Greavswasthegreatest
Vital Football Legend
Well what a surprise today after Cummings and his crap' I needed to drive to Barnard Castle to test my eyesight', Gove ccomes out today and makes a huge point that anyone with eye trouble and Covid19 should seek medical advice...FFS what a shite spin to come out with to help exonerate the dark lord!
Greavswasthegreatest
Vital Football Legend
Gove has today in interview on SKY taken a huge shovel and dug a deeper deeper hole for Cummings and the Govt ....FFS what a twat Gove is...many are joining ranks in defending the guy, who should do the right thing and resign......he should have said I am sorry it was wrong and got a slap on the wrist and a fine and the thing would have been dead in ground and everyone would have moved on. SKY's Kay Burley took him to the cleaners....and would not let her grip slip .......do they think the population believe anything this cabinet says now...CUMMING GATE.
Spursex
Alert Team
Johnson was ill and in about to be taken into hospital.
Spursex
Alert Team
I cannot agree with anyone defending the indefensible, and Cummings should not have broken the rules, irrespective of the motivation.
Johnson was and is wrong to back him.
Gary Onedaysoon
*Prediction Champion 20/21 & 21/22*
Johnson was admitted to hospital on the 5 April. Cummings travelled to Durham at the end of March. Johnson, we were told, was still discussing government affairs with the Cabinet and his advisors whilst in self-isolation up until he was admitted to hospital. He would have been in contact every day with Cummings. How could he have not known he had travelled to Durham? And the rest of the Cabinet: where did they think he was?
Spursex
Alert Team
Who said he was in contact with Cummings everyday? - I must have missed that.
I'm told he is very much always in the background and has never interacted with the cabinet or the civil servants on a daily basis, so as they/most would have had their hands full doing other things, can't see why they'd even think about him.
Nick Real Deal
Vital Football Legend
If Cummings had told anyone he was going to Durham they may have challenged his decision and told him he would be causing a situation. So he kept quite about it. He did phone Boris while both were sick in bed but both say they dont remember much about what was said ( bullshit ).
Pompey Yid
Vital Champions League
I wrote yesterday of the wife's friend an NHS matron saying there would be another spike, lo and behold there has been at our local hospital, plus its the down souff annual diddi travellers holiday season, 2 and 2, have a think, oh and I can guarantee it will not be in the local news.
There is as much hatred towards Boris and Cummings on here, you would think they are both gooners or chavs, lol!
There is as much hatred towards Boris and Cummings on here, you would think they are both gooners or chavs, lol!
Spursex
Alert Team
Health
Coronavirus doctor's diary: The drug combination that may help us beat Covid-19
Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) describes some of the trials under way to find a cure for Covid-19, and suggests that a combination of three different types of drug may hold the key.
At BRI we are now participating in eight different clinical trials to try and find a cure for Covid-19.
We are part of a huge international effort. It feels like all the light of global science has been concentrated into a laser beam directed at this almost invisible virus.
The biggest of the trials we are involved in is the Recovery trial. Already more than 10,000 patients have been recruited nationwide and are taking either a placebo or one of a number of other drugs. (I wrote about this important trial last month.)
Last week at BRI we recruited the first patient in the UK for a small trial to test whether a new drug made by AstraZeneca is safe and effective. This is one of a number of small trials - jointly referred to as the Accord trial - designed to assess further drugs that may be added to the Recovery trial.
The hope is that this AstraZeneca drug, which does not yet have a name, will help to damp down a dangerous overreaction of the immune system that occurs in a small proportion of patients, sending the body into shock and closing down vital organs, such as the lungs, heart, blood vessels and kidney.
This overreaction has been referred to as a "cytokine storm" - cytokines being molecules that flag up the presence of an infection that the body must fight. The drug in the new trial blocks a cytokine called IL-33 (or interleukin-33).
Mark Winterbourne (pictured here with Mo Farah) will either be given the IL-blocker or a placebo
Mark Winterbourne, who volunteered to take the IL-blocker, arrived in hospital with symptoms that were at first thought to be caused by gallstones. It was only after he tested positive for Covid-19 that we realised this was the probable source of the problem. (Covid-19 is an illness with a wide variety of symptoms - but this is an unusual case!) Mark says volunteering comes naturally to him; while working as a volunteer photographer for the Great North Run, he met and became friends with Sir Mo Farah.
I suspect that a vaccine for Covid-19 is still a year away, so these trials searching for treatments are critical.
The doctors here are looking ahead to a time - not too far off, they hope - when anyone with early symptoms will be able to drive to a testing centre, get swabbed, get a quick result and a prescription for a combination of effective drugs, before the worst of their symptoms take hold.
This combination may include an antiviral drug, an immune suppressing drug, and an anti-inflammatory drug.
Among antivirals being tested, one may help prevent the coronavirus attaching to the lining of the lungs, and another may help to stop it reproducing in the body.
Immune-suppressing drugs could help prevent the immune overreaction to the virus - the cytokine storm. If the IL-33 blocker from the Accord trial is effective, it would be a contender.
