COVID19

[morepork]

Do you have antibodies?

Haven’t been tested. Is there any point if we had it back in feb?

Think you had it. Be nice to know if you had a possibly protective immune response to it.

[Stom]

Do you have antibodies?

Haven’t been tested. Is there any point if we had it back in feb?

Think you had it. Be nice to know if you had a possibly protective immune response to it.

Sorry, I thought the if covered that :p

Yeah, but would it show up?

[Banquo]

Haven’t been tested. Is there any point if we had it back in feb?

Think you had it. Be nice to know if you had a possibly protective immune response to it.

Sorry, I thought the if covered that :p

Yeah, but would it show up?

That's what I was going to ask- our staff wanted antibody tests, so I sorted it, but very unsure of their use other than explaining some previous symptoms....is the immunity a given now?

Stom- you might want to have your sats checked and get some rehab advice.

[morepork]

The global biomedical community would like an answer to just that. They need data.

[Banquo]

The global biomedical community would like an answer to just that. They need data.

What's the proposal for getting it?

[morepork]

You would assume following up individuals diagnosed with the virus via PCR for seropositive serum. Taking serum or plasma at regular intervals over time and using it to conduct inactivating antibody assays in vitro. Culture cells that are permissive for coronavirus infection and run dilutions of serum to see if it blocks uptake of the virus by cells. All pretty standard stuff. You can freeze and bank serum so it doesn't have to be done fresh. There are surely such banks around the world at the moment.

[Banquo]

You would assume following up individuals diagnosed with the virus via PCR for seropositive serum. Taking serum or plasma at regular intervals over time and using it to conduct inactivating antibody assays in vitro. Culture cells that are permissive for coronavirus infection and run dilutions of serum to see if it blocks uptake of the virus by cells. All pretty standard stuff. You can freeze and bank serum so it doesn't have to be done fresh. There are surely such banks around the world at the moment.

well here's to someone knowing what they are doing, somewhere.....

[morepork]

Knowing the muppets over here, Mike Pence has probably directed HR at the CDC to open a position for an exorcist, with preference given to individuals with TV experience.

[Banquo]

Knowing the muppets over here, Mike Pence has probably directed HR at the CDC to open a position for an exorcist, with preference given to individuals with TV experience.

I shouldn't laugh, I know.

[Stom]

Think you had it. Be nice to know if you had a possibly protective immune response to it.

Sorry, I thought the if covered that :p

Yeah, but would it show up?

That's what I was going to ask- our staff wanted antibody tests, so I sorted it, but very unsure of their use other than explaining some previous symptoms....is the immunity a given now?

Stom- you might want to have your sats checked and get some rehab advice.

Maybe, but I'm pretty OK now. Was about a month to 2 that I just didn't feel 100%

[Digby]

Knowing the muppets over here, Mike Pence has probably directed HR at the CDC to open a position for an exorcist, with preference given to individuals with TV experience.

I shouldn't laugh, I know.

"There is one outside chance for a cure. I think of it as shock treatment, as I said, it's a very outside chance...Have you ever heard of hydroxychloroquine?"

[Galfon]

Looking ahead to the winter and no certainty of early vaccine..
Prof. Bell (Oxon):
'This whole epidemic has relied too heavily on assumptions that have turned out not to be true.
So my strong advice is to be prepared for the worst.'

sounds reasonable.
The blighter is running riot where restrictions have been relaxed. ( Israel/ ME another example ).
Jul 2 -  7-day avge of new cases (ft) :
fra 729 ^, uk 560 v,  ger 445,
..isr 735 ^^.
Cze R, Oz are also on a bump.

..US meanwhile appears to be on another lunar mission:
Jul 3 - 47127 and rising, so it is a good job the flame was put out when it was.

[Eugene Wrayburn]

We deserve better than this.

We voted them in, and they didn't exactly look a competent bunch when we did so. So pretty much we've done it to ourselves

And that's what really hurts...

[Digby]

We deserve better than this.

We voted them in, and they didn't exactly look a competent bunch when we did so. So pretty much we've done it to ourselves

And that's what really hurts...

it wears me out

[canta_brian]

We deserve better than this.

We voted them in, and they didn't exactly look a competent bunch when we did so. So pretty much we've done it to ourselves

And that's what really hurts...

I think we now know the way to purest hell.

[Sandydragon]

We voted them in, and they didn't exactly look a competent bunch when we did so. So pretty much we've done it to ourselves

And that's what really hurts...

it wears me out

And yet it could have been worse.

I don't for one second think Corbyn and his team would have handled this any better. Here we are taking the piss out of the Americans for their binary choice, but ours wasn't that much different (arguably theirs is a better one).

[Puja]

And that's what really hurts...

it wears me out

And yet it could have been worse.

I don't for one second think Corbyn and his team would have handled this any better. Here we are taking the piss out of the Americans for their binary choice, but ours wasn't that much different (arguably theirs is a better one).

You think Corbyn would've pursued herd immunity, first openly then through the current miasma of government "guidance"?

Puja

[Digby]

Russia denied Covid was a thing in Russia, which is about as much as I've got to go on for how Corbyn would have responded, certainly there's little evidence he relies on evidence even if he might not be quite as crazy as his brother

[Sandydragon]

it wears me out

And yet it could have been worse.

I don't for one second think Corbyn and his team would have handled this any better. Here we are taking the piss out of the Americans for their binary choice, but ours wasn't that much different (arguably theirs is a better one).

You think Corbyn would've pursued herd immunity, first openly then through the current miasma of government "guidance"?

