Main Coronavirus / Covid-19 Discussion Thread

[RossyG]

Highest death toll in the world,,,

It isn't.

 

[beorhthelm]

I wish you all the best and fingers crossed that it's nothing serious, talking to a carer who I live with she is very scathing of gp's who she says earn 4 or 5 times more than nurses and care workers yet they don't even visit covid patients who have died. Not even to issue a death cert they instead send a community nurse to certify them. These nurses/carers have no choice to be face to face with covid patients.

1m should be sufficient according to WHO, other european's are going with that or 1.5m. its simple policy change with minimal risk that eases constraints of social distancing.

 

[CHAPPERS]

It isn't.

Apologies, this story seems to have been updated. Replace toll with rate.

 

[The Wizard]

Something about Patrick Vallance made me wonder if he didn’t agree with the changes Boris was announcing, he’s quite abrasive anyway but his body language looked a bit off and he seemed particularly blunt and to the point and must have used the word cautious at least 10 times.

I thought the changes were fairly straightforward, nothing surprising just sticking to the plan that was laid out, I did think Boris backed up the changes pretty well by going through the 5 tests as well, would love to know what had irked Vallance or perhaps he was just in a bad mood.

 

[Solid at the back]

Gove chuckling away whilst lying on the radio the other day
Sunak tweeting about Nandos opening
Johnson bullshitting his way through liaison committee
Cummings DID break the rules, no apology

Now Hancock enjoys a chuckle on the telly.

[tweet]1265899137771474944[/tweet]

What a disgrace of a government. Highest death toll in the world and this lot are having a lovely time giggling their way through it.

Absoulte scumbag, should resign immediately. Acting all passove aggressive, what a knob.
This is the same guy who said back in January that 500 specialist beds would be enough

 

[atomised]

Argus reporting r rate on the increase quite significantly over the last week in brighton and hove.

 

[Bold Seagull]

Anyone else struggling with the numbers and resulting actions in other countries?

South Korea are reporting a spike of just 56 new cases, that isn’t deaths, that is just cases, and they are having a massive reverse in closing schools, museums and parks again. 56.

We’re not even anywhere getting it down to just 56 deaths per day, let alone new cases which we know could be up at 50k or more per day.

56 v 50,000. The 56 country is tightening restrictions in response, we’re relaxing restrictions...anyone else got an explanation for being at opposite ends of the spectrum on handling this?

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

Anyone else struggling with the numbers and resulting actions in other countries?

South Korea are reporting a spike of just 56 new cases, that isn’t deaths, that is just cases, and they are having a massive reverse in closing schools, museums and parks again. 56.

We’re not even anywhere getting it down to just 56 deaths per day, let alone new cases which we know could be up at 50k or more per day.

56 v 50,000. The 56 country is tightening restrictions in response, we’re relaxing restrictions...anyone else got an explanation for being at opposite ends of the spectrum on handling this?

I believe it is an approach they can take as they have the infrastructure to deal with it. Perhaps we don't?

 

[Bold Seagull]

Argus reporting r rate on the increase quite significantly over the last week in brighton and hove.

Well, the Argus is reporting that a researcher is estimating where the R-number is; “ Posting the findings to crowd-sharing research platform Deckzero, the researchers said: “This approximated value is not the instantaneous reproduction number.”

It also said we are dealing with a very small number of cases, so over a week 2 weeks ago we had 8 new cases, over the last week it was 18, so that has a significant impact on a weekly R value, but not over a longer period.

“When cases are small, R will fluctuate more; this should not be treated as noise as the infection grows exponentially is undisrupted.”

Obviously cause to be vigilant and cautious, but not alarmist.

 

[Green Cross Code Man]

Argus reporting r rate on the increase quite significantly over the last week in brighton and hove.

It is a pity it doesn't cite the analysis, however R of 1.68 in B&H and R1.32 in East Sussex is concerning. Particularly as schools aren't opening yet except for Key Workers.

Edit: Sorry saw the crowd funded research citation.

 

[The Wizard]

Poor article from the Argus, sadly going down lots of the main stream media route. That ‘scientific’ research is flimsy at best, and because we have such low cases the R is basically pointless, claiming the ‘virus could rapidly be on the spread again’ is really, really poor from them IMO considering they know a lot of older vulnerable people will read that.

10 more cases in a city of 300 odd thousand is not cause for panic.

 

[Deleted member 22389]

Poor article from the Argus, sadly going down lots of the main stream media route. That ‘scientific’ research is flimsy at best, and because we have such low cases the R is basically pointless, claiming the ‘virus could rapidly be on the spread again’ is really, really poor from them IMO considering they know a lot of older vulnerable people will read that.

10 more cases in a city of 300 odd thousand is not cause for panic.

