This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
At this stage we should ignore the view of anyone who purports to tell us 'what has obviously happened' when their opining, by sheer coincidence no doubt, leads them to criticise a PM and government they have consistenly and vehemently opposed since well before this crisis appeared. The agenda is obvious and clear.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
Belatedly on-topic. GNU: I cannot see what is in it for Boris and Dom. However, it would provide a mechanism for the rest of the Conservative Party to ditch the pair of them, just as Chamberlain (maj 200) was forced out at Labour's insistence back in May 1940. Rishi's popularity means Boris is no longer, at least for the moment, indispensible for electoral reasons, even if there were an election due this side of 2024. Maybe I should have taken the 200/1 on the Chancellor when @Philip_Thompson put him up.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
In what context ?
You'll find it on catch-up.
No, if you’re going to use a random assertion as an argument, don’t expect me to do your work for you please.
(CNN) At least one person in Kentucky is infected after taking part at a "coronavirus party" with a group of young adults, Gov. Andy Beshear said Tuesday.
The partygoers intentionally got together "thinking they were invincible" and purposely defying state guidance to practice social distancing, Bashear said.
I wonder if that would invalidate their health insurance?
Not even an infection on the Dead Pool list yet... The glittering prize is still out there.
Weinstein was my pick. He's in a New York jail with it
You're in with a chance of the "double" as you would be not only the overall winner but the recipient of the Marcelo Bielsa Award for Sporting Excellence as your choice is not a nonagenarian found on Wikipedia.
(CNN) At least one person in Kentucky is infected after taking part at a "coronavirus party" with a group of young adults, Gov. Andy Beshear said Tuesday.
The partygoers intentionally got together "thinking they were invincible" and purposely defying state guidance to practice social distancing, Bashear said.
I wonder if that would invalidate their health insurance?
If caught at the party, there should be at least one other infected person there. If already ill, there might be.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
You only have to read the first page with the abstract of their conclusions to see that they are going much further that that.
Can you be more specific? I do not see anything much further. Indeed the first sentence of the "results" section reads:
"Our overall approach rests on the assumption that only a very small proportion of the population is at risk of hospitalisable illness." (emphasis mine)
--AS
What they appear to have done is derived from first principles a model of epidemiological spread, and then run the model with varying assumptions to see which best fit the data we have on numbers of reported infections and deaths in the UK and Italy.
Their conclusion is that the model with the earlier start, relatively widespread infection rates and low rates of need for hospitalisation fits the data the best.
This doesn't, of course, prove anything - although it is a piece of analysis to throw into the mix. It would also explain the apparent levelling off in China and Iran, for which I haven't yet seen other convincing explanations (apart from major data inadequacy or fraud)
That they are doing more than exploring possibilities is very clear from their paper, for example "Importantly, the results we present here suggest the ongoing epidemics in the UK and Italy started at least a month before the first reported death and have already led to the accumulation of significant levels of herd immunity in both countries."
On topic, parliament should be meeting online, it's not rocket science. We've had too much consensus already - in the last few weeks as the government was creating one of the worst failures in modern British political history the opposition was mostly coming from Rory Stewart and Jeremy Hunt. The next Labour leader should be less awful that the current one, so let's see the opposition oppose.
I have no idea where you are coming from on this but these decisions are made on the recommendations of the medical and scientific advisors to the government
There are too many outsiders across Europe and elsewhere criticising HMG when they should be dealing with their own issues on covid 19
You have a bunch of people dying, your economy is getting wrecked, and you are literally banned from leaving your house.
You cannot tell at this stage which countries have been better than others
The UK does not take to authoritarian edicts and they have to be persuaded
HMG have followed the advice all the way and if they had not they would be in real trouble. If that advice is wrong then so be it, but no politician could justify going against advice on something as big as this
And by the way, Varadkar only caught us up today though his measures are not as strict as HMG
And please tell me which country has avoided a 'bunch' as you call them of deaths and avoided economic armageddon
You are talking nonsense from a long way away
It’s not nonsense.
They were always following the science and the experts? But you just posted “ The UK does not take to authoritarian edicts and they have to be persuaded‘ an admittance it’s culture not solely science. And politics. And the lobby system. And ideology. And Cummings.
Certainly had the sense last week the people and media were rallying around the government. I sense that changing this week. The two week herd immunity experiment they started off with now coming home as the catastrophic balls up it was, before they gave in to WHO demands and fell inline with most the rest of the world
It should only have been considered for two minutes, Cummings got his way for two weeks because the idiot is much powerful in this government
The Sun - Piers Morgan??? That's raised the level of debate.
