19 ms·

The phrase "sick man of Europe" never seemed so apt. Our government has totally failed - hilariously late in imposing lockdown, never closed the borders, failed

• throwawaymanbot 6y ago
  Shameful yes, absolutely incredible that we are living in a time, that the UK gov is THIS inept and uncaring. I'm actually astonished.
• brink 6y ago
  Is there a realistic objective to lock-downs other than avoiding overrun hospitals?
  • tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Time to develop a vaccine. Time to develop better treatments. Keep a lid on the virus with track and trace (I'm doubtful we can achieve this in the UK).
  • philipswood 6y ago
    This is a disease of governments and health systems. As an individual the odds aren't too worrying in isolation. Everything functioning well, few people get sick and those are treatable and death rates are low. But it's exponential growth. So cases can swamp any realistic health system left unchecked. At this stage the low fatalities (0.5%) goes out of the window and start looking at just under 10%. So a good strategy seems to be to slow the spread to managable rates at which level actual disease impacts are quite low. Imagine, in the limit, theoretically, you could keep everyone seperate and expose a batch size you could treat, lead them through and then take the next batch. You could have death rates under 0.5%. The only other realistic objectives I see are tactical: ramping up treatment ability and postponing cases until a cure/preventative measure is available and when disease progression and treatment are better understood.
    • SuoDuanDao 6y ago
      If I understand your reasoning, the difference between hospice care and staying at home with bedrest & fluids is a 9.5% death rate. Is that actually the model you work with? My understanding is that most COVID patients sick enough to get a ventilator die anyway.
      • paypalcust83 6y ago
        Your understanding is wrong and shows a lack of compassion for human life. Ventilated patients die because they already had extreme damage done to their lungs from a lack of interventional treatment and then are overpressurized which further damages their lungs which finally kills them. The Great Ventilator Rush was an exercise in futility and ignorant mass murder.
        • klmadfejno 6y ago
          This is mostly bullshit. Using ventilators was fairly standard care for the set of symptoms. It has come to light that alternate treatments are probably better in some circumstances. But you're writing this as if the disease is treatable. It's still not treatable. Most people who end up ventilators are, in fact, sick enough that they're likely to die. The parent said nothing that lacked compassion for human life. Accusing doctors who are risking their lives trying to save patients with the best of their knowledge mass murderers is magnitudes more heartless.
      • redis_mlc 6y ago
        > My understanding is that most COVID patients sick enough to get a ventilator die anyway. Yes, 66% to 90% mortality rate.
      • orwin 6y ago
        I don't know this is not more widespread, but you have 3 type of care. Non-intrusive ventilators or oxygen masks (or the nasal oxygen stuff), instrusive ventilator and the last one is artificial blood oxygenation, i will count this as intrusive ventilation as it is often used with intrusive ventilation. Around 10% of known cases needs hospitalisation. Among them, 70% to 80% of cases only needs oxygen and not respiratory help. So you can't give them oxygen, they'll either die or have permanent right heart or brain damage. Those will likely be fine after a dozen day at the hospital. If your oxygen levels are really, really low, you will need an intrusive ventilator. And yes, the death rate in those cases is absurdly high (between 60 and 90%). Note: 10% of known cases is NOT 10% of cases. Note 2: IMO this 10% number should be way higher as hypoxemia is far more widespread than previously thought, even for people with mild symptoms, even for kids (i only have anecdotal data on this so don't use it as an argument until papers are written and consensus is made). Still, if you have covid with only mild symptoms, please go to the hospital to take your oxygen saturation level.
  • mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Lockdowns, like quarantines, are primarily aimed at stopping the spread of infectious diseases. Hopefully keeping the number of hospital patients under control is a side effect.
  • Finnucane 6y ago
    Possibly slowing transmission enough to buy yourself some time to develop treatment and vaccine. The problem epidimiologists were looking at was that with no immunity, treatment, or vaccine, there was nothing to stop the spread to a large percentage of the population very quickly, potentially leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths in the US, at least. And yeah, the medical system would have collapsed under that load, as happened in parts of Italy. The other problem doctors are worried about is people with life-threatening conditions--heart attack, stroke, etc. not going to hospital out of fear.
