COVID-19

[shpalman]

Italy closed parks and public gardens and restricted exercise to the vicinity of people’s houses on 20 March when the official death toll had reached 4000.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN2173BM

If the UK is to follow suit then that’ll be announced this weekend.

Italy did that not because of the death toll but because people were taking the piss regarding jogging and dog walking.

[Stephanie]

With Matt Hancock turning up at the opening of the Nightingale Hospital not looking 100%.

Does anyone know - where did the UK get the scientific evidence to support its 7 day isolation period for people with symptoms of COVID-19 (and in Hancock's case confirmed to have it)?

I've been following the published research since January and have not seen anything to justify such a short isolation period in confirmed cases.

Shirley this will be a per-case thing, and the time until you are symptom-free and/or non-contagious will depend to a very large extent on how far through the illness you are when tested?

For example, suppose the whole Cabinet got tested on the same day (not unreasonable --- they are running the country FFS, the people going "Oh well it's all very well for Boris Johnson to get a test, what about the nurses????!?!??!1??" are somewhat missing the point) and Hancock had been having very mild (or even zero) symptoms for a couple of weeks by that time? Having the test doesn't restart any sort of biological clock and doesn't tell us when you will be clear, even if everybody's progression was the same.

My brother was told it was fine to go out after a week, as long as his symptoms had improved and he hadn't had a fever for 48 hours.

[greyspoke]

Closing parks but not actually preventing people from travelling to take exercise may cause more people to travel to find some open space to exercise in. People round here are taking the 2m thing seriously, but in crowded places it leads to some delicate stand-off situations. Everyone is being very polite about it though. Narrow paths where you can't see the other end of the narrow bit are obviously high-risk.

[Woodchopper]

Italy closed parks and public gardens and restricted exercise to the vicinity of people’s houses on 20 March when the official death toll had reached 4000.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN2173BM

If the UK is to follow suit then that’ll be announced this weekend.

Italy did that not because of the death toll but because people were taking the piss regarding jogging and dog walking.

Fair enough. We’ll have to see how many people in Britain are over enthusiastic about the sunny weather over the weekend.

[badger]

Italy closed parks and public gardens and restricted exercise to the vicinity of people’s houses on 20 March when the official death toll had reached 4000.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN2173BM

If the UK is to follow suit then that’ll be announced this weekend.

Italy did that not because of the death toll but because people were taking the piss regarding jogging and dog walking.

Fair enough. We’ll have to see how many people in Britain are over enthusiastic about the sunny weather over the weekend.

The timing of BoJo's letter (on the doormat this morning) gives a very clear subtext to this effect. It's practically dripping in "we know there's a corker of a Spring weekend in store, please control the urge to go out and have at it".

[shpalman]

Well it would certainly be a disaster here to try to relax the restrictions in mid April: the 25th of April and the 1st of May are public holidays and if everyone decides to do two month's worth of clogging up the touristy places in the one week bridge between them, then the whole thing will blow up again.

We will need to let people get slowly back to work but the "unnecessary" stuff has to wait.

No big yay-the-pandemic-is-over party or else it will be very not over at all.

[Gfamily]

Data from the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker App
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data

The higher than average rate of symptoms reported in Cheltenham and the Cotswolds is interesting.

[Bird on a Fire]

Well it would certainly be a disaster here to try to relax the restrictions in mid April: the 25th of April and the 1st of May are public holidays and if everyone decides to do two month's worth of clogging up the touristy places in the one week bridge between them, then the whole thing will blow up again.

Heh, we have the same dates - 25th of April is Liberation Day in Portugal (start of the revolution against the dictatorship in 1974; first free elections in 1975), and 1st of May is Labour Day.

[Martin Y]

Data from the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker App
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data

The higher than average rate of symptoms reported in Cheltenham and the Cotswolds is interesting.

One notes of course the Cheltenham Festival in the middle of March was one of the last big public events before everything stopped.

[shpalman]

Data from the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker App
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data

The higher than average rate of symptoms reported in Cheltenham and the Cotswolds is interesting.

One notes of course the Cheltenham Festival in the middle of March was one of the last big public events before after everything should have stopped.

