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The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
Mike4
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The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407192

Postby Mike4 » April 26th, 2021, 6:24 pm

I agree with Julian, we need a thread so titled.

The UK vaccine response is the stand-out success. What else have we else we done to handle the pandemic notably better than most other countries in the world?

Printed masses of money to keep the economy going rather than see mass job losses, is another.

Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.

Establishing a genuinely world-besting genomic sequencing programme.

Any more for the list?

GrahamPlatt
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407220

Postby GrahamPlatt » April 26th, 2021, 7:52 pm

“Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.”
I really do think you can scratch that from the list. Or at least remove the word effective.

Nimrod103
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407228

Postby Nimrod103 » April 26th, 2021, 8:19 pm

GrahamPlatt wrote:“Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.”
I really do think you can scratch that from the list. Or at least remove the word effective.


What do you know? Please share with us.

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407229

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » April 26th, 2021, 8:25 pm

Mike4 wrote:I agree with Julian, we need a thread so titled.

The UK vaccine response is the stand-out success. What else have we else we done to handle the pandemic notably better than most other countries in the world?

Printed masses of money to keep the economy going rather than see mass job losses, is another.

Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.

Establishing a genuinely world-besting genomic sequencing programme.

Any more for the list?

I've been very impressed with how my daughters school has managed to continue teaching over the internet and with set pieces. There must have been some incredible workloads to turn that response around. Communication has been superb too.

AiY

EssDeeAitch
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407230

Postby EssDeeAitch » April 26th, 2021, 8:29 pm

Having 1,000,000 people volunteer to work with NHS services to shop for, talk to, ferry, vaccinate and generally asist others.

scotview
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407231

Postby scotview » April 26th, 2021, 8:32 pm

A dedicated and highly professional ICU clinical staff, who provided 24/7 support and monitoring of ICU covid patients,

Most of this ICU nursing effort was on a one to one basis.

They worked incredibly hard whilst putting themselves in harms way.

GrahamPlatt
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407239

Postby GrahamPlatt » April 26th, 2021, 9:15 pm

scotview wrote:A dedicated and highly professional ICU clinical staff, who provided 24/7 support and monitoring of ICU covid patients,

Most of this ICU nursing effort was on a one to one basis.

They worked incredibly hard whilst putting themselves in harms way.



Indeed, they saved BoJo’s life (ipse dixit)

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/202 ... ay-protest

servodude
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407261

Postby servodude » April 26th, 2021, 11:45 pm

I really liked the converted busses to transport critically ill ICU patients when the hospitals were (or weren't depending on your view) full

A very practical, quickly implemented and neat solution - and involving busses just made it all the more British.

- sd

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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407339

Postby dealtn » April 27th, 2021, 11:50 am

GrahamPlatt wrote:“Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.”
I really do think you can scratch that from the list. Or at least remove the word effective.


What's not impressive or effective about testing more than a million people each day?

murraypaul
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407343

Postby murraypaul » April 27th, 2021, 12:09 pm

On a wider level, I think the most impressive aspect is that the government did step back and give room to the medical and scientific advisors.
I think it helped with public acceptance that they were being given information by people actually qualified to do so.

servodude
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407348

Postby servodude » April 27th, 2021, 12:23 pm

dealtn wrote:
GrahamPlatt wrote:“Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.”
I really do think you can scratch that from the list. Or at least remove the word effective.


What's not impressive or effective about testing more than a million people each day?


I agree.
It was slow to start (wrt. the amount of cases around) and at a couple points massaged the figures to suit the promises regards delivery
- but looks to have developed in to something to be proud of (from a throughput perspective at least)

-sd

Julian
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407352

Postby Julian » April 27th, 2021, 12:38 pm

Thanks Mike for starting this thread, and thanks Dod for starting that other thread that was the original inspiration.

I'd definitely put testing on the impressive list, maybe doubly so since it involved turning a bad initial situation into a spectacularly good one. According to Statista we are number one in the world now for testing rates and have been for a while now (https://www.statista.com/statistics/110 ... worldwide/). And then there's genetic sequencing where we are number 1 in the world by an even bigger margin providing over 40% of all sequences delivered to the GISAID global sharing hub (https://apnews.com/article/world-news-g ... 96103ceab6).

The scalability and adaptability of the NHS has also been impressive. I'd even add the oft-criticised Nightingale hospitals to the mix there. Better to have built something that ultimately was hardly used than to have discovered they were desperately needed and had not been planned for. No one had 100% foresight especially in the early stages so a few false turns actually demonstrate a willingness to make prompt decisions and invest resources rather than being paralysed by indecision and fear of mistakes. I suppose the UK's decision to extend the vaccine dosing intervals might go into that category as well, a brave decision made and implemented in the face of the best data available at the time except in this case I suspect it tuned out to be the right decision and saved many lives due to getting more people protected while the second wave was still raging and hospitals were struggling to cope.

The army of volunteers has already been mentioned but I'd also mention the Army or probably more accurately the UK military as a whole. As I understand it there was valuable logistical expertise and personnel provided there. Another good aspect to build on for future pandemic planning perhaps. I sometimes feel that the UK military is an under-utilised resource for instance when G4S (I think) dropped the ball so badly on the London Olympics security and the Army stepped in at the last minute I was left thinking "why wasn't that done in the first place?". With much talk of terrorist threats at the time I certainly felt more comfortable having trained military personnel doing the security rather than a collection of workers from the gig economy who had gone through a couple of weeks of training for the Olympics security role.

