The big Coronavirus thread

kingstongraham

Of the population

coopster_the_1st

kingstongraham said:

Of the population

0.00% of the population of the Charles de Gualle aircraft carrier have died in the last month.

So what outside factors explain the difference?

Focusing on death is wrong way to look at this and will mean less optimal decisions being made

kingstongraham

tailwindhome said:

The Sunday Times is being very negative about the UK government

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/coronavirus-38-days-when-britain-sleepwalked-into-disaster-hq3b9tlgh

This first paragraph here seems bad:

kingstongraham

coopster_the_1st said:

kingstongraham said:

Of the population

0.00% of the population of the Charles de Gualle aircraft carrier have died in the last month.

So what outside factors explain the difference?

Focusing on death is wrong way to look at this and will mean less optimal decisions being made

Fuck that.

I don't share your optimism that we can quickly prevent people being fat, having diabetes or being old.

(Well, I suppose your preferred answer would quickly get rid of quite a lot.)

coopster_the_1st

kingstongraham said:

coopster_the_1st said:

kingstongraham said:

Of the population

0.00% of the population of the Charles de Gualle aircraft carrier have died in the last month.

So what outside factors explain the difference?

Focusing on death is wrong way to look at this and will mean less optimal decisions being made

censored that.

I don't share your optimism that we can quickly prevent people being fat, having diabetes or being old.

(Well, I suppose your preferred answer would quickly get rid of quite a lot.)

Type 2 diabetes and being fat are lifestyle choices.

No amount of money will prevent aging.

However, those people you list will have a worse quality of life in 10 years time. General life for them will be much worse as will the medical treatment they can receive. And the same applies to the rest of us

kingstongraham

So lockdown until they slim down? Or are all fat people going into your holiday camp?

morstar

ddraver said:

Sounds like a lot of journos at the whining lefty rag, The...*checks notes*... Sunday Times are going to need to be told to cheer up and say, '...but Holland!!" on the morrow...

You do realise we missed the early lockdown?

As did Luxembourg.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/europe/2020/03/luxembourg-coronavirus-covid-19-cases-testing-crossborder

And lots of subsequent testing hasn’t helped because movement continues.

I have only ever used Luxembourg to challenge the test amazing numbers assumption. As unless you can test pretty much everybody every day, the testing is only ever a sample.
I don’t profess to know what size that sample should be.

nickice

coopster_the_1st said:

kingstongraham said:

coopster_the_1st said:

kingstongraham said:

Of the population

0.00% of the population of the Charles de Gualle aircraft carrier have died in the last month.

So what outside factors explain the difference?

Focusing on death is wrong way to look at this and will mean less optimal decisions being made

censored that.

I don't share your optimism that we can quickly prevent people being fat, having diabetes or being old.

(Well, I suppose your preferred answer would quickly get rid of quite a lot.)

Type 2 diabetes and being fat are lifestyle choices.

Not strictly true for type 2 diabetes

DeVlaeminck

We still have Prof Giesecke who advises the Swedish govt claiming the death rate is 0.1% and we should lock down the vulnerable while the rest of us take the hit in the name of herd immunity. We do need to know how many are dying with C19 rather than dying if it - my youngest bro died of pneumonia but in reality it was cancer via the treatment for that which suppressed his immune system after a bone marrow transplant.

I don't know how we can determine that - excess deaths compared to previous years is the obvious way but then death rates do fluctuate and given lock down we might expect deaths from other factors/diseases may be different to the norm.

On another note I was out on the bike yesterday and there is a huge amount of fly tipping going on - of course the tips are closed and a minority have decided the countryside makes a good alternative.

nickice

Wheelspinner said:

nickice said:

Wheelspinner said:

tailwindhome said:

Stevo_666 said:

As I've mentioned before, the vaccine is the proper exit strategy. Testing & tracing etc is only managing the problem not solving it.

I'm not sure anyone disagrees with this.

Well, I don’t, in a practical sense anyway.

Find a vaccine in few months that works really effectively and maybe it is. Chances of that actually happening are somewhere between slim and SFA.

Here’s a list of all the vaccines available for Coronavirus infections, including for SARS and MERS:






Feel reassured now? Not for lack of trying I might add.

They gave up on a SARS vaccine as they had effectively eradicated it. MERS is so rare it's not worth the investment

“They gave up....”. That’s a clue. Studies continued for several years after the original outbreak to develop a suitable vaccine for Coronavirus type viruses but none were found that were usable.

I’m not arguing that a vaccine isn’t the [ideal] solution, to enable a return to whatever normal looks like.

