Dat 28 of Coronavirus Lockdown - Yes, 3 more weeks

As expected, on Thursday Dominic Raab announced that these restrictions will persist for another 3 weeks.

I've been reading a great deal about the crisis in care homes. It is as if the elderly have been forgotten, their carers denied status as 'key workers' and certainly at the back of the queue for PPE. Estimates vary widely, but I've read that 45% of COVID-19 deaths are probably occuring in care homes among elderly people who have been persuaded to agree to "do not admit to hospital" wishes.

Hopefully this is in the process of being addressed more effectively now it has been raised in the media.

I'm thoroughly fed up with these restrictions. People in the USA are protesting at the lockdown, yet here in the UK people seem so happy to persist. I thought, and the Govt. thought, that we are a nation of rebels who would not submit to limitations to our liberty. Quite the reverse. The Govt are talking about releasing things only as public opinion changes. So we are in lockdown which will only end when we think it should! True that they need to carry the public with them, and also true that they have been more effective in their messaging and have terrified so many people that I suspect there will be mental issues, with people too anxious to leave their houses, lasting far into the future.

We have the virus under control, I believe. The NHS is not overwhelmed, indeed it has excess capacity though we are awaiting deliveries of PPE. The challenge will be to get the country back to work, with people too scared to go to the workplace and too scared to allow their children back to school in case they pick up the virus. I've seen threads on Facebook of Mothers saying that no way will they let their kids go back to school. Admittedly, if you have a serious health condition as a Mother, then since kids can easily get the disease, spread it but recover themselves with minimal effects, it is probably pretty worrying.

Onto positive things - enjoying cooking.


Discovered a lovely oriental supermarket and authentic japanese dishes from the Wagamamma cook book and a vegan japanese cookbook. Getting out every day for a lovely walk in the woods. Avoiding supermarkets apart from one a fortnight. Might carry on with that. Enjoying gardening - my seeds are sprouting! I'll be around all summer so easily able to ensure they are looked after and don't dry out.

Day 25 of Coronavirus lockdown

This is definitely displacement activity. I've had a paper accepted for publication in a journal, and have until 30th April to incorporate the review comments. I've made a start and intend to finish this week - so I'm just about to embark on it, but guess what suddenly seems so important :) Yup - blogging.

Procrastination is the name of the day.

Yesterday I went out for a walk in the woods and saw a neighbour in his garden and started chatting through the hedge (been doing a lot of that lately - I think the coronavirus neutralising effects of privet have been under-researched).

Turns out he is a data analyst working on the graphs that get published by the government and the media. He is in contact with his opposite numbers in other countries. He mentioned Germany and showed me a text on his phone (over the hedge) that he read out. It sort of confirms my suspicions that there is not a lot of transparency. Apparently Germany distinguish between patients who die 'of' coronavirus, and those who die 'with' coronavirus, but of another cause - say a heart attack. So the drop in the German cases may not be as steep as it appears.

Equally, he pointed out that in the UK, we were coping well. The new Nightingale hospital in London was sitting fully manned (he said 600 nurses and Drs but I don't know) and zero patients.  He also said that the death statistics weren't actually as bad as they were made out to be.

I would like to see a lot more open discussion about the deaths - ages, exactly what they died of, what underlying health conditions they had, if any, also if they were health care workers (as that seems to place you at greater risk even if you don't have underlying health conditions). On today's BBC news site, there is an article saying that according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS) 9 out of 10 COVID-19 deaths are patients with underlying conditions. Most common was heart disease, followed by dementia and then respiratory illness.

Young people under age of 40 may contract the disease but combat it somehow without generating antibodies, so the antibody test will not work on them. This goes some way to explaining why the disease is so much worse for older people. Their immune systems go into overdrive - people over age 60 have 3 times as high an immune response as those under according to one article I read. The risk of dying over that age also increased hugely.

