Day 54 of Coronavirus lockdown

Broad beans

The emphasis is on getting to work rather than staying home. It is not possible to eliminate risk entirely. I read recently that out of the 36000 or so deaths, most have been in the over 80s. A figure of something like 246 deaths of people under the age of 40 sticks in my mind. I think the odds of being injured in a road traffic accident are probably higher.

Well, actually as of last Monday, things have eased up a little in England. We can now go out as often as we want. The mantra has changed to "Stay alert, save the NHS, save lives".....or something like that. I don't actually remember apart from the Stay alert bit which many people seem to be confused by. So confused that the Govt. issued a detailed explanation of what they meant. I think many people are really enjoying being told exactly what to do, when to go out, when to stay in, how to interact with others. 

So we can now go to the park, have a picnic, sit on a bench. But we cannot go visit elderly relatives in care homes. That is a fiasco. The Court of human rights is looking into whether the human rights of care home residents have been infringed. More and more evidence is emerging that there was a directive in place to release elderly patients from hospital into care homes without testing if they were still infectious with COVID-19. Private care home owners have said they were able to refuse, but others were forced into taking in these patients and then it spread in the care home. 

Schools are supposed to go back in a phased way - reception, yr1 and yr 6 on 1st June. The unions are resisting it - I guess it is easy for teachers to refuse to go back as they are still being paid. Parents with school age children in deprived areas with insecure employment have fewer choices. The academies are defying the unions and are their schools back as they have more autonomy. So far the evidence seems to be that particularly young children neither catch nor spread the disease - out of 62 NHS nurseries that have been open during this period, only 3 have had any positive tests for COVID-19 and of those, there have been no instances of children passing it on. Mainly staff picking it up from outside I suspect. 

There is a lot on the news about the difference between different regions. It does seem to make sense. If you live somewhere where the virus is ramping up, then it makes more sense not to ease the restrictions. But if you live somewhere where the virus is under control - I think they had something like 26 new cases in London yesterday, then surely you should go back to something resembling normal. 

On a positive note - my broad beans have really grown well and I can even see little mini-beans forming. Hopefully they will stay blight free and we shall be eating some of our own before the season is over.

Red Mite......again

On Monday I had just sat down at my laptop after playing with my chickensin the run, getting them to jump on my knee to take treats out of my hands. I spotted the unmistakable little mite wandering across the bottom of my laptop screen. Recognised it instantly, even though it was not red, i.e. had not recently fed. I squished it

I trotted back to the chickens and looked carefully in the eglu and there was one little accumulation of red mites. Just in a corner between the roosting bars and the nest box. I looked very carefully, and could see others, but very few seemed to be moving. I dust the entire eglu with diatomaceous earth each time I clean it which, if the mites wander over it, dessicates and kills them. However I had become complacent. I wasn't checking the roosting bars as carefully as I should, and I wasn't washing everything each time, so I'd allowed the little mites to gain a foothold.

So I swung into action. Here are my steps for getting rid of red mite. I video'd myself during each step, and have made a recording probably as much for my own benefit as for anyone else. Nevertheless, I recall how worried I was the first time I had red mite so I hope this post and associated video will help any other backyard chicken keepers facing this teeny enemy for the first time. 

Day 1: Monday

Having discovered the mites, my priority was to remove the chickens to somewhere safe. Over the years I have acquired 4 eglus. I use only one in the main walk in run (WIR). I have another in the outdoor run. I have one set aside as a spare (in case the main eglu gets red mite) and I have another eglu plus tunnel permanently set up and empty as a hospital eglu. In this case, I removed the chickens from their red eglu in the WIR to the green hospital eglu. However to minimise the red mites that would transfer across with the chickens, I took each one out, one by one, and rubbed diatomacious earth into their bodies, focusing on chest, under wing, back and vent. 

Having cleared the WIR, I then dismantled the red eglu and moved it, and all the perching blocks, dustbaths, run enrichment toys etc out onto the grass. I sprayed everything, every nook and cranny, with mite killer. Any proprietory brand will do the trick. I have read that if you simply jet wash everything without first killing off the mites, you spread them all over your garden. 

I then left everything in the sun to sterilise.

Also, I took all my clothes off and put straight in the washing machine and had a shower to reduce the change of introducing red mite into the house.

Day 2: Tuesday

Today I cleared out all the bedding. This was a surprisingly tiring task. Previously I have made every mistake in the book. Clearing things without first killing the red mites, for instance - I once gave red mite infestation to my large black wheely bin once! That was disgusting. 

Again, total clothes change, wash clothes and shower before joining the household.

Day 3: Wednesday

Today is the fun day - jet washing. So enjoyable, yet I couldn't say why. I jet washed the spare pink eglu first - it was clean and clear of mites, but had got a little grubby as it had been stored outside. Then I jet washed the floor of the run and lastly the red eglu that had the mites. Before washing it, I checked carefully. There were still one or two little mites alive in the roosting bars. In fact, that was where they had been hiding out - the diatomaceous earth is a powder, and all the surfaces had been well covered, but underneath the bars was clear of powder and so an ideal breeding ground for the nasty little mites. 

