Just out of curiosity, why would that be and what can we learn from that for the rest of Europe? Earlier in the week it seemed like Germany was lightyears ahead of all other European countries, so my guess would've been that they would have the 'best' outcome.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
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Just out of curiosity, why would that be and what can we learn from that for the rest of Europe? Earlier in the week it seemed like Germany was lightyears ahead of all other European countries, so my guess would've been that they would have the 'best' outcome.
I watched the 2011 film Contagion last night. Scary how similar a lot of the plot points are to what’s happening with this pandemic.
Terms like “social distancing” wouldn’t have meant anything to me had I watched this film even six months ago. How times have changed
Terms like “social distancing” wouldn’t have meant anything to me had I watched this film even six months ago. How times have changed
I'm not sure "best care" assures anything in this case. If he's put on a ventalator its 50/50.
Flattening the curve obviously means extending it as well. So... May might be optimistic imo... Let's hope you're right.
Oh, and in China schools are some of the last phases to "normalize".
Is it true that China had no deaths? It just seems unrealistic to me.
If all these tories radio 5 keep bringing on air were to be believed, you'd think he looked like Ronaldo or something.Scary how they talk about bats too, and you see the chain of how it began.I watched the 2011 film Contagion last night. Scary how similar a lot of the plot points are to what’s happening with this pandemic.
Terms like “social distancing” wouldn’t have meant anything to me had I watched this film even six months ago. How times have changed
Definitely mate. Eerily similar.
Tuesday was the first day they reported Zero deaths since they began reporting them.
My Sister has just sent me screenshots of messages between her and other nurses in North West hospitals that are having their social media stuff censored or threatened with discipline. Any comments about PPE, difficulty of shift or what they’re going through and they’re being pulled aside for it.
When I think of the company I work for, they would probably do the same but it still feels wrong.
When I think of the company I work for, they would probably do the same but it still feels wrong.
Lowest number of total deaths. It seems like I'm wrong though as Germany's total deaths are lower than Belgium, so they are doing better than everyone else.
I've talked about this before, but to me success is managing the spread within the community. The blue print is the one SK have provided, which is to test and trace. To successfully do that you need your testing capacity to be big enough to manage it within your country.
The lockdown isn't there to shut you up inside until there is a vaccine, and opening up restrictions doesn't mean we want people to get it to "build herd immunity. You just want to buy enough time so that you can increase your capacity to successfully test and trace and couple it with a few of the more effective restrictions (ban on large gatherings, restrict travel etc).
The other thing a lockdown does is, it provides you with quite useful data on the "real" number of people who have it. When the growth of cases is exponential, the number of people you diagnose (which is constant) is limited by the number of people you can test - thus the models you're using to determine community spread are quite wild (because the growth of cases is constantly outstripping your testing capacity). When you flatten the curve (i.e. the new number of new diagnosed cases is constant) you have a much better idea of the "real" number of cases.
That's my thinking behind it anyways, I could be talking shit.
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Aye,very good film. Soderbergh continues to be one of the more underrated Directors in Hollywood.I watched the 2011 film Contagion last night. Scary how similar a lot of the plot points are to what’s happening with this pandemic.
Terms like “social distancing” wouldn’t have meant anything to me had I watched this film even six months ago. How times have changed
Which report did you find?
France is rated by the WHO as the best in the world and they pay fees upfront for various treatments which are reimbursed generally between 70-100%. The idea that such schemes cannot be part of world leading healthcare systems is bollocks.
We even have such schemes already, namely prescriptions and dental care. There are exemptions for many disadvantaged groups who get the services free.
https://www.nhs.uk/using-the-nhs/help-with-health-costs/get-help-with-prescription-costs/
It also provides much more reliable data about how effective these interventions are. What we had before were models estimating how much it can slow the spread based on assumptions about adherence and limited data on its reproduction rate in varying conditions. So if the conditions arise again where interventions are needed, they can apply them more judiciously.
The primary reason countries went into lockdown was to prevent the healthcare system from being overloaded, ultimately. Giving people more time to develop the tools to identify the main sources of the fires and to produce more fire extinguishers to put them out were essential, but the key was to make sure enough fires didn't develop so rapidly that our resources where overwhelmed even in the best scenarios.
