The government's change of tack on Covid-19 has come in for criticism from no less a person than the editor of The Lancet. Richard Horton says his journal published a paper in January forecasting a much higher level of intensive care unit use, which is exactly what the paper from Imperial College put out on Monday confirms. He says we have effectively lost seven weeks.
This is his tweet:
It said it took a study from Imperial to understand the likely burden of COVID-19 on the NHS. But read the first paper we published on COVID-19 on Jan 24. 32% admitted to ITU with 15% mortality. We have wasted 7 weeks. This crisis was entirely preventable. https://t.co/eahwRnaBFZ— richard horton (@richardhorton1) March 17, 2020
Elsewhere, there are reports that UK companies making testing kits have been exporting them because our own government has placed no orders. It comes as Hancock and Johnson appeal to British industry to suddenly start knocking up more ventilators as if they were small metal pressings from a stamping machine.
In a conference call with a lot of senior CEOs on Monday night, where ways of ramping up production were discussed, the idiot masquerading as PM couldn't resist making a joke about it, suggesting the plan could be called operation last gasp. He has no empathy or even self awareness.
Sir Patrick Vallance appeared before the Health Select Committee yesterday and admitted the NHS does not have the ability to do 'mass testing' and gave a list of those who are being tested. It was not a very long one. One wonders what government has been doing.
People who call in to 111 with symptoms aren't tested but simply advised to quarantine themselves for seven days if they live alone or fourteen days it they live with family. But nobody knows if they have Covid-19 or not. Vallance explained to the committee that they are 'ramping up' our capacity for testing but with no date given as to when the 10,000 tests per day target will be met. At the moment it's abour 1500 per day and is effectively being rationed.
Community testing was stopped last Friday, he said. So we don't know among those being told to self-isolate how many are genuinely Covid-19 positive. More importantly they don't know if their quarantine is necessary or not and if they will have immunity later. Amazingly, this applies even to front line health workers.
The Washington Post has described our response as 'disaster':
"But the United Kingdom has apparently decided lessons of SARS and the experiences in Wuhan and Italy do not apply in Britain. The U.K. government has said its approach to the outbreak will be to postpone enforced “social distancing” (the now well-known name for reducing your contacts to as few as possible) although a request for limited social interaction was announced on Monday. This will ensure more people get infected in this initial wave of the pandemic — British officials suggest as many as 60 percent of the population — and, hopefully, become immune.
"Unless, of course, they die."
The Post thinks we are still moving 'way too slowly'.
Theresa May tried in the House on Monday to get Matt Hancock (does anybody have any faith in the Health Secretary by the way?) to reveal why we weren't testing everybody who needs it:
"May I press the Secretary of State on two points that have been raised by others? The advice from the World Health Organisation was very clear: test, test, test. At an earlier stage the UK changed its testing requirements, and those who have symptoms and self-isolate are no longer tested. If the full information is to be available, surely the testing has to be very significantly increased. Who exactly is going to be tested?"
What she got was a long waffly answer:
"The point that was made last week was that as the increase in the number of cases continues, so our testing capability must increase faster, and at this stage we have to make sure that the use of the tests we have are prioritised. As we expand testing capability, we will expand the number of people who can get hold of those tests. I understand the frustrations of those who want a test, but the whole House will agree that we have to make sure that we use those tests on the people who need them most, which means saving lives in hospitals."
Anyone watching Johnson and Sunak's press conference later yesterday was left in no doubt what the message was. If Sunak said the government would 'do whatever it takes' once, he must have said it a dozen times.
The Chancellor announced £330 billion in 'support' as the headline figure but it turns out much of that will be in the form of guarantees of loans by the banks on 'attractive' terms. Attractive to the banks that is. What we didn't get is how much was in the firm of non repayable grants and how much in the form of loans and what the expected take up would be. You can bet it won't cost the Treasury anything like £330 billion - but it sounds generous, perfect for a press conference, eh?
Details on how to claim, how to qualify and how long the process will take wasn't revealed and as yet there is no support for self employed, those on zero hours contracts, temporary staff or gig economy workers. They will probably be impacted first and worst but are still waiting to hear what help they might get.
Last night Nissan and Ford announced their UK plants would close temporarily because of lack of demand. They are the first of many as the UK begins to shut down voluntarily with the government a passive bystander.
Where is the leadership?
