That's clearly an absurd amount, but I would always assume that Hofstadter's Law applies to lockdowns, and six days seems very optimistic. I don't see much point in locking people down for less than twice the mean asymptomatic period, given that at T0 there are people who have just been infected and you're sending them to spend 24 hours a day breathing the same air as the rest of their family. If the UK's four weeks aren't extended I will be astonished; I think another 20 days or so, allowing for a "Christmas truce", is/are inevitable.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 8:59 amYesterday, I saw person after person leaving the supermarket with 2 packets of 18 toilet rolls - for a six day lock down. As someone wrote in the paper this morning, were these people going to spend 6 days on the toilet.
COVID-19
- sTeamTraen
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Re: COVID-19
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Re: COVID-19
The UK is not in lockdown.sTeamTraen wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 9:35 amThat's clearly an absurd amount, but I would always assume that Hofstadter's Law applies to lockdowns, and six days seems very optimistic. I don't see much point in locking people down for less than twice the mean asymptomatic period, given that at T0 there are people who have just been infected and you're sending them to spend 24 hours a day breathing the same air as the rest of their family. If the UK's four weeks aren't extended I will be astonished; I think another 20 days or so, allowing for a "Christmas truce", is/are inevitable.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 8:59 amYesterday, I saw person after person leaving the supermarket with 2 packets of 18 toilet rolls - for a six day lock down. As someone wrote in the paper this morning, were these people going to spend 6 days on the toilet.
Would that mean Scotland, NI and Wales based English people are going to be the biggest risk to England over Christmas as they travel to visit family? That'd be ironic.
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Re: COVID-19
Gah! True. Apologies for my England-centrism.
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Re: COVID-19
One day of easing of restrictions means five days of tighter restrictions
having that swing is a necessary but not sufficient condition for it meaning a thing
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Re: COVID-19
6 days depends on where you are sitting. If you have 23 active cases that are all connected, 6 days might be sufficient to stop spread outside the cluster. Trying to employ a short lock down to stop 20,000 cases a day obviously won't work.sTeamTraen wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 9:35 amThat's clearly an absurd amount, but I would always assume that Hofstadter's Law applies to lockdowns, and six days seems very optimistic. I don't see much point in locking people down for less than twice the mean asymptomatic period, given that at T0 there are people who have just been infected and you're sending them to spend 24 hours a day breathing the same air as the rest of their family. If the UK's four weeks aren't extended I will be astonished; I think another 20 days or so, allowing for a "Christmas truce", is/are inevitable.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 8:59 amYesterday, I saw person after person leaving the supermarket with 2 packets of 18 toilet rolls - for a six day lock down. As someone wrote in the paper this morning, were these people going to spend 6 days on the toilet.
If nothing else, the past 6 months has shown that ever tightening lock downs as numbers get large has taken a long time to drive down numbers. Sharp lock downs have been much more effective. Australian state governments seem to have moved past the idea of keeping numbers low so that hospitals won't be overwhelmed to one of eradicating each outbreak, so people can live fairly normally between outbreaks. They have an enormous amount of popular support for this.
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Re: COVID-19
Painful to see from over here, I have to be honest.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:15 am6 days depends on where you are sitting. If you have 23 active cases that are all connected, 6 days might be sufficient to stop spread outside the cluster. Trying to employ a short lock down to stop 20,000 cases a day obviously won't work.sTeamTraen wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 9:35 amThat's clearly an absurd amount, but I would always assume that Hofstadter's Law applies to lockdowns, and six days seems very optimistic. I don't see much point in locking people down for less than twice the mean asymptomatic period, given that at T0 there are people who have just been infected and you're sending them to spend 24 hours a day breathing the same air as the rest of their family. If the UK's four weeks aren't extended I will be astonished; I think another 20 days or so, allowing for a "Christmas truce", is/are inevitable.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 8:59 amYesterday, I saw person after person leaving the supermarket with 2 packets of 18 toilet rolls - for a six day lock down. As someone wrote in the paper this morning, were these people going to spend 6 days on the toilet.
