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

Penna

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Italy has banned people coming into the country from Bangladesh after numerous positive cases within the Bengali community in Lazio (associated with flying from Dhaka).

Italy may also invoke legislation which is normally used to detain people who are mentally ill in order to force infected people to remain in hospital :
The potential move towards forced hospitalisations came after a cluster of infections arose in the northern Veneto region, triggered by a man who developed coronavirus symptoms on the day he returned from a business trip to Serbia and initially resisted treatment in hospital.

The 64-year-old, from Vicenza, is now in a serious but stable condition in hospital. Five others tested positive and 89 people were quarantined after he attended a funeral and birthday party at which there were more than 100 guests.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...tion-people-who-refuse-treatment-for-covid-19
 

11101

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It's killing the air freight business as most of it would be in the underbelly of passenger planes, I speak from experience, its like playing Tetris at work with different sterilised loads returning to us to to await a containers instead of going to Shannon or Dublin, but it has to be done, can't leave the to yanks have access, they would travel.
But profits are through the roof? I have a couple of friends in logistics and they are loving it, they can charge whatever they want because space is so restricted, even though airlines are flying aircraft empty to help meet demand.
 

UnrelatedPsuedo

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It’s just not possible for any EU country to function with travel restricted to the extent that will prevent imported cases. It’s something we’re going to have to live with, unfortunately.
Why not? What would be the impacts of all borders staying closed for year?

I assume we’re only talking about tourism?

Im not suggesting a year shut down obviously. But if you had to list why we couldn’t do that, what would that list of things look like? Where are the pain points for locking down in that manner?
 

JPRouve

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Why not? What would be the impacts of all borders staying closed for year?

I assume we’re only talking about tourism?

Im not suggesting a year shut down obviously. But if you had to list why we couldn’t do that, what would that list of things look like? Where are the pain points for locking down in that manner?
A huge amount of businesses would shut and a lot of people would have no income or severely reduced ones.
 

Pogue Mahone

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Why not? What would be the impacts of all borders staying closed for year?

I assume we’re only talking about tourism?

Im not suggesting a year shut down obviously. But if you had to list why we couldn’t do that, what would that list of things look like? Where are the pain points for locking down in that manner?
Not just tourism, no. As @christy87 said, there’s a good bit of air freight that relies on commercial airlines. Huge numbers of people also commute from one EU country to another, every week, in order to work. You have families split across borders. Companies which rely on workers from other EU countries to stay functional (e.g. recent drama re fruit pickers). Basically, the EU functions as a single large country. Suddenly stopping freedom of movement would be catastrophic.

Even in a super remote country like New Zealand, restricting movement can really mess up people’s lives. It would be this x 1000 in the EU.
 
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JPRouve

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Would a coordinated simultaneous worldwide lockdown/quarantine for 4-6 weeks would end the virus for good?
Probably not because you can't actually stop everything and there will always be a certain level of community transmissions. You would have to only stop lockdowns when there is virtually no one carrying the virus.
 

Suv666

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If he survives it, I can already see the "just a flu" rhetoric gaining more traction. fecking Brazil even further. Hoping he at least ends up in a hospital.
 

prateik

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He'll get the best care.. recover and then claim its not a serious issue..
We know its going to happen.
 

Pogue Mahone

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Probably not because you can't actually stop everything and there will always be a certain level of community transmissions. You would have to only stop lockdowns when there is virtually no one carrying the virus.
It’s one of those ideas that seems cool in theory but falls apart the moment you think about it. Especially when you realise that a lot of the people who couldn’t possibly work from home (carehome workers, doctors, nurses, hospital employees, food processors etc) have the highest rates of infection.
 

George Owen

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Probably not because you can't actually stop everything and there will always be a certain level of community transmissions. You would have to only stop lockdowns when there is virtually no one carrying the virus.
Yeah that's the point. These localized quarantines are not working. It only takes one sick person from a non quarantined city/country to start the shit all over again.

But if we all do the quarantine at the same time, it would make it easier to separate the sick population from the healthy ones, do the tracking, etc.
 

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Any idea why the discrepancy between UK deaths and cases?

Like, despite the consistently falling numbers we're still averaging 100 deaths a day. Proportionally speaking, that's plenty more than the US despite them consistently averaging more than 3x the number of cases.
 

redshaw

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UK 155 deaths and 581 cases

Last Tue was 155, last Wed 176, cases in the 600 range.
 

Pogue Mahone

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Any idea why the discrepancy between deaths and cases?

