The big Coronavirus thread

rick_chasey

Anyone else have to look up furlough in the past fortnight?

Love how everyone uses it like they grew up using it.

rjsterry

TheBigBean said:

Stevo_666 said:

working mothers edged out of their job.

I know I will sound like a Guardian reading lover of political correctness, but is it really that hard to write "working parents.."?

Edit comment about the Telegraph not Stevo 666

Notwithstanding your own arrangements, there will be plenty of households and employers with rather more old-fashioned views.

rjsterry

nickice said:

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

rjsterry said:

Stevo_666 said:

Interesting article on Sweden going out on a limb with its approach in the Telegraph:
https://telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/04/02/swedes-rest-world-engaging-reckless-experiment/


"Faced with what many there believe will be a manageable illness, Sweden has decided – for now at least – that lockdown represents a greater risk

Now and again, my wife asks if it’s worth getting Swedish passports for our children. She has never got around to seeking British citizenship and I try to tell her that she’d better get her skates on before Priti Patel comes around asking for her papers. But the kids: how would a Swedish passport possibly benefit them? We run through what might go wrong for a country and, in every eventuality, Britain always seems the better bet. But now Swedes have a fresh argument: that their country might be the only one in Europe to come out of the corona crisis with the economy semi-intact.

There is, still, no lockdown there. Shopping centres remain open, as are most schools and firms. Many work from home, many don’t – all are at liberty to choose. When I called a friend in Stockholm to ask about the Swedish experiment, he was on his way to a book launch. He’s still taking his sons to football matches and is proud that Sweden is keeping calm and carrying on. To him there is no Swedish experiment: it’s the rest of Europe that is experimenting – by locking down economies in response to a virus which may prove to be no more deadly than flu.

It’s not that Sweden is in denial. It has had 5,466 confirmed cases, 282 deaths. Coronavirus has been found in a third of Stockholm’s (many) elderly care homes. But the debate there is still where the British debate was three weeks ago when the Prime Minister was resisting lockdown. This changed for Britain when Imperial College London published its study suggesting that avoiding lockdown could mean 250,000 deaths. This logic applies to Sweden – but the country of the Nobel Prize and the Karolinska Institute believes its own experts. They disagree with Imperial. They still see Covid-19 as a manageable risk.

The face of Sweden’s response has been Anders Tegnell, the state epidemiologist, who has held daily press conferences. Politicians have taken a back seat. His team have published their own assessment of the virus and its likely trajectory, showing it peaking with about 250 needing intensive care in Stockholm. The nation’s hospitals, he says, can cope. A 600-bed temporary ward is opening tomorrow, south of the city – and when it does, a quarter of all intensive care beds will be used. So for now, no reason to impose any more restrictions.

He urges caution, and Swedes are responding. Sixth formers and university students are learning from home. Sports fixtures continue, but with spectators more spaced out. Online meet-ups are replacing real ones, elbow-bumping (remember that?) replaced handshakes long ago. A naturally cautious country is taking Tegnell’s advice.


But crucially, he isn’t asking Swedes to trust him. Hospital data is published all the time, so Sweden’s “experiment” is being conducted in the open. Every time a patient is admitted, the data is updated on a Covid live website in striking detail. Average age: 60. Those with diabetes: 26 per cent. With cardiovascular or lung disease: 24 per cent. With at least one other underlying health condition: 77 per cent. Sweden is also updating its statistics to say if someone died from Covid, or of something else – but with Covid. This might reduce the “death” figure by two thirds.

If Tegnell’s analysis proves wrong, the public will be able to see it unravel on his dashboard. In which case, he says, he stands ready to tighten things up. Sweden’s famous love of transparency – you can look up your neighbour’s salary online if you feel the urge – is being used as a tool to foster trust. So far, it’s working: polls show that three quarters of Swedes support the strategy. The debate, overall, is very different from Britain’s. There is no shortage of epidemiologists in the Swedish press, backing Tegnell and denouncing the “desk-based theory” of the Imperial College study.

