SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)

I see Paulo Dybala still has it after 5 weeks although he seems to be asymptomatic? Presumably he can still therefore pass on the virus to any people outside of isolation even though it hasn't affected him? This virus is a survivor if that's true.

https://www.skysports.com/football/...t-to-recover-over-a-month-after-positive-test

Ah BBC ... "Quite a shock , but expected"

Hound Dog said:

When is Super League resuming? Can't find info on that.

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To be confirmed but it seems 8th June. And behind closed doors as well.

If you are in CH this is a good twitter account to follow for info

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

Rooney24 said:

To be confirmed but it seems 8th June. And behind closed doors as well.

If you are in CH this is a good twitter account to follow for info

Tweet

— Twitter API (@user) date

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Thanks.

I am not in CH, I just like the football league

Big number for hospital deaths unless this is hospital combined with a few care home deaths in the last day plus the backlog?

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@BootsyCollins @africanspur

You are damn right that my response is emotive, and it couldn't be otherwise. "Swedish model" and similar nonsense is growing like the plague here in my country due to a crazy man that has espoused a similar approach non-stop, and starts to get a gigantic following with hashtags like #letsgoout or similar.

We live in an era were people don't acknowledge their ignorance anymore, everyone has to take a position on any subject because they read about it on facebook, and now we have to deal with the voice of a Computer Science engineer getting louder than all doctors combined. His fans will never back down, nor will him, even when every thing he says is counter-argued by stronger evidence or his short-term predictions are shown wrong time and time again.

It's this type of blindness that brought us the likes of Trump. It's a growing trend fueled by social media, people pick a side on things they know nothing about and they will stick to it until the end like if it's a football club. Whoever thinks this problem is limited to the "deplorables" should think again. It's affecting everyone else, regardless of political inclination or the subject at hand.

I'm arguing this nonsense with some of my own family members, who know fully well I was far ahead of the curve on Covid-19 knowledge, and who know very well my qualities and limitations as a doctor. Suddenly I have to debate non-sense like the Swedish model with them, when just 6 weeks ago everyone was terrified of becoming like Italy - which we would have, had we taken just one or two more weeks to start confining and distancing ourselves.

Anyone from the UK should feel relief they narrowly avoided a catastrophe of gigantic proportions due to guys like those experts from Sweden, yet many seem happy to get back to square one.


Swedish results so far are miserable.

redshaw said:

Big number for hospital deaths unless this is hospital combined with a few care home deaths in the last day plus the backlog?

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Supposedly they will announce care home deaths today as well. Thought it was going to be separately though.

redshaw said:

Big number for hospital deaths unless this is hospital combined with a few care home deaths in the last day plus the backlog?

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That's all deaths.

Carolina Red said:

Where's that "I don't believe it" gif?

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“I got this guys” - Charles Darwin

Carolina Red said:

Where's that "I don't believe it" gif?

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Watch him get a mild case, then use it to tell people that it's all a fake.

IPSOS.MORI opinion

One month in: British public opinion on COVID-19
A new blog looking at how public opinion in relation to COVID-19 has changed over the past month.
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/one-month-british-public-opinion-covid-19-coronavirus

Public opinion on the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic
Ipsos experts share the latest polls, research and analysis related to the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic
https://www.ipsos.com/ipsos-mori/en-uk/public-opinion-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic#polls

Carolina Red said:

Another danger of the "Sweden is doing well" narrative is that the right wing nutters here in the US are using it to fuel their protests against our state governments lockdown measures.

What those dumbasses don't look at is that if we were at Sweden's deaths per million, we'd already be over 80,000 confirmed deaths.

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Interestingly it is mostly the right wing nutters and especially the far right who want a lockdown in sweden.

DomesticTadpole said:

Supposedly they will announce care home deaths today as well. Thought it was going to be separately though.

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Yeah I'm not on about the thousands added, I'm wondering about the daily figure but after reading the small print the 765 number is all deaths, not just hospitals and care home. Under yesterday's calculations of hospital deaths only the figure would be 578 today, so it's inline with the expected drop.

