Scrutable

Watching the news over the past few days has made me think, the 1st four doctors to die all seem to be Muslim Immigrants, but from a variety of countries, as was the apparently healthy 13 year old boy who died.

I realise that we don't know the race/religion/ethnic origins of all the other people who have died and 5 people out of >1400 is a very small number so it may well just be a statistical blip, but is it possible that certain populations are more vulnerable to Covid-19?

kerrya1 wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:42 pm Watching the news over the past few days has made me think, the 1st four doctors to die all seem to be Muslim Immigrants, but from a variety of countries, as was the apparently healthy 13 year old boy who died.

I realise that we don't know the race/religion/ethnic origins of all the other people who have died and 5 people out of >1400 is a very small number so it may well just be a statistical blip, but is it possible that certain populations are more vulnerable to Covid-19?

The most at risk members of the population were born in the 1930s and 40s or earlier, so they would be more likely to be white British. ETA or the earlier members of the windrush generation

shpalman wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 4:31 pm I think Italy's numbers are still on an exponential growth. The doubling time this week is about 16.9 days, which is fairly long, but it means we're not at the peak.

Are whole-country numbers worthwhile for Italy? Isn't it the sum of flat/declining numbers in the north and exponential growth elsewhere?

lpm wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:53 pm

shpalman wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 4:31 pm I think Italy's numbers are still on an exponential growth. The doubling time this week is about 16.9 days, which is fairly long, but it means we're not at the peak.

Are whole-country numbers worthwhile for Italy? Isn't it the sum of flat/declining numbers in the north and exponential growth elsewhere?

I'm also following the numbers for Lombardy, where twice as many tests were carried out compared to yesterday so of course they got more positives.

kerrya1 wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:42 pm Watching the news over the past few days has made met think, the 1st four doctors to die all seem to be Muslim Immigrants, but from a variety of countries, as was the apparently healthy 13 year old boy who died.

I realise that we don't know the race/religion/ethnic origins of all the other people who have died and 5 people out of >1400 is a very small number so it may well just be a statistical blip, but is it possible that certain populations are more vulnerable to Covid-19?

I've seen some discussion regarding this and the West Midlands hotspot, mentioning social and religious behaviours. However we know healthcare workers are at greater risk anyway and we also do have a lot of Muslim doctors.

Those studies which estimate the true number of infections based on scaling the high CFR down to something more reasonable? Well there may be thousands more deaths https://www.reuters.com/article/us-heal ... SKBN21J677

In the hardest-hit area around the city of Bergamo, some 4,500 people died of coronavirus in March, according to data analysis firm InTwig, while only 2,060 were included in the data provided by the Civil Protection Agency.

Most of the elderly victims died in their homes or in old peoples' homes and, because they never made it to hospital, were never tested for the virus, according to the study based on data from doctors and overseen by a professor at Bergamo University.

Separate data from national statistics office ISTAT showed deaths in the north of Italy doubled in the first three weeks of March compared with the average during the same period between 2015 and 2019, reflecting the onset of coronavirus.

mediocrity511 wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:06 pm

kerrya1 wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:42 pm Watching the news over the past few days has made met think, the 1st four doctors to die all seem to be Muslim Immigrants, but from a variety of countries, as was the apparently healthy 13 year old boy who died.

I realise that we don't know the race/religion/ethnic origins of all the other people who have died and 5 people out of >1400 is a very small number so it may well just be a statistical blip, but is it possible that certain populations are more vulnerable to Covid-19?

I've seen some discussion regarding this and the West Midlands hotspot, mentioning social and religious behaviours. However we know healthcare workers are at greater risk anyway and we also do have a lot of Muslim doctors.

An Italian teenager died in London

mediocrity511 wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 7:06 pm

kerrya1 wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:42 pm Watching the news over the past few days has made met think, the 1st four doctors to die all seem to be Muslim Immigrants, but from a variety of countries, as was the apparently healthy 13 year old boy who died.

I realise that we don't know the race/religion/ethnic origins of all the other people who have died and 5 people out of >1400 is a very small number so it may well just be a statistical blip, but is it possible that certain populations are more vulnerable to Covid-19?

I've seen some discussion regarding this and the West Midlands hotspot, mentioning social and religious behaviours. However we know healthcare workers are at greater risk anyway and we also do have a lot of Muslim doctors.

