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

dwd said:
Recoveries and those in a serious/critical condition. Just seems like we aren't bothering releasing that information like other countries are, unless I'm missing something?
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We've got a very low "recovery" rate - I think partly because we aren't retesting for a series of three covid negative results and that was the early "recovered" standard. That number hasn't been updated in the public stats since the 22nd. But yeah, I think we're slow giving hospital admissions/discharges and critical/ICU numbers. That was (according to someone I spoke to a couple of weeks ago) supposed to be part of a bigger public release of information that included deaths, ages, locations and comorbidities etc - but the big package fell foul of data protection.

I agree, it shouldn't have taken them this long to release raw total hospital data though - none of that would be personally identifiable.
 
Trump lobs Boris under the bus:

Guardian said:
The US president, Donald Trump, has said the UK’s early approach to tackling the coronavirus outbreak would have been “very catastrophic” if Boris Johnson had not decided to change tack.

Trump suggested the prime minister had looked to “ride out” the virus in an approach that would have caused “a lot of death”.

The criticism appeared to be a reference to the UK government initially following a plan for so-called “herd immunity”.
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Regulus Arcturus Black said:
My argument has only ever been that if you can keep your health service going, whilst NOT locking down then surely that’s the best solution?
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Of course it is. But how can you guarantee that? All evidence points in the opposite direction, that it's impossible.

I think there may be some merit to the idea that Sweden's "natural" social distance is helpful, but I think its being completed wasted.
That "natural" social distancing is nowhere near to the artificial social distancing that has been imposed in other countries.
 
Arruda said:
Of course it is. But how can you guarantee that? All evidence points in the opposite direction.
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No, the evidence here doesn’t.. and when/if it does, stricter measures will no doubt be brought in.

This isn’t me saying about the evidence by the way, I have absolutely no idea about this stuff, I’m just repeating what the experts here say every single day in the press conference.

Right now it’s still stable and we are building up, we’re fortunate unlike Italy and Spain that we (I mean everywhere else in Europe here) are way ahead due to what happened there. Tonnes of recruitment, thousands of recently retired staff brought back, SAS Cabin crew being trained as hospital helpers, ICU units added daily, massive field hospitals already built etc etc etc.
 
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SteveJ said:
No, mate - I live in one of the area's more boring towns.
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Shame, they were one of the few bright spots in the news of the last couple of days.
 
jojojo said:
We've got a very low "recovery" rate - I think partly because we aren't retesting for a series of three covid negative results and that was the early "recovered" standard. That number hasn't been updated in the public stats since the 22nd. But yeah, I think we're slow giving hospital admissions/discharges and critical/ICU numbers. That was (according to someone I spoke to a couple of weeks ago) supposed to be part of a bigger public release of information that included deaths, ages, locations and comorbidities etc - but the big package fell foul of data protection.

I agree, it shouldn't have taken them this long to release raw total hospital data though - none of that would be personally identifiable.
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Recoveries are an odd one as there is no standard definition of what a recovery is. Considering the size of the outbreak and the timeline, China should have the most, followed by Italy and Iran. I'm not sure how Spain and Germany are up there above everybody bar China considering they both only really got going 2 weeks ago. Are they just desperate to clear people out of the hospitals?
 
marktan said:
4.5k cases from 9k tests yesterday. We must have one of the highest positive cases to tests ratios in the world. We really need to step up testing. There's clearly way to many people who have it, but don't get tested and then carry on with their lives passing it onto others.

The US has passed a million tests in like 3 weeks whilst we're still hovering 10k tests a day.
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Feck, that’s an insane ratio, we have been doing between 1.5-2k tests per day for a week or so here in Lithuania which on average resulted in 30-40 new cases.
 
Some bad numbers for UK.

Italy/Spain numbers didn't feel too far away once we crossed 1k, which was just 4 days ago.

Remdesivir is being trialed in the UK today, hopefully some good can come out of it.
 
11101 said:
Recoveries are an odd one as there is no standard definition of what a recovery is. Considering the size of the outbreak and the timeline, China should have the most, followed by Italy and Iran. I'm not sure how Spain and Germany are up there above everybody bar China considering they both only really got going 2 weeks ago. Are they just desperate to clear people out of the hospitals?
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There's no official number for recovered patients in Germany, most parts of the country don't track it all. The about 16000 recovered is just a vague estimation done by the Robert-Koch-Institut and compleltely meaningless. I doubt it's much different in other countries. The importance of that stat will change and will become a huge part once we start loosening the restrictions, but for now better ignore it.

I hope we'll start testing a representative sample of the people in heavier affected cities soon, both for the active virus and for antibodiest. That would give us an idea of how quickly communities/regions actually develop herd immunity and what percentage you could count as recovered. That would tell us a lot more than what we know now. As far as I know they try to do this in Ischgl in Austria, so hopefully we know soon more to what degree a hotspot with only 1600 people has already achieved herd immunity.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
No, the evidence here doesn’t.. and when/if it does, stricter measures will no doubt be brought in.

