I've not commented lately because I'm having to reset my password literally each and every time I try to sign in at the moment...
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Yes when you step into PB you have to every so often look out of the window to confirm that the world is still spinning.
Then again, much of the media (talking about the Graun online here) is also culpable.
But PB has taken what for most people (all walking around, taking the tube, going to spinning classes, whatever) is a 3-5 concern, and cranked it up to 11.
Who is right? We shall see but I'm with the 3-5 wash your hands be sensible crowd.
Even if the pandemic turns out to be "just another type of flu" it is still an interesting topic to follow. The spread of viruses is dominated by random processes and followinng them is not easy. On top of that the political aspect comparing how different countries are preparing/coping with outbreaks is interesting.
And of course it is important that the medical and political organisations keep on top of it, because there is a real possibility it bcomes a "level 8-9 concern" and if that happens it could happen very quickly.
As for PB, it seems there are all types here from coronapocolyse types to the "ignore it and it'll go away by itself" types. Most people are more in the middle but enjoy posting about it. I'm trying to keep a balanced opinion, and calling out stupid extrapolations or totally unfounded and scientifically dodgy comments.
It's nice to see some commonsense among the drivel from the extremists on either sid.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Or you could say that the evidence-based thoeries are the common sense theories!
The quantum physics parts of my degree course disabused me of that notion.
I've not commented lately because I'm having to reset my password literally each and every time I try to sign in at the moment...
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Yes when you step into PB you have to every so often look out of the window to confirm that the world is still spinning.
Then again, much of the media (talking about the Graun online here) is also culpable.
But PB has taken what for most people (all walking around, taking the tube, going to spinning classes, whatever) is a 3-5 concern, and cranked it up to 11.
Who is right? We shall see but I'm with the 3-5 wash your hands be sensible crowd.
Even if the pandemic turns out to be "just another type of flu" it is still an interesting topic to follow. The spread of viruses is dominated by random processes and followinng them is not easy. On top of that the political aspect comparing how different countries are preparing/coping with outbreaks is interesting.
And of course it is important that the medical and political organisations keep on top of it, because there is a real possibility it bcomes a "level 8-9 concern" and if that happens it could happen very quickly.
As for PB, it seems there are all types here from coronapocolyse types to the "ignore it and it'll go away by itself" types. Most people are more in the middle but enjoy posting about it. I'm trying to keep a balanced opinion, and calling out stupid extrapolations or totally unfounded and scientifically dodgy comments.
It's nice to see some commonsense among the drivel from the extremists on either sid.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Or you could say that the evidence-based thoeries are the common sense theories!
Not always! Evidence based theories led to Goldman Sachs saying "We were seeing things that were 25-standard deviation moves, several days in a row." Thats what the evidence told them, but it wasnt common sense or correct. The evidence just didnt cover all the possible outcomes, which is probably true again in this scenario.
One of L's parameters is the maximum value or "carrying capacity". The good news is that this has now decreased from a number of the order of 10^10 (larger than the world's population) all the way down to 85983.
Apologies if following comes across as snarky. It isn't intended in that spirit!
You do seem to be getting really "into" this whole modelling thing. Rather than toy around with it, have you considered looking at how the professionals do it and try to do it "properly"? It isn't that hard to learn the basics, and there are some pretty accessible texts available on it - not the most comprehensive on the market, but a good start for a beginner with some statistical knowledge already, might be Vynnycky and White?
Re carrying capacity, in a simple and well set-up (ie "no way substantially more than the world's population could get infected") model, there's a wonderfully simple relationship with R0, the basic reproduction number (average number of people you'd expect an infectious person to infect, if they mix with a completely susceptible population). In practice, once quite a few of their contacts are either already infected by the disease or immune to it, then the average number of people they'll infect will actually be the net reproduction number, Rn = R0 times the proportion of susceptible individuals in the population. (So eg if R0 is 2 but 30% of people are already infected or immune, then the number of people an infectious person will infecte Rn = 2 x 0.7 = 1.4.)
If an equilibrium is reached, then clearly the net reproduction number needs to equal one (higher than that and the number of new infectious individuals is still increasing, below that and it's falling). But in that case, R0 x s = 1 and so the proportion of susceptible individuals is s = 1/R0. The number who are not susceptible (either immune or infected) is 1 - 1/R0. So if R0 = 2 then we expect an equilibrium in which 50% of people are infected or immune (eg because of previous infection) and 50% remain susceptible; if R0 = 4 then 75% of people are infected or immune and 25% remain susceptible.
For a variety of reasons R0 can change over space and time, and more sophisticated models have "compartments" eg for different age groups.
Many thanks for this. I will look up Vynnycky and White. What's bugging me at the moment is that my understanding of R_0 and my understanding of the logistic model are in two separate boxes.
Given a logistic function
L / (1 + e^ (-kx + x_0 ) )
where L is carrying capacity, x_0 is x-value at the sigmoid's midpoint, and k is the logistic growth rate,
what is R_0 expressed as a function of the three parameters, or four including x if it varies as I think it probably does? There must surely be a straightforward answer to this.
I've not commented lately because I'm having to reset my password literally each and every time I try to sign in at the moment...
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Yes when you step into PB you have to every so often look out of the window to confirm that the world is still spinning.
Then again, much of the media (talking about the Graun online here) is also culpable.
But PB has taken what for most people (all walking around, taking the tube, going to spinning classes, whatever) is a 3-5 concern, and cranked it up to 11.
Who is right? We shall see but I'm with the 3-5 wash your hands be sensible crowd.
Even if the pandemic turns out to be "just another type of flu" it is still an interesting topic to follow. The spread of viruses is dominated by random processes and followinng them is not easy. On top of that the political aspect comparing how different countries are preparing/coping with outbreaks is interesting.
And of course it is important that the medical and political organisations keep on top of it, because there is a real possibility it bcomes a "level 8-9 concern" and if that happens it could happen very quickly.
As for PB, it seems there are all types here from coronapocolyse types to the "ignore it and it'll go away by itself" types. Most people are more in the middle but enjoy posting about it. I'm trying to keep a balanced opinion, and calling out stupid extrapolations or totally unfounded and scientifically dodgy comments.
It's nice to see some commonsense among the drivel from the extremists on either sid.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Or you could say that the evidence-based thoeries are the common sense theories!
The quantum physics parts of my degree course disabused me of that notion.
Did you hear In our Time yesterday morning? All about Paul Dirac. Caused me to look him on Wiki. What a staggering contribution. Well worth a listen.
I've not commented lately because I'm having to reset my password literally each and every time I try to sign in at the moment...
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Yes when you step into PB you have to every so often look out of the window to confirm that the world is still spinning.
Then again, much of the media (talking about the Graun online here) is also culpable.
But PB has taken what for most people (all walking around, taking the tube, going to spinning classes, whatever) is a 3-5 concern, and cranked it up to 11.
Who is right? We shall see but I'm with the 3-5 wash your hands be sensible crowd.
Even if the pandemic turns out to be "just another type of flu" it is still an interesting topic to follow. The spread of viruses is dominated by random processes and followinng them is not easy. On top of that the political aspect comparing how different countries are preparing/coping with outbreaks is interesting.
And of course it is important that the medical and political organisations keep on top of it, because there is a real possibility it bcomes a "level 8-9 concern" and if that happens it could happen very quickly.
As for PB, it seems there are all types here from coronapocolyse types to the "ignore it and it'll go away by itself" types. Most people are more in the middle but enjoy posting about it. I'm trying to keep a balanced opinion, and calling out stupid extrapolations or totally unfounded and scientifically dodgy comments.
It's nice to see some commonsense among the drivel from the extremists on either sid.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Or you could say that the evidence-based thoeries are the common sense theories!
The quantum physics parts of my degree course disabused me of that notion.
True quantum theory is not common sense. I don't think that the spread of a virus is occuring at the quantum level though.
Except in Spain now the PSOE is in Government with the far left Podemos, the PP and Citizens and Vox are all a potential alliance.
In Germany the liberal FDP are the CDU's usual coalition partners anyway but without the AfD there is no possible right of centre majority in Germany now
As far as Spain is concerned, Citizens are a busted flush (4% in the latest poll). PP and VOX are now scrapping for the role of top centre-right party (20 and 19% respectively in the latest poll) so yes a PP-VOX coalition currently polls the same as the PSOE-Podemos coalition (41%).
If VOX start outpolling PP it becomes a significant change in Spanish politics and we may yet see PP back toward the centre.
In Germany the problem is FDP are sinking back (6% in the latest YouGov) so will they even be in the next Bundestag? That puts the CDU/CSU as you say with either going in with the AfD (combined at just over 40%) or staying with SPD (about the same)?
I'd also offer the thought of a Union/Green coalition which is what is happening in Austria and which would enjoy a clear majority in the Bundestag.
So much depends on who the CDU choose as their Spitzenkandidat next month.
The key is the Vox and PP combined total in Spain yes as they are now the main alter native to Podemos.
The Union might prefer a Greens deal as is now the case in Austria (though Kurz previously allied with the Freedom Party) but if the Greens prefer to deal with the SPD and Linke then Merz could become CDU leader on a platform of co operation with the AfD in response
One of L's parameters is the maximum value or "carrying capacity". The good news is that this has now decreased from a number of the order of 10^10 (larger than the world's population) all the way down to 85983.
Apologies if following comes across as snarky. It isn't intended in that spirit!
