Read this with interest, Brian - and then brain generated image of attendant in full PPE handing out a couple of sheets of bog paper - rather as the French used to do in the 50s. I shall have a drink and try to forget ...

But it would be stupidity of the first order to have, like proverbial London buses, two disasters one after the other.

We don't need Brexit delayed; we need it to be cancelled.

Who would have looked after Boris if the Portuguese nurse had gone home because he'd made him feel undervalued?

I find it depressing that whenever we get beyond Covid-19 we have Brexit still looming, with all the delusional nonsense that goes with it.

You'd hope that if we have learned anything from the Covid-19 crisis it is that we need reliable friends close by, not unreliable ones far away.

Not true. For England:

In December 2019 there were 125119 doctors.

In June 2016 there were 110 084 doctors

In December 2019 there were 332 213 nurses+health visitoors

In June 2016 there were 318 358

These figures went up pretty much monotomically (i.e no matter what perior you pick as your start and end you will end up with pretty much the same end result). Ofc the Guardian has probably found a way to massage the statistics into saying what they want them to say. Probably by looking at just gross leaving figures or something.

So no shortage.

See my above post. The idea that brexit caused a nursing shortage is just wrong. They have been montomically increasing since 2016.

And the really tragic thing is that people on here really were in denial back in January when it came to COVID.

Anyway I wasn't trying to make a political point, just in response to Beast bringing brexit into this discussion. The only point I made was that as a result of no deal preparations we are probably better off than we otherwise would have been.

Then again, I would have prepared more for COVID, you know back when everyone called me nuts for saying what was going to happen?

No.

Seems like the government is moving quickly on this:

It came as the government said it might change its advice on using face masks.

The UK's chief scientific adviser Sir Patrick Vallance told the daily Downing Street news conference an ongoing review was considering the guidance on whether people should wear face masks

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52273774

Re-activation seems real enough in two cases known to me (a great niece, and an employee in my daughter's firm) both felt they had recovered from the initial bout of Covid but a week or so later had a bad couple of days before recovering again. This ties in with the folk wisdom of 'not being able to shake off a cold' - a 'cold' being not infrequently caused by a different coronavirus

Our experts appear to have all bases covered when it comes to testing: 

Patrick Vallance, ITV tonight: "no question... testing is an incredibly important part of how we need to manage this going forward"

Stephen Powis of NHS England, Apr 8: too early to know who is right on testing

Jenny Harries, Mar 26: widespread testing "not appropriate" for UK

— Alex Wickham (@alexwickham) April 13, 2020

This... this is fcking terrifying. We need to think long and hard before removing restrictions and letting infection levels rise again:

https://twitter.com/J_Bloodworth/status/1249794092634124293?s=19

(Correct link.)

It seems like the same evidence-based approach that has been taken all along

”Asked by the BBC's David Shukman whether the government could change its advice to the British public on wearing face masks while outside, Sir Patrick said that, if evidence supported it, the guidance could change.

He added that the government had already seen "more persuasive" data suggesting masks can stop a person passing the virus to someone else, rather than preventing them from catching it.

The World Health Organization said it remains the case that medical masks should be reserved for healthcare workers, not the general public.”

It will not change unless there is a clear benefit from a body of evidence no matter how people try to spin things. That’s how these things work. They are evidence based, not to be mocked or laughed at, no “I told you so” with a silly emoticon. The insinuation we know better than those (like the WHO) would be annoying if it wasn’t so ludicrous.

The WHO don’t just pop onto the BBC or Twitter to formulate their policies. If the body of evidence evolves so will the policies, it’s not a difficult concept surely? It doesn’t mean when we guessed one option we were some how more informed and “knew it all along”.

Yet there were 43,000 vacancies for nursing staff as of October last year and that won't have changed very much

https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/workforce/nhs-nurse-vacancies-in-england-rise-to-more-than-43000-08-10-2019/

As always, Michael, excellent.

Very scary. In all the commotion we’re not stopping to look at the actual effects of this virus on the human body. 

I hope to God there aren’t going to be long term effect of the virus, akin to HIV infection, for example. If so, this is a whole new ball game. 

Thankfully we don’t have any reliable data yet and these are still unknowns. Let’s hope for the best. 

Indeed Nick, I've seen some reports over the last few weeks of lingering lung damage in patients in South Korea, one of which I posted in these threads. I didn't think much of it at the time, as it was only evident in a few patients, but now we're clearly seeing more stories of recurring illness in survivours.

Really not good at all, and will need close monitoring.

I found this article

https://www.latimes.com/science/story/2020-04-10/coronavirus-infection-can-do-lasting-damage-to-the-heart-liver

It confirms that there's evidence that SARS, MERS and Ebola all can result in longer term damage.  But it does emphasise that it's too early to be certain and that with other viruses some long term damage reduces or clears up over time - although it can be quite a long time.

It does also suggest that the longer-lasting damage seems to be linked to those that suffer a more severe illness and that those longer-term effects may be linked to why those patients suffer the more extreme illness.

But whatever the explanation it's clearly not good.

LOL Trump press briefing

Tony Fauci must have had a broken bottled shoved up his arse and his wife taken hostage

Trump then shows a propaganda video of how great he is and then falsely claims Sleepy Joe called him a racist

He basically spends 2 hours trolling! And he loves it!

Thanks, Gandalf - I'd picked up on this via:

https://uk.yahoo.com/news/coronavirus-patients-suffered-strokes-other-neurological-symptoms-says-155200137.html

Very concerning - changes the time implications.

Keep healthy.

R.