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

Italy is outlining today how to start coming out of lockdown from 4 May:

- manufacturing will open first, followed by construction, then offices, all with big restrictions. bars and restaurants are considered highest risk and no chance of opening them any time soon.

- increasing public transport services so distance can be kept between people, and everybody needs to have their temperature scanned before boarding a bus or a train.

- outdoor exercise to be allowed. You will need to carry a certificate with the time you left home on it.

- elderly to stay with the same restrictions as before.

- any hotspots will be designated as red zones and totally closed off with nobody able to enter/leave.


There was also a nice story coming out of Ferrari who i wouldn't necessarily think of as a generous company - the board of directors have given up their entire salary for the rest of the year in order to pay for food packages and teaching equipment for the local town.
 
11101 said:
There was also a nice story coming out of Ferrari who i wouldn't necessarily think of as a generous company - the board of directors have given up their entire salary for the rest of the year in order to pay for food packages and teaching equipment for the local town.
Click to expand...


I think their annual F1 budget is 400 million so they can afford it.
 
sullydnl said:
I note that a country like Belgium which locked down early has more deaths than Sweden but I also note that Belgium include nursing home and non-hospital deaths in their figures, with hospital deaths making up less than half their total, so I'm not sure what the figures in Sweden represent exactly.
Click to expand...

168 deaths yesterday in Belgium, 62 died in the hospital, all of them confirmed corona cases. 103 people died in nursing homes, of which 3 percent confirmed cases and the other 97 percent suspected cases.

So this explains the above. it doesn't look good when Belgium is being compared to the rest of the world though. All countries should at least have the same way of counting the deceased.
 
onemanarmy said:
So this explains the above. it doesn't look good when Belgium is being compared to the rest of the world though. All countries should at least have the same way of counting the deceased.
Click to expand...

Fair play to Belgium for not downplaying anything. While there surely are countries that downplay the numbers for political reasons, I think we just have to accept that some countries/regions/cities, like Northern Italy and Madrid, have been completely overwhelmed and can't keep track. The numbers will surely be adjusted by statisticians when everything has calmed down. The annual influenza deaths, for example, are usually not counted specifically, but estimated after the fact.
 
massi83 said:
Why such a negative response?
Click to expand...

Just seemed like you were nit-picking. 50%, 40%, whatever. Sweden has an unusually high proportion of single person households, which gives their gamble a better chance of paying off than other countries. That’s the point I was making.

I still think their strategy is based on wild assumptions based on very little evidence (see tweet below) but their demographics might save them from disaster.



The 0.1% mortality/50% already infected stats seem to have been plucked out of thin air and his claim that the flattening of the curves we’re seeing is down to running out of vulnerable peope left to infect is ludicrous. Even the grimmest death rates, anywhere in the world, would represent only a small % of the total pool of vulnerable people in that country.
 
Last edited:
onemanarmy said:
168 deaths yesterday in Belgium, 62 died in the hospital, all of them confirmed corona cases. 103 people died in nursing homes, of which 3 percent confirmed cases and the other 97 percent suspected cases.

So this explains the above. it doesn't look good when Belgium is being compared to the rest of the world though. All countries should at least have the same way of counting the deceased.
Click to expand...

It's impossible in some places but will all be accounted for once things settle down.

Take Lombardy as possibly the hardest hit place in Europe - they have published total mortality data irrespective of cause. They can't add these to official figures yet but data like this will be pored over by statisticians later on:

https://public.flourish.studio/visu...e=showcase&utm_campaign=visualisation/1870425

In places like Bergamo there have been more than 4 times as many deaths as normal and only a fraction are attributed to Covid. When they're having to ship them out overnight in Army trucks because they have no more space to keep them, who dies of what slips down the priority list.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Just seemed like you were nit-picking. 50%, 40%, whatever. Sweden has an unusually high proportion of single person households, which gives their gamble a better chance of paying off than other countries. That’s the point I was making.

I still think their strategy is based on wild assumptions based on very little evidence (see tweet below) but their demographics might save them from disaster.



