Reading in between the lines, it sounds like previous viruses, such as influenza, weren't cost-effective to use far-UVC?
Of course, like masks, we shouldn't get a false sense of security from any policy or technology. Lemme know any info about the practical effectiveness of far-UVC in a public area.
“Far-UVC light has the potential to be a ‘game changer,’” said David Brenner, professor of radiation biophysics and director of the center. “It can be safely used in occupied public spaces, and it kills pathogens in the air before we can breathe them in.”
The research team’s experiments have shown far-UVC effective in eradicating two types of airborne seasonal coronaviruses (the ones that cause coughs and colds). The researchers are now testing the light against the SARS-CoV-2 virus at Columbia in a biosafety laboratory, with encouraging results, Brenner said.
The team previously found the method effective in inactivating the airborne H1N1 influenza virus, as well as drug-resistant bacteria. And multiple, long-term studies on animals and humans have confirmed that exposure to far-UVC does not cause damage to the skin or eyes. ...
Far-UVC, which has a very short wavelength, cannot reach or damage living human cells. But the narrow band wavelength can still penetrate and kill very small viruses and bacteria floating in the air or on surfaces.
Far-UVC lamps are now in production by several companies, although ramping up to large-scale production, as well as approval by the Food and Drug Administration and Environmental Protection Agency, will take several months. At between $500 and $1000 per lamp, the lamps are relatively inexpensive, and once they are mass produced the prices would likely fall, Brenner said.
nfe wrote: Priti Patel has just used the daily briefing to boast of the policing successes during lockdown. Heavy stress placed on the fact that 'burglary, car crime, and shoplifting are all down on the same period last year'.
So that's where we are.
or it could be shes taking a leaf out of johnsons book and using his dead cat strategy to distract from passing 20.000 hospital deaths today.
It's like people are really determined not to read between the lines in this post
For clarity the 'where we are' is 'in a farcical world where government seeks to distract from their failures by heralding the results of the virus as political successes like the tone deaf disinterested rats they are'.
nfe wrote: Priti Patel has just used the daily briefing to boast of the policing successes during lockdown. Heavy stress placed on the fact that 'burglary, car crime, and shoplifting are all down on the same period last year'.
So that's where we are.
or it could be shes taking a leaf out of johnsons book and using his dead cat strategy to distract from passing 20.000 hospital deaths today.
Oh 20k was broken long time ago. But now even the made to look better numbers broke 20k with daily count going up again despite weekends usually being slower days in death count reporting followed by spikes in start of weeks.
And trump shows what a crybaby he is cancelling press conference and blaming surprise surprise press.
nfe wrote: Priti Patel has just used the daily briefing to boast of the policing successes during lockdown. Heavy stress placed on the fact that 'burglary, car crime, and shoplifting are all down on the same period last year'.
So that's where we are.
or it could be shes taking a leaf out of johnsons book and using his dead cat strategy to distract from passing 20.000 hospital deaths today.
Oh 20k was broken long time ago. But now even the made to look better numbers broke 20k with daily count going up again despite weekends usually being slower days in death count reporting followed by spikes in start of weeks.
Sorry i meant 20,000 uk hospital deaths. On the 17th March Sir Patrick Vallance told the commons health select committee that keeping hospital deaths under 20,000 would be a good outcome. Now we've passed that in just 39 days.
To be fair when the '20k would be a good outcome' statement was made they were talking absolute best case scenarios. It wasn't ever presented as a likely achievement.
They'll spectacularly miss their only actual stated target for anything on Thursday, however, when they're still nowhere near 100k tests a day.
nfe wrote: To be fair when the '20k would be a good outcome' statement was made they were talking absolute best case scenarios. It wasn't ever presented as a likely achievement.
They'll spectacularly miss their only actual stated target for anything on Thursday, however, when they're still nowhere near 100k tests a day.
Too few tests available or just a personel bottleneck`?
nfe wrote: To be fair when the '20k would be a good outcome' statement was made they were talking absolute best case scenarios. It wasn't ever presented as a likely achievement.
They'll spectacularly miss their only actual stated target for anything on Thursday, however, when they're still nowhere near 100k tests a day.
Too few tests available or just a personel bottleneck`?
Both. We haven't exceeded 24,000 in a day thus far. Government claim there's capacity to do double that (and have now switched to talking about capacity rather than tests performed at all times) but appointments are running out daily in an hour each morning.
Nb. I say 'we' but these are all England and Wales numbers. Scotland is doing better, though still only meeting half of their target. I don't know the situation in NI.
See the problem is they opened up the test line things the other day, and they ran out within 30 minutes, which I believe is because they just said any 'key worker' can apply for them, which is a massive percentage of the population, and with that population mostly in a state of fear, they have bumrushed the test website. They should be taking a more targeted approach, putting the tests where they are actually needed.
Just a quick public note - Now that the daily press conferences are (or will soon be) canceled, hopefully we can focus this thread on the coronavirus and not general political "theater".
We've given a lot of leeway the last several days, as what was said about disinfectant obviously just could not be ignored. But the further we go down the general politics rabbit hole, the harder it will be to keep this useful thread not a proxy for general political debate - and thus, open.
So, I'd ask folks to please consider this and try your best to remain on the topic of coronavirus, and not get into the "theater" of general politics whenever possible. That way, we can keep discussing this here.
Aye, we are doing pretty well for ourselves so far. The real test is going to be on tuesday when we go from level 4 (total lockdown) to level 3 (limited reopening and freedom of movement). As it stands all of our infenctions can be traced to specific instances and all of our fatalities are linked to those, however with many shops reopening and greater movement of population we will see how the limits of social distancing and "necessary" shopping are tested.
just the one month that we were in total lockdown has crushed our economy though and unemployment is set to rocket to almost 18% from the 4% it was previously.
It's definitely going to affect folks whos life revolves around drinking and partying the most. Hopefully they will see that there more to life than all that.
For me it has actually had some positive affects. I've been able to buy some new power tools with the money I'm not spending on lunches and days out at the weekends with the family, and we've replaced those with going out for walks in the Oxfordshire countryside, so it's not all bad.
There are pros and cons of the new conditions for both singlys and those with families I think.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Thinking about how different people are or aren’t coping well with Lockdown.
I think on the whole, us Nerds are pretty lucky. Barring the game side of things, we’re actually pretty used to this being a hobby with solo elements.
Building, painting etc? Good ways to while away the hours with something to show at the end of it.
It’s harder to find hobby it time with the kid at home. Fortunately, he’s more than happy to sit down and do three pages of math problems at a stretch...
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Thinking about how different people are or aren’t coping well with Lockdown.
I think on the whole, us Nerds are pretty lucky. Barring the game side of things, we’re actually pretty used to this being a hobby with solo elements.
Building, painting etc? Good ways to while away the hours with something to show at the end of it.
I'm a very outdoors person who loves to go for bimbles into the countryside as far away from people as possible, I also love this hobby so thankfully I'm ok. If I couldn't get my alone time then working for the local clinics and hospitals would be a nightmare as they are always buzzing with activity even without the Wuhan SARS2 virus causing such problems.
You're allowed to drive to do it. Check the laws, the police cant stop you, as long as you're walking longer than you're driving (like they can prove that?!)
I drove to Warburg nature reserve yesterday. Had a delightful walk with the family. Even saw a snake... Couldnt tell if it was an Adder or Grass snake.
I'm not surprised that china is taking a lead in vaccination research given the chinese have an unlimited supply of human test subjects to experiment on with absolutely no regard for human rights or lives. I'm sure thousands of dissidents and malcontents have been used as subjects already.
Hopefully other countries are taking a slightly more humane approach.
Let's just hope there IS vaccine to be found. Just because there's virus doesn't mean vaccine can be found and so far nobody has come up with vaccine for previous corona viruses so whether one can be made for this one is another thing.
There's still the "nuclear" option, of starting to help states singular to isolate them and basically curb any and all cases, if we can manage to focus enough tests in one point. So that we can eliminate it out of one cluster of nations after the other, HOWEVER you can start to imagine how devastating such isolations would be for the economy and how slow recovery would be, overall, due to the lack of non healthy traiding partners.
The big vaccine risk is that everyone gets so hooked on it being the solution that we rush one through that is later found to have significant side effects.
Even if we don't develop a vaccine, improved containment, testing, treatment, early identification etc.... will all come into play to help reduce the severity of suffering and increase the rate and result of recovery as well as contain the virus.
Not Online!!! wrote: There's still the "nuclear" option, of starting to help states singular to isolate them and basically curb any and all cases, if we can manage to focus enough tests in one point. So that we can eliminate it out of one cluster of nations after the other, HOWEVER you can start to imagine how devastating such isolations would be for the economy and how slow recovery would be, overall, due to the lack of non healthy traiding partners.
Except viruses have bad habit of coming back anyway. You can try to get rid of it completely but odds are you won't get rid of it permanently and it will just come back.
Not Online!!! wrote: There's still the "nuclear" option, of starting to help states singular to isolate them and basically curb any and all, if we can manage to focus enough tests in one point. So that we can eliminate it out of one cluster of nations after the other, HOWEVER you can start to imagine how devastating such isolations would be for the economy and how slow that would be, overall, due to the fact of lacks of tests and the recovery would be severly stinted due to the initial lack of non healthy trade partners.
Considering its worldwide spread now I think such a policy could work but would take a monumental amount of good will and global unity as well as open and honest governance and a lot of reliable test kits and containment measures. It could be done - in theory. The big risk is that there are multiple nations that might try to "hide" it up; or which have populations in isolation which manage to still get infected but not inform the rest of the nation. Leading to invisible infection pockets from where infection can start up again.
Right now I think the testing kits aren't necessarily good enough and they certainly aren't available in a global supply volume.
A focused "country by country" approach might work, but runs the risk that unless you cease all travel to "cleared" countries you could clear a nation and then a week or two later one person travels in and it all kicks off again.
The real issue is the week long incubation. If you've a tracking system like China has for the majority of the population, you can at least quickly trace, inform and lockdown the population potentially infected. I think without such a rapid response system track and trace can be hindered. Remember its not just tracking, its also informing everyone who was there to lockdown. People can easily forget that they were at such-and-such a station for 5 minutes when changing connecting trains etc... Otherwise even from one or two cases entering a population it can spread very quickly through before you identify it.
If it had a much shorter incubation or a much more overt incubation period then containment would be a lot easier.
Yeah, we still have no real AIDS vaccine last I heard. (IF someone can prove me wrong, hey, I'd be happy!)
Here's something some people may like, It's NSFW, if that still matters, and a lot of people hate this guy, but for once even his worst enemies are saying he got something right. Watch it is you want a possible angle on what could cause the next big epidemic and what =me might be able to do to mitigate the changes of it.
Matt Swain wrote: Yeah, we still have no real AIDS vaccine last I heard. (IF someone can prove me wrong, hey, I'd be happy!)
Closest with regards to HIV is PrEP. Basically taking doses of the drugs which are used to treat HIV, either every day or a larger dose at different times around the risky activity (double dose 2 to 24 hours before, one 24 hours after activity and then one 48 hours after).
So we have reached the stage where you can effectively prevent yourself from contracting HIV even if you engage in risky behaviour. But it is more akin to birth control tablets than what most people would think of if you said vaccine (i.e. one course and you're done except for maybe some boosters)
On the flip side, we eradicated smallpox, showing that it is possible to wipe out viruses using vaccines. This obviously doesn't mean that a vaccine against COVID is going to work, but at least it's plausible.
Matt Swain wrote: Yeah, we still have no real AIDS vaccine last I heard. (IF someone can prove me wrong, hey, I'd be happy!)
Closest with regards to HIV is PrEP. Basically taking doses of the drugs which are used to treat HIV, either every day or a larger dose at different times around the risky activity (double dose 2 to 24 hours before, one 24 hours after activity and then one 48 hours after).
So we have reached the stage where you can effectively prevent yourself from contracting HIV even if you engage in risky behaviour. But it is more akin to birth control tablets than what most people would think of if you said vaccine (i.e. one course and you're done except for maybe some boosters)
There’s also existing treatments which can stop someone carrying HIV from passing it on.
Worryingly for COVID-19, I’ve seen news reports where Those That Know These Things aren’t convinced infection provides immunity.
Also I think that NZ and Australia have much more experience and awareness of "containment" in general terms. They are much hotter on the import and risks of importing alien species. Whilst countries like the UK have regulations but its my impression we are less hot on it than we could be (its not helped that we've already had loads of invasive species damage and suchlike after generations of invaders and conquest such as the Romans, but also from exploring and adventuring Victorians bringing all and sundry back from their exploits in the empire.
Sometimes I have a hard time being anything but pessimistic about what's going on in the US, because it seems like no one wants to take anything seriously. Here in Michigan, while things are going to be opened up that were protested about (previously closed portions of big box stores, etc), NOW the rumor is that the same group wants to protest about the self-titled "tyrannical" demand that we all wear masks in enclosed/close public spaces.
Just last night, the neighbors across the street had about 9 cars in their driveway and about 15 people at a time at a yard party, though different cars kept coming and going all day (not being nosey, but I was working in the front yard so I noticed easily).
AegisGrimm wrote: Sometimes I have a hard time being anything but pessimistic about what's going on in the US, because it seems like no one wants to take anything seriously. Here in Michigan, while things are going to be opened up that were protested about (previously closed portions of big box stores, etc), NOW the rumor is that the same group wants to protest about the self-titled "tyrannical" demand that we all wear masks in enclosed/close public spaces.
Just last night, the neighbors across the street had about 9 cars in their driveway and about 15 people at a time at a yard party, though different cars kept coming and going all day (not being nose, but I was working in the front yard so I noticed).
Totally agree. Where I am at, two weeks ago I saw 1 in 15 people wearing masks when at the grocery store. Yesterday, I saw 1 in 50. I even had to stop at a clinic for an unrelated issue, and no one on the staff had masks, gloves, etc. There was nothing different from normal except a sign on the door.
Worse, people were bringing their families shopping and acting like everything was "back to normal" because they WANT it to be back to normal so badly.
My state hasn't even really been hit yet, and we have only tested 8K people. We only test those in the high risk category, showing symptoms, who have come in contact with a known case; so I am pretty sure most of our publicly reported numbers are being under reported because we simply do not test people. Even the ones who have the symptoms because we have so few test kits we can only test the most impacted.
I have no idea what is driving these decisions, but it is getting hard to look at and assume the best intentions.
AegisGrimm wrote: Sometimes I have a hard time being anything but pessimistic about what's going on in the US, because it seems like no one wants to take anything seriously. Here in Michigan, while things are going to be opened up that were protested about (previously closed portions of big box stores, etc), NOW the rumor is that the same group wants to protest about the self-titled "tyrannical" demand that we all wear masks in enclosed/close public spaces.
Just last night, the neighbors across the street had about 9 cars in their driveway and about 15 people at a time at a yard party, though different cars kept coming and going all day (not being nosey, but I was working in the front yard so I noticed easily).
Yep. That is the problem with giving in to these kinds of protests. They won't stop at getting what they were asking for, they will then start asking for something else, something more. And they will keep doing that. It isn't actually about protesting for, it is entirely about protesting against.
It's like paying a ransom/blackmail. The person extorting the money out of you isn't going to stop until they feel they have got absolutely everything they can out of you and when that happens you still have no guarantee they will do what they said they would.
It's also problematic because these protests are presenting themselves as "grassroots" while they are in reality being organized & funded by outside agitators with fairly close ties to the current administration.
This, by the by, is the thing I referred to down in the thread about moderation. There's no real way to discuss this without going into politics.
AegisGrimm wrote: Sometimes I have a hard time being anything but pessimistic about what's going on in the US, because it seems like no one wants to take anything seriously. Here in Michigan, while things are going to be opened up that were protested about (previously closed portions of big box stores, etc), NOW the rumor is that the same group wants to protest about the self-titled "tyrannical" demand that we all wear masks in enclosed/close public spaces.
Just last night, the neighbors across the street had about 9 cars in their driveway and about 15 people at a time at a yard party, though different cars kept coming and going all day (not being nosey, but I was working in the front yard so I noticed easily).
I'm worried for the US too. We get a daily press conference every day, and this is one of the slides they produce and update daily. There's caveats to apply with regard to how deaths are recorded, and allowances for the relative scale of the populations, but even so, the shape of the US line is so different to how so many other countries. On top of which, I heard the phrase "you take an elevator to the peak and then the stairs down again" yesterday, and given how long it seems to be taking those peaks to drop in other countries that have apparently reached them, I fear the US has a lot further to run before things are done.
AegisGrimm wrote: Sometimes I have a hard time being anything but pessimistic about what's going on in the US, because it seems like no one wants to take anything seriously. Here in Michigan, while things are going to be opened up that were protested about (previously closed portions of big box stores, etc), NOW the rumor is that the same group wants to protest about the self-titled "tyrannical" demand that we all wear masks in enclosed/close public spaces.
Just last night, the neighbors across the street had about 9 cars in their driveway and about 15 people at a time at a yard party, though different cars kept coming and going all day (not being nose, but I was working in the front yard so I noticed).
Totally agree. Where I am at, two weeks ago I saw 1 in 15 people wearing masks when at the grocery store. Yesterday, I saw 1 in 50. I even had to stop at a clinic for an unrelated issue, and no one on the staff had masks, gloves, etc. There was nothing different from normal except a sign on the door.
Worse, people were bringing their families shopping and acting like everything was "back to normal" because they WANT it to be back to normal so badly.
My state hasn't even really been hit yet, and we have only tested 8K people. We only test those in the high risk category, showing symptoms, who have come in contact with a known case; so I am pretty sure most of our publicly reported numbers are being under reported because we simply do not test people. Even the ones who have the symptoms because we have so few test kits we can only test the most impacted.
I have no idea what is driving these decisions, but it is getting hard to look at and assume the best intentions.
I understand your frustration I see a lot of the same behaviors here in my state (NC). Thankfully I can work from home and I'm only going out once a week to restock on groceries but at the grocery store few people wear masks or PPE. It's not surprising that only half or less of the people wear masks because they've been in short supply for weeks but none of the employees wear them either. Obviously the employees in the deli section still wear masks and hair nets because they're doing food prep but none of the shelf stockers or cashiers had PPE. The store put big sneeze guard type plexiglass panels up around the registers but that's it. So while I was wearing a homemade mask from my sister in law I'm still getting groceries that have been handled by staff without PPE so I'm not sure how much benefit I get from wearing the mask.
Our state is also limiting testing to people who are most likely already sick so we're very likely undercounting cases. My wife is a nurse and the clinic where she works is running out of PPE so she has to reuse masks while they wait for a restock. Thankfully she's not handling covid19 patients anymore but there's still widespread shortages.
The governors and state legislatures are in a very tought spot. The virus isn't going away anytime soon, it's going to keep bouncing around the country, we'll keep getting new cases and we likely won't have a vaccine until at least 2021 and we're already seeing new strains. I've yet to see an official articulate just what conditions need to be met in order for it to be safe to reopen. Our governor extended the lockdown to May 8 but I don't think conditions will be very different then. I doubt we'll get hard hit like NYC but we won't be virus free either. In the meantime the economy is getting wrecked.
With over 26 million people unemployed states are paying out unemployment benefits at an unprecedented rate while their tax revenues plummet. Nobody is driving, oil is at -$37/barrel so gas tax revenues are way down so there's a huge hole in the infrastructure budget. Nobody is going out or spending a lot of money so sales tax revenue is down. The longer the lockdown lasts the more businesses close, the more people get laid off and the longer they're collecting unemployment lowers income tax revenue that will get collected next year and fewer businesses and employees means less payroll tax revenue. That's a really tough spot for states to be in. We need a functioning economy to generate tax revenue to fund government services. To get a functional economy we need to end the lockdown and to end the lockdown we need....I don't know what.
Whenever the lockdown does end things won't just go back to "normal." The pandemic and lockdown are going to affect people's spending habits and social habits. We won't know the extent of those changes until the lockout finally ends. Knowing that the virus will still be out there whenever the lockdown ends means that it's unlikely that people will just act like it never happened and go back to doing whatever they were doing before. It's guaranteed that states are going to need to address budget shortfalls and that's never a good thing. The sooner we can get through this the better. The longer the lockdown lasts the more suffering it causes.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: You know there's nothing stopping you going for walks in the countryside right?
There might be no law against it but speaking as a farmer I would ask people not to travel to the countryside. I can’t stop work and if I get sick my animals won’t have anyone to look after them. Walkers and cyclists are stopping to hang over my gates daily. Runners spit into fields and hedges. These are my workplaces, gates are my doorhandles. My farm is about 3 miles from the edges of a city and from early morning I’m plagued with walkers, cyclists and runners. Yesterday I could hardly get down a narrow road in a tractor for cyclists. On part of the farm we have a council war memorial; the council have put signs telling people the memorial is closed and have put large stones across the car park. Cyclists and walkers just go round the sign, and climb over the stones.
Truth is we don’t want you here, we live here, we work here. We are not furloughed, we can’t or livestock suffer or die.
I I have no idea why I have an American flag beside my profile. I’m British, rule Britannia and all that stuff
Knockagh, I'll adjust the flag on your profile - might take a day or two to kick in (and won't effect old posts - but at least you'll have a union jack going forward ).
As for the countryside, I think people should feel free to exercise but some of what you describe is obviously going too far - no one should be going into closed areas, or encroaching on your farmland. Sorry to hear that!
queen_annes_revenge wrote: You know there's nothing stopping you going for walks in the countryside right?
There might be no law against it but speaking as a farmer I would ask people not to travel to the countryside. I can’t stop work and if I get sick my animals won’t have anyone to look after them. Walkers and cyclists are stopping to hang over my gates daily. Runners spit into fields and hedges. These are my workplaces, gates are my doorhandles. My farm is about 3 miles from the edges of a city and from early morning I’m plagued with walkers, cyclists and runners. Yesterday I could hardly get down a narrow road in a tractor for cyclists. On part of the farm we have a council war memorial; the council have put signs telling people the memorial is closed and have put large stones across the car park. Cyclists and walkers just go round the sign, and climb over the stones.
Truth is we don’t want you here, we live here, we work here. We are not furloughed, we can’t or livestock suffer or die.
I I have no idea why I have an American flag beside my profile. I’m British, rule Britannia and all that stuff
Well, whilst I respect what you're saying, people have a right to walk in the countryside,(provided its not private land obviously) the benefits of getting outside are clear, so I'd advise anyone who wants to walk in the countryside to do so.
And I don't condone casual spitting. I don't know why anyone does that. But it doesn't mean everyone is that way.
I also agree, cyclists suck, but then they also have rights, so we just got to deal with them I guess.
Also, there is this. Your chances of infection are very low outdoors.
Prestor Jon wrote: With over 26 million people unemployed states are paying out unemployment benefits at an unprecedented rate while their tax revenues plummet. Nobody is driving, oil is at -$37/barrel so gas tax revenues are way down so there's a huge hole in the infrastructure budget. Nobody is going out or spending a lot of money so sales tax revenue is down. The longer the lockdown lasts the more businesses close, the more people get laid off and the longer they're collecting unemployment lowers income tax revenue that will get collected next year and fewer businesses and employees means less payroll tax revenue. That's a really tough spot for states to be in. We need a functioning economy to generate tax revenue to fund government services. To get a functional economy we need to end the lockdown and to end the lockdown we need....I don't know what.
