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Part of the issue is that they are trying to avoid looking like the economy is their only interest in regard to sending people back to work. So instead of a clear message of "remain in lockdown, permitted only to go to work or gather food" turns into "remain vigilant and sort of only go to work and do essentials, but at the same time you can sort of go out sometimes if you're sensible and if the rest of the country isn't going to the same place etc..."
So instead of a clear message its sort of garbled into a very lax sounding lockdown The result of which it becomes increasingly easy for people to break lockdown. Once broken another and another and another get added. One trip to the garden centre turns to two then three then you're going out just to go out.
Kilkrazy wrote: I've just ordered a slab of Brewdog's latest beer -- Barnard Castle Eye Test.
That is pretty funny. thats the one part of his story that seems a bit absurd.
It's dodgy way before that. Cummings went home from work to see his wife, who was showing symptoms. He then returned to work, before travelling up north that evening.
Either she was symptomatic, and he should have begun isolation from the moment he returned home - in which case he broke lockdown by returning to work afterwards.
Or she was not symptomatic, and the whole trip up to Durham was unnecessary and a breach of lockdown.
Merely having a child is not the massive extenuating circumstance his story has made out.
My personal take on this is that this was a trip he'd had planned all along for his wife's birthday (which coincided with the Barnard Castle eye-test jaunt) and the whole story from start to finish is bollocks he concocted with Boris as a vaguely plausible story to get him off the hook once it was reported he'd been spotted.
After Weston-super-Mare hospital closed to new patients earlier this week, it now turns out that of their staff treating their covid 19 patients. 40% of them have tested positive for the virus.
That's kind of shocking. We know it spreads very easily, but that sounds like a very high number of medical staff going down with it.
Though I've not kept up with infection rates in other hospitals - it might be normal showing how easily its spread or perhaps Weston Super Mare had some issue with PPE or policies (or both) which allowed it to spread so fast through their staff.
Of course it could also be that within the Covid wing restrictions were good, but that it was patients entering without knowing they had it spreading the infection to staff that way and then it spread through staff channels (which would highlight a weakness in staff interaction policies/safety).
Also that number is likely go higher as they test more staff. Losing nearly 50% or perhaps more staff over 2 weeks whilst also dealing with a rise in Covid cases and shutting down regular medical cover - that's exactly what lockdowns were aiming to avoid happening nationally to the system. Hopefully if there's any cover in other regions that isn't so heavily overwhelmed they can move staff around. Still its a sign of what could have happened to the medical system at large
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/05/28 11:58:07
So for those of you mandating that vaccines should be mandatory - what about those of us that can’t get any?
I have severe allergy to eggs, which prevents me from being able to get vaccines at all, or I could die.
Do I no longer get to have a job because in making others ‘safe’ I could die instead?
Vaccine or no vaccine, it’s not so black and white folks. There are some of us that simply can’t ever get a vaccine, but does that mean I lose my rights to work because I’m a ‘danger’ for not being vaccinated?
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/05/28 12:35:28
Overread wrote: Part of the issue is that they are trying to avoid looking like the economy is their only interest in regard to sending people back to work. So instead of a clear message of "remain in lockdown, permitted only to go to work or gather food" turns into "remain vigilant and sort of only go to work and do essentials, but at the same time you can sort of go out sometimes if you're sensible and if the rest of the country isn't going to the same place etc..."
So instead of a clear message its sort of garbled into a very lax sounding lockdown The result of which it becomes increasingly easy for people to break lockdown. Once broken another and another and another get added. One trip to the garden centre turns to two then three then you're going out just to go out.
It looks like they don't really care about even pretending they care about workers, or, as a member of the government called them, human capital stock.
Ghool wrote: So for those of you mandating that vaccines should be mandatory - what about those of us that can’t get any? I have severe allergy to eggs, which prevents me from being able to get vaccines at all, or I could die.
Do I no longer get to have a job because in making others ‘safe’ I could die instead?
Vaccine or no vaccine, it’s not so black and white folks. There are some of us that simply can’t ever get a vaccine, but does that mean I lose my rights to work because I’m a ‘danger’ for not being vaccinated?
Vaccines which are not made from eggs are possible and available.
Also, even when vaccines have been manufactured using eggs, it is possible they will not trigger your allergy.
