Coronavirus outbreak

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The topic was raised on BBC Radio 4 this morning. The Guardian covers it here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ve-stopped-falling-major-english-survey-shows
The React report notes that because they didn't test for a month they may have missed the peak. "Since there was a gap of over one month from the end of round 7b on 3rd December 2020 to beginning of round 8a on 6th January 2021 we may have missed a peak in prevalence during the intervening period. Using a constant growth model, we found no strong evidence for either growth or decay averaged across the period of round”
 
"some movement on this school of thought" Share a link to a description of the discussion, please. Or maybe @Rocky can provide.
"some sources" suggest that cases are not falling. Which, please? The UK tracker suggests a 7-day average reduction of 21%.
"last feb . . . everyone was washing there hands like crazy" Pretty sure the 'wash hands' message had had very limited effect (and certainly not "crazy" washing of hands, by the leap day). Perhaps it was different in their neck of the woods.
Timeline: PHE "News story" dated 4 March: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/public-information-campaign-focuses-on-handwashing
Infection rates in February and March did anything but fall. Without hand washing, the infection rates might have increased even faster. Do you agree?
Effective, frequent and wide-spread hand washing is standard recommended practice, well explained here by the British Safety Council: https://www.britsafe.org/publicatio...-important-to-stop-the-spread-of-coronavirus/
And besides, what better way to instill pride in our country (other kingdoms may apply) than to encourage regular singing of the national anthem (20 second version). 'Singing' the Lord's Prayer is one alternative option: other prayers of all faiths and none available.

Another concise post from @Ajax Bay

Your blasting of my links yesterday - is precisely why I didn't put a link in today. - the story is readily out there.

So there was no increase in handwashing last Feb - OK. -
 
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byegad

Legendary Member
Location
NE England
We, Lady Byegad and myself, decided to lock ourselves down on the 15th of March.
I'd been following the news, foreign and domestic, and said we want bugger-all to do with this. Lady Byegad had been home for under 2 months following her brain abscess operation and inpatient physiotherapy and her outpatient physio appointments had just been cancelled. Due to Covid risks!
While BoJo, Wee Jimmy Crankie, the NI bird and the boring Welsh leader were struggling to decide what to do, We decided to lockdown. I said to Lady Byegad, The main enemy will be human stupidity, not the virus. How right I was!
In late March, Lady Byegad had an appointment in Newcastle RVI with her specialist, the National Lockdown was in place and the roads, and hospital were deserted. We went again in May, the outpatient area of the hospital was eerily quiet still.
In the summer we ventured out for new glasses each, 4 trips in all, hearing aids for me, 2 trips, and a new car, 2 more trips for me and one for Lady Byegad. I've since filled the car exactly twice, entailing contactless payments in the garage.
Apart from some walks around our estate, while everyone else is at work and working in the garden, and some runs out in the new car where we didn't get out near other people, we have only seen our good neighbours, sons and delivery drivers who have followed social distancing when leaving shopping for us.

Why you may ask? Well we're both vulnerable to any chest infection, and while some of our friends have taken more risks, several of them have caught the virus, and with 1 exception they caught it while out of the house for shopping or excercise. The exception caught it while in hospital for his cancer treatment. Sadly one of them has died, not my mate with cancer, miraculously! Which in our direct acquaintances makes a 1 in something under 20 death rate!

Has the gibberment handled this well? IMHO definitely not, there was ample evidence from China that this was relatively easy to catch, and it kills people.
Would the UK population responded well to a harsher regime to protect us all? We'll never know, it was never attempted.
Have other countries done better? Plainly some have!
Have some done worse? Very few and one of them had a moronic toddler in charge who at least initially thought it was 'fake news', and he should know, as a major source himself!

We're immensely grateful to all the essential workers who together with the NHS and research scientists at keeping us safe and those who will, eventually get us to whatever the new normal will turn out to be.
 
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Joey Shabadoo

My pronouns are "He", "Him" and "buggerlugs"
A couple of weeks ago it seemed certain that construction was going to be shut down in Scotland. I'm in touch with many of the housebuilding sites and teams of joiners. Initial prep work was being done on making structures weathertight in anticipation of being told to stop.

https://www.constructionnews.co.uk/...further-construction-restrictions-08-01-2021/
Nicola Sturgeon said her administration is reviewing whether to order the closure of “more non-essential” business activity. From last April until June, construction work deemed “non-essential” was banned in the country.