I zapped them with mite killer before jetwashing the entire thing. I then took the door portion from the base portion and discovered that there were crevices there where mites could hide. Important to dismantle everything.

Having washed everything, I left it in the sun to try out. The red eglu has gone into storage ready for my next red mite problem. Provided it is unused for 8 months, any mites left on it (and I believe I've got rid of them all) will have died so it should be fine. 

Day 4: Thursday

Time to reassemble everything. I used Poultry shield on the pink eglu before reassembling it. I don't know if that will make much difference, but it can only help. I put everything back together in the WIR and dusted with diatomaceous earth. Then I moved the chickens back home. I took the opportunity to spray their legs with scaley mite spray just in case. 

Looking carefully at the green hospital eglu, I could see one or two clear mites (unfed) in the poop tray so there had obviously been some on the birds when I moved them across. Each time I handle the girls, I end up with up to 3 little mites on me. However they are all clear, unfed mites so I'm hoping that infestation will not build up either in the hen house, or in my home.

My plan moving forward is to clean and change the roosting bars and poop try every 3 days, and to reapply diatomaceous earth every day. I think the mites have a 5 day life cycle, so if I clean everything thoroughly every 3 days, and if in the interim the place is full of diatomaceous earth which should kill them, I'm hoping to eradicate them. 

If you don't have a spare eglu, then much of what I have done will not be possible. The first time I had red mite, I had only one eglu and I controlled it by cleaning regularly and spraying with mite killer. If they cannot find a little dark place to accumulate and breed, I think they will eventually die out. 

Here's an 18 minute video of the whole process

Day 39 of Coronavirus Lockdown

I submitted the revised version of my paper yesterday. It is much better and I'm very happy with it. That has taken up much more of my time than I expected, so not much blogging. The glorious April weather we have been having up until a few days ago broke and it has been pouring, so not too difficult to sit working on the paper.

While the sun has been out and it's been lovely and warm, I've really enjoyed walking in the woods and discovering more footpaths. I'm so fortunate to live here. It feels like CoronaVirus is a million miles away. Last Sunday we recorded ourselves playing the tune for a Morris dance called Hells Bells. This was to be the master music track so I uploaded it on YouTube. Then the dancers and musicians from our side, Wicket Brood, can record themselves dancing or playing along to it and we can post it as a video on our Facebook page. Stuart, a brilliant melodion play in our band who has also demonstrated spectacular video editing skills is editing all the footage down. I can't wait to see how it looks.

After recording ourselves in the courtyard playing our instruments, we recorded ourselves doing a bit of the dance, then we recorded ourselves at the end of the garden. As we did so, a couple of ladies and a dog walked past in the field at the end. There is no footpath on the field, but one of the ladies said she was from the victorian house up the hill and owned the field. It was lovely to meet our neighbours in such an odd way (we were in full Morris kit with face paint and everything). She said they heard the lovely music and came along to see what it was. She invited us to come for their midsummer celebrations. So, Coronavirus can be a great way to meet new people.

 

Other news, well Boris Johnson and Carrie Symonds had a baby boy on Wednesday morning - 29th April. I wonder if they will call him Tom after the veteran who has raised £26million by walking round his garden in Marston Mortaine, not far from here, who was 100 years old on 30th April. They did a spitfire flyby for him which was lovely. Boris is back, but the noises from government are that this lockdown is likely to continue. Recent surveys suggest that 60% of British people would feel anxious and uncomfortable about going out if the restrictions were removed.

That number doesn't include me! I'd be out like a shot. I know somebody who has the virus. He is in his 30s and on day 12 of the disease. It sounds unpleasant, but not unbearable. It seems to me that the choice is to wreck the economy by keeping able-bodied people and school children at home, yet coping with a huge toll of elderly people in care homes, just in case we catch it.

It sounds like the Govt are considering options for lifting the restrictions. Financially, it is getting dire. I've read that 1 in 6 retail businesses are not going to reopen. British Airways are making 12,000 staff redundant. Ryan air and Easyjet are looking to do similar, focus being on pilots and air crew. People are being asked to take pay cuts. Others are furloughed at 80% up to a fairly low ceiling, so many families are wondering how they are going to survive economically.

I read an interesting article today in the Telegraph, written by an American, that suggested that lockdown is not the best course of action. I find it quite convincing, especially since here in the UK we failed spectacularly at protecting our most vulnerable elderly people in care homes. Mass testing and tracking and tracing as outlined by the Government is very welcome, but this should have been attempted much earlier, and the social care sector really needs to be treated as part of the NHS, not siloed, making elderly people into some sort of second class citizen.

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.