Boris Johnson is in intensive care
As if things weren’t disturbing enough, now we get this news:
Boris Johnson has been moved to intensive care after his coronavirus symptoms worsened, Downing Street have confirmed.
The Prime Minister was admitted to St Thomas’ hospital in Westminster on Sunday after his coronavirus symptoms persisted for 10 days.
After tests and observation, his doctors advised that he be admitted to intensive care around 7pm.
A statement from Number 10 said: “Over the course of this afternoon, the condition of the Prime Minister has worsened and, on the advice of his medical team, he has been moved to the Intensive Care Unit at the hospital.
According to the article, once a person with COVID goes to intensive care, that person’s survival chances are 50/50.
Johnson’s case is upsetting on so many levels, and not just the political ones. One would imagine he has had the best of care (whatever that standard is in the UK). He was in the hospital when his condition worsened. He’s only 55 and has no known previous health problems except overweight. According to the article, he’s 5’9″ and at one point years ago weighed about 234 pounds, but has lost considerable weight in recent years although he remains “slightly overweight.” But slight overweight shouldn’t be a bid risk factor, and he’s also “an avid runner and cycler.”
I fervently hope he recovers.
Per the descriptive statistics in a report Steve Sailer links to, people who do not require the most invasive respiratory support usually survive (> 80%), but they’ve been losing about 2/3 of the patients in ICU who had to be intubated.
Hopefully, given his importance, this is more precautionary. I did read somewhere that the recovery rate for people who have to go on ventilators is somewhere in the 10 to 20 percent range, so if someone gets to that level, not a very good outlook.
That is, upsetting. I admire the raw talents of very few men, and even fewer in politics. But since seeing Johnson in action in debate with Mary Beard, I’ve stood in near awe of the guy`s abilities.
His positive outlook, his can do attitude, and his quick intelligence, are qualities Britain sorely needs.
Patrick:
I read several articles about prognosis if a person is on a ventilator, and it said the figures have a huge spread, from something like 40% deaths to 80% deaths.
This seems a good time to prepare compatible serum therapeutic antibodies for the PM, just in case they’re needed in extremis.
Boris should be emergency evacuated to a first world hospital. Mayo comes to mind.
I am assuming the doctors tending Johnson are prepared to use survivor plasma if needed. I would think now would be the time.
UK: Ministers are accused of treating Doomsday scientist like demigod: Number 10 has failed to properly challenge the word of coronavirus professor Neil Ferguson whose study sent Britain into lockdown, critics say
Ministers were last night accused of treating the scientist behind the devastating study that sent Britain into lockdown like a ‘demigod’ and failing to properly challenge his work.
Professor Neil Ferguson and his team of academics at Imperial College London last month produced a shocking forecast of 250,000 UK coronavirus deaths without a draconian lockdown, persuading Boris Johnson to abandon his more limited response to the virus.
But now Professor John Ashton, a former regional director of public health for North West England, has accused No 10 of relying on a ‘little clique’ of researchers and failing to consult a wider pool of academics. ‘These guys are being regarded as demigods,’ he said.
‘Here we are talking about science but this research is being given a kind of religious status, like tablets of stone from the mountain.’
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8188041/Ministers-accused-treating-Doomsday-scientist-like-demigod.html
AND
Britain is sliding into dystopia
Derbyshire Police have tweeted a menacing video warning the public to stay away from the Peak District during the coronavirus lockdown.
The video shows police drone footage of unsuspecting members of the public hiking, walking their dogs and watching the sunset. All totally harmless behaviour, which is now deemed ‘non-essential’ – and by implication illegal – by the authorities.
The footage gives us a glimpse into the dystopia unfolding before our eyes. In the name of fighting coronavirus, in a matter of days Britain has become something of a police state. Millions of people are effectively under house arrest.
Parliament, meanwhile, before shutting up shop entirely, handed the authorities the most draconian powers ever known during peacetime. Police have been given blanket powers to enforce largely arbitrary rules.
It is abundantly clear that the people being shamed by Derbyshire Police have done nothing wrong. They are walking alone or in small groups. And with so much distance between them and everyone else – the Peak District could hardly be more sparsely populated – they pose no danger of spreading the virus to anyone.