No? Then I will.
One part of the argument is has the government always been following the science. Well it’s not even an argument anymore, with the two week herd immunity experiment at the start they haven’t been have they.
The second part of the argument is should you follow the science. And this isn’t an argument that can be won, just like faith v reason can never be won. To some people “we can’t know everything, we should listen to the scientists to fill the gaps” is entirely reasonable just what they want to hear. To others, like me, it’s dangerous lazy bollox to blindly place your faith into the hands of science. Science cares not for the conscious awareness we need in our liberal democracy and political decision making.
Science has given us the standard of living we have to day by means of such things as electricity, agriculture, medicine.
The sort of faith you refer to has given us several million dead, suppression of women for centuries, othering of the non faithful and shameful actions against them. Persecution of those that won't submit to a judeo/christian/muslim beard in the skies rules even if they are harming no one.
I will take science thanks
As a scientist who is not religious, I ask you to please stop spouting this hatred, especially at a time like this.
As someone who was a scientist till ill health took me out of a lab sorry tough wasn't me turning round in the first place and claiming faith was more important than science
I think he was arguing that you can't just "place your faith in science" but there's a role for political judgement. e.g. There are lots of smart epidemiologists modelling this - they may have different views and - certainly - when it comes to health vs economic trade offs that's a political call.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
Hoping that you're going to come down like a ton of bricks on those indulging in endless speculation on why Germany is doing relatively well on the virus, often based on the proposition that they're somehow fiddling the stats. And give the 'it wuz the Sino leather workers of Tuscany wotz to blame' merchants a boot up the hoop while you're at it.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
No the original Facebook post was about the viral load, it was about reducing the amount of the virus you acquire - and you CAN acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from catching the load from multiple people before your immune system kicks in*, or from the same person repeatedly, which is part of the reason why the NHS is recommending strong precautions against crowds and against sharing a towel etc with someone who is infected.
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
That doesn't really sit happily with the findings, in particular the proportion of those medical staff infected who develop serious symptoms. I believe recent figures were that medical staff account for 8% of Italian infections but 15% of Italian deaths.
Some of this might be down to timing, of course, but I have also seen articles talking about the risks of multiple infection incidences and the amount of virus received.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
Hoping that you're going to come down like a ton of bricks on those indulging in endless speculation on why Germany is doing relatively well on the virus, often based on the proposition that they're somehow fiddling the stats. And give the 'it wuz the Sino leather workers of Tuscany wotz to blame' merchants a boot up the hoop while you're at it.
Rather early in the writing of "The History of Covid-19" to be so smug about your conclusions....
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
Well, we do now. But we weren't mainstream for a critical 10-14 days during which time that nonsense about herd immunity was presented as actual science and believed, indeed celebrated, by Cummings.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
Hoping that you're going to come down like a ton of bricks on those indulging in endless speculation on why Germany is doing relatively well on the virus, often based on the proposition that they're somehow fiddling the stats. And give the 'it wuz the Sino leather workers of Tuscany wotz to blame' merchants a boot up the hoop while you're at it.
Sounds like stifling something you don't agree with.
There's more than anecdotal evidence that Germany are excluding from their mortality rates anyone who would have died of other causes in the imminent future. I don't entirely blame them but it certainly helps explain the discrepancy.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
The remark, I believe, was that you can't compare case numbers between countries on a like for like basis. That doesn't mean you can't learn from other countries and observe trends etc.
You seem to want to shut down discussion of the best ways of dealing with this virus.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
No the original Facebook post was about the viral load, it was about reducing the amount of the virus you acquire - and you CAN acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from catching the load from multiple people before your immune system kicks in*, or from the same person repeatedly, which is part of the reason why the NHS is recommending strong precautions against crowds and against sharing a towel etc with someone who is infected.
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
The original Facebook post repeated used the phrase "VIRAL LOAD" (in capitals). It was wrong. The NHS advice is driven by probability of infection - repeated encounters with the virus increase the chance of catching the bug.
FWIW, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. But I have spent 25 years working with, advising and sitting on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I have some familiarity with the basics.
You only have to read the first page with the abstract of their conclusions to see that they are going much further that that.
Can you be more specific? I do not see anything much further. Indeed the first sentence of the "results" section reads:
"Our overall approach rests on the assumption that only a very small proportion of the population is at risk of hospitalisable illness." (emphasis mine)
--AS
What they appear to have done is derived from first principles a model of epidemiological spread, and then run the model with varying assumptions to see which best fit the data we have on numbers of reported infections and deaths in the UK and Italy.