Yeah, the bolded in combination with the fact that Germany has over 7 times the population of Belgium. There's loads of factors why things are looking 'good' over there.
Like you said, the testing. From what I've read the Germans were the first in Europe to test so extensively, simply because they had the expertise to quickly develop tests (they were extra prepared since some incident with rotten vegetables brought into supermarkets caused a minor health crisis a couple of years back, killing dozens of people).
Other countries would've liked or would like to do similar testing but they haven't got the infrastructure in place to develop and implement the testing in a similar way while panic was breaking out. Germans were able to test a ridiculous amount from the beginning compared to other countries, even younger people with mild symptoms were tested extensively and they traced back every contact moment as far as they could for everyone.
The average age of infected patients was around 45 years vs 65+ years in countries like Italy and France. On top of that they have by far the most ICU beds with 30/100.000 inhabitants, whereas most other countries have less than 10/100.000 which obviously saves a lot of mass panick and creates calmness. They're also still expanding the ICU capacity.
I would also say that having rational politcal leadership from top to lower level surely must be a positive factor. They definitely have competent people in place at the most important positions, which is not exactly a given elsewhere.
It's a big country in terms of surface so maybe there are also quite a few areas that are not densely populated which could help.
Of course there's always a big question mark because I guess you can't 100% ensure there won't be some dramatic surge over the next months due to something unforseen.
Surely you'd have to have Norway at the top of the list so far for Europe, way ahead of Belgium? Just 83 deaths and 111,000 tests done?
I think Norway actually have an incredible opportunity to go to test and trace level with this. Austria too, amazing job there it seems.
Interested in your thinking regarding your thoughts on lockdown giving countries an opportunity to go to test and trace with this, from everything I'd heard so far I'd been made to believe it was way too widespread in Europe to get there in most countries and that the only ways out were vaccine or herd immunity. Hope what you say is the case.
You are probably right. I don't know much about the individual cases in a lot of the different countries - though I did live in Belgium, so I am paying a bit more interest in their fortunes. From the communication I've got from my friends still there, they're fairly confident its under control & whatever they're doing is working.
Japan to declare state of emergency over coronavirus
There are lots of countries "doing well" in fairness, the stats in Austria, Portugal, Ireland, Germany and plenty of others look promising after the initial mistake in Europe of thinking "Ah, it'll be like SARS and won't make it here", lots of European countries have done themselves proud, so far.
I say so far because I'm certain we have a long long road ahead of us. If people believe this can be brought down to test and trace level in Europe then I'm blown away, everything I'd read and heard has made out that it takes just a few infected to "slip the net" as such and bring everything crumbling back down again. I have 100% been of the mindset that vaccine or herd immunity were the only two ways out of this.
I read an article the other day which speculated that they might not have enough equipment (yet) to really test and trace everything. However, the way forward after Easter will be revealed this afternoon in a presser. Some have called for even tighter measures, while others want to follow Sweden's take on things. Will be very interesting to see if the government has a clever strategy which the people can buy into and be upheld in the long term.
I think if there is anything positive to come out of all this it is likely to be much more robust systems to be in place throughout the world to ensure that if and when another pandemic hits we are all in a much stronger position to react appropriately re: testing, PPE, etc. and it will hopefully avoid this situation occuring to the same degree.
I think the number of available tests is a bigger bottleneck here. Otherwise a country like Iceland or a region like the Faroe Islands could test everyone.
That has to be the biggest lesson. One of the reasons S. Korea has done well is due to the lessons learnt from SARS.
One of the potential ways out of this is testing for IgG antibodies which would be a reflection of infection and recovery. The assumption would be that you are immune if you have those and those people can preferentially be allowed to get back to work etc. I read somewhere Germany was looking at that approach.
With big Donald leading from the front.
Why.
Do you believe that we should all just take it on the chin.
Especially the families and loved ones of the many ten's of thousands of those who have had their lives cut short by the virus.