UK has now gone the Belgium way of sorts by just announcing one figure for all. For those tracking the hospital deaths and their drop it could be a be bit tricky unless they add the hospital data in the small print every time.

People who support the Swedish model probably hate their parents and grandparents

Carolina Red said:

She's asymptomatic. Apparently had the virus while she was at the NC State House protest.

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Plenty of time to give it to the other protestors under cover then.

Irwin99 said:

I see Paulo Dybala still has it after 5 weeks although he seems to be asymptomatic? Presumably he can still therefore pass on the virus to any people outside of isolation even though it hasn't affected him? This virus is a survivor if that's true.

https://www.skysports.com/football/...t-to-recover-over-a-month-after-positive-test

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Something slightly more positive from that article -

"The Argentina international announced on Twitter that he and his partner Oriana Sabatini had both tested positive after becoming the third Juventus player affected, with defender Daniele Rugani and midfielder Blaise Matuidi also confirming positive diagnoses."

Only three players for Juventus got it, despite them all being in close quarters with each other for weeks on end

United58 said:

Something slightly more positive from that article -

"The Argentina international announced on Twitter that he and his partner Oriana Sabatini had both tested positive after becoming the third Juventus player affected, with defender Daniele Rugani and midfielder Blaise Matuidi also confirming positive diagnoses."

Only three players for Juventus got it, despite them all being in close quarters with each other for weeks on end

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Yeah, that is a positive. I just find it fascinating that he can have it for 5 weeks although he does seem asymptomatic.

spiriticon said:

People who support the Swedish model probably hate their parents and grandparents

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Austria, Swiss, Norway, Denmark, Finland, US States, Germany... everyone is moving to a “Swedish model” now anyway, just more slowly.
Soon enough all countries will be, because as I’ve argued all along, without a vaccine there is no other way.
Curve is flat in Sweden, I believe all of Europe can live with this virus and behave responsibly to keep the curves flat now we truly know how serious it is.

The “risk” Sweden took was believing their data showed them they wouldn’t get swamped in the first weeks, like NYC, Italy, Spain, Belgium or The UK, they are past that now.

Or of course, if a vaccine arrives in the next 2 months, Sweden’s approach may also look stupid. But that said, Gothenburg and Malmö are still proof that half term timing in Scandinavia’s biggest city was the biggest variable so far between all the Scandy cities, not the approach.

Irwin99 said:

Yeah, that is a positive. I just find it fascinating that he can have it for 5 weeks although he does seem asymptomatic.

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I guess it's part of the reason it's spread so much - it just goes on and on and on. I had the flu in January and I was bad for maybe four days but this... (Although I may have had a flu-like virus in me for weeks?)

Arruda said:

@BootsyCollins @africanspur

You are damn right that my response is emotive, and it couldn't be otherwise. "Swedish model" and similar nonsense is growing like the plague here in my country due to a crazy man that has espoused a similar approach non-stop, and starts to get a gigantic following with hashtags like #letsgoout or similar.

We live in an era were people don't acknowledge their ignorance anymore, everyone has to take a position on any subject because they read about it on facebook, and now we have to deal with the voice of a Computer Science engineer getting louder than all doctors combined. His fans will never back down, nor will him, even when every thing he says is counter-argued by stronger evidence or his short-term predictions are shown wrong time and time again.

It's this type of blindness that brought us the likes of Trump. It's a growing trend fueled by social media, people pick a side on things they know nothing about and they will stick to it until the end like if it's a football club. Whoever thinks this problem is limited to the "deplorables" should think again. It's affecting everyone else, regardless of political inclination or the subject at hand.

I'm arguing this nonsense with some of my own family members, who know fully well I was far ahead of the curve on Covid-19 knowledge, and who know very well my qualities and limitations as a doctor. Suddenly I have to debate non-sense like the Swedish model with them, when just 6 weeks ago everyone was terrified of becoming like Italy - which we would have, had we taken just one or two more weeks to start confining and distancing ourselves.

