Coronavirus (COVID-19)

[WhiteRoseKillie]

Just now, oaksoft said:

Honestly, this tactic of grabbing the moral high ground to try and win an internet argument is wearing pretty thin.

It would be nice if people could discuss things without this sanctimonious nonsense.

You could always go and discuss it with Brenda.

[Todd_is_God]

Just 149 deaths (avg 21 per day) related to Covid-19 last week among the population at large in Scotland last week

[Melanius Mullarkey]

[bendan]

31 minutes ago, virginton said:

Lupus is in fact relatively uncommon as is fucking malaria within the UK public as well. Both lupus and rheumatoid arthritis can be treated by any number of drugs rather than just Trump's super powerful malarial drug. If this decision was run through a NICE appraisal like any new drug on the market then it would be given short shrift as a waste of resources. 

The drug was already being prescribed by the NHS so it's hard to understand what you're saying here.

Edited May 20, 2020 by bendan

[Granny Danger]

5 minutes ago, Snafu said:

The UK government was ready for this pandemic. Until it sabotaged its own system

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/19/uk-government-pandemic

We were second in the world for preparedness. Then Boris Johnson et al deliberately de-prepared us

We have been told repeatedly that the UK was unprepared for this pandemic. This is untrue. The UK was prepared, but then it de-prepared. Last year, the Global Health Security Index ranked this nation second in the world for pandemic readiness, while the US was first. Broadly speaking, in both nations the necessary systems were in place. Our governments chose not to use them.

But even 16 March would have been extraordinarily late. We now know that government ministers were told on 11 February that the virus could be catastrophic, and decisive action was urgently required. Instead, Boris Johnson told us to wash our hands and “go about our normal daily lives”.

Had the government acted in February, we can hazard a guess about what the result would have been, as the world has conducted a clear controlled experiment: weighing South Korea, Taiwan and New Zealand against the UK, the US and Brazil. South Korea did everything the UK government could have done, but refused to implement. Its death toll so far: 263. It still has an occasional cluster of infection, which it promptly contains. By contrast, the entire UK is now a cluster of infection.

While other countries either closed their borders or quarantined all arrivals, in the three months between the emergence of the virus and the UK’s lockdown, 18 million people arrived on these shores, of whom only 273 were quarantined. Even after the lockdown was announced, 95,000 people entered the UK without additional restrictions. In fact, on 13 March, the UK stood down even its own guidance, which had gently requested travellers from Italy and China to self-isolate. This decision, taken as other nations were stepping up their controls, seems baffling.

Similarly, on 12 March, Johnson abandoned both containment and nationwide testing and tracking. A week later, the status of the pandemic was lowered, which meant that the government could reduce the standard of personal protective equipment required in hospitals, and could shift infectious patients into non-specialist care. Again, there was no medical or scientific justification for this decision.

Exercise Cygnus, a pandemic simulation conducted in 2016, found that the impacts in care homes would be catastrophic unless new measures were put in place. The government insists that it heeded the findings of this exercise and changed its approach accordingly. If this is correct, by allowing untested patients to be shifted from hospitals to care homes, while failing to provide the extra support and equipment the homes needed and allowing agency workers to move freely within and between them, it knowingly breached its own protocols. Tens of thousands of highly vulnerable people were exposed to infection.

In other words, none of these are failures of knowledge or capacity. They are de-preparations, conscious decisions not to act. They start to become explicable only when we recognise what they have in common: a refusal to frontload the costs. This refusal is common in countries whose governments fetishise what we call “the market”: the euphemism we use for the power of money.

 

The reasons for ignoring the reality were political; the advice of spin doctors would be ranked ahead that of health care professionals.  This is why I get very annoyed when people try to downplay the political aspect of this fiasco.

 

[Granny Danger]

2 minutes ago, bendan said:

The drug was already being prescribed by the NHS so it's hard to understand what you're saying here.

In what quantities?

[vikingTON]

28 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

Approved by NICE. 50,000 cases of Lupus, 400,000 cases of rheumatoid arthritis in the UK.

NICE disagrees on the lupus total by a factor of four when Scotland and TFS are added to the mix as well:

https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/gid-tag373/documents/systemic-lupus-erythematosus-draft-scope2&ved=2ahUKEwjB4qj-rMLpAhUEUBUIHTv8BjkQFjANegQIAhAC&usg=AOvVaw2AOvVaw2ttmT7ouMLNp5px6xRfnja

 

[DeeTillEhDeh]

Yeah because malaria is going to be rampant in the UK while nobody is travelling to the tropics all year. A complete and utter nonsense argument.

Lupus isn't malaria. It just happens to be treated by antimalarial drugs.  

 

 

Around 50,000 of the 300,000 (mainly women) in the UK with Lupus are treated with the drug.

