a lot movies featuring terrorism were dropped from the schedules. I remember an episode of "Spooks" was also cancelled

And George Clooney, once of ER, will then tell you when your symptoms are serious enough for you to go to hospital. https://t.co/5h6prK8or9

— Stig Abell (@StigAbell) March 31, 2020

The Times is suggesting they will be tightening towards lockdown in the coming days because things are going so badly. I thought you were advocating their laissez-faire approach? Perhaps you could email this information to some of your friends in the Tory Party who are starting to sound more concerned about losing a few £ than saving a few lives.

Mayday hospital used to be called "Maydie"  by locals. It was a filthy place, perhaps it has improved now, but feel sorry for anyone working there

Did you catch some of #TeamCroydon on @BBCNews tonight? 📺

Keeping each other positive as we continue to respond to #COVID19....

Can someone teach us the moves?
💃🏼 🕺🏾💃🏼🕺🏾💃🏼🕺🏾 pic.twitter.com/3P4n1wn8NJ

— Croydon Health Services NHS Trust (@croydonhealth) March 31, 2020

I appreciate we haven't yet closed our borders. However there is an interesting discussion on GMB around why people arriving on flights from hot spots are not being quarantined for 14 days.

https://twitter.com/GMB/status/1245239008009105408

I think this is a valid point, where are this people going and dispersing to? Why when we repatriated those from China where they placed into Quarantine? 

Fear not peasants, Wills and Kate have got your back

One of the big problems seems to be that all decisions have to be made centrally. In fact Hancock himself apparently has to make the decisions on testing, although I assume he is advised. It shows the absurdity of a centralised system. The classic anecdote is what happened in the Soviet Union. One year they produced far too few footballs and far too many loaves of bread because of the centralised targets. The result was people started playing football with loaves of bread. Quite why the economically liberal United Kingdom follows this centralised planning system when it comes to health beggars belief.

If you recall Brian, I called their "laissez-faire" approach an "interesting control experiment" - the leaked documents are the first indication that it might not be working and that there is internal dissent.

But Sweden is de facto a police state, so not sure where it goes from here. Will certainly embarrass the Swedish government however.

P.S.

The general director of the Swedish health care authority, Johan Carlson, has responded to the leak - he compares shutting down to narcotics abuse problems:

"Outlawing things will not stop them he says and compares Corona to narcotics abuse ".

He has been taking lessons from Kim Yong Un.

The German miracle is slowly ending btw. They are moving 0.1% point of CFR up a day for some days now.

At 1.1% now. South Korea at 1.7% CFR.

There is little reason to assume either do not have a pretty good coverage, also it has been revealed that not all deaths that are corona are registered as such in Germany, but we knew that anyway and it is pretty common across Europe.

The German "miracle" was a mirage - they have all the equipment and reagents and have been testing massively, so finding many positives - that depressed the CFR to begin with.

Corona appears to run at 0.8-1.3 CFR in perfect circumstances and with a tail of chronic lung patients over the years to come (those who survive ventilation).

Nevertheless, South Korea has more or less lifted the lockdown to save the economy as all must at some point - this is the only approach - get it contained, relax the economy destroying measures, see cases starting to rise again, lockdown again, rinse and repeat.

Brian - with the best will in the world, completely trashing the economy is no solution, since that would cause mass death and despair itself.

Only solution - stop travel, control borders, control the epidemic internally and wait for a medical miracle (vaccine anyone?).

Will come quicker than we think, IMO.

As you say, the lower CFR in Germany was down to the specifics of the group infected initially: younger, fit people who had been skiing.  It always seemed like a statistical quirk given the CFRs elsewhere.

Our inter connectedness is a strength but in a pandemic a huge weakness. You talk of stopping travel in one sentence and not completely trashing the economy in another but they are inextricably linked.

I hope you’re correct but that would require a miraculous series of events and/or changes to safety protocols.