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

[Pexbo]

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.

We're going to have a second spike in 5/6 weeks and going to be back in lock down. This is just beyond fecking stupid and I refuse to believe the Government did not expect this to happen when they changed the rules.

This graph is just so disingenuous. It's not going to be a steady decline at all, it's going to be a roller-coaster with the second peak towering over the first.

 

[Fluctuation0161]

Drop in cases but we'll see over the next few days.

Still not hitting the end of April arbitrary test target of 100k. Never mind the pending 200k target.

Great success will be claimed no doubt.

 

[Pogue Mahone]

So, which countries did well so far? We shall base our wild assumptions on random and biased news reports.

Here's my Top 5:

1. New Zealand
2. Australia
3. Israel
4. Singapore
5. South Korea

Isolated, small/wealthy or previous practical pandemic experience covers most of them.

The real surprise success stories are all the Eastern European countries (with the obvious exception of Russia!). I’d love to know how/why they did so well. Maybe they tick the “isolated” box?

 

[Pogue Mahone]

Bottom line is the fatality rates.

And even they can’t be trusted, based on different reporting criteria.

Number of cases can more or less completely be ignored.

 

[golden_blunder]

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 think Asian countries in general are far more advanced and meticulous in their planning than western countries, perhaps because they have more experience. It’s 2nd nature to them to wear face masks for example. Perhaps when it comes to face masks we should be copying them.

 

[golden_blunder]

Taiwan have done a great job too.

Yeah people forget about them, but considering their location to China they’ve done an amazing job

 

[Smores]

We're going to have a second spike in 5/6 weeks and going to be back in lock down. This is just beyond fecking stupid and I refuse to believe the Government did not expect this to happen when they changed the rules.

This graph is just so disingenuous. It's not going to be a steady decline at all, it's going to be a roller-coaster with the second peak towering over the first.

Yeah but now it's not the government's fault because they did tell people to use common sense afterall

It's funny how we've gone from 'we must follow the science' to 'Tom 29 from Stoke with 3 GCSEs should just use his common sense'

 

[golden_blunder]

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.

In Ireland they have social distancing efforts on public transport- basically a bus that holds 60 people is ruining at max capacity of 17, with A lot of seats covered with Covid/do not sit messages

aren’t they doing that in the U.K.?

 

[golden_blunder]

Yeah but now it's not the government's fault because they did tell people to use common sense afterall

It's funny how we've gone from 'we must follow the science' to 'Tom 29 from Stoke with 3 GCSEs should just use his common sense'

Even the highly educated don’t have common sense - see the government

 

[JB08]

So Boris said the other night that there are threat levels 1-5 on the virus - where can you find out what the level currently is? Surely it should be as easy as a quick Google?

 

[balaks]

We're going to have a second spike in 5/6 weeks and going to be back in lock down. This is just beyond fecking stupid and I refuse to believe the Government did not expect this to happen when they changed the rules.

This graph is just so disingenuous. It's not going to be a steady decline at all, it's going to be a roller-coaster with the second peak towering over the first.

I completely agree.

 

[RobinLFC]

So Boris said the other night that there are threat levels 1-5 on the virus - where can you find out what the level currently is? Surely it should be as easy as a quick Google?

It was 4 last week in the UK, don't know whether it's changed since then.

EDIT: Quick Google search indicates that it's still 4 and aiming to get down to 3 in the coming days/weeks.

 

[11101]

We're going to have a second spike in 5/6 weeks and going to be back in lock down. This is just beyond fecking stupid and I refuse to believe the Government did not expect this to happen when they changed the rules.

This graph is just so disingenuous. It's not going to be a steady decline at all, it's going to be a roller-coaster with the second peak towering over the first.

It's an illustration. What would you prefer? A rocky line with peaks and troughs that most wont understand and everybody can complain about when they don't match up exactly to what really happens? A second wave that is impossible to predict and makes people question the point of following any of these measures?

