Yeah....and the French, the Spanish and the Italians.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
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In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik and Imran hold a long overdue conversation about United's awful league form with 1 win in 7. They discuss a disappointing draw at Bournemouth, a not so disappointing draw against Liverpool and a crushing defeat at Chelsea - Is time nearly over for Erik Ten Hag?
Then in a special second half of the pod, Nik welcomes Natalie ( https://twitter.com/natalie_17) to discuss the fortunes of Manchester United Women as they booked a place in the FA Cup Final after a historic first ever win vs. Chelsea.
It's probably a financial motive. Nobody should be going near places like Milan considering how many cases there are.
Is their actually any tables out their to tell us how many are currently infected rather than the total infections?
In which country?
In the UK the answer would be no because they don't publish the amount of recovered cases but in other countries that would be the active cases column on Worldometer. It's not an accurate information though because it doesn't fully take into account the thousands of infected people that haven't been tested.
UK primarily is where I'm most concerned about as that's where I'm from but I think it's important that it's general knowledge to know how many are currently infected & how many have recovered
I see Italy are planning to reopen borders for tourism at the start of June as well with very little of any restrictions (at least from what I read.) Seems a little premature no? I'm general I'd love to visit Italy as I've never been and was supposed to go to a now cancelled concert in Bologna on July. If I thought it was was safe for tourism, I'd stil consider visiting the country later in the year but start of June seems very soon.
Edit: Weird this was a reply to @Penna but it's showing up as @UnrelatedPsuedo. Sorry for the random notification!
No such data. It could be had from a true random sampling.
It is possible to calculate it approximately, though. Starting from deaths and calculating it backwords using a best educated-guess for IFR. Then taking into account for how many days people are infected, the lag of deaths and what the current estimate for R is.
Following is an illustration and numbers are not totally correct:
Let's say UK has 600 deaths per day and IFR is 1% it means 60.000 are infected every day. Let's say average infectious period last for 6 days. Meaning that 360.000 are currently infectious. So 360k/68m=0.5% of people. More in England, less in other parts and so on.
And depends if you wanted to know hiw many people can transmit the virus (6days) or are "sick" from it (more than 6 days). And 6 days is not a fact either just a guess.
There's still a very strong "stay local for the summer" message coming across, to the extent that the Government is even offering people financial incentives to take an Italian holiday - not everyone, your family income has to be under 40,000 euros a year but that's a lot of people in this country.
I also think it's too much, too soon. I don't like the idea of people being able to travel freely between regions just for the sake of travelling or doing social-type things while we still have so many cases. The idea of doing that from next week (as being pushed by some regions) is ridiculous.
At some point we want to take a trip back to the UK, as we're in the process of buying a small flat there and we'd like to see family and friends (we have no UK base at present). However, it's taking so long to complete we won't be able to do that for a good while! I'm thinking for you and for us we'd be better waiting till September-ish.
That was, and is the policy in my opinion. I think they were going to be more open about it until the press pushed them to lock down. Personally, I have no issue with this as a policy if we can shield the most vulnerable. Its preferable to sitting and waiting for a vaccine.
I am not (at all) keen on the Tory's or what they stand for but being fair, they have handled some things well (i.e. increase of ICU capacity) and other things horribly (acquiring sufficient PPE for NHS staff).
Care homes is the big issue and the Government are being roundly criticised, but it is clearly a very difficult practical problem to solve. My Grandmother has late stage dementia and is in a very nice care home which so far, fortunately hasn't been ravaged by the virus. They are locked down, nobody can visit and they are doing all they can but the staff have to come and go, and therein lies the risk.
The criticism of the Government doesn't seem to offer any solutions. Care homes are like prisons full of very old and very ill people and this has been a problem across the world. Extensive testing is needed but if people are asymptomatic, or don't present with symptoms for weeks while being infected, that won;t solve the problem. If the virus gets in, then it goes round like wildfire. Its almost inevitable.
Im not sure what benefits there are to restricting your borders when you’ve been one of the worst hit areas. Is it not more a case of lesser hit countries having responsibility to restrict travel to and from the highest risk areas? At this point it’s a global pandemic. Countries still need to have sensible regulations and guidance and ensure their citizens are acting responsibly but I don’t see why people shouldn’t be able to travel internationally as long as it’s essential.
The difficulty in shielding the most vulnerable as the virus spreads through the general populace is one of the great flaws with that "herd immunity" approach. You'd be relying on the Tories doing something they have already comprehensively failed to do. Just as Sweden were also looking at protecting care homes and failed to do so. Because, as you say, it's an extremely difficult thing to do. It's like setting a wildfire and then saying "well this is a good idea as long as people indoors don't get burned to death". You still have to do something to actually stop those people from getting burned as the fire rages around them.
So if government were pursuing that herd immunity strategy, the first solution to try and protect those in care homes would be not to pursue that herd immunity strategy. Because a virus that is suppressed in the general community will have a harder time repeatedly getting to the most vulnerable than a virus that is buring through the general community. And even countries that do well in suppressing the virus have and will struggle to protect their most vulnerable.