Far more test kits and materials, far more people to do the testing, more engagement and coordination at the federal level, a unified populace, governments that can govern, new treatments, eventually a vaccine (even if only a partially effective)...it's a lengthy list. And it doesn't seem like any of the above are coming anytime soon.
My heart tells me we'll find a way, but my mind says that we're in some real doodoo all around. We need to get lucky and have some big breaks go our way.
As for the countryside, I think people should feel free to exercise but some of what you describe is obviously going too far - no one should be going into closed areas, or encroaching on your farmland. Sorry to hear that!
It's not as simple as this in the UK. A lot of farmland in the UK has what are called 'public rights of way' and hence the public are allowed to travel across certain areas. The land owners are then responsible for maintaining the routes etc and the public have to act appropriately (dogs on leads with cattle/sheep, no littering, no picking the vegetables - though there is always the minority).
The likelihood of picking up something as a farmer from people of public rights of way is extremely low though. Most countryside workers are already wearing some form of protective equipment. It's the fear of the virus that is more problematic and realistically the populace being scattered across the countryside is much more effective way of isolation than going out to a few city parks which would be packed. It is much more likely that you would pick it up from someone delivering animal feed, doing the milk collections than you would from the random stranger having touched a gate rail. In fact Weil's disease is much greater risk than COVID19 working in the countryside, so if you are protecting yourself from this disease you are mostly protecting yourself from COVID19.
Wearing PPE is not all there is when it comes to PPE. Wearing is only part of the battle; you've also got to have correct putting on and (more importantly) taking off programs. You also have to have proper procedures when wearing it. Otherwise all it is doing is keeping your underclothes and skin clean.
A farmer is unlikely to worry about correct removal measures unless they've been working with poisons that very day. So chances are they are wiping their hands on their overalls; wearing them several days in a row; pulling gloves on and off all day without correct procedure to not touch the outside with their skin. Wiping their hands on those same overalls - heading off and wiping down an eating lunch or having a cuppa and a biscuit and then continuing on.
The only ones that might day to day have the proper PPE wearing and practice are those working in intensive farming units like chickens and the like and they are mostly going to be working indoor/confined spaces rather than out in the fields.
That said in good sunshine etc... the chances are slimmer that they'll catch corona unless they bump into the walkers/etc... The greater risk is people trampling crops; leaving gates open; moving through areas in large volumes (even on rights of way if you get a LOT of use it will wear the path down and people will drift off path - footfall can cause all kinds of damage).
As for the countryside, I think people should feel free to exercise but some of what you describe is obviously going too far - no one should be going into closed areas, or encroaching on your farmland. Sorry to hear that!
It's not as simple as this in the UK. A lot of farmland in the UK has what are called 'public rights of way' and hence the public are allowed to travel across certain areas. The land owners are then responsible for maintaining the routes etc and the public have to act appropriately (dogs on leads with cattle/sheep, no littering, no picking the vegetables - though there is always the minority).
The likelihood of picking up something as a farmer from people of public rights of way is extremely low though. Most countryside workers are already wearing some form of protective equipment. It's the fear of the virus that is more problematic and realistically the populace being scattered across the countryside is much more effective way of isolation than going out to a few city parks which would be packed. It is much more likely that you would pick it up from someone delivering animal feed, doing the milk collections than you would from the random stranger having touched a gate rail. In fact Weil's disease is much greater risk than COVID19 working in the countryside, so if you are protecting yourself from this disease you are mostly protecting yourself from COVID19.
You rarely even see the milk collector or the meal man. It’s all done on the phone. Meal drivers don’t even see anyone in the feed mill. They put their order into a computer and it sticks it into the lorry. Meal is blown into bulk bins on farms. Milk is collected by a regular driver who never sees anyone. The only risk we have is large volume animal movements to the abattoir as we need a lot of labour for this but it’s being done by teams that are working together daily. A friend of mine died recently after weeks on a ventilator and the family had awful trouble getting workers to come to the farm to remove the animals when they were ready for slaughter. The family had to arrange this on top of the funeral. The day he was buried his son and wife were up from 5 power washing yards and stores and spraying everywhere with Glutaraldehyde.
My father told me not to go were I wasn’t wanted and urban dwellers should respect rural food producers at least for a little while. We really really don’t want you in the countryside. Everyone I talk to is saying the same. Stay at home and let workers work safely.
AegisGrimm wrote: Sometimes I have a hard time being anything but pessimistic about what's going on in the US, because it seems like no one wants to take anything seriously. Here in Michigan, while things are going to be opened up that were protested about (previously closed portions of big box stores, etc), NOW the rumor is that the same group wants to protest about the self-titled "tyrannical" demand that we all wear masks in enclosed/close public spaces.
Just last night, the neighbors across the street had about 9 cars in their driveway and about 15 people at a time at a yard party, though different cars kept coming and going all day (not being nosey, but I was working in the front yard so I noticed easily).
I'm worried for the US too. We get a daily press conference every day, and this is one of the slides they produce and update daily. There's caveats to apply with regard to how deaths are recorded, and allowances for the relative scale of the populations, but even so, the shape of the US line is so different to how so many other countries. On top of which, I heard the phrase "you take an elevator to the peak and then the stairs down again" yesterday, and given how long it seems to be taking those peaks to drop in other countries that have apparently reached them, I fear the US has a lot further to run before things are done.
Yes, we have a lot of deaths. However that graph is misleading because it just shows total deaths and isn't per capita. The US has a lower per capita death rate than Spain, Italy, France, Belgium and the UK, and less deaths than all of Europe combined.
The US should never be compared 1 on 1 with other countries, especially in Europe. Its misleading.
Very true, its what 50 European countries worth in size? Heck you've got national parks bigger than the UK!
So yep its hard to compare stats like that, it looks shocking but then you're comparing a vastly bigger nation to a selection of smaller ones.
I think the big issue with the USA is this rising protesting and almost defiance of basic measures other countries are taking - in some states. I think when other countries are suffering so heavily and you've got US states protesting and fighting against measures designed to save them - then potentially there might be a huge time bomb in a few weeks time.
Numbers wise the US has been average so far, not terrible, not great. Of course the US is still slightly behind curve wise, which means a lot for deaths if you see how slowly that slopes down in Italy/Spain.
Yes, we have a lot of deaths. However that graph is misleading because it just shows total deaths and isn't per capita. The US has a lower per capita death rate than Spain, Italy, France, Belgium and the UK, and less deaths than all of Europe combined.
And the US has higher deaths per capita than; Portugal, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Norway, Estonia, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Poland, Croatia, Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Kosovo and Slovakia
The US should never be compared 1 on 1 with other countries, especially in Europe. Its misleading.
Disciple of Fate wrote: Numbers wise the US has been average so far, not terrible, not great. Of course the US is still slightly behind curve wise, which means a lot for deaths if you see how slowly that slopes down in Italy/Spain.
The US has also been far behind on testing, and there are legitimate concerns that some areas plain aren't reporting because of political factors.
Disciple of Fate wrote: Numbers wise the US has been average so far, not terrible, not great. Of course the US is still slightly behind curve wise, which means a lot for deaths if you see how slowly that slopes down in Italy/Spain.
The US has also been far behind on testing, and there are legitimate concerns that some areas plain aren't reporting because of political factors.
Yes, but this can be said for certain European countries too, the lack of testing that is. The real statistics will come months from now, when countries can start comparing average deaths with previous years. Its harder to hide those numbers.
not all countryside is farmland, and without any disrespect, the countryside isnt yours to instruct people on.
personally I avoid farmland as much as possible anyway, I prefer woodland and water courses as areas to walk, but if people are walking around, minding their own business, leave them to it. live and let live.
Prestor Jon wrote: With over 26 million people unemployed states are paying out unemployment benefits at an unprecedented rate while their tax revenues plummet. Nobody is driving, oil is at -$37/barrel so gas tax revenues are way down so there's a huge hole in the infrastructure budget. Nobody is going out or spending a lot of money so sales tax revenue is down. The longer the lockdown lasts the more businesses close, the more people get laid off and the longer they're collecting unemployment lowers income tax revenue that will get collected next year and fewer businesses and employees means less payroll tax revenue. That's a really tough spot for states to be in. We need a functioning economy to generate tax revenue to fund government services. To get a functional economy we need to end the lockdown and to end the lockdown we need....I don't know what.
Far more test kits and materials, far more people to do the testing, more engagement and coordination at the federal level, a unified populace, governments that can govern, new treatments, eventually a vaccine (even if only a partially effective)...it's a lengthy list. And it doesn't seem like any of the above are coming anytime soon.
My heart tells me we'll find a way, but my mind says that we're in some real doodoo all around. We need to get lucky and have some big breaks go our way.
I feel the same. I'm hopeful that things will work out and I know covid19 isnt an existential threat but I also recognize how terrible our government's response has been. Some people are stuck at home telecommuting and other people are stuck at home watching their lives and livlihoods fall apart and the government is basically telling both groups to just keep doing it indefinitely. What is the end goal? How will we know we reached that point?
You're right we need a lot more testing capacity, they've been promising to increase testing in places like NY and NJ for a while now but still aren't reaching that goal. I don't know when or how we'll increase testing and what those means of testing will be. I understand the frustration of wanting to get back to normal and for people needing to get back to earning a living but without widespread accessible testing why would people take the risk? We can't even take our kids across town to visit their grandparents because it's too risky so I'm definitely not taking them to a restaurant or movie theather or barbershop that could have infected people. The virus isn't going away anytime soon and we are really lacking a coherent plan, timetable and signs of progress.
Yes, we have a lot of deaths. However that graph is misleading because it just shows total deaths and isn't per capita. The US has a lower per capita death rate than Spain, Italy, France, Belgium and the UK, and less deaths than all of Europe combined.
And the US has higher deaths per capita than; Portugal, Denmark, Germany, Austria, Slovenia, Norway, Estonia, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Moldova, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Lithuania, Poland, Croatia, Greece, Cyprus, Albania, Bulgaria, Latvia, Kosovo and Slovakia
The US should never be compared 1 on 1 with other countries, especially in Europe. Its misleading.
Why not? American exceptionalism?
No because a country like Hungary has 10 million people spread across 36,000 square miles and the USA has 330 million people spread out over 3,800,000 square miles. Hungary is the size of the state of Indiana and has the population of the state of Michigan. It's an apples to oranges comparison. It's like saying France and Luxembourg are equivalent countries.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: not all countryside is farmland, and without any disrespect, the countryside isnt yours to instruct people on.
personally I avoid farmland as much as possible anyway, I prefer woodland and water courses as areas to walk, but if people are walking around, minding their own business, leave them to it. live and let live.
Ohh boy, and people wonder why urban rural divide exists.
All country comparisons are apples to oranges. Hence using methods to create more valid comparisons like per capita calculations. Otherwise you couldn't even compare states within the US.
No because a country like Hungary has 10 million people spread across 36,000 square miles and the USA has 330 million people spread out over 3,800,000 square miles. Hungary is the size of the state of Indiana and has the population of the state of Michigan. It's an apples to oranges comparison. It's like saying France and Luxembourg are equivalent countries.
Well, that's why we do per capita comparisons.
Speaking of population density;
Hungary 106 people per km2.
United States 35 people per km2.
I would normally assume, that countries with a higher population density, would be harder hit by a disease like the Corona virus.
Disciple of Fate wrote: Numbers wise the US has been average so far, not terrible, not great. Of course the US is still slightly behind curve wise, which means a lot for deaths if you see how slowly that slopes down in Italy/Spain.
The US has also been far behind on testing, and there are legitimate concerns that some areas plain aren't reporting because of political factors.
Yes, but this can be said for certain European countries too, the lack of testing that is. The real statistics will come months from now, when countries can start comparing average deaths with previous years. Its harder to hide those numbers.
It really isn't that hard to hide the numbers when there isn't testing happening.
Disciple of Fate wrote: Numbers wise the US has been average so far, not terrible, not great. Of course the US is still slightly behind curve wise, which means a lot for deaths if you see how slowly that slopes down in Italy/Spain.
The US has also been far behind on testing, and there are legitimate concerns that some areas plain aren't reporting because of political factors.
Yes, but this can be said for certain European countries too, the lack of testing that is. The real statistics will come months from now, when countries can start comparing average deaths with previous years. Its harder to hide those numbers.
It really isn't that hard to hide the numbers when there isn't testing happening.
But that is what I mean by the average deaths in comparison. If you report 0 deaths from Coronavirus, but you're magically a 1000 deaths above the yearly average without a reason, that immediately shows dishonesty. But those population statistics take time to come out.
No because a country like Hungary has 10 million people spread across 36,000 square miles and the USA has 330 million people spread out over 3,800,000 square miles. Hungary is the size of the state of Indiana and has the population of the state of Michigan. It's an apples to oranges comparison. It's like saying France and Luxembourg are equivalent countries.
Well, that's why we do per capita comparisons.
Speaking of population density;
Hungary 106 people per km2.
United States 35 people per km2.
I would normally assume, that countries with a higher population density, would be harder hit by a disease like the Corona virus.
....Guess not.
You'd be guessing wrong. New York City and New York State are the municipal and state areas that have been the hardest hit by coronavirus. NYC has a population density of 22,000/km2 with a total population over 8 million. New York state has a population density of 421/mile2 with a total population 20 million spread over an area of 47,000 square miles. New York state is larger and more densely populated than Hungary and has worse covid19 statistics. That information isn't readily apparent when you compare Hungary and the USA as nations. Hence why it's not a useful comparison.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: not all countryside is farmland, and without any disrespect, the countryside isnt yours to instruct people on.
Actually there's precious little land in the UK that isn't owned by someone who can tell you what you can and cannot do with it. Even the wildlife parks and reserves have pathways you are allowed on and whole areas that they block the public from.
Also you have to respect the scale of the current situation - when the lockdown started some rural walks got more people in a single day than they might see over many years. The people SWARMED to those locations and the very act of that alone can cause huge damage to the countryside. Again one person alone isn't a problem its hundreds of thousands to millions that causes the issue.
I do lament the fact that the UK is so "fenced in" at times and would love a more open and "wild" nation; but with the population and the size of the country its just never going to be possible until we lose a huge portion of the population.
Disciple of Fate wrote: Numbers wise the US has been average so far, not terrible, not great. Of course the US is still slightly behind curve wise, which means a lot for deaths if you see how slowly that slopes down in Italy/Spain.
The US has also been far behind on testing, and there are legitimate concerns that some areas plain aren't reporting because of political factors.
Yes, but this can be said for certain European countries too, the lack of testing that is. The real statistics will come months from now, when countries can start comparing average deaths with previous years. Its harder to hide those numbers.
It really isn't that hard to hide the numbers when there isn't testing happening.
But that is what I mean by the average deaths in comparison. If you report 0 deaths from Coronavirus, but you're magically a 1000 deaths above the yearly average without a reason, that immediately shows dishonesty. But those population statistics take time to come out.
I think Kanluwen's point is more about the lack of testing in the US altogether. We are pretty much only using tests to confirm that patients that are exhibiting obvious symptoms are indeed infected with covid19. We're only testing a very small percentage of our population. It is very likely that there are millions of American infected with the virus but showing very minor or nonexistent symptoms but we'll never know for sure because it's unlikely that we'll ever get all those people tested. Without widespread testing we won't have the ability to accurately state the death rate or other statistics.
No because a country like Hungary has 10 million people spread across 36,000 square miles and the USA has 330 million people spread out over 3,800,000 square miles. Hungary is the size of the state of Indiana and has the population of the state of Michigan. It's an apples to oranges comparison. It's like saying France and Luxembourg are equivalent countries.
Well, that's why we do per capita comparisons.
Speaking of population density;
Hungary 106 people per km2.
United States 35 people per km2.
I would normally assume, that countries with a higher population density, would be harder hit by a disease like the Corona virus.
....Guess not.
You'd be guessing wrong. New York City and New York State are the municipal and state areas that have been the hardest hit by coronavirus. NYC has a population density of 22,000/km2 with a total population over 8 million. New York state has a population density of 421/mile2 with a total population 20 million spread over an area of 47,000 square miles. New York state is larger and more densely populated than Hungary and has worse covid19 statistics. That information isn't readily apparent when you compare Hungary and the USA as nations. Hence why it's not a useful comparison.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: not all countryside is farmland, and without any disrespect, the countryside isnt yours to instruct people on.
personally I avoid farmland as much as possible anyway, I prefer woodland and water courses as areas to walk, but if people are walking around, minding their own business, leave them to it. live and let live.
The countryside is owned by farmers at least it is in my area. Unless there is parks or public ground I’m afraid it is owned. As I told a walker yesterday. “Look left and right as far as your eyes can see I own it all. This is my office. So kindly go home.”
I think Kanluwen's point is more about the lack of testing in the US altogether. We are pretty much only using tests to confirm that patients that are exhibiting obvious symptoms are indeed infected with covid19. We're only testing a very small percentage of our population. It is very likely that there are millions of American infected with the virus but showing very minor or nonexistent symptoms but we'll never know for sure because it's unlikely that we'll ever get all those people tested. Without widespread testing we won't have the ability to accurately state the death rate or other statistics.
I don't think that is the implication, given that as I said, the US isn't the only country that can't sufficiently test at the moment. And no, we cannot accurately state the death rate atm, but we can collect information from other sources and make a decent approximation of how it is going. It might not be 100% accurate, but decent enough for policy and such.
No because a country like Hungary has 10 million people spread across 36,000 square miles and the USA has 330 million people spread out over 3,800,000 square miles. Hungary is the size of the state of Indiana and has the population of the state of Michigan. It's an apples to oranges comparison. It's like saying France and Luxembourg are equivalent countries.
Well, that's why we do per capita comparisons.
Speaking of population density;
Hungary 106 people per km2.
United States 35 people per km2.
I would normally assume, that countries with a higher population density, would be harder hit by a disease like the Corona virus.
....Guess not.
You'd be guessing wrong. New York City and New York State are the municipal and state areas that have been the hardest hit by coronavirus. NYC has a population density of 22,000/km2 with a total population over 8 million. New York state has a population density of 421/mile2 with a total population 20 million spread over an area of 47,000 square miles. New York state is larger and more densely populated than Hungary and has worse covid19 statistics. That information isn't readily apparent when you compare Hungary and the USA as nations. Hence why it's not a useful comparison.
So how do we do useful comparisons?
We draw comparison between things that are comparable. Just like when a real estate agent finds comps for a house or property they are listing. They find other properties that are similar in terms of size, age, amentities, location, etc. and use that data to calculate a value for the property they are listing.
Comparing the US and the EU would make more sense than comparing the US to individual European countries that are many times smaller and far more homogeneous than the US. Likewise comparing states withing the US with countries inside the EU that have similar populations, area, rural and urban ratio etc. would be more useful than comparing Portugal to most of a continent.
No because a country like Hungary has 10 million people spread across 36,000 square miles and the USA has 330 million people spread out over 3,800,000 square miles. Hungary is the size of the state of Indiana and has the population of the state of Michigan. It's an apples to oranges comparison. It's like saying France and Luxembourg are equivalent countries.
Well, that's why we do per capita comparisons.
Speaking of population density;
Hungary 106 people per km2.
United States 35 people per km2.
I would normally assume, that countries with a higher population density, would be harder hit by a disease like the Corona virus.
....Guess not.
Population density by country isn't a useful predictor, because you get large variations. Population density by region (or locality, in the case of major cities) is more relevant. I wouldn't expect all that many cases in eastern Hungary or Montana. But it could be useful to compare Budapest and Miami, as metropolitan areas that have around 2-3 million people. [When assessed properly. Officially 'Miami' has less than 500,000 people, but the Miami-Dade County has 2.7 million. Some states do city accounting in weird ways for other reasons (like voting districts), so South Miami, Miami Springs, Miami Shores and Miami Beach are all their own entities distinct from 'Miami,' despite being adjacent]. I don't remember if Buda and Pest are still technically the separate cities that they were at one time, but it'd be silly to treat them separately for virus statistics... unless there was a real divergence in virus cases between the two.
For the Coronavirus, its much more useful to take the US as regions. The NYC experience (despite the media time on it) isn't the experience of Denver or Dallas, or wherever. Heck, it isn't even the experience of most of NY state. An old issue New Yorkers have been complaining about for decades.
One of three mothers who said they started the ReOpenNC protest has tested positive for COVID-19. She said she was in a two week quarantine that ended Sunday and was asymptomatic.
It's unclear if she attended the protest last week, which drew hundreds downtown, since was was under quarantine.
"As an asymptomatic COVID19 positive patient (quarantine ends 4/26) another concern I have is the treatment of COVID patients as it relates to other communicable diseases. I have been forced to quarantine in my home for 2 weeks," she wrote on her social media page.
"I have been told not to participate in public or private accommodations as requested by the government, and therefore denied my 1st amendment right of freedom of religion," she wrote.
"It has been insinuated by others that if I go out, I could be arrested for denying a quarantine order," she wrote.
No because a country like Hungary has 10 million people spread across 36,000 square miles and the USA has 330 million people spread out over 3,800,000 square miles. Hungary is the size of the state of Indiana and has the population of the state of Michigan. It's an apples to oranges comparison. It's like saying France and Luxembourg are equivalent countries.
Well, that's why we do per capita comparisons.
Speaking of population density;
Hungary 106 people per km2.
United States 35 people per km2.
I would normally assume, that countries with a higher population density, would be harder hit by a disease like the Corona virus.
....Guess not.
Population density by country isn't a useful predictor, because you get large variations. Population density by region (or locality, in the case of major cities) is more relevant. I wouldn't expect all that many cases in eastern Hungary or Montana. But it could be useful to compare Budapest and Miami, as metropolitan areas that have around 2-3 million people. [When assessed properly. Officially 'Miami' has less than 500,000 people, but the Miami-Dade County has 2.7 million. Some states do city accounting in weird ways for other reasons (like voting districts), so South Miami, Miami Springs, Miami Shores and Miami Beach are all their own entities distinct from 'Miami,' despite being adjacent]. I don't remember if Buda and Pest are still technically the separate cities that they were at one time, but it'd be silly to treat them separately for virus statistics... unless there was a real divergence in virus cases between the two.
For the Coronavirus, its much more useful to take the US as regions. The NYC experience (despite the media time on it) isn't the experience of Denver or Dallas, or wherever. Heck, it isn't even the experience of most of NY state. An old issue New Yorkers have been complaining about for decades.
At most you could generally eliminate "dead Space " aka national parks and uninhabitable area, or compare metropolitan regions.
Statistics a powerfull tool but only if the brain behind it actually works.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: not all countryside is farmland, and without any disrespect, the countryside isnt yours to instruct people on.
personally I avoid farmland as much as possible anyway, I prefer woodland and water courses as areas to walk, but if people are walking around, minding their own business, leave them to it. live and let live.
The countryside is owned by farmers at least it is in my area. Unless there is parks or public ground I’m afraid it is owned. As I told a walker yesterday. “Look left and right as far as your eyes can see I own it all. This is my office. So kindly go home.”
Then fair enough, unless they're on a byway of course.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: not all countryside is farmland, and without any disrespect, the countryside isnt yours to instruct people on.
personally I avoid farmland as much as possible anyway, I prefer woodland and water courses as areas to walk, but if people are walking around, minding their own business, leave them to it. live and let live.
The countryside is owned by farmers at least it is in my area. Unless there is parks or public ground I’m afraid it is owned. As I told a walker yesterday. “Look left and right as far as your eyes can see I own it all. This is my office. So kindly go home.”