The 0.1% mortality/50% already infected stats seem to have been plucked out of thin air and his claim that the flattening of the curves we’re seeing is down to there not being enough vulnerable peope left to infect is ludicrous. Even the grimmest death rates, anywhere in the world, would represent only a small % of the total pool of vulnerable people in that country.
Click to expand...

Wasn't my intention. UK seems to be 29,5%.
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...019-there-were-82-million-people-living-alone
 
Maticmaker said:
The only way around it is a lock-in...at the pub!
Click to expand...


I mean, pubs are pretty low down the pecking order in terms of importance and priority I know (and I love a drink), but if this is true then I think we can safely say that we'll possibly lose pubs for good. As in, the vast majority of them. And when this is all over, starting up a pub will be seen as a dangerous proposition because 'something like this could happen again' and it will all have been for nothing.
 
11101 said:
Italy is outlining today how to start coming out of lockdown from 4 May:

- manufacturing will open first, followed by construction, then offices, all with big restrictions. bars and restaurants are considered highest risk and no chance of opening them any time soon.

- increasing public transport services so distance can be kept between people, and everybody needs to have their temperature scanned before boarding a bus or a train.

- outdoor exercise to be allowed. You will need to carry a certificate with the time you left home on it.

- elderly to stay with the same restrictions as before.

- any hotspots will be designated as red zones and totally closed off with nobody able to enter/leave.


There was also a nice story coming out of Ferrari who i wouldn't necessarily think of as a generous company - the board of directors have given up their entire salary for the rest of the year in order to pay for food packages and teaching equipment for the local town.
Click to expand...
Sounds a good plan, but struggling to see how that would be viable in London with the tube. The queues would be huge and it would be risky, as a lot of the stations are built in places that can't accommodate massive two metre spaced queues, eg on major roads etc...Would need to be a massively staggered return to work over weeks potentially, maybe with the young and healthy first, then those in their 40s, 50s, 60s etc...No quick way out of this I can see.
 
Jippy said:
Sounds a good plan, but struggling to see how that would be viable in London with the tube. The queues would be huge and it would be risky, as a lot of the stations are built in places that can't accommodate massive two metre spaced queues, eg on major roads etc...Would need to be a massively staggered return to work over weeks potentially, maybe with the young and healthy first, then those in their 40s, 50s, 60s etc...No quick way out of this I can see.
Click to expand...

One of the rules is to have staggered shift patterns so people are not all commuting together, and the licenses required to open will mean a lot of companies will have to keep people at home. It won't be back to normal by any means.

Italy is getting a good idea of where and how the virus transmits by now. Manufacturing, construction and real estate are considered low risk. Commerce, sport and land travel are medium risk. Air travel and health services are high risk.
 
Jippy said:
Sounds a good plan, but struggling to see how that would be viable in London with the tube. The queues would be huge and it would be risky, as a lot of the stations are built in places that can't accommodate massive two metre spaced queues, eg on major roads etc...Would need to be a massively staggered return to work over weeks potentially, maybe with the young and healthy first, then those in their 40s, 50s, 60s etc...No quick way out of this I can see.
Click to expand...

Yeah I'd imagine so. I don't see why employers can't take the intiative here and start changing their working hours. What I mean is, it's not written in stone that every officer worker needs to be in the office from 9am-5pm. Why can't they do the exact same job from 11am-7pm instead? 10am-6pm? If employers started to be a bit more flexible it could mean less people cramming onto certain tubes/trains/buses. My employer is already talking about doing this once we're allowed to return to the workplace - staggering people's hours so that 50% of the office is always empty, coming to an agreement with each individual about what hours would work best for them, are there any specific trains/buses that make them nervous due to how busy they are etc.


EDIT - 1101 above me just said the same thing.
 
Massive Spanner said:
Ugh, I'd murder a pint of Guinness right now. Hopefully they'll be allowed open in some capacity over the summer. limited numbers, beer gardens etc.
Click to expand...

I guess the problem is that even if you have limited numbers social distancing will definitely go out the window a few pints in. More so than restaurants, which would maybe have a better chance of opening.

Plus given the queues for shops, can you imagine the queues to get in to limited capacity pubs on a Saturday?
 
Massive Spanner said:
Ugh, I'd murder a pint of Guinness right now. Hopefully they'll be allowed open in some capacity over the summer. limited numbers, beer gardens etc.
Click to expand...

