He is in Santa Barbara. He lives in the suburb next to the Uni which is 95% students who are mostly now at home with their parents so social distancing isn't an issue. And California is better than most US states. You just worry with him being so far away and travel being difficult or impossible at the moment.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
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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.
You do it for both reasons. The aim is to get to a vaccine as best you can, without mass death and economic collapse. Australia and NZ are beginning to slightly relax restrictions but they have almost eradicated SARS-CoV-2. Most states have zero cases for a week now and the two biggest states aren't far behind. NSW had its first zero new infections day yesterday. And the deaths of the elderly is not acceptable here. Our total death toll is still under 100 and we have 2 outbreaks in old people's homes that are getting daily news attention because 17 residents have died in one home.
If we do it right we can slowly loosen restrictions and we may get to a point where free interstate travel is allowed again and possibly also allow travel between NZ and Australia. We still fear a second wave of course which is why things are going slowly.
BoJo and his bunch of murderously incompetent clowns have fecked it up so badly by not locking down early enough, or hard enough or for long enough. And left the borders open without compulsory quarantine.
Does anyone have any theory on what is going on in Bahrain and Singapore? The first one has a death rate of 0.16% while the second one of 0.085% (which is lower than the estimated casualty death rate from seasonal flu).
Just lucky (as in, their infected being healthy young people) or something else?
Bear in mind, the death rate has been in those levels for months now.
Just lucky (as in, their infected being healthy young people) or something else?
Bear in mind, the death rate has been in those levels for months now.
I guess small authoritarian, rich island countries can lock down harder and isolate the old and those with other conditions much better. Their death rate will already be lower by SATS-CoV-2 having only a low impact on their health service.
I can't think of much else assuming their data is true.
I don't think Singapore would lie. They are semi-dictatorial, but I have the impression that their information is real. I think that they managed the spread very well, with lockdown and controls, but they still had 24k+ infections, so it is not a matter of just a small sample (like Faroe Islands for example).
In Europe, the state with the lowest mortality (and that has over 1000 confirmed cases) is Iceland at 0.55%. It is still 7 times higher than Singapore (and 4-5 times higher than Bahrain). Those two countries are in a league of their own, total outliers.
A lot (vast vast majority) of those infected in Singapore are migrant workers - by definition not old and also likely to be healthy.
The situation in Singapore is simple. 80-90% of all cases are from migrant workers who live in managed dorms. Close quarters. And the basic mantra of any epidemic goes, it only takes one person...
The numbers every day is through the roof. 96-98% of every confirmed daily case numbers has been from these dorms. They have been in lockdown for a month now so I am not sure why the migrant worker numbers aren't falling or falling significantly. It may be because of the increase in testing. I am told that they have tested at least 60% of the migrant worker population.
Meanwhile, community spread is like 2-10 people a day max for the past several weeks.
That actually skews the numbers dramatically when you remove the migrant workers' numbers. But nevertheless, after four months since the 1st case of Covid, the death toll has been low, at 21.
There is one key reason why the numbers are low: Institutional memory. https://www.moh.gov.sg/docs/librari...erim-pandemic-plan-public-ver-_april-2014.pdf
There have been several lessons learnt from the past epidemics incl SARs.
1) Protect healthcare workers first and foremost. I think during the SARs epidemic, 43% of the victims/cases were healthcare workers. Now, the healthcare workers here have been told not to worry about PPEs. A friend of mine who is in the frontline told me that the CMO (Chief Medical Officer of the MOH) was very insistent that change your full PPE kit -- N95s, face shield, gloves, gowns, shoe covers etc every time you remove it when you have to pee, eat or otherwise. So she changes her full PPE kits like FOUR times a day.
Along with the PPEs, they have been stockpiling various medical equipment like ventilators, patient monitoring, tele/remote consulting and even pulse oximeters for years.
2) The system has been built for over-capacity. I have been told that its currently running at 20% capacity or thereabouts of available beds.
3) The reason why the beds capacity is not really taxed -- and in Singapore most ICU or hospitalised patients will have their own individual rooms is because of the segmentation of the patients.
Since at least 40% of patients are asymptomatic or some will be presymptomatic, they are initially put into large community care facilities -- converted exhibition halls like the size of the Excel --- or the chartering of the excess capacity from cruise ships -- to both do the step up and to step down management of the patients.
