The big Coronavirus thread

pblakeney

kingstongraham said:

More realistic to assume that some are actively seeking good news stories, which I think is absolutely fair enough.

TBF, there are 2 other threads for C-19 good news.
This is the bad news thread?

rick_chasey

https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/coronavirus-timeline-uk-germany-comparison-johnson-merkel

Day by day comparison of UK vs German response.

TheBigBean

rjsterry said:

morstar said:

rjsterry said:

Some of the comments from friends and acquaintances on Johnson's hospital admission are interesting. He seems to have been one of those people* who at some level think illness is something that happens to other people and is somehow indicative of some lack of resolve or spirit. Might this attitude have had some impact on the timing government decisions?

*something I recognise, shall we say.

Agreed. I thought Raabs, he’s a fighter comment was telling.
The implication being that if you die, you’re a quitter.

To be fair to Raab, it's only what every friend or relative of someone who is seriously ill says. A hangover of the medieval view of illness as divine punishment perhaps, and a comforting idea when you're scared. Raab definitely looked scared when he was saying it, but it's complete b******s.

It's a line that worked for Armstrong for years.

kingstongraham

Stevo_666 said:

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

First.Aspect said:

rick_chasey said:

If you compare Ireland to England, England has a 2.5x higher death rate per capita right now.

I guess that’s the difference between cancelling st Patrick’s day and letting Cheltenham happen.

Scotland's is half that of England. They squeezed the Murrayfield match in while they could. Same policies, much lower population density.

I've been watching your posts on here for a couple of weeks Rick and they are unbalanced. Everything is bad. The UK is terrible. We should have done more. Of everything.

I think you need to step away from the news somehow.

+1.

I've said the same thing and to be fair its not just Rick. It wasn't that long back that somebody commented on how certain people must be googling 'negative UK ÇOVID news' or similar every morning before posting.

I'd love to see some of this lot running the show instead of the government.

Do you think that you need to specifically enter that search term to get negative news about the virus at the moment?

You may not have to, but some people probably did. And you missed the related 'UK' bit.

No searches involved... I didn't preselect which sites, and didn't know what would be there.

It's just generally a bad news story at the moment.

rjsterry

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

First.Aspect said:

rick_chasey said:

If you compare Ireland to England, England has a 2.5x higher death rate per capita right now.

I guess that’s the difference between cancelling st Patrick’s day and letting Cheltenham happen.

Scotland's is half that of England. They squeezed the Murrayfield match in while they could. Same policies, much lower population density.

I've been watching your posts on here for a couple of weeks Rick and they are unbalanced. Everything is bad. The UK is terrible. We should have done more. Of everything.

I think you need to step away from the news somehow.

+1.

I've said the same thing and to be fair its not just Rick. It wasn't that long back that somebody commented on how certain people must be googling 'negative UK ÇOVID news' or similar every morning before posting.

I'd love to see some of this lot running the show instead of the government.

Do you think that you need to specifically enter that search term to get negative news about the virus at the moment?

You may not have to, but some people probably did. And you missed the related 'UK' bit.

No searches involved... I didn't preselect which sites, and didn't know what would be there.

It's just generally a bad news story at the moment.

Standby for claims that Prof Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust and a pandemics expert on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies is part of the LMS, too.

rjsterry

TheBigBean said:

rjsterry said:

morstar said:

rjsterry said:

Some of the comments from friends and acquaintances on Johnson's hospital admission are interesting. He seems to have been one of those people* who at some level think illness is something that happens to other people and is somehow indicative of some lack of resolve or spirit. Might this attitude have had some impact on the timing government decisions?

*something I recognise, shall we say.

Agreed. I thought Raabs, he’s a fighter comment was telling.
The implication being that if you die, you’re a quitter.

To be fair to Raab, it's only what every friend or relative of someone who is seriously ill says. A hangover of the medieval view of illness as divine punishment perhaps, and a comforting idea when you're scared. Raab definitely looked scared when he was saying it, but it's complete b******s.

It's a line that worked for Armstrong for years.

Ooh, good cycling reference.

nickice

Herd immunity isn't really a cure, I'm assuming they mean an effective control method.

