Sorry to the poster who I mistakenly quoted, my most recent post was for our friend Pogue. I was addressing his or her clouded interpretation of my post.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
I agree with him 100% and the point by point criticism he makes in his Twitter thread is very good, very scientific - if anything he is being kind. The article is a weird mishmash and often either conflates or at the very least isn't clear about the differences between actual evolution and social evolution which are too very different things even if the latter can (or likely is) to some degree driven by the former.
Really? Source?
Except neither are anywhere near as fatal or novel, there is a degree of immunity in the population and we have vaccines for them. The death toll this year for SARS-CoV-2 is already 10 times more than the total for the H1N1 swine flu outbreak in 09.
Which leads me to my point. So what?
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I lead a team of software developers in a large company. There are 200 of us in the IT department, working from home is optional, no questions asked. Out of those 200, around 40 come to work anyway and there are around 800 people in the company building in total, a half of which work from the office.
We had a confirmed coronavirus case with one of our programmers last week and everyone in contact were asked to isolate. So far, three people sharing the office with her were confirmed positive and our head of department lost his sense of smell and taste today.
In the meantime, he refused to isolate and was coming to work every day. He constantly moves from one office to another, has had dozens of meetings and even held 3 on-site job interviews this week.
Talk about a super spreader..
We had a confirmed coronavirus case with one of our programmers last week and everyone in contact were asked to isolate. So far, three people sharing the office with her were confirmed positive and our head of department lost his sense of smell and taste today.
In the meantime, he refused to isolate and was coming to work every day. He constantly moves from one office to another, has had dozens of meetings and even held 3 on-site job interviews this week.
Talk about a super spreader..
What other pandemics are comparable in terms of numbers of deaths going from zero to over a million in under 12 months?
Interesting spelling of dickhead
Same - it's absolutely wonderful.
This should be a police matter. He could be responsible for the death of someone’s loved one. Incredibly arrogant, ignorant and reckless behaviour.
Why can you not force him to stay away?
Is that not now a matter for the police? Up to a 10k fine for refusing to isolate after a positive test (and i would think the sack).
I think they mean 3 months. There were traces found from samples taken in December. I assume as the whole post has a hint of conspiracy ranting it's just a typo made in anger.
Another restrictions from tomorrow here, restaurants have to be closed (only takeaway permitted). 330 people died over last two days, almost 60 of them without any comorbidities whatsoever. Lots of people do not believe virus kills anybody and think doctors are only putting it into death certificates to get money so there are going to be protests in all big cities tomorrow. In the meantime our government has sneaked in a change in legislation in another controversial topic, which means women will not be able to get abortion due to fetal impairment (we are going to have the strictest law in all of Europe, essentially meaning you can get abortion only if there's direct and undeniable threat to woman's life), which prompted another protests from people who are not necessarily covid denialists, so you are going to have tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people protesting on the streets tomorrow. Dare I say Poland is right now in the deepest shit of all the countries in the world when it comes to containing of this pandemic.
Doesn`t sound good, look after yourself Sarni.
Anyone else seen the news that the Oxford vaccine is looking promising?
There's a big difference to being down 50% and down 100% (completely shut). Cash burn for a business grows exponentially as you lower sales further beyond their breakeven point.
Nope. Link?
Quick google shows it is December 2019 - I think it's highly likely the virus was circulating in Europe including the UK from December.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/us-h...d-19-was-there-in-december-2019-idUKKBN23Q1J9
Yes, working exactly as they expected it to in human cells which boosts the chances of there being long lasting immunity. It hasn't yet been peer reviewed but it looks very promising.
I think the only concern is false positives with increased testing. You wouldn't expect false negatives to increase but the test is so sensitive it the false positive rate could increase.
This is a really nice write up. But a bit of a head scratcher understanding. Essentially false positive rate is estimated to be as high as 4% but I think (could be wrong) this was judged when testing was limited and in a clinical setting with sick patients whose pre test diagnosis would be suspected covid. Now more and more people are being tested when they either have no symptoms or symptoms that are not consistent with covid. This could push the false positive rate up because the test is very sensitive. The recommendation is that any person with low pre test probability of covid should be tested again to confirm.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanres/article/PIIS2213-2600(20)30453-7/fulltext
Not sure what links are allowed but if you google Oxford vaccine and select news it's on loads of sites yesterday - The S*n, Express, Telegraph, Sky etc
Yes I read about the vaccine before on Sky
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...ne-behaves-as-desired-analysis-finds-12111085
" Dr David Matthews, of Bristol's School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, who led the research, said: "This is an important study as we are able to confirm that the genetic instructions underpinning this vaccine, which is being developed as fast as safely possible, are correctly followed when they get into a human cell. "
The person who died in the trials was taking the placebo as well.
https://news.sky.com/story/coronavi...ne-behaves-as-desired-analysis-finds-12111085
" Dr David Matthews, of Bristol's School of Cellular and Molecular Medicine, who led the research, said: "This is an important study as we are able to confirm that the genetic instructions underpinning this vaccine, which is being developed as fast as safely possible, are correctly followed when they get into a human cell. "
The person who died in the trials was taking the placebo as well.
I have no idea how that happened, I have not gone to the office since June.
But he did not have a positive test. He was just in contact with someone who did have. Which does not make his behaviour any less insane.
Jesus, what a nob. Our govt has the power to close offices that have outbreaks.
I’ll be honest, my first thought was same as Stan. You want your head read lad.
Can’t you report him to HR or something? That’s disgraceful, surely everyone knows loss of smell is a key sign?