The Swedish prime minister is asked if he has ceded power to Tegnell: he doesn’t seem offended. Time will tell if we made the right choice, he says. Over here, this would be seen as dangerous, even heartless. Doesn’t he want to save lives? But Swedes are also looking at Britain’s surging unemployment, one in five small firms on the verge of going bust, children deprived of education, working mothers edged out of their job. That also hits lives.

And this case is being made, in Sweden, in a way it might not be over here. Kerstin Hessius, who runs a government pension fund, has been arguing that money vs lives is a false choice. Rising unemployment hits pensions directly,” she says. “What’s more, the tax base disappears – then we have to start cutting welfare.” And Swedes should be proud that “we have not extinguished the entire society, as many other countries have done”.


The risk is pretty obvious. Tegnell might soon find out that the virus spreads far faster than he thought – and by then it would be too late. Sweden’s hospitals would be overrun. A letter signed by 2,000 luminaries appeared in the papers this week saying it was time for Sweden to fall in line with the rest of the world. Åre, where I had hoped to be skiing next week, will shut its lifts the week leading up to Easter. Posters had started appearing in train stations, put up by locals, telling visitors they were endangering lives by refusing to stay home.

Sweden is not immune from what is, now, a fierce global recession. Unemployment has spiked and bailouts have started – albeit ones that will be easier to pay off than Britain’s. Swedes tend to have more of a sense of the economy as the engine of the welfare state: damage one, and you damage the other. You also damage public health, society, education and democracy. As one former politician told me, Sweden is not resisting lockdown in spite of being a strong social democratic state. It’s doing it because it’s a strong social democratic state.

For now, Stockholm is perhaps the last capital in Europe where there are signs of normal life – with shoppers, skateboarders, pensioners and commuters (albeit in far fewer numbers). They know who to thank for their liberty. On Vasagatan, there’s a poster taped to a wall saying “All power to Tegnell, state epidemiologist”. Whether they’ll be saying this at the end of the month is, of course, another question entirely."

Interesting. Does emphasise that we still don't quite know what we are dealing with.

True.

Worth keeping an eye on Sweden, amongst others.

Much lower population density than ours (~25% of the UK). See also Canada. Outbreaks can only take hold where there are enough people interacting.

But Stockholm has a higher population density than London. It's hard to use population density of a country overall as Sweden (like Scotland and Canada, for example) has low population density because vast parts of the country are sparsely inhabited.

Who knows at the moment, but I've also been struck by the reports on here from people in Cornwall and Devon.

briantrumpet

rick_chasey said:

Anyone else have to look up furlough in the past fortnight?

Love how everyone uses it like they grew up using it.

I looked it up in the Oxford English Dictionary for its etymology and history. It's been around a long time in military circles. The older spelling was usually something like 'furlow', and the -ough spelling only becoming standard in the 19th century.

tailwindhome

rick_chasey said:

Anyone else have to look up furlough in the past fortnight?

Love how everyone uses it like they grew up using it.

It's the new 'backstop'

TheBigBean

rjsterry said:

TheBigBean said:

Stevo_666 said:

working mothers edged out of their job.

I know I will sound like a Guardian reading lover of political correctness, but is it really that hard to write "working parents.."?

Edit comment about the Telegraph not Stevo 666

Notwithstanding your own arrangements, there will be plenty of households and employers with rather more old-fashioned views.

Something which is of little relevance in my view especially when it is simply a case of swapping one word for another.

capt_slog

I heard a bit on the radio, not sure who it was, but asking if it was reasonable that a football club who are paying the players in £millions should be asking the government for money to furlough their other staff, groundsmen, admin etc.

Nope.

tailwindhome

capt_slog said:

I heard a bit on the radio, not sure who it was, but asking if it was reasonable that a football club who are paying the players in £millions should be asking the government for money to furlough their other staff, groundsmen, admin etc.

Nope.

Why?

kingstonian

capt_slog said:

I heard a bit on the radio, not sure who it was, but asking if it was reasonable that a football club who are paying the players in £millions should be asking the government for money to furlough their other staff, groundsmen, admin etc.

Nope.