In which case I didn't realise we had herd immunity to SARS, MERS and ebola.

The above are only considered to be transmissible when someone is showing symptoms and MERS is very difficult to transmit. Totally different ball game which is why we managed to more or less control them The original post was correct. Either we lockdown until a vaccine or effective treatment is discovered or we just accept some people will get it and die but do our best to increase healthcare capacity. I bet the government accounted for people not respecting the lockdown as they realise this is useful to allow the virus to slowly progress through the population and thus transmission will become more and more difficult even without herd immunity. There was something in the Telegraph about antibody tests in an affected German town showing that 15% of people had had it.

rick_chasey

Yeah, it’s almost like the news coming out of the U.K. is actually bad.

mr_goo

Checking FlightRadar as I do on a daily basis and am seeing quite a number of private jets still operating. Some I am sure are Medical flights, however looking at the type and size of others I'm pretty sure they're being used by the ultra wealthy to still get about in. Are they immune to social distancing and being told to stay at home?

Jeremy.89

nickice said:

Herd immunity isn't really a cure, I'm assuming they mean an effective control method.

In which case I didn't realise we had herd immunity to SARS, MERS and ebola.

The above are only considered to be transmissible when someone is showing symptoms and MERS is very difficult to transmit. Totally different ball game which is why we managed to more or less control them The original post was correct. Either we lockdown until a vaccine or effective treatment is discovered or we just accept some people will get it and die but do our best to increase healthcare capacity. I bet the government accounted for people not respecting the lockdown as they realise this is useful to allow the virus to slowly progress through the population and thus transmission will become more and more difficult even without herd immunity. There was something in the Telegraph about antibody tests in an affected German town showing that 15% of people had had it.

Diseases that are a totally different ball game. Yet so far indications are that countries badly effected by SARS have handled covid better aren't they? Certainly South Korea seems to have...

Ultimately it appears the West never really considered a test trace and contain strategy, which is understandable but means we are stuck in a very challenging situation. Squeezing a lockdown on and off to effectively promote viral spread (and resulting deaths) is going to be a somewhat politically challenging activity. If offices were all to open in Tuesday, I doubt many would go in, if supermarkets were ordered to remove social distancing measures, I should think many would refuse.

orraloon

mr_goo said:

Checking FlightRadar as I do on a daily basis and am seeing quite a number of private jets still operating. Some I am sure are Medical flights, however looking at the type and size of others I'm pretty sure they're being used by the ultra wealthy to still get about in. Are they immune to social distancing and being told to stay at home?

Yes.

nickice

Jeremy.89 said:

nickice said:

Herd immunity isn't really a cure, I'm assuming they mean an effective control method.

In which case I didn't realise we had herd immunity to SARS, MERS and ebola.

The above are only considered to be transmissible when someone is showing symptoms and MERS is very difficult to transmit. Totally different ball game which is why we managed to more or less control them The original post was correct. Either we lockdown until a vaccine or effective treatment is discovered or we just accept some people will get it and die but do our best to increase healthcare capacity. I bet the government accounted for people not respecting the lockdown as they realise this is useful to allow the virus to slowly progress through the population and thus transmission will become more and more difficult even without herd immunity. There was something in the Telegraph about antibody tests in an affected German town showing that 15% of people had had it.

Diseases that are a totally different ball game. Yet so far indications are that countries badly effected by SARS have handled covid better aren't they? Certainly South Korea seems to have...

Ultimately it appears the West never really considered a test trace and contain strategy, which is understandable but means we are stuck in a very challenging situation. Squeezing a lockdown on and off to effectively promote viral spread (and resulting deaths) is going to be a somewhat politically challenging activity. If offices were all to open in Tuesday, I doubt many would go in, if supermarkets were ordered to remove social distancing measures, I should think many would refuse.

Well of course South Korea has handled it better than other countries following experiences with SARS but they can't make that last forever without a vaccine or very effective treatment. SARS was much easier to suppress than this virus on account of it only being transmitted when an infected person was showing symptoms (and usually in hospital)

morstar

So, here’s how I see the options.
1) Do nothing.
2) Lock down indefinitely. Requires vaccine to exit.
3) Lock down to gain control. Once control gained, Aggressive testing and tracing policy.
4) ‘Manage’ spread.

