Boris..intensive care..

I wonder how he will pan out after this hiatus. No bad intent in this.

I expect you are right, Labaik, but wouldn't you want any prime minister to have the best treatment available? It's the post, not the person.

Yes, given how ill he was, he had a swift recovery. My brother wasn’t taken to hospital but my SIL who is a career said she thought he was dangerously ill 2 weeks ago (phoned 999, they said he should stay at home). He’s barely able to walk across the room even now and he’s younger and fitter than Boris.

I do think he has been very ill. However I also think that he had better care than anyone else has had at this moment in time and that a ventilator was ready and waiting for him if he'd needed it. And he had one of the best specialist doctors in the world.

Some people do recover more quickly than others.
I think those needing ventilating may take longer to recover, if they do.
Those who need CPAP may recover more quickly, probably because they had not got to that stage but still need intensive care.

Some people are left with lingering symptoms but others may recover more quickly.

I haven’t read all this thread so forgive me if I repeat what others have said.
I am absolutely delighted Boris Johnson has defeated the virus but am I naive in thinking he wasn’t as ill as we were led to believe?
I know he was in a serious condition but to be discharged very soon after being out of ICU and going home seems very quick indeed.
I repeat I wish him all the best in his recovery.

Oh dear. Desperate times.

And it said in the Times that women have more protection because of our XX [?] chromasomes. But until we do more testing no one will know anything for certain. On todays blog a professor from Baghdad University said people were drinking bleach because they'd heard it would cure them .

I think my daughter said she'd read that Group A was more susceptible.

I still wonder if some blood groups may be more susceptible than others.

Sweden's reaction to all this is interesting. I await results on their methods.

Oh labaik that is a good theory. Be interesting to see what happens in Sweden.

Having just watched Dr Campbells latest blog got me thinking about Sweden. He was talking about how it is better to not take paracetamol to reduce the fever if you catch the virus because the fever is the bodies way of fighting it off. Which I totally agree with. But there were also studies on how saunas affect the body. Now, I 'm a great believer in saunas and it's really bothering me that I can no longer go to a health club and have one. But it got me wondering if the fact that Swedish people like their saunas might mean that fewer of them [along with the other factors that NotSpaghetti mentioned] will succumb to the virus. If there is one thing I would love to do at this moment in time it would be to have a sauna; and I don't stay in one for 20 or so minutes; I can happily spend hours in one. I'll just have to make do with a hot bath, I guess...

Regarding Sweden, it has made some changes (re restaurants and bars for example), and also it has a massive number of single person households.
The deaths so far have been largely in multi-generational households apparently. Also, the population us quite good at self-policing. I read an interesting article about this the other day. Not a study though. Also, those who feel at odds with the policy are staying home. Their welfare system is extremely generous so no one who feels at all unwell needs to keep working.
It would not work here.

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South Korea have contained it. Friends there have not been in lockdown at all.

New Zealand had a test and contact trace policy.

Most NHS deaths were not white British. No doubt some are immigrants. I hope once this is over, we change our attitude towards incomers. AND I hope the government ministers that have been treated and had their lives saved by the NHS remember and change their attitude towards it.

32 NHS staff have now died.

I am sure in years to come countries will be judged on how they handled the pandemic but it won’t be easy to maintain for example that a certain level of deaths is acceptable to save any country’s economy .

Having said that it’s impossible for any country to have implemented a strategy to save every life.

Yes JenniferEccles I agree that it will be interesting to see how Sweden progresses in their handling and the progression of coronavirus there.
I have read that in fact life is not exactly going on as normal, as many fewer are using public transport, and those over 70 are advised to socially isolate for example.
I have also noticed that many of their own scientists do not agree with their government's approach. A leading virologist was reported as saying "I didn't sign informed consent for this experiment. I don't know if (my family and I) can stay in a country that is not protecting its population".
There is so much yet to learn about this virus.

Sarah Trollope, for example, not quite so lucky as out esteemed leader.

Yes Chew, he is and so be it. Unfortunately he has taken a lot of other people down with him.

Some people cite China as being the country which best dealt with the virus by initiating a lockdown very early on, but now a very large number of Chinese have not encountered it so have no immunity should it return there.

Only time will tell whether the herd immunity policy is better though.

Sweden might be the country to watch as their bars and restaurants are still open.

He's an idiot Labaik and now he's paying the price for his idiocy. But some people only learn the hard way.

I just can't understand why some people are still defending the way this government has handled the crisis. The fact that Johnson didn't even take on board the advice regarding protecting oneself from catching the virus just about sums it all up. I mean, he openly boasted that he was still shaking peoples hands when everyone was being advised not to. Can anyone explain why this wasn't ignorant and foolhardy of him?

I know greeneyedgirl- that's why I said underfunding was nothing new!!

The so called 'herd immunity' ideology is why we will probably end up with more deaths than Italy, because we were so slow initially to initiate social isolation.
The signs from China were clear, in February, and now we are starting to see the result. Our daily death rate is probably over 1,000 a day if deaths in the community were included.
We will not know of course until this is all over what the ultimate cost in human life will be, but I hope there will be a public Enquiry about the way it has been managed.
I worked in the NHS for years and I can say Jane10 that many of the problems in the NHS prior to this virus were definitely down to underfunding.
Of course there needs to be a debate about what can be realistically paid for in normal times, but to be frank we started from a very low base to be able to cope with a pandemic such as we are now experiencing.