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

Pogue Mahone said:
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.
Click to expand...
Oh I know that. I don't think a lot of what I said really hinges on per capita data. It basically makes it look slightly better, but that could essentially be for population density reasons and not because their strategy is great.
 
yumtum said:
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.
Click to expand...


I get the same train, from further up the line. We get it even worse, because if it leaves Cardiff Central more than 20mins late, it doesn't even go beyond Bridgend so everyone who is going to stations all the way up to Maesteg is essentially punted off the train and we have to either wait in Bridgend for 1hr for the next train to come up, or on rare occasions they have had the time/foresight to order a replacement bus to take us the rest of the way.

I've been to third world countries with FAR more reliable train infra structure than the UK, it's an absolute disgrace for apparently one of the world's 'premier' countries.
 
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...

To early to tell, but given the restrictions in social movement in place in Denmark for some time compared to in Sweden with bars and nightclubs open, people living as normal etc, there is some reason to believe that they will have different outcomes.

Denmark will most likely start with the dance for the foreseeable future until a vaccine or effective treatment is in place, having been relatively successful with the hammer. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

Sweden and Tegnell will soon be asked the question about how much a life is worth? I.e keeping the economy rolling for the sake of £££ instead of a lockdown and a proven strategy for saving lives. Given their loose restrictions and non-aggressive testing, the current status or situation in Sweden can only be verified/gauged 2-3 weeks from now.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
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.
Click to expand...
How long does it take to map someone's genetic code? And if it is indeed genetic, can one change someone's DNA? I guess not. I know this sounds silly, but I need to ask.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
I get the same train, from further up the line. We get it even worse, because if it leaves Cardiff Central more than 20mins late, it doesn't even go beyond Bridgend so everyone who is going to stations all the way up to Maesteg is essentially punted off the train and we have to either wait in Bridgend for 1hr for the next train to come up, or on rare occasions they have had the time/foresight to order a replacement bus to take us the rest of the way.

I've been to third world countries with FAR more reliable train infra structure than the UK, it's an absolute disgrace for apparently one of the world's 'premier' countries.
Click to expand...
Too right, the tube is fine but the train, Jesus , the incompetence is staggering. And when you consider the money people are paying for it. It’s amazing that British people take it so well.
 
Skills said:
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?
Click to expand...
Yeah I guess, while it's preferable to have our team all together in the office, it's not essential, even if wfh is sub-optimal. That's the compromise I suppose and as someone with emphysema, albeit mild, it's probably no bad thing i stay mainly at home.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
I get the same train, from further up the line. We get it even worse, because if it leaves Cardiff Central more than 20mins late, it doesn't even go beyond Bridgend so everyone who is going to stations all the way up to Maesteg is essentially punted off the train and we have to either wait in Bridgend for 1hr for the next train to come up, or on rare occasions they have had the time/foresight to order a replacement bus to take us the rest of the way.

I've been to third world countries with FAR more reliable train infra structure than the UK, it's an absolute disgrace for apparently one of the world's 'premier' countries.
Click to expand...

It really is crazy, it would make more sense for her to go to the Pencoed station as she can drive to there without paying for parking, but there were more than a few occasions where nothing showed up and everyone one the platform were left scrambling for ways to get into Cardiff - now I have to take her and pick her up from Bridgend.

I went to Hong Kong last year, and obviously not a third world country, their transport was something to be admired, if you missed one train then another came like 1-2 minutes later.
 
"Taken off the ventilator" usually conjures ominous doom but in context of this illness its gotten a positive slant.
 
Pagh Wraith said:
Plastic
Click to expand...

Ah well, so I guess it's not too dissimilar from what the ice cream shops are doing. I'm not sure that will work outside of beer gardens and parks though. If your regular pub in the middle of the street tried that, even if you don't allow customers inside they would congregate on the sidewalks around the pub. To some degree you already see that with alcoholics and kiosks.
 
Fosu-Mens said:
To early to tell, but given the restrictions in social movement in place in Denmark for some time compared to in Sweden with bars and nightclubs open, people living as normal etc, there is some reason to believe that they will have different outcomes.

Denmark will most likely start with the dance for the foreseeable future until a vaccine or effective treatment is in place, having been relatively successful with the hammer. https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-the-hammer-and-the-dance-be9337092b56

Sweden and Tegnell will soon be asked the question about how much a life is worth? I.e keeping the economy rolling for the sake of £££ instead of a lockdown and a proven strategy for saving lives. Given their loose restrictions and non-aggressive testing, the current status or situation in Sweden can only be verified/gauged 2-3 weeks from now.
Click to expand...
Yeah we're definitely about to start dancing here. Most schools opened on Wednesday for up to and including fifth grade (~650k pupils), more will follow this week after needing a bit more time to prepare. Some businesses are starting to open again. At the briefing the health guy put a lot of emphasis on the fact that with the gradual opening we'd still stay at an R of around 0.8 according to their models, of course under the assumption that people will keep up social distancing.
 
