Coronavirus outbreak

[Eziemnaik]

A more cynical man, a man less trusting the mass media would say that Cummings story is just a dead cat gov threw on the table

 

[mjr]

A more cynical man, a man less trusting the mass media would say that Cummings story is just a dead cat gov threw on the table

What do you think they're distracting from?

 

[pawl]

Everything's dropped off now. High levels of traffic, larger groups, larger and more common interhousehold groups and as you face hardly any face coverings. Pubs, restaurants and so on not open, nor are schools are universities, but attitudes are near normal minus those things.

It really annoys me the current attitude of certain members of the general public regarding social distancing What is it they don’t understand? Yes the new rules state we can travel as far as we like for EXERCISE.To me exercise means just that not having barbecues on beaches As a 79 year old I will continue to abide by the previous rules Since lockdown I have only had to travel a total distance of aprox 15 miles for essential items I am unable to obtain locally

Comment sense seems to be in short supply.

EDIT Now of course it looks as though I should have included Dominic Cummings

 

[mjr]

What is it they don’t understand? Yes the new rules state we can travel as far as we like for EXERCISE.To me exercise means just that not having barbecues on beaches

What is it you don't understand? The new rules in England are that you can travel as far as you like to any open air recreation, even if it's a beach barbecue or picnic. See 6(ba) in https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/regulation/6

 

[Tenacious Sloth]

What is it you don't understand? The new rules in England are that you can travel as far as you like to any open air recreation, even if it's a beach barbecue or picnic. See 6(ba) in https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2020/350/regulation/6

You don’t expect people to read the actual rules do you?

Much easier to get the ‘purity spiral’ version off social media.

 

[rualexander]

It wouldn’t surprise me if they discovered we had it in this country since last year.

I was layed up for most of January with a bug that seemed to mirror the Covid-19 symptoms very closely. Persistent dry, hacking cough, high temperature and fluid on/in my lungs. It took me a few weeks to shake it off.

Obviously, I don’t know that it was Covid that I had - but it wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest to discover I have the antibodies. I don’t expect that these more accurate tests will become available to the general public any time soon though.

But the possibility of earlier infections doesn't explain what would therefore be a large lag time until the peak of infections and deaths in early April.
Maybe early on it was less infectious and/or less lethal of course.
But it seems that it isn't mutating significantly.

 

[silva]

In Belgium data reported to politicians upon asking stated that 70% of the current SARS epidemy deaths were people in facilities for elderlies under state regulated care. Their average age was about the same as the countries one.
Yesterday I came across data from US State Pennsylvania. About the same.
If these two samples have any world representation (I don't care that much to start looking it all up, have more useful things to do) then it's like police shooting down entire village while hunting 2 thieves hiding in the local bank. Weird cops?

 

[Eziemnaik]

What do you think they're distracting from?

Laughable quality, clarity and lack of general direction in their response to the crisis

 

[mjr]

Laughable quality, clarity and lack of general direction in their response to the crisis

In which case, Cummings is a good cat to kill, as his paw prints seem to be on those things!

 

[mjr]

This mentions a model that suggests strongly that if Boris had done a proper lockdown a week earlier, instead of his "would you mind awfully bankrupting pubs and cafes?" routine, the UK would have had 75% fewer deaths.

More or Less: Behind the Stats: School re-opening, Germany's Covid-19 success and statistically savvy parrots http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08dnd81

 

[PK99]

This mentions a model that suggests strongly that if Boris had done a proper lockdown a week earlier, instead of his "would you mind awfully bankrupting pubs and cafes?" routine, the UK would have had 75% fewer deaths.

More or Less: Behind the Stats: School re-opening, Germany's Covid-19 success and statistically savvy parrots http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p08dnd81

That calculation is dealt with in the article:
https://unherd.com/thepost/how-much-difference-would-an-earlier-shutdown-have-made/

So it’s not as simple as lockdown a week earlier –> two fewer doublings –> 75% reduction in deaths. If we’d moved the entire process forward by a week — school closures, behaviour changes, everything — that might have done it; but a lot of behaviour change was driven by seeing what was happening elsewhere. Britons saw Italy and China and became rightly scared. It’s not easy to see how we’d have brought that forward.

In their report, More or Less addressed another point, which is that the model also assumes that an earlier lockdown would have been as fully complied with as the one that actually happened; a big assumption, given that a week earlier, people might not have been so scared. That caveat hasn’t made it into any of the other coverage.

None of this is to say that an earlier lockdown would not have saved lives. It almost certainly would. But the stark claim that it would have prevented 75% of deaths — 30,000, so far — is wildly overconfident and I think should be reported with far more uncertainty; the true figure could be much lower.

 

[Joey Shabadoo]

Add in that, as we all saw, lockdown was ignored by more and more people as time went on so if we’d gone in earlier, many would have been coming out earlier.

 

[mjr]

That calculation is dealt with in the article:
https://unherd.com/thepost/how-much-difference-would-an-earlier-shutdown-have-made/

I think it avoids the point rather than deals with it!

Is it still arch-conservative Tim Montgomerie in charge at the sinisterly-misnamed "unherd"? Anyway, it's no surprise when such a deeply establishment-elite site defends the establishment. As yet, Cummings's lockdown-busting isn't on their home page, but the Prof Gupta one is both lead headline and "Don't miss"!

 

[mjr]

Add in that, as we all saw, lockdown was ignored by more and more people as time went on so if we’d gone in earlier, many would have been coming out earlier.

And it would have mattered less, with fewer cases around. That's not an "add in" by the way: it's even in the bit quoted above.

But I think you're wrong and more decisive less dithery action would have inspired more trust and participation.

 

[Rusty Nails]

While it is undoubtedly true that lives would have been saved by earlier action it is not possible, with any level of certainty, to say that any figure, say 75%, of deaths would have been saved.

A model is just that, a model that depends on ifs, buts and assumptions. If you don't like one model others are available.