Lockdown diary: day four

I've spent almost all today working at home, occasionally being interrupted by members of my family stopping to tell me things like the news that the PM and health secretary have tested positive for Coronavirus. (The Chief Medical Officer is also experiencing symptoms and self-isolating)

This should not surprise anyone - people in positions like theirs meet a vast number of people and therefore have lots of opportunities to catch any bug which is going around. A strong immune system is pretty much an essential requirement for anyone who want to be a politician but one of the bizarre things about COVID-19 is that the normal relationships between the strength of your immune system and how vulnerable you are do not seem to work in the normal way.

The good news is that because of those differences, although young people are not completely immune this bug does not kill nearly as many children, or adults under thirty, as a disease this deadly normally would.

The bad news is that a strong immune system is not invariably a good defence.

As Michael Gove pointed out, this coronavirus does not discriminate and can attack anyone.

Annoying to be stuck indoors on what has been a beautiful day in West Cumbria but we all have rather more important things to worry about.

Horrified by the death totals from Spain and Italy. I can certainly see why my social media friends who live in those countries and have been sending me warnings about the need to act, pointing out that what had hit them was and is on its way to Britain, were getting at.

Please stay at home. Support the NHS. Save lives.

Comments

Jim said…
Im sure Boris will speak to Mr Benjamin On WhatsApp, although from what I hear he has actually started to take his own advise and is working from home, as he is proving he can.

Not sure why he didnt do it from the start, and why he has tested positive when he had the first symptoms of covid. Other people with symptoms are not being tested, I know one person who is coming to the end of 14 days isolation, hes much better now (he was very rough at one point) though the doctor told him they are not testing as he has not been in hospital and his oxygen is higher than 90 (whatever that means). Has he had it? I dont know, neither does he.

So the antibody tests, If the NHS dont have the money to test people then who makes them and where do we buy them?

7:30 am
Chris Whiteside said…
No adverts please. (I have removed an advert.)
12:22 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
In terms of the test for whether you have COVID-19 at the moment, I am hearing mixed messages on how much testing Britain is actually doing, but the majority of informed sources one ought to be able to rely on including non-party political ones - the briefings forwarded to councillors by CCC officers for instance - tell me that Britain is doing more testing than most countries and is ramping it up as fast as we can.

The Deputy Chief medical officer at the Cabinet Office press conference the other day did say something about the protocols for who gets tested - I didn't make a note of the details but it was pretty obvious that the PM and health secretary would have met the criteria.

I would have thought her immediate boss Professor Whitty would meet them too, but perhaps he is waiting on the outcome of a test or it was inconclusive.

Jim, I do not claim to be an expert, and cannot remember where I read or heard this so please do not take the following provisional reply as gospel, but my recollection is that although there are frantic efforts being made to get a test into use for whether or not someone has the antibodies which would suggest that they have had it in the past and are now immune, I don't think that particular test is up and running yet.

I will keep an eye open for a definitive and confirmed answer to that question and as soon as I find one will post it both here and on a new thread.
12:35 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
UPDATE

I am advised that Public Health England are currently testing a new antibody test that may be able to show if a person has had Covid - 19.

E.g. it is in the test stage

See new thread on testing.
9:25 pm
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