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

I've been under the impression that things are becoming okay but had a sobering reminder when my neighbour was taken to hospital today. I don't know if it is Covid19 but he was coughing a lot the other day. He walked into the ambulance himself with PPE. I know it could be a many other things but it did give me a bit of a jolt.
 
I've been under the impression that things are becoming okay but had a sobering reminder when my neighbour was taken to hospital today. I don't know if it is Covid19 but he was coughing a lot the other day. He walked into the ambulance himself with PPE. I know it could be a many other things but it did give me a bit of a jolt.
Are you getting tested? if it is a case of covid then someone should take the initiative and inform the rest of your neighbors.
 
Another major spike feels extremely unlikely at the moment. I have a pretty good grasp of how these things work and still catch myself wondering if the virus has somehow suddenly become much more benign and we’ve nothing to worry about from here. Even though I know this makes no sense.

What we need to remember, though, is this graph from the Spanish flu pandemic. I’m sure everyone felt exactly the way we do right now in August of 1918.

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Stupid question.
But with regards to the graph; what would cause the virus to behave like that?
I get the Winter spike. But why such periods of relative nothingness inbetween?
Assuming at the time knowledge about this stuff would have been fairly poor and so social distancing and lockdowns perhaps not as understood?
 
The Belgians, Italians and Spanish don’t seem particularly pleased with their governments. Surely that along with their comparable numbers mean that their governments also “deliberately chose their path” if that’s how we’re critiquing this.

Brazil are the only country that you’ve mentioned that you could accuse of being completely reckless and deliberately choosing a disastrous path imo.
All of them have a lower death (per capita) than those I mentioned, and they definitely did not choose that path, they were just hit earlier than other countries.

Brazil and Sweden definitely choose that path, as did the US and the UK (to a slightly lower degree).
 
My mates elderly mother in law has been rushed to hospital and is on a ventilator in ICU.

Doctors are convinced it’s Coronavirus but they won’t know until tomorrow when the test results come back.

She doesn’t go out, hasn’t had visitors but has somehow caught this thing. I can only think that it’s from her Tesco delivery.
 
Stupid question.
But with regards to the graph; what would cause the virus to behave like that?
I get the Winter spike. But why such periods of relative nothingness inbetween?
Assuming at the time knowledge about this stuff would have been fairly poor and so social distancing and lockdowns perhaps not as understood?

I think that people did avoid other people when it was at its worst. There might not have been official guidance about social distancing but when you hear about a really dangerous infection killing loads of people, chances are you‘ll mingle a lot less than usual. I’m sure most of them knew that the only way to catch it was off someone else.

Medical advancements aside, the one big advantage we have over them is we’ve been forewarned about this possible second wave. I hope we make the most of that advantage.
 
All of them have a lower death (per capita) than those I mentioned, and they definitely did not choose that path, they were just hit earlier than other countries.

Brazil and Sweden definitely choose that path, as did the US and the UK (to a slightly lower degree).
Nah they don’t, only for the last week but not overall. Not from sites I’ve looked on.

I don’t really understand your line of thinking. I thought the process behind your thoughts were that because these countries had the highest deaths per capita, slow lockdown measures etc it showed poor government reaction and therefore meant they ‘deliberately chose’ their path.

How does it work then that countries like Belgium, Italy and Spain governments didn’t ‘choose their path’ and instead were just simply unlucky because they were hit earlier, they too had ample cases before shutting down and yet Belgium and Spain only shut down a week before the U.K.
They also have similar death rates. Italy’s hospital situation reached critical point, something that didn’t happen in the U.K.

I just don’t get how you can pick and choose which countries to criticise about “deliberately choosing their path” when it’s clear all those countries had different tactics through this whole thing and yet their results have been equally as poor.
The residents of Belgium, Italy and Spain don’t seem to think their results are purely based on bad luck from being hit early.
 
Nah they don’t, only for the last week but not overall. Not from sites I’ve looked on.

I don’t really understand your line of thinking. I thought the process behind your thoughts were that because these countries had the highest deaths per capita, slow lockdown measures etc it showed poor government reaction and therefore meant they ‘deliberately chose’ their path.

How does it work then that countries like Belgium, Italy and Spain governments didn’t ‘choose their path’ and instead were just simply unlucky because they were hit earlier, they too had ample cases before shutting down and yet Belgium and Spain only shut down a week before the U.K.
They also have similar death rates. Italy’s hospital situation reached critical point, something that didn’t happen in the U.K.

