There were a lot less cases in August. April was the peak.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
Interesting. Generally agreed!
Man, those statements are designed to get you to have precisely that reaction. Why jump into their trap? Here's a more considered analysis of the data.
Between March and May there were over 96,000 deaths from non-covid factors and over 33,000 from covid. Anything that makes up 1/4 of our death total is a huge issue that requires urgent attention. That's while doing an enormous amount to prevent covid from transmitting - if we didn't do anything, it's very reasonable to expect more people would have died from covid than all other sources combined.
What you want to compare is covid vs. preventable deaths. Something like influenza, for example, rather than dementia and alzheimer's. We can prevent people from dying from influenza by reducing the transmission and providing timely medication, and because that's a very achievable goal, it's something we should expect to do. That isn't the case for dementia and alzheimer's, unfortunately. And while we know how to limit cardiovascular deaths, we can't have the same instant impact, they require long-term behavioural change which we have invested much more in over the course of their history than we have in tackling this particular virus. That long-term behavioural change is just harder, and less effective.
There is nothing comparable to this, that kills as many people (or makes them seriously ill) which is preventable with known strategies. There is no plausible reality where we would have let things just go on as normal with that present, when it comes with the double whammy of exponential growth. Which is why literally no country in the world has done that. No amount of selective analysis of the numbers will ever dispute that fundamental reality.
If this is true, my guess its because contrary to the "top 23" other reasons people die, Covid is infectious.
Wow - this is a statistic that i have never seen and shows the lockdowns etc as being a necessity at minimum.
Yes it’s silly. But who cares?This image sums it up perfectly for me in terms of the perceived society priorities in Wales:
Women or men pushing buggies will bump into friends from other householders in that aisle and linger. It’s a clothing section.
People won’t do the same in other areas of the shop. Or at the vodka rack on the end.
It’s an imperfect analysis of an imperfect rule.
But... who cares. It helps a little and is silly a little. It doesn’t matter. People need to pick a different hill.
By what metric has Italy suffered worse than UK?
is there a deeper point to quibbling over the numbers?Yeah it's stark! For all we can criticise about the UK government, the ONS have really excelled at helping us put things in context with really relatively numbers. What we had to do after the first peak I think is debatable, but the situation we found ourselves in by March was seriously grim, and even with a severe response we still suffered hugely. If we didn't do that the outcomes would have been legitimately criminal.
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That criticism of UK is warranted even if you seem to be driven to argue (not prove) differently? A bit odd response from you. And it was a genuine question, because I couldn't think of one.
That was in August. There were 482 deaths from Corona that month. We will probably see more announced on Tuesday-Thursday this week.
Tesco bans sales of sanitary products after branding them as 'non-essential' under Welsh firebreak rules
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/...ts-nonessential-wales-firebreak-a4572964.html
https://www.standard.co.uk/news/uk/...ts-nonessential-wales-firebreak-a4572964.html
Disgraceful.
Mistake. Corrected. Move along.
Yes it’s silly. It’s also not real. They blocked by aisle, erroneously.
Not real. Ignore Twitter.
Shopping centres rammed today with kids off. Social distancing non existent.
Criticism of the UK government is warranted. They got a heads up from Italy and somehow still managed to find themselves in an equally bad situation quite soon after. I primarily blame Boris Johnson's buffoonery for that, but there were obvious systemic failures too. My point wasn't that the UK government responded well to the situation, rather that if they responded so poorly and the Italians responded so well, and yet we find ourselves in a situation where Italy could suffer more severe consequences, then wouldn't that point to the government's measures not being as influential as we thought / hoped? As I understand it, the only alternative explanation would be that there wasn't such a wide gap in the measures imposed and the adherence to them. That seems less likely to me but I don't know the respective situations inside-out.
Given the UK has had significantly higher fatalities and a much deeper economic slump off the back of lockdown, by what metric do you consider Italy having suffered 'more severe consequences'?
Baffles me that people don’t get this.
