Coronavirus Thread

[Monk]

1 hour ago, simFox said:

So you accept the point of non Covid death reporting. Now accept the fact that more people are dieing at home due to lack of care. Accept all the other points I took ten seconds to write and all of a sudden the covid deaths aren't so high.

Yes, I agree it exists but where we disagree is how big of an issue we think it is. 
 

if you take that excess death area above the chart - neither of us, I don’t think have any concrete stats to say what % of the extra deaths died from Covid and what % died from the socioeconomic impact of Covid. 
 

My opinion from what I’ve read is that we are talking a very small proportion of them will be deaths from the socioeconomic impact. You are suggesting that it’s a higher proportion - that’s where we disagree.
 

I don’t dispute the existence of these issues - and certainly someone eg committing suicide because of the anxiety (I personally know someone who’s mother did this during lockdown in New Zealand) or someone’s curable cancer becoming terminal are absolute tragedies of course - but you’re making out that they are a major component of the numbers without backing that up with any evidence. 

[st albans fox]

Saw a study from the states today saying that face coverings protect the wearer by reducing the level of virus if they catch it ...... hence the seriousness of the case is reduced, often to almost asymptomatic levels ...... the lower the level of virus caught, the easier the body finds is able to fight it 

 

so all those anti mask wearers could be putting themselves more at risk than those of us following the rules .....

[Sampson]

59 minutes ago, Markyblue said:

I stopped reading once you mentioned the nhs being swamped,  that is not only untrue its a complete lie. I think figures show that even in the worse period the nhs was nowhere near overwhelmed. The nightingale hospitals were barely used at all.

It's not a complete lie. But you're confusing being swamped with breaching capacity which I never claimed - largely because every other kind of non-life-or-death operation a hospital does got scrapped and essential wards were reduced too to cope with it.

 

We have family friends who are nurses at the city hospital down here in Portsmouth who are usually Cardiac nurses and Geriatric nurses. But both wards were set up as temporary covid wards whilst doing 14 shifts and having 8 patients to a nurse and annual leave was forbidden to be taken for 2 months. As was the same with many other wards, while the labour of nurses on wards like the Cardiac and Geriatric wards were greatly reduced - meaning people who came in for those reasons would not get the same level of care.

 

And we weren't noticeably badly hit as a city. We had pretty standard numbers. You'll find similar stories up and down the country - where hospitals became essentially mobilised as temporary covid wards with nurses on long hours with no annual leave and far more patients to a nurse and doctor than ideal. Other wards suffered from covid, people having heart-attack or strokes or elderly patients did not have the same level of care that they usually would back in March and April time because their staff and resources were all taken up by temporary covid wards. People died who could have been saved in normal times from other ailments unquestionably.

 

That isn't a lie, it's a lived experience which tens of thousands of NHS staff up and down the country will attest to.

 

And a hospital system where all non-life-or-death operations are cancelled and the capacity of critical care wards dealing with heart attack or stroke or asthma attack patients is greatly reduced, while nurses are working on 2 or 3 times as many patients at a time as they should do while working 14 hour days having no annual leave is not somewhere we should ever want to get close to again.

Edited 10 August 2020 by Sampson

[simFox]

Sampson, out of interest, what is the situation like now at hospitals? How many Covid patients and "regular" patients?

[Sampson]

34 minutes ago, simFox said:

Sampson, out of interest, what is the situation like now at hospitals? How many Covid patients and "regular" patients?

There weren't any covid patients in the hospital last time I spoke to them and the hospital has begun allowing routine operations again and cancer patients back for tests and treatment. But we haven't had a single covid death reported in Portsmouth for over 2 months according to the local paper and generally only get 1 case a week or so now if that, as a single case is so notable it makes the paper now. So I'm not sure how that compares to the rest of the country, as we seem to have virtually got rid of it.

 

I think it's similar in the Isle of Wight now too. I've heard a few people round here joke that as Portsmouth is an island city we should just shut off the bridges to the mainland and stay in a bubble with just us and the Isle of Wight shut off from the rest of the country so it doesnt come back.

Edited 10 August 2020 by Sampson

[st albans fox]

Worrying uptick in Spanish deaths today .......would be expected several weeks after cases began to spike ...... hopefully it’s an anomoly ...

[Md9]

Are the cases going down in Leicester at all at the minute? 