I doubt it's just a question of capacity and even that might be an insurmountable issue, considering I just read that a German state demands people to keep a 50 meter distance before eating ice cream. Think about how pubs clean their glasses, they basically just give them a quick dunk in the water, everything is basically served in open containers and alcohol makes people careless and stupid. I think the best you can hope for is bottled beer.
 
Jippy said:
Sounds a good plan, but struggling to see how that would be viable in London with the tube. The queues would be huge and it would be risky, as a lot of the stations are built in places that can't accommodate massive two metre spaced queues, eg on major roads etc...Would need to be a massively staggered return to work over weeks potentially, maybe with the young and healthy first, then those in their 40s, 50s, 60s etc...No quick way out of this I can see.
Click to expand...
11101 said:
One of the rules is to have staggered shift patterns so people are not all commuting together, and the licenses required to open will mean a lot of companies will have to keep people at home. It won't be back to normal by any means.
Click to expand...

I don’t think anyone who’s been able to do their job from home should - or will be allowed to - return to their office again when current lockdown is eased. And that will likely be the status quo for the next year or two.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
I mean, pubs are pretty low down the pecking order in terms of importance and priority I know (and I love a drink), but if this is true then I think we can safely say that we'll possibly lose pubs for good. As in, the vast majority of them. And when this is all over, starting up a pub will be seen as a dangerous proposition because 'something like this could happen again' and it will all have been for nothing.
Click to expand...
Time heals, people forget. We're social creatures. It's not like humanity stopped socialising after the plagues or the Spanish flu.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
I mean, pubs are pretty low down the pecking order in terms of importance and priority I know (and I love a drink), but if this is true then I think we can safely say that we'll possibly lose pubs for good. As in, the vast majority of them. And when this is all over, starting up a pub will be seen as a dangerous proposition because 'something like this could happen again' and it will all have been for nothing.
Click to expand...

Its a sizable fraction of the economy though if you consider all mass gatherings, restaurants and events.

What is a football club worth if you can't ever play in front of a crowd?
 
sullydnl said:
I guess the problem is that even if you have limited numbers social distancing will definitely go out the window a few pints in. More so than restaurants, which would maybe have a better chance of opening.

Plus given the queues for shops, can you imagine the queues to get in to limited capacity pubs on a Saturday?
Click to expand...
Yeah but ... My Guinness :(
 
sullydnl said:
I guess the problem is that even if you have limited numbers social distancing will definitely go out the window a few pints in. More so than restaurants, which would maybe have a better chance of opening.

Plus given the queues for shops, can you imagine the queues to get in to limited capacity pubs on a Saturday?
Click to expand...
I guess they could just set up a system on their website where you can reserve your slot. Or you just phone in. Businesses will have to adapt if they're going to survive.

Serving alcohol to drunk people is technically supposed to be illegal anyway, at least where I live.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
I mean, pubs are pretty low down the pecking order in terms of importance and priority I know (and I love a drink), but if this is true then I think we can safely say that we'll possibly lose pubs for good. As in, the vast majority of them. And when this is all over, starting up a pub will be seen as a dangerous proposition because 'something like this could happen again' and it will all have been for nothing.
Click to expand...

There will be astroturf movements starting in the UK soon about opening up the country, targeted at the people who voted for Brexit. Similar to the "grassroot" AKA astroturf movement going on in USA now aimed at the conservatives/Trump supporters.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I don’t think anyone who’s been able to do their job from home should - or will be allowed to - return to their office again when current lockdown is eased. And that will likely be the status quo for the next year or two.
Click to expand...


We are going to be to an extent, once lockdown ends. I work for a university, WFH now of course.

It's going to be a phased return, by all accounts. So 2 days a week in the office, with people taking it in turns each week so only half the team is in the office at one time and can socially distance. I think one of the main things is that some of my colleagues haven't been so fortunate and have been having to go to work daily in this current climate - there's obviously some feeling that this is not a fair situation, so the sooner the university can try levelling the play field a little, they're going to try. I think if you're considered at risk (maybe one of my team), you won't be expected to go in. I'll be one of the first expected to return to the office part-time (30s, good health, no children/family/childcare issues).
 