You could tell people you might have it, and to keep away.... It might take a lot of signs, but still.
I think Kanluwen's point is more about the lack of testing in the US altogether. We are pretty much only using tests to confirm that patients that are exhibiting obvious symptoms are indeed infected with covid19. We're only testing a very small percentage of our population. It is very likely that there are millions of American infected with the virus but showing very minor or nonexistent symptoms but we'll never know for sure because it's unlikely that we'll ever get all those people tested. Without widespread testing we won't have the ability to accurately state the death rate or other statistics.
I don't think that is the implication, given that as I said, the US isn't the only country that can't sufficiently test at the moment. And no, we cannot accurately state the death rate atm, but we can collect information from other sources and make a decent approximation of how it is going. It might not be 100% accurate, but decent enough for policy and such.
That was exactly the "implication"(I thought it was pretty well spelled out, to be honest).
This isn't a question of "can't sufficiently test". It is literally that in some states? Testing is not being done unless someone exhibiting obvious symptoms and had come into an individual confirmed to have been infected or someone has sufficient connections/wealth to acquire private testing. There is also a huge scandal unfolding right now with Tyson and a few other meatpacking facilities in that they were either underreporting or downright concealing cases of infected individuals and are now playing the "well, we needed these people at work or there will be no meat!" card despite there being something along the lines of 9 billion tons of chicken in cold storage.
One of three mothers who said they started the ReOpenNC protest has tested positive for COVID-19. She said she was in a two week quarantine that ended Sunday and was asymptomatic.
It's unclear if she attended the protest last week, which drew hundreds downtown, since was was under quarantine. "As an asymptomatic COVID19 positive patient (quarantine ends 4/26) another concern I have is the treatment of COVID patients as it relates to other communicable diseases. I have been forced to quarantine in my home for 2 weeks," she wrote on her social media page.
"I have been told not to participate in public or private accommodations as requested by the government, and therefore denied my 1st amendment right of freedom of religion," she wrote.
"It has been insinuated by others that if I go out, I could be arrested for denying a quarantine order," she wrote.
Some people really are too stupid to live.
It's more than that. I guarantee you that she was present at the event last week, or the one prior. It's important to note that she was voluntarily self-quarantining and that what she posted on Facebook was wildly different to what she was telling our local affiliate stations. She continually responded with "No comment" when asked about if she was present there or not.
Also, we have zero churches that are supposed to be open.
I think Kanluwen's point is more about the lack of testing in the US altogether. We are pretty much only using tests to confirm that patients that are exhibiting obvious symptoms are indeed infected with covid19. We're only testing a very small percentage of our population. It is very likely that there are millions of American infected with the virus but showing very minor or nonexistent symptoms but we'll never know for sure because it's unlikely that we'll ever get all those people tested. Without widespread testing we won't have the ability to accurately state the death rate or other statistics.
I don't think that is the implication, given that as I said, the US isn't the only country that can't sufficiently test at the moment. And no, we cannot accurately state the death rate atm, but we can collect information from other sources and make a decent approximation of how it is going. It might not be 100% accurate, but decent enough for policy and such.
That was exactly the "implication"(I thought it was pretty well spelled out, to be honest).
This isn't a question of "can't sufficiently test". It is literally that in some states? Testing is not being done unless someone exhibiting obvious symptoms and had come into an individual confirmed to have been infected or someone has sufficient connections/wealth to acquire private testing. There is also a huge scandal unfolding right now with Tyson and a few other meatpacking facilities in that they were either underreporting or downright concealing cases of infected individuals and are now playing the "well, we needed these people at work or there will be no meat!" card despite there being something along the lines of 9 billion tons of chicken in cold storage.
The implication I read into it was that they don't do enough tests on purpose in your post, versus just a generalized they don't have enough tests from Prestor Jon.
So my response was to the generalized comment. Not to your post about the wilful obfuscation of numbers/potential infections.
Otherwise again for the record, this limit on testing applies to certain European counties as well.
You rarely even see the milk collector or the meal man. It’s all done on the phone. Meal drivers don’t even see anyone in the feed mill. They put their order into a computer and it sticks it into the lorry. Meal is blown into bulk bins on farms. Milk is collected by a regular driver who never sees anyone. The only risk we have is large volume animal movements to the abattoir as we need a lot of labour for this but it’s being done by teams that are working together daily. A friend of mine died recently after weeks on a ventilator and the family had awful trouble getting workers to come to the farm to remove the animals when they were ready for slaughter. The family had to arrange this on top of the funeral. The day he was buried his son and wife were up from 5 power washing yards and stores and spraying everywhere with Glutaraldehyde.
Despite the sadness of the situation, it's still very very unlikely that this was picked up from the person out walking for some exercise if it was related to COIVD19.
My father told me not to go were I wasn’t wanted and urban dwellers should respect rural food producers at least for a little while. We really really don’t want you in the countryside. Everyone I talk to is saying the same. Stay at home and let workers work safely.
Pfft, this is nothing compared to dealing with the hordes that turn up at B&Q or want to go down to the local waste site to get rid of the essentially broken lawnmower. You aren't the only one working each and every day and relatively to some workers your risk is tiny. You really don't have it bad, in fact you are unlikely to be doing yourself favours with some people because you have a lot of space to move around in. There are a lot of people in towns and cities that live in one bedroom flats that have to share lifts, rails, doors and god knows what else every single day. Allowing a few hours relaxation in the countryside on public footpaths is really not a problem in comparison to these places. Just because the disease kills and scares people does not mean that we should 'isolate by lifestyle' and that those lucky enough to live in the countryside should make it sacrosanct from those that can only afford to live in dense urban areas. This is the sort of approach that develops frustration and community divides not just now but in the future.
Look at this way, by allowing people onto your land you are improving people's self isolation and saving the NHS. Preventing it forces more people closer together increasing the risk of transmission and harming the NHS and reducing the availability of those that need ventilators.
Except Prestor Jon didn't say anything about a lack of tests. We're only testing, as he mentioned, a very small percentage of our population. New York State and California are two of the states that are performing more tests than most other states and their reported cases are through the roof compared to neighboring states. It is not necessarily a lack of tests, it is a lack of testing being done.
And then you have crap like what we're seeing relating to Tyson and Smithfield's meatprocessing facilities where they're the epicenters for huge outbreaks in their communities...yet it took people effectively acting as whistleblowers for testing to finally happen there. Whether through incompetence or sheer Cover Your Own Rear, there is something that ain't right.
Additionally worth mentioning: Here in the US? People don't tend to go to the doctors unless something is demonstrably wrong or it's an emergency. That's how bad insurance is for most working, young adults who aren't still covered by a parent's plan.
Just because the disease kills and scares people does not mean that we should 'isolate by lifestyle' and that those lucky enough to live in the countryside should make it sacrosanct from those that can only afford to live in dense urban areas. This is the sort of approach that develops frustration and community divides not just now but in the future.
Look at this way, by allowing people onto your land you are improving people's self isolation and saving the NHS. Preventing it forces more people closer together increasing the risk of transmission and harming the NHS and reducing the availability of those that need ventilators.
And? He has a point, Centers allways have better infrastructure and support, not to mention economic viability and opportunity.
You going to rural parts increases the Strain on most likely allready more meh than ok healthcare systems.
Kanluwen wrote: Except Prestor Jon didn't say anything about a lack of tests. We're only testing, as he mentioned, a very small percentage of our population. New York State and California are two of the states that are performing more tests than most other states and their reported cases are through the roof compared to neighboring states. It is not necessarily a lack of tests, it is a lack of testing being done.
And then you have crap like what we're seeing relating to Tyson and Smithfield's meatprocessing facilities where they're the epicenters for huge outbreaks in their communities...yet it took people effectively acting as whistleblowers for testing to finally happen there.
Whether through incompetence or sheer Cover Your Own Rear, there is something that ain't right.
Additionally worth mentioning:
Here in the US? People don't tend to go to the doctors unless something is demonstrably wrong or it's an emergency. That's how bad insurance is for most working, young adults who aren't still covered by a parent's plan.
That is what I'm reading into his post, a more generalized statement as opposed to yours. So for me it is hard to say if he agrees to your post or just replies to my post, which is what my reply was based on. Lack of testing is a pretty open statement that can go anywhere depending on the writer's intent.
I don't disagree with you that you can fix the numbers in certain ways and have general underreporting. I'm saying that in a few months from now, you can see how these last few months are doing compared to the average yearly deaths. For example, in my country we have far more deaths than the average over the last years, accounting even for positive Coronavirus deaths, which clearly seems to indicate more people are dying from the virus than are positively confirmed to have it upon death. So yes, you can hide the number of infected, but at the end of the line you can't hide the spike of deaths. So in the future we can make a reasonable accurate estimate of how deadly it was even with a lack of testing.
Just because the disease kills and scares people does not mean that we should 'isolate by lifestyle' and that those lucky enough to live in the countryside should make it sacrosanct from those that can only afford to live in dense urban areas. This is the sort of approach that develops frustration and community divides not just now but in the future.
Look at this way, by allowing people onto your land you are improving people's self isolation and saving the NHS. Preventing it forces more people closer together increasing the risk of transmission and harming the NHS and reducing the availability of those that need ventilators.
And? He has a point, Centers allways have better infrastructure and support, not to mention economic viability and opportunity.
You going to rural parts increases the Strain on most likely allready more meh than ok healthcare systems.
It really doesn't. You go, walk around, see a handful of other people, miles away, then you go home.
This isn't a question of "can't sufficiently test". It is literally that in some states? Testing is not being done unless someone exhibiting obvious symptoms and had come into an individual confirmed to have been infected...
This is how my state's Dept of Health phrases it on there website regarding testing counts. IIRC.
Just because the disease kills and scares people does not mean that we should 'isolate by lifestyle' and that those lucky enough to live in the countryside should make it sacrosanct from those that can only afford to live in dense urban areas. This is the sort of approach that develops frustration and community divides not just now but in the future.
Look at this way, by allowing people onto your land you are improving people's self isolation and saving the NHS. Preventing it forces more people closer together increasing the risk of transmission and harming the NHS and reducing the availability of those that need ventilators.
And? He has a point, Centers allways have better infrastructure and support, not to mention economic viability and opportunity.
You going to rural parts increases the Strain on most likely allready more meh than ok healthcare systems.
It really doesn't. You go, walk around, see a handful of other people, miles away, then you go home.
And for every 99 you get that understand this and do so you get the one moron that doesn't Like the nice dude on springbreak in florida , and then you got the salad.
My point also was more aimed at the oh woe is my kinda comment whirlwind gave.
Just because the disease kills and scares people does not mean that we should 'isolate by lifestyle' and that those lucky enough to live in the countryside should make it sacrosanct from those that can only afford to live in dense urban areas. This is the sort of approach that develops frustration and community divides not just now but in the future.
Look at this way, by allowing people onto your land you are improving people's self isolation and saving the NHS. Preventing it forces more people closer together increasing the risk of transmission and harming the NHS and reducing the availability of those that need ventilators.
And? He has a point, Centers allways have better infrastructure and support, not to mention economic viability and opportunity.
You going to rural parts increases the Strain on most likely allready more meh than ok healthcare systems.
It really doesn't. You go, walk around, see a handful of other people, miles away, then you go home.
Camera footage suggests something completely different. People still gather, together, not 'miles away.'
So total lock down ended here at midnight however judging by the amount of traffic about people have gotten the impression that that means buisness as normal, rather than limited freedom of movement. Going to be a fascinating week ahead seeing if there is going to be an uptick in cases again.
Just because the disease kills and scares people does not mean that we should 'isolate by lifestyle' and that those lucky enough to live in the countryside should make it sacrosanct from those that can only afford to live in dense urban areas. This is the sort of approach that develops frustration and community divides not just now but in the future.
Look at this way, by allowing people onto your land you are improving people's self isolation and saving the NHS. Preventing it forces more people closer together increasing the risk of transmission and harming the NHS and reducing the availability of those that need ventilators.
And? He has a point, Centers allways have better infrastructure and support, not to mention economic viability and opportunity.
You going to rural parts increases the Strain on most likely allready more meh than ok healthcare systems.
It really doesn't. You go, walk around, see a handful of other people, miles away, then you go home.
Except if you say it's permissible, then 1000 other people do it too.
This happened and you've consistently ignored it when it's been raised. The first couple of weekends after social distancing in the UK the hills and nice country walks in Scotland and Wales, and I presume the lakes etc in England, were extremely busy. Like, 'busier than we've ever seen on a beautiful summer day' busy.
Thousands of people on Ben Lomond all saying 'well, everyone else is staying home, I'll just go and I won't see anyone'.
You're right that it's no problem if it's very quiet (lest you have a breakdown or something) but how do you keep it quiet if you tell everyone it's fair game? Heavily discouraging going roaming is the only reason it's quiet enough for the entitled to crow about how safe it is because it's quiet!
Well it's the same old thing for him. His rights and freedom is everything. Idea that when everybody crams into same place it's not just him doesn't get through him.
As it is local national park is more crowded atm than downtown
tneva82 wrote: Well it's the same old thing for him. His rights and freedom is everything.
Ohh it's his right allright, what got to me is the comment from whirlwind and so long he behaves no worries from rural folks will happen.
However don't expect them when you show up after basically ignoring the countryside to be thrilled or how great it is and how Rich supposedly Land folk compared to cities are like whirlwind inferred in his answer to knockgah (sorry if wrong in the Name) .
England: passes 21,000 death mark (more likely 31,500+).
English people: take a day trip to B&Q with family to buy a BBQ.
Police: hang around outside SPAR and ALDI to check you're not buying chocolate bars.
NHS: "Are we a joke to you?".
Just because the disease kills and scares people does not mean that we should 'isolate by lifestyle' and that those lucky enough to live in the countryside should make it sacrosanct from those that can only afford to live in dense urban areas. This is the sort of approach that develops frustration and community divides not just now but in the future.
Look at this way, by allowing people onto your land you are improving people's self isolation and saving the NHS. Preventing it forces more people closer together increasing the risk of transmission and harming the NHS and reducing the availability of those that need ventilators.
And? He has a point, Centers allways have better infrastructure and support, not to mention economic viability and opportunity.
You going to rural parts increases the Strain on most likely allready more meh than ok healthcare systems.
It really doesn't. You go, walk around, see a handful of other people, miles away, then you go home.
Except if you say it's permissible, then 1000 other people do it too.
This happened and you've consistently ignored it when it's been raised. The first couple of weekends after social distancing in the UK the hills and nice country walks in Scotland and Wales, and I presume the lakes etc in England, were extremely busy. Like, 'busier than we've ever seen on a beautiful summer day' busy.
Thousands of people on Ben Lomond all saying 'well, everyone else is staying home, I'll just go and I won't see anyone'.
You're right that it's no problem if it's very quiet (lest you have a breakdown or something) but how do you keep it quiet if you tell everyone it's fair game? Heavily discouraging going roaming is the only reason it's quiet enough for the entitled to crow about how safe it is because it's quiet!
nfe is 100% right here. The roads around us are crowded at times, cars lined up along the side and of the road. It’s never like this normally. I passed a man on an electric wheel chair a few days ago. He’s almost certainly vulnerable and definitely more than 2km away from home.
I get that it’s hard living in a flat or town house in a city, but the reality is that’s were most people live. I could never live in a city to me it looks horrendous and I do feel for urban dwellers. But urban dwellers have better access to hospitals, waste collection and shops than we do. Life in the countryside is more complex than urban folk can imagine. Most of us work alone or in family units, self isolation or stopping work even when sick is rarely possible. Delivery services don’t always come to us so we have to go to shops anyway, sick or not. Animals need fed, milked, medicines applied. Ground needs worked as seasons pass, it’s not possible to stop. The last thing YOUR food producers need is our substandard, poorly maintained road systems clogged up with furloughed workers feeling the need to stretch their legs. A couple of months inside won’t kill you.
Whilst I expect it to be a bit too early to say that, I'm very jealous of the way NZ have handled this.
Nz is smaller, has less people and therefore better controll aswell as beeing an island and highly developped.
Not to say it was expected but they did what many a somewhat isolated country could've done.
It also had a Government that was quick and decisive, and was also clear in what it was expecting from its citizens.
Being an island hasn't helped the UK.
Not to get too technical but England has that chunnel linking it to france so in some ways it's not exactly an island anymore. Also it's so close to europe that birds can easily fly to it from the mainland, so they could be carrying some infections too.
Just because the disease kills and scares people does not mean that we should 'isolate by lifestyle' and that those lucky enough to live in the countryside should make it sacrosanct from those that can only afford to live in dense urban areas. This is the sort of approach that develops frustration and community divides not just now but in the future.
Look at this way, by allowing people onto your land you are improving people's self isolation and saving the NHS. Preventing it forces more people closer together increasing the risk of transmission and harming the NHS and reducing the availability of those that need ventilators.
And? He has a point, Centers allways have better infrastructure and support, not to mention economic viability and opportunity.
You going to rural parts increases the Strain on most likely allready more meh than ok healthcare systems.
It really doesn't. You go, walk around, see a handful of other people, miles away, then you go home.
Except if you say it's permissible, then 1000 other people do it too.
This happened and you've consistently ignored it when it's been raised. The first couple of weekends after social distancing in the UK the hills and nice country walks in Scotland and Wales, and I presume the lakes etc in England, were extremely busy. Like, 'busier than we've ever seen on a beautiful summer day' busy.
Thousands of people on Ben Lomond all saying 'well, everyone else is staying home, I'll just go and I won't see anyone'.
You're right that it's no problem if it's very quiet (lest you have a breakdown or something) but how do you keep it quiet if you tell everyone it's fair game? Heavily discouraging going roaming is the only reason it's quiet enough for the entitled to crow about how safe it is because it's quiet!
There's plenty of countryside for the majority of people to go out, and still be ample distance from others. They will be more spread out than they are in cities. Look at the photos from London. Obviously if everyone goes at the same time, what you say might be the case, but that isn't going to happen. People will go at different times. It's not a reason to tell people not to go, which is the point I was making.
Except if you say it's permissible, then 1000 other people do it too.
This happened and you've consistently ignored it when it's been raised. The first couple of weekends after social distancing in the UK the hills and nice country walks in Scotland and Wales, and I presume the lakes etc in England, were extremely busy. Like, 'busier than we've ever seen on a beautiful summer day' busy.
Thousands of people on Ben Lomond all saying 'well, everyone else is staying home, I'll just go and I won't see anyone'.
You're right that it's no problem if it's very quiet (lest you have a breakdown or something) but how do you keep it quiet if you tell everyone it's fair game? Heavily discouraging going roaming is the only reason it's quiet enough for the entitled to crow about how safe it is because it's quiet!
There's plenty of countryside for the majority of people to go out, and still be ample distance from others. They will be more spread out than they are in cities. Look at the photos from London. Obviously if everyone goes at the same time, what you say might be the case, but that isn't going to happen. People will go at different times. It's not a reason to tell people not to go, which is the point I was making.
How many times? It did happen. They went en masse. It would really be worth listening to the evidence people present in this thread before repeating statements that have been flatly disproved.
Further breakdown of ONS numbers shows 4,343 care home deaths in the two weeks to 17th April. Four times the fortnight before that and the cut off is still before deaths peaked. At least the picture is clearer as to why hospitals haven't been full despite the fourth highest European death toll (probably actually the highest) - we've just not bothered treating thousands of cases in hospitals at all.
Except if you say it's permissible, then 1000 other people do it too.
This happened and you've consistently ignored it when it's been raised. The first couple of weekends after social distancing in the UK the hills and nice country walks in Scotland and Wales, and I presume the lakes etc in England, were extremely busy. Like, 'busier than we've ever seen on a beautiful summer day' busy.
Thousands of people on Ben Lomond all saying 'well, everyone else is staying home, I'll just go and I won't see anyone'.
You're right that it's no problem if it's very quiet (lest you have a breakdown or something) but how do you keep it quiet if you tell everyone it's fair game? Heavily discouraging going roaming is the only reason it's quiet enough for the entitled to crow about how safe it is because it's quiet!
There's plenty of countryside for the majority of people to go out, and still be ample distance from others. They will be more spread out than they are in cities. Look at the photos from London. Obviously if everyone goes at the same time, what you say might be the case, but that isn't going to happen. People will go at different times. It's not a reason to tell people not to go, which is the point I was making.
How many times? It did happen. They went en masse. It would really be worth listening to the evidence people present in this thread before repeating statements that have been flatly disproved.
Can you provide any evidence? Other than anecdote? Because I've searched the news pages and can't find anything. I'm aware that lots of people visited seasides and coastal resorts, but not seen anything about the general countryside.
I’ve never been as well groomed as I am these days.
I mean, I’m always clean. I shower daily regardless. But in terms of shaving, trimming and oiling the beard? Never been this hot on it! The joys of not being knackered after a long commute!
Except if you say it's permissible, then 1000 other people do it too.
This happened and you've consistently ignored it when it's been raised. The first couple of weekends after social distancing in the UK the hills and nice country walks in Scotland and Wales, and I presume the lakes etc in England, were extremely busy. Like, 'busier than we've ever seen on a beautiful summer day' busy.
Thousands of people on Ben Lomond all saying 'well, everyone else is staying home, I'll just go and I won't see anyone'.
You're right that it's no problem if it's very quiet (lest you have a breakdown or something) but how do you keep it quiet if you tell everyone it's fair game? Heavily discouraging going roaming is the only reason it's quiet enough for the entitled to crow about how safe it is because it's quiet!
There's plenty of countryside for the majority of people to go out, and still be ample distance from others. They will be more spread out than they are in cities. Look at the photos from London. Obviously if everyone goes at the same time, what you say might be the case, but that isn't going to happen. People will go at different times. It's not a reason to tell people not to go, which is the point I was making.
How many times? It did happen. They went en masse. It would really be worth listening to the evidence people present in this thread before repeating statements that have been flatly disproved.
Can you provide any evidence? Other than anecdote? Because I've searched the news pages and can't find anything. I'm aware that lots of people visited seasides and coastal resorts, but not seen anything about the general countryside.
Is this one of those cases where someone asks for evidence but if any is provided it'll be dismissed because it wasnt reported in mainstream news and this bs side topic goes on for another 50 pages???
Except if you say it's permissible, then 1000 other people do it too.
This happened and you've consistently ignored it when it's been raised. The first couple of weekends after social distancing in the UK the hills and nice country walks in Scotland and Wales, and I presume the lakes etc in England, were extremely busy. Like, 'busier than we've ever seen on a beautiful summer day' busy.
Thousands of people on Ben Lomond all saying 'well, everyone else is staying home, I'll just go and I won't see anyone'.
You're right that it's no problem if it's very quiet (lest you have a breakdown or something) but how do you keep it quiet if you tell everyone it's fair game? Heavily discouraging going roaming is the only reason it's quiet enough for the entitled to crow about how safe it is because it's quiet!
There's plenty of countryside for the majority of people to go out, and still be ample distance from others. They will be more spread out than they are in cities. Look at the photos from London. Obviously if everyone goes at the same time, what you say might be the case, but that isn't going to happen. People will go at different times. It's not a reason to tell people not to go, which is the point I was making.
How many times? It did happen. They went en masse. It would really be worth listening to the evidence people present in this thread before repeating statements that have been flatly disproved.