Another issue will be suddenly finding a bunch of qualified people to actually *do* the research work. Sure, re-prioritise the existing people where you can but to suddenly remove expert resource from all the current programs of trials and clinical work has plenty of risk involved.

You can't just take half my sentence to try to defeat my argument. They gave up because SARS was contained so it wasn't worth the investment. If they had had the same level of investment as they have now, they would have most likely been successful. The reason they've never had a vaccine for coronaviruses is because this is the first one that it's actually been worth making one for

nickice

kingstongraham said:

coopster_the_1st said:

kingstongraham said:

Of the population

0.00% of the population of the Charles de Gualle aircraft carrier have died in the last month.

So what outside factors explain the difference?

Focusing on death is wrong way to look at this and will mean less optimal decisions being made

censored that.

I don't share your optimism that we can quickly prevent people being fat, having diabetes or being old.

(Well, I suppose your preferred answer would quickly get rid of quite a lot.)

I doubt everyone on that aircraft carrier is in tip-top shape but they will tend to be younger.

pblakeney

kingstongraham said:

So lockdown until they slim down? Or are all fat people going into your holiday camp?

It's a Logan's Run way of thinking where everything is just peachy, until you are 29 and counting....

kingstongraham

All I was saying was an estimate of mortality that implies an infection rate in New York City of 125% might be a bit low.

morstar

Thought this is quite an interesting read about virus spread. Talks about some of the counter-intuitive trends once you pass the first couple paragraphs.

https://www.citylab.com/life/2020/03/coronavirus-data-cities-rural-areas-pandemic-health-risks/607783/

coopster_the_1st

nickice said:

kingstongraham said:

coopster_the_1st said:

kingstongraham said:

Of the population

0.00% of the population of the Charles de Gualle aircraft carrier have died in the last month.

So what outside factors explain the difference?

Focusing on death is wrong way to look at this and will mean less optimal decisions being made

censored that.

I don't share your optimism that we can quickly prevent people being fat, having diabetes or being old.

(Well, I suppose your preferred answer would quickly get rid of quite a lot.)

I doubt everyone on that aircraft carrier is in tip-top shape but they will tend to be younger.

They will also be largely male which puts them in a higher risk group.

However, and this is not aimed at you as you get it, many people are only focusing on deaths and thus making short term panic decisions which the rest of us are going to have to live with for many years and decades to our detriment, when most of these people are going to die of C19 anyway, just in the next 12 months instead of the next 12 weeks.

To put it quite simply "The cure cannot be worse than the disease"

kingstongraham

Sure, sure. Most obese people die within a year.

coopster_the_1st

kingstongraham said:

Sure, sure. Most obese people die within a year.

Most obese people are not going to die from C19.

Obese people will make up a small percentage of the less than 0.5% that will die from C19.
And this makes the point precisely, you are thinking emotionally rather than pragmatically. It is simply that being obese increases your chances of being one of the "<0.5%"

kingstongraham

You're guessing.

rick_chasey

https://twitter.com/bbcnewsnight/status/1251541051602542599?s=21

News night explain why Germany is doing so much better than the U.K.

Note that Merkel makes it clear their exit strategy involves getting infection rates to below testing rates so they can trace and track.

pangolin

pangolin said:

morstar said:

“ One thing very visible to us in London intensive care units now is how diabetes, high blood pressure and possibly being a little overweight, seem to be such potent risk factors for having a severe lung illness, perhaps even more so than having an existing lung disease which you would think would be a greater risk," Dr Patel said.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52338101

Am I missing something or is this just very bad reporting and or science. From the article (talking about patients in critical care):

"more than a third were overweight - with a BMI of 25-30
38% were obese - with a BMI of over 30"

From google:

"The Health Survey for England 2017 estimates that 28.7% of adults in England are obese and a further 35.6% are overweight but not obese."

Sounds like being obese raises your risk slightly but surely that is a surprise to nobody? And overweight folk are just an accurate representation of society.

I'll repost this as we're back on obesity. Are there some other stats somewhere that point to obese people being over represented amongst covid victims? Or is it an easy/reassuring thing to believe for a group of reasonably fit cyclists.

rick_chasey

coopster_the_1st said:

nickice said:

kingstongraham said:

coopster_the_1st said:

kingstongraham said:

Of the population

0.00% of the population of the Charles de Gualle aircraft carrier have died in the last month.

So what outside factors explain the difference?

Focusing on death is wrong way to look at this and will mean less optimal decisions being made

censored that.

I don't share your optimism that we can quickly prevent people being fat, having diabetes or being old.

(Well, I suppose your preferred answer would quickly get rid of quite a lot.)

