Coronavirus (COVID-19) Outbreak

[Bluebird Hewitt]

56 minutes ago, Harvsky said:

 

UK deaths massively higher than what has been reported so far 

Interested to see where they got the higher rates from.

I know testing is low and those who actually have coronavirus is likely to be much higher, but struggling to see how the death difference can be that much bigger when every death has to be recorded and I'd assume a cause of death as well, unless they're only recording hospital deaths etc. 

Maybe I'm not thinking fully. Who knows. 

Edited April 7, 2020 by Bluebird Hewitt

[Honey Honey]

32 minutes ago, Danny said:

Yeah I’ve got plenty of people on Facebook loving him, it’s amazing how far a persons can take you in this country

I don’t see a rationale argument to suggest the handling of this pandemic has been anything but catastrophic, people are just viewing it as “oh well he’s just an ordinary bloke trying to do his best” but his best has been getting people killed when successful and viable options have been underwater elsewhere around the globe

The expert advice the government was receiving was mixed. Sweden's current approach is actually what the UK plan started out as. 

Mistakes are inevitable, correction is the minimum you can ask for. We are fortunate we have that, some don't.

Leaders across the world are all benefiting from boosted ratings when they enact hard lockdown. The reason being it is what people want in times of uncertainty. It's what people saw happening elsewhere so wanted here. It's not like any of us are part of the inner expert critique, we back the method we like the sound of the arguments for and we promote them. It's particularly helpful that the governments earlier position supporters weren't very good at defending that approach at the time and didn't understand it. Most of the opponents to the new approach are far right flirting tosspots or contrarian dullards.

 

14 minutes ago, Bluebird Hewitt said:

Interested to see where they got the higher rates from.

I know testing is low and those who actually have coronavirus is likely to be much higher, but struggling to see how the death difference can be that much bigger when every death has to be recorded and I'd assume a cause of death as well. 

Maybe I'm not thinking right. Who knows. 

Not sure how the ONS process data but mustn't be real time. Knowing the ONS they probably estimate.

[Machado]

27 minutes ago, Stan said:

Obviously shouldn't laugh at anyone getting COVID-19 (unless you're a paedo, murderer, sex abuser etc etc) but the Israeli Health Minister has tested positive for it. He has previously claimed that testing positive for it is 'divine punishment for homosexuality'  

Weird way of coming out of the closet.

[RandoEFC+]

I honestly don't think you can properly judge any government's handling of the situation until after the whole thing has died down, and even then it's a massive case of hindsight. I think Johnson has shown leadership qualities throughout the crisis in some ways. In other ways I think he should have been more decisive earlier on and introduced the lockdown measures sooner. We could see from what other countries were doing that introducing those measures was effective and we left it a bit too late because we were busy twatting around with herd immunity and Cummings' behavioural science units. The bum/contradictory advice Johnson got from the government scientists can't be blamed on him though.

[...Dan]

I went out for a walk yesterday and didn't last 5 minutes because my heart felt weak...

Hopefully that's only temporary.

[Danny]

1 hour ago, Harvsky said:

The expert advice the government was receiving was mixed. Sweden's current approach is actually what the UK plan started out as. 

Mistakes are inevitable, correction is the minimum you can ask for. We are fortunate we have that, some don't.

Leaders across the world are all benefiting from boosted ratings when they enact hard lockdown. The reason being it is what people want in times of uncertainty. It's what people saw happening elsewhere so wanted here. It's not like any of us are part of the inner expert critique, we back the method we like the sound of the arguments for and we promote them. It's particularly helpful that the governments earlier position supporters weren't very good at defending that approach at the time and didn't understand it. Most of the opponents to the new approach are far right flirting tosspots or contrarian dullards.

Experts at the time were all saying that herd immunity would only really work if there was a vaccine, the approach went against advice from WHO...it definitely wasn’t a people centred approach. The governments ignorance in light of what was happening in China and Italy particularly was astounding. I’m happy we have done a u-turn on that disaster of an approach but hardly thankful it’s taken the government this long.

 

[Dr. Gonzo]

The herd immunity theory sounds good until you hear medical experts say it could take years to develop herd immunity without a vaccine... and then it just sounds like a way to get the world's health services completely overwhelmed.

[Panflute]

God, the worst thing (well, after the death, disease and damage to people's livelihoods) must be the myriad of celebrities trying to cash in on a vague sense of brotherhood, recording horrible, soppy songs and other crap to 'help keep people motivated'.