I don’t think the fact that 2 has achieved early control means it will necessarily achieve success. Suppose the vaccine doesn’t come in 18 months.
3 is the most desirable method to minimise mortality vs allow economic activity.
4 is where I believe we are.

There are two fundamental challenges to 3 that I can see.

Can we actually shut this down to the required degree to start contact tracing? You could argue that this only worked where deployed early.
Can we actually do this? As a western democracy, this will have privacy complaints, will cost a significant amount and can we deploy the necessary resources to achieve it.

I have seen no indication of 3 being pursued so 4 becomes our default.

surrey_commuter

morstar said:

surrey_commuter said:

morstar said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

rick_chasey said:

surrey_commuter said:

Interesting article in the Sunday Times about reported deaths. As behind paywall the summary is;

• Deaths not reported fully at the weekend
  
• More accurate figures take two weeks and are running at double the original daily reported number
  
• The real number could be double again
  1. • 
       

This is U.K. specific?

I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot on this point. The daily figures published for most countries are hospital deaths with C19 registered that day. They are not a comprehensive report of all deaths occurring with C19 on that day. It's therefore a crude figure, but the best anyone is going to have. The logistics of collecting this data are such that the real figures are bound to lag behind, and detailed analysis of the numbers of direct fatalities caused by C19 will take weeks if not months to arrive. This is not a failing.

It does feel like a failing in the modern age, when we have a situation where these numbers are being used to track a pandemic.

Otoh there's no need for us (the general public) to know the precise number of deaths every 24 hours.

It's just a result of the process for registering deaths. The important information is in the trend, not the figures for a particular day.

I see potential issues if you're deciding when to stop holding mass horse racing events and your data is two weeks out of whack.

More up to date data doesn't currently exist.

Which must be a key learning from this.
Antiquated administrative processes are limiting the effectiveness of responses.
It’s a stark contrast to the markets which trade based on data that is milliseconds old whilst we are tackling a pandemic with data that is up to two weeks old. I accept they are not the same but the contrast is startling.
The limitation is resistance to change rather than capability.
But I agree with you, the reporting delay is consistent so the data serves a blunt purpose of measuring broad trends.

But if you believe in easing the lockdown as soon as possible to save tens of billions. Why not spend a few tens of millions in getting better data.

For clarification, I don’t explicitly believe that. I have however tried to debate objectively that delayed deaths are not a particular success.

Regarding data, I agree this is a sound investment but as somebody who works on business change projects, such upheaval is difficult in any large organisation in normal times.
At a time of national crisis, in a government organisation dealing with civil servants who are probably one of the most change resistant groups in existence...
I don’t see how any such project could be achieved successfully.

Did not mean “you”. I could have written that better. Meant BoJo (and myself)

If the lazy fvckers won’t do what you want on the day of the week you want then hire somebody else to do it. Money is no object.

surrey_commuter

rjsterry said:

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

First.Aspect said:

rick_chasey said:

If you compare Ireland to England, England has a 2.5x higher death rate per capita right now.

I guess that’s the difference between cancelling st Patrick’s day and letting Cheltenham happen.

Scotland's is half that of England. They squeezed the Murrayfield match in while they could. Same policies, much lower population density.

I've been watching your posts on here for a couple of weeks Rick and they are unbalanced. Everything is bad. The UK is terrible. We should have done more. Of everything.

I think you need to step away from the news somehow.

+1.

I've said the same thing and to be fair its not just Rick. It wasn't that long back that somebody commented on how certain people must be googling 'negative UK ÇOVID news' or similar every morning before posting.

I'd love to see some of this lot running the show instead of the government.

Do you think that you need to specifically enter that search term to get negative news about the virus at the moment?

You may not have to, but some people probably did. And you missed the related 'UK' bit.

No searches involved... I didn't preselect which sites, and didn't know what would be there.

It's just generally a bad news story at the moment.

Standby for claims that Prof Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust and a pandemics expert on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies is part of the LMS, too.