Another way of looking at it is that the income taxes those players are paying will more than cover the cost of the furlough of the other staff, groundsmen, admin etc.

Stevo_666

The reason is probably the way the relief is structured. Companies can claim back up to 80% of the employees wages or £2,500 per month, whichever is lower. So above a threshold salary of £37,500 pa, it gets progressively more expensive to furlough employees.

briantrumpet

If the person who drafted me for a couple of miles (without asking) catches it from me, I'll know why.

https://mobile.twitter.com/nypost/status/1245959372565602304

kingstongraham

Stevo_666 said:

The reason is probably the way the relief is structured. Companies can claim back up to 80% of the employees wages or £2,500 per month, whichever is lower. So above a threshold salary of £37,500 pa, it gets progressively more expensive to furlough employees.

Only if you continue to pay them their full salary. It is at the discretion of the employer to top up the payment.

focuszing723

briantrumpet said:

If the person who drafted me for a couple of miles (without asking) catches it from me, I'll know why.

https://mobile.twitter.com/nypost/status/1245959372565602304

That's the last of my pleasure gone then. I used to love to leave a floater.

rjsterry

A thought on China's figures and the apparent mismatch between these and the numbers of cremations: if they were making use of the same tests that Spain, etc sent back for giving too many false negatives then that would lead to under reporting of deaths attributed to C19. That or straight fiddling.

kingstonian

rjsterry said:

A thought on China's figures and the apparent mismatch between these and the numbers of cremations: if they were making use of the same tests that Spain, etc sent back for giving too many false negatives then that would lead to under reporting of deaths attributed to C19. That or straight fiddling.

Probably both

coopster_the_1st

Stevo_666 said:

Here's quite a good article about understanding the death toll and the trade off between lives saved by lockdown type measures vs the impact of those on health and longevity:
https://bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

It's something that has been debated a lot on here so quite relevant.

From the article:

Nearly 10% of people aged over 80 will die in the next year, Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, at the University of Cambridge, points out, and the risk of them dying if infected with coronavirus is almost exactly the same.

So if you are over 80 your chances of dying this year are the same as dying from C19...

Stevo_666

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

The reason is probably the way the relief is structured. Companies can claim back up to 80% of the employees wages or £2,500 per month, whichever is lower. So above a threshold salary of £37,500 pa, it gets progressively more expensive to furlough employees.

Only if you continue to pay them their full salary. It is at the discretion of the employer to top up the payment.

If that's the case then if you don't top up the payment, you don't get the money from the government...hence my point about it being more economically attractive to furlough those earning £37.5k pa or less.

Stevo_666

kingstonian said:

rjsterry said:

A thought on China's figures and the apparent mismatch between these and the numbers of cremations: if they were making use of the same tests that Spain, etc sent back for giving too many false negatives then that would lead to under reporting of deaths attributed to C19. That or straight fiddling.

Probably both

I don't think many people believe the Chinese figures in any event.

rick_chasey

German papers challenging the 'test test test' German policy, suggesting they will eventually run out of reagents and that testing people who obviously don't have it is actually a big waste....

kingstongraham

Stevo_666 said:

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

The reason is probably the way the relief is structured. Companies can claim back up to 80% of the employees wages or £2,500 per month, whichever is lower. So above a threshold salary of £37,500 pa, it gets progressively more expensive to furlough employees.

Only if you continue to pay them their full salary. It is at the discretion of the employer to top up the payment.

If that's the case then if you don't top up the payment, you don't get the money from the government...hence my point about it being more economically attractive to furlough those earning £37.5k pa or less.

Not so, as I understood it:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme

Employers need to make a claim for wage costs through this scheme.

You will receive a grant from HMRC to cover the lower of 80% of an employee’s regular wage or £2,500 per month, plus the associated Employer National Insurance contributions and minimum automatic enrolment employer pension contributions on that subsidised wage. Fees, commission and bonuses should not be included.

