COVID-19 — Coronavirus

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I am confused why a formerly rational poster has apparently taken leave of his senses. Doubling every 5 days not 3 btw.
Your stats are broken. Let’s look at March to date:

01/03 - 36 confirmed cases
02/03 - 39
03/03 - 51
04/03 - 87
05/03 - 116
06/03 - 164
07/03 - 209
08/03 - 278
09/03 - 321
10/03 - 383
11/03 - 460
12/03 - 590
13/03 - 798
14/03 - 1,140
15/03 - 1,391
16/03 - ?

Where is there even one 5-day doubling? 3 is about average but some are closer to 2 days than 5.
 
What I'm worried about is that some of my countrymen will see that cases and deaths keep rising and will think that the lockdown isn't working, even though they're being told countless times that results of the lockdown will only be visible in 2 weeks because of the nature of the virus itself.
are you actually in Italy,sorry if its a stupid question or a question that's been asked before, what's it like are people staying indoors , and hows the food situation.
 
So are you disagreeing that there are probably about 20,000 now or not? When you said you'd heard anecdotally (fucking irony you should be relying on anecdotes and not official advice) that there were "tens of thousands" was that you agreeing with me or disagreeing? Which? Agree or disagree?

And btw, there were 460 cases on March 11th. So 920 by the end of today then. Doubling every 5 days. Oh wait... we're at 1,391 and todays stats are not out yet. So much for doubling every 5 days.

I think there are more than that and I think global figures are suppressed by

- people not being tested because they don’t feel particularly ill ( but will have still spread it ) ; and
- countries only testing people if they present to hospital as seriously ill. Japan numbers look under control but I understand it’s because they are only testing serious cases that arrive at hospital.

it does mean the mortality rate may be lower but i reckon contagious is a lot higher than worldometer.
 
Your stats are broken. Let’s look at March to date:

01/03 - 36 confirmed cases
02/03 - 39
03/03 - 51
04/03 - 87
05/03 - 116
06/03 - 164
07/03 - 209
08/03 - 278
09/03 - 321
10/03 - 383
11/03 - 460
12/03 - 590
13/03 - 798
14/03 - 1,140
15/03 - 1,391
16/03 - ?

Where is there even one 5-day doubling? 3 is about average but some are closer to 2 days than 5.
I read a stat somewhere that 28000 infected would rise to 10,000,000 in a month if left unchecked.
 
I believe it to be rubbish too. The longer they leave social distancing, the longer this is going to take. This is exponential growth and decay, where the change in the amount of virus we have dX is directly proportional to the amount of virus we have, X, at time t. It's a common process in the natural world and those curves and models that we keep seeing are models of exponential growth and decay. The one thing everyone knows about exponential growth and decay is that it's steep and precipitous, and we saw that in Wuhan.

We've been told that due to the R0 value of the virus, something that is unique to each virus, this one doubles every 4 days, and you see that in most countries. The only thing that differs between most countries is the time - it's a horizontal shift of the curve, hence we are 2-3 weeks behind Italy.

It's now the job of each country to smash the growth rate of the virus by interfering with the transmission. That can be done by social distancing (Wuhan) or by blanket testing and information technology (South Korea), sadly a lot of western health administrator don't believe you can stop it, and you can only control it, hence no Western nation has seriously implemented a testing program. It's a complere disgrace that we do not have easy access to tests. Not even Drs and nurses can get ready access to tests for themselves when they are ill (I know this).

We're now at 10,000 cases (so we are told??). That will be 20,000 in 4 days, then 40,000, 80,000, 160,000 is nothing is done, but if society shuts down and people do this properly, as happened in Wuhan, the virus will precipitously collapse in a relatively short period. It does depend on what we do though. That is why the government was criticised by scientists. We should be learning from other societies and their approaches and not ignoring them. Good science adapts models to the real world not dogma.

There are two models which completely decimated the virus: Wuhan (social control) and South Korea (intelligent targeted testing on a massive scale combined with anti-virals). We should be learning from these models, not ignoring them.

When I see completely empty squares and cities I am hugely encouraged because how can a virus grow in that environment? What worries me though is that what you don't see is where the people have gone. They are crammed tightly together in houses. Our families will infect each other, but not if it's done early enough. That's why it's very important that social distancing is done very quickly.

