The big Coronavirus thread

rick_chasey

Why is that fanciful?

Because the UK failed to prepare for that strategy? Because it locked down too late so the number of infection was too high?

Why the obsession with Singapore? Plenty of bigger nations have fewer deaths per capita.

Stevo_666

First.Aspect said:

rick_chasey said:

rick_chasey said:

john80 said:

rick_chasey 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.

So what is the good news in the U.K. peaking mucher higher than the Italy?

I mean, f@ck me, thousands more are dying than in other comparable nations and it’s all “you’re a doomonger”.

Strap on a pair and smell the sh!t.

Heavy on the criticism bit light on the solution. Once you accept there is not a silver bullet you might gain some perspective.

Have offered plenty of suggestions, you just need to pay more attention.

Lockdown sooner so you can get on top of testing, then you test and track.

That then allows for more specific measures that don’t involve such a gigantic lockdown for so long.

Test and track is a pipe dream. Tell you what, lets all take 10 seconds to see how that's worked in Singapore imagine how much better it would work in a country with 5 x the area and 12 x the population.

If you really think that strategy is the "answer" then you are an idiot. Sorry.

I was trying to tell him that, but slightly more politely.

Well said.

rjsterry

rick_chasey said:

rick_chasey said:

john80 said:

rick_chasey 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.

So what is the good news in the U.K. peaking mucher higher than the Italy?

I mean, f@ck me, thousands more are dying than in other comparable nations and it’s all “you’re a doomonger”.

Strap on a pair and smell the sh!t.

Heavy on the criticism bit light on the solution. Once you accept there is not a silver bullet you might gain some perspective.

Have offered plenty of suggestions, you just need to pay more attention.

Lockdown sooner so you can get on top of testing, then you test and track.

That then allows for more specific measures that don’t involve such a gigantic lockdown for so long.

We can't lockdown sooner than we did. That has happened. It's very possible when this is all over, we will have enough data to be able to say that we probably should have moved quicker, but right now we don't and we are where we are. The best you can hope for there is being better prepared for the next one in n years time. From where we are now there is a strong argument for widespread testing to better understand the distribution of cases, but arguing about when we should have locked down on the basis of incomplete data is not useful.

coopster_the_1st

coopster_the_1st said:

Jeremy.89 said:

morstar said:

rick_chasey said:

morstar said:

rick_chasey said:

nickice said:

john80 said:

Singapore has over 200 new cases per day and a large number cant be tracked or traced to a source. Where you boys going with this. I would say they are rapidly getting into the same boat as everybody else.

Agreed. At some point it's going to get out of control without a full lockdown.

Explain Germany’s 60-70% fewer deaths in comparison to the U.K then?

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. If those deaths come eventually anyway...

Amazing

It’s not a flippant statement. It’s the sort of dilemma the leaders are having to rationalise and respond to objectively.

Simply having a low mortality rate in the early days is meaningless if the end result is worse.

If we ramp up our death numbers to 2000 a day, and assume a mortality rate of 0.5% we can have 60% of the population infected within 100 days.

Get herd immunity done?

Based on your calculations Saturday 18th July

Additionally as more people gain immunity more social interaction is needed to maintain the R0.

We could be back to a much more normal way of life sometime in June, the vulnerable and high risk still isolated but parts of the rest of society back to normal.

To expand on this further all the current government intervention plans are for a 3 month period, which ends on Monday 22nd June.

The government could easily release an advisory plan with these dates used if it was not for those up there on the moral high ground (I can't see how social distancing is being maintained with the number of those up there )

ddraver

First.Aspect said:

Rick, what should be done? The floor is yours.

This is straightforward Sealioning dude...

Stevo_666

nickice said:

morstar said:

rick_chasey said:

So Germany got its first cases roughly the same time as the U.K. and yet they’ve only had 2800 deaths vs 10,000 U.K.

Who wants to defend the U.K. actions vs that?

There’s a reason it’s delivering ventilators and kit to the U.K. and not the other way around - Britain is the charity case here.

Your underlying assumption is that this trend can be extrapolated out for the entire lifecycle of the pandemic.

Do you acknowledge any possibility that may not be the case?

Even epidemiologists haven't been able to explain why Germany is different yet he's using it as a model to bash the UK.