[simFox]

Watch from 1:53:30

 

ML really takes it apart at 2:00

 

Leicsmac, would appreciate your opinion.

 

 

[leicsmac]

9 hours ago, simFox said:

Branded as not being a leader because he didn't bow to media and public opinion. 

 

When the dust settles, history will judge the leaders.

I can't see history judging a leader that saw the death of over 100,000 of their citizens with one of the highest deaths per capita ratios due to one cause (and that's just the ones we know about, really it's probably far more) that might have been reduced had a different path been taken and treat it with with vaguely humorous dismissal any way other than badly, but who knows? It's certainly a weird timeline that we're on right now.

 

6 hours ago, simFox said:

Watch from 1:53:30

 

ML really takes it apart at 2:00

 

Leicsmac, would appreciate your opinion.

 

 

I'm not big on YT videos as a credible source for anything seeing as they lack scientific rigour and substantiation, but I did have a look.

 

Levitt might be right. He equally might be wrong. That's been my point all along - we don't know enough about what we're dealing with to be sure of what to do either way, and I don't get the people peddling certainty when there is none. With things being equal, in this matter the more risk averse pathway is probably the better one to take.

Edited 11 August 2020 by leicsmac

[Guest Fktf]

1 hour ago, leicsmac said:

I can't see history judging a leader that saw the death of over 100,000 of their citizens due to one cause (and that's just the ones we know about, really it's probably far more) that might have been reduced had a different path been taken and treat it with with vaguely humorous dismissal anything other than badly, but who knows? It's certainly a weird timeline that we're on right now.

 

I'm not big on YT videos as a credible source for anything seeing as they lack scientific rigour and substantiation, but I did have a look.

 

Levitt might be right. He equally might be wrong. That's been my point all along - we don't know enough about what we're dealing with to be sure of what to do either way, and I don't get the people peddling certainty when there is none. With things being equal, in this matter the more risk averse pathway is probably the better one to take.

This is a rule I'm happy we've begun to follow. Far better to tolerate some fortnightly local lockdowns - even if they might not strictly be necessary - in order to avoid what is going on Australia right now. We can never predict anything with certainty, so better to be cautious. 

[Guest Fktf]

I see the covid deniers are out in force. Remember, the reason we didn't break NHS capacity is because of the lockdown. Whatever you want to argue on the stats, if we got to the point of having to choose who to treat due to a lack of equipment, we would have been much worse off.

[st albans fox]

2 hours ago, Fktf said:

I see the covid deniers are out in force. Remember, the reason we didn't break NHS capacity is because of the lockdown. Whatever you want to argue on the stats, if we got to the point of having to choose who to treat due to a lack of equipment, we would have been much worse off.

The worst kind of historians are selective ones and those with hindsight .......

 

Some of the stuff is like arguing that because a building didn’t fall over in a hurricane, it didn’t need the extra foundations used to protect it from such an event .......

[zorro en españa]

7 hours ago, st albans fox said:

Worrying uptick in Spanish deaths today .......would be expected several weeks after cases began to spike ...... hopefully it’s an anomoly ...

I’m assuming you are referring to the 73 deaths reported on worldometer.

 

I think I have mentioned before that Spain is now only recording deaths as per the day they actually occur.  Of course worldometer sees a difference in its total deaths when the news trickles through so has to show the difference somehow hence the 73 it quoted yesterday (suspect the Monday number will always be higher hereonin?)

 

If it helps - there have been 113 deaths in the last 14 days and 65 in the last seven days.  This is an upturn.

 

I wish, too, that Spain didn’t decide to change the way it reports.  It is alarming to see a figure like yesterday’s and then have to start digging out what has happened .... at least I know where to look now.

 

One other point - the number of cases is definitely now showing people who have tested for antibodies.  Near where I am an outbreak has occurred and 41 people have tested positive.  I do not know how many fall into the antibody category but I do know, following the source identified - nightclubs, that over a thousand people have been tested.  I would imagine nearly all would fall into the under 40 category.

[Crinklyfox]

11 hours ago, simFox said:

Let's hope this is true. I guess we need to wait for the peer reviewed literature, but it's becoming more talked about.

 

Levels of herd immunity within the UK may already be high enough to prevent a second wave of coronavirus, a new study by Oxford University scientists suggests.

 

The researchers posit that some of the population may already have a high level of immunity to Covid-19 without ever having caught it.