All of the above would ensure that patients in ICUs are ensured the maximum individualised quality of care which has kept the fatality rates low. There were no fatalities until seven weeks ago.
In fact, the deaths so far have been your stereotypical patients, elderly, preconditions etc. Nothing out of the initial playbook.
Singapore health industry has so many beds because it’s also designed for mass medical tourism. Presumably all those beds have been given over for national use right now, given no patients because of international lockdown?
Same is true in Bangkok and to a less extent KL. Ditto Dubai.
So the vast majority of those infected are health and in low risk age groups?
I have no access to the breakdown of those numbers. But one would assume so otherwise, the fatality rates would be much higher.
Its an ageing population and has been geared up for it, for a good decade now. The elderly have been told to stay home and they will have food services provided for or arranged if required. They have summed up the old community spirit and have asked the kids to ensure that they are well taken cared of or there will be some neighbourhood group that will ensure that the elderly are not left to their own device.
They have been giving away free masks to the general population -- initially the surgical ones back in Feb which were insufficient. Then reusable mask and now a new & improved version are supposed to be distributed in the next week.
The migrant worker clusters are really the 3rd wave of infection. The 1st being the tendril from China and then the community spread. (A heavy resourced containment strategy was applied ie trace, track, map and isolate both primary and secondary contacts.)
The 2nd being the imports when the world caught up and then whenever visitors come or Singaporeans return home, they would bring the virus. Visitors and returnees were either isolated in 5 star hotels or at home for returnees.
The stats in Singapore are skewed for a few reasons.
First of all, the sudden spike is due to the virus spreading among the foreign workers community who live in dorms. The community spread among rest of Singapore is very low. After realising the spread among foreign workers, the government went in aggressively to test everyone staying in the dorms. Testing is still ongoing. Many workers who are asymptomatic are tested and confirmed as cases, which means the death rate is always going to be lower.
The foreign workers community is usually made of younger people, and we know death rate among this demographic is likely to be lower anyway. In fact, almost every one of the 21 deaths in Singapore are 65 and above. If I recall correctly, there is zero death among the foreign workers. (one poor chap committed suicide. But that is not included in the statistics)
Thanks for the detailed explanation. Makes perfect sense. And while I guess it is hard to replicate their model in large states, I am sure that most states could have done far better than they have.
Ok this is a lot more comprehensive than my half baked answer.
Thanks
Regarding why the cases among foreign workers are not coming down significantly yet, the reason is that they are testing every single worker regardless if they have symptoms or not. Many of the confirmed cases did not have symptoms and had been quietly spreading it in dorms. The Gov just said yesterday they expect the number of newly discovered cases to remain high in the next week as testing is still ongoing. But the good news is exponential growth has stopped
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I am one of those who came back and got quarantined in a hotel. I think that really worked. Imported cases were contained and minimised from spreading to community.
Yes. The migrant workers probably made up 95% and above of the cases and most are under 50.
You were asymptomatic?
Oh I mean one of those flying home who needed to serve compulsory quarantine in the five star hotels. I was not symptomatic and did not get tested
What hotel did they put you up in? How was it? In UK they haven’t cared one bit about returnee’s!
Am surprised the first wave was so low given that vast majority of local population live in HBD and high rise apartments.
They had applied a two-pronged approach -- both of them are quite a standard fare for anyone with an MPH or MPA which my sister does from Columbia. They did apply some localised twist to the various measures but if you look at the link below, its not supremely unique or Singaporean.
https://www.moh.gov.sg/docs/librari...erim-pandemic-plan-public-ver-_april-2014.pdf
Tbh I never heard of the terms like social distancing etc -- but in that document written in 2014, it was mentioned.
The measures mentioned were applied and they are certainly scalable if you read the above document.
The biggest difference imo is the communications strategy. It has been clear, concise and almost non-politicised in what is an election year. The coms strategy is sophisticated, multi-platform in that they give you a reason why you need to adhere (for the sake of your neighbours and your elderly parents, being an ageing nation) Data-based rather than anecdotal or opinions press conferences if anything they tend to be quite cautious and gloomy like scaremongers. (Though there was a burst of old-style big stick approach by one of the ministers for about a week but he has gone silent since.)
IMo.more importantly, their actual containment measures it has been incrementally escalated.
