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filbertway

Coronavirus Thread

By filbertway, in General Chat

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Wymsey

Wymsey

Posted
Posted (edited)
4 minutes ago, Trav Le Bleu said:

Supposed to be reviewed every two weeks. Which technically is today, but thinking about how late everything was announced last week, maybe they'll announce it tomorrow.

 

Which means a tweet at 1 am Saturday morning.

@turkish14's son might well know the 'update' on this.:D:P

Edited by Wymsey
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Guest Fktf

Guest Fktf

Posted
Posted
5 hours ago, Monk said:

 

From Wikipedia:

Totalitarian regimes are often characterized by extensive political repression, a complete lack of democracy, widespread personality cultism, absolute control over the economy, massive censorship, mass surveillance, limited freedom of movement (most notably freedom to leave the country) and widespread use of state terrorism. Other aspects of a totalitarian regime include the use of concentration camps, repressive secret police, religious persecution or state atheism, the common practice of executions, fraudulent elections (if they take place), possible possession of weapons of mass destruction and potentially state-sponsored mass murder and genocides. Historian Robert Conquest describes a totalitarian state as one which recognizes no limit on its authority in any sphere of public or private life and it extends that authority to whatever length is feasible.[1]

 

Lets go through these:

  • Political repression - no they are still a functioning democracy and the lockdown was passed in parliament
  • Lack of democracy - no
  • Cultism - no
  • Control over economy - not in the sense it is meant here 0
  • Censorship - no
  • Freedom of movement - yes, temporary
  • Mass surveillance - yes, temporary
  • Concentration camps - no, the isolation centres are hotels and people have freely escaped
  • Secret police - no
  • Religious persecution - no
  • Executions - no
  • Fraudulent Elections - no
  • WMDs & State Terrorism - no
  • Mass murder, genocide - no

 

It's a term that people like to band about, but its objectively not totalitarian. And what sets this apart more than anything else is that the measures are temporary and clearly for the benefit of society as a whole.

 

Fair play. I didn't really mean nz was a totalitarian state in general, but that is what I said. 

 

Let me try again. On a spectrum, I think the NZ response has been more towards  totalitarian than many, including an awful lot European countries. And like you say, good on 'em. 

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simFox

simFox

Posted
Posted (edited)

How quickly we are willing to give up our freedoms and right to property, all in the name of fear and safety. 

 

The New Zealand strategy simply cannot work long term. Either they destroy their economy due to repeated (totalitarian esque) lockdowns forever, or the virus takes hold and the same  happens there like everywhere else.

 

I don't think they are managing expectations with the vaccine. Its a Coronavirus, it mutates and changes like the cold. If my suspicions are correct, this vaccine will probably give permissive immunity, meaning it will lessen the effects and modulate to some degree, but there will still be cases, deaths and hospitalisations. If they can't currently bare one single household catching the virus, how will they tolerate hundreds? In Nigeria, the population has partial immunity to malaria, but people still die. Our driver was happy he passed his medical, "only had a bit of malaria and typhoid".

 

I'd love to live in New Zealand, but that would not be possible if NZ strategy is to stay isolated at the meerest hint of the virus, if so that could continue indefinitely. I'd rather live in a country with a bit of covid and travel in and out as I please.

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st albans fox

st albans fox

Posted
Posted
28 minutes ago, simFox said:

How quickly we are willing to give up our freedoms and right to property, all in the name of fear and safety. 

 

The New Zealand strategy simply cannot work long term. Either they destroy their economy due to repeated (totalitarian esque) lockdowns forever, or the virus takes hold and the same  happens there like everywhere else.

 

I don't think they are managing expectations with the vaccine. Its a Coronavirus, it mutates and changes like the cold. If my suspicions are correct, this vaccine will probably give permissive immunity, meaning it will lessen the effects and modulate to some degree, but there will still be cases, deaths and hospitalisations. If they can't currently bare one single household catching the virus, how will they tolerate hundreds? In Nigeria, the population has partial immunity to malaria, but people still die. Our driver was happy he passed his medical, "only had a bit of malaria and typhoid".

