COVID-19 Police state

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EACLucifer
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by EACLucifer » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:00 am

lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 am
At yesterday’s briefing Gove was asked why ventilator capacity could be exceeded. We all know the answer to this:

NHS capacity is too low

- government under-investment for a generation
- 10 years of austerity worsening every metric
- coming into the crisis in Jan 2020 with almost no free beds
- complacent government response in Feb 2020
- government eventually sending an email wondering if anyone could make more ventilators on 16 March
- lack of PPE causing loss of capacity via illnesses and deaths of NHS staff

Infection rate is too high

- complacent government response in Feb 2020
- government thinking voluntary distancing and hand washing was the answer
- government abandoned test and trace on 12 March
- government deliberately letting the rate rise in early March to get herd immunity, the chief scientific adviser saying on 13 March ”one of the key things we need to do is build up some kind of herd immunity”
- government keeping pubs, football grounds, theatres, cinemas, events open - even while responsible citizens were voluntarily shutting and cancelling events
- keeping schools open as a deliberate way to keep infections going among the least vulnerable group - even while responsible citizens were voluntarily stopping their children from going
- government only entering the current partial lock down on Monday 23 March, two weeks after Italy, even though Italy had already shown us they were too late
- to this day government keeping public transport running to take employees to work, with people still being required to keep working if their employer demands and they cannot work from home, keeping schools partially open, not releasing prisoners from overcrowded prisons, keeping flights coming in from New York and USA without screening, keeping non-essential shopping partially going

But what was the response to the question of why ventilator capacity could be exceeded? It will be exceeded if “people do not self isolate properly”.

This is the same sh.t they pulled with climate change and it works. The blame for climate change was shoved down onto individuals. It’s the fault of people flying to Benidorm and not putting their recycling in the correct bins, it’s most definitely not the fault of the fossil fuel economy and government failure.

There’s a concerted government and tabloid drive on right now – to dodge the blame and point the finger at individuals. Nurses are not dying because the government is too incompetent to give them PPE, they are dying because you sunbathed in a park. Frail old people are not being denied ventilators due to underfunding of the NHS, they are dying because you drove to a shop to buy easter eggs.

It stinks. The horrific death toll is due to the government’s actions – which were partly gross negligence and partly deliberate running-hot to protect the economy. Shout back at them when they put the blame on individuals walking in the countryside. Don’t clap along with them when they celebrate NHS staff risking their lives without PPE. Keep the focus lasered-in on where it should be – that this is still only a partial lockdown with thousands of new infections being driven by people forced to mingle in the workplace, those people being mostly poorly paid, minorities and the powerless.

And remember how many thousands of lives we the public have saved by voluntarily acting many days earlier than the government demanded.
This. All of the above.

Every time they have acted days or weeks after they should have done, they have blamed the public, yet every time, it has been because the government has been to incompetent or cowardly to lead.

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:07 am

Martin_B wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 12:53 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Sat Apr 04, 2020 7:22 pm


Alternatively, the news article stated that the car park was completely full. The car park has 217 spaces. I don't know exactly when the article was written, but it was posted here at 1420 BST. I'll assume that it took a few hours for the car park to be closed and for the article to be written and posted here, and I'll assume that few people would turn up before breakfast on a Saturday. I'll also assume that a typical car holds between one and five people.

If so that means that:

a) Circa 217 cars each containing between 1-5 people arrived at the car park within about 2-3 hours. I doubt that all of those people could leave the car park and maintain a 2 meter distance between themselves and other groups.

b) About 109 cars arrived at the car park when it was over half full, and the the people in those cars decided to park anyway rather than leave and go somewhere else. None of them appear to have thought "looks a bit crowded here, lets turn around".

Certainly, you can't blame people for individually deciding to go to the park.

But someone who turns up to a crowded car park and decides to park there anyway doesn't appear to be taking social distancing very seriously.
But I think there's a problem with your reasoning here:

Even if every one of the 217 cars held 5 people, that's only 1085 people. Cassiobury Park is 190 acres, or about 770,000 m2. That gives everyone 700 m2 each (assuming equally spaced) or nearly an acre per group of car occupants. That's hardly crowded*, and people who know the park will know this. You may have to walk past other people go get to an uncrowded spot, but how long are you allowed to reduce the social distancing gap? If you walk down the pavement and someone is walking the other way, you can't always stay 2 m apart, but the time of the reduced gap is seconds. Walking past other groups who are exercising in the park will also take mere seconds.

Does this increase your risk? Yes, but probably by only a minute amount. That said, people aren't always very good at assessing personal risk.