Anyone from the UK should feel relief they narrowly avoided a catastrophe of gigantic proportions due to guys like those experts from Sweden, yet many seem happy to get back to square one.


Swedish results so far are miserable.

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Hey man. I understand you are emotional. I am too. People around us are dying.
I just took your reply as you were trying to out me in the ”dont care if people die as long as i have my freedom etc bullshit” group.
I know nothing about all this, and you seems to know alot. I just feel like this is a new situation for everyone and we all try to do our best.
i am sorry if i took it the wrong way. I remember you in the beginning of this thread was very stressed out, so i hope you are better now.

Regulus Arcturus Black said:

Austria, Swiss, Norway, Denmark, Finland, US States, Germany... everyone is moving to a “Swedish model” now anyway, just more slowly.
Soon enough all countries will be, because as I’ve argued all along, without a vaccine there is no other way.
Curve is flat in Sweden, I believe all of Europe can live with this virus and behave responsibly to keep the curves flat now we truly know how serious it is.

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Changing lockdown phase =/= moving to the Swedish model. The Swedish model is defined by the lack of action in the initial days of the virus. Its completely disingenuous to suggest that countries are moving to the Swedish model, by that logic, every single country in lock down would eventually adopt the Swedish model, what an incredible testament to the Swedish approach that would be

Arruda said:

@BootsyCollins @africanspur

You are damn right that my response is emotive, and it couldn't be otherwise. "Swedish model" and similar nonsense is growing like the plague here in my country due to a crazy man that has espoused a similar approach non-stop, and starts to get a gigantic following with hashtags like #letsgoout or similar.

We live in an era were people don't acknowledge their ignorance anymore, everyone has to take a position on any subject because they read about it on facebook, and now we have to deal with the voice of a Computer Science engineer getting louder than all doctors combined. His fans will never back down, nor will him, even when every thing he says is counter-argued by stronger evidence or his short-term predictions are shown wrong time and time again.

It's this type of blindness that brought us the likes of Trump. It's a growing trend fueled by social media, people pick a side on things they know nothing about and they will stick to it until the end like if it's a football club. Whoever thinks this problem is limited to the "deplorables" should think again. It's affecting everyone else, regardless of political inclination or the subject at hand.

I'm arguing this nonsense with some of my own family members, who know fully well I was far ahead of the curve on Covid-19 knowledge, and who know very well my qualities and limitations as a doctor. Suddenly I have to debate non-sense like the Swedish model with them, when just 6 weeks ago everyone was terrified of becoming like Italy - which we would have, had we taken just one or two more weeks to start confining and distancing ourselves.

Anyone from the UK should feel relief they narrowly avoided a catastrophe of gigantic proportions due to guys like those experts from Sweden, yet many seem happy to get back to square one.


Swedish results so far are miserable.

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Right but as I said, I hope people actually making the decisions don't look at this topic emotively because it is far more complex than some are willing to admit.

With respect, is this not what you are doing right now? From my understanding, you are a doctor (as am I) yet we clearly have some differing views on this. Being a doctor does not automatically make you right on this topic, just as being a non-medic does not automatically make you wrong. Being a doctor certainly does not make us experts on it either. As far as I'm aware, the people leading the Swedish response are themselves expert epidemiologists, not froth at the mouth simpletons.

Seemingly, some of the animosity towards the 'Swedish model' comes from the fact that people are linking it to idiots in their own countries. That isn't the Swedes' issue, nor should they make policy decisions based on idiots in the USA, UK, Portugal or elsewhere.

Its funny, I find myself taking seemingly diametrically opposed views on this topic with different people. Because I actually don't advocate their model myself. It does bother me though when people are speaking with utter authority on a topic that literally nobody on the world can speak with utter authority on because so many things about it are still novel and unknown to us. We don't know what will happen when we relax lockdowns properly. We don't know the effects on the economy, which have a huge impact on health and healthcare provision. We don't know whether people will get re-infected, whether they have lasting immunity, whether we'll make a successful vaccine or cure. We...just don't.