Anti-inflammatory drugs include steroids - for example Dexamethasone, one of the first drugs included in the Recovery trial.
Front line diary
Prof John Wright, a doctor and epidemiologist, is head of the Bradford Institute for Health Research, and a veteran of cholera, HIV and Ebola epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. He is writing this diary for BBC News and recording from the hospital wards for BBC Radio.
BRI Respiratory consultant Dinesh Saralaya feels optimistic that a combination treatment will be available before the end of the summer.
"I think we'll find at least two or three drugs which will prevent these patients ever needing to come into hospital," he says.
"You will go to the test centre and then be given the drugs once you're diagnosed. Under the current strategies, you get the Covid virus, so you're isolating, then you get worse, you get a temperature, you start getting breathless, then you come in. But people need to be given the drugs very early."
Another of our consultants is potentially contributing to another trial - as a donor of antibodies.
Debbie Horner caught Covid-19 at a very early stage of the outbreak and quickly recovered. Two weeks ago, when a call went out for people like her to donate convalescent blood plasma, she immediately agreed.
Image copyright Debbie Horner
Researchers want to find out whether antibody-rich plasma from people who have had Covid-19 will help other patients fight off the disease. This work is also part of the Recovery trial.
It's now been discovered that the patients most likely to have high levels of antibodies are men over the age of 35 who became so ill they needed hospital treatment. NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is keen to recruit donors who have recovered from Covid-19 and who are either male, or are over 35, or were ill enough to be hospitalised.
Debbie had a mild case so it is possible that her plasma is not as rich in antibodies as the team would like. The results have yet to come in. If her plasma is wanted she will happily donate more.
"It's a bit different to taking blood normally," she says. "They take out a fraction of the blood - the plasma fraction - and then they give you back all your red cells and other bits of blood that aren't required, so essentially, it's just like getting a bit dehydrated."
A few cups of tea are enough to fix that, Debbie says.
Image copyright NHSBT Image caption Blood plasma is orange
Mike Murphy, professor of transfusion medicine at the University of Oxford, says this is a great opportunity to understand more about the value of plasma transfusions more generally. Plasma was collected in the late 2000s to see if it would be a way of treating people with Ebola and flu, he says.
"But by the time there were enough convalescent donors who had recovered from the infection, and were able to donate, the peak of the infection had passed, and so there was no opportunity to test the benefit of convalescent plasma. The Covid-19 pandemic is obviously different."
Coronavirus doctor's diary: The drug combination that may help us beat Covid-19
- 26 May 2020
Dr John Wright of Bradford Royal Infirmary (BRI) describes some of the trials under way to find a cure for Covid-19, and suggests that a combination of three different types of drug may hold the key.
At BRI we are now participating in eight different clinical trials to try and find a cure for Covid-19.
We are part of a huge international effort. It feels like all the light of global science has been concentrated into a laser beam directed at this almost invisible virus.
The biggest of the trials we are involved in is the Recovery trial. Already more than 10,000 patients have been recruited nationwide and are taking either a placebo or one of a number of other drugs. (I wrote about this important trial last month.)
Last week at BRI we recruited the first patient in the UK for a small trial to test whether a new drug made by AstraZeneca is safe and effective. This is one of a number of small trials - jointly referred to as the Accord trial - designed to assess further drugs that may be added to the Recovery trial.
The hope is that this AstraZeneca drug, which does not yet have a name, will help to damp down a dangerous overreaction of the immune system that occurs in a small proportion of patients, sending the body into shock and closing down vital organs, such as the lungs, heart, blood vessels and kidney.
This overreaction has been referred to as a "cytokine storm" - cytokines being molecules that flag up the presence of an infection that the body must fight. The drug in the new trial blocks a cytokine called IL-33 (or interleukin-33).
Mark Winterbourne (pictured here with Mo Farah) will either be given the IL-blocker or a placebo
Mark Winterbourne, who volunteered to take the IL-blocker, arrived in hospital with symptoms that were at first thought to be caused by gallstones. It was only after he tested positive for Covid-19 that we realised this was the probable source of the problem. (Covid-19 is an illness with a wide variety of symptoms - but this is an unusual case!) Mark says volunteering comes naturally to him; while working as a volunteer photographer for the Great North Run, he met and became friends with Sir Mo Farah.
I suspect that a vaccine for Covid-19 is still a year away, so these trials searching for treatments are critical.
The doctors here are looking ahead to a time - not too far off, they hope - when anyone with early symptoms will be able to drive to a testing centre, get swabbed, get a quick result and a prescription for a combination of effective drugs, before the worst of their symptoms take hold.
This combination may include an antiviral drug, an immune suppressing drug, and an anti-inflammatory drug.
Among antivirals being tested, one may help prevent the coronavirus attaching to the lining of the lungs, and another may help to stop it reproducing in the body.
Immune-suppressing drugs could help prevent the immune overreaction to the virus - the cytokine storm. If the IL-33 blocker from the Accord trial is effective, it would be a contender.