Ghool wrote: So for those of you mandating that vaccines should be mandatory - what about those of us that can’t get any?
I have severe allergy to eggs, which prevents me from being able to get vaccines at all, or I could die.
That's a built in part of the process. Its part of the point of mass vaccination, in fact. You take the ones you can get safely, and widespread vaccines in the rest of the population protects *you* as a vulnerable member of society.
The more people 'opt out,' the more at risk you are, children to young too take vaccines are, and other vulnerable people are. That's exactly why it is important that everyone who can be vaccinated is vaccinated.
But, as our next chart shows, there’s little correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities — a measure that looks at the overall number of deaths compared with normal trends.
In Europe, roughly three groups of countries emerge in terms of fatalities. One group, including the U.K., the Netherlands and Spain, experienced extremely high excess mortality. Another, encompassing Sweden and Switzerland, suffered many more deaths than usual, but significantly less than the first group. Finally, there were countries where deaths remained within a normal range such as Greece and Germany.
Yet the data show that the relative strictness of a country’s containment measures had little bearing on its membership in any of the three groups above. While Germany had milder restrictions than Italy, it has been much more successful in containing the virus.
The overall impression is that while restrictions on movement were seen as a necessary tool to halt the spread of the virus, when and how they were wielded was more important than their severity. Early preparation, and plentiful health-care resources, were enough for several countries to avoid draconian lockdowns. Germany, with better testing and contact tracing and more intensive care units than its neighbors, could afford to keep the economy a bit more open. Greece, by acting quickly and surely, appears to have avoided the worst, so far.
Virus needs an active carrier to spread disease. If you've been infected you can't be infected again.
This is conjectural. While that is how many viruses work that is not how all viruses work. Science says this is likely the case for COVID, but there is still data implying otherwise.
If you isolated the vulnerable (65+) for 1 month and allowed the non vulnerable to be exposed the virus would literally lose it's ability to spread quickly. 65+ people mostly are retired and live at home or in nursing homes it is fairly easy to execute this plan.
This is a fantasy that cannot happen in reality. You cannot magically section off a segment of the population by age. Who do you think is caring for the elderly? Its predominantly people in their 20s through 40s.
X essentially means number of vulnerable people exposed to the virus and a certain high % of them die. X goes down because the number of carriers over time goes down. Time increases your chance of being exposed to an active carrier because as time passes you come in contact with more people.
Lets say this unnamed 65 year old came in contact with 5 random people in a month but came in contact with 30 random people in 6 months. In my proposed plan the people the later 5 months are less likely to carry the virus because they have already been exposed. This in effect reduces X. When everyone goes on lock down you are not reducing the viruses chance to spread because you keep the potential carrier population large. Once you get to the point where each infected person does not average another infection - the virus dies in a few weeks.
If you're going to try to explain "how something works" it would help if you understood what it is you're explaining and how, on a really basic level, reality works.
This is such an absolutely stupid argument that you made. I'm honestly incredibly distraught that you took the time to type this out and could not comprehend on a really basic level where the big gaping logical hole is. Like, you've completely failed to comprehend the basic function of what SOCIAL DISTANCING means. It means MINIMIZING your contact with others. An unnamed 65 year old person will come into contact with 5 random people per month over 6 months for a total of 30 people under a distancing scenario. Under a non-distancing/non-lockdown scenario the unnamed 65 year old will come into contact with 5 HUNDRED people per month for a total of 3,000 people over the same time period. I.E. Social distancing reduces the unnamed 65 year olds contact and thus makes him *less* likely to be exposed to an active carrier, because over time you come into contact with *less* people.
Additionally, due to the lockdown, the number of "active carriers" during any given point in time is drastically reduced - the whole point is to maintain a case count as close to zero as possible for as long as possible - so not only does the unnamed 65 year old come into contact with 1/100th the number of individuals he would have if he hadn't socially distanced, but the probability that any of the 30 people he encounters has the virus is itself a fraction of the probability that one of the 3,000 people he would have encountered otherwise has it. I.E. 1 in 30 might have the virus under the distancing scenario, whereas in the non-distancing scenario the number is more like 1,500.
And theres no time discount here, by the way. Based on the data we have collected its estimated that in an uncontrolled scenario the virus would be active for 6-9 months before it reached a herd immunity tipping point. One month of isolation for senior citizens would not cut it at all.
