Coronavirus

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**Bran Dawri**

queen_annes_revenge wrote:

post hoc ergo proctor hoc again.. youre making a blanket assumption off one piece of information without considering a whole host of other factors. I could make a simple counterpoint in stating that Belgium has a strict lockdown, and they have the worst death rate per million in Europe. Holland has advisory social distancing and a targeted 'intelligent' lockdown in place has a much lower death rate.

Social distancing in the Netherlands is *not* advisory. Breaking will result in a fine. The "intelligent" lockdown was a very smart terminology by our prime minister to get the otherwise rather headstrong Dutch people to fall in line.
It was otherwise still a lockdown much like other countries had, including Belgium. Nonessential businesses, schools and shops were closed, people stayed at and worked from home.

We're now slowly re-opening, starting with schools and some other businesses next week.

**Azreal13**

Boris on TV.

Work from home if you can, go to work if you must is now work from home if you can, go to work if you can't.

Outside exercise now unlimited, including travel to other venues.

Social distancing will now carry heavier penalties if breached.

Next step if these measures are successful is to look at schools for junior age kids.

**nfe**

You must respect social distancing and cannot interact with anyone outside your household, but also must go to work if you can't work at home, thereby necessitating interaction with those outside your household.

**AegisGrimm**

Still at a point where no one cares to socially distance much here in Michigan (US).

I had two different deliveries on Thursday to Senior Apartment complexes/ Care Homes where it's all probably 75+ year old populations, and at both places the maintenance guys I was delivering to met me with no masks or gloves at all. They haven't seen me in 4 weeks, I could be sick with damn near anything, and they are working in a high-risk population. There are guys coming into our main store from complexes with known confirmed cases, and they aren't bothering with any masks at all, either on site or at our store. They say "they're too much of a pain in the ass to wear, so we aren't bothering".

I swear, if everyone actually bothered with appropriate distancing and masks, our economy could be 90% open (or more) and everything would be fine (or as near as it can be, considering).

**Danny76**

nfe wrote:
You must respect social distancing and cannot interact with anyone outside your household, but also must go to work if you can't work at home, thereby necessitating interaction with those outside your household.

Yeah but the interacting out of household clearly means socially..

More importantly, GW factory falls under stage 1 for sure (those that can’t work from home).

Stage 2 being shops and the like.
Stage 3 being hospitality. Restaurants mentioned, but also would include hairdressers, masseurs, zoos and those similar.

**gorgon**

AegisGrimm wrote:

I swear, if everyone actually bothered with appropriate distancing and masks, our economy could be 90% open (or more) and everything would be fine (or as near as it can be, considering).

I dunno if I agree with that exactly, but I agree that Americans probably need to be treated like children since we can’t behave like responsible adults. The Freedumb crowd is helping ruin it for the rest of us, and they’re too dumb to even realize it.

**nfe**

Danny76 wrote:
nfe wrote:
You must respect social distancing and cannot interact with anyone outside your household, but also must go to work if you can't work at home, thereby necessitating interaction with those outside your household.

Yeah but the interacting out of household clearly means socially..

Thank goodness the virus sleeps during working hours.

**Azreal13**

You'll be expected to socially distance at work and while travelling to work. That's why travelling by car, walking or cycling if at all possible was discussed, because all the trains and buses will have greatly reduced capacity to allow people to keep separate.

**insaniak**

Sqorgar wrote:
RiTides wrote:
I guess I'll agree to disagree - your #1 point / assumption (that lockdowns don't make "a lick of difference") has been, in my view, proven false both in this thread and in general. If our starting points are that different, we can't really effectively discuss much beyond that...

I haven’t read a single article or paper that has evidence that the lockdowns have worked, or how well they’ve worked. Heck, if you search for “have lockdowns worked”, you’ll primarily find articles saying it has not, and a few that assert that it has without explanation or data. But I’m always open to counter arguments, so if you have a link to something empirical, I’d love to read it.

I just googled 'have lockdowns worked' and the very first article that comes up is a Politico piece with a whole lot of graphs and analysis that concludes that lockdowns have been effective at slowing the spread of the virus, particularly when implemented hard and early. If you haven't read any that have said that lockdowns are effective, then I can only conclude that you're not actually looking for them.