I guess it's a fair trade-off, though, as at least Eurovision was cancelled.

[SchalkeUK]

4 minutes ago, Panflute said:

God, the worst thing (well, after the death, disease and damage to people's livelihoods) must be the myriad of celebrities trying to cash in on a vague sense of brotherhood, recording horrible, soppy songs and other crap to 'help keep people motivated'.

I guess it's a fair trade-off, though, as at least Eurovision was cancelled.

Aw, come on - Eurovision was never meant to motivate anyone other than those taking part and Terry Wogan and he died before it did!

[Carnivore Chris]

4 hours ago, IgnisExcubitor said:

Channel mostly headed and run by Indians . Some of my commie comrades here hate it, because its anti-China and pro Indian government (to an extent). I mean, their editor in chief, Sudir Chaudhary is absolutely hated by the left here.

@topic

Tablighi Jamaat members continue to be scum - shitting in quarantine centre rooms now. 

 

I admittedly only started watching it lately during this coronavirus lockdown as I was constantly being recommend videos on YouTube and they speak alot of truths on there about this matter.

I love the main woman who presents it. Her bluntness is brilliant 

[Mpache]

What I find interesting is that there seems to be a hotspot for the virus in each country and it doesn't seem to be completely widespread at least in the reports.

China: Wuhan and Hubei province

Italy: Bergamo

Spain: Madrid

USA: New York

Ecuador: Guayaquil

Chile: Santiago and Temuco

Well aware this isn't the case in every country but there seems to be a problem area where as in other provinces/states seems to be controlled in a less-worse manner. Either because of population density (New York and Wuhan) or certain incidents (Atalanta vs Valencia being game zero in Italy and Temuco because of that one bloke who flew on the plane knowing he had the virus) 

[Honey Honey]

3 hours ago, Danny said:

Experts at the time were all saying that herd immunity would only really work if there was a vaccine, the approach went against advice from WHO...it definitely wasn’t a people centred approach. The governments ignorance in light of what was happening in China and Italy particularly was astounding. I’m happy we have done a u-turn on that disaster of an approach but hardly thankful it’s taken the government this long.

Not quite true on a few levels. 

They weren't "all" saying herd immunity requires a vaccine. A vaccine is an option to achieve herd immunity, which is in all diseases of which such has occurred in the last 50 years. The original stance was that the virus would keep coming back for years until each community developed herd immunity. No vaccine was mentioned.

Lockdown measures were not implemented earlier because they were modelling the impact of each measure and the timing in which to do that. As was said at the time there are negative health consequences with each measure in the modelling. Isolation causes sedation which leads to premature death for those with particular conditions for example. They also noted concern for long term isolation not being followed, suggesting that because of that if they go too early it wont work due to rule breakers. They were waiting for community outbreaks to reach particular levels they modelled to be optimal for the response.

They explicitly said the aim was to broaden the peak, flatten it. That goal is no different to the approach today. To say the approach wasn't people centred is to completely miss the argument laid forth by people with decades of experience. 

The end failure of the early response was really the modelling. It was wrong and missing huge confounding variables. We lost time because of that. We didn't mobilise testing and ventilators earlier because of that, just as the French didn't mobilise in 1938 because they didn't see what was coming.The premise of the argument was built on bad data and that was exposed when published and when available for public scrutiny. Allowing experts from outside SAGE to chip in, putting weight behind those within SAGE and government who disagreed with the premise behind the work. The lesson therefore resides in a slow pace to transparency. That no organisation has a monopoly on expertise in a country like the UK.

[Danny]

29 minutes ago, Harvsky said:

Not quite true on a few levels. 

They weren't "all" saying herd immunity requires a vaccine. A vaccine is an option to achieve herd immunity, which is in all diseases of which such has occurred in the last 50 years. The original stance was that the virus would keep coming back for years until each community developed herd immunity. No vaccine was mentioned.

Lockdown measures were not implemented earlier because they were modelling the impact of each measure and the timing in which to do that. As was said at the time there are negative health consequences with each measure in the modelling. Isolation causes sedation which leads to premature death for those with particular conditions for example. They also noted concern for long term isolation not being followed, suggesting that because of that if they go too early it wont work due to rule breakers. They were waiting for community outbreaks to reach particular levels they modelled to be optimal for the response.

They explicitly said the aim was to broaden the peak, flatten it. That goal is no different to the approach today. To say the approach wasn't people centred is to completely miss the argument laid forth by people with decades of experience. 