[* Yes, I know many other people may turn up by walking.]
First, as you write, there are bottlenecks, the car park is one, and its likely that the other entrances are as well. Even if people can spread out and sit much more than two meters apart, some of them are going to get much closer when they enter or leave the park.

Second, as you write, there are still small risks to people who are careful and avoid getting within two meters. In addition to, say, some jogger running up from behind them and breathing heavily, the virus can persist for hours (possibly much longer) on hard surfaces, so it could be transferred if people cough near things like park benches or car door handles.

As mentioned up thread, driving adds additional risk, that the infection will be spread to pockets where there are no infections, and that the driver may hit a someone (bringing them into close contact with others and possibly resulting in someone needing a hospital bed).

For an individual all those risks are small. But at a societal level its inevitable that instances like that will happen and the infection will spread. One person driving to the park and sunbathing probably puts themselves at a very low additional risk of catching the infection. If across the country 100 000 people do that then all those small risks will add up to transmission of the infection, probably between communities.

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by shpalman » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:07 am

lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 am
At yesterday’s briefing Gove was asked why ventilator capacity could be exceeded.
5% of covid suffers will need mechanical ventilation, and there are only enough ventilators for about 0.01% of the population.

The idea that you could let the entire UK population get the virus at the same time was wrong by three orders of magnitude.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:09 am

EACLucifer wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:00 am
lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 am
At yesterday’s briefing Gove was asked why ventilator capacity could be exceeded. We all know the answer to this:

NHS capacity is too low

- government under-investment for a generation
- 10 years of austerity worsening every metric
- coming into the crisis in Jan 2020 with almost no free beds
- complacent government response in Feb 2020
- government eventually sending an email wondering if anyone could make more ventilators on 16 March
- lack of PPE causing loss of capacity via illnesses and deaths of NHS staff

Infection rate is too high

- complacent government response in Feb 2020
- government thinking voluntary distancing and hand washing was the answer
- government abandoned test and trace on 12 March
- government deliberately letting the rate rise in early March to get herd immunity, the chief scientific adviser saying on 13 March ”one of the key things we need to do is build up some kind of herd immunity”
- government keeping pubs, football grounds, theatres, cinemas, events open - even while responsible citizens were voluntarily shutting and cancelling events
- keeping schools open as a deliberate way to keep infections going among the least vulnerable group - even while responsible citizens were voluntarily stopping their children from going
- government only entering the current partial lock down on Monday 23 March, two weeks after Italy, even though Italy had already shown us they were too late
- to this day government keeping public transport running to take employees to work, with people still being required to keep working if their employer demands and they cannot work from home, keeping schools partially open, not releasing prisoners from overcrowded prisons, keeping flights coming in from New York and USA without screening, keeping non-essential shopping partially going

But what was the response to the question of why ventilator capacity could be exceeded? It will be exceeded if “people do not self isolate properly”.

This is the same sh.t they pulled with climate change and it works. The blame for climate change was shoved down onto individuals. It’s the fault of people flying to Benidorm and not putting their recycling in the correct bins, it’s most definitely not the fault of the fossil fuel economy and government failure.

There’s a concerted government and tabloid drive on right now – to dodge the blame and point the finger at individuals. Nurses are not dying because the government is too incompetent to give them PPE, they are dying because you sunbathed in a park. Frail old people are not being denied ventilators due to underfunding of the NHS, they are dying because you drove to a shop to buy easter eggs.

It stinks. The horrific death toll is due to the government’s actions – which were partly gross negligence and partly deliberate running-hot to protect the economy. Shout back at them when they put the blame on individuals walking in the countryside. Don’t clap along with them when they celebrate NHS staff risking their lives without PPE. Keep the focus lasered-in on where it should be – that this is still only a partial lockdown with thousands of new infections being driven by people forced to mingle in the workplace, those people being mostly poorly paid, minorities and the powerless.

And remember how many thousands of lives we the public have saved by voluntarily acting many days earlier than the government demanded.
This. All of the above.

Every time they have acted days or weeks after they should have done, they have blamed the public, yet every time, it has been because the government has been to incompetent or cowardly to lead.
I agree, by a very long way responsibility for the current sh.t show lies with the current and previous governments.

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:16 am

greyspoke wrote:
Sat Apr 04, 2020 8:07 pm
So why can't there be official guidance on parking? That is my point, people are allowed to do things, but rather than being given any practical guidance on how to do it, they are accused of breaking rules (that they probably didn't in fact break) when they do. Alternatively just close the f.cking car park before the inevitable happens rather than waiting for it to happen first. Admittedly, it would be a lot simpler to ban motorised travel for exercise purposes. But that isn't the way it is, and again the messaging just p.ssy-foots around it.