**GoatboyBeta**

At my work we were already thinking of reopening the shop front in a limited capacity from next week anyway. Trade sales have really started to pick up, and from Monday a few more furloughed staff are back in. But as others have said the trick is(as before the lockdown) getting the general public to respect distancing while they wait. Especially as car spares are often not an "in and out" sale.

**RiTides**

Insaniak, I googled that and read the article, and the numbers are kind of mind-numbing

(it's here, if anyone is curious - can't read it on mobile as the graphs do not show up, though). I'm not really sure about some of their correlations as a lot of those countries do have very different circumstances, and from the graphs even those hit super hard took early measures. But I think your point was just to show that there are articles presenting evidence and data regarding the effectiveness (or ineffectiveness, depending on when they were implemented) of lockdown measures in various countries, which is obviously true.

Part of the reason why I am unsure of their correlations, though (as a guy who hangs around scientists

but again am actually just an engineer...) is that so many are based on "since the date of the third coronavirus death". I would find it hard to believe, for instance, that France had no deaths due to the coronavirus in the month since they've retroactively found out that they had a community-spread case in December, a month prior to their first official case. So, that would shift where they were on some of those graphs, and mean even if they took as effective measures as possible, they would be coming much too late (due to a lack of information on the spread of the disease in their country).

This makes it hard to compare things in detail until fuller studies are done tracing the origins and early spread in each country. I do think the overall trend is clear, though... and I think that's what that article is trying to deal with. Lots of room to go back and do some in-depth scientific studies, of course, which I'm looking forward to after the fact...

**queen_annes_revenge**

So uk address by bojo tonight was a waste of time. No real easing of anything, but now we're 'allowed' to sit in parks, which is good, but was basically what everyone was doing anyway. Hopefully now though the jackboot rozzers might refrain from marching through parks chastising the public.. One can hope.

**reds8n**

queen_annes_revenge wrote:
So uk address by bojo tonight was a waste of time. No real easing of anything, but now we're 'allowed' to sit in parks, which is good, but was basically what everyone was doing anyway. Hopefully now though the jackboot rozzers might refrain from marching through parks chastising the public.. One can hope.

https://twitter.com/OliverHealdUK/status/1259557899359137792

There’s 60 pages of advice tomorrow. Worth reading first

... might've been an idea to maybe release this for people to peruse first perhaps ? One can't help but think that. say, 1900 hours tonight might've been a great time to release this.

via
https://twitter.com/bengoldacre/status/1258372975004389379

May 2020. Our first paper analyses the pseudonymised health data of over 17.4 million UK adults to discover the key factors associated with death from COVID-19.
Background: Establishing who is at risk from a novel rapidly arising cause of death, and why, requires a new approach to epidemiological research with very large datasets and timely data. Working on behalf of NHS England we therefore set out to deliver a secure and pseudonymised analytics platform inside the data centre of a major primary care electronic health records vendor establishing coverage across detailed primary care records for a substantial proportion of all patients in England. The following results are preliminary.

Data sources: Primary care electronic health records managed by the electronic health record vendor TPP, pseudonymously linked to patient-level data from the COVID-19 Patient Notification System (CPNS) for death of hospital inpatientswith confirmed COVID-19, using the new OpenSAFELY platform.

Population: 17,425,445 adults.

Time period: 1st Feb 2020 to 25th April 2020.

Primary outcome: Death in hospital among people with confirmed COVID-19.

Methods: Cohort study analysed by Cox-regression to generate hazard ratios: age and sex adjusted, and multiply adjusted for co-variates selected prospectively on the basis of clinical interest and prior findings.

Results: There were 5683 deaths attributed to COVID-19. In summary after full adjustment, death from COVID-19 was strongly associated with: being male (hazard ratio 1.99, 95%CI 1.88-2.10); older age and deprivation (both with a strong gradient); uncontrolled diabetes (HR 2.36 95% CI 2.18-2.56); severe asthma (HR 1.25 CI 1.08-1.44); and various other prior medical conditions. Compared to people with ethnicity recorded as white, black people were at higher risk of death, with only partial attenuation in hazard ratios from the fully adjusted model (age-sex adjusted HR 2.17 95% CI 1.84-2.57; fully adjusted HR 1.71 95% CI 1.44-2.02); with similar findings for Asian people (age-sex adjusted HR 1.95 95% CI 1.73-2.18; fully adjusted HR 1.62 95% CI 1.43-1.82).

