Coronavirus outbreak

[lane]

Bus driver and other transport have been found to be very high risk occupations (unlike you or I fortunately and that's a blessing), so protection is needed, besides the high level of mixing and most transport are closed, small confined environments with sometimes with poor ventilation.

Schools on the other hand, teacher has been shown to be a much lower risk occupation and continuous mixing of new households not already involved in mixing in schools is low. Schools also have a much more sophisticated testing regime available to them than most high risk occupations (that's changing and being worked on). You have it the wrong way round. Instead of worrying about schools you should be jumping up and down in anger asking for MORE protections for some high risk occupations like security guard and bus driver.

Even if masks were mandated inside in various environments, schools would be one of the last places to have them mandated as it's believed to be a much lower risk.

You of course think that's complete nonsense, but you do know every single bit of that. The tabloid newspapers and Boris continuously going on about pubs, schools and jolly holidays continues to perpetuate these myths and stoke the worries.

As in all things with such a widespread virus, things have to be simplified. It's not really pointless, you are protecting the bus driver/train/other.

I would be interested to understand why the bus driver is at high risk but not the teacher. Spending all day in a poorly ventilated classroom (in many cases) with 30 children and then mixing with potentially 150 different children in a day and maybe many more in the course of a week. What is the basis of the science which says one is low risk and the other high risk?

By the way I am not being flippant about the regulations - I think the time has come when they are a bit meaningless and I prefer to risk assess things myself - even though I might be less informed than the SAGE committee. However I am quite risk adverse where the virus is concerned.

 

[lane]

Much of the confusion is down to mixed messages and unclear ones.
The other main issue which is key is Ineffective public awareness of methods of transmission.
Studies of other counties clearly show both are key to pubic understanding and compliance.
Too much of the ”rules“ for business have been left to industry bodies to come up with.
As long as they are within government “guidelines“ they get the ok for government. They have been more or less free to read them as they see fit.

In terms of methods of transmission the scientists can't agree on that one!

 

[tom73]

In terms of methods of transmission the scientists can't agree on that one!

A good few do though

 

[Unkraut]

A fairly long, but interesting read:

https://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2020/07/09/a-conversation-with-john-ioannidis/

I view “lockdown” as a drug with dangerous side effects when its use is prolonged.

Again, we face a communication challenge – how do we convey the severity of a virus which is both more dangerous and less dangerous than the flu?

I consider that people who criticize me with valid scientific arguments are my greatest benefactors. But the outrage propagated by social media is a force of its own, and destroys any intelligent discourse, civil or uncivil.

 

[Julia9054]

On the bus Knaresborough to Harrogate makes me wonder: how's the bike?

It doesn't work on the way back when the legs have beer in them

 

[Rocky]

A fairly long, but interesting read:

https://thehealthcareblog.com/blog/2020/07/09/a-conversation-with-john-ioannidis/

I view “lockdown” as a drug with dangerous side effects when its use is prolonged.

Again, we face a communication challenge – how do we convey the severity of a virus which is both more dangerous and less dangerous than the flu?

I consider that people who criticize me with valid scientific arguments are my greatest benefactors. But the outrage propagated by social media is a force of its own, and destroys any intelligent discourse, civil or uncivil.

Except that John Ioannidis and his colleagues say one thing and do the exact opposite (as my wife has found when challenging them on the evidence)!!

 

[Salty seadog]

I would be interested to understand why the bus driver is at high risk but not the teacher. Spending all day in a poorly ventilated classroom (in many cases) with 30 children and then mixing with potentially 150 different children in a day and maybe many more in the course of a week. What is the basis of the science which says one is low risk and the other high risk?

It's political science. Get the kids in school with no social distancing or mitigating practices 'cos kids don't get the virus .
This frees up the parents to go back to work and get paying tax again. Its just childcare.

The teachers don't matter.
My dad's a teacher and I'm not looking forward to him going back.

 

[mjr]

It doesn't work on the way back when the legs have beer in them

Oooh, I wouldn't want a bike like that!

