Is it? Not seeing that in the data.
SARS CoV-2 coronavirus / Covid-19 (No tin foil hat silliness please)
- Thread starter Don't Kill Bill
- Start date
-
In the latest episode of the United Hour Podcast, Nik (@Rood) is joined by CEO Duncan Drasdo and Financial Director Andy Green from the Manchester United Supporters Trust for a special episode on all things behind the scenes at Old Trafford including a brief history of MUST and their aims today, views on INEOS and Sir Jim Ratcliffe so far, and the Old Trafford regeneration.
Probably more emotional from me than scientific. But I remember playing weeks/months of 5 a side and not seeing numbers rise to my surprise, praying that pubs didn't reopen. Once they did the numbers started changing.
Probably the only thing they have done half well. A partially trained marmoset would have made a less shit job of literally everything else. Even my cat, who would have done nothing but lick herself, would have been an improvement on BoJo and his evil clown collective.
i remember the pubs serving food reopened last summer June 29th and it wasn’t till the schools went back in September that shit hit the fan.
I think some people are relatively happy in the lockdown to be honest. I stopped paying attention to the news etc cos it was just constantly miserable and then flicked on recently and when the cases were lower the story was buried in other articles.
I'm sure some people are worn out etc by all this and are just down in general but I'm also pretty sure some people haven't minded the lockdown stuff and would of been happy for it to continue.
I wish something opened earlier than is planned but at least there's an end now. Can't wait to go back to the gym and pubs and get haircut as well!
The excess death stats are interesting.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
They certainly seem to suggest that the major error was Boris's initial response but since then the management hasn't been too bad compared to other large Euro nations.
It also suggests that there been a fair amount of cooking of the books in countries like Portugal, Spain and Italy whilst the shocking numbers from the UK and Belgium appear to be accurately reported.
The deaths from Covid reported in Russia at 56k whilst excess deaths stand at 368k are shocking but predicatable.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
They certainly seem to suggest that the major error was Boris's initial response but since then the management hasn't been too bad compared to other large Euro nations.
It also suggests that there been a fair amount of cooking of the books in countries like Portugal, Spain and Italy whilst the shocking numbers from the UK and Belgium appear to be accurately reported.
The deaths from Covid reported in Russia at 56k whilst excess deaths stand at 368k are shocking but predicatable.
Last edited:
They've done a decent job with a healthy slice of luck.
The entire strategy has been a total mess with them rolling the dice at every turn. They did exactly the same thing with the vaccine, taking risks no other country has been prepared to take. So far, it looks like they got lucky with that and rolled a 6.
The probability of them rolling another 6 with the reopening plan is quite low.
You're being somewhat hyperbolic here. The UK scientists backed the AZ vaccine to behave like pretty much every vaccine of it's type ever has and completely unsurprisingly - it did. It was more akin to rolling 6 with a loaded dice. The other countries you talk about didn't have the vaccines available for a mass roll out, if they did then their decision might have been the same.
It wasn't only the AZ vaccine they took the risks on, and to date none of those other countries have changed course to follow suit.
I get the need to take risks, but i'm not a fan of my family being part of what's essentially an extended clinical trial.
Last edited:
I don’t know where your “cooking the books” accusation comes from. None of the countries you mention have a much bigger gap between excess deaths and confirmed covid deaths than we see in the UK graph (or, indeed, most other countries). Although Belgium does seem an outlier in terms of having an almost exact match.
The country that stands out as most definitely cooking the books is, unsurprisingly, Russia.
It’s fascinating data though.
In Northern Europe they’ve been barely affected (with Sweden an obvious outlier).
Western Europe had two massive waves but the further east you go the smaller the first wave, with the vast majority of deaths in the second wave.
It really brings it home how geography played such a big part in how each country experienced the pandemic.
