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

Pogue Mahone said:
This article is interesting/surprising. Goes against the prevailing narrative in this thread anyway.

Anyone from the US know if it’s misleading in any way? Has Florida’s no lockdown approach really been as successful as it’s portrayed?
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Florida was very mildly hit in the first wave. Since 1st of June they have had around 50% more deaths than NY. Just looked quickly at worldometers numbers, didn't check excess deaths. Article needed subscription after couple of paragraphs, but the first ones were so badly written I am glad I didn't have to read whole thing.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
This article is interesting/surprising. Goes against the prevailing narrative in this thread anyway.

Anyone from the US know if it’s misleading in any way? Has Florida’s no lockdown approach really been as successful as it’s portrayed?
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Probably just a consequence of keeping Covid-19 away from the vulnerable and maybe also which clade of SARS-CoV2 is dominant.

Mr. DeSantis took a smarter approach. His administration halted outside visitations to nursing homes and bolstered their stockpile of personal protective equipment. Florida’s government also set up 23 Covid-dedicated nursing centers for elderly patients discharged from hospitals. Nursing-home residents who tested positive and couldn’t be isolated in their facilities were sent to these Covid-only wards. Florida set up field hospitals to handle a surge in cases that models predicted in the spring, although it never materialized.
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Similar reasons to why India and other places without too many vulnerable have little problem living without restrictions. Any country with a low median population age and not much health care for that population will barely notice COVID-19. Its the elderly and / or immunocomprimised you really need to protect.

The UK did the opposite of Florida to start with, sending hospital patients with COVID-19 back to care homes.
 
Mb194dc said:
Probably just a consequence of keeping Covid-19 away from the vulnerable and maybe also which clade of SARS-CoV2 is dominant.



Similar reasons to why India and other places without too many vulnerable have little problem living without restrictions. Any country with a low median population age and not much health care for that population will barely notice COVID-19. Its the elderly and / or immunocomprimised you really need to protect.

The UK did the opposite of Florida to start with, sending hospital patients with COVID-19 back to care homes.
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But Florida have high median population age.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
This article is interesting/surprising. Goes against the prevailing narrative in this thread anyway.

Anyone from the US know if it’s misleading in any way? Has Florida’s no lockdown approach really been as successful as it’s portrayed?
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Haven't they been fudging their numbers pretty much from the start? According to Rebekah Jones anyway, the data scientist who created their dashboard and was fired when she claimed they were underreporting.
 
massi83 said:
Florida was very mildly hit in the first wave. Since 1st of June they have had around 50% more deaths than NY. Just looked quickly at worldometers numbers, didn't check excess deaths. Article needed subscription after couple of paragraphs, but the first ones were so badly written I am glad I didn't have to read whole thing.
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That’s weird. I was able to read the whole thing first go. But it’s paywalled for me now as well. They did get pretty deep into the data around deaths/hospitalisations etc. Florida seemed to do much better than you’d expect.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
But Florida have high median population age.
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Yes, but they kept Covid-19 away from that elderly population, as explained in the quote. That is the main determinant of Covid-19 mortality.

Countries with very small relative vulnerable populations like India, have little or no problem with Covid-19 due to that.

Generalised lockdowns only help to the extent they keep Covid-19 away from that vulnerable group. That is what we're seeing with Florida, Sweden and other places compared to the UK, NY, CA.
 
Mb194dc said:
Yes, but they kept Covid-19 away from that elderly population, as explained in the quote. That is the main determinant of Covid-19 mortality.

Countries with very small relative vulnerable populations like India, have little or no problem with Covid-19 due to that.

Generalised lockdowns only help to the extent they keep Covid-19 away from that vulnerable group. That is what we're seeing with Florida, Sweden and other places compared to the UK, NY, CA.
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The main argument of lockdown advocates has always been that it’s not possible to let the virus spread among the young, while simultaneously shielding the elderly. I’ve been making that argument myself.
 