Farrah thanks we will have a vaccine a lot sooner than 18 months

nickice

morstar said:

So, here’s how I see the options.
1) Do nothing.
2) Lock down indefinitely. Requires vaccine to exit.
3) Lock down to gain control. Once control gained, Aggressive testing and tracing policy.
4) ‘Manage’ spread.

I don’t think the fact that 2 has achieved early control means it will necessarily achieve success. Suppose the vaccine doesn’t come in 18 months.
3 is the most desirable method to minimise mortality vs allow economic activity.
4 is where I believe we are.

There are two fundamental challenges to 3 that I can see.

Can we actually shut this down to the required degree to start contact tracing? You could argue that this only worked where deployed early.
Can we actually do this? As a western democracy, this will have privacy complaints, will cost a significant amount and can we deploy the necessary resources to achieve it.

I have seen no indication of 3 being pursued so 4 becomes our default.

I think 4 is the only realistic option in the long-term for any country. As long as people are not dying for lack of medical treatment, that is. South Korea is imposing two weeks of quarantine for any new arrivals to the country which I think would be unworkable in a lot of other countries.

morstar

nickice said:

morstar said:

So, here’s how I see the options.
1) Do nothing.
2) Lock down indefinitely. Requires vaccine to exit.
3) Lock down to gain control. Once control gained, Aggressive testing and tracing policy.
4) ‘Manage’ spread.

I don’t think the fact that 2 has achieved early control means it will necessarily achieve success. Suppose the vaccine doesn’t come in 18 months.
3 is the most desirable method to minimise mortality vs allow economic activity.
4 is where I believe we are.

There are two fundamental challenges to 3 that I can see.

Can we actually shut this down to the required degree to start contact tracing? You could argue that this only worked where deployed early.
Can we actually do this? As a western democracy, this will have privacy complaints, will cost a significant amount and can we deploy the necessary resources to achieve it.

I have seen no indication of 3 being pursued so 4 becomes our default.

I think 4 is the only realistic option in the long-term for any country. As long as people are not dying for lack of medical treatment, that is. South Korea is imposing two weeks of quarantine for any new arrivals to the country which I think would be unworkable in a lot of other countries.

Agreed. And I also think it only works in South Korea due to global activity having largely stopped.
Supposing the rest of the world was active having been through the virus, they would be hugely disadvantaged.

Wheelspinner

nickice said:

morstar said:

So, here’s how I see the options.
1) Do nothing.
2) Lock down indefinitely. Requires vaccine to exit.
3) Lock down to gain control. Once control gained, Aggressive testing and tracing policy.
4) ‘Manage’ spread.

I don’t think the fact that 2 has achieved early control means it will necessarily achieve success. Suppose the vaccine doesn’t come in 18 months.
3 is the most desirable method to minimise mortality vs allow economic activity.
4 is where I believe we are.

There are two fundamental challenges to 3 that I can see.

Can we actually shut this down to the required degree to start contact tracing? You could argue that this only worked where deployed early.
Can we actually do this? As a western democracy, this will have privacy complaints, will cost a significant amount and can we deploy the necessary resources to achieve it.

I have seen no indication of 3 being pursued so 4 becomes our default.

I think 4 is the only realistic option in the long-term for any country. As long as people are not dying for lack of medical treatment, that is. South Korea is imposing two weeks of quarantine for any new arrivals to the country which I think would be unworkable in a lot of other countries.

That policy implemented here a couple weeks ago. Blanket ban on arrivals from many places unless a returning citizen, and 14 days in a hotel mandatory.

Seems to be helping.

nickice

Wheelspinner said:

nickice said:

morstar said:

So, here’s how I see the options.
1) Do nothing.
2) Lock down indefinitely. Requires vaccine to exit.
3) Lock down to gain control. Once control gained, Aggressive testing and tracing policy.
4) ‘Manage’ spread.

I don’t think the fact that 2 has achieved early control means it will necessarily achieve success. Suppose the vaccine doesn’t come in 18 months.
3 is the most desirable method to minimise mortality vs allow economic activity.
4 is where I believe we are.

There are two fundamental challenges to 3 that I can see.