Swedish results so far are miserable if looking at it solely from a narrow prism of mortality. There are of course so many other factors at play, many of which also play into morbidity and mortality long term. What may seem initially like the right or wrong plan may turn out differently. As to whether Sweden does better with this long term or not, we will have to see. Until then, we can't be saying with utter confidence one is right and the other wrong.

I can understand why you'd get emotional, having those discussions with friends and family. But that is not how policy decisions should be made.

Personally, I couldn't care less about my freedom right now, as I'm having to leave the house for work anyway and I live with my wife and kids. My life is not quite so drastically different than before so it doesn't impact me that much personally when lockdown is lifted.

Pogue Mahone said:

Have they asked you to bake your N95 masks in an oven at 70C so you can reuse them yet? Was a serious suggestion doing the rounds in Ireland.

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Jesus christ, thankfully not yet. What a suggestion....

Not often I read two very long posts on here, arguing different viewpoints, and agree with both of them!

Re Sweden, this is probably selfish but I’m delighted they’re taking more risks than other countries. We need a control group.

Pexbo said:

Changing lockdown phase =/= moving to the Swedish model. The Swedish model is defined by the lack of action in the initial days of the virus. Its completely disingenuous to suggest that countries are moving to the Swedish model, by that logic, every single country in lock down would eventually adopt the Swedish model, what an incredible testament to the Swedish approach that would be

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I call bullshit on lack of action by the way, a shit load was done here, just not full lockdown. They have just argued all along that full lockdown was unnecessary as it is all about flattening the curve and that has clearly been done here without full lockdown. They have argued that this strategy is long term, and can be kept up until next year if need be.

Sweden has 3 of the 6 biggest cities in all of Scandinavia, if the “lack of action” was a problem, why are the other 2 Swedish cities in that top 6 list doing so “well”?

africanspur said:

Swedish results so far are miserable if looking at it solely from a narrow prism of mortality.

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Not only that @africanspur, to call them “miserable” you have to also look at it long term and believe other countries will do better once restrictions are eased. You have to consider that this virus is likely to be around for at least a year, probably longer and imagine that countries who “started well” will continue to do so out of lockdown.

Pogue Mahone said:

The geographic/demographic/connectivity variations are known in advance, though. Hence you could argue that a country like England should have shut down earlier/more aggressively than the likes of Ireland or New Zealand. And the fact that the opposite happened has been a big factor in your grim statistics.

My main beef with inter-country comparisons has always been the different way in which data is collected. Completely pointless comparing cases between two countries, only one of which does any kind of extensive community testing. Likewise comparing deaths when one country records only covid deaths in hospitals. Then there’s the way that per capita analysis favours big countries, with mortality rates diluted by regions the epidemic has not yet reached (hence the US has relatively low deaths per million, despite being an absolute train wreck) In a smaller country the epidemic can spread to every corner in a couple of weeks.

I do agree that luck plays a part, mind you. Just a handful of superspreaders can create thousands of infections downstream. So there’s a fine line between success and failure.

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Oh for sure, I totally agree. Don't get me wrong, I have a list as long as my arm about everything the Tories have done wrong in this pandemic, starting with their very essence as a party. Their slow action has made things worse than they should have been. Again, we can't necessarily compare like for like (not least due to London) but the best comparison for me would probably be Germany. At every single step in this ordeal, they've shown better leadership, communication, grasp of the science we do have and general mobilisation of their resources. Its been night and day (though I understand even they are having issues with PPE)!

And totally agree with the second paragraph! Remember reading a few articles about how angry many Cornish were at the influx of rich Londoners coming down to wait out the pandemic in their holiday homes....but of course potentially spreading it to an area of the UK not exactly overflowing with young healthy people or ICU beds.....That shouldn't really have been possible.