I just don’t get how you can pick and choose which countries to criticise about “deliberately choosing their path” when it’s clear all those countries had different tactics through this whole thing and yet their results have been equally as poor.
The residents of Belgium, Italy and Spain don’t seem to think their results are purely based on bad luck from being hit early.

Italy was caught on the hop, as the first European country with a big outbreak. Which is a good excuse. Spain followed them closely. Uk and Belgium had more time to prepare and its hard to work out why they both did equally badly, considering Belgium locked down earlier.

But when you look at the mass gatherings going on in the Uk after every country around them had banned them, it’s fair to say the government deserves to get stick. Don’t forget, if the football league hadn’t taken an executive decision to cancel the weekend’s fixtures (despite the government saying business as usual) we’ve have had dozens of stadiums crammed full of hundreds of thousands of people, up and down the country, while the virus was spreading everywhere. Would have been absolute carnage.
 
As far as I can tell, only the Spanish ruling party has actually lost ground since the crisis began. Italy's parties were doing badly and continue to do so. IDK about Belgium.
OTOH, ruling party ratings have increased for Germany, the UK(!), Australia, NZ, Sweden(!), Denmark, and Finland. Not sure if there have been formal polls but I think Modi wil cross 80% soon. I think Norway and US have been mostly unchanged.

The Tories hit almost 50%, an the Swedish SocDems regained first place after losing it to an anti-immigrant right-wing party. I do not understand the polling for both these cases at all.
 
Italy was caught on the hop, as the first European country with a big outbreak. Which is a good excuse. Spain followed them closely. Uk and Belgium had more time to prepare and its hard to work out why they both did equally badly, considering Belgium locked down earlier.

But when you look at the mass gatherings going on in the Uk after every country around them had banned them, it’s fair to say the government deserves to get stick. Don’t forget, if the football league hadn’t taken an executive decision to cancel the weekend’s fixtures (despite the government saying business as usual) we’ve have had dozens of stadiums crammed full of hundreds of thousands of people, up and down the country, while the virus was spreading everywhere. Would have been absolute carnage.
Yeah I’m not disputing that we did a bad job at all, but even then the mass gatherings are just a small part of a giant puzzle, like for instance, yes you stop mass gatherings but then ignore all your care homes so have you really done that good of a job?

I just didn’t really get revans thinking, that you can sort of pick and choose specific countries from the highest deaths per capita group and then say the government deliberately set their nations on a bad path but then turn around and pick other countries out of that same group and just sort of imply they were unlucky especially when people from these countries appear to be just as critical of their governments methods. Although Italy are probably the ones you can give a little benefit of doubt to, Spain and Belgium though? Not so sure....
 
Yeah I’m not disputing that we did a bad job at all, but even then the mass gatherings are just a small part of a giant puzzle, like for instance, yes you stop mass gatherings but then ignore all your care homes so have you really done that good of a job?

I just didn’t really get revans thinking, that you can sort of pick and choose specific countries from the highest deaths per capita group and then say the government deliberately set their nations on a bad path but then turn around and pick other countries out of that same group and just sort of imply they were unlucky especially when people from these countries appear to be just as critical of their governments methods. Although Italy are probably the ones you can give a little benefit of doubt to, Spain and Belgium though? Not so sure....

I guess it boils down to governments being taken to task when they have a high death toll combined with any really obvious mistakes or decisions that make them stand out from other countries around them.

Hence the Uk and Sweden are in the firing line, while people are more willing to accept that Belgium just got unlucky. It’s definitely possible that bad luck explains all the excess deaths outliers. But when your country has busy pubs, clubs and massive sporting events after your neighbours have already shut down you kind of lose the right to any benefit of the doubt when your stats compare badly to theirs.
 
I agree with what you're saying. There has been extra testing which coincided with increased relaxation and the numbers are trending downwards. I think we'll know soon-ish if you're right though.

Eid was a bit brutal in the midlands in terms of families not sticking to lockdown whatsoever just speaking anecdotally. London was a lot better with people sticking to the rules there.
The behaviour of muslims in my street in Preston has been exemplary. Families have visited each other more than usual, but chatted and laughed at a distance, the visitors staying in the street and the residents on their doorsteps. Gifts of food have been exchanged by being left on the garden wall and the leaver walking away while they were picked up.
 
I agree with what you're saying. There has been extra testing which coincided with increased relaxation and the numbers are trending downwards. I think we'll know soon-ish if you're right though.

