COVID-19

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Gfamily
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Gfamily » Fri May 15, 2020 11:45 pm

Vertigowooyay wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 7:30 am
Absolutely raging at the front page of the Mail this morning.

E9D0E70C-7266-4F1A-8713-0CC4733A05E5.jpeg
Yet any criticism of the government's performance is 'politicising the crisis'; despicable, and worth pointing out the double standards wherever comments are allowed..
My avatar was a scientific result that was later found to be 'mistaken' - I rarely claim to be 100% correct
ETA 5/8/20: I've been advised that the result was correct, it was the initial interpretation that needed to be withdrawn
Meta? I'd say so!

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Millennie Al » Sat May 16, 2020 2:16 am

Fishnut wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 6:12 pm
This piece makes a convincing argument that we've left quarantining international travellers too late and it'll do bugger all now.
“That sort of policy only reduces risk in the situation where we have very low case numbers and origin countries have much higher numbers.”
We very much hope that such a situation will arise soon. The whole point of lockdown is to get our number of cases very low. At that point, unless we're the last in the world to achieve this, then we obviously do need to be quarantining. Theoretically, we might not need to do so until then, but our record so far in introducing measures shows that we are thoroughly incompetent and need a long time to get anything working right, so we absolutely should be quarantining now so that we have time to get it working properly by the time it is essential.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Sat May 16, 2020 3:07 am

Fishnut wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 8:24 am
Vertigowooyay wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 7:30 am
Absolutely raging at the front page of the Mail this morning.

E9D0E70C-7266-4F1A-8713-0CC4733A05E5.jpeg
f.cking hell. NO-ONE SHOULD HAVE TO BE A HERO. This isn't a war, this is a public health crisis. If we want things to get back to normal (and tbh 'normal' wasn't that great for a vast number of people) we need to stop pretending that this pandemic will be over if we just wish hard enough.
I'll quote myself on Twitter

https://twitter.com/ParkinJim/status/12 ... 65922?s=20
Exactly, I don't want heroes. I want competent staff given the tools to treat patients to the best known practice and in a safe and comfortable working environment.

Staff being heroes shows that the system has failed
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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jimbob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Sat May 16, 2020 3:16 am

Gfamily wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 11:45 pm
Vertigowooyay wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 7:30 am
Absolutely raging at the front page of the Mail this morning.

E9D0E70C-7266-4F1A-8713-0CC4733A05E5.jpeg
Yet any criticism of the government's performance is 'politicising the crisis'; despicable, and worth pointing out the double standards wherever comments are allowed..
No, we should get behind Boris in this time of national crisis.

It undermined the war effort in 1940 for there to have been a vote of no-confidence in the government after the Norway Campaign. The UK should have stuck with the known leadership of Chamberlain.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Sat May 16, 2020 3:20 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Sat May 16, 2020 2:16 am
Fishnut wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 6:12 pm
This piece makes a convincing argument that we've left quarantining international travellers too late and it'll do bugger all now.
“That sort of policy only reduces risk in the situation where we have very low case numbers and origin countries have much higher numbers.”
We very much hope that such a situation will arise soon. The whole point of lockdown is to get our number of cases very low. At that point, unless we're the last in the world to achieve this, then we obviously do need to be quarantining. Theoretically, we might not need to do so until then, but our record so far in introducing measures shows that we are thoroughly incompetent and need a long time to get anything working right, so we absolutely should be quarantining now so that we have time to get it working properly by the time it is essential.
Exactly, I've said elsewhere that not testing and isolating, coupled with quarantine for airport arrivals is guaranteeing failure.

At the moment it might be throwing embers onto the butning woodpile, but if we've stamped out our own fires, we can't prevent new fires without stopping those.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Martin_B » Sat May 16, 2020 9:00 am

jimbob wrote:
Sat May 16, 2020 3:16 am
Gfamily wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 11:45 pm
Vertigowooyay wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 7:30 am
Absolutely raging at the front page of the Mail this morning.

E9D0E70C-7266-4F1A-8713-0CC4733A05E5.jpeg
Yet any criticism of the government's performance is 'politicising the crisis'; despicable, and worth pointing out the double standards wherever comments are allowed..
No, we should get behind Boris in this time of national crisis.
All the better to work out where the knife should go in?
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Sat May 16, 2020 12:47 pm

I couldn't possibly comment
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Sat May 16, 2020 11:25 pm

Damning editorial in the BMJ on Friday

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1932
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Herainestold » Sun May 17, 2020 2:45 am

When did the virus originate in the US?