Can you provide any evidence? Other than anecdote? Because I've searched the news pages and can't find anything. I'm aware that lots of people visited seasides and coastal resorts, but not seen anything about the general countryside.
I mentioned hills, right? And Ben Lomond specifically? What did you google?
OK, granted, those popular national parks, a day before lockdown fair enough, but I'm talking about the countryside generally, right now. Where I was this weekend could've easily accommodated thousands of people, and allowed for social distancing. Obviously that's an extreme example as that isn't going to happen. I'm talking about the countryside on people's doorsteps, not national parks, which are always going to have more visitors because of their nature.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: OK, granted, those popular national parks, a day before lockdown fair enough, but I'm talking about the countryside generally, right now. Where I was this weekend could've easily accommodated thousands of people, and allowed for social distancing. Obviously that's an extreme example as that isn't going to happen. I'm talking about the countryside on people's doorsteps, not national parks, which are always going to have more visitors because of their nature.
'Bugger, you've given me exactly what I asked for, let me move my goalposts'.
There's so much strangeness in here.
First up, 'talking about the countryside generally, right now' is daft. People are being told not to go. Of course these places are quiet. You're suggesting that discouragement be removed/ignored. Telling people that, provided they socially distance, visiting these places is fine draws quite a lot of people. As you asked me to demonstrate, and I did.
What you claim 'isn't going to happen' is what did happen, and what you've just conceded happened.
Your trying to shift the focus towards persons specifically seeking out less well-known parts of the countryside. The countryside 'on people's doorsteps'. Well, most people don't have countryside on their doorstep. What they're familiar with is the national parks and other rural beauty spots, or the little woods near their homes. People aren't going to go to that bit of land somewhere near a river by a little A road that comes off the M64. They're going to go to the places they're familiar with. In large numbers.
Exactly - plus don't forget parking is limited so suddenly even if people can disperse into an area, they are going to be flooding to the same carparking spots. Sure you might socially distance - but you're ALL going to touch the same bit of fence/gate/post getting in and out.
Suddenly social distancing doesn't matter because you've all picked it up in the carpark. Or on the roadside etc....
Plus you can bet its going to be hard to socially distance come the evening when everyone floods back to leave at the same time.
Plus we've not even started on the issues with walkers in more hilly regions falling, tripping and otherwise needing rescue. The volunteer services were overloaded with people having accidents. Plus with social distancing there's more incentive for people to go "off path" and get themselves into all kinds of trouble in places where they are off the beaten trail and don't have any clue how to tell others where they are (and that's assuming they get phone reception to call for aid).
The problem isn't one person its a vast number of people; many of which are not "outdoors experienced" or know how to behave in the countryside. They'll walk into the field of cattle with calves whilst walking their dog; they'll cross the bulls field and feed sugar and chocolate to friendly horses. The lockdown put a lot of people on pause at once and many who never really had any interest in going to the countryside suddenly wanted to go - en-mass.
I'd still argue, that even if those places did have a higher number of visitors, that its still not a problem.. Provided they keep their distance from others, there's no issue. It's not like they're going to be packed in elbow to elbow. They're going to be closer to other people in the supermarket, or in city streets or even city parks, and they're outside so any risk of transmission is considerably lower anyway.
You're allowed to drive to the countryside. I'd bet most people (barring maybe those in the absolute centre of big cities) are within about a 30 minute drive to a green space.
But you do you, I'll do me. I'm still within the law. Catch me outside, or don't, if you insist on quarantining yourself despite being healthy (I'm assuming)
The problem is if a large number of people decide "you do you, I'll do me" we end up in similar situations to what people have already pointed out. It's not just about one person, it's about the collective's behaviour, which is why it's potentially dangerous to think "it's only me, so it's fine". Again, we have evidence of this behaviour.
For example, I live right on the edge of Edinburgh. Within a 20 minute drive of me there are about a dozen nice outside spaces to visit. Of those, some have car parks (probably closed right now) but most don't and I can tell you right now where people will end up parking when they go there. So the general area might be more or less empty but there will be a potential concentration of people in one or two locations by necessity. Also, I don't know if those places will be empty or not because I don't know how many people will think "the guidelines don't apply to me".
queen_annes_revenge wrote: OK, granted, those popular national parks, a day before lockdown fair enough, but I'm talking about the countryside generally, right now. Where I was this weekend could've easily accommodated thousands of people, and allowed for social distancing. Obviously that's an extreme example as that isn't going to happen. I'm talking about the countryside on people's doorsteps, not national parks, which are always going to have more visitors because of their nature.
The countryside‘generally’ as you call it is private property, owned and worked by someone. It’s not yours to walk around. Go buy a field and walk round it to your hearts content.
You're allowed to drive to the countryside. I'd bet most people (barring maybe those in the absolute centre of big cities) are within about a 30 minute drive to a green space.
Yes. And somewhere between tens and hundreds of thousands of other people will be within 30 mins drive of the same green space. If that's a popular one? It'll be busy. I can drive to Loch Lomond in half an hour and 600,000 people live here.
But you do you, I'll do me.
Problem is, several million people would do you given the chance, and then we have 1,000 people trying to get in one car park in the Trossachs again. You don't care, because you're walking by a river somewhere you're familiar with that other people don't know, but I'd suggest recognising the inherent privilege in this and how that skews your perception of how this plays out in reality would be helpful.
I've been in the office this week, and when I've been driving home through my local streets I've been amazed at just how many people there are out walking around. Aside from school-run times, I have *never* seen that many people out and about.
I think the problem is, a lot of people are approaching the government's recommended restrictions as a target - i.e. "I'm allowed to go out to work, I'm allowed to go out to buy essentials from the shops, I'm allowed to go out for exercise. Better make sure I do all those things..."
It would be more sensible to look at it from the perspective of 'what is the bare minimum I actually *need* to do?' For instance...
I'm doing alternate weeks in the office at the moment - there's stuff I/my team need to do onsite that can't be done remotely. Ejecting backup tapes and handing them over for offsite storage, for instance. But I'm working from home as much as I can.
We're ordering groceries online where possible (but all supermarkets seem to be overloaded on that front at the moment) so we do also visit the local supermarkets on occasion. Maybe once every week to ten days.
I am also going out exercising. Before this kicked off I signed up for a charity trek to raise money for the Alzheimers Society in September. I'm very much hoping this still goes ahead, so I'm going out training for this. But only once a week, and I'm trying to walk round places where other people aren't - last time I went through our local industrial estate and didn't see another soul.
I could go out a lot more and still be complying with the government restrictions - but that feels like losing track of the actual goal...
queen_annes_revenge wrote: OK, granted, those popular national parks, a day before lockdown fair enough, but I'm talking about the countryside generally, right now. Where I was this weekend could've easily accommodated thousands of people, and allowed for social distancing. Obviously that's an extreme example as that isn't going to happen. I'm talking about the countryside on people's doorsteps, not national parks, which are always going to have more visitors because of their nature.
The countryside‘generally’ as you call it is private property, owned and worked by someone. It’s not yours to walk around. Go buy a field and walk round it to your hearts content.
I just can't understand these people. As hard as it is for me as someone who has been wrongfully imprisoned to say it, I hope these people get prison sentences, at least several years actual time. Impersonating a police officer is a crime. Impersonating medical personnel in a medical crisis should be too.
And yes, it's hard for me to recommend that. People who have been imprisoned often find it harder to casually recommend prison. They could disrupt hospitals and endanger lives with this .
I just can't understand these people. As hard as it is for me as someone who has been wrongfully imprisoned to say it, I hope these people get prison sentences, at least several years actual time. Impersonating a police officer is a crime. Impersonating medical personnel in a medical crisis should be too.
And yes, it's hard for me to recommend that. People who have been imprisoned often find it harder to casually recommend prison. They could disrupt hospitals and endanger lives with this .
They're always the first to yell about "stolen valour" whenever a kid dresses as a soldier for Halloween too.
Jesus effing Christ.
Just read about a dctor in NY who committed suicide after having been on the frontlines battling this disease nonstop who just couldn't take seeing so many people dying horribly anymore.
And then there's idiots like these. "He/She needed killin' y'honour" is becoming more and more attractive...
queen_annes_revenge wrote: OK, granted, those popular national parks, a day before lockdown fair enough, but I'm talking about the countryside generally, right now. Where I was this weekend could've easily accommodated thousands of people, and allowed for social distancing. Obviously that's an extreme example as that isn't going to happen. I'm talking about the countryside on people's doorsteps, not national parks, which are always going to have more visitors because of their nature.
The countryside‘generally’ as you call it is private property, owned and worked by someone. It’s not yours to walk around. Go buy a field and walk round it to your hearts content.
That’s only Open access land not private land.. open access land doesn’t exist anywhere within 50 miles of me. It’s pretty much an English thing, in a lot of the UK it doesn’t exist. It mostly apples to mountain ranges, open moors or more rarely common grazing ground. If you can find some near you and you couldn’t care less about locals or workers I’m sure legally you can access some. But then again I could squat in your house if you went on holiday for long enough and claim squatters rights. I would be a prick for doing it though.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: OK, granted, those popular national parks, a day before lockdown fair enough, but I'm talking about the countryside generally, right now. Where I was this weekend could've easily accommodated thousands of people, and allowed for social distancing. Obviously that's an extreme example as that isn't going to happen. I'm talking about the countryside on people's doorsteps, not national parks, which are always going to have more visitors because of their nature.
The countryside‘generally’ as you call it is private property, owned and worked by someone. It’s not yours to walk around. Go buy a field and walk round it to your hearts content.
thats true, but having a walk over land, compared to someone taking your property, is different in orders of magnitude. I dont understand your attitude that people who are merely walking around open spaces are bad people. I've been on country walks every weekend for the past month and I havent even seen any workers or locals.
If anything, I would suggest those who believe people shouldn't take part in harmless activity, just because of some warped sense of entitlement is the bad person. I'm not saying this is you, but you do seem to have a large chip on your shoulder about such trivial issues as law abiding citizens walking.
Texas is starting to open up. I'm of mixed minds. We need to be careful, but even with all the precautions and locking down in late February it still killed the FIL and the MIL got it.
On the positive doing my first shooting competition Saturday. This should be...interesting. "all right everyone lets be especially careful to watch your hoses and and avoid tripping in your biohazard suit. Winner gets an entire roll of TP!"
queen_annes_revenge wrote: thats true, but having a walk over land, compared to someone taking your property, is different in orders of magnitude. I dont understand your attitude that people who are merely walking around open spaces are bad people. I've been on country walks every weekend for the past month and I havent even seen any workers or locals.
If anything, I would suggest those who believe people shouldn't take part in harmless activity, just because of some warped sense of entitlement is the bad person. I'm not saying this is you, but you do seem to have a large chip on your shoulder about such trivial issues as law abiding citizens walking.
Here’s a couple of snaps around the farm last while. Haven’t put people in for obvious reasons. Blocking gates, clogging turning circles and one real smart Alec parking on a bend in front of a road closed sign so no tractors can get past. Cost half a day of mans wages that little walk.
No, no, no, you misunderstand. queen_annes_revenge would never do something like this so clearly it's fine to say everyone should be allowed out in the countryside. This is all just harmless activity /s
queen_annes_revenge wrote: thats true, but having a walk over land, compared to someone taking your property, is different in orders of magnitude. I dont understand your attitude that people who are merely walking around open spaces are bad people. I've been on country walks every weekend for the past month and I havent even seen any workers or locals.
If anything, I would suggest those who believe people shouldn't take part in harmless activity, just because of some warped sense of entitlement is the bad person. I'm not saying this is you, but you do seem to have a large chip on your shoulder about such trivial issues as law abiding citizens walking.
No have not mentioned my opinion of anybody's character or intent, so you can drop that line straight away. Who mentioned taking property? It certainly wasn't me!
The whole point of distancing is to prevent the spread of a virus, which is killing people.
Everybody needs to keep healthy, so exercise is permitted, which it isn't in some other countries. Total lockdown has people unable to leave their house at all elsewhere. We do not have that.
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/coronavirus-guidance-on-access-to-green-spaces "stay local and use open spaces near to your home where possible – do not travel unnecessarily"
We walk around the block a couple of times a week. We live on the outskirts of a city. We've no need to wander through the fields over the road to get exercise.
Haha my old uncle once had someone park in front of a gate at silage time. The guy refused to move and my uncle lifted his car and threw it in the river... the guy was completely gobsmacked. This was in the early 90s my uncle had to go to court got a fine and always said he would have done it again just to see the guys expression!
I’m not quite that stubborn!! Might get cross but if I got in like that my wife would kick my ass!
Slipspace wrote: No, no, no, you misunderstand. queen_annes_revenge would never do something like this so clearly it's fine to say everyone should be allowed out in the countryside. This is all just harmless activity /s
Last time I checked "everyone should be allowed to go into the countryside" was not a defense of people blocking roadways. If people are obstructing the roads then call the local police and have them tow the cars, I'm sure the local township would appreciate the extra cash coming in from the fines.
Slipspace wrote: No, no, no, you misunderstand. queen_annes_revenge would never do something like this so clearly it's fine to say everyone should be allowed out in the countryside. This is all just harmless activity /s
Last time I checked "everyone should be allowed to go into the countryside" was not a defense of people blocking roadways. If people are obstructing the roads then call the local police and have them tow the cars, I'm sure the local township would appreciate the extra cash coming in from the fines.
So now someone deciding it's fine for them to go out to the countryside against government advice requires getting the police involved. Great!
Also, in the first of those pictures it looks like there are just a lot of cars all parked at a popular spot, not breaking the law but making social distancing in this wide open space potentially quite difficult.
If everyone goes to the countryside, where do you want them to park? The roads round us are narrow, most require you to pull in if you meet another vehicle. The council have shut the car parks to try to dissuade people from coming out, but some folks just don’t care.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: thats true, but having a walk over land, compared to someone taking your property, is different in orders of magnitude. I dont understand your attitude that people who are merely walking around open spaces are bad people. I've been on country walks every weekend for the past month and I havent even seen any workers or locals.
If anything, I would suggest those who believe people shouldn't take part in harmless activity, just because of some warped sense of entitlement is the bad person. I'm not saying this is you, but you do seem to have a large chip on your shoulder about such trivial issues as law abiding citizens walking.
Here’s a couple of snaps around the farm last while. Haven’t put people in for obvious reasons. Blocking gates, clogging turning circles and one real smart Alec parking on a bend in front of a road closed sign so no tractors can get past. Cost half a day of mans wages that little walk.
Well yeah, of course that's not OK, but a few bad examples doesn't mean you can tar everyone else with that brush, not an argument for curtailing public rights.
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Slipspace wrote: No, no, no, you misunderstand. queen_annes_revenge would never do something like this so clearly it's fine to say everyone should be allowed out in the countryside. This is all just harmless activity /s
While I didn't actually say that, what you're saying is essentially just the reverse, so not really valid in any way.
Knockagh wrote: The council have shut the car parks to try to dissuade people from coming out, but some folks just get it.
FTFY
Stay in, unless you need to go out.
If you need to go out, don't drive.
If you need to drive, do it for a sensible reason.
Those few bad examples are all it takes, in a lot of cases. More cases. The whole point of the 'lockdown' is to revent more cases.
Slipspace wrote: No, no, no, you misunderstand. queen_annes_revenge would never do something like this so clearly it's fine to say everyone should be allowed out in the countryside. This is all just harmless activity /s
While I didn't actually say that, what you're saying is essentially just the reverse, so not really valid in any way.
You see the '/s'? You seem to have missed it the first time around.
That's why closing the car parks was a dumb idea. I've been to tons of national parks, national trust areas, and even large Manor houses where you can walk the grounds, and even on busy events, it's easy enough to get into the open space while staying away from other people. If you're that worried, close off every second parking space, but let people use them. Then you won't have people parking on verges or potentially blocking access. It's no different to a supermarket car park, where everyone can pile in with no restriction.
The national Trust had the right idea, opening up their open spaces free of charge. Unfortunately, then they also bowed to public pressure and went full shut down a few days later.
People still have to pass to get through the gates.
Unless you make a one-way route around the entire place, there's no point.
People will still ignore that too.
Supermarket car parks have no option, the have to stay open. Get your daily walk doing that.
It was "public pressure" that causes it all. Too many people.
Knockagh, I sympathize with what you're saying, but at the same time - it feels like you think because some people are behaving badly, everyone is... and that's just not true. If anything, how much queen_annes_revenge has thought about this probably means they're being very conscientious about private land owners.
Also, in your pictures I see a Very large monument and water... I am guessing your farm is adjacent to this, as that obviously cannot be farmland?
I can also tell there are issues-unique-to-the-UK in this. For our exercise, we've been fortunate that there is a very wide sidewalk by the water near us, leading into a large park in either direction. We've been able to exercise without getting near anybody, but here in the US this is truly public land... not maintained by any private person, so that issue isn't a factor.
Passing people outside is not going to spread the virus. Just stay the 2 metres, or as best as, and you'll be fine. It honestly feels like common sense has just been put to the wind in favour of a 'save us oh mighty government' mindset to me right now.
Slipspace wrote: No, no, no, you misunderstand. queen_annes_revenge would never do something like this so clearly it's fine to say everyone should be allowed out in the countryside. This is all just harmless activity /s
Last time I checked "everyone should be allowed to go into the countryside" was not a defense of people blocking roadways. If people are obstructing the roads then call the local police and have them tow the cars, I'm sure the local township would appreciate the extra cash coming in from the fines.
So now someone deciding it's fine for them to go out to the countryside against government advice requires getting the police involved. Great!
Also, in the first of those pictures it looks like there are just a lot of cars all parked at a popular spot, not breaking the law but making social distancing in this wide open space potentially quite difficult.
? The police and local government are always involved whenever people are breaking the law, how is enforcing a law against obstructing the roadways now any different than it was 6 months ago?
No, it definitely isn't especially when it comes to parking lots. Without fail, I always end up with someone parked next to me when I park in the furthest part of the lot even when it's otherwise empty.
From what I've seen, people here are distancing the appropriate amount the vast majority of the time - especially while exercising. One person or the other moves way over to keep the appropriate space when passing / etc.
I also think it's important to move to a sort of sustainable setup. In my opinion, if people start to get crazy and are extremely distancing now, but then drop it, that will be much worse overall for the spread of the virus. Whereas if they are learning how to do needed things (and exercise is Definitely on that list lol) with appropriate social distancing, that is something that can keep the virus at bay moving forward.
So, the idea that it's black-and-white just doesn't seem true to me... people better not be avoiding all exercise for months, and at the same time, need to be social distancing. Both of these things are possible, but people need to be very intentional about it and as a society we need to encourage the right kind of sustainable activity going forward.
Slipspace wrote: No, no, no, you misunderstand. queen_annes_revenge would never do something like this so clearly it's fine to say everyone should be allowed out in the countryside. This is all just harmless activity /s
Last time I checked "everyone should be allowed to go into the countryside" was not a defense of people blocking roadways. If people are obstructing the roads then call the local police and have them tow the cars, I'm sure the local township would appreciate the extra cash coming in from the fines.
So now someone deciding it's fine for them to go out to the countryside against government advice requires getting the police involved. Great!
Also, in the first of those pictures it looks like there are just a lot of cars all parked at a popular spot, not breaking the law but making social distancing in this wide open space potentially quite difficult.
? The police and local government are always involved whenever people are breaking the law, how is enforcing a law against obstructing the roadways now any different than it was 6 months ago?
I don't know, what's changed in the world in the last 6 months? (For those that may miss it again, that was sarcasm). The point is, we're supposed to be socially distancing. This attitude of "it's fine for people to drive go out into the countryside" kind of falls down for a whole bunch of reasons amply demonstrated over the last couple of pages. Once you have to call the police out you've now got extra people potentially interacting that wouldn't have done so in the first place. Yes, I understand the risk of an infection being spread because of a police intervention for a stupidly parked car is minimal but if we play out that scenario over many weeks and every part of the country the risk goes up. So maybe we should just stay local to avoid such possibilities.
which couldve been avoided by not closing the car parks...
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RiTides wrote: From what I've seen, people here are distancing the appropriate amount the vast majority of the time - especially while exercising. One person or the other moves way over to keep the appropriate space when passing / etc.
I also think it's important to move to a sort of sustainable setup. In my opinion, if people start to get crazy and are extremely distancing now, but then drop it, that will be much worse overall for the spread of the virus. Whereas if they are learning how to do needed things (and exercise is Definitely on that list lol) with appropriate social distancing, that is something that can keep the virus at bay moving forward.
So, the idea that it's black-and-white just doesn't seem true to me... people better not be avoiding all exercise for months, and at the same time, need to be social distancing. Both of these things are possible, but people need to be very intentional about it and as a society we need to encourage the right kind of sustainable activity going forward.
didnt you hear? if you dont voluntarily imprison yourself in your own home while constantly preaching 'stay home, save lives' you just want everyone to die?
I can see the points people are making, and in general there's a lot of sense to being as conservative as possible in these times... but exercise is something everyone really needs to be making an intentional point of doing right now, one way or another. There are memes about all the weight people will have gained through this, but that's actually true and going to be a big problem for society...
The actual risk of infection in an outdoor field is just so low compared to almost any other situation. I think people should be courteous, especially in the settings Knockagh posted about! But they need to get outside in the open air (if accessible where they live) and get moving, or else they'll have all sorts of other health problems - particularly the longer we keep social distancing in place, since they are not getting their usual exercise from other activities.
Places are closing the car parks because people for whatever reason seem to believe that simply being outside means they can stand around in groups without maintaining distancing.
That's why my state closed the playgrounds, for example--parents would still act like everything was 100% normal and gather up in their groups to talk like it was no big deal.
RiTides wrote: Knockagh, I sympathize with what you're saying, but at the same time - it feels like you think because some people are behaving badly, everyone is... and that's just not true. If anything, how much queen_annes_revenge has thought about this probably means they're being very conscientious about private land owners.
Also, in your pictures I see a Very large monument and water... I am guessing your farm is adjacent to this, as that obviously cannot be farmland?
I can also tell there are issues-unique-to-the-UK in this. For our exercise, we've been fortunate that there is a very wide sidewalk by the water near us, leading into a large park in either direction. We've been able to exercise without getting near anybody, but here in the US this is truly public land... not maintained by any private person, so that issue isn't a factor.
The water you see is Belfast Lough. It’s about 4 miles away as the crow flies. It around 900ft lower than the photo. The monument sits in the middle of our farm. It’s a war memorial put on land belonging to our family after the First World War. My great grandmother allowed it to be built there as she was left on her own at the end of the war. Memorial services and military parades take place a couple of times a year at most and I let the British Legion and council use my fields for car parking as there is only a turning circle at the monument. Wait for it....it’s called the Knockagh Monument! The council yesterday blocked the circle with large rocks. Which cyclists are using to park their bikes. See photo. Also photo from tractor today for distance to water.
Kanluwen - As a parent, I can say that's definitely not how people I saw behave . The reason to have playgrounds closed, in my opinion, is because it's nearly impossible to ask children to social distance while actively playing on the same slides / etc as one another.
Obviously, there are going to be bad apples. But the more as a society people can learn how to do needed activities and social distance at the Same time, the safer we'll all be in the long run, imo...
Edit: Simul-post! Knockagh, that is a breathtaking view you have . And I see now... in the US, a monument like that would never be on private land, so it's a bit different. The Knockagh Monument... pretty awesome
Frazzled wrote: Texas is starting to open up. I'm of mixed minds. We need to be careful, but even with all the precautions and locking down in late February it still killed the FIL and the MIL got it.