Can we actually shut this down to the required degree to start contact tracing? You could argue that this only worked where deployed early.
Can we actually do this? As a western democracy, this will have privacy complaints, will cost a significant amount and can we deploy the necessary resources to achieve it.

I have seen no indication of 3 being pursued so 4 becomes our default.

I think 4 is the only realistic option in the long-term for any country. As long as people are not dying for lack of medical treatment, that is. South Korea is imposing two weeks of quarantine for any new arrivals to the country which I think would be unworkable in a lot of other countries.

That policy implemented here a couple weeks ago. Blanket ban on arrivals from many places unless a returning citizen, and 14 days in a hotel mandatory.

Seems to be helping.

It's part of the lockdown, though. It only works at the moment because most other countries are in some degree of lockdown.

rjsterry

mr_goo said:

Checking FlightRadar as I do on a daily basis and am seeing quite a number of private jets still operating. Some I am sure are Medical flights, however looking at the type and size of others I'm pretty sure they're being used by the ultra wealthy to still get about in. Are they immune to social distancing and being told to stay at home?

One was sent back to the UK from Marseille by the French authorities the other day. From the report, they were told not to land, but did so anyway, then tried to buy their way past the authorities.

rjsterry

surrey_commuter said:

morstar said:

surrey_commuter said:

morstar said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

rick_chasey said:

surrey_commuter said:

Interesting article in the Sunday Times about reported deaths. As behind paywall the summary is;

• Deaths not reported fully at the weekend
  
• More accurate figures take two weeks and are running at double the original daily reported number
  
• The real number could be double again
  1. • 
       

This is U.K. specific?

I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot on this point. The daily figures published for most countries are hospital deaths with C19 registered that day. They are not a comprehensive report of all deaths occurring with C19 on that day. It's therefore a crude figure, but the best anyone is going to have. The logistics of collecting this data are such that the real figures are bound to lag behind, and detailed analysis of the numbers of direct fatalities caused by C19 will take weeks if not months to arrive. This is not a failing.

It does feel like a failing in the modern age, when we have a situation where these numbers are being used to track a pandemic.

Otoh there's no need for us (the general public) to know the precise number of deaths every 24 hours.

It's just a result of the process for registering deaths. The important information is in the trend, not the figures for a particular day.

I see potential issues if you're deciding when to stop holding mass horse racing events and your data is two weeks out of whack.

More up to date data doesn't currently exist.

Which must be a key learning from this.
Antiquated administrative processes are limiting the effectiveness of responses.
It’s a stark contrast to the markets which trade based on data that is milliseconds old whilst we are tackling a pandemic with data that is up to two weeks old. I accept they are not the same but the contrast is startling.
The limitation is resistance to change rather than capability.
But I agree with you, the reporting delay is consistent so the data serves a blunt purpose of measuring broad trends.

But if you believe in easing the lockdown as soon as possible to save tens of billions. Why not spend a few tens of millions in getting better data.

For clarification, I don’t explicitly believe that. I have however tried to debate objectively that delayed deaths are not a particular success.

Regarding data, I agree this is a sound investment but as somebody who works on business change projects, such upheaval is difficult in any large organisation in normal times.
At a time of national crisis, in a government organisation dealing with civil servants who are probably one of the most change resistant groups in existence...
I don’t see how any such project could be achieved successfully.

Did not mean “you”. I could have written that better. Meant BoJo (and myself)

If the lazy fvckers won’t do what you want on the day of the week you want then hire somebody else to do it. Money is no object.

Do you really think the problem is uppity registrars? Or do you think there might be a good reason why you can't just log onto a website to register a death? In any case, what would having a more accurate daily total achieve. The decision to bring in the various stages of lockdown wasn't based on passing some magic number. Deaths is a trailing indicator of demand on services anyway.

tailwindhome

Two experts debate coronavirus

The expert on the right is Jimmy Whitworth, Professor of International Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The expert on the left is Toby Young

rick_chasey

tailwindhome said:

Two experts debate coronavirus

The expert on the right is Jimmy Whitworth, Professor of International Public Health at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine

The expert on the left is Toby Young

Don’t want to be mega annoying but this trope was done to death re Brexit (ie uninformed people debating experts) so much so that this does not even raise an eyebrow anymore.

morstar

rjsterry said:

surrey_commuter said:

morstar said:

surrey_commuter said:

morstar said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

rick_chasey said:

surrey_commuter said:

Interesting article in the Sunday Times about reported deaths. As behind paywall the summary is;

• Deaths not reported fully at the weekend
  
• More accurate figures take two weeks and are running at double the original daily reported number
  
• The real number could be double again
  1. • 
       

This is U.K. specific?