If social distancing must be enforced, it should be enforced with proportion, common sense and empathy. It is not at all clear that the police can be trusted to do this.
https://www.spiked-online.com/2020/03/26/britain-is-sliding-into-dystopia/
There’s no indication as yet he’s on a ventilator. Just on oxygen.
Has he been treated with hydroxycholoroquine and zinc?
And azithromycin, don’t forget that! We do NOT want to lose this man.
Who takes over if he dies?
Boris is hardly your ordinary patient.
The news just says he’s worsened. Nothing more.
The High and the Mighty sometimes do not get the best care, because their status impedes ‘normal’ care. These patients are not ‘normal’ humans. Medicos tiptoe around the patient, and indecision and inaction abound.
My thought is that PM Johnson would get moved into the ICU more readily than any average patient. I’m glad to hear from Art Deco that he isn’t on a ventilator. It’s possible that his condition isn’t that bad yet.
Who takes over if he dies?
The Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab is his designated deputy. The Queen might formally designate one of the cabinet to hold office as Prime Minister until the Conservative parliamentary caucus or some other body chose a new leader. Raab was on board with Brexit.
Today at the WH Coronavirus Taskforce briefing President Trump talked in somewhat veiled terms, but he appeared to be saying that he had talked to two U.S. pharmaceutical/research organizations, and had them contact Boris’ doctors to offer unspecified help in treating Johnson.
Dear Father, please protect and heal Boris.
And so say we all.
Artfldgr – the British are always more submissive to authority until suddenly they aren’t.
In some small defense of the police, the article I read last week mentioned that they were mostly concerned with people driving there from other parts of the country, rather than the locals (are there locals?), and thus possibly making stops along the way.
As we’ve seen in China (and Italy, Uruguay, Texas, etc etc etc) it only takes one Typhoid Mervin to plow along the trail without appropriate Social Distancing to upset the apple cart.
And what Ed said, adding a prayer for President Trump, VP Pence, and the task force leaders.
I have a lot of people on my FB feed saying things like, “how’s that herd immunity going for you now, Boris?”
It occurs to me that people who both (a) want people they don’t like to get the disease and die, and (b) insist we all stay bunkered forever because they or people they know are at risk…
Have no moral leg to stand on.
Slightly overweight is a big deal. It is a clear indication of metabolic syndrome – pre-diabetes, hyperinsulinemia – which can remain undiagnosed.
Visual cues for someone with metabolic syndrome – chubby cheeks, even a slight belly : waist(at belly button)/height ratio > 0.5.
I love Boris and am praying for his full recovery. Unfortunately, he has a tough fight ahead of him – he has chubby cheeks and a belly, so by the looks of it, odds are not encouraging 🙁
—
The flattening of the curve doesn’t mean one will not get the virus, it means one will just get it later (eventually). Absent a vaccine, the best chance of recovering from this virus is to be healthy. Eat real (unprocessed) food, exercise, sleep, meditate (reduce stress), and get some sun. That is the only thing each of us can do to survive this virus!
Well, if any of you get this thing, be prepared for your apartment building neighbors to want you to be walled up forever as in The Cask of Amontillado. I had it for a while, got better, and have self-quarantined for two weeks; actually, twice as long as the CDC recommends. Then today I was treated to hysterics from a leftwing neighbor on my landing who accused me of endangering her life and taking her away from her 10-year-old daughter by planning to emerge from my apartment on Thursday — having scrupulously followed the hospital and the CDC directives on quarantine all this time.
I told her she would NEVER be easy with my emergence, that she would want me to postpone it for a week, and another week …. I have literally been in house arrest over this, and I’m going mad being cooped up in a tiny apartment, getting what I need only with great difficulty. Just now I realized I forgot to order MEAT for the next three days: and Shipt isn’t shipping and Instacart is on strike.
I. Am. Done. I am not responsible for the “feelings” of others. If they “feel” that I will be a walking time bomb, without any rational reason to believe this, that is Their Problem. I even tried to reassure the hysterical woman that I would wear a mask in the hallway, and gloves: she swatted that aside.