No. You can't possibly know if the approach worked yet. It takes time. collecting data takes time as does testing whole populations for a disease. Beyond the fact that most of these numbers across the world are being misrepresented for one reason or another. Lets just say all the number thus far were accurate. What % of the population has been exposed? No where near what is required to make these determinations.
We've collected enough data at this point to know that it hasn't worked. Sweden expected 20-25% of the population to have been exposed by this point, statistcal analysis of randomly sampled antibody tests determined that 7.3% of Stockholms population had been infected/showed antibodies, and the number outside of Stockholm was lower, slightly above 1%. Swedens deaths per capita was already almost 10x higher than that of its neighbors (many of which are more densely populated than Sweden itself is and thus should have seen a much bigger impact from the virus), but right now they are seeing something like 500 deaths per week from COVID, whereas their neighbor Norway is only seeing 7. Mind you, Norway has a population of about 5 million compared to Swedens 10, but you're still talking a couple orders of magnitude in difference between the two. It should not be that large. Their deaths per capita is offically higher than the US - 36 for them, vs 27 for us, and unlike the US Swedens curve is not bending and that number is not slowing down or decreasing. Statistically and mathematically speaking, there is no future point in which the situation in Sweden suddenly becomes "successful" under these circumstances. No amount of "collect more data over time" will improve these figures based on the established trends.
This situation gets even worse if a vaccine is identified, as Sweden is currently trending towards another 30k deaths over the course of the next year. Norway, Denmark, and Finland are trending towards less than 1000 each. In effect Seden will have killed 30,000+ people unnecessarily, whereas the other 3 nations will have likely saved the lives of tens of thousands, each.
More importantly, almost half of Swedens deaths have come from the elderly, despite the fact that the majority of stringent measures enacted by the Swedish government were intended to isolate and protect the elderly. Why? Because its not possible to isolate an 80 year old when they are reliant on 20 and 30 year olds for care.
In the case of Sweden it would be expected that they would have higher rates initially than other neighboring areas
You would expect the numbers in Sweden to be 2-3x higher, not 17x higher (Norway), 7x better (Denmark), or 13x higher (Finland). In the comparison between the 4 nations, we find that Denmark, in particular, has a population density about 5.5x higher than Swedens - Denmark should, based on density-trends we've seen elsewhere, be the hardest hit of the 4 nations, and yet it isn't, in large part because Denmark has successfully suppressed the virus through lockdown measures, whereas Sweden has not.
Plus they did an absolutely horrible job of protecting the vulnerable so they are hardly a model for the strategy.
And yet thats the only thing they actually really attempted to do - it didn't work, not because they did a gak job, but because its an unrealistic scenario.
Plus - this is completely ignoring the cost of the lockdown itself - which is also hard to measure immediately and admitably is likely also being misrepresented both ways due to the political nonsense.
Sweden is projected to have a 7-10% hit to its GDP in 2020 as a result of COVID based on economic data they have collected thus far, the US is expected to have a 4-8% hit based on current data for CY2020. So, it seems that not only has Sweden failed from a healthcare standpoint, but also an economic standpoint.
This is not political. It is logic
You haven't used an ounce of valid logic in your entire argument, which leads me to believe its mostly political and you're going to extreme lengths of rationalization and cognitive dissonance to try to justify your position.
Q_A_R wrote:Fair enough. You have to admit that the ICL model could have some serious flaws though? It predicted 500 000 deaths in the UK alone, when so far there are about 350 000 confirmed deaths in the entire world?
I pointed this out 10-20 pages ago, but I'll restate it again. The ICL model predicted 500k deaths as a WORST CASE SCENARIO where everything went wrong.
The ICL model has actually born out to be reasonably accurate, the 1.1-2.2 million death figure that was reported was always the worst case "do nothing" scenario in which governments took zero response whatsoever and individuals made no changes to their behavior - which was already essentially obsolete when it was published because by that time governments globally had already taken steps to address the crisis and individual behavior had already altered in an unforseen and unprecedented manner. The model *always* included more conservative scenarios with varying degrees of individual and governmental response that indicated a lower number of deaths - anyone who spent more than 5 seconds glancing at headlines already knew this and was aware of it, your own ignorance of it is not indicative of a failure on the part of the model. https://reason.com/2020/03/27/no-british-epidemiologist-neil-ferguson-has-not-drastically-downgraded-his-worst-case-projection-of-covid-19-deaths/
Contrary to what you may have read or heard, British epidemiologist Neil Ferguson has not suddenly reduced his worst-case projection of COVID-19 deaths in the U.K. by a factor of 28. To the contrary, he says the policies adopted by the British government, which are in line with the aggressive control measures recommended by a highly influential March 16 paper that Ferguson and other researchers at Imperial College wrote, should keep the number of deaths below 20,000.
