Coronavirus Thread

[Jon the Hat]

Great news on the vaccine development as well.  Mankind’s ingenuity in the face of huge pressure is a wonderful thing.

[UPinCarolina]

18 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Who are the COVID deniers?

May I present to you half of my country?

[Kopfkino]

2 hours ago, st albans fox said:

Again it seems that we have too many deaths per positive case (taking into account the high number of tests carried out compared to our continental neighbours).  

 

sadly this was fairly predictable based on what happened in the spring and given the rate of cases by mid October .....I suppose the death rate is now reaching a level where those who argue vehemently against strong restrictions find it difficult to gain traction on here.  

Given all the chat about false positives and how many cases weren’t actually cases, I wonder how they deal with the fact that they’re own logic essentially puts the case fatality rate at 100% and is therefore one of the most dangerous things man has ever encountered

Edited 12 November 2020 by Kopfkino

[leicsmac]

42 minutes ago, Jon the Hat said:

Great news on the vaccine development as well.  Mankind’s ingenuity in the face of huge pressure is a wonderful thing.

Bloody right it is, but the thing about tapdancing on the tightrope above hell in that way is that you only have to get it wrong once.

 

I'd rather humanity be a little more foresighted and risk averse in the first place, to be honest.

 

30 minutes ago, UPinCarolina said:

May I present to you half of my country?

And most of Brazil, and a lot of Belarus, to say nothing of other places.

[WigstonWanderer]

4 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

Sweden shows that the difference between shutting everything and just being careful isn’t that high.  Meanwhile millions of missed cancer screenings will no doubt equal thousands more deaths.

Not sure how many times this needs to be said but allowing infections to spread unchecked will cause hospitals to overflow meaning less facilities for cancer screening. Also it will increase the risk of non COVID patients picking up the infection at hospital, further discouraging people to come forward for cancer screening and other services. Furthermore GPs are probably less inclined to see patients for fear spreading the disease in their surgery or even catching it themselves, thus reducing the capacity of front end health services.

 

All these effects would conspire to make the situation you claim to care about much worse. To argue otherwise makes no sense.

Edited 12 November 2020 by WigstonWanderer

[st albans fox]

6 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

Sweden shows that the difference between shutting everything and just being careful isn’t that high.  Meanwhile millions of missed cancer screenings will no doubt equal thousands more deaths.

Sadly Jon, we were given the opportunity to be like Sweden re a second wave but we weren’t able to take it. Reasons are probably too complex to be spouted on here as definitive but to say we didn’t have that chance this time around is incorrect ....

 

[Lionator]

9 hours ago, st albans fox said:

Again it seems that we have too many deaths per positive case (taking into account the high number of tests carried out compared to our continental neighbours).  

 

sadly this was fairly predictable based on what happened in the spring and given the rate of cases by mid October .....I suppose the death rate is now reaching a level where those who argue vehemently against strong restrictions find it difficult to gain traction on here.  

I still think the testing regime is missing a lot of positive cases. If the death rate is 0.5-1%, and it was 595 yesterday, that would mean that there were roughly 60k-120k cases 2-3 weeks ago, whereas we have only been picking up about 20k a day. 

[Buce]

7 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

It’s amazing Buce, honestly that she does that, but that doesn’t make wearing one any less unpleasant for someone in which it induces anxiety.

 

 

Lots of things about the lockdown are 'unpleasant', Jon. We are all making sacrifices for the greater good of society - the old and vulnerable who are isolated from friends and family; the people being plunged into poverty through losing work; the kids having their education disrupted... but as someone who has personal experience of dealing with anxiety, wearing a mask for ten minutes really isn't such a big deal in the grand scheme of things.

 

7 hours ago, Jon the Hat said:

 Not sure what your point is? Are you pissed off with the tiny proportion of utter twats the media likes to find?

 

I dispute your premise that it's a tiny minority - personal observation has determined that - but I was actually referencing the post I quoted, which in turn referenced those (including a poster on here) whose excuse for not wearing a mask was that it 'steamed up his glasses'.

 

 

[st albans fox]

26 minutes ago, Lionator said:

I still think the testing regime is missing a lot of positive cases. If the death rate is 0.5-1%, and it was 595 yesterday, that would mean that there were roughly 60k-120k cases 2-3 weeks ago, whereas we have only been picking up about 20k a day. 

Tally’s pretty well with the ONS data which estimated 75/90k daily last week October 

 

the last ONS i saw said cases likely dropped 50/70k daily so seven day average deaths may well peak around 600/700 on this wave. 

