The Brick Castle: COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News weekend update 17th / 18th October 2020.

Sunday, 18 October 2020

COVID-19 Coronavirus UK and World News weekend update 17th / 18th October 2020.

The UK added 16,982 cases today and now has reported a total of 722,409 positive cases of COVID-19. We completed 305,315 tests on Friday (obviously they're proud of that, they've not updated it).

Hospital figures have also not been updated: 5,608 people were in hospital on Thursday 15th, with 592 using a ventilator on Friday 16th October.

In the 24 hours up until 5pm yesterday, we officially reported the loss of another 67 people who have tested positive to COVID-19 within 28 days. We now very sadly have a total of 43,646 officially reported losses of life in all settings.

Rep. Of Ireland 49,962 (+1,283) cases and 1,852 (+3) losses of life.

There have now been a total of 40,149,458 reported cases worldwide. The number of people who have lost their lives worldwide to COVID-19 is 1,116,907. Already 30,017,848 people have recovered. Passing 40m cases is a grim milestone, but passing 30m recovered far less so.

"We do need stronger restrictions if we want the number of infections to go down," says Prof Steven Riley, Professor of Infectious Disease Dynamics, Imperial College London, on the Channel 4 Lockdown Debate about 10 minutes ago.

The English and Welsh COVID App., and most of the others, work by pinging a location every few minutes. If you pass by someone who later tests positive, you might have 1 ping in common. If you spend 20 minutes sitting beside them, you should get at least 2. When it finds 2 together, the app. triggers and you get a notification to self-isolate.
With the English and Welsh app. it seems to also be sending a flash alert after 1 ping, just to make you more 'alert'. If you get this, it flashes up, but when you try to find out more or do anything, it's gone. It's confusing a lot of you. This is not a notification to isolate, you just had a close call.

The row between Greater Manchester and the UK Government continues. After Boris gave a thinly-veiled attack implying Andy Burnham was putting lives at risk, Andy Burnham's comeback was to point out that Sir Patrick Vallance has now joined Jonathan Van Tam, Dr Jenny Harries and Chris Whitty in saying that the baseline Tier 3 measures aren't enough to bring down levels of COVID. There really does seem to be no positive evidence and no point.

Bloomberg has a good Sunday piece on Long COVID, asking why it's not being mentioned by politicians when it's becoming a massive issue already - and we are nowhere near finished.
"...most long Covid patients weren’t hospitalized and didn’t have pre-existing conditions."
A reminder that we can't simply separate our population into 'vulnerable' and 'safe'. We are all assumed to be 'more' or 'less' vulnerable until we know better.

Japanese COVID advice from March 2020 2 Zero COVID

Wearing a mask is scientifically proven and common sense, and it's just a bit of cloth. It's astounding how angry some people are prepared to get about it. A man has been arrested in Wichita, Kansas, after allegedly threatening to kidnap and cut the throat of the mayor. He is upset about the city's COVID19 public mask ordinance order. Wow, he really needs to redirect that energy.

Coincidentally.... Twitter has removed a tweet (saying masks don’t work) from Donald Trump's coronavirus advisor, Scott Atlas, for violating its rules against sharing false and harmful information about the coronavirus.

An 89 year old Dutch woman who had been having treatment for Cancer has become the first known person to succumb after catching COVID twice. Researchers studied samples from both times she was ill, and found they were very slightly different strains, so she definitely caught it twice. She should have had some immunity after the first period of illness, but it doesn't bode well for how long it lasted. There were only 59 days between symptoms starting on the first and second occasion.
Remember whatever illness you pick, for mostly unknown reasons, some people simply won't ever develop immunity, and some people will have already had it built in.

Japanese COVID advice from March 2020 3 avoid the 3 cs

Congratulations to Jacinda Ardern, whose party have won the New Zealand election outright with a landslide victory (she was previously Premier in a coalition government). Her decisiveness, balls and compassion for human life have also proven the scientists correct. You cannot separate a priority for health and a priority for money. In closing early and hard, she has, so far at least, managed to prevent massive loss of both. You're my hero. Best of luck for the future.

New Zealand isn't the only country to benefit from swift moves by their leadership. Iceland, Vietnam, South Korea and several more countries have avoided large losses of life.
Lawrence H Summers, (economist, former Vice President of Development Economics and Chief Economist of the World Bank, senior U.S. Treasury Department official and former director of the National Economic Council) stated on CNN today:
"America’s failure on COVID-19 is almost unimaginable. Heck, if the U.S. had handled the pandemic as well as Pakistan, we would have saved in neighborhood of $10 trillion."

I don't like to be a damp squib, but if you haven't already thought of it, Halloween may be very different this year. Your Halloween will be back, but this year there is still all sorts you can do to make some great memories and enjoy the day. How about having a more traditional English Halloween with your household. You can do apple bobbing, suspending doughnuts from string and eating them with no hands, timed chocolate-eating with a knife and fork, tell spooky stories, or devise a flawed plot to blow up the houses of Parliament.

Japanese COVID advice from March 2020 4 close contact

Not much news this weekend - but I think last week's posts were some of the longest ever, so it seems fair. I imagine we'll see more of Boris next week, although now all of the scientific and medical experts are speaking out against government strategy, it'll be interesting to see who he's with...

All of today's pictures were public health messages put out in March, in Japan. Ahead of the game...

Some people. They look like numbers, but they are all people:

Countries / Cases / Losses of life (some states /provinces yet to report):

USA 8,353,795 (+11,130) 224,416 (+134)

India 7,544,353 (+51,626) 114,575 (+511)

Brazil 5,224,821 (+459) 153,730 (+40)

Russia 1,399,334 (+15,099) 24,187 (+185)

Spain 982,723 not yet reported today 33,775

Mexico 847,108 (+5,447) 86,059 (+355)

UK 722,409 (+16,982) 43,646 (+67)

South Africa 702,131 not yet reported today 18,408

Iran 530,380 (+3,890) 30,375 (+252)