Really not keen on sending my 5 year old back to school. I think she will have to go in from the 8th June, but I might leave it an extra week just to see what the numbers are like since they eased the lockdown further yesterday.

 

[atomised]

Well, the Argus is reporting that a researcher is estimating where the R-number is; “ Posting the findings to crowd-sharing research platform Deckzero, the researchers said: “This approximated value is not the instantaneous reproduction number.”

It also said we are dealing with a very small number of cases, so over a week 2 weeks ago we had 8 new cases, over the last week it was 18, so that has a significant impact on a weekly R value, but not over a longer period.

“When cases are small, R will fluctuate more; this should not be treated as noise as the infection grows exponentially is undisrupted.”

Obviously cause to be vigilant and cautious, but not alarmist.

Unfortunately the argus have become very good at alarmist clickbait headlines. It's frustrating that large numbers wont look past the headline. Probably the same people who have been telling me all along that our local hospitals are snowed under with critical cases

 

[The Wizard]

We have 430 TOTAL cases in the whole of Brighton and Hove, a city of 300000 population, this means 1/700 people has had the virus, obviously we know it’s more than that, that’s a massive underestimate but please don’t let that nonsense science in that argus article scare you into changing any of your plans, the R rate at such low incidence of infection is basically irrelevant.

To put it into context last week we had 18 cases confirmed in B&H, that’s 1 in every 16.6k people

 

[Notters]

7% with antibodies.

However, many more could have immunity memory cells which kick in to produce an immune response after a 2nd infection.

Plus, potentially, many many people with immunity from other coronaviruses.

I was therefore a bit surprised when Chris Whitty said "everyone else is susceptible to the virus" - this is likely not to be the case. Edit - I think it was Vallance.

 

[oldboyroy]

Anyone else struggling with the numbers and resulting actions in other countries?

South Korea are reporting a spike of just 56 new cases, that isn’t deaths, that is just cases, and they are having a massive reverse in closing schools, museums and parks again. 56.

We’re not even anywhere getting it down to just 56 deaths per day, let alone new cases which we know could be up at 50k or more per day.

56 v 50,000. The 56 country is tightening restrictions in response, we’re relaxing restrictions...anyone else got an explanation for being at opposite ends of the spectrum on handling this?

Think we're on about 8 to 9 thousand new infections a day not 50k but I see your point. South Korea and some others see small numbers of new infections as a big spike and aim to nip it in the bud immediately whereas we simply can't as someone else pointed out we don't have the facilities to do so.

 

[WATFORD zero]

A couple of concerning situations in S Korea, where some lockdown steps have been re-introduced and Japan where the has been a new flurry of cases. And both these countries have had an efficient track and trace system operating since very early days, so they are geared up to react very quickly to any changes in their numbers.

I do think we need to be very careful with our easing of measures and we desperately need an efficient track and trace system which still appears to be some weeks (if not months) away

 

[WATFORD zero]

Something about Patrick Vallance made me wonder if he didn’t agree with the changes Boris was announcing, he’s quite abrasive anyway but his body language looked a bit off and he seemed particularly blunt and to the point and must have used the word cautious at least 10 times.

I thought the changes were fairly straightforward, nothing surprising just sticking to the plan that was laid out, I did think Boris backed up the changes pretty well by going through the 5 tests as well, would love to know what had irked Vallance or perhaps he was just in a bad mood.

I think you may find that Hancock announcing the 'launch' of track and trace while the person responsible for it says it won't be operational for another month

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-05-28/coronavirus-test-and-trace-scheme-launch-government-covid-19/

and the Government refusing to release turnaround times for tests which are thought to be in excess of 5 Days

https://www.buzzfeed.com/albertonardelli/uk-coronavirus-test-trace-trace-results

together with no feedback whatsoever from the app that went into beta testing on the IOW a month ago, and still very high levels of infection and fatalities, compared to others who are easing lockdown.

Look back at the last two week's daily briefings and count how many times the scientists have said that we need 'an efficient testing system' in order for Track and Trace to work and for us to ease the lockdown. Meanwhile Hancock announces we are launching it, against all scientific advice, in order to try and get the discussion off of Cummings.

But maybe he was just in a 'bad mood'

 

[Is it PotG?]

All not perfect in South Korea

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavirus-south-korea-forced-to-close-schools-again-after-spike-in-new-covid-19-cases-11996706

 

[The Wizard]

It’s very difficult to compare anything to South Korea really, they have one lowest case rates in the world so perhaps there is little to no immunity there? I think country to country comparisons are very difficult to make, most countries in Europe have had no spikes when returning children to schools, Austria population to case ratio wise is very similar to ours, and they’ve done very well.

South Korea also, despite doing the very well have tested the least % of their population of any developed nation.