COVID-19

Discussions about serious topics, for serious people
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Bird on a Fire
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Bird on a Fire » Sun Oct 25, 2020 1:36 pm

shpalman wrote:
Sun Oct 25, 2020 1:16 pm
Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Oct 25, 2020 1:01 pm
In terms of cases missed by government testing, I've just been reading on the Uni of East Anglia's covid page:
UEA is actively encouraging staff and students to undertake asymptomatic testing to identify cases and make campus safer for everyone and is working in partnership with the Earlham Institute (EI) on the Norwich Research Park to do this as part of the Norwich Testing Initiative (NTI). Our own testing initiative scheme, working in partnership with the EI, has helped to identify more than three quarters of the students who have tested positive on campus, which demonstrates the importance of testing and making campus safer for everyone.

Tests undertaken via the NTI are collected Monday to Friday, with tests collected on a Friday processed into Saturday. There are then no more NTI tests processed until the Monday collection, which will mean lower results reported for Sunday and Monday.
So at least under those circumstances (young people living together - cases are amongst students rather than staff) the government testing scheme seems to be missing about 75% of cases. Seeing as the current wave appears to be more amongst those age cohorts, this does rather suggest that the UK's official figures are a mahoosive underestimate. Do many other countries have a policy of no-asymptomatic-testing?
...
Italy does as of about now, and more and more countries either already do or will have soon, as they have to re-prioritise who to test as the number of symptomatic cases rises.

As spread becomes more "community" and everything but the essentials gets locked down, knowing whether your mild symptoms are covid or not becomes less and less useful since the advice to self-isolate is the same and there isn't much hope or use in tracing everyone's contacts.
OTOH, people aren't going to self-isolate every time they or someone they know gets a bit of a cough or cold all winter. They'll chance it. Without tests, nobody will follow the advice because in the majority of cases it'll be a huge overreaction, especially if there's not enough financial and wellbeing support for repeated fortnights of isolation.

If anything, it's the mild and asymptomatic cases that need the tests. Obvious covid symptoms mean you need isolation. Mild/no symptoms might not.
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sTeamTraen
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Re: COVID-19

Post by sTeamTraen » Sun Oct 25, 2020 1:53 pm

On this day last year, Joe Biden tweeted that American was not prepared for a pandemic.

This is now being used by Trump supporters as proof that the pandemic (which, of course, is also a hoax) was orchestrated by Biden and the rest of the illuminations.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by AMS » Sun Oct 25, 2020 2:13 pm

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Sun Oct 25, 2020 1:36 pm
OTOH, people aren't going to self-isolate every time they or someone they know gets a bit of a cough or cold all winter. They'll chance it. Without tests, nobody will follow the advice because in the majority of cases it'll be a huge overreaction, especially if there's not enough financial and wellbeing support for repeated fortnights of isolation.

If anything, it's the mild and asymptomatic cases that need the tests. Obvious covid symptoms mean you need isolation. Mild/no symptoms might not.
Indeed, and to add - people won't isolate their *whole households* for *2 weeks* without tests being available for known contacts or for mild symptoms, especially if they can't work from home.

(And in practice, someone who's running a 38+ fever with persistent coughing is unlikely to go out to the pub anyway, regardless whether it's covid or flu.)

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lpm
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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Sun Oct 25, 2020 4:16 pm

Some links??

Some links!!!

Come off it. It's worthy of more than links. There are books. Lots of books. Pale Rider by Laura Spinney for a start.

God, in years to come, someone will ask what happened in 2020, and it'll be reduced to a couple of links.

"2020? Here's a thread of half a dozen tweets, will tell you all you need to know."
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lpm
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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Sun Oct 25, 2020 11:03 pm

France.

52,000 cases in a day.

f.ck.

That's our future.
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raven
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Re: COVID-19

Post by raven » Mon Oct 26, 2020 3:49 pm

lpm wrote:
Sun Oct 25, 2020 4:16 pm

God, in years to come, someone will ask what happened in 2020, and it'll be reduced to a couple of links.
Well, pandemics come, and pandemics go. 2020's will probably be old hat after 100 years too. Maybe there's some comfort in that.

I'm a bit concerned that it's taking off so quickly in Spain and France again. I thought they were being stricter than we were. Contact tracing in Berlin is getting overwhelmed too, I just read.

None of which bodes well for the UK.

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jimbob
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Mon Oct 26, 2020 4:25 pm

Lots of stories and papers showing that children can be very efficient spreaders of the virus.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lani ... 4/fulltext

https://translate.google.com/translate? ... -1.9250781
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lpm
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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:03 pm

The virus is out-running the restrictions across Europe.