Pogue Mahone said:
The main argument of lockdown advocates has always been that it’s not possible to let the virus spread among the young, while simultaneously shielding the elderly. I’ve been making that argument myself.
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I think it does depend a bit on locality.

Keeping young away from old, and the working middle aged away from the frail old is easier in some places than others. Florida is where people go to retire - but they don't take their kids and grandkids with them. They don't look after the grandkids after school, and they don't live with their working age children.

Compound that with chronic underfunding (and underrating) of residential care in the UK and throw in a couple of dreadful decisions - like sending patients directly back to carehomes from hospital (untested and sometimes even after positive tests). Then stir in a couple of months extra time (and better weather) to sort out your PPE etc.

If you look at the UK deaths, they skew really heavily towards residential care and poorer communities. I don't know what Florida did with its poor people though, maybe they followed Trump's advice and didn't test them?
 
Pogue Mahone said:
This article is interesting/surprising. Goes against the prevailing narrative in this thread anyway.

Anyone from the US know if it’s misleading in any way? Has Florida’s no lockdown approach really been as successful as it’s portrayed?
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I guess its all relative. Floridas deaths per million might be in the middle of the pack as per the article but its still a pretty damning figure if taken in context of other developed countries rates and looks even worse if compared to world death rates per million, in the worst 5%. (20th worst)
So maybe it looks like a "success" in the US, but pretty awful in the bigger picture
 
Stack said:
I guess its all relative. Floridas deaths per million might be in the middle of the pack as per the article but its still a pretty damning figure if taken in context of other developed countries rates and looks even worse if compared to world death rates per million, in the worst 5%. (20th worst)
So maybe it looks like a "success" in the US, but pretty awful in the bigger picture
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But it still generates the question as to the efficacy of lockdowns within that context. Florida is part of the same larger ecosystem of the US, given that no states fully isolated themselves from the others. So it is a valid question to ask if in areas with a certain baseline of community spread, do you get much different outcomes based on level of restrictions or is there another variable that's the main determinant? California being one of the main contrasts as a state that was fairly restrictive in the latter part of 2020, and still seeing higher mortality than Florida.

I think that at least there's an overconfidence in the efficacy of lockdowns from some quarters. I don't think we have any other measures that are particularly good at reducing the spread of the virus (with the exception of the vaccine, which should eventually fully knock it out), so its understandable that we continue to use lockdowns or semi-versions of it, but I definitely don't subscribe to notions of "if we locked down properly for x time this would all be sorted" when you're dealing with high levels of community spread. I just hope that in years to come epidemiologists work through all of these different conditions and different outcomes and can come up with a solid theory of what measures are actually effective at reducing spread.
 
MTF said:
But it still generates the question as to the efficacy of lockdowns within that context. Florida is part of the same larger ecosystem of the US, given that no states fully isolated themselves from the others. So it is a valid question to ask if in areas with a certain baseline of community spread, do you get much different outcomes based on level of restrictions or is there another variable that's the main determinant? California being one of the main contrasts as a state that was fairly restrictive in the latter part of 2020, and still seeing higher mortality than Florida.

I think that at least there's an overconfidence in the efficacy of lockdowns from some quarters. I don't think we have any other measures that are particularly good at reducing the spread of the virus (with the exception of the vaccine, which should eventually fully knock it out), so its understandable that we continue to use lockdowns or semi-versions of it, but I definitely don't subscribe to notions of "if we locked down properly for x time this would all be sorted" when you're dealing with high levels of community spread. I just hope that in years to come epidemiologists work through all of these different conditions and different outcomes and can come up with a solid theory of what measures are actually effective at reducing spread.
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But Californias mortality rate is lower than Floridas. Florida 1472 per million. California 1370 per million
 
MTF said:
But it still generates the question as to the efficacy of lockdowns within that context. Florida is part of the same larger ecosystem of the US, given that no states fully isolated themselves from the others. So it is a valid question to ask if in areas with a certain baseline of community spread, do you get much different outcomes based on level of restrictions or is there another variable that's the main determinant? California being one of the main contrasts as a state that was fairly restrictive in the latter part of 2020, and still seeing higher mortality than Florida.

