Tag: lockdown

London Lockdown Lowdown

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The skinny goblin Santa still suspended from his rope off that house in Kingsbury Road is looking increasingly like a hostage waiting in vain for a rescue from being trapped out of season.

One of my neighbours down the hill comes out of her house negotiating a shopping list over her shoulder with an elderly relative, gets to her car and calls to the toddlers strapped in the back seat- in a voice half way between forced jollity and grim determination – “Right. Who wants to go to ASDA?” – as though the tone would make it sound like Disneyland. From the back seats…silence.

Sadly, one of my downstairs neighbours – Mum, Dad, daughter, are moving. All COVID related. The landlords – who are getting on – have left for Ireland to quarantine in a quieter, sparser, greener place and are selling it out from under them. At the end of the first furlough period, both the Mum and the Dad downstairs were made redundant from their managerial roles in a hotel. Luckily, the Dad has found a job deputy managing a store – a rather posh one in Chelsea – and says he is the one member of the management team that hasn’t contracted the virus even though the streets are like a ghost town. This makes both him and his boss very nervous. Unfortunately the Mum has not and has had to claim Universal Credit. That makes them unacceptably precarious renters for far too many landlords; unwilling to accept tenants on benefit or solely dependent on one job in an uncertain environment. They have nevertheless found an unexpectedly affordable flat in Fitzrovia, near Regents Park, as the expected rent has dropped by 40% since last year – a sign of how much the centre of the city is hollowing out. This is part of the zone in the West End that is dead at the best of times, as so many houses and flats are owned as investments by absentee, often oversea, landlords and often not even rented out; so there are empty, lifeless streets lined with dark flats, and the occasional pedestrian scuttling nervously through the shadows.

All through the night, the foxes scream in the snow.

‘Twas the Night before lockdown.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The Mutual Self Help WhatsApp group set up on our road is now mostly used for neighbours to post up some spectacular photos, advertise lost cats and check with each other if the Virgin Broadband internet connection has gone down AGAIN.

On the walk past the park down to the shops J remarks that she keeps being sent ads for for something she has only talked about on the phone and not clicked on. Alexa is watching you.

An electric sign above the entrance to Aldi asks people to stop and wait if it is showing red and come in if it is showing green. It is showing red. Everyone is going in. Some jobs have to be done by people. A sign on a door is advice from a technological slave. A person on a door sets up a relationship with a peer. Even if they’d put the stop/go lights in a cardboard cut out of a person – like those replica Policemen they use to nudge people not to shoplift at Morrisons – it would have worked better. Even a picture of eyes looking at you clicks on your conscience.

Coffee with COVID?

In the vast Lebanese eatery by the tube station, where we risk a coffee, a brisk trade is given a slightly edgy feel by impending closure – and the way that the black clad, elegant staff, who sashay between tables carrying trays above their shoulders in one hand with an almost French flourish, are all wearing masks that don’t cover their noses. S showed us a poster that compared wearing a mask without covering the nose to wearing a condom that just covers the testicles. With picture. This is now impossible to un-see every time someone comes past wearing their mask in an “off the nose” style.

Out of the windows of the Bus, people scurry past the shops in the twilight wearing masks, stocking up. Posters spell out the current level of warning and measures to be taken. A recorded announcement proclaims the need for all passengers to wear masks. Several people without them show no sign of having heard it. The style is dystopian and isolating – feels like being on a different planet – rather than humane and mobilising. Probably the best the Tories can do. They can only mobilise in national terms. Humanity is a bit beyond them.

On the way back up the hill, our local UKIP supporter’s cinema screen TV lights up the street with the interminable US presidential results programme’s hypnotic red and blue dyptich glowing in a darkened living room. Biting their nails for the wrong result.

Listening to Radio 4 while washing up – as you do – I realise that Michael Buerk’s voice is two parts sigh to three parts sneer.

Quiet, but not quite quiet enough.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

With the sudden sharp and shocking increase in Coronavirus infections there are fewer people out and about, and they seem to be moving slower, more carefully, more wary and considerate, aware of the fragility of life and taking the time to live its most mundane moments more fully.

