COVID-19

[mediocrity511]

I wager that the government will announce that schools will begin shutting, w/c 30th March

A school localish to us shut today after a parent was diagnosed. Not just for a deep clean but not opening until after Easter now.

[EACLucifer]

CofE news: services suspended. About bl..dy time too.

I'm surprised it took them so long. The Catholic Church seem to have shut down quite promptly in Italy, and in the gulf muezzins were telling people it was time to go and pray at home. The MCB have called for all mosque services to be suspended, and as I understand it, the Chief Rabbi in Israel has announced no religious law is more important than the Health Ministry's directives.

[lpm]

The Archbish has really been at the forefront of this. Day after day giving solace to us frightened souls and meeting the nation's spiritual needs.

Spose it's better than blaming it on sin and a mitigation policy of burning a few jews, which was their standard pandemic response until about 2004.

[badger]

Sir Patrick answering Qs right now at the Health and Social Care committee.

Watch live or wind back to beginning. News outlets are live blogging it.

https://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/c ... 9ff8a01354

[lpm]

If there was a phone app that tracked you everywhere and recorded other mobiles you met or came near, with data flowing to govt scientists, would it be worth it?

A couple of civil liberties issues but some benefits. The govt would be able to see how the spread ebbs and flows. You'd get useful reports like: "You spent two hours on Weds afternoon at Basingstoke Travelodge with a person who has reported being infected" or "You were in Bruiser Jack's illegal casino on Saturday night within 3 metres of an infected person".

[bmforre]

Jochen Bittner writing from Germany in the NYTimes:
Europe needs ...

Europe Needs Solidarity. And Ventilators and Masks and Beds...

We appear to sense deep inside that it will be easier to recover from a material downturn than from having to select who will live and who will die. The resourcefulness with which people have accepted and adjusted to their new reality testifies to that human intuition...

While Germany stopped the export of protective medical gear, China sent a freight plane with thousands of respiratory masks and dozens of ventilators to Rome late last week. And the European Union has struggled to come up with a continentwide approach, let alone carry one out. A summit on Tuesday could provide an opportunity to right that wrong...

However and whenever this pandemic comes to a halt, Europe will still be the most important “we” for Germans — economically, culturally and politically. The Continent’s citizens will remember then who, in a time of crisis, regarded themselves as part of it.

[JellyandJackson]

CofE news: services suspended. About bl..dy time too.

I'm surprised it took them so long. The Catholic Church seem to have shut down quite promptly in Italy, and in the gulf muezzins were telling people it was time to go and pray at home. The MCB have called for all mosque services to be suspended, and as I understand it, the Chief Rabbi in Israel has announced no religious law is more important than the Health Ministry's directives.

I’m disappointed it took so long.

[EACLucifer]

CofE news: services suspended. About bl..dy time too.

I'm surprised it took them so long. The Catholic Church seem to have shut down quite promptly in Italy, and in the gulf muezzins were telling people it was time to go and pray at home. The MCB have called for all mosque services to be suspended, and as I understand it, the Chief Rabbi in Israel has announced no religious law is more important than the Health Ministry's directives.

I’m disappointed it took so long.

Likewise - many religious institutions far more devout, even fundamentalist, have been much better in their response, but then the woolly embarassed about taking things seriously responses are probably the most dangerous anyway.

[Gfamily]

CofE news: services suspended. About bl..dy time too.

I'm surprised it took them so long. The Catholic Church seem to have shut down quite promptly in Italy, and in the gulf muezzins were telling people it was time to go and pray at home. The MCB have called for all mosque services to be suspended, and as I understand it, the Chief Rabbi in Israel has announced no religious law is more important than the Health Ministry's directives.

I’m disappointed it took so long.

I expect a lot of church congregations would have spent a lot of last Sunday making sure that as many as possible of their vulnerable members have arranged contacts in case they need to go into self-isolation.

[mikeh]

If there was a phone app that tracked you everywhere and recorded other mobiles you met or came near, with data flowing to govt scientists, would it be worth it?

A couple of civil liberties issues but some benefits. The govt would be able to see how the spread ebbs and flows. You'd get useful reports like: "You spent two hours on Weds afternoon at Basingstoke Travelodge with a person who has reported being infected" or "You were in Bruiser Jack's illegal casino on Saturday night within 3 metres of an infected person".

Mobile phone data is used in emergency response, WorldPop (and Flowminder) research groups at Southampton have done plenty on this area, for example following the earthquake in Nepal, and hurricanes in Haiti
https://www.worldpop.org/events/hurricane
https://web.flowminder.org/case-studies ... quake-2015

Clearly the ethical issues often make people raise their eyebrows, but in situations like this, you'd hope the eyebrow may remain a little lower than it might otherwise be. I have seen an entertaining presentation from this group showing how the French move around the country across the year, so for example at start of August, everyone in Paris heads to the beach, and come last week in August the many dots on the map move back to the capital

Not in emergency response mode, but they've also done this in Namibia, looking at migration patterns around the country. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0242-9
Which is all useful data if you wanted to, for example, have a think about likely hot spots of cases, chains of transmission etc.

