Pandemic reports from the Departments of Health, Bad Planning, and Unlikely Allies

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The Guardian interviewed past British health ministers about their experiences. The best bit of advice came from Kenneth Clarke: “Get the prime minister to take as little interest in the subject as possible.” The best demonstration of cluelessness came from Jeremy Hunt: “I was gobsmacked to find that 150 patients a week die in the NHS because of treatment errors. Then I discovered that this was actually true all over the world, it’s what happens in medicine.”

Ah, Jeremy, it does me good to see that you came into the job with a real grounding in the subject.

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Medical staff from the St. Peter Hospital turned out to meet Belgium’s prime minister, Sophie Wilmès. As her car rolled majestically between the two evenly spaced lines of people wearing scrubs, they turned their backs. It was to criticize staff shortages, low pay, budget cuts to health care, and the use of less qualified staff to do part of nurses’ jobs. I don’t know if it’ll change government policy, but it’ll sure as hell change the way the government organizes Wilmès’s public appearances.

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Irrelevant photo: These are called, um, something. I always forget. They’re wonderful to touch, though.

Britain’s wrestling with the question of whether to reopen schools in June. So what does science have to tell us? 

Not much.

Only a few useful studies have been done, and they point in opposite directions. An Italian one from the town of Vo, which had a major outbreak, didn’t find a single kid under ten who’d been infected, even though plenty of them lived with people who were sick. Studies from Iceland, Norway, and Korea have similar findings.

But.

There’s always a but, isn’t there?

A British Office of National Statistic study looked at 10,000 people and found that the same proportion of people tested positive for the virus across all age groups. Or at least it found “no evidence” of differences, which may or may not be the same thing. (There’s always an or as well as a but. Or there is around here.) If you’re willing to trust a non-professional’s translation of that–and I admit, it’s a risk–kids get infected at the same rate as adults.

A German study seems to back that up. 

So is it safe to reopen the schools? I have no idea. If serious testing and contact tracing were in place, they could make a better argument for it.

Has the government studied the situation? It’s not impossible, but studying the situation has a way of bringing out all kinds of inconvenient information, so I wouldn’t put a lot of money on it.

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So what’s happening with contact tracing? You would have to ask, wouldn’t you? A company that has a contract to recruit contact tracers emailed applicants to say that the jobs they were applying for had been put on hold because the government’s considering an alternative to the app that it had bet its chips on.

At which point the Department of Health said the email was wrong. The chips are still on the existing app. And the company that sent the email said it was all a miscommunication. 

So how’s the app performing on the Isle of Wight, where it’s being tested? Slightly under half of the population has downloaded it, although that may include people who downloaded it twice (that would’ve been me, but I don’t live there and don’t use a smartphone) or who are from the mainland and so don’t count. Still, it’s a better take up than in Singapore (20%) or Australia (25%). 

On the other hand, it’s an early, dumbed-down version of the app. It only asks about two symptoms. If a person’s answers send up red flag, their contacts get a warning. But there’s no way for the person to enter a test result (assuming that the government gets its testing centers working well enough for the person to get their results back in a reasonable time). So contacts get warned but then they’re left to wander around wondering what they should do. Isolate? Go to work? Write their wills?

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And now a report from the Department of Bad Planning: Not only didn’t the government talk to teachers’ unions before announcing that the schools would reopen, it didn’t talk to city governments before announcing that the lockdown would be loosened. 

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The Department of Unlikely Allies reports that a hundred people (or several hundred, depending on your source) demonstrated in London on Saturday, protesting (variously) the lockdown, 5G, the fake virus, contact tracing, and the vaccine that doesn’t exist yet, although to be fair they didn’t say that it did, they were just getting their licks in in advance. 

The protest was called by the UK Freedom Movement, which circulated a flyer on Facebook, saying, “We say no to the coronavirus bill, no to mandatory vaccines, no to the new normal and no to the unlawful lockdown.”

It called sixty mass gatherings around the country, but it’s not clear how many of them gathered. A dozen people micro-massed in Southampton. 