When this lockdown was initiated, it was for 3 weeks. Today during the PM briefing (Dominic Raab, the Foreign Secretary will probably host it as he is deputising for the PM as Boris Johnson recovers at Chequers) they will announce what happens next. All the papers are reporting that the lockdown is likely to be continued for another 3 weeks. Many people are calling for more transparency about what the exit strategy will be. 

Most working age people, if they catch the virus, will recover. It may, or may not, be as bad as flu. Older people get it much worse. I really thing that we should get the economy moving sooner rather than later as it is powered by younger people. These people will be shouldering the financial burden of the impending recession, they are the ones losing their jobs as businesses go under and losing their homes as they can no longer afford the mortgage. Let's see what Dominic Raab announces this afternoon.

Day 24 of Coronavirus lockdown - death statistics

Today it is all over the news how residents in care homes have ended up with COVID-19. It seems that frail patients were discharged from hospitals into their care homes without being tested for COVID-19, even if they displayed symptoms. The disease then spread within the care home with predictable mortality results. Workers in care homes do not get priority for PPE unlike healthcare workers. It must be really dire.

And the Nightingale hospitals are standing empty. There were 17 patients in the London one (capacity 4000). In one article I read it was suggested that frail patients could be discharged from hospitals to a form of 'staging' house, either their own home, or other accommodation where they would be cared for by one person. Maybe we should use parts of the Nightingale hospitals for this since we don't seem to need them for Coronavirus patients.

It is easy to say that the rate of deaths is dropping if you don't test certain categories of patients, the elderly and frail, who exhibit symptoms and then don't put it on the death certificate. I found this table in the Spectator daily roundup which lists the expected number of deaths for the week ending 3rd April alongside the actual number of deaths, whether for COVID-19 or not. Makes for interesting reading.

Day 23 of Coronavirus lockdown

I'm deliberately not rereading my previous posts before writing this one so I don't influence my thoughts. It has been surprisingly difficult to find time to sit down and write an update, but I've just got back from the post office (15 minute queue outside) where I posted a parcel for Stephen and bought two cards for Esther. She isn't expecting many cards on her birthday on 17th as we are still all staying at home so she won't see any friends or colleagues, so I got her one from me and one from the cats. I walked to her house, pushed the lot through the door and left.

Some people are really freaked out by the whole situation. As you walk around, people stand aside so you can keep 2m between you. Or they cross to the other side of the road. Everyone is following the social distancing rules. Some people, particularly the elderly and I assume anybody who has an underlying health issue or is just panicked by the idea of catching the virus is wearing a mask. There is no evidence that masks, other than the top grade surgical masks, stop you from catching the virus. However the WHO are considering changing their advice in the light of growing evidence that wearing a mask stops you from unwittingly infecting others around you if you have the virus asymptomatically. Just another example of the unclear guidelines.

Looking at the trend in deaths, it seems to me that health workers and key workers such as bus drivers, supermarket staff etc who deal with lots of people are the most at risk. They should therefore have the best PPE (personal protection equipment). Ordinary members of the public can make do with scarves or less expensive masks. There seems to be some effect of 'viral load' whereby otherwise fit Doctors and nurses get the infection and then get very ill and sometimes die.

The lockdown thus far seems to have achieved what was intended. There is a compliance level of 90%. We have avoided overloading the NHS. Several new Nightingale hospitals have been built in conference centres etc in areas like London, Manchester where high infection rates are likely, all ready to deal with the intensive care demands. Sadly Boris Johnson got very ill and had to go into intensive care. He is out now and recuperating with his girlfriend, Carrie Simmonds at Chequers. So much hinges on him as a leader and as a positive energy. His approval ratings seem to be really high.

I've read articles about how people have accepted the strict lockdown measures. The government didn't expect so many companies to shut up shop and claim loans to keep afloat. There are more businesses closing their doors and far more workers furloughed or losing their jobs than expected. One estimate puts the cost of the government's job retention schemes at billions of pounds per week.

