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BrianDavion wrote:
On a on topic but slightly lighter note

Well done . This is the way

 Sqorgar wrote:

Bran Dawri wrote:
Wait, I thought you didn't trust statistics?
But now a statistical correlation is in your favour it's suddenly ironclad proof of " the perfect virus temperature"?

I trust statistics when I know how they are calculated. When someone says the coronavirus is 20 times more deadly than the flu - how did you arrive at that statistic? If you can't show me where it came from, then it definitely is suspect. Case in point, they calculate the flu mortality rate using estimated numbers, which are at least three times higher than confirmed cases, but calculate the coronavirus mortality rate using only confirmed cases. This means that you can't say that the coronavirus is more deadly than the flu because you aren't comparing two statistics talking about the same thing. And because I know what that methodology is, I know that the statistics are bs. If I didn't know that, and believed that the two mortality rates were equivalent, I'd be the same dumb donkey-cave as everyone else freaking the feth out over complete bs.

Interestingly enough, if you compare the same statistics - confirmed deaths divided by confirmed cases - the flu has a mortality rate that is at least two to four times that of the coronavirus. And that's with the extreme selection bias in coronavirus testing.

Bollocks. Flu CFR is ~0,1%. Even if I'm assuming 10 times the number of infected corona patients than are currently confirmed (277K vs 11K dead, CFR OF 2,5%) without adjusting flu numbers, corona is STILL roughly three times as deadly.

Flu estimates 3x as many cases as are confirmed (probably a number on the low side), with almost no testing reducing its actual statistics even further. Corona, which is being tracked MUCH more vigorously likely has less of an actual multiplier, yet even using a much higher one is still deadlier.

It also doesn't take into account that in areas where the healthcare system is overwhelmed the CFR jumps to 6-7% for corona, though that number may be on the high side as testing is then prioritised to those at risk and untested cases obviously are not represented in a CFR.

I wouldn't even call these numbers statistics. This is basic math.

Just done my grocery shop. Shop had plenty of stuff. Bread was full. The usual suspects were pretty bare, aswell as bottled beers, I'm assuming due to the recent pub closing thing in the UK. Still, I picked up a few hobgoblins and a couple of ipas for my evening tipples. Cold medicine and frozen were strapped, except for the name brand stuff, so it's good to see that even in an emergency were still tight fisted. Plenty of people walking around with plastic gloves on for some reason, and my personal highlight, a woman who kept a furry scarf pressed to her face around the whole shop. People are dumb.

 queen_annes_revenge wrote:
People are dumb.

Indeed sespecially those people not taking those simple precautions!

Feeling mildly sick with a scratchy throat - wonderful.

I guess I wear a mask when working on some forgeworld today

Meanwhile in England...

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nSXIetP5iak

Pretty much sums it up...

Dogs can't get covid 19. This begs to question can furries get it? Quick write a grant, those trillions in government funds have to be spent on something useful. It could save the hooman race.

Kind of feeling cute today, might go by toilet roll, idk

Brian and Sqorgar (and anyone else who wants to have an honest discussion on numbers)

The big question is transmissible since we have no good data on what would happen absent intervention, so as a thought experiment for different percentages of the population that would get it how would death rates stack up compared to already occurring causes of death for both Flu death rate and the 3x death rate Brain hypothesized. (US 2017 Numbers in comparison)

So at 5% of the population infected (or 15% for flu rate) the Wuhan Virus would crack the top ten.
At 18% of the population (54% for flu rate) it would take over third place just ahead of random accidents.
Not until 67% of the population is infected assuming a 3X death rate would it take over #1 from heart disease.

Of course somewhere in there the medical system gets overwhelmed and the death rate increase but for now its food for thought. So how contagious do people think this is with what rationale. Given the number of medial personnel who've become sick and would have been taking the standard precautions and our bodies haven't experienced this before I could believe that number could be high, so lets say absent drastic measures it would be the number one killer in the US. Does that justify the drastic measures ?

@jerram, sqorgar and others There is much that is not known. There are models that are thrown around (not toy soldiers). However, like many things, these models can be inaccurate.