Also, a full car park is full of cars. I am not sure how people should relate that to social distancing, or whether they should be expected to see a contagion risk in vehicles (assuming they aren't going to lick them).
The problem with official guidance on the level of things like parking is that there is a wide range of other things. If the guidance gets too long then it ends up like the highway code, which is only read be people who have to pass a test.

It seems to me that if Britain is to limit the number of casualties to what we are seeing in France, Spain or Italy then it'll have to follow suit and close parks and associated car parks and ban exercise beyond 1km from the home, or stop it completely outside the home.

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by lpm » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:21 am

gosling wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:57 am
Can I steal this to post on FB?
Sure, If you are foolish enough to use FB, and are naive to think people on FB read this sort of stuff instead of doing a "what vegetable are you most like" quiz.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by shpalman » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:28 am

shpalman wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:07 am
lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 am
At yesterday’s briefing Gove was asked why ventilator capacity could be exceeded.
5% of covid suffers will need mechanical ventilation, and there are only enough ventilators for about 0.01% of the population.

The idea that you could let the entire UK population get the virus at the same time was wrong by three orders of magnitude.
Sorry, my mistake, there are currently enough for 0.015% of the population, with the goal to increase that to 0.027% of the population

In the same news pEoPlE aReN't fOlLoWiNg tHe rUlEs whines man who managed to catch the virus and then went out before the end of the quarantine period.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by lpm » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:36 am

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:16 am
It seems to me that if Britain is to limit the number of casualties to what we are seeing in France, Spain or Italy then it'll have to follow suit and close parks and associated car parks and ban exercise beyond 1km from the home, or stop it completely outside the home.
I'm old enough to remember the events of 12 March 2020.

On that day the govt deliberately avoided lock down measures. They argued if you go too early, it would be too hard to sustain later at a more critical time. The CSO specifically said we need to start social distancing measures at the last time its feasible to start. They explicitly allowed high infection rates then in order to preserve the "strength" of lock down measures for later on, because lock downs would inevitably be diluted by non-compliance if made too challenging.

If they argued on 12 March that keeping a light-touch lock down was the way to sustain it, why aren't they being challenged now? Why now the opposite position of makine it harder and more unbearable, particularly for the poorer urban populations?

Nobody seems to remember what the govt said 24 days ago, because it seems like ancient history.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by gosling » Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:41 am

lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:21 am
gosling wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:57 am
Can I steal this to post on FB?
Sure, If you are foolish enough to use FB, and are naive to think people on FB read this sort of stuff instead of doing a "what vegetable are you most like" quiz.
:lol: it's only in response to the people on my feed complaining about people in parks

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by greyspoke » Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:01 am

shpalman wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:07 am
lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 am
At yesterday’s briefing Gove was asked why ventilator capacity could be exceeded.
5% of covid suffers will need mechanical ventilation, and there are only enough ventilators for about 0.01% of the population.

The idea that you could let the entire UK population get the virus at the same time was wrong by three orders of magnitude.
That article says
Global estimates suggest that around 5% of COVID-19 patients will require intensive care involving a ventilator.
and
Although the lowest estimates suggest that only 5% of patients with a critical COVID-19 infection will need mechanical ventilation,
Not sure what % of people with symptoms will have a "critical" infection. Or the difference between a "global estimate" and a "lowest estimate".


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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by Woodchopper » Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:17 am

lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:36 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:16 am
It seems to me that if Britain is to limit the number of casualties to what we are seeing in France, Spain or Italy then it'll have to follow suit and close parks and associated car parks and ban exercise beyond 1km from the home, or stop it completely outside the home.
I'm old enough to remember the events of 12 March 2020.

On that day the govt deliberately avoided lock down measures. They argued if you go too early, it would be too hard to sustain later at a more critical time. The CSO specifically said we need to start social distancing measures at the last time its feasible to start. They explicitly allowed high infection rates then in order to preserve the "strength" of lock down measures for later on, because lock downs would inevitably be diluted by non-compliance if made too challenging.

If they argued on 12 March that keeping a light-touch lock down was the way to sustain it, why aren't they being challenged now? Why now the opposite position of makine it harder and more unbearable, particularly for the poorer urban populations?

Nobody seems to remember what the govt said 24 days ago, because it seems like ancient history.
Perhaps its due to low expectations. If everyone knows that the politicians and their advisers running government are a bunch of duplicitous incompetents then there isn't much to be gained from pointing it out. This crowd are, after all, the bunch that brought us Brexit.