On the positive doing my first shooting competition Saturday. This should be...interesting. "all right everyone lets be especially careful to watch your hoses and and avoid tripping in your biohazard suit. Winner gets an entire roll of TP!"
In general, I tend to agree with reopening stuff here in Texas. We're so spread out that the shelter-in-place order was only ever going to slow the spread, not stop it (to be clear, slowing it is A Good Thing). I live in Fort Worth and work in Dallas, and I can see there are still a ridiculous number of people out and about this whole time as I drive to work and back. I don't want everything opened all the way all at once, though. I just hope people still act intelligently about this in the coming weeks/months. Almost half of the people I do see when I go shopping are wearing masks, and I hope that continues for awhile.
RiTides wrote: Knockagh, I sympathize with what you're saying, but at the same time - it feels like you think because some people are behaving badly, everyone is... and that's just not true. If anything, how much queen_annes_revenge has thought about this probably means they're being very conscientious about private land owners.
.
Or he's "my rights can't be interfered at all". He wouldnjt pay one pound if that meant getting rid of corona entirely. His rights and all that. He has to be allowed to do whatever he wish or it's tyranny.
RiTides wrote: I can see the points people are making, and in general there's a lot of sense to being as conservative as possible in these times... but exercise is something everyone really needs to be making an intentional point of doing right now, one way or another. There are memes about all the weight people will have gained through this, but that's actually true and going to be a big problem for society...
The actual risk of infection in an outdoor field is just so low compared to almost any other situation. I think people should be courteous, especially in the settings Knockagh posted about! But they need to get outside in the open air (if accessible where they live) and get moving, or else they'll have all sorts of other health problems - particularly the longer we keep social distancing in place, since they are not getting their usual exercise from other activities.
Of course. I agree totally with all of this, but it seems that theres so little balance.
Going for family walks is about the only exercise I'm getting at the moment, barring throwing and dragging a pallet around on the grass, and sledgehammering junk behind the garages near my house. I sure as hell arent going to be jogging. that just ruins my legs, and cycling is for weirdos in silly spandex outfits. If it doesnt involve barbells I'm not really interested, so I'm S**t out of luck right now.
Knockagh wrote: Haha my old uncle once had someone park in front of a gate at silage time. The guy refused to move and my uncle lifted his car and threw it in the river... the guy was completely gobsmacked. This was in the early 90s my uncle had to go to court got a fine and always said he would have done it again just to see the guys expression!
I’m not quite that stubborn!! Might get cross but if I got in like that my wife would kick my ass!
That he got fined is the real crime. It's the parked cars owner who should be charged and fined
RiTides wrote: Kanluwen - As a parent, I can say that's definitely not how people I saw behave . The reason to have playgrounds closed, in my opinion, is because it's nearly impossible to ask children to social distance while actively playing on the same slides / etc as one another.
Obviously, there are going to be bad apples. But the more as a society people can learn how to do needed activities and social distance at the Same time, the safer we'll all be in the long run, imo...
Edit: Simul-post! Knockagh, that is a breathtaking view you have . And I see now... in the US, a monument like that would never be on private land, so it's a bit different. The Knockagh Monument... pretty awesome
The bit it sits on has moved to the council for maintainer costs. But approaches and car parking is still all privately owned. Our family has taken great pride in being custodians of the memorial for generations now.
I probably am rather hyper protective of it. When Covid wasn’t here we have had lots of problems with kids visiting the monument at night to smoke joints and drink beer they leave awful mess. We’ve had lots of cars burned out over the years too. It’s a quiet spot that people can go to were they think no one is about. It doesn’t leave a great flavour in your mouth for visitors.
Wow, that is beautiful! Thanks for sharing... brightens things up a bit in here (although sorry about the pesky kids >.< still an amazing thing to have on / surrounded by ones own land ).
There are many similar monuments in the Red River Valley on Private land in MN to commemorate the Minnesota-Dakota War as well. This is not necessarily a uniquely UK thing and it does happen in the States as well.
No idea the impact COVID-19 is having on them at the moment as I am not in the area at the moment.
To the Glory of God and in proud and affectionate remembrance of the men of County Antrim who fell in the Great War. This memorial is erected by their grateful county.
Then it has a quote from a hymn that says
'Nobly you fought, your knightly virtue proved,
your memory hallowed in the land you loved'
There’s a smaller plaque below the main one which was added to include the Second World War and also our soldiers who died in Northern Ireland fighting terrorism.
This quarantine has been really healthy for me mentally and financially
Saved a few grand these past two months by not travelling to work or going out. I didnt waste 3+ hours a day on a commute for a job that I can do much faster at home, and finally getting some good hobby time in working on my own projects. Girlfriend is home as well.
My dog also loves this. Normally I take him out around 6-7am and I get home around 8pm and take him out again - but its dark out already at this point. He's hype I'm there all week and doesnt have the same issues with whining/separation he used to have when no one was home for 12 hours a day. Pup is lonely not seeing other dogs at the park every weekend but he seems me throughout the day.
Smoking a bit too much when painting now that I'm inside but I havent bothered to drink in a few weeks so overall I'm feeling 10/10 health wise
It's not this way for everyone - but this was a nice breather in my life to reset the constant work work work. Doing a 55-60 hour work week is now fine mentally since I can mix painting in with it and I dont have to only be really home one day to relax and paint.
Not sure if I want to get tested - it's $280 to get it done locally if I want to do the antibody thing but honestly I havent really left my place is 5-6 weeks
Knockagh wrote: . The council yesterday blocked the circle with large rocks. Which cyclists are using to park their bikes. See photo. Also photo from tractor today for distance to water.
That's not a lot of bikes though. Even the number of cars is relatively low. I'm not sure I really see the issue here as they are still following government guidelines.
Knockagh wrote: . The council yesterday blocked the circle with large rocks. Which cyclists are using to park their bikes. See photo. Also photo from tractor today for distance to water.
That's not a lot of bikes though. Even the number of cars is relatively low. I'm not sure I really see the issue here as they are still following government guidelines.
It was a few demonstration pics. Haven’t got my camera out all day. Anyway I can’t convince everyone to stay round home. It’s obvious the forum like the country is divided on this.
Surely though in time of national emergency we should collectively obey national guidance? Regardless if we think we are smarter or cleverer than those in authority. Everyone today appears to be far too smart.
@stevefamine Do you think people will be allowed to work from home more when this is over? My wife just got a new laptop from her work today. She always had a desktop until now, they have given these new laptops to all the accountants in her department. Can’t see them going to that expense just to go back to normal in a few weeks/months. Although she works for the civil service and they have been known to waste money.....from time to time....
That's what I think folks on both sides of the discussion are saying, though - people need to follow guidelines, and some of the behavior you described violates those. But it's also possible for people to exercise outdoors without violating social distancing / government guidelines. That's what folks need to stick to!
Regarding working from home - I definitely hope working remotely, at least some of the time, becomes more common after this! My wife and her whole team have been more effective now than when they were in the office, similar to what Stevefamine described
My job would hate to let us work from home. My long commute has tolls - but since the company pays for that expensive nice building they'll want to have us in there. The offices are easily what I'd call "over the top/TRUMP hotel aesthetics". It's an expensive HQ buildings with a huge waterfall / daily catering companies come in for buffets / and huge photo OP/video stuff over where I work.
Random hype / sales/ awards and loud clappers and bells does not help the work environment. I do like wearing a suit though
In the future - people should be allowed to work from home more. Instead of burning PTO calling out sick I'd easily just work from home those days instead of infecting people at work and having my nose run and coughing to come in for a half day and being told to spend two hours getting home after I bothered to show up. I do have some 30+ pto days a year so I'm not complaining but it would be lovely to just have the option to work - but not show.
But yeah, if someone's pitting a modest drop in standard of living(oh noes, poor middle class people won't be able to take a foreign holiday every single year sometimes twice? i weep ) against hundreds of thousands of lives, I consider them to be a sociopath.
We're not talking about a modest drop in living standards. We're talking hundreds of millions of people losing their jobs and being unable to afford basic needs. Needs which the government could never afford because nobody can pay any taxes, plus collapse of agriculture leading to worldwide food shortages. A situation which could lead to not just hundreds of thousands of lives lost, but hundreds of millions of lives lost. Which would be a combination of economic collapse, famine, and violence stemming from those 2 previous causes.
It is infinitely better to take a known risk(maybe a few hundred thousand dead worldwide) vs the possibility of worldwide collapse that would lead the millions of dead.
Maybe you'd save your grandfather from dying to COVID, but its not worth it if it means millions of people starving to death fighting for scraps and recovery that could last over a century.
Like many, you seem to have discounted the economic chilling effects that result from deaths. Various think tanks, economists, universities, etc. have done the math on this ad almost unanimously (including some of the most conservative and pro-business think tanks like the American Enteriprise Institute) they agree that the economic hit from an estimated 1-2 million Americans dying is far worse than the economic impact of the shutdown.
"We're going to lose $500 billion dollars from this mistake and that is going to be bad for a lot of people", then they absolutely are thinking about your neighbour. And also your daughter, and your postman and your cat. They're thinking of far more people than you are.
Thinking about a lot of people doesn't mean they are thinking about it well. I have yet to see anyone following this line of thinking make a compelling or reasonable argument that factors in the dollar costs of lives lost - its an nth order consequence and people are terrible at taking those into consideration, but they exist.
People are also failing to consider the more direct economic harm that premature reopening will lead to - business interruption insurance no longer applies if the government reopens the economy and you're allowed to resume operations, which means that a business has to reopen regardless of whether or not it is practical for them to do so - if you run a sit-down restaurant and 80% of your customers are still too fearful to patronize your establishment because there isn't yet a vaccine then you're going to take a financial hit. That financial hit means you have to lay off personnel, up until now your staff was furloughed so they at least they had health insurance and the state was kind enough to cover the tab for you, but now their insurance is most likely gone unless they can afford the higher premium COBRA coverage and they have to go through a marketplace plan (assuming they can afford it) or try to get coverage through MEDICAID, and you're also covering the unemployment costs associated with that layoff instead of the state footing the bill (and if the economy is forced to close down again because of a second wave, they remain on your tab even while you're forced to re-close your business). Because you can resume business your landlord is now also expecting rent in full or you will be evicted for failure to pay (some states have already got ahead of this one, but not all).
I'm really tempted to say that if you're pushing for a reopening, you probably *aren't* really thinking about people at all, not really, not in a meaningful way that really considers what the consequences of that reopening actually are - especially when you consider that reopening is most harmful to those PEOPLE who are already most vulnerable working low-income service industry jobs. If you were really thinking about people, you'd be pushing to keep the economy closed and push a freeze on the economy instead - freeze rents, freeze credit card payments, freeze loan/mortgage repayments, etc. Ban layoffs/only allow furloughs, bail out those industries effected by the economic freeze with interest-free loans (credit card companies, landlords, etc.) so that they retain staff on payroll, etc. and basically keep everything paused on the "status quo ante" on life support up until a vaccine is rolled out and then hit go again, at which point you hand out stimulus checks to every American to get them spending again. The only way the economy comes back in any manner even approaching what it was before this is if people and industry still have jobs when all this is over, for everyone to have jobs requires everyone to have money to spend to keep volume of business/cash flows up.
That includes services like nail salon, restarunts and tattoo parlors... so, long as those businesses observe proper PPE and social distancing.
Its not possible to observe social distancing in two of those scenarios (nail salons, tattoo parlors), and the other one its not possible to observe proper PPE wear (explain to me how you eat and drink in a restaurant through a mask).
Grey Templar wrote: The middle ground is a shutdown lasting for 6-8 weeks tops, which in my area has already gone way past that. With a gradual opening starting at week 6 and working up to full reopening maybe 12 weeks. Anything longer than that is going to not just cripple the economy. Its going to annihilate it.
Earlier studies by AEI determined that the best case most optimistic scenario for an effective lockdown was 8-12 weeks total, but found that 16-24 weeks was more realistic as the 8-12 week scenario was not, in their words, well grounded in reality, and that we could go up to something like 32-37 weeks before the cost of the lockdown became more economically harmful than the resultant harm from the likely number of deaths attributable to the virus. The study also finds that the cost of lifting lockdown too soon and having to re-impose lockdown measures again later (or intentionally "riding the wave" and repeatedly lockding down, reopening, and locking down again) is substantially greater than just a single long-duration lockdown.
Seriously, please inform yourself a bit before you go off on an alarmist "total socio-economic collapse" rant that is wholly unsupported by facts, reality, or highly-biased think tanks that would generally support your line of thinking.
RiTides wrote: Antibody testing from NYC just showed an infection rate of 20% in a sample population. Needs lots of follow up and confirmation but it would imply both that the virus was more widespread and contagious than previously thought, but also less deadly (0.5% fatality rate - still high but lower than previously indicated):
Hoping so (if their coronavirus coverage is free like many places)? It is showing a just over 20% infection rate in a sample test population from NYC, which would also indicate a 0.5% mortality rate. So scary in the sense that it's more contagious and widespread than we realized, but also less deadly. All of this is preliminary and needs more testing to verify, but really interesting...
20% of NYC was found to have antibodies, BUT only 3.6% of those tested upstate came back positive. I.E. - no, rather it implies the opposite, its *not* that widespread outside of some densely populated hotspots that had huge flareups (this also means that NYC would be good for at least another 12-15k dead before herd immunity kicks in, assuming that herd immunity is a thing with COVID-19, which scientists still seem somewhat undecided on).
And the fastest vaccine development ever -- mumps -- took 4 years. *IF* a vaccine is achievable, there's reason to think it won't need to be that long
Wouldn't seasonal flu vaccines be faster? If they have to pump out a new version of it every year in response to recent mutations, you would think that they don't exactly have a 4 year lead time....
Immediate difference?
Sweden, 198 deaths per million population.
Denmark, 67 deaths per million population.
The numbers coming out of Sweden are encouraging only because Sweden has a small population and is not densely populated. 2200 dead is an easy number to shrug off, especially for the general public who don't really know how to connect the different relevant data points together in a meaningful way.
Denmark seems to be the best performing of the Scandinavian nations, 7 deaths per 100k residents (22 for sweden), with half the population but 5x the population density. Had Denmark taken the swedish approach, I would expect that Denmark would have been absolutely devastated. Personally, I think Sweden is overly optimistic about all this, they are estimating that they are weeks away from achieving herd immunity, etc. I saw one report suggest that for every positive case of coronavirus there are another 999 that were too mild to be identified - a claim which it seems they have since backtracked, and for good reason. At 19-20k confirmed cases in the country that would put the number of cases in sweden total at about 2x the national population.
NinthMusketeer wrote:Another factor could be that people of European descent tend to be more resistant to disease, due to the black plague(s) and general Dark Ages sanitation doing a significant degree of natural selection.
Umm what? Thats not even remotely true, and you're discounting the fact that on the whole tropical disease like those found in Asia, Africa, and Central/South America tend to be the most deadly and debilitating (and those of European descent are particularly susceptible to them). Besides that, it doesn't work that way, surviving black/bubonic plague doesn't suddenly make you more resistant to Typhoid or the flu.
Quick google searches confirm that there isn't much to back this claim:
Whilst I expect it to be a bit too early to say that, I'm very jealous of the way NZ have handled this.
Im just generally jealous of NZ. Jacinda Ardern is a dime, extremely intelligent, very eloquent, and a natural leader. Geographically and climatically NZ is gorgeous, and historically I think NZ has done best by its indigenous populations of all the former British colonies (which isn't to say that its perfect), etc.
Yes, we have a lot of deaths. However that graph is misleading because it just shows total deaths and isn't per capita. The US has a lower per capita death rate than Spain, Italy, France, Belgium and the UK, and less deaths than all of Europe combined.
The US should never be compared 1 on 1 with other countries, especially in Europe. Its misleading.
Its even more misleading to ignore population density, once you normalize for density, the US is actually doing pretty awfully:
Generally, the closer you are to the top left of that chart, the worse you have performed in containing the virus. Only Sweden is really performing any worse than the US is at present, but thats misleading because most of the Swedish population is clustered into a relatively small area of the nation. In this situation per capita gives a very incomplete picture of whats going on and can lull you into a false sense of success, as population density is a hugely determinant factor in transmission rates for the virus. Look at Norway and Singapore for example - roughly the same population, but Singapore occupies an area slightly greater than Oslo, Norway. You would expect to see a much larger case count in Singapore than in Norway as a result, as its logically easier to transmit the disease in Singapore than it is in Norway.
Prestor Jon wrote:You'd be guessing wrong. New York City and New York State are the municipal and state areas that have been the hardest hit by coronavirus. NYC has a population density of 22,000/km2 with a total population over 8 million. New York state has a population density of 421/mile2 with a total population 20 million spread over an area of 47,000 square miles.New York state is larger and more densely populated than Hungary and has worse covid19 statistics. That information isn't readily apparent when you compare Hungary and the USA as nations. Hence why it's not a useful comparison.
If by wrong you mean right - you just made steelmages point for him - a place with a higher population density will be hit harder. In your own words, New York state has a higher population density than Hungary, and also harder hit by coronavirus, ergo exactly what he said. Mind you, there are a number of problems with this example, as Hungary is likely under/mis-reporting its statistics, and the numbers you gave for New York State *also* include New York City, which is such a massive statistical outlier within the state that it is skewing the data. Unless you were responding to the "guess not" bit, which I think was meant as sarcasm (or he knows something I/we dont).
Population density by country isn't a useful predictor, because you get large variations. Population density by region (or locality, in the case of major cities) is more relevant. I wouldn't expect all that many cases in eastern Hungary or Montana. But it could be useful to compare Budapest and Miami, as metropolitan areas that have around 2-3 million people. [When assessed properly. Officially 'Miami' has less than 500,000 people, but the Miami-Dade County has 2.7 million. Some states do city accounting in weird ways for other reasons (like voting districts), so South Miami, Miami Springs, Miami Shores and Miami Beach are all their own entities distinct from 'Miami,' despite being adjacent]. I don't remember if Buda and Pest are still technically the separate cities that they were at one time, but it'd be silly to treat them separately for virus statistics... unless there was a real divergence in virus cases between the two.
The data is largely normalized/regional variations are smoothed out when you're comparing one nation to another on the subject of density, especially when it comes to nations like the Europe and those in Western and parts of Eastern Europe which have roughly proportional population distributions to the US that smooth out outlier effects from places like New York City. You start to go awry when you include very large nations like Canada and Russia, sparsely populated nations/nations with uneven distributions like Scandinavia or Australia, or small micronations like Singapore, etc.
No, it definitely isn't especially when it comes to parking lots. Without fail, I always end up with someone parked next to me when I park in the furthest part of the lot even when it's otherwise empty.
The smartest statement I have ever seen posted on dakka is that "people are (fething) weird about parking".
NinthMusketeer wrote:Another factor could be that people of European descent tend to be more resistant to disease, due to the black plague(s) and general Dark Ages sanitation doing a significant degree of natural selection.
Umm what? Thats not even remotely true, and you're discounting the fact that on the whole tropical disease like those found in Asia, Africa, and Central/South America tend to be the most deadly and debilitating (and those of European descent are particularly susceptible to them). Besides that, it doesn't work that way, surviving black/bubonic plague doesn't suddenly make you more resistant to Typhoid or the flu.
Quick google searches confirm that there isn't much to back this claim:
At any rate, that is how natural selection works. Those of the population most susceptible to disease are the ones that die off, removing them from the future gene pool. Africans have this with their resistance to malaria.
Some more detail on current (by which we mean two week old) England and Wales figures. They were higher two weeks ago (22,351) than the government stated they were today (21,678). On the ONS cutoff date (17.04) they were underreported by 52%. Note: France and Italy include care home deaths, Spain is trying but struggling to compile all data. As such, there is a reasonable chance the UK is the second worst effected state on the planet in teens of total fatalities.
There have been 29,751 excess deaths (UK-wide and compared to five-year average) over the period of corona fatality in the UK.
Hancock claimed that domestic and care home deaths would be included in the figures as of tomorrow, but DHSC have subsequently clarified that this will only acknowledge fatalities where there has been a positive test carried out, so will still seek to sweep non-hospital deaths under the carpet.
And the fastest vaccine development ever -- mumps -- took 4 years. *IF* a vaccine is achievable, there's reason to think it won't need to be that long
Wouldn't seasonal flu vaccines be faster? If they have to pump out a new version of it every year in response to recent mutations, you would think that they don't exactly have a 4 year lead time....
Those aren’t really new vaccines. The shots we get are mixes of existing vaccines for Influenza A and B, based on the forecasts for which strains of A and B will emerge each winter. Some years they get a good match, other years they don’t. But it’s also ultimately all A and B, so whatever we get will probably give us some level of resistance.
COVID-19 is a novel bug, not a strain of some existing virus.
NinthMusketeer wrote:Another factor could be that people of European descent tend to be more resistant to disease, due to the black plague(s) and general Dark Ages sanitation doing a significant degree of natural selection.
Umm what? Thats not even remotely true, and you're discounting the fact that on the whole tropical disease like those found in Asia, Africa, and Central/South America tend to be the most deadly and debilitating (and those of European descent are particularly susceptible to them). Besides that, it doesn't work that way, surviving black/bubonic plague doesn't suddenly make you more resistant to Typhoid or the flu.
Quick google searches confirm that there isn't much to back this claim:
At any rate, that is how natural selection works. Those of the population most susceptible to disease are the ones that die off, removing them from the future gene pool. Africans have this with their resistance to malaria.
Racial heritage is certainly relevant to disease (beyond disparity of treatment).
Diseases attack the body in different ways. Having a population survive the bubonic plague does not make them generally more disease resistant, it only makes them more resistant to specific diseases that are specifically similar to bubonic plague. Having strands of genetic code that prove more effective at combating the bacteria responsible for the plague doesn't really do anything in terms of combating a virus like COVID or influenza, etc. Bacterium and viruses are two entirely different types of microbes that trigger entirely different immune responses.Your third link points this out directly, and clarifies that its believed that aside from the black death the plagues that europe experienced were largely viral haemorrhagic fevers which might explain the reduced susceptibility to HIV amongst certain parts of the European diaspora.
You also seem to have confused the meaning of the first article you linked (which corroborates the info corrected link earlier in this post):
As a result, according to the new evidence, people of African ancestry generally show stronger immune responses than Europeans do.
Showing a stronger immune response means they (Africans) have a stronger immune system, and are therefore generally less susceptible to disease.
Those aren’t really new vaccines. The shots we get are mixes of existing vaccines for Influenza A and B, based on the forecasts for which strains of A and B will emerge each winter. Some years they get a good match, other years they don’t. But it’s also ultimately all A and B, so whatever we get will probably give us some level of resistance.
COVID-19 is a novel bug, not a strain of some existing virus.
Fair nuff/good point, also didn't realize the dynamics involved with the annual flu vaccine being based on pre-existing strains.
NinthMusketeer wrote:Another factor could be that people of European descent tend to be more resistant to disease, due to the black plague(s) and general Dark Ages sanitation doing a significant degree of natural selection.
Umm what? Thats not even remotely true, and you're discounting the fact that on the whole tropical disease like those found in Asia, Africa, and Central/South America tend to be the most deadly and debilitating (and those of European descent are particularly susceptible to them). Besides that, it doesn't work that way, surviving black/bubonic plague doesn't suddenly make you more resistant to Typhoid or the flu.
