I think you are absolutely right. And to make things worse the government had a two month period to plan and prepare as they saw what happened in China. I can almost hear Boris talking in one of his cabinet meeting.... "It's only flu".

Absolute nonsense. Mortality rate is probably, in reality, about 0.01%.

So many people will have had, or will get this virus and will never know.

It's probably why we need the antibody test going nationwide as soon as possible.

Totally. The buffoon was boasting about shaking hands with Coronavirus patients only 4 weeks ago.

To think I've actually read online that some people think he's doing a good job. The mind boggles.

Chris Whitty our CMO has said he believes the figure for mortality is 1%, and that is the figure used in the UK model, hence that is the figure I have used.

However, if the figure you claim of 0.01% is correct it would mean we could avoid any self isolation and distancing, plus people going to work throughout the outbreak, as the 400,000 deaths would drop to 4,000. But why is every country in the world and every epidemiologist saying that we need to isolate and stamp out the infection ? Why wreck your economy for a number of deaths below what you would normally expect for seasonal flu ?

The Diamond Princess, with a population of people primed for death by covid19, is the closest thing we have to a thorough analysis of this virus and had a mortality rate of less than 1%.

The point I'm trying to make is that a large swathe of the UK population are going to have had, or have this virus and will never appear on any official figures, so any mortality rate is going to be massively over estimated.

Any mortality rate will be an educated guess at best, but 1% of people likely to get this virus is highly unlikely, though those numbers will likely become true after the 30 years of recession and social collapse that will entail after this.

The saying used to be short term pain for long term gain. Bizarrely, we have turned that saying on its head.

There will also be a knock on effect of an increase in deaths due to other areas, for example cancer. This comes from the cancellation of certain tests being postponed as they are deemed to being non essential at the present.

The government has been criticised with it's response to Covi19, but it's difficult to get a handle on what would be the most effective way of dealing with this disease.
Only time will tell which countries government appeared to have deployed the most effective tactics. I used the word "appeared" as I'm very sceptical about some of the numbers, and believe some countries are being very economical with the trust. I don't believe China's statistics and North Korea stating that it is virus free, is just a lie.

What is that saying - lies, damn lies and statistics.

I understand that the lock down procedure adopted by most nations is to reduce the spread of the virus, but unless the lock down lasts for a very significant period,,,,,,,,,,,,How will the general public re-emerge into society and not then catch it?

The virus appears to have spread throughout the world by airline passengers and those passengers that were infected were surely very small numbers.

Until a vaccine has been developed, tested and then made available to the masses, I can`t see how the countries adopting lock down can resume normal life without a mass breakout of CoVid 19.

As I understand it there are two options:

Chinese approach
Isolate people until the infection rate and mortality rate drops to a very low level. Then whenever a case appears, isolate the individuals and track down every contact and isolate them. All this would allow some semblance of life and the economy to restart albeit with bursts of fire fighting in various towns and cities. Then wait for a vaccine to be produced.

British Approach
Crudely speaking, for any disease that spreads through a community there is a tipping point where the numbers of infected and then immune, prevent the disease spreading to anyone else that is not infected (Herd Immunity). The initial intention of the Govt. was I believe to allow our population to reach herd immunity as a single infection peak and hence gain immunity. But a report by Imperial College (16 March ?) squashed that when they pointed out large numbers of people would die and we didn't have the hospital capacity to cope with the sick. Currently we are following the isolation model that all other countries are following, however the Imperial model also suggested using a series of infection peaks to reach herd immunity instead. So we would allow some relaxation of the isolation approach to induce another infection peak, then increase isolation etc etc hence push the population through herd immunity. Currently they are refusing to say what their strategy is ( the question was asked yesterday at the briefing). I suspect we will not get an answer until they find out how many people are asymptomatic and how many have had a mild infection and not realised it. That depends on the 'antibody test' which currently isn't working (not accurate enough). But again like the Chines we would obviously use a vaccine in the medium term (12 months) when available.

As I say, that's my understanding.

Highly unlikely... My son had the first symptoms at the end of last week, but he could have been carrying the virus for over a week before that.

Saying that, we have all picked it up quickly. (I was the last to show symptoms on Tuesday night).

Like I said, it might not necessarily be covid19- I guess we won't know until an antibody test is available- but we all have the supposed symptoms. If it arrives in your modest household, I'd simply accept it's likely you are going to get it. It's very big odds in your favour that you will be perfectly fine.

I must admit, that is what I expected, as I would think it's practically impossible to keep away from each other. Then, there's the period that somebody has it, but isn't showing symptoms that lasts for an unknown period of time.

Hope that you're all responding well and getting better!
KST

Firstly, as I understand it, the most basic requirements for any pandemic are 1) PPE to protect the critical staff in hospitals and 2) Testing so that you can understand how it is spreading and hence how to control it. There is an article today on the BBC site (with pictures) of hospital staff using clinical waste bags to protect themselves instead of disposable gowns. This is not Tehran, it's the UK. As far as testing is concerned, we dont have enough test kits for the Drs and nurses attending the hospitalised, let alone other support staff, let alone in the community. Hence the recently announced deaths of two Drs and nurses (and they will not be the last). The Government doesn't need a scientific strategy to deal with this, simply preparation and planning. A stock of PPE plus a functioning supply chain, and designated labs. in the UK who can quickly raise antibodies to a given virus, then incorporate it into an ELISA test would have allowed us to tackle the coronavirus (or any other). And we know that both these areas have been shockingly neglected.