Conclusions: We have quantified a range of clinical risk factors for death from COVID-19, some of which were not previously well characterised, in the largest cohort study conducted by any country to date. People from Asian and black groups are at markedly increased risk of in-hospital death from COVID-19, and contrary to some prior speculationthis is only partially attributable to pre-existing clinical risk factors or deprivation; further research into the drivers of this association is therefore urgently required. Deprivation is also a major risk factor with, again, little of the excess risk explained by co-morbidity or other risk factors. The findings for clinical risk factors are concordant with policies in the UK for protecting those at highest risk. Our OpenSAFELY platform is rapidly adding further NHS patients’ records; we will update and extend these results regularly.

https://opensafely.org/outputs/2020/05/covid-risk-factors/

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.06.20092999v1

meanwhile..

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/5g-coronavirus-conspiracy-theory-attacks

In one incident, a broadband engineer was spat at in the face by an enraged member of the public. The engineer is now ill with suspected coronavirus.

Since March 30, there have been 77 arson attacks on mobile phone masts across the UK, with staff working on mobile infrastructure also reporting 180 incidents of abuse. There have been 13 additional incidents of sabotage reported, ranging from failed arson attacks to attempts to damage mobile network infrastructure in other ways. From April 20 through May 5, more than a week after the supposed peak of attacks in early April, there were 16 arson or sabotage attacks on mobile phone masts. When failed or attempted attacks are added to the tally, that number increases to 74.

**Mr. Burning**

So, we can have pudding if we eat our greens (don't act like complete muppets. Obey social distancing rules, its a call to work not an excuse for a bbq on the common etc) if not it'll be straight to our rooms to think about what we have done.

Boris is actually being a little bit smart. The easing of lockdown can begin but the govt cant solely be responsible if individuals don't take responsibility for their actions (however ineffective the Govt has been so far).

Automatically Appended Next Post:

queen_annes_revenge wrote:
So uk address by bojo tonight was a waste of time. No real easing of anything, but now we're 'allowed' to sit in parks, which is good, but was basically what everyone was doing anyway. Hopefully now though the jackboot rozzers might refrain from marching through parks chastising the public.. One can hope.

I really don't like the filth, but you seem to be under the impression that the forces of the entire country are spending time in riot gear kettling parks, commons and town squares - reenacting acting the Brixton riots.

**Mario**

Disciple of Fate wrote:https://voxeu.org/article/covid-19-italy-analysis-death-registry-data

Germany after lifting the lockdown seems to experience a rise in infection. The R rate being at 1.1 now, but more information might be needed:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52604676

I'd add that Germany didn't implement a full lockdown like some countries did. The earliest response was stuff like that restaurants were essentially forced to close (distancing and reduced capacity made it unprofitable to run), big venues had to be closed and same for any big events. Early it felt more like the rules were for companies while people were advised to do things. Of course everything is interconnected and if a restaurant can't open effectively that's gonna affect its employees, and so on.

From a citizen perspective you could go outside and people were advised to be careful (some additional rules that I can't remember all, stuff like fewer people in cars, hoping that people stay at home if they can). But generally the rules and advice were normal stuff I did anyways (stay away from random people in public, wash your hands correctly when you come back, just everyday common sense stuff, I was actually thankful for that). It felt neither oppressive nor totalitarian, just somewhat inconvenient. Stricter rules about wearing masks (when shopping and on public transportation, not outside in general) were applied end of April (20th or 21st?), same about distancing while shopping or in a bus, tram,… . When it came to personal movement it never felt too drastic (at least to me).

Relaxation of rules essentially led to some people acting like it's over. It's a bit disappointing when you are shopping and there's enough space but some people feel like everything's over and they suddenly can't be bothered to drive their shopping cart in a slightly wider curve around you. Yesterday we even had "protests" in city centres. Here in Munich we had about 3000 people with the usual banners (I even saw a photo of one comparing politicians with Mengele, as they are supposedly "experimenting" on the populace at large with their rules (something like that?), which was weird) and, of course, this protest had a lot of disregard for mask wearing and social distancing in general.

To use the seatbelt analogy: It's like someone's life was saved by one (and/or an airbag) and they just run back into traffic because they survived the initial accident and now think that everything's okay again.

**queen_annes_revenge**

No. But there have been plenty of examples, throughtout the entire lockdown (and before). The police are supposed to be a professional outfit. They will be judged on their performance. I have stated in this thread that my local police(Thames valley) have been pretty good around or neck of the woods, generally leaving folks alone.

