Liverpool vs Valencia and Cheltenham cost many lives

[A1X]

Let's not forget if it were not for Arteta's positive test we would almost certainly have played the Arsenal game to a full house on Saturday 14th March (the FA and Premier League only acted as a result of that, they confirmed we would be going ahead as late as 9pm on Thursday 12th we would be), as would every other football league club. In hindsight, thank goodness they were cancelled because otherwise things could have got extremely bad.

 

[MJsGhost]

Let's not forget if it were not for Arteta's positive test we would almost certainly have played the Arsenal game to a full house on Saturday 14th March (the FA and Premier League only acted as a result of that, they confirmed we would be going ahead as late as 9pm on Thursday 12th we would be), as would every other football league club. In hindsight, thank goodness they were cancelled because otherwise things could have got extremely bad.

Indeed.

There was a poll at the time, with 80%+ intending to go if the match was on, so even if not quite a full house it would have been a big risk for an outbreak in Brighton

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

What we got was a public led lock down followed by government policy. It was obvious it was both necessary and incoming and there was a period of uncertainty, where deciding to work from home, without your employees approval, or cancelling an event or trip was entirely at your own risk. I know of a number of people who got ill after flying to Dubai around February half term. The destination itself wasn't an infection hot spot, the journey there and back was the risk. Easy to see with hindsight, but your argument suggests they favoured what was popular at the time over tough decisions. Not a great leadership style that.

No indeed. I may have been too easily taken in by Boris' boyish cheeky charm at the time.

 

[LamieRobertson]

Let's not forget if it were not for Arteta's positive test we would almost certainly have played the Arsenal game to a full house on Saturday 14th March (the FA and Premier League only acted as a result of that, they confirmed we would be going ahead as late as 9pm on Thursday 12th we would be), as would every other football league club. In hindsight, thank goodness they were cancelled because otherwise things could have got extremely bad.

Big thank you to him and the Arsenal players that went down as i was definitely going...which seems a tad foolish now

 

[Hugo Rune]

the article offers no evidence, no refered paper, analysis, not even a BBC graph, to support the position. where would these hotspots be, Cheltenham involves people coming in from far and wide. was there a spike in cases in Liverpool a week to 10 days afterwards, should be easy to show so why not show it. the total cases suggest maybe, with heightened cases in Knowsley, St Helens and Wirral, but other areas in London or major cities are similar or higher (NE has most cases per region?), suggesting nothing much different.

Listen to ‘file on four’ on BBC sounds. I was listening tonight, it’s really quite damning especially from those that worked at Cheltenham (the guy working behind a bar there went down pretty soon after the festival).

 

[CheeseRolls]

Three million people were going to the cinema every week in February & early March, most of them on Friday & Saturday. That's 12x as many as went to Cheltenham over all four days, 50x the number that went to the Liverpool match. They went through a handful of entrances, touched the handles as they did so, into an enclosed space with air conditioning - not an outdoor stadium - about 250 at a time, sat there for a couple of hours eating popcorn, sneezing and with their hands on the armrests, then trooped out to let another 250 do the same, three or four times a day per screen.

Were those trips necessary or unnecessary in your opinion? And if, as you state at the top of the thread as if it's an indisputed fact, Cheltenham and Liverpool "cost many lives", how many more did cinema trips cost? Twenty times as many? More?

I don't think this is being singled out as anti-sport or anti horse racing. More that these were significant gatherings where the impact could be extrapolated. Sure people travelled from far and wide, but the ripple effect on hotel, bar and restaurant staff was measurable. Your point about cinemas is valid, but much harder to extrapolate the impact from many gatherings of 250-300.

 

[Mtoto]

I don't think this is being singled out as anti-sport or anti horse racing. More that these were significant gatherings where the impact could be extrapolated. Sure people travelled from far and wide, but the ripple effect on hotel, bar and restaurant staff was measurable. Your point about cinemas is valid, but much harder to extrapolate the impact from many gatherings of 250-300.

It's also very easy to use a pic from Cheltenham so everyone says: wow, look at all those people packed into the stands. Much harder to represent all the millions of interactions going on elsewhere at the same time. It's just how people are and how they react, to images in particular.

 

[Mtoto]

I am never going to the cinema again!

And a well put point. However the Liverpool game would have had a high number of Spanish fans who were infected. That was before things really took off here. Being able to stop something that is known to carry high risk is preferable to stopping things which are maybe of a lower risk?