Anti-inflammatory drugs include steroids - for example Dexamethasone, one of the first drugs included in the Recovery trial.
Front line diary
Prof John Wright, a doctor and epidemiologist, is head of the Bradford Institute for Health Research, and a veteran of cholera, HIV and Ebola epidemics in sub-Saharan Africa. He is writing this diary for BBC News and recording from the hospital wards for BBC Radio.
- Listen to the next episode of The NHS Front Line on BBC Sounds or the BBC World Service
- Or read the previous online diary entry: A patient given hours to live who proved everyone wrong
BRI Respiratory consultant Dinesh Saralaya feels optimistic that a combination treatment will be available before the end of the summer.
"I think we'll find at least two or three drugs which will prevent these patients ever needing to come into hospital," he says.
"You will go to the test centre and then be given the drugs once you're diagnosed. Under the current strategies, you get the Covid virus, so you're isolating, then you get worse, you get a temperature, you start getting breathless, then you come in. But people need to be given the drugs very early."
Another of our consultants is potentially contributing to another trial - as a donor of antibodies.
Debbie Horner caught Covid-19 at a very early stage of the outbreak and quickly recovered. Two weeks ago, when a call went out for people like her to donate convalescent blood plasma, she immediately agreed.
Image copyright Debbie Horner
Researchers want to find out whether antibody-rich plasma from people who have had Covid-19 will help other patients fight off the disease. This work is also part of the Recovery trial.
It's now been discovered that the patients most likely to have high levels of antibodies are men over the age of 35 who became so ill they needed hospital treatment. NHS Blood and Transplant (NHSBT) is keen to recruit donors who have recovered from Covid-19 and who are either male, or are over 35, or were ill enough to be hospitalised.
Debbie had a mild case so it is possible that her plasma is not as rich in antibodies as the team would like. The results have yet to come in. If her plasma is wanted she will happily donate more.
"It's a bit different to taking blood normally," she says. "They take out a fraction of the blood - the plasma fraction - and then they give you back all your red cells and other bits of blood that aren't required, so essentially, it's just like getting a bit dehydrated."
A few cups of tea are enough to fix that, Debbie says.
Image copyright NHSBT Image caption Blood plasma is orange
Mike Murphy, professor of transfusion medicine at the University of Oxford, says this is a great opportunity to understand more about the value of plasma transfusions more generally. Plasma was collected in the late 2000s to see if it would be a way of treating people with Ebola and flu, he says.
"But by the time there were enough convalescent donors who had recovered from the infection, and were able to donate, the peak of the infection had passed, and so there was no opportunity to test the benefit of convalescent plasma. The Covid-19 pandemic is obviously different."
Nick Real Deal
Vital Football Legend
20 years ago, he was 27. One isolated incident ( if true ) does not constitute a reputation IMO.
Nick Real Deal
Vital Football Legend
Cummings said he has to deal with and evaluate many issues every day. He has to keep Boris undisturbed as much as possible. He cant confront Boris with every decision he has to make.
Harry-Kari
Vital 1st Team Regular
Believe what you will but there is a lot more about his behaviour in general in the documentary that was the basis of the article.....amongst other things I would have to question how anyone who spent 4 years in Russia after leaving education can sit at the heart of government....do we learn no lessons from history?
Gary Onedaysoon
*Prediction Champion 20/21 & 21/22*
The ramifications of this decision were enormous, as we're now seeing. Had it been disclosed at the time the whole lockdown could have potentially unravelled. No way can this be treated as a trivial issue not to bother the PM with.
Nick Real Deal
Vital Football Legend
My point was to shed light on his role and support of Boris. Cummings has to bother Boris only with essential business. Being in the background but doing an excellent job is what a leader wants of his staff.
Cause me the least hassle and need to get involved. This was always my goal as a manager. If my boss has to get involved in my dept, I had failed.
Nick Real Deal
Vital Football Legend
I believe Cummings should have sought medical advice and told Domonic Raab of his intentions to go to Durham. Raab was in charge at that time.
Gary Onedaysoon
*Prediction Champion 20/21 & 21/22*
In that case, why did Cummings tell him at all? And Johnson shouldn't be defending him today. If it was anyone other than Cummings I doubt if Johnson would have given them his total backing.
Nick Real Deal
Vital Football Legend
Good point, why didnt Cummings tell Raab instead.
Spursex
Alert Team
I spent 3.2 years in Russia over a period of 10 years, I have advised some of the biggest businesses on the planet, all had security depts that automatically did background checks on who/what/where you've been and have done - and of course I did before then was asked to sign the official secrets act. I was often interviewed on my way back by men with silly names and some incredibly smart ones; Cummings would have been through all those checks and more.
Besides, if our services thought you could be of benefit to us whilst there, they weren't and aren't slow in coming forwards.
Spursex
Alert Team
Hindsight.
I'm sure he'd much rather all this not be going on now, but that's hindsight for you - he clearly didn't think his actions and the consequences through, which sadly means he isn't good or smart enough to be a personal advisor.
