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

Pogue Mahone said:
Exponential growth is a hard thing to get your head around. It means when things go wrong they go wrong fast. That’s why the exit from lockdown needs to be slow and careful. Only takes a few superspreader events to put the whole country deeply in the shit.
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Humans will never understand exponential growth. We don’t have the capacity for it. The best we can do is learn it as a fact and accept it’s true but you never get your head around it.

My favourites:

If you put a grain of rice on a chess board square, then two on the square next to it, then four next to that and so on. By the time you reach the last square there isn’t enough grains of rice on earth.


If you fold a piece of paper in half 103 times it will be thicker than the observable universe.
 
Pexbo said:
Humans will never understand exponential growth. We don’t have the capacity for it. The best we can do is learn it as a fact and accept it’s true but you never get your head around it.

My favourites:

If you put a grain of rice on a chess board square, then two on the square next to it, then four next to that and so on. By the time you reach the last square there isn’t enough grains of rice on earth.


If you fold a piece of paper in half 103 times it will be thicker than the observable universe.
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I’ve heard both these before but they still bend my brain.

Exponential growth is unfathomable.
 
Wibble said:
Depressingly we have just passed 3 million deaths. And given the huge under-reporting that seems to be occurring in India (and no doubt elsewhere as well) it is likely much higher.

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/
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The situation in India is so terrible, with hospitals running out of oxygen when patients are already on vents. There was a fire in a Covid hospital yesterday which killed some patients, too. The true number of people dying from Covid won't ever be known.
 
Feels like we're heading straight toward a new UK wave with the amount of new cases in our offices the last two weeks. Overall UK numbers seem ok though, must just be the type of people we employ...

One guy I work with tested positive on one of these quick DIY lateral flow tests on Monday before he was showing symptoms. Prevented him from spreading it around to others for the next day or so before his symptoms started. They are worth doing!
 
Simbo said:
Feels like we're heading straight toward a new UK wave with the amount of new cases in our offices the last two weeks. Overall UK numbers seem ok though, must just be the type of people we employ...

One guy I work with tested positive on one of these quick DIY lateral flow tests on Monday before he was showing symptoms. Prevented him from spreading it around to others for the next day or so before his symptoms started. They are worth doing!
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Big picture, the UK are in good shape, thanks to the vaccine rollout. Cases are low for pretty much the whole country, there were good results released today on both vaccines reducing transmission, all the top 4 priority groups should have completed their full course next week. We had a little test of the system with opening the schools in March, and nothing bad happened, and now cases are at an even lower level.

There will still be isolated outbreaks, like the one in your offices, but between vaccinations and the LFTs, more of those chains of transmission should be broken.
 
Pexbo said:
Humans will never understand exponential growth. We don’t have the capacity for it. The best we can do is learn it as a fact and accept it’s true but you never get your head around it.

My favourites:

If you put a grain of rice on a chess board square, then two on the square next to it, then four next to that and so on. By the time you reach the last square there isn’t enough grains of rice on earth.


If you fold a piece of paper in half 103 times it will be thicker than the observable universe.
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I was familiar with the first, because it is from a fable, but the latter has blown my mind.

The other side of the coin though is exponential growth can’t continue for long because of the finite resources, in this case, the hosts.
 
golden_blunder said:
That article is horrific. No wonder Boris cancelled.
Systemic failure from the politicians.
also doesn’t anyone watch world News? They had 1 wave. Didn’t they think there would be more?
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Mainly we (re)elected a right wing clown whose first priority is always to preserve his own image.

Did you know fact: the prime minister of India has now been in the position for 7 years, yet hasn't addressed a SINGLE press conference.
 
Very creative...

ec35d90a-daf6-4c63-81ff-0a020c4dc940.gif
 
lynchie said:
Apparently cremating more people than are dying.

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Based on reports in Indian media too, it appears that it's a few states (MP, UP, Gujarat - all have cities in your graphs) which are undercounting. This doesn't seem to be happening in the other states, at least not to this extent. There are reports from UP that they are also deliberately sending false negative PCR results.
If we get reliable excessive mortality data, only then we'll know what's been happening.
 