Like, despite the consistently falling numbers we're still averaging 100 deaths a day. Proportionally speaking, that's plenty more than the US despite them consistently averaging more than 3x the number of cases.
I reckon the average age of the cases in the UK vs US might answer that. If not, it could be down to how deaths are being classified. No other reason makes sense. Unless the UK has a higher % of people with co-morbidities or ethnic minorities? (fairly sure the opposite is the case)
 

JPRouve

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Yeah that's the point. These localized quarantines are not working. It only takes one sick person from a non quarantined city/country to start the shit all over again.

But if we all do the quarantine at the same time, it would make it easier to separate the sick population from the healthy ones, do the tracking, etc.
But what you are suggesting will last more than 4 to 6 weeks. France and Italy had stringent lockdowns where people couldn't really get in the country, where they couldn't move from regions to regions, it lasted more than 2 months and the amount of new cases were still in the hundreds, for larger countries it would last way longer than that. If your goal is eradication for certain countries it could last a year and that's with people not doing daft things like underground clubs/pubs.

Also most countries don't have the means to separate or track the population even rich countries can't do it without failings, the US are testing people at a high pace and they barely made the equivalent of 10% of their population in tests, even if you assumed that it represents the amount people tested and not the amount tests done, you only need one person out of the other 90% to start a new cluster. Your suggestion only makes sense when the virus isn't widely circulating within your borders and you have a small population.
 

11101

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Any idea why the discrepancy between UK deaths and cases?

Like, despite the consistently falling numbers we're still averaging 100 deaths a day. Proportionally speaking, that's plenty more than the US despite them consistently averaging more than 3x the number of cases.
The deaths you see now are cases that were diagnosed a couple of weeks ago.

There is also the likelihood that the virus in Europe is getting weaker but more infectious, so less people are aware anything is wrong and asking for tests.
 

christy87

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But profits are through the roof? I have a couple of friends in logistics and they are loving it, they can charge whatever they want because space is so restricted, even though airlines are flying aircraft empty to help meet demand.
That's why the company I work for are sending the majority of the product by boat now, we had to cancel an order a few weeks back and the cost was around 14K
 

lynchie

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Any idea why the discrepancy between UK deaths and cases?

Like, despite the consistently falling numbers we're still averaging 100 deaths a day. Proportionally speaking, that's plenty more than the US despite them consistently averaging more than 3x the number of cases.
We're not really having >100 deaths a day, but there's a steady stream of back-dated deaths from care homes in particular, as well as weekend hospital deaths.

You can get a better picture of the decline from the ONS data
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...glandandwalesprovisional/weekending26june2020
 

lynchie

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I reckon the average age of the cases in the UK vs US might answer that. If not, it could be down to how deaths are being classified. No other reason makes sense. Unless the UK has a higher % of people with co-morbidities or ethnic minorities? (fairly sure the opposite is the case)
I saw stats for one US state that had a massive spike in deaths attributed to something else - it was either pneumonia or a generic "other" classification - that matched the covid spike.
 

zing

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As we approach 1000 pages, I was there on page 1, mildly apprehensive but mostly joking that I was on a plane toTaiwan. Mad to see how collectively attitudes changed online from memes and jokes to “oh shit” over the space of a few months
Recall very early on, someone made a comment saying if this is as long as the Trump thread, we're fecked. Wonder if we'll get there. We're definitely fecked though.
 

Pogue Mahone

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I saw stats for one US state that had a massive spike in deaths attributed to something else - it was either pneumonia or a generic "other" classification - that matched the covid spike.
With the orange lunatic in charge, wouldn’t be surprised at all if there’s been pressure from on high to diddle the stats. We already know his genius idea to keep the case numbers down.
 

noodlehair

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Any non dodgy reason why the case numbers and death numbers in the US now just aren't tallying up with each other at all?

Edit: I see my post is addressed in the post immediately above it making me look foolish. Please ignore.
 

Ekkie Thump

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I reckon the average age of the cases in the UK vs US might answer that. If not, it could be down to how deaths are being classified. No other reason makes sense. Unless the UK has a higher % of people with co-morbidities or ethnic minorities? (fairly sure the opposite is the case)
Yeah, that seems a decent explanation. What I find strange though is the fact that we seem to have ramped up our testing enormously, have been seeing relatively few positives and yet our deaths - cases ratio remains so lopsided.

