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

cyberman said:
Boris was advising away until his heart was content, he was telling the public not go to to clubs etc for a while before they closed it down. The advice was there, its the actions that count.
I just have an overall problem with how this was handled from the start. There were calls for special protection of care homes that were ignored, there had to be a public outcry to cancel Paddys Day and the pubs themselves etc etc. Leo was even out in America in anticipation of it. We thundered ahead with closures and speeches while in discussion with NI, not informing them about our actions and pissing them off to the point an all island plan was abandoned and proclaiming our pokiticians to be grandstanding
We arent even performing that well per capita, we just spent the first few months condescendingly laughing at Boris and Trump while doing little ourselves to the point we were blaming nurses for not washing their hands for the entire spread and the UK even went into lockdown before us. Our early assessment has as many goof soundbites as the other countries that are so called struggling.
Our governent, by and large, doesnt act until theres a demand for it. Face masks is the next demand that theyll give in to.
I just think its all a bit of a myth and im rambling a bit but the difference between us and UK is their government were voted into power and ours want to work their way back in. Thats why they give into public outcries which seems proactive on the surface but thats all it is.
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This is accurate. There's been little to no difference between Ireland and the UK in all of this.
 
Atze-Peng said:
Sweden still with increasing cases - especially compared to Norway and Finland. They are also testing less by quite the margin. We will see how it is going to develop, but as of now it seems like the gamble didn't pay off in absolute numbers - but depending on the growth of the virus it may pay off economically.
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With all due respect @Atze-Peng, that's just more utterly unscientific nonsense. Sweden's cases aren't increasing for what that's worth. See: https://experience.arcgis.com/experience/09f821667ce64bf7be6f9f87457ed9aa

Or, I can play along and say that Germany is no success, just look at it compared to it's neighbours Austria, Poland and Czech.

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Unless anyone can tell us with any degree of certainly what "dose" of the virus each individual country had in mid-March, these comparisons are utterly pointless and being a "neighbour" means pretty much ziltch as shown in the case of New York State and New Jersey, in the same fecking country.

Oh and can someone with twitter tell the daft doctor that the currency is the weirdest comparison I've ever heard and that Finland in fact, has the fecking Euro.
 
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I lived in Hong Kong for about 5-6 years through SARS and then the bird flu scare

Not at all surprised to see how well they are crushing it there. Putting aside the proximity and inflow of people from Mainland China, population of nearly 7.5 million in an area roughly the size of London, high population density, many people jam packed into skyscrapers and now no new cases for 5 consecutive days, no local cases for about 10 days. Total number at 1040 infected with 4 deaths.

Threats of strikes from healthcare staff unions forced border closures (although not all and incremental) but significant quarantine measures, testing and tracing, provision of masks, not complete lockdown level but strict social policies on gatherings etc in addition to testing and tracing aggressively early. Sure its not perfect (they've had shortages, issues with PPE, hoarding).

Makes a lot of countries look inept.
 
Wolverine said:
I lived in Hong Kong for about 5-6 years through SARS and then the bird flu scare

Not at all surprised to see how well they are crushing it there. Putting aside the proximity and inflow of people from Mainland China, population of nearly 7.5 million in an area roughly the size of London, high population density, many people jam packed into skyscrapers and now no new cases for 5 consecutive days, no local cases for about 10 days. Total number at 1040 infected with 4 deaths.

Threats of strikes from healthcare staff unions forced border closures (although not all and incremental) but significant quarantine measures, testing and tracing, provision of masks, not complete lockdown level but strict social policies on gatherings etc in addition to testing and tracing aggressively early. Sure its not perfect (they've had shortages, issues with PPE, hoarding).

Makes a lot of countries look inept.
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Am I safe in saying they all have a facemask culture?
 
cyberman said:
Am I safe in saying they all have a facemask culture?
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Yes, but they've been difficult to acquire I think compared to when it was SARS. There is still a ban as far as I know on public wearing masks in the context of protests but otherwise public use is fairly ubiquitous.
 
Wolverine said:
Yeah that's going to be a huge challenge. Really wished they had started human trials earlier!

I think it'll come down to sample size, incredibly high efficacy rate (in terms of v low infection rates), good safety profile (hopefully just the usual pyrexia, headache post-shot) and maybe if we can see this thing in action during the ease of lockdown measures we will see

Why I am somewhat more hopeful now is the building consensus on possible immunity with the re-infections now attributed to faulty tests that there is light at the end of the tunnel.

I think it'll be a huge challenge to walk the tightrope with regards to declaring a vaccine as effectively the cure for this due to the financial incentives of getting their first. But also messing this up would have enormous risks of losing public confidence in the scientific community with regards to tackling this disease.
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Did you watch the video in my post? Loads of food for thought that hadn’t occurred to me before. As well as the low r0 headfeck, there’s the challenge of demonstrating efficacy in kids and elderly, in separate studies to the primary phase IIIs in adults.

