COVID-19

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Millennie Al
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Millennie Al » Thu May 21, 2020 1:42 am

EACLucifer wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 10:41 pm
For example, they appear to have now admitted that the reason they stopped testing was they couldn't manage to conduct enough tests. At the time, though, they said that science supported not testing.
But, in one sense, science did support it. In the sense that if you don't have the staff, materials, facilities, or knowledge to do something then it's true that you cannot do it. Just as science supports me not visiting the moon by jumping really high.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by jimbob » Thu May 21, 2020 5:43 am

EACLucifer wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 10:41 pm
There seems to be very little understanding of the two key points;

1) Though lockdown reduces numbers, it won't eliminate the disease. Without very heavy social distancing or an alternative method of control, it will start quadrupling every week again.

2) There should no longer be any debate on whether or not it is possible to at least keep the virus mostly contained by testing, tracing and isolating. It's been done by a number of countries.

About one Briton in a thousand has already died before their time, and we are unlikely to be much more than a tenth of the way to herd immunity. The continued lying and incompetence is, at best, morally manslaughter on a grand scale.

For example, they appear to have now admitted that the reason they stopped testing was they couldn't manage to conduct enough tests. At the time, though, they said that science supported not testing. Perhaps through sheer incompetence, or perhaps in order to reinforce that lie, testing capacity was not increased or used in a sensible way - for example by using private testing capacity to at least test health workers and care home residents.
This
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Re: COVID-19

Post by badger » Thu May 21, 2020 7:22 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 1:42 am
EACLucifer wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 10:41 pm
For example, they appear to have now admitted that the reason they stopped testing was they couldn't manage to conduct enough tests. At the time, though, they said that science supported not testing.
But, in one sense, science did support it. In the sense that if you don't have the staff, materials, facilities, or knowledge to do something then it's true that you cannot do it. Just as science supports me not visiting the moon by jumping really high.
Don't be daft.

Anyway, as has been linked* to upthread by BoaF and Woodchopper there are grumblings around initial testing strategy vs actual capability. There's seems to be an argument growing that we did have the capability to test more, but reluctance to use existing labs meant more fatal delay.

I saw this recently which touches on this.
https://m.huffingtonpost.co.uk/amp/entr ... Da6OY8zr8m

*I think this was the link
https://mobile.twitter.com/globalhlthtw ... 7809021953

I think there could be more blowback for the Gvt on this, both in terms of handing over juicy contracts without tender (to companies senior Tories are non-execs on),
the strategic wisdom of setting up a parallel system when testing was needed much more quickly that beds/ventilators, and that there may be an argument that we could have had much more testing earlier if we'd thrown that money at the NHS when it would have made so much more difference.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by AMS » Thu May 21, 2020 7:46 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 1:42 am
EACLucifer wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 10:41 pm
For example, they appear to have now admitted that the reason they stopped testing was they couldn't manage to conduct enough tests. At the time, though, they said that science supported not testing.
But, in one sense, science did support it. In the sense that if you don't have the staff, materials, facilities, or knowledge to do something then it's true that you cannot do it. Just as science supports me not visiting the moon by jumping really high.
The science always supported testing and tracing as the way to stop the virus spreading.

If the advisors were being asked how to prioritise insufficient testing resources, that's a very different question.

Whether or not you can jump to the moon is irrelevant. There's a big difference between what's physically impossible and what's not currently available.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Thu May 21, 2020 8:21 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 1:42 am
EACLucifer wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 10:41 pm
For example, they appear to have now admitted that the reason they stopped testing was they couldn't manage to conduct enough tests. At the time, though, they said that science supported not testing.
But, in one sense, science did support it. In the sense that if you don't have the staff, materials, facilities, or knowledge to do something then it's true that you cannot do it. Just as science supports me not visiting the moon by jumping really high.
As in Kennedy's famous "We choose not to go to the Moon because I can't jump that high" speech.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Little waster » Thu May 21, 2020 10:24 am

Perhaps it's me, but there is something faintly dystopian about listening to radio ads exhorting the joys of becoming a farm labourer in order to save the nation from starving.