You need to have had a negative Covid test in the last three days to get into Cyprus, so am hoping the flight should be pretty safe, if we're all clean. Can't imagine it's that much more risky there than here- it's warm there so we'll eat outside etc...
He actually started isolating after losing his smell.
The problem are the previous 8 days, when he was walking around freely despite having been in contact with a confirmed case, while all others who had contact with that person have isolated.
The head of HR went ballistic on him over the phone today but the damage has been done already.
He is also very high up (as I said, head of the IT department, only the company owner is above him) so not like HR can do anything to him.
What is also remarkable is that he is one of the nicest persons I met in my life and anyone who knows him will say the same. No one has any idea why he did what he did.
Isn't there more to it than just sales though? In the scenario where sales are down 50%, costs are not far enough 100%, while in the scenario where sales are down 100%, surely costs are down a lot? And that's without considering any external intervention. The notion of "re-opening the economy" is based on the premise that if enough restrictions are removed, government can let businesses get back to doing their own thing and government can retreat into its rightful place. Not in all scenarios but that's the general position taken.
The data seems to suggest that's a fallacy, and the net consequence of that could be more bankruptcies and unemployment. At least part of the reason the US congress have held off on more stimulus is the belief in that fallacy. If they had understood the reality of the situation they might have decided it was better to shut down some parts of the economy and provide support to cover the much lower costs, rather than "allowing" them to run the business in a consistently unprofitable situation that is a direct consequence of their public health policy.
Italy is verging on another lockdown. Lombardy has already implemented partial lockdown rules and a curfew and other regions are following suit, but the exponential rise in ICU admissions in the last few days basically means that these restrictions might be too little too late. I don't see how the country can survive another full lockdown, even if it's just for a month. So many local businesses went under during the first one.
Today's numbers - Actual positives, discharged/recovered, expired, total cases.
The situation in NI seems bizarre when put in that context. I suppose it's just another case of areas that were lucky in spring being unlucky in Autumn but damn that's a big hit
What's the feeling in Italy on the cause? Up to 19k cases now.
They were low for a long time while cases started to rise in Spain France, Belgium Holland then UK. Italy and Germany looked to keeping things ok. I know one Italian based poster here said it's the schools.
And what if you get stuck there? What If either of you need hospitalised? I hope you have extra “what if” funds set aside. I think you’re mad
So what I mean is that certain businesses can maybe break-even or lose less even if their demand is reduced. But when you're shutdown and have 0 sales, that is the maximum your losses can be at because certain fixed costs like rent and manager salaries you just can't get away from. It's also the state in which you pay the fewest employees, order nothing from suppliers, etc.
Businesses might find that if their demand were to be down 80% it is still preferable to just stay closed than incur the basic costs of opening, but that is a decision they're able to come to through probably a few weeks of discovery. All I'm saying is that it does not get worse than being mandated to be closed.
By now there's not a country in Europe or the Americas at least that can realistically pursue a policy of eradication. Now I'm not saying that means that we should just open up and let the virus rip through. This is exactly the dilemma that all countries face now. What I can't agree to now vs might have agreed to in March, is this notion that businesses and the economy in the will be better off with shutdowns, which was based on the premise that shutdowns would enable essentially eradication followed by a return to full or close to full normality.
The situation in NI seems bizarre when put in that context. I suppose it's just another case of areas that were lucky in spring being unlucky in Autumn but damn that's a big hit
If that was the case everywhere we could start to speculate about immunity taking the edge off the second wave but, unfortunately, Lombardy seems to be getting slammed all over again.
It doesn't get worse than being mandated to close, unless being mandated to close comes with other benefits - right? That's the part of the equation that you're excluding. I'm not saying that would change the outcome but if you're not accounting for it at all, it makes it impossible to judge the full picture, surely.
To me there's an argument to shut down certain sectors that a) are already unprofitable, on course for mass bankruptcies, and are covering substantially more costs than they would be if shut down and b) are important factors in the transmission of the virus. If higher levels of transmission directly correlate with lower levels of consumer spending, then getting transmission under better control could lessen the economic pain on other sectors of the economy, while allowing the businesses that are shut down to return in more favourable conditions, and the overall economic costs could be lessened, offsetting additional government spending. There's a lot of variables there but ruling that out entirely seems a bit of a leap.
Yeah, I wasn't suggesting that we can expect areas that were badly hit first time round to be exempted from future hits this time round. But the probability is that if you escaped the worst of it last time, you're more likely to be hit this time than your previously unfortunate neighbour. I think the pattern on that is so strong that we cant possibly put it down to just a quirk in the data.
I know 3 people fairly close to me who all had Covid at the very start. All of them, 100% of the people I know who’ve had it, have long Covid. 2 are in their late 60’s so it’s less surprising that they’re still struggling with breathing but one is only a couple of years older than me, big lad, ex rugby player of 47 and I found out today he’s been readmitted to hospital with bad breathing problems. Really worrying.
People still belittling this and / or itching to get back to normal life probably haven’t seen the effects Covid can have on people and families up close. I still don’t want to catch it.
People still belittling this and / or itching to get back to normal life probably haven’t seen the effects Covid can have on people and families up close. I still don’t want to catch it.
France with another 42k and 298 deaths.
Belgium with 16746 cases, equivalent to France UK having 90k+. Wonder if we'll see a lockdown there soon.
Belgium with 16746 cases, equivalent to France UK having 90k+. Wonder if we'll see a lockdown there soon.
As in they had it back in March? fecking hell, that is worrying.