This appears to be Ricks approach:
- Look at the stats and find a country that is top of the table or close to it for a given metric based on current reported figures
(for example S. Korea for infection rates or Germany for mortality rates).
- Say 'Aha! That country is doing better than we are/we are crap at this.'
- Move onto looking for the next example to support his pre-existing views.

It was commented on recently by more than person that his approach is unbalanced. It's also getting a bit tedious IMO.

sungod

nickice said:

sungod said:

rick_chasey said:

On what basis would the U.K. not accept it?

Most people give up that info for free, and that’s before the wide acceptance of CCTV everywhere. London is the world centre of CCTV.

yep, on top of which, everyone carrying an operational mobile phone is already being tracked in real time, the carriers make this data available to government and in some cases to anyone with the money, it varies by country, but the default assumption should always be that you are traceable

it's not high accuracy one-shot, but with enough data and compute resource it's enough to track people you want to monitor/arrest/kill

widespread use of backend onboarding services extends global visibility to guest wifi, if you give a real email address/other id to register for free/guest wifi then that adds to the mix, some governments mandate providing a mobile number (so that an sms can be sent with a pin to access wifi) then they can link cellular subscriber identity to wifi usage, bluetooth adds further options

This is simply not the same as having a compulsory app on your phone as they do in South Korea. I think we understand that we are already tracked but to do it so openly is completely different.

never claimed it was

i doubt most people have any idea of the degree of monitoring already in place

kingstongraham

So in Singapore, they are trying to test and track where people who have the virus are and who they have been in contact with, and because of that, they now know that it is spreading, so they are locking down to get control. It sounds sensible.

surrey_commuter

Stevo_666 said:

rick_chasey said:

nickice said:

john80 said:

Singapore has over 200 new cases per day and a large number cant be tracked or traced to a source. Where you boys going with this. I would say they are rapidly getting into the same boat as everybody else.

Agreed. At some point it's going to get out of control without a full lockdown.

Explain Germany’s 60-70% fewer deaths in comparison to the U.K then?

Have a look at the BBC website. Because they are testing more than we are - including large numbers with only mild symptoms, their mortality rate appears to be lower.

As for absolute numbers, who knows. It's a complex area with multiple potential factors. What is your explanation?

Also we await with baited breath your next statistical comparison with a country where we come off worse on some metric or other at this point in the crisis. I'm sure there are more if you look hard enough.

You should check the stats, he really is not digging around for random stats to rubbish the UK Govt’s C19 strategy, we are top 10 for being rubbish in most meaningful categories

Edited to add this link to some great raw data
https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries

kingstongraham

No-one knows the best path forward, everyone will make mistakes. Seems a good idea to try to steer a path that learns from other countries' good or bad decisions, and avoids unnecessary deaths.

Bold decisions can pay off, but might not. I'm still hoping that our leaders will err slightly towards caution.

Stevo_666

surrey_commuter said:

Stevo_666 said:

rick_chasey said:

nickice said:

john80 said:

Singapore has over 200 new cases per day and a large number cant be tracked or traced to a source. Where you boys going with this. I would say they are rapidly getting into the same boat as everybody else.

Agreed. At some point it's going to get out of control without a full lockdown.

Explain Germany’s 60-70% fewer deaths in comparison to the U.K then?

Have a look at the BBC website. Because they are testing more than we are - including large numbers with only mild symptoms, their mortality rate appears to be lower.

As for absolute numbers, who knows. It's a complex area with multiple potential factors. What is your explanation?

Also we await with baited breath your next statistical comparison with a country where we come off worse on some metric or other at this point in the crisis. I'm sure there are more if you look hard enough.

You should check the stats, he really is not digging around for random stats to rubbish the UK Govt’s C19 strategy, we are top 10 for being rubbish in most meaningful categories

So do you think that Ricks arguments on this thread are balanced?

surrey_commuter

kingstongraham said:

So in Singapore, they are trying to test and track where people who have the virus are and who they have been in contact with, and because of that, they now know that it is spreading, so they are locking down to get control. It sounds sensible.

How is that any better than our 6 week wait to count dead bodies?

It is people like you who took the Great out of Britain

Jeremy.89

coopster_the_1st said:

Jeremy.89 said:

morstar said:

rick_chasey said:

morstar said:

rick_chasey said:

nickice said:

john80 said:

Singapore has over 200 new cases per day and a large number cant be tracked or traced to a source. Where you boys going with this. I would say they are rapidly getting into the same boat as everybody else.