More of this sort of thing, I say.

[JellyandJackson]

I'm surprised it took them so long. The Catholic Church seem to have shut down quite promptly in Italy, and in the gulf muezzins were telling people it was time to go and pray at home. The MCB have called for all mosque services to be suspended, and as I understand it, the Chief Rabbi in Israel has announced no religious law is more important than the Health Ministry's directives.

I’m disappointed it took so long.

I expect a lot of church congregations would have spent a lot of last Sunday making sure that as many as possible of their vulnerable members have arranged contacts in case they need to go into self-isolation.

I really hope so. I was late (as usual) so this may have been formally announced at the beginning of the service, but round our way there tend to be little groups of people who look out for each other. The clergy can also do their bit, obv, but given our minister (unpaid, natch) is into her 60s and has Parkinson’s, I hope she’s going to self-isolate. This is going to be really, really bad for our congregation, and our lot are younger than many.

As to the woolly embarrassed not wanting to talk about it thing, they did have to check canon law first. Sometimes there is not enough in all the world for the CofE. Even the statement is rubbish compared to the MCB one. Sigh.

[bagpuss]

I feel like I'm living in 2 separate worlds at the moment. On the one hand, my email inbox and FB feed are full of everything that Mr bagpuss and I might conceivably attend being postponed, called off or closed down. On the other hand, the rest of my email inbox is stuff reassuring me that everything that the bagkitten attends is, with minor changes, still going fully ahead. I'm finding the dissonance quite difficult to deal with.

[Gfamily]

If there was a phone app that tracked you everywhere and recorded other mobiles you met or came near, with data flowing to govt scientists, would it be worth it?

Repurpose this from 2017/8 perhaps.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articl ... c-pandemic

[Woodchopper]

If there was a phone app that tracked you everywhere and recorded other mobiles you met or came near, with data flowing to govt scientists, would it be worth it?

A couple of civil liberties issues but some benefits. The govt would be able to see how the spread ebbs and flows. You'd get useful reports like: "You spent two hours on Weds afternoon at Basingstoke Travelodge with a person who has reported being infected" or "You were in Bruiser Jack's illegal casino on Saturday night within 3 metres of an infected person".

Mobile phone data is used in emergency response, WorldPop (and Flowminder) research groups at Southampton have done plenty on this area, for example following the earthquake in Nepal, and hurricanes in Haiti
https://www.worldpop.org/events/hurricane
https://web.flowminder.org/case-studies ... quake-2015

Clearly the ethical issues often make people raise their eyebrows, but in situations like this, you'd hope the eyebrow may remain a little lower than it might otherwise be. I have seen an entertaining presentation from this group showing how the French move around the country across the year, so for example at start of August, everyone in Paris heads to the beach, and come last week in August the many dots on the map move back to the capital

Not in emergency response mode, but they've also done this in Namibia, looking at migration patterns around the country. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-019-0242-9
Which is all useful data if you wanted to, for example, have a think about likely hot spots of cases, chains of transmission etc.

More of this sort of thing, I say.

As I'm sure you'll know, there are much fewer ethical issues if the data is annonymized and the phone users have given their permission for data to be collected and analyzed (eg French people migrating to the coast). Google currently tracks people's phones in order to identify the fastest routes through traffic.

Ethics wise it becomes much more difficult if an individual's movements could be tracked.

So ethics wise it would be pretty easy to use phone data to get a better idea of, say, what kinds of activity bring people into contact with many others and for how long (eg what is the mean closeness of buses compared to trains). The main practical problem would be getting Google, Apple or Facebook etc to hand over the data.

[jimbob]

I notice they're now saying we're three weeks behind Italy. Presumably at some point "two weeks" will become the truth, which of course it was all along.

Also, Boris Johnson yesterday said that the doubling was every five days, which is utter sh.t - it's every 2.7 days. Why is he talking such bollocks?

Possibly because he hadn't lied for a couple of minutes and needed to keep his hand in?

Or maybe the governemnt *really* us that bad at maths that they think that the 373 cases on March 11 and 1395 on March 16th according to the WHO situation reports #51 and #56 does indeed equate to a doubling.

[JellyandJackson]

I feel like I'm living in 2 separate worlds at the moment. On the one hand, my email inbox and FB feed are full of everything that Mr bagpuss and I might conceivably attend being postponed, called off or closed down. On the other hand, the rest of my email inbox is stuff reassuring me that everything that the bagkitten attends is, with minor changes, still going fully ahead. I'm finding the dissonance quite difficult to deal with.

I’m finding things are starting to change quite quickly, even just today Kid C has had beavers cancelled, swimming otoh is moved from a school pool which isn’t allowing visiting groups in, to another school which is. Given parents sit together to watch at the new school, I’m going to reply to the email to say thanks but no thanks.