So, for example, many people are quoting the roughtly 3 percent rate of mortality. They then extrapolate to the number of people who get the disease, and voila arrive at a number. However, all of that is based on the disease effecting all groups of people in the society equally. My understanding is that at-risk groups have the true high mortality rate, which is in excess of 10 percent. I would hope that these groups are protected. If they are, I also hope that the casualties from covid-19 are much lower than 3 percent of the individuals who contract it.

Heres a little tidbit released by the DoD concerning COVID19 vulnerability due to the flu vaccine:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31607599/

TLDR; if you’ve been vaccinated for the seasonal flu, you are more susceptible to COVID19 infection.

 spaceelf wrote:
@jerram, sqorgar and others There is much that is not known. There are models that are thrown around (not toy soldiers). However, like many things, these models can be inaccurate.

So, for example, many people are quoting the roughtly 3 percent rate of mortality. They then extrapolate to the number of people who get the disease, and voila arrive at a number. However, all of that is based on the disease effecting all groups of people in the society equally. My understanding is that at-risk groups have the true high mortality rate, which is in excess of 10 percent. I would hope that these groups are protected. If they are, I also hope that the casualties from covid-19 are much lower than 3 percent of the individuals who contract it.

Part of my point exactly. So what do you do with so much unknown, look at a range of possibilities and assess their likelihood. The fact that even if you think some of the doomsday scenarios aren't well supported by data even lower numbers could easily have this as the number one killer in the US for 2020 if substantial measures weren't/aren't taken is still rather disconcerting to put it mildly.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Ghool wrote:
Heres a little tidbit released by the DoD concerning COVID19 vulnerability due to the flu vaccine:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31607599/

TLDR; if you’ve been vaccinated for the seasonal flu, you are more susceptible to COVID19 infection.

It would be more accurate to say you could be(probably are) more susceptible, study is not based on current virus or current vaccination but is from 2018 using that vaccination and other corona type viruses going around at the time. Would be interesting to see what the increase in risk is and interestingly enough since you're dealing with DOD personnel you're talking younger and healthier than the general population.

One of the first things they do when you are hospitalized, especially if you are older and at risk, is give you the flu vaccine and pneumonia vaccine. It's not generally a good idea, since if you are hospitalized, your immune system is already either compromised or working overtime trying to fight whatever put you there (even if it is a broken arm). Even though it is typically a bad idea to further stress the immune system, it is policy based on recommendations by the CDC.

I think that if we don't see more than 50,000 people dead from the coronavirus (and I doubt we'll see that many), we should declare the CDC and WHO terrorist organizations for the sheer amount of damage they will have done to our world's infrastructure.

 Sqorgar wrote:
One of the first things they do when you are hospitalized, especially if you are older and at risk, is give you the flu vaccine and pneumonia vaccine. It's not generally a good idea, since if you are hospitalized, your immune system is already either compromised or working overtime trying to fight whatever put you there (even if it is a broken arm). Even though it is typically a bad idea to further stress the immune system, it is policy based on recommendations by the CDC.

I think that if we don't see more than 50,000 people dead from the coronavirus (and I doubt we'll see that many), we should declare the CDC and WHO terrorist organizations for the sheer amount of damage they will have done to our world's infrastructure.

I think if studies show that if we had done liitle there would be less than 50k deaths you can start to have that conversation, However even that relies on a false argument alot of people make, that a probabilistic decision is post facto determined to be right or wrong based solely on the outcome. To use an example everyone should understand, if you play Russian Roulette and survive it doesn't change the fact you're just as much of an idiot as the person who didn't survive.

Can I get some advice on agency workers rights here? If an employer determines that it’s not safe to have its employees in the building at this time, and tells them to stay away, can it then turn around to agency workers and say ‘you have to come in and work here, in this same building’?

Jerram wrote:
I think if studies show that if we had done liitle there would be less than 50k deaths you can start to have that conversation, However even that relies on a false argument alot of people make, that a probabilistic decision is post facto determined to be right or wrong based solely on the outcome. To use an example everyone should understand, if you play Russian Roulette and survive it doesn't change the fact you're just as much of an idiot as the person who didn't survive.