I have heard reports of people saying "We're young, we're strong" when talking about their continued close association in groups. I'm not going to point out nationalities or religious persuasions, but it points to public health messages failing in some cultural contexts.
Similarly, some people of very strongly religious persuasions are convinced that they need only to carefully follow the rules of their particular sub-group and that more general societal rules don't apply to them. Again, I'm carefully not picking out any particular religion.
It can't be easy trying to deal with such people, especially if you are in front-line medical or public order positions.
I'm not sure how these issues can be remedied, both short term and long term.

You're not pointing to it, but pretty heavily implying it by quoting a discussion about Muslims. I don't think it's fair to bring in unverified "heard some reports" in this way.

The most obvious religious community I can think of ignoring regulations is ultra-orthodox Jews, but I'm well aware there's going to be a bias on that due to the number of reform/secular Jews I follow posting about how pissed off they are with the ultra-orthodox

The MCB - not a group I usually have many kind words for - were prompt in calling mosques to shut down.

The chances are the reason those doctors died is the government ignoring the need for PPE for frontline workers, not any religion ignoring calls for social distancing.

Plenty of reports of evangelicals in the states continuing or threatening to continue services - one leader of a mega church has been arrested

US deaths now >4,000.

Grumble wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 10:26 pm Plenty of reports of evangelicals in the states continuing or threatening to continue services - one leader of a mega church has been arrested

Florida finally has a stay-at-home order. But churches are exempt, including from the size of gatherings rules.

Stephanie wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 9:41 pm You're not pointing to it, but pretty heavily implying it by quoting a discussion about Muslims. I don't think it's fair to bring in unverified "heard some reports" in this way.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/ ... ics-police

This was the article my comments were referencing. It does mention teenagers as a demographic that public health messaging isn't reaching, but not in any form of specific demographics of teenagers just them generally.

From the FT
At this point the curves in France, Spain and Italy were starting to flatten, but they're not yet doing so in the UK and US.

There may be a need for the UK to bring in additional mitigation measures (not just more enforcement of social distancing, but also things like adding public transport capacity so essential workers don't need to be crowded together when commuting).

The US looks f.cked.

lpm wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:53 pm

shpalman wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 4:31 pm I think Italy's numbers are still on an exponential growth. The doubling time this week is about 16.9 days, which is fairly long, but it means we're not at the peak.

Are whole-country numbers worthwhile for Italy? Isn't it the sum of flat/declining numbers in the north and exponential growth elsewhere?

I don't think so. I've been following the regional totals here and regions outside Northern Italy don't appear to have been growing exponentially.

It looks like the national shutdown has contained the spread of the infection. The problem now is how to relax restrictions without increasing R0 and precipitating a new outbreak.

Stephanie wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 9:41 pm You're not pointing to it, but pretty heavily implying it by quoting a discussion about Muslims. I don't think it's fair to bring in unverified "heard some reports" in this way.

Well, I'm deliberately not pointing to the source as it would pick out one particular community, and give some clues as to my location (which the admins know anyway from the geolocation of my IP address). ((And, I had literally heard reports, on the radio, followed up by reading an online report))
I don't know if they are Muslim. They are part of a recent immigrant group who have a very different culture to the people who have been here longer (looking far enough back, we are all immigrants) - and it's a fair bet that congregating in groups isn't helping. The particular community are now over-represented in hospital admissions diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2, whereas previously it was a richer group who you could well think had just returned from the Tyrol from their skiing holidays.
As for the religious group examples, I was specifically not thinking of Muslims, but in fact Orthodox Jews (I guess others have seen the same news reports as me) and Christians, as others have detailed below in earllier postings.
I was doing my best not to point out particular groups and make general points, so I couldn't be accused of anti-'X' bias. Looks like I was wrong.

I'll repeat what I said:

It can't be easy trying to deal with such people, especially if you are in front-line medical or public order positions.
I'm not sure how these issues can be remedied, both short term and long term.

I'm still not sure how best to get people (in general) to behave in line with public health requirements. I'm pretty sure coercion or stigmatisation isn't the way.

Hit quote instead of edit. Again.

I just think it's best to stick to articles on these things, where possible, rather than dancing around trying not to offend, but saying a bunch of stuff anyway.