Their conclusion is that the model with the earlier start, relatively widespread infection rates and low rates of need for hospitalisation fits the data the best.
This doesn't, of course, prove anything - although it is a piece of analysis to throw into the mix. It would also explain the apparent levelling off in China and Iran, for which I haven't yet seen other convincing explanations (apart from major data inadequacy or fraud)
That they are doing more than exploring possibilities is very clear from their paper, for example "Importantly, the results we present here suggest the ongoing epidemics in the UK and Italy started at least a month before the first reported death and have already led to the accumulation of significant levels of herd immunity in both countries."
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
At this stage we should ignore the view of anyone who purports to tell us 'what has obviously happened' when their opining, by sheer coincidence no doubt, leads them to criticise a PM and government they have consistenly and vehemently opposed since well before this crisis appeared. The agenda is obvious and clear.
And so someone who opposes Johnson on principle but acknowledges that he's doing not too badly on this and should not have a GNU?
You're rather myopic at times, Felix (as well as damned rude but the latter I'm prepared to forgive).
I suspect you work close to the Gov't ... am I right?
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
Hoping that you're going to come down like a ton of bricks on those indulging in endless speculation on why Germany is doing relatively well on the virus, often based on the proposition that they're somehow fiddling the stats. And give the 'it wuz the Sino leather workers of Tuscany wotz to blame' merchants a boot up the hoop while you're at it.
Sounds like stifling something you don't agree with.
There's more than anecdotal evidence that Germany are excluding from their mortality rates anyone who would have died of other causes in the imminent future. I don't entirely blame them but it certainly helps explain the discrepancy.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
You seem to want to shut down discussion of the best ways of dealing with this virus.
Indeed. A little sinister. And then he gets vitriolic if you disagree, so watch out.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
No the original Facebook post was about the viral load, it was about reducing the amount of the virus you acquire - and you CAN acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from catching the load from multiple people before your immune system kicks in*, or from the same person repeatedly, which is part of the reason why the NHS is recommending strong precautions against crowds and against sharing a towel etc with someone who is infected.
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
The original Facebook post repeated used the phrase "VIRAL LOAD" (in capitals). It was wrong. The NHS advice is driven by probability of infection - repeated encounters with the virus increase the chance of catching the bug.
FWIW, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. But I have spent 25 years working with, advising and sitting on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I have some familiarity with the basics.
Yes because it was talking about viral load. And I've heard multiple NHS Doctors on the TV and Radio talking about the risk of getting a worse outcome from catching more of the virus.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
That doesn't really sit happily with the findings, in particular the proportion of those medical staff infected who develop serious symptoms. I believe recent figures were that medical staff account for 8% of Italian infections but 15% of Italian deaths.
Some of this might be down to timing, of course, but I have also seen articles talking about the risks of multiple infection incidences and the amount of virus received.
I would be interested in the source saying that 15% of Italian deaths are Health Care Workers (not medical staff surely?). That would require a very high age for Italian HCW, and also around a thousand dead.
Re. the viral load discussion, I think we're conflating two different things. As with HIV, which is also a virus, you're more likely to catch it if the viral load of the host is high. This is why PrEP is so effective: it reduces the viral load in the host to such a negligible level that it's almost impossible for someone else to acquire it from them.
What Charles is pointing out (I think) is that if you do acquire the virus, you acquire the virus. You either get it or you don't. HIV is similar except for one thing. With HIV once your body sero-converts that's it, you've got it for life. (For the smart felix's yes yes I know about 3 cases who have apparently shaken it out entirely). There's one exception with HIV. Sero-conversion means there's a narrow window of 72 hours where if you take PEP (Post-exposure Prophylaxis) which are anti retro-virals you have a very good chance of kicking out the virus from your system. Around 98% if you take it soon after exposure i.e. within 24 hours.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
Would rather hope for a more substantial silver lining, but yes Trump and Boris whilst worryingly close over Brexit have diverged over Coronavirus. Even if you still get the impression that if left alone, Boris’ ideological instincts make his actions sometimes a little hesitant.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
Well, we do now. But we weren't mainstream for a critical 10-14 days during which time that nonsense about herd immunity was presented as actual science and believed, indeed celebrated, by Cummings.