Though Brexit would probably have got us there eventually even without COVID-19. :|
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Re: COVID-19

Post by EACLucifer » Thu May 21, 2020 10:42 am

AMS wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 7:46 am
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 1:42 am
EACLucifer wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 10:41 pm
For example, they appear to have now admitted that the reason they stopped testing was they couldn't manage to conduct enough tests. At the time, though, they said that science supported not testing.
But, in one sense, science did support it. In the sense that if you don't have the staff, materials, facilities, or knowledge to do something then it's true that you cannot do it. Just as science supports me not visiting the moon by jumping really high.
The science always supported testing and tracing as the way to stop the virus spreading.

If the advisors were being asked how to prioritise insufficient testing resources, that's a very different question.
As of december 2019, nobody had testing resources for COVID-19 at all. This country has a large biotech sector. If resources were insufficient two months after a PHEIC was declared, that's not just a neutral fact, that's a catastrophic failure of planning.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by lpm » Thu May 21, 2020 11:32 am

To be fair, no other developed country succeeded either.

Apart from nearly every other developed country.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Thu May 21, 2020 11:43 am

sTeamTraen wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 9:54 pm
shpalman wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 6:53 pm
Clicking through the gov.uk site I see 35704 for the UK, which would be 535.7 per million; the situation in Italy is 32300 deaths, 535.1 per million.

Assuming 66.65 million and 60.36 million for the populations of the UK and Italy respectively.
World-O-Meter has 67,845,213 for the UK population "based on Worldometer elaboration of the latest United Nations data". The ONS has an estimate for mid-2019 of 66,796,807 here [XLS].

I normally enjoy nerdy stuff like this immensely, but in current circumstances I find it hard to get excited about proving Liam Fox wrong. Maybe that's the point of him talking shite.
Lombardy is currently at something like 1560 deaths per million, using the official figures. What do you get for London?

I think I've already pointed out that if the north of Italy were a separate country then it would be way ahead in terms of deaths per million.

The north of Italy is in some regions run by politicians affiliated with the Lega, which used to be (as the Lega Nord) the party for right-wing morons who wished the north of Italy were a separate country. However, both Lombardy and Veneto are Lega and they've had quite different outcomes, so maybe the health officer of Lombardy is just a moron. (He said he couldn't lock Bergamo down because that was a national rather than regional decision, and got corrected live on tv by his interviewer who pointed out that Codogno was locked down by a regional decree, and when he was back on the next day said "yeah you're right I checked" AS IF IT WOULDN'T HAVE BEEN BETTER TO HAVE CHECKED BEFORE and not blame the national government for the disaster in Bergamo which was his responsibility.)

I don't think this article about Bergamo is entirely helpful because it would have predicted that Milan be much worse, and it wasn't; but both Bergamo and Milan had a "let's not let it scare us" attitude during the last week of February, promoted by morons such as Nicola Zingaretti (governor of Lazio, affiliated with the PD who are generally relatively reasonable) who then caught the virus.

It's now exactly three months since the last time I went out socially, by the way.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by AMS » Thu May 21, 2020 12:00 pm

lpm wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 11:32 am
To be fair, no other developed country succeeded either.

Apart from nearly every other developed country.
The S Korean government turned to its pharma sector for help with scaling up testing right at the very start.

The UK government asked its pharma sector for help in late March.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by sTeamTraen » Thu May 21, 2020 12:16 pm

Millennie Al wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 12:59 am
Actually, it seems very likely it will end. The Black Death ended. The 1918 flu ended. But the cost of letting it end naturally is high.
The 1918 flu killed perhaps 3% of the population of the entire world, and may have infected 30%.

And measles is still going strong, after at least 40 or 50 generations.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by sTeamTraen » Thu May 21, 2020 12:23 pm

shpalman wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 11:43 am
Lombardy is currently at something like 1560 deaths per million, using the official figures. What do you get for London?
ECDC doesn't have this level of detail. NHS England [XLSX] has 5819 deaths in London as of yesterday, for about 10 million population, so only a bit more than the UK average and nowhere near Lombardy.

Off topic: Good to see Google being super-nerdy about the definition of the UK in the last line here, although I'm not sure what the North-East and Yorkshire did to get detached from England:
nerdy.png
nerdy.png (18.35 KiB) Viewed 4344 times
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Little waster » Thu May 21, 2020 12:26 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 12:23 pm
shpalman wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 11:43 am
Lombardy is currently at something like 1560 deaths per million, using the official figures. What do you get for London?
ECDC doesn't have this level of detail. NHS England [XLSX] has 5819 deaths in London as of yesterday, for about 10 million population, so only a bit more than the UK average and nowhere near Lombardy.