Eid was a bit brutal in the midlands in terms of families not sticking to lockdown whatsoever just speaking anecdotally. London was a lot better with people sticking to the rules there.
Anecdotally, where I am, just east of Manchester, it was much the same. I saw loads of families coming and going with visits to relatives over the weekendz when I was walking to the supermarket. Hopefully it won't be too bad, but getting loads of people of various generations together in houses is asking for trouble.
 
I guess it boils down to governments being taken to task when they have a high death toll combined with any really obvious mistakes or decisions that make them stand out from other countries around them.

Hence the Uk and Sweden are in the firing line, while people are more willing to accept that Belgium just got unlucky. It’s definitely possible that bad luck explains all the excess deaths outliers. But when your country has busy pubs, clubs and massive sporting events after your neighbours have already shut down you kind of lose the right to any benefit of the doubt when your stats compare badly to theirs.
Yeah I guess, although we are still talking about basically a week between Belgium and Spain shutting to U.K. shutting. In people’s attempts to quite fairly paint U.K., US, Brazil as villains, I think it falls hollow if you don’t do the same with other countries.

In Spain at the time of the Liverpool/Atlético game they themselves hadn’t shut down, despite having way more cases than us. This was also despite already having 3,000 of their fans in Milan for a game a few weeks earlier.
 
Yeah I guess, although we are still talking about basically a week between Belgium and Spain shutting to U.K. shutting. In people’s attempts to quite fairly paint U.K., US, Brazil as villains, I think it falls hollow if you don’t do the same with other countries.

In Spain at the time of the Liverpool/Atlético game they themselves hadn’t shut down, despite having way more cases than us. This was also despite already having 3,000 of their fans in Milan for a game a few weeks earlier.

Yeah, fair enough. To be honest, I’m not up on the exact details of when various countries shut down. I just remember being horrified/angry when Boris came out with his business as usual shpiel and thousands of Irish people flew into Cheltenham after we’d already banned all mass gatherings in Ireland. Then there were videos going round of the Stereophonics gig. Pure madness. It felt like we were watching a slow motion car crash at the time - and I remember saying so in this thread - so it’s not a case of being wise after the fact.

You are right, though. The experience of countries like Belgium does muddy the waters.
 
In people’s attempts to quite fairly paint U.K., US, Brazil as villains, I think it falls hollow if you don’t do the same with other countries.

People have their agendas and multiple people turn up today to post the 7 seven day average. There's a bunch of other countries like you've mentioned, Belgium Spain with very high deaths per capita.
 
Yeah, fair enough. To be honest, I’m not up on the exact details of when various countries shut down. I just remember being horrified/angry when Boris came out with his business as usual shpiel and thousands of Irish people flew into Cheltenham after we’d already banned all mass gatherings in Ireland. Then there were videos going round of the Stereophonics gig. Pure madness. It felt like we were watching a slow motion car crash at the time - and I remember saying so in this thread - so it’s not a case of being wise after the fact.

You are right, though. The experience of countries like Belgium does muddy the waters.

The thing that boils my piss about Cheltenham/Anfield/Phonics ect is that it was a conscious decision made by the government to allow these things to go ahead. They knew what was going to happen and we know they knew because we all fecking knew too.

They set an arbitrary date and stuck to it despite knowing the damage it would cause. It’s like having a ride at a fairground that is falling to pieces. If someone said “well we know it’s bad but we’ve already agreed it’s going to be running until next Thursday before being decommissioned so there isn’t much point stopping it now”, people would be up in arms at that decision and it would rightly be deemed a criminal act.

The head organisers of Cheltenham said “time will tell if it was the wrong decision”. I just can’t believe anyone could be so cavalier about it. If you replace “wrong decision” with the actual meaning of “result in the death of tens, possibly hundreds of people” it’s clear it should be a criminal matter.
 
The thing that boils my piss about Cheltenham/Anfield/Phonics ect is that it was a conscious decision made by the government to allow these things to go ahead. They knew what was going to happen and we know they knew because we all fecking knew too.

They set an arbitrary date and stuck to it despite knowing the damage it would cause. It’s like having a ride at a fairground that is falling to pieces. If someone said “well we know it’s bad but we’ve already agreed it’s going to be running until next Thursday before being decommissioned so there isn’t much point stopping it now”, people would be up in arms at that decision and it would rightly be deemed a criminal act.

The head organisers of Cheltenham said “time will tell if it was the wrong decision”. I just can’t believe anyone could be so cavalier about it. If you replace “wrong decision” with the actual meaning of “result in the death of tens, possibly hundreds of people” it’s clear it should be a criminal matter.