  • hardlianotion 6y ago
    I think that lockdowns are there in order to get time to put systems for managing an outbreak in place. So one would hope that effective track and trace, isolation and public space management protocols and construction of overflow treatment capacity would be priorities when a lockdown is underway, as lockdown is unsustainable over medium term and up.
  • Gibbon1 6y ago
    Lock down kills the exponential growth. In California at the current infection rate it would take 130 years to infect another 5% of the population. Buys time: That allows epidemiologists to understand exactly what the risk factors are. So governments and businesses can begin to fine tune suppression measures. Gives the biotech industry time to develop cheap and fast tests. Which you need to do contact tracing. Hopefully they can develop immunotherapy agents to prevent exposed people from developing the disease. Time for public health officials to raise a small army to do contact tracing. Allows doctors time to understand how best to treat the disease. For a disease with a serious mortality morbidity rate even partly effective treatments are important. Allows sane people to grok what they need to do to keep themselves safe. And allows society to begin to reign in careless people, loons and deniers. Also give again sane people the opportunity to stay safe by not allowing businessmen like Musk to force them into unsafe working conditions.
  • bakuninsbart 6y ago
    You can try to bring the rate of new infections down to a level where they can be traced, and newly infected can be isolated early. This allows society to go more or less back to normal. That's what some Asian countries did successfully and what others are now seeking to replicate.
  • IkmoIkmo 6y ago
    Well, yes... Assuming the mortality figure of 1-2% is correct, no lockdowns would lead to a few billion infections worldwide, which would lead to 50-100 million dead. This is roughly what world war II caused in the span of 5 years or so of planetary warfare. Second to that, hundreds of millions more would need to be hospitalised. You'd essentially see any other healthcare be completely overwhelmed, e.g. cancer treatment or conceiving a child in the hospital. You'd see tons of excess mortality from these second hand effects as well. Third, in general, and in particular without proper care, you'd see many people suffer permanent organ damage. We see this to be true for many who have recovered from Corona, but with permanently damaged lung or liver capacity. Not to mention the trauma and PTSD for hundreds of millions even those who survive, who'll have experienced what it's like to (nearly) suffocate for weeks. Experiences like these would occur in every community and would likely completely shatter certain individuals, families even communities, their religious beliefs, their sense of security etc. The notion we'd let something like this happen in the 21st century. It'd be a paradigm change in our thinking for many of us who believed our live, societies, governments etc were stable and provided order. Situations like these would be ripe for abuse by political or religious extremists, violence, scape-goating etc.
• thefounder 6y ago
  It was a political move(perhaps a bit misscalculated). Lock-downs are not good for economy and they are boring for sure.
  • mytailorisrich 6y ago
    Yes, but for a lockdown to be as short as possible it should come in early and be as strict as possible. It was late and hasn't been strict and so we're having the worst of both worlds: Decimated economy and lockdown that has to be extended.
    • brink 6y ago
      How does early translate to short?
      • thefounder 6y ago
        If you take preventive measures less people get infected thus less time required to stop the virus spreading.
        • OJFord 6y ago
          And unless you fully close borders (which very few countries have done) that won't be short, unless all you wanted was to delay.
          • thefounder 6y ago
            Sure, now that the borders are closed, let's send everyone back to work and see how the works out! Maybe some political rethoric will keep people safe from contagion. If it doesn't work we can always blame EU or China. I guess that was the plan from the begining anyway.
            • OJFord 6y ago
              Not now, I meant in your hypothetical 'lock down early before you have it (or much of it)' scenario. Without also fully closing the borders or staying locked down, that doesn't work.
• mytailorisrich 6y ago
  If you remember they had explicitly stated at the time in the daily press conference that lockdown should not be imposed too early but that we should wait until the exact right time to flatten the curve: Basically, let the virus spread and wait since we were not in a position to do anything else for lack of preparation. It sounded nonsensical at the time. It has been proven that it was.
  • sgt101 6y ago
    I am made sad by the knowledge that the people who are now gloating about this place being bad and having lots of old people die, while another place is just dandy and hasn't had a problem because of it's greater moral character have called things really early. The next wave of lockdowns will not be as successful as this wave, indeed it's really doubtful that many places will be able to impose them
    • mytailorisrich 6y ago
      Most of what the government had said and done in the beginning (and perhaps still now) was factually nonsensical and had attracted widespread criticism from experts. It isn't "gloating" to try remind people of what had been said and to hold the government to account.