Nothing would do but that I be buried alive for the foreseeable future to allay her crazy anxiety. The leftwing Canadian guy who lives one floor down chimed in on the abuse.
This has left me severely shaken. I’ve read about this sort of shunning and hysteria in history books, but never thought to be the target of such a nightmare myself. WOW.
Am I naive! I should never have said a word to either one of them, but I’m hopelessly artless in such matters.
Beverly:
So glad you’re better!
As for the neighbors, ever read Shirley Jackson’s “The Lottery”?
Hopefully, over time their reactions will ease, though.
Beverly :
You are fine and congratulations on winning the fight against this nasty virus. That is what matters.
If I may, how are you doing general health wise. Weight, height, age, any underlying conditions…just curious.
Take care and god bless
Abhay
Over 60, and plump, but in generally good health, aside from chronic rhinitis.
The shock was the hysteria pouring out of the phone into my ear. Way past any rational discourse.
The kung flu gave me a tough time because of the rhinitis. I Always have problems with respiratory viruses because of postnasal drip. But yes, I’ve won this fight, it just took a while. It’s been over a week since I had even a low grade fever.
FWIW, there was No One at the NYC hospital ER I went to…literally two folks ahead of me. The nurse told me they’d seen almost no covid patients. This was in downtown Manhattan.
That last post is very interesting, Beverly. NY state is the US “leader” in CV by a wide margin for both case rate and fatality rate per population. In fact it is near Italy in fatality rate and *3x* Italy in case rate. And the concentration in NYC is undoubtedly worse, though I think that is also true for the most impacted areas of Italy.
Obese is obese, and Johnson, unfortunately, is obese and aging. He started off at 5’9″ and 234 pounds, which is morbidly obese, and even if he lost 30 pounds (a good feat), he would still be quantitatively obese. Being over 50 and obese carries a TON of risk factors, and seems to make for easy pickings for this virus which we know has already taken out (thanks to the media’s breathless obituaries of them) several obese men around the country a decade or more younger. To compound the problem, with shelter in place and the shuttering of health clubs, there’s nothing left for the already obese to do now but sit, eat, and gain more weight indoors. Don’t think that the powers that be don’t realize that the demographic of obese likely 2020 voters skews heavily in Trump’s favor; so it behooves them to keep the country shut down, fatten up Trump voters, and hope the residual virus lays waste to them when they are finally let out of their cages. Then you have a two-fer–culling of the Trump electorate and the specter of a “second wave” of virus hitting in the late summer/early fall which could get the necessary voting-by-mail enacted.
The chances of Trump winning this election move closer to nil every week.
A bit of good news coming out of Austria; The young Chancellor Kurz has taken the lead once again and is now leading the country back to “normalcy” with a plan and specific dates for the enactment of the plan.
https://www.zeit.de/politik/ausland/2020-04/oesterreich-coronavirus-massnahmen-aufhebung-sebastian-kurz
The link is in German. However, your browser may be able to translate into English.
Kurz is very much like the young Octavian, He is intelligent, bold, a good communicator and offers hope in a strange time where the pessimists take front and center stage.
For all of you out there, do not despair. Better days will soon be back again…and Beverly, I would be pleased to have a neighbor like you!
Agree. Yay, Beverly!
Don’t think that the powers that be don’t realize that the demographic of obese likely 2020 voters skews heavily in Trump’s favor
Wait, what? How do you know this?
It reminds me of years ago when I’d read communists- whoops, I mean “progressives”- casually assume that anyone who actually opposed their vision of a glorious prog future were morbidly obese white people riding scooters through Walmart due to the diabetes. Then came the 2010 elections.
I have the honor to work with a swarm of Trump supporters- or “critical workers,” as the government is calling us now- and there isn’t a single obese person among us.
So, thus, I’d appreciate a source for your assertion. I admit it might be true, but I suspect not.
Then you have a two-fer–culling of the Trump electorate and the specter of a “second wave” of virus hitting in the late summer/early fall which could get the necessary voting-by-mail enacted.