Beyond that, you would start hunting the virus in those facilities by mass testing everyone, whether they're showing symptoms or not, as other countries have done. When people say "all a lockdown does is buy you time", that's the sort of measure you can implement with that bought time. As is it will apparently be June at best before that happens in the UK.
As it happens though I don't think the UK have been perusing that deliberate herd immunity strategy. Rather they've found themselves caught between different approaches and been ineffective as a result, which unfortunately doesn't then relieve the need to lift lockdown.
My mum is a nurse in a care home and they haven't had a single Covid-19 case. During the first week of March they isolated all residents to their rooms(it's more an advice than anything else) and forbidden visits, they did before instructions for the government, they have PPEs because they are supposed to have stocks that they purchase all year long since they use them even outside of a pandemic, at the beginning they struggled a bit with renewing their hydroalcoholic gels stocks since everyone was trying to purchase them. Now the reality of care homes is that it's not prison and they have patients that have mental health issues such as Alzheimer, these people sometimes won't and can't respect social distancing rules, legally you can't imprison them either and they will eventually wander around. So a lot of luck is involved with the virus not affecting care takers and make sure that everyone realize that he is a risk soon enough, and that they stay at home when they have cold symptoms.
That last sentence is the key but unfortunately even staying at home if you get symptoms won’t keep the virus out of care homes. It can be passed on before symptoms start.
In Ireland the big problem was agency workers who did shifts in multiple care homes. That was how it jumped from one care home to another. If that isn’t something that happens routinely then you just need a bit of luck, as you say.
Some early signs coming out from China about economic recovery suggesting we might not have that quick bounceback and v-shaped recovery you'd hope. Although it's hard to tell when China's economy relies on exports.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/15/...tion=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article
They've surveyed 11,000 households in England so far (it will go on for a year) and they estimate that 148,000 are infected currently, or 1 in 400 people.
Thanks! Yeah, I remembered that just after posting. And if we assume deaths are now around 300 a day, my "calculations" would result in 0.25%= 1/400.
Care to offer any solutions on how you shield the vulnerable?
Your one of those who keep posting about hysterical fear and that most will just get on with life. So with a rapid spread throughout the community how do you protect those who want to be able to go about their life to some extent? Tell them if they leave their house it's their own fault?
The vulnerable group is quite large after all and keeping the virus spread limited at least allows them some freedoms.
Its obviously very difficult - hence the point I made about hard hard it is to protect those in care homes. I have a friend who had lymphoma last year and after aggressive chemo the year before last he has been in remission for over a year. He has been told to shield for 12 weeks from lock down started - no leaving the house, working from home, cant see his kids or granddaughter, youngest daughter (key worker) has moved out. Not sure what will happen when his wife needs to go back to work.
Not sure how sustainable that is. He's a very active man (running, cycling etc) and I know it is very hard. Would he stick that long term? I suspect not.
I don't know what the answer is for people like him other than a vaccine, successful treatments or herd immunity which reduces his chances of catching teh virsu at all.
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Nearly 500 deaths today, seems more than usual for a Saturday?
All valid points. There is evidently no easy answer. Regular, mass testing of those in care homes seems to be the best option now. Hopefully that's realistic.
Well it's a matter of priorities isn't it, we can tell these people sorry we want to go about our lives or we can accept that we need to make some sacrifices to their benefit.
Herd immunity from a practical perspective obviously works (under the assumption of long term immunity) but it shifts burden onto the vulnerable which i just can't get in board with.
I know we're not generally great at helping the vulnerable so I'm hoping the goodwill hasn't been used up. It doesn't need a full lockdown forever but it might need one occasionally.
Just on that last bit - does that mean that if say I got a bad cold over Christmas I might be immune from Covid-19 right now? If so, how long does such immunity typically last?
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Sunday and Monday are the low counts usually. 2 and 3 Saturdays ago was 621 and 843 and Sun/Mon were half those, last Sat 346.
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Not necessarily completely immune but you’d be more likely to get a milder illness than you would otherwise. There’s been studies on the coronaviruses that cause the common cold where they exposed people to the virus a year after their first infection and they still ended up getting infected but had almost no symptoms.
Really encouraging stuff.
It's good that it's been dropping over the past couple of weeks, but i'm really starting to fear for whats to come. It looks to me like people aren't taking this relaxation of the lockdown seriously. I've been out to do shopping today and it looks like a normal day out there. Even queues to get into shops aren't really social distancing anymore, well not round here they're not. Inside shops, there's not a lot of social distancing going on either, people just passing close by others etc.
Great news, if true. Out of all their findings that one’s the most tenuous. The whole thing is really pleasing though. Most positive bit of research I’ve seen in weeks.
I don't agree with opening so quickly but i think they are thinking that there is such a huge testing and hospital bed capacity now that they can cope with any small surges, serological tests are already underway, and the economy is on it's knees with Lombardy and the North closed down. There were 276 people in Covid ICU in Lombardy yesterday, peak capacity now is almost 2,000. That's a long runway for them to clamp down again if needed.