MDFC Manager said:
Mainly we (re)elected a right wing clown whose first priority is always to preserve his own image.

Did you know fact: the prime minister of India has now been in the position for 7 years, yet hasn't addressed a SINGLE press conference.
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Wow!
do you think he will get voted out in the next one after this?
 
golden_blunder said:
Wow!
do you think he will get voted out in the next one after this?
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Nope. He's got very powerful backers which means the entire Indian media is just pure propaganda and whenever he's under any kind of pressure a whole host Indian celebrities openly come out and endorse him.
 
Skills said:
Nope. He's got very powerful backers which means the entire Indian media is just pure propaganda and whenever he's under any kind of pressure a whole host Indian celebrities openly come out and endorse him.
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That’s a depressing thought but let’s see, there’s been a lot of death. It would take someone very special to back that!
 
golden_blunder said:
That’s a depressing thought but let’s see, there’s been a lot of death. It would take someone very special to back that!
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The only way that all those covid related deaths, as well as the ineptitude during the early stages of the pandemic is for a proper investigation to be held.
And Boris is using every trick to delay that, in the hope that people will much less interested if and when it happens.
 
Buster15 said:
The only way that all those covid related deaths, as well as the ineptitude during the early stages of the pandemic is for a proper investigation to be held.
And Boris is using every trick to delay that, in the hope that people will much less interested if and when it happens.
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Was talking about the Indian PM whom Boris seems competent compared too but you’re right too
 
golden_blunder said:
Im reading that there was still religious festivals, weddings, cricket etc, why??
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That's not it. Last year, PM raised $1.3B from citizens as a fund to fight with the pandemic by the name of PM Cares fund. In the last 4-5 months of last year, when we started bringing the curve down, he laid the foundation stone of Ram temple (which was his biggest manifesto point this election), laid foundation stone of Central Vista (we're spending $2.7B on reconstructing the parliament for some reason). He also passed a pretty controversial Farm law that led to massive protests in the country.

All this was being done in the middle of a pandemic when you'd expect the PM to be hands-on on dealing with the crisis and putting all other things like these on the back burner. In late January, when our case count was <20k, PM declared India's victory over pandemic in an address to World Economic Forum. We started exporting vaccines to countries that weren't in immediate need to get brownie points, we exported Oxygen as well for some weird reason.

And then we started all this. Also, somewhere in the middle, our Health minister went to a Press conference and endorsed an Ayurvedic medicine created by a popular godman as a cure for Corona, without any scientific backing
 
anant said:
That's not it. Last year, PM raised $1.3B from citizens as a fund to fight with the pandemic by the name of PM Cares fund. In the last 4-5 months of last year, when we started bringing the curve down, he laid the foundation stone of Ram temple (which was his biggest manifesto point this election), laid foundation stone of Central Vista (we're spending $2.7B on reconstructing the parliament for some reason). He also passed a pretty controversial Farm law that led to massive protests in the country.

All this was being done in the middle of a pandemic when you'd expect the PM to be hands-on on dealing with the crisis and putting all other things like these on the back burner. In late January, when our case count was <20k, PM declared India's victory over pandemic in an address to World Economic Forum. We started exporting vaccines to countries that weren't in immediate need to get brownie points, we exported Oxygen as well for some weird reason.

And then we started all this. Also, somewhere in the middle, our Health minister went to a Press conference and endorsed an Ayurvedic medicine created by a popular godman as a cure for Corona, without any scientific backing
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Christ. It just seems completely uncontrolled looking in from the outside. It’s heartbreaking to watch
 
golden_blunder said:
Wow!
do you think he will get voted out in the next one after this?
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Imagine trump but worse with less transparency and nearly the entire mainstream media peddling propaganda like fox news and having a horde of blind supporters like qanon but they're like 1/3rd of the population. Every problem is blamed on minorities, leftists, liberals, communists and even the capitalist west. Infact, his supporters use 'liberal' and 'secular' as cuss words.