[Turdly]

We're doing an excellent job of social distancing at work.

Advised to work from home where possible but have been told that research is unaffected as science postdocs/PhD students cannot work from home (ignoring the vast amount of data analysis and writing they could do). Not only are they expected to keep coming to work but it effectively requires all academic staff in those disciplines to come in as well as our presence is required for H&S purposes.

Meanwhile, HR will be working from home.

[mediocrity511]

I feel like I'm living in 2 separate worlds at the moment. On the one hand, my email inbox and FB feed are full of everything that Mr bagpuss and I might conceivably attend being postponed, called off or closed down. On the other hand, the rest of my email inbox is stuff reassuring me that everything that the bagkitten attends is, with minor changes, still going fully ahead. I'm finding the dissonance quite difficult to deal with.

I’m finding things are starting to change quite quickly, even just today Kid C has had beavers cancelled, swimming otoh is moved from a school pool which isn’t allowing visiting groups in, to another school which is. Given parents sit together to watch at the new school, I’m going to reply to the email to say thanks but no thanks.

Rainbows is cancelled, all our local baby groups are cancelled (though weirdly only in 2 parts of the city, don't know if means our area has a lot of cases). But school is carrying on, Reception kids rehearsing constantly for their Easter show that I can't see happening.

[TopBadger]

Agree with the two worlds thing. It's odd.

Now seeing on local facebook groups that local catering companies who would otherwise be supplying local restaurants / pubs / etc are offering to supply households who can't get out and about or can't get a slot from the big supermarkets. Which is encouraging.

It is bloomin bizarre that schools are still open. They're surely the single biggest vector for infection? It seems that all my ailments come from my kids anyway!

[lpm]

What about H&S in schools? How are they possibly providing a safe working environment for a teacher with diabetes, or a 65 year old catering staff, or a pregnant teacher?

People are able to track their own infection chains - they will know if grandma dies after catching it from grandson, who caught it during an outbreak at Emmerdale Secondary School. The public enquiry into these sorts of deaths is going to be full of anger.

[EACLucifer]

I think it is fairly clear the evidence from previous pandemics shows closing schools reduces the spread of infection.

A couple of studies are linked from this NY Times piece.

While there are definitely real downsides to closing them, given the situation facing us, it seems immoral and absurd to keep them open, and they will undermine every effort to reduce the spread of this disease while they remain open.

[jimbob]

I feel like I'm living in 2 separate worlds at the moment. On the one hand, my email inbox and FB feed are full of everything that Mr bagpuss and I might conceivably attend being postponed, called off or closed down. On the other hand, the rest of my email inbox is stuff reassuring me that everything that the bagkitten attends is, with minor changes, still going fully ahead. I'm finding the dissonance quite difficult to deal with.

I’m finding things are starting to change quite quickly, even just today Kid C has had beavers cancelled, swimming otoh is moved from a school pool which isn’t allowing visiting groups in, to another school which is. Given parents sit together to watch at the new school, I’m going to reply to the email to say thanks but no thanks.

Rainbows is cancelled, all our local baby groups are cancelled (though weirdly only in 2 parts of the city, don't know if means our area has a lot of cases). But school is carrying on, Reception kids rehearsing constantly for their Easter show that I can't see happening.

I spent some of the weekend trying to persuade the other local scout leaders to cancel, and was just about working on Monday morning. After the press conference, the UK Girlguiding and UK Scouts both cancelled all meetings, which took it out of our hands.

[JellyandJackson]

What about H&S in schools? How are they possibly providing a safe working environment for a teacher with diabetes, or a 65 year old catering staff, or a pregnant teacher?

Kids A & B are at the local comp. From tomorrow, no school for yr 9&10. Kid B (yr 9) is thrilled, Kid A (yr 12) is outraged. The reason given is precisely to allow enough staff, and a safe environment for the staff who are there.

I still reckon the whole school will close, and kid C’s juniors, by....oh I dunno, early next week at the absolute latest.

[lpm]

They are deliberately keeping them open - as a final measure up their sleeve. They want loads of children to get immunity early, because in their own lives children have very little to do with their grandparents. The fact that some vulnerable children will die, plus thousands of grandparents in multi-generational households, is something they would accept.

The little kids two doors down from me are off school and playing in the garden - their mother is a GP and has unilaterally decided.

[purplehaze]

They are deliberately keeping them open - as a final measure up their sleeve. They want loads of children to get immunity early, because in their own lives children have very little to do with their grandparents. The fact that some vulnerable children will die, plus thousands of grandparents in multi-generational households, is something they would accept.

The little kids two doors down from me are off school and playing in the garden - their mother is a GP and has unilaterally decided.

The nearest primary school to me had 50% non attendance rate.

The secondary schools are seeing little by way of GCSE students and 6th formers.

Most of the younger students (5-13) grandparents are in the mid 50 - 60 group. Few are over 70. The older students do care deeply about their grandparents but most of them are self sufficient anyway.