Jippy said:
Sounds a good plan, but struggling to see how that would be viable in London with the tube. The queues would be huge and it would be risky, as a lot of the stations are built in places that can't accommodate massive two metre spaced queues, eg on major roads etc...Would need to be a massively staggered return to work over weeks potentially, maybe with the young and healthy first, then those in their 40s, 50s, 60s etc...No quick way out of this I can see.
Click to expand...

They can do male female only days.

That make sure and even half alternately going out.

Kinda like the odds even plate number only
 
do.ob said:
I doubt it's just a question of capacity and even that might be an insurmountable issue, considering I just read that a German state demands people to keep a 50 meter distance before eating ice cream. Think about how pubs clean their glasses, they basically just give them a quick dunk in the water, everything is basically served in open containers and alcohol makes people careless and stupid. I think the best you can hope for is bottled beer.
Click to expand...

The beer gardens are open here, though. And they sell draught beer. You just cannot sit down or consume it within the premises.
 
11101 said:
One of the rules is to have staggered shift patterns so people are not all commuting together, and the licenses required to open will mean a lot of companies will have to keep people at home. It won't be back to normal by any means.

Italy is getting a good idea of where and how the virus transmits by now. Manufacturing, construction and real estate are considered low risk. Commerce, sport and land travel are medium risk. Air travel and health services are high risk.
Click to expand...
Staggered shift patterns makes sense, but obviously easier for some businesses to implement than others. I guess one obvious downside is that a lot of older, higher risk people are the business owners and senior managers of companies, who economically it is more important to have back in the business.

Sky1981 said:
They can do male female only days.

That make sure and even half alternately going out.

Kinda like the odds even plate number only
Click to expand...
Oh god that sounds awful.
 
massi83 said:
Happy to have a look, if you provide a link :)
Click to expand...

You can get all of the information yourself. Loads of people are churning out content on it.

Sweden is an outlier for a few reasons that may impact approach.

- High numbers of single person dwellings
- 85% of Swedish folks live in villages of 200 people or cities. Large towns don’t seem to be a thing the way they are in most European spots.
- 6 out of ten Swedes do not live in a Urban system (50,000+ people)

This is 2018 Swedish Census data. Nobody is making stuff up, but evidently some values will shift.

Edit : BBC article links to figures of over 50%

Link
 
Last edited:
Jippy said:
Staggered shift patterns makes sense, but obviously easier for some businesses to implement than others. I guess one obvious downside is that a lot of older, higher risk people are the business owners and senior managers of companies, who economically it is more important to have back in the business.


Oh god that sounds awful.
Click to expand...

The question a lot of businesses need to ask - how many people do they really need on site? I mean, if there are people who are just as effective WFH - why not just let them continue? And then for everyone else - check how frequently everyone else needs to be in?
 
I'm sure some have thought about this, but there is a chance that in a few decades people might finally understand why 20% develop serious symptoms. If it isn't viral load, then it might be linked to a myriad possibilities.

Maybe if enough analysis is done on those who are asymptomatic, a thread might be found that links all those people. What does 80% of the population eat? Or drink? Or do? It could be logical in hindsight or it could be downright crazy! I wonder...
 
11101 said:
Italy is outlining today how to start coming out of lockdown from 4 May:

- increasing public transport services so distance can be kept between people, and everybody needs to have their temperature scanned before boarding a bus or a train.
Click to expand...

Imagine that in the UK? My other half gets a train from Bridgend to Cardiff 6 days a week (well, when she was working) and half the times the trains are randomly cancelled on short notice, with them putting two buses on to replace a train full of people commuting from a small town to the capital, missing smaller stations on the way.

The infrastructure in the UK is a joke, can't see the UK coming up with anything remotely good enough to start shuttling people to work from smaller towns to major cities.
 