There has been talk of an 'exit strategy', but people are so convinced by the message that they must stay home in order to protect the NHS and save lives, there is a chance that workers will refuse to go back into the work place. Public opinion seems to be driving government decisions.

A cabinet source said: "We won't be able to lift the lockdown until the public feels ready for it. The Prime Minister's illness has probably added another week to when that point will come, because it's made everyone feel as if they know someone who has come close to losing their life to the virus and it has changed attitudes."

So the timing will be dictated as much by the public's attitudes as by the science otherwise it won't work. To persuade the public the govt need to get a new message across. Instead of talking about 'exit' which has a feel of finality and suddenness about it, Dominic Raab is using terms like 'relaxation' and 'transition'.

Only 717 deaths were recorded yesterday - Easter Monday - as compared to over 900 the day before. This could be due to delayed reporting. Also, deaths in care homes are excluded from the statistics (by international agreement, apart from Belgium who include them). The situation in care homes is getting far worse. Over 100 institutions have had outbreaks in the past 24 hours. Without testing, I think the care home staff are probably bringing it in unwittingly, then the residents catch it and die because they generally don't go to hospital. There has been controversy of late over GPs and others getting elderly people to say that if they get COVID-19 they don't want to go to hospital. Most probably come too high up the frailty scale (1 - 9 with 5 - 9 counting as too frail) to be considered for intervention when resources are scarce.

My feeling is that this virus is here to stay. The best we can do is ensure that the NHS is geared up to cope, and then let the population slowly catch and recover from it. Lets be honest, what is the alternative? If we all stay home, the economy will grind to a halt and we will run out of things. I've been keeping an eye on Sweden, and looking at Mark Handley's graphs, Sweden, with no full lockdown, is showing a similar infection and death curve to Italy, yet Italy imposed lockdown.

I find myself wondering if the full lockdown and consequent impact on the economy is making any difference to the overall progression of the disease. We've done what we needed to do to protect the NHS. There is no way we can all stay indoors until the virus is eradicated because it won't be. We need an exit strategy now.

Meanwhile, the Chinese have allowed the ghastly wet markets to start up again. I do not blame Chinese people per se, but the Chinese government is authoritarian and has the power to stop this, yet they do not. They have caused a world pandemic yet they continue to allow the wet markets from which the virus sprang. I have seen the usual virulent tweets on twitter, blaming Boris Johnson for the deaths of people from Coronavirus. Cheap political point scoring in my opinion. The UK bodies have done what they thought was best at the time, given the advice they had. Some of their choices may not have been the best, though I think it makes little difference overall. In my view, the real culprits in this ghastly worldwide pandemic are the Chinese government. I am no fan of Trump, but why should he not say it like it is - the virus originated in China, they tried to deny it, chastised the Doctor who first raised the alarm in December and who subsequently caught and died from the virus. In my mind they are totally to blame for creating and releasing a worldwide pandemic.

Day 15 of Coronavirus Lockdown

It has been two weeks since we all went on virtual house arrest, so I thought it a good time to post a quick update on how my thinking has developed. I've fallen into a habit of reading the newspaper from cover to cover. Probably the first 10 news articles relate to Coronavirus. I seldom watch the 16:00 Coronavirus update any more. It is well reported in subsequent news broadcasts and I usually catch the gist later in the day. I don't really want to structure my day around a COVID-19 related news broadcast.

I'm probably reading too much news, but it is a bit addictive. I awoke last night, around 2am and couldn't get back to sleep so sometime after 3pm I got my iPad out and downloaded and read today's paper. I remember key snippets, but it does rather blur into one. I'm interested in Iceland, where they are relying on a culture of collaboration and cooperation to assure social distancing and have not initiated any European or Chinese-style whole country lockdown, and Sweden, where they seem convinced that the way forward is to follow the track the UK followed initially, asking people to social distance but not imposing any great lockdown. They've banned social gatherings of 50 people or more I believe, and A level students and university students are learning from home. I think the vulnerable are urged to stay home. People can still walk the streets and enjoy restaurants etc. The Swedish medical office says that the damage to the economy would be far worse than the disease. They only have (if I remember correctly) 600 intensive care beds.