I think that at least there's an overconfidence in the efficacy of lockdowns from some quarters. I don't think we have any other measures that are particularly good at reducing the spread of the virus (with the exception of the vaccine, which should eventually fully knock it out), so its understandable that we continue to use lockdowns or semi-versions of it, but I definitely don't subscribe to notions of "if we locked down properly for x time this would all be sorted" when you're dealing with high levels of community spread. I just hope that in years to come epidemiologists work through all of these different conditions and different outcomes and can come up with a solid theory of what measures are actually effective at reducing spread.
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I agree with this. It’s also fairly obvious that a “one size fits all” approach is too crude. There are all sorts of regional/local factors that will influence the optimal balance between keeping the economy afloat and the health service functional. The challenge will be identifying these factors and working out if they apply in any given region.
 
Stack said:
But Californias mortality rate is lower than Floridas. Florida 1472 per million. California 1370 per million
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For the total since the inception of this thing, yes. California ended up barely hit in the first wave on a relative basis, despite many of the first cases being detected there. Sure you can say I'm cherry-picking by saying "oh, only the 2nd wave". My point and that of others is that that was when the restrictions were most different. Restrictions were fairly tight in most of the US in March-May, and it's been in the Nov-Jan timeframe that Florida has been very open while California has been quite restrictive, and the case and death curves don't reflect any advantages of being more restrictive.
 
MTF said:
For the total since the inception of this thing, yes. California ended up barely hit in the first wave on a relative basis, despite many of the first cases being detected there. Sure you can say I'm cherry-picking by saying "oh, only the 2nd wave". My point and that of others is that that was when the restrictions were most different. Restrictions were fairly tight in most of the US in March-May, and it's been in the Nov-Jan timeframe that Florida has been very open while California has been quite restrictive, and the case and death curves don't reflect any advantages of being more restrictive.
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Sorry didnt mean to imply you were cherry picking, that wasnt my thinking. I guess the tricky bit is also working out the reasons for lockdowns in various places. To protect health infrastructure, to slow disease spread or even elimination and from there all the various differences between regions that can affect the outcomes. So a lockdown may have worked for certain outcomes in one region but those restrictions wont work elsewhere.
With respect to Floridas approach going forward it will be interesting to see how it works as the new more infectious variants spread (another variable factor). To be clear I honestly have no idea what the correct approaches should be, the eggheads will hopefully work that out going forward so when the next pandemic hits the world does a better job of dealing with it.
 
Vidyoyo said:
Is obviously wrong but did the public know that much about the benefits of/need for masks on March 4? I don't remember feeling that was the case.

Edit - Just went back through the thread and Elvz posted a tweet on March 4 saying we'd had a recorded 85 in total cases. How crazy does that seem now?!
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The public obviously didn't know the benefits of mask wearing, but there was plenty of scientific evidence that even wearing scarves, etc, can help.

This was all being debated on Reddit in the very early points of the outbreak

For me, Masks and Track and Trace have both been a huge disappointment. Track and Trace I think has done very little. Masks as well, there had been no guidance on building and using masks. No enforcement. I wear two cloth masks at work because I don't feel that one does enough, but the cloth masks that go around me head are so much more comfortable than the surgical/barrier masks that hang from ears.

Others at work wear barrier/surgical masks that they remove from their face every 5 minutes. Or scarves which they seem to wear with utmost reluctance.

It's ridiculous. But still, it's nearly over
 
rcoobc said:
The public obviously didn't know the benefits of mask wearing, but there was plenty of scientific evidence that even wearing scarves, etc, can help.