Agreed. At some point it's going to get out of control without a full lockdown.

Explain Germany’s 60-70% fewer deaths in comparison to the U.K then?

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. If those deaths come eventually anyway...

Amazing

It’s not a flippant statement. It’s the sort of dilemma the leaders are having to rationalise and respond to objectively.

Simply having a low mortality rate in the early days is meaningless if the end result is worse.

If we ramp up our death numbers to 2000 a day, and assume a mortality rate of 0.5% we can have 60% of the population infected within 100 days.

Get herd immunity done?

Based on your calculations Saturday 18th July

Additionally as more people gain immunity more social interaction is needed to maintain the R0.

We could be back to a much more normal way of life sometime in June, the vulnerable and high risk still isolated but parts of the rest of society back to normal.

Calculations that include doubling the current death rate, and assuming that a totally unrealistic level of control is available.

If we keep the death rate where its at currently, we're looking at 200 days.

Its also based on 60% requirement to get herd immunity, which is, the minimum I have seen, if we assume 80% and keeping the rate hovering around 1000 a day, then a vaccine starts to come into play much more.

Ultimately aiming purely for herd immunity through exposure is going to be an extremely difficult sell. Why should I put myself unnecessarily in harms way? Simultaneously continuing like this for 12 months in the hope there's a vaccine round the corner is not practical for most. Then again, tightening and relaxing the lockdown is logistically challenging, do we send kids back to school for one week every month to try and give things a good shake up...or maybe we could do fortnightly openings of the local wetherspoons.

pblakeney

This morning’s cheery thought.
A tested and viable vaccine will be available at some point.
Who gets it first? The needy? The popular? The highest bidder? Nationalistic, it’s ours we get it first, sod the rest?

kingstongraham

If that were the aim, then opening schools up while keeping most of the rest of the lockdown and social distancing would expose younger families first obviously.

Keep the pubs and shops and cinemas etc closed, and tell people to stay home and not to take the kids to see the grandparents to prevent it spreading outside those social circles.

morstar

pblakeney said:

This morning’s cheery thought.
A tested and viable vaccine will be available at some point.
Who gets it first? The needy? The popular? The highest bidder? Nationalistic, it’s ours we get it first, sod the rest?

Influencers first. They are clearly the leaders in our society.
But seriously, good question. And how long to distribute to a large enough extent to turn off lock down.

pangolin

morstar said:

pblakeney said:

This morning’s cheery thought.
A tested and viable vaccine will be available at some point.
Who gets it first? The needy? The popular? The highest bidder? Nationalistic, it’s ours we get it first, sod the rest?

Influencers first. They are clearly the leaders in our society.
But seriously, good question. And how long to distribute to a large enough extent to turn off lock down.

In Contagion (film) they did a lottery based on your birthday. 1 year for everyone to get the vaccine. Lots of the other parts of the film were pretty accurate.

Stevo_666

Stevo_666 said:

surrey_commuter said:

Stevo_666 said:

rick_chasey said:

nickice said:

john80 said:

Singapore has over 200 new cases per day and a large number cant be tracked or traced to a source. Where you boys going with this. I would say they are rapidly getting into the same boat as everybody else.

Agreed. At some point it's going to get out of control without a full lockdown.

Explain Germany’s 60-70% fewer deaths in comparison to the U.K then?

Have a look at the BBC website. Because they are testing more than we are - including large numbers with only mild symptoms, their mortality rate appears to be lower.

As for absolute numbers, who knows. It's a complex area with multiple potential factors. What is your explanation?

Also we await with baited breath your next statistical comparison with a country where we come off worse on some metric or other at this point in the crisis. I'm sure there are more if you look hard enough.

You should check the stats, he really is not digging around for random stats to rubbish the UK Govt’s C19 strategy, we are top 10 for being rubbish in most meaningful categories

So do you think that Ricks arguments on this thread are balanced?

I'm interested in your view on this SC.

Your statement above does seem to imply that you have gone through the same exercise of looking at the stats.