And you’re spot on about public confidence. They’re not used to the attrition rates that are normal in drug developed. The inevitable failed trials and dead ends cause a lot of upset, no doubt.
 
They are saying that outdoor events are safer. Have they never been on a football ground concourse trying to get a drink, go to the toilet or leaving the ground?
 
cyberman said:
Boris was advising away until his heart was content, he was telling the public not go to to clubs etc for a while before they closed it down. The advice was there, its the actions that count.
I just have an overall problem with how this was handled from the start. There were calls for special protection of care homes that were ignored, there had to be a public outcry to cancel Paddys Day and the pubs themselves etc etc. Leo was even out in America in anticipation of it. We thundered ahead with closures and speeches while in discussion with NI, not informing them about our actions and pissing them off to the point an all island plan was abandoned and proclaiming our pokiticians to be grandstanding
We arent even performing that well per capita, we just spent the first few months condescendingly laughing at Boris and Trump while doing little ourselves to the point we were blaming nurses for not washing their hands for the entire spread and the UK even went into lockdown before us. Our early assessment has as many goof soundbites as the other countries that are so called struggling.
Our governent, by and large, doesnt act until theres a demand for it. Face masks is the next demand that theyll give in to.
I just think its all a bit of a myth and im rambling a bit but the difference between us and UK is their government were voted into power and ours want to work their way back in. Thats why they give into public outcries which seems proactive on the surface but thats all it is.
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Disagree with many things in that post. If they were constantly giving in to public outcry why push the lockdown out another fortnight? That was exactly the opposite of the populist tactics you’re accusing them of. Like them or hate them, our government have been pretty good about going along with the expert advice they’ve been getting. Which has saved a lot of lives.
 
TheReligion said:
It doesn't seem a big as made out when you consider what @cyberman was saying.
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What he was saying does feck all to take away from the obvious, significant differences in the approach of the two countries. Or the even more obvious difference in the death toll.
 
192 deaths in the last 24 hours in Italy (474 deaths reported as there were 282 community deaths from April that hadn't been included previously).

This is the first time since 14 March that daily deaths have fallen below 200.

There've been 28, 710 deaths in total in Italy to date, so as @horsechoker says, the UK and Italian numbers are close.
 
I’m actually going to try not to get sucked into the whole country comparison thing. It’s human nature to get tribal, especially when there’s a football sized hole in our lives, but it’s probably a bit mean-spirited. Plus accurate comparisons are incredibly difficult to get right.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I’m actually going to try not to get sucked into the whole country comparison thing. It’s human nature to get tribal, especially when there’s a football sized hole in our lives, but it’s probably a bit mean-spirited. Plus accurate comparisons are incredibly difficult to get right.
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Ah I know.

It was an Irish person I took issue with in the first place over it but it's probably best left there.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
I’m actually going to try not to get sucked into the whole country comparison thing. It’s human nature to get tribal, especially when there’s a football sized hole in our lives, but it’s probably a bit mean-spirited. Plus accurate comparisons are incredibly difficult to get right.
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Yeah agreed. Ive already commented there's an undercurrent of slagging the UK here in literally everything. And alot of competitiveness from some Irish posters.
 
Withnail said:
Ah I know.

It was an Irish person I took issue with in the first place over it but it's probably best left there.
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I’m not having a go at anyone here. Was more of a note to self. I’m stupidly argumentative/competitive at the best of times. So it’s not ideal when I bring that same energy to slagging off other countries death tolls :(
 
Penna said:
192 deaths in the last 24 hours in Italy (474 deaths reported as there were 282 community deaths from April that hadn't been included previously).

This is the first time since 14 March that daily deaths have fallen below 200.

There've been 28, 710 deaths in total in Italy to date, so as @horsechoker says, the UK and Italian numbers are close.
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As Pogue mentioned, it’s hard to compare right now, this study into excess deaths by the FT says that both the UK and Italy‘s official figures are both well under reality. It’s the same in most countries. I’d guess the truth will officially come out when we’re further down the road.

https://www.ft.com/content/6bd88b7d-3386-4543-b2e9-0d5c6fac846c
 
It's mad to see countries like Spain and Italy already opening stuff back up yet here in Ireland we won't be able to travel more than 5k away til mid June. It's a pretty damning indictment of our health service that we have to take such cautious measures over the summer in our roadmap compared to other, far worse affected countries.
 
Jeez... I watched The Lighthouse yesterday. I feel cabin fever setting in.
gormless said:
I’ma bit confused by this. Anybody care to explain why a lower rate of virus spread makes it longer to develop avaccine?
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I'd think it's partly inspired by the game Plague Inc. The more dire the virus is, the more scientists focus on finding a cure/vaccine.
 