Quick google searches confirm that there isn't much to back this claim:
At any rate, that is how natural selection works. Those of the population most susceptible to disease are the ones that die off, removing them from the future gene pool. Africans have this with their resistance to malaria.
Racial heritage is certainly relevant to disease (beyond disparity of treatment).
Diseases attack the body in different ways. Having a population survive the bubonic plague does not make them generally more disease resistant, it only makes them more resistant to specific diseases that are specifically similar to bubonic plague. Having strands of genetic code that prove more effective at combating the bacteria responsible for the plague doesn't really do anything in terms of combating a virus like COVID or influenza, etc. Bacterium and viruses are two entirely different types of microbes that trigger entirely different immune responses.Your third link points this out directly, and clarifies that its believed that aside from the black death the plagues that europe experienced were largely viral haemorrhagic fevers which might explain the reduced susceptibility to HIV amongst certain parts of the European diaspora.
You also seem to have confused the meaning of the first article you linked (which corroborates the info corrected link earlier in this post):
As a result, according to the new evidence, people of African ancestry generally show stronger immune responses than Europeans do.
Showing a stronger immune response means they (Africans) have a stronger immune system, and are therefore generally less susceptible to disease.
A response would require explaining out a lot of biology and genetics information that I do not feel is particularly on-topic, so agree to disagree.
At any rate, that is how natural selection works. Those of the population most susceptible to disease are the ones that die off, removing them from the future gene pool. Africans have this with their resistance to malaria.
Racial heritage is certainly relevant to disease (beyond disparity of treatment).
PArtly true. Those of the population that are resistant to a specific disease pass on those genes giving their population resistance (very rarely full immunity) to that particular disease. For other diseases, all bets are off. Africans' resistance to malaria is actually a good example. Europeans when they came to Africa didn't have that resistance, so they died in droves from it. Native americans and smallpox (which Europeans were more resistant to due having grown up with it) are another good example. So racial heritage is relevant to specific diseases, not diseases in general.
And I very much suspect that African people having generally stronger immune responses is much more due to the unsanitary living conditions across most of the continent giving their existing immune system a constant workout than inherent genetics. If Europeans lived in similar conditions, their overall immune system would be a lot stronger, too.
I'm not so sure on that last point Bd, europe had pretty unsanitary conditions up until about the victorian period and the installation of proper sewerage systems. If that was the case those people should've been much more resilient, but diseases were still rampant. I'd say genetic resistance is more likely to be the cause of things like resistance to malaria, than the environmental conditions they are in.
However I do hold the opinion that humans should be exposed to quantities of germs in order to maintain a healthy immune system. We are often guilty of over sanitisation and avoidance of dirt and the like in modern culture.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I'm not so sure on that last point Bd, europe had pretty unsanitary conditions up until about the victorian period and the installation of proper sewerage systems. If that was the case those people should've been much more resilient, but diseases were still rampant.
Much more resilient than which baseline? What are you comparing them to?
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I'm not so sure on that last point Bd, europe had pretty unsanitary conditions up until about the victorian period and the installation of proper sewerage systems. If that was the case those people should've been much more resilient, but diseases were still rampant.
Much more resilient than which baseline? What are you comparing them to?
I'm not comparing anything. the premise is that unsanitary conditions lead to hardier immune systems, which would extend to a premise of , the more unsanitary the conditions, the hardier the immune systems would be I'm saying that that isnt explicitly true because of the living conditions and the diseases that were rampant during that period which suffered from unsanitary conditions.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I'm not so sure on that last point Bd, europe had pretty unsanitary conditions up until about the victorian period and the installation of proper sewerage systems. If that was the case those people should've been much more resilient, but diseases were still rampant. I'd say genetic resistance is more likely to be the cause of things like resistance to malaria, than the environmental conditions they are in.
However I do hold the opinion that humans should be exposed to quantities of germs in order to maintain a healthy immune system. We are often guilty of over sanitisation and avoidance of dirt and the like in modern culture.
Re: resistance to malaria: That was my point? Genetic resistance is to a specific disease - africans to malaria, which killed europeans, and europeans to smallpox which killed entire tribes of native americans, not diseases in general.
The latter can be a consequence of giving your immune system a good workout. Other factors help too, though. Diet, for instance. Clean air and other living conditions. And if conditions are unsanitary enough, even a strong immune system can be overwhelmed. And yes, genetics too - up to a point. Some people's baseline resistance is higher than other's.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: I'm not so sure on that last point Bd, europe had pretty unsanitary conditions up until about the victorian period and the installation of proper sewerage systems. If that was the case those people should've been much more resilient, but diseases were still rampant.
Much more resilient than which baseline? What are you comparing them to?
I'm not comparing anything. the premise is that unsanitary conditions lead to hardier immune systems, which would extend to a premise of , the more unsanitary the conditions, the hardier the immune systems would be I'm saying that that isnt explicitly true because of the living conditions and the diseases that were rampant during that period which suffered from unsanitary conditions.
Your isolated example has no bearing on whether unsanitary conditions lead to stronger immune systems. Strong immune systems can still be beaten and the presence of certain diseases does not prove the absence of strong immune systems. You need a contrasting example to make any kind of argument at all. To make a meaningful one you need demonstrable differences between an unsanitary group and a control group.
Of course, we also know for a fact that high cleanliness does lead to weaker immune systems. So there's that.
Not Online!!! wrote: Also, until the vicotiran Era? Like, the romans built aqueducts, bathhouses etc for fun and giggles?
They did, but they weren't for everyone. the general public were still pretty grim for the most part. and especially post roman, through medieval up until victorian times.
Yes, underwear and pants make it extremely unlikely you're going to get corona from someone dropping his guts in front of you, but if you see some moron with his pants hanging way down and exposing any crack, I really would urge you to avoid being anywhere near him from behind even more vigorously than you probably do already. (I know I avoid people like that like a plague -no pun intended, honest- in the best of times.)
More seriously, this is a reason to avoid public bathrooms if at all possible as the covid can apparently live in microscopic particles of gak that tend to float around in bathrooms.
And yes you may once in a while have to use a public restroom. If you do be sure to be a space marine with his helmet and respirator firmly and properly in place and not one of those dumbasses who goes into battle bare headed to look dramatic.
Tannhauser42 wrote: If farts can pass the virus, then I could single-handedly (single-buttedly?) doom the world.
Well, if you walk around with your pants hanging way down and allowing "unfiltered" gas to escape while doing a one man recitation of the campfire scene in blazing saddles, yeah you might increase people's chances of getting infected if you had it. I hope you're not that guy.
On a more serious note, some years ago some towns began banning low hanging pants and imposing arrests and fines for them because it was considered "offensive". These laws were generally struck down and some people sued for false arrest. At the time I opposed such las and cheered their repeal as they were passes bcause some people found low pants offensive, and I do. But because you don;t like X is no reason to arrest and fine people for X if it harms no one else.
Now I would favor these laws passed on an emergency basis to deal with this as, let's face it, people stupid enough to dress like this are probably too stupid to avoid corona. For the duration of this crisis I would support laws banning "crack revealing" pants as these can let unfiltered farts out carrying microgak particles that can spread covid.
Knockagh wrote: To the Glory of God and in proud and affectionate remembrance of the men of County Antrim who fell in the Great War. This memorial is erected by their grateful county.
Then it has a quote from a hymn that says
'Nobly you fought, your knightly virtue proved,
your memory hallowed in the land you loved'
There’s a smaller plaque below the main one which was added to include the Second World War and also our soldiers who died in Northern Ireland fighting terrorism.
Thank you for sharing. I appreciate you and your family taking care of it and allowing your land to be used for it.
I was specifically thinking of fools who go around with their pants hanging down their and revealing the split. Plumbers were notorious for this but it's become a fashion thing among some people. It occurs to me that such a fashion could allow gas to escape without being filtered thru clothing making transmission somewhat less unlikely.
UK is heading for a rough ride - whilst the daily stats appear to be going down for hospitals in terms of the number of new cases reported and the number of deaths (ergo still high but a gradual reduction can be seen)
According to this there could easily be another 6K or more deaths to be added which is easily going to push the current figures for the uk closer to the 30K deaths value instead of the 22,370 value that we have from hospitals alone.
That's a big jump in the numbers overnight and its likely going to cause quite an uproar over conditions and treatment and just what has been happening in carehomes.
Especially when values for recovery rates in the UK are not all that high - 135 a few days ago according to this newspaper. Though I also note that oddly the statistics website noted in my first link hasn't had recovery data for a while now.
Overread wrote: UK is heading for a rough ride - whilst the daily stats appear to be going down for hospitals in terms of the number of new cases reported and the number of deaths (ergo still high but a gradual reduction can be seen)
According to this there could easily be another 6K or more deaths to be added which is easily going to push the current figures for the uk closer to the 30K deaths value instead of the 22,370 value that we have from hospitals alone.
That's a big jump in the numbers overnight and its likely going to cause quite an uproar over conditions and treatment and just what has been happening in carehomes.
Especially when values for recovery rates in the UK are not all that high - 135 a few days ago according to this newspaper. Though I also note that oddly the statistics website noted in my first link hasn't had recovery data for a while now.
Had a sobering(COVID-19 is nearly as good as klatchian coffee) phone call from an old customer today, who a few years ago called time on the spanners and went to work for the NHS. He wanted to know if we had any disposable overalls in stock(body shops use them when they are spraying paint). Apparently the local trust was getting ready to go into care homes and they didn't have enough PPE.
Also a bit of a PSA. A good mains powered battery charger is a useful thing to have Over the last couple of weeks we have noticed a lot of people calling up to ask about new car battery's. For a lot of vehicles, especially in multi car households its been a month since they went anywhere. Being stationery for extended periods is not a good thing for cars, especially the battery.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: well, people could go for a drive. common sense would say that its necessary to tick their engines over.
That's always a good thing to do for stuff like the fuel and exhaust systems. But the engine ignition itself is one of the biggest drains a car will put on the battery. A lot of people greatly overestimate the amount of power your alternator puts back in when the engine is running. And modern driving habits(short journeys, lots of stopping and starting) combined with the amount of electronic doohickey's on cars these days don't do the battery any favours either. So a good charger is IMO always a good thing to have anyway, but especially now.
Oh and tyre pressure, give that a regular check as well
I just had to get a new battery today on our secondary car as all this downtime was bad on an already older battery, even when starting them and letting them run for ten minutes every few days. I'm going to take it out for a drive tonight just to "get the juices flowing", because it's been unused for about three weeks. (Didn't bother getting a battery till now as we have two cars and it's not like we are driving to work, are we?)
queen_annes_revenge wrote: well, people could go for a drive. common sense would say that its necessary to tick their engines over.
That's always a good thing to do for stuff like the fuel and exhaust systems. But the engine ignition itself is one of the biggest drains a car will put on the battery. A lot of people greatly overestimate the amount of power your alternator puts back in when the engine is running. And modern driving habits(short journeys, lots of stopping and starting) combined with the amount of electronic doohickey's on cars these days don't do the battery any favours either. So a good charger is IMO always a good thing to have anyway, but especially now.
Oh and tyre pressure, give that a regular check as well
That's true, luckily I have a charger and a tyre inflator, so I'm golden. I'm doing maybe 2 or 3 journeys a week, usually at weekends, to the supermarket, and then wherever we go walking, so they're not very long journeys, but can at least get the engine upto a decent speed.
I've also seen a fair few folk using their cars as spaces to hide away from the rest of the house while listening to their music...…… the battery won't last long under those conditions and a significant minority won't even realise they need to run the engine to keep doing it
I reckon we don't need to respond to the blatantly partisan stuff in here.
As an alternative comment, relevant to the actual virus, some fo the studies say about 80 percent of the world's CV transmission has happened in the axis of public transportation.
Subways may be very vulnerable, but buses are a major weak point especially in places like NYC where they are astonishingly still running.
There IS a way to lower transmission in such buses without much fuss. Remove the side windows and the rear window of the bus so that physically, it is changed from an indoor space with a slow air conditioner furning the air volume over .. slowly .. .into a windy outdoor space where the virus load your passengers might shed is blown ... away ... and off in the sunny summer air.
Reducing the second spike in NYC will be just as important as reducing the first spike, and if they ever in their lives want their city to reopen they will need every trick in the book to keep from drowning in the virus a second time.
The more I think of htis idea, the fewer down sides I see to it. Won't help metros, but removing the bus windows and legislating stiff fines for any taxi, yelp, or uber to roll a window up, would easily shift the dynamics of transportation verctor spread.
I know "remove" the windows sounds harsh, but it prevents some asswipe passenger from putting them up cause they are cold or don't like the morning rush hour noise. And while I might favor the more extreme "smash them all out" .. removed windows that we replace in the spring of next year don't even really require a budget.
low to no cost and no particular developmental work to create a new product ... and a potential HUGE payoff in reduced infection rates when NYC reopens in about 14 more months.
Had to remove a few posts - we'd love to keep this thread open to discuss the pandemic, but it will have to be closed if people cannot resist talking about politics.
Dukeofstuff wrote: I reckon we don't need to respond to the blatantly partisan stuff in here.
As an alternative comment, relevant to the actual virus, some fo the studies say about 80 percent of the world's CV transmission has happened in the axis of public transportation.
Subways may be very vulnerable, but buses are a major weak point especially in places like NYC where they are astonishingly still running.
There IS a way to lower transmission in such buses without much fuss. Remove the side windows and the rear window of the bus so that physically, it is changed from an indoor space with a slow air conditioner furning the air volume over .. slowly .. .into a windy outdoor space where the virus load your passengers might shed is blown ... away ... and off in the sunny summer air.
Reducing the second spike in NYC will be just as important as reducing the first spike, and if they ever in their lives want their city to reopen they will need every trick in the book to keep from drowning in the virus a second time.
The more I think of htis idea, the fewer down sides I see to it. Won't help metros, but removing the bus windows and legislating stiff fines for any taxi, yelp, or uber to roll a window up, would easily shift the dynamics of transportation verctor spread.
I know "remove" the windows sounds harsh, but it prevents some asswipe passenger from putting them up cause they are cold or don't like the morning rush hour noise. And while I might favor the more extreme "smash them all out" .. removed windows that we replace in the spring of next year don't even really require a budget.
low to no cost and no particular developmental work to create a new product ... and a potential HUGE payoff in reduced infection rates when NYC reopens in about 14 more months.
Removing the windows will last about as long as it takes someone to get injured as a result of them not being there. The liability risk is worse than the virus risk.
As an alternative comment, relevant to the actual virus, some fo the studies say about 80 percent of the world's CV transmission has happened in the axis of public transportation.
Subways may be very vulnerable, but buses are a major weak point especially in places like NYC where they are astonishingly still running.
There IS a way to lower transmission in such buses without much fuss. Remove the side windows and the rear window of the bus so that physically, it is changed from an indoor space with a slow air conditioner furning the air volume over .. slowly .. .into a windy outdoor space where the virus load your passengers might shed is blown ... away ... and off in the sunny summer air.
Reducing the second spike in NYC will be just as important as reducing the first spike, and if they ever in their lives want their city to reopen they will need every trick in the book to keep from drowning in the virus a second time.
The more I think of htis idea, the fewer down sides I see to it. Won't help metros, but removing the bus windows and legislating stiff fines for any taxi, yelp, or uber to roll a window up, would easily shift the dynamics of transportation verctor spread.
I know "remove" the windows sounds harsh, but it prevents some asswipe passenger from putting them up cause they are cold or don't like the morning rush hour noise. And while I might favor the more extreme "smash them all out" .. removed windows that we replace in the spring of next year don't even really require a budget.
low to no cost and no particular developmental work to create a new product ... and a potential HUGE payoff in reduced infection rates when NYC reopens in about 14 more months.
Aside from sounding poorly thought out and kind of hokey, the northeast weather makes it pretty unrealistic too.
Yes, even in the summer.
Anyway, there’s some slightly positive news concerning a ‘worse case’ scenario (in the hospital, in ICU, etc) drug treatment:
Not Online!!! wrote: Wait WTF, is that even allowed?
No legal reprecussions for such behaviour?
Remains to be seen. I think you can tell how stoked the MEs are about the idea by the fact they immediately leaked it to the press.
Suffice it to say that lowering your coronavirus deaths by... not reporting them is probably going to result in a lot more numbers that also won't be reported.
It also really undermines the "China is lying to us about their numbers" narrative, if we're doing it too.
Not Online!!! wrote: Wait WTF, is that even allowed?
No legal reprecussions for such behaviour?
Remains to be seen. I think you can tell how stoked the MEs are about the idea by the fact they immediately leaked it to the press.
Suffice it to say that lowering your coronavirus deaths by... not reporting them is probably going to result in a lot more numbers that also won't be reported.
It also really undermines the "China is lying to us about their numbers" narrative, if we're doing it too.
Ladies and gents get your pressur suits, we have breached the tripple facepalm level to the ultra dense territory.
Yeah, that sucks... I went and found the local Tampa Bay Times article which has a lot more detail. The coroner's count includes anyone who died in Florida, whereas the state count does not include non-Florida-residents, resulting in a difference of about 10%:
This was causing controversy, but rather than resolve the 10% difference, they asked the coroners to stop. Definitely not a good look and needs to be rectified ASAP.
The UK has been playing with numbers a bit by not including out-of-hopsital deaths. However they've never tried to hide the numbers outright, just not published and combined them in official presentations. I think there's a bit of politics in it, but also I think an element of the fact that collation and verification of that data has taken longer to process because the system isn't really setup to process that data in any way near the speeds needed for an accurate daily reflection of changes.
Though they are now rolling the data in and have added the historical data to the public stats
Interestingly Wales, Scotland and N Ireland data already included the stats, so it was purely an England variation.
It's spiked the numbers a lot going from 22K to 26 and pushing the daily deaths well over 1K on several days
Interestingly whilst the values have shot up the overall patterns haven't totally changed. Things are still flatlining to showing some steady decline in rates.
According to some studies compared death rates in various countries and states at this time of year to the death rates over the last 5 years it appears covid is killing a lot more people than we have been told up to now.
A unbiased non political group compared the average death rates over the last 5 years in some countries like italy, spain, etc and some american states to current ones, not causes of death just the actual numbers of people dying, and concluded the reported covid deaths don't account for the big rise above average this year is seeing.
Estimates show that if covid is responsible, it's death rate is at least 50% higher than we've been told.
I did try to post a link to the article but when I tried to go to the page i got hit in the face with a "sign up!" screen and after 3 time I said this. Sometimes I just don't feel like adding another account name/password to the giant invisible digital chain of them we're all wrapped in now.
Not Online!!! wrote: Wait WTF, is that even allowed?
No legal reprecussions for such behaviour?
Remains to be seen. I think you can tell how stoked the MEs are about the idea by the fact they immediately leaked it to the press.
Suffice it to say that lowering your coronavirus deaths by... not reporting them is probably going to result in a lot more numbers that also won't be reported.
It also really undermines the "China is lying to us about their numbers" narrative, if we're doing it too.
When not testing people isn't enough to obscure the numbers, go the extra mile!
As Kanluwen referenced earlier, in my state they only test someone if these criteria are true:
1. They show symptoms
2. They become hosptialized
3. They have been known to come in contact with another COVID case
If those three are not in place, you get sent home to quarantine sans test because there are not enough tests to go around. At least that is what information on the State's Public Health website leads me to believe, along with local anecdotal evidence.
If you die without an official COVID diagnosis, you did not die from COVID. Meanwhile, I am hearing from others that numbers are being skewed the OTHER way by counting all deaths despite underlying conditions that have COVID. Which is true? Who knows, but it seems legitimate to say that the numbers we are seeing are not accurate.
Therefore, as an individual I am forced to assume the worst and act accordingly.
Not Online!!! wrote: Wait WTF, is that even allowed?
No legal reprecussions for such behaviour?
Remains to be seen. I think you can tell how stoked the MEs are about the idea by the fact they immediately leaked it to the press.
Suffice it to say that lowering your coronavirus deaths by... not reporting them is probably going to result in a lot more numbers that also won't be reported.
It also really undermines the "China is lying to us about their numbers" narrative, if we're doing it too.
When not testing people isn't enough to obscure the numbers, go the extra mile!
As Kanluwen referenced earlier, in my state they only test someone if these criteria are true:
1. They show symptoms
2. They become hosptialized
3. They have been known to come in contact with another COVID case
If those three are not in place, you get sent home to quarantine sans test because there are not enough tests to go around. At least that is what information on the State's Public Health website leads me to believe, along with local anecdotal evidence.
If you die without an official COVID diagnosis, you did not die from COVID. Meanwhile, I am hearing from others that numbers are being skewed the OTHER way by counting all deaths despite underlying conditions that have COVID. Which is true? Who knows, but it seems legitimate to say that the numbers we are seeing are not accurate.
Therefore, as an individual I am forced to assume the worst and act accordingly.
In Illinois they will count it as a COVID death even if you had underlying conditions per the director of the health department.
Considering people aren’t out and about as much to die in accidents or crime related deaths, the spike means it’s probably even more corona than we are lead to believe.
Of course I 'd guess he wants to maintain the lockdown because people stuck at home spend more time on the net like I'm doing, and more time on fb, thereby driving up his profits.
In Illinois they will count it as a COVID death even if you had underlying conditions per the director of the health department.
Which I think is the better method. The disease exacerbating another condition resulting in death is still a death that should be attributed to Covid-19.
Just like those who died from pneumonia which developed due to flu or HIV or whatever should count for those stats.
Yeah, not having accurate numbers makes it all a guessing game, which sucks
Regarding the "death rate" - to know this, we'd have to know how many people are actually infected (asymptomatic or not) in addition to figuring out which deaths should be attributed to COVID-19 and which shouldn't.
From the NYC antibody testing, they were showing around 25% of the city's population having antibodies. That would mean that the number of cases was way higher than predicted, bringing the rate down.
It is by far the better method, but that would also mean politically admitting it is worse than it is.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
RiTides wrote: Yeah, not having accurate numbers makes it all a guessing game, which sucks
Regarding the "death rate" - to know this, we'd have to know how many people are actually infected (asymptomatic or not) in addition to figuring out which deaths should be attributed to COVID-19 and which shouldn't.
From the NYC antibody testing, they were showing around 25% of the city's population having antibodies. That would mean that the number of cases was way higher than predicted, bringing the rate down.
So yeah, numbers... we don't have them
The WP had an article showing the increase on the average death rate was double the number of covid deaths in the early months of the hard hit states, so that might mean a significant gap. Given the dramatic increase, the underlying issue seems likely. I will try to find it.
In Illinois they will count it as a COVID death even if you had underlying conditions per the director of the health department.
Which I think is the better method. The disease exacerbating another condition resulting in death is still a death that should be attributed to Covid-19.
Just like those who died from pneumonia which developed due to flu or HIV or whatever should count for those stats.
There's a legal precedence that even if someone was going to die soon anyway, killing them one second sooner than they would have died is still murder and the fact they would have died a second later from something else doesn't matter in the murder case. Yes, that is a legal precedence.
The fictional ronald opus case is cited as an example of this.
And yes, the coroner listed suidide as a cause of death, but that doesn't affect the murder charge as even if someone is executed by the state, the cause of death is listed as a homicide. The official coroner conclusion is not a legal verdict.
The legal ruling is that if it were true the man shot shot opus would be guilty of murder regardless of opus' intent to commit suicide or the fact he'd have dies a second or two later.