You do seem to be getting really "into" this whole modelling thing. Rather than toy around with it, have you considered looking at how the professionals do it and try to do it "properly"? It isn't that hard to learn the basics, and there are some pretty accessible texts available on it - not the most comprehensive on the market, but a good start for a beginner with some statistical knowledge already, might be Vynnycky and White?
Re carrying capacity, in a simple and well set-up (ie "no way substantially more than the world's population could get infected") model, there's a wonderfully simple relationship with R0, the basic reproduction number (average number of people you'd expect an infectious person to infect, if they mix with a completely susceptible population). In practice, once quite a few of their contacts are either already infected by the disease or immune to it, then the average number of people they'll infect will actually be the net reproduction number, Rn = R0 times the proportion of susceptible individuals in the population. (So eg if R0 is 2 but 30% of people are already infected or immune, then the number of people an infectious person will infecte Rn = 2 x 0.7 = 1.4.)
If an equilibrium is reached, then clearly the net reproduction number needs to equal one (higher than that and the number of new infectious individuals is still increasing, below that and it's falling). But in that case, R0 x s = 1 and so the proportion of susceptible individuals is s = 1/R0. The number who are not susceptible (either immune or infected) is 1 - 1/R0. So if R0 = 2 then we expect an equilibrium in which 50% of people are infected or immune (eg because of previous infection) and 50% remain susceptible; if R0 = 4 then 75% of people are infected or immune and 25% remain susceptible.
For a variety of reasons R0 can change over space and time, and more sophisticated models have "compartments" eg for different age groups.
Many thanks for this. I will look up Vynnycky and White. What's bugging me at the moment is that my understanding of R_0 and my understanding of the logistic model are in two separate boxes.
Given a logistic function
L / (1 + e^ (-kx + x_0 ) )
where L is carrying capacity, x_0 is x-value at the sigmoid's midpoint, and k is the logistic growth rate,
what is R_0 expressed as a function of the three parameters, or four including x if it varies as I think it probably does? There must surely be a straightforward answer to this.
I don't see how there can be, since surely R_0 will change with changing government intervention and/or behaviour of the population ?
I've not commented lately because I'm having to reset my password literally each and every time I try to sign in at the moment...
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Yes when you step into PB you have to every so often look out of the window to confirm that the world is still spinning.
Then again, much of the media (talking about the Graun online here) is also culpable.
But PB has taken what for most people (all walking around, taking the tube, going to spinning classes, whatever) is a 3-5 concern, and cranked it up to 11.
Who is right? We shall see but I'm with the 3-5 wash your hands be sensible crowd.
Even if the pandemic turns out to be "just another type of flu" it is still an interesting topic to follow. The spread of viruses is dominated by random processes and followinng them is not easy. On top of that the political aspect comparing how different countries are preparing/coping with outbreaks is interesting.
And of course it is important that the medical and political organisations keep on top of it, because there is a real possibility it bcomes a "level 8-9 concern" and if that happens it could happen very quickly.
As for PB, it seems there are all types here from coronapocolyse types to the "ignore it and it'll go away by itself" types. Most people are more in the middle but enjoy posting about it. I'm trying to keep a balanced opinion, and calling out stupid extrapolations or totally unfounded and scientifically dodgy comments.
It's nice to see some commonsense among the drivel from the extremists on either sid.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Or you could say that the evidence-based thoeries are the common sense theories!
The quantum physics parts of my degree course disabused me of that notion.
True quantum theory is not common sense. I don't think that the spread of a virus is occuring at the quantum level though.
I'm not saying that it is occurring at the quantum level. I was merely making the point that "common sense" is not always a good indicator of reality.
I've not commented lately because I'm having to reset my password literally each and every time I try to sign in at the moment...
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Yes when you step into PB you have to every so often look out of the window to confirm that the world is still spinning.
Then again, much of the media (talking about the Graun online here) is also culpable.
But PB has taken what for most people (all walking around, taking the tube, going to spinning classes, whatever) is a 3-5 concern, and cranked it up to 11.
Who is right? We shall see but I'm with the 3-5 wash your hands be sensible crowd.
Even if the pandemic turns out to be "just another type of flu" it is still an interesting topic to follow. The spread of viruses is dominated by random processes and followinng them is not easy. On top of that the political aspect comparing how different countries are preparing/coping with outbreaks is interesting.
And of course it is important that the medical and political organisations keep on top of it, because there is a real possibility it bcomes a "level 8-9 concern" and if that happens it could happen very quickly.
As for PB, it seems there are all types here from coronapocolyse types to the "ignore it and it'll go away by itself" types. Most people are more in the middle but enjoy posting about it. I'm trying to keep a balanced opinion, and calling out stupid extrapolations or totally unfounded and scientifically dodgy comments.
It's nice to see some commonsense among the drivel from the extremists on either sid.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Or you could say that the evidence-based thoeries are the common sense theories!
Not always! Evidence based theories led to Goldman Sachs saying "We were seeing things that were 25-standard deviation moves, several days in a row." Thats what the evidence told them, but it wasnt common sense or correct. The evidence just didnt cover all the possible outcomes, which is probably true again in this scenario.
I don't know the background of what you are talking about. If there the model is with a random normal distribution, and there are 25-sd changes several days in a row, then of course the model is being violated. The evidence is saying that the existing model is insufficient. That is both an evidence based approach and common sense.
I've not commented lately because I'm having to reset my password literally each and every time I try to sign in at the moment...
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Yes when you step into PB you have to every so often look out of the window to confirm that the world is still spinning.
Then again, much of the media (talking about the Graun online here) is also culpable.
But PB has taken what for most people (all walking around, taking the tube, going to spinning classes, whatever) is a 3-5 concern, and cranked it up to 11.
Who is right? We shall see but I'm with the 3-5 wash your hands be sensible crowd.
Even if the pandemic turns out to be "just another type of flu" it is still an interesting topic to follow. The spread of viruses is dominated by random processes and followinng them is not easy. On top of that the political aspect comparing how different countries are preparing/coping with outbreaks is interesting.
And of course it is important that the medical and political organisations keep on top of it, because there is a real possibility it bcomes a "level 8-9 concern" and if that happens it could happen very quickly.
As for PB, it seems there are all types here from coronapocolyse types to the "ignore it and it'll go away by itself" types. Most people are more in the middle but enjoy posting about it. I'm trying to keep a balanced opinion, and calling out stupid extrapolations or totally unfounded and scientifically dodgy comments.
It's nice to see some commonsense among the drivel from the extremists on either sid.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Or you could say that the evidence-based thoeries are the common sense theories!
The quantum physics parts of my degree course disabused me of that notion.
True quantum theory is not common sense. I don't think that the spread of a virus is occuring at the quantum level though.
I'm not saying that it is occurring at the quantum level. I was merely making the point that "common sense" is not always a good indicator of reality.
About two days ago Frank Luntz had vaguely woken up to coronavirus and was saying "So, this is a bit like the flu?"
He's a halfwit.
Lunz is, within a very limited political context, an exceptional propagandist, and a consummate networker. Other than that, I'm not sure he has any outstanding talents.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
So I heard two things yesterday about Coronavirus, one unsure how to view it and the other with quite worrying implications.
The first was from a contact at Oxford University who claimed the labs there have worked out a vaccine for Coronavirus but that it will be year end before it is fully tested etc etc. I genuinely don't know if this is new news, expected etc. I haven't been following very development about what is happening.
The second, and slightly more scary, one was about a firm that produces a disinfectant solution that protects against coronavirus-type viruses. There are apparently limited facilities globally that can produce this solution (less than 20). The Chinese Govt promised to send over three 747s ASAP to bring back everything they could (the firm apparently can't produce that much so said no).
Sending over 3x747s to bring back that stuff doesn't sound like a Government which believes it has on top of the problem.
Conducting clinical trials, even during an outbreak, is necessarily time consuming. First you have to demonstrate safety (China probably have an advantage here, as they seem happy to play fast and loose with ethical restrictions we can’t ignore). But that doesn’t just mean the vaccine on its own is safe - you also have to be sure it’s immune effects won’t cause ADE on exposure to the live virus). Demonstrating effectiveness is going to be equally difficult, as you need a significant population exposed to the virus after they’ve been vaccinated - which exposure your health services are doing everything in their power to avoid...
For now, any such trial in the UK simply isn’t going to happen.
Pandemic trials can be different
Safety. And if you are clean then fuck it and let rip
I've not commented lately because I'm having to reset my password literally each and every time I try to sign in at the moment...
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Yes when you step into PB you have to every so often look out of the window to confirm that the world is still spinning.
Then again, much of the media (talking about the Graun online here) is also culpable.
But PB has taken what for most people (all walking around, taking the tube, going to spinning classes, whatever) is a 3-5 concern, and cranked it up to 11.
Who is right? We shall see but I'm with the 3-5 wash your hands be sensible crowd.
Even if the pandemic turns out to be "just another type of flu" it is still an interesting topic to follow. The spread of viruses is dominated by random processes and followinng them is not easy. On top of that the political aspect comparing how different countries are preparing/coping with outbreaks is interesting.
And of course it is important that the medical and political organisations keep on top of it, because there is a real possibility it bcomes a "level 8-9 concern" and if that happens it could happen very quickly.
As for PB, it seems there are all types here from coronapocolyse types to the "ignore it and it'll go away by itself" types. Most people are more in the middle but enjoy posting about it. I'm trying to keep a balanced opinion, and calling out stupid extrapolations or totally unfounded and scientifically dodgy comments.
