Chinese virus
- Thread starter Chris Ashdown
- Start date
T
The Byre
This is rapidly becoming a serious issue -
Oncologist Professor Karol Sikora "Around 450 people die every day of cancer in the UK. There is no peak and the numbers are not coming down. Unless we get control of the situation now, that will increase - potentially up to 60,000 unnecessary fatalities. Cancer is relentless and we need to act now!"
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What's your idea? Each person washes his/her own material? How could one ensure the disinfection is done correctly because if it's not that would be a problem. Given the number of people in the NHS, what are the chances every single one of them would do it properly every single time? Remember that a lot of those equipments are changed multiple times per shift.
If it's to be done in a centralised way, what would be the logistics required to collect all the material in a safe way, transport it and then return them to the hospitals.
Not to mention that while the equipment was being transported and disinfected, you'd still require equipment in the hospitals.
My doubt on this approach is purely from a practical perspective.
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That approach works when you are talking about construction materials or equipment that does not require proper disinfection.
In this case, a lot of the equipment would not even survive a cycle in a washing machine.
This is the sort of instance where the NHS and the government have to say all bets are off and the internal procurement processes have to be thrown out of the window to allow material to be bought on an emergency basis. No tender, no calls for best offers, just a matter of finding stock and securing the purchase.
Time to think about the cost was weeks, months or years ago.
By the way, I do not agree we should criticise the government or the NHS for lack of planning for this specific scenario. However, I do think they could be a lot better at responding to the problems that are thrown at them.
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Unfortunately, a lot of the deaths caused by those missed appointments or exams will take place in months or years and by the time it happens the true cause may have been forgotten.
Now, if this is indeed correct, the survival rate for cancer should decrease and the number of daily deaths linked to cancer may increase temporarily at least.
Hopefully, that will not be the case.
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I believe most of the disposable gowns which are just those really thin pinny types have those plastic ties on them like you get on some dust bin sacks -the method for removing them to avoid cross contamination is to rip off the ties.
in any case the WHO advice is for surgical gowns to be used for any work that is withing 1 metre of a CV patient.
Its easy to say reuse PPE but in a short staffed, high pressure environment in a hospital CV red zone it would be pretty impossible to reuse PPE and maintain proper infection control procedures. It would require storage and space etc organised to be done properly.
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That's one of the big issues that isn't being addressed. The NHS moved away from re-using and washing items decades ago, so there's no infrastructure in place to start washing and re-using gowns etc.
We're not talking about things you can wash in the sink. They have to be sterilised, steamed, covered in medical grade disinfectants and whatever other chemicals are needed.
The PPE they've been buying in for the last few years is single use. It is not designed to be washed or put through a machine. Even if it was, there are no machines to do this and there are no staff available to wash and dry clothing, even if it were possible.
They have to buy more in but I imagine they have multiple tiers of public bodies and organisations that prohibit the procurement of items that have not passed rigorous testing and are approved for use in medical facilities. This is all fine, when you have plenty of stock but when procurement has failed to acquire enough stock, the waiting time to upgrade and increase capacity is too long.
The same situation is happening with the new hospitals. Not only are there not enough staff to run them, there's not enough equipment, even at basic level. The NHS has never been prepared for this type of scenario. Sure, they went through the practice runs a few years ago but on the back of that, they don't appear to have actioned any of the recommendations for dealing with a pandemic.
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Everyone gums it about testing but they are not effective - test away even if it is ineffective. I would rather wear a disinfected gown than rely on a faulty test.
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Great idea, have 2-3-4 and sort yourself out. My approach is also from a purely practical perspective to get the job done. Look after yourself as no one else will has always been my mantra.
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Why are you brining in testing?
This is about cleaning PPE...which you can't do as it's not designed to be cleaned, there are no facilities to do it in the hospital.
You may be happy wearing something that's been badly disinfected but you are not working with people that could cause you to die.
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Where will you being doing all this within the hospital? You can't take them home to do them. You will need to ensure no virus gets out of the room as well.
I will assume you have no experience in doing any of this in a medical envrionment.
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You are right I don't, I just see people running around blaming everyone but not coming up with a viable solution. The papers are continually saying so and so offered items to the government 2without saying where they got them from, who made them and how much profit they want (probably vast)
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T
The Byre
There is a solution - it's called doing something!
The cabinet was first made aware of the seriousness of C19 pandemic in a Cobra meeting on January 24th. Officials and scientists attended another three Cobra meetings stressing the urgency of the situation. None of these meetings were attended by the PM who was away with his new lover on a 'working holiday'.