So even if covid kills someone a day, an hour or a minute sooner than they would have died of whatever, legally it still killed them and is the cause of death.
For purposes of useful scientific statistics this is a poor standard to use, of course. It shows the difference between legal standards, set by people, and reality.
Scientifically if covid hastens the death of someone with a terminal condition it should probably not be counted as a covid death.
But as they say, "figures can lie because liars can figure". The death tolls and rates are kept by people and people have biases. The death toll will always have some bias in it due to human judgement.
Important bit, some graphs in the article showing the spikes.
In the early weeks of the coronavirusepidemic, the United States recorded an estimated 15,400 excess deaths, nearly two times as many as were publicly attributed to covid-19 at the time, according to an analysis of federal data conducted for The Washington Post by a research team led by the Yale School of Public Health.
The excess deaths — the number beyond what would normally be expected for that time of year — occurred during March and through April 4, a time when 8,128 coronavirus deaths were reported.
The excess deaths are not necessarily attributable directly to covid-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. They could include people who died because of the epidemic but not from the disease, such as those who were afraid to seek medical treatment for unrelated illnesses, as well as some number of deaths that are part of the ordinary variation in the death rate. The count is also affected by increases or decreases in other categories of deaths, such as suicides, homicides and motor vehicle accidents.
But in any pandemic, higher-than-normal mortality is a starting point for scientists seeking to understand the full impact of the disease.
The Yale analysis for the first time estimates excess deaths, both nationally and in each state, in those five weeks. Relying on data that the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS) released Friday, the analysis paints a picture of unusually high mortality that will come into sharper view as more data becomes available.
The analysis calculates excess deaths by using a model to estimate how many people probably would have died absent the pandemic, and then subtracting that number from the overall deaths reported by the NCHS.
The analysis suggests that the deaths announced in the weeks leading up to April 4, based on reports from state public health departments, failed to capture the full impact of the pandemic. Those incomplete numbers were widely cited at a time when many states were making critical decisions about closing businesses and taking other actions to stem the spread of the virus.
The analysis also suggests that the death toll from the pandemic is significantly higher than has been reported, said Daniel Weinberger, a Yale professor of epidemiology and the leader of the research team. As of Sunday, more than 54,000 people had been killed by the novel coronavirus, according to numbers reported by state health departments and compiled by The Post.
My bank has a crate of these quarters sitting around that have been deemed "in poor taste" to circulate. I think they're May's release for fresh quarters
My bank has a crate of these quarters sitting around that have been deemed "in poor taste" to circulate. I think they're May's release for fresh quarters
Lots of bat/covid jokes around
Yeah, thanks for posting this, it brings up something pretty important.
Covid likely, AFAWCK, started from raw batmeat in a chinese wet market.
I just know for a fact a too large segment of humanity will decide to keep this from happening again by "controlling" (read exterminating) bats.
People will not realize bats do a lot of good for humanity by controlling bugs that would eat human food crops. Instead the morons will go on a crusade to wipe out bats because of ignorance and stupidity. Hell. africa is an example of a land without[ enough bats. If they had more the bats might eat enough of those damn locusts to save millions from famine.
The way to prevent things like covid are to regulate these 'wetmarkets' and have far stricter testing for new viral strains, faster reactions to new viral threats, etc.
But no, it's easier to "Go kill all those damn bats!"
China may realize now that killing bats off would likely be a disaster, but I'm afraid other countries might go on a dalek like extermination campaign against bats tho, which would have potentially near apocalyptic results. (Dammit there's no ork screaming in terror icon...)
According to some studies compared death rates in various countries and states at this time of year to the death rates over the last 5 years it appears covid is killing a lot more people than we have been told up to now.
A unbiased non political group compared the average death rates over the last 5 years in some countries like italy, spain, etc and some american states to current ones, not causes of death just the actual numbers of people dying, and concluded the reported covid deaths don't account for the big rise above average this year is seeing.
Estimates show that if covid is responsible, it's death rate is at least 50% higher than we've been told.
I did try to post a link to the article but when I tried to go to the page i got hit in the face with a "sign up!" screen and after 3 time I said this. Sometimes I just don't feel like adding another account name/password to the giant invisible digital chain of them we're all wrapped in now.
Or, potentially more people are dying from lack of cancer care, or not turning up to hospitals for other reasons, which has been well speculated in recent media.
But "cause of death: cancer" or other reasons is pretty clear. So eventually we should be able to compare those types of numbers against the average too. More likely, those deaths will come later and not now, because aside from those dying from an acute lack of care, most diseases like cancer don't kill instantly.
There's a possibility it started from a leak at a high bio-security lab in Wuhan which was studying bat coronaviruses.
A number of high bio-security labs around the world have accidentally leaked stuff over the years.
A British government lab leaked Foot and Mouth virus in the 2000s. A US government lab leaked smallpox in the 80s (I think, not sure about the date.) The tubes of virus were found later in a cardboard box in a filing cabinet.
So it certainly isn't impossible. To be a little bit conspiracy theory, it would explain why the Chinese government don't want an enquiry.
Kilkrazy wrote: There's a possibility it started from a leak at a high bio-security lab in Wuhan which was studying bat coronaviruses.
A number of high bio-security labs around the world have accidentally leaked stuff over the years.
A British government lab leaked Foot and Mouth virus in the 2000s. A US government lab leaked smallpox in the 80s (I think, not sure about the date.) The tubes of virus were found later in a cardboard box in a filing cabinet.
So it certainly isn't impossible. To be a little bit conspiracy theory, it would explain why the Chinese government don't want an enquiry.
Without going to far into it, the most mundane explanation of why China doesn't want an enquiry is because it makes them look bad, because it was noted by doctors far earlier than the government wanted to respond and something like 41% of early infections could be traced back to one hospital based on their own research.
My bank has a crate of these quarters sitting around that have been deemed "in poor taste" to circulate. I think they're May's release for fresh quarters
Lots of bat/covid jokes around
Yeah, thanks for posting this, it brings up something pretty important.
Covid likely, AFAWCK, started from raw batmeat in a chinese wet market.
I just know for a fact a too large segment of humanity will decide to keep this from happening again by "controlling" (read exterminating) bats.
People will not realize bats do a lot of good for humanity by controlling bugs that would eat human food crops. Instead the morons will go on a crusade to wipe out bats because of ignorance and stupidity. Hell. africa is an example of a land without[ enough bats. If they had more the bats might eat enough of those damn locusts to save millions from famine.
The way to prevent things like covid are to regulate these 'wetmarkets' and have far stricter testing for new viral strains, faster reactions to new viral threats, etc.
But no, it's easier to "Go kill all those damn bats!"
China may realize now that killing bats off would likely be a disaster, but I'm afraid other countries might go on a dalek like extermination campaign against bats tho, which would have potentially near apocalyptic results. (Dammit there's no ork screaming in terror icon...)
Bats in the US are all ready being devastated by a Bat disease, white-nose syndrome. it wouldn't take much to do a lot more damage here in the states.
Can anyone point me towards a company or person who is 3D printing the clips for face masks for healthcare workers?
I remember seeing loads of people posting maybe on Facebook in groups, or maybe it was even on Dakka, about providing a load.
I work in a care home and we were meant to be getting some (our poor ears and killing us), so I let all these posts go by. And now we find out we can’t get any. And I can’t seem to find any of these posts anywhere now!
Big oof. I printed about 100 of those for my local hospital. I'd offer to help you out but I ran out of petG to print with. D-USA was printing some in PLA, not sure how that worked out but I think he said it worked.
What I can do is give you the link to a patterns for them if you want to provide it to someone local, and advise you that I think a large paperclip might be a good substitution, although I have not tried it.
According to some studies compared death rates in various countries and states at this time of year to the death rates over the last 5 years it appears covid is killing a lot more people than we have been told up to now.
A unbiased non political group compared the average death rates over the last 5 years in some countries like italy, spain, etc and some american states to current ones, not causes of death just the actual numbers of people dying, and concluded the reported covid deaths don't account for the big rise above average this year is seeing.
Estimates show that if covid is responsible, it's death rate is at least 50% higher than we've been told.
I did try to post a link to the article but when I tried to go to the page i got hit in the face with a "sign up!" screen and after 3 time I said this. Sometimes I just don't feel like adding another account name/password to the giant invisible digital chain of them we're all wrapped in now.
Add to that there's less deaths reiated to bad air quality and traffic accidents...
But not surprising. The hospital cases alone isn't uk only counting thing
In Illinois they will count it as a COVID death even if you had underlying conditions per the director of the health department.
Which I think is the better method. The disease exacerbating another condition resulting in death is still a death that should be attributed to Covid-19.
Just like those who died from pneumonia which developed due to flu or HIV or whatever should count for those stats.
I agree. The person was living with a pre-existing condition, corona is what killed them.
Especially if that pre-existing condition was alcoholism
In Illinois they will count it as a COVID death even if you had underlying conditions per the director of the health department.
Which I think is the better method. The disease exacerbating another condition resulting in death is still a death that should be attributed to Covid-19.
Just like those who died from pneumonia which developed due to flu or HIV or whatever should count for those stats.
There's a legal precedence that even if someone was going to die soon anyway, killing them one second sooner than they would have died is still murder and the fact they would have died a second later from something else doesn't matter in the murder case. Yes, that is a legal precedence.
The fictional ronald opus case is cited as an example of this.
And yes, the coroner listed suidide as a cause of death, but that doesn't affect the murder charge as even if someone is executed by the state, the cause of death is listed as a homicide. The official coroner conclusion is not a legal verdict.
The legal ruling is that if it were true the man shot shot opus would be guilty of murder regardless of opus' intent to commit suicide or the fact he'd have dies a second or two later.
So even if covid kills someone a day, an hour or a minute sooner than they would have died of whatever, legally it still killed them and is the cause of death.
For purposes of useful scientific statistics this is a poor standard to use, of course. It shows the difference between legal standards, set by people, and reality.
Scientifically if covid hastens the death of someone with a terminal condition it should probably not be counted as a covid death.
But as they say, "figures can lie because liars can figure". The death tolls and rates are kept by people and people have biases. The death toll will always have some bias in it due to human judgement.
The alternative is to set a "time limit" on murder, which obviously opens up enough problems no legal system wants to deal with it. Because we are all mortal, we are all going to die at some point, and whatever kills us is always going to just be the thing that got there sooner.
Can anyone point me towards a company or person who is 3D printing the clips for face masks for healthcare workers?
I remember seeing loads of people posting maybe on Facebook in groups, or maybe it was even on Dakka, about providing a load.
I work in a care home and we were meant to be getting some (our poor ears and killing us), so I let all these posts go by. And now we find out we can’t get any. And I can’t seem to find any of these posts anywhere now!
Any help greatly appreciated.
Fenris Games was printing them facebook is playing up a bit for me but the link above should be a repost of their announcement, and the one below is their facebook page but that's not showing me any of their content at the moment.
Don't know if they're still going/have materials but worth a message to check, even if Ian @ Fenris has had to stop he may well know of some other potential printers too
Until fairly recently the UK had a law that if you were seriously assaulted and died as a result more than a year and a day later, it couldn't count as murder.
With modern medical technology that became nonsense, and the law was changed.
A similar thing could be applied to Covid. Like if you've got diabetes which might have killed you, and Covid which may have killed you, there should be a decision about what to put on the death certificate.
Of course what's happened is that in a lot of cases, diabetes has been put on the DC, partly because there isn't enough testing for Covid.
Well, yesterday I became an unlicensed barber when I cut my hair with a mirror and a pair of scissors thanks to corona.
Today I became an unlicensed surgeon.
A friend of mine lives with a family member who has little feeling in his feet. He apparently got a dirty splinter in a callous that worked it's way in deep, possibly over a week or more, and had caused a good sized infected spot under his callous. it was over an inch across and not looking good.
His family was leery of him going to a hospital given his health issues and fear of covid. Then my friend remembered he had a buddy who was good with an xacto knife.... Guess who?
I was against it and told them they really needed to get to a doctor, but between their fear for this guy being exposed and their financial issues I got talked into taking a look.
Basically I ended up wearing cleaning gloves and of course a mask, using a brand new xacto blade sterilized with alcohol, and cutting open a thick callous and draining out fluid and some pus. I cut away the callous using snips I usually take parts off sprues with and made sure the splinter was out, then disinfected the open exposed abscess with hydrogen peroxide, iodine (He felt that! ) and putting antibiotic ointment on the spot before covering it with some gauze and tape wrapped found his foot. I tossed the brand new blade, I just couldn't keep it. The snips were too expensive to pitch so got a second washing with alcohol.
I flat out told them if his fever wasn't down in 24 hours to get his to a doctor or ER, period.
I mean it wasn't an ideal situation to be in, but a friend in need and all that. plus after looking at the situation I decided I might be able to do it as I'd cut splinters out of my feet now and then. I'd even lanced a boil with my trusty xacto once.
This is getting weird. I swear if I end up delivering baby I'm gonna scream.
A unbiased non political group compared the average death rates over the last 5 years in some countries like italy, spain, etc and some american states to current ones, not causes of death just the actual numbers of people dying, and concluded the reported covid deaths don't account for the big rise above average this year is seeing.
I've been posting these numbers for a couple of weeks for the UK when the ONS updates come. We're currently 80% above 5-year average (up to 17.04, so before our peak) but only about half have been attributed to coronavirus. Excess deaths to 5-year average is the stabdard international measure so it's how we'll be able compare nations when it's over (insofar as we can at all).
According to some studies compared death rates in various countries and states at this time of year to the death rates over the last 5 years it appears covid is killing a lot more people than we have been told up to now.
A unbiased non political group compared the average death rates over the last 5 years in some countries like italy, spain, etc and some american states to current ones, not causes of death just the actual numbers of people dying, and concluded the reported covid deaths don't account for the big rise above average this year is seeing.
Estimates show that if covid is responsible, it's death rate is at least 50% higher than we've been told.
I did try to post a link to the article but when I tried to go to the page i got hit in the face with a "sign up!" screen and after 3 time I said this. Sometimes I just don't feel like adding another account name/password to the giant invisible digital chain of them we're all wrapped in now.
Or, potentially more people are dying from lack of cancer care, or not turning up to hospitals for other reasons, which has been well speculated in recent media.
I also ran out of PETG, which can be sterilised. More is due out next week, but it's gold-dust these days.
I have lots of PLA though, if you just needed a mask you can wash.
PM me if you want a couple, as I printed them after the local council took the others to give to the social services teams.
Looks like closing the schools/nurseries could have been a mistake. Hopefully this might get things rolling again.
If parents take the kids in, they'll hang around the playground or on the walk in, and spread it that way.
The children aren't the problem, as you mention, up to the age of 10, it seems.
they concluded that "young children don't transmit the virus".
What about the older kids though?
Teachers have to be there, along with support staff. They'll have to re-organise the school to be able to work safely.
Funny, recently in germany they did actually attempt to find out just how contagious children were and found no difference so far between them and normal virus carriers .
Looks like closing the schools/nurseries could have been a mistake. Hopefully this might get things rolling again.
If parents take the kids in, they'll hang around the playground or on the walk in, and spread it that way.
The children aren't the problem, as you mention, up to the age of 10, it seems.
they concluded that "young children don't transmit the virus".
What about the older kids though?
Teachers have to be there, along with support staff. They'll have to re-organise the school to be able to work safely.
Not Online!!! wrote: Funny, recently in germany the did actually attempt to find out just how contagious children were and found no difference so far between them and normal virus carriers .
You've gotta look at who is posting this claim, look at that person's previous posts during this topic and look at the source.
Not Online!!! wrote: Funny, recently in germany the did actually attempt to find out just how contagious children were and found no difference so far between them and normal virus carriers .
You've gotta look at who is posting this claim, look at that person's previous posts during this topic and look at the source.
That tells you allot.
I don't judge people, i judge arguments.
Schools beeing an incremental part of future economic growth and of social security in some countries what with food hand outs etc is and has a massive effect.
And whilest i disagree with his urge to open the country his stance on government is quite justifyable in many regards.
Looks like closing the schools/nurseries could have been a mistake. Hopefully this might get things rolling again.
If parents take the kids in, they'll hang around the playground or on the walk in, and spread it that way.
The children aren't the problem, as you mention, up to the age of 10, it seems.
they concluded that "young children don't transmit the virus".
What about the older kids though?
Teachers have to be there, along with support staff. They'll have to re-organise the school to be able to work safely.
Not if they socially distance.
In most schools it would be impossible to carry on with the normal number of people and still socially distance. It would probably be impossible even if you halved the number of kids, judging by most of the schools near me. The info about young children not passing on the disease was at the very least suspected before lockdown as there was some evidence to support it. As others have pointed out the closing of the schools was more about maintaining social distancing and reducing transmission between adults and older school children. I think throwing out accusations after the fact about what was the wrong and right approach to take is extremely unhelpful, especially when it relies on evidence that surfaces after decisions were taken. When dealing with a verified deadly and highly infectious disease the correct approach is an abundance of caution.
You made a funny there .. since this is yet another claim made by WHO which then had to be taken out of context by the media to reach the rather tortured conclusion that kids don't spread.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: No, I was referring to his comment about the parents spreading it outside the school.
And what about teachers at the school? The environment they do their job in makes it extremely difficult to socially distance especially from the kids, some of whom are old enough to be infectious. Then there's the parents who pick their kids up. School closing time is like a cattle market in most places I know of. Yes, they absolutely could socially distance - possibly - but you're introducing another risk factor. The data they had to work with at the time modelled various scenarios and keeping schools open suggested an increase in infection rate, I suspect due to the difficulties of socially distancing in that environment. That increase is even with the current social distancing in place, probably because the models take into account the likelihood of people not socially distancing as instructed. It may well turn out that data was incorrect but unless it was maliciously misreported in order to further some sort of agenda that's the sort of second-guessing that's really not helpful to anyone. Sadly I think it's the sort of thing we're going to see a lot of from certain sections of the media for quite a long time after this pandemic has passed.
The only way would be staggered start times, which might mean that the school would endup with students perhaps finishing very late in the day. So you spread out the load; but at bigger schools where you're dealing with thousands of students, even staggered would still have a lot of people moving around all at once.
Also what about coaches? A lot of students aren't taken by car, but are collected and bussed in. Again that's another close environment that would need way more coaches to socially distance. Even if the driver is isolated the students are again in a close environment to pass coughs, colds, nits and corona around between themselves.
Heck lets pause and consider that even if students cannot pass corona they can pass loads of other things. There'd be a panic at every cough or cold passed around.
Crispy78 wrote: My wife is a teacher. School timetables take enough working out without having to stagger start and end times for everyone.
Yep and that's before you're either cutting classes or trying to factor in which staff can stay longer in the day and which students can too. It would be a nightmare where you'd either have to cut classes or have a huge mess at the end of every day.
Honestly instead of putting money into trying to socially distance schools (and failing); I'd put it into more distance learning. Also lets not forget we are now in May and lockdown won't end till June like as not. That's basically the end of the school year anyway.
I could see them try and reopen just for final GCSE and A level students BUT those are groups that are most likely to spread the virus. So getting them all back in to sit examinations (in nice enclosed rooms.....) is just not sensible either.
No matter which way you look at it its nearly impossible to justify re-opening schools during an epidemic. The only way would be immense testing procedures with accurate tests. However even that snowballs because you'd have to test all students and their families and those families workplaces and their families and then any other work places any else in the family work at. By which point you're required to test most of the population. I can't see the government finding near 70million testing kits and processing all that testing.
Yeah, my eldest son's school (which is the school my wife works at) is doing brilliantly.
The kids have their usual lessons with their usual teachers via Teams. It's been absolutely seamless.
We are lucky though as we're in a pretty affluent area where it's pretty much guaranteed that the average pupil has access to a computer at home. We also have a large IBM campus nearby that employs a lot of the school parents, and I believe they assisted in getting Teams up and running for the school.
I don't know how much the government has assisted in rolling out distance-learning processes / funding / equipment though. My suspicion is not much.
At the risk of stroking my own national ego, If I recall correctly the increase in the Swedish mortality rate compared to the 5-year average was closely aligned with the number of people reported as dead in corona, meaning underreporting is less likely to occur in Sweden compared to elsewhere. This, in turn, potentially means Sweden looks bad comparatively speaking because of reporting practices, not because of actual deaths. Will look for a source once I'm not on my phone.
Overread wrote: The only way would be staggered start times, which might mean that the school would endup with students perhaps finishing very late in the day. So you spread out the load; but at bigger schools where you're dealing with thousands of students, even staggered would still have a lot of people moving around all at once.
Also what about coaches? A lot of students aren't taken by car, but are collected and bussed in. Again that's another close environment that would need way more coaches to socially distance. Even if the driver is isolated the students are again in a close environment to pass coughs, colds, nits and corona around between themselves.
Heck lets pause and consider that even if students cannot pass corona they can pass loads of other things. There'd be a panic at every cough or cold passed around.
And there's no evidence they don't carry. Generally kids are super effective at spreading diseases though
Not Online!!! wrote: Funny, recently in germany the did actually attempt to find out just how contagious children were and found no difference so far between them and normal virus carriers .
You've gotta look at who is posting this claim, look at that person's previous posts during this topic and look at the source.
That tells you allot.
.
I don't judge people, i judge arguments.
Schools beeing an incremental part of future economic growth and of social security in some countries what with food hand outs etc is and has a massive effect.
And whilest i disagree with his urge to open the country his stance on government is quite justifyable in many regards.
Not Online!!! wrote: Funny, recently in germany the did actually attempt to find out just how contagious children were and found no difference so far between them and normal virus carriers .
You've gotta look at who is posting this claim, look at that person's previous posts during this topic and look at the source.
That tells you allot.
You could always just engage in debate rather than gakposting. I'd enjoy that judging from the amazing content of your previous posts... You realise your post was just an ad hominem?
Gitzbitah wrote: Matt Swain, that's it. That's the story your grandchildren will never believe.
Exalt for peak social isolation!
Wouldn't that have been matt taking his mate behind the shed as the point of peak Isolation that is.
Btw at Matt, if he allready had fever then he should've gone allready.
Yeah, I said that to them, a few times.
Anyway, they called, fever's down, inflammation is diminishing, looking good. One thing about this guy is he always has a supply of antibiotics stockplied so he's covered on the infection front.
in other corona news, there seem to be a lot of suicides among healthcare workers seeing so many people die around them and being helpless. I feel for these people, really I do. I just can't understands how they don't see killing themselves makes the situation worse for everyone, including the people they could have helped. I'm not judging these peiople, god known what seeing dozens of people die every day while you try to save them does to a person's mind. Obviously it's horrible.
I don't know, do we need to start giving anti depressants to healthcare workers? Should we be offering them free antidepressants, THC, etc? Are any countries doing this already?
Gitzbitah wrote: Matt Swain, that's it. That's the story your grandchildren will never believe.
Exalt for peak social isolation!
Wouldn't that have been matt taking his mate behind the shed as the point of peak Isolation that is.
Btw at Matt, if he allready had fever then he should've gone allready.
Yeah, I said that to them, a few times.
Anyway, they called, fever's down, inflammation is diminishing, looking good. One thing about this guy is he always has a supply of antibiotics stockplied so he's covered on the infection front.
in other corona news, there seem to be a lot of suicides among healthcare workers seeing so many people die around them and being helpless. I feel for these people, really I do. I just can't understands how they don't see killing themselves makes the situation worse for everyone, including the people they could have helped. I'm not judging these peiople, god known what seeing dozens of people die every day while you try to save them does to a person's mind. Obviously it's horrible.