Woodchopper wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 7:24 am

lpm wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 5:53 pm

shpalman wrote: Wed Apr 01, 2020 4:31 pm I think Italy's numbers are still on an exponential growth. The doubling time this week is about 16.9 days, which is fairly long, but it means we're not at the peak.

Are whole-country numbers worthwhile for Italy? Isn't it the sum of flat/declining numbers in the north and exponential growth elsewhere?

I don't think so. I've been following the regional totals here and regions outside Northern Italy don't appear to have been growing exponentially.

It looks like the national shutdown has contained the spread of the infection.

Well, good. I suppose if we haven't seen the outbreaks now, more than two weeks after everyone from the south who lived in the north went back home, then maybe the south has been spared the worst of it. However, the south is far more prone to social unrest and people generally not giving a sh.t and doing what they like. Depends which side the local mafia is on.

Just goes to show that it helps to do the lockdown measures before you suddenly realise what "exponential" means.

Woodchopper wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 7:24 amThe problem now is how to relax restrictions without increasing R0 and precipitating a new outbreak.

I was just at the supermarket, and things did feel a little bit less tense than a week ago; I hope people aren't relaxing because they think the worst is over. (The worst will only be over if people don't relax yet.)

Two months after we discussed oxygen... two weeks after shpalman raised the alert about very high oxygen use in Italy hospitals... the UK is discovering it could be the constraining factor in numbers treated.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... s-patients

A major NHS hospital almost ran out of oxygen for its Covid-19 patients on ventilators because it was treating so many people with the disease who needed help to breathe.

The incident, which occurred at a London teaching hospital last weekend, has prompted NHS bosses to urgently warn all NHS trusts in England to limit the number of people they put on mechanical ventilators and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines.

NHS England was so concerned by what happened that it told hospital bosses in a letter on Monday that the risk constituted a “critical safety concern” which could have major consequences for all patients relying on oxygen to stay alive. It told them to take a series of urgent actions to reduce the risk of their own oxygen supply suddenly running short because of heavy demand.

They advise trusts in the letter to:

Calculate the maximum number of patients who can be treated with high-flow [oxygen] devices such as wall CPAP and communication of this to the relevant clinical teams.

Implement safety measures to prevent accidental O2 system failure (such as limiting the number of these devices available for clinical use).

Woodchopper's FT article claims cases are plateau-ing - but they're plotted on exponential graphs.

On linear axes they look like they'd still be rising pretty fast.

Would be interesting in seeing them graphed like that or the actual figures to see for ourselves.

Lew Dolby wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 9:13 am Woodchopper's FT article claims cases are plateau-ing - but they're plotted on exponential graphs.

On linear axes they look like they'd still be rising pretty fast.

Would be interesting in seeing them graphed like that or the actual figures to see for ourselves.

The FT graphs changed this month from being 'total deaths' to being 'daily deaths'- so 'plateauing' means it has changed from being exponential to being geometric, which is quite a transition.

Dr Fauci is telling us things we don’t want to know! Important things! He must be stopped.

lpm wrote: Thu Apr 02, 2020 8:27 am Two months after we discussed oxygen... two weeks after shpalman raised the alert about very high oxygen use in Italy hospitals... the UK is discovering it could be the constraining factor in numbers treated.

https://www.theguardian.com/society/202 ... s-patients

A major NHS hospital almost ran out of oxygen for its Covid-19 patients on ventilators because it was treating so many people with the disease who needed help to breathe.

The incident, which occurred at a London teaching hospital last weekend, has prompted NHS bosses to urgently warn all NHS trusts in England to limit the number of people they put on mechanical ventilators and continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) machines.

NHS England was so concerned by what happened that it told hospital bosses in a letter on Monday that the risk constituted a “critical safety concern” which could have major consequences for all patients relying on oxygen to stay alive. It told them to take a series of urgent actions to reduce the risk of their own oxygen supply suddenly running short because of heavy demand.

They advise trusts in the letter to:

Calculate the maximum number of patients who can be treated with high-flow [oxygen] devices such as wall CPAP and communication of this to the relevant clinical teams.

Implement safety measures to prevent accidental O2 system failure (such as limiting the number of these devices available for clinical use).

So how are oxygen supplies looking? Is there much point ordering umpteen thousand ventilators if we've not the oxygen to put through them?