I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot on this point. The daily figures published for most countries are hospital deaths with C19 registered that day. They are not a comprehensive report of all deaths occurring with C19 on that day. It's therefore a crude figure, but the best anyone is going to have. The logistics of collecting this data are such that the real figures are bound to lag behind, and detailed analysis of the numbers of direct fatalities caused by C19 will take weeks if not months to arrive. This is not a failing.

It does feel like a failing in the modern age, when we have a situation where these numbers are being used to track a pandemic.

Otoh there's no need for us (the general public) to know the precise number of deaths every 24 hours.

It's just a result of the process for registering deaths. The important information is in the trend, not the figures for a particular day.

I see potential issues if you're deciding when to stop holding mass horse racing events and your data is two weeks out of whack.

More up to date data doesn't currently exist.

Which must be a key learning from this.
Antiquated administrative processes are limiting the effectiveness of responses.
It’s a stark contrast to the markets which trade based on data that is milliseconds old whilst we are tackling a pandemic with data that is up to two weeks old. I accept they are not the same but the contrast is startling.
The limitation is resistance to change rather than capability.
But I agree with you, the reporting delay is consistent so the data serves a blunt purpose of measuring broad trends.

But if you believe in easing the lockdown as soon as possible to save tens of billions. Why not spend a few tens of millions in getting better data.

For clarification, I don’t explicitly believe that. I have however tried to debate objectively that delayed deaths are not a particular success.

Regarding data, I agree this is a sound investment but as somebody who works on business change projects, such upheaval is difficult in any large organisation in normal times.
At a time of national crisis, in a government organisation dealing with civil servants who are probably one of the most change resistant groups in existence...
I don’t see how any such project could be achieved successfully.

Did not mean “you”. I could have written that better. Meant BoJo (and myself)

If the lazy fvckers won’t do what you want on the day of the week you want then hire somebody else to do it. Money is no object.

Do you really think the problem is uppity registrars? Or do you think there might be a good reason why you can't just log onto a website to register a death? In any case, what would having a more accurate daily total achieve. The decision to bring in the various stages of lockdown wasn't based on passing some magic number. Deaths is a trailing indicator of demand on services anyway.

I wouldn’t so much say uppity registrars. I’d frame it more as certain activities that are not exposed to commercial pressure are slow to react to opportunities to improve efficiency.

This type of thing for me is the great conundrum with public services vs market.

The market delivers efficiencies but market practices don’t suit all activities. However, where activities are not subject to market pressures, they are often slow to adopt efficiency opportunities.

Franchising registrars won’t achieve anything but maybe something like Covid does suggest there are reasons / opportunities to modernise. But this is no more than armchair opinion.

nickice

Talk in the French press of the lockdown continuing until at least the 10th of May. Of course we have to wait until our supreme ruler announces it on Monday.

surrey_commuter

rjsterry said:

surrey_commuter said:

morstar said:

surrey_commuter said:

morstar said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

rick_chasey said:

surrey_commuter said:

Interesting article in the Sunday Times about reported deaths. As behind paywall the summary is;

• Deaths not reported fully at the weekend
  
• More accurate figures take two weeks and are running at double the original daily reported number
  
• The real number could be double again
  1. • 
       

This is U.K. specific?

I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot on this point. The daily figures published for most countries are hospital deaths with C19 registered that day. They are not a comprehensive report of all deaths occurring with C19 on that day. It's therefore a crude figure, but the best anyone is going to have. The logistics of collecting this data are such that the real figures are bound to lag behind, and detailed analysis of the numbers of direct fatalities caused by C19 will take weeks if not months to arrive. This is not a failing.

It does feel like a failing in the modern age, when we have a situation where these numbers are being used to track a pandemic.

