
Coronavirus: Boris Johnson taken to intensive care - DanBC
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52192604
======
davidwitt415
A few weeks ago, Johnson suggested in public that the US 'take one on the
chin' regarding Covid-19. How's that working out for you Boris?

I don't care if you think this is inappropriate, because I find it welcome
that for once a politician has to personally face the ramifications of his
fecklessness. If only more of our leaders would have to face up, we might have
real leadership instead of political posturing.

~~~
thu2111
He said the UK needed to do that, not the US. And in case you're in doubt,
yes, it's wildly inappropriate. To wish revenge on a politician who has from
the start delegated to his own scientific advisors, which is exactly what
people wanted politicians to do, is a sick thing.

You can go read the same advice he was reading on gov.uk, which states the
obvious very clearly: you can't stop a virus with no vaccine by keeping
everyone under indefinite house arrest. Even the dubious modellers admit that
lockdown doesn't really flatten the curve, it just moves it forward. There's
no solution in lockdown and it's wrong to pretend otherwise.

Given the information at the time (and still now) the original "let it spread
with timed and staged lockdown" strategy was very likely correct. It becomes
clearer every day. The hospitals aren't overflowing, the country hasn't run
out of ventilators - not even close - and yet the economy is trashed with
consequent dire impacts to the future funding of the healthcare system and
other public services. The country could clearly be coping with fewer
restrictions than it has now.

Despite that it's no surprise that the British left may sadly rejoice at
Boris' ill fortune. It's hard to forget the parties they threw when Thatcher
died.

~~~
DanBC
> The hospitals aren't overflowing,

We've converted all private provision to NHS provision; we've cancelled most
elective care; we've built more than one private hospital (NHS Nightingale in
London has 4,000 new beds).

We need at least 5 staff members to safely look after each ventilated patient.
That's dropped right down because of covid-19, and we've already soon big
changes in staff:patient ratios.

We're not at peak covid-19 yet, and we're trying to flatten the curve with
social distancing and isolation measures.

Despite all this our ICUs are overflowing.

Listen to this doctor in Wales (you only need the first minute to hear how
many patients they have)
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejlbCmRJMW4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ejlbCmRJMW4)

Or this junior doctor who works in A&E, who talks about the large changes in
patient flow:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN6Trgzf9kY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN6Trgzf9kY)

~~~
thu2111
Someone else found UK hospital admissions data. UK ER aren't just empty right
now but disturbingly so.

Part of the reason they're empty is that pneumonia and respiratory illness has
hardly moved, yet cardiac, gastro and others have fallen off a cliff. That
implies people with serious non-COVID problems are staying away from hospitals
when they need care, because they've been told they have to "save the NHS".

[https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/...](https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/877600/EDSSSBulletin2020wk13.pdf.pdf)

------
agd
I don’t think this is the time for snarky comments about his politics.

He’s in intensive care and his wife is pregnant. I hope he gets better soon
and I hope his family are doing ok at this difficult time.

~~~
ColinWright
> _... his wife is pregnant._

Prime Minister Johnson is not married.

In 1987, he married Allegra Mostyn-Owen. That was annulled in 1993.

Twelve days later he married Marina Wheeler.

Johnson and Wheeler finalised their divorce in February 2020.

On February 29th Johnson announced his engagement to Carrie Symonds.

He is engaged to be married, and his fiancée is expecting.

But he is not currently married.

More details:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Johnson#Relationships](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boris_Johnson#Relationships)

~~~
mprev
Any time someone gives the guy’s full name it’s a clear indicator of a certain
agenda. Give it a rest. Dredge it up when he’s recovered or maybe, if he
doesn’t survive this, after a respectful interval following his death.

~~~
ColinWright
I have edited my comment. It now no longer gives his full name, nor mentions
all of the documented relationships.

~~~
Bnshsysjab
I don’t think it’s the full names the parent comment is taking issues with
here.

------
haunter
“I can tell you that I’m shaking hands continuously. I was at a hospital the
other night where I think there were actually a few coronavirus patients and I
shook hands with everybody, you’ll be pleased to know and I continue to shake
hands”. (March 3rd)

[https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1234828026933805057](https://twitter.com/DavidLammy/status/1234828026933805057)

------
jjgreen
He's been looking rougher and rougher as the week has worn on, I don't like
the guy but wouldn't wish this on him.

------
Freestyler_3
Where did all of these leaders get their information about covid from? Surely
not from the people who were watching the crisis develop in China.

Another stupid thing: People have been burning down cell towers because they
think 5G causes corona. Only to leave their area to be less covered by
telephone network, possibly making it harder to reach emergency services.

edit: I know many leaders have changed their views to more realistic ones, but
I do wonder how they could be so misinformed in the beginning.