Edited 12 November 2020 by st albans fox

[Jon the Hat]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

Sadly Jon, we were given the opportunity to be like Sweden re a second wave but we weren’t able to take it. Reasons are probably too complex to be spouted on here as definitive but to say we didn’t have that chance this time around is incorrect ....

 

We’ve still closed down huge swathes of the economy with very little evidence that it is effective.

[whoareyaaa]

10 hours ago, yorkie1999 said:

Heard of someone ordering a test kit, dipped it water , sent it back and it came back positive.

never the government wouldn't lie to us

[String fellow]

As I understand it, deniers of Covid-19 are those people who compare it to 'flu or believe it to be a government conspiracy for social control, or have some other agenda that prevents them seeing what is right in front of their eyes. Demonstrators outside a school in Liverpool shouting at kids not to get tested, are an example of folk with these misguided beliefs. Here's another article about deniers, written recently by a doctor in Derby.

https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/hospital-leaders-sharp-rebuttals-deniers-4692135

[WigstonWanderer]

2 hours ago, Lionator said:

I still think the testing regime is missing a lot of positive cases. If the death rate is 0.5-1%, and it was 595 yesterday, that would mean that there were roughly 60k-120k cases 2-3 weeks ago, whereas we have only been picking up about 20k a day. 

I think the problem with this sort of arithmetic is that there is no single case fatality rate. Earlier most infections were probably amongst younger, less vulnerable people. Now with widespread infection, more vulnerable people are probably unable to avoid contact with an infected person, and they have a higher mortality rate.

[dsr-burnley]

4 hours ago, WigstonWanderer said:

Not sure how many times this needs to be said but allowing infections to spread unchecked will cause hospitals to overflow meaning less facilities for cancer screening. Also it will increase the risk of non COVID patients picking up the infection at hospital, further discouraging people to come forward for cancer screening and other services. Furthermore GPs are probably less inclined to see patients for fear spreading the disease in their surgery or even catching it themselves, thus reducing the capacity of front end health services.

 

All these effects would conspire to make the situation you claim to care about much worse. To argue otherwise makes no sense.

It's not just an argument about this week or this month.  GPs have been discouraging visits since March and did not lift the restrictions when the rates of infection were low in summer.  This, then, was not about protecting the NHS but about trying to ensure that no-one caught coronavirus at all.  There will have to be reduced cancer screenings and operations and so forth when the crisis is at its peak, but the crisis down time when cases were few should have been a time to catch up - not a time to keep on hiding because it hadn't quite gone away.

 

We don't know how much effect the general, varying degrees of lockdown have had on this disease.  We know for certain that regardless of policy, once the disease had taken hold, the Spring wave faded away in Summer and returned in Autumn regardless of human policy.  The only question is how much difference human policy made to the numbers.

[dsr-burnley]

2 hours ago, Lionator said:

I still think the testing regime is missing a lot of positive cases. If the death rate is 0.5-1%, and it was 595 yesterday, that would mean that there were roughly 60k-120k cases 2-3 weeks ago, whereas we have only been picking up about 20k a day. 

It's bound to miss cases.  Many people have no symptoms and reason to believe they have it so they don't get tested.  Look at Accrington Stanley - they missed 4 games recently because they had 19 players and staff down with it.  But until they go tested, none of them knew they were carrying it.  Probably most of those 19, if they had been in "normal life" as opposed to football would not have been tested.

[yorkie1999]

45 minutes ago, String fellow said:

As I understand it, deniers of Covid-19 are those people who compare it to 'flu or believe it to be a government conspiracy for social control, or have some other agenda that prevents them seeing what is right in front of their eyes. Demonstrators outside a school in Liverpool shouting at kids not to get tested, are an example of folk with these misguided beliefs. Here's another article about deniers, written recently by a doctor in Derby.

https://www.derbytelegraph.co.uk/news/local-news/hospital-leaders-sharp-rebuttals-deniers-4692135

Or, are people that haven’t been personally affected or don’t know anyone who’s had it. Don’t put me in that category though, I’m just giving another reason. If you’ve never seen a ghost or an alien, do you believe in their existence, probably not and you’d probably think people that claim that ghosts are real to be mad.

[Steven]

3 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Or, are people that haven’t been personally affected or don’t know anyone who’s had it. Don’t put me in that category though, I’m just giving another reason. If you’ve never seen a ghost or an alien, do you believe in their existence, probably not and you’d probably think people that claim that ghosts are real to be mad.

I believe in aliens but not ghosts.

[StanSP]

12 minutes ago, yorkie1999 said:

Or, are people that haven’t been personally affected or don’t know anyone who’s had it. Don’t put me in that category though, I’m just giving another reason. If you’ve never seen a ghost or an alien, do you believe in their existence, probably not and you’d probably think people that claim that ghosts are real to be mad.