The end failure of the early response was really the modelling. It was wrong and missing huge confounding variables. We lost time because of that. We didn't mobilise testing and ventilators earlier because of that, just as the French didn't mobilise in 1938 because they didn't see what was coming.The premise of the argument was built on bad data and that was exposed when published and when available for public scrutiny. Allowing experts from outside SAGE to chip in, putting weight behind those within SAGE and government who disagreed with the premise behind the work. The lesson therefore resides in a slow pace to transparency. That no organisation has a monopoly on expertise in a country like the UK.

No but various experts were saying it was unlikely to be achieved without a vaccine, you have people dying in their hundreds daily in Italy and don’t suspect that herd immunity, which essentially meant do nothing and carry on, would somehow have a different approach here? They’ve been hiding behind the police state nonsense for a while now, “the good British public are mature enough to do this and that etc etc”, was also convenient that builders were suddenly considered essential workers...wonder what was at the forefront of that decision, £££. 
 

They were treating it like it was a common cold. Go out, shake their hands, drink their spit you’ll be fine. You have South Korea ripping the dick off the virus and then you watch our inept response.

[Harry]

8 hours ago, Harvsky said:

 

UK deaths massively higher than what has been reported so far 

Is the latter category definitely corona as cause of death?

Why would they not release those numbers?

Any chance they are being consistent with other countries and it may be a broader issue...?

[RandoEFC+]

The herd immunity thing was a disaster, and the only reason most of us didn't think it was obvious is that we aren't scientists and assumed that the experts knew better than us.

The evidence was there at the time:

- China had already shown by that point that you can stem the spread of the virus by introducing severe lockdown measures. I'm not saying it's realistic in a country like the UK to do exactly what they did but they squashed it pretty damn fast.

- Northern Italy was already in absolute crisis at the time and the front-line reports and images from hospitals and morgues were readily available in the UK on national news, social media and national radio. Italian medics were ringing us up begging us to act faster than they did.

- They literally talked about 'flattening the curve' in the same press conference that they were talking about letting it work its way through the population, which would have created the steepest curve of all. It seemed so stupid to me at the time that I just assumed I knew so little about it that it wasn't worth me passing judgement, but no, they genuinely thought letting loads of people catch it so that they could develop immunity would 'flatten the curve'.

- The NHS, by every measure I've seen, was one of the least prepared health services in Europe when it comes to dealing with demand on intensive care. We had already seen the virus run rings around the much superior health service of Northern Italy, Germany has something like double the number of beds per head than the UK, etc. This is another reason why any strategy involving the herd immunity/take it on the chin approach fails to stand up to even minor scrutiny.

If there was some other science that it was based on, then they didn't explain it very well at any of the press briefings. Now isn't the time to go in two-footed on the government though. They went back on it pretty quickly which is all you can ask once they've misjudged something. We'll have a much better idea of how to analyse their approach after this is all over and I might get proven completely wrong, but on the evidence available to a "layman" like me, the herd immunity philosophy, while fleeting, doesn't look either competent or responsible.

[Harry]

The situation in Wisconsin is outrageous.

In person election going ahead today at same time as local coronavirus peak.

Governor tried to extend timeframe for mail in ballots to enable everyone to postal vote.

In person polling stations were reduced from 180 to just 5 in line with the expected bulk mail in approach.

Mail in date extension order overturned by the conservative majority on the US supreme Court, largely because it sets the precedent for November 2020 elections, and the GOP know that a mail in system will greatly increase turnout, and in particular amongst the crowd that don't usually vote, which typically lean against the GOP.

Therefore significant likelihood of greatly exacerbating the epidemic in Wisconsin to protect Trump's chances of reelection in November.

 

[Azeem]

[Harry]

 

[Honey Honey]

5 hours ago, Danny said:

No but various experts were saying it was unlikely to be achieved without a vaccine, you have people dying in their hundreds daily in Italy and don’t suspect that herd immunity, which essentially meant do nothing and carry on, would somehow have a different approach here? They’ve been hiding behind the police state nonsense for a while now, “the good British public are mature enough to do this and that etc etc”, was also convenient that builders were suddenly considered essential workers...wonder what was at the forefront of that decision, £££. 
 

They were treating it like it was a common cold. Go out, shake their hands, drink their spit you’ll be fine. You have South Korea ripping the dick off the virus and then you watch our inept response.