Not to mention the massive economic damage to hundreds of countries and their citizens.
Well that's what interests me because Sweden's take on it is clearly, let it work through the community slowly, taking measures that can be maintained for months on end, if herd immunity or vaccine comes first, who cares, they are then "through to the other side".
It's all about not overwhelming the health service but there's the cold sense of inevitability about this virus being around in Sweden, Europe, The World until that vaccine or until enough herd immunity builds up.
Denmark's plan of action from yesterday seems to want to get to Sweden's level but in a more much refined and gradual way, some schools will be the first to open on 15th May. No doubt the study from University College has helped them to believe that is the correct first stage.
Austria are due to open from next week, starting with small shops, garden centres and DIY stores on 14th April.
If countries can test and trace until a vaccine, so many lives could be saved that I personally didn't think was possible. I thought we were way past those possibilities in Europe.
Yeah Sweden and Norway too, Karolinska I believe think that might have this available in the next couple of weeks.
Taiwan also.
Major right wing politician here was trying to explain how Belgium is a perfect example that lockdowns don't work because Netherlands haven't closed anything and have better numbers. There's so much that is factually wrong with that statement that I couldn't even figure out where to begin answering to that tweet so I just gave up.
Must be infuriating to have such people in a position of power. The lockdown is doing exactly what it was supposed to do, flattening the curve.
I haven't been paying attention to the Netherlands' numbers but I did think they have a similar lockdown to us - I'm at least certain that the pubs in Eindhoven are closed.
You are right, but the qualifier is that the ones that do slip the net don't follow a degree of social distancing. We'll still need to keep bans on mass gatherings, travellings and a degree of general social distancing. Just won't involve keeping people locked up at home. We just don't want those few outliers to spread it to people in mass.
I've mentioned this before but in the west this is possible to do. Germany are planning to increase capacity to 1m tests per week which is about 1.2% of their population every week. Even in the worst case projections of uncontrolled spread, you only have about 20% of the population getting it at the same time. So if you can test 1.2% of your population over the course of a week, you have a good shot as long as there is still a degree of effective social distancing. Then you add in clever systematic testing in schools, offices and environments where you need a large groups of people in - you can nip outbreaks at the start. Then as you keep record of who's already had it, you know you don't need to test them again (well assuming you don't get reinfected - big IF that needs to be explored at the moment).
Is it too too early to ask Caf people's opinions about whether the lockdown will be eased - or tightened - around Easter (i.e. 12/4/20)?
My opinion is it's way too early. The numbers aren't consistent enough yet to say whether we're close to peaking. I think after peak and a week or two of consistent numbers indicating that we've peaked, we'll slowly start easing the restrictions.
Not sure how they're going to do it, but i don't see schools or pubs etc opening this side of summer.
We're due out of lockdown on Monday aren't we?
For me, the governent will announce that we're gonna extend it. Probably by an initial two/three weeks.
I think the plan is/was to review it every three weeks indefinitely wasn't it?
Still, i really can't see us ending it any time soon, not whilst people are still blatantly flouting the rules on exercise and still gathering together.
Neither eased nor tightened, just extended.
Our government have adopted an incremental strategy to keep people from defying for the most part. I am adamant that the plan since lockdown was mooted, was a 2month lockdown (or 8 weeks, rather) and we will indeed get that but it's going to be incrementally to keep people from losing their heads too much. 3 weeks.....will become an additional 3 weeks (and - not in a conspiracy way - Boris' predicament will make that news hit home without much protest) and then at the end of April, I reckon they'll issue a deadline of the second week of May for a slow, steady release of lockdown measures.
Our government have adopted an incremental strategy to keep people from defying for the most part. I am adamant that the plan since lockdown was mooted, was a 2month lockdown (or 8 weeks, rather) and we will indeed get that but it's going to be incrementally to keep people from losing their heads too much. 3 weeks.....will become an additional 3 weeks (and - not in a conspiracy way - Boris' predicament will make that news hit home without much protest) and then at the end of April, I reckon they'll issue a deadline of the second week of May for a slow, steady release of lockdown measures.
Thanks for your views, folks.