SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

Tony Babangida said:
I am not the least bit surprised! People are desperate for this stage IV lockdown to be over. It's hard to stay rational. Plus it looks like the DHHS might have mishandled the family at the centre of the outbreak, they don't fill me with confidence. Fingers crossed for the outbreak to be controlled and restrictions easing by the end of the week.
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Hard to know if the DHHS cocked up or the family made an error (or both) as I think the family just assumed the youngest kid didn't need clearance as he hadn't tested positive yet and DHHS didn't specifically address the status of the youngest kid. The subtext of some reports seems to be that language was an issue. Of course than could be the press racist dogwhistling as it was a Muslim family/school or DHHS needing clearer comms or just a cockup. Fingers crossed there are no more infections from that cluster to come. I fear there may be a few more.

I know that the second lockdown must have been even harder than the first but the right wing press and politicians have been irresponsible and trying to stir shit up and exacerbate the stress for political gain. Also hard to know if Vic's contract tracing is worse than NSW's (as Muroch et al. seem to be alleging) or if they are just leaping on possible outbreaks and doing mass contract tracing thus the day or so delay in results. It would be great of they could make an announcement by mid week but I'm not sure when the last transmission was which will influence when any announcement can be made.
 
Tony Babangida said:
Well we got our easing! That first pint in the pub is going to be the best of my life!!
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I just saw that. Bloody brilliant. I thought Dan Andrews was going to cry. Well done Victoria and Victorians. Top effort that all should be very proud of - enjoy your pint. If I were in Melbourne I'd be off to Hop Nation for a hazy IPA.
 
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Italy had higher case numbers than the UK yesterday. The Government declared another emergency decree - the third in a fortnight. Bars and restaurants must close at 6pm, cinemas, concert halls, clubs and all that kind of thing closed, no public gatherings (there are usually a lot of festivals at this time of year), gyms and swimming pools closed and we are now strongly recommended to stay within our communes and not visit other people's homes - not mandatory at the moment. Restrictions on schools as well. We're getting back to how we were in the first wave.

I'm just about to leave the comune for my usual weekly shopping trip, to stock up on the things I can't get in the village or online. It may be my last chance I think, as I suspect we'll be seeing the police on the roads stopping us very soon.
 
Penna said:
Italy had higher case numbers than the UK yesterday. The Government declared another emergency decree - the third in a fortnight. Bars and restaurants must close at 6pm, cinemas, concert halls, clubs and all that kind of thing closed, no public gatherings (there are usually a lot of festivals at this time of year), gyms and swimming pools closed and we are now strongly recommended to stay within our communes and not visit other people's homes - not mandatory at the moment. Restrictions on schools as well. We're getting back to how we were in the first wave.

I'm just about to leave the comune for my usual weekly shopping trip, to stock up on the things I can't get in the village or online. It may be my last chance I think, as I suspect we'll be seeing the police on the roads stopping us very soon.
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Does the fact that Italy has suffered worse before and is on course to suffer worse again make you wonder whether any of the issues that you had with the UK government's / citizen's approach to the pandemic were all that important? If the Italian government were doing all the right things and the UK government all the wrong things then doesn't that point to the lack of impact these things can realistically have?
 
I know we obviously have mass testing now across the continent and it is an incredibly interconnected continent.....but how on earth have we managed to get ourselves back in this situation? Pretty much all of us?

Did we relax too much after we'd controlled the first wave? Should all those holidays have been banned? Seems ridiculously silly now, especially considering I think most of East Asia/ SE Asia, which has far less movement between countries anyway, still seems relatively much more closed.

Vaccine or not, its pretty demoralising that we've ended up in a situation where many of us are going back into some kind of lockdown and the majority seem under at least some kind of measures.
 
africanspur said:
I know we obviously have mass testing now across the continent and it is an incredibly interconnected continent.....but how on earth have we managed to get ourselves back in this situation? Pretty much all of us?

Did we relax too much after we'd controlled the first wave? Should all those holidays have been banned? Seems ridiculously silly now, especially considering I think most of East Asia/ SE Asia, which has far less movement between countries anyway, still seems relatively much more closed.

Vaccine or not, its pretty demoralising that we've ended up in a situation where many of us are going back into some kind of lockdown and the majority seem under at least some kind of measures.
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In fairness, I think that the main issue here is a lack of a clear early message on what we can expect. I know that a lot of people thought that they need to stay home for a month or two and this would be over.