This was all being debated on Reddit in the very early points of the outbreak

For me, Masks and Track and Trace have both been a huge disappointment. Track and Trace I think has done very little. Masks as well, there had been no guidance on building and using masks. No enforcement. I wear two cloth masks at work because I don't feel that one does enough, but the cloth masks that go around me head are so much more comfortable than the surgical/barrier masks that hang from ears.

Others at work wear barrier/surgical masks that they remove from their face every 5 minutes. Or scarves which they seem to wear with utmost reluctance.

It's ridiculous. But still, it's nearly over
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To be fair, I was kinda thinking this yesterday when I popped out for a coffee. The masks thing seems confused because of the way it's been implemented as the main source of safety when, arguably, it should be supplementary.

Distance and controlling how many people gather in one space is, I would think, much more important yet I still notice some shops - definitely Wilko for one - just let loads of people in as long as they're wearing a mask.

Masks as a primary source of contact evasion makes a lot more sense to me when people are stationery and sat/stood in proximity for long periods (e.g. public transport). Gyms were horrendous for this when they were open.

Also you can largely wear any sort of covering with there being almost no rule on its effectiveness. I myself have worn a snood on a few occasions I've need to pop to the shop after a run. Please don't judge btw, I am but a simple man.

Track and trace is obviously a calamity.
 
madzo2007 said:
Theres a good read in the Sunday Times today about how the UK's herd immunity gamble cost lives. It talks about Cheltenham, Liverpool v Athletico and how slow we were to lockdown compared to other countries.

Link https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/cheltenham-festival-failures-of-state-herd-immunity-coronavirus-gamble-cost-britain-26ln87pv3 (paywalled but free to read on Apple News for the time being)
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Whats the point of these articles? They really are no help at all
 
Pogue Mahone said:
To give a bit of balance to the Tory government slapping itself on the back for the vaccine roll-out.
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Balance for who though - tory voters wont change their minds and tory haters will still hate.
 
McGrathsipan said:
Tories learn??? Not going to happen
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Is not about the tories learning. Is about society learning for the next time and not moaning if there are early lockdowns like it happened in China, South Corea, Vietnam and Thailand that they reacted pretty fast with measures and society responded well as per lessons learnt in 2009
 
4bars said:
Is not about the tories learning. Is about society learning for the next time and not moaning if there are early lockdowns like it happened in China, South Corea, Vietnam and Thailand that they reacted pretty fast with measures and society responded well as per lessons learnt in 2009
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For us in the west, I doubt It. All anyone really talks about is “getting back to normal” and “China should pay for this!”. Watching last week tonight a couple of weeks ago was pretty sobering. And really eye opening about our relationship with nature that we kind of take for granted. Seeing tourists walking through a tourist spot of a bat cave kinda makes you wonder what other horrors await us.

I read a thing about how Taiwan had dealt with covid. They had seen the signs before in 2003. So alarm bells went off straight away for them. They mobilised straight away. And they got back to “normal” by May last year. In fact they have dealt with it so well, that they have just reported their 10th covid related death. Not for this week. Not for this month. Not for this year. Their 10th covid related death since this all started. They didn’t feck around. They learned the lesson from 2003. Meanwhile in Blighty, we have boris not going to cobra meetings for months. Taking time off in the countryside to get a divorce so that he can marry his mistress that he knocked up. Repeatedly telling everyone how glad they will be to hear that he’s been shaking hands with covid sufferers, and that this will be all over by valentines day, Mother’s Day, Easter, the summer, Christmas, valentines day, Easter...

Frankie Boyle said it pretty well. “We're Living Through Whatever Is The Opposite Of A Golden Age Of Political Talent”.

We could have all had early lock downs and avoided all of this pain and death. But we didn’t want to the inconvenience. We didn’t want to miss horse races, and stereophonics gigs. We didn’t want to miss out on football matches, or nights out at the local for a couple of weeks or months. And even after all that, we still went to other peoples houses for Christmas dinner, and fecked ourselves worse than before.
 