Eg:
  • 7 day Average Cases (April 14th): 4984 | 7 day Average Deaths (April 30th): 712
    • That equates to deaths in 14.3% of associated cases
  • 7 day Average Cases (June 11th): 1259 | 7 day Average Deaths (June 27th): 133
    • That equates to deaths in 10.6% of associated cases (a 26% fall)
In the same period as above our testing grew from 15k to 197k a day, the positivity rate fell from 35% to 0.63% and the absolute number of identified cases dropped by more than 75%. I would have thought that the combination of such a low positivity rate with such widespread testing would lead to us capturing more and more cases that were less and less urgent. But if widespread testing were capturing fewer cases of which a greater share were less urgent then surely its impact on the deaths-cases ratio would be greater than that which we're seeing?
 

Ekkie Thump

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We're not really having >100 deaths a day, but there's a steady stream of back-dated deaths from care homes in particular, as well as weekend hospital deaths.

You can get a better picture of the decline from the ONS data
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopula...glandandwalesprovisional/weekending26june2020
You see, this is actually doubly dumb of me. I forgot that the DHSC figures were an amalgamation of different days stretching back through time. This is after I spent the best part of 3 weeks banging on about that exact fact and literally updating a graph with the actual daily death figures (hospital only) released by NHS England.
 

Pogue Mahone

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Yeah, that seems a decent explanation. What I find strange though is the fact that we seem to have ramped up our testing enormously, have been seeing relatively few positives and yet our deaths - cases ratio remains so lopsided.

Eg:
  • 7 day Average Cases (April 14th): 4984 | 7 day Average Deaths (April 30th): 712
    • That equates to deaths in 14.3% of associated cases
  • 7 day Average Cases (June 11th): 1259 | 7 day Average Deaths (June 27th): 133
    • That equates to deaths in 10.6% of associated cases (a 26% fall)
In the same period as above our testing grew from 15k to 197k a day, the positivity rate fell from 35% to 0.63% and the absolute number of identified cases dropped by more than 75%. I would have thought that the combination of such a low positivity rate with such widespread testing would lead to us capturing more and more cases that were less and less urgent. But if widespread testing were capturing fewer cases of which a greater share were less urgent then surely its impact on the deaths-cases ratio would be greater than that which we're seeing?
Hmmm. That is puzzling. Early on I put your high death rate down to severity bias. But that shouldn’t still be an issue by now, as you say.
 

golden_blunder

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Can’t shake the feeling that this is going to be life for a few years. A stream of people dying whilst public life gets opened and closed in an endless loop
 

UnrelatedPsuedo

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Not just tourism, no. As @christy87 said, there’s a good bit of air freight that relies on commercial airlines. Huge numbers of people also commute from one EU country to another, every week, in order to work. You have families split across borders. Companies which rely on workers from other EU countries to stay functional (e.g. recent drama re fruit pickers). Basically, the EU functions as a single large country. Suddenly stopping freedom of movement would be catastrophic.

Even in a super remote country like New Zealand, restricting movement can really mess up people’s lives. It would be this x 1000 in the EU.
Queenstown was being destroyed by tourism. Absolute destroyed. Kiwis are happy to press reset. Bad example but I do appreciate your point.

To your first paragraph - Businesses could organise themselves. Testing resolves those kind of problems. Enough to mitigate at

Air freight? I don’t give a shit. Nor should anyone really.

Not a shot across your bows, but for such a left leaning site, we spout a lot of shite with an economy bent.

The drive to bring tourism and international flights back full force is fecking up everything. In my opinion of course. The whole world could just go far slower. We pretend that it can’t.
 
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Not a shot across your bows, but for such a left leaning site, we spout a lot of shite with an economy bent.

The drive to bring tourism and international flights back full force is fecking up everything. In my opinion of course. The whole world could just go far slower. We pretend that it can’t.
Do you think it's ok to keep parents from their children? Children from grandparents and others from their loved ones for a year or more?

And for what end goal? 5 months in and people need to start realising that lockdowns won't make this go away and closed borders won't either. A vaccine might mind.

Israel closed it's borders completely on 12th March, locked down, and fecking look at it now? Wake up people. You gotta learn to live with this, track it where possible, and keep your health service going.

Australia haven't being desperately bringing back tourism or international flights, and they've just re-locked down Melbourne. Some people in public housing treated like fecking prisoners.
 
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Hound Dog

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Can’t shake the feeling that this is going to be life for a few years. A stream of people dying whilst public life gets opened and closed in an endless loop
On the bright side, we are already almost half a year in. Let's be optimistic and believe that we are two thirds away from the end.