Coronavirus outbreak

[SkipdiverJohn]

Yep generally through people not adhering to the advice given by refusing to wear masks and giving false details in pubs etc. The selfish people who are 'going to carry on as before' have made this pandemic far worse for the country.

It's the people like you who want to disrupt daily life that are making it last much longer than it needs to. No-one can stop the virus, so we might as well let it run and get it over and done with, then normality can return ASAP.
Do you want years of worsening economic damage, business failures, millions more job losses, and long-term interference in people's right to go about their business as they see fit?

 

[roubaixtuesday]

No-one can stop the virus,

Other than a geographically and economically diverse range of countries, that is.

 

[Rezillo]

Now I'm cross that I spent time fact-checking another throwaway slur.

There are a few posts here that are so depressingly wrong and in such an extensive way, it makes one want to weep. In the main, I've given up - it's a fruitless task to rebut those with conviction rather than evidence-based agendas.

Not that it is confined to a mere cycling forum. The food and drinks industry in its claims about infection risk appears to be confusing ARIs (acute respiratory infection incidents) firstly with Covid incidents (which only make up some of the ARIs) and then with Covid cases, apparently failing to realise that an ARI could be two cases or two hundred. This means that in an extensively monitored envronment such as care homes, where a couple of qualifying cases can easily be picked up, a hundred ARIs could equate to fewer Covid cases than from a handful of food outlet ARIs. Even considering ARIs alone, in week 37, the Covid-confirmed food outlet sector incidents were only 1 off being second in the source list. They subsequently got overtaken by educational sector incidents.

[edited for repeated typos]

 

[Salty seadog]

I hope the government have got the extra ventilators they were trying to get. If not that's a pretty big WTF.

 

[tom73]

I hope the government have got the extra ventilators they were trying to get. If not that's a pretty big WTF.

They may have but they don't have the staff to use them.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

I really don't know why the media is getting worked up at things like university outbreaks, because the mortality rate from such events is virtually zero. Rather than have knee-jerk local responses I would just give all the students as much beer and party food as they could consume and tell them to all mix with each other within their own group as much as possible. In a couple of weeks you could effectively immunize the whole university population on-campus and effectively prevent them being able to transmit the virus to the wider population.

 

[stowie]

It's the people like you who want to disrupt daily life that are making it last much longer than it needs to. No-one can stop the virus, so we might as well let it run and get it over and done with, then normality can return ASAP.
Do you want years of worsening economic damage, business failures, millions more job losses, and long-term interference in people's right to go about their business as they see fit?

I do keep saying this, but Manaus in Brazil did what you are advocating. Their health service was utterly overrun. They were burying the dead in mass graves. I know we have more available healthcare to all, but this would just mean it collapses later rather than sooner.

In July Manaus COVID infection figures dropped significantly. There was speculation and ongoing studies that maybe they had reached herd immunity - an estimated 44%-66% of the population had contracted COVID. But recently the numbers have surged again. They are, this time, shutting down. It may be that mild or asymptomatic cases of COVID result in only a temporary immunity measured in months. But it is not clear why the cases fell and why they are rising again.

Long story short - places have done similar to what you advocate and ended up in this situation

 

[deptfordmarmoset]

I really don't know why the media is getting worked up at things like university outbreaks, because the mortality rate from such events is virtually zero. Rather than have knee-jerk local responses I would just give all the students as much beer and party food as they could consume and tell them to all mix with each other within their own group as much as possible. In a couple of weeks you could effectively immunize the whole university population on-campus and effectively prevent them being able to transmit the virus to the wider population.

And go home to kill nan for Christmas...

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

And go home to kill nan for Christmas...

No, that's the whole point. All the students need to catch the virus as soon as possible, so that by the time they break up for Christmas, they will have already had it and be clear of it. All the attempts to prevent it spreading in places like universities is doing is meaning there will be more potentially infectious students around at the end of the term. A concerted "catch the virus now, and protect your granny for Christmas" campaign could go a long way to neutralising the threat to elderly family members.

 

[raleighnut]

It's the people like you who want to disrupt daily life that are making it last much longer than it needs to. No-one can stop the virus, so we might as well let it run and get it over and done with, then normality can return ASAP.
Do you want years of worsening economic damage, business failures, millions more job losses, and long-term interference in people's right to go about their business as they see fit?

TBH following the advice hasn't really made much of a difference to my life. Pubs have been shite since the smoking ban and the 'opinion poll' 4 years ago made them worse, Restuarants well I can cook better food at home than the microwaved pap they sell, I could go on but I won't. You go on about people's right to go about their business as they see fit well my rights to live in other countries has been forcibly removed as has my 'right' to smoke wherever I like.

 

[Rezillo]

I do keep saying this, but Manaus in Brazil did what you are advocating. Their health service was utterly overrun. They were burying the dead in mass graves. I know we have more available healthcare to all, but this would just mean it collapses later rather than sooner.

Same thing happened in Lombardy - local hospitals overwhelmed, then many, many people dying at home, followed by collapse of local undertaking services and on at least one occasion the army brought in to convoy the bodies away.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/italy-army-coffins-coronavirus/

 

[mjr]

[...] The food and drinks industry in its claims about infection risk appears to be confusing ARIs (acute respiratory infection incidents) firstly with Covid incidents (which only make up some of the ARIs) and then with Covid cases, apparently failing to realise that an ARI could be two cases or two hundred. This means that in an extensively monitored envronment such as care homes, where a couple of qualifying cases can easily be picked up, a hundred AFIs could equate to fewer Covid cases than from a handful of food outlet AFIs. Even considering AFIs alone, in week 37, the Covid-confirmed food outlet sector incidents were only 1 off being second in the source list. They subsequently got overtaken by educational sector incidents.

What's an AFI in this context?

Conviction-based remarks are easy to report. Reporting evidence-based news is much more difficult and it feels like it isn't rewarded by the marketplace, so the main thing preventing a total race to the bottom in news coverage are the last vestiges of journalism ethics — but now we've got a failed newspaper columnist as PM and an ex-Newsnight ex-ITV editor taking the top PR job in Downing Street now with a daily primetime TV show. I fear that temptation may grow too much for many journalists who see conviction-based reporting as a path to power and/or fame.

 

[mjr]

And go home to kill nan for Christmas...

But they'll kill their teachers and the researchers and techs and other academic workers sooner - but that's OK because "people have had enough of experts" and it's not like we need research labs to develop treatments, preventatives or vaccines

 

[marinyork]

But they'll kill their teachers and the researchers and techs and other academic workers sooner - but that's OK because "people have had enough of experts" and it's not like we need research labs to develop treatments, preventatives or vaccines

People have had enough of experts. It's very much the situation the world is in.

 

[SkipdiverJohn]

Same thing happened in Lombardy - local hospitals overwhelmed, then many, many people dying at home, followed by collapse of local undertaking services and on at least one occasion the army brought in to convoy the bodies away.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/italy-army-coffins-coronavirus/

In any country/locality there is going to be a manageable infection rate, which will depend on a whole host of factors both economic and demographic. The only justification I see for any form of coronavirus restrictions to normal life, is to try to keep the amount of infection cases just below the point at which the local services would be overwhelmed. So long as you achieve that, then the virus is manageable until such time it naturally burns itself out through less and less efficient transmission.
Having waves of virus followed by hard lockdowns, then further, even larger, waves of virus followed by more hard lockdowns, is not achieving anything - other than to wreck the economies of the countries doing it.