If nothing else, the past 6 months has shown that ever tightening lock downs as numbers get large has taken a long time to drive down numbers. Sharp lock downs have been much more effective. Australian state governments seem to have moved past the idea of keeping numbers low so that hospitals won't be overwhelmed to one of eradicating each outbreak, so people can live fairly normally between outbreaks. They have an enormous amount of popular support for this.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.
Re: COVID-19
It's f.cking amazing. Well done, South Australia. Fingers firmly crossed that this is an early indication of the cluster being reined in.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 8:44 amDay 1 of the full lock down is winding down.
So far it seems that most people are following the rules. The normal traffic noise was non-existent.
More than 20,000 tests yesterday (more than 1% of the population), with no new cases.
There will be ongoing restrictions after the first six days but if the last couple of days' case numbers are any clue, they will ease off and look more like lockdowns in other places.
It breaks my heart that so many other countries passed up the opportunity to treat this the way Australian state governments have.
(The Federal government has fought with the various states as they callously shut borders and close businesses. If it were left to them, I think we would look much more like the rest of the world.)
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Re: COVID-19
Absolutely. I think most of the "tier" stuff is what happens when you treat it like a marketing exercise. The "tiers explained" folders look like mobile phone packages (gold, platinum, etc), but nothing short of "stay the f.ck at home, sorry about your extended family dinners" seems to actually work.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:15 amIf nothing else, the past 6 months has shown that ever tightening lock downs as numbers get large has taken a long time to drive down numbers. Sharp lock downs have been much more effective.
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Re: COVID-19
I was thinking it was trying to seem as though it was like New Zealand - https://covid19.govt.nz/alert-system/ab ... rt-system/ except they have clear guidance as to what the restrictions for the levels will be and the definitionssTeamTraen wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:20 amAbsolutely. I think most of the "tier" stuff is what happens when you treat it like a marketing exercise. The "tiers explained" folders look like mobile phone packages (gold, platinum, etc), but nothing short of "stay the f.ck at home, sorry about your extended family dinners" seems to actually work.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:15 amIf nothing else, the past 6 months has shown that ever tightening lock downs as numbers get large has taken a long time to drive down numbers. Sharp lock downs have been much more effective.
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation
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Re: COVID-19
Around early-mid summer I really started to question my own views about lockdown, because I had spent a good chunk of April and May talking to/working with a number of people who were spiralling into mental collapse because of it, to the point of suicidality in some cases, and I was worried that my pro-lockdown attitude was just a result of me sitting in my little privileged bubble with my nice house etc. Personally I'm more or less over that now because looking at e.g. Australia it seems fairly clear that the issue isn't lockdown itself, it's locking down too little and too late. It's not that I think people's mental health is a price worth paying, it's that we shouldn't have allowed ourselves to get into such sh.t in the first place and now we're left with little real choice. Obviously that's no huge revelation, but as the months pass it seems more and more obvious. However I can see that unless you are really looking at how other countries are faring (not just France, Spain, Germany etc - properly globally), then you might genuinely start to question the utility of lockdowns when they cause genuine suffering. I'm not defending people who just want to meet up with their friends and family out of a sense of entitlement, but I can certainly see how people would think that allowing a bit of relaxation here and there is a risk worth taking. I'm not even totally sure I 100% disagree with them seeing as we are so far in the sh.t it's not the same as e.g. Australia accidentally taking its eye off the ball for a couple of days (and I do think this is a UK issue here, or at least not just England, I haven't checked the situation in Wales and NI specifically).sTeamTraen wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:20 amAbsolutely. I think most of the "tier" stuff is what happens when you treat it like a marketing exercise. The "tiers explained" folders look like mobile phone packages (gold, platinum, etc), but nothing short of "stay the f.ck at home, sorry about your extended family dinners" seems to actually work.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:15 amIf nothing else, the past 6 months has shown that ever tightening lock downs as numbers get large has taken a long time to drive down numbers. Sharp lock downs have been much more effective.