Everything that the British government is doing comes from the top of the medical profession and it you can see that it is informed by the idea of building up immunity i.e. they do not want to stop the infection in its tracks because they don't believe it is possible. The thing is it's been shown that you can do this. I hope Boris Johnson and his government get panicked by reality as the Germans, French, Spanish, and Italians have been, and react very quickly. If they do it slowly and wait weeks (as suggested - then they are deliberately trying to infect the healthy - whilst isolating the old and immune-compromised). They say the herd immunity was a PR blunder and they don't believe it, but everything they do and have done suggests they do actually believe this. Hopefully politicians will be shocked by reality and move fast now.

I am completely shocked that advanced Western nations with computers, lots of trained people, and testing kits did not follow the South Korea model. It was shown to work.
We need to take this into our own hands and self isolate before we start getting infected.
 
are you actually in Italy,sorry if its a stupid question or a question that's been asked before, what's it like are people staying indoors , and hows the food situation.
I'm in Italy (Lombardy to be precise) and I'm Italian. People are staying much more indoors than usual, mostly because there's police patrols in the streets checking your motive to be outside and you can be fined 260€ or even arrested if you're just being an asshole and actively endangering others with your actions. People are still going outside daily to buy essential things or to go to the pharmacy, or even just to walk the dog. I sometimes see a couple people strolling through the park from my balcony. Jogging by yourself isn't forbidden even if it's not advised, and some parks have been closed in Rome.
Food is not a problem, you might have to queue for a long time if you go during stores rush hours but there's no panic scenes like in the US or other countries. You might want to shop for a 2-days worth to avoid queuing, but there are no shortages. And if you go early or during less busy days, you might find little queue.
 
Your stats are broken. Let’s look at March to date:

01/03 - 36 confirmed cases
02/03 - 39
03/03 - 51
04/03 - 87
05/03 - 116
06/03 - 164
07/03 - 209
08/03 - 278
09/03 - 321
10/03 - 383
11/03 - 460
12/03 - 590
13/03 - 798
14/03 - 1,140
15/03 - 1,391
16/03 - ?

Where is there even one 5-day doubling? 3 is about right but some are closer to 2 days than 5.
Let's listen to Government epidemiologist Prof Katrina Lithgoe, world expert on predicting spread of infectious diseases in humans and animals currently on BBC2 who's just said 'we've just revised it down from 7 days to 5 days - directly contradicting a Dr Drobak who claimed 3 days doubling on the programme.
 
I read a stat somewhere that 28000 infected would rise to 10,000,000 in a month if left unchecked.
Yes, that’s the thing. We can only ‘see’ the confirmed cases doubling. The reality is we’re already at more than 20k. We also know that there’s a two-week lag from introducing social distancing measures and them actually having a visual effect. So even if we introduce measures today, the next 2 weeks still roughly see the below in terms of actual infections:

18/03 - 40k
21/03 - 80k
24/03 - 160k
27/03 - 320k
30/03 - 640k

So over half a million by the end of the month no matter what we do between then and now. We obviously only test a fraction of those, so the confirmed figure won’t reflect it, but this is what we’ll be faced with. Or rather, the NHS will be faced with. After that, you’d like to think we’ve introduced some measures and can start to reduce the rate of increase. But we’ll have to wait and see on that.
 
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I'm in Italy (Lombardy to be precise) and I'm Italian. People are staying much more indoors than usual, mostly because there's police patrols in the streets checking your motive to be outside and you can be fined 260€ or even arrested if you're just being an asshole and actively endangering others with your actions. People are still going outside daily to buy essential things or to go to the pharmacy, or even just to walk the dog. I sometimes see a couple people strolling through the park from my balcony. Jogging by yourself isn't forbidden even if it's not advised, and some parks have been closed in Rome.
Food is not a problem, you might have to queue for a long time if you go during stores rush hours but there's no panic scenes like in the US or other countries. You might want to shop for a 2-days worth to avoid queuing, but there are no shortages. And if you go early or during less busy days, you might find little queue.
do things seem to be getting a little better ?
 
