THIS BLOG'S OBJECTIVES AND MY BIOGRAPHY

My first trip on public transport since lockdown

Now this blog has become established, it’s time to tell you the objectives of it and a little bit about me.

I’m an Oxbridge science graduate who is professionally qualified and who has been deeply distressed by the impact this coronavirus is having on our lives and livelihoods.

The primary objective is to get back to some normality as quickly as possible.  But safely, so we don’t get a second peak and a second lockdown.  That would make life far worse.  That means reducing the risk of the disease to each of us as individuals.  It also means reducing the risks to the country and world as a whole.  How do we do that?

The second objective supports the first, which is to defeat this SARS2 coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease it causes.  How do we do that?

This blog concentrates on achieving those two objectives.  Looking towards the future.  Rarely looking at the past.

This is with the attitude “Hope for the best but prepare for the worst”.  Though avoiding the worst by working to achieve the best.

The blog focuses on the UK, but with an international outlook.  Indeed much applies worldwide.


IMPACT OF THIS CORONAVIRUS AND LOCKDOWN

For me personally, being self-employed, it has meant a significant hit to income.  It has been disastrous for my hobbies too.  I’m a semi-pro musician who used to be out 5-6 nights a week for some musical activity or another.  I’m missing it all!

For the country and the wider world, I look around and see families pulled apart, and people living in fear of contracting the virus.  I see other people’s livelihoods destroyed, both here and abroad.  My friends in the music industry especially.

On top of which the economy and public finances are being destroyed.  We’re all going to have to pay for it in the future.  The less cost the better.

So it is imperative we fully exit lockdown quickly yet safely.  There is so much we could be doing to reduce the social and financial costs.  If only we put the right effort into the right actions at the right time.


DUAL OBJECTIVES

The need to achieve the two objectives above has have been brought into sharp relief by the lockdown.  There’s two aspects:

(1)    Suppressing the SARS2 virus and the COVID-19 disease:

• Not just to avoid deaths
• To avoid the suffering of everyone contracting the disease.  It isn’t pleasant at home and certainly not in hospital.
• To avoid long-lasting ill health for survivors
• To avoid the NHS (or other local health service) being overrun
• To avoid other medical impacts, such as cancers not being diagnosed due to suspended services

(2)    Minimising the dreadful 'side effects' of lockdown:

• Social aspects such as families not being able to see each other
• Financial impacts on most individuals, as they lose their businesses, their jobs, or their income
• The hit to the economy and the public finances
• Consequent effects on many people’s mental health and worse

Whilst death is affecting tens of thousands of individuals and their families, the 'side effects' are affecting us all.  Millions.

So we need the lightest possible lockdown, and to exit the lockdown as soon as possible. Whilst ensuring that the virus is kept suppressed, with a transmission rate R well under 1, and then defeated.

Elimination of the SARS2 coronavirus worldwide is the ideal, but highly unlikely in any reasonable timeframe.  SARS2 has the ability to quickly change from a few cases somewhere in the world into a pandemic in individual countries.

Indeed here in the UK the timescales to ridding ourselves of this SARS2 coronavirus are long, probably years.  The government and its advisors are now being more honest about that, although it was obvious from the start.  For the foreseeable future, we’ve got to learn to live with this virus, always ready to infect us if we drop our guard.

I have many ideas to help in achieving these objectives, as well as an interest in all the various dimensions in this challenge.


A BIT MORE ABOUT ME

You’ll have to excuse that my trumpeter has been furloughed.  I’ll have to blow my own!

Education

I studied Natural Sciences at Cambridge, specialising in chemistry, spectroscopy and biochemistry.  I find the science of this virus and its effects fascinating.   I’ve become an ‘armchair virologist’ and epidemiologist with an interest in all the virus’s consequences, be they social, medical or financial.

In university holidays I worked in a commercial laboratory, harvest-picker on farms, a hod-carrier on a building site, and as a postie.  I met many different people, which gave me a good start in understanding the broad range of people in the UK.


Career Foundations

I decided to pursue a career in business, and qualified in finance.  In those early years I worked with a wide range of organisations from a small bookshop to the construction of the Thames Barrier, from a family-run care home to quoted companies.

Final exams prizewinner, confident in finance, commercial matters, performance management, taxation, basic law and IT.

I joined a biotech, became the Head of Finance, and helped lay the foundations for it to join the FTSE100.  That gave me first-hand experience of drug development, and working with top scientists.

From the archive

I then joined what is now a Big4 consultancy (then a Big8), doing a lot of work in public sector financial planning and the various aspects of IT, including security and privacy,

Experience in businesses from local to national such as Guinness and British Gas, and multinationals such as Sony, Siemens and HP.


Subsequent Career

Over the last 30 years I have developed a wealth of experience and success in solving problems and implementing solutions.  This has been in a wide range of organisations from tiny start-ups to FTSE and multinationals.

I’ve been a pioneer, inventing novel solutions and was one of the first to make use of opportunities in using the internet.

I've written nearly 100 articles on technical subjects for my professional institute.  This blog is like an extention of that work.   I've also appeared on BBC TV and radio, on different occasions pre-recorded and live.

I’ve doubled profits for some buisnesses, including  a care home,  and solved intractable problems for others. All confidential, of course.