Norman Brownbutter said:
For us in the west, I doubt It. All anyone really talks about is “getting back to normal” and “China should pay for this!”. Watching last week tonight a couple of weeks ago was pretty sobering. And really eye opening about our relationship with nature that we kind of take for granted. Seeing tourists walking through a tourist spot of a bat cave kinda makes you wonder what other horrors await us.

I read a thing about how Taiwan had dealt with covid. They had seen the signs before in 2003. So alarm bells went off straight away for them. They mobilised straight away. And they got back to “normal” by May last year. In fact they have dealt with it so well, that they have just reported their 10th covid related death. Not for this week. Not for this month. Not for this year. Their 10th covid related death since this all started. They didn’t feck around. They learned the lesson from 2003. Meanwhile in Blighty, we have boris not going to cobra meetings for months. Taking time off in the countryside to get a divorce so that he can marry his mistress that he knocked up. Repeatedly telling everyone how glad they will be to hear that he’s been shaking hands with covid sufferers, and that this will be all over by valentines day, Mother’s Day, Easter, the summer, Christmas, valentines day, Easter...

Frankie Boyle said it pretty well. “We're Living Through Whatever Is The Opposite Of A Golden Age Of Political Talent”.

We could have all had early lock downs and avoided all of this pain and death. But we didn’t want to the inconvenience. We didn’t want to miss horse races, and stereophonics gigs. We didn’t want to miss out on football matches, or nights out at the local for a couple of weeks or months. And even after all that, we still went to other peoples houses for Christmas dinner, and fecked ourselves worse than before.
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I agree 100%, but reports must be done and articles must be published to see what happened and how we could act better. without them 100% we would not learn, with them there might be a better reaction. Maybe not as good as Taiwan but better that is something. At least the population will know what it means. If not a part of the population and by then, lets hope Boris and other bad leaders will not be in power and free of the chains of the past mistakes and be able to do the right thing and the population understand why is done and do it quickly
 
Pogue Mahone said:
This article is interesting/surprising. Goes against the prevailing narrative in this thread anyway.

Anyone from the US know if it’s misleading in any way? Has Florida’s no lockdown approach really been as successful as it’s portrayed?
Click to expand...

paywalled, but i read on twitter they didnt even normalise for population in some of their comparisons. and if you go by waves of deaths/infections, there are impacts of the earlier opening-up that are obscured by the type of graph they use (log scale).
 
Norman Brownbutter said:
For us in the west, I doubt It. All anyone really talks about is “getting back to normal” and “China should pay for this!”. Watching last week tonight a couple of weeks ago was pretty sobering. And really eye opening about our relationship with nature that we kind of take for granted. Seeing tourists walking through a tourist spot of a bat cave kinda makes you wonder what other horrors await us.

I read a thing about how Taiwan had dealt with covid. They had seen the signs before in 2003. So alarm bells went off straight away for them. They mobilised straight away. And they got back to “normal” by May last year. In fact they have dealt with it so well, that they have just reported their 10th covid related death. Not for this week. Not for this month. Not for this year. Their 10th covid related death since this all started. They didn’t feck around. They learned the lesson from 2003. Meanwhile in Blighty, we have boris not going to cobra meetings for months. Taking time off in the countryside to get a divorce so that he can marry his mistress that he knocked up. Repeatedly telling everyone how glad they will be to hear that he’s been shaking hands with covid sufferers, and that this will be all over by valentines day, Mother’s Day, Easter, the summer, Christmas, valentines day, Easter...

Frankie Boyle said it pretty well. “We're Living Through Whatever Is The Opposite Of A Golden Age Of Political Talent”.