 

In a paper yet to be peer-reviewed, they point to evidence suggesting exposure to seasonal coronaviruses, such as the common cold, may have already provided some with a degree of immunity, and note that others may be more naturally resistant to infection.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity-second-wave-oxford-study-boris-johnson-a9623791.html?fbclid=IwAR2QkAlOk12OqK0L8Aa9M2sa9JELC5RiqZ46RzrUmKTo68C73ptgf3bxJD0

There is some evidence to suggest that contracting one coronavirus may provide some protection against contracting others due to the immune system response.  Research into the SARS outbreak supports this hypothesis.

 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2550-z_reference.pdf

 

However there is also practical evidence to suggest that there are limitations to this protection.  The common cold is a coronavirus and also rapidly mutates, so there may be several mutations during a cold/flu season, the upshot being that someone can contract more than one common cold in a single season.

 

The UK lockdown was imposed towards the end of the 2019/20 cold/flu season, so there may be little more resistance from previously contracted coronaviruses now than there was then, when the infection rate was rising rapidly in the community.  

[Guest Markyblue]

3 hours ago, Fktf said:

I see the covid deniers are out in force. Remember, the reason we didn't break NHS capacity is because of the lockdown. Whatever you want to argue on the stats, if we got to the point of having to choose who to treat due to a lack of equipment, we would have been much worse off.

If you mean me as a covid denier you want to give your head a wobble,  my wife works for the nhs and I'm fully aware what she has gone through,  my point was the nhs was not overwhelmed,  i didn't say other wards were not used for covid patients,  but which ever way you spin it the system coped, i know that doesn't sit well with many on here but there you go.

[Guest Markyblue]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

The worst kind of historians are selective ones and those with hindsight .......

 

Some of the stuff is like arguing that because a building didn’t fall over in a hurricane, it didn’t need the extra foundations used to protect it from such an event .......

What a ridiculous statement, either a system was overwhelmed or it wasn't,  too say it wasn't because extra measures were put in place is frankly laughable. Of course extra measures were put in place wasn't that the sensible thing to do.

[st albans fox]

4 minutes ago, Markyblue said:

What a ridiculous statement, either a system was overwhelmed or it wasn't,  too say it wasn't because extra measures were put in place is frankly laughable. Of course extra measures were put in place wasn't that the sensible thing to do.

You’ve lost me .........

 

I'm simply referencing people who are making statements and arguing that what happened in March/April was wrong/right without taking the context of what the situation actually was back then rather than how it is now. 
 

As far as the hurricane analogy is concerned, I think you agree with me ..... and if you don’t then I’m sorry but I can’t understand your argument. 

 

 

[Guest Markyblue]

14 minutes ago, st albans fox said:

You’ve lost me .........

 

I'm simply referencing people who are making statements and arguing that what happened in March/April was wrong/right without taking the context of what the situation actually was back then rather than how it is now. 
 

As far as the hurricane analogy is concerned, I think you agree with me ..... and if you don’t then I’m sorry but I can’t understand your argument. 

 

 

I think i got the wrong end of the stick, being labelled a covid denier when my mrs is ñhs rattled me, my apologies. Not by you i should add.

[CosbehFox]

Just nearly had a falling out with family member whose anti-vaccine. 
 

These folk really don’t know where to go when you mention that it’s very likely the healthy, vast population will never have the vaccine. I suspect it will work like the flu jab.

[CosbehFox]

19 hours ago, Mark 'expert' Lawrenson said:

COVID for most parts (yes I’m assuming) is only a contributing factor in a lot of deaths, if you die of a heart attack you die of a heart attack and yet this would go down as a COVID death if the patient had the virus. 
It’s contributed to a lot of deaths but has by no means been the main cause of death and yet figures will show COVID deaths.

Its all really sad.

Equally though there will be plenty of examples of people suffering with underlying issues which COVID has accelerated. 
 

The poor people who’ve gone to hospitals for treatment at the very start of this pandemic for an ailment which if not curable, can extend their life, then catch COVID I really feel for them. 
 

The example you give though about attributing death is an existing debate at every death amongst coroners. Cancer in essence eventually causes one of your body parts to shut down - pneumonia or a form of infection is what gets you and sometimes it’s that what goes on the certificate. It may be another incident which the cancer fails to allow your immune system to fight (or rather work against).  That goes down rather than cancer or vice eras. 
 

