darkwolf666
Well-known member
Understood, good luck!
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Main Coronavirus / Covid-19 Discussion Thread
- Thread starter GingerBeerMan
- Start date
Understood, good luck!
In England, a further 16 deaths were confirmed, bringing the total number of Covid deaths in English hospitals to 29,735.
The patients, who died between August 19 and September 18 were aged between 69 and 97 - and all had underlying health conditions.
The patients, who died between August 19 and September 18 were aged between 69 and 97 - and all had underlying health conditions.
Albion Dan
Banned
Guys an effing lunatic. But hey some on here would have you believe what’s happening there is totally normal.
sydney
tinky ****in winky
this is Dan Andrews in Victoria , it is a direct response to continued "protests and demonstrations " ie people going out for walks / exercise , going to the beach or a park and lying in the sun , some of the footage of the victorian police is really quite alarming , very close to a police state right now ....Andrews himself is being accused of being drunk on power , ignoring medical advice and plunging parts of victoria into a communist like , police state.
new numbers are dropping and still less than 800 deaths in the state , the huge majority are elderly in nursing homes .
Is Andrews approach popular ?
sydney
tinky ****in winky
there are no approval polls , they have been in lockdown for nearly 2 months , the aged , vulnerable and financially secure people are supportive , the younger population and those with businesses that can't operate are starting to rear up a bit , i would hazard a guess between 80/20 to 70/ 30 in favour of what he is doing
the heavy handed approach of the police has raised a few eyebrows ....some have been stood down
So looks like Tuesday is the day for further announcements
Curfew
No household mixing
Given the rule of 6 was started last week, there is a lag in testing - how do they already know this hasn’t had an affect?
Curfew
No household mixing
Given the rule of 6 was started last week, there is a lag in testing - how do they already know this hasn’t had an affect?
It was initially but he seems to have gone way over the top now.
As [MENTION=420]sydney[/MENTION] says some of the police action does appear to be extremely heavy handed and I am normally one that backs the police. I’m lucky in that it hasn’t affected me personally too much but I am getting seriously hacked off at not being able to go more than 5km from home, not being able to walk along the beach, not being able to go out for a drink, the threat of still being in lockdown at Christmas if we haven’t done 14 consecutive days with zero new cases.
I haven’t been able to visit my 95 year old mum in the UK this year, my friend’s visit was cancelled earlier in the year, I can’t visit my daughter’s home but we are coping.........at the moment.
I’m edging towards the 2 fingers to Mr Andrews to be honest.
D
Deleted member 2719
Guest
How is Covid in Worthing now
I understand it is particularly bad atm.
I understand it is particularly bad atm.
How is Covid in Worthing now
I understand it is particularly bad atm.
Looking at the BBC tracking, Worthing has 16 cases per 100,000 down 10 on last week
Yoda
English & European
How is Covid in Worthing now
I understand it is particularly bad atm.
An average of 2.9 cases per day on yesterdays figures. The one day spike which made things look pretty bad was all one family having a mass gathering according to official reports.
On another note, if this is true (https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...llegal-in-bid-to-tackle-second-spike-12076577) and only 20% of positive readings have been self isolating, no wonder we have seen an increase and is more than likely this and not groups of more than 6 & mixing households pushing the rise. Those figure would mean out of all of yesterdays confirmed cases, 3538 people are going about their normal daily lives.
RossyG
Well-known member
- Dec 20, 2014
- 2,630
Seems they have Covid detention centres in Italy, too. Hope we don't get them.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...us-centre.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/ar...us-centre.html?ito=social-twitter_dailymailUK
Over the centuries, the course of respiratory illnesses have been so erratic that in the Middle Ages they were attributed to the influence of planets. They were known as ‘Influenza degli astri’ in Italian – hence the term influenza.
Today, our bewildered Prime Minister and his platoon of inept advisers might as well be using the planets to guide us through this pandemic, so catastrophic and wildly over-the-top are their decisions.
Now we look set to repeat the pattern of what happened six months ago when they first panicked the country into shutting down, except that this time it has been given a fancy title – operation ‘circuit break’.
Whatever the name, it may be a grave error with terrible consequences for the health of the British people and for the health of the country. How can we possibly be making the same mistake – again?