Otoh there's no need for us (the general public) to know the precise number of deaths every 24 hours.

It's just a result of the process for registering deaths. The important information is in the trend, not the figures for a particular day.

I see potential issues if you're deciding when to stop holding mass horse racing events and your data is two weeks out of whack.

More up to date data doesn't currently exist.

Which must be a key learning from this.
Antiquated administrative processes are limiting the effectiveness of responses.
It’s a stark contrast to the markets which trade based on data that is milliseconds old whilst we are tackling a pandemic with data that is up to two weeks old. I accept they are not the same but the contrast is startling.
The limitation is resistance to change rather than capability.
But I agree with you, the reporting delay is consistent so the data serves a blunt purpose of measuring broad trends.

But if you believe in easing the lockdown as soon as possible to save tens of billions. Why not spend a few tens of millions in getting better data.

For clarification, I don’t explicitly believe that. I have however tried to debate objectively that delayed deaths are not a particular success.

Regarding data, I agree this is a sound investment but as somebody who works on business change projects, such upheaval is difficult in any large organisation in normal times.
At a time of national crisis, in a government organisation dealing with civil servants who are probably one of the most change resistant groups in existence...
I don’t see how any such project could be achieved successfully.

Did not mean “you”. I could have written that better. Meant BoJo (and myself)

If the lazy fvckers won’t do what you want on the day of the week you want then hire somebody else to do it. Money is no object.

Do you really think the problem is uppity registrars? Or do you think there might be a good reason why you can't just log onto a website to register a death? In any case, what would having a more accurate daily total achieve. The decision to bring in the various stages of lockdown wasn't based on passing some magic number. Deaths is a trailing indicator of demand on services anyway.

Well I could suggest doing German levels of testing so we knew how widespread it was it as we can’t figure out a timely way of counting the dead that seems impractical.

All the suggestions are that this Govt uses data for decision making so it is bizarre they have left themselves without proper data.

I would be looking to get the economy moving either through regional easing or changing the messaging to non-essential businesses. Realistically you would not know the impact for over a month.

rjsterry

surrey_commuter said:

rjsterry said:

surrey_commuter said:

morstar said:

surrey_commuter said:

morstar said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

Jeremy.89 said:

rjsterry said:

rick_chasey said:

surrey_commuter said:

Interesting article in the Sunday Times about reported deaths. As behind paywall the summary is;

• Deaths not reported fully at the weekend
  
• More accurate figures take two weeks and are running at double the original daily reported number
  
• The real number could be double again
  1. • 
       

This is U.K. specific?

I feel like I'm repeating myself a lot on this point. The daily figures published for most countries are hospital deaths with C19 registered that day. They are not a comprehensive report of all deaths occurring with C19 on that day. It's therefore a crude figure, but the best anyone is going to have. The logistics of collecting this data are such that the real figures are bound to lag behind, and detailed analysis of the numbers of direct fatalities caused by C19 will take weeks if not months to arrive. This is not a failing.

It does feel like a failing in the modern age, when we have a situation where these numbers are being used to track a pandemic.

Otoh there's no need for us (the general public) to know the precise number of deaths every 24 hours.

It's just a result of the process for registering deaths. The important information is in the trend, not the figures for a particular day.

I see potential issues if you're deciding when to stop holding mass horse racing events and your data is two weeks out of whack.

More up to date data doesn't currently exist.

Which must be a key learning from this.
Antiquated administrative processes are limiting the effectiveness of responses.
It’s a stark contrast to the markets which trade based on data that is milliseconds old whilst we are tackling a pandemic with data that is up to two weeks old. I accept they are not the same but the contrast is startling.
The limitation is resistance to change rather than capability.
But I agree with you, the reporting delay is consistent so the data serves a blunt purpose of measuring broad trends.

But if you believe in easing the lockdown as soon as possible to save tens of billions. Why not spend a few tens of millions in getting better data.

For clarification, I don’t explicitly believe that. I have however tried to debate objectively that delayed deaths are not a particular success.