 

8 minutes ago, Steven said:

I believe in aliens but not ghosts.

What about God? 

Anyone ever seen him? 

[Buce]

7 minutes ago, Steven said:

I believe in aliens but not ghosts.

 

I'd be interested in what makes you believe in the former but not the latter when there is an equal lack of evidence for either.

 

But I guess that's for another thread.

[simFox]

2 minutes ago, StanSP said:

 

What about God? 

Anyone ever seen him? 

Might explain his declining popularity in the UK.

 

He's quite popular in the less educated countries though.

Edited 12 November 2020 by simFox

[z-layrex]

2 minutes ago, Buce said:

 

I'd be interested in what makes you believe in the former but not the latter when there is an equal lack of evidence for either.

 

But I guess that's for another thread.

I mean if you honestly think there isn't other forms of life in the universe, you're a bigger idiot than a covid denier.

[Leicester_Loyal]

[WigstonWanderer]

33 minutes ago, dsr-burnley said:

It's not just an argument about this week or this month.  GPs have been discouraging visits since March and did not lift the restrictions when the rates of infection were low in summer.  This, then, was not about protecting the NHS but about trying to ensure that no-one caught coronavirus at all.  There will have to be reduced cancer screenings and operations and so forth when the crisis is at its peak, but the crisis down time when cases were few should have been a time to catch up - not a time to keep on hiding because it hadn't quite gone away.

 

We don't know how much effect the general, varying degrees of lockdown have had on this disease.  We know for certain that regardless of policy, once the disease had taken hold, the Spring wave faded away in Summer and returned in Autumn regardless of human policy.  The only question is how much difference human policy made to the numbers.

You say yourself that the lack of cancer screening is due to GPs discouraging visits and nothing to do with lockdowns. Do you think that they would have been more likely to encourage visits without a lockdown to suppress infection rates?

 

So the spring wave vanished like Trumpian magic then? Nothing to do with the hard lockdown? I suppose the same magic worked in Melbourne to apparently eliminate the virus after reaching over 700 positive tests per day amongst a population of 6m?

[SpacedX]

18 minutes ago, z-layrex said:

I mean if you honestly think there isn't other forms of life in the universe, you're a bigger idiot than a covid denier.

That would depend upon whether the original post was referring to a belief in alien visitation, or the existence of extra-terrestrial life elsewhere in the universe. I'm sure that you'll find in respect of the latter, Buce entertains the near certainty of this. It's only a matter of time before we discover at the very least, non cellular life forms such as - dare I say - viruses and viroids - or single celled organisms in our own solar system. In respect of sentient life - it's doubtless out there, but the universe is so vast spatially and temporally that even if it did coincide with our own fleeting 'civilisation' it's likely that we'd never even know about it far less have been visited given the vast distances of interstellar space. 

 

As you know, known science is empirical as opposed to anecdotal and about evidence, not "belief". Buce is right, currently there is zero evidence of alien life.  

[dsr-burnley]

6 minutes ago, WigstonWanderer said:

You say yourself that the lack of cancer screening is due to GPs discouraging visits and nothing to do with lockdowns. Do you think that they would have been more likely to encourage visits without a lockdown to suppress infection rates?

 

So the spring wave vanished like Trumpian magic then? Nothing to do with the hard lockdown? I suppose the same magic worked in Melbourne to apparently eliminate the virus after reaching over 700 positive tests per day amongst a population of 6m?

Unfortunately you've decided not to answer what I actually wrote, but what you imagine me to have written.

 

The Australia one is a simple misunderstanding.  When I said (the bit you forgot to bold) "once the disease had taken hold", I was not referring to a relatively small number of cases like in Australia -  I was referring to huge numbers of cases like the UK.  By the time it occurred to our government to do what Australia did, it was too late.  So your supposition about Melbourne is irrelevant to my post.  

 

As for the hard lockdown, I suppose it is possible that our case reduction was entirely due to the hard lockdown,  But it's unlikely, because firstly cases were falling before hard lockdown started, and secondly because countries that didn't have a hard lockdown still had cases reduced.  Something else, as well as hard lockdown, caused the reduction.  I think once again you have misunderstood what I said - when I said "we don't know for certain how much effect the general, varying degrees of lockdown have had" I was not saying that I believe lockdown has made no difference.  I'm sorry for the misunderstanding, but I don't think my wording was all that obscure.

 

If you could helpfully quote the part where I said that lack of cancer screening was nothing to do with lockdown, I would be obliged.  I can't see how you've got that interpretation at all.