A legitimate Question: when did COVID-19 first appear in the U.S.?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVZMb5oOOCE
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Woodchopper » Sun May 17, 2020 5:41 am

Herainestold wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 2:45 am
When did the virus originate in the US?

A legitimate Question: when did COVID-19 first appear in the U.S.?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVZMb5oOOCE
The genetic evolution of the virus has been mapped https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

The origin of all the identified strains has been traced back to Wuhan in early December 2019.

Given the speed by which people can travel round the world any cases outside found outside Wuhan a few weeks later add some details but don't change our understanding of the spread of the disease. It doesn't matter that the Frenchman who contracted Covid-19 had never been to Wuhan. All that is necessary is that there was a chain of contact with someone who had.

As for any claimed cases outside Wuhan from before early December lets apply Occam's razor.

Enormously more likely than re-writing evolution are explanations such as a) false positive tests, b) coincidence (eg someone caught influenza earlier and subsequently also had Covid-19), c) people who thought they had Covid-19 and weren't tested didn't actually have it. Given the enormous number of tests and cases its not surprising that the above might happen.

Your video is better off in the Covid Woo thread.

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Fishnut
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Fishnut » Sun May 17, 2020 7:05 am

jimbob wrote:
Sat May 16, 2020 11:25 pm
Damning editorial in the BMJ on Friday

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1932
I think these lines are key,
Above all, the response to covid-19 is not about flattening epidemic curves, modelling, or epidemiology. It is about protecting lives and communities most obviously at risk in our unequal society.
It feels very much like the government has lost sight (if it ever even had it in its sights) that the reason we are doing all this is to try and protect lives.
it's okay to say "I don't know"

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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Sun May 17, 2020 7:26 am

Fishnut wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 7:05 am
jimbob wrote:
Sat May 16, 2020 11:25 pm
Damning editorial in the BMJ on Friday

https://doi.org/10.1136/bmj.m1932
I think these lines are key,
Above all, the response to covid-19 is not about flattening epidemic curves, modelling, or epidemiology. It is about protecting lives and communities most obviously at risk in our unequal society.
It feels very much like the government has lost sight (if it ever even had it in its sights) that the reason we are doing all this is to try and protect lives.
Exactly.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Sun May 17, 2020 8:40 am

Also this episode of More or Less at about 13 minutes in is utterly scathing about the government's testing statistics.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/m000j2r7

By making the test numbers meaningless, we cannot see how to improve it or indeed if actions have a positive or negative impact.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation

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Re: COVID-19

Post by EACLucifer » Sun May 17, 2020 5:20 pm

Vertigowooyay wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 7:30 am
Absolutely raging at the front page of the Mail this morning.

E9D0E70C-7266-4F1A-8713-0CC4733A05E5.jpeg
It doesn't matter if its soldiers, nurses or teachers, there's one thing consistent when society labels an entire category of people heroes; that they are happy putting them in harms way and seeing some die.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by EACLucifer » Sun May 17, 2020 5:26 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 9:26 pm
Little waster wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 12:55 pm
"For christ-sake someone get Simon Jenkins enrolled in a basic statistics course before he dips his toe into anything sciencey again" #43 in an occasional series.

Tl;dr. Sweden and the UK originally didn't lockdown, Norway and Denmark did. Partially-locked down Sweden has had 10-times the deaths of it's comparable completely-locked down neighbours but only 70% of the deaths of the partially-locked down UK, it is almost as if one is a vast sparsely-populated backwater and the other is one of the densest-populated and most globalised places on Earth. Therefore the Swedes (and incidentally myself) were right.
The other thing about Sweden is it’s partial lockdown started earlier than in Britain. People wanting a ‘Swedish strategy’ tend to neglect the part which would have required that Boris Johnson took it seriously in February.
That and, as far as I recall, it's currently forecast to have a bigger economic hit than it's locked down neighbours, as well as the higher death rate. It's not protect lives or the economy - it's protect lives and the economy, or kill more people and hurt the economy. Unfortunately, ignorant twunts seem to think that it's an either or, and in their rush to show how much they prefer money to human life, are harming the thing they are purporting to protect, while still paying that indefensible price in lives.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by EACLucifer » Sun May 17, 2020 5:30 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 2:45 am
When did the virus originate in the US?