"We assessed in that report…that fatalities would probably be unlikely to exceed about 20,000 with effectively a lockdown, a social distancing strategy," Ferguson, who is himself recovering from COVID-19, told a parliamentary committee on Wednesday. "But it could be substantially lower than that."
As a note, the UK has seen 32k deaths so far - the paper was calculated on the basis of Great Britain rather than the UK, I don't have stats for GB specifically, but it seems like if anything the results derived from the ILC model were *too* conservative, as GB/the UK have exceeded the 20,000 figure by 50%, though the 32k figure is still very squarely within the range of likely values within the various mitigation scenarios presented - i.e. the Imperial War College model is actually scarily accurate.
In reality, the only major model that has really been wrong has been the IHME model used by the Trump administration which predicted 70,000 deaths in the US by August (newsflash, we've already exceeded that number) - in large part because it doesn't* actually model the virus at all but attempts to project results by extrapolating data from the performance of other countries and fitting it to a curve - which brings me back to a previous point: if every country followed the same curve regardless of action, then the IHME model would be right and would not have needed to be revised multiple times (with the latest going from 70k deaths by august to 134k deaths by august).
*The model was revised - and I mean, revised, completely changed from the ground up - recently to take disease transmission rates and epedemiological modeling and data into account rather than just trying to extrapolate from aggregate performance. Ultimately, this means the model was as wrong as wrong could be.
So no. The ICL study did not have "serious flaws". Perhaps your understanding of the study had serious flaws, but the study itself is and has been "on the money" thus far. Now, if you wanted to say that the MEDIA COVERAGE of the study had serious flaws, then I would agree with you, as you heard a hell of a lot about the worst case scenario 500k dead, but next to nothing about the mid/low range estimates of the study.
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
Yeah as far as I'm aware that korean study basically found that you can be expelling dead virus from your cells for months after recovery, resulting in positive test results. These dead cells were not infectious and none of the people studied infected anyone else during that time.
But, as our next chart shows, there’s little correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities — a measure that looks at the overall number of deaths compared with normal trends.
In Europe, roughly three groups of countries emerge in terms of fatalities. One group, including the U.K., the Netherlands and Spain, experienced extremely high excess mortality. Another, encompassing Sweden and Switzerland, suffered many more deaths than usual, but significantly less than the first group. Finally, there were countries where deaths remained within a normal range such as Greece and Germany.
Yet the data show that the relative strictness of a country’s containment measures had little bearing on its membership in any of the three groups above. While Germany had milder restrictions than Italy, it has been much more successful in containing the virus.
The overall impression is that while restrictions on movement were seen as a necessary tool to halt the spread of the virus, when and how they were wielded was more important than their severity. Early preparation, and plentiful health-care resources, were enough for several countries to avoid draconian lockdowns. Germany, with better testing and contact tracing and more intensive care units than its neighbors, could afford to keep the economy a bit more open. Greece, by acting quickly and surely, appears to have avoided the worst, so far.
That opinion piece is lacking some serious data. If you go to EuroMoMo where they got the graph from supposedly.You can see the Z rate of Sweden hit higher than that of the Netherlands, yet here in the opinion piece it is claimed the Netherlands had a far worse mortality rate, but no numbers to verify or anything:
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
Automatically Appended Next Post: Again, Xenomancers, how are you going to hermetically seal off the 65+ population from the rest of the world? Its entirely unworkable. Not to mention that the healthcare system can't handle such a spread.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/05/28 15:11:19
Sorry for my spelling. I'm not a native speaker and a dyslexic.
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But, as our next chart shows, there’s little correlation between the severity of a nation’s restrictions and whether it managed to curb excess fatalities — a measure that looks at the overall number of deaths compared with normal trends.