The group Hope Not Hate, which “uses research, education, and public engagement to challenge mistrust and racism,” said, “It is notable how diverse the people leading the groups appear to be, with some groups moderated entirely by vegan activists, others by committed Brexiteers and still others by full-blown conspiracy theorists.”

If I can translate that, these are people who wouldn’t normally talk to each other. Lockdown’s driving people to discover all sorts of new possibilities. Isn’t it wonderful?

Overall, a recent poll shows that the British public not only supports the lockdown but is uneasy about easing it.

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After the leak of a report indicating that the government was thinking about freezing public sector wages, Boris Johnson has said no one has had that thought, even in passing. I only mention that because I caught a few drops of the leak and squeezed them out here, so I thought I should mop them up. I should also get out of the metaphor before I drown in it.

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A new study makes singing look–well, nothing’s safe these days but as safe as anything else is. Anecdotal evidence had been pointing to it as a great way to spread little virii.

The anecdotes? A number of choirs popped up as virus hotspots, leading to the logical assumption that singing caused the spread. It’s common sense. Singers breathe deeply and exhale powerfully, so why wouldn’t they both spread and take in better than your average amateur breather? 

Well, because it doesn’t work that way–or it doesn’t seem to. I won’t rule out a contradictory report coming in next week. In the meantime, though, a specialist in fluid mechanics experimented to see how far singers and instrumentalists could shoot air, with all its virus-carrying droplets and aerosols.

Singers propel air about half a meter–maybe a foot and a half. His best guess is that the choir outbreaks came from socializing before or after singing, although the director of one choir swore they’d all been careful about both distance and sanitizing their hands.

The study also showed that flutes, oboes, and clarinets propelled air further than larger wind instruments. 

Stay away from people carrying flutes, please. They’re dangerous.

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The U.S. Navy reports that thirteen sailors who’d apparently recovered from Covid-19, testing negative, tested positive for a second time. The same thing has been reported in South Korea. It’s possible, but far from certain, that the disease becomes dormant in a person’s system and then reactivates. 

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The Department of Greed and Despair wishes to inform you that some of the protective gear that’s being sold comes with phony documentation. So as people return to work, they can’t know if they’re being handed workable protective gear or not. 

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And finally, from the Ray of Hope Department, two vaccine updates:

A vaccine being worked on in the U.S. shows that the vaccine did create antibodies in eight people in the test, although this stage of the test is about safety, not effectiveness. 

Another vaccine being tested in Oxford protected monkeys against pneumonia and the most severe symptoms of the virus, but it hasn’t been tested in humans yet. 

66 thoughts on “Pandemic reports from the Departments of Health, Bad Planning, and Unlikely Allies”

      • A friend of mine who directs a small choir keeps updating us on Facebook with bits of science and guesswork. I really miss playing with the sextet. Yesterday I finally decided to put away our music, because it will be a while before I need it again.

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  3. Also seen this morning, from the Department of Irony, some local authorities offer motorists caught speeding an alternative to a fine and points on their licence, namely taking a speed awareness course. During lockdown, for some local authorities, the speed awareness course will be taken at home on the now popular video app called ‘Zoom’.

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  4. I have two recorders and two Irish whistles, although i have no information about how much they spread the virus.
    I promise not to blow them at people in public until I know…
    more accurately I promise not to blow them at people in public until it is safe…and I can play them better!

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  5. The department of ignorance thanks you for the update.
    The department of humour claims this post meets all of its specifications for humour (although they refuse to make public what those specifications are).
    Tuesday’s department sends love, light, and glitter

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  7. One of the great myths of technology is the ubiquity of smartphones. The slight flaw in encouraging uptake of the app is that the ancient Android phones used by the older generation can’t use it. It’s a bit like the old pub sign “Free beer for people over 80 accompanied by their parents.”

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    • Yeah. Exactly. And add to the Android users the stubborn coots like me who still have dumb phones. Or think a phone’s something you plug into the wall. Maybe they figure we’re so doddery that we never leave home.

      The theory behind the app, I think, is that it’ll cover enough of the population to make the rest of it safe. Whether (given the incompetence behind most of this government’s decisions) there’s any real data behind that I don’t know.