It’s massively wanky to compare it to something as emotive as Hillsborough but it’s not wrong to do so.

The inquiry will probably run for twice as many decades too.

We’d booked tickets and burnt them. We went to the Cotswolds. Didn’t go near anyone. My girl was so annoyed that I was being prissy.

Re: Cheltenham for anyone not knowing where the Cotswolds is.
 
Yeah, fair enough. To be honest, I’m not up on the exact details of when various countries shut down. I just remember being horrified/angry when Boris came out with his business as usual shpiel and thousands of Irish people flew into Cheltenham after we’d already banned all mass gatherings in Ireland. Then there were videos going round of the Stereophonics gig. Pure madness. It felt like we were watching a slow motion car crash at the time - and I remember saying so in this thread - so it’s not a case of being wise after the fact.

You are right, though. The experience of countries like Belgium does muddy the waters.
Yeah we’ve messed up in most aspects in the U.K.that can’t be doubted, I stupidly gave them the benefit of the doubt at the beginning due to the unknown but it’s just been a catalogue of errors.
Although with mass gatherings I am a little sceptical on that figure of exactly ‘41’ deaths linked to Liverpool Atletico game based on the ‘data modelling’.

Cheltenham would seem the more logical thing that created the biggest problems in terms of the mass gatherings. It goes on for three days, you’re there for the whole day, drinking, gambling, talking to numerous people at close quarters, all the staff coming from literally all over the U.K. and Ireland etc. All the small canopies and what not And yet the data modelling suggested Cheltenham had less impact than the Liverpool game. That makes literally zero sense. But yeah Cheltenham going ahead is insane.


People have their agendas and multiple people turn up today to post the 7 seven day average. There's a bunch of other countries like you've mentioned, Belgium Spain with very high deaths per capita.
Yup, If it was just the U.K. being pummelled id understand because we’re mostly all here, we’ve been following it from a U.K. perspective so itd make sense. But when you start bringing in other countries but then somehow absorb others it gets a little bit fishy and maybe it’s just because all those countries did one thing in particular you didn’t agree with even if it was only a small part of the puzzle and the countries you don’t mention fecked up badly elsewhere anyway.
 
Italy was caught on the hop, as the first European country with a big outbreak. Which is a good excuse. Spain followed them closely. Uk and Belgium had more time to prepare and its hard to work out why they both did equally badly, considering Belgium locked down earlier.

But when you look at the mass gatherings going on in the Uk after every country around them had banned them, it’s fair to say the government deserves to get stick. Don’t forget, if the football league hadn’t taken an executive decision to cancel the weekend’s fixtures (despite the government saying business as usual) we’ve have had dozens of stadiums crammed full of hundreds of thousands of people, up and down the country, while the virus was spreading everywhere. Would have been absolute carnage.

Mikel Arteta catching the virus saved thousands of lives most likely. Premier League announced business as usual, couple of hours later Arteta had the virus and it was all cancelled.
 
The Belgians, Italians and Spanish don’t seem particularly pleased with their governments. Surely that along with their comparable numbers mean that their governments also “deliberately chose their path” if that’s how we’re critiquing this.

Brazil are the only country that you’ve mentioned that you could accuse of being completely reckless and deliberately choosing a disastrous path imo.

Italians are very pleased with the way the government and the country responded. There are obviously things that could have been done better, but it's well understood the country was caught totally off guard and the harsh response was the right thing to do.

I cant speak for the other countries but Spaniards tend to share the same worldview as the Italians.

The UK chose the path that they thought would protect the economy without overwhelming the health service. It looks to have worked, but it's still prioritising money over lives.
 
'Dominic Cummings was cautioned by police as he & his family rode on the Wall of Death at the fair 'just to test my eyesight' after it was described by safety experts as a death trap, and also, on fire.'
 
Yeah, fair enough. To be honest, I’m not up on the exact details of when various countries shut down. I just remember being horrified/angry when Boris came out with his business as usual shpiel and thousands of Irish people flew into Cheltenham after we’d already banned all mass gatherings in Ireland. Then there were videos going round of the Stereophonics gig. Pure madness. It felt like we were watching a slow motion car crash at the time - and I remember saying so in this thread - so it’s not a case of being wise after the fact.

You are right, though. The experience of countries like Belgium does muddy the waters.