The traffic is sparser and has lost the feverish quality of the return to normal that everyone knew wasn’t a return to normal, a sense of living on thinner ice than we’d thought, with too many cars moving too fast, hurrying through, cutting each other up, drivers with frightened eyes, vehicular Social Darwinism; now back to the calm between storms.

Outside Tesco, it is peaceful and tidy. A few weeks ago there were flocks of discarded plastic bags doing dances in the air on the vortexes of wind that were whipping and wheeling, floating up and drifting down, like some elegant, new, ugly life form.

In the meadowed part of the park, the wildflowers planted by the council to save the bees are having a late surge; now head high in places, an impressionists palette of magenta, buttery yellow and cornflower blue waving in the wind and pale autumn light. Magnificent.

Passing the local High School – on the “concern” list for the Local Authority after cases of COVID – and a year group “bubble” is out in the lower school playground. A couple of hundred students scattered in the usual tight clumps, giving no impression that anything unusual is going on.

Though the Moot of eight old chaps that used to sit in a circle smack in the middle and take it in turns to hold forth and put the world to wrongs has dispersed, the socially distanced Yoga class on the far side of the park carries on as normal with all thirty of its participants doing the downward dog in a wide circle, rule of six or no rule of six. Were they to be arrested, the charge sheet would be surreal. A few elderly people without masks puff and wheeze on the outdoor gym.

Picking up some light reading from the library and both the latest Le Carre (1) and Mick Herron (2) efforts involve increasing tension between UK and German Intelligence in the context of Brexit; with double agent plots in both. Herron’s barely disguised satire on Boris Johnson gets full marks from a battery of reviewers in the Telegraph, Mail and Express; indicating more self awareness from those titles in their culture section than they would ever admit to in News and Comment. Surprising they didn’t called it treasonous.

In my local Tesco they have moved the toilet rolls into the same row as the Newspapers. Looking at the headlines this morning, I can see their point.

1. Agent running in the field.

2. Joe country.

Wearing down the front line

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

 

😳😳😳😳😳😳😑😑😑😑 

See ITV NHS Staff survey below.

If, in a life or death struggle, your front line workers are feeling like this, even though they are putting on the bravest face they can manage, you have a serious problem that you need to address.

Since warfare is the lowest common metaphor for any struggle, it should be noted that it is a commonplace of military strategy that a successful offensive – or defence come to that – is dependent not simply on soldiers being well trained and equipped, with plenty of back up in reserve and a plan flexible enough to innovate under the impact of opposition and the unexpected; it also, crucially and decisively, depends on the state of the soldiers themselves. What is their morale? How far do they trust their leaders? Have they been fed? How long have they been fighting? Have they slept. How exhausted are they? How are they coping with the deaths they have seen. How many have shot their nerves, are shell shocked, have PTSD? How worn out are they?

Its not just where they stand, what their strength is on paper. Its whether they have any strength left. This is particularly crucial if the struggle is projected to go on for a long time.

On Friday, Boris Johnson held up the UK as a positive example to other countries because our Health Service has not been overwhelmed by Coronavirus. This took some Chutzpah because on Friday 9 (and still today) the UK’s daily death rate was second only to the USA; so we are no example to anyone.

More to the point, Johnson was assuming that staff in the front line are in a position to cope for the prolonged period of partial lockdown and ‘living with the virus” that too many factions in the UK government and – worryingly, the opposition too – envisage as the “next stage’ – possibly starting as early as May 18th. A shorter, sharper campaign to eliminate the virus; with the lockdown tightened until new infections were well down and deaths in single figures took China 6 weeks across the whole country and 11 in Wuhan before there were cautious steps taken to ease off. The problem here is that our infections per capita – thanks to the complete failure to prepare and get a grip in February and early March -are massively above the worst peak in China, so even this will take us longer.

Instead, the entire debate is about how much and how fast things can be relaxed. That will mean that there is a danger of the virus rebounding. Germany – which has a much more effective testing and tracing system than anything in the UK relaxed restrictions last Monday when death rates were down to just over 1000 a day. Every day since the number of new infections rose. It had reached just over 1400 by Friday. What happens in Spain and other countries with even higher infection rates, let alone the US States that are determined to “reopen” with no safety net at all will be even more instructive.