I was looking at the table
UK: Covid deaths - 113k - excess deaths 106k
Belgium: Covid deaths - 21k - excess deaths 20k
Italy: Covid deaths - 54k - excess deaths 93k
Spain: Covid deaths - 58k - excess deaths 75k
Portugal: Covid deaths - 10k - excess deaths 18k
The UK scientists believed that the Pfizer data did show that an extended dose would give high efficacy and it looks like they were right. I believe Denmark have extended the time to second dose too. I hear what you're saying but I've heard the UK scientists talking about this a lot on the radio and TV and was convinced by them. They are second to none and appeared to be absolutely certain.
Last edited:
Mainly because no-one trusts a word this bumbling feck gullet says, remember the Christmas debacle?
The table on this page. Italy's is only up to the end of November though so it could have been updated by now eslewhere, although the excess deaths were at 93k in November.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/coronavirus-excess-deaths-tracker
Really think this is a bit of a stupid statement to make. The government were so confident that Christmas would be going ahead without any restrictions etc. then as we opened up after the November restrictions, numbers went out of control and they had to backtrack. I feel it could be a similar situation here.
Apart from vulnerable being vaccinated, hospitalisation being low etc. is no one a little bit concerned about their long term health? Been hearing plenty of stories of people who haven't fully recovered 3-4 months on and no telling if after 5-10 year this can affect the lungs in terms of cancers, or other complications.
I understand our need to open up a bit, get our social lives back on track etc. But jumping in head first and removing all social distancing, letting bars/restaurants/clubs get jam packed again suddenly is asking for some bad news?
I'd rather actually base this off data, have a few months of hard lockdown, gradually open things up and see if the situation stays improved, and then be able to get out of this for good, rather than having false hope and ending up in another lockdown after summer.
Lots of automobile accidents bro
Geography and how interconnected the Western and Southern European nations are, both for business and leisure.
If they're confident of every adult having being offered a vaccine by July, I don't see anything inherently wrong with late June being a date to relax social restrictions. 12 weeks back from June 21st is the end of March, by which case they expect all over 40's to have had the first jab, and by 21st of June I imagine a second jab.
Was there any mention of international travel?
17th of May at the earliest
I really hope they only allow travel to countries in a very similar position to us with vaccines etc.
I've zoned out of most things news-related, do we know if office workers will continue to work from home after June, or will it still be advised after that date?
At the moment, they're advising people to work from home until June 21st. After that date I expect it to go back to an employers decision as to where people work from.
Ah gotcha, thanks for the clarification
Yeah, I’m sure there’s a publication waiting to be written looking at a correlation between average daily number of visitors from foreign countries and deaths from covid.
I see waiting lists in hospitals in Ireland have doubled since Covid began.
Will we look back on this in a few years when we've more information and see that the affects of the lockdowns have been far more detrimental than Covid itself? I mean obviously lockdowns are needed so as to not overwhelm the health service but I do think what we're seeing now is nothing compared to the indirect deaths and heartache this will cause long term, which is why it's so frustrating to see our government piss about in level 5 endlessly.
Will we look back on this in a few years when we've more information and see that the affects of the lockdowns have been far more detrimental than Covid itself? I mean obviously lockdowns are needed so as to not overwhelm the health service but I do think what we're seeing now is nothing compared to the indirect deaths and heartache this will cause long term, which is why it's so frustrating to see our government piss about in level 5 endlessly.
I would say 100% for sure we will.
It's not either/or though is it?
I mean it's not like all the additional people on waiting lists would have been happily & efficiently dealt with if the lockdowns hadn't happened and COVID was spreading rampantly. The virus itself would disrupt those unrelated treatments.
It's the same when people argue about the economic damage of the lockdown not being worth it. It ignores the fact that a huge portion of that economic damage would have occurred just from having the virus, even without responding with lockdowns. Because when there are huge numbers of people being hospitalised and dying, behaviours adjust and systems falter.
Geography is not the most important reason that Nordic countries did less poorly than others. That is triviliasing the correct approaches taken here.