In Europe, roughly three groups of countries emerge in terms of fatalities. One group, including the U.K., the Netherlands and Spain, experienced extremely high excess mortality. Another, encompassing Sweden and Switzerland, suffered many more deaths than usual, but significantly less than the first group. Finally, there were countries where deaths remained within a normal range such as Greece and Germany.
Yet the data show that the relative strictness of a country’s containment measures had little bearing on its membership in any of the three groups above. While Germany had milder restrictions than Italy, it has been much more successful in containing the virus.
The overall impression is that while restrictions on movement were seen as a necessary tool to halt the spread of the virus, when and how they were wielded was more important than their severity. Early preparation, and plentiful health-care resources, were enough for several countries to avoid draconian lockdowns. Germany, with better testing and contact tracing and more intensive care units than its neighbors, could afford to keep the economy a bit more open. Greece, by acting quickly and surely, appears to have avoided the worst, so far.
That opinion piece is lacking some serious data. If you go to EuroMoMo where they got the graph from supposedly.You can see the Z rate of Sweden hit higher than that of the Netherlands, yet here in the opinion piece it is claimed the Netherlands had a far worse mortality rate, but no numbers to verify or anything:
https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/
Automatically Appended Next Post: Again, Xenomancers, how are you going to hermetically seal off the 65+ population from the rest of the world? Its entirely unworkable.
How are we going to effectively inact any kind of quarrantine or lockdown if we can't even identify everyone who is sick? Putting the entire general populace on lockdown to stop the spread of infection is analagous to putting everyone in prison, the guilty and the innocent, to reduce crime. Afterall if everyone was locked up nobody would be free to commmit crimes.
Of course even the most strict lockdown measures still allow for movement. "Essential workers" still go to work. "Essential businesses" like grocery stores still stay open and people are still going out to shop at them. The majority of people who contract covid19 don't show symptoms or have symptoms mild enough to not require hospitalization so most infected people don't feel sick, aren't going to be tested and will have the freedom to go out. How is that a lockdown?
Again, Xenomancers, how are you going to hermetically seal off the 65+ population from the rest of the world? Its entirely unworkable. Not to mention that the healthcare system can't handle such a spread.
Do you agree or disagree with his broad stroke of quarantine the at risk, allow free movement of resilient populations?
Again, Xenomancers, how are you going to hermetically seal off the 65+ population from the rest of the world? Its entirely unworkable. Not to mention that the healthcare system can't handle such a spread.
Do you agree or disagree with his broad stroke of quarantine the at risk, allow free movement of resilient populations?
Not really, there is a reason virtually no epidemiologist has advocated for this. Because this would take months, if not longer, to get to herd immunity. The healthcare system would become exhausted and there is no realistic way to protect those over 65 for such a prolonged period of time. Look at Sweden, he says they did not do enough to protect the vulnerable, but after 2 months they are at 7-8% infected from testing (in Stockholm). If 60% would be the minimum for herd immunity, that would mean it takes Sweden without a lockdown more than 15 months at least.
How are we going to effectively inact any kind of quarrantine or lockdown if we can't even identify everyone who is sick? Putting the entire general populace on lockdown to stop the spread of infection is analagous to putting everyone in prison, the guilty and the innocent, to reduce crime. Afterall if everyone was locked up nobody would be free to commmit crimes.
Of course even the most strict lockdown measures still allow for movement. "Essential workers" still go to work. "Essential businesses" like grocery stores still stay open and people are still going out to shop at them. The majority of people who contract covid19 don't show symptoms or have symptoms mild enough to not require hospitalization so most infected people don't feel sick, aren't going to be tested and will have the freedom to go out. How is that a lockdown?
Lockdowns are only meant as a way to get a grip on the situation to give room to the healthcare system and get a good start on being able to test and tracing. I don't think any country is going for indefinite lockdown. The lockdown thing kind of goes back to the X amount of deaths argument. Not having the freedom to go out would probably fall under the quarantine China style category, but that seems politically impossible in the West, because that's massively authoritarian.
Measures to keep the R rate down seem to be the long term strategy in this, not lockdowns.
This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2020/05/28 15:59:38
Sorry for my spelling. I'm not a native speaker and a dyslexic.
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Again, Xenomancers, how are you going to hermetically seal off the 65+ population from the rest of the world? Its entirely unworkable. Not to mention that the healthcare system can't handle such a spread.