This sounds like another progressive fantasy. The problem is that so far this pandemic is hitting blue areas much harder than red. Densely populated urban New York, New Orleans, and Wayne Count, Michigan are suffering much more than rural Trumpistan.
Hence, Trump supporters might well conclude that the only reason there was such hysteria was the left wanted to destroy the US economy so they could finally put down the Hated Orange Man, thus enabling them to finally implement that glorious prog utopia they always imagine is just one more election away. They have no reason to not show up at the polls in person, sorry.
Meanwhile, folks who vote relentlessly democrat in densely populated urban centers are living in a bad horror movie that may only end with their deaths, listening to their local elected officials scream curses at the one guy who seemed to recognize their was a big problem early on. That is, Donald Trump.
The chances of Trump winning this election move closer to nil every week.
Or not. But your mileage may vary.
Beverly,
That’s very good news, your neighbors notwithstanding.
I’m sure you already knew, but its always good, though sometimes painful, to have a clarifying situation which tells you exactly who your friends are.
createss,
Your comment is absurd. It’s also blatant trolling.
. He started off at 5’9? and 234 pounds, which is morbidly obese,
It isn’t.
This has left me severely shaken. I’ve read about this sort of shunning and hysteria in history books, but never thought to be the target of such a nightmare myself. WOW.
Have your other neighbors complained, or is it just this woman? While we’re at it, is she a social worker or school administrator?
I just chose this thread as the place for my update, sorry if way out of place. I tend to use the the top most popular thread.
Anyway: not much change from yesterday. Active cases should still flatten by Friday or Saturday. Then we will be entering a new regime where we wonder at which point the Gaussian function takes over and hopefully see a decrease. Serious cases still fit with a 3rd order polynomial.
In keeping with the thread, I also was upset to hear Johnson moved to ICU. I hope for his recovery. I think he’s one of those rare people; someone who Britain and maybe the world needs to be here.
The sheer randomness of this virus is unsettling. It is almost like Thanos said 2% instead of 50%.
Re Abhay’s waist to height ratio remark. If I ever came across that before, I didn’t recall it.
And it puts a different slant on things for those of us who have been used to thinking in other terms such as height to weight. And as you know, that can be misleading as your doctor will tell you, if she notes that you are more muscular than average and the chart doesn’t account for that.
But for those of us who also noticed that our coat to slacks drop is down to 7 inches … and then when you start dividing 73 by 37, it gets kind of alarming as well motivating.
Glad I saved all those brand new never worn 25 year old Levis with 34 waists. I was thinking of tossing them in the Goodwill box. Now, it’s more important than ever that I wear them.
Thanks for the perspective.
I often wonder if commenters like Createss imagine that tone is persuasive. I assume it has more to do with discharging rancor than with persuasion.
The very best of wishes to Johnson, including the hope that doctors will quietly try all the maligned “unproven” techniques. If they work, be ready for the criticism that he got treatments ordinary Brits are denied by a hidebound NHS.
Good news about your recovery, Beverly.
I guess progressive liberally and concern with stigma and social shaming is limited to exercises on social media or other contexts where their pet ox stands no chance of being gored.
I don’t think that “createss’s” remarks were meant with malice. I read the remark about Trump voter demographics as an unthinking slip into stereotypes for the purpose of making a dubious point.
I don’t know how Trump voters compare with progressive voters with regard to say, BMI, but having seen the activists on stage at various progressive rallies, I’d say that the progressive movement is carrying around a lot of excess weight itself.
The red state v blue state differentials in health and obesity are I suspect affected to some degree at least by the large African American populations in some of them. That would not apply to West Virginia, of course. I’m still not quite over the experience of stopping in a Shoneys there on a Sunday afternoon, some 20 years ago.
My latest numbers on New York State: Deaths doubling every 5.2 days, down from ~3 just a couple days ago.
Total number of NYS deaths come from The COVID Tracking Project.
Then I apply these formulae:
Daily Deaths = Total Deaths Today – Total Deaths Yesterday
Growth Rate = Total Deaths Today / Total Deaths Yesterday
Doubles Every = LOG(2) / LOG(Growth Rate)
Daily Deaths have flattened the past three days, and as a result Doubles Every is accelerating.