I doubt everyone on that aircraft carrier is in tip-top shape but they will tend to be younger.

They will also be largely male which puts them in a higher risk group.

However, and this is not aimed at you as you get it, many people are only focusing on deaths and thus making short term panic decisions which the rest of us are going to have to live with for many years and decades to our detriment, when most of these people are going to die of C19 anyway, just in the next 12 months instead of the next 12 weeks.

To put it quite simply "The cure cannot be worse than the disease"

We could just kill the top 3,000 wealthiest people and take their money.

Would save more lives and stimulate the economy.

That’s not ethical though. So why is it ethical to have lots of people die to keep open the economy?

morstar

rjsterry said:

morstar said:

I think population density has some good correlation to mortality rates in Europe.
Portugal seems to fare better than you’d expect on that metric but they are well isolated assuming Spain has experienced infections in the
main population centres.

John Burn Murdoch has analysed this and there is only a very weak correlation. It's not the magic key.

See thread here

https://twitter.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1249821596199596034?s=19

Rather awkwardly for some the best correlation with lower deaths is an earlier lockdown.

Not arguing against earlier lockdown. I think we all accept that is proven to be a very effective suppressant.

The analysis doesn't really prove or disprove the population density theory as he used national statistics when the outbreaks aren't seeded everywhere.

From a bit of reading I have done to try and see if what I had observed made sense or not the following is a general summary.

Highly dense urban areas can assist early spread.

"Relative to rural areas, urban centers do provide stronger chains of viral transmission, with higher rates of contact and larger numbers of infection-prone people."

https://www.citylab.com/life/2020/03/coronavirus-data-cities-rural-areas-pandemic-health-risks/607783/

London, like Luxembourg has a high desity of people and high frequency of inward and outward travel helping to establish viral spread. The number of other major cities in the UK have no baring on that outbreak.

But that is very much about the early stages. Over the full lifecycle, the population density seems largely irrelevant. If anything, the poorer health provision in less densely populated areas increases risk.

coopster_the_1st

pangolin said:

pangolin said:

morstar said:

“ One thing very visible to us in London intensive care units now is how diabetes, high blood pressure and possibly being a little overweight, seem to be such potent risk factors for having a severe lung illness, perhaps even more so than having an existing lung disease which you would think would be a greater risk," Dr Patel said.”
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52338101

Am I missing something or is this just very bad reporting and or science. From the article (talking about patients in critical care):

"more than a third were overweight - with a BMI of 25-30
38% were obese - with a BMI of over 30"

From google:

"The Health Survey for England 2017 estimates that 28.7% of adults in England are obese and a further 35.6% are overweight but not obese."

Sounds like being obese raises your risk slightly but surely that is a surprise to nobody? And overweight folk are just an accurate representation of society.

I'll repost this as we're back on obesity. Are there some other stats somewhere that point to obese people being over represented amongst covid victims? Or is it an easy/reassuring thing to believe for a group of reasonably fit cyclists.

rick_chasey

Aaaaaaaaaah

ddraver

BUT HOLLAND RICK!!!!!

rick_chasey

For those of you with a Sunday Times subbie

https://twitter.com/simon_nixon/status/1251777308261789699?s=21

(Where that paragraph came from).

tailwindhome

Michael Gove: “There are one or two aspects of the Sunday Times report that are slightly off-beam”.

morstar

rick_chasey said:

https://twitter.com/bbcnewsnight/status/1251541051602542599?s=21

News night explain why Germany is doing so much better than the U.K.

Note that Merkel makes it clear their exit strategy involves getting infection rates to below testing rates so they can trace and track.

That's a really good watch. Thanks.

I know we'll take very different things from it though. For me it underlines the UK policy has been one of allowing the virus to spread whilst "Protecting the NHS". I don't think this is in dispute, they are simply not shouting it from the rooftops.

I think where we differ is that you ultimately believe the UK are failing to suppress this in the same way the Germans are whereas I think UK are not even trying to suppress this in the same way the Germans are.

Is that a fair assessment?

If so, the debate is about what is the right policy, not why the UK failed to achieve a goal it wasn't targeting.

The inference is that we have to hope UK is at least significantly further along than Germany in terms of %age infected.

rjsterry

rick_chasey said:

https://twitter.com/bbcnewsnight/status/1251541051602542599?s=21

News night explain why Germany is doing so much better than the U.K.

Note that Merkel makes it clear their exit strategy involves getting infection rates to below testing rates so they can trace and track.

Which if the government sticks to its 5 tests we are now aiming for, too. We've just got a lot more to do to bring the two rates together.

rick_chasey