**Kilkrazy**

You should have seen the VE Day street party in Henley. Total anti-social distancing. No sogn of the police.

**queen_annes_revenge**

Well, unless they were all snogging, I can't say I'd be too bothered. The risk is low.

We were forbidden from sitting on front lawns on my camp, which is ridiculous. I wasn't planning on doing that anyway, bu them saying that just made me want to sit out with some beer on my front grass. In the circumstances I didn't see any MPs all day, so we wouldve been OK, but no one else in the street did anything anyway.

**Disciple of Fate**

Mario wrote:
Disciple of Fate wrote:https://voxeu.org/article/covid-19-italy-analysis-death-registry-data

Germany after lifting the lockdown seems to experience a rise in infection. The R rate being at 1.1 now, but more information might be needed:

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-52604676
I'd add that Germany didn't implement a full lockdown like some countries did. The earliest response was stuff like that restaurants were essentially forced to close (distancing and reduced capacity made it unprofitable to run), big venues had to be closed and same for any big events. Early it felt more like the rules were for companies while people were advised to do things. Of course everything is interconnected and if a restaurant can't open effectively that's gonna affect its employees, and so on.

From a citizen perspective you could go outside and people were advised to be careful (some additional rules that I can't remember all, stuff like fewer people in cars, hoping that people stay at home if they can). But generally the rules and advice were normal stuff I did anyways (stay away from random people in public, wash your hands correctly when you come back, just everyday common sense stuff, I was actually thankful for that). It felt neither oppressive nor totalitarian, just somewhat inconvenient. Stricter rules about wearing masks (when shopping and on public transportation, not outside in general) were applied end of April (20th or 21st?), same about distancing while shopping or in a bus, tram,… . When it came to personal movement it never felt too drastic (at least to me).

Relaxation of rules essentially led to some people acting like it's over. It's a bit disappointing when you are shopping and there's enough space but some people feel like everything's over and they suddenly can't be bothered to drive their shopping cart in a slightly wider curve around you. Yesterday we even had "protests" in city centres. Here in Munich we had about 3000 people with the usual banners (I even saw a photo of one comparing politicians with Mengele, as they are supposedly "experimenting" on the populace at large with their rules (something like that?), which was weird) and, of course, this protest had a lot of disregard for mask wearing and social distancing in general.

To use the seatbelt analogy: It's like someone's life was saved by one (and/or an airbag) and they just run back into traffic because they survived the initial accident and now think that everything's okay again.

The same sort of lockdown feeling in the NL by the sound of it. Its not too strict, they just rely on a lot of common sense that sometimes seems to be lacking these last few days.

That experience of relaxation is very recognizable though. Suddenly its been busier and people do not seem to care about keeping their distance as much. Going to work and getting essentials is going to become a minefield. Its pretty horifying to see that with slight relaxations most people think its business as usual and cram into public transport to shopping centres and the beach. I get the feeling the NL might see a rise on the R rating as well at this rate.

Funnily enough, we also have had multiple demonstration in my city (the governmental capital) which seem to be a collection of far right nutjobs, anarchists, anti vaxxers and 5g protesters. Not really the best and brightest after hearing what they have to say. They came out in force during our public holiday on the anniversary of the WW2 capitulation of German troops in the Netherlands and boy, did they milk that with equating pandemic lockdown restrictions with Nazi oppression... it also introduced me to the alternative of a sit-in, the hug-in, these people SMH...

**insaniak**

queen_annes_revenge wrote:

We were forbidden from sitting on front lawns on my camp, which is ridiculous. I wasn't planning on doing that anyway, bu them saying that just made me want to sit out with some beer on my front grass.

But heaven forbid they should treat us like kids...

**queen_annes_revenge**

Eh, play stupid games, get stupid prizes. It works both ways.

**Patriarch**

My dad went into hospital last week with heart problems. Tested negative for Covid 19 when he went in. As of yesterday he's now got it. Given he social isolates at the best of times, looks like he picked it up there.

Doesn't appear to have developed any symptoms yet, fingers crossed...

**Future War Cultist**

Patriarch wrote:
My dad went into hospital last week with heart problems. Tested negative for Covid 19 when he went in. As of yesterday he's now got it. Given he social isolates at the best of times, looks like he picked it up there.

Doesn't appear to have developed any symptoms yet, fingers crossed...

Really hope everything works out ok.