We could have all had early lock downs and avoided all of this pain and death. But we didn’t want to the inconvenience. We didn’t want to miss horse races, and stereophonics gigs. We didn’t want to miss out on football matches, or nights out at the local for a couple of weeks or months. And even after all that, we still went to other peoples houses for Christmas dinner, and fecked ourselves worse than before.
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Excellent post. But you’re right, we as a society won’t take any lessons from it, we will still whinge about civil liberties and have parties if another pandemic comes along
 
Anyone seen the Great Barrington Declaration on COVID-19 policies? It was authored and signed by the professor of medicine of Harvard, Professor of immunology at Oxford and a professor at Stanford too.

Declaration

Thoughts, anyone?
 
Hoof The Ball said:
Anyone seen the Great Barrington Declaration on COVID-19 policies? It was authored and signed by the professor of medicine of Harvard, Professor of immunology at Oxford and a professor at Stanford too.

Declaration

Thoughts, anyone?
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I havent time to read all of it now but the general gist is that we should let the less vulnerable people back out and only shield the older more vulnerable people.
I agree 100%.
Locking everyone up is only prolonging the misery.
 
McGrathsipan said:
I havent time to read all of it now but the general gist is that we should let the less vulnerable people back out and only shield the older more vulnerable people.
I agree 100%.
Locking everyone up is only prolonging the misery.
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Should have been done from the start.
 
Hoof The Ball said:
Anyone seen the Great Barrington Declaration on COVID-19 policies? It was authored and signed by the professor of medicine of Harvard, Professor of immunology at Oxford and a professor at Stanford too.

Declaration

Thoughts, anyone?
Click to expand...

Already been discussed endlessly, it's been widely discredited by the scientific community. Of course the fact that it was funded by a US libertarian think tank and billionaire climate change denier Koch should be enough of an indication.
 
Hoof The Ball said:
Anyone seen the Great Barrington Declaration on COVID-19 policies? It was authored and signed by the professor of medicine of Harvard, Professor of immunology at Oxford and a professor at Stanford too.

Declaration

Thoughts, anyone?
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It’s bollox. With a bunch of absolute shysters behind it. That Gupta bint in particular has a lot to answer for. It’s rare for one scientist to be so consistently wrong, so often, as she has over this past year.

The timing was funny too. Right before society opened (although not as much as they wanted) and kicked off this latest wave which brought hospitals to their knees and kicked off a bunch of seriously problematic variants.
 
Grinner said:
@Penna @11101 I'm hearing rumblings about a tougher lockdown coming our way. It sounds like we might have a crap spring. What's a good source for immediate news for this?
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The government is discussing options including a 3 week total lockdown and a weekend only lockdown with an earlier curfew. Ever since Draghi came to power the Scientific Committee has turned militant, but I think they know extreme measures will not go down well because they haven't achieved anything with them on previous occasions. There is also talk of combining it with a mass vaccination campaign, although that begs the question what they think they are doing now.

I use tg24.sky.it for national news. Like Sky in the UK they're good at breaking stories quickly.
 
11101 said:
The government is discussing options including a 3 week total lockdown and a weekend only lockdown with an earlier curfew. Ever since Draghi came to power the Scientific Committee has turned militant, but I think they know extreme measures will not go down well because they haven't achieved anything with them on previous occasions. There is also talk of combining it with a mass vaccination campaign, although that begs the question what they think they are doing now.

I use tg24.sky.it for national news. Like Sky in the UK they're good at breaking stories quickly.
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ok cheers. Italians have brought this on themselves. it's been lax for months now.
 
Grinner said:
@Penna @11101 I'm hearing rumblings about a tougher lockdown coming our way. It sounds like we might have a crap spring. What's a good source for immediate news for this?
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La Repubblica, ANSA (which is in Italian and English) or thelocal.it - you know I like the last site, as it's particularly helpful for Brits living in Italy.
 
Hoof The Ball said:
Anyone seen the Great Barrington Declaration on COVID-19 policies? It was authored and signed by the professor of medicine of Harvard, Professor of immunology at Oxford and a professor at Stanford too.

Declaration

Thoughts, anyone?
Click to expand...

Idiotically wrong.

The approach they suggest makes all the things they want to improve worse.
 
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