Regarding what you are saying, several posters here stated pretty clearly that we will have to go in and out of some kind of lockdown until a vaccine is found. Also, it was pretty common knowledge that the shit would hit the fan once autumn came.
 
Hound Dog said:
In fairness, I think that the main issue here is a lack of a clear early message on what we can expect. I know that a lot of people thought that they need to stay home for a month or two and this would be over.

Regarding what you are saying, several posters here stated pretty clearly that we will have to go in and out of some kind of lockdown until a vaccine is found. Also, it was pretty common knowledge that the shit would hit the fan once autumn came.
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Do you mean in the UK (or Serbia) or across Europe as a whole?

I think the problem of course is that many of us (and those in governments too) didn't know what to expect. In Europe, we slightly arrogantly saw it as an Asian virus I think that wouldn't hit us in Europe and even after we got control of the first wave (or avoided it in some cases in Central/East Europe), a lot of people seemed in pretty celebratory mood about how well they'd done to avoid it.

A lot of Europe seemed to treat their summer holidays as normal and people were flying all over the continent, while I see Singapore/HK/Japan/SK etc are still mostly in discussions about restarting business travel etc.

I feel like in Europe (and North America) we've kind of bit the bullet and said a second wave (or more ) is inevitable and almost shrugged our shoulders. Obviously still too early to say but it doesn't seem that East/SE Asia is really gong through something similar en masse like we are in Europe.
 
Some talk of Belgium having a lockdown, it's been quite bad there.

The cases and deaths will build slower in the second wave but I wonder what point some of the countries start another lockdown. It may be possible to hit a certain level of deaths/cases and not overwhelm the hospitals but it''s still very tricky as the lag of deaths and any extra restrictions imposed means you have to do a lockdown in advance.

Maybe during this Christmas when work and schools are mostly closed and families don't gather as much as previous years (meaning staying over 25th onwards) it can really drop down but it's another two months away and the lead up to Christmas could be quite devastating
 
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Hound Dog said:
In fairness, I think that the main issue here is a lack of a clear early message on what we can expect. I know that a lot of people thought that they need to stay home for a month or two and this would be over.

Regarding what you are saying, several posters here stated pretty clearly that we will have to go in and out of some kind of lockdown until a vaccine is found. Also, it was pretty common knowledge that the shit would hit the fan once autumn came.
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Yeah, and it was presented early on that intermittent quarantines - or the closest we could get to that, taking into account quarantine fatigue - were expected to be necessary to keep it below the ICU threshold. We've improved treatments, increased ICU capacity and have been able to incorporate a lot of interventions into the non-quarantine periods, which has given us a bit more leeway, but it was never going to be enough to avoid another iteration of it this year. This was from a report 6 months ago from the people who essentially brought the UK quarantine into effect:

Brwned said:
You're looking at it from the German perspective, but in reality the UK is in a different world on this.

The major concern is about overloading the healthcare system past its breaking point. The UK has 4,500 ICU beds, Germany has 24,500 beds. Based on a study in Wuhan, about 5% of cases require ICU beds, so Germany has the capacity to manage 490,000 typical cases (50x what they currently have) while the UK has the capacity to manage 90,000 typical cases (a little over double what they currently have). On top of that the UK has a shortage of PPE and testing capacity, leading to many more doctors ill or self-isolating and reducing the peak demand they can manage. The UK had no alternative because the infrastructure in place was dramatically inferior to Germany.

We already have hospitals urging people not to go there because they have severe resource shortages. On lockdown. Surely everyone could see that would be happening on a much wider scale if not for the lockdown. It wouldn't simply have been a few old people losing a few months of their lives. It's the healthcare system that's at risk.

If we had 25,000 ICU beds then we would be able to cope without a lockdown, as per this graph on the top-left from Imperial's modelling. Instead, because the ICU capacity is 5x lower, even with the most risky approach to suppression we will need to be in intermittent lockdown for 6 of the next 18 months, 1 month on, 2 months off.