I'm not advocating not locking down by the way. I haven't been on a bus since March ffs and I wash my hands more often than Lady Macbeth. Just trying to understand different perspectives and why - in the absence of lots and lots of information, which many people don't actually have access to - people might not be being completely illogical in questioning decisions to lock down.
To defy the laws of tradition is a crusade only of the brave.
Re: COVID-19
I was talking to Dad about this - the 1967 Foot and Mouth epidemic hit during his first year of work in MAFF and he was heavily involved on the ground during that.discovolante wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:50 amAround early-mid summer I really started to question my own views about lockdown, because I had spent a good chunk of April and May talking to/working with a number of people who were spiralling into mental collapse because of it, to the point of suicidality in some cases, and I was worried that my pro-lockdown attitude was just a result of me sitting in my little privileged bubble with my nice house etc. Personally I'm more or less over that now because looking at e.g. Australia it seems fairly clear that the issue isn't lockdown itself, it's locking down too little and too late. It's not that I think people's mental health is a price worth paying, it's that we shouldn't have allowed ourselves to get into such sh.t in the first place and now we're left with little real choice. Obviously that's no huge revelation, but as the months pass it seems more and more obvious. However I can see that unless you are really looking at how other countries are faring (not just France, Spain, Germany etc - properly globally), then you might genuinely start to question the utility of lockdowns when they cause genuine suffering. I'm not defending people who just want to meet up with their friends and family out of a sense of entitlement, but I can certainly see how people would think that allowing a bit of relaxation here and there is a risk worth taking. I'm not even totally sure I 100% disagree with them seeing as we are so far in the sh.t it's not the same as e.g. Australia accidentally taking its eye off the ball for a couple of days (and I do think this is a UK issue here, or at least not just England, I haven't checked the situation in Wales and NI specifically).sTeamTraen wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:20 amAbsolutely. I think most of the "tier" stuff is what happens when you treat it like a marketing exercise. The "tiers explained" folders look like mobile phone packages (gold, platinum, etc), but nothing short of "stay the f.ck at home, sorry about your extended family dinners" seems to actually work.Chris Preston wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 10:15 amIf nothing else, the past 6 months has shown that ever tightening lock downs as numbers get large has taken a long time to drive down numbers. Sharp lock downs have been much more effective.
I'm not advocating not locking down by the way. I haven't been on a bus since March ffs and I wash my hands more often than Lady Macbeth. Just trying to understand different perspectives and why - in the absence of lots and lots of information, which many people don't actually have access to - people might not be being completely illogical in questioning decisions to lock down.
As a consequence - he's well aware that timely and severe restrictions on travel are vital for highly-infectious diseases. Of course, Foot and Mouth is airborne and can travel several miles, so *that* is not comparable.
He's also unimpressed with the institutional memory in the Civil Service, as they relearned the same lessons from a 1920's outbreak - which the older farmers told them. And the 2000-2001 outbreak had the same failures again (failing to lock down livestock movement as soon as it was suspected)
Have you considered stupidity as an explanation
Re: COVID-19
Be careful of drawing precise conclusions from a very small number of data.
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Re: COVID-19
Yes, especially if one of the axes is bounded (that 125% label on the Y axis is unlikely to be troubled by the proximity of any data). Also because a percentage is a fraction, and the same amount of information is contained in its reciprocal, although the curve will have a rather different shape.
