The aim is not to overwhelm ITUs not stop the infection in its tracks in this country. The herd immunity picture always acknowledged hundred’s of thousands would die in the UK. The Chinese and South Korean’s are aiming to stop it completely resurfacing and seem to be doing a pretty good job so far. Our government had a shot at it and found it economically unpalatable then had to shut it down anyway to prevent a runaway ITU disaster. I know where i’d currently prefer to be a citizen of.

Psychiatrist here. We are always available to chat. These times will pass. We are seeing a lot of people rightly feeling very anxious right now but you need to know most people will still be ok. Call 111 if you need to speak to a professional or Samaritans, Breathing Space or any other support number. Sorry you feel like this.

Try to keep positive and remember the majority of people your age will survive. Lots of people are going to experience this before it’s over. All the best.

Nope can confirm health workers are not getting tested as backlog has already completely overwhelmed supply to the point where we are again just being told to isolate if symptomatic

Raab designated survivor. The farce may actually get worse…

Kimbers, where did you read we would need 10+ years of lockdowns from?

Being able to fit back into my Rapha gear after a period where things were a bit tight

Yes their only hospital based numbers. Many more told to stay at home so no evidence how many of those actually had Covid. Evidence from China suggests only about 20% or so with non-admission tested positive.

TiRED is bang on about that Oxford study. It takes massive assumptions and tries to make it fit instead of taking the data we have that is ever present from all the countries affected so far and working from that. I can’t believe these authors have even postulated the theory far or less decided to start testing people. I can only expect it is due to a rivalry with Imperial and their noses being out of joint that they weren’t the ones that changed the political direction?

Real news: If the virus had gone unchecked with the same doubling time there would have been an estimated 3.6 million deaths in around 10 weeks. No matter what nonsense is spread about China they have set an impressive precedent of containment in this issue. Pity it comes mainly because they have significant abrogation of human rights but you win some, you lose some.

Source

This is a post from a critical care consultant on Reddit. He is working in London and is working on the front line against coronavirus. Make of it what you will:

“I’m sad to say that I do have the details, and there has been intense discussion about this over the past weeks. To answer your question: “herd immunity” would have been a beneficial outcome to slowing virus growth to a prolonged period of time. It was not a primary outcome.
That said, the official policy was wholly wrong and when all the dust has settled, when all the costs and lives have been counted, people have to make their governments accountable.
I’ll tell you what happened in the UK.

Over the past decade, eminent figures in public health developed complex models that would help inform the UK response to a pandemic. The response plan would allow slow spread through a population and a number of deaths that would be deemed acceptable in relation to low economic impact. Timing of population measures such as social distancing would be taken, not early, but at a times deemed to have maximal psychological impact. Measures would be taken that could protect the most vulnerable, and most of the people who got the virus would hopefully survive. Herd immunity would beneficially emerge at the end of this, and restrictions could relax. This was a ground-breaking approach compared to suppressing epidemics. It was an approach that could revolutionise the way we handled epidemics. Complex modelling is a new science, and this was cutting edge.

But a model is only ever as good as the assumptions you build it upon. The UK plan was based on models with an assumption that any new pandemic would be like an old one, like flu. And it also carried a huge flaw – there was no accounting for the highly significant variables of ventilators and critical care beds that are key to maintaining higher survival numbers (https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/health/2020/03/government-documents-show-no-planning-ventilators-event-pandemic).

So, come 2020 and COVID-19 causes disaster in China, Iran and Italy. Epidemiologists and doctors from around the world observe, and learn valuable lessons:

the virus is insidious with a long incubation, any population actions you take will only have an effect weeks later

the virus spreads remarkably quickly and effectively

the virus causes an unusually large proportion of patients to require invasive ventilatory support

early large scale testing, and social distancing measures, are effective at stopping exponential growth

stopping exponential growth is VITAL to preventing your critical care systems from being overwhelmed.

Everyone in the world could see these things. But despite this, very few governments chose to act.

The UK did the opposite of acting. In an act of what I see as sheer arrogance, they chose to do nothing, per the early stages of their disaster plan. There was some initial contact tracing, but this stopped when it was clear that there was significant community spread and exponential growth. And after this? They did not ramp up testing capabilities. They did not encourage social distancing. They did not boost PPE supply, or plan for surge capacity. They ignored advice from the WHO, public health experts in other country; epidemiologists, scientists and doctors in their own. I can tell you with certainty now that they did not even collect regular statistics for how many COVID patients were being admitted to critical care in the UK. They did nothing.