We got there in the end.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
Hoping that you're going to come down like a ton of bricks on those indulging in endless speculation on why Germany is doing relatively well on the virus, often based on the proposition that they're somehow fiddling the stats. And give the 'it wuz the Sino leather workers of Tuscany wotz to blame' merchants a boot up the hoop while you're at it.
Sounds like stifling something you don't agree with.
There's more than anecdotal evidence that Germany are excluding from their mortality rates anyone who would have died of other causes in the imminent future. I don't entirely blame them but it certainly helps explain the discrepancy.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
No the original Facebook post was about the viral load, it was about reducing the amount of the virus you acquire - and you CAN acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from catching the load from multiple people before your immune system kicks in*, or from the same person repeatedly, which is part of the reason why the NHS is recommending strong precautions against crowds and against sharing a towel etc with someone who is infected.
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
The original Facebook post repeated used the phrase "VIRAL LOAD" (in capitals). It was wrong. The NHS advice is driven by probability of infection - repeated encounters with the virus increase the chance of catching the bug.
FWIW, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. But I have spent 25 years working with, advising and sitting on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I have some familiarity with the basics.
Yes because it was talking about viral load. And I've heard multiple NHS Doctors on the TV and Radio talking about the risk of getting a worse outcome from catching more of the virus.
I think there is misunderstanding between the technical definition of “Viral load” (how much virus you have in your blood - once you’ve had one it will increase - at rate unknown) and a popular understanding of “”Viral load” as “how much virus you are exposed to” - clearly, the more, the higher the chance of infection. Hence the government advice.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
I think the bigger bonus is that it is going to be far harder to convince anyone in the UK that it is possible to work with someone as unstable and narcissistic as Trump. Good luck with chlorinated chicken after this! A huge downside is that the US is only going to become more isolationist and divided at home. It is hard to see things ending well over there.
If there was any talent in the opposition parties then maybe. But they are full of complete numpties.
... whereas Dorries, Raab, Williamson and Patel are intellectual giants?
There needs to be some version of the the Overton Window that refers to the dumbness of governing pols lowering general expectations of all politicians.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
No the original Facebook post was about the viral load, it was about reducing the amount of the virus you acquire - and you CAN acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from catching the load from multiple people before your immune system kicks in*, or from the same person repeatedly, which is part of the reason why the NHS is recommending strong precautions against crowds and against sharing a towel etc with someone who is infected.
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
The original Facebook post repeated used the phrase "VIRAL LOAD" (in capitals). It was wrong. The NHS advice is driven by probability of infection - repeated encounters with the virus increase the chance of catching the bug.
FWIW, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. But I have spent 25 years working with, advising and sitting on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I have some familiarity with the basics.
Yes because it was talking about viral load. And I've heard multiple NHS Doctors on the TV and Radio talking about the risk of getting a worse outcome from catching more of the virus.
And it was wrong.
It said that if you are in a room with a bunch of infected people you are more likely to catch the disease BECAUSE OF THE VIRAL LOAD!! (capitals added in mockery of the original post)
It was wrong. You are more likely to catch the disease because of the increased exposure to viral particles shed by carriers.
But believe a random facebook post if you want. I don't give a flying fuck right now.
I cleared out our shed at the weekend. Am I at greater risk? Viral shedding is an unexpected concern. I will stick to be garage in future.
I think it's only an issue if you cleared the virus out of your shed....
Thanks. There was indeed a very suspicious looking bucket with some green stuff in it. I poured it behind the shed, but was not wearing PPE at the time.
A national government is unlikely to be formed due to significant differences between the parties over some issues. One example is over the number of trains on the London Underground. I think there should be more trains as key workers do need to get to work. The number of trains seems to have been reduced to put pressure on the government, not just to save money. I am disappointed in the Mayor of London as I had previously been supporting him over Brexit.
Scientists seem to think that there is a good chance of developing a vaccine. Coronaviruses are less prone to mutation than flu viruses, and hopefully a suitable vaccine has now been developed and is in the testing stage. Huge quantities of it will then need to be manufactured so that the UK population can be vaccinated. This could mean that the Brexit transition period has to be extended so that the UK can get quick access to vaccines manufactured in the EU.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
All the models are just that, models - we need testing of the symptomatic, asymptomatic and recovered to validate any of them. As we're currently firefighting that's not possible right now. We'll get there but till then patience and caution must be correct
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
Would rather hope for a more substantial silver lining, but yes Trump and Boris whilst worryingly close over Brexit have diverged over Coronavirus. Even if you still get the impression that if left alone, Boris’ ideological instincts make his actions sometimes a little hesitant.