Why is it that the Government is once again in the grip of doom-mongering scientific modellers who specialise in causing panic and little else?
This nonsensical term ‘circuit breaker’ is not the only aspect of the Government’s rhetoric that needs closer scrutiny. Because it is the irrational, unscientific use of language that is partly to blame for driving Ministers into these mistakes.
Take the word ‘trajectory’, something we have heard a great deal of this past week. This is a ballistic term that suggests a degree of certainty. It is claimed our ‘trajectory’ shows Britain following Spain – and we may be only a matter of weeks behind them.
We have heard a great deal about ‘waves’, too. Even on Friday, Mr Johnson was using the term to describe what is going on. We are ‘seeing a second wave coming in’, said our bumbling PM.
Waves, of course, are solid bodies of water which hit rhythmically in one go and can be seen coming from afar.
Yet this is hardly how the pandemic has been playing out. Epidemics tend to be chaotic. They are foggy, unpredictable and never go the way you think they will. Hardly the characteristics of a wave.
Behind the curve’ is also used with damaging frequency, especially when making comparisons with other countries.
Take the latest reliable data from Spain (up to September 3) which does not indicate any sort of upward curve in infections, let alone one coming to get us here in Britain.
In fact, the data shows that the number of Spanish cases did grow last month – but then reached a plateau.
Some of Spain’s 17 provinces are already past the peak infection (when considered by the date that symptoms began), while the proportion of completely asymptomatic cases in Spain is on the rise.
Anyone who has clinical experience of dealing with respiratory viruses knows that the only certainty is uncertainty itself.
Yet our PM, and his Dad’s Army of highly paid individuals with little experience of the job at hand, continue to behave as if they are acting on the basis of certainty.
Instead, they move from one poorly designed, rash decision to another, driven by the misguided belief that we are experiencing a ‘second wave’, following Spain’s ‘trajectory’ and just ‘behind the curve’ there.
Making comparisons between countries using different national data with different definitions is no more useful than trying to compare apples and pears. It is not good science. The fog of pandemic chaos has even engulfed the most basic and best-understood of all outcomes: death.
Even now, we cannot be sure what we are dealing with.
Are we looking at deaths by Covid? Deaths with Covid? Or even deaths post-Covid?
Our latest study, out yesterday, shows that nearly a third of all Covid-19 deaths recorded in July and August might have actually been the result of other causes –cancer, for example, or road traffic accidents.
It is unfortunate that Mr Johnson is surrounded by mediocre scientific advisers.
It is strange and concerning, that the Government is still relying on mathematical modellers who have a 20-year track record of getting things wrong and have been particularly wrong in the past six months.
Why have we lost sight of the fact that the agents of doom from Imperial College have already admitted that Sweden – which had no lockdown – has probably suppressed Covid-19 to the same level as Great Britain but without draconian measures?
And where are the 28,000 deaths post-lockdown in Italy that Imperial College predicted?
Does anybody remember the 2005 H5N1 – or ‘bird flu’ – influenza pandemic? You would be forgiven for having no recollection because there was no such pandemic, despite the warnings of Professor Neil Ferguson and his team.
It is just one example among many predictions that Prof Ferguson has got wrong.
So what is really going on, away from the computer models? For a start, this is the end of September and the common cold, the rhinovirus, is on the march once more.
In the week ending September 17, England’s National Influenza Surveillance report shows that ‘Rhinovirus positivity’ had increased by 23 per cent in seven days. It is likely that the new school year set this in motion, as it does every year.
Covid, too, appears to follow this seasonal pattern, picking up in the colder weather, but the death rate – so far, at least – does not appear to be rising.
The good news, then, is that anyone going down with a new respiratory illness is likely to be suffering from a cold – not Covid.
But the rhinovirus presents us with a problem, too. Because the symptoms of a cold mean many of us will need a Covid test.
And increased Covid testing is picking up dead – entirely harmless – fragments of virus as well as genuine infections. So many of the positive results we think we are getting might not be positives at all.
Our inability to accurately report the most simple measures – the proportion of positive tests that were asymptomatic or the date at which the symptoms began, for example – is a major problem for our intelligence gathering.
And the result is a confused, rudderless Government lost in a swamp of poor statistics and ill-informed recommendations.
So, Mr Johnson, we need you to plan for the long winter ahead.