The  pressure this will put NHS staff under will be intense. it cannot be taken for granted that the line will hold. A survey of NHS staff carried out by ITV last week came up with some alarming results. Just under 6 out of every 10 workers reported feeling stressed beyond a point they could cope with (57%). 1 in 10 reported having suicidal thoughts (11%). One in 30 reported self harming (3.4%). Half report that there has been insufficient support. (1)

What this means is that NHS workers need more than claps and badges. They need PPE, respect and support from managers (and no gagging orders on telling it like it is to protect official myths); and above all a clear strategy from government to eliminate the virus, not the prospect of continual ongoing “management” of it.

(1) https://www.itv.com/news/2020-04-30/more-than-half-of-frontline-nhs-workers-unable-to-cope-with-stress-brought-on-by-coronavirus-itv-news-survey-finds/

Who can you trust?

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

The UK government’s explanation of why it has decided to stop comparing the UK’s Coronavirus infection and death rates with China’s is deeply ironic. They say that Chinese stats can’t be trusted.*

There is a more obvious explanation; that China has been very successful in keeping its death rates down while the UK has not, that this is deeply embarrassing, and becoming more so as time goes on.

This is what that looks like in deaths per million as of April 26 (1).

. chart (5)

This is significantly worse than the previous week. The Chinese figure is unchanged (on 3.3 per million) – because the virus is under control – while the US and UK figures deteriorate (from 101 to 168 per million for the US and from 206 to 305 per million for the UK) (1). This figure means that the Chinese can now start to safely reopen their economy. It is quite clear that the UK and US cannot do so safely at this level. Denial is essential to even contemplate doing so. ** Whitewashing out the discrepancy with China, is a further aspect of playing down or ignoring their experience and any lessons that could be learned from it – could be preparing the ground to do so at an unsafe level.

The trustworthiness of UK official figures is also questionable. While the daily death rate is confined to those who have died in hospital after being tested and serves a purpose in tracking trajectory, it does not include anyone who has died anywhere else; and no one in government is keen to point out that the headline figure is not the total of people who have actually died: which is considerably larger. This may be considered a sin of omission, but it nevertheless serves a purpose in downplaying how bad things actually are; another form of denial.

A Financial Times analysis (2) incorporating the Office for National Statistics figures on all deaths concluded that the official UK figure of 17 337 deaths up to Tuesday 21 April is less than half the actual figure. That looks like this.

chart (4)

 

*This is odd, because the WHO does trust them (as does the Financial Times; whose job it is to provide accurate information for the business class). A logical next step in this trajectory will be to downgrade relations with the WHO – which also serves a purpose in that it stubbornly insists on tighter conditions for easing lockdown’s than the UK government is prepared to contemplate. See previous blog.

**It is clear that the ground is being prepared to do this. Train operating companies are preparing to open up 80% of services by May 18th. Statements by Nicola Sturgeon and Mark Drakeford on behalf of the Scottish and Welsh governments on Friday on easing the lockdown to “live with” or “live alongside” the virus indicate that a reopening is being planned that is a response to commercial, not health, pressures. When Keir Starmer says that the UK risks being “left behind” in its consideration of “exit strategy” in the context of other countries beginning to ease restrictions, this applies pressure in precisely the wrong direction. The UK has the second highest daily death rate in the world right now. As of April 25, that looks like this.

chart (6)

The points he – and the rest of the Labour and trade union movement should to be making are:

1. That the only safe exit is one in which the WHO ‘s 6 conditions are met in full and

2. That the current lockdown should be tightened to include ALL non essential work; as the quickest route to an exit is through cutting off all possible routes to infection.

3. We can no more “live with” the virus than we can live with climate breakdown.

(1) https://www.statista.com/statistics/1104709/coronavirus-deaths-worldwide-per-million-inhabitants/

(2) https://www.ft.com/content/67e6a4ee-3d05-43bc-ba03-e239799fa6ab

Re-opening to the virus? How the UK government’s conditions for ending the lockdown differ from the WHO.