D7rNRTk.png


Germany does have 25,000 ICU beds so they have more choice in that regard.
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The Welsh government has already said this "circuit breaker" aka lockdown aka quarantine doesn't come with a promise that it's the last, in fact it would be prudent to expect it again in January after cases pick up again out of that quarantine period and with the holiday spread. Many politicians have been less transparent about that but many public health experts have been just as transparent. The problem is they're slotted into this he said, she said narrative or doom and gloom pitted against rays of sunshine in the media coverage, which you can say is the media confusing people, but on some level it reflects the way the wider population wants it to be portrayed. The harsh truths don't get interpreted as truth but as doom mongering. Even if it was true they didn't want to believe it.
 
africanspur said:
Do you mean in the UK (or Serbia) or across Europe as a whole?

I think the problem of course is that many of us (and those in governments too) didn't know what to expect. In Europe, we slightly arrogantly saw it as an Asian virus I think that wouldn't hit us in Europe and even after we got control of the first wave (or avoided it in some cases in Central/East Europe), a lot of people seemed in pretty celebratory mood about how well they'd done to avoid it.

A lot of Europe seemed to treat their summer holidays as normal and people were flying all over the continent, while I see Singapore/HK/Japan/SK etc are still mostly in discussions about restarting business travel etc.

I feel like in Europe (and North America) we've kind of bit the bullet and said a second wave (or more ) is inevitable and almost shrugged our shoulders. Obviously still too early to say but it doesn't seem that East/SE Asia is really gong through something similar en masse like we are in Europe.
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I mean Europe in general and it is even worse in the US. There has not been a clear enough loud enough message on how long it will last.

The politicians mainly focused on what would need to be done next when adressing people. Anf then you have Johnson and the likes promising that life will be back to nearly normal by Xmas, which was never going to happen.
 
africanspur said:
Do you mean in the UK (or Serbia) or across Europe as a whole?

I think the problem of course is that many of us (and those in governments too) didn't know what to expect. In Europe, we slightly arrogantly saw it as an Asian virus I think that wouldn't hit us in Europe and even after we got control of the first wave (or avoided it in some cases in Central/East Europe), a lot of people seemed in pretty celebratory mood about how well they'd done to avoid it.

A lot of Europe seemed to treat their summer holidays as normal and people were flying all over the continent, while I see Singapore/HK/Japan/SK etc are still mostly in discussions about restarting business travel etc.

I feel like in Europe (and North America) we've kind of bit the bullet and said a second wave (or more ) is inevitable and almost shrugged our shoulders. Obviously still too early to say but it doesn't seem that East/SE Asia is really gong through something similar en masse like we are in Europe.
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It’s not just Europe and North America though. South America’s been absolutely hammered. India’s having a terrible time. Case numbers are peaking in Iran and Israel’s had a second full lockdown already.

We also somehow have close neighbours having very different experiences to other countries in the same region. Pakistan doesn’t seem to be having a second wave, or Saudi Arabia. And the continent of Africa is a patchwork of very different caseload graphs.

It’s very hard to work out why different countries are/aren’t having a second wave but there’s more to it than just Europe/North America making terrible decisions.

It’s probably easier to look at the very small number of countries that seem to be doing well. The common themes seem to be geographic isolation and low population density and/or prior experience of dealing with a novel viral epidemic.
 
africanspur said:
Do you mean in the UK (or Serbia) or across Europe as a whole?

I think the problem of course is that many of us (and those in governments too) didn't know what to expect. In Europe, we slightly arrogantly saw it as an Asian virus I think that wouldn't hit us in Europe and even after we got control of the first wave (or avoided it in some cases in Central/East Europe), a lot of people seemed in pretty celebratory mood about how well they'd done to avoid it.

A lot of Europe seemed to treat their summer holidays as normal and people were flying all over the continent, while I see Singapore/HK/Japan/SK etc are still mostly in discussions about restarting business travel etc.

I feel like in Europe (and North America) we've kind of bit the bullet and said a second wave (or more ) is inevitable and almost shrugged our shoulders. Obviously still too early to say but it doesn't seem that East/SE Asia is really gong through something similar en masse like we are in Europe.
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While both of these statements are true I'm not sure they tell the story you're alluding to. Business travel has dropped off a cliff everywhere and will recover much more slowly than leisure travel, so comparing business travel in Asia to leisure travel in Europe will only mislead.