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- sTeamTraen
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Re: COVID-19
Thank you for posting this. Lockdown has not been hard on me and Mrs sTeamTraen; we get on very well at opposite ends of the house and having recently moved to another country we were going to need to build our in-person social networks from scratch anyway, so we are not missing regular gatherings with friends and family any more than we would otherwise have done. And we get pensions --- I suspect we are not the only comfortably-off people to have saved quite a bit of money this year due to reduced opportunities for travel and eating out. Our kids have done OK: One has been half-furloughed and half-working, so getting 90% of her pretty nice salary, and the other works from home anyway, mostly for public-sector and educational customers.discovolante wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 11:50 amAround early-mid summer I really started to question my own views about lockdown, because I had spent a good chunk of April and May talking to/working with a number of people who were spiralling into mental collapse because of it, to the point of suicidality in some cases, and I was worried that my pro-lockdown attitude was just a result of me sitting in my little privileged bubble with my nice house etc. Personally I'm more or less over that now because looking at e.g. Australia it seems fairly clear that the issue isn't lockdown itself, it's locking down too little and too late. It's not that I think people's mental health is a price worth paying, it's that we shouldn't have allowed ourselves to get into such sh.t in the first place and now we're left with little real choice. Obviously that's no huge revelation, but as the months pass it seems more and more obvious. However I can see that unless you are really looking at how other countries are faring (not just France, Spain, Germany etc - properly globally), then you might genuinely start to question the utility of lockdowns when they cause genuine suffering. I'm not defending people who just want to meet up with their friends and family out of a sense of entitlement, but I can certainly see how people would think that allowing a bit of relaxation here and there is a risk worth taking. I'm not even totally sure I 100% disagree with them seeing as we are so far in the sh.t it's not the same as e.g. Australia accidentally taking its eye off the ball for a couple of days (and I do think this is a UK issue here, or at least not just England, I haven't checked the situation in Wales and NI specifically).
I'm not advocating not locking down by the way. I haven't been on a bus since March ffs and I wash my hands more often than Lady Macbeth. Just trying to understand different perspectives and why - in the absence of lots and lots of information, which many people don't actually have access to - people might not be being completely illogical in questioning decisions to lock down.
But I have been torn about expressing any sort of doubts about lockdown in public (online) because the overwhelming majority of people who bang on about it appear to be some combination of (a) innumerate, (b) science deniers, (c) a..eholes who imagine that their entire life revolves around the pub, or (d) general c.nts*. And while some people's mental health will suffer, I suspect that we won't be hearing as much from the people for whom working from home has been a revelation, especially those who have to put up with various kinds of workplace harassment. (There was a report --- for which I don't have the link handy --- saying that anxiety levels among UK schoolchildren dropped markedly during lockdown, which will have given food for thought to anyone who works in education.)
All that said, though, this can't go on for ever, and at some point we will have to learn to live with non-zero COVID, even with a (necessarily imperfect) vaccine. I think one of the best ways of looking at it was expressed by Martin Y here.
*Toby Young seems to score a full house here.
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- EACLucifer
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Re: COVID-19
Some people with certain disabilities find takeaways a godsend, so I hope there's been at least some thought as to how to cover for the (likely few) people affected this way.Squeak wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 10:16 pmIn South Australia, at least, all the places that might do deliveries are closed for the week, so the no takeaways rule would totally cut them off. But the number of people there without access to at least a kitchenette would be extremely small, since Adelaide is a spread-out city with little in the way of high-density micro-apartments. There might be the occasional person stuck in a hotel, but even there, they'd at least have a little fridge and a kettle, even if the hotel kitchen is closed. A week of sandwiches, cous cous, and blanched vegies isn't an impossible situation.
For homeless people, kitchens are probably the least of their concerns right now but SA does seem to have made some reasonable efforts to put roofs over their heads, so I hope that most have got reasonable food access as part of those arrangements. However, I haven't seen anything specific this week yet.
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Re: COVID-19
Including today's numbers, the 7-day deaths total for the UK is 2,848. A week ago it was 2,807. So that could be approaching good news.
The bad news, I think, is that 7-day new cases is 163,061, compared with 166,998 last week. That's down, but only by 2%. And it's been over 150,000 for 4 weeks, and over 100,000 for 7 weeks. It could be that the decline is going to be even slower than in the first wave, where the UK lagged behind other comparable countries in reducing new cases.