I would love to see the “Doubles Every” metric go to infinity but sadly it never will.
People do die, and the medical community will always find ways to attribute it to COVID-19, rightly or wrongly.
There is a lot of inertia in the system to keep the hysteria alive particularly in this election year. I suspect that senior government officials at the local, state, and federal level are pleased with their newly discovered authoritarian powers. Why give it up? Plus there are a lot of “Karens” out there among the citizenry who get a thrill budding into people’s business. We’re not out of the woods yet. The Leviathan must be beaten back.
Oops, sorry, I meant to write “butting into” not “budding into”
I don’t think that “createss’s” remarks were meant with malice.
I disagree, intensely and viscerally. I used to argue with these folks for fun, back in the day.
They convinced me thoroughly and well that they hated me and wanted me dead. All’s fair in love and war as the saying goes- and the shinola createss shoveled upon us fits well into that spectrum.
I suspect this particular comment was something paid for by some leftist activist group- not paid well, but by the word, so making a decent argument wasn’t even the point. But the usual hatred was there, as evinced by the casual slur of the sort leftists deploy all the time about the loathsomeness of non-leftists.
The point was to spread FUD- fear uncertainty and doubt- thus making non-leftists feel bad about themselves. Key takeaway- Trump can’t win, so don’t even try. Emotions, not logic.
That said, these sort of comments deserve harsh pushback, in my opinion, because they certainly can dissuade the uncommitted. If you’ve been non-leftist as long as I have been, you’re used to being called the scum of the earth at every opportunity. It’s a puerile insult from lying, murderous vermin, with no impact.
However, if you merely have doubts about the glorious bill of goods you’ve been promised, the frothing hostility aimed at dissenters from leftists may convince you to stay on the leftist plantation and hope for the best.
If you live in New York, or New Orleans, or a few other places, you may presently be having doubts about the wisdom of pretending this pandemic was just a racist fantasy by The Donald, as leftists told their constituents.
Or you might just be dead already due to their incompetence.
Createss, come back and tell me how wrong I am. I’d love to be proven such, so I could feel better about my political opponents. Please also provide a link or two about the science that shows a correlation between support for Trump and a high BMI.
Science, we both love it, amiright?
The High and the Mighty sometimes do not get the best care, because their status impedes ‘normal’ care. These patients are not ‘normal’ humans. Medicos tiptoe around the patient, and indecision and inaction abound.
Boy, is that true. Doctors are often intimidated by powerful/famous patients and the results are not good. At one time we were faced with the possibility that Nixon would be hospitalized in our hospital when he was living in San Clemente. The Secret Service came in and took over half our ICU. We were relieved when he was sent to Long Beach where he had an obsolete operation by a politically connected surgeon whose son was a politician.
I just hope he gets the hydroxychloroquine so disdained by the political left because Trump suggested it. Anthony Eden was sidelined during the Suez Crisis because a British surgeon had injured his common bile duct doing a simple gallbladder surgery. He came to the US to try to have it repaired but it ended his career. And, of course, we all know about Michael Jackson.
Be of good cheer, Beverly, and keep Badgering through this!
Xennedy has it right that “createss” is trolling us. However, he/she is not working for the Democrats. This is straight out of one of the disinformation mills operated by Putin (RT), Telesur, the Chinese, and the Iranians.
Their goals are to sow confusion and disunity. And it is working! Look at the state of American politics today. They are like Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings.
I can think of few more important world problems that need to be addressed than finding a way to identify and flag such messages as trolls.
OK, I’m not the most prolific commenter here.
Just noticing there are a couple of new commenters on this thread. Coincidence, I’m sure…
DNW – the waist/height ratio is a quick and easy test. There was a BBC video that was making the rounds a couple of years ago, where they showed how you would take a string to measure your height, then fold it in half and wrap it around your belly at the belly button and if the folded string did not go around, it meant you had metabolic issues.
Visceral fat – as opposed to subcutaneous fat – is responsible for metabolic syndrome and tends to accumulate around the organs (liver, pancreas ..) near your belly and hence this test works. As with most quick and easy tests, there are exceptions.