 

[tom73]

if only every shop displayed this

View: https://twitter.com/tormcycling/status/1281516789625688064?s=20

 

[Rezillo]

Comparing SARS-CoV-2 with SARS-CoV and influenza pandemics:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30484-9/fulltext

Table 3, if I've read it correctly, is an agglomeration of data from cities with historic data to enable comparisons to be made with earlier outbreaks, rather than giving absolute worldwide or regional figures.

In broad terms, twice as many Covid-19 deaths as in the 1957 flu pandemic, four times as many as the 1969 flu pandemic and a quarter of the 1918 flu pandemic. And most of those, imho, in the space of a few weeks in spring rather than a whole winter season.

I particularly liked this quote:

"A mortality study in 17 cities in the USA during the 1918 influenza pandemic found that the cities which implemented mitigation strategies early on had a delayed, flatter epidemic curve, with a 50% lower peak mortality, and a 20% lower overall mortality".

Who said history is bunk?

 

[lane]

Comparing SARS-CoV-2 with SARS-CoV and influenza pandemics:

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30484-9/fulltext

Table 3, if I've read it correctly, is an agglomeration of data from cities with historic data to enable comparisons to be made with earlier outbreaks, rather than giving absolute worldwide or regional figures.

In broad terms, twice as many Covid-19 deaths as in the 1957 flu pandemic, four times as many as the 1969 flu pandemic and a quarter of the 1918 flu pandemic. And most of those, imho, in the space of a few weeks in spring rather than a whole winter season.

I particularly liked this quote:

"A mortality study in 17 cities in the USA during the 1918 influenza pandemic found that the cities which implemented mitigation strategies early on had a delayed, flatter epidemic curve, with a 50% lower peak mortality, and a 20% lower overall mortality".

Who said history is bunk?

Surely the thing here is all these additional deaths in the UK, are after we have had an unprecedented lock down. We don't do that for the flu.

 

[Goggs]

Surely the thing here is all these additional deaths in the UK, are after we have had an unprecedented lock down. We don't do that for the flu.

You didn't have a lock-down, not by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[Rezillo]

Surely the thing here is all these additional deaths in the UK, are after we have had an unprecedented lock down. We don't do that for the flu.

It's not an article based on UK stats - it's just establishing a death rate comparison of covid-19 with other pandemics using figures from cities worldwide.

Besides, lockdown is intended to prevent health care services collapsing by trying to spread out the onset of cases over a longer time scale. As the article says, the population risk of admission to intensive care is five to six times higher in patients infected with SARS-CoV-2 than in those with the fairly mild 2009 influenza pandemic. Combine that with a highly compressed timescale for Covid-19 case onset compared to a winter flu season and it is a recipe for disaster. With flu, the cases are spread over a season and a far higher proportion of cases die at home. It puts health services under pressure but without a collapse.

Lockdown hasn't been about eliminating the disease - most of the population is still vulnerable. We're roughly back to where we were in February but with people taking their own distancing measures and better tracing, there is some hope of it not reaching an exponential phase again. The argument remains as to how many deaths could have been avoided by earlier lockdown, which will probably rage for years to come.

 

[randynewmanscat]

It doesn't work on the way back when the legs have beer in them

The bike is fine, you need to drink more beer. It is well documented with peer reviewed science that beer directly causes humans to be capable of herculean efforts.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Besides, lockdown is intended to prevent health care services collapsing by trying to spread out the onset of cases over a longer time scale.......
Lockdown hasn't been about eliminating the disease - most of the population is still vulnerable. We're roughly back to where we were in February but with people taking their own distancing measures and better tracing, there is some hope of it not reaching an exponential phase again.

i reckon the lockdown will prove to be totally pointless, and a Swedish-style "just be sensible" advice message would achieve a similar outcome without the economic carnage. Trying to suppress the virus for months is likely just to result in a disastrously deadly winter flu + coronavirus 2nd wave season instead. Once the NHS critical care capacity had been boosted, they would have been better off just letting the virus loose so millions of the healthy population could get it and be done with. I had a nasty dose of the measles when I was a youngster, made me properly ill. I've never caught it again since though. If I worked in a high risk public contact job I would rather catch the coronavirus early on and get it over with, knowing that afterwards you can forget about it.