This has often involved looking at an organisation from every conceivable angle, for every department and external stakeholder.  Together with every level of staff, from the CEO and CFO managing the business to middle managers and the more junior personnel carrying out the work.

Looking at the detail whilst keeping an overview.  Managing projects, heading up task forces and leading strategy steering groups with the CFO at FTSE level.


RELEVANCE TO COVID-19

My 360 degree approach to solving problems means my skills and experience are ideally suited to addressing the wide-ranging challenges of COVID-19.  Especially with my scientific background.

I often share mainstream views, including serious criticism of much of what the UK government has done.  But my experience can mean I will sometimes hold views contrary to the mainstream.  Here’s some examples:

Pre-lockdown Strategy

It was clear from the outset that we would be living with this virus for years.  As soon as lockdown was suggested I could see the nasty ‘side-effects’ of it.  If anything those side-effects have turned out worse.  We needed a long-term strategy, not just for a couple of months.

So I wanted the UK to achieve the dual objectives above by taking a longer-term view with the lightest possible lockdown.  For example allowing pub gardens to stay open as warmer weather was imminent.  This broad approach turned out to be the strategy which Sweden has followed.  Not necessarily the best approach, given the apparent success of countries that locked down early.   But those countries may have problems across the other objectives that Sweden will avoid.  Sweden is being criticised for the early deaths, but only time will tell for the overall consideration of  total deaths and across the other objectives.

However the UK had to lock down reasonably hard because of the threat to the NHS. I personally locked down for my own protection more than a week before the government’s instruction.


Lockdown Exit Strategy

I immediately campaigned for a Lockdown Exit Strategy to be developed whilst many people were saying it was too early.  To achieve full or partial exit safely is incredibly difficult.  Some say impossible,  I don’t.  Just very difficult.

It takes time to identify and evaluate anti-transmission measures, and determine a ‘road map’ leading in stages towards exiting lockdown.   So work needed to start immediately back in March.  What we’ve got is only a half-baked ‘road map’ and set of anti-transmission measures compared to what I envisaged.

Conversely I liked the government's new messaging more than most, as long as it is taken as:

• "Stay alert" means "Don't relax and don't drop your guard" as explained above
• "Control the virus" means the various rules and approved control measures, which will change over time.  The message therefore won't need to change further for some time

But that wasn't how the government explained it.  They've got these two aspects muddled !



Mass Test/Trace/Isolate

Mass test/trace/isolate is WHO advice, and indeed fine in theory.  No wonder the scientists, media and general public are clamouring for it.

However I am not doing so in the short term.  This is because I am sufficiently concerned to think we might have to pause a mass test/trace/isolate programme until better tests are available and other critical issues have been resolved:
•    ‘False negatives’ arising from swab testing, especially self-swabbing
•    Privacy of the app, and whether a GB-only app is appropriate
•    Various other aspects

Testing in ‘hot-spots’ needs to continue, including hospitals and care homes.  As does the sampling being done to monitor the transmission rate R.

In any case we need to concentrate on anti-transmission methods for the public and ways to keep people out of hospital.


The Battle to keep R below 1

To avoid R rising over one, which would mean a second peak, I am now campaigning for better communication from government about the strategy, rules and anti-transmission measures.  So far it has been more like a year 12 school project gone horribly wrong.  I see far better examples abroad.   There’s a review as a part of this posting.

Indeed we need to be aiming for an R below 0.5, for two reasons:

• Because it quickly reduces new cases of COVID-19 to near zero in just a few weeks as the graph below shows.  The graph shows cumulative cases, so you'll have to inagine the daily changes.  Anything above 0,5 takes far longer
• Better to ensure R does not go over 1.

Avoiding Hospital Treatment

I’m especially interested in helping avoid people developing symptoms serious enough to warrant hospital treatment.  Here's a posting about that objective. 

That would reduce the risk of death, reduce other serious complications.  and avoid a very unpleasant experience.

Placed alongside a better set of anti-transmission measures, that would help get us back to normality both quickly and safely.


KEEPING UP WITH THE SCIENCE

As part helping in the fight against COVID-19, I am now involved in helping a university professor identify and summarise research that would help understand how testing and its interpretation can be improved.  That involves reviewing academic and medical papers in batches of 500 at a level deeper than in the general media.

That is giving me the best possible insight into the available science as it develops.

Indeed I am learning all the time.  That can include points well-presented by other people.  I'm more than happy to discuss a topic if done positively.  If that means changing my opinion on something so be it, as long as others adopt the same approach.  I'm primarily interested in what's best.


MY POLITICS

As a footnote, my politics are mainstream and middle of the road.  My grandfather and my mother's family were staunchly Labour,  I share the attitude to protect the vulnerable and the general public.  But realise a strong economy is needed to pay for public services.  Hence support for business and the self-employed.

I didn't vote for  PM Johnson's party at the last general election, so have no natural desire to support them nor indeed any other registered party.  Indeed I am deeply critical and worried about the UK government's approach.

Politics will play no part in this blog.  Just whether the government is doing a good job.  Not just criticism, but a positive view of what I beleive they ought to be doing.


IN CONCLUSION

We will defeat this virus and get back to normality.  But it will need ingenuity and a lot of effort.

I am doing whatever I can to help to achieve these objectives as quickly as possible.  For my own sake, for my family, and the country.  This blog forms part of my work.

Onwards and upwards!