It seems like people think we live just as normal in Sweden. We dont, the only difference from most countries is that we are recommended to keep a distance, not forced. Like WHO pointed out today.

Alot of places are closed and mass gatherings are forbidden.

Considering the care home figures go back to March 2nd, and the experts were talking about figures in the 20k range, I was expecting worse to be honest. A lot worse. I was expecting to come home to an increase of about 15k, if I'm being honest.

I'm thankful the number is less than expected and any deaths are tragic, of coure. But I am quite pissed off. I think the government have botched this reporting, now.

The lockdown was implemented for the main goal of protecting our NHS and ensuring they were coping with the pandemic. Since the lockdown began, the focus has been (rightly so) on the NHS - hospital admissions, hospital deaths and the pattern surrounding both. We have been told time and again by the government that once we know the NHS is stable and coping well, we can consider the next stages.

So up until today, the public had a visual representation of this. Daily reported hospital deaths. Easy to compare them to the day before, the week before, to see a pattern emerging. Are we improving? Has lockdown done the job it was supposed to do?

Up until today, we could see that the answer was Yes, especially in the past few days compared to this time last week (and the week before, and so on).

We can't do that anymore, because the daily figure will now include care home figures and we don't know whether the hospital situation is improving, still plateauing or getting worse. The care home figures should be reported as their own entity - a separate fight, so to speak.

What a great way to get the public as a united front. Especially when we're in such a crucial stage where 50% more traffic on the roads suggests a lot of people have stopped complying. Take away the only visual representation they had of the NHS situation which they directly relate to lockdown and their future.

Its either another incompetent, stupid decision or I suppose it might be deliberate - give them bigger numbers, scare them back indoors. Personally, I don't think the fear factor is going to make much difference going forward on a lot of people, maybe 2-3 weeks ago but not going forward.

Anyway, I'm off for food, this has done my skull in this evening.

Pogue Mahone said:

I think the point is that every country has to do a balancing act between letting life and businesses continue as near to normal as possible while ensuring their health service isn’t overwhelmed. Sweden’s health service is far from overwhelmed and their economy hasn’t contracted as sharply as neighbouring countries with more drastic measures (I think? Would actually like to see evidence of this? @Regulus Arcturus Black)

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Apparently the IMF currently expects a GDP growth of -6.8% for Sweden in 2020 while it expects -6.5 for Denmark and -6.3 for Norway. Obviously the results could look very different in the end but I thought it was interesting that they don't expect any great results from Sweden.

BootsyCollins said:

It seems like people think we live just as normal in Sweden. We dont, the only difference from most countries is that we are recommended to keep a distance, not forced. Like WHO pointed out today.

Alot of places are closed and mass gatherings are forbidden.

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Aye, it's mad. We haven't seen the missus grandma since mid March, poor thing, misses her grand daughter terribly. Our neighbours on both sides are devastated for the same reasons with their grandkids. The city (Stockholm) is something of a ghost town in comparison to "normal", even parkrun is cancelled and only 30 people usually turn up to those.
At Easter we had 10% of the normal travel.
Both myself and the missus celebrated big birthday's.... alone.

My company is fecked, I mean fecked, and it's just one of very very many. I can't even tell you how many people I know who have lost job or been furloughed.

Another thing I'd add is just to ask people to use Occam's razor when considering Sweden to other countries.

Sweden: 244 deaths /million population
1319 deaths in Stockholm, Scandinavia's most populous area.
Only 192 deaths in Gothenburg County (Västa Götaland)
Only 62 Malmö in County (Skåne)

Ireland: not updated today but 235 deaths /million population

Belgium: 647 deaths /million population

Now Ireland and Belgium locked down, that hasn't stopped their numbers being comparable or in Belgium's case, much worse. Is that because "Sweden did better" or because "Belgium did worse", or does that fact that Ireland's deaths have continued to rise during lockdown and yet Gothenburg and Malmö are still extremely low for big cities simply tell us that it's more likely the biggest variable here with deaths SO FAR is the amount of virus that existed already in that country/those cities in late Feb/March when the World realised what was happening in Italy.