From a quick glance at this data, people in Asia are travelling quite a lot on planes. There were 28m seats available on the w/c 19th October in APAC compared to 43m a year earlier, while there 11m seats available in Europe compared to 29m a year earlier. In other words the drop-off in European flights has been much more severe, even now. Or if you look at this data, Asian travel has been steadily increasing to now be the top travellers. That's domestic and international overall, and it's just the case that a larger proportion of European flights have always been international, so it's difficult to do a side by side comparison regionally.

If you take Japan as an example, 140k seats were available for international flights vs 1.2m a year earlier, whereas for the UK 930k seats were available vs 3m a year earlier. So Japan's international demand fell to 12% of normal levels while the UK's fell to 32%. And generally speaking European borders have been open much longer and to a much wider range of countries than Asia's. But then if the notion is that movement of people across medium-long distances through airports and planes is a major source of transmission, then domestic flights are still a risk factor and Asia are doing a lot more of that at the moment. And if you assume that most people are moving from areas of higher community transmission to lower community transmission, or maintaining a similar level, then the end destination doesn't matter all that much.

What would make a difference is the kinds of holidays people take and the propensity to do things in large groups, and from the data I've seen whether it was Asian travel (which has a tradition of large group cultural tours) or European travel (which obviously leans more to large group partying), there was much more travelling among small groups than usual. At the end of the day, most transmission that we're able to track comes from within our own borders. It's only the countries that have managed to keep it under control exceptionally well within their own borders (e.g. Germany) that can point to a significant proportion being imported in.
 
Brwned said:
Does the fact that Italy has suffered worse before and is on course to suffer worse again make you wonder whether any of the issues that you had with the UK government's / citizen's approach to the pandemic were all that important? If the Italian government were doing all the right things and the UK government all the wrong things then doesn't that point to the lack of impact these things can realistically have?
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Good point, but I still believe that clear instruction and proper enforcement is the way to go. I think we got it under control as well as any European county could, bearing in mind that Italy was the first European country to have massive amounts of cases and deaths. There is a very clear lead here from the Government and that can be tweaked by regional presidents, as long as they are putting in additional measures and not relaxing the nation-wide ones.

I think there's now a misconception that it's generally worse here than the UK. I would dispute that, as many regions have reasonably low numbers of cases and deaths, although a couple in particular have serious problems (Lombardy and Campania). When we were in the UK through September, people were reacting with horror when I said we live in Italy. At the time, cases were very low here and things were under control. When I told people what was actually happening, they were surprised and somewhat dubious.

The measures must have worked originally, because we were all down to very low numbers of new cases for quite a long time. When we relaxed them (coinciding with very good weather here and the holiday season), things started to go the other way again. The UK could have moved more decisively and at an earlier stage, which I believe would have resulted in better first wave outcomes for the UK. Johnson had the benefit of not being first, he didn't make the best use of it.
 
i recently read somewhere that Covid has the 24th highest mortality rate in the UK? Why are we locking everything down over this? To me, it seems over-reactive.
 
Brwned said:
Does the fact that Italy has suffered worse before and is on course to suffer worse again make you wonder whether any of the issues that you had with the UK government's / citizen's approach to the pandemic were all that important? If the Italian government were doing all the right things and the UK government all the wrong things then doesn't that point to the lack of impact these things can realistically have?
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The initial response in Italy was definitely better. Italy went from being worst in Europe to amongst the best, whereas the UK never really got a handle on it.

The second wave is yet to be seen. I see there is more negative press in Italy this time around and the natural Italian tendency to ignore rules a little more pronounced, but i was in the UK two weeks ago and there are clearly plenty of problems there too. Yesterday was the first day in months where Italy posted more cases than the UK. It's too early to tell how either country will handle the second wave.


Aside from that, everything the Italian government is doing now is skirting around the real issue, schools and universities. Cases only started to shoot up once the kids went back in mid September. Schools are getting closed down all over the place as authorities try to keep up. The 11pm curfew is aimed at stopping kids hanging around in town squares at night. The sport ban is aimed at them playing football together. But nobody will say it. Just my opinion of course.
 
SiRed said:
i recently read somewhere that Covid has the 24th highest mortality rate in the UK? Why are we locking everything down over this? To me, it seems over-reactive.
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”You can’t catch a car crash“
 
SiRed said:
i recently read somewhere that Covid has the 24th highest mortality rate in the UK? Why are we locking everything down over this? To me, it seems over-reactive.
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24th in Wales for the month of September alone. Find it extremely unlikely its 24th for the year in the entire UK.
 