 

I'd love to live in New Zealand, but that would not be possible if NZ strategy is to stay isolated at the meerest hint of the virus, if so that could continue indefinitely. I'd rather live in a country with a bit of covid and travel in and out as I please.

I guess this is where we all end up ......although if the virus struggles to find a host (due to widespread vaccination)  it may cease to meaningfully exist as has happened with SARS and mers. I guess we make sure those over 40 and younger with underlying health conditions are regularly vaccinated to protect society in general. 
 

 

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simFox

simFox

Posted
Posted
16 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

I guess this is where we all end up ......although if the virus struggles to find a host (due to widespread vaccination)  it may cease to meaningfully exist as has happened with SARS and mers. I guess we make sure those over 40 and younger with underlying health conditions are regularly vaccinated to protect society in general. 
 

 

I'd like to live in a world where I'm free to travel in and out of countries where COVID-19 is a risk and is managed appropriately in a way that doesn't impact the desire to live with freedom and socialise 

 

Much like we manage:

 

Smallpox

Malaria

Dengue

Yellow fever

HIV

Rabies

Ebola

SARS

Norovirus

Hepatitis

Flu

Marburg

Rotavirus

Polio

Typhoid

Cholera

Zika

Varicella zoster

 

Interestingly, once these things are here, it would be hard to get rid of. It's sprung up in NZ, just like the cold sprung up in the Antarctic.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/#:~:text=Six of 12 men wintering,not revealed a causative agent.

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Guest Fktf

Guest Fktf

Posted
Posted
1 hour ago, simFox said:

How quickly we are willing to give up our freedoms and right to property, all in the name of fear and safety. 

 

The New Zealand strategy simply cannot work long term. Either they destroy their economy due to repeated (totalitarian esque) lockdowns forever, or the virus takes hold and the same  happens there like everywhere else.

 

I don't think they are managing expectations with the vaccine. Its a Coronavirus, it mutates and changes like the cold. If my suspicions are correct, this vaccine will probably give permissive immunity, meaning it will lessen the effects and modulate to some degree, but there will still be cases, deaths and hospitalisations. If they can't currently bare one single household catching the virus, how will they tolerate hundreds? In Nigeria, the population has partial immunity to malaria, but people still die. Our driver was happy he passed his medical, "only had a bit of malaria and typhoid".

 

I'd love to live in New Zealand, but that would not be possible if NZ strategy is to stay isolated at the meerest hint of the virus, if so that could continue indefinitely. I'd rather live in a country with a bit of covid and travel in and out as I please.

Have they ever suggested they will do this, or are you assuming it so you can show how silly their strategy is?

 

My guess they are waiting for some form of vaccine/effective treatment, and by all accounts it seems one will be ready in 6 months. That's exactly what the rest of us are doing, just with less success.

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simFox

simFox

Posted
Posted
5 minutes ago, leicsmac said:

Not good developments over here in the last 24 hours - 100-odd cases yesterday and now as of 4.30pm more than 50 cases today in my own district alone, which means there will likely be a lot more nationwide. Linked mostly to churches.

Isolate and monitor. No more lockdowns are necessary. We shouldn't be accepting this anymore.

 

If people aren't dieing, it's not dangerous.

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leicsmac

leicsmac

Posted
Posted
Just now, simFox said:

Isolate and monitor. No more lockdowns are necessary. We shouldn't be accepting this anymore.

 

If people aren't dieing, it's not dangerous.

That's actually what the Koreans have been doing all along, apart from a small time in March where numbers really were shooting up and so a bigger lockdown was thought warranted (and even then it wasn't total, even though I had a month furloughed). They have the resources and social awareness has been good enough so far that they've been able to target these hotspots as they came up. Not the same, it would seem, as other nations.

 

This, however, seems like the biggest one since those difficult times.

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reynard

reynard

Posted
Posted
11 hours ago, st albans fox said:

I thought that the estimate from previous studies was somewhere between 5 and 10% ?  So 8 do t understand the surprise in the article 

 

and if these tests were done in late June/July, then surely many people who had a mild case back in March/April may well not show antibodies ? 