In the UK, Leicester has been in local lockdown the longest. It's just posted its highest per capita rate. Paris has tightened yet still seems to have growth. Places from Poland to Switzerland to Iceland are all heading upwards.

Not only are local lockdowns failing to get R<1, they don't seem to be getting it below, say, 1.2. Tier 3 etc just doesn't get the job done.

I'm pretty sure it's the sheer weight of infections being generated by schools, colleges and universities, plus keeping pubs and restaurants open, plus a widespread disregard for the rules. The UK public has been totally Cummingsed and simply doesn't obey, similar forces probably apply elsewhere in Europe.

I'm hoping Wales will prove the value of a proper lockdown - but any success will only show up in figures with a hell of a lag, far too late to help England from the current path.

Those red circles on the James Annan death chart just keep marching up the curve. With the lag between infections and deaths, we're locked into that curve for the next month. Will 500 deaths a day (15,000 in a month) be enough to jolt the UK into action? What about 1,000 a day (30,000 a month)? What is it going to take?


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Little waster
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Little waster » Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:27 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:03 pm

Those red circles on the James Annan death chart just keep marching up the curve. With the lag between infections and deaths, we're locked into that curve for the next month. Will 500 deaths a day (15,000 in a month) be enough to jolt the UK into action? What about 1,000 a day (30,000 a month)? What is it going to take?
That’s what I like about lpm, their crazy optimism.

1000 deaths a day despite a Tier 3 lockdown will be seized upon as evidence (sic) that lockdowns don’t work so we should just let rip and go full Mad Max. By the time sanity prevails again we’ll be running out of football stadiums to store the dead.
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bob sterman
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Re: COVID-19

Post by bob sterman » Mon Oct 26, 2020 7:05 pm

Little waster wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:27 pm
1000 deaths a day despite a Tier 3 lockdown will be seized upon as evidence (sic) that lockdowns don’t work so we should just let rip and go full Mad Max.
I suspect you're right. Even though Tier 3 is not anything close to a real "lockdown" - restaurants open, schools open, universities open, churches open.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by sTeamTraen » Mon Oct 26, 2020 7:17 pm

lpm wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:03 pm
I'm pretty sure it's the sheer weight of infections being generated by schools, colleges and universities, plus keeping pubs and restaurants open, plus a widespread disregard for the rules. The UK public has been totally Cummingsed and simply doesn't obey, similar forces probably apply elsewhere in Europe.
There's no European case quite as bad as Cummings, but most countries have had their "do as I say, not as I do" moments. The president of our local regional government was discovered sitting in a bar at 2am the other day when (a) it should have closed at 1am and (b) she should probably have been setting an example by just not going the f.ck out anyway. The owner of the bar got fined - she didn't, although the rules don't provide for fining the punters. The bar owner later said "I wanted to shut, but I didn't want to face the consequences of upsetting the president of the region".

In the last few days I have read "Police break up large illegal parties, attendees report not giving a f.ck" stories in Spain, France, and the Netherlands. One rave in France a month back had something like 10,000 attendees from up to 100km away.

I find this interesting from a general public policy point of view. The kind of people who at age 40-60 are sitting round tables in government offices thinking about these problems are, for the most part, not the kind of people who spent most weekends between their 17th and 23rd birthdays getting off their tits. Pubs are where they go for a glass of wine or a pint of real ale (just a half for the designated driver), a nice meal, and perhaps occasionally to lose their children. The idea that a very substantial number of young (near-)adults will experience profound feelings of withdrawal if they can't get wasted with their mates on a regular basis does not seem to have figured in their calculations.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by jdc » Tue Oct 27, 2020 2:23 am

bob sterman wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 7:05 pm
Little waster wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:27 pm
1000 deaths a day despite a Tier 3 lockdown will be seized upon as evidence (sic) that lockdowns don’t work so we should just let rip and go full Mad Max.
I suspect you're right. Even though Tier 3 is not anything close to a real "lockdown" - restaurants open, schools open, universities open, churches open.
Yep.

When masks became mandatory in shops here I saw posts from people on other forums saying "don't bother about the new rules, I just went to the supermarket maskless and nobody challenged me". The other day I saw one of these very people claiming that masks were pointless as the new rules hadn't stopped the pandemic.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by FlammableFlower » Tue Oct 27, 2020 9:11 am

jdc wrote:
Tue Oct 27, 2020 2:23 am
bob sterman wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 7:05 pm
Little waster wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:27 pm
1000 deaths a day despite a Tier 3 lockdown will be seized upon as evidence (sic) that lockdowns don’t work so we should just let rip and go full Mad Max.
I suspect you're right. Even though Tier 3 is not anything close to a real "lockdown" - restaurants open, schools open, universities open, churches open.
Yep.