SiRed said:
i recently read somewhere that Covid has the 24th highest mortality rate in the UK? Why are we locking everything down over this? To me, it seems over-reactive.
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That was in August, when the Covid death rate in England was 7.2 per 100,000 people. The total death rate for all causes was 277 per 100,000, so yes, Covid was not that big a deal in August. In April however the Covid rate was 623 per 100,000, so over double all the other causes put together.
 
11101 said:
That was in August, when the Covid death rate in England was 7.2 per 100,000 people. The total death rate for all causes was 277 per 100,000, so yes, Covid was not that big a deal in August. In April however the Covid rate was 623 per 100,000, so over double all the other causes put together.
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So the improvement would be down to what exactly?? Learning how to treat the illness better?
 
Will UK go into full lockdown now? Spain , Italy and France have had a huge spike. Cases seem to be on the rise . We are pretty fecked if this lockdown comes.
 
Penna said:
Good point, but I still believe that clear instruction and proper enforcement is the way to go. I think we got it under control as well as any European county could, bearing in mind that Italy was the first European country to have massive amounts of cases and deaths. There is a very clear lead here from the Government and that can be tweaked by regional presidents, as long as they are putting in additional measures and not relaxing the nation-wide ones.

I think there's now a misconception that it's generally worse here than the UK. I would dispute that, as many regions have reasonably low numbers of cases and deaths, although a couple in particular have serious problems (Lombardy and Campania). When we were in the UK through September, people were reacting with horror when I said we live in Italy. At the time, cases were very low here and things were under control. When I told people what was actually happening, they were surprised and somewhat dubious.

The measures must have worked originally, because we were all down to very low numbers of new cases for quite a long time. When we relaxed them (coinciding with very good weather here and the holiday season), things started to go the other way again. The UK could have moved more decisively and at an earlier stage, which I believe would have resulted in better first wave outcomes for the UK. Johnson had the benefit of not being first, he didn't make the best use of it.
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11101 said:
The initial response in Italy was definitely better. Italy went from being worst in Europe to amongst the best, whereas the UK never really got a handle on it.

The second wave is yet to be seen. I see there is more negative press in Italy this time around and the natural Italian tendency to ignore rules a little more pronounced, but i was in the UK two weeks ago and there are clearly plenty of problems there too. Yesterday was the first day in months where Italy posted more cases than the UK. It's too early to tell how either country will handle the second wave.


Aside from that, everything the Italian government is doing now is skirting around the real issue, schools and universities. Cases only started to shoot up once the kids went back in mid September. Schools are getting closed down all over the place as authorities try to keep up. The 11pm curfew is aimed at stopping kids hanging around in town squares at night. The sport ban is aimed at them playing football together. But nobody will say it. Just my opinion of course.
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Interesting. Generally agreed!

SiRed said:
i recently read somewhere that Covid has the 24th highest mortality rate in the UK? Why are we locking everything down over this? To me, it seems over-reactive.
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Man, those statements are designed to get you to have precisely that reaction. Why jump into their trap? Here's a more considered analysis of the data.

Between March and May there were over 96,000 deaths from non-covid factors and over 33,000 from covid. Anything that makes up 1/4 of our death total is a huge issue that requires urgent attention. That's while doing an enormous amount to prevent covid from transmitting - if we didn't do anything, it's very reasonable to expect more people would have died from covid than all other sources combined.

What you want to compare is covid vs. preventable deaths. Something like influenza, for example, rather than dementia and alzheimer's. We can prevent people from dying from influenza by reducing the transmission and providing timely medication, and because that's a very achievable goal, it's something we should expect to do. That isn't the case for dementia and alzheimer's, unfortunately. And while we know how to limit cardiovascular deaths, we can't have the same instant impact, they require long-term behavioural change which we have invested much more in over the course of their history than we have in tackling this particular virus. That long-term behavioural change is just harder, and less effective.

There is nothing comparable to this, that kills as many people (or makes them seriously ill) which is preventable with known strategies. There is no plausible reality where we would have let things just go on as normal with that present, when it comes with the double whammy of exponential growth. Which is why literally no country in the world has done that. No amount of selective analysis of the numbers will ever dispute that fundamental reality.
 