Xennady,
With regards to trolls, you nailed it. They’re very far from harmless.
Couple of comments wrt obesity. Fifty plus years ago, I graduated from infantry OCS. I was 6’2″, 205. I could run all day, hump heavy loads in the hot sun, do chin ups and push ups and leg lifts until the guy counting got bored. Following a three week debauch over Christmas, I returned to Benning for jump school. The fearsome and wonderful and legendary physical requirements were a joke. According to today’s tables, I was overweight.
My father was a hot shot, fast, end at UConn, ’43. He, too, at slightly shorter and twenty pounds lighter would be overweight, today.
I have been sinfully proud of my abilities wrt the belly muscles and torso muscles. When my kids were twelve, and below, they had a game where they would try to inconvenience me with a surprise shot to the belly. Never bothered me.
Fast forward with reluctance to today. The usual way I got up, or moved in other ways are forbidden by physicians and physical therapists. The reason is that, with age, the belly muscles separate down the middle. The kind of stresses they used to stand will no longer be supported. You can get a mesh insert holding them together, or you can wear a truss, or you can be careful.
So, without much additional fat, my tummy sticks out. There is more fat than I need or want, but that’s not the point.
The other point is that official figures on obesity do not necessarily comport with reality. Prepping the battle space for another graduate of an HOA to some government health panel, I suspect.
Abhay Jajoo:
The more dangerous fat apparently is unseen and can’t be measured that way.
Beverly on April 7, 2020 at 1:48 am said:
…
FWIW, there was No One at the NYC hospital ER I went to…literally two folks ahead of me. The nurse told me they’d seen almost no covid patients. This was in downtown Manhattan.
* * *
CTH commenters did a round-up of local situations, and there are very many empty or underused hospitals, even in the “hot spots” — so where are all the fatalities coming from?
https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2020/04/04/ground-reports-healthcare-focus-whats-going-on-in-your-city-town-neighborhood/comment-page-8/#comment-8039134
There were a few medical people coming in with opposite experiences — running hard just to stay in place — but the majority were not. Maybe those who are in the bad places are working to hard to read blogs, but one would expect bystanders or family members to report.
Look up ‘metabolic syndrome’.
Here’s from Mayo Clinic:
The National Institutes of Health guidelines define metabolic syndrome as having three or more of the following traits, including traits you’re taking medication to control:
Large waist — A waistline that measures at least 35 inches (89 centimeters) for women and 40 inches (102 centimeters) for men
High triglyceride level — 150 milligrams per deciliter (mg/dL), or 1.7 millimoles per liter (mmol/L), or higher of this type of fat found in blood
Reduced “good” or HDL cholesterol — Less than 40 mg/dL (1.04 mmol/L) in men or less than 50 mg/dL (1.3 mmol/L) in women of high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol
Increased blood pressure — 130/85 millimeters of mercury (mm Hg) or higher
Elevated fasting blood sugar — 100 mg/dL (5.6 mmol/L) or higher
******
The abdominal fat is intra-abdominal, a fat-filled mesentery. Not immediately beneath your abdominal skin, but deep, inside your belly.
Afflicts both sexes.
The hypertension, type II diabetes, and elevated “bad” lipoproteins are associated in the long term, if uncorrected/untreated, with an increase in coronary and peripheral arterial disease and stroke(s).
“createss” is what I’d call a concern troll.
Also, that figure of 234 pounds for Johnson is, as I wrote in my post, not a recent figure at all. It was quite a few years ago. He lost a considerable amount of weight in recent years. So the 234 figure is irrelevant.
@neo
Yes, belly is a strong visual indicator ..not definitive.
You can “see” Visceral fat on a Dexa Scan (about $75-100 in US) test. I get them done quarterly.
More on what happens with viruses when you are pre-diabetic (insulin resistant, have metabolic syndrome) ..
http://scopeblog.stanford.edu/2019/05/29/what-happens-when-a-person-with-prediabetes-get-a-viral-infection-new-study-provides-in-depth-look/?fbclid=IwAR305aYLPGmasQOFs7LZ5RhECTgKGC_j1xkSwhT4mIg-Sq4U9PR420jNcvQ