What were they thinking? Maybe that what had happened in China, and was happening in Italy, couldn’t possibly happen in the UK, right? It was impossible. The persisted with the original plan with no modification.
Well COVID-19 is not flu. That is perfectly clear. And it was clear that the UK numbers were following, exponentially, the same trend as Italy. But still the government and their advisers stuck to their guns and put out reassuring messages. I would ask here – why did they still think we would be different?

Finally, a team at Imperial informing the government’s response put up-to-date COVID-19 data into the historical models that the UK plan was based on (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/media/imperial-college/medicine/sph/ide/gida-fellowships/Imperial-College-COVID19-NPI-modelling-16-03-2020.pdf), and predicted in a best case scenario 250,000 deaths and excess of 8x surge capacity of UK intensive cares. They concluded that our approach was wrong, and that “Epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time”.

Where are we now?
The government has instituted a number of measures that they previously called “unscientific”, but has not mandated them.
We are far, far into the exponential curve both in deaths and critical care numbers, and there is at least two weeks more growth until any of the half-hearted measures taken might kick in.

We do not have sufficient testing capability for even hospital patients, who sometimes wait days for a test result. There are not enough tests for anyone in the community, or any healthcare workers who might have symptoms.

Hospitals are scrambling to produce surge capacity, and several smaller hospitals in London are now overwhelmed with COVID and out of ventilators.

There is clearly not enough PPE in the country and we are rushing to secure supplies.
Don’t believe the UK government propaganda when they say that they are only advancing along the same plan at a faster pace. It is total bollocks. Their plan was wrong, kaput, totally broken. They chose to perform an experiment on an entire population, a trial of ‘new epidemic mitigation strategy in UK’ vs ‘epidemic suppression in rest of the world’. They didn’t listen to other experts from all over the world, and in this arrogance they did not observe the lessons or data that was there, plain to see. They have backtracked completely and are now doing what most world public health experts and what the WHO asked them to do in the first place. They’ve wasted a month, at least.

Will they suffer? Hell no. It will be the vulnerable in the population, the unlucky young, and the medical staff at the front line.

When the final counts return in months or a years time, don’t let them get away with it.”

I don’t know whether to keep posting facts now as they are indeed harbringing of doom. The north of Italy is now registering a 9% mortality rate in detected cases. London is on almost exactly the same mortality curve per time period and is both way more dense in population and with way less clamp down on people’s movements. We are all probably going through different coping measures at the current time and turning off the news isn’t a terrible idea for periods as long as you’re following best advice. My only aim here is to get people to take this more seriously than they could have imagined a few weeks ago so we can try and at least partly mitigate the deaths of our loved ones. Keep your chin up everyone.

FunkyDunc – as a doctor in the frontline I know for a fact PPE is almost non-existent in some hospitals. We are being asked to go in with simple surgical masks in many places simply as there isn’t any higher grade PPE available. People comparing it to Chernobyl where soldiers were ordered to run into the fire despite no radioactive protection. You are not on the sharp end of all this and would be best served to listen properly to those who are. Your statements to not indicate you have a real grip on what frontline staff are going through and preparing to go through. Be careful of defending the indifensible.

What is not getting across to people but is fundamental is that although the mortality rates in older people are much higher, younger people are still needing ICU to survive. What you need to understand is when ICU gets overwhelmed younger much fitter patients will die. The problem with the curve in Italy is it’s still at a relatively early point in terms of those who are fitter as they are more likely to be critically ill but being sustained. I’m not sure how else to tell you this but every single one of us is at risk of dying if our ICUs get overwhelmed which is beginning to happen in London. They have stopped putting >65s into ICU in Lombardy now. That’s not over 80. That’s our mothers and fathers who were otherwise relatively well. I’m not sure what else to say on the matter as we will all be accused of over-egging it until people become personally affected.

For a bit of balance.

BBC News

I hope somebody is taking a more holistic view of what’s happening.

Stumpyjon, this article doesn’t appear to be based on any evidence at all. The journalist is playing some kind of Devil’s advocate which is pretty irresponsible. There is no evidence the deaths anywhere “would have happened anyway” unless you believe since we’re all going to die in the end you can say well nothing matters. The point in this is that the deaths attributable to Covid-19 will generally be both extra and very much more than the NHS can cope with per unit time. It’s beyond bizarre to state the NHS has over-egged it when 500 people are dying from Covid alone per day in Lombardy. London is following the exact curve of Lombardy if not slightly higher and restrictions on movement are much weaker. Can’t believe this article made it through the editorial process in the BBC although one wonders if there’s a politician behind it?