To be fair to Boris, I think anyone would be a little hesitant given the enormity of the decisions he is making.
I cleared out our shed at the weekend. Am I at greater risk? Viral shedding is an unexpected concern. I will stick to be garage in future.
I think it's only an issue if you cleared the virus out of your shed....
Thanks. There was indeed a very suspicious looking bucket with some green stuff in it. I poured it behind the shed, but was not wearing PPE at the time.
Leave it a couple of weeks before you invite it in for a drink.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
No but if the likes of Eadric and I can warn people in January why did it take until March for our Gov't to get its act together? Jeremy Hunt knew they were talking bollocks and, gently, said so.
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
No the original Facebook post was about the viral load, it was about reducing the amount of the virus you acquire - and you CAN acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from catching the load from multiple people before your immune system kicks in*, or from the same person repeatedly, which is part of the reason why the NHS is recommending strong precautions against crowds and against sharing a towel etc with someone who is infected.
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
The original Facebook post repeated used the phrase "VIRAL LOAD" (in capitals). It was wrong. The NHS advice is driven by probability of infection - repeated encounters with the virus increase the chance of catching the bug.
FWIW, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. But I have spent 25 years working with, advising and sitting on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I have some familiarity with the basics.
Yes because it was talking about viral load. And I've heard multiple NHS Doctors on the TV and Radio talking about the risk of getting a worse outcome from catching more of the virus.
And it was wrong.
It said that if you are in a room with a bunch of infected people you are more likely to catch the disease BECAUSE OF THE VIRAL LOAD!! (capitals added in mockery of the original post)
It was wrong. You are more likely to catch the disease because of the increased exposure to viral particles shed by carriers.
But believe a random facebook post if you want. I don't give a flying fuck right now.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
Would rather hope for a more substantial silver lining, but yes Trump and Boris whilst worryingly close over Brexit have diverged over Coronavirus. Even if you still get the impression that if left alone, Boris’ ideological instincts make his actions sometimes a little hesitant.
To be fair to Boris, I think anyone would be a little hesitant given the enormity of the decisions he is making.
True, but you get the impression that it’s all the more painful because it goes against some of his values. He seems to get there in the end, but it takes a bit of extra time, which at the moment isn’t necessarily a good thing.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
No but if the likes of Eadric and I can warn people in January why did it take until March for our Gov't to get its act together? Jeremy Hunt knew they were talking bollocks and, gently, said so.
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
Eadric wasn't warning people in January. He wasn't even here in January.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
Would rather hope for a more substantial silver lining, but yes Trump and Boris whilst worryingly close over Brexit have diverged over Coronavirus. Even if you still get the impression that if left alone, Boris’ ideological instincts make his actions sometimes a little hesitant.
To be fair to Boris, I think anyone would be a little hesitant given the enormity of the decisions he is making.
True, but you get the impression that it’s all the more painful because it goes against some of his values. He seems to get there in the end, but it takes a bit of extra time, which at the moment isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Spot on.
I thought he was good in his address to the nation. Should have made it 3 or 4 weeks earlier but at least he did it and he was statesmanlike.
No way should he bring Labour or LibDems on board. What he SHOULD do is give Dominic Cummings the boot, once and for all. Boris can do this if he has the courage of his convictions.
Given nobody can go out, I suppose it makes sense to stick a tag on anyone with less than three months left on their sentence and stay home, like the rest of us.
To be fair to Boris, I think anyone would be a little hesitant given the enormity of the decisions he is making.
True, but you get the impression that it’s all the more painful because it goes against some of his values. He seems to get there in the end, but it takes a bit of extra time, which at the moment isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Good!
When it comes to a government putting in authoritarian restritions I'd far rather a PM who is instinctively against that than one who leaps at the opportunity for a power grab.
I'm glad Theresa May isn't PM now. Not only was she incompetent but she would have ceased authoritarian powers gladly.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
I think the bigger bonus is that it is going to be far harder to convince anyone in the UK that it is possible to work with someone as unstable and narcissistic as Trump. Good luck with chlorinated chicken after this! A huge downside is that the US is only going to become more isolationist and divided at home. It is hard to see things ending well over there.
Trumps ability to troll the English middle classes makes his re election worthwhile
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
Hoping that you're going to come down like a ton of bricks on those indulging in endless speculation on why Germany is doing relatively well on the virus, often based on the proposition that they're somehow fiddling the stats. And give the 'it