Do you agree or disagree with his broad stroke of quarantine the at risk, allow free movement of resilient populations?
Not really, there is a reason virtually no epidemiologist has advocated for this. Because this would take months, if not longer, to get to herd immunity. The healthcare system would become exhausted and there is no realistic way to protect those over 65 for such a prolonged period of time. Look at Sweden, he says they did not do enough to protect the vulnerable, but after 2 months they are at 7-8% infected from testing (in Stockholm). If 60% would be the minimum for herd immunity, that would mean it takes Sweden without a lockdown more than 15 months at least.
Sweeden was not without social distancing encouragement. They just took a lighter approach. Like I have stated before - Sweeden is not the model to be followed. If there is a model to be followed it isolationist practices like Singapore or NZ who have had little to no cases because they control who enters their country and if they find a case they ISOLATE the crap out of them and everyone they have come in contact with. That is the length you have to be willing to go to stop this thing from spreading. European/American lockdown procedures are half assed and in the end amount to nothing because eventually in like 15 months or something near there everyone will have been exposed. It makes no freaking difference wether that happens in 3 months or 15 months. The same number of people will die. There difference between the UK and the US comapred to places like singapore and NZ is...they are international hubs for business and travel. So while this is great for economies and freedom in general. It is bad for spreading viruses. In the future I really hope they take a look at this and stop labeling countries racist for restricting travel into their countries from places during health scares. Realistically though - this is how viruses spread so its no surpise where the hots spots are. So we can't use those coutrnies effective strategies. We need our own strategies because we just have more exposure to that kind of stuff.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/04/sweden-avoids-full-lockdown-pm-insists-restrictions-continue-200420173945004.html What is the alternative? Lockdown the entire populace until there is a vaccine? That isn't sustainable.
Seriously? What are we gonna do? I know my suggestion seems incredible but it's not as bad as a full lockdown which is completely unsustainable because people can't work.
At the very least it accelerates herd-immunity (which saves lives) and allows economies to continue to function. Instead of spending billions for paying for people to stay home from work. Spend that money on services that help 60+ people stay home - live delivery services/ PPE for 65+ people/ or any other ideas that anyone has to help 60+ people stay isolated.
Again, Xenomancers, how are you going to hermetically seal off the 65+ population from the rest of the world? Its entirely unworkable. Not to mention that the healthcare system can't handle such a spread.
Do you agree or disagree with his broad stroke of quarantine the at risk, allow free movement of resilient populations?
Not really, there is a reason virtually no epidemiologist has advocated for this. Because this would take months, if not longer, to get to herd immunity. The healthcare system would become exhausted and there is no realistic way to protect those over 65 for such a prolonged period of time. Look at Sweden, he says they did not do enough to protect the vulnerable, but after 2 months they are at 7-8% infected from testing (in Stockholm). If 60% would be the minimum for herd immunity, that would mean it takes Sweden without a lockdown more than 15 months at least.
How are we going to effectively inact any kind of quarrantine or lockdown if we can't even identify everyone who is sick? Putting the entire general populace on lockdown to stop the spread of infection is analagous to putting everyone in prison, the guilty and the innocent, to reduce crime. Afterall if everyone was locked up nobody would be free to commmit crimes.
Of course even the most strict lockdown measures still allow for movement. "Essential workers" still go to work. "Essential businesses" like grocery stores still stay open and people are still going out to shop at them. The majority of people who contract covid19 don't show symptoms or have symptoms mild enough to not require hospitalization so most infected people don't feel sick, aren't going to be tested and will have the freedom to go out. How is that a lockdown?
Lockdowns are only meant as a way to get a grip on the situation to give room to the healthcare system and get a good start on being able to test and tracing. I don't think any country is going for indefinite lockdown. The lockdown thing kind of goes back to the X amount of deaths argument. Not having the freedom to go out would probably fall under the quarantine China style category, but that seems politically impossible in the West, because that's massively authoritarian.
Measures to keep the R rate down seem to be the long term strategy in this, not lockdowns.
We literally have health experts calling for lockdown until vaccine and a huge portion of people believe we should stay in lockdown...I think the initial lockdown was a good idea based on the information we were given to begin with regardless if there could have been a better plan. Needs to be over now though.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/05/28 16:05:07
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
Again though, if everyone gets sick in 3 months versus 15 months, that means any case requiring hospitalization would be stuffed in that 3 month period. How are you going to prevent it from becoming overwhelmed for resources or staff?