Posted on by urbanramblings19687496

These are the WHO’s conditions for a safe ending to lockdowns These are very clear and are aimed at eliminating the virus.

  1. Disease transmission is under control
  2. Health systems are able to “detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact”
  3. Hot spot risks are minimized in vulnerable places, such as nursing homes
  4. Schools, workplaces and other essential places have established preventive measures
  5. The risk of importing new cases “can be managed”
  6. Communities are fully educated, engaged and empowered to live under a new normal

These are very clear and are aimed at eliminating the virus. In China, the point at which disease transmission was under control was when deaths were down to single figures.

As in China, at that point the Health system has to know where any new infection takes place and have the equipment and infrastructure to rapidly intervene, test, contact trace and isolate to prevent it getting out again. This virus is very infectious and spreads very quickly.

At that point, anyone coming in from an area where the virus is still in spate will need to be tested and quarantined if need be and all schools and workplaces will have to have the appropriate preventive measures in place and be fully equipped.

The last point is as crucial as the others. Communities have to know the risks, know the procedures and recognise that this is not a blip that will “disappear like a miracle” (D.Trump) but a threat that will still be lurking at least until a vaccine is produced – which is scheduled to take 18 months if all goes well. So, even when we are out of the woods, we could still meet a wolf; and have to be on our guard.

The UK government puts different conditions. They say

  1. The government must have confidence that the NHS can still provide sufficient critical care and specialist treatment across the UK.
  2. Secondly, there is a need to see a sustained and consistent fall in the daily death rate to be confident the UK is beyond the peak of the outbreak.
  3. There also must be reliable data from SAGE that the infection rate has decreased to manageable levels.
  4. Testing capacity and PPE must be in hand to meet supply for future demand.
  5. There also must not be a risk of a second peak of infection that could overwhelm the NHS.

As the words are not the same, the differences must be deliberate. While some of them sound similar, the devil is in the detail.

  • Being “beyond the peak” can be any time from when death rates start to decline in a “sustained and consistent” way. It does not necessarily mean that the death or infection rate would be under control if the restrictions were lifted.
  • There is no specific mention of schools or workplaces, no mention of imported cases, no mention of having to minimise the risks in vulnerable hot spots.
  • There is an emphasis instead on making sure that the NHS is not overwhelmed. A laudable aim in itself, but when you consider that it is currently being achieved by pre-triage on the one hand and rapid removal of the elderly into hotspots like care homes on the other, you can see its limitations.
  • There is no mention of communities being fully educated, engaged and empowered to live under a new normal, which reflects the UK’s relatively lackadaisical lockdown.
  • Having infection rates at “manageable levels” does not mean the same as having them “under control.” “Under control” means on the path to elimination. Manageable means copeable with, not overwhelming.
  • Avoiding the “risk of a second peak” is not the same as eliminating the virus. Their bottom line is that the second peak should not be so great as to overwhelm the NHS. That could describe the current situation. The NHS is not being overwhelmed, but the UK has the second highest daily death rate in the world.
  • The phrase “testing capacity and PPE must be in hand to meet supply for future demand” implies that there is going to be a future demand. This is not the same as having a system ready and primed to “detect, test, isolate and treat every case and trace every contact”. Managing. Not eliminating.

So, we have a half way house policy here. Just as the UK “lockdown” is half a lockdown.

The danger is that there will be a return with infections at too high a level; so the rate of infection will go up again, without adequate PPE, without a testing and contact tracing system in place – with schools one of the first places to open simply to have kids taken care of during the day so the economy can “open” (in Trump’s phrase) and their mums and dads can go back to work.

This would let the genie back out of the bottle and then require restrictions to come back in to stop it running out of control. So instead of getting a grip and crushing the virus in one determined go, we end up with a reactive yo yo of restrictions going up and down; with the presumption that a vaccine will arrive like the cavalry coming over the hill. The problem with this – of course – is that it might not.

So, an apposite question for Labour (and others) to be asking is why it is that the government is not adopting the WHO guidelines without equivocation.

Lives rest on this.