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by shpalman » Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:53 am

greyspoke wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:01 am
shpalman wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:07 am
lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 am
At yesterday’s briefing Gove was asked why ventilator capacity could be exceeded.
5% of covid suffers will need mechanical ventilation, and there are only enough ventilators for about 0.01% of the population.

The idea that you could let the entire UK population get the virus at the same time was wrong by three orders of magnitude.
That article says
Global estimates suggest that around 5% of COVID-19 patients will require intensive care involving a ventilator.
and
Although the lowest estimates suggest that only 5% of patients with a critical COVID-19 infection will need mechanical ventilation,
Not sure what % of people with symptoms will have a "critical" infection. Or the difference between a "global estimate" and a "lowest estimate".
Italy reached 4000 cases in the ICU about a week ago, when the total number of official active infections was about 80,000. Give me a moment to try to look up the numbers for Germany, though.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by shpalman » Sun Apr 05, 2020 12:46 pm

I only found that while Italy has about 37% of its cases in the hospital, Germany had 14% (of its cases in the hospital) so I would assume their fraction of cases in the ICU is about 2% compared to Italy's 5%. This assumes that severity in hospital admissions is similar even if Germany has picked up a lot more mild/asymptomatic cases in their population due to their extensive testing.

Ok so you might only need 100 times more ventilators, not 1000 times more.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by purplehaze » Sun Apr 05, 2020 1:26 pm

Perhaps golf courses and driving ranges could be made to be open to the public for spaces to go and enjoy the sun.

Not all people have a back garden to enjoy this lovely weather.

And run or cycle in twilight or dawn if you really feel the need for exercise.

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Apr 05, 2020 2:51 pm

lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:44 am
This is the same sh.t they pulled with climate change and it works. The blame for climate change was shoved down onto individuals. It’s the fault of people flying to Benidorm and not putting their recycling in the correct bins, it’s most definitely not the fault of the fossil fuel economy and government failure.

There’s a concerted government and tabloid drive on right now – to dodge the blame and point the finger at individuals. Nurses are not dying because the government is too incompetent to give them PPE, they are dying because you sunbathed in a park. Frail old people are not being denied ventilators due to underfunding of the NHS, they are dying because you drove to a shop to buy easter eggs.

It stinks. The horrific death toll is due to the government’s actions – which were partly gross negligence and partly deliberate running-hot to protect the economy. Shout back at them when they put the blame on individuals walking in the countryside. Don’t clap along with them when they celebrate NHS staff risking their lives without PPE. Keep the focus lasered-in on where it should be – that this is still only a partial lockdown with thousands of new infections being driven by people forced to mingle in the workplace, those people being mostly poorly paid, minorities and the powerless.

And remember how many thousands of lives we the public have saved by voluntarily acting many days earlier than the government demanded.
So much this. Relying on voluntary actions if you have the power to enforce necessary restrictions is simply proof that you don't give enough of a sh.t.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:01 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:07 am
Martin_B wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 12:53 am
Woodchopper wrote:
Sat Apr 04, 2020 7:22 pm


Alternatively, the news article stated that the car park was completely full. The car park has 217 spaces. I don't know exactly when the article was written, but it was posted here at 1420 BST. I'll assume that it took a few hours for the car park to be closed and for the article to be written and posted here, and I'll assume that few people would turn up before breakfast on a Saturday. I'll also assume that a typical car holds between one and five people.

If so that means that:

a) Circa 217 cars each containing between 1-5 people arrived at the car park within about 2-3 hours. I doubt that all of those people could leave the car park and maintain a 2 meter distance between themselves and other groups.

b) About 109 cars arrived at the car park when it was over half full, and the the people in those cars decided to park anyway rather than leave and go somewhere else. None of them appear to have thought "looks a bit crowded here, lets turn around".

Certainly, you can't blame people for individually deciding to go to the park.

But someone who turns up to a crowded car park and decides to park there anyway doesn't appear to be taking social distancing very seriously.
But I think there's a problem with your reasoning here:

Even if every one of the 217 cars held 5 people, that's only 1085 people. Cassiobury Park is 190 acres, or about 770,000 m2. That gives everyone 700 m2 each (assuming equally spaced) or nearly an acre per group of car occupants. That's hardly crowded*, and people who know the park will know this. You may have to walk past other people go get to an uncrowded spot, but how long are you allowed to reduce the social distancing gap? If you walk down the pavement and someone is walking the other way, you can't always stay 2 m apart, but the time of the reduced gap is seconds. Walking past other groups who are exercising in the park will also take mere seconds.