It depends on who is getting it and who makes up that 40m.

There's 15m children in the country who mostly show almost no symptoms. If those 15m get it you will get minimal hospitalisations.

There's 12.15m people over 60 in the country, if they get it, we will be fucked.

Keep the schools open while locking away the old, and you should have the virus spread through the child population and people with school age children - 30-50 year olds.

And that should get you up to your 40m with much fewer hospitalisations than if it's just spreading through the population at random like in Italy.
Ok so it’s happens your way in a best case scenario and we half the number that need hospitalisation.

So where does the NHS find the capacity to treat 166,000 per month?
 
When my 3 were little (not that long ago) we used washable nappies. If you get stuck, cut up some old towels and line them with dried out babywipes. You can learn how to fold nappies from Youtube. Not ideal for you but better than nothing....which really would get messy !

The old terries nappy. These young parents do not know they are born
 
Let's listen to Government epidemiologist Prof Katrina Lithgoe, world expert on predicting spread of infectious diseases in humans and animals currently on BBC2 who's just said 'we've just revised it down from 7 days to 5 days - directly contradicting a Dr Drobak who claimed 3 days doubling on the programme.
Well that’s that then, let’s all trust Katrina over everyone else.
 
Scary posts on here, Everybody is nervous, anxious, scared including myself. I'm so worried for my family and the not knowing part is difficult. Some things I've seen in recent days people acting 'normal' is ridiculous! I went to Tesco to get some essentials on my own obviously left the kids at home with the missus, Was standing in the que and I kept my distance from a man on from of me, But behind me there was a man standing so close to me you could nearly feel his breath, I turned to him and said 'Don't even attempt to take another step closer to me or I'll f*cking plant you'. He just stared at me.

Everybody just stay safe as possible, keep your distance and hygiene as good as you can.

Stay Safe folks!
 
Ok so it’s happens your way in a best case scenario and we half the number that need hospitalisation.

So where does the NHS find the capacity to treat 166,000 per month?

Where's half come from? Until we know the age distribution of hospital admissions you can't put a number on it.
 
Yes, that’s the thing. We can only ‘see’ the confirmed cases doubling. The reality is we’re already at more than 20k. We also know that there’s a two-week lag from introducing social distancing measures and then actually having a visual effect. So even if we introduce measures today, the next 2 weeks still roughly see the below in terms of actual infections:

18/03 - 40k
21/03 - 80k
24/03 - 160k
27/03 - 320k
30/03 - 640k

So over half a million by the end of the month no matter what we do between then and now. We obviously only test a fraction of those, so the confirmed figure won’t reflect it, but this is what we’ll be faced with. Or rather, the NHS will be faced with. After that, you’d like to think we’ve introduced some measures and can start to reduce the rate of increase. But we’ll have to wait and see on that.
We might not see that number of cases, but we would see the resulting deaths. At a 1% mortality rate, we should see 6,400 deaths by the end of the month if those figures turn out to be correct.

If we currently have 20,000 cases in the UK, that means the current mortality rate is just 0.175%. That seems way too low, suggesting that we don't actually have that many cases.
 
I'm in Italy (Lombardy to be precise) and I'm Italian. People are staying much more indoors than usual, mostly because there's police patrols in the streets checking your motive to be outside and you can be fined 260€ or even arrested if you're just being an asshole and actively endangering others with your actions. People are still going outside daily to buy essential things or to go to the pharmacy, or even just to walk the dog. I sometimes see a couple people strolling through the park from my balcony. Jogging by yourself isn't forbidden even if it's not advised, and some parks have been closed in Rome.
Food is not a problem, you might have to queue for a long time if you go during stores rush hours but there's no panic scenes like in the US or other countries. You might want to shop for a 2-days worth to avoid queuing, but there are no shortages. And if you go early or during less busy days, you might find little queue.
All the best mate, hope everything improves for you guys quickly.
 
We might not see that number of cases, but we would see the resulting deaths. At a 1% mortality rate, we should see 6,400 deaths by the end of the month if those figures turn out to be correct.
Or hopefully less if Whitty is right and the real rate is closer to 0.5% taking account the milder cases.
 
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