Yes you can follow quarantine procedures, but a significant part of the US, including the President is agitating against what you call a half-assed lockdown. How are you ever going to pull of a quarantine politically? You would need everyone to stay home for two plus weeks to burn it out internally, because otherwise outside quarantine would not work because its spreading internally.
And again, no country is advocating for permanent lockdowns until a vaccine, that is just a straw man. Again, how will you isolate anyone over 60+ from any physical contact? How will you manage, you still need people to give them food and care for them. There isn't enough PPE in the world to protect everyone over 65.
Edit: please give some sources for this claim for lockdowns till a vaccine, because so far no country is doing that even with expert advice. 'Regular' people believing we should remain in lockdown is understandable, because this is a complicated problem and it sounds like an easy solution.
Edit 2: after some googling, what I can find is more sensational leaning headlines that don't accurately represents the studies behind it and get a lot more nuanced on these 'lockdown until vaccine' headlines inside the article. It just says that certain measures will be necessary until that time and a balance between pandemic and the economy will have to be struck, but not to continue the situations during the height of the lockdowns indefinitely. This seems more like a failure to understand about what a concept of lockdown exactly entails and articles lumping all prevention mechanisms under the lockdown nomer
This message was edited 4 times. Last update was at 2020/05/28 16:35:02
Sorry for my spelling. I'm not a native speaker and a dyslexic.
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The data on Sweden now shows they have the highest per capita excess death rate in the world , only 7.5% of the Stockholm population are antibody positive, 1% in the rural areas, and their economy tanked something like 6%.
Relaxing a lockdown is certainly possible without reigniting the epidemic if you have got the numbers of infected people very low, got the infection rate (the R number) down, and you have a good TTI tegime, plus testing and quarantine tor international travellers.
Places like South Korea and Hong King have done this. The UK and US have not yet managed it.
The estimated R number for the UK is 0.7 - 1.0, and that is with a fairly good lockdown in place, and we've got we don't know how many infectious people because we've only just got the testing capacity in place to test everyone who might be infected. Our TTI regime looks like another UK.GOV project which might will start to get good in a month or two, but it isn't yet.
For example someone rings you up and says they need to take a lot of personal information from you because you might have been in contact with an infected person. What are most people going to say?
Kilkrazy wrote: The data on Sweden now shows they have the highest per capita excess death rate in the world , only 7.5% of the Stockholm population are antibody positive, 1% in the rural areas, and their economy tanked something like 6%.
Relaxing a lockdown is certainly possible without reigniting the epidemic if you have got the numbers of infected people very low, got the infection rate (the R number) down, and you have a good TTI tegime, plus testing and quarantine tor international travellers.
Places like South Korea and Hong King have done this. The UK and US have not yet managed it.
The estimated R number for the UK is 0.7 - 1.0, and that is with a fairly good lockdown in place, and we've got we don't know how many infectious people because we've only just got the testing capacity in place to test everyone who might be infected. Our TTI regime looks like another UK.GOV project which might will start to get good in a month or two, but it isn't yet.
For example someone rings you up and says they need to take a lot of personal information from you because you might have been in contact with an infected person. What are most people going to say?
This seems like a meaningless statistic when we know sweeden has a lower per capita mortality rate for corona virus than many other countries. It could mean lots of things.
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
Cummings on the front pages sees more government mishandling hidden deeper within.
I'm back to work 'from' Monday, we'll see what work I get booked between now and then. PPE is ready, bottles of hand sanitizer are waiting to spill in my bag. I get to see how the rest of the UK looks post lockdown now.
Mr. Burning wrote: Cummings on the front pages sees more government mishandling hidden deeper within.
Absolutely, but the UK doesn't care about liars and incompetents, and they certainly don't care about health crisis mismanagement. They go insane about hypocrites, however.
This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2020/05/28 18:34:13
Kilkrazy wrote: The data on Sweden now shows they have the highest per capita excess death rate in the world , only 7.5% of the Stockholm population are antibody positive, 1% in the rural areas, and their economy tanked something like 6%.