My city has 5 confirmed cases - every single one directly attributable to interaction with a known infected traveler (and isolated appropriately). We've had one death, who was actually brought here from a hospital in Georgia and tested positive here (because it was suspected beforehand, proper sanitation procedures were followed to the letter). One of the other cases was someone on a Japanese cruise ship who is a resident of my county, but which wasn't infected here and has been quarantined well away from here. So we have a non-resident, infected in Georgia but tested here, and a resident who isn't here and wasn't tested here - these are both counted among the minuscule cases in my city. My question is whether or not that dead guy from Georgia is also being counted in Georgia using the same criteria as our cruise ship resident. Regardless, neither of which should realistically be counted as cases in my county. But good thing we put a stop to all those elective and non-critical medical procedures! (You know there are people who went through the entire colon prep, just to have their colonoscopies canceled because of this)

So the WHO is burning the candle from both ends with their reporting of numbers, and they (and the media) are not reporting pertinent details that convey an accurate sense of what is going on. They are purposely increasing the level or fear through intentionally inflated, overly vague numbers that hide the true nature and significance of the spread of this virus. They are greatly overstating the risk to individuals and communities, and using some of the worst math I've ever seen to arrive at fake statistics intended to frighten the general populace.

You know what? I'm going to coin a new term: "Fake Math". The WHO is using Fake Math with the intention of instilling an irrational sense of fear - terror, if you will - in order to pressure the world governments into enacting their policies. The WHO is, by definition, a terrorist organization.

https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

What agenda do you see them pressing, Sqorqar? It reads like they're gathering information, and trying to limit the infections. They aren't advocating for quarantine or lockdown- from what I've read, experts think that is just postponing the problem. Limited contact, and a self quarantine for 1 week once you become symptomatic, or 2 weeks if someone in your household gets it.

I'm really not trying to gotcha or anything like that, I don't understand what goal you see the WHO advancing.

I definitely get that all methodologies that conflict with your viewpoint are flawed, and the corona virus cannot be compared to any other illness or study in your opinion.
So leaving aside the reliability of their statistics- what do you think the WHO are trying to do?

 Ghool wrote:
Heres a little tidbit released by the DoD concerning COVID19 vulnerability due to the flu vaccine:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31607599/

TLDR; if you’ve been vaccinated for the seasonal flu, you are more susceptible to COVID19 infection.

Isn't that likely to be because people the majority of people who get seasonal flu vaccines are already in higher risk groups (old, compromised immune systems etc.)?

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Can I get some advice on agency workers rights here? If an employer determines that it’s not safe to have its employees in the building at this time, and tells them to stay away, can it then turn around to agency workers and say ‘you have to come in and work here, in this same building’?

I would contact ACAS or an employment lawyer. But, from my basic legal understanding. If the location is declared unsuitable then no workers should be entering/expected to work.

 A Town Called Malus wrote:

 Ghool wrote:
Heres a little tidbit released by the DoD concerning COVID19 vulnerability due to the flu vaccine:

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31607599/

TLDR; if you’ve been vaccinated for the seasonal flu, you are more susceptible to COVID19 infection.

Isn't that likely to be because people the majority of people who get seasonal flu vaccines are already in higher risk groups (old, compromised immune systems etc.)?

I'll respond to this first because its in my wheel house.

Not in this case, I'm 99% certain this is all military members (DoD (Department of Defense) mandates and provides for all miltary members to get flu shots in season). I'm fairly sure there's little if any civil service because while they have health insurance they are treated in town with public doctors and not the DoD health system.

So you're talking in general, young and healthy, at least as when compared to the general public.

Well today I saw 2 coaches full of people that can't be younger than 75 on a touring holiday.

My only thought was plague wagon.

Clearly they didn't get the memo.
Touring scotland and they wonder why are cases are rising.

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Can I get some advice on agency workers rights here? If an employer determines that it’s not safe to have its employees in the building at this time, and tells them to stay away, can it then turn around to agency workers and say ‘you have to come in and work here, in this same building’?

https://www.hse.gov.uk/toolbox/workers/temporary.htm

Agency/temporary workers
Businesses and self-employed people using temporary workers must provide the same level of health and safety protection for them as they do for employees.