He can lie with a straight face, he claimed on national tv that he was one of the first persons to take a photograph with a digital camera in 1987 and sent it across the country instantly via email. This was before the digital camera was even on the shelves and many years before email/internet were available in India. Despite his lie being evident he hasn't back tracked on it because he knows his supporters don't care. It's a cult.

Basically he could shoot people on live tv and still not lose support from his followers.
 
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Is the situation in India something that's confined to that nation, or is it a sign of things to come for the rest of the world?
 
Dante said:
Is the situation in India something that's confined to that nation, or is it a sign of things to come for the rest of the world?
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Our government committed a series of blunders, claimed Covid was over and refused to prepare for the inevitable second wave to reach this point. This didn't happen overnight.

Depends on the relationship between the various variants floating around and the vaccines. We are supposed to start vaccinations for everyone over 18 from 1st May. In a couple of months we'll find out I guess.
 
Dante said:
Is the situation in India something that's confined to that nation, or is it a sign of things to come for the rest of the world?
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Good qn and I suspect it’ll happen all over. Eventually social restrictions become untenable and there aren’t enough vaccines to go around.
 
Dante said:
Is the situation in India something that's confined to that nation, or is it a sign of things to come for the rest of the world?
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It's perhaps a sign that some of the surprising good news stories of last year couldn't last. We all had lots of theories about past exposure to other diseases or weather conditions or cultural differences and some of them just haven't worked out.

The world needs the vaccines and I think we'll see them arriving everywhere before the end of the year. Too late for a lot of people, but still the only route out that will work for most of the world.
 
Suv666 said:
Our government committed a series of blunders, claimed Covid was over and refused to prepare for the inevitable second wave to reach this point. This didn't happen overnight.

Depends on the relationship between the various variants floating around and the vaccines. We are supposed to start vaccinations for everyone over 18 from 1st May. In a couple of months we'll find out I guess.
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zing said:
Good qn and I suspect it’ll happen all over. Eventually social restrictions become untenable and there aren’t enough vaccines to go around.
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jojojo said:
It's perhaps a sign that some of the surprising good news stories of last year couldn't last. We all had lots of theories about past exposure to other diseases or weather conditions or cultural differences and some of them just haven't worked out.

The world needs the vaccines and I think we'll see them arriving everywhere before the end of the year. Too late for a lot of people, but still the only route out that will work for most of the world.
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Thanks, all.

So by the sounds of it, India is indeed experiencing something slightly different from the rest of the world. But government mismanagement is transforming an otherwise solvable problem into an outright crisis.

Hopefully other nations will have learned something from this. But I'm worried that the rest developing world could fall victim to the same thing through no fault of their own.
 
zing said:
Good qn and I suspect it’ll happen all over. Eventually social restrictions become untenable and there aren’t enough vaccines to go around.
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Well thats BS to be honest and a quite over dramatic.

For a start there isnt 1.3 billion people in every country in the world. Indian cities are packed with people living on the poverty line.
I would suggest that unfortunately the poorer countries might suffer much more than more developed/western countries.
 
McGrathsipan said:
Well thats BS to be honest and a quite over dramatic.

For a start there isnt 1.3 billion people in every country in the world. Indian cities are packed with people living on the poverty line.
I would suggest that unfortunately the poorer countries might suffer much more than more developed/western countries.
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Your reaction is over dramatic. I’m talking about the developing world - I didn’t clarify that but assumed the comment about vaccines conveyed what I meant.
 
zing said:
Your reaction is over dramatic. I’m talking about the developing world - I didn’t clarify that but assumed the comment about vaccines conveyed what I meant.
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Assumption left your post looking like it did.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Exponential growth is a hard thing to get your head around. It means when things go wrong they go wrong fast. That’s why the exit from lockdown needs to be slow and careful. Only takes a few superspreader events to put the whole country deeply in the shit.
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I have a worry that Italy will suffer this. They are gambling heavily to try to save their summer. I understand why but it seems risky.
 
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