Sweden is an interesting one for sure. Being Danish I like to compare it to here where we closed a lot of stuff down fairly early.
Sweden has carried out more than 20k tests less than Denmark but ended up with almost twice as many cases (14385 cases to 7515 cases). That's in a population that's almost twice as big. So they're dipping into a larger pool of people fewer times and getting out a much higher number of positives. If you were testing at random you'd say they have a lot of cases that hasn't been reported yet. (Of course no one's really testing at random though)
They have almost three times as many deaths as Denmark (1540 to 355 deaths), and many more in serious/critical condition (450 to 84). So currently (and this will change) ~10.7 % of the people testing positive end up dying (but then they'll predominantly test people who are quite ill compared to here). In Denmark ~4.7 % of people testing positive pass away.
However, if you look at the amount of cases per capita (keeping in mind they are testing less than half the people we are per capita) it isn't that grim. They have 1424 cases per million people whereas we have 1297 per million. This could be due to them having a population density of 23/km^2 where we have more than five times as many people per km^2 (and of course fewer tests).

So yeah, I think their approach probably hasn't been as bad as it would have been elsewhere (at this point), but they most likely have a lot more cases they aren't aware of compared to here. Although, again, population density might make the relative amount of unreported cases lower than somewhere like Denmark.
 
Shakesey said:
I'm sure some have thought about this, but there is a chance that in a few decades people might finally understand why 20% develop serious symptoms. If it isn't viral load, then it might be linked to a myriad possibilities.

Maybe if enough analysis is done on those who are asymptomatic, a thread might be found that links all those people. What do 80% of the population eat? Or drink? Or do? It could be logical in hindsight or it could be downright crazy! I wonder...
Click to expand...

It could be genetic differences. Have heard about household where one parent gets seriously unwell, the other only minor disease, with a similar pattern in their kids. Which could imply heritability of vulnerability.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
Yeah I'd imagine so. I don't see why employers can't take the intiative here and start changing their working hours. What I mean is, it's not written in stone that every officer worker needs to be in the office from 9am-5pm. Why can't they do the exact same job from 11am-7pm instead? 10am-6pm? If employers started to be a bit more flexible it could mean less people cramming onto certain tubes/trains/buses. My employer is already talking about doing this once we're allowed to return to the workplace - staggering people's hours so that 50% of the office is always empty, coming to an agreement with each individual about what hours would work best for them, are there any specific trains/buses that make them nervous due to how busy they are etc.


EDIT - 1101 above me just said the same thing.
Click to expand...

Whilst I am not a fan, Labour have been promoting a 4 day (or less) week for ages now. In my opinion they can be a bit devil may care with the economy, but in principle, someone somewhere has done the maths and figures that it works. I could see that working, with only one overlap day to severely limit (effectively halve) those commuting. i.e., Half work Mon - half-way through Thursday, the rest, Thursday afternoon til Sunday. Sure that changes the concept of what weekend means, and it could feck over some families if anything like it was adopted, but maybe it's got merit.
 
Maagge said:
Sweden is an interesting one for sure. Being Danish I like to compare it to here where we closed a lot of stuff down fairly early.
Sweden has carried out more than 20k tests less than Denmark but ended up with almost twice as many cases (14385 cases to 7515 cases). That's in a population that's almost twice as big. So they're dipping into a larger pool of people fewer times and getting out a much higher number of positives. If you were testing at random you'd say they have a lot of cases that hasn't been reported yet. (Of course no one's really testing at random though)
They have almost three times as many deaths as Denmark (1540 to 355 deaths), and many more in serious/critical condition (450 to 84). So currently (and this will change) ~10.7 % of the people testing positive end up dying (but then they'll predominantly test people who are quite ill compared to here). In Denmark ~4.7 % of people testing positive pass away.
However, if you look at the amount of cases per capita (keeping in mind they are testing less than half the people we are per capita) it isn't that grim. They have 1424 cases per million people whereas we have 1297 per million. This could be due to them having a population density of 23/km^2 where we have more than five times as many people per km^2 (and of course fewer tests).

So yeah, I think their approach probably hasn't been as bad as it would have been elsewhere (at this point), but they most likely have a lot more cases they aren't aware of compared to here. Although, again, population density might make the relative amount of unreported cases lower than somewhere like Denmark.
Click to expand...

I know I’m repeating myself here but you can’t accurately do per capita comparisons. The epidemic doesn’t instantly spread evenly throughout the entire population of a country so dividing the number of cases by the entire population will make outbreaks look worse in countries with small populations and less bad in more populous countries.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.