Off topic: Good to see Google being super-nerdy about the definition of the UK in the last line here, although I'm not sure what the North-East and Yorkshire did to get detached from England:
nerdy.png
I'll think you find England has been detached from the North East and Yorkshire.

Fog in Doncaster etc.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by tom p » Thu May 21, 2020 2:59 pm

Millennie Al wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 1:42 am
EACLucifer wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 10:41 pm
For example, they appear to have now admitted that the reason they stopped testing was they couldn't manage to conduct enough tests. At the time, though, they said that science supported not testing.
But, in one sense, science did support it. In the sense that if you don't have the staff, materials, facilities, or knowledge to do something then it's true that you cannot do it. Just as science supports me not visiting the moon by jumping really high.
Most. Specious. Argument. Ever.
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EACLucifer
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Re: COVID-19

Post by EACLucifer » Thu May 21, 2020 3:08 pm

tom p wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 2:59 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 1:42 am
EACLucifer wrote:
Wed May 20, 2020 10:41 pm
For example, they appear to have now admitted that the reason they stopped testing was they couldn't manage to conduct enough tests. At the time, though, they said that science supported not testing.
But, in one sense, science did support it. In the sense that if you don't have the staff, materials, facilities, or knowledge to do something then it's true that you cannot do it. Just as science supports me not visiting the moon by jumping really high.
Most. Specious. Argument. Ever.
1/10, must try much harder
A bit like saying that Britain did not send people to the moon in 1969 because it was scientifically impossible to jump that high, while ignoring that the Americans did it not by jumping very high, but by developing and using a series of massive rockets.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Trinucleus » Thu May 21, 2020 3:53 pm

sTeamTraen wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 12:16 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 12:59 am
Actually, it seems very likely it will end. The Black Death ended. The 1918 flu ended. But the cost of letting it end naturally is high.
The 1918 flu killed perhaps 3% of the population of the entire world, and may have infected 30%.

And measles is still going strong, after at least 40 or 50 generations.
Presumably as we gain evidence of treatments, protocols etc, the death rate could come down. Would there be a point (eg when it's the same as flu) that we consider the risk not worth strict social control measures?

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Re: COVID-19

Post by shpalman » Thu May 21, 2020 4:56 pm

Trinucleus wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 3:53 pm
sTeamTraen wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 12:16 pm
Millennie Al wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 12:59 am
Actually, it seems very likely it will end. The Black Death ended. The 1918 flu ended. But the cost of letting it end naturally is high.
The 1918 flu killed perhaps 3% of the population of the entire world, and may have infected 30%.

And measles is still going strong, after at least 40 or 50 generations.
Presumably as we gain evidence of treatments, protocols etc, the death rate could come down. Would there be a point (eg when it's the same as flu) that we consider the risk not worth strict social control measures?
Well... given that without social controls or herd immunity (via vaccination or by just letting it kill 1% of the population) it would have a doubling time of 2-3 days, and 2-3 days in which a person can be asymptomatic but infectious, you will end up having to treat an awful lot of people in 1-2 weeks even if you did have an efficient way of treating them which didn't require hospitalization of a substantial percentage of them.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Stranger Mouse » Thu May 21, 2020 5:18 pm

I’m having a family member who I really don’t get on with haranguing me that there were Covid cases in the UK as early as November / December last year.

Is there any actual evidence for this or am I safe in calling b.llsh.t? I accept it may have started earlier than thought in China but apart from the Daily Express nobody else is pushing this.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by bob sterman » Thu May 21, 2020 6:50 pm

So at the government briefing today it was stated that antibody tests had shown that 17% of people in London, and 5% of the overall population, have had coronavirus.

Can't find a figure right now for excess deaths in London - but the official number for COVID-19 deaths in London is currently about 6000.

Using this figure that would put the IFR in London at about 0.4% currently.

But once you factor in further deaths from currently hospitalised patients who were infected weeks ago - and other deaths due to COVID that weren't confirmed with testing - then I assume the IFR would end up in the 0.5-1.0% range that we've seen pretty consistently around the world.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Sciolus » Thu May 21, 2020 7:05 pm

Stranger Mouse wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 5:18 pm
I’m having a family member who I really don’t get on with haranguing me that there were Covid cases in the UK as early as November / December last year.