Dialling down the rhetoric and putting the available Covid data into context would be a useful start. (There are many more registered deaths from influenza and pneumonia than Covid at present, yet the public is only given a daily diet of Covid.)
There might come a time when we need more stringent rules for the population, but that time is not right now. If we do need a national shutdown of some sort, remember there is a ready-made opportunity in the week after Christmas when many of us take an extended break in any case.
But for now the only ‘circuit break’ we need is an end to the current cycle of bad data, bad language and shockingly bad scientific advice.
Carl Heneghan is Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, Oxford University, and Dr Tom Jefferson is Senior Associate Tutor, University of Oxford.
Today, our bewildered Prime Minister and his platoon of inept advisers might as well be using the planets to guide us through this pandemic, so catastrophic and wildly over-the-top are their decisions.
Now we look set to repeat the pattern of what happened six months ago when they first panicked the country into shutting down, except that this time it has been given a fancy title – operation ‘circuit break’.
Whatever the name, it may be a grave error with terrible consequences for the health of the British people and for the health of the country. How can we possibly be making the same mistake – again?
Why is it that the Government is once again in the grip of doom-mongering scientific modellers who specialise in causing panic and little else?
This nonsensical term ‘circuit breaker’ is not the only aspect of the Government’s rhetoric that needs closer scrutiny. Because it is the irrational, unscientific use of language that is partly to blame for driving Ministers into these mistakes.
Take the word ‘trajectory’, something we have heard a great deal of this past week. This is a ballistic term that suggests a degree of certainty. It is claimed our ‘trajectory’ shows Britain following Spain – and we may be only a matter of weeks behind them.
We have heard a great deal about ‘waves’, too. Even on Friday, Mr Johnson was using the term to describe what is going on. We are ‘seeing a second wave coming in’, said our bumbling PM.
Waves, of course, are solid bodies of water which hit rhythmically in one go and can be seen coming from afar.
Yet this is hardly how the pandemic has been playing out. Epidemics tend to be chaotic. They are foggy, unpredictable and never go the way you think they will. Hardly the characteristics of a wave.
Behind the curve’ is also used with damaging frequency, especially when making comparisons with other countries.
Take the latest reliable data from Spain (up to September 3) which does not indicate any sort of upward curve in infections, let alone one coming to get us here in Britain.
In fact, the data shows that the number of Spanish cases did grow last month – but then reached a plateau.
Some of Spain’s 17 provinces are already past the peak infection (when considered by the date that symptoms began), while the proportion of completely asymptomatic cases in Spain is on the rise.
Anyone who has clinical experience of dealing with respiratory viruses knows that the only certainty is uncertainty itself.
Yet our PM, and his Dad’s Army of highly paid individuals with little experience of the job at hand, continue to behave as if they are acting on the basis of certainty.
Instead, they move from one poorly designed, rash decision to another, driven by the misguided belief that we are experiencing a ‘second wave’, following Spain’s ‘trajectory’ and just ‘behind the curve’ there.
Making comparisons between countries using different national data with different definitions is no more useful than trying to compare apples and pears. It is not good science. The fog of pandemic chaos has even engulfed the most basic and best-understood of all outcomes: death.
Even now, we cannot be sure what we are dealing with.
Are we looking at deaths by Covid? Deaths with Covid? Or even deaths post-Covid?
Our latest study, out yesterday, shows that nearly a third of all Covid-19 deaths recorded in July and August might have actually been the result of other causes –cancer, for example, or road traffic accidents.
It is unfortunate that Mr Johnson is surrounded by mediocre scientific advisers.
It is strange and concerning, that the Government is still relying on mathematical modellers who have a 20-year track record of getting things wrong and have been particularly wrong in the past six months.
Why have we lost sight of the fact that the agents of doom from Imperial College have already admitted that Sweden – which had no lockdown – has probably suppressed Covid-19 to the same level as Great Britain but without draconian measures?
And where are the 28,000 deaths post-lockdown in Italy that Imperial College predicted?
Does anybody remember the 2005 H5N1 – or ‘bird flu’ – influenza pandemic? You would be forgiven for having no recollection because there was no such pandemic, despite the warnings of Professor Neil Ferguson and his team.
It is just one example among many predictions that Prof Ferguson has got wrong.