But humans are notoriously bad at estimating risk.

I'm not suggesting that any of these events absolutely did not contribute to spread of the virus at all. They probably did - but I suspect to a much smaller extent than most imagine, and far, far less than absolutely everything about what we used to think of as "normal life" back in February and March. All of what we did then was always going to contribute to the spread of a novel virus, and as a result, distinctions between “necessary” and “unnecessary” movement are fairly pointless.

People were interacting, and swapping saliva residue, coughs, sneezes etc, on an epic scale. There are 70,000 people who *work* at Heathrow and then go home at the end of their shift, never mind the 100s of thousands they mingle with every week who are arriving from all corners of the globe. How can anyone seriously claim to pick a few numbers out of all that lot, which was happening every day in Feb & early March and has also, to some extent, continued through April and May, and then point to Twickenham, Anfield or Cheltenham and say: “Look! A spike!”.

 

[wellquickwoody]

But humans are notoriously bad at estimating risk.

So which species are better at it in your opinion?

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

How can anyone seriously claim to pick a few numbers out of all that lot, which was happening every day in Feb & early March and has also, to some extent, continued through April and May, and then point to Twickenham, Anfield or Cheltenham and say: “Look! A spike!”.

Well I am not claiming some kind of superior knowledge but I would suggest the fact that Tim Spector, a leading epidemiologist who heads King's epidemiology department, means that he is not just 'anyone', warrants listening to and deserves taking seriously. I am aware that differences of opinion are two-a-penny, but wouldn't dismiss the idea as I am not qualified to do so.

 

[beorhthelm]

Listen to ‘file on four’ on BBC sounds. I was listening tonight, it’s really quite damning especially from those that worked at Cheltenham (the guy working behind a bar there went down pretty soon after the festival).

a barman? what other bars had he been working in i wonder. how soon after Cheltenham did he go down with covid, week to 10 days to point at that event as source. its poor anecdotal evidence of anything. anyway, my earlier rant was more about the piss-poor journalism on the BBC giving weight to a hypothesis without any supporting details.

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

So which species are better at it in your opinion?

It is risk assessment rather than risk taking that humans are conspicuously shit at. All the species capable of aspiration, social organisation, nurturing of offspring etc are capable of risk taking. The extent appears to be determined by what is perceived to be at stake. Warrior classes (of ants or wasps for example) will cheerfully risk death to save the nest. Human life is so complex and nuanced and dynamic that in our existence we are up against new unknowns on a regular basis. With no experience we upgrade our risk assesment to a consideration of risk to benefit assessment. I have always been struck how we manipulate this to fit our prejudices (for example at one point people wouldn't dream of not driving the kids to school at the height f 'stranger-danger' hysteria and yet mum would chain smoke in the car, and we would happily drink and drive and yet the same folk would have a fear of flying). It is the range and scope and rediculousness of our risk taking that is so striking. You don't see birds poncing about on my lawn when the cat's about (even our dopey cat).

 

[wellquickwoody]

It is risk assessment rather than risk taking that humans are conspicuously shit at. All the species capable of aspiration, social organisation, nurturing of offspring etc are capable of risk taking. The extent appears to be determined by what is perceived to be at stake. Warrior classes (of ants or wasps for example) will cheerfully risk death to save the nest. Human life is so complex and nuanced and dynamic that in our existence we are up against new unknowns on a regular basis. With no experience we upgrade our risk assesment to a consideration of risk to benefit assessment. I have always been struck how we manipulate this to fit our prejudices (for example at one point people wouldn't dream of not driving the kids to school at the height f 'stranger-danger' hysteria and yet mum would chain smoke in the car, and we would happily drink and drive and yet the same folk would have a fear of flying). It is the range and scope and rediculousness of our risk taking that is so striking. You don't see birds poncing about on my lawn when the cat's about (even our dopey cat).

Please, put me on ignore

 

[LamieRobertson]

It is risk assessment rather than risk taking that humans are conspicuously shit at. All the species capable of aspiration, social organisation, nurturing of offspring etc are capable of risk taking. The extent appears to be determined by what is perceived to be at stake. Warrior classes (of ants or wasps for example) will cheerfully risk death to save the nest. Human life is so complex and nuanced and dynamic that in our existence we are up against new unknowns on a regular basis. With no experience we upgrade our risk assesment to a considerati of risk to benefit assessment. I have always been struck how we manipulate this to fit our prejudices (for example at one point people wouldn't dream of not driving the kids to school at the height f 'stranger-danger' hysteria and yet mum would chain smoke in the car, and we would happily drink and drive and yet the same folk would have a fear of flying). It is the range and scope and rediculousness of our risk taking that is so striking. You don't see birds poncing about on my lawn when the cat's about (even our dopey cat).