It's nice to see some commonsense among the drivel from the extremists on either sid.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Or you could say that the evidence-based thoeries are the common sense theories!
Not always! Evidence based theories led to Goldman Sachs saying "We were seeing things that were 25-standard deviation moves, several days in a row." Thats what the evidence told them, but it wasnt common sense or correct. The evidence just didnt cover all the possible outcomes, which is probably true again in this scenario.
I don't know the background of what you are talking about. If there the model is with a random normal distribution, and there are 25-sd changes several days in a row, then of course the model is being violated. The evidence is saying that the existing model is insufficient. That is both an evidence based approach and common sense.
It refers to the daily price moves during the global financial crisis and credit crunch.
My gf is on maternity leave and I work from gone anyway... all we seem to be taking about is how many people have got the virus and whether we dare get a haircut or go to the gym, while everyone else I know is going to work, getting the tube etc
I’d say PB is a place where people like to argue about the best way to solve potential problems in general, and the more obscure & unlikely the hypothetical scenario, the better. We see it with ‘Could obscure politician no ones heard of (David Leadbitter?) be the next PM?’, ‘Who will be in the cabinet of the Govt of national unity?’ & so on, so while there is something going on, the level of scrutiny on here is probably at the upper end of the upper end of reality.
I think the virus is interesting and a genuine crisis of the first order, however it's a shame how it is blotting out everything else. The Labour Leadership, for example. We are entering the final 28 days of Corbyn. This is both poignant and politically huge, yet so little comment on it, either here or elsewhere.
God I just want Corbyn gone. Get some sanity, some reality, some competence back to Labour. Fingers crossed.
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Basically people who are analytical and comfortable with numbers will look at the growth rate and say, "this thing is doubling every 3 days, there doesn't seem to be a plausible mechanism to stop it doing that, it will probably carry on doing that". I'm sure people like this are attracted to political betting, which is all about numbers, and looking at trends to predict the future.
Another way of looking at it is to say, "we haven't seen things get very bad like this before as far as I can remember, and the media often make a big fuss about things that turn out to sort themselves out, it probably won't be that bad". I'd say this line of thinking will get you to the right answer more often than not, but sometimes when it's wrong, it's really, really wrong...
I am moderately comforted by events in China, and think their numbers are probably kosher. There is every reason to believe that public health measures can stop it here too, at some economic cost.
I reckon we are about 8 weeks off the peak, and on a fairly steep rising part of a bell curve. How high that peak is, is speculative at present.
What is it about the quarantining of an entire City that comforts you? Do you think we have the will to do what the Chinese thought necessary?
There is two broad ways of tackling this problem: 1) Top-down goverment control. Like the Chinese. 2) Bottom-up, citizen control. Like the Koreans (with a bit of 1).
We are going for the British approach which is a group of very clever people telling the masses what they should be doing to keep everyone safe. Unfortunatley the masses either don't believe the clever people or they are totally ignorant or they simply don't care.
For this once in a century pandemic I worry it is not going to be a very successful model
Well, here's an example of what one person said to take the nuance out of it.
Government Plan:
"2.7 Given that the data are still emerging, we are uncertain of the impact of an outbreak on business. In a stretching scenario, it is possible that up to one fifth of employees may be absent from work during peak weeks. This may vary for individual businesses. "
Val Policella in the G:
"If, as government plans suggest, one in five staff are out of action, the care sector will be hit hardest and fastest, as it is already so fragile and understaffed. "
So I heard two things yesterday about Coronavirus, one unsure how to view it and the other with quite worrying implications.
The first was from a contact at Oxford University who claimed the labs there have worked out a vaccine for Coronavirus but that it will be year end before it is fully tested etc etc. I genuinely don't know if this is new news, expected etc. I haven't been following very development about what is happening.
The second, and slightly more scary, one was about a firm that produces a disinfectant solution that protects against coronavirus-type viruses. There are apparently limited facilities globally that can produce this solution (less than 20). The Chinese Govt promised to send over three 747s ASAP to bring back everything they could (the firm apparently can't produce that much so said no).
Sending over 3x747s to bring back that stuff doesn't sound like a Government which believes it has on top of the problem.
The disinfectant story is from just after the Wuhan lockdown started
My gf is on maternity leave and I work from gone anyway... all we seem to be taking about is how many people have got the virus and whether we dare get a haircut or go to the gym, while everyone else I know is going to work, getting the tube etc
I’d say PB is a place where people like to argue about the best way to solve potential problems in general, and the more obscure & unlikely the hypothetical scenario, the better. We see it with ‘Could obscure politician no ones heard of (David Leadbitter?) be the next PM?’, ‘Who will be in the cabinet of the Govt of national unity?’ & so on, so while there is something going on, the level of scrutiny on here is probably at the upper end of the upper end of reality.
I think the virus is interesting and a genuine crisis of the first order, however it's a shame how it is blotting out everything else. The Labour Leadership, for example. We are entering the final 28 days of Corbyn. This is both poignant and politically huge, yet so little comment on it, either here or elsewhere.
God I just want Corbyn gone. Get some sanity, some reality, some competence back to Labour. Fingers crossed.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
One of L's parameters is the maximum value or "carrying capacity". The good news is that this has now decreased from a number of the order of 10^10 (larger than the world's population) all the way down to 85983.
Apologies if following comes across as snarky. It isn't intended in that spirit!
You do seem to be getting really "into" this whole modelling thing. Rather than toy around with it, have you considered looking at how the professionals do it and try to do it "properly"? It isn't that hard to learn the basics, and there are some pretty accessible texts available on it - not the most comprehensive on the market, but a good start for a beginner with some statistical knowledge already, might be Vynnycky and White?
Re carrying capacity, in a simple and well set-up (ie "no way substantially more than the world's population could get infected") model, there's a wonderfully simple relationship with R0, the basic reproduction number (average number of people you'd expect an infectious person to infect, if they mix with a completely susceptible population). In practice, once quite a few of their contacts are either already infected by the disease or immune to it, then the average number of people they'll infect will actually be the net reproduction number, Rn = R0 times the proportion of susceptible individuals in the population. (So eg if R0 is 2 but 30% of people are already infected or immune, then the number of people an infectious person will infecte Rn = 2 x 0.7 = 1.4.)
If an equilibrium is reached, then clearly the net reproduction number needs to equal one (higher than that and the number of new infectious individuals is still increasing, below that and it's falling). But in that case, R0 x s = 1 and so the proportion of susceptible individuals is s = 1/R0. The number who are not susceptible (either immune or infected) is 1 - 1/R0. So if R0 = 2 then we expect an equilibrium in which 50% of people are infected or immune (eg because of previous infection) and 50% remain susceptible; if R0 = 4 then 75% of people are infected or immune and 25% remain susceptible.
For a variety of reasons R0 can change over space and time, and more sophisticated models have "compartments" eg for different age groups.
Many thanks for this. I will look up Vynnycky and White. What's bugging me at the moment is that my understanding of R_0 and my understanding of the logistic model are in two separate boxes.
Given a logistic function
L / (1 + e^ (-kx + x_0 ) )
where L is carrying capacity, x_0 is x-value at the sigmoid's midpoint, and k is the logistic growth rate,
what is R_0 expressed as a function of the three parameters, or four including x if it varies as I think it probably does? There must surely be a straightforward answer to this.
I don't see how there can be, since surely R_0 will change with changing government intervention and/or behaviour of the population ?
Not to mention the changing seasons.
If all factors combine to keep the number of total infections following the logistic curve (which has been close to the case for the world outside China), we ought to be able to derive some information about R_0.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
My back of envelope number crunching on the Italian outbreak, modelling on the impression that it does seem to be closely resembling the Chinese outbreak.
I'd also expect other Western nations to resemble this
At this stage of the Wuhan outbreak, day 14, around 10% of the cases and deaths had happened. This suggests around 40000 cases and 2000 deaths in the current Italian outbreaks.
To project this forward, pandemics often come to a location in 3 waves over 2-3 years, with typically 20% in the first wave of infection. That would suggest 200k cases and 10k deaths, in the areas affected, over the next 3 years.
The other multiplier is that there are and will be areas of Italy substantially unaffected by this. Looking at provincial level, the 16 provinces with large numbers of local cases cover about 12.1m people, and I reckon another 9 provinces, and 5.5m people, broadly those in between current outbreaks, are in the firing line.
That gives about a 30% geographical coverage of the Italian population from this outbreak. If we guess at about 70% of areas ultimately having outbreaks (this could be almost everywhere but not all places getting all waves), we can about double the numbers affected - 400k cases and 20k deaths nationally over 3 years.
There are plenty of doubts over this, only 5% of the population catch COVID in this model (although the very close contact needed for transmission and UK planning assumptions give me some assurance, as discussed down thread). Also, whether measuring at provincial level gives good enough numbers for coverage.
As Foxy notes, the 50% hospitalisation rates are what will stretch us.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Think it's both here because the outcome can be modeled. The historical example I keep thinking about is the Titanic. For a period after it hit the iceberg there were no obvious impacts on the bulk of the ship or on the passengers. All seemed well. No panic since there appeared to be nothing to panic about. Finish main course. Order another bottle and pudding.
But the chap onboard who had designed the vessel knew otherwise. Armed with the knowledge of where the damage was, and the cast iron laws of fluid dynamics and stress transference, he could deduce with a high degree of certainty that the ship was going down in just over two hours. Hence the bravery of the band, who knew this too but played on.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
I would be interested in seeing any figures for the percentage of the workforce who could work from home.