**Sqorgar**

insaniak wrote:
I just googled 'have lockdowns worked' and the very first article that comes up is a Politico piece with a whole lot of graphs and analysis that concludes that lockdowns have been effective at slowing the spread of the virus, particularly when implemented hard and early. If you haven't read any that have said that lockdowns are effective, then I can only conclude that you're not actually looking for them.

Well, the place where you made a mistake was that you used Google. Try using something like duck duck go. It anonymizes your searches so you don't get targeted results, and it isn't run by Google who thinks search algorithms are a form of activism.

So, I checked out that Politico piece and... well, it's wholly unconvincing. Firstly, it only compares one statistic: number of cases versus when the lockdown was announced. As Nate Silver would point out, coronavirus case counts are meaningless. Basically, the early parts of the curve are representative of an increase in testing, not an increase of cases - the actual curve likely started earlier and may be differently shaped than what out insufficient testing. You can't use the number of cases alone. A better metric would be to look at multiple different factors and see if their is a correlating change among all of them surrounding the announcement of the lockdown.

Second, it compares different countries with wildly different factors based on this single statistic. You can't say that Greece had fewer cases due to an earlier lockdown than northern Italy because Greece is in a completely different climate zone than northern Italy (this might be most important factor of all - all the worst epidemics occurred in the same narrow climate band as each other). It has less air pollution. It has a younger, healthier population. It has a different medical system. Lots of things could contribute to the overall severity of the epidemic.

Third, the graphs themselves don't show any actual obvious relationship between when the lockdowns are announced and, well, anything. The article talks repeatedly about locking down before the third death (which certainly wasn't actually the third death), but if the lockdowns worked - and they are extreme and intrusive responses of some significance - the relationship should be absolutely crystal clear in every situation. It's like showing up to a wedding drunk and without pants - there's going to be a very obvious distruption. The lockdowns are so expansive that if their end result is to just nudge the graph a bit, then they definitely aren't worth it.

Anyway, that article wasn't just unconvincing, I'm not sure the authors really understand the complexity of the situation. They appear to be data analysts, so I guess they know how to read a graph - but I guess it never occurred to them that the graph might be filled with worthless data, or that the graph might only contain part of the picture (or none of it). You absolutely can not draw any conclusions from the number of cases alone.

**NinthMusketeer**

See this is what makes Sqorgar so fun--I used duck duck go and the first result was an article about how lockdowns have worked and where to go from here. It is like he posts a guide on how to refute his post within the post itself.

**insaniak**

Sqorgar wrote:
Well, the place where you made a mistake was that you used Google. Try using something like duck duck go. It anonymizes your searches so you don't get targeted results, and it isn't run by Google who thinks search algorithms are a form of activism.

Yes, when I'm looking for information, I too prefer to use the smaller library over the one with access to more information.

So, I checked out that Politico piece and... well, it's wholly unconvincing.

I'm shocked.

**queen_annes_revenge**

Hopefully this 50 page document due to be released today sorts things out here in the UK, but I doubt it. The twitter sphere is ablaze with people who are confused about the update, people ridiculing those who are confused about the update, and frothing fear mongers who seem to think the update means everyone is going to die. The UK is a mess. This is what happens when you depend so much on the government and official institutions for guidance on every single issue, that you can't function when their micromanagement inevitably fails.

**Not Online!!!**

queen_annes_revenge wrote:
Hopefully this 50 page document due to be released today sorts things out here in the UK, but I doubt it. The twitter sphere is ablaze with people who are confused about the update, people ridiculing those who are confused about the update, and frothing fear mongers who seem to think the update means everyone is going to die. The UK is a mess. This is what happens when you depend so much on the government and official institutions for guidance on every single issue, that you can't function when their micromanagement inevitably fails.

correction this is what happens when a centrally run government fails to work propperly and efficently respectively fails at communication.

**queen_annes_revenge**

True, but the populace(or at least the that as represented by twitter) are in a frenzy, freaking out because they don't know what to do now their parents/big brother can't hold their hands. It's slightly pathetic.

**Danny76**

Not that I think using his alternative choice is necessarily right, as it may be chosen as it’s one that proves the point as you say.
He is right, the way Google targets and gathers data, it’s not the best to get factual evidence unless you go deeper in (not just what they bring to the top).

But I think there’s a lot of evidence for lockdowns working without having to resort to someone’s published opinion on google or otherwise