Sure, I'm not debating that it's black and white. I think all three lockdowns were essential, though this one would have been far less damaging if the government hadn't peddled that "meaningful Christmas" crap but I also think the exit from all three was shambolic, overly cautious and in the wrong areas every single time. Yet again we're going to send schools back first even though that worked out shite last time. Yet again the pubs, hairdressers etc. get f'ed over despite being proven to not be major spreading areas of the virus. It's crazy. At this rate the rest of Europe will be fully open before we can even get the mops on our head cut! I mean what's even the point of the 5km rule at this stage if the parks are all rammed with people cause they can't go anywhere else?
All I'm saying is we'll probably look back on this lockdown especially and the ridiculously over drawn exit from it and the damage will likely be horrific. This is not living with Covid, it's hiding from it.
Hmmm. Not sure I agree with that . We’ve even got Sweden as a control group. Didn’t take the same “correct” approach as other Nordic countries yet ended up considerably less severely affected than other Western European countries who locked down much more rigorously.
Well the sheer fact that Swe has 7 (seven!) times bigger numbers than Fin/Nor already pretty much disapproves geography as an important explainer. Also depends what you mean with geography, North, East, South means feck all (actually North is at disadvantage bcs of weather!), population density obviously matters.
Nordic countries are least corrupt in the world, have better social security systems, better trust in government and so on and so on. All of which are better explainers than geography. And Sweden benefits from these.
Actually, “geography” was probably the wrong word. There are loads of factors at play here but I’m willing to bet that the movement of people is the single biggest factor.
Countries that are in or around major transport hubs were hit the hardest, early on in the pandemic (once it spread beyond Italy anyway). With the second wave it looks like tourist destinations also got hammered pretty bad.
For European countries that don’t typically have significant business travel or summer tourist trade it was probably a lot easier to keep on top of the virus.
I am speculating though! Could be wrong.
I would go with this this time
Think I could convince you if I wasted 1h of my life, but we can leave it at this I agree with this. Even now, I've seen many people online trivialize the correct approaches taken that actually worked and helped lower fatalities, by wrongly comparing them against countries that supposedly did not lockdown. There are actually huge amounts of factors that helped contain the virus, and one of the key factors include lockdowns. Forcing schools to reopen for one day and then closing it the next day is not one of them. And these kinds of ridiculous policies have been a huge reason why lockdowns have not been as effective as some other countries. To claim afterwards that lockdowns don't work is disingenuous.
Having said that, lockdown is the weapon of last resort. It is the nuke option when all is lost. Ideally, all countries should have closed borders and implemented social distancing and contact tracing and mask wearing from the beginning. A clear protocol that is enforced properly would have helped countries stay semi open while numbers kept low. Almost all countries failed this with only few exceptions. Therefore, a lockdown was inevitable. To see the insane pro business narrative I've seen going around on social media to just blindly reopen and that lockdowns are useless is shocking.
A work colleague of my wife took her 92 year old father to hospital for an operation about 3 weeks ago , got a phone call the next day saying he had been potentially exposed to covid so the op was put off for 10 days to make sure he wasn`t positive and he had to isolate . After the ten days he was thankfully negative , had the op then she had another phone call saying he may have been exposed again , it turns out there has been an outbreak and the old man is quite poorly as he has now tested positive.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56160872
Fingers crossed for him , my wifes friend can`t even visit her dad.
Meanwhile , my next door neighbours family come and stay every other weekend from Preston .
It seems like some people are affected and others are just carrying on as if nothing is going on.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-56160872
Fingers crossed for him , my wifes friend can`t even visit her dad.
Meanwhile , my next door neighbours family come and stay every other weekend from Preston .
It seems like some people are affected and others are just carrying on as if nothing is going on.
Ive just been given an appointment for my Vaccine, and whilst Im delighted, and cant wait for saturday I dont know why I am getting it yet? Im 39, no underlying health risks apart from very very mild asthma, (I havent used an inhaler in five years) Im not going to say no but feel slightly cheeky for getting it?
That's very frustrating to hear. I hope your wife's friend's dad turns out alright. And justice is met on your neighbours.
Yeh mate , the old guy has got a raging temperature and nasty cough but the worst part is his daughter can`t go to see him and is just going off what she is being told . Horrible situation.
The neighbour is just a bell end , totally ignored restrictions from day one .