Providers of temporary workers and employers using them need to co-operate and communicate clearly with each other to ensure risks to those workers are managed effectively.

You need to agree who does what. Don’t assume the ‘other side’ will take responsibility:

make sure, before temporary workers start, that they are covered by risk assessments, and they know what measures have been taken to protect them
make sure they understand the information and instructions they need to work safely, and have had any necessary training
consider the language needs of temporary workers who do not speak English well or at all (see our advice on migrant workers)
check, before they start, that they have any occupational qualifications or skills needed for the job
agree on arrangements for providing/maintaining any personal protective equipment, display screen equipment eyesight tests, and any necessary health surveillance
agree on arrangements for reporting relevant accidents to the enforcing authority (usually HSE or the local authority)
Under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, agencies and businesses that use workers supplied by them must exchange the information they both need to ensure the safety of workers.

see also :

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/agency-workers/agency-workers-what-you-need-to-know/

https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg450.htm

... that said firms like Uber have challenged -- and so far lost -- these sort of rulings in court.

 Sqorgar wrote:


You know what? I'm going to coin a new term: "Fake Math".

This is not a new approach, it's the same thing we've seen certain elected officials resorting to when questioned or challenged and they don't have any competent response, and seek to instead discredit the source or questioner.

The WHO is using Fake Math with the intention of instilling an irrational sense of fear - terror, if you will - in order to pressure the world governments into enacting their policies.

...to what point and purpose?

World domination by the evil shadow epidemiologist league?

The WHO is, by definition, a terrorist organization.

O_o

Alternatively, is it possible that a lot of this is instead a reflection of the fact that data is always dirty and takes time to clean and analyze, data in news reports is typically incomplete and that this is still an actively evolving situation, people reporting on it often have no fething clue what they're talking about and the people reading it usually have even less of one, and that specifics often aren't terribly relevant next to the general trendline?

 Gitzbitah wrote:
https://www.who.int/emergencies/diseases/novel-coronavirus-2019/advice-for-public

What agenda do you see them pressing, Sqorqar? It reads like they're gathering information, and trying to limit the infections. They aren't advocating for quarantine or lockdown- from what I've read, experts think that is just postponing the problem. Limited contact, and a self quarantine for 1 week once you become symptomatic, or 2 weeks if someone in your household gets it.

I'm really not trying to gotcha or anything like that, I don't understand what goal you see the WHO advancing.

I definitely get that all methodologies that conflict with your viewpoint are flawed, and the corona virus cannot be compared to any other illness or study in your opinion.
So leaving aside the reliability of their statistics- what do you think the WHO are trying to do?

The WHO is a division of the UN, and I don't think is acting independently. The current head of the WHO is accused of covering up cholera outbreaks in Ethopia when he was health minister and over exaggerating the health of the country and his achievements in order to advance politically. The dude is a stooge.

The UN has this effort they call Agenda 2030 (which is an expansion of their previous climate-change based Agenda 21), which you can read about on their webpage. Basically, it is a set of 17 goals which they hope to achieve by the year 2030 - which is rather an impressive thing when there are goals like eradicating (or more precisely halving) poverty, hunger, sickness, violence, inequality, and so on. Like, let's achieve utopia in 15 years, guys! It's not even realistic to achieve these goals by 3030!

Ultimately, though, none of the goals on that list are even remotely achievable without the UN becoming more important that the governments of its members. For instance, two of the goals focus on reducing inequality. What exactly is the UN's plan on enacting sweeping social change regarding inequality in places like the Middle East, where women wear burkas and they throw gay people off buildings? There's a lot of contentious stuff in there that even places like the US are split on, culturally and politically, like globalization, climate change, immigration, and social justice. We couldn't even get these goals passed in the US alone. The only way this works for the UN, realistically, is if they are somehow able to dictate policy in their member countries.