This isn’t me saying about the evidence by the way, I have absolutely no idea about this stuff, I’m just repeating what the experts here say every single day in the press conference.
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You are completely dismissing the chance that your experts are completely wrong in interpreting things, which is probably why your points can come across as a bit strange.

You don't need to be defensive about your opinion, even if you're just conveying someone else's opinion. I'm sure the vast majority in here want to have a serious discussion, and I would question the morals of anyone looking for an "I told you so" angle in something as tragic as this.

The reason I post so much about this is due to concern and utter incomprehension.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
No, the evidence here doesn’t.. and when/if it does, stricter measures will no doubt be brought in.

This isn’t me saying about the evidence by the way, I have absolutely no idea about this stuff, I’m just repeating what the experts here say every single day in the press conference.

Right now it’s still stable and we are building up, we’re fortunate unlike Italy and Spain that we (I mean everywhere else in Europe here) are way ahead due to what happened there. Tonnes of recruitment, thousands of recently retired staff brought back, SAS Cabin crew being trained as hospital helpers, ICU units added daily, massive field hospitals already built etc etc etc.
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The capacity in Stockhom isn't exactly promising, and It's somewhat funny that Anders Tegnell, a few days earlier, is happy to confirm that the numbers are looking good, only for him to explain today, after a large increase in number of deaths, that the new numbers aren't bad because they are numbers for the entire week that they didn't have earlier due to the workload.. He's essentially saying that they don't have an overview of the situation, so it'll be interesting to see the numbers on friday..

Your major outbreak so far is in Stockholm, which isn't promising news either given that you're looking for quick herd immunity, and you've already hit 6 times as many dead as in Norway while you have about 4 times as many in critical condition.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
Is there any evidence for that anywhere though Pogue?
I mean, we’re beefing up hospitals and buikding massive field hospitals every single day, not just chilling around doing ziltch and hoping it’ll be fine.
Will locking down now help Ireland to build more ICU units and field hospitals than Sweden? I don’t think so.
Will locking down now for four weeks stop Ireland getting the rate infection after lockdown is over, once again I don’t think so.
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I don’t know why you keep dancing round the point here. Sweden’s approach will only be proved wrong or right in another two or three weeks time. All the opinions coming out of all the countries whose epidemic is much more advanced than Sweden’s is that they profoundly regret not shutting down sooner. Time will tell if Sweden has some unique traits that will allow it to take a different approach, without enduring the same tragedy as Italy or Spain.

Anyway, your mind is obviously made up. A couple of weeks back you were telling everyone that stopping Premier League football would be an over-reaction! If the appalling death rate coming out of the Uk hasn’t convinced you that your opinion on this pandemic might occasionally be wide of the mark then nothing I can say will convince you either.
 
This virus is deadly enough to kill millions of people while driving most others completely crazy due to isolation, losing jobs and not having enough money. Or in general to completely feck up the rest of the world.

In that morbid sense, it is pretty much perfectly "designed". I just hope at this point that warm whether will help.
 
We knew this already.

Jim Beam said:
This virus is deadly enough to kill millions of people while driving most others completely crazy due to isolation, losing jobs and not having enough money. Or in general to completely feck up the rest of the world.

In that morbid sense, it is pretty much perfectly "designed". I just hope at this point that warm whether will help.
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I don't see how it will. Most cases are spread by people touching their face after touching surfaces that have been exposed.
Its 30+ degrees in Nigeria and it's spreading rapidly. Cases are doing every fee days and there has been feck all testing.
 
Leroy The Red said:
Yeah like I said in the other thread...

Not sure why you’re talking about the government. Its clear I’ve been referencing the general population. You made out as if you were ahead of things and were criticising people for ‘not taking it seriously’ and telling me to listen to Charlie Austin when literally you yourself only took a ‘serious’ stance at the start of the month, which is completely fine btw. I just don’t really understand why you’ve taken this whole Gandalf the wise stance.
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That's just not what happened. You brought my personal habits into it and I corrected you. I've also noticed a stark difference in how this has been handled overall in the UK compared to other places and it has made me sad, and the figures today highlight the extent of the tragedy, specifically as it is unfolding in the UK. The government needs to take accountability and we all need to take personal accountability too. Government can only do so much.
 
vodrake said:
The "special relationship" is the first thing to go when you've got a whole heap of deflecting blame from yourself to do
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RedSky said:
It's cool, we've got lots of friends in the EU to fall back on...
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IMHO there will be a lot of fallout between nations once this is over. Not just the USA and the U.K. but within the EU which has hardly covered itself in glory with regards to cooperation particularly in the early days. Then there is China which I don’t believe the world will easily forgive. I know we live in a globalized world but the economic cost to the world that this will cause will be far greater than if no country ever traded with China. And on a truely personal note.....bugger Hauwei having any sort of input into the U.K. 5G network.
 