I expect it is less than many think but I do not know
The key word is "could". Redefining how businesses operate will change the numbers being able to work remotely or flexibly. The decline of traditional retail is one such factor.
Moving to a fully digital and paper-light (or even paperless) environment also reduces the need for expensive premises with all that flows from that.
As for costs, yes, I pay to have the heating and lighting on but the lunch is cheaper and I'm not paying travel costs. Nor do I need so many "work" clothes as I don't wear a suit and tie to work at home.
Working at home attire is much more casual though never TOO casual - one must try to retain a vaguely professional veneer so never feel tempted to work in your Rupert Bear jimjams.
Youjust turn off video feed and you can sit in your jim jams no problem
I've not commented lately because I'm having to reset my password literally each and every time I try to sign in at the moment...
Anyway, it seems to me that the proportion of the public who are worried about Coronavirus is vastly overrepresented on PB. In my circle of family and friends I honestly don't know anyone who is very worried... and that includes my Daily Express reading 92-year-old grandad who isn't at all concerned.
Yes when you step into PB you have to every so often look out of the window to confirm that the world is still spinning.
Then again, much of the media (talking about the Graun online here) is also culpable.
But PB has taken what for most people (all walking around, taking the tube, going to spinning classes, whatever) is a 3-5 concern, and cranked it up to 11.
Who is right? We shall see but I'm with the 3-5 wash your hands be sensible crowd.
Even if the pandemic turns out to be "just another type of flu" it is still an interesting topic to follow. The spread of viruses is dominated by random processes and followinng them is not easy. On top of that the political aspect comparing how different countries are preparing/coping with outbreaks is interesting.
And of course it is important that the medical and political organisations keep on top of it, because there is a real possibility it bcomes a "level 8-9 concern" and if that happens it could happen very quickly.
As for PB, it seems there are all types here from coronapocolyse types to the "ignore it and it'll go away by itself" types. Most people are more in the middle but enjoy posting about it. I'm trying to keep a balanced opinion, and calling out stupid extrapolations or totally unfounded and scientifically dodgy comments.
It's nice to see some commonsense among the drivel from the extremists on either sid.
Personally, I'd rather put my trust in evidence-based theories than "common sense".
Or you could say that the evidence-based thoeries are the common sense theories!
Not always! Evidence based theories led to Goldman Sachs saying "We were seeing things that were 25-standard deviation moves, several days in a row." Thats what the evidence told them, but it wasnt common sense or correct. The evidence just didnt cover all the possible outcomes, which is probably true again in this scenario.
I don't know the background of what you are talking about. If there the model is with a random normal distribution, and there are 25-sd changes several days in a row, then of course the model is being violated. The evidence is saying that the existing model is insufficient. That is both an evidence based approach and common sense.
It refers to the daily price moves during the global financial crisis and credit crunch.
I find it hard to believe that Goldman Sachs was implememting a model appropriate for average trading days, during a stock market crash.
What's bugging me at the moment is that my understanding of R_0 and my understanding of the logistic model are in two separate boxes.
Given a logistic function
L / (1 + e^ (-kx + x_0 ) )
where L is carrying capacity, x_0 is x-value at the sigmoid's midpoint, and k is the logistic growth rate,
what is R_0 expressed as a function of the three parameters, or four including x if it varies as I think it probably does? There must surely be a straightforward answer to this.
If you're looking at the proportion of the population that have been infected, then you can use the fact that in equilibrium the proportion of susceptibles is 1/R0. (There are issues here over e.g. whether previously infected individuals eventually lose immunity and become susceptible again later.) If you're thinking about the growth rate, that's more complicated, because a disease where you're infectious for, on average, 20 years and during which time you'll infect, on average, 2 people has exactly the same R0 as a disease where you're infectious for 20 days and infect on average 2 people, but clearly they grow at different rates... Does the approximate formula Lambda = (R0 - 1) divided by D, where D is the duration of infectiousness in days, help you out re initial growth rate?
Rather than a simple logistic model, you'd be better to model it as a dynamic system, perhaps with a compartmental model like SIR or SEIR, and try to fit the coefficients of the appropriate differential equations. Not too much work to set this up in your numerical ODE solver of choice (in R/Python/Matlab or whatever) or in specialist dynamic system modelling software or domain-specific language (eg if you have access to it, Berkeley Madonna, or you can use Imperial College's Odin which has recently been added to CRAN if you're an R person).
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
So I heard two things yesterday about Coronavirus, one unsure how to view it and the other with quite worrying implications.
The first was from a contact at Oxford University who claimed the labs there have worked out a vaccine for Coronavirus but that it will be year end before it is fully tested etc etc. I genuinely don't know if this is new news, expected etc. I haven't been following very development about what is happening.
The second, and slightly more scary, one was about a firm that produces a disinfectant solution that protects against coronavirus-type viruses. There are apparently limited facilities globally that can produce this solution (less than 20). The Chinese Govt promised to send over three 747s ASAP to bring back everything they could (the firm apparently can't produce that much so said no).
Sending over 3x747s to bring back that stuff doesn't sound like a Government which believes it has on top of the problem.
Conducting clinical trials, even during an outbreak, is necessarily time consuming. First you have to demonstrate safety (China probably have an advantage here, as they seem happy to play fast and loose with ethical restrictions we can’t ignore). But that doesn’t just mean the vaccine on its own is safe - you also have to be sure it’s immune effects won’t cause ADE on exposure to the live virus). Demonstrating effectiveness is going to be equally difficult, as you need a significant population exposed to the virus after they’ve been vaccinated - which exposure your health services are doing everything in their power to avoid...
For now, any such trial in the UK simply isn’t going to happen.
Pandemic trials can be different
Safety. And if you are clean then fuck it and let rip
God I just want Corbyn gone. Get some sanity, some reality, some competence back to Labour. Fingers crossed.
I sense Starmer and the team he assembles will be formidable. I'm also bullish for the next election. 80 seats sounds a lot but over 5 years it's only just over one a month.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
The TLDR is: HM Treasury's Green Book on economic evaluation uses a £60k figure on a "willingness to pay" basis, equal to the value it puts on a statistical life year even though this is a different concept altogether! NICE puts thresholds of between £20k and £30k but also shows some flexibility rather than hard-and-fast logic (quite controversial, see https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14737167.2017.1330152 ) while academic health economists suggest we should use the marginal cost of a QALY in the NHS (ie how many pounds of extra funding would be needed to save one extra QALY, which might be more like £13k - see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25692211 )
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
@Benpointer In international comparisons, it's been quite common for people to use a threshold of 3 x GDP per capita for each DALY averted (DALY = disability-adjusted life year versus QALY = quality-adjusted life year; the main difference is QALYs are good and we try to "gain" them but we want to "avert" DALYs because they measure how many years of life, or their equivalent, are lost to the disease; DALYs are the far more common measure in development economics, international aid etc) which would give a figure of about £90k per DALY.
But other people use a figure of one times GDP/capita as a more realistic threshold, which would come close to the NICE £30k threshold, but national income is a highly controversial benchmark of health-intervention cost-effectiveness and again lots of health economists would prefer an alternative system to be thought out, see e.g. https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/93/2/14-138206/en/
Has PB.com yet noted who has been appointed to the ERG chair as successor to Mr Baker?
Field Marshall Marky Mark is mustering the merry men who have been mobilised for the imminent 'March of the Mouthbreathers against Migration', to refocus the public's attention on the things of real importance.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
Summary of indications from my L* model (all figures are Worldometers ones for outside of China, published a few hours after the end of the relevant day):
6 March: * if <3400 new cases, then virus will be under control by end of March (defined as less than 1000 cases below a future total, which in this case would be <90K); * if >3600 new cases, keep thinking "Apocalypse". But a single day's figures are sensitive to various developments even in only a single country, so these conclusions can't be made with great confidence.
10 March: * if <38000 total cases, then under control by end of March, as above * if >44000 total cases, then expect many millions more to be infected.
12 March: * if we are going down the "under control by end of March" path, then the daily number of new cases should start to decrease on or before this day.
God I just want Corbyn gone. Get some sanity, some reality, some competence back to Labour. Fingers crossed.
I sense Starmer and the team he assembles will be formidable. I'm also bullish for the next election. 80 seats sounds a lot but over 5 years it's only just over one a month.
From ferrets to mice and marmosets, labs scramble to find right animals for coronavirus studies https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/05/coronavirus-labs-scramble-to-find-right-animals-for-covid-19-studies/ ...About 15 years ago, Perlman’s lab engineered some mice to have the receptors SARS coopts to gain entry into our cells. But maintaining that colony was work in and of itself. Lab members had to keep propagating them, swiping skin and tail samples to check that they still had the desired genetic makeup.
Related: Who is getting sick, and how sick? A breakdown of coronavirus risk by demographic factors By 2009 or so, long after the SARS outbreak had died down, that seemed like a waste of resources. “We kept them for an extra five years and decided, ‘We are not using these mice, no reason to keep them,’” Perlman said. So his team collected some sperm, froze it down, and sent it off to Jackson Labs for safekeeping. Then they got rid of the colony.
Early this year, Gralinksi’s lab was preparing to do the same with mice left over from SARS work. “We were about a week away from killing all of them and cryopreserving the line,” she said. Her team had started the necessary paperwork when they heard news of a strange sort of pneumonia popping up in Wuhan, China — a coronavirus, people said. “It was like, ‘All of those mice, we need to set them up as breeders immediately,” she recalled. “So our colony is in the growing phase right now; we’re not ready to do experiments.”