Maagge said:
Yeah we're definitely about to start dancing here. Most schools opened on Wednesday for up to and including fifth grade (~650k pupils), more will follow this week after needing a bit more time to prepare. Some businesses are starting to open again. At the briefing the health guy put a lot of emphasis on the fact that with the gradual opening we'd still stay at an R of around 0.8 according to their models, of course under the assumption that people will keep up social distancing.
Click to expand...

As long as you don't have any large gatherings with a massive spread of the virus, aggressive testing and common sense and restrictions, you guys should be relatively safe.
 
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...

Very easy to police though. Better than all the certificate and time stamp stuff.
 
Leroy The Red said:
Too right, the tube is fine but the train, Jesus , the incompetence is staggering. And when you consider the money people are paying for it. It’s amazing that British people take it so well.
Click to expand...

I’ve argued this for a long time. The UK is full of people (and this isn’t their fault) that have never really left their own village. They’ve been conditioned into accepting dogshit in relation to public services.

Our public transport infrastructure is horrendous given the size of our economy. I’ve been to developing countries that have better telecommunications infrastructure. Yet in the North East of England there are several towns and villages that struggle to maintain a 3G connection. There are some smaller villages that are in complete blackness dependent on your phone network.

Spend only a little time and Europe and East Asia and you’ll really come to terms with how far we are behind in some aspects of our services.
 
The train service in Ireland is shocking. There are literally only trains that service the east of the country. If you live on the west coast it’s roads or flying only. Annoys the feck out of me,
 
do.ob said:
Ah well, so I guess it's not too dissimilar from what the ice cream shops are doing. I'm not sure that will work outside of beer gardens and parks though. If your regular pub in the middle of the street tried that, even if you don't allow customers inside they would congregate on the sidewalks around the pub. To some degree you already see that with alcoholics and kiosks.
Click to expand...

Yeah, that definitely would not be feasible for pubs. It's quite funny cycling along the Elbe here. The beer gardens are all open serving beer, food and ice cream but as you cannot sit down people get inside to order and then congregate around them sitting on the grass.
 
Serious question to anyone in the UK. Have you been able to buy masks/disposable gloves in recent weeks??

I can’t find any despite looking daily. Have ordered a couple of buff bandana type things to fashion masks when out and about. Can’t find anything better online anywhere!
 
Fosu-Mens said:
As long as you don't have any large gatherings with a massive spread of the virus, aggressive testing and common sense and restrictions, you guys should be relatively safe.
Click to expand...
Yeah all large gatherings are banned until the end of August at this point. So far it seems like it's been handled well by our government.
 
Kag said:
I’ve argued this for a long time. The UK is full of people (and this isn’t their fault) that have never really left their own village. They’ve been conditioned into accepting dogshit in relation to public services.

Our public transport infrastructure is horrendous given the size of our economy. I’ve been to developing countries that have better telecommunications infrastructure. Yet in the North East of England there are several towns and villages that struggle to maintain a 3G connection. There are some smaller villages that are in complete blackness dependent on your phone network.

Spend only a little time and Europe and East Asia and you’ll really come to terms with how far we are behind in some aspects of our services.
Click to expand...


It really is. We're basically the Donald Trump of countries - we love to blow our own trumpet and bleat on about how 'Great' we are and how we're one of the wealthiest nations on the planet but there's no substance to any of it. Drill a bit deeper and you see that we are basically blaggers. We're still blagging our way along on past 'glories' and we're just quite good at convincing other countries that its true. When I say 'we' of course, I mean those in power.


Adisa said:
Click to expand...



Can someone clue me up here? Who makes the fecking rules in Brazil if not the President?? How doesn't he have the authority to remove lockdown if thats what he wants?
 
Penna said:
@11101, do you have a source please for that info you posted? It's very helpful.
Click to expand...

Being reported by Corriere Della Sera. It is only a draft so far but supposedly will be confirmed today.

https://www.corriere.it/cronache/20...-2-6cf5321c-81b9-11ea-b7e0-dce1b61a80bf.shtml

Something else you might be interested in, our two regions are projected to be the last to come out of this, at the end of June :

tabella%20(1).jpg


https://www.corriere.it/salute/neur...he-99cd6da8-82d2-11ea-86b3-8aab0c7cf936.shtml


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...