I keep a close eye on my town's case numbers and they are down in the single figures and teens most days now despite the streets having been packed for the last week or two. At the peak it was hundreds. Hopefully they are right that it does not spread much outdoors.
My nan’s care home in Norwich was tested a few weeks ago. Now they are doing all the tests again, as they either went wrong or got lost. Would be good to know how many of the tests, which still aren’t reaching 100,000 daily, actually produce a result. Our testing has been a perfect example of how to hit a target and completely miss the point.
I read an article from the Guardian today about the rise in mental health related issues with a lot of people (often young men) who are previously "not known" to services now presenting with serious mental health issues. I read somewhere else that cancer diagnoses has reduced 80% and evidently that is down to reduced screening. These are some of the short term effects of lockdown. Longer term effects in developed countries come from a recession which will reduce life expectancy, often for the poorest. That all adds up to years lost.
If you start from the premise that lockdown a) will reduce the spread and reduce deaths but won't stop some people dying; and b) it cannot continue forever then it becomes evident that without a vaccine, a balance has to be found in the best interests of society. It's obviously a very tough balance to keep. The burden of a continued lock down and economic damage falls on the younger members of society. They are the people who need to work to fund essential services in the country, to pay the pensions of those retired and (increasingly) to fund care home fees for parents who live longer. As such, economic damage hits everyone in the long term. Of course, short term we must do what we can to protect our old and vulnerable too. Its hard to square these two issues.
The friend I referred to is older than me and I met him at work. He's a real family man, married very young and has three kids and now one grandchild. He has a job he likes, has never been hugely ambitious and is genuinely the most positive person I know. He is a role model because he's not the most wealthy but he genuinely loves his life. He cycles and runs, travels with his wife all over the world and once told me if he got to 70 and dropped dead, he'd take that if he could be healthy until that day. I like his take on life.
We mustn't forget that amongst crunching numbers and stats, people need to have a quality of life. That's what makes going to work bearable for the vast majority of the population. Those who have retired want to enjoy the 10 or 20 years they have left and I suspect those this is designed to protect are the ones who will get sick of it first.
Not looking forward to the next 6 weeks or so. Given the fact that England are starting to cautiously ease restrictions, Scotland will follow suit, but probably 2 -3 weeks later.
I just know that as soon as England announce a slight ease, so many Scottish folks will take that as a signal to just go about their normal life. Give people an inch, they take a mile. A second wave is inevitable and potentially worse given how desperate people are to get back to some form of normality.
I just don't trust people.
I just know that as soon as England announce a slight ease, so many Scottish folks will take that as a signal to just go about their normal life. Give people an inch, they take a mile. A second wave is inevitable and potentially worse given how desperate people are to get back to some form of normality.
I just don't trust people.
That's good news all round. I see we had 153 deaths today, the lowest since lockdown began.
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<100 cases for first time since March. And this is after loosening testing criteria in primary care. Very encouraging.
Why was he arrested? Is it a crime to say 5G and covid19 are linked?
I assume because he was using a megaphone to tell everyone they were being brainwashed or whatever. It'll be a public order offence. They refused to do the social distancing, too.
Question.. if they get a vaccine this year are you running to get the vaccine or wait to see if any issues? I will wait just in case they find something wrong.
I’m no expert but surely this doesn’t really make sense. That it’s going to be worse.
How can it possibly be worse unless the virus itself mutates and is worse and most are saying that won’t happen.
Every other factor would suggest it won’t be no?
Back when this started pretty much nobody took it seriously. Nobody was going out of there way to take those extra precautions.
There’s no way you’re gonna have everyone back out mingling. A large amount of people will still be cautious and then you’ll have a good amount of people who will flat out refuse to leave their homes due to the fear . Then you factor it that less people will be working, people generally being cleaner, more testing, I don’t really see how it could be worse. What’s the rationale behind the second wave being worse than the first?
Not sure why, but I read this comment in the voice of Dwight from the American Office
But, to answer your question, as someone living in the UK probably not as it'll only be available here once other countries have been taking it long before we can. Such has been the general trend of how we've dealt with the virus.
Of course I don’t agree with his message content: it’s absurd. I also personally advocate for a much harsher level of restrictions and don’t think ‘feeedom of speech’ is the most important human right, right now. That being said, I can’t see what this chap has done wrong in these circumstances.
I doubt police will be able to get such a charge to stick in court. Or is it specifically written in the new relaxed lockdown measures that people can’t use mega speakers?
He is not at fault for not observing social distancing, rather it’s the others who have stopped near him to listen to him speak. And lockdown never mentioned limitations to free speech either.
There are many legal and cultural minefields that will require careful navigating in next months.
It would go to front-line medical workers and then other essential services first, wouldn’t it? I’m thinking I’d have to wait a while anyway, though I’m not sure if that provides the sort of timeframe you’re thinking of.