Stockholm, unlike all of the other big cities in Scandinavia, had half term in week 9: 24th Feb - 1st March, and as we know, Swedes love to ski. All other big cities in Scandinavia had half term in week 7 or 8, including the 2nd and 3rd largest Swedish cities which so far are doing extremely well.

Surely occam's razor tells us then that parts of Ireland, all of Belgium, and Stockholm, had a massive dose of the virus in late Feb/early March, way more than Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Malmö

Brazil seems to be having some worrying numbers

Regulus Arcturus Black said:

Not only that @africanspur, to call them “miserable” you have to also look at it long term and believe other countries will do better once restrictions are eased. You have to consider that this virus is likely to be around for at least a year, probably longer and imagine that countries who “started well” will continue to do so out of lockdown.

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There’s two potential upsides to the Swedish approach.

1. Reaching herd immunity sooner. We’ll get an idea if this is working will when Sweden (and neighbour countries) get serology results back. Have to say I’m sceptical on that one. Maybe a % or two in it. Which is a huge number of sick people for a very marginal gain. Hope I’m wrong.

2. Taking less of an economic hit. Obviously it’s still very early but how is Sweden doing in comparison to other Scandi/Nordic countries? Unemployment. GDP drop predictions etc. I’d be very curious about that one.

I guess less of a lockdown means better mental health too. Which is important but very hard to quantify. That might be another hidden upside. Going to be interesting to see how it all pans out anyway.

Edged even a bit closer to normality today as our government decided that travel restrictions between municipalities do not apply from tomorrow onward. Which I feel like is a bit of a silly decision to do right before a holiday weekend, because now everyone will presumably visit their families, but whatever, this always has been a weird restriction.

Regulus Arcturus Black said:

Aye, it's mad. We haven't seen the missus grandma since mid March, poor thing, misses her grand daughter terribly. Our neighbours on both sides are devastated for the same reasons with their grandkids. The city (Stockholm) is something of a ghost town in comparison to "normal", even parkrun is cancelled and only 30 people usually turn up to those.
At Easter we had 10% of the normal travel.
Both myself and the missus celebrated big birthday's.... alone.

My company is fecked, I mean fecked, and it's just one of very very many. I can't even tell you how many people I know who have lost job or been furloughed.

Another thing I'd add is just to ask people to use Occam's razor when considering Sweden to other countries.

Sweden: 244 deaths /million population
1319 deaths in Stockholm, Scandinavia's most populous area.
Only 192 deaths in Gothenburg County (Västa Götaland)
Only 62 Malmö in County (Skåne)

Ireland: not updated today but 235 deaths /million population

Belgium: 647 deaths /million population

Now Ireland and Belgium locked down, that hasn't stopped their numbers being comparable or in Belgium's case, much worse. Is that because "Sweden did better" or because "Belgium did worse", or does that fact that Ireland's deaths have continued to rise during lockdown and yet Gothenburg and Malmö are still extremely low for big cities simply tell us that it's more likely the biggest variable here with deaths SO FAR is the amount of virus that existed already in that country/those cities in late Feb/March when the World realised what was happening in Italy.

Stockholm, unlike all of the other big cities in Scandinavia, had half term in week 9: 24th Feb - 1st March, and as we know, Swedes love to ski. All other big cities in Scandinavia had half term in week 7 or 8, including the 2nd and 3rd largest Swedish cities which so far are doing extremely well.

Surely occam's razor tells us then that parts of Ireland, all of Belgium, and Stockholm, had a massive dose of the virus in late Feb/early March, way more than Oslo, Helsinki, Copenhagen, Gothenburg, Malmö

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Can’t speak for Belgium but we had a shitload of people coming back from ski trips infected after half-term holidays in February (with another load of people hitting the slopes leading up to the long weekend of St Patrick’s Day)

...and don’t get me started on deaths per capita with small vs large countries. I’m like a broken record on that one!