 

 

[madwullie]

31 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Honestly, this tactic of grabbing the moral high ground to try and win an internet argument is wearing pretty thin.

It would be nice if people could discuss things without this sanctimonious nonsense.

WTF are you talking about mate? Claiming I'm being sanctimonious because morally I prefer to think of wider society before myself. Right you are. Literally noone thinks like that, and absolutely noone puts themselves 100% before others. Wearing thin - have a word with yourself  

Edited May 20, 2020 by madwullie

[vikingTON]

5 minutes ago, bendan said:

The drug was already being prescribed by the NHS so it's hard to understand what you're saying here.

Before a surge in the market price caused by claims from a Tango fantasist that it can cure Covid. So no, throwing £38 million to get extra batches right now is not a sensible use of public money. If any new drug purchase was being proposed on such a specious basis then it would be rejected and rightly so.

[Granny Danger]

Oaksoft must be so excited that he’s got so many people on here that are willing to engage with him.

”Yes mum I’m just talking to my friends.  Yeah I know they’re laughing at me but they’re still my friends”.

 

[Melanius Mullarkey]

Do folk really think that this #Torycunt government is so forward thinking and actually cares about anything other than themselves and their donars that they’ve suddenly though “you know what, we better buy some malaria tablets for all the old folk with arthritis  and folk with lupus in case it gets all bought up” whilst simultaneously being complicit in the deaths of thousands of medically vulnerable people and old folk?

Who is supplying the drug?

[madwullie]

7 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

I think it's quite difficult to talk about anything to do with COVID without employing arguments from moral philosophy. It's all about what's the best thing to do for the most people, which at the moment means some cancer treatment isn't going ahead, so it's quite interesting to see the perspective of people who are in that position.

Yeah high ground bad, high horse good 

[madwullie]

1 minute ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

Do folk really think that this #Torycunt government is so forward thinking and actually cares about anything other than themselves and their donars that they’ve suddenly though “you know what, we better buy some malaria tablets for all the old folk with arthritis  and folk with lupus in case it gets all bought up” whilst simultaneously being complicit in the deaths of thousands of medically vulnerable people and old folk?

Who is supplying the drug?

Apparently its a generic drug so not much profit in it, but trump has some pretty hefty donors who are involved with it. Whether he actually would risk taking it being a fat f**k I suppose depends on how much he genuinely believes his own shite, and how much is a front to get his thick base to follow him

[The Moonster]

39 minutes ago, oaksoft said:

Honestly, this tactic of grabbing the moral high ground to try and win an internet argument is wearing pretty thin.

It would be nice if people could discuss things without this sanctimonious nonsense.

Couldn't scorch your neck with a blow torch.

1 minute ago, Melanius Mullarkey said:

Who is supplying the drug?

Amazed it's taken so long for this question to be asked. I'll bet Rees-Mogg stands to make a few bob at least.

[vikingTON]

16 minutes ago, DeeTillEhDeh said:

Lupus isn't malaria. It just happens to be treated by antimalarial drugs.  

Around 50,000 of the 300,000 (mainly women) in the UK with Lupus are treated with the drug.

There are not 300k people in the UK with lupus, nor even the 50k 'estimate' provided by the main Lupus awareness charity itself. It's an uncommon condition which means that we do in fact have to prioritise the best use of funds in treatment - which doesn't actually involve throwing money at one single drug among many because the moron in chief is taking it every day.

Edited May 20, 2020 by vikingTON

[Todd_is_God]

Good to see that, despite the usual higher than previous days deaths and infections reported on a Wednesday, deaths still dropped from 61 last week to 50 this week, with new cases remaining in double figures at 96, down from 166 last week.

With Wednesday usually the worst day for both this is an encouraging sign

[Melanius Mullarkey]

5 minutes ago, The Moonster said:

Couldn't scorch your neck with a blow torch.

Amazed it's taken so long for this question to be asked. I'll bet Rees-Mogg stands to make a few bob at least.

Had a quick look but I think its still out for tender.  Might nip down to Boots and bulk buy and put a cheeky £25m tender offer in.

[DeeTillEhDeh]

There are not 300k people in the UK with lupus, nor even the 50k 'estimate' provided by the main Lupus awareness charity itself. It's an uncommon condition which means that we do in fact have to prioritise the best use of funds in treatment - which doesn't actually involve throwing money at one single drug among many because the moron in chief is taking it every day.

Did I say throw money at it?

Try fucking reading the previous content before sticking your obnoxious fucking oar in.

No-one here is saying that we should act because the manchild President says so - some are just asking what is the actual demand for the drug in normal circumstances and whether of not it is worth stocking up on the drug if there is a shortage.

[welshbairn]

Of all the things to rightfully attack the government for, spending a pin p***k of the NHS drugs budget on stuff people actually need is about the lamest.