Coronavirus outbreak

[mjr]

Apologies if this has already been comprehensively talked about but can someone explain why the UK’s covid-19 deaths are set to overtake Italy and become the second-highest in the world? Is it our demographics and are we particularly elderly / vulnerable? Is it all to do with the initial herd immunity response and delayed lockdown? It just seems very strange.

Be cautious about precise international comparisons based on the national headline numbers, rather than the adjusted estimates which organisations like Euromomo and the WHO might publish in months or years to come. I'm not sure how Italy's counting methods compare to the UK's - maybe @marinyork or someone else knows?

That said, we're not doing well. The reasons why the UK's death toll might be unnecessarily high are not all to do with delayed lockdown and the bad examples set by government ministers. The delay in testing is probably another factor, as are ignoring care homes from the headline figures for a long time and seeming to be slow to mobilise the armed forces to the full extent seen in other countries.

This from Boris's employer has aged badly: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/0/coronavirus-uk-death-toll-latest/

 

[icowden]

That seems like going around in circles about why you feel it doesn't matter to you, not why you think it's a good thing. Maybe you don't think it's a good thing - we'd go around in circles less if you came out and posted that.

Maybe we should look from other directions. Why is it a bad thing? Is whether it is a good thing or a bad thing important? If it does no harm to the user, what is the disbenefit to using and promoting the app?

On the other hand I do agree with you that we should be promoting the palatable and useful app possible in order to achieve take up. It's also concerning that the Government seem to have no clue that the NHS has standards and that the app does not meet them in its current form.

 

[Slick]

That seems like going around in circles about why you feel it doesn't matter to you, not why you think it's a good thing. Maybe you don't think it's a good thing - we'd go around in circles less if you came out and posted that.

The reasons I feel that it doesn't matter to me is that i think more data will be lost downloading candy crush or whatever than using this app and I'm also at least willing to wait until the testing is completed before deciding if it's a good thing or not. The government knowing who I'm in contact with is of very little consequence to me.

Leaving aside the 007 bogus epithet (That Hancock is not 007, or at least I bloody hope he isn't or we've got big problems), your view about your own use of the app is understandable in a way from where you're starting, but surely you should also be wanting the most palatable useful app so it stands the best possible chance of reaching critical mass and not being a complete waste of its users' time and resources?

Of course, and I hope that it will be by the time NHS give it the go ahead.

I just feel it seems a gross insult to all those who have died and will die needlessly if central tracking of users is put before widespread adoption and public safety.

My focus would be more on the success and failure of the app but if as you say this would have a better chance of success then yes go another route but if surrendering minor personal data to the government and our NHS is the cost then I can live with it if it helps achieve what we all want.

 

[Levo-Lon]

Watching BBC news, I don't think the travel industry will be popular for a while if it involves flying.
I don't fly anymore but anyone remotely anxious will be avoiding the skies.

Will we even have a travel industry in a year's time ?

 

[Slick]

Watching BBC news, I don't think the travel industry will be popular for a while if it involves flying.
I don't fly anymore but anyone remotely anxious will be avoiding the skies

I watched it. Aer Lingus squeezing all the usual number of passengers on that plane is disappointing at best.

 

[Slick]

That seems like going around in circles about why you feel it doesn't matter to you, not why you think it's a good thing. Maybe you don't think it's a good thing - we'd go around in circles less if you came out and posted that.

Leaving aside the 007 bogus epithet (That Hancock is not 007, or at least I bloody hope he isn't or we've got big problems), your view about your own use of the app is understandable in a way from where you're starting, but surely you should also be wanting the most palatable useful app so it stands the best possible chance of reaching critical mass and not being a complete waste of its users' time and resources?

I just feel it seems a gross insult to all those who have died and will die needlessly if central tracking of users is put before widespread adoption and public safety.

I found this interesting and pretty balanced.

https://www.wired.co.uk/article/nhs-covid-19-tracking-app-contact-tracing

 

[Andy in Germany]

Oops, Wrong thread...

Nothing to see here...

 

[newfhouse]

There’s a very readable and informative blog about the development of the app from Ian Levy, NCSC‘s Technical Director. It discusses some of the technical and architectural choices made, and promises that the source code will be published, eventually - whatever that means.