~~~
gridlockd
> Where did all of these leaders get their information about covid from?
> Surely not from the people who were watching the crisis develop in China.

The official information coming out of China was "mostly mild courses, mostly
kills old people with pre-existing conditions, kind of like the flu".

Later, the official information coming out of Italy was "mostly mild courses,
mostly kills old people with pre-existing conditions, kind of like the flu".

Therefore, if you're not going to make a big fuss about the flu, why make one
about COVID-19? Quite a few _actual virologists_ took this stance, at least
for a while. The alarmists won the battle for attention, but not because of
superior information.

That was also before Italy was overwhelmed. Even experts underestimated just
how virulent COVID-19 was going to be and how many people were going to get it
in such short order of time.

However, the fact remains that it's mostly mild courses, mostly kills old
people with pre-existing conditions - kind of like the flu.

If _the flu_ kills an otherwise healthy person, which happens all the time,
it's not news. COVID-19 is an unprecedented media spectacle, with
unprecedented reactions from governments across the world, mob mentality is
driving more and more drastic responses.

It's _not_ a foregone conclusion that these drastic responses were the right
measure. Sweden has done pretty much nothing, yet their graphs don't look any
worse than those of other European countries. Perhaps they're covering it all
up, but perhaps all of this social distancing, all this shutdown does very
little to slow the spread of this disease if just a few people go shopping
once a week, if just a few people go to work and carry it home. We _don 't
know_, because we don't know how COVID-19 actually spreads.

History is written by the winners. Had COVID-19 turned out less severe, the
alarmists would've been decried as oversensitive fools. Now the anti-alarmists
are being portrayed as irresponsible. Yet, both acted in good faith on _the
same information_. Don't forget that the price of the shutdown is a major
recession, it's not a simple political decision to make. The principle of
charity must be applied.

~~~
rconti
>The official information coming out of China was "mostly mild courses, mostly
kills old people with pre-existing conditions, kind of like the flu".

>Later, the official information coming out of Italy was "mostly mild courses,
mostly kills old people with pre-existing conditions, kind of like the flu".

In both cases, the information _also_ included extremely rapid uncontrolled
spread, a much higher death rate than the flu, and overwhelming available
medical resources. This was known for a _very_ long time; as far back as early
January in China.

>The alarmists won the battle for attention, but not because of superior
information.

I'm not sure calling the people who were correct "alarmists" is aging well.
And you still are apparently dismissing it as 'luck', that they were correct,
because you state their information was no better.

>Even experts underestimated just how virulent COVID-19 was going to be and
how many people were going to get it in such short order of time.

I seem to recall predictions of crazy R0 values for coronavirus back in early
January. I, too, thought it was probably at the "overdone" side of things,
again, in early January, before we had more information. But the picture
started becoming much more clear by early February, and certainly mid-
February. And we continued to do NOTHING in the US, at least into mid-March.
And even once we spent a month ignoring the devastating consequences in Italy,
much of the US hand-waved it away, and explained that they're all old people,
and it could never happen here.

Then once it started happening here, we started hearing from governors of
southern states, explaining how it can't happen THERE because they're not
Washington. Or California. And then it became "we're not New York". I'm sorry,
but the level of _intentional ignorance_ on this matter has played out over
many, many months, over and over again, in precisely the same, predictable
pattern. And here you are, claiming nobody could have known, and the alarmists
got lucky.

>History is written by the winners. Had COVID-19 turned out less severe, the
alarmists would've been decried as oversensitive fools. Now the anti-alarmists
are being portrayed as irresponsible. Yet, both acted in good faith on the
same information.

Wrong.

~~~
gridlockd
> In both cases, the information also included extremely rapid uncontrolled
> spread, a much higher death rate than the flu, and overwhelming available
> medical resources.

A high death rate in the beginning isn't meaningful. Early on during the Swine
Flu, mortality was estimated at 0.5%[1], later estimates were ten times
lower[2].

This was described as the "tip of the iceberg" phenomenon in a Q&A on a
Harvard website[3] as late as early March. That section was later removed.