I already have that link bookmarked btw.

coopster_the_1st

Jeremy.89 said:

coopster_the_1st said:

Jeremy.89 said:

morstar said:

rick_chasey said:

morstar said:

rick_chasey said:

nickice said:

john80 said:

Singapore has over 200 new cases per day and a large number cant be tracked or traced to a source. Where you boys going with this. I would say they are rapidly getting into the same boat as everybody else.

Agreed. At some point it's going to get out of control without a full lockdown.

Explain Germany’s 60-70% fewer deaths in comparison to the U.K then?

It’s a marathon, not a sprint. If those deaths come eventually anyway...

Amazing

It’s not a flippant statement. It’s the sort of dilemma the leaders are having to rationalise and respond to objectively.

Simply having a low mortality rate in the early days is meaningless if the end result is worse.

If we ramp up our death numbers to 2000 a day, and assume a mortality rate of 0.5% we can have 60% of the population infected within 100 days.

Get herd immunity done?

Based on your calculations Saturday 18th July

Additionally as more people gain immunity more social interaction is needed to maintain the R0.

We could be back to a much more normal way of life sometime in June, the vulnerable and high risk still isolated but parts of the rest of society back to normal.

Calculations that include doubling the current death rate, and assuming that a totally unrealistic level of control is available.

If we keep the death rate where its at currently, we're looking at 200 days.

Its also based on 60% requirement to get herd immunity, which is, the minimum I have seen, if we assume 80% and keeping the rate hovering around 1000 a day, then a vaccine starts to come into play much more.

Ultimately aiming purely for herd immunity through exposure is going to be an extremely difficult sell. Why should I put myself unnecessarily in harms way? Simultaneously continuing like this for 12 months in the hope there's a vaccine round the corner is not practical for most. Then again, tightening and relaxing the lockdown is logistically challenging, do we send kids back to school for one week every month to try and give things a good shake up...or maybe we could do fortnightly openings of the local wetherspoons.

Lower the mortality rate and we can move the date closer. The calculations can work both ways. I was putting a date to your calculations to make it more real from a time point of view. For example the 200 days calculation is Friday 30th October which is no where near as palatable as 18th July.

Unless there is a huge error in the unlock modelling I don't see the need for the lockdown being tightened again, especially as they will err on the side of caution.

Schools re-opened for any kids who do not live with a vulnerable person(promote non-motorised transport to/from school) could happen from next Monday(20th). It is starting to look like the cancellation of GCSE's and A levels was a panic driven decision.

kingstongraham

First the antibody test please. No point vaccinating me if I've had the virus.

Pross

It does feel like for some on here that if you aren't fully condemning the UK response then you are supportive of whole scale unavoidable mass slaughter which is pretty insulting when you've lost a family member to the virus.

Yes, countries can try to learn from each other but this is so fast moving and the picture is a bit confused as to what does and doesn't work well so by time the data is processed it can be too late to implement. You also can't assume that what works for one works the other and have to accept that issues such as population size / density, local and international movement, culture and yes even what is deemed an acceptable outcome politically all have to be taken into account.

Hopefully when / if a second wave occurs there will be a better understanding of what will or won't work and there will be a quicker and more effective response.

Do I think the UK Government has got everything right? Of course not, they've continued to over promise and under deliver on testing and PPE. They could have possibly brought in the lockdown a bit earlier but I felt they were right I trying to get financial measures in place first in order to get greater buy in to the process and as none of us (as far as I'm aware) work in emergency planning we won't know all the issues that needed to be discussed and resolved before it was announced. On the other hand I was impressed with the speed at which additional bed and ICU capacity has been brought into use, I really didn't think we could turn it around that quickly and it appears to have become available before it was desperately needed.

TL;DR the UK has done some things reasonably well and could have done better elsewhere. What works for one country doesn't necessarily work for another. Failing to criticise everything the UK does or doesn't do doesn't mean you are happy for people to die.

First.Aspect

pblakeney said:

This morning’s cheery thought.
A tested and viable vaccine will be available at some point.
Who gets it first? The needy? The popular? The highest bidder? Nationalistic, it’s ours we get it first, sod the rest?

Depends on who finds it, who can make it fastest and who buys it first. Who needs it most is going to be irrelevant. See, for example, face masks being turned back to the US at Canadian border, or UK companies prioritising PPE supply to England, not Scotland.

Elbows out.

morstar

Italy have tested 3x UK rate and found twice as many cases.

