The Wall Street Journal reports U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson Moved to Intensive Care
British Prime Minister Boris Johnson was admitted to intensive care at a London hospital Monday as he struggles to recover from the new coronavirus.
The British government said in a statement that Mr. Johnson’s condition had worsened over the afternoon. The 55-year-old had been admitted to hospital on Sunday after suffering persistent symptoms from Covid-19 for 10 days. Mr. Johnson has asked Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to deputize for him, the government said.
An official said that the prime minister remained conscious and was moved to intensive care at 7 p.m. U.K. time (2 p.m. EDT) as a precautionary step.
Britain doesn’t have the equivalent of a vice president who automatically takes over if the prime minister dies. It is up to the members of the U.K. cabinet to decide among themselves who should lead the country if the prime minister dies or falls gravely ill.
UK Experiment Gone Bad
On March 13, the New York Times reported As Europe Shuts Down, Britain Takes a Different, and Contentious, Approach.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson has largely kept Britain open, opting for more targeted measures, a strategy that has startled some epidemiologists.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson of Britain once said his political hero was the mayor in the film “Jaws,” praising him for defying mass hysteria to keep the beaches open after a constituent is eaten by a shark.
As the coronavirus now stampedes across Britain and much of the world, Mr. Johnson is heeding the same principle, spurning the mass closures that have become commonplace across Europe and gambling his political future on a more restrained approach.
While countries across Europe have shut schools, sporting events and even restaurants and bars, Mr. Johnson has largely kept Britain open, opting for more targeted measures like asking people with respiratory symptoms to stay home.
Distressing
What If
What If Part 2.
We do not have solid answers to any questions.
However, other than discounting medical politicians at the WHO and CDC (proven wrong and initially way overoptimistic), I hold medical experts in higher esteem than armchair economists comparing what is happening now to the flu.
Without a doubt Coronavirus Deaths are Badly Undercounted.
Regardless …
https://twitter.com/Tim_R_Dawson/status/1247249205267181574
Best Wishes to Boris Johnson!
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
if you look like a clown, and you act like a clown, you are a clown. best of luck, bozo!
Quite disappointed in that WSJ piece.
First Dominic Raab (British Foreign Secreary) also holds the title of First Secretary of State which makes him defaco #2. He will be in charge whilst Boris is incapacitated. It does not confer a succession right though in the event the PM dies/resigns. Should the worst happen there would need to be a new party leadership election and whoever wins that will become PM. The position of “Deputy Prime Minister” IS also a constitutional role in the UK, though not one that the current Conservative government uses.
Second the UK is actually on quite a strict lockdown. People have been asked to stay at home and this is being policed (with a gentle touch). People are allowed to travel to/from work if that work is considered important/essential (and those people cannot work from home). Otherwise they are only allowed out to shop for essential food/medicine or for up to 1 hour of exercise (not in groups). Restaurants, retail, etc are all closed. The government has powers to lockdown further if it needs to but British people generally are sensible and get it. The roads are largely empty and if you go out you typically see about 5% of the people around as usual. They are usually exercising and typically alone or small family groups. The supermarkets all have floor markings/one-way systems, etc to ensure people can keep 2m apart and they restrict the numbers of customers at any time. A few people are flaunting the rules but it’s a very small minority and there’s a lot of social pressure against it.
We can be sure that he is receiving the best care possible, and the doctors likely are consulting every expert in the world.
If he pulls through, it will become the golden treatment for the corona virus.
All the best.
Johnson is 12 years younger than I.
Scary.
Longlive Boris Johnson, the UK needs him badly, more than ever.
I have enormous empathy and sympathy for BoJo and his loved ones as a fellow human being. However, as a physician, I was extremely angered by the footage of him arrogantly and stupidly shaking the hands of every patient in a hospital 3 weeks ago in front of the TV cameras. An absolutely appalling example from a supposed leader. Perhaps doubters will now finally understand how indiscriminate and vicious this virus is.
Thanks for mentioning that. I was not aware. He was literally begging to get ill, and he did.
How risky is his weight?
It’s not gonna help, that’s for sure. On another tack, I would bet my bottom dollar that he’s being filled with hydroxychloroquine, high dose Vitamin C, zinc, Azithromycin, and antivirals by a medical team that won’t be too concerned by the lack of double-blind, con trolled study evidence. A real-world test of hype vs efficacy….
It’s obvious he didn’t follow Trump’s suggestion of taking those anti malarial medicines.
Trump shakes people’s hands all the time and he is fine 😉
Mish, if you’re interested and have access The Economist has an article and interesting graph today on the undercounting of COVID deaths in hard hit parts of Europe.
Thanks – I don’t have access to that article. Can you take a screen shot of a key chart if you have one.