As for "uncontrolled spread", we've all seen footage of masses of people
storming the hospitals in an entirely unsanitary manner, we've seen people
getting dragged off the streets, for the crime of having an elevated
temperature, then getting force-quarantined in open halls with no regards to
safety. If this was an overwhelmed healthcare system, it wasn't clear that the
blame could be put on the virus.

> This was known for a very long time; as far back as early January in China.

It wasn't, but hindsight is 20/20\. In mid-January there were less than 500
confirmed cases and no good estimate on the number of unconfirmed cases. Less
than thirty people had died, over the course of two months in which likely a
comparable number of people in Wuhan died from Influenza, but didn't make the
news.

> I'm not sure calling the people who were correct "alarmists" is aging well.

They _were_ the alarmists at the time and will forever have been so. Some of
their predictions may have turned out correct, others may yet turn out
correct, others may turn out incorrect.

The Swine Flu, as predicted, _could_ have killed 120 million people[4], but
then it _didn 't_, even without any shutdowns.

> And you still are apparently dismissing it as 'luck', that they were
> correct, because you state their information was no better.

Of course their information wasn't any better. Everyone had access to the same
information. The difference is in its interpretation, not so much based on
luck but personal disposition. Again, not _all_ virologists made the same dire
predictions.

> I seem to recall predictions of crazy R0 values for coronavirus back in
> early January. I, too, thought it was probably at the "overdone" side of
> things, again, in early January, before we had more information.

Yes, you saw _predictions_ of crazy R0 values that _you yourself_ weren't
ready to believe. At the time it wasn't solid information, and it never will
have been.

> But the picture started becoming much more clear by early February, and
> certainly mid-February.

By mid-February, less than 2000 people had died worldwide from COVID-19,
compared to at least 10,000 deaths from Influenza in the US alone. I'm not
saying the "flu comparison" is a valid comparison, but at that point in time,
it was still allowed to be made, even by experts.

> And we continued to do NOTHING in the US, at least into mid-March.

Neither did most European countries. Even in Italy, there was no nation-wide
shutdown until March 9th.

> Wrong.

Wrong how? Your comment is a good example of an inaccurate historical account,
as written by those who ended up on "the right side".

[1]
[https://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b2840.full](https://www.bmj.com/content/339/bmj.b2840.full)

[2]
[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784967/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2784967/)

[3]
[https://web.archive.org/web/20200304132800/https://www.healt...](https://web.archive.org/web/20200304132800/https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/as-
coronavirus-spreads-many-questions-and-some-answers-2020022719004)