At a minimum, employers must pay their employee the lower of 80% of their regular wage or £2,500 per month. An employer can also choose to top up an employee’s salary beyond this but is not obliged to under this scheme.

nickice

rjsterry said:

A thought on China's figures and the apparent mismatch between these and the numbers of cremations: if they were making use of the same tests that Spain, etc sent back for giving too many false negatives then that would lead to under reporting of deaths attributed to C19. That or straight fiddling.

What if China cremated everyone who died (irrespective of whether they had COVID 19)? Could that not explain the numbers?

rjsterry

coopster_the_1st said:

Stevo_666 said:

Here's quite a good article about understanding the death toll and the trade off between lives saved by lockdown type measures vs the impact of those on health and longevity:
https://bbc.co.uk/news/health-51979654

It's something that has been debated a lot on here so quite relevant.

From the article:

Nearly 10% of people aged over 80 will die in the next year, Prof Sir David Spiegelhalter, at the University of Cambridge, points out, and the risk of them dying if infected with coronavirus is almost exactly the same.

So if you are over 80 your chances of dying this year are the same as dying from C19...

And when you want to find the probability of A OR B happening...

rjsterry

nickice said:

rjsterry said:

A thought on China's figures and the apparent mismatch between these and the numbers of cremations: if they were making use of the same tests that Spain, etc sent back for giving too many false negatives then that would lead to under reporting of deaths attributed to C19. That or straight fiddling.

What if China cremated everyone who died (irrespective of whether they had COVID 19)? Could that not explain the numbers?

Lots of options. It was just a thought on their apparently low numbers.

rjsterry

Stevo_666 said:

kingstonian said:

rjsterry said:

A thought on China's figures and the apparent mismatch between these and the numbers of cremations: if they were making use of the same tests that Spain, etc sent back for giving too many false negatives then that would lead to under reporting of deaths attributed to C19. That or straight fiddling.

Probably both

I don't think many people believe the Chinese figures in any event.

No, but important to know why they are what they are. We then still might be able to learn something from them.

Stevo_666

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

kingstongraham said:

Stevo_666 said:

The reason is probably the way the relief is structured. Companies can claim back up to 80% of the employees wages or £2,500 per month, whichever is lower. So above a threshold salary of £37,500 pa, it gets progressively more expensive to furlough employees.

Only if you continue to pay them their full salary. It is at the discretion of the employer to top up the payment.

If that's the case then if you don't top up the payment, you don't get the money from the government...hence my point about it being more economically attractive to furlough those earning £37.5k pa or less.

Not so, as I understood it:

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/claim-for-wage-costs-through-the-coronavirus-job-retention-scheme

Employers need to make a claim for wage costs through this scheme.

You will receive a grant from HMRC to cover the lower of 80% of an employee’s regular wage or £2,500 per month, plus the associated Employer National Insurance contributions and minimum automatic enrolment employer pension contributions on that subsidised wage. Fees, commission and bonuses should not be included.

At a minimum, employers must pay their employee the lower of 80% of their regular wage or £2,500 per month. An employer can also choose to top up an employee’s salary beyond this but is not obliged to under this scheme.

Depends how many employers would try to pay their employees the minimum or less then the normal pay. Clearly unless they stick to the minimum legal amount, its cheaper to do that for lower paid workers.

TheBigBean

Another thing I have wondered is whether Korea has milder strain. They have 175 deaths in total versus 684 in the UK for today alone. It is not a young country either - Korean women have the highest life expectancy in the world.

ddraver

It would seem to be phenomenally good luck that in an international outbreak they have only been affected by a minor strain

focuszing723

South Korea amongst other Asian countries have a culture of wearing face masks. They also have had experience in dealing with situations like this with sars and mers.

focuszing723

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gAk7aX5hksU

This is worth a watch. An expert from South Korea explains why they have coped better than other countries.

TheBigBean

focuszing723 said:

South Korea amongst other Asian countries have a culture of wearing face masks. They also have had experience in dealing with situations like this with sars and mers.

Yes, they also have more intensive care beds, good use of technology, no worries about app tracking, experience of things drifting over from China and masking wearing etc. but the difference is still fairly stunning unless the theory is that they simply don't have that many infections because of the above.