Various experts doesn't matter. As I said from the start the advice the government was receiving was mixed. To assume the approach taken was about a disregard for human life is quite an accusation at those involved.

The approach was never at any time to do nothing. Even from the very start they did at least something. Let's not conflate what is considered not enough with nothing. It was made clear that the approach was to enact particular protocols at certain times based on assumptions and modelling of when that is best to enact to flatten the curve. The UK locked down around two weeks after deaths in Italy blew up. It is only in that spell when calls for much stronger action actually emerged in the UK. Italy locked down on around 400 deaths, the UK on less than 300. It's France that locked down on less which caused pressure.

Herd immunity is an inevitability, a necessity. We have to get there at some point. 70 year olds can't just lock themselves up until they die of something else. The virus is unlikely to die out across the planet of its own accord. 

The flatten the curve argument is rooted in the notion that herd immunity must be achieved. You'll see some curve flattening models don't actually reduce the number of deaths at all, it spreads them out across a longer period of time. Other curve flattening models take into account excess deaths from a crashed health care system and show flattening the curve does save lives. 

ICL was modelling that the NHS would not crash any time soon. The governments position was not do nothing it was to lockdown if the NHS approached capacity. The data used in this modelling turned out to be for a different virus. Once it was updated with metrics from China and Italy it showed catastrophic results for life and the NHS almost immediately and so we locked down. 

I've advocated for South Korea approach but let's get real about timings, we only knew empirically that approach was working when cases plateaued, one week before we locked down. They mobilised testing when Wuhan blew up, we and many others didn't so we are two months behind them.

Test and trace is the issue that exists in the UK right now. Mistakes have been made for various reasons. None of which can soundbites do justice for. The attitude towards Italy and Spain was pathetic for sure. We didn't stop flights they carried on. Our current outbreak is not about China it's about Italy and Spain, as is the majority of the countries. 

[Mpache]

Wuhan lifts lockdown. This could either be really good or really bad news. If lifting the lockdown proves successful and safe, then we can potentially expect life to return to normal if it does prove to create herd immunity after time.

[Stan]

15 minutes ago, Inti Brian said:

Wuhan lifts lockdown. This could either be really good or really bad news. If lifting the lockdown proves successful and safe, then we can potentially expect life to return to normal if it does prove to create herd immunity after time.

Lockdown and herd immunity are 2 different things?

Lockdown would essentially stop herd immunity taking effect because no-one is allowed out, no-one allowed to interact outside of a household and therefore the virus can't pass through the 'herd' so to speak. And then the herd is unable to become immune because they've not been exposed to the virus. Herd immunity has its risks with a virus this strong I'd have thought? 

I'm not sure on the details of this lockdown being lifted - are there still restrictions or is it complete freedom back to how it used to be before lockdown measures?

I'd hope to think Wuhan officials or even China officials aren't so naive to not expect a second wave - if there's complete freedom they must be pretty confident the virus has been eradicated but I doubt this is the case. 

[Mpache]

1 minute ago, Stan said:

I'd hope to think Wuhan officials or even China officials aren't so naive to not expect a second wave - if there's complete freedom they must be pretty confident the virus has been eradicated but I doubt this is the case. 

Yeah this is the one worry. We'll have to pay attention to China in the next few weeks. If things calm down enough and there's no second wave then that's definitely a good sign for the near future. 

[IgnisExcubitor]

14 hours ago, Carnivore Chris said:

 

I love the main woman who presents it. Her bluntness is brilliant 

Palki Sharma. You're welcome.

12 hours ago, Inti Brian said:

What I find interesting is that there seems to be a hotspot for the virus in each country and it doesn't seem to be completely widespread at least in the reports.

China: Wuhan and Hubei province

Italy: Bergamo

Spain: Madrid

USA: New York

Ecuador: Guayaquil

Chile: Santiago and Temuco

Well aware this isn't the case in every country but there seems to be a problem area where as in other provinces/states seems to be controlled in a less-worse manner. Either because of population density (New York and Wuhan) or certain incidents (Atalanta vs Valencia being game zero in Italy and Temuco because of that one bloke who flew on the plane knowing he had the virus) 

Add my city Mumbai to that list. 

Population density plays a huge role. Even when we are sealing areas where cases are appearing, it is not helping matters. 

[MUFC]

Coronavirus.

Lockdown.

Tolet roll.

Economy.

2 meters.

Vaccine.

Tablighi Jamaat.

[CaaC (John)+]

Blame the bloody beans for the mass buying of toilet roll.