Vaccines definitely yes but I hope there is a lot more to come on that front, another case I hope of building further on existing success. We are already building some high tech flexible vaccine manufacturing capability in Essex (https://www.gov.uk/government/news/over ... 19-vaccine) and in Oxfordshire (https://www.vmicuk.com/). There's also some interesting new vaccine research going on for instance Imperial College's work on saRNA (self amplifying RNA) vaccines that potentially might have sat alongside the Oxford/AZ vaccine as a UK-developed option if the Imperial team hadn't taken the conscious decision to not try to get approval during the first set of approvals but instead look to get something approved for booster shots against future mutations (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/213313/ ... mutations/). The life sciences scene has always been very strong in the UK, has performed well during the pandemic, and I think will be one of the most positive legacies coming out of all of this because it is only going to get stronger still (I hope).

And a final word ...

servodude wrote:I really liked the converted busses to transport critically ill ICU patients when the hospitals were (or weren't depending on your view) full

A very practical, quickly implemented and neat solution - and involving busses just made it all the more British.

- sd

A bit of an action replay with Britain re-cycling some of its past. My mum was a nurse and drove ambulances in London during the blitz which were - you guessed it - converted London buses.

- Julian

Dod101
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407361

Postby Dod101 » April 27th, 2021, 1:23 pm

Can we really claim a world besting genomic sequencing programme? I do not know but would be interested to have any references to this. The whole subject is so international I think it might be difficult for us Brits to claim as our own. I stand to be corrected though.

It is a heartening thread though and thanks to Mike4.

Dod

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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407363

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » April 27th, 2021, 1:28 pm

Dod101 wrote:Can we really claim a world besting genomic sequencing programme? I do not know but would be interested to have any references to this. The whole subject is so international I think it might be difficult for us Brits to claim as our own. I stand to be corrected though.

It is a heartening thread though and thanks to Mike4.

Dod

Does it matter if we claim it anyway - if we don't someone else will :roll: (My bad)

AiY

AsleepInYorkshire
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407364

Postby AsleepInYorkshire » April 27th, 2021, 1:31 pm

Julian wrote:Thanks Mike for starting this thread, and thanks Dod for starting that other thread that was the original inspiration.
- Julian


And a an excellent post added to the thread Julian.

AiY

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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407366

Postby GrahamPlatt » April 27th, 2021, 1:32 pm

Nimrod103 wrote:
GrahamPlatt wrote:“Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.”
I really do think you can scratch that from the list. Or at least remove the word effective.


What do you know? Please share with us.


https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n822

dealtn
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407370

Postby dealtn » April 27th, 2021, 1:42 pm

GrahamPlatt wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:
GrahamPlatt wrote:“Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.”
I really do think you can scratch that from the list. Or at least remove the word effective.


What do you know? Please share with us.


https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n822


I see, so your objection to "mass population infection testing" is to quote a report that is on test, trace and isolate that highlights the large gaps are as a result of "gaps in symptom recognition" (by people), and "willingness to test" (by people).

Presumably you are actually agreeing then that the "mass population infection testing" is good, but is made ineffective, by the population? You're probably right it could be better if say 2 million tests a day were carried out rather than half of that. But even still by international comparisons I think the UK is relatively doing well on this score.

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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407373

Postby servodude » April 27th, 2021, 1:51 pm

dealtn wrote:
GrahamPlatt wrote:
Nimrod103 wrote:
What do you know? Please share with us.


https://www.bmj.com/content/372/bmj.n822


I see, so your objection to "mass population infection testing" is to quote a report that is on test, trace and isolate that highlights the large gaps are as a result of "gaps in symptom recognition" (by people), and "willingness to test" (by people).

Presumably you are actually agreeing then that the "mass population infection testing" is good, but is made ineffective, by the population? You're probably right it could be better if say 2 million tests a day were carried out rather than half of that. But even still by international comparisons I think the UK is relatively doing well on this score.


I think the main grievance I've seen aired is that testing on its own only tells you more accurately what you're up against
- getting bigger numbers after a point is a diminishing return
- and arguably what you do with your results/testing is more important

-sd

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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407385

Postby 9873210 » April 27th, 2021, 3:58 pm

dealtn wrote:
GrahamPlatt wrote:“Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.”
I really do think you can scratch that from the list. Or at least remove the word effective.


What's not impressive or effective about testing more than a million people each day?


It's a measure of effort, not results.

In school some people aim for a D1 (Doesn't understand the material but works hard). I'm more impressed by a A5 (Has a better grasp of the subject than the instructor with no apparent effort).

Julian
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Re: The most impressive aspects of the UK's Pandemic Response

#407589

Postby Julian » April 28th, 2021, 10:33 am

9873210 wrote:
dealtn wrote:
GrahamPlatt wrote:“Rolling out an effective mass population infection testing service.”
I really do think you can scratch that from the list. Or at least remove the word effective.


What's not impressive or effective about testing more than a million people each day?


It's a measure of effort, not results.

In school some people aim for a D1 (Doesn't understand the material but works hard). I'm more impressed by a A5 (Has a better grasp of the subject than the instructor with no apparent effort).

I tentatively disagree. I can't unequivocally disagree because you don't define what "result" you are disappointed in but if you mean some level of suppression of the pandemic in the UK, either cases or deaths, then testing is a necessary but not sufficient effort in order for test/trace/isolate to have any downward effect on the cases which ultimately should put downward pressure on deaths as well. I haven't gone back and done a forensic analysis of the previous posts on this thread but I have the impression that none of those people praising testing was necessarily also saying that all of the other parts of the test/trace/isolate system are equally impressive. To criticise the effort expended on testing as wasted in terms of case suppression is a bit like saying that Samsung wasted its effort manufacturing my new TV because it is unable to receive any TV broadcasts when that failure to deliver its hoped-for results is because I haven't bothered to plug it into an aerial and scan for TV stations.

- Julian


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