To aside, those advocating a complete relaxation of restrictions or a stronger relaxation, I think the damage you may think is recoverable has been done. Particularly the economy. It’s accelerated the death of the retail high street. A lot of companies in the corporate are taking the chance to ‘clear deadwood’ which they wanted to do.
 

Equally I don’t think the confidence of the general public will return until there’s a vaccine.  So we are stuck 

[simFox]

6 hours ago, leicsmac said:

I can't see history judging a leader that saw the death of over 100,000 of their citizens with one of the highest deaths per capita ratios due to one cause (and that's just the ones we know about, really it's probably far more) that might have been reduced had a different path been taken and treat it with with vaguely humorous dismissal any way other than badly, but who knows? It's certainly a weird timeline that we're on right now.

 

I'm not big on YT videos as a credible source for anything seeing as they lack scientific rigour and substantiation, but I did have a look.

 

Levitt might be right. He equally might be wrong. That's been my point all along - we don't know enough about what we're dealing with to be sure of what to do either way, and I don't get the people peddling certainty when there is none. With things being equal, in this matter the more risk averse pathway is probably the better one to take.

What you seem to disregard (which is everyone else's point) is that trying to save lives from covid is potentially costing more lives and livelihoods. It is more damaging.

 

You are also looking at Brazil with your British societal lens, I work overseas, I know how poor people are, they live day to day. The Brazilian government aren't going to pay people to stay at home, they aren't providing for their citizens in the same way as the UK. Shutting down their economy isn't going save lives in the way you think it is when hundreds or thousands of people share a tap! Staying at home isn't saving lives when you all effectively live together.

 

The virus will kill less people in a Western country with good health care and more people with less developed health care, your options really come down to how quickly it kills them, not how many it will kill. The end total for the virus will be the same. However you will only change the total with the way you deal with slowing the spread which will drag out the time taken, but ultimately, that might gain you political points. A good leader won't be going for points.

 

[SpacedX]

41 minutes ago, Cardiff_Fox said:

Just nearly had a falling out with family member whose anti-vaccine. 

These people should be deprived internet connectivity - and if that doesn't work extracted from their echo-cambers, hermetically sealed in a vault and buried at the bottom of the ocean in their own interest and for the greater good of society. 

[simFox]

1 hour ago, st albans fox said:

You’ve lost me .........

 

I'm simply referencing people who are making statements and arguing that what happened in March/April was wrong/right without taking the context of what the situation actually was back then rather than how it is now. 
 

As far as the hurricane analogy is concerned, I think you agree with me ..... and if you don’t then I’m sorry but I can’t understand your argument. 

 

 

March/April is done, I think most accept what we did. What we are looking at now is how we handle things going forward and more lockdowns are not the answer in my view. It's not March anymore.

 

Looking back we could have done equally well with social distancing measures and sensible precautions, however we did the lockdown, so hey ho.

 

Unless of course you are a civil servant, council bod on full furlough creaming the covid lottery, in which case keeping the lockdowns going will be great for your extended holibobs.

[Stivo]

12 hours ago, simFox said:

Let's hope this is true. I guess we need to wait for the peer reviewed literature, but it's becoming more talked about.

 

Levels of herd immunity within the UK may already be high enough to prevent a second wave of coronavirus, a new study by Oxford University scientists suggests.

 

The researchers posit that some of the population may already have a high level of immunity to Covid-19 without ever having caught it.

 

In a paper yet to be peer-reviewed, they point to evidence suggesting exposure to seasonal coronaviruses, such as the common cold, may have already provided some with a degree of immunity, and note that others may be more naturally resistant to infection.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/coronavirus-herd-immunity-second-wave-oxford-study-boris-johnson-a9623791.html?fbclid=IwAR2QkAlOk12OqK0L8Aa9M2sa9JELC5RiqZ46RzrUmKTo68C73ptgf3bxJD0

this is of course the same Oxford group who suggested back  in early March that the uk had already achieved herd immunity as 50%  of the population had been exposed it...

 

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.03.24.20042291v1

 

 

 

 

 

[Monk]

29 minutes ago, simFox said:

What you seem to disregard (which is everyone else's point) is that trying to save lives from covid is potentially costing more lives and livelihoods. It is more damaging.

 

You’re making this unfounded assertion again.
 

Yes it costs SOME lives, but you’ve provided no evidence that it costs MORE lives than COVID itself. Where is there a study or a reputable news outlet that says this?