I've read other research into how the disease is transmitted, conducted I believe in Iceland. They have followed an intensive track and trace approach, with 60 dedicated officers and medics who track the origin of each infected person. So far they've identified 20 different strains of the virus, some more virulent than others, and traced each infected person back to some foreign contact, with, interestingly, 9 Iclanders having been infected in the UK in January at a particular, but not identified, football match. At that point, the UK didn't realise it even had the virus.

Iclandic researchers have also collected data on where the virus is most likely to be transmitted, and it is little surprise that it is through mass gatherings such as football matches, concerts, theatres. Transmission is rarer at restaurants, and very rare in supermarkets. Walking past people outside is very unlikely to cause contagion, though it is still possible. They also swabbed down a household where multiple members COVID-19 and discovered no traces of the virus on high use areas such as door handles, surfaces etc. I have also read estimates that up to 50% of the population is or has been infected asymptomatically.

We won't know here in the UK as we don't have the capacity to test, thanks to Public Health England's centralised approach to testing and early disinclination to make use of the offers of help from labs and research scientists across the country. PHE have not exactly covered themselves in glory, advising the PM not to undertake testing in the community, restricting it to only those admitted to hospital, when the World Health Organisation were advising community testing and track and trace as a more effective way to manage the disease. However we can use the research from other countries whose public health authorities are more aware of the importance of collaboration and research sharing.

The initial findings from the research into modes of transmission in Iceland has got me wondering at the advisability of continuing this whole country lockdown beyond the 3 week original limit specified by Boris Johnson. This is a rather contentious thought, but I'd like to explore it. I've seen a fair amount of virtue signalling on social media. This cartoon captures it pretty well. People sitting in their extensive gardens with their iPads and laptops disapproving of those who go exercise in a public space. Then you have cases like the Scottish Chief Medical Officer driving 40 miles out of Edinburgh for two weeks in a row to spend the weekend with her family at her bungalow, whilst advising others to stay at home. She has now resigned amid a storm of criticism.

But how dangerous is going for a walk in a park. Is it less dangerous than sitting for a moment on a park bench on your own to catch your breath? The police have challenged people for doing just that. Or driving to walk your dog in a more remote part of the countryside, rather than on the pavements outside your house or apartment where you come into contact with loads of other people.

I'm worried about the economic impact. The banks (unsurprisingly) seem unwilling to help out small businesses with loans despite the fact that the Govt. has released money for it. Some businesses are within days or weeks of going under, and the banks are asking them to put up collateral, or explore other avenues for getting a loan. People with mortgages are worried about losing their homes. Mortgage companies are offering a 3 month payment holiday, but if you are made redundant as is happening as businesses go under then this will not help.

So we come to the hard choices. The Imperial study from Professor Ferguson, the same who predicted that the impact of CJD would be huge in 25 years (it wasn't) and who advised the massive cattle culling that many now deem excessive and unnecessary, predicted 250,000 deaths from COVID-19 if the PM didn't impose the lockdown. Yet a recent Oxford paper suggested that this estimate of potential deaths might be excessive. Conflicting advice, but increasing amounts of data from countries who are ahead of us on the curve. I came across @MarkJHandley on Twitter who posts fascinating statistical graphs with freely available data from affected countries. Things are serious, but as yet I'm not sure whether the levelling off of cases is due to lockdown measures, or if the same might happen with the closure of high infection risk places such as football grounds and concert venues whilst allowing people to carry on economic activity with hightened levels of hygene in public transport and public places, and social distancing in other places.

There is no doubt that people are dying horribly in ICUs in hospitals. I read that if you are admitted to an ICU with corona virus you have a 50% chance of dying. However if you are over 80 years old, this rises hugely to something like 80%. And this brings me to the reason I'm wondering about the advisability of this lockdown. It looks like the vast majority of the population can catch COVID-19 with mild to flu-like symptoms.