At Jackson Labs, in Maine, Perlman’s mouse sperm has given rise to a new generation — but it’s not ready to be infected with the virus yet, either. As Cathleen Lutz, senior director of the mouse repository at the non-profit’s rare and orphan disease center, wrote in an email to STAT, “Our first litters have been born just days ago.”
Gralinksi’s mice should be ready for studies by April, Lutz’s by May. “I must get two emails a day asking for the mice,” Perlman said....
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
$100m immediately, to support o Vaccine development for 8 candidates through phase 1 clinical trials
$375m by END OF MARCH, to support o Manufacturing of clinical trial material for phase 2/3 trials for 4-6 vaccine candidates o Preparation of phase 2/3 trials for 4-6 vaccine candidates (potential initiation of phase 2 trial for 1 candidate) o Initial investments to expand global manufacturing capacity. These investments are needed to ensure the vaccine is ultimately available at scale and globally
$400m by END OF JUNE, to support o Execution of phase 2/3 trials for at least 2 candidates o Preparation of phase 2/3 clinical trials in a number of locations globally o Production of additional phase 2/3 clinical trial material o Further investment in scaling up / technology transfer of manufacturing process for up to 6 candidates
$400m by END OF SEPTEMBER, to support o Conduct of phase 2/3 clinical trials for additional 4 candidates in a number of locations globally o Investment in large-scale manufacturing capacity for at least 3 vaccine candidates
$500-750m in 2021, to support o Enhancing global manufacturing capacity with tech transfer to geographically distributed locations of up to 3 candidates o Completion of clinical trial testing o Completion of regulatory and quality requirements for at least 3 vaccines o Preparation of regulatory dossiers for emergency authorization/licensure submission
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
My back of envelope number crunching on the Italian outbreak, modelling on the impression that it does seem to be closely resembling the Chinese outbreak.
I'd also expect other Western nations to resemble this
At this stage of the Wuhan outbreak, day 14, around 10% of the cases and deaths had happened. This suggests around 40000 cases and 2000 deaths in the current Italian outbreaks.
To project this forward, pandemics often come to a location in 3 waves over 2-3 years, with typically 20% in the first wave of infection. That would suggest 200k cases and 10k deaths, in the areas affected, over the next 3 years.
The other multiplier is that there are and will be areas of Italy substantially unaffected by this. Looking at provincial level, the 16 provinces with large numbers of local cases cover about 12.1m people, and I reckon another 9 provinces, and 5.5m people, broadly those in between current outbreaks, are in the firing line.
That gives about a 30% geographical coverage of the Italian population from this outbreak. If we guess at about 70% of areas ultimately having outbreaks (this could be almost everywhere but not all places getting all waves), we can about double the numbers affected - 400k cases and 20k deaths nationally over 3 years.
There are plenty of doubts over this, only 5% of the population catch COVID in this model (although the very close contact needed for transmission and UK planning assumptions give me some assurance, as discussed down thread). Also, whether measuring at provincial level gives good enough numbers for coverage.
As Foxy notes, the 50% hospitalisation rates are what will stretch us.
That's an interesting and optimistic take, thankyou
But aren't you ignoring the way different countries can and will deal with this?
China put 11m people in Wuhan on a world-historic lockdown, welding them in homes, and violently arresting people who broke quarantine. Another 50m throughout Hubei were in very very intense quarantine, kept in their streets, apartment blocks etc.
THEN - and this is crucial - China flooded Wuhan with tens of thousands of health workers, respirators, etc - 0.7 healthworkers for every patient. That's how they kept the infection rate to 5-10% and the death rate to "only" 4.9%, so far.
No other country will be able to do that (except maybe America), they won't have the spare healthworkers as every other region will be in the same sinking boat.
This is one of my biggest worries.
I'm looking at the outbreak trends rather than any qualitative counter measures taken. At day 14 both Italy and China have around about 25% increase in cumulative cases per day - in fact China's was a little higher. If they continue to mirror, Italy's New Cases / day measure peaks in around 5 days. Fact is that Italy's measures are currently giving similar results to China's.
The 5-10% infection rate must be neighbourhood rates - 80000 cases in a city of 11 million, or a Chinese province of 58 million is nowhere near 10%. That is a very localised figure if true.
And low infection rate on anything above neighborhood level is good, although it is a worry that immunity barely builds up for subsequent waves and the 20/60/20 profile of other, mainly flu, pandemics doesn't apply. Still, slow and creeping has got to be better, if only 2% have been infected by the time a vaccine comes online, brilliant.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
That's because the flu is 10-50 times less deadly than coronavirus. And importantly the flu has a far lower hospitalisation rate, yet despite that still causes a massive stretch on NHS resources.
Going to be a much more sombre statement, by the sound of it.
However, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said the delay represented “absolute chaos” in government.
Screw McDonnell. What a prat! Given what's happening to the world economy with coronavirus a sombre budget makes perfect sense.
Infrastructure and climate change being dealt with on their own makes sense too.
Quite frankly whatever forecast numbers are quoted in the budget now are almost irrelevant. Its an educated guess at the best of times, but at times like this its meaningless.
Except in Spain now the PSOE is in Government with the far left Podemos, the PP and Citizens and Vox are all a potential alliance.
In Germany the liberal FDP are the CDU's usual coalition partners anyway but without the AfD there is no possible right of centre majority in Germany now
As far as Spain is concerned, Citizens are a busted flush (4% in the latest poll). PP and VOX are now scrapping for the role of top centre-right party (20 and 19% respectively in the latest poll) so yes a PP-VOX coalition currently polls the same as the PSOE-Podemos coalition (41%).
If VOX start outpolling PP it becomes a significant change in Spanish politics and we may yet see PP back toward the centre.
In Germany the problem is FDP are sinking back (6% in the latest YouGov) so will they even be in the next Bundestag? That puts the CDU/CSU as you say with either going in with the AfD (combined at just over 40%) or staying with SPD (about the same)?
I'd also offer the thought of a Union/Green coalition which is what is happening in Austria and which would enjoy a clear majority in the Bundestag.
So much depends on who the CDU choose as their Spitzenkandidat next month.
The key is the Vox and PP combined total in Spain yes as they are now the main alter native to Podemos.
The Union might prefer a Greens deal as is now the case in Austria (though Kurz previously allied with the Freedom Party) but if the Greens prefer to deal with the SPD and Linke then Merz could become CDU leader on a platform of co operation with the AfD in response
There is approximately zero chance of the CDU having any kind of national understanding with the Afd either before or after the next election here. No matter how much ignorant foreign far right supporting people want it.
So I heard two things yesterday about Coronavirus, one unsure how to view it and the other with quite worrying implications.
The first was from a contact at Oxford University who claimed the labs there have worked out a vaccine for Coronavirus but that it will be year end before it is fully tested etc etc. I genuinely don't know if this is new news, expected etc. I haven't been following very development about what is happening.
The second, and slightly more scary, one was about a firm that produces a disinfectant solution that protects against coronavirus-type viruses. There are apparently limited facilities globally that can produce this solution (less than 20). The Chinese Govt promised to send over three 747s ASAP to bring back everything they could (the firm apparently can't produce that much so said no).
Sending over 3x747s to bring back that stuff doesn't sound like a Government which believes it has on top of the problem.
Conducting clinical trials, even during an outbreak, is necessarily time consuming. First you have to demonstrate safety (China probably have an advantage here, as they seem happy to play fast and loose with ethical restrictions we can’t ignore). But that doesn’t just mean the vaccine on its own is safe - you also have to be sure it’s immune effects won’t cause ADE on exposure to the live virus). Demonstrating effectiveness is going to be equally difficult, as you need a significant population exposed to the virus after they’ve been vaccinated - which exposure your health services are doing everything in their power to avoid...
For now, any such trial in the UK simply isn’t going to happen.
Pandemic trials can be different
Safety. And if you are clean then fuck it and let rip
Not quite following your argument Charles.
If there aren’t *any* safety concerns and you have evidence of efficacy there are protocols whereby you mass inoculate without a RCT. Effectively the human population is your control.
A lot of the face touching is entirely unconscious. On the radio this morning, the interviewee noted that his interviewer had touched his face 5 times over the past few minutes without thinking about it. Not touching your face at all is surprisingly difficult.
True for me too. I'm a chronic toucher of myself pretty much everywhere. It takes a conscious effort not to, and even then I catch myself. Could do with handcuffs.
Telling people not to do something is a fool's errand. Like me saying 'Don't think about purple elephants'. Better to tell people to do something instead. I don't know what the active positive equivalent to not touching your face is mind. But I am sure there is one.
Perhaps to use a tissue when doing so?
Knitting, or otherwise keeping your hands busy, might also help.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
That's because the flu is 10-50 times less deadly than coronavirus. And importantly the flu has a far lower hospitalisation rate, yet despite that still causes a massive stretch on NHS resources.
Is it really?
Given those vulnerable for the flu are vaccinated I don't believe those figures. Comparing how many people DO die from the flu as a proportion of those infected, versus how many DO die from coronavirus as a proportion of those infected is mathematically illiterate because it doesn't account for the difference in immunity.
If the flu is disproportionately infecting the healthy working age adults without any complications then it should be unsurpring its relatively less fatal. Perversely if we had a coronavirus vaccine given to the at risk but no influenza one then would the dangers be reversed?
France up to 577 cases, 9 dead. 150 cases, 2 deaths increase.
Dies anyone know...
