Monday, April 6, 2020

Nothing better symbolises the UK's open defiance of the World Health Organization than the Chief Medical Officer returning to work when he might still be infectious

The World Health Organization's guidelines on isolation are quite straightforward and specific - an individual should not have contact with others until 14 days after symptoms end.  It's acknowledged that even this doesn't eliminate the risk of transmission entirely - it's estimated that around 1% of people might still be infectious after 14 days.  But the aim is to reduce the risk to an acceptable level, and clearly anything above 1% would be totally unacceptable, given how high the mortality rate of this virus is and how easily it spreads.

It's not hard to see that the risk must be much, much greater than 1% if people ignore the WHO and instead follow the UK's much laxer guidelines - which are only to isolate for seven days after symptoms begin.  In practice, that could be as much as ten days earlier than the WHO say is safe.  A string of senior people in the UK establishment, including Prince Charles and Matt Hancock, have already abandoned self-isolation when there was a significant risk that they were still infectious.  Their excuse was that they were following the advice of the government's Chief Medical Officer.

But today the Chief Medical Officer himself returned to work only around ten days after he first started showing symptoms.  So what's his excuse for putting his colleagues and the wider community at unnecessary risk?  Essentially he's defying the WHO through his own personal choice.

And of course the length of the isolation period is not even the most serious way in which the UK is defying the WHO on a daily basis.  Even more disgraceful is the abandonment of testing and contact tracing, which the WHO stress is the key to controlling the pandemic.

24 comments:

  1. It seems to be a "badge of courage" to defy best practice advice. How the heck did we regress to this?

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  2. And the MSM are over this like a rash....
    Yeh fxxxxng right

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  3. You actually wonder if they ever had the virus.

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    1. Your right William. I think high profile people are saying. 'look if we can get this so can anyone so you better do what we tell you...'

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  4. Coming back to sweden.

    https://www.thelocal.se/20200405/swedish-corona-death-rates-may-be-twice-as-high-as-previously-thought

    Sweden's coronavirus death rates 'higher than previously thought'

    About double it seems.

    Simple backlog in reporting; nothing suspicious.

    Bit awkward though if you've been holding up Sweden as an example of why you don't need lockdowns. Well, the death rate just doubled.

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  5. Johnson is now in intensive care.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52192604

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  6. Boris Johnson now in intensive care apparently

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    1. It was a virus that developed in China ya toss pot. Get a life Nat si even at this stage of events.

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    2. St Thomas's say that Johnson require 4 litres of oxygen rather than the normal 15 litres that a average ICU patient would get on admission. So maybe slightly better than feared.
      Meanwhile a 58-year-old heart surgeon in Wales has died after testing positive for Covid-19.

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  7. Can anyone provide a link to where I can read a copy of the World Health Organization's guidelines on isolation.

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    1. I can't find any specific time limits. This is their main public advice page.

      https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

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  8. Thanks for looking, I did manage to find that, was hoping for more specific advice to timing as mentioned in the article.

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    1. Thepnr
      I found this from WHO. The advice on extending the period of self-isolation even after symptoms disappear seem to have been made by the DG of WHO at a press briefing in mid-March

      https://www.who.int/dg/speeches/detail/who-director-general-s-opening-remarks-at-the-media-briefing-on-covid-19---16-march-2020

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    2. Thepnr
      And this from inews. The DG's advice seem to be based on the findings of the WHO's mission to China. There is a link within the article to that report
      https://inews.co.uk/news/health/matt-hancock-returns-to-work-just-a-week-after-coronavirus-test-but-uks-short-quarantine-is-international-outlier-2527275

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    3. @Legerwood

      Many thanks, that's exactly what I was looking for.

      It makes perfect sense, at least to me, because the simple truth is that no one knows yet how infectious someone can still be after having the virus. Always best then to remain cautious. This is the direct advice from your link.

      "People infected with COVID-19 can still infect others after they stop feeling sick, so these measures should continue for at least two weeks after symptoms disappear.

      Visitors should not be allowed until the end of this period."

      Looks straightforward to me, why can't all countries get together and agree on this. Foolish not to.

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    4. Thepnr
      It seems that the UK is once again an outlier where WHO advice is concerned as they were with the advice on testing.

      There is also evidence emerging that even for those who recover there may be longer term consequences because of damage to their lungs eg susceptibility to chest infections and reduced lung capacity affecting their ability to do strenuous work/exercise. So far the research has been done on a small number of patients but no doubt more will be done.

      In terms of what this virus can do and how it performs we still have a lot to find out.

      https://www.dw.com/en/covid-19-recovered-patients-have-partially-reduced-lung-function/a-52859671

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  9. Folk everywhere are whining about the Police telling them to go home or get out of parks, let's get this straight, Calum Steele Union man for the Police Federation tweeted "The police don't enforce advice they enforce the law"
    So if you haven't noticed what you've just been told is the lockdown isn't advice it's an order that the Ploice have been instructed to enforce, but no government wants to say the actual words that obviously mean that for fear of the usual press media and online squealing about it

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    1. The Law doesn't apply to Royalty or Tory MSP's obviously, when it becomes just advice. For Scottish Oiks like us it inst advice but Law and a Law that allows the Plods to behave like goosestepping Fascists.

      C.C Livingstone should be sacked or forced to resign. The buck has to stop with him.

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  10. Being in the UK is not only making Scots poorer it is killing Scots.

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    1. I would make a different point. It's the “London Effect” sub-text to various stories. One of the recent ones was HS2 where the surface arguments were about “speed” and “capacity” but less about the supposed need to funnel things towards the far south-eastern part of the UK.
      And regarding Covid-19 could we consider that the Italians are lucky not to have one super-dominant city like London with its packed Tube trains &c.? I suppose the nearest they would get to that would be Milan.
      iEngland will have more problems to sort out than iScotland and hundreds of years of lopsided development focussed on London is one of them.

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  11. I had what appears to be the virus. Cough, shivers/feeling cold when wrapped like a mummy, headache, diarrhoea etc. Advice from GP at end of 7 days was that I wasn’t infective after 5 days. It appears that there are different models at play. I had signed up to this App. Input my circumstances daily along with my wife who appears not to have had the virus. https://covid.joinzoe.com/ (Disappearing into the spare room and being served my meals by a tray left at the door might have helped). There are a couple of Webinars on there research page where the scientists update on process, symptoms etc with some surprising stuff. Each webinar looks to be about 45 minutes.

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    1. I’ve just seen this that suggests that virus can be spread by ‘viral shedding’ up to 37 days after symptoms with a mean of 20 days. Makes a mockery of both UK and WHO 7& 14 days. https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30566-3/fulltext

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