More details have been published about the Milan metro, viability is not such a concern. They will cap capacity at 30% of normal and simply close stations after that, and trains will have circles painted on the floor to keep people apart. They've said they're not really bothered if it means some people can't get to work on time, its up to the companies to figure out new schedules.
 
Alabaster Codify7 said:
Can someone clue me up here? Who makes the fecking rules in Brazil if not the President?? How doesn't he have the authority to remove lockdown if thats what he wants?
Click to expand...
it's kinda like america where they have a fascist in the presidency but regional politicians still have some powers, their minister of health also took corona seriously until he got fired
 
Shakesey said:
How long does it take to map someone's genetic code? And if it is indeed genetic, can one change someone's DNA? I guess not. I know this sounds silly, but I need to ask.
Click to expand...

If you asked me that question in 2003 the answer would be 13 years and it would cost you two billion dollars. Nowadays you could get it done in a few hours, for a few hundred quid. Once they identified the gene(s) that might make someone more vulnerable you wouldn't even need to map your whole genome, just test for those specific genes. Which would be even cheaper/quicker. The tricky bit is identifying those genes in the first place. Which will take a long time and a lot of research. And changing somebody's DNA to stop them getting certain illnesses is the holy grail of modern medicine. If we can work that out, then the health benefits of that therapy would make curing COVID-19 seem like a sticking plaster in comparison.
 
Heardy said:
Serious question to anyone in the UK. Have you been able to buy masks/disposable gloves in recent weeks??

I can’t find any despite looking daily. Have ordered a couple of buff bandana type things to fashion masks when out and about. Can’t find anything better online anywhere!
Click to expand...
There’s still lots on the Chinese apps like AliExpress. Obviously don’t know about quality
 
85
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
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 less.
- 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
Click to expand...
85% live in places with population higher than 200 obviously. It's not the viking age.
 
Heardy said:
Serious question to anyone in the UK. Have you been able to buy masks/disposable gloves in recent weeks??

I can’t find any despite looking daily. Have ordered a couple of buff bandana type things to fashion masks when out and about. Can’t find anything better online anywhere!
Click to expand...
Those type of masks are a bit pointless I believe, you need the 3M ones
 
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...
It would be suicide to even open a pub. You’d be lucky if it’s open by December. Unless there some quick testing unit the bodyguards or bouncers can use.
 
AaronRedDevil said:
It would be suicide to even open a pub. You’d be lucky if it’s open by December. Unless there some quick testing unit the bodyguards or bouncers can use.
Click to expand...
"How many cases 'a coronavirus 'av yeh had today bud?"
"uh, just .. just the one case so far"
"yeh all righ' but no trouble outta yeh and keep teh the two meetrez or yeh'll be ou'"
 
UnrelatedPsuedo said:
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 less.
- 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
Click to expand...

These two things cannot be true at the same time.
 
berbatrick said:
@Dwazza Gunnar Solskjær
A small caveat is that I work with bacteria not viruses, but I think the same principles apply.

The way we do genetic changes is to target a particuar region of the genome and replace it. This could be an entire gene or a single letter at one position. Natural selection does not work like that.

During normal propogation of any species, there are random changes at random positions throughout the genome. Most of them don't stick - some are harmful, others have no fitness effect but simply disappear during random sampling to form the next generation. For this, imagine if a virus with some mutations that have no effect on its activity infected someone living totally alone. After that person fully recovers or dies that strain of the virus never gets a chance to spread, and that particular mutational strain vanishes. The same vanishing can happen for many many reasons.
Some of the mutations do stick - again, due to random sampling to form the next generation (say, a particular strain happens to infect a super-spreader), these become widespread. The rarest of mutations involve those that do impact the function of the virus in a positive way. This beneficial mutation at that same spot coud possibly be generated artificially in a lab studying the virus.

But because in natural evolution there are mutations everywhere compared to what you started with, this final extra-virulent virus will not resemble a lab strain, which will have only the mutation under study. In fact, if we study a particular mutation and accidentally create more mutations elsewhere, the study becomes invalid since we can't say for sure which mutation is doing what.

Because we know the background rate of mutations per generation and we know roughly how many generations per year, we have a rough estimate of how much the total number of mutations should be. That's how that professor was able to give an estimate of 50 years.


I hope this makes sense!
Click to expand...

Thanks mate. Really just looking for some details as to your last paragraph, hard numbers is to speak unless they vary from pathogen to pathogen.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.