I don't know, do we need to start giving anti depressants to healthcare workers? Should we be offering them free antidepressants, THC, etc? Are any countries doing this already?
With the risk of sounding like a Commie (allbeit it's just corporatism)
No don't fuel the Healthcare workers with drugs. Give them propper working conditions, acceptable hours, acceptable wages and fix up the systems for security off the patients and the workers.
Anti-depressants are designed to work against chemical imbalances in the mind. The typically only work well when used as part of a combination approach including therapy/counselling and support.
Healthcare workers suffering extreme stress are more likely to need more of the latter than the former. It's not so much a chemical imbalance causing their issue, its an environmental situation which is causing the problem.
That would be my laymans understanding of the situation. Ergo you can't "drug them up", you'd have to remove them from the environment. That would mean effective monitoring and support to spot and identify issues in people before it got to a critical point. Better working hours, pay, reduced stress etc.... would all help significantly as well. Heck its already somewhat insane that we consider 12 hour shifts normal and that many work FAR longer hours in the medical profession even during normal working systems let alone during a pandemic.
I agree, drugs are not the answer and would likely only be a temporary mask at the very best, at the worst they could impede judgement and performance. Sadly one of the biggest benefits would be more healthcare workers to spread the load and you can't just train them up in a weekend.
Anti-depressants also take a while to kick in - and can make symptoms worse as they build up. Speaking from experience here.
The main affect in my experience (everyone is different) is to take the edge off, let you start getting your head straight.
Would they benefit some healthcare workers? I don’t doubt it. But...they’re simply not a cure all. And many should not be prescribed if the patient is having suicidal thoughts (I haven’t, just in case people were wondering).
On the record I am not advocating drugging people up just to keep them working. If you want to believe that, I can't stop you.
The thing here that makes me want to cry and scream is that the people killing themselves are likely the most caring and dedicated people in the field who are having their hearts torn out by seeing so many people dying and not able to stop it.
I'm not about just keeping them working like a Bezos would be, I want to save their lives period.
If something would do it better than anti depressants I'm all for it.
Do we need psychs on the hospital floors watching people for signs of danger? Emergency counseling? I mean we should be trying to do something. We have too few trained healthcare workers as it, everyone who dies from whatever cause is too much of a loss.
I mean, "African and Indian immigrants fill most of our essential jobs and are thus extremely vulnerable to infection" seems to be a pretty good explanation.
Among the many bad side effects of randomly applied psychiatric antidepressants are psychotic mania, suicide, and weight gain. Its not a good idea to give 100 people antidepressants if you think 3 or 4 o fthem need the stuff. You are quite right about the possibility of them enhancing suicidal ideation into action, that's been a problem with some of them, its also a problem with some other therapies that counter depression in some situations. Its not one size fits all by any means.
Hmmm, having a psychologist observe the healthcare staff might be a good idea. They're trained to notice behavior (and behavior changes) that could indicate depression, and you would immediately have someone qualified around to help.
On the other hand, having someone watch you 24/7 to judge whether or not you're going loopy is very likely to significantly add to the already high levels of stress, so I dunno. Food for thought.
The suicides among nurses and doctors does, aside from make me sad, also make me absolutely furious at the idiots protesting beause they want a haircut or go to a bar.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote: Anti-depressants also take a while to kick in - and can make symptoms worse as they build up. Speaking from experience here.
This. I started on anti-depressants in January (that month absolutely sucked) and still don't really feel level, even now.
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Bran Dawri wrote: Hmmm, having a psychologist observe the healthcare staff might be a good idea. They're trained to notice behavior (and behavior changes) that could indicate depression, and you would immediately have someone qualified around to help.
On the other hand, having someone watch you 24/7 to judge whether or not you're going loopy is very likely to significantly add to the already high levels of stress, so I dunno. Food for thought.
The suicides among nurses and doctors does, aside from make me sad, also make me absolutely furious at the idiots protesting beause they want a haircut or go to a bar.
I think having counselors available for the staff to talk to would be great, with regular check ups just to make sure people are coping.
But the problem is that, at least here in the UK, we do not have the numbers to be able to do that. The waiting lists for accessing clinical counselling and therapy, even for severe depression, are very long as there is simply not enough doctors to meet the demand.
I mean, "African and Indian immigrants fill most of our essential jobs and are thus extremely vulnerable to infection" seems to be a pretty good explanation.
20% of NHS worker deaths are Filipino. They make up less than 2% of the workforce. There's more to it.
UK gov make their 100,000 tests per day target. By counting all the tests they sent out rather than those actually completed.
Different experience today. Left work early (yeah, I still have to go to work in the mornings) to go to the Asian grocery stores to pick up a few things that I don't feel like paying twice the price for on Amazon. There are two not far from where I work, and practically across the street from each other. Both of them had signs in front refusing entry to anyone not wearing a mask. Just thought that was interesting, compared to not seeing such requirements anywhere else I've been to.
Also, just a warning to everyone here in the US. Stock up on meat while you can. The panic buying appears to have started from what I've heard over on a BBQ forum I'm a part of. It's been in the news all week about the meat processing plants shutting down, and now stores are putting limits on what people can buy, so people will panic buy and make extra trips to get around those limits.
Here in PA it's a requirement as well, though the Asian market I go to had signs up a full week before it became a requirement.
Would be interesting requirement here seeing you can't buy one
At least here it just has to be a face covering, so it's a lot of cloth masks, some home made, and even people just tying a handkerchief over their face like they're in a Western movie.
Bit surprised you are not aware; most people are generally able to distinguish the concepts of 'safer' and 'completely safe' quite readily. One does not expect to be completely safe from car accidents just because they are wearing a seat belt, nor should they. But seat belts are still required because they make a significant improvement on safety relative to the effort. Similarly, wearing a mask is at worst an inconvenience and even a marginal improvement in safety is worth the comparatively trivial cost.
I mean, "African and Indian immigrants fill most of our essential jobs and are thus extremely vulnerable to infection" seems to be a pretty good explanation.
Throw in socio-economic and cultural factors and it’s truly not hard to figure out.
I mean, "African and Indian immigrants fill most of our essential jobs and are thus extremely vulnerable to infection" seems to be a pretty good explanation.
20% of NHS worker deaths are Filipino. They make up less than 2% of the workforce. There's more to it.
UK gov make their 100,000 tests per day target. By counting all the tests they sent out rather than those actually completed.
"Two-thirds of Bangladeshi men over the age of 60 have a long-term health condition that would put them at risk from infection."
I mean, "African and Indian immigrants fill most of our essential jobs and are thus extremely vulnerable to infection" seems to be a pretty good explanation.
20% of NHS worker deaths are Filipino. They make up less than 2% of the workforce. There's more to it.
UK gov make their 100,000 tests per day target. By counting all the tests they sent out rather than those actually completed.
"Two-thirds of Bangladeshi men over the age of 60 have a long-term health condition that would put them at risk from infection."
Per the article.
Ah, that'll explain the Filipio numbers. I see.
Oh, wait, no it won't. Maybe someone should investigate.
Well, it's back to work Monday for me. (technically Saturday).
Restaurants are now able to be opened, but we have 2 days of food prep to do.
In addition to wearing gloves and face masks we need to stand at least 6 feet apart. We are also legally limited to 50% capacity, and all tables must be at least 6 feet apart. So, realistically this means we are at 45% table capacity. Also, no tables of more than 6 people.
I'm totally thrown. Mothers day is coming up fast. It's usually our busiest day of the year, by a far margin. Every year the store is PACKED. I have no idea what will happen now. I somehow expect groups of people waiting outside the door for a table to free up.
I hate dealing with people on "normal" days that demand "their table NOW". Also, I know I'm going to have to stop people from trying to pull 2 tables together.
Mr. Burning wrote: With social distancing measures in place bars and restaurants are going to loose more by reopening than by staying closed.
Half the amount of covers per sitting isn't even going to keep lights on in some venues..
That's a good point and the same is likely true of movie theatres. Without the huge opening weekends for blockbusters with all seats filled many are going to struggle to stay open. Airlines could have the same problem. Ironically in many cases it costs more to open and be half-empty than it costs to stay closed.
It'll also be interesting to see if there's confidence among the general public to even go to bars and restaurants any more.
Polls from the UK suggest otherwise, with something like 60 odd percent saying they would be afraid to go out to public places once lockdown is lifted. It's a little absurd really when you consider that for the vast majority of healthy folks, the likelihood of dying from cv is about the same as the likelihood of them dying this year anyway, that fear is irrational. I'll be happy to visit pubs and restaurants once they open up, I'll just avoid crowded places, which I generally did anyway.
Bit surprised you are not aware; most people are generally able to distinguish the concepts of 'safer' and 'completely safe' quite readily. One does not expect to be completely safe from car accidents just because they are wearing a seat belt, nor should they. But seat belts are still required because they make a significant improvement on safety relative to the effort. Similarly, wearing a mask is at worst an inconvenience and even a marginal improvement in safety is worth the comparatively trivial cost.
There's a difference here though.
Seat belts have been shown, scientifically, to significantly reduce fatalities and serious injuries in car accidents. Hence making their use mandatory saves lives and reduces the impact on health services and the state from the impact of those accidents. They are also designed to fit in a specific way with very little chance of the public messing up their use (can I stick something into a hole correctly etc).
The evidence of masks to reduce the transmission during pandemics is very shaky though. There have been studies that show no difference, some show it has a *very* minor positive impact. What the studies have shown is that:-
Higher grade masks in medical services (e.g. hospitals) significantly reduce the risk for the medical staff of catching the disease.
That the transmission of a virus through a face covering can be up to 90% lower (noting 10% is still a lot when you are talking millions of individual viruses)
That if you *explosively* (i.e. completely uncontrolled) sneeze the maximum distance particles can travel is about 7m (but this is to the floor)) so for a 1.8m tall person at 7m it won't be in your face at this point.
After this we have to postulate on what this means. There is no doubt masks can help in certain circumstances but then why doesn't it help with the transmission in a significant way? I could suggest the following:-
Medical services, doctors, nurses etc have been professionally trained to use them; they are regularly checked by other staff; the PPE is regularly changed. This doesn't apply to the public. They are likely to use the same mask over and over, they are not trained in their use and will apply them to their own faces. This means that masks may not be providing the protection they think it is. Handling a contaminated mask and then touching a surface can just as easily transmit the virus. Not wearing them properly, adjusting them because they are uncomfortable all risk transmitting the diseases. I have seen people walk with a mask on then pull them down when they talk to someone. Reusing the masks also brings its own risk - one interaction with a virus contaminates the mask. They should then be removed by someone professionally and disposed of. If you handle it, wear it the other way round next time etc all risk transferring the virus. Finally masks are a dream come true for a virus. They are generally warm and moist and protected from the elements so they can live longer in that environment (and then placed right next to where they can infect someone). Again this is why the professionals regularly dispose and don't reuse their PPE.
As such there is a very large risk that people wearing masks will have the illusion of being safer than they are and hence take more risks (standing closer together etc). Hence it does become an illusion of safety rather than a real increase in safety and ultimately that can spread your virus faster. And this might be why the evidence for using masks is very weak as although it benefits in some cases where people use them properly it is offset by those that don't and because of the illusion actually end up infecting more people. Hence ultimately I agree with the UK Government approach on masks. Making them mandatory will put additional pressure on getting PPE for the NHS/Social Care where it might actually make a difference and we already have a shortage. We don't need a bigger shortage.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Polls from the UK suggest otherwise, with something like 60 odd percent saying they would be afraid to go out to public places once lockdown is lifted. It's a little absurd really when you consider that for the vast majority of healthy folks, the likelihood of dying from cv is about the same as the likelihood of them dying this year anyway, that fear is irrational. I'll be happy to visit pubs and restaurants once they open up, I'll just avoid crowded places, which I generally did anyway.
Yes but its not just about them, its about their parents, their brother with asthma, their grandparents etc.... This is the point and why people are scared. It's not just that YOU might die its that OTHERS might die because you brought a disease home because you want out to see a film. You do something totally normal, safe and for your own entertainment and you are responsible for bringing home something that kills another family member or friend. That's the terror people have.
This isn't like a random disease, its an epidemic of one very specific disease that has shown a very effective spreading pattern for a social species. Plus you don't even know you've got it - you've been spreading it to friends, family and work mates for a whole week or so before you start coughing and self-isolate. The damage is done before you've even a chance to stop it spreading from yourself.
That's why people are justifiably scared and why places like cinemas simply won't recover until there's a vaccine or infection rates are so low and traced back that its removed/reduced from the population. The government payments are going to have to be maintained long after lockdowns end until such a time as the country is "cleansed" to a point where people can socialise as normal
We will reach that point, how long it takes is unknown.
Of course there's also the grim other angle which is that the disease keeps spreading until you've lost everyone you will lose from it and it burns out of the population that way - ergo natural selection and herd immunity.
Scrabb wrote: "Two-thirds of Bangladeshi men over the age of 60 have a long-term health condition that would put them at risk from infection."
Per the article.
I'm not going to look up the article unless someone demands it, but Kamala Harris, a US senator, is pushing for a panel here in the US to investigate the disproportionate medical outcomes in the US as well to help drive the response. As with other countries, in the US, people of color are dying at a rate much higher than white people, in some cases substantially higher (13% of the population in a state but 30% of the deaths iirc).
I'm for the investigation. It could be socio-economic factors as mentioned, but perhaps there is a racial element to the disease as well, like sickle cell anemia.
Seat belts have been shown, scientifically, to significantly reduce fatalities and serious injuries in car accidents. Hence making their use mandatory saves lives and reduces the impact on health services and the state from the impact of those accidents. They are also designed to fit in a specific way with very little chance of the public messing up their use (can I stick something into a hole correctly etc).
.
Fairly minor inconvenience, potentially big help as symptomless people don't spread it out so much. Point of mask isn't preventing you from catching.
2 weeks after requirement austria got 90% drop in new cases.
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queen_annes_revenge wrote: Polls from the UK suggest otherwise, with something like 60 odd percent saying they would be afraid to go out to public places once lockdown is lifted. It's a little absurd really when you consider that for the vast majority of healthy folks, the likelihood of dying from cv is about the same as the likelihood of them dying this year anyway, that fear is irrational. I'll be happy to visit pubs and restaurants once they open up, I'll just avoid crowded places, which I generally did anyway.
Lol. It's always about me me me me with you.
Did it occur that just because you might not die your old parents could? Or that old lady you pass while you are in infecting stage without even knowing you have it as symptoms haven"t started?
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Polls from the UK suggest otherwise, with something like 60 odd percent saying they would be afraid to go out to public places once lockdown is lifted. It's a little absurd really when you consider that for the vast majority of healthy folks, the likelihood of dying from cv is about the same as the likelihood of them dying this year anyway, that fear is irrational. I'll be happy to visit pubs and restaurants once they open up, I'll just avoid crowded places, which I generally did anyway.
Lol. It's always about me me me me with you.
Did it occur that just because you might not die your old parents could? Or that old lady you pass while you are in infecting stage without even knowing you have it as symptoms haven"t started?
Nope. Mememememememe.
I think this may be the first time ive ever agreed with Tneva
queen_annes_revenge wrote: Polls from the UK suggest otherwise, with something like 60 odd percent saying they would be afraid to go out to public places once lockdown is lifted. It's a little absurd really when you consider that for the vast majority of healthy folks, the likelihood of dying from cv is about the same as the likelihood of them dying this year anyway, that fear is irrational. I'll be happy to visit pubs and restaurants once they open up, I'll just avoid crowded places, which I generally did anyway.
Lol. It's always about me me me me with you.
Did it occur that just because you might not die your old parents could? Or that old lady you pass while you are in infecting stage without even knowing you have it as symptoms haven"t started?
Nope. Mememememememe.
Ah, nice of you to finally engage me properly for once. Unfortunately, you're mistaken.
By your logic, I shouldn't get into my car in the morning. Because I might kill someone with it. You could apply that to literally any action taken by anyone ever. There's always some element of risk.
Shield the vulnerable as best as possible, let everyone else get back to some semblance of normality.
An old lady isn't going to be infected by walking past someone outside.
I'll add this too. It might help you understand, as you really don't seem to be getting it.
Please do not attach non-wargaming images to your posts - BrookM
Scrabb wrote: "Two-thirds of Bangladeshi men over the age of 60 have a long-term health condition that would put them at risk from infection."
Per the article.
I'm not going to look up the article unless someone demands it, but Kamala Harris, a US senator, is pushing for a panel here in the US to investigate the disproportionate medical outcomes in the US as well to help drive the response. As with other countries, in the US, people of color are dying at a rate much higher than white people, in some cases substantially higher (13% of the population in a state but 30% of the deaths iirc).
I'm for the investigation. It could be socio-economic factors as mentioned, but perhaps there is a racial element to the disease as well, like sickle cell anemia.
A few minutes on google or better yet on the CDC website https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/spotlight/HeartDiseaseSpotlight_2019_0404.pdf shows that preexisting medical conditions that would be comorbidities with covid19 deaths are more prevalent among African Americans. It would be more surprising if there wasn’t a racial disparity in the covid19 death rates.
Combined data for 2015 through 2017 allowed for assessment by major racial/ethnic categories and found that non-Hispanic black adults had the highest prevalence of obesity (38.4%) overall, followed by Hispanic adults (32.6%) and non-Hispanic white adults (28.6%).
African-American children have the highest prevalence of asthma.4
African-Americans in the U.S. die from asthma at a higher rate than people of other races or ethnicities.4
African-Americans are three times more likely to die from asthma, especially African-American women, than any other group.9
African-Americans are three times more likely to stay in the hospital from asthma.4
About 13.4 percent of African-American children have asthma, compared to about 7.4 percent of white children with asthma.4
Diabetes disproportionately affects racial/ethnic minority populations. Compared with white adults, the risk of having a diabetes diagnosis is 77% higher among African Americans, 66% higher among Latinos/Hispanics, and 18% higher among Asian Americans (1). Despite the high prevalence of the condition, minorities experience lower quality of care and greater barriers to self-management compared with white patients
Ok, some people are claiming that things like masks and lockdowns are of debatable credibility, that the science isn't solid, there's room for debate, etc.
Well, you know the old saying "Tell it to the hand."? I say to the people saying there isn't enough evidence to support things like masks, social distancing, lockdowns, etc "Tell it to the facts."
The facts are that countries that listened to experts and initiated hard active measures early on had very low rates of covid and are now largely free of it. New zealand is the main example. South korea i believe is another.
Countries that hesitated, delayed, implemented the measures in a half assed way got hit harder.
And we all know who's Number 1 in covid infections and deaths.
As I said in another post, figures can lie because liars can figure. Which means you have to check the methodology of a claim as well as the results.
The main data set here is that countries that reacted rapidly and properly in the manner epidemiologists recommended suffered the least and those that didn't suffered more.
People can, based on their own motivations and biases, try spinning that data with whatever factors they choose. The key data doesn't change.
Socio-economics drives health issues like obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease etc. And things like more people living in homes together. Go to poor white communities and you’ll see many of the same risk factors. Well, maybe other than population density since in the US poor whites tend to be rural.
Everyone knew from the beginning that poor communities were going to get blasted by this thing. I’m surprised by the surprise.
Edit: of course access to healthcare may be a factor. But I think anyone who knows anything about these risk factors could see that freight train coming.
gorgon wrote: Socio-economics drives health issues like obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease etc. And things like more people living in homes together. Go to poor white communities and you’ll see many of the same risk factors. Well, maybe other than population density since in the US poor whites tend to be rural.
Everyone knew from the beginning that poor communities were going to get blasted by this thing. I’m surprised by the surprise.
Edit: of course access to healthcare may be a factor. But I think anyone who knows anything about these risk factors could see that freight train coming.
Yup. It’s harder to eat healthy and live healthy when you’re poor even without accounting for any hereditary or environmental factors. Low income families, across racial lines are also the ones hardest hit by the 30 million unemployed workers and consequent lack of health insurance if they were lucky enough to have it through their job. They’ll also be the ones who struggle the most to make ends meet during the crisis and the least capable of recovering in a post covid19 economy.
Fairly minor inconvenience, potentially big help as symptomless people don't spread it out so much. Point of mask isn't preventing you from catching.
You could be asked to wear a bright yellow mac before you go out and wash it when you get back - that is also a minor inconvenience but it doesn't mean it is effective in preventing the spread of the virus. I repeat - the scientific evidence that masks are effective at slowing or preventing spread of respiratory illnesses in a community is weak. All controlled studies have shown no or very little impact on the spread of a virus this doesn't matter whether you have it and trying to prevent spreading it on or don't have it and trying to avoid getting it because the tests consider a populace at large. The reason why this is unclear. My best postulation is that people don't use them correctly and do not continually swap them out / clean them.
What's wrong with this picture? The customer is being tested for a temperature and seems to have done a decent job of using a mask. But what about the worker....mask isn't fully covering the face, large gaps around the side. Easily within 2m. And here potentially is your problem. The employee feels confident that they don't have it and hence are using the PPE incorrectly and it's effectiveness is likely to be low (barring preventing spitting at the customer). What is the chance that they change their gloves each time after they have breathed on the gloves? If they employee does actually have the virus they are acting in a way that is almost certainly going to spread it.
And this ultimately is why masks may not work. It's not the mask itself that is the problem its the way we use them and which why isolated tests on masks seem to show an effect but actual populace tests seem to have minimal effect. But these things are difficult to test, need large samples and take time to consider other possibilities.
2 weeks after requirement austria got 90% drop in new cases.
This is a very poor scientific approach. Because you can see a link you determine a cause and effect. The problem is that it is anecdotal. Austria implemented a number of other measures which could have caused the effect as well. You are making a conclusion without evidencing that the link is real. Simply I could state because everyone wore bright yellow Macs for those two weeks is the cause for the 90% decrease. It's plainly ridiculous and so is the above statement without evidence. The test is to prove the statement wrong and question whether there were any other factors that could have generated the same result (e.g. social distancing). Basically you have to assume your hypothesis wrong and try and prove if anything else could cause it (rather than use the evidence to prove the statement correct as that stops you thinking about other possiblities).
queen_annes_revenge wrote: ... I'll be happy to visit pubs and restaurants once they open up, I'll just avoid crowded places, which I generally did anyway.
You must go to some pretty crap pubs and restaurants
um? if you say so? if youre going on number of customers as an indicator of a restaurant or pubs quality, then wetherspoons and mcdonalds would be the countrys best establishments
).
.
Who mentioned taking property? It certainly wasn't me!
. The reason to have playgrounds closed, in my opinion, is because it's nearly impossible to ask children to social distance while actively playing on the same slides / etc as one another.
(although sorry about the pesky kids >.< still an amazing thing to have on / surrounded by ones own land 
) against hundreds of thousands of lives, I consider them to be a sociopath.
Over the last couple of weeks we have noticed a lot of people calling up to ask about new car battery's. For a lot of vehicles, especially in multi car households its been a month since they went anywhere. Being stationery for extended periods is not a good thing for cars, especially the battery.
) and putting antibiotic ointment on the spot before covering it with some gauze and tape wrapped found his foot. I tossed the brand new blade, I just couldn't keep it. 
The snips were too expensive to pitch so got a second washing with alcohol.