Regulus Arcturus Black said:
And unless you want this to keep coming back with a bang, you surely need measures that the majority of the population can keep up for months on end. If you can keep schools and as many businesses as possible open whilst social distancing and the other measures are in place, whilst not overwhelming the health service, surely that has to be your goal? It’s something you can keep up for 10 months if need be.
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Yep. Though I do think a factor here as that our government has run down the health service so much that it literally couldn't cope before corona virus was even a thing. So it seems as much about buying time to get more facilities and equipment as anything else...but people should be asking questions as to why it was allowed to get into such a mess as to force us into this position, rather than worrying about what other countries are doing.

I think that will happen after this all eases off and that's when there'll be the big danger of unrest and even full on rioting. The fallout out from this here will be pretty big and in large part it's been manifactured by the lack of responsibility from the government in looking after people, instead of just looking after money and playing stupid political games with everyone's future.

There's only so long they will be able to hide something like that. Especially when they've had to magic up hundreds of billions of pounds of the money they kept saying they didn't have to carry out their own lockdown policies. At the moment the fear and shock factor from the virus will keep people mostly to sticking to rules and concentrating on looking after themselves and loved ones. Once this starts to ease of and people have time to assess the damage and their situation, and actually ask questions, there is potentially going to be a very big problem.
 
Sandikan said:
This is a country that covered up both the initial outbreak, and the severity of it. They clamped down on that doctor who attempted to whistleblow. This is a country who heavily control what goes out, no facebook etc.

Other countries have their hands full trying to sort out their own emergencies right now, but I dare say in due course there will be major accusations made , and not just from the likes of Trump.
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Ian Duncan Smith did a big one today. Basically saying after the crisis is over the west needs to rethink our relatiomship with China completely
 
11101 said:
Recoveries are an odd one as there is no standard definition of what a recovery is. Considering the size of the outbreak and the timeline, China should have the most, followed by Italy and Iran. I'm not sure how Spain and Germany are up there above everybody bar China considering they both only really got going 2 weeks ago. Are they just desperate to clear people out of the hospitals?
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I think you get better recovery rates by diagnosing/following up milder cases in the community. The more severe cases seem to take several weeks to recover so countries that mainly focussed on hospital testing (Italy then, Uk now) will have very low recovery rates for the first few weeks of their epidemic.
 
redshaw said:
Some bad numbers for UK.

Italy/Spain numbers didn't feel too far away once we crossed 1k, which was just 4 days ago.

Remdesivir is being trialed in the UK today, hopefully some good can come out of it.
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It is so crucial this works in the short term at least. There so many lives on the line is ridiculous. Good to see UK had joined the trial.
 
SteveJ said:
Trump lobs Boris under the bus:
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It's all so surreal. American conservatives were the ones preaching how the whole thing was just a political scam and now they are pointing fingers at what everyone else has been doing, people who at their worst probably did and cared 10 times as much about this crisis. I don't know how I would deal with that if I was living there. That's a level of delusion and hypocrisy where I would probably just draw a line and say that I refuse to socialize with such scum. But then it's half the country, so you have to?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s tragic on a global scale that two countries we would traditionally look towards for leadership and scientific excellence (UK and US) both seem to have dropped the ball here. The whole world will pay the price.
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Well said, fully agree. This sort of reflects the dangers of populism and a culture that rejects "experts".

Sweet Square said:
Editor of the lancet last week on the BBC, summed it up well.

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Ugh. It's so angering. I have vulnerable family and friends in the UK and I feel so helpless. They are at risk, as are the frontline staff at hospitals, as the video states harrowingly.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
It’s tragic on a global scale that two countries we would traditionally look towards for leadership and scientific excellence (UK and US) both seem to have dropped the ball here. The whole world will pay the price.
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“people are tired of experts”
 
TheGame said:
Apparently Alok Sharma is on today.
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He's just said this:
"Of those hospitalised in the UK, 2,352 have died. The youngest was just 13 years old. This is more tragic evidence that this virus does not discriminate. This pandemic is the biggest threat this country has faced in decades."
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Gambit said:
Ian Duncan Smith did a big one today. Basically saying after the crisis is over the west needs to rethink our relatiomship with China completely
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probably true... somebody is going to have to bail our government out and buy their bonds... better start bigging up the huawai 5G and letting China pick what infrastructure they want to build for the UK.
 
Adisa said:
I don't see how it will. Most cases are spread by people touching their face after touching surfaces that have been exposed.
Its 30+ degrees in Nigeria and it's spreading rapidly. Cases are doing every fee days and there has been feck all testing.
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Was out of touch recently (pulled back to work, actually reassigned to Civil protection service which works and coordinates with the police in cases of major accidents and catastrophes in my country; or times like this), so didn't even look at the world wide figures so much the last few days. Nigeria is the one that gave me that hope in the 1st place as the numbers weren't so big from the start.

Looking it even now it is at 156 cases and 1st one was on February 27th. Now, I know they aren't testing, so not taking that number as relevant at all. Number of deaths is at 2 which still isn't nearly as dramatic like the rest of the world. But, I see now it is actually becoming worse in the last few days which would mean you are probably right. That would be a really bad/awful news.
 
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