The post you've quoted says they "could suffer more severe consequences". On the virus transmission side, that's just based on the sharper increase in cases and the higher number of daily cases, especially after doing so well to keep cases so low, and the development of specific hotspots which posed the biggest problem there last time. Which I'm taking from local's comments in here plus the supporting data. On the economic side, that's largely a byproduct of it: a more strict response leading to more economic damage.
But that's not really the point I'm making, so if it's a point of contention, I'm happy to retract the statement. The broader point is that if the measures were much more appropriate, and much better adhered to, then you would have expected the UK to do significantly worse - especially at this stage. And there were a lot of people in here saying that is why the UK was going the way it was, while Italy was keeping things low. Is it an unreasonable point to question how influential those measures can be when the conditions worsen, or alternatively how well they were adhered to in their respective countries?
How are Boots able to offer a 12 minute test and the Gov aren't?
Yet more government lies...
This morning on BBC1, Matt Hancock clearly stated that Boris Johnson had been in close contact recently with Marcus Rashford regarding free school meals.
And yet on SKY, he clearly stated that he has not been in contact with Rashford since June.
Am I surprised. Not at all.
Lies are endemic with this government. So much easier than being truthful.
This morning on BBC1, Matt Hancock clearly stated that Boris Johnson had been in close contact recently with Marcus Rashford regarding free school meals.
And yet on SKY, he clearly stated that he has not been in contact with Rashford since June.
Am I surprised. Not at all.
Lies are endemic with this government. So much easier than being truthful.
I imagine it's a small scale operation that will be dealing with low numbers a day based off the machine that will be processing, as opposed to the hundreds of thousands that require processing and the most efficient way to do that is via a lab.
Different type of test. Boots is doing an antigen test which is a lot less accurate than the PCR test done in labs. I think we’ll end up moving towards using similar tests to the Boots one on a massive scale at some point soon. But it’s not accurate enough yet to compete with PCR tests at a national level.
In Belgium they're working on a 5 min PCR test.
https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/five-minute-breath-test-covid-19
"imec in Belgium is developing a PCR test that can identify Covid-19 in breath in under five minutes.
The research lab in Leuven has been given a grant of €2 million by the Flemish government and is teaming up with UZ Leuven University Hospital for clinical validation of Covid-19 test. Imec intends to test a functional prototype at Brussels Airport in the summer of 2021.
The test uses the 'gold standard' polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to be accurate in determining if someone has the virus without having to use an uncomfortable nasal swab and laboratory processing time. Other tests can be easier to conduct but can be less accurate.
By testing exhaled air imec tests not only whether someone has the virus but also how likely they are to be contagious. Droplets from exhaled breath are thought to be the virus's main transmission method. Peter Peumans, CTO of Health Technologies at IMEC said the test is being designed to cope flexibly with other viruses that spread by the same method, such as influenza, respiratory synctycial virus (RSV) and tuberculosis.
"SARS-CoV-2 testing via breath sample coupled with an ultrafast molecular analysis would be game-changing since it would allow for the timely detection of individuals who are most likely to transmit the virus," said Peter Piot, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The system uses an aerosol sample collector and molecular analysis unit that can perform the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. The microfluidic MEMS allows for thousands of cavities in which to capture viral particles and testing time has been reduced from 50 minutes to 5 minutes."
https://www.eenewseurope.com/news/five-minute-breath-test-covid-19
"imec in Belgium is developing a PCR test that can identify Covid-19 in breath in under five minutes.
The research lab in Leuven has been given a grant of €2 million by the Flemish government and is teaming up with UZ Leuven University Hospital for clinical validation of Covid-19 test. Imec intends to test a functional prototype at Brussels Airport in the summer of 2021.
The test uses the 'gold standard' polymerase chain reaction (PCR) to be accurate in determining if someone has the virus without having to use an uncomfortable nasal swab and laboratory processing time. Other tests can be easier to conduct but can be less accurate.
By testing exhaled air imec tests not only whether someone has the virus but also how likely they are to be contagious. Droplets from exhaled breath are thought to be the virus's main transmission method. Peter Peumans, CTO of Health Technologies at IMEC said the test is being designed to cope flexibly with other viruses that spread by the same method, such as influenza, respiratory synctycial virus (RSV) and tuberculosis.