When masks became mandatory in shops here I saw posts from people on other forums saying "don't bother about the new rules, I just went to the supermarket maskless and nobody challenged me". The other day I saw one of these very people claiming that masks were pointless as the new rules hadn't stopped the pandemic.
You can almost admire their sheer bl..dy-mindedness to do nothing in the face of a deadly pandemic and to attempt to reason their way out of any action or responsibility.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Bird on a Fire » Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:06 am

Governments have spent the last 50 years or so fighting the idea of collective responsibility, because capitalists make more money out of fragmented individualists.

The consequence is that society as we know it is hopeless at tackling global environmental challenges, no matter their urgency.
We have the right to a clean, healthy, sustainable environment.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Brightonian » Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:19 am

Seems herd immunity would never have worked after all. Though the finding has yet to be peer-reviewed.

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Little waster
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Little waster » Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:22 am

Bird on a Fire wrote:
Tue Oct 27, 2020 10:06 am
Governments have spent the last 50 years or so fighting the idea of collective responsibility, because capitalists make more money out of fragmented individualists.

The consequence is that society as we know it is hopeless at tackling global environmental challenges, no matter their urgency.
And with the appointment of ACB on the SCOTUS in the death throes of the Trump maladministration the Repugs are making a strong fist of an attempt to legally stymie any actions to combat AGW for a generation or so because that's something we have lots of time to dilly-dally over.

Meanwhile if the Democrats attempt the nuclear option* of packing the court watch the Republicans scream blue murder about what a shameless unconstitutional power grab that is.


*ooh what's this? An ancient chest belonging to one Pandora, I wonder what's inside? Cans! Lots of cans, cans with pictures of assorted helminths on the side ... and a bag making meowing noises. How strange.
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lpm
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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:09 am

It's an amazing exploration of what 21st Century humans are like.

100 years ago they didn't care all that much when loads of elderly died early, because it was pretty routine to cull the weakest with a spot of cholera.

60 years ago they were still advertising cigarettes on TV even while knowing it shortened lives.

But today there's a pretty strong majority of the near-immune in favour of making sacrifices to protect the more vulnerable. Yet also a noisy minority in western countries with the sheer bl..dy-mindedness to do nothing and dodge all responsibility to wider society. And the pandemic being played out against a backdrop where world governments continue to subsidise the fossil fuel polluters that everyone knows are causing climate breakdown.

And of course there's the confused and inconsistent contingent, which is probably most of us, e.g. BoaF supporting Cummings's approach of an individual doing whatever that individual thinks best, yet simultaneously supporting collective responsibility.
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PeteB
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Re: COVID-19

Post by PeteB » Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:14 am

lpm wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:03 pm

Those red circles on the James Annan death chart just keep marching up the curve. With the lag between infections and deaths, we're locked into that curve for the next month. Will 500 deaths a day (15,000 in a month) be enough to jolt the UK into action? What about 1,000 a day (30,000 a month)? What is it going to take?


Image
Look on the bright side, it seems to peak out at 3000-4000 a day by Christmas (if I am reading the log scale correctly)

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lpm
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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:27 am

Yep, we get into herd immunity territory per the model. Reach 500,000 cases per day and it gets us up to 67% immunity fairly fast and it starts to fizzle. The top of log scales hide the horror.
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PeteB
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Re: COVID-19

Post by PeteB » Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:44 am

I predict the next Carl Heneghan Tweet "We are weeks away from Herd Immunity"

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Re: COVID-19

Post by geejaytee » Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:13 pm

PeteB wrote:
Tue Oct 27, 2020 11:14 am
lpm wrote:
Mon Oct 26, 2020 6:03 pm

Those red circles on the James Annan death chart just keep marching up the curve. With the lag between infections and deaths, we're locked into that curve for the next month. Will 500 deaths a day (15,000 in a month) be enough to jolt the UK into action? What about 1,000 a day (30,000 a month)? What is it going to take?


Image
Look on the bright side, it seems to peak out at 3000-4000 a day by Christmas (if I am reading the log scale correctly)
This is kind of arguing the wrong thing, but that graph is terrible. Light green and cyan on white background? Overlapping graph and text? Multiple axes with it not clear which is which?

I also have questions about the technical details, but I'd need to see the model (does he have it somewhere?) before reviewing that. I've hidden it behind the spoiler here:

Spoiler:


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Re: COVID-19

Post by geejaytee » Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:23 pm

Last edited by geejaytee on Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by PeteB » Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:24 pm

sorry - changed 1st link - got wrong url - updated now

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Re: COVID-19

Post by geejaytee » Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:27 pm

PeteB wrote:
Tue Oct 27, 2020 12:24 pm
sorry - changed 1st link - got wrong url - updated now
I've edited my reply so no one will know

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