Coronavirus - the new strain

[Heckyman]

Just had a Skype with my colleague in Korea, they are pretty confident there that the outbreak in Daegu (centered around the church/cult) is now under control, business will go on and there will be a vaccine next year. He expected that the European lockdowns would also bring it under control.

He had not heard anything about the situation in the UK, and when I told him the Government was planning to let everyone be infected and develop "herd immunity", he simply could not believe it.

It's as if Boris and his team are all on drugs. Or maybe they are also world class geniuses. Only hindsight will provide the answers.

 

[gintonic]

n that case they will have got it wrong as it will have cost their economy a lot more.

maybe or maybe not. Each country has its own context which introduces variables which means that we may never have a decision that is either "right" or "wrong".

 

[tiggers]

This is an interesting slant on why the Government made the choice it did yesterday..
https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog...h-and-the-government-is-choosing-the-economy/

That thinking has crossed my mind too, I, however, wasn't confident enough in it to commit it to a public blog. I hate the Tories as much as anyone, but isn't this type of thinking a bit much, even for them?

 

[tiggers]

maybe or maybe not. Each country has its own context which introduces variables which means that we may never have a decision that is either "right" or "wrong".

No, it's a pretty simple bit of mathematics... shutting schools and the likes down has a huge cost.

 

[gintonic]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51858987

 

[Richard Nichola]

According to https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/covid-19-testing/

The UK has tested more people for Covid-19 than just about everywhere except China, Italy and South Korea. So we are doing something well.

Q. Is it possible to test people to see if they've had Covid-19 (i.e. if they've got antibodies.) It would worth sampling the population in Wuhan to get a good estimate on how many undetected cases there were, as that is a key thing we don't yet know.

 

[gintonic]

shutting schools and the likes down has a huge cost.

and your point is? Of course it is, but so is almost every pathway one might take. I am not sure what you are trying to convince me of.

 

[mandryka]

I can't find anywhere any details of the model that the British government is using, so that I can understand their response. Is this in the public domain? Can anyone provide a link?

I haven't checked, but ditto for the (opposed?) model that the French government is using.

 

[Tony L]

The UK has tested more people for Covid-19 than just about everywhere except China, Italy and South Korea. So we are doing something well.

You are reading the wrong column, the important one is ‘tests per million people’! The higher that number the more accurate the conclusions are likely to be. 387/1,000,000 is unlikely to be a useful sample group. Better than America’s 26 though!

 

[gavreid]

Is there any evidence that this is actually happening anywhere? Aside for the very old?

...

Around the world - yes very much so. About 10:1 ratio (or thereabouts) I believe.

 

[tiggers]

and your point is? Of course it is, but so is almost every pathway one might take. I am not sure what you are trying to convince me of.

Really? Some countries have closed schools and banned mass gatherings, we haven't. You said both could actually be the right decision - we might end up in the same place regardless of strategy and I pointed out that still would make closing schools and banning gatherings the wrong decision due to the additional cost to the economy. You then went off on some waffle like you do when your point has been made to look at bit daft. HTH!

 

[Tony L]

He had not heard anything about the situation in the UK, and when I told him the Government was planning to let everyone be infected and develop "herd immunity", he simply could not believe it.

Assuming the government is insane enough to either instigate or allow a very high peak has anyone seen any predictions how long it will take to do its damage? I’m curious to know roughly how long I have to stay right away from everything in that scenario. Obviously I’m making my own rules/decisions, screw the government! My biggest risk at present is opening the door to the Tesco food delivery or postman. I’ll start using masks for this soon. I’m not going out at all.

 

[onlyconnect]

This video is worth a look:

https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1238279302468288512

The thing that stands out to me is that the most common means of transmission is at home, ie one family member to another. So home isolation if you do not live alone is precisely the wrong thing to do - unless you want more people to catch it.

Tim

 

[gintonic]

ou then went off on some waffle like you do when your point has been made to look at bit daft. HTH!

waffle?

and your point is? Of course it is, but so is almost every pathway one might take. I am not sure what you are trying to convince me of.

why is that waffle? it is a possibility that the same economic impact might occur over the medium term and the same health impact over the same period with different decisions.

 

[Heckyman]

@Tony L see the Q&A in yesterday's presser, they expected about a 12-13 week period of officially asking the elderly to self-isolate. They also mentioned something like a 50% of people to be infected within a 3 wk period 10-14 weeks from now.

I would say 28 weeks worst case, basically from here to the peak and back down again.

 

[Richard Nichola]

Assuming the government is insane enough to either instigate or allow a very high peak has anyone seen any predictions how long it will take to do its damage? I’m curious to know roughly how long I have to stay right away from everything in that scenario. Obviously I’m making my own rules/decisions, screw the government! My biggest risk at present is opening the door to the Tesco food delivery or postman. I’ll start using masks for this soon. I’m not going out at all.

If you indicate to Tesco that you're self isolating, they'll put everything in bags for life, leave it by the door and back off before you open. No need to sign on their grotty phone.

 

[gintonic]

I would say 28 weeks worst case, basically from here to the peak and back down again.

can you share your data? modelling?, assumptions? what is your best case?

 

[Cesare]

I'm not sure if this has been posted on the thread, but it's pretty grim reading and is one take on what is going on and how to interpret it.

I think the take home point for me is that slowing down the uptake can have a very significant affect on the mortality rate, and that an overrun health service will basically give 10x the casualties. Neither figure (a working health service or an overrun one) are good though.

https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca

 

[Richard Nichola]

You are reading the wrong column, the important one is ‘tests per million people’! The higher that number the more accurate the conclusions are likely to be. 387/1,000,000 is unlikely to be a useful sample group. Better than America’s 26 though!

Unless a test is conducted on a random sample of people, it can never tell you how people have the disease in the population - we'll have been testing suspected cases so not randomly selected. What it indicates is that we've been doing a lot of testing per positive case, compared to other nations.

 

[thebigfredc]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51858987

Answers the main question being asked on here as to why the UK Government has reacted differently to Italy - i.e. there are important differences in the pattern of the outbreak between the two countries.

Don't take too much notice of it though because one of the usual crowd will be along in a minute to remind us the BBC is actually the media arm of the Tory party.