They are big believers of the nudging technique for behavioural changes. So things have been incremental. And the mindset changes has been slow but higher adherence to the measures. It permeates better when done incrementally.
Lockdowns (or 'circuit breakers' as they are euphemistically called here) should always be the last resort. Therefore the prep work prior to that has to be well war-gamed and detailed for proper implementation from stockpiling of PPEs to infrastructure and protection of the Healthcare workers.
Despite it all, the authorities have even admitted that regardless of all their prep work/scenario planning etc, as with any pandemics, it's will be the case of whack-a-mole.
But ultimately, the key is buying time until a vaccine solution is found.
Swissotel Stamford or the Resortsworld on Sentosa were the two options:
Cityscape:
or seaview:
Taxpayers $$
The step down facilities for the migrant workers:
Singapore's recovered foreign workers to be housed on SuperStar cruise ships
I stayed in Swissotel Stamford. The stay was fine and they frequently called to check our health and if we needed anything.
The memory from SARS is quite strongly etched in the government and the population, so people take the precautions really seriously.
No. A lot more hotels were utilised. I'm not even sure resort world sentosa was used. In sentosa it was rasa sentosa that made the news rather than resort world. Rasa sentosa and stamford were more well known simply because the first batches went there.
I bet the corporate rates are pretty favourable now that most hotels are running at a near-zero occupancy rate.
really interesting. It seems Singapore was clearly well ahead in preparation for something like this. Perhaps understandable given SARS but it still appears such planning and knowledge wasn’t sought by lesser prepared governments which is frustrating.
I agree, the lockdown's been so strict and now it's all easing up at once. Your region's boss was one of the ones pushing Conte to move things forward to next week, I see. Ours wasn't, so I'm not expecting any changes anytime soon because they've been super-cautious here.
Sheesh...
Covid-19 isn't just a respiratory disease. It hits the whole body
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/health/coronavirus-symptoms-blood-clots-inflammation/index.html
Covid-19 isn't just a respiratory disease. It hits the whole body
https://www.cnn.com/2020/05/12/health/coronavirus-symptoms-blood-clots-inflammation/index.html
Definitely. Before the government changed to paying for the hotel stay, they already secured very favourable rates from many hotels for returning singaporeans to self isolate in. It was circulated to us singaporeans overseas.
Singapore was a different animal altogether. Their infrastructure in system and actual competent leadership was head and shoulder above the majority of the world. Not many can replicate their system to he fair.
Having an authoritarian competent leadership, an almost totally submissive citizen (albeit grumpy), modern infrastructure, and small city wide population works in their favour.
A couple of us joked that in the event we indonesians got corona we'll simply buy a one way ticket and fly to singapore. Their quarantine would be much better than ours
So, which countries did well so far? We shall base our wild assumptions on random and biased news reports.
Here's my Top 5:
Here's my Top 5:
- New Zealand
- Australia
- Israel
- Singapore
- South Korea
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But like the migrant workers situation and NYC have shown, small tight quarters can really shoot the numbers up pretty quickly. The margin for error is much smaller in such tight urban environments.
Taiwan have done a great job too.
Looks like most border controls between Germany and Austria will cease on Friday. I'd say my trip to Vienna in two weeks has just become a little more likely.
Also, the European Commission has said we would definitely have a summer holiday season in Europe.
Also, the European Commission has said we would definitely have a summer holiday season in Europe.
Vietnam seem to have done very well.
I hadn't seen that, he has been very conservative up to now and has been saying he wants to see the local data before opening anything early.
I just hope they are right and the virus doesn't spread in outdoor spaces. My company is starting to talk about us all going back to the office in June, which is not going to happen.
I'd love to agree with you on that, but TW is officially part of China. They've done a fantastic job though! I'd put them right at the top if I had it my way.
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Interesting... Could Vietnam replace SK?
Yeah wanted to say that too.
Little report on BBC website that some buses in Canning Town are arriving at full capacity. Would've liked to have seen more buses run and some workers allowed to arrive a bit later. Hope they had all the windows open.
Does seem as though herd immunity lite is in operation. Being a major international hub it's probably impossible to be on egg shells for 1-2 years.
Does seem as though herd immunity lite is in operation. Being a major international hub it's probably impossible to be on egg shells for 1-2 years.
Bottom line is the fatality rates.