The government did nothing for 38 days. During that time, every other European country prepared for lockdown and obtaining PPE. During those 38 days the government sent part of its stockpile of PPE to China.
Companies expecting to have to start making PPE as per agreed contract, heard nothing. Their trade association contacted the government but was ignored. Companies received and are now manufacturing for other countries, inc. Italy, Spain and Germany.
On April 1st the government began to act and initiate a plan for reacting to a pandemic that was already in existence since November 2017. Over five weeks of complete inaction!
It is not that the UK or the NHS was not prepared - it's just that Johnson is every bit the incompetent playboy clown people who knew him warned that he would be.
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2, 3 or 4 would not really solve the issue as the Dr or nurse has to change it several times per shift.
Then, of course, there's the little inconvenience of where exactly to get the equipment.
Now, provided the person does manage to buy all the equipment necessary and find a solution to store the infected ones in a safe way, where exactly would the person disinfect all this equipment? At home? Obviously, that's not an option.
Not to mention that disposable equipment is unlikely to be effective after one dips it into liquid.
This is an area where getting the job done in the wrong way will just lead to an early grave.
This is a difficult situation where there are no easy answers or solutions. At this stage, it is unlikely to have a cheap solution either. The major problem here is that the quantities required are just mind-boggling.
I do not have the numbers but I'd guess we are talking millions per day rather than thousands... Every. Single. Day!
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That's just nonsense.
The UK and NHS were not prepared for what is happening - it is not down to a single person, the PM, to plan and be prepared - there is a whole army of people involved with decisions like this.
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“Military personnel have criticised the NHS for its ‘appalling’ handling of distributing personal protective equipment (PPE) amid continued complaints of shortages.
The army, which has been helping the health service deploy the life-saving gear, is understood to be pushing for more control of the allocation to ensure kit is ending up where it needs to be.
A senior source alleged 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. They claimed NHS logistics were ‘knackered’ and questioned why certain key items were not being rationed.
‘We know how knackered their [NHS logistics] systems are, but we’ve been surprised we’ve not been called in to help more, and we’ve been surprised by their failure to ration [kit]’ the insider told The Times.”
This story from The Metro seems clear who is to blame foe a lot of this mess.
The army, which has been helping the health service deploy the life-saving gear, is understood to be pushing for more control of the allocation to ensure kit is ending up where it needs to be.
A senior source alleged 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. They claimed NHS logistics were ‘knackered’ and questioned why certain key items were not being rationed.
‘We know how knackered their [NHS logistics] systems are, but we’ve been surprised we’ve not been called in to help more, and we’ve been surprised by their failure to ration [kit]’ the insider told The Times.”
This story from The Metro seems clear who is to blame foe a lot of this mess.
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Who? The NHS?
Surely the ultimate responsibility is with the U.K. government. If the NHS leadership have failed then those above them are clearly not capable of asking the right questions and ensuring the NHS is spending taxpayer money responsibly.
I’m not a BoJo fan but this mess pre-dates his leadership and goes back to over ten years ago. Why did they waste money on training for pandemics and vast sums on reports and research to throw it all in the bin and not action anything. If that was a decision by NHS leadership then why was it not picked up by whoever was running the government department at the time? MPs are answerable to the public and should be ensuring tax payer money is spent wisely, if it’s being thrown around all over the place they should be in there demanding resignations from those responsible for this mess. Time for MPs to show a bit of leadership and power, instead of hiding and coming up with silly excuses on morning tv shows.
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T
The Byre
The UK was actually rather well prepared.
The US was also very well prepared. Both countries had far-reaching and sophisticated emergency plans for a pandemic. Both required the PM or President to sign an executive order to put them into action.
In December 2017 a huge plan was created called NHS Operating Framework for Managing the Response to a Pandemic. Yes PPE stocks were low, but there was a plan to have companies here and abroad manufacture PPE on-demand as parts of large orders-on-call contracts and 110 laboratories were earmarked to become testing centres as part of the 'British In Vitro Diagnostics Association'.
All the PM had to do was to sign the executive order to initiate that plan on January 24th - the date of the Cobra meeting on the subject. Johnson did not attend any of the first five Cobra meetings on C19.
The 'British In Vitro Diagnostics Association' was first contacted on April 1st.
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Yip - everyone has great 20/20 hind-vision, Go ahead and continue the blame game without offering a solution.