What are the usual flu cases and deaths in Europe over the same timeframe, and what is the difference between this and the average?
Are the people dying, elderly and ill in most cases, those who usually die of flu, or is the usual flu death rate the same as ever?
DOES anyone know!
For example, lets say deaths caused by smoking cigarettes were accepted as 100 a month and that was never really reported in the media, then new, superstrength cigarettes were introduced and all over the news were headlines of the death rate from these new cigarettes of 25 a month... we would need to know if 100 were still dying from the old ciggies or whether that number had gone down because of the 25 who died from the superstrengths
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
That's because the flu is 10-50 times less deadly than coronavirus. And importantly the flu has a far lower hospitalisation rate, yet despite that still causes a massive stretch on NHS resources.
Is it really?
Given those vulnerable for the flu are vaccinated I don't believe those figures. Comparing how many people DO die from the flu as a proportion of those infected, versus how many DO die from coronavirus as a proportion of those infected is mathematically illiterate because it doesn't account for the difference in immunity.
If the flu is disproportionately infecting the healthy working age adults without any complications then it should be unsurpring its relatively less fatal. Perversely if we had a coronavirus vaccine given to the at risk but no influenza one then would the dangers be reversed?
If you like at a year where they got the vaccine wrong, and the strains of flu spreading are ones that the vaccine isn't effective against, I guess you'll still find a much lower death rate than Covid-19
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
That's because the flu is 10-50 times less deadly than coronavirus. And importantly the flu has a far lower hospitalisation rate, yet despite that still causes a massive stretch on NHS resources.
Is it really?
Given those vulnerable for the flu are vaccinated I don't believe those figures. Comparing how many people DO die from the flu as a proportion of those infected, versus how many DO die from coronavirus as a proportion of those infected is mathematically illiterate because it doesn't account for the difference in immunity.
If the flu is disproportionately infecting the healthy working age adults without any complications then it should be unsurpring its relatively less fatal. Perversely if we had a coronavirus vaccine given to the at risk but no influenza one then would the dangers be reversed?
That's because the flu is 10-50 times less deadly than coronavirus. And importantly the flu has a far lower hospitalisation rate, yet despite that still causes a massive stretch on NHS resources.
It's the impact on health services which seems to me to be the biggest concern. If this virus spreads widely there will be far more people requiring treatment than there is treatment to give them. Thus the draconian measures to reduce and manage the peak. Thus the hit to the global economy.
Going to be a much more sombre statement, by the sound of it.
However, the shadow chancellor, John McDonnell, said the delay represented “absolute chaos” in government.
Screw McDonnell. What a prat! Given what's happening to the world economy with coronavirus a sombre budget makes perfect sense.
Infrastructure and climate change being dealt with on their own makes sense too.
Quite frankly whatever forecast numbers are quoted in the budget now are almost irrelevant. Its an educated guess at the best of times, but at times like this its meaningless.
Agree with you on both counts. McDonnell is yesterday's man now, anyway.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
That's because the flu is 10-50 times less deadly than coronavirus. And importantly the flu has a far lower hospitalisation rate, yet despite that still causes a massive stretch on NHS resources.
Is it really?
Given those vulnerable for the flu are vaccinated I don't believe those figures. Comparing how many people DO die from the flu as a proportion of those infected, versus how many DO die from coronavirus as a proportion of those infected is mathematically illiterate because it doesn't account for the difference in immunity.
If the flu is disproportionately infecting the healthy working age adults without any complications then it should be unsurpring its relatively less fatal. Perversely if we had a coronavirus vaccine given to the at risk but no influenza one then would the dangers be reversed?
If you like at a year where they got the vaccine wrong, and the strains of flu spreading are ones that the vaccine isn't effective against, I guess you'll still find a much lower death rate than Covid-19
I don't think the vaccine is ever 100% ineffective, its simply less effective.
Has PB.com yet noted who has been appointed to the ERG chair as successor to Mr Baker?
Field Marshall Marky Mark is mustering the merry men who have been mobilised for the imminent 'March of the Mouthbreathers against Migration', to refocus the public's attention on the things of real importance.
Mouthbreathing may not be wise in the current circumstances.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
Flu vaccine is manufactured in eggs
It’s always a race against time to get sufficient quantities - it’s a slow process and one that is capacity constrained. Governments are also unwilling to pay for everyone to get it.
France up to 577 cases, 9 dead. 150 cases, 2 deaths increase.
Dies anyone know...
What are the usual flu cases and deaths in Europe over the same timeframe, and what is the difference between this and the average?
Are the people dying, elderly and ill in most cases, those who usually die of flu, or is the usual flu death rate the same as ever?
DOES anyone know!
For example, lets say deaths caused by smoking cigarettes were accepted as 100 a month and that was never really reported in the media, then new, superstrength cigarettes were introduced and all over the news were headlines of the death rate from these new cigarettes of 25 a month... we would need to know if 100 were still dying from the old ciggies or whether that number had gone down because of the 25 who died from the superstrengths
I think its far too early to have any reliable stats but frankly its drop in the ocean stuff at the minute.
UK flu virus deaths per year range from about 4000 in a good year to about 23000 in a bad year. 2 deaths to date can't affect those stats yet.
In Italy there are about 17,000 deaths on average every year from the flu. 148 coronavirus deaths isn't enough to meaningfully affect flu totals yet.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
Flu vaccine is manufactured in eggs
It’s always a race against time to get sufficient quantities - it’s a slow process and one that is capacity constrained. Governments are also unwilling to pay for everyone to get it.
Indeed but presumably that means there is no significant herd immunity amongst working age adults?
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
Flu vaccine is manufactured in eggs
It’s always a race against time to get sufficient quantities - it’s a slow process and one that is capacity constrained. Governments are also unwilling to pay for everyone to get it.
Indeed but presumably that means there is no significant herd immunity amongst working age adults?
Probably! TBH I suspect flu has replaced pneumonia as the 'old man's friend'. Carries one off more 'comfortably' than dementia.
France up to 577 cases, 9 dead. 150 cases, 2 deaths increase.
Dies anyone know...
What are the usual flu cases and deaths in Europe over the same timeframe, and what is the difference between this and the average?
Are the people dying, elderly and ill in most cases, those who usually die of flu, or is the usual flu death rate the same as ever?
DOES anyone know!
For example, lets say deaths caused by smoking cigarettes were accepted as 100 a month and that was never really reported in the media, then new, superstrength cigarettes were introduced and all over the news were headlines of the death rate from these new cigarettes of 25 a month... we would need to know if 100 were still dying from the old ciggies or whether that number had gone down because of the 25 who died from the superstrengths
I dont know but looking into the future, surely there will be less flu spread as people are more aware of hand hygiene and how to avoid it. That should have an impact for years to come.
The numbers for flu also vary a lot, in 1989 26000 died in the UK and 60% caught it. Most years its nothing like that so the range of "usual flu death rate" may be too wide for your question to be adequately answered.
France up to 577 cases, 9 dead. 150 cases, 2 deaths increase.
Dies anyone know...
What are the usual flu cases and deaths in Europe over the same timeframe, and what is the difference between this and the average?
Are the people dying, elderly and ill in most cases, those who usually die of flu, or is the usual flu death rate the same as ever?
DOES anyone know!
For example, lets say deaths caused by smoking cigarettes were accepted as 100 a month and that was never really reported in the media, then new, superstrength cigarettes were introduced and all over the news were headlines of the death rate from these new cigarettes of 25 a month... we would need to know if 100 were still dying from the old ciggies or whether that number had gone down because of the 25 who died from the superstrengths
I dont know but looking into the future, surely there will be less flu spread as people are more aware of hand hygiene and how to avoid it. That should have an impact for years to come.
The numbers for flu also vary a lot, in 1989 26000 died in the UK and 60% caught it. Most years its nothing like that so the range of "usual flu death rate" may be too wide for your question to be adequately answered.
OK cheers.
What I am hoping for I guess is that the people who are dying of Coronavirus are those who would have died of flu anyway. Maybe false hope, but a possibilty I think.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
That's because the flu is 10-50 times less deadly than coronavirus. And importantly the flu has a far lower hospitalisation rate, yet despite that still causes a massive stretch on NHS resources.
Is it really?
Given those vulnerable for the flu are vaccinated I don't believe those figures. Comparing how many people DO die from the flu as a proportion of those infected, versus how many DO die from coronavirus as a proportion of those infected is mathematically illiterate because it doesn't account for the difference in immunity.
If the flu is disproportionately infecting the healthy working age adults without any complications then it should be unsurpring its relatively less fatal. Perversely if we had a coronavirus vaccine given to the at risk but no influenza one then would the dangers be reversed?
If you like at a year where they got the vaccine wrong, and the strains of flu spreading are ones that the vaccine isn't effective against, I guess you'll still find a much lower death rate than Covid-19
Occasionally the vaccine itself can be a little nasty in its effects.
My back of envelope number crunching on the Italian outbreak, modelling on the impression that it does seem to be closely resembling the Chinese outbreak.
I'd also expect other Western nations to resemble this
At this stage of the Wuhan outbreak, day 14, around 10% of the cases and deaths had happened. This suggests around 40000 cases and 2000 deaths in the current Italian outbreaks.
To project this forward, pandemics often come to a location in 3 waves over 2-3 years, with typically 20% in the first wave of infection. That would suggest 200k cases and 10k deaths, in the areas affected, over the next 3 years.