Basically, the UN has the stated goals and desire to become something akin to the EU. While the coronavirus itself is not a manufactured crisis, the escalation of this crisis into a world locked in their houses, gripped in terror is. We're going to walk out of this thing praising the WHO and UN for saving the world, and that's going to give them a lot of clout as a governing body. I expect the UN to be increasingly consulted on national policies, which gives them the kind of power they want to enact sweeping social and political change across the world.

Called it.

 reds8n wrote:

 Future War Cultist wrote:
Can I get some advice on agency workers rights here? If an employer determines that it’s not safe to have its employees in the building at this time, and tells them to stay away, can it then turn around to agency workers and say ‘you have to come in and work here, in this same building’?

https://www.hse.gov.uk/toolbox/workers/temporary.htm

Agency/temporary workers
Businesses and self-employed people using temporary workers must provide the same level of health and safety protection for them as they do for employees.

Providers of temporary workers and employers using them need to co-operate and communicate clearly with each other to ensure risks to those workers are managed effectively.

You need to agree who does what. Don’t assume the ‘other side’ will take responsibility:

make sure, before temporary workers start, that they are covered by risk assessments, and they know what measures have been taken to protect them
make sure they understand the information and instructions they need to work safely, and have had any necessary training
consider the language needs of temporary workers who do not speak English well or at all (see our advice on migrant workers)
check, before they start, that they have any occupational qualifications or skills needed for the job
agree on arrangements for providing/maintaining any personal protective equipment, display screen equipment eyesight tests, and any necessary health surveillance
agree on arrangements for reporting relevant accidents to the enforcing authority (usually HSE or the local authority)
Under the Conduct of Employment Agencies and Employment Businesses Regulations 2003, agencies and businesses that use workers supplied by them must exchange the information they both need to ensure the safety of workers.

see also :

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/work/rights-at-work/agency-workers/agency-workers-what-you-need-to-know/

https://www.hse.gov.uk/pubns/indg450.htm

... that said firms like Uber have challenged -- and so far lost -- these sort of rulings in court.

Depends on the building and the employees in particular too.

If a care home requested agency staff to cover, it may be that some of their employees have at risk people at home or are themselves.
Then the building isn’t safe for thone employees but doesn’t mean it isn’t safe for anyone..


Would have to know the specific job role to know whether any ‘side rules’ like this as it were would make a difference.

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompetence. I think the WHO may just be overreacting to compensate for their initial downplaying and kowtowing to China. But at this point Vaks point is more relevant when it comes to National health organizations, the problem is too many people pretend the data isn't dirty and they have the one true answer, frustrating those of us who know better.

I do have some questions about the Wuhan virus, guys:
Why and how did it become such a mess in Italy ? They have been in quarantine for a long time now. Did they do it too late ?
I'm very interested by that !
And another one: how are you doing it in non Western countries ? Like, South Korea and Japan mainly ? About news about them ?
Asian tend to have plenty of masks unlike our incompetent governments
If you want... interesting info about the situation in communist China by a non official source, visit Jennifer Sent Blog on fb

The two things I've heard specifically to Italy, without actually worrying enough to verify, is that they have an ageing population (don't know if disproportionate or just the same as many western economies) and that they are culturally prone to a lot of close physical contact.

Both make sense to me, but, like I say, haven't been troubled sufficiently to check.

There will be several reasons,

They probably didn't do a good enough job of identifying, testing and isolating people who came in to the country with the disease (the UK seems to have been more effective than most at this)

The don't seem to have been as good at contact tracing those who they did identify with the disease so they could isolate and test all the folk they met when they might have been contagious (again the UK seems to have done a decent job)

third Italians seem to be more sociable than many populations because of their social customs, lots of hugs, kisses, family gatherings, they stand closer together when talking to each other (the distance people feel comfortable with is a learned behaviour and can vary quite a lot), larger families and more people living together etc so the virus spreads more easily

they're also an older population on average so they will catch it more easily (your immune system get weaker as you age), and when they do catch it they will be sicker (and I suspect that because their immune systems are weaker older people will release more virus when they cough making them more likely to infect people)

I'm sure there are other factors too, there is speculation that there may be some genetic factor or a link to diet but that's impossible to tell at this point