Sweden have gone down the route of herd immunity without lockdown. Their population is smaller but the density in built up areas is no less than UK. If you extrapolate their death rate to our population it is about 14000 - much the same as ours. The only difference is their economy is not being mutilated and wont be saddled with a debt repayment problems that will make the debt left by Labour look small fry. You used to bitch about the austerity programs - I take it you will do the same in the future. Please stop being a parrot
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If it doesn’t rest with the management of the organisation, why do you need the organisation and management?
If anyone on here appointed a manager, are you seriously saying if they didn’t their job right, you would not hold them accountable?
The fact you oversee the operation is different, and yes, you would deserve criticism as well, but the management accepts the pay to do the job so they should accept their failures to do so.
With Boris only just recently made PM, and since he is looking at hundreds of various problems in the first couple of months, I think it unfair to mark him down for criticism ahead of managers, many of whom might have been in those jobs for years.
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Take the risk Chris! - If it is from China you're only going to use it once before it breaks!
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Chatting to the Chinese supplier I’ve got quite friendly with since both our families have had virus bereavements she asked how our businesses we’re doing as she’d had zero orders from the UK since March 19th and only two general enquiries. She tells me this is common and many people are now out of work in China because they are not selling anything! Rather knocks the conspiracists!
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Sweden put in perspective
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ow-slowly-Britains-despite-lack-lockdown.html
With 20/20 hindsight we should have continued on our original path instead of buckling under the rancid screaming of the media. The value of our media is disproportionate to the influence they wield on the population.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...ow-slowly-Britains-despite-lack-lockdown.html
With 20/20 hindsight we should have continued on our original path instead of buckling under the rancid screaming of the media. The value of our media is disproportionate to the influence they wield on the population.
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Must be true if it's in the Daily Mail!
Looking at the stats the infection rates and death rates are still increasing and a lot of people in the country and starting to get more worried about it and the lack of any lockdown.
Also Sweden is a larger country with only a few large cities and much less density of population that the UK has. And people are happier to follow government advice which we are not as good at here.
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But do we have the 20/20 hindsight already? I do not think we do as we still do not know how this will pan out.
Different countries are reporting numbers in different ways. So, unless we are sure both countries are reporting numbers in the same way, comparisons will be meaningless.
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I did find it on other sources. As true as it could be from any media source. Break it down to population density in the affected areas and we are comparable. The population seem to have followed these more stricter regulations although there are signs that some are rebelling.
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Putting the population and geographical differences to one side, I wonder how Swedens national and international travel compares to the UK?
For example, does Sweden have the same volume of people passing through airports as the UK, with Heathrow being one of the worlds busiest airports.
I think the UK is quite unique and it's difficult to compare us with other nations. The UK is a hub, millions of people travelling in to or through our airports and ports going on to other countries like the US or back the other way, to the european mainland.
We're still seeing 15k people a day travelling through our airports apparently. Does Sweden have the same volume of international traffic? It must be easier to contain a virus, if your population don't travel much and they're not interacting with international travellers on the scale of say London.
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Does Sweden have the same custers of deprived communities?
Does it have the same immigrant clusters were multi-generational extended family groups are more common (this was also said the be the case with Italian families) allowing the virus to spread.
I saw one report that a large percentage of Swedes live alone. That would have a dramatic effect on the spread.
You simply cannot make simplistic comparisons between countries, without digging a lot deeper, even when they are near neighbours in Europe, let alone the wider world. But that's exactly what the tabloids like to do.
Does it have the same immigrant clusters were multi-generational extended family groups are more common (this was also said the be the case with Italian families) allowing the virus to spread.
I saw one report that a large percentage of Swedes live alone. That would have a dramatic effect on the spread.
You simply cannot make simplistic comparisons between countries, without digging a lot deeper, even when they are near neighbours in Europe, let alone the wider world. But that's exactly what the tabloids like to do.
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Themselves and those that appointed them. I am not absolving the Gov of overall blame, but it seems stupid that so many expect Boris to run everything down to ordering pencils. It is not that hard being a buyer, but I have mentioned numerous times that although everyone loves the NHS, and the world class care it gives, in many areas it can be improved immensely.
Between these buyers, the trust boards, overall managers etc, there are a lot of people to blame before Boris. This has been going on for many years, us Brits are very good at managing things badly.
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It will lead to more privatisation of services. They'll just say the NHS is not fit for purpose in its current form and that private companies should be allowed to take over almost every service. Private companies that prioritise shareholder profits of course and link closely with insurance providers.
I think it's just a British thing in general. We haven't been any good at anything since the late 1800s. We used to be able to build colossal bridges, now we can't even fix potholes properly.
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