COVID-19

[jimbob]

Has anyone already posted the video of a queue of ambulances at a hospital in Moscow? I just saw it on tv here. The same youtube channel has a few more videos of the queues at other hospitals. It looks like things are really kicking off there.

Russia's figures were (literally) incredibly good.

[shpalman]

The UK was desperately unprepared for this Part 94: running out of body bags.

[headshot]

The UK was desperately unprepared for this Part 94: running out of body bags.

That’s a link to a story about Apollo-13.

[JQH]

The UK was desperately unprepared for this Part 94: running out of body bags.

That links to a story about Apollo 13 ...

Which turned out to be quite interesting.

[lpm]

Spain has eased some restrictions.

And yet is still much more restrictive than the UK.

[shpalman]

The UK was desperately unprepared for this Part 94: running out of body bags.

That links to a story about Apollo 13 ...

Which turned out to be quite interesting.

Try https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52205655

(I started a thread about the Apollo 13 thing in Nerd Lab).

[JQH]

The UK was desperately unprepared for this Part 94: running out of body bags.

That links to a story about Apollo 13 ...

Which turned out to be quite interesting.

Try https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52205655

(I started a thread about the Apollo 13 thing in Nerd Lab).

Cheers.

[Woodchopper]

Spain has eased some restrictions.

And yet is still much more restrictive than the UK.

Deaths in Spain have been trending down for five days. Presumably the government believes that it has got R0 down to below 1, which may give it some leeway to ease some restrictions and still keep it below one.

Judging by the hospital admission data from here (slide 3), UK hospital admissions have stabilized in most of the country except for the Scotland, the North West and North East & Yorkshire. This suggests that overall in Britain R0 is still over 1.

[Edited to add link]

[Opti]

Spain has eased some restrictions.

And yet is still much more restrictive than the UK.

Yep. But people here aren't treating it as an exercise to see what they can get away with. If you want to undertake any activity it's best to check with local Policia if it's allowed. And you really don't want to start discussing the finer points of the decree with the Guardia Civil.
It's actually all really cool, except for the beach thing. The popo have now got a new consignment of quad bikes that appear out of nowhere.

[sTeamTraen]

Spain has eased some restrictions.

And yet is still much more restrictive than the UK.

Deaths in Spain have been trending down for five days. Presumably the government believes that it has got R0 down to below 1, which may give it some leeway to ease some restrictions and still keep it below one.

The only restriction that has been eased in Spain is one that was brought in for the second two-week period of the lockdown, from 29 March until Easter. (Two weeks is the longest that Parliament can vote the renewal of the current level of "state of alarm" for. We are now entering the third two-week period.) This restriction was that you could only leave the house to go to work if your work was in an "essential" category. Now, as in the first two-week period, you can go to work even if your work is not "essential", *if* there is no way to do it from home. For example, tomorrow someone is coming round to measure our flat for new windows --- we will be keeping two metres from him at all times, I'm sure.

Otherwise, we are still not allowed out for any reason other than grocery shopping, doctor/pharmacy visits, and dog sh.t. So as lpm says, we are still way more locked down than the UK.

[Woodchopper]

Spain has eased some restrictions.

And yet is still much more restrictive than the UK.

Deaths in Spain have been trending down for five days. Presumably the government believes that it has got R0 down to below 1, which may give it some leeway to ease some restrictions and still keep it below one.

The only restriction that has been eased in Spain is one that was brought in for the second two-week period of the lockdown, from 29 March until Easter. (Two weeks is the longest that Parliament can vote the renewal of the current level of "state of alarm" for. We are now entering the third two-week period.) This restriction was that you could only leave the house to go to work if your work was in an "essential" category. Now, as in the first two-week period, you can go to work even if your work is not "essential", *if* there is no way to do it from home. For example, tomorrow someone is coming round to measure our flat for new windows --- we will be keeping two metres from him at all times, I'm sure.

Otherwise, we are still not allowed out for any reason other than grocery shopping, doctor/pharmacy visits, and dog sh.t. So as lpm says, we are still way more locked down than the UK.

As far as I know Spain has also recently allowed some non-essential factories and construction sites to open.

ETA here it is: https://english.elpais.com/economy_and_ ... -soon.html

[PeteB]

James Annan model (purely from deaths data) that we have reached the peak

here

I asked him about the 'reported deaths' vs 'death date' and he says it doesn't affect the model as long as the spread of reported deaths stays reasonably consistent

[Opti]

Spain has eased some restrictions.

And yet is still much more restrictive than the UK.

Deaths in Spain have been trending down for five days. Presumably the government believes that it has got R0 down to below 1, which may give it some leeway to ease some restrictions and still keep it below one.