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Re: COVID-19
It seems to me that a combination of a milder lockdown and a seasonal effect making Covid more contagious means that Rt is now at about 1.sTeamTraen wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 4:53 pmIncluding today's numbers, the 7-day deaths total for the UK is 2,848. A week ago it was 2,807. So that could be approaching good news.
The bad news, I think, is that 7-day new cases is 163,061, compared with 166,998 last week. That's down, but only by 2%. And it's been over 150,000 for 4 weeks, and over 100,000 for 7 weeks. It could be that the decline is going to be even slower than in the first wave, where the UK lagged behind other comparable countries in reducing new cases.
Unfortunately the delay in introducing the lockdown means that it’s stabilized at about 400 deaths per day. It’ll probably stay like that until about May* unless the lockdown is tightened further or relaxed. If it does stabilize until then that’s about 60 000 to 70 000 more deaths.
ETA *When a combination of mass vaccination and the spring will kick in. Hopefully.
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Re: COVID-19
f.cking hell. f.cking, sh.tting, c.nting hell, Sky f.cking News. Go and f.ck yourself sideways with a pair of rust scissors.
The headline: The actual story: Angry Twitter thread here.
The headline: The actual story: Angry Twitter thread here.
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Re: COVID-19
Gosh, I assume that if taking a dump had been on the questionnaire then visiting the crapper would be top of the list.
Re: COVID-19
Just in case anyone meets one of those "They've had no deaths in Sweden since whenever" types.
Deaths in Sweden are now on the rise, as you'd expect from an increase in cases, like they have.
Deaths in Sweden are now on the rise, as you'd expect from an increase in cases, like they have.
Re: COVID-19
It's a bit like that stat about being more likely to have a car crash within a few miles of home.Woodchopper wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 6:45 pmGosh, I assume that if taking a dump had been on the questionnaire then visiting the crapper would be top of the list.
Re: COVID-19
I hope so too but I just don't know. It was only a couple of days from the first case to the announcement so it all came in a bit of a rush. Since then, they've been slowly finding workarounds/clarifications for the most urgent (or at least the most vocal) problems. I assume the formal meals on wheels program counts as essential but that's a very limited subset of people for whom cooking is problematic.EACLucifer wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 2:30 pmSome people with certain disabilities find takeaways a godsend, so I hope there's been at least some thought as to how to cover for the (likely few) people affected this way.Squeak wrote: ↑Wed Nov 18, 2020 10:16 pmIn South Australia, at least, all the places that might do deliveries are closed for the week, so the no takeaways rule would totally cut them off. But the number of people there without access to at least a kitchenette would be extremely small, since Adelaide is a spread-out city with little in the way of high-density micro-apartments. There might be the occasional person stuck in a hotel, but even there, they'd at least have a little fridge and a kettle, even if the hotel kitchen is closed. A week of sandwiches, cous cous, and blanched vegies isn't an impossible situation.
For homeless people, kitchens are probably the least of their concerns right now but SA does seem to have made some reasonable efforts to put roofs over their heads, so I hope that most have got reasonable food access as part of those arrangements. However, I haven't seen anything specific this week yet.
Re: COVID-19
EAC, them you for nudging me to bung a few bucks to my favourite Adelaide charity. The Hutt St centre do a lot of work to feed and house homeless people and people with a disability (a group that used to include my sister in law) and they must be under extra pressure this week.
If anyone's advocating for or instantly establishing new kind of complex and flexible support for people with disabilities, it'll be them.
If anyone's advocating for or instantly establishing new kind of complex and flexible support for people with disabilities, it'll be them.
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Re: COVID-19
Or coming into contact with someone else's dump...Woodchopper wrote: ↑Thu Nov 19, 2020 6:45 pmGosh, I assume that if taking a dump had been on the questionnaire then visiting the crapper would be top of the list.
Excretion of SARS-CoV-2 through faecal specimens
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33161824/
Fecal-oral transmission of SARS-CoV-2: review of laboratory-confirmed virus in gastrointestinal system
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33057894/