Puja

I doubt that he would have acted decisively and if the herd immunity option was proposed by SAGE then do you think he would have argued for an alternative? This is not an area that anyone would consider to be a strength of Corbyn.

[Son of Mathonwy]

New ONS numbers up to 26 Jun are out, so as of that date we have:
Positive test UK Covid-19 deaths: 43,414
All UK Covid-19 deaths (ONS number): 54,510
So the total UK number is 26% higher than the government number.

Excess deaths compared with 5 year average to 26 Jun: 64,615
which is 49% higher than the government number.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Russia denied Covid was a thing in Russia, which is about as much as I've got to go on for how Corbyn would have responded, certainly there's little evidence he relies on evidence even if he might not be quite as crazy as his brother

Coz Corbyn is exactly the same kind of guy as Putin? Not seeing much justification for this one.

Instead, how about Corbyn being less in love with business and capitalism than Boris ... reasonable assumption?
This means he would have probably worried less about impacting business and hence have:
1) Put border controls in place at the outset,
2) Locked down earlier.

Also, he would have naturally have turned to state resources before the private sector, so would probably have:
3) beefed up NHS PPE and ventilator procurement rather than bringing in private sector firms with no experience of such things,
4) utilised local health resources from the start, building contact tracing up from this, rather than using Serco (which has no experience etc etc).

5) Obviously there would only have been a few months since the election, but we can reasonably think that Corbyn would have increased spending on the NHS in that time. So NHS resources would have been a little better by March,
6) Corbyn isn't the world-class bullshitter that Johnson is, so we might have been lied to a little less (whatever value you place on this).
7) We can reasonably think that Brexit would have been put to one side and an extension to article 50 agreed while Covid-19 is the big deal, hence no time wasted on negotiation or business preparation for Brexit.

[Digby]

Corbyn did his best to side with Russia after their attack on Salisbury, being critical of us and praising what he weirdly thinks Russia (still) represents is on message for the antiquated idiot

[Mellsblue]

Russia denied Covid was a thing in Russia, which is about as much as I've got to go on for how Corbyn would have responded, certainly there's little evidence he relies on evidence even if he might not be quite as crazy as his brother

Coz Corbyn is exactly the same kind of guy as Putin? Not seeing much justification for this one.

Instead, how about Corbyn being less in love with business and capitalism than Boris ... reasonable assumption?
This means he would have probably worried less about impacting business and hence have:
1) Put border controls in place at the outset,
2) Locked down earlier.

Also, he would have naturally have turned to state resources before the private sector, so would probably have:
3) beefed up NHS PPE and ventilator procurement rather than bringing in private sector firms with no experience of such things,
4) utilised local health resources from the start, building contact tracing up from this, rather than using Serco (which has no experience etc etc).

5) Obviously there would only have been a few months since the election, but we can reasonably think that Corbyn would have increased spending on the NHS in that time. So NHS resources would have been a little better by March,
6) Corbyn isn't the world-class bullshitter that Johnson is, so we might have been lied to a little less (whatever value you place on this).
7) We can reasonably think that Brexit would have been put to one side and an extension to article 50 agreed while Covid-19 is the big deal, hence no time wasted on negotiation or business preparation for Brexit.

1) & 2) - Only if he’d ignored SAGE.
3) PPE procurement and distribution was saved by the private sector - who implemented a functioning ordering platform - and the army - who sorted logistics - after PHE f**ked it up.
4) I agree this would’ve been the better course of action but it was a PHE decision not a political one. So, unless Corbyn thought he knew better than PHE we’d have followed the same course. Private sector involvement is a red herring as they weren't brought in at the start of the crisis. Unless, that is, you mean following the successful German model of using the private sector to boost testing capacity, something PHE refused to do. Regardless, it’s probably moot as Prof Ferguson has said that, in retrospect, the U.K. was so heavily and widely seeded that track and trace would’ve been useless.
5) He’d have also ramped up borrowing which would’ve pushed us even further in to the debt black hole we’re already in.
6) Corbyn is a world class bullshitter. Just ask the Jewish community or anybody who has tried to unravel his public utterances on Brexit.
7) Corbyn probably wants Brexit more than Boris so I’m not so sure about that. Not that I think it’s particularly relevant.

None of this is to necessarily defend a govt that has made numerous mistakes, but to declare that a man who has shown little aptitude for leadership or the ability to put a coherent manifesto together let alone a coherent response to a pandemic would have nailed the response to COVID is quite a reach.

[Puja]

Corbyn did his best to side with Russia after their attack on Salisbury, being critical of us and praising what he weirdly thinks Russia (still) represents is on message for the antiquated idiot

That is a bizarre take and one which appears directly taken from the Mail or one of Murdoch's ilk. Corbyn advocated investigating and gathering evidence to go through The Hague, instead of just declaring Russia guilty by fiat, which is pretty consistent from him in anything to do with foreign affairs - Iraq, Syria, bin Laden. Whether you agree with him on that or not, it's a long distance from him being in lockstep with Putin on every issue.

Puja

[Digby]

Corbyn talked about giving the results of the investigation to Russia so we could get their honest take on the situation. Just one of the reasons Corbyn isn't fit to be an MP let alone the leader of a major party. And there's no doubt for me that Corbyn still hankers after the USSR and what it suggests to him as being the dream of socialism, why when (a) what that delivered for the people of the Soviet Union was so abysmally bad and (b) Russia isn't remotely close to anything Corbyn should in theory like even if he weirdly liked the USSR is a mystery. But Corbyn is weak on science, weak on facts and weak on national security issues

I don't think he's in lockstep with Putin, I think he'd like to be on what he imagines Putin to be even if that bears little resemblance to reality.