So what is really going on, away from the computer models? For a start, this is the end of September and the common cold, the rhinovirus, is on the march once more.
In the week ending September 17, England’s National Influenza Surveillance report shows that ‘Rhinovirus positivity’ had increased by 23 per cent in seven days. It is likely that the new school year set this in motion, as it does every year.
Covid, too, appears to follow this seasonal pattern, picking up in the colder weather, but the death rate – so far, at least – does not appear to be rising.
The good news, then, is that anyone going down with a new respiratory illness is likely to be suffering from a cold – not Covid.
But the rhinovirus presents us with a problem, too. Because the symptoms of a cold mean many of us will need a Covid test.
And increased Covid testing is picking up dead – entirely harmless – fragments of virus as well as genuine infections. So many of the positive results we think we are getting might not be positives at all.
Our inability to accurately report the most simple measures – the proportion of positive tests that were asymptomatic or the date at which the symptoms began, for example – is a major problem for our intelligence gathering.
And the result is a confused, rudderless Government lost in a swamp of poor statistics and ill-informed recommendations.
So, Mr Johnson, we need you to plan for the long winter ahead.
Dialling down the rhetoric and putting the available Covid data into context would be a useful start. (There are many more registered deaths from influenza and pneumonia than Covid at present, yet the public is only given a daily diet of Covid.)
There might come a time when we need more stringent rules for the population, but that time is not right now. If we do need a national shutdown of some sort, remember there is a ready-made opportunity in the week after Christmas when many of us take an extended break in any case.
But for now the only ‘circuit break’ we need is an end to the current cycle of bad data, bad language and shockingly bad scientific advice.
Carl Heneghan is Professor of Evidence Based Medicine and Director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine, Oxford University, and Dr Tom Jefferson is Senior Associate Tutor, University of Oxford.
Excellent, well reasoned article. Boris just wants to be seen to be doing something. Anything. Even if he makes things worse.
So what is your solution then?
You weren’t asking me but I have to be honest, I’m not overly enamoured with the options that are being mooted, such as a short, national lockdown or circuit breaker.
The original lockdown in March was a blunt instrument but an absolutely necessary one because we were completely blind to where the virus was in our community. We now have the following at our disposal:
- Extensive testing
- A track and trace system
Now, no one is pretending that either of the above are in perfect working order, but what they do give you is an accurate picture as to the direction of travel and where the virus is being spread.
The ‘where’ is the crucial one for me, and I’m not talking about a city or regional level but rather the types of places where transmission is particularly rife. Is it pubs, is it offices, is it factories and so on? Then you can take specific, targeted action to try and solve that problem.
And action doesn’t have to look like blanket closure either. Let’s take pubs. I haven’t had a proper pub session since they reopened (although I’ve been out a couple of times for meals) but many I’ve walked past, particularly on late weekend nights, have looked like the perfect breeding ground for Covid - big, groups of pissed up people, huddled together with zero social distancing. It looked ‘normal’. We can’t have that.
Rather than shut them, impose strict capacity limits with sitting room and table service only. It’s not perfect, but we’ve been way too lax in allowing the pubs to open up the way they have. Targeted action, based on closely monitored data, allows us to tackle specific problems forensically with significantly less economic harm caused.
Now, it may be that it’s already too late for that kind of approach, I honestly don’t know, but for me that’s precisely what should have been done right at the outset once we allowed places to reopen.
It all just seems like common sense to me, but maybe I’m missing something that our illustrious Eton-educated leaders could pick me up on.
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nicko31
Well-known member
From Wednesday Autumn rain and gales start, people's behaviour will move more indoors. Still reckon meeting outdoors should be treating differently, the risk with social distancing is low
beorhthelm
A. Virgo, Football Genius
- Jul 21, 2003
- 36,026
that is the main motive. theres political calculations made by those around him, would seem they fear the consequence of case rising, even when thats not happening.
I agree with that. I suppose it boils down to reducing as much face to face contact as possible while trying to stop the economy tanking. TBH I don't think the governments request to go to work if you can was taken on board by many so I am not sure that is a lever they can pull anymore. Apparently the experts said a while back Pub and Restaurants might need to go to reopen the schools. But then that is most probably a couple of million people out fo a job.