... but they complied with the government guidance at the time, I'm shocked that the virus didn't respect that.

[shpalman]

More than 70 cases is 71 cases WHY DO JOURNALISTS DO THIS

[bob sterman]

Data from the COVID-19 Symptom Tracker App
https://covid.joinzoe.com/data

The higher than average rate of symptoms reported in Cheltenham and the Cotswolds is interesting.

I clicked on the FAQ section hoping to see an explanation of how the creators of this take self-reported COVID-19 symptoms reported by smartphone owners who've downloaded an app, and use these to create estimates for the general population prevalence of symptomatic COVID-19 in various geographical regions.

They are esimating that in some London boroughs - 6-7% of the population have symptomatic COVID-19. Would be interested to see their workings.

[shpalman]

FB_IMG_1586005186615.jpg (84.09 KiB) Viewed 4442 times

The percentage daily increase averaged over the last five days, region by region.

The caption gives the increases in the numbers of swabs ("tamponi") performed, which will of course increase the numbers of positives.

[Stranger Mouse]

Critical incident declared in Watford Hospital

Also in Watford https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/ ... bury-park/

[Stranger Mouse]

While I'm on here this is a f.cking awesome podcast on coronavirus airborne v aerosol

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/v4heg36

[shpalman]

Castiglione d'Adda is a small town near Codogno which had 4665 inhabitants in 2017 but probably has less than that now.

40 out of 60 prospective blood donors (out of the town's total of 130 active donors) had positive swabs for SARS-CoV-19, despite being completely asymptomatic.

But then it says that out of the 20 who were negative, only a few could donate because they lacked sufficient numbers of the antibodies, or something; I'm sure that when I heard about this on the news a day or two ago it was that 70% of donors had covid antibodies in their blood.

[Nero]

While I'm on here this is a f.cking awesome podcast on coronavirus airborne v aerosol

https://gimletmedia.com/shows/science-vs/v4heg36

Just so happened that I have just listened to that, it was very good.

[Woodchopper]

Critical incident declared in Watford Hospital

Also in Watford https://www.watfordobserver.co.uk/news/ ... bury-park/

From the link:

Cassiobury Park car park has been closed after “thousands” of people risked their lives and others by choosing to flout government Covid-19 guidelines and 'picnic in the sun'.

It may be shut permanently.

[Trinucleus]

Well it would certainly be a disaster here to try to relax the restrictions in mid April: the 25th of April and the 1st of May are public holidays and if everyone decides to do two month's worth of clogging up the touristy places in the one week bridge between them, then the whole thing will blow up again.

We will need to let people get slowly back to work but the "unnecessary" stuff has to wait.

No big yay-the-pandemic-is-over party or else it will be very not over at all.

The May holiday has been moved to the 8th to celebrate my 65th birthday (also something to do with the war), so it would be good to relax restrictions for people with an Air bnb booking

[purplehaze]

Thankfully not so warm today in the North West.

Chilly with a hint of sunshine and warmth. Not too much seasoning.

Stay safe.

[Bird on a Fire]

Google have made a site using their creepy tracking, where you can put in a location and see trends in how the community has (or has not) responded to coronavirus restrictions

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

[shpalman]

Google have made a site using their creepy tracking, where you can put in a location and see trends in how the community has (or has not) responded to coronavirus restrictions

https://www.google.com/covid19/mobility/

You can see for example that in Bavaria they're all still going to the park.

[shpalman]

Well, Italy has fewer deaths to report today as compared to yesterday. Also, there are actually fewer patients in the ICU in total (yesterday 4068, today 3994).

There are daily variations in the numbers of new cases, especially because of variations of the numbers of swabs taken, so it's not clear to me whether R is effectively slightly more or slightly less than unity.

It's estimated that the lockdown has saved at least 30,000 lives.

[shpalman]

MD in Private Eye

[shpalman]

As of today, to go outside in Lombardy you need either a face mask or at least to cover your nose and mouth with a scarf or something. The official national position continues to be that this isn't necessary. But the Chinese experts who arrived here recently mainly asked two questions: "why are there still so many people outside?" and "why aren't they all wearing masks?"