Is there any actual evidence for this or am I safe in calling b.llsh.t? I accept it may have started earlier than thought in China but apart from the Daily Express nobody else is pushing this.
There have been reports from reasonably serious people of cases in Europe before January. The most credible and parsimonious explanation for these is:
(a) Patients had a different virus with similar symptoms (there are loads of them);
(b) Antibody tests are either false positives or are because the patient was infected at some time after SARS-Cov-2 reached Europe;
(c) PCR tests on contemporary blood samples are false positives, e.g. from contamination. I believe reports that claim positive PCR tests are particularly rare.

Or so I understand.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Opti » Thu May 21, 2020 7:30 pm

I was really, really unwell, here in Spain from the 5th January. A bit like flu, but no runny nose. But no sense of smell or taste. High fever, really painful dry cough - at one point I thought I was developing pneumonia - thought I was dying. Lasted pretty much all of January.
Despite having had the flu jab and all sorts of coincidental things to do with air travel ... I still reckon I just had a strain of flu that the jab didn't cover.
Time for a big fat one.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Grumble » Thu May 21, 2020 7:41 pm

Opti wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 7:30 pm
I was really, really unwell, here in Spain from the 5th January. A bit like flu, but no runny nose. But no sense of smell or taste. High fever, really painful dry cough - at one point I thought I was developing pneumonia - thought I was dying. Lasted pretty much all of January.
Despite having had the flu jab and all sorts of coincidental things to do with air travel ... I still reckon I just had a strain of flu that the jab didn't cover.
Glad you’re ok now Opti. Does sound suspiciously like Covid19, would be interesting to see if you ever get an antibody test.
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Opti » Thu May 21, 2020 7:53 pm

Yeah, it does, but I think the Jan 5th thing rules that out, most likely. I'd love to be 'the one', but, really, I think it was, in all probability, just flu.
But I did feel really sh.t. I know I think I'm special, but I don't really think I'm that special.
If they ever get round to testing me, well ...
Time for a big fat one.

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Re: COVID-19

Post by Herainestold » Thu May 21, 2020 8:01 pm

Sciolus wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 7:05 pm
Stranger Mouse wrote:
Thu May 21, 2020 5:18 pm
I’m having a family member who I really don’t get on with haranguing me that there were Covid cases in the UK as early as November / December last year.

Is there any actual evidence for this or am I safe in calling b.llsh.t? I accept it may have started earlier than thought in China but apart from the Daily Express nobody else is pushing this.
There have been reports from reasonably serious people of cases in Europe before January. The most credible and parsimonious explanation for these is:
(a) Patients had a different virus with similar symptoms (there are loads of them);
(b) Antibody tests are either false positives or are because the patient was infected at some time after SARS-Cov-2 reached Europe;
(c) PCR tests on contemporary blood samples are false positives, e.g. from contamination. I believe reports that claim positive PCR tests are particularly rare.

Or so I understand.
There have been a number of reports, and clinical re-evaluations of suspicious respiratory illnesses in November from France, the UK, America.
What is lacking is some kind of genome analysis whioch would place the infections in the phylogenetic tree as catalogued by nextstrain
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Re: COVID-19

Post by Herainestold » Thu May 21, 2020 8:14 pm

Special for Lucifer

China to develop COVID-19 vaccine as global public good, reflects nation's intl generosity: analysts
China has announced the country will promote the development of a COVID-19 vaccine as a global public good when it becomes available, which experts said reflects China's resolution and generosity in serving the international community, while some European companies and the US seek to use vaccines to pursue their own interests.

Chinese President Xi Jinping on Monday announced the country will make COVID-19 vaccine a global public good when available as he addressed the opening of the 73rd session of the World Health Assembly via video link.
However, China's generous gesture has been twisted by some Western media as part of an effort to defuse criticism of the Chinese government's response to the pandemic. Chinese analysts slammed such twisted remarks noting that, in contrary to China's generosity, some European companies and the US are actually the ones that use vaccines as strategic assets to pursue profits.

French pharmaceutical giant Sanofi is facing condemnation after announcing it will give priority to the US in using their vaccines when available.

Oxford University had also reached agreement with Swedish drug maker Astrazeneca to give priority to increasing production capacity for Britain on a vaccine they developed, according to media reports.

US President Donald Trump also revealed he would use vaccines as a strategic asset.
https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1188793.shtml
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