 

[Shakesy]

Isolated, small/wealthy or previous practical pandemic experience covers most of them.

The real surprise success stories are all the Eastern European countries (with the obvious exception of Russia!). I’d love to know how/why they did so well. Maybe they tick the “isolated” box?

Eastern European countries are suffering!

Belarus' leader denies the existence of COVID and Ukraine is quickly becoming an epicenter. I speak to Ukrainians daily and most think the virus is a hoax or is overblown. They just lifted some restrictions there, but nothing much has changed. Restaurants are open and mask-less people wander around in the street. They are terribly under-equipped with medical supplies as well...

UKR is going south very quickly. Maybe Romania, Poland, etc are doing well?

 

[Sweet Square]

Sky is really getting into the habit of showing footage of low paid workers on public transport in order to anger the current large middle class viewership stuck at home.

 

[golden_blunder]

Sky is really getting into the habit of showing footage of low paid workers on public transport in order to anger the current large middle class viewership stuck at home.

It doesn’t matter who the footage is off - packed busses are going to lead to spikes

 

[golden_blunder]

Which is probably want they want to happen now anyway

 

[africanspur]

Sky is really getting into the habit of showing footage of low paid workers on public transport in order to anger the current large middle class viewership stuck at home.

Shock as people in city of 9 million, where people heavily rely on public transport to get around and many don't even own cars, have to use public transport to get to work when told by the government they should be working.

As you said though, I'm sure it will allow a lot of people who can comfortably work from home/ who have the luxury of owning a car in a city like London the opportunity to judge these people for lack of social distancing.

 

[thebelfastboy]

We're going to have a second spike in 5/6 weeks and going to be back in lock down. This is just beyond fecking stupid and I refuse to believe the Government did not expect this to happen when they changed the rules.

This graph is just so disingenuous. It's not going to be a steady decline at all, it's going to be a roller-coaster with the second peak towering over the first.

Honest question, what's the basis for assuming that the second wave or peak will 'tower above' the first.
Surely people have significantly better awareness about distancing, hygiene, wfh etc??

 

[buchansleftleg]

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.

Didn't Boris order those trendy London Buses with the non-opening windows and mega expensive curved glass everywhere.... He is starting to rival Chris Grayling for his decisions coming back to cost us dearly. Mind you Grayling mostly cost us money...Boris has blood on his hands.

 

[Penna]

Vietnam seem to have done very well.

My nephew lives there and it's been brilliant. He and his partner stayed in the country near her family for a while, but very little changed and now everything's back to normal. They've gone back to Ho Chi Minh City and he sent us a vid the other day of them walking around the streets - everything open, no-one wearing masks that I could see.

I'm not sure how they've done it, but whatever they've done it's worked.

 

[Pexbo]

It's an illustration. What would you prefer? A rocky line with peaks and troughs that most wont understand and everybody can complain about when they don't match up exactly to what really happens? A second wave that is impossible to predict and makes people question the point of following any of these measures?

It's a completely unnecessary illustration and intentionally vague and disingenuous. If they are trying to indicate that the different stages are triggered by the R value then they should have scrapped the graph and given us a more absolute list with the target R values because god forbid we're actually given details and specifics instead of shitty slogans and abstract graphs.

• R1 = Lockdown as we know it.
• R0.8 = Step 1
• R0.5 = Step 2
• R0.3 = Step 3

If we reach the target R, we get rewarded with relaxed measures. If we abuse it and the R goes back up, we enter back into the relevant level of lockdown. At least that way the public understands the implications.

 

[balaks]

Honest question, what's the basis for assuming that the second wave or peak will 'tower above' the first.
Surely people have significantly better awareness about distancing, hygiene, wfh etc??

I think it's that there may be potential for a higher number of infections because the virus is much more established within the community now.

 

[FrankDrebin]

Sky is really getting into the habit of showing footage of low paid workers on public transport in order to anger the current large middle class viewership stuck at home.

