COVID-19 — Coronavirus

[shevtheblue]

So the prediction by Neil Ferguson of 500k dying wasn't over egged? Even he changed his mind a few days later.

It is serious, no doubting that. But is it serious enough to devastate the country for years to come, massively impact children's well-being and education and lead to countless deaths from suicide, cancer etc? Clearly any pandemic is a shite situation and whichever route you take it's going to have a huge impact on people. Looking at this particular virus it's clear that we have handled it wrong. Those who are fit and healthy shouldn't have been locked down and those who are elderly or have serious medical conditions should have been protected better.

Your final point about it killing a good chunk of those who catch it is garbage unless you are counting 0.5% or whatever it turns out to be as a big chunk.

The point isn't about how many it is killing, it's about how quickly it spreads and how that is uncontrollable without restrictions. There is a percentage that are high at risk for this, they will die or become seriously ill and need medical attention - we needed to be able to cope with that. You cannot stop people getting it in normal society, you can slow it down so you can get your shit together OR get a vaccine, whichever comes first. So the govt now think they have got their shit together, the NHS are coping much better with it than they were initially. Believe me, i have close relatives and friends who are frontline and have talked about the absolute chaos at the start of this. Comparing it with drowning, dying in car accidents, dying of the flu, or being struck by lightning, they're all comparisons to blur your senses. Hopefully we have all helped to get it under control so it can be fought more efficiently, now.

 

[Phil1]

So the prediction by Neil Ferguson of 500k dying wasn't over egged? Even he changed his mind a few days later.

It is serious, no doubting that. But is it serious enough to devastate the country for years to come, massively impact children's well-being and education and lead to countless deaths from suicide, cancer etc? Clearly any pandemic is a shite situation and whichever route you take it's going to have a huge impact on people. Looking at this particular virus it's clear that we have handled it wrong. Those who are fit and healthy shouldn't have been locked down and those who are elderly or have serious medical conditions should have been protected better.

Your final point about it killing a good chunk of those who catch it is garbage unless you are counting 0.5% or whatever it turns out to be as a big chunk.

I count 100’s of thousands dead around the world a good chunk - regardless of what the percentages are.

 

[grunge]

So the prediction by Neil Ferguson of 500k dying wasn't over egged? Even he changed his mind a few days later.

500k based on zero interventions at all... I'd say thats not over egging anything to be honest.

the problem is no duration's were applied to the predictions. is that 500k over 6/12/18/24 months?

with our lockdown we still peaked at nearly 1k a day deaths and are down to 100-150 a day, and have a known count of just under 55k excess deaths in less that 2 months.

without lockdown, that peak would have been far higher, and the duration of the peak far longer, adding in the NHS being totally crippled causing more deaths etc. Even if you take it conservitaly and say the peak was only 3 or 4 times the size. stretch that out over 6/12 months and yeah. 500k starts to seem quite realistic.

to put it into context. 500k is an average of 1369 a day for 12 months, when you look at that compared to what we have had with lockdown.


The change in value a few days later was a change in model to predict what would happen with lockdown measures/social distancing.


Id say the biggest error in his modeling was the other side of it. where he predicted a total death count of 5700....

 

[Tim of the Oak]

So the prediction by Neil Ferguson of 500k dying wasn't over egged? Even he changed his mind a few days later.

It is serious, no doubting that. But is it serious enough to devastate the country for years to come, massively impact children's well-being and education and lead to countless deaths from suicide, cancer etc? Clearly any pandemic is a shite situation and whichever route you take it's going to have a huge impact on people. Looking at this particular virus it's clear that we have handled it wrong. Those who are fit and healthy shouldn't have been locked down and those who are elderly or have serious medical conditions should have been protected better.

Your final point about it killing a good chunk of those who catch it is garbage unless you are counting 0.5% or whatever it turns out to be as a big chunk.

The 250k to 500k estimates were for the so nothing scenario IIRC

It’s the deaths and serious illness that have devastated the country. Other factors have been harmful like you say but we can recover, in the main. The economy can be rebuilt and I’m glad our Country is opening up again. For example. I heard on the radio this morning that estate agents are being rush off their feet with pent up demand.

Some of the industries like airlines and car manufacturing were struggling anyway, unfortunately. That doesn’t change the impact on people losing their jobs, just like people having co-morbidities who die of the virus are still a very big loss to their friends and families.

The inquiry will be important when there’s the chance to review the pandemic response. That said, we didn’t have capacity for test, track and isolate and therefore a lockdown was inevitable.

 

[True_Blue69]

I count 100’s of thousands dead around the world a good chunk - regardless of what the percentages are.

Sorry to break it to you, but we are all going to die at some point through something. We are still allowed to buy cigarettes over the counter FFS despite how many millions they kill.

 

[Gorton_Tubster]

Some other advice /opinion needed.

I work in care and have been told the client I have on Monday has covid.

My company are not the best and they do the bare minimum to comply. Which means for example this particular client was supposed to be locked down but was going out three times a day because he didn't believe he should be locked down. The company sort of turned a blind eye - requested him to stop going out but not actually stopping it happening.

Would you go in?