These people, who would be only mildly affected by the virus, are the people who are losing their livelihoods and who will bear the economic burden of paying for this for years to come. There will be suicides and wholesale misery, as there was to a lesser extent during the CJD crisis when farmer after farmer committed suicide. This current situation is much more far-reaching and will, I think, result in huge numbers of mental health issues caused by the uncertainty and fear.

I wonder if we could return to a semblance of normality, using social distancing together with protection for the vulnerable groups, until we have time to develop one of the potential cures, vaccines and anti-virals that are currently being rushed through development and testing. I'm not sure that keeping the 90% of the population who will be relatively unaffected by the virus from earning money, contributing taxes and keeping the economy afloat is the right long-term solution. We have ramped up the NHS ICU provision with the Nightingale hospitals. It is the metropolitan areas that are the most affected. Why not allow the rest of the country to get back to work, whilst protecting the vulnerable?

Day 11 of Coronavirus Lockdown

Thursday today. Important to mention as it is easy to lose track of the days. It started out sunny so I took a short walk into the village to the post office to post a package. It was very pleasant. Hardly anybody out, very few cars. The lady in the post office said that she had been expecting people to get angry if they had to queue as she was working on her own there, but everybody had been very cheerful. I guess it is just nice to get out of the house so a short wait just means you get more time to admire the things for sale in the PO.

Walking back I decided to go up Sandy Lane, rather than the road. This is a very old byway open to all traffic (actually, just pedestrians) that runs up the hill, past the old sandpit area parallel to the road, with a number of footpaths connecting it to the road, some with quirky houses. It was a good choice. The air smelled really fresh, and there were flowering daffodils that I could smell as I walked past. I've heard that the reduction in vehicles and planes is doing great things for our carbon emissions. Am I imagining it, or does the air smell fresher and cleaner?  It always is pretty clean here due to all the trees surrounding us.

I've got lots to do. I have my crochet - I've done two of 9 squares and have decided to have a go at a hexagon. Excitement! 
I've also got a big sack of compost - they were selling it in Costco where we went yesterday for some provisions. Keeping trips to the supermarket down to 1 per week, less if we can manage it. So I have lots of seed planning and planting to do. At least the postal service is still working so I can order seeds. There is much news about nurseries  and farms who will have to destroy plants and crops unless they can get them to an open garden centre, in the case of the nurseries, or get skilled labourers to harvest the crops in the case of the farmers. We may well be relying on my broad beans!

I have had a paper accepted for publication with what they call major revisions - they aren't really major, but will take a bit of thoughtful implementation. I have until 30th April. I made a start last week, but was struggling to concentrate. This week feels better, but I'm still resisting. To be honest, I'd rather be practising one of my musical instruments, or doing some crochet or tending to my chickens. I even found myself sorting the measuring spoons in the kitchen drawer in descending order of size!

Even blogging has its attractions! I'm supposed to be amending the paper as I sit here. 

The death toll continues to rise.  today we have had 2,352 deaths, an increase of 563 on yesterday and, as always, the biggest daily increase yet. The govenment talk about maybe increasing the restrictions, but I'm not sure that would be warranted. Any impact from the restrictions would take two or three weeks to show up in a reduction of cases. We are currently faced with a shortage of tests, so many NHS workers are in self-isolation due to having contact with somebody with COVID-19, when in fact they might be perfectly well. There are big testing centres being set up, e.g. at Ikea in Wembly, but there seem to be delays in doing the tests, with some NHS workers having been sent away yesterday because they didn't have the right paperwork. Hopefully they will get this sorted. The government were definitely slow to act in the early days, when ordering test kits and instituting distancing protocols would have had the strongest effect. To shift the blame onto the population now by implying that the lockdown restrictions need to be increased because we aren't adhering to it properly would be, I think, a wrong call. 

Must get back to that paper!