Blaming of the public has begun !

 

[Pexbo]

Honest question, what's the basis for assuming that the second wave or peak will 'tower above' the first.
Surely people have significantly better awareness about distancing, hygiene, wfh etc??

This first wave originated in a handful of locations from a handful of cases. The virus is now prevalent in every corner of the UK to varying degrees. Talk of the R being below 1 now is nonsense if people are suddenly going to be using public transport and acting like they were back in February. The mechanics of the virus hasn't changed. A full bus in May will propagate the virus in exactly the same was a full bus in March did.

 

[romufc]

Honest question, what's the basis for assuming that the second wave or peak will 'tower above' the first.
Surely people have significantly better awareness about distancing, hygiene, wfh etc??

Complacency, with time people get complacent and feel powerful.

 

[Pexbo]

Blaming of the public has begun !

It's madness. If the government really had any motivation to avoid this they would have put measures in place to make sure it didn't happen. Every single mode of public transport in England has a sticker on it saying the maximum passenger capacity. How difficult would it have been to instruct the bus companies to operate at 50% capacity. If a bus can seat 70 people, bring it into law that they can only have 35 passengers.

 

[Penna]

Blaming of the public has begun !

How the hell do they expect people to go to work? Start driving their non-existent cars into city centres where there's nowhere to park?

 

[balaks]

It's madness. If the government really had any motivation to avoid this they would have put measures in place to make sure it didn't happen. Every single mode of public transport in England has a sticker on it saying the maximum passenger capacity. How difficult would it have been to instruct the bus companies to operate at 50% capacity. If a bus can seat 70 people, bring it into law that they can only have 35 passengers.

The poor bus driver aint going to be able to police that though - that's the problem.

 

[Kentonio]

Blaming of the public has begun !

Well to be fair the horrible plebs should be getting their chauffeurs to drive them to their low paying factory jobs in their limos, not risking people's health on public transport!

 

[buchansleftleg]

Honest question, what's the basis for assuming that the second wave or peak will 'tower above' the first.
Surely people have significantly better awareness about distancing, hygiene, wfh etc??

I think there are 2 potential reasons - one is that the initial peak comes from a small initial base of infection that rapidly spreads to all it can until things get locked down. So whilst you might feel like the disease is continuing to spread it is in fact lying dormant waiting for....release of lockdown...which allows a sudden massive increase in the numbers of people to infect and the disease spreads even more rapidly as people mass together thinking they are now safe.

The second reason is the potential for a further wave to be a mutated form of the virus which is either more deadly or has adapted to overcome initial treatments. The Spanish Flue epidemic highlighted both of these. As the initial first wave subsided the First world war ended, leading to mass celebrations, mass movement of troops around the world. This also coincided with a virulent strain coming from an American Army camp that effected younger, fitter people far more than the first wave.

This second wave travelled more globally as troops were sent back to places like India and lead to the complete overwhelming of medical resources as young fit men drowned in their own blood. It's estimated that around 10-15 million died in the first wave and 50 - 85 million died in the second wave. Some people think this has no relevance because of modern medicine and while they didn't have things like antibiotics back then, that would only have helped avoid secondary infection, not the disease itself.

This is very much a worst case scenario...it is most likely that the mutations will be to lessen the diseases impact rather than increase it. However if we release lockdown too early there is an increased risk that one of the potentially thousands of mutations that could occur will prove to be one that makes it more deadly, or adapts to overcome one of our treatment methods.

 

[RobinLFC]

It's a completely unnecessary illustration and intentionally vague and disingenuous. If they are trying to indicate that the different stages are triggered by the R value then they should have scrapped the graph and given us a more absolute list with the target R values because god forbid we're actually given details and specifics instead of shitty slogans and abstract graphs.

• R1 = Lockdown as we know it.
• R0.8 = Step 1
• R0.5 = Step 2
• R0.3 = Step 3

If we reach the target R, we get rewarded with relaxed measures. If we abuse it and the R goes back up, we enter back into the relevant level of lockdown. At least that way the public understands the implications.