PPE is visor, gloves, apron, so no issues there except 6 hours of wearing that is difficult (no breaks)

So I have refused to work in Covid houses, IE where there is someone who has Covid. (I dont mind the risk of not knowing but I do not want to knowinngly increase the risk by working with clients who have covid. (There are plenty of support workers who dont mind btw)

They have said it is part of my role and if I do not agree to these clients I would lose my other shifts (Because the risks are the same with every client apparently) and then obviously my job. They're having a big pow wow about it now and I expect them to hand me my notice.

The undertone to the whole thing is that I am being uncaring, scared, unreasonable etc etc and I really dont know (Or care tbh - My wife is at risk and we're both in our fifties, my dad died last week of it and I dont know if I am susceptible to this virus). Anyone out there in a similar situation and just getting on with it, or anyone got any advice?

 

[Gelsons Dad]

Need another 40% to 50%.

Not necessarily. If we were farmed salmon in a pen we would but i've read 3 papers that said 20% in most settings is enough.

 

[BlueAnorak]

I got to the 1st graph and gave up on the article as its just flat out wrong. at no point have we dropped below the 5 year average since we spiked. the week that graph said we dropped to the weekly average we had 8,012 over the 5 year average.

if they cant even get the fundamentals like that right then it removes all reliability from the article.

We did briefly drop below 0 excess deaths for non COVID-19 deaths on 8th of May. It has since gone up a bit. Other than that, the article is pretty good.
New cases do appear to be stopping at about 20% with deaths similarly at 20% of those with co- comorbidities who get infected.
The comments on the Dianond Princess are interesting. As are the comments on Japen and Sweden.
If UK public health opinion was correct, both Sweden and Japan should be charnel houses as they haven't locked down. They aren't - far from it.
If Sweeden had our population they would be looking at 28k deaths so far. They're about a month behind us epidemic time wise so they're still behind our total.
Japan is way behind our death rate.
Japan has reasonable track,trace and test though not in the same league as South Korea. They do however universally wear face masks - as do most in Sweden. Research will probanly confirm that social distancing and face masks are the two major defences against this virus. That is what I expect anyway given the patterns developing across the world.

 

[St.Pauli support]

So the prediction by Neil Ferguson of 500k dying wasn't over egged? Even he changed his mind a few days later.

It is serious, no doubting that. But is it serious enough to devastate the country for years to come, massively impact children's well-being and education and lead to countless deaths from suicide, cancer etc? Clearly any pandemic is a shite situation and whichever route you take it's going to have a huge impact on people. Looking at this particular virus it's clear that we have handled it wrong. Those who are fit and healthy shouldn't have been locked down and those who are elderly or have serious medical conditions should have been protected better.

Your final point about it killing a good chunk of those who catch it is garbage unless you are counting 0.5% or whatever it turns out to be as a big chunk.

That's exactly the biggest problem, when people are unable or unwilling to understand a complex and even scientific situation and spread their opinion as truth.

Funny you, having the brilliant idea we should protect the vulnerable better.
How fuckin exactly, go on mate! Sweden and the rest of the world are listening keenly.

Why can't we protect people dying from cancer or flu, or suicide, or car crashs? Why?
We are paying fortunes to monitor food, water or products to avoid more cancer.
We are paying fortunes to help people suffer and die from flu and many other diseases.
We are paying fortunes to help people living on in difficult personal circumstances.
We are paying fortunes to avoid more car crashs and help injured and dying people.

Because we did understand that ANY human life has the exact same value. We cannot play God and decide who has to go first. It doesn't make sense and never will. So we have to try our best, and hindsight we often are aware we might have been too cautious. And we learn on the way.

In humanist countries we have decided to help any soul in trouble, even when 70+ yo. Even murderers are treated with dignity, while we sometimes make a fist in our pocket.

Speak out plain and clear if you prefer social Darwinism, "survival of the fittest". (Fit, as you say.)

In Germany we've had a dark time when that was quite popular so to say, until we have understood that it was the biggest of utter crap possible. No comparison intended.

 

[johnnytapia]

Is that what the Critic mag is? Should check my sources more thoroughly. A counterpoint at the very least.
Unsurprisingly there's a lot of that about at the moment as people just want answers or a way back to normality via a silver bullet.

As a slight aside does everyone remember when school kids were taking one day off for the Greta Thunberg environmental awareness day? The govt proclaiming how bad just one day off would be for their education?
I have worries about my youngest son (age 9). It's incredibly difficult for him to do any form of homework (or at least for me or his mum to enforce). The only way I could work round this is to build lots of stuff with him: Papier Mache viking boats & helmets supplemented with a google shared doc in written form. Next up a 3 foot long titanic. We also built garden furniture from old bits of wood and pallets. I got him on the power tools (safely guided of course), measuring (maths), painting (art) and the sense of pride when it's complete. We do bike rides when we can but there's this sense he's missing out on the social & educational side of school and is pretty much locked down on Roblox.

You're doing brilliantly. He'll be loving all that, being with dad, all that special time together. Embrace it, enjoy it. Then smash the fuck out of the Titanic with a home-made iceberg.