The other multiplier is that there are and will be areas of Italy substantially unaffected by this. Looking at provincial level, the 16 provinces with large numbers of local cases cover about 12.1m people, and I reckon another 9 provinces, and 5.5m people, broadly those in between current outbreaks, are in the firing line.
That gives about a 30% geographical coverage of the Italian population from this outbreak. If we guess at about 70% of areas ultimately having outbreaks (this could be almost everywhere but not all places getting all waves), we can about double the numbers affected - 400k cases and 20k deaths nationally over 3 years.
There are plenty of doubts over this, only 5% of the population catch COVID in this model (although the very close contact needed for transmission and UK planning assumptions give me some assurance, as discussed down thread). Also, whether measuring at provincial level gives good enough numbers for coverage.
As Foxy notes, the 50% hospitalisation rates are what will stretch us.
That's an interesting and optimistic take, thankyou
But aren't you ignoring the way different countries can and will deal with this?
China put 11m people in Wuhan on a world-historic lockdown, welding them in homes, and violently arresting people who broke quarantine. Another 50m throughout Hubei were in very very intense quarantine, kept in their streets, apartment blocks etc.
THEN - and this is crucial - China flooded Wuhan with tens of thousands of health workers, respirators, etc - 0.7 healthworkers for every patient. That's how they kept the infection rate to 5-10% and the death rate to "only" 4.9%, so far.
No other country will be able to do that (except maybe America), they won't have the spare healthworkers as every other region will be in the same sinking boat.
This is one of my biggest worries.
I'm looking at the outbreak trends rather than any qualitative counter measures taken. At day 14 both Italy and China have around about 25% increase in cumulative cases per day - in fact China's was a little higher. If they continue to mirror, Italy's New Cases / day measure peaks in around 5 days. Fact is that Italy's measures are currently giving similar results to China's.
The 5-10% infection rate must be neighbourhood rates - 80000 cases in a city of 11 million, or a Chinese province of 58 million is nowhere near 10%. That is a very localised figure if true.
And low infection rate on anything above neighborhood level is good, although it is a worry that immunity barely builds up for subsequent waves and the 20/60/20 profile of other, mainly flu, pandemics doesn't apply. Still, slow and creeping has got to be better, if only 2% have been infected by the time a vaccine comes online, brilliant.
With a regime like China, any threat to its authority is going to be met with an over-the-top show of force.
With the USA, sick pay is really limited. At the lower ends of the job spectrum, people are going to struggle in no matter what.
A "PC cleaner" has just wiped out all my browser history. A good Covid-19 website was recommended here a few times, can someone repost it, thanks. It has a world map with the cases/deaths/recoverd numbers on the left hand side, and you can click on each country to get the individual country's data and graphics.
From this site I can very quickly I can see that on 27th February (8 days ago) italy had 470 cases, the current figure is 3927. In Germany it is currently 565 cases, and the shape of the curve looks very similar.
It is growing exponentially throughout Europe
Spain has had 100 new cases just today - up to 382
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
That's because a substantial portion of the population have some level of immunity to some types of flu because of past exposure. Plus there's also the seasonal vaccine.
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
There's also herd immunity. So many, although not enough, people are vaccinated against whatever that years flu is that the virus can't find many hosts.
If herd immunity is so relevant for the flu why don't more people get vaccinated? Why not vaccinate everyone? Surely only a small percentage of working age adults get vaccinated?
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
Adequacy of supplies, I suspect. Flu vaccine as, IIRC, Charles explained recently, is only appropriate for that year's flu, and has to be reformulated annually. Seems to spread across the globe from East to West, so it's necessary to see what's happening in the likes of Japan and New Zealand before making vaccine for Europe and America.
I understand that, but if production were scaled up and the vaccine were given to everyone then there'd be herd immunity.
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
That's because the flu is 10-50 times less deadly than coronavirus. And importantly the flu has a far lower hospitalisation rate, yet despite that still causes a massive stretch on NHS resources.
Is it really?
Given those vulnerable for the flu are vaccinated I don't believe those figures. Comparing how many people DO die from the flu as a proportion of those infected, versus how many DO die from coronavirus as a proportion of those infected is mathematically illiterate because it doesn't account for the difference in immunity.
If the flu is disproportionately infecting the healthy working age adults without any complications then it should be unsurpring its relatively less fatal. Perversely if we had a coronavirus vaccine given to the at risk but no influenza one then would the dangers be reversed?
France up to 577 cases, 9 dead. 150 cases, 2 deaths increase.
Dies anyone know...
What are the usual flu cases and deaths in Europe over the same timeframe, and what is the difference between this and the average?
Are the people dying, elderly and ill in most cases, those who usually die of flu, or is the usual flu death rate the same as ever?
DOES anyone know!
For example, lets say deaths caused by smoking cigarettes were accepted as 100 a month and that was never really reported in the media, then new, superstrength cigarettes were introduced and all over the news were headlines of the death rate from these new cigarettes of 25 a month... we would need to know if 100 were still dying from the old ciggies or whether that number had gone down because of the 25 who died from the superstrengths
I dont know but looking into the future, surely there will be less flu spread as people are more aware of hand hygiene and how to avoid it. That should have an impact for years to come.
The numbers for flu also vary a lot, in 1989 26000 died in the UK and 60% caught it. Most years its nothing like that so the range of "usual flu death rate" may be too wide for your question to be adequately answered.
OK cheers.
What I am hoping for I guess is that the people who are dying of Coronavirus are those who would have died of flu anyway. Maybe false hope, but a possibilty I think.
There will be some overlap, almost inevitably, but we will never know an exact % of Coronavirus deaths who would have died of flu within x months anyway.
Comments
Given a logistic function
L / (1 + e^ (-kx + x_0 ) )
where L is carrying capacity,
x_0 is x-value at the sigmoid's midpoint, and
k is the logistic growth rate,
what is R_0 expressed as a function of the three parameters, or four including x if it varies as I think it probably does? There must surely be a straightforward answer to this.
The Union might prefer a Greens deal as is now the case in Austria (though Kurz previously allied with the Freedom Party) but if the Greens prefer to deal with the SPD and Linke then Merz could become CDU leader on a platform of co operation with the AfD in response
Not to mention the changing seasons.
The US trend is a bit scary considering how little they've tested.
Other than that, I'm not sure he has any outstanding talents.
Safety. And if you are clean then fuck it and let rip
https://twitter.com/politico/status/1235898241167822848?s=20
Government Plan:
"2.7 Given that the data are still emerging, we are uncertain of the impact of an outbreak on business. In a stretching scenario, it is possible that up to one fifth of employees may be absent from work during peak weeks. This may vary for individual businesses. "
Val Policella in the G:
"If, as government plans suggest, one in five staff are out of action, the care sector will be hit hardest and fastest, as it is already so fragile and understaffed. "
I'd also expect other Western nations to resemble this
At this stage of the Wuhan outbreak, day 14, around 10% of the cases and deaths had happened. This suggests around 40000 cases and 2000 deaths in the current Italian outbreaks.
To project this forward, pandemics often come to a location in 3 waves over 2-3 years, with typically 20% in the first wave of infection. That would suggest 200k cases and 10k deaths, in the areas affected, over the next 3 years.
The other multiplier is that there are and will be areas of Italy substantially unaffected by this. Looking at provincial level, the 16 provinces with large numbers of local cases cover about 12.1m people, and I reckon another 9 provinces, and 5.5m people, broadly those in between current outbreaks, are in the firing line.
That gives about a 30% geographical coverage of the Italian population from this outbreak. If we guess at about 70% of areas ultimately having outbreaks (this could be almost everywhere but not all places getting all waves), we can about double the numbers affected - 400k cases and 20k deaths nationally over 3 years.
There are plenty of doubts over this, only 5% of the population catch COVID in this model (although the very close contact needed for transmission and UK planning assumptions give me some assurance, as discussed down thread). Also, whether measuring at provincial level gives good enough numbers for coverage.
As Foxy notes, the 50% hospitalisation rates are what will stretch us.
But the chap onboard who had designed the vessel knew otherwise. Armed with the knowledge of where the damage was, and the cast iron laws of fluid dynamics and stress transference, he could deduce with a high degree of certainty that the ship was going down in just over two hours. Hence the bravery of the band, who knew this too but played on.
is the most up-to-date, I think, though not as detailed as others.
Rather than a simple logistic model, you'd be better to model it as a dynamic system, perhaps with a compartmental model like SIR or SEIR, and try to fit the coefficients of the appropriate differential equations. Not too much work to set this up in your numerical ODE solver of choice (in R/Python/Matlab or whatever) or in specialist dynamic system modelling software or domain-specific language (eg if you have access to it, Berkeley Madonna, or you can use Imperial College's Odin which has recently been added to CRAN if you're an R person).
The problem that rampers like yourself don't understand is they see exponential growth and expect it to grow forever until everyone, or 80% etc gets the virus. That's not the way it works, there's a bell curve so it grows exponentially at first, then logarithmically but not to infinite.
There's a reason why viruses don't strike 100% or 80% of the people all the time. In flu season the flu is a very deadly virus spread like this but we don't see every single healthy adult getting the flu every single year do we?
I've never had the flu vaccine for the last 20 years but have maybe had the flu once in 20 years.
Dictators and authoritarians will love it.