R1 will never again lead to lockdown as we know it.

Denmark has re-opened the country, schools, and certain facilities from mid-April onwards. Their R0 went from 0.6 to 1.0 and back down to 0.7. Laying off restrictions won't necessarily lead to a sudden increase of R0 as long as most people adhere to the rules in place such as wearing face masks, social distancing, and just being vigilant when around other people. It's only if you have disaster scenarios such as the packed public transport in London that you're gonna see a rapid increase of infections again.

 

[Pexbo]

The poor bus driver aint going to be able to police that though - that's the problem.

They already do when they drive past bus stops because they are full.

 

[balaks]

They already do when they drive past bus stops because they are full.

Yeah they can do that I guess

 

[arnie_ni]

We're going to have a second spike in 5/6 weeks and going to be back in lock down. This is just beyond fecking stupid and I refuse to believe the Government did not expect this to happen when they changed the rules.

This graph is just so disingenuous. It's not going to be a steady decline at all, it's going to be a roller-coaster with the second peak towering over the first.

Do you think they try to hid it someway and avoid a second lockdown?

 

[NYAS]

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.

As someone from the Gulf I can tell you Bahrain numbers are likely not real. They are doing worse than us (Kuwait) because the initial arrival of the virus into both countries were religious worshippers coming back from Iran (back when the virus was ravaging Iran) and Bahrain have way more people who regularly attend those ceremonies. Earlier in the pandemic there were videos going viral of them not having enough hospital beds to house cases. You can probably trust the numbers of all Gulf countries except Bahrain and KSA.

 

[arnie_ni]

In Ireland they have social distancing efforts on public transport- basically a bus that holds 60 people is ruining at max capacity of 17, with A lot of seats covered with Covid/do not sit messages

aren’t they doing that in the U.K.?

No



And the media are blaming the public not the government

 

[buchansleftleg]

I know it's only relative but for the last few days since Saturday we barely heard any ambulances going to the nearby Hospital. Until Yesterday...and today we are now starting to hear more and more ambulances going past for emergency calls. Prepare for big death totals in around 9 days time. I hope I'm proved wrong but if I'm right then this government should be forced to resign given how badly they have handled this.

We need a government of SOME of the talents rather than this cretinous mob of ghouls.

 

[Shakesy]

Honest question, what's the basis for assuming that the second wave or peak will 'tower above' the first.
Surely people have significantly better awareness about distancing, hygiene, wfh etc??

Isn't this second-wave assumption based on the Spanish Flu pandemic? I think I read that somewhere...

 

[11101]

It's a completely unnecessary illustration and intentionally vague and disingenuous. If they are trying to indicate that the different stages are triggered by the R value then they should have scrapped the graph and given us a more absolute list with the target R values because god forbid we're actually given details and specifics instead of shitty slogans and abstract graphs.

• R1 = Lockdown as we know it.
• R0.8 = Step 1
• R0.5 = Step 2
• R0.3 = Step 3

If we reach the target R, we get rewarded with relaxed measures. If we abuse it and the R goes back up, we enter back into the relevant level of lockdown. At least that way the public understands the implications.

There are three problems with that.

First, and most importantly, you need to communicate this stuff to the lowest common denominator. People who have no idea what R0 is and wouldn't understand it if you tried to tell them. And then to people like most of us in this thread who know just enough about it to be dangerous - people who are educated enough to interpret the information in the wrong way.

You also need to avoid making absolute declarations because things might change and R0 is only part of the story. An R0 of 2 is not a big problem if hospitals are empty, but an R0 of <1 can still be a huge problem if you're already at breaking point.

Thirdly, if they say Step 2 comes at R0=0.5, every media outlet in the country will be wheeling out various 'experts' all with their own explanation of what they think the R0 is and why the government is wrong. No doubt it is one of the metrics they will be using behind the scenes.