The only restriction that has been eased in Spain is one that was brought in for the second two-week period of the lockdown, from 29 March until Easter. (Two weeks is the longest that Parliament can vote the renewal of the current level of "state of alarm" for. We are now entering the third two-week period.) This restriction was that you could only leave the house to go to work if your work was in an "essential" category. Now, as in the first two-week period, you can go to work even if your work is not "essential", *if* there is no way to do it from home. For example, tomorrow someone is coming round to measure our flat for new windows --- we will be keeping two metres from him at all times, I'm sure.

Otherwise, we are still not allowed out for any reason other than grocery shopping, doctor/pharmacy visits, and dog sh.t. So as lpm says, we are still way more locked down than the UK.

Same here in Malaga province. Way more locked down than the UK. Look at the figures ... then look at them in two weeks time. We'll see. This is an experiment, in real time.

[Holylol]

The lockdown in France is extended until 11th of May. Probably longer for the elderly and other vulnerable people.
After that, the government expects to be able to test every person with symptoms and, if positive, to quarantine them under medical surveillance.

More details (in French) : https://www.lemonde.fr/planete/article/ ... _3244.html

[Millennie Al]

Deaths in Spain have been trending down for five days. Presumably the government believes that it has got R0 down to below 1, which may give it some leeway to ease some restrictions and still keep it below one.

Quite possibly. But they're rather foolish to do so. If each person infects 0.9 more, then they start a cascade which infects a total of 9 more people. If it's 0.8 instead of 0.9, the cascade is of 4 people. That's a big difference. If you get it down to 0.5, then that's 0.5+0.25+0.125+... = only 1 more person. We can estimate the coefficient by seeing how fast the number of new cases falls, If it was 0.5, then over a period of infectivity, the number of new cases would halve. While the number of new cases does seem to be declining slightly, it's not by much, so we're definitely still at a point where a small difference in the infection rate will make a big difference in the total number of people who will get infected (and hence the total number of people who will die). However, the number of new cases might decline due to inadequate testing, so we need to be wary of over-optimism in how well we think we are doing.

[Woodchopper]

James Annan model (purely from deaths data) that we have reached the peak

here

I asked him about the 'reported deaths' vs 'death date' and he says it doesn't affect the model as long as the spread of reported deaths stays reasonably consistent

I hope he’s right and we’ll see over the next few days. There has previously been a dip over the weekend due to delayed reporting. That’s likely to have been affected by the holiday. So we may have to wait until Wednesday or later.

[PeteB]

I hope he’s right and we’ll see over the next few days. There has previously been a dip over the weekend due to delayed reporting. That’s likely to have been affected by the holiday. So we may have to wait until Wednesday or later.

Yes, it was actually on Saturday he said his model thought this was the peak, and he also doesn't trust weekend figures, he tried adding a few hundred deaths to the figures announced on Sunday and Monday just to check the sensitivity, and he also said the hospital admissions still going up at a record rate would seem to contradict it.

Interesting, On April 7th, using the model, he thought there was evidence of Rt < 1

here is how R0 and Rt vary as more data comes in (up to Saturday)

[lpm]

Three weeks ago there was a general expectation the peak would be this week, Easter weekend to the following weekend - based on Italy showing the future.

Getting there at the Easter weekend would be slightly surprising, as I would have expected slightly slower than Italy due to the UK looser lockdown. Maybe that will impact the slope of the downward curve?

[lpm]

People on that twitter are saying elderly people with covid are being moved into nursing homes. Apparently its standard in normal times - free up hospital beds by moving not-ill-enough-for-hospital-but-basically-dying elderly into better and more pleasant end of life care in homes. But surely anyone sane would separate out into Covid-only nursing homes?

I've no idea what this morning's non-hospitalised deaths figure is likely to be.

[jimbob]

I've no idea what this morning's non-hospitalised deaths figure is likely to be.

Does anyone?

[lpm]

The press release certainly seems written to obscure rather than illuminate. They gave the numbers out of context and deliberately confused differing metrics.

[MartinDurkin]

This from David Spiegelhalter looks worrying, particularly "Covid not mentioned" figures. Data only to 3rd April.
https://twitter.com/d_spiegel/status/12 ... 2692096003

EVjXaKrXkAAd-pa.jpg (36.88 KiB) Viewed 5217 times

[Martin Y]

This from David Spiegelhalter looks worrying, particularly "Covid not mentioned" figures. Data only to 3rd April.
https://twitter.com/d_spiegel/status/12 ... 2692096003
EVjXaKrXkAAd-pa.jpg

It's very revealing. Either April stared with a sudden spate of 2,500 remarkable coincidences per week or the real Covid-19 death rate was about 6,000 per week.

[FlammableFlower]

This feeds slightly into the supply thread, but the interesting experiment in South Dakota where the governor has gone "full-Trump" with no lockdown and talking up untested drugs...

[Martin Y]

This feeds slightly into the supply thread, but the interesting experiment in South Dakota where the governor has gone "full-Trump" with no lockdown and talking up untested drugs...

Well, if he called it right, presumably the rest of us will all emerge from hibernation to find we're blinking in the new dawn and welcoming our new Dakotan overlords.

Or not.