I was one of those asked to take the test which I did and was not surprised when it came back negative. There were two positive options one indicating a modest antibody level or weak and the other a strong anti body level. There was a lot of info with the test and it clearly underlined the fact that they could not be 100% accurate ata personal level but was more a way of trying to provide an estimate of those potentially infected.

I'm not at all surprised the numbers are so low though I think the estimate for London was 13%. I know and have heard fom several people, I'm sure we all have, who think they had it back in January and February when it is more likely they had some form of seasonal flu like illness.

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StanSP

StanSP

Posted
Posted

https://amp.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/14/government-quietly-drops-13m-covid-tests-from-england-tally?utm_term=Autofeed&CMP=twt_gu&utm_medium=&utm_source=Twitter&__twitter_impression=true

 

 



The government has quietly removed 1.3m coronavirus tests from its data because of double counting, raising fresh questions about the accuracy of the testing figures.

In the government’s daily coronavirus update on Wednesday, it announced it had lowered the figure for “tests made available” by about 10% and discontinued the metric.

An update on the page read: “An adjustment of -1,308,071 has been made to the historic data for the ‘tests made available’ metric. The adjustments have been made as a result of more accurate data collection and reporting processes recently being adopted within pillar 2.”

 

The Department for Health and Social Care (DHSC) said the changes affected data reported between 14 May and 12 August. It said there had been “a double-counting of test kits that had been dispatched”, “which had not been removed from the lab’s processed data”.

The changes were made after it was discovered fewer in-person pillar 2 tests had been carried out than originally reported, while more tests had been sent to NHS trusts and care homes. The problem was acknowledged by the DHSC on 6 July but the tests were removed from the data on 12 August.

Pillar 2 tests involve all testing done outside hospitals through commercial companies. For example, swab tests carried out at satellite testing centres, such as care homes, and home swab testing kits delivered by post.

Justin Madders, the shadow health minister, said the data on testing had been “shambolic” for months.

“To now retrospectively adjust the testing figures by 1.3m overnight – without explanation – is the latest in a long line of chaotic failings by the government on testing,” he said.

“How can we be confident that testing and tracing is working properly when basic data on the number of tests is obviously so flawed? Ministers need to get a grip of this as a matter of urgency.”

 

In a letter to the health secretary, Matt Hancock, in June, the head of the UK Statistics Authority, Sir David Norgrove, said: “The aim seems to be to show the largest possible number of tests, even at the expense of understanding.”

The Liberal Democrat health, wellbeing and social care spokesperson, Munira Wilson, said: “With so many families torn apart by this pandemic, the government must recognise the fall in public trust in their handling of the crisis.

“To avoid questions of fiddling the numbers, they must be explicitly transparent in how they have changed the data and how they will rapidly build testing capacity.

“Ultimately, we need an immediate independent inquiry so lessons can be learned more systematically.”

The revised test count comes after up to 750,000 unused coronavirus testing kits manufactured by the diagnostics company Randox were recalled from care homes and individuals because of concerns about safety standards.

The recall was ordered by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA) and the UK government instructed care homes and members of the public to immediately stop using Randox testing kits in mid-July amid concerns over their sterility.

Allyson Pollock, a clinical professor of public health at Newcastle University, said: “The government needs to make clear what they mean by an adjustment and why the change has taken place. There are also big questions that should be asked about the Randox contract, and the one with Deloitte is still not published, we should really press for that.”

A DHSC spokesperson said: “In July we became aware of an overcounting issue which we publicly and transparently acknowledged and have since sought to clarify these figures subsequently.

“This does not change the fact that we have rapidly built, from scratch, the largest diagnostic testing industry in British history, with over 13 million tests delivered, and capacity to test 300,000 every day.”

 

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reynard

reynard

Posted
Posted
48 minutes ago, simFox said:

I'd like to live in a world where I'm free to travel in and out of countries where COVID-19 is a risk and is managed appropriately in a way that doesn't impact the desire to live with freedom and socialise 

 

Much like we manage:

 

Smallpox

Malaria

Dengue

Yellow fever

HIV

Rabies

Ebola

SARS

Norovirus

Hepatitis

Flu

Marburg

Rotavirus

Polio

Typhoid

Cholera

Zika

Varicella zoster

 

Interestingly, once these things are here, it would be hard to get rid of. It's sprung up in NZ, just like the cold sprung up in the Antarctic.