I couldn’t link it to a comment so I emailed it to you. I hope you get it.
This is also interesting given all those who insisted to your post yesterday that all deaths are being attributed to COVID. According to the “Worldmeters” site, NYC was testing people early in the crisis that died at home, but no longer has the capacity to do that.
In a related matter. The following is from the USA portion of the Worldmeter site for April 6. It looks like all of the people worried every death is counted as COVID don’t need to worry anymore. Source links are on the site.
“An estimated additional 180 – 195 deaths per day occurring at home in New York City due to COVID-19 are not being counted in the official figures. “Early on in this crisis we were able to swab people who died at home, and thus got a coronavirus reading. But those days are long gone. We simply don’t have the testing capacity for the large numbers dying at home. Now only those few who had a test confirmation before dying are marked as victims of coronavirus on their death certificate. This almost certainly means we are undercounting the total number of victims of this pandemic,” said Mark Levine, Chair of New York City Council health committee [source]”
In Madrid firemen are not answering so many activity related emergencies any more. This article explains how often they now have to provide access to those who were alone and uncared for.
Moral of the story is to reach out to people you know in this circumstance, even if you don’t know them well or do not even particularly like them. A call to ask if they have anyone keeping an eye on them, would they like you to call them each day? If not then to let you know if they need attention to call you and you will try to arrange help. No one has to even meet them for this, a note in their mailbox if nothing else.
Some have almost too many calls of this kind.
Some have none.
That is really sad, and good advice.
It’s really sad. A lot of these people are just told to stay at home by the medical services, and they are not in a position/state after that to pressure for attention – someone else has to do that for them.
The silver lining here is that it will be difficult for the Just The Flu™ people to dismiss this should BoJo shuffle off this mortal coil.
Then again, some of them will probably claim he had a million preexisting conditions and wouldn’t have lived through the spring anyway.
Amazingly they are hugely out on Twitter the past few days, one person even blasting me
This virus will prove to be less deadly than most influenza strains. Far more contagious though. But to say “Just the Flu” is something only said by someone who has never had an actual Influenza disease. I have… twice… and the Flu is an absolute killer. They’re mixing CFR and IFR to scare people. CFR for Influenza is around 10% (*i.e. if you’re hospitalized you die 1/10 times). The oft-report .1% is IFR which includes and estimated millions of people likely infected who never were officially diagnosed and counted. With Covid being much more contagious we’re likely to have far more infected/asymptomatic/mild/caseless numbers than with the Flu already. Covid-19 is new… and yes it can kill you but perspective is what we need. There are far more greater dangers in this absurd response with nothing but fear porn 24×7.
“The strategy of the British government in minimizing the impact of Covid-19 is to allow the virus to pass through the entire population,”
Seems to be working.
I am sorry — but this made me laugh…
under my mask.
The US is way ahead of us on that, NYC 6000 per million infected, triple the rate of the worst areas of London, and of Italy or Spain. About half way to Wuhan if Chinese figures were correct.
The UK’s been on lockdown with instructions to stay at home since the 23rd March, there’s no intention to allow the virus to spread. All the talk about trying to achieve “heard immunity” was misreporting or misrepresented. The Chief Medical Office at one point mentioned that in due course most viruses eventually die out due to heard immunity & vaccines but this of course takes time. The press jumped on this as policy!
They waited until March 23rd? Hmm. We had restrictions here on March 7th, when we had only 2-3 cases.
Here’s a timeline of the UK’s actions.
I’m not saying it was necessarily the best plan, but there hasn’t been a policy to allow it to spread.
Thanks, Scoot! I’ve been looking for something like that. It looks like the earliest state on their list is Pennsylvania, at March 21. To look at that list, you’d think my state has no restrictions at all. In actuality, our Governor has been addressing this aggressively since March 7th, and depending on the day we are either 1st or 2d in the US for the lowest number of cases per million population, competing with West Virginia for the honor. So, have we ordered an official stay at home order? No, but most non-essential businesses are closed, and most people are working from home.
I’m amused when people whose own states are screwed up tell us that we have to do it their way. No, you don’t. If you act early, and shut things down early, and the people listen, you never have to shut things completely.
I am aware that it was misrepresented.
But, I was on the last plane of out Milano, Italia on March 12th.
Spent the afternoon of the 13th and the morning of the 14th at LHR and the Brits were quite relaxed about it all. They acted as if Italia was on Mars.
That is pretty bad if they were nonchalant all the way into mid March. Some were sounding the alarm in January when things went haywire in China.
Yep, lots of naive people everywhere, it’s been very frustrating.
Eventually most will get it or be vaccinated. Needn’t be Government policy just highly likely. This virus is not going away, it will ebb and flow like flu.