COVID-19: The Madness of Crowds.

The panic-buying phase seems to be without end at the moment... how much stuff can these people pack away? Lofts across the country must be groaning at the huge amount of baked bean tins stored up there.

Roof fires across the country will also be on the rise due to the amounts of toilet roll stored in lofts too.

It's crazy.

I've had to buy toilet roll for my daughters on two separate days now. The downside of having kids and running your life round them rather than scouring the shops for supplies.

Luckily there's a Tesco across the road from work and I can nip in first thing to get the stuff.  But really, it opens at 7am and by 9am it's down to the last few bog roll options.... madness.

I see people are abusing shop staff when they get told they can't buy the shop out in one go. Almost always foreigners. The government may talk about the Dunkirk spirit, but a these days a large percentage of the country have no idea what Dunkirk or Blitz Spirit is, because they have no family history of suffering the privations of world war 2.

Anyhoo, I'm still at work despite government advice to the contrary. We don't have antiseptic hand gel, because we can't get any. Risk takers, ain't we?

Just had a blood pressure consultation this morning. It's way high because my stress response has been triggered. Not because of COVID-19, that I can handle. No, it's because my autistic son has been refused PIP payments.

The original fight to get him on DLA nearly cost me my sanity and left me with hypertension. I'm not looking forward to having another battle.

COVID-19: Working Against Medical Advice

Well, despite the advice given out by Boris yesterday, I'm at work today.

The advice being if you are eligible for the 'flu jab, then you should isolate for 12 weeks.

Guess what Boris, I can't isolate for 12 days let alone 12 weeks because I can't afford to.

SSP will not pay the bills.

My council tax hasn't been deferred, nor my car insurance, nor rent or my other outgoings. The only good news is I have a couple of week's worth of food in the house now.

So, I am at work today with all of my colleagues. We haven't shut the shop yet because the government hasn't given any advice in that regard. So currently we are serving customers and trying to mitigate infection transfer.

Customers that hand us keys now put them in a tray rather our hands. We wash our hands after each time serving in the shop.

And that's about s much as we can do.

If the virus becomes more endemic, no detail yet, but the owners may look at closing the shop and sticking with online and telephone orders only.

COVID-19: The Current Expected Scenario.

Okay, here's my take on the outcome of the COVID-19 pandemic with current biosecurity efforts in place.

All this talk of herd immunity is tosh. It's based on totally irrelevant presumptions that once infected the population has immunity and cannot be infected a second time.

So, after the virus has swept through the population that isn't isolated, we can expect around at least 1% to die. If the numbers increase so much that there are no ventilators for those that become extremely sick, then we can expect those percentages to rise exponentially. As high as 30% mortality at the height of the infection for some parts of the community.

Anyway, the majority survive the first wave and everyone in the UK that has had the virus is now beyond the infectious stage.  And I mean everyone.  If there is a virus shedder out in the wild, then infections and re-infections will continue along with deaths, until everyone is not a shedder.

If there is someone out there that is still shedding the virus, then we continue going round and round and people die 1% or more at a time until the population thins out enough that natural separation takes over. People are so thinly spread out that they don't come into contact with each other and the virus self-isolates until people stop shedding.

Let's say we are successful in isolating the virus and there is no-one in the UK that is infectious and in six months time we open the borders. If anyone shedding the virus arrives from abroad, then we get the whole cycle all over again, because there is no herd immunity, that's bollocks. People will catch another bought of the virus.

Then we go through phase 2, another round of closures, isolations and deaths until we get it under control. Again.

Hopefully we learn and keep the borders closed. Until EVERYONE IN THE WORLD is beyond the infectious phase.

Then we can open the borders again.

Otherwise this becomes the global equivalent of the Bubonic Plague: global numbers decrease until we're all isolated enough to stop infecting each other. What global population figures are for that to happen are anyone's guess.

COVID-19: Blind Faith.

Here in the UK, the government has decided to abandon testing of suspected COVID-19 carriers.

It's instead relying on anyone displaying certain symptoms to self-isolate, whether they have the virus or not. Unfortunately if they are displaying symptoms, they have already been spreading the virus for a week or more.

But the lack of testing means the government is blind to the scale of the virus. Without sight of the scale of the virus, without finding carriers and identifying contacts, the government will be unaware of the scale of the pandemic in the UK.

In a situation like this, with a virus like this, the lessez-faire approach will not work. The virus reacts best to a strong and determined response. Those countries that have taken strong action are amongst those that have the lowest infection rates and mortality rates.

Those like Italy that acted to little too late, are amongst the worst affected.

The government should be testing anyone and everyone, so that previously unidentified pockets and carriers of the virus can be identified and isolated.

Yes, we should be ramping up production and purchase of ventilators to guard against the worst case scenario, but the virus is far from endemic. But to avoid a mass breakout of the virus we need to get those previously unidentified pockets identified and under control.

The production of testing kits needs to be ramped up and people need to be tested even though they don't have symptoms. That's the problem with this virus: you can be infected and be infecting others without displaying symptoms.

So the current advice to wait until you are displaying symptoms is wrong-headed. You need to be testing those NOT displaying symptoms.

The CMO Chris Whitty is still hoping that COVID-19 acts like the 'Flu. It doesn't. Waiting for symptoms is too late. Waiting for the end of the typical 'flu season is too late.

I've heard him and other experts talking about herd immunity. There is none. People can be infected and gain no immunity. People get COVID-19 and then can get re-infected.

Here''s the definition of herd immunity:

herd immunity

noun

1. the resistance to the spread of a contagious disease within a population that results if a sufficiently high proportion of individuals are immune to the disease, especially through vaccination.

   "the level of vaccination needed to achieve herd immunity varies by disease"

The UK health experts are working on a false premise because humans do not display any immunity after infection with COVID-19.  There is no vaccine. It's already been reported that a woman in Japan was infected, then tested negative and then tested positive again a week later, I assume because she was exposed to an active shedder of the virus again.

Expecting the herd to garner some form of immunity after infection is nonsense. We need to work on the premise that unless isolated from the herd, the virus will continue to spread.

We need to do as other countries do and identify and isolate those that are carrying the virus and are infectious. Once they are no longer infectious then as far as we are aware, they are safe to re-enter the community.

The other thing is, if COVID-19 can re-infect individuals and they get no immunity from infection, then a vaccine would be a hard thing to develop. There may never be an effective vaccine.

The government are playing fast and lose with this one. We need to get a grip and get it done soon.