Id like to apologise for the Irish civil war I have triggered here.
Its Mccarthy v Keane all over again
 
Tbf the differing approaches in ROI and the UK have rather more practical policy implications when you consider that both are present on the same small island, separated only by a near non-existent border which will be extremely difficult to ever restrict and control in the way other European countries might restrict and control theirs.

If you're comparing Ireland to Sweden, say, then it's a debate about abstract approaches that can become pointlessly tribal and difficult to accurately compare. In the case of ROI and the UK though there are potential real-world consequences to having different approaches. There is also a need to be able to make direct and accurate comparisons in terms of data.
 
gormless said:
I’ma bit confused by this. Anybody care to explain why a lower rate of virus spread makes it longer to develop avaccine?
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Basically its down to the fact that its hard to know if somebody didn't suffer from the disease because they're immune to it or the fact that community transmission is so low that they just weren't exposed to it

So if you have a scenario in lockdown if I vaccinated somebody and they hardly left home and I restudied them in a year time to see they didn't suffer from COVID it may have nothing to do with a vaccine its just that they weren't exposed, similarly even if they were going out, they just simply never were exposed to the virus

However if covid is rampant in a community and you vaccinate somebody who you study in 1 year's time and they were in a disease hotspot , loads of people getting COVID around them and they didn't then you can attribute that more likely to vaccine efficacy.

I think to overcome that challenge you need a large sample size, efficacy of vaccine in terms of virtually non-existant COVID rate, study them after a long period of time and ideally the control group who got placebo vaccines have a similar covid rate to rest of the community population
 
Pogue Mahone said:
Did you watch the video in my post? Loads of food for thought that hadn’t occurred to me before. As well as the low r0 headfeck, there’s the challenge of demonstrating efficacy in kids and elderly, in separate studies to the primary phase IIIs in adults.

And you’re spot on about public confidence. They’re not used to the attrition rates that are normal in drug developed. The inevitable failed trials and dead ends cause a lot of upset, no doubt.
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Yes just watching it now, yer man's not very charismatic but presents well and makes excellent points. Good use of precedents as well with regards to Ebola, shingles etc. One shocking thing also is about remdesivir dosable intravenously, wonder how many of Gilead's shareholders are aware of that at the moment.
 


I've been worrying about what's been said on the second tweet for weeks, they have terrified a significant number of the population into thinking they'll drop dead if they leave the house or get close to another human being. The government coms stragtegy has backed them into a corner.
 
sullydnl said:
Tbf the differing approaches in ROI and the UK have rather more practical policy implications when you consider that both are present on the same small island, separated only by a near non-existent border which will be extremely difficult to ever restrict and control in the way other European countries might restrict and control theirs.

If you're comparing Ireland to Sweden, say, then it's a debate about abstract approaches that can become pointlessly tribal and difficult to accurately compare. In the case of ROI and the UK though there are potential real-world consequences to having different approaches. There is also a need to be able to make direct and accurate comparisons in terms of data.
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Correct me if I’m wrong on this but it looks like NI’s deaths per million is 200 whilst Ireland’s is 260. Maybe NI is behind on care home deaths or something but there doesn’t seem to be a profound difference.
 
Massive Spanner said:
It's mad to see countries like Spain and Italy already opening stuff back up yet here in Ireland we won't be able to travel more than 5k away til mid June. It's a pretty damning indictment of our health service that we have to take such cautious measures over the summer in our roadmap compared to other, far worse affected countries.
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We're not really opening things up. The only change from Monday will be that some people (builders mostly) will be able to work again, you can visit family members who live in the same region as you (whilst observing social distancing, masks etc) and you can exercise outside - at the moment you can only walk 200 metres from your home.

You still need a good reason for leaving your area of residence and have to fill in a form. Other shops aren't opening yet, bars and restaurants aren't opening, hairdressers will be shut for ages yet. I would have been very happy to have been able to travel 5km during the last 2 months!
 
gormless said:
I’ma bit confused by this. Anybody care to explain why a lower rate of virus spread makes it longer to develop avaccine?
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The way to test a vaccine is to give a group of people a vaccine and a matched control group a placebo. You wait and hope that less people in the vaccine group end up infected. The more people in each group get exposed the quicker you’ll be able to show a difference. At the most extreme, if you have no community spread at all you will never be able to prove the vaccine works.
 
This thread reads like a parallel universe to me regards to peoples behaviour. I can’t remember any kind of rule breaking in nearly a month, save for a few questionable groups of kids and a couple of oldies shoving past me in the supermarket.

I think a lot of people don’t know how far 2 metres is
 
TheReligion said:
Yeah agreed. Ive already commented there's an undercurrent of slagging the UK here in literally everything. And alot of competitiveness from some Irish posters.
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I’m from NI so I get to slag off both :)

And living in Dublin and seeing Ireland’s response, I can tell you genuinely it was not anything like the U.K. reaction.

I think once time allows it to settle, there will be a lot of recriminations
 
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