Secondly it's not an issue of politics, its accountability and we all know where that lies.

This party has underfunded and cut costs for the NHS for years and as a result it’s on its . They’d sooner spend the British tax players money on painting Buckingham Palace than funding the NHS properly.

How do you explain the governments constant mixed messages? Johnson going from bragging about shaking hands with CV patients, to talking about herd immunity to then enforcing a ‘lockdown’.

Large sporting events were fine. Delaying the closure of pubs/restaurants. Encouraging *regular* outside exercise. Non-essential workers still working if they can't work from home. Self-employed in limbo for weeks. Lying about testing capability. And that’s only the half of it. These people think they're fit to 'lead' us.

All governments have found this crisis difficult. In the UK it has exposed some failings at the top of government that have grown over the past decade.

The first has been a hollowing out of expertise in the civil service. Back when there was foot and mouth and swine flu there was much better capacity in terms of having people around with long-standing experience, not only scientists but people with a handle on the infrastructure and logistics requirements in a sector. Ministers would be working long hours but also had a lot of people around them who could give them accurate up to date information and guide their decisions. There was also a different culture back then where Ministers were more willing to accept hearing bad news or things they didn't agree with.

A lot of the expertise has gone. Some went during the cuts of the Cameron era where they were made redundant and moved to the academic or private sectors (often to then be hired back by government as external consultants). Also the culture changed - especially after the referendum - where 'experts' were treated with suspicion and seen as part of some kind of deep state conspiracy to undermine the UK - so a lot of the best people resigned or were 'moved on' and replaced by yes men who tow Ministers lines. There was a move away from people with policy expertise to PR types and more of an emphasis on "defensive lines" and "constructing a narrative" that supports the government rather than policy problem solving.

Last week the papers were running stories about how NHS management have been threatening clinical staff with being struck off if they raise concerns publically about the lack of PPE. This is how NHS management have been operating for a while. The priority is to shut down the story and not let the public be alarmed, rather than take accountability.

The problem with yes men and PR-focused managers in the civil service is they aren't necessarily competent and they are exactly what you don't want in this type of crisis. People are calling out the government for being slow off the mark to prepare when we knew about this in January. I'd be interested to see what type of briefing Ministers were getting back then. I wouldn't be surprised if it was "this is likely to be contained regionally in China....the NHS is world class, we are well equipped to deal with any cases that emerge here". Yes-men civil service managers send that type of stuff up as it is what Ministers want to hear and they don't want to be on the receiving end of a Minister saying "well if there are problems, effing sort them out by the end of the week...I don't expect to hear about coronavirus again".

The other issue is the type of policy/strategy advisers that are around No.10. In the Blair/Brown/Cameron years it was "policy wonks". These were nerdy, academic types who spend their time reviewing evidence from around the world on 'what works' questions like what's the best way to organise town planning to optimise public transport and infrastructure links; what are the best tax policies to incentivise small businesses to invest in high-growth technologies; what are the best early years policies to increase pupil attainment when the kids hit secondary school. They got mocked as people who had never done a job outside government but they were generally very intelligent and tuned in to research and evidence and could be set to work in a crisis and come up with some innovative solutions.

Now the approach has been to try and copy the Republican Party in the US and move towards "digital political campaign strategists". These people will be in to digital tech, social media messaging, targeted ads and devising policy based on appealing to core target groups. It is a more ruthless view of politics imported from the US which is that the purpose of policy is not about delivering what's best for the public but advancing your party's political standing. So instead of traditional policy wonks focusing on 'what works' questions you will have these guys working on things like 'bait' policies. A bait policy is something brought in to draw the media narrative and divide party lines in the way you want to support your message. For example - announce an extended freeze in beer and petrol duty and at the same time throw something out there being tougher on refugee children or limiting access to counselling on the NHS after gender reassignment. The bait will be to put out your 'popular' policy (beer and petrol) and on the same day get Labour talking about asylum seekers and transgender people. The goal is to reinforce the message to the target voter: "Labour doesn't speak for people like me any more". Longer term, things like getting rid of the BBC to have a US Fox News style channel to put out favourable media coverage, introducing political appointments to the judiciary, is part of the strategy. This is all taken from the Republican Party approach and it is ruthlessly successful over there - they exploit bait policy all the time to target different core voting groups over racial issues, guns, abortion, Israel, trade/China; send out their messaging through Fox and friendly radio talk shows and have friendly judges that can be relied on in case they face legal challenges.

But again, as the US is finding out just as we are, these kind of people are utterly useless in a public health crisis. You can't set them to work like traditional style policy wonks, they don't have the links with academics, scientists, policy experts in other countries to tap in to important knowledge. Their contacts are funding groups, media sources. They judge their success by monitoring social media and comments columns under newspapers, and seeing people post their key words like "Venezuela" "LIEbour", "EUSSR" "globalists" "BBC fake news" "cultural marxism" "establishment elites" "IRA". So while they might be useful in helping shape an attack narrative against people criticising the government's approach, they aren't able to solve a complex problem like this pandemic even if they are put to that task. As a result Ministers are left lacking the support networks around them that they need to respond to an urgent health crisis.