Relaxing a lockdown is certainly possible without reigniting the epidemic if you have got the numbers of infected people very low, got the infection rate (the R number) down, and you have a good TTI tegime, plus testing and quarantine tor international travellers.
Places like South Korea and Hong King have done this. The UK and US have not yet managed it.
The estimated R number for the UK is 0.7 - 1.0, and that is with a fairly good lockdown in place, and we've got we don't know how many infectious people because we've only just got the testing capacity in place to test everyone who might be infected. Our TTI regime looks like another UK.GOV project which might will start to get good in a month or two, but it isn't yet.
For example someone rings you up and says they need to take a lot of personal information from you because you might have been in contact with an infected person. What are most people going to say?
This seems like a meaningless statistic when we know sweeden has a lower per capita mortality rate for corona virus than many other countries. It could mean lots of things.
Au contraire, it's more meaningful than the covid death rate, because it takes into account differences in reporting between countries. Unless you believe there's some cause of death in the past 3 months which isn't Covid related and has unaccountably increased 30-40% compared to previous years.
Automatically Appended Next Post: We just had the 10th and final "Clap for Key Workers" session. It was pretty well attended, though it was noticeably shorter than previous weeks. The steam had begun to go out of it.
I agree with stopping it now, before it becomes a dismal shadow of its former glory.
I do regret the loss of a demonstration of community spirit, though. For a few weeks we all leant out of our windows and it didn't seem ot matter if you were a Tory or Labour or SNP or Brexiteer or Remainer.
We were all united for a few sweet minutes in appreciation of the vital work done by medical staff, porters, drivers, shopp workers and everyone who has bene slogging through this crisis, overworked, underpaid and underprotected, to try and keep the rest of us fed and well.
This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2020/05/28 19:20:14
As for quarantining the High Risk population and allowing freedom to work for low-risk people, how does this work?
Someone care to elaborate on this "plan"?
Is there actually some substance behind it? Maybe some government pitching it, a white paper, a politician asking for votes on it, or is it just a bunch of commentators on the internet saying it?
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Kilkrazy wrote: The data on Sweden now shows they have the highest per capita excess death rate in the world , only 7.5% of the Stockholm population are antibody positive, 1% in the rural areas, and their economy tanked something like 6%.
Relaxing a lockdown is certainly possible without reigniting the epidemic if you have got the numbers of infected people very low, got the infection rate (the R number) down, and you have a good TTI tegime, plus testing and quarantine tor international travellers.
Places like South Korea and Hong King have done this. The UK and US have not yet managed it.
The estimated R number for the UK is 0.7 - 1.0, and that is with a fairly good lockdown in place, and we've got we don't know how many infectious people because we've only just got the testing capacity in place to test everyone who might be infected. Our TTI regime looks like another UK.GOV project which might will start to get good in a month or two, but it isn't yet.
For example someone rings you up and says they need to take a lot of personal information from you because you might have been in contact with an infected person. What are most people going to say?
This seems like a meaningless statistic when we know sweeden has a lower per capita mortality rate for corona virus than many other countries. It could mean lots of things.
Au contraire, it's more meaningful than the covid death rate, because it takes into account differences in reporting between countries. Unless you believe there's some cause of death in the past 3 months which isn't Covid related and has unaccountably increased 30-40% compared to previous years.
It could be a lot of things is all I am saying. It could be argued that all the countries around them are under reporting too or maybe in the case of the UK over-reporting. It could be differences in reporting as with like with the "died with" and "died of" discrepancies. Not saying that is the case - your conclusion could be correct. It's all assumption though. I don't even think it would be unreasonable to expect the country with the loosest lockdown procedures to have the highest death rate up to this point. Though I believe their reporting is just as reliable as other countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy Interestingly and unsurprisingly Sweden ranks pretty high in the world for life expecency. Interestingly also - Spain is ranked even higher - yet doesn't have an excessive R number....the older you are the more likely corona is fatal so how is Spain 5th in the world not having excessive deaths with a huge corona virus death rate?
Seems strange to me. If you could explain that to me I'd appreciate it. I am not entirely sure how R number is calculated. I'm pretty sure countries with higher life expectancy should be more acceptable to change in R.
If we fail to anticipate the unforeseen or expect the unexpected in a universe of infinite possibilities, we may find ourselves at the mercy of anyone or anything that cannot be programmed, categorized or easily referenced.
- Fox Mulder
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