Brwned said:
Interesting. Generally agreed!



Man, those statements are designed to get you to have precisely that reaction. Why jump into their trap? Here's a more considered analysis of the data.

Between March and May there were over 96,000 deaths from non-covid factors and over 33,000 from covid. Anything that makes up 1/4 of our death total is a huge issue that requires urgent attention. That's while doing an enormous amount to prevent covid from transmitting - if we didn't do anything, it's very reasonable to expect more people would have died from covid than all other sources combined.

What you want to compare is covid vs. preventable deaths. Something like influenza, for example, rather than dementia and alzheimer's. We can prevent people from dying from influenza by reducing the transmission and providing timely medication, and because that's a very achievable goal, it's something we should expect to do. That isn't the case for dementia and alzheimer's, unfortunately. And while we know how to limit cardiovascular deaths, we can't have the same instant impact, they require long-term behavioural change which we have invested much more in over the course of their history than we have in tackling this particular virus. That long-term behavioural change is just harder, and less effective.

There is nothing comparable to this, that kills as many people (or makes them seriously ill) which is preventable with known strategies. There is no plausible reality where we would have let things just go on as normal with that present, when it comes with the double whammy of exponential growth. Which is why literally no country in the world has done that. No amount of selective analysis of the numbers will ever dispute that fundamental reality.
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Wow - this is a statistic that i have never seen and shows the lockdowns etc as being a necessity at minimum.
 
F-Red said:
This image sums it up perfectly for me in terms of the perceived society priorities in Wales:

ElB6g-WWAAEzf5W
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Yes it’s silly. But who cares?

Women or men pushing buggies will bump into friends from other householders in that aisle and linger. It’s a clothing section.

People won’t do the same in other areas of the shop. Or at the vodka rack on the end.

It’s an imperfect analysis of an imperfect rule.

But... who cares. It helps a little and is silly a little. It doesn’t matter. People need to pick a different hill.
 
Brwned said:
Does the fact that Italy has suffered worse before and is on course to suffer worse again make you wonder whether any of the issues that you had with the UK government's / citizen's approach to the pandemic were all that important? If the Italian government were doing all the right things and the UK government all the wrong things then doesn't that point to the lack of impact these things can realistically have?
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By what metric has Italy suffered worse than UK?
 
massi83 said:
By what metric has Italy suffered worse than UK?
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:lol: is there a deeper point to quibbling over the numbers?

SiRed said:
Wow - this is a statistic that i have never seen and shows the lockdowns etc as being a necessity at minimum.
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Yeah it's stark! For all we can criticise about the UK government, the ONS have really excelled at helping us put things in context with really relatively numbers. What we had to do after the first peak I think is debatable, but the situation we found ourselves in by March was seriously grim, and even with a severe response we still suffered hugely. If we didn't do that the outcomes would have been legitimately criminal.
 
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Brwned said:
:lol: is there a deeper point to quibbling over the numbers?
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That criticism of UK is warranted even if you seem to be driven to argue (not prove) differently? A bit odd response from you. And it was a genuine question, because I couldn't think of one.
 
SiRed said:
i recently read somewhere that Covid has the 24th highest mortality rate in the UK? Why are we locking everything down over this? To me, it seems over-reactive.
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That was in August. There were 482 deaths from Corona that month. We will probably see more announced on Tuesday-Thursday this week.
 
massi83 said:
That criticism of UK is warranted even if you seem to be driven to argue (not prove) differently? A bit odd response from you. And it was a genuine question, because I couldn't think of one.
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Criticism of the UK government is warranted. They got a heads up from Italy and somehow still managed to find themselves in an equally bad situation quite soon after. I primarily blame Boris Johnson's buffoonery for that, but there were obvious systemic failures too. My point wasn't that the UK government responded well to the situation, rather that if they responded so poorly and the Italians responded so well, and yet we find ourselves in a situation where Italy could suffer more severe consequences, then wouldn't that point to the government's measures not being as influential as we thought / hoped? As I understand it, the only alternative explanation would be that there wasn't such a wide gap in the measures imposed and the adherence to them. That seems less likely to me but I don't know the respective situations inside-out.
 
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