Yellow Fang
Legendary Member
- Location
- Reading
America and Sweden. If they get away with a lower death count it will be because of their lower settlement densities.
Unemployment may end up worse in many other countries.
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Unemployment may end up worse in many other countries.
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Summary of UK advice and lockdown:
2 Feb: Matt Hancock issues handwashing/sneezing advice;
13 Feb: Chris Whitty says no behaviour change needed;
25 Feb: those returning from Italian quarantine zones advised to quarantine for 14 days;
29 Feb: Chris Whitty says school closures not needed;
3 Mar: Boris shook hands with everybody at a hospital;
7 Mar: Boris shook hands at Twickenham;
9 Mar: Boris issues handwashing/sneezing advice;
12 Mar: those with symptoms told to quarantine for just 7 days (WHO advice is for the whole time you have symptoms plus 14 days after);
16 Mar: Boris advises to work from home and against travel, pubs and theatres; those with symptoms now told to quarantine for 14 days (so anyone already quarantined since 12 Mar would not be out yet);
17 Mar: Foreign Office advisory against nonessential travel abroad - but travel numbers reportedly already falling fast;
18 Mar: schools to close 20 Mar - widely reported that many parents had withdrawn their children before that;
20 Mar: entertainment and leisure venues ordered to close but it takes a day to make it legal;
23 Mar: lockdown announced but it takes two more days to make it legal;
27 Mar: Boris and Hancock test positive, Whitty develops symptoms.
If the peak really was obtained at 8 April and the median time for symptoms to show is 5 days and the median time between symptoms and death is 18.5 days, that may put the key change 23.5 days before the 2pm, so 2am on 16 March, which would suggest the key change was telling anyone with any symptoms to quarantine, rather than even the not-quite-Swedish lockdown bankrupting hospitality without a bailout/furlough scheme.
BUT! The counterpoint to this is that these are all probabilities and estimates and it's a long time between taking an action and seeing the reaction, so rather like steering a heavy boat, a heavier adjustment to the rudder may have been needed once we started to drift off course in order to bring us back sooner. It would have been a brave or foolhardy captain who stopped after the quarantine order and the expected cost of a small probability of crashing into full hospitals would probably have been higher than the expected cost of a probably-unnecessary lockdown.
Correction (29 April): I totally lost track that we are talking about the "peak" which is basically the "mode" and something like time-to-death will be very skewed, so the mode will be less than the median. In line with https://www.cyclechat.net/threads/peak-infections-occurred-before-full-lockdown.260300/post-5975500 - this means that peak infection probably occurred at some point between 16 March and 3 April and we need more information about typical time-to-death before we can decide when is most likely. Any claims that it was one side or the other of 24 March probably tells you more about the claimant than the virus!
Statisticians and epidemiologists will probably argue about this one for decades. I think that, at best, we need more information about this virus and illness than we have even now to decide reliably when and how to unlock, let alone whether we locked down optimally.
(edited to add missing words and line breaks - edited to add correction)
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Andy in Germany
Guru
- Location
- Rottenburg am Neckar
We are now having to wear masks all day.
Thin ,poor fitted, all it does is make my exhaled air go up into my eyes and steam up my specs..And tickle, so the urge to rub them has increased also..
On the plus side I look heaps better
Draw a toothy smile on the outside.
I sympatise with the steaming up glasses problem, as the cotton masks I have do the same. I'll need them at work as well I expect.
roubaixtuesday
self serving virtue signaller
USA has a much lower death rate than us - many states responded ahead of the Federal govt. I'd give them about the same marks as us.
Sweden is more interesting; whether or not you agree with their approach it at least has been considered and consistent. They have a lower death rate than us. It could go either way. I'd give them marginally better at the moment, but with much uncertainty.
I'm really struggling to see anyone else who has had the time to respond and done worse than we have. Italy and Spain had weeks less to respond, but with about the same outcome. Ireland was in a very similar position to us, much better outcome. Ditto Germany. USA are crap, obviously, but no worse than us.
Not good once they get damp they are next to useless. If they don't have enough then you have to do the best you can
Yellow Fang
Legendary Member
- Location
- Reading
Turkey, we don't hear much about them. Erdogan has refused to do anything until recently.
matticus
Guru
How is Belarus getting on? (I'm enjoying their hockey matches)
roubaixtuesday
self serving virtue signaller
Dunno about Turkey. Greece has done magnificently, so I guess it's traditional that Turkey will do the exact opposite...
Well done Matt .... PPE shortage forcers trust to prioritise staff on racial grounds.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-52455233
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-somerset-52455233
Andy in Germany
Guru
- Location
- Rottenburg am Neckar
Belgium seems to have quite a lot of deaths so far relative to population
Spain had less warning, and it could be just that Belgium is being honest...
mjr
Comfy armchair to one person & a plank to the next
- Location
- mostly Norfolk, sometimes Somerset
Belgium is including all deaths in its headline reports. Its hospital death rate is slightly lower than the UK's. They seemed very much harmed by the scale of outbreak in France and the relaxed approaches taken in the Netherlands and the UK (whose TV is widely rebroadcast in Belgium).Belgium seems to have quite a lot of deaths so far relative to population
Rusty Nails
We remember
- Location
- Living in the slow lane
It appears to me that it is far too difficult, given the limited information we have about the behaviour of the virus this early in its life, too be too definitive about how much the "league table" of death/infection rates is due to the different approaches of the various governments.
There are a range of factors, other than the government strategy/lockdown timings, including population density, rural/urban mix, age mix, cultural differences, attitudes to authority, poverty/deprivation levels, state/preparedness of national health services etc.
My own inexpert view is that a lot of our poor performance is due to a mix of: national/government complacency (of course we'll deal with it better than other countries), lack of clarity about early strategy, government concerns that strict restrictions would look too Nanny state, poor preparedness of NHS (in great part due to financial constraints/targets, but also to the bureaucratic, slow response of its management and PHE), shocking neglect of social services/care homes for the elderly.
I hope that, at the end of all this, the country really examines what sort of health/social care it really needs, and government and the people are honest about how much that will cost and how much they are going to be prepared to pay for it.
There are a range of factors, other than the government strategy/lockdown timings, including population density, rural/urban mix, age mix, cultural differences, attitudes to authority, poverty/deprivation levels, state/preparedness of national health services etc.
My own inexpert view is that a lot of our poor performance is due to a mix of: national/government complacency (of course we'll deal with it better than other countries), lack of clarity about early strategy, government concerns that strict restrictions would look too Nanny state, poor preparedness of NHS (in great part due to financial constraints/targets, but also to the bureaucratic, slow response of its management and PHE), shocking neglect of social services/care homes for the elderly.
I hope that, at the end of all this, the country really examines what sort of health/social care it really needs, and government and the people are honest about how much that will cost and how much they are going to be prepared to pay for it.
- Location
- Somewhere wet & hilly in NW England.
That's a bit of an ambivalent statement there: the article merely says that they are recommending that people of Scotland consider wearing a mask in some limited situations.