Seeing as we are extrapolating nuanced numbers using blunt assumptions. We can assume we have had 50% more cases than Italy and just over half the deaths.

We know the stats are incomplete so nothing can be read into them with any certainty.

It is not impossible to think that our infections have spread far further than Italy and we have benefitted from less overload on health service and preferable demographics.

We have definitely hit our largest population centres in London & the West Midlands

kingstonian

Pross said:

It does feel like for some on here that if you aren't fully condemning the UK response then you are supportive of whole scale unavoidable mass slaughter which is pretty insulting when you've lost a family member to the virus.

Yes, countries can try to learn from each other but this is so fast moving and the picture is a bit confused as to what does and doesn't work well so by time the data is processed it can be too late to implement. You also can't assume that what works for one works the other and have to accept that issues such as population size / density, local and international movement, culture and yes even what is deemed an acceptable outcome politically all have to be taken into account.

Hopefully when / if a second wave occurs there will be a better understanding of what will or won't work and there will be a quicker and more effective response.

Do I think the UK Government has got everything right? Of course not, they've continued to over promise and under deliver on testing and PPE. They could have possibly brought in the lockdown a bit earlier but I felt they were right I trying to get financial measures in place first in order to get greater buy in to the process and as none of us (as far as I'm aware) work in emergency planning we won't know all the issues that needed to be discussed and resolved before it was announced. On the other hand I was impressed with the speed at which additional bed and ICU capacity has been brought into use, I really didn't think we could turn it around that quickly and it appears to have become available before it was desperately needed.

TL;DR the UK has done some things reasonably well and could have done better elsewhere. What works for one country doesn't necessarily work for another. Failing to criticise everything the UK does or doesn't do doesn't mean you are happy for people to die.

Good, balanced post

Pross

surrey_commuter said:

kingstongraham said:

So in Singapore, they are trying to test and track where people who have the virus are and who they have been in contact with, and because of that, they now know that it is spreading, so they are locking down to get control. It sounds sensible.

How is that any better than our 6 week wait to count dead bodies?

It is people like you who took the Great out of Britain

See, what does overly emotive and hysterical comments like this add to anything? The system is what has always been in place. I'm sure it would be relatively straightforward to get a new system in place to provide more real-time recording (although who knows with the history of public sector IT projects) but then how do you go about picking up those deaths that occurred between the last one recorded under the old system and new ones being recorded as they happen?

kingstongraham

I'd say that the government has done OK given the position that we were going into this in. There have been missteps, of course, and they don't really seem to be articulating any next step, but at the moment I can accept that this is a deliberate messaging strategy.

What they all learned from "Get Brexit Done" is working here. Constant repetition of "Stay Home, Protect the NHS, Save Lives" is doing the job they want it to. Also, the press conferences where they always ask if a journalist has a follow up question is refreshing and will keep them on board.

They should have more tests though, and they need to be credible. If you can't get the tests, say what you can get. If you don't do it, say why. Don't try and bluff your way through it.

Pross

pblakeney said:

This morning’s cheery thought.
A tested and viable vaccine will be available at some point.
Who gets it first? The needy? The popular? The highest bidder? Nationalistic, it’s ours we get it first, sod the rest?

Presumably those at highest risk. That's basically how the annual flu jab works.

john80

pblakeney said:

This morning’s cheery thought.
A tested and viable vaccine will be available at some point.
Who gets it first? The needy? The popular? The highest bidder? Nationalistic, it’s ours we get it first, sod the rest?

Any sensible nation would prioritise their own people with central government dictating what was free to sell abroad. What goes abroad is done at a good profit.

coopster_the_1st

john80 said:

pblakeney said:

This morning’s cheery thought.
A tested and viable vaccine will be available at some point.
Who gets it first? The needy? The popular? The highest bidder? Nationalistic, it’s ours we get it first, sod the rest?

Any sensible nation would prioritise their own people with central government dictating what was free to sell abroad. What goes abroad is done at a good profit.

The vaccine will be shared freely to all available places that can produce it. Getting the world economy started is enough. There is no need to profit from it locally or nationally.

Pross

If a US company gets a vaccine first Trump will probably hold off licensing it to other countries until they pay enough to cover the trillions spent on the US response. Hopefully one of Bill Gates' sponsored companies will come up with something and make it open source for worldwide production.