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/#:~:text=Six of 12 men wintering,not revealed a causative agent.

You do realise that for the vast majority of this list we can mitigate the illness through vaccination, treatment or the fact that transmission is not as easy as it appears to be with Covid or indeed by helping developing countries to produce clean and safe water to drink.

On your first example, smallpox, we don't manage it at all, The disease has been eradicated by a massive vaccination programme. Polio was virtually eradicated though vaccination until idoi anti-vaxers and conflicts got in the way. Covid is currently one virus where as the common cold is several hence the difficulty in developing a vaccine. However, people don't tend die or need hospital treatment of a cold. Even if we don't produce a vaccine I'm certain we will learn how to treat the disease more effectively. Probably alreay have done in hospitals.

 

I understand you are trying to broaden the debate and welcome your contributions but this isn't any run of the mill disease. Without a lockdown we would still be in a psotion of hospitals not being able to carry out any other work than Covid work. We've no idea yet what the long term death rates from covid will be. It won't, by first accounts, likely be a simple death after a few weeks but many people look likely to be left with serious heart and lung damage which will reduce their life expectancy.

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simFox

simFox

Posted
Posted
30 minutes ago, reynard said:

You do realise that for the vast majority of this list we can mitigate the illness through vaccination, treatment or the fact that transmission is not as easy as it appears to be with Covid or indeed by helping developing countries to produce clean and safe water to drink.

On your first example, smallpox, we don't manage it at all, The disease has been eradicated by a massive vaccination programme. Polio was virtually eradicated though vaccination until idoi anti-vaxers and conflicts got in the way. Covid is currently one virus where as the common cold is several hence the difficulty in developing a vaccine. However, people don't tend die or need hospital treatment of a cold. Even if we don't produce a vaccine I'm certain we will learn how to treat the disease more effectively. Probably alreay have done in hospitals.

 

I understand you are trying to broaden the debate and welcome your contributions but this isn't any run of the mill disease. Without a lockdown we would still be in a psotion of hospitals not being able to carry out any other work than Covid work. We've no idea yet what the long term death rates from covid will be. It won't, by first accounts, likely be a simple death after a few weeks but many people look likely to be left with serious heart and lung damage which will reduce their life expectancy.

I think we have now set off down a moral path without any evidence that it is technically possible. We cannot control the virus and i'm not pinning any hope that the vaccine will eradicate. The fear has truck so deep, people are losing all reason and we have in my view experienced a sustained over reaction, which in some part also includes political point scoring. it's quite evident on here what the majority still believe about this virus and is seemingly justifying the continued local lockdown strategy

 

We need to come to terms with what is technically possible and how we can manage the situation. The needs of the few do not outweigh the many, 99.7% of us will not die.

 

It still boggles me how quickly people have turned on each other, how easy it would be for a government to exert some kind of engineered fear and control over an entire population that is both self governing and perpetuating. All we need is a public HSE narrative, utilise a body to enforce and a hotline where the public can report each. Could even give citizens a chance to display how compliant and obedient they are in order to enforce some collective acceptance of the will of government.

 

Covid aside, it's terrible how we've ended up so far.

 

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Legend_in_blue

Legend_in_blue

Posted
Posted

Out and about today in another suburb of Leicester and still the banks allow only 3, from what I could see, people in at any one time.  Complete with security on the door.  Queues all down the street.

 

Contrast this across the UK with 30 kids in a similarly sized area in 2 weeks time, 5 times over in a day, without masks.  

 

Where are we going with this?  At what point do things change?

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z-layrex

z-layrex

Posted
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People are so ****ing entitled. Complaining about the France quarantine, they should be thankful they've been given 24 hours to get home. They knew the risks when they decided to go abroad, heaven forbid people go 1 year without a holiday abroad. Twats. 

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