[4] [https://metro.co.uk/2009/04/26/swine-flu-could-kill-up-
to-12...](https://metro.co.uk/2009/04/26/swine-flu-could-kill-up-
to-120m-57725/)

~~~
rconti
>Yes, you saw predictions of crazy R0 values that you yourself weren't ready
to believe. At the time it wasn't solid information, and it never will have
been.

You're correct. It wasn't a "gotcha" on your part. I volunteered that
information to point out that I was not an alarmist, I wasn't ready to believe
the most "alarming" predictions, and yet, somehow, it was _still_ clear to me
and the entirety of mainstream thought in the US, how bad it was going to be,
before the most contrarian commentators were willing to admit.

>Neither did most European countries. Even in Italy, there was no nation-wide
shutdown until March 9th.

In the US, it was still theoretically possible to contain it with "just" 19
confirmed cases at the end of February, even though, of course, that meant
likely 10 times+ as many people had it, and were spreading it, when community
spread was first reported on February 29[1]

Once community spread was found in the US, and _given_ our lack of ability to
test for it, it was a foregone conclusion that it would spread like wildfire
in the US, because containment is impossible if you don't know who's infected
but asymptomatic.

Already in that first week of March, tech companies such as LinkedIn were
already sending people home for the month[2], because it was beyond clear we
were going to see rapid community spread. "We are 10 days behind Italy" was a
common saying in mid-March.

My own company sent us home later that first week, as we had _direct links_ to
places with known community spread. It was out of an abundance of caution, as
I don't believe anyone ever got infected. It was an aggressive move, but it
turned out to be the right move.

10 days later, a shelter in place order was sent out for the ENTIRE BAY AREA,
and then a few days later, for the entire state.

And here we are, 3 weeks later, folks in Georgia saying "we are not Louisiana"
(I had to update that from "we are not California" and "we are not New York"
because the states ignorant leaders compare themselves to keep shifting as one
by one the dominos fall)

>By mid-February, less than 2000 people had died worldwide from COVID-19,
compared to at least 10,000 deaths from Influenza in the US alone. I'm not
saying the "flu comparison" is a valid comparison, but at that point in time,
it was still allowed to be made, even by experts.

It was still "allowed to be made" by people who cannot perform simple
extrapolation.

Yes, just because a graph is going up today does not mean it will go up
tomorrow -- _absent any other evidence_

But with a known long incubation period, and roughly 1 month between infection
and death, you can know for virtual fact that it's not going to stop at 2000
deaths when _known_ infections is an order of magnitude higher, and there is
basically no testing, and absolutely no reason for it to have stopped
spreading. (eg, no preventive measures in place, no reason to expect the virus
to die off on its own, etc).

And now we have a bunch of people who listened to contrarian opinions to
convince themselves that "it couldn't happen here" are going back to find
"evidence" to piece together a tenuous line of thinking that could have led
even an informed person to be wrong. But constructive a narrative from
historically cherry-picked statements is not the same thing as having weighed
the available evidence at the time.

[1][https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/three-
st...](https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/news-perspective/2020/02/three-states-
report-new-community-spread-covid-19)

[2][https://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-tells-employees-
to-...](https://www.businessinsider.com/linkedin-tells-employees-to-work-from-
home-over-coronavirus-concerns-2020-3)

------
MiguelVieira
From the CDC: "Mortality among patients admitted to the ICU ranges from 39% to
72% depending on the study. The median length of hospitalization among
survivors was 10 to 13 days."

------
nojvek
I hope Boris gets out of this as a new leaf. It’s also a real wake up call to
politicians that what they say in public and their policies have serious
repercussions.

Every decision they make in the current pandemic climate could take or
potentially save lives. Some of them being their loved ones.

------
aazaa
Johnson, like many world leaders, vastly underestimated what he was facing:

> "I was at a hospital the other night where I think there were a few
> coronavirus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you will be pleased
> to know, and I continue to shake hands," he said. "People obviously can make
> up their own minds but I think the scientific evidence is… our judgement is
> that washing your hands is the crucial thing."

[https://www.newsweek.com/boris-johnson-says-shaken-hands-
cor...](https://www.newsweek.com/boris-johnson-says-shaken-hands-coronavirus-
patients-1490214)

This may be the first crisis where shooting your mouth off about things you
know little about backfires - quickly and lethally.

I suspect there will be many instances of this sort of thing in the months to
come. False predictions about "light at the end of the tunnel." Panicked re-
instatements of lockdowns after premature lifting. Miracle cures that turn
deadly because drugs are much more complicated than they seem.

All the while cheerleaders with hidden agendas will continue to promote
dangerous, ill-informed opinions.

~~~
neilwilson
That was weeks ago. The facts changed and he changed his mind. Yet nothing he
has said since then erases the original sin apparently.

Now he’s in ICU and may not survive.

Let those without sin cast the first stone.

~~~
Axsuul
I think "may not survive" is setting the wrong tone here since the odds of him
surviving are good.

~~~
parsimo2010
Consider that people in ICU have a much higher mortality rate than the general
population, that the government is going to bias their reports towards calm
and stability, and that most people would even call a 20% probability of dying
pretty bad.

Saying that “he may not survive“ is perfectly reasonable. It’s not saying he’s
definitely going to die. I hope the media wouldn’t sensationalize it like
this, but there is definitely a chance that he will die.

~~~
redis_mlc
There's 66% - 90% mortality after ventilator use by corona patients.

~~~
baha_man
He's not on a ventilator yet as far as we know

------
mandeepj
Why no Chinese politician has contracted Corona? Did they understand the risk
from day 1?

Heck, none of their other cities were impacted by it but the disease has made
its way to London, NYC, and all the major other cities.

~~~
haunter
How many times have you seen Johnson, Trump, Merkel, Macron etc. in facemask?

Whenever they shown Xi Jinping in Wuhan or any member of the politburo
visiting hospitals and such they were all wearing masks, sometimes even rubber
gloves too.

~~~
nojvek
It’s not the first battle of Chinese with viruses. SARS, bird flu, swine flu.
They’ve learnt their lessons.

I do hope they get their animal market hygiene together. It’s a bit crazy how
many viruses have originated from China.

