I honestly don’t know. Lack of judgement is one of those imponderables. Anthropologists talk about ‘tacit knowledge’. You could tell me exactly what he’s done and what he’s accused of, and not having a background as an officer of the US Navy (or any other) I still wouldn’t know whether he crossed the line, or whether the line has moved recently.
Of course I have my suspicions, which reflect my prejudices.
The oxygen supply line should be quite robust? With a lot of mothballed airliners they could pull some emergency oxygen supplies form the aircraft? I would have thought there is enough production capacity around even with a spike in ICU demand. Perhaps some facilities are hoarding it.
Hospitals in the UK typically use large tanks of liquid O2 which is delivered periodically by lorry. You can’t hoard more than the capacity of your tank and it would eventually boil off anyway so I doubt that hoarding will be an issue. You will often see large frosted nests of pipes next to the tanks. Their job is to evaporate oxygen from the tanks – but they also have a maximum flow rate.
I suspect it will be the distribution network that is the limiting factor.
@Airborne_Again What’s this about Swedish health authorities only officially reporting about half of the number of deaths due to the corona virus? The rest eventually ends up in the database, but is still not officially reported?
LeSving wrote:
What’s this about Swedish health authorities only officially reporting about half of the number of deaths due to the corona virus? The rest eventually ends up in the database, but is still not officially reported?
Are you referring to the delayed reporting of deaths? I do know there have been delays in reporting of deaths from the regional health authorities to the Public Health Agency. This means that the Agency can’t report all deaths immediately (that is, in the summaries the day after). That is not good, of course, but if that happens it is only reasonable that they are added to the database later. And of course the database is official. The Public Health Agency has been very clear about this at every daily press conference I’ve listened to so it’s not like they’re trying to hide something.
But my impression was that the delayed deaths were included in the daily reports when they were eventually reported. Are you saying that is not the case?
Why not isolate old/risk persons?
Under 50 it doesn’t really have an effect.
Right now the economic impact is not in line with the effects/death rate of this virus. The socioeconomic consequences will kill more people.
Already death rates for other illnesses are soaring because people are afraid to get medical treatment (eg for small strokes/heart attacks).
But my impression was that the delayed deaths were included in the daily reports when they were eventually reported. Are you saying that is not the case?
It’s not clear how. The obvious way to do this is to report each they all the new confirmed deaths regardless of exactly when the death occured. We are only interested in new confirmed deaths each day.
The Swedish authority is not doing this. Instead they are reporting the new confirmed deaths that occured during the last 24 hours. Lots of deaths during the last 24 hours are not confirmed (exact cause of death is not confirmed, and could take an additional day or two).
Lots of deaths are not reported as Corona deaths this way. In fact only half of them are. They are included into the databases later on (I would guess). But the public is never given the correct numbers.
@Snoopy, I’m thinking the same, except that I would raise the age for house arrest to 70, and make it voluntary.
I reckon that the English will put up with the current restrictions until next weekend (Easter). After that, there will be widespread civil disobedience as people see the enormity of the hole that Public Health England has dug by ignoring warning upon warning of just such a pandemic, and by subsequent inaction, inertia and outright rejection of any help from private sector laboratories.
Better to let people die and lock them in their homes than risk “privatising” any function of the last bastion of socialism. And if the filthy capitalist running dogs go out of business, so much the better. The State will provide. 
I don’t think it’s clear what age groups
it affects. In London apparently 1 in 6 ICU patients is under 50 but in Newport they are all in their 50s or younger. I don’t understand why this should be. I realise the two statements are not incompatible, but as Peter posted the other day, in some places young people seem to be affected more than initially predicted.
FWIW I agree that we’ll have to relax the restrictions soon. There will be a rethink on some of the sillier ones (I sometimes wonder whether they were put in place so that they might be gradually removed in due course). By then we’ll have a better handle on treatment and epidemiology. It may be possible to let lots more people go back to work. It will be a while before the cafes reopen and we can go to sports matches and the opera.
Is there any reason British people can’t go to farms to harvest fruit and veg? Even if they’d normally be reluctant I would imagine there must be thousands of unemployed people desperate for some fresh air at the moment.