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  8. Good news about the singing. Bad news about testing positive again. Those virus are sneaky little devils. I have had herpes hiding in me since high school. I breaks put a cold sore on my lip from time to time. Had one in March following whatever I had in late February , first time in ten years or more. I have had the shingles shots to prevent the chicken pox virus from breaking out.

    We had places set up fir drive by tests. No symptoms required. Free for those under medicare or medicaid. No copay if you have insurance and $175 for self pay and those without insurance. Tested 50,000 this weekend with 1,000 testing positive. Interpret that however you want. I don’t know what significance those numbers have.

    Our hospitalization and death rates continue to go down. We started to reopen on April 23, first state to ease up restrictions. Predicted spike did not occur. I expect numbers to go back ip in October.

    No devision yet on what to do about schools. I guess they are waiting as long as they can to make the decision.

    I have heard bagpipe solis that were good and I enjoyed. . Also heard some that made me want to scream and run from the building. Could be the bagpipes or the person playing them or both. But differences in results are astounding.

    I call those flowers purple flowers. Then there are red, yellow, blue, gold and white flowers, and other colors.

    Stay safe.

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    • It’s hard to know what the numbers means. One of the most reliable estimates to date of how many people had been exposed after a major outbreak came from Spain. I think it was under 10%–far from herd immunity. If immunity exists. We hang onto whatever good news we can get. May that spike never arrive, although frankly it would surprise me if it didn’t.

      I like your way of identifying flowers, but I hit the limit of what it allows when I moved here. Too many wildflowers for it to work. (Big yellow flower, little yellow flower, other yellow flower, oh damn is that the same yellow flower?…)

      If I ever get to make bagpipe laws (which is unlikely), one of them is going to be that they have to be played outside.

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  9. “Jeremy, it does me good to see that you came into the job with a real grounding in the subject”
    That reminds me of a minister a long time ago in Germany. In a cabinet re-shuffle he was switched from one ministry to the other and a reporter asked him if he had the necessary knowledge to lead that department. His answer, “I don’t need the knowledge because I’m here to make the political decisions”.

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  10. I am inspired by the wisdom of Winston Churchill ‘You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing after they have tried everything else.’ Our president is taking a preventive dose of hydroxychloroquine because some doctor said it would help. Also the testing kits used to screen whitehouse staff and the president are not the most reliable. So far we seem to be stuck in the else phase. My biggest worry with this bunch is with this bunch is we will breeze right on by the right thing and keep on doing everything.

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  14. Glad you mentioned that one of the good news vaccine tests had a subject pool of EIGHT (healthy)people. They promise they will go on to hundreds and then thousands in the next phases. But as a former math teacher (even though only at an elementary school level) that seems a bot iffy for a valid trial.

    At least the protesters in the UK and Belgium appear not to be carrying automatic weapons.

    Bad news, Ernest Harben – I had the shingles shot (Zostavax) when it first came out and in January I had shingles. Now there is a better series of shots (Shingrex) but my doctor told me not to bother.

    Pit’s tale of the German offcials remark seems to explain much of our Dear Leaders cabinet choices.

    This just in : Annie Glenn, the wife of John Glenn (US Senator and the first person to orbit the Earth) died today at 100 – of corona virus. She was an outstanding advocate in her own right/

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    • It’s not good news, but if a vaccine could protect against any infection, then it would be useful. The real danger, as far as I understand it, would be if there’s no immunity to this thing, or only a very short-term immunity. So many things just aren’t known about this disease.

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  16. Mow the reports are that the second tests picked up dead virus still in the blood. No reinfection with live virus. Last night NBC reported that current estimates are that twenty per cent of people in New York
    city have had the virus snd have antibodies/immunity. Still not herd immunity but is better than two per cent.

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    • I can’t find the NBC report, but the articles I did find are talking about the percent of people who were tested, not of the total population. I’m not sure that’s the same set of statistics. We’ll find out eventually, I trust. Either way, the cost, measured in lives lost, has been terrible.

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