A legitimate Question: when did COVID-19 first appear in the U.S.?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVZMb5oOOCE
Why do you love posting the b.llsh.t propaganda of a fascist regime committing genocide? Woodchopper's already debunked your shite, so all that's left for me to do is ask why you keep ducking questions and challenges re the Chinese regime's abhorrent treatment of the Uighurs and many others, and how you sleep at night?

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Re: COVID-19

Post by EACLucifer » Sun May 17, 2020 5:33 pm

jimbob wrote:
Sat May 16, 2020 3:07 am
Fishnut wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 8:24 am
Vertigowooyay wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 7:30 am
Absolutely raging at the front page of the Mail this morning.

E9D0E70C-7266-4F1A-8713-0CC4733A05E5.jpeg
f.cking hell. NO-ONE SHOULD HAVE TO BE A HERO. This isn't a war, this is a public health crisis. If we want things to get back to normal (and tbh 'normal' wasn't that great for a vast number of people) we need to stop pretending that this pandemic will be over if we just wish hard enough.
I'll quote myself on Twitter

https://twitter.com/ParkinJim/status/12 ... 65922?s=20
Exactly, I don't want heroes. I want competent staff given the tools to treat patients to the best known practice and in a safe and comfortable working environment.

Staff being heroes shows that the system has failed
I think Brecht put it most memorably - "Unhappy is the land that needs heroes" (translations vary slightly)

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Re: COVID-19

Post by sTeamTraen » Sun May 17, 2020 5:46 pm

This is astonishing. 100,000 crew members remain in cruise ship limbo for months

Among other details from this story: Captain Karl Staffan Bengtsson of the Norwegian Bliss appears to be a total c.nt.
Something something hammer something something nail

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Herainestold » Sun May 17, 2020 5:52 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 5:41 am
Herainestold wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 2:45 am
When did the virus originate in the US?

A legitimate Question: when did COVID-19 first appear in the U.S.?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVZMb5oOOCE
The genetic evolution of the virus has been mapped https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

The origin of all the identified strains has been traced back to Wuhan in early December 2019.

Given the speed by which people can travel round the world any cases outside found outside Wuhan a few weeks later add some details but don't change our understanding of the spread of the disease. It doesn't matter that the Frenchman who contracted Covid-19 had never been to Wuhan. All that is necessary is that there was a chain of contact with someone who had.

As for any claimed cases outside Wuhan from before early December lets apply Occam's razor.

Enormously more likely than re-writing evolution are explanations such as a) false positive tests, b) coincidence (eg someone caught influenza earlier and subsequently also had Covid-19), c) people who thought they had Covid-19 and weren't tested didn't actually have it. Given the enormous number of tests and cases its not surprising that the above might happen.

Your video is better off in the Covid Woo thread.
I have to admit I don't really understand the nextstrain graphs.

I am wondering about the claims that the virus was killing people in France as early as November. When they went back and looked at older case reports from people who had respiratory ailments last fall, they had some that they re-classified as Covid-19. How does that square with the nextstrain data?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society ... ysis-chest
Masking forever
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Russian socialism will rise again

Herainestold
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Herainestold » Sun May 17, 2020 6:13 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 5:46 pm
This is astonishing. 100,000 crew members remain in cruise ship limbo for months

Among other details from this story: Captain Karl Staffan Bengtsson of the Norwegian Bliss appears to be a total c.nt.
Wow. That is horrendous.
Masking forever
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Russian socialism will rise again

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Woodchopper » Sun May 17, 2020 6:44 pm

Herainestold wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 5:52 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 5:41 am
Herainestold wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 2:45 am
When did the virus originate in the US?

A legitimate Question: when did COVID-19 first appear in the U.S.?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVZMb5oOOCE
The genetic evolution of the virus has been mapped https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

The origin of all the identified strains has been traced back to Wuhan in early December 2019.

Given the speed by which people can travel round the world any cases outside found outside Wuhan a few weeks later add some details but don't change our understanding of the spread of the disease. It doesn't matter that the Frenchman who contracted Covid-19 had never been to Wuhan. All that is necessary is that there was a chain of contact with someone who had.

As for any claimed cases outside Wuhan from before early December lets apply Occam's razor.

Enormously more likely than re-writing evolution are explanations such as a) false positive tests, b) coincidence (eg someone caught influenza earlier and subsequently also had Covid-19), c) people who thought they had Covid-19 and weren't tested didn't actually have it. Given the enormous number of tests and cases its not surprising that the above might happen.

Your video is better off in the Covid Woo thread.
I have to admit I don't really understand the nextstrain graphs.