Does this increase your risk? Yes, but probably by only a minute amount. That said, people aren't always very good at assessing personal risk.

[* Yes, I know many other people may turn up by walking.]
First, as you write, there are bottlenecks, the car park is one, and its likely that the other entrances are as well. Even if people can spread out and sit much more than two meters apart, some of them are going to get much closer when they enter or leave the park.
How much of those 190 acres are on footpaths and within a 30-minute's stroll from the entrance? Because that's the only area most visitors will be using.

Maybe they should put signs up saying "Please DO walk all over the grass". Footpaths should only be for people who need them for accessibility reasons.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by greyspoke » Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:09 pm

purplehaze wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 1:26 pm
Perhaps golf courses and driving ranges could be made to be open to the public for spaces to go and enjoy the sun.
...
But that wold be contrary to the STAY AT HOME apart from those occasions when you don't have to policy.

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by jimbob » Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:12 pm

lpm wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 10:21 am
gosling wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 9:57 am
Can I steal this to post on FB?
Sure, If you are foolish enough to use FB, and are naive to think people on FB read this sort of stuff instead of doing a "what vegetable are you most like" quiz.
I will too.

It makes me feel as though I'm doing something.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by Martin Y » Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:23 pm

greyspoke wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 11:01 am
… That article says
Global estimates suggest that around 5% of COVID-19 patients will require intensive care involving a ventilator.
and
Although the lowest estimates suggest that only 5% of patients with a critical COVID-19 infection will need mechanical ventilation,
Not sure what % of people with symptoms will have a "critical" infection. Or the difference between a "global estimate" and a "lowest estimate".
It's ambiguous but I took it to mean 5% of all cases are expected to become sufficiently critical as to need ventilation, rather than 5% of patients (i.e. those hospitalised). But of course the number of "cases" is highly elastic and depends on how much testing you do.

And there's also ambiguity in the word "need", covering the range from "would benefit from" right up to "will die without".

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by greyspoke » Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:54 pm

If it is 5% of all positive tested cases, and the survival rate of patients put on a ventilator is 40% (the figures for that seem quite sound), that puts the death rate for such cases at 2%.

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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by shpalman » Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:59 pm

I don't think they put someone face down with a tube down their throat unless it's fairly urgently medically indicated.

CPAP style machines are fairly helpful for the recovery phase but I read something in Italian (what feels like) ages ago saying that if someone is in respiratory distress then don't mess about: intubate them as soon as possible.

29000 of Italy's cases are in non-intensive care though.

The point about my calculation is to understand the order of magnitude of the number of cases who would need intensive care were the virus be left to run free in the population (and therefore infect a substantial fraction of it at more or less the same time, so tens of millions of cases in total with some small percentage needing a ventilator, so hundreds of thousands) as compared to the idea of 10000 extra ventilators. Unless it can be shown that 90% of us already had the virus and didn't notice, those are the orders of magnitude.

As for Johnson and Hancock telling people to follow the guidelines so as to not catch or spread the virus, those c.nts caught the virus not me.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by shpalman » Sun Apr 05, 2020 4:09 pm

greyspoke wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:54 pm
If it is 5% of all positive tested cases, and the survival rate of patients put on a ventilator is 40% (the figures for that seem quite sound), that puts the death rate for such cases at 2%.
The issue with that survival rate of patients put on a ventilator is that the recoveries take longer than the deaths. The other issue is that a lot of patients were basically left at home but went into respiratory crisis and died before they could be admitted into the ICU.

I'm sure Civil Protection would insist that this is because admission was originally not considered necessary, and not that the ICUs were already full and they were old and had pre-existing conditions so they would have died anyway.

This surprised Italy by arriving from Germany and starting to circulate in Lombardy before patient 1 showed up.

The UK could have demonstrated what could have happened had we reacted two weeks earlier. Instead the UK f.cked it up and is on course for being equally f.cked within the next two weeks.

So if any of you are pissed off at not being allowed to go and lie in the park how about you consider yourself lucky that you're not lying face down in the ICU with a tube down your throat.
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by jimbob » Sun Apr 05, 2020 4:20 pm

shpalman wrote:
Sun Apr 05, 2020 3:59 pm

As for Johnson and Hancock telling people to follow the guidelines so as to not catch or spread the virus, those c.nts caught the virus not me.
LIKE
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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lpm
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Re: COVID-19 Police state

Post by lpm » Sun Apr 05, 2020 7:18 pm

Jeez. I thought the Queen would just waffle on with platitudes. But when she threatened to go to Green Park and kick sunbathers in the nuts! This is the kind on enforcing we need.
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