The TLDR is: HM Treasury's Green Book on economic evaluation uses a £60k figure on a "willingness to pay" basis, equal to the value it puts on a statistical life year even though this is a different concept altogether! NICE puts thresholds of between £20k and £30k but also shows some flexibility rather than hard-and-fast logic (quite controversial, see https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14737167.2017.1330152 ) while academic health economists suggest we should use the marginal cost of a QALY in the NHS (ie how many pounds of extra funding would be needed to save one extra QALY, which might be more like £13k - see https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25692211 )
https://www.nhs.uk/news/heart-and-lungs/first-time-flu-infection-may-affect-lifetime-immunity/
https://www.fredhutch.org/en/news/center-news/2019/08/bloom-flu-single-mutation.html
No substantial portion of the population has any level of immunity from catching this, and there is no vaccine.
In international comparisons, it's been quite common for people to use a threshold of 3 x GDP per capita for each DALY averted (DALY = disability-adjusted life year versus QALY = quality-adjusted life year; the main difference is QALYs are good and we try to "gain" them but we want to "avert" DALYs because they measure how many years of life, or their equivalent, are lost to the disease; DALYs are the far more common measure in development economics, international aid etc) which would give a figure of about £90k per DALY.
But other people use a figure of one times GDP/capita as a more realistic threshold, which would come close to the NICE £30k threshold, but national income is a highly controversial benchmark of health-intervention cost-effectiveness and again lots of health economists would prefer an alternative system to be thought out, see e.g. https://www.who.int/bulletin/volumes/93/2/14-138206/en/
https://twitter.com/LivEchoLFC/status/1235921199395373057
Payrolls streaking well ahead of expectations.
Trump must be reflecting very bitterly on Corona.
Field Marshall Marky Mark is mustering the merry men who have been mobilised for the imminent 'March of the Mouthbreathers against Migration', to refocus the public's attention on the things of real importance.
(all figures are Worldometers ones for outside of China, published a few hours after the end of the relevant day):
6 March:
* if <3400 new cases, then virus will be under control by end of March (defined as less than 1000 cases below a future total, which in this case would be <90K);
* if >3600 new cases, keep thinking "Apocalypse".
But a single day's figures are sensitive to various developments even in only a single country, so these conclusions can't be made with great confidence.
10 March:
* if <38000 total cases, then under control by end of March, as above
* if >44000 total cases, then expect many millions more to be infected.
12 March:
* if we are going down the "under control by end of March" path, then the daily number of new cases should start to decrease on or before this day.
What are the usual flu cases and deaths in Europe over the same timeframe, and what is the difference between this and the average?
Are the people dying, elderly and ill in most cases, those who usually die of flu, or is the usual flu death rate the same as ever?
https://www.statnews.com/2020/03/05/coronavirus-labs-scramble-to-find-right-animals-for-covid-19-studies/
...About 15 years ago, Perlman’s lab engineered some mice to have the receptors SARS coopts to gain entry into our cells. But maintaining that colony was work in and of itself. Lab members had to keep propagating them, swiping skin and tail samples to check that they still had the desired genetic makeup.
Related: Who is getting sick, and how sick? A breakdown of coronavirus risk by demographic factors
By 2009 or so, long after the SARS outbreak had died down, that seemed like a waste of resources. “We kept them for an extra five years and decided, ‘We are not using these mice, no reason to keep them,’” Perlman said. So his team collected some sperm, froze it down, and sent it off to Jackson Labs for safekeeping. Then they got rid of the colony.
Early this year, Gralinksi’s lab was preparing to do the same with mice left over from SARS work. “We were about a week away from killing all of them and cryopreserving the line,” she said. Her team had started the necessary paperwork when they heard news of a strange sort of pneumonia popping up in Wuhan, China — a coronavirus, people said. “It was like, ‘All of those mice, we need to set them up as breeders immediately,” she recalled. “So our colony is in the growing phase right now; we’re not ready to do experiments.”
At Jackson Labs, in Maine, Perlman’s mouse sperm has given rise to a new generation — but it’s not ready to be infected with the virus yet, either. As Cathleen Lutz, senior director of the mouse repository at the non-profit’s rare and orphan disease center, wrote in an email to STAT, “Our first litters have been born just days ago.”
Gralinksi’s mice should be ready for studies by April, Lutz’s by May. “I must get two emails a day asking for the mice,” Perlman said....
We've always followed the medical advice for vaccinations, so our children have all relevant vaccines, when my wife was pregnant she got the flu vaccine. But even when she was pregnant and we had a toddler in the house I never got the vaccine as it wasn't recommended I should by the NHS but I'd have thought for herd immunity if it mattered so much that I should have?
https://twitter.com/SkyNewsBreak/status/1235925148089438208
CEPI welcomes UK Government's funding and highlights need for $2 billion to develop a vaccine against COVID-19
https://cepi.net/news_cepi/2-billion-required-to-develop-a-vaccine-against-the-covid-19-virus/
CEPI has identified five funding phases:
$100m immediately, to support
o Vaccine development for 8 candidates through phase 1 clinical trials
$375m by END OF MARCH, to support
o Manufacturing of clinical trial material for phase 2/3 trials for 4-6 vaccine candidates
o Preparation of phase 2/3 trials for 4-6 vaccine candidates (potential initiation of phase
2 trial for 1 candidate)
o Initial investments to expand global manufacturing capacity. These investments are needed to ensure the vaccine is ultimately available at scale and globally
$400m by END OF JUNE, to support
o Execution of phase 2/3 trials for at least 2 candidates
o Preparation of phase 2/3 clinical trials in a number of locations globally
o Production of additional phase 2/3 clinical trial material
o Further investment in scaling up / technology transfer of manufacturing process for up to 6 candidates
$400m by END OF SEPTEMBER, to support
o Conduct of phase 2/3 clinical trials for additional 4 candidates in a number of locations globally
o Investment in large-scale manufacturing capacity for at least 3 vaccine candidates
$500-750m in 2021, to support
o Enhancing global manufacturing capacity with tech transfer to geographically
distributed locations of up to 3 candidates
o Completion of clinical trial testing
o Completion of regulatory and quality requirements for at least 3 vaccines
o Preparation of regulatory dossiers for emergency authorization/licensure submission
Over half Chinese:
https://www.biocentury.com/article/304456/who-is-creating-a-roadmap-to-develop-covid-19-vaccines
Either way, since it isn't I wouldn't have thought there'd be that much herd immunity. Since proportionately few working age adults (besides those vulnerable themselves or directly working with the vulnerable) get it on the NHS I'd have thought a very high proportion of working age adults don't get it so herd immunity would be very much limited.
Yet we don't see the virus scything through all the unvaccinated working age population every year.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/05/governments-coronavirus-urgent-climate-crisis
https://amp.theguardian.com/uk-news/2020/mar/06/plans-infrastructure-climate-postponed-budget-rishi-sunak
Going to be a much more sombre statement, by the sound of it.
The 5-10% infection rate must be neighbourhood rates - 80000 cases in a city of 11 million, or a Chinese province of 58 million is nowhere near 10%. That is a very localised figure if true.
And low infection rate on anything above neighborhood level is good, although it is a worry that immunity barely builds up for subsequent waves and the 20/60/20 profile of other, mainly flu, pandemics doesn't apply. Still, slow and creeping has got to be better, if only 2% have been infected by the time a vaccine comes online, brilliant.
Screw McDonnell. What a prat! Given what's happening to the world economy with coronavirus a sombre budget makes perfect sense.
Infrastructure and climate change being dealt with on their own makes sense too.
Quite frankly whatever forecast numbers are quoted in the budget now are almost irrelevant. Its an educated guess at the best of times, but at times like this its meaningless.
Knitting, or otherwise keeping your hands busy, might also help.
The one showing fuel tax rises going down like a whole bargain bucket full of cold sick?
Given those vulnerable for the flu are vaccinated I don't believe those figures. Comparing how many people DO die from the flu as a proportion of those infected, versus how many DO die from coronavirus as a proportion of those infected is mathematically illiterate because it doesn't account for the difference in immunity.
If the flu is disproportionately infecting the healthy working age adults without any complications then it should be unsurpring its relatively less fatal. Perversely if we had a coronavirus vaccine given to the at risk but no influenza one then would the dangers be reversed?
For example, lets say deaths caused by smoking cigarettes were accepted as 100 a month and that was never really reported in the media, then new, superstrength cigarettes were introduced and all over the news were headlines of the death rate from these new cigarettes of 25 a month... we would need to know if 100 were still dying from the old ciggies or whether that number had gone down because of the 25 who died from the superstrengths
Agree with you on both counts. McDonnell is yesterday's man now, anyway.
It’s always a race against time to get sufficient quantities - it’s a slow process and one that is capacity constrained. Governments are also unwilling to pay for everyone to get it.
https://twitter.com/skynews/status/1235931938034155520?s=21
UK flu virus deaths per year range from about 4000 in a good year to about 23000 in a bad year. 2 deaths to date can't affect those stats yet.
In Italy there are about 17,000 deaths on average every year from the flu. 148 coronavirus deaths isn't enough to meaningfully affect flu totals yet.
The numbers for flu also vary a lot, in 1989 26000 died in the UK and 60% caught it. Most years its nothing like that so the range of "usual flu death rate" may be too wide for your question to be adequately answered.
What I am hoping for I guess is that the people who are dying of Coronavirus are those who would have died of flu anyway. Maybe false hope, but a possibilty I think.
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/839350/Surveillance_of_influenza_and_other_respiratory_viruses_in_the_UK_2018_to_2019-FINAL.pdf
Only pensioners get a take up rate over 70%.
With the USA, sick pay is really limited. At the lower ends of the job spectrum, people are going to struggle in no matter what.