I am wondering about the claims that the virus was killing people in France as early as November. When they went back and looked at older case reports from people who had respiratory ailments last fall, they had some that they re-classified as Covid-19. How does that square with the nextstrain data?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society ... ysis-chest
French sources state that they didn't reclassify the patients as having had Covid-19, instead that a doctor had examined CT scans and found that some in November were consistent with Covid-19. Which is a long way from a diagnosis.
https://www.cnews.fr/france/2020-05-07/ ... le-mois-de

As far as I can see the only sources claiming that the patients had been reclassified are Chinese.

If the French hospital has a blood sample from back then they should be able to test it for antibodies and get a definitive answer. If not then its more complicated because the people who were sick in November may have had Covid-19 since then.

As yet, the earliest confirmed case in France is from 27 December.

plebian

Re: COVID-19

Post by plebian » Sun May 17, 2020 7:28 pm

JQH wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 9:44 am
TopBadger wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 9:27 am
I'm no fan of the mail - but how else would you crop that picture to fit the page format?
Didn't need to crop at all since they clearly weren't trying to avoid the headline running over the picture
They don't crop it it though, if you see they put a lightening mask behind most of the text but there is something underneath, it's like they photoshopped out the kids and replaced them with a whiteboard. It's far worse than just cropping.

To have gone to that much trouble, and presuming they have access to a vast library of pictures, the picture editor could have chosen a teacher who was an ethnic minority.

I don't think this was conscious racism but plain everyday sh.tty bias.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by bob sterman » Sun May 17, 2020 9:10 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 10:41 pm
dyqik wrote:
Fri May 15, 2020 9:41 pm
This report suggests that there's some f.cking bad science going on from people who should know better.
Buzzfeed News wrote:
JetBlue’s Founder Helped Fund A Stanford Study That Said The Coronavirus Wasn’t That Deadly
A Stanford whistleblower complaint alleges that the controversial John Ioannidis study failed to disclose important financial ties and ignored scientists’ concerns that their antibody test was inaccurate.
It gets worse:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/st ... arya-email
It gets even worse, back in late April - David Neeleman (the JetBlue founder who is alleged to have funded the study) was engaging in some Twitter activism in support of Ioannidis (who he supposedly didn't fund)...

https://twitter.com/CT_Bergstrom/status ... 5670232065

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Herainestold » Sun May 17, 2020 10:40 pm

Woodchopper wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 6:44 pm
Herainestold wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 5:52 pm
Woodchopper wrote:
Sun May 17, 2020 5:41 am


The genetic evolution of the virus has been mapped https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global

The origin of all the identified strains has been traced back to Wuhan in early December 2019.

Given the speed by which people can travel round the world any cases outside found outside Wuhan a few weeks later add some details but don't change our understanding of the spread of the disease. It doesn't matter that the Frenchman who contracted Covid-19 had never been to Wuhan. All that is necessary is that there was a chain of contact with someone who had.

As for any claimed cases outside Wuhan from before early December lets apply Occam's razor.

Enormously more likely than re-writing evolution are explanations such as a) false positive tests, b) coincidence (eg someone caught influenza earlier and subsequently also had Covid-19), c) people who thought they had Covid-19 and weren't tested didn't actually have it. Given the enormous number of tests and cases its not surprising that the above might happen.

Your video is better off in the Covid Woo thread.
I have to admit I don't really understand the nextstrain graphs.

I am wondering about the claims that the virus was killing people in France as early as November. When they went back and looked at older case reports from people who had respiratory ailments last fall, they had some that they re-classified as Covid-19. How does that square with the nextstrain data?

https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society ... ysis-chest
French sources state that they didn't reclassify the patients as having had Covid-19, instead that a doctor had examined CT scans and found that some in November were consistent with Covid-19. Which is a long way from a diagnosis.
https://www.cnews.fr/france/2020-05-07/ ... le-mois-de

As far as I can see the only sources claiming that the patients had been reclassified are Chinese.

If the French hospital has a blood sample from back then they should be able to test it for antibodies and get a definitive answer. If not then its more complicated because the people who were sick in November may have had Covid-19 since then.

As yet, the earliest confirmed case in France is from 27 December.
Thanks for the cogent reply. I think this matter needs more investigation , but you are correct the current data does not support community transmission of covid virus in France in November.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Woodchopper » Mon May 18, 2020 4:37 am

Useful summary of why some of the 'its all hysteria' arguments are wrong: https://mattschelling.substack.com/p/yo ... -comparing

eg the IFR of influenza isn't 0.1%

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