At a briefing on Thursday, she was asked by a journalist why restrictions are different this year. She said: “To ensure that life with some degree of normality can continue we always try to strike a balance between keeping people at home and allowing certain things continue. In the last lockdown of course, non-essential construction and manufacturing didn’t operate for a period, they’ve both done an awful lot to make their operations safer, but we have to keep all of that under review.

It was something of a surprise that the briefing came and went with little more than changes to takeaways and retail.

While it's true a lot of work was done to get sites re-open last year - social distancing measures, limited numbers on site, enhanced PPE etc, at many sites that has now become a bit of a sham. The sanitising stations are lacking maintenance, the hand gel dispensers are empty and strict one way systems and distancing measures are no longer enforced. The pressure to keep sites moving means full squads are now allowed in and it's up to individual contractors to de-conflict schedules and ensure bubbles aren't breached - many don't bother. A couple of smaller sites have been closed down entirely after cases of Covid were confirmed but larger ones continue with replacements brought in for individuals who have to self-isolate. Unofficially, some sites ask contractors to switch off track and trace apps.
 

Ajax Bay

Guru
Location
East Devon
Another concise post from @Ajax Bay Your blasting of my links yesterday - is precisely why I didn't put a link in today. - the story is readily out there. So there was no increase in handwashing last Feb - OK. - Thats about as credible as any of your waffling drivel I suppose.
My heart rose reading your first assessment, but.
https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/f...d-be-agreeable-even-when-you-disagree.227879/
Apologies for not being concise, but needs must: the devil is often in the detail (like 'where the f*** do you get that from'?)
You may find this difficult to appreciate, @kingrollo but I am interested in the points you raise. If you think the basis of what you say is weak and sharing a link will invite people to examine what it says, I can understand why you'd not want to share the link. Thank you to @deptfordmarmoset for pointing to the Guardian article. I note the sensible use of "may" scattered liberally therein. Academics have done a bunch of work and share that, offering something for the media to bite on. On cases, the data from gov.uk on the date of sample are clear: falling. Of course "it may be that in coming days there will be a flattening off, but clearly we need to keep a watching brief” - as opposed to 'won't be a flattening off' and 'not keeping a watching brief'.
Here's the link to the Imperial College's React-1 infection survey - today's (21 Jan) report (pre-print)
https://spiral.imperial.ac.uk/handle/10044/1/85583
Summary (edited - to mitigate risk of albeit incredible 'waffling drivel' :laugh::laugh: accusations)
The REal-time Assessment of Community Transmission study-1 (REACT-1) obtains throat and nose swabs from between 120,000 and 180,000 people in the community in England at approximately monthly intervals.
Round 8a of REACT-1 6-15 Jan . . compared with Round 7 13 Nov - 3 Dec
Results In round 8a, . . we found no strong evidence for either growth or decay averaged across the period (end Nov to mid Jan); based on data from a limited number of days, prevalence may have started to rise at the end of round 8a.
Conclusion During the initial 10 days of the third COVID-19 lockdown in England in January 2021, prevalence of SARS-CoV-2 was very high with no evidence of decline. Until prevalence in the community is reduced substantially, health services will remain under extreme pressure and the cumulative number of lives lost during this pandemic will continue to increase rapidly.

My comment: Infection level about the same in mid January as at the end of November. And this is news? Nothing to see: move along.
You can just envisage Imperial desperately trying think of a way of spinning this monthly 'result' to get at least a bit of media coverage, given the considerable and useful work they've done. As @johnblack has said this period spanned the maximum, as I think any reasonable person would recognise - at least someone who understands that calculus is not a cloud formation.

(The current (mid Jan) daily case rate is dropping: 7-day average 20+%.) It is still high and of course the current restrictions are having a beneficial effect.
The daily cases by specimen date peaked on 1 Jan: https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/cases
The UK daily admissions peaked on 9 Jan. https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare
Regrettably (but in line with statistical expectation) the death rate (7-day rolling average) has yet to peak, but we can hope that will be in a less than a week. And the effect of the vaccination programme (over 80s) will start contributing to the reduction in serious illness levels by the end of the month and also to NHS staffing levels as less will be off sick or self-isolating.
 
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tom73

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
One of the major problems is the disagreement on how the Covid virus spreads. Scientists still can't agree whether it spreads through droplets or via aerosol (viral particles in the air). This leads to problems with preventative measures: washing hands and not touching face (because of fomite transmission) to face mask wearing and very strict social distancing (air transmission). As ever, very few scientists are taking time to re-evaluate their position as new evidence arises. Given this, it is hard for policymakers when they are getting such conflicting advice.