Regarding data, I agree this is a sound investment but as somebody who works on business change projects, such upheaval is difficult in any large organisation in normal times.
At a time of national crisis, in a government organisation dealing with civil servants who are probably one of the most change resistant groups in existence...
I don’t see how any such project could be achieved successfully.

Did not mean “you”. I could have written that better. Meant BoJo (and myself)

If the lazy fvckers won’t do what you want on the day of the week you want then hire somebody else to do it. Money is no object.

Do you really think the problem is uppity registrars? Or do you think there might be a good reason why you can't just log onto a website to register a death? In any case, what would having a more accurate daily total achieve. The decision to bring in the various stages of lockdown wasn't based on passing some magic number. Deaths is a trailing indicator of demand on services anyway.

Well I could suggest doing German levels of testing so we knew how widespread it was it as we can’t figure out a timely way of counting the dead that seems impractical.

All the suggestions are that this Govt uses data for decision making so it is bizarre they have left themselves without proper data.

I would be looking to get the economy moving either through regional easing or changing the messaging to non-essential businesses. Realistically you would not know the impact for over a month.

Different data. I agree that more detailed testing would give us a much better idea of how we are doing. Even if we had an absolutely accurate up to the minute number of deaths it would only tell us how well we had done 4 weeks previously. Unfortunately we have missed that boat, I think. It will take months of effort to get back on top of testing.

Stevo_666

Jeremy.89 said:

nickice said:

Herd immunity isn't really a cure, I'm assuming they mean an effective control method.

In which case I didn't realise we had herd immunity to SARS, MERS and ebola.

The above are only considered to be transmissible when someone is showing symptoms and MERS is very difficult to transmit. Totally different ball game which is why we managed to more or less control them The original post was correct. Either we lockdown until a vaccine or effective treatment is discovered or we just accept some people will get it and die but do our best to increase healthcare capacity. I bet the government accounted for people not respecting the lockdown as they realise this is useful to allow the virus to slowly progress through the population and thus transmission will become more and more difficult even without herd immunity. There was something in the Telegraph about antibody tests in an affected German town showing that 15% of people had had it.

Diseases that are a totally different ball game. Yet so far indications are that countries badly effected by SARS have handled covid better aren't they? Certainly South Korea seems to have...

Ultimately it appears the West never really considered a test trace and contain strategy, which is understandable but means we are stuck in a very challenging situation. Squeezing a lockdown on and off to effectively promote viral spread (and resulting deaths) is going to be a somewhat politically challenging activity. If offices were all to open in Tuesday, I doubt many would go in, if supermarkets were ordered to remove social distancing measures, I should think many would refuse.

Even in those which currently appear to be keeping a lid on it via test, trace and contain (mainly those which had to deal with SARS back in the day), it looks as if more action will be needed:-
https://nzherald.co.nz/world/news/article.cfm?c_id=2&objectid=12324356

Stevo_666

rjsterry said:

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

First.Aspect said:

rick_chasey said:

If you compare Ireland to England, England has a 2.5x higher death rate per capita right now.

I guess that’s the difference between cancelling st Patrick’s day and letting Cheltenham happen.

Scotland's is half that of England. They squeezed the Murrayfield match in while they could. Same policies, much lower population density.

I've been watching your posts on here for a couple of weeks Rick and they are unbalanced. Everything is bad. The UK is terrible. We should have done more. Of everything.

I think you need to step away from the news somehow.

+1.

I've said the same thing and to be fair its not just Rick. It wasn't that long back that somebody commented on how certain people must be googling 'negative UK ÇOVID news' or similar every morning before posting.

I'd love to see some of this lot running the show instead of the government.

Do you think that you need to specifically enter that search term to get negative news about the virus at the moment?

You may not have to, but some people probably did. And you missed the related 'UK' bit.

No searches involved... I didn't preselect which sites, and didn't know what would be there.

It's just generally a bad news story at the moment.

Standby for claims that Prof Jeremy Farrar, the director of the Wellcome Trust and a pandemics expert on the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies is part of the LMS, too.

I think you have enough members already

Stevo_666

rick_chasey said:

Yeah, it’s almost like the news coming out of the U.K. is actually bad.

I suppose you have a point: who needs to read bad news when we can just read your posts on here?