Nicely put ...I’m finding it interesting watching people zooming (no not video) around in their cars in excess of the speed limit...after spending weeks at home protecting themselves from the virus...and then you have the car driver with the sign of a baby on board stuck in the rear window ...navigating a roundabout with a mobile in hand

 

[LamieRobertson]

Listen to ‘file on four’ on BBC sounds. I was listening tonight, it’s really quite damning especially from those that worked at Cheltenham (the guy working behind a bar there went down pretty soon after the festival).

Did you catch the care home episode last week on file on 4

 

[Mtoto]

Well I am not claiming some kind of superior knowledge but I would suggest the fact that Tim Spector, a leading epidemiologist who heads King's epidemiology department, means that he is not just 'anyone', warrants listening to and deserves taking seriously. I am aware that differences of opinion are two-a-penny, but wouldn't dismiss the idea as I am not qualified to do so.

He is highly eminent in his field, no dispute, and yes, worth listening to. But epidemiologists are not scientists in the same way that physicists are scientists. In some respects, they have more in common with economists, in particular when it comes to novel diseases like Covid-19. A physicist who is presented with something new can bend it, burn it, irradiate it, fire alpha particles at it and dozens of other things, and record what happens in minute - even sub-atomic - detail before drawing any conclusions. Epidemiologists have to work with models and (highly) educated guesswork to fill in the yawning gaps where quantitative data should be, refining their models as time goes by and more accurate data eventually appears.

They are also trying to communicate with the public via the crude filter that is the British media, including many general reporters who dropped science and maths at the first opportunity, 20 or more years ago. Prof Ferguson's famous Imperial paper effectively made nine predictions, based on three different levels of restriction and three different R values - but every report, inevitably, went straight to the doomsday scenario of maximum R and minimal restrictions and splashed on it. (As an aside, it also included this paragraph: "Stopping mass gatherings is predicted to have relatively little impact (results not shown) because the contact-time at such events is relatively small compared to the time spent at home, in schools orworkplacesand in other community locations such as bars and restaurants.")

So I think it's fair to ask where and what Prof Spector's numbers are, how he got them and how he drew his conclusions. He runs a symptom-tracking app - which initially just asks people if they're feeling well - but there's no published paper with the data as far as I can see. Yet his quote about "suffering and death" as a direct result of Cheltenham & Anfield is already around the world.

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

He is highly eminent in his field, no dispute, and yes, worth listening to. But epidemiologists are not scientists in the same way that physicists are scientists. In some respects, they have more in common with economists, in particular when it comes to novel diseases like Covid-19. A physicist who is presented with something new can bend it, burn it, irradiate it, fire alpha particles at it and dozens of other things, and record what happens in minute - even sub-atomic - detail before drawing any conclusions. Epidemiologists have to work with models and (highly) educated guesswork to fill in the yawning gaps where quantitative data should be, refining their models as time goes by and more accurate data eventually appears.

They are also trying to communicate with the public via the crude filter that is the British media, including many general reporters who dropped science and maths at the first opportunity, 20 or more years ago. Prof Ferguson's famous Imperial paper effectively made nine predictions, based on three different levels of restriction and three different R values - but every report, inevitably, went straight to the doomsday scenario of maximum R and minimal restrictions and splashed on it. (As an aside, it also included this paragraph: "Stopping mass gatherings is predicted to have relatively little impact (results not shown) because the contact-time at such events is relatively small compared to the time spent at home, in schools orworkplacesand in other community locations such as bars and restaurants.")

So I think it's fair to ask where and what Prof Spector's numbers are, how he got them and how he drew his conclusions. He runs a symptom-tracking app - which initially just asks people if they're feeling well - but there's no published paper with the data as far as I can see. Yet his quote about "suffering and death" as a direct result of Cheltenham & Anfield is already around the world.

Excellent post. Instinctively I would agree with the over-riding headline, but as you say epidemiology is highly subjective and interpretive.