FWIW, I'm pretty certain it spreads through the air.
Most of that is due to historic snobbery of any idea respiratory disease is via aerosol. Around the 1920 a very influential study shown that it was both. However to side with the idea that it was airborne the author was not keen on being seen to side with the any idea of dark age unclean air / vapours. So came heavy on aerosol his views expressed in the study stuck and become seen as fact.

We have known for decades that’s not the case but his views carry on. Covid is very much in air and it’s fact case studies even from early days show this. The big issue is as Covid is new hard studies in the early days did not exist and you can’t carry out randomised tests in the middle of a pandemic. So many of the experts who felt a different view and approach was needed fell back on studies round other respiratory disease. leading to the ”show us the proof” and “that’s not covid.”

Fast forward and much of the different view points are in fact now seen as right. But to admit it means admitting they got it wrong and they don’t like that. The other big issue is WHO and they are pretty slow to change on anything.
 

Rocky

Hello decadence
Most of that is due to historic snobbery of any idea respiratory disease is via aerosol. Around the 1920 a very influential study shown that it was both. However to side with the idea that it was airborne the author was not keen on being seen to side with the any idea of dark age unclean air / vapours. So came heavy on aerosol his views expressed in the study stuck and become seen as fact.

We have known for decades that’s not the case but his views carry on. Covid is very much in air and it’s fact case studies even from early days show this. The big issue is as Covid is new hard studies in the early days did not exist and you can’t carry out randomised tests in the middle of a pandemic. So many of the experts who felt a different view and approach was needed fell back on studies round other respiratory disease. leading to the ”show us the proof” and “that’s not covid.”

Fast forward and much of the different view points are in fact now seen as right. But to admit it means admitting they got it wrong and they don’t like that. The other big issue is WHO and they are pretty slow to change on anything.
Couple that with the medical profession seeming only to accept RCT evidence and not mechanistic studies (such as lab evidence) we seem to be stuck in a rut. The WHO has refused to have experts in fluid dynamics (and airflow) sitting on its committees as they are said to 'have a conflict of interest' and instead got expert members with no expertise in the particular areas. This has led to the WHO issuing conflicting evidence and refusing to correct earlier statements (see their pronouncements on aerosol transmission and masks for example). It is little wonder that with such weak leadership, Covid deniers are exploiting this.
 

tom73

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
Couple that with the medical profession seeming only to accept RCT evidence and not mechanistic studies (such as lab evidence) we seem to be stuck in a rut. The WHO has refused to have experts in fluid dynamics (and airflow) sitting on its committees as they are said to 'have a conflict of interest' and instead got expert members with no expertise in the particular areas. This has led to the WHO issuing conflicting evidence and refusing to correct earlier statements (see their pronouncements on aerosol transmission and masks for example). It is little wonder that with such weak leadership, Covid deniers are exploiting this.
No such experts are on SAGE either the biggest issue from the start of course is no matter what SAGE makes clear Boris and co are very selective on what they hear.
 

Rocky

Hello decadence
No such experts are on SAGE either the biggest issue from the start of course is no matter what SAGE makes clear Boris and co are very selective on what they hear.
There are two professors currently advising the government who are still arguing that Covid is nothing more than flu and that the death statistics have been over-stated. One is an extreme libertarian who campaigned against encouraging health care staff (in recent years) to have a 'flu jab. With friends like these, who needs enemies.

(I'm not going to name names)
 

Ajax Bay

Guru
Location
East Devon
No such experts [in fluid dynamics (and airflow)] are on SAGE either the biggest issue from the start of course is no matter what SAGE makes clear Boris and co are very selective on what they hear.
I think you'll find Prof Cath Noakes, Professor of Environmental Engineering for Buildings, University of Leeds has been on SAGE from April, once they realised that in indoor spaces, ventilation and air flow can influence the likelihood of transmission.
Awarded an OBE in the NY Honours.
An excellent interview on BBC Radio 4's 'Life Scientific' a few days ago:
Not clear if that's the point you were trying to add value on, though I struggled with your conjoined sentence.
 
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tom73

Guru
Location
Yorkshire
There are two professors currently advising the government who are still arguing that Covid is nothing more than flu and that the death statistics have been over-stated. One is an extreme libertarian who campaigned against encouraging health care staff (in recent years) to have a 'flu jab. With friends like these, who needs enemies.

(I'm not going to name names)
Oh forgotten about them have an idea who ;)
 
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