"SARS-CoV-2 testing via breath sample coupled with an ultrafast molecular analysis would be game-changing since it would allow for the timely detection of individuals who are most likely to transmit the virus," said Peter Piot, of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
The system uses an aerosol sample collector and molecular analysis unit that can perform the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test. The microfluidic MEMS allows for thousands of cavities in which to capture viral particles and testing time has been reduced from 50 minutes to 5 minutes."
Now that could be a game changer.
What if someone was to make a test that could do it in say 1 minute. Would that hypothetical test be good?
Ah ok, I was entering the debate late tbf. Tbh, my brain is too frazzled after a stress-y day at work, so will leave this to our Italian posters. Would be interesting to see if there was any measure of comparison on adherence across countries, but guess it would be highly subjective.
Um... yes? Not sure where you’re going with this?
The main thing is that an ideal test is quick and accurate, with PCR tests the most accurate we have yet.
@Pogue Mahone would a test that came back in 23 seconds and was 94.2% effective be a good test?
Just wondering why so called “scientists” are working on five minute testers when quicker ones would be better. This is why faith in the government is falling.
I'm so tired of reading Danish friends on Facebook complaining about masks and how they give cancer etc. etc.
One even suggested we should try and split the world in a normal one and one for all those hysterical about covid. What does she think will happen in the former? No one gets ill?
One even suggested we should try and split the world in a normal one and one for all those hysterical about covid. What does she think will happen in the former? No one gets ill?
Well, it can't be wiped out. I'm a little surprised that masks aren't more universally used in Europe, it seems to be because the region had so much luck beating the virus down with lockdowns. Here in the US masks have been a big topic for months, since we never beat the virus back. Your need to act like New Zealand to get rid of it.
My understanding is that we're all gonna get this eventually, so we want the person giving it to us to be wearing a mask and we want to be wearing one ourselves, so that the viral load is small and our immune systems can easily defeat it. And of course we don't want to overwhelm the healthcare system so we can't have too many sick at once. Waiting for a vaccine with lockdowns certainly isn't gonna work in a country with no financial assistance from the govt.
There was an outbreak in a California penal system, 96% were asymptomatic thanks to the masks, we know they weren't able to social distance in prison. That's down from 60% symptomatic and 20% hospitalized without masks at the beginning of the pandemic.
This is the main reason the deaths are lower than before, and of course the medial knowledge we've acquired since then, using steroids and blood thinners, and the use of Ivermectin, Doxycycline, Zinc and Vitamin D3 showing great ability to defeat symptomatic cases, and others.
https://www.thehindu.com/news/natio...tive-in-treating-covid-19/article32601262.ece
Yea but I am thinking about the tech if there is any way it can be scaled to cope with big numbers.
Just been for my first Covid test at a drive-thru centre. It was eerie driving through at night under floodlights, with workers all hazmat-ed up and communicating with you via printed sheets, as you can't wind your window down until you reach the actual testing part.
The gamer/moviebuff in me has played/seen enough pre/post-apocalyptic games/movies to be 100% prepared for one of the workers to be suddenly set upon by a flesh-eating humanoid of some kind. Fortunately, it passed without incident. This time...
The gamer/moviebuff in me has played/seen enough pre/post-apocalyptic games/movies to be 100% prepared for one of the workers to be suddenly set upon by a flesh-eating humanoid of some kind. Fortunately, it passed without incident. This time...
For some reason people seem to think that if you’re listening to the advice about mask wearing, it makes you scared (or hysterical as you put it).
I got accused of living in fear the other day (on social media obviously, because none of those weirdos would say it to someone’s face), and all I could think of replying was that it literally makes no difference to me to put a mask on for 2 seconds while I get some milk.
I genuinely struggle to understand people’s issue with others choosing to wear a mask. The whole lock down vs economy argument is at least something that has valid points on either side.
It’s similar in lunacy to those who are blaming the increasing rates of infection with increased testing. Increased testing just shows how much actual virus is out there, it doesn’t cause one more case than what was already out in the world. If anything, the testing might be lagging too much in the states.
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