This link is probably the most insightful as to where things might be headed

I’m reading from some of my colleagues in London that ITU’s are already having to move patients to other hospitals. This usually only ever happens in severe critical incidents like 7/7. We are still in the early days of this and things are going to heat up pretty quickly now. Nobody will be arguing about the seriousness of this in a couple of weeks. The UK government has screwed up any potential warning period it had but there’s nothing we can do now. We’re all just going to need to ride this wave now.

My experience of Canyon is they are a bunch of cowboys. Never buying a bike from them ever again.

Sorry to hear that TJ. My partner is pregnant so is already on 3 months shutdown. Just hoping the information that it’s no more serious in pregnancy is correct.

Psychiatry trainee here working in big hospital. Just started 7 days self-isolating after persistent cough started yesterday. Feel fine generally. So frustrating we can’t find out if it actually is “The ‘rona” or not. Could be at work today otherwise. Think we are going to be very busy over the next few months.

Having demoed the Heckler at the weekend I can say it is really unnoticeable the difference to my mega 290. Had it all over the Inners downhill/off piste trails and it was just so much fun. Main issue is gathering so much momentum so easily you had to brake earlier than you normally would. If I had the cash I’d buy one immediately. Will sadly have to wait until we re-mortgage.

Didn’t realise it was a cost thing. Makes more sense. Guess even if it is it’s in keeping with the desire to raise the Tweed Valley’s profile overall. Wonder if funding from tourism etc is looked into?

Hoping this is going to be an annual occurrence. Bit bizarre the UK not hosting a stage over the last few years.

I’m going to head up. I’m forecasting things will be sloppy and windy as per…

Mine doesn’t seem overly stressed with 40 running 48/32. Might work. I say might.

Are the headset bearings properly loaded?

My H2 will adjust within a few seconds regardless of what cadence or gear I put in. Can occasionally make it waver about 30-40 watts.

Just to add I demoed the Rocketmax at the weekend whilst other’s demoed the Flaremax (2019 edition) and it was tough to choose between them on off-piste trails such as five year plan at Glentress. The Rocketmax was marginally more sure-footed but only just. The way you can turn these bikes on their side and they hold you up is incredible. Once you try one of these bikes you will most certainly want one.

Have you actually measured the travel you’re getting? Many shocks are stop short of the bottom of the shaft intentionally although you are still getting the full number of mms travel.

Get a stage. Superb helmet. Kicking myself I didn’t wait until the sales to buy one.

I just want to add there wasn’t actually a fist fight at GT7 but someone did clothesline me completely uneccessarily from behind resulting in some very stern words! Otherwise I had a very friendly race!

Definitely not the last time but in the Hero Dolomites this summer some guy overtook me on a wee incline so to be clever I tried to jump back past him as we turned down into a gravel track. Jumped ok but wiped out as I landed. Guy asking in broken English if I was ok and me apologising for being such a knob. Only lycra on so quite a bit of blood. Unfortunately still had 7 hours riding to go.

I would instead of the busier roads mentioned above head up the Beeftub to St Mary’s loch then down to the Gordon Arms, left over to Innerleithen then cycle route 1 to Temple then Carrington then turn right in Rosewell and head to Lasswade then just follow the road up across the Bypass and down past Gilmerton into the centre. Probably the most quiet of all the routes. I wouldn’t suggest the A701 or 702 as there is often some fairly fast and dodgy driving on both

From a Nukeproof Mega? I have them on the same wheels on a mega and not experiencing these problems. In fact if anything they were almost too tight to get back over the rims once I realised they came with tubes in them! No problems since going tubeless

Loved the grip just not pumping tyre up every couple of hours for over a week

that’s not been my experience tbh. Poor rim-tyre combination maybe? Think the magi-x is fantastic on the front but gum-x not so much in recent wet days on the rear. TBF the weather has been really crap though.

No I fit a large in the MTR shell which is normal for me. Kept me warm enough at FW on Saturday

Started using Learn French by Paul Noble and really liking the style of learning!

If you decide to go for one I can wholly recommend the TLD stage. Don’t need to take it off at all and definitely gives more confidence riding the steeps.

Your heart and lung capacity plus your muscular endurance naturally decline as you age. I think given you say you’re a pensioner that getting tested for various cardiovascular and respiratory things is essential. The other thing people don’t often realise is you need more time in rest to recuperate as you age so it’s important if you’re going out hard to really take it easy for even a couple of days afterwards. There are so many aspects to tiring earlier but it’s important to know you are managing your body well first of all before looking for pathological causes.

Can I ask what exactly you did with the suspension?