• throwanem 6y ago
  I feel like the "of Europe" part is maybe not so apt in this case, at least since the afternoon of January 31.
  • gnulinux 6y ago
    "Sick man of Europe" was originally used for the Ottoman Empire, so it does seem suitable to use it for UK in this case.
    • throwanem 6y ago
      I'm well aware. But considering that Turkey, the modern successor state of the Ottoman Empire, is negotiating its way into the EU, while the UK has just finished making a dog's breakfast of negotiating its way out of it...
      • StartupTree 6y ago
        Turkey is not currently negotiating its way into the EU, not using any credible definition of the word.
        • donogh 6y ago
          Technically, they are still negotiating, though negotiations stalled in 2016[1]. I can't ever see it happening; there is so much opposition. Human rights seems to be biggest sticking point, and is unlikely to be resolved any time soon. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_European_Union https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accession_of_Turkey_to_the_Eur...
  • cnorthwood 6y ago
    Europe is more than the EU, unless you're suggesting countries like Switzerland or Norway are also not "of Europe"
    • throwanem 6y ago
• IkmoIkmo 6y ago
  I still can't believe the prime minister said he would not stop shaking hands as all medical experts in the greatest global and UK health crisis in a century say it's literally step number one... and then he actually gets infected, takes up hospital space that'd otherwise go to other patients (with many treatments such as a cancer treatment delayed due to the corona crisis), leaving the country without its prime leader as the crisis goes through its worst moments leaving tens of thousands dead, literally more than 8 months of London Blitz WWII bombing by nazis and a quarter million (and likely truly a few million) infected, many of them having permanent organ damage that cuts years of their life expectancy and quality of life in the decades to come. And that's for a country that got hit substantially later than Asia, and substantially later than the rest of Europe and sits on an island with a few roads to shut off, and is substantially richer than say an Italy or Spain. Yet it has surpassed Italy's crisis and has not yet shown any signs of a strong trend of improvement. It's absolutely insane how they mismanaged this. Yet it seems he and his administration fair not much worse criticism than any other leadership in other countries at the moment.
  • StartupTree 6y ago
    Just to balance your comment slightly, the UK death rate is not out of proportion to other countries in Europe.
    • cjlars 6y ago
      Excess deaths are comparable to other 'out of control' EU countries, like Spain, Italy and Belgium, but UK is definitely among the problem group. [charts halfway down the link] https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06441 https://www.ft.com/content/a26fbf7e-48f8-11ea-aeb3-955839e06...
      • StartupTree 6y ago
        Yes agreed, UK is a problem group. Unfortunately the thrust of the arguments above yours is that the UK is uniquely terrible. This is not because of the data, but because many people strongly despise the current rightwing government. This is why the quality of discussion here will be limited.
• vmception 6y ago
  Does anyone think differently of the UK right now? Like from my perspective it seems like an isolated island of hooligans, distinct from a civilized society. Even when it comes to the language, continental Europe speaks a more easily understood version of English. With their self isolation and general dysfunction, it really seems have handicapped the point of the UK, like as a financial center or place to consider for anything. A perspective.
  • watwut 6y ago
    I definitely think differently then you. I dont see the whole UK in such derisive way, despite me disagreeing with decision to leave EU and me thinking the country handled covid badly.
    • vmception 6y ago
      I'm not married to the indoctrination of a perfect royal family, or the global Crown/Commonwealth concept, so maybe that helps me see it without any cognitive dissonance.
  • drcongo 6y ago
    I'm British and I see it like that too.
  • buggeryorkshire 6y ago
    You may have issues.
    • vmception 6y ago
      okay Buggery Yorkshire, not here to bruise any egos
• StartupTree 6y ago
  By your definition, Sweden, which has remained open, is the sickest man in Europe.
  • tree3 6y ago
    And yet Sweden has less cases per capita than the UK.
    • hyko 6y ago
      It should be a lot lower, give that Sweden’s biggest city has roughly 1.5 million inhabitants (vs 8.9 million in the UK), and Sweden’s population density is 24 people per km2 (vs 281 per km2 in the UK).