Belgium is a very densely populated country with other countries closely packed around them and they got hit hard an early. Once you have an outbreak it is much harder to address. The difference is Belgium were unlucky, the UK were incompetent. Deaths wise they have been counting every death in care homes as Covid, tested or otherwise, so they numbers aren't comparative. Even their excess deaths figures are likely far more accurate that the UK's, that are likely up to 25% higher than estimated.
 
Belgium is a very densely populated country with other countries closely packed around them and they got hit hard an early. Once you have an outbreak it is much harder to address. The difference is Belgium were unlucky, the UK were incompetent. Deaths wise they have been counting every death in care homes as Covid, tested or otherwise, so they numbers aren't comparative. Even their excess deaths figures are likely far more accurate that the UK's, that are likely up to 25% higher than estimated.

People have been using excess deaths and it's 10% higher, Belgium has a higher death per million but UK might overtake it soon, that's using excess deaths. UK has done a bad job like others but there's possible contributing factors as well like it's a major international hub, many very large airports, England's size of 55 million, that's a lot of people for a small area, other countries have 2-3 times more space and England has much smaller homes on average. The traveling within the country is another aspect that might be worth looking into more in England and Belgium recalling the satellite images and with 20% of cases just in London and also the amount who travel abroad, last I saw UK had double the amount of France. Our small less hit south west Cornwall region is like half of France.
 
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Cheltenham would seem the more logical thing that created the biggest problems in terms of the mass gatherings. It goes on for three days, you’re there for the whole day, drinking, gambling, talking to numerous people at close quarters, all the staff coming from literally all over the U.K. and Ireland etc. All the small canopies and what not And yet the data modelling suggested Cheltenham had less impact than the Liverpool game. That makes literally zero sense. But yeah Cheltenham going ahead is insane.

Yeah, but Scousers talking to Spaniards? Can you imagine the amount of spittle flying around?
 
Read an interesting theory earlier that maybe what we’ve experienced is the second spike after a doctor in France found that one of his patients had covid19 back in December. This was after the doctor tested some samples they’d kept from December.
 
Read an interesting theory earlier that maybe what we’ve experienced is the second spike after a doctor in France found that one of his patients had covid19 back in December. This was after the doctor tested some samples they’d kept from December.


Wouldn't that be easy to determine by seeing how many excess deaths there were in December, Jan and Feb?
 
Wouldn't that be easy to determine by seeing how many excess deaths there were in December, Jan and Feb?

There was no excess deaths in the first semester, which funnily enough has been used by some to demonstrate that the pandemic was fake.
 
At this point it can’t only be the governments fault. But mostly the people, they don’t care what happens at this point or who might die because of them.
 
Read an interesting theory earlier that maybe what we’ve experienced is the second spike after a doctor in France found that one of his patients had covid19 back in December. This was after the doctor tested some samples they’d kept from December.
Nah. Just because there was an early case does not mean their was an early outbreak, per se. And there’s no evidence of an earlier milder strain that could’ve been circulating without spiking hospitalizations.

If he is right, SARS-CoV-2 needs to be introduced undetected into a new country at least four times to have an even chance of establishing itself, Kucharski says. That may explain why the virus did not take off around the world sooner after it emerged in China, and why some very early cases elsewhere—such as one in France in late December 2019, reported on 3 May—apparently failed to ignite a wider outbreak. If the Chinese epidemic was a big fire that sent sparks flying around the world, most of the sparks simply fizzled out.

Science article on spread
 
Nah. Just because there was an early case does not mean their was an early outbreak, per se. And there’s no evidence of an earlier milder strain that could’ve been circulating without spiking hospitalizations.



Science article on spread

You could also use the January case in France in Bordeaux, it also didn't create an outbreak or the first death in late January. The outbreak was in March and is seemingly linked to a mass gathering and probably a "super spreader".
 
Numbers in Belgium have been very favourably for a few days in a row now. Consistently less than 50 deaths and hospitalizations, and "only" just over 100 new infections reported today (down from 198 yesterday and 250 the day before that). Currently 1.1k people still in the hospital, 220 of which are in ICU. The peak was at April 7th with 6k hospitalizations, 1.2k of which ICU.

Pubs and restaurants are bound to re-open as from the 8th of June. If they put too much restrictions in place though (which it seems like they'll do), I can't see many people going to the pubs yet, or even pubs re-opening at all because it wouldn't be worth it.
 
Wouldn't that be easy to determine by seeing how many excess deaths there were in December, Jan and Feb?
I don’t know, I just thought it was an interesting theory. One thing is for sure though, it has been with us in Europe for longer than we originally thought.