I found it answered many of my questions, triggered a whole lot more, but on the whole was reasonably reassuring (to me) about the reasons for the design decisions. There is obviously still a trust issue regarding data retention, dispersal, etc. but I have the same wariness about all of the data the NHS and other government departments hold.

 

[Low Gear Guy]

Apologies if this has already been comprehensively talked about but can someone explain why the UK’s covid-19 deaths are set to overtake Italy and become the second-highest in the world? Is it our demographics and are we particularly elderly / vulnerable? Is it all to do with the initial herd immunity response and delayed lockdown? It just seems very strange.

There are several reasons. In no particular order:

No government planning for civil emergencies
An underfunded health service
No compulsory quarantine for arrivals from affected areas
Delay in applying lockdown
A high proportion of the population with underlying health conditions
High density of population
Poor air quality

A perfect storm, ready and waiting.

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

Something to further my suspicion that covid-19 was around for weeks before we knew what it was. 4 days before most of us had heard of Wuhan, a French death, classed as pneumonia, has revealed evidence of CV19. This death was on 27 December. BBC World Service covered it this morning and the Guardian also has an article: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...tal-discovers-covid-19-case-december-retested

 

[Andy in Germany]

With the contact tracing app set to go live within weeks it ... ...It still look's and sounds like a total privacy mess not to mention the rest.
...
If people don't trust they won't use it.
...
Most people never worried about Cambridge Analytica till they had to. Centrally controlled data is not a great selling point.

...public trust in this goverment and transparency ? They don't have a great track record for me.

And here is the problem: I suspect the people who hired these companies to harvest illegal data thought it was a great wheeze, but they squandered what little trust remained, just before a crisis turned up that required their citizens to trust them.

The responsibility has to be shared between us and the government. Neither side can sort it on their own.
I can blame the government for its response, but I can also blame the public for not fully accepting and sticking to the restrictions.

I see the point, but after the way the government, or individuals now in government have treated the citizens of the UK in recent years, I'm not surprised that people doesn't trust them or see any reason to follow what they say.

In the current situation the government is not only morally bankrupt and incompetent, it gives the impression that it's more interested in using the crisis for its own goals than helping its citizens. Given this track record and their current behaviour I'm not surprised that people are not following the government's recommendations.

Understand, I'm not saying it's acceptable that people aren't following the regulations, but if the government spends years acting illegally, peddling lies as truth, contradicting itself, then dismissing experts when it doesn't suit them, than they shouldn't be surprised when a real problem comes up and they discover that they don't have much credibility: shared responsibility requires shared trust.

Just to put another slant on current events, there were more deaths from suicide last month than Covid in my home county .

There will be more: this crisis is causing, and hiding, a mental and psychological health crisis.

 

[kingrollo]

So the Israel is reckon to have found an effective treatment ....good .....but wonder what the terms of a supply deal might include ?

 

[pawl]

We may all wish they had downloaded it and it wont do us any good then either. and we may also wish we hadnt given them reason not to use it.

Give people something else to download other than which Costa Coffee or B&Q is open

 

[PK99]

This from 29 March and posted previously, is relevant to all the tracking knicker twisting going on at the moment:

It was 7am when James Fox was dragged from his slumbers by an incessant ringing on the doorbell of his flat in the Taiwanese capital where he was undergoing a 14-day coronavirus quarantine.

Still groggy with sleep, the American university researcher opened the door to find an irate policeman who instantly began to berate him in rapid-fire Chinese. “I had no idea why because I couldn’t understand what he was saying. It was a very frightening experience,” he recalled.

Mr Fox’s mistake had been to switch his mobile phone onto "airplane" mode in order to get a good night’s sleep, unwittingly dropping off the Taiwanese government’s electronic surveillance grid for those being quarantined after arriving from overseas.

The knock at the door came despite Mr Fox receiving two calls a day from a government-assigned social worker to check that he had not developed Covid-19 symptoms after a recent trip to Iceland.

His experience, shared on a Facebook group, offered a flicker of insight into the extent that some governments are prepared to go to suppress the spread of Covid-19, raising profound questions for Western democracies about how the state, big data and society should intersect as the global pandemic takes hold.

 

[newfhouse]

This from 29 March and posted previously, is relevant to all the tracking knicker twisting going on at the moment:

How does that inform the debate about the choices made by the developers and sponsors of the UK app? “Don’t worry, it could be worse” doesn’t really help me to decide whether to install or use it.