      • IkmoIkmo 6y ago
        This is a bit misleading. The urban population of sweden sits at 85%, the UK at 83%. Yes there's lots of space in Sweden, and it's also true that barely anyone lives there. I'm still hoping some researcher will publish a dataset of 'median lived density', rather than a simple density average. That is to say, a weighted density calculation. In other words, if 100 people live in one building in a vast desert the size of Texas, their 'lived/experienced density' or 'weighted density' is far greater than if 100 people live spread out in an area the size of a few football fields. Then we could have a more sophisticated discussion around density, as this issue aaaalways pops up when doing comparisons at the national level. (at the city level it's not as big of a problem, although even there some weird zoning differences can sometimes throw figures off.)
        • hyko 6y ago
          Yeah that’s a good point, it would be super useful to have that ‘weighted density’ available.
        • InfiniteRand 6y ago
          You might be interested in this article about lived population density vs rate of spread of COVID-19. https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.01167 https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.01167 Although I do not have enough statistical knowledge to really tell if the author's assessment is correct.
• balnaphone 6y ago
  > hilariously late in imposing lockdown > Really is shameful It's shameful that any country put practically their entire citizenry under house arrest. If someone is scared of catching something, they should stay home. If they want, they can live their life in a full-body condom, covered in bubble-wrap, soaking their hands in chlorhexidine, sipping O2 from a tank. Nobody is or should be putting a gun to their head to come out. The UK government, and governments around the world, have indeed failed. They've failed to protect the liberty of the people, and in fact have become tyrannical.
  • cycrutchfield 6y ago
    Your liberty doesn’t give you the right to make other people sick. Equating quarantine with tyranny is a hilariously hot take and is only something that the lunatic fringe would actually believe.
    • balnaphone 6y ago
      No one is advocating the right to break into homes to make others sick. Anyone who wants to stay home alone, absolutely should. I am advocating freedom of movement and freedom of association. Quarantine is for the sick, not the healthy. I'm equating lockdowns with tyranny, yes. Shutting down the global economy has resulted in hundreds of millions of people experiencing food insecurity. It will result in an enormous cost in terms of deaths, morbidity, and impaired mental well-being, for people in the UK and around the world.
      • jhayward 6y ago
        > Quarantine is for the sick, not the healthy No, quarantine is literally for the “potentially exposed”, not the known sick. Once a person is sick, they are then isolated, not quarantined.
        • balnaphone 6y ago
          The majority of people in the UK have not been exposed, even potentially. Therefore, this is not a traditional quarantine, by the standard definition. Prior to the lockdown, quarantine was already in effect for foreign travellers and so on. This is a novel policy. Some definitions below. ==== From the Cambridge English Dictionary: lockdown noun [ C or U ] mainly US UK /ˈlɒk.daʊn/ US /ˈlɑːk.daʊn/ a situation in which people are not allowed to enter or leave a building or area freely because of an emergency. From the Oxford dictionary: quarantine noun /ˈkwɔrənˌtin/ , /ˈkwɑrənˌtin/ [uncountable] a period of time when an animal or a person that has or may have a disease is kept away from others in order to prevent the disease from spreading From the American CDC: "Isolation" separates sick people with a contagious disease from people who are not sick. "Quarantine" separates and restricts the movement of people who were exposed to a contagious disease to see if they become sick.
• hyko 6y ago
  The UK government has made some mistakes, but to describe them as having “totally failed” is just needless hyperbole. Edited to add: “total failure” would have been to just do nothing, allow the health service to be overrun, let hundreds of thousands die, let millions be hospitalised, and let the economy tank with no support for business or workers. None of which is true of the UK government response. You may not like the UK government, but stating something that is so obviously wrong just undermines the rest of your legitimate criticism.
• Borish_Johnson 6y ago
  Your fault for having Borish Johnson as PM.
• aries1980 6y ago
  I am not convinced the lockdown is the issue, but the general health of the people. When you see news like this: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetland-52649712 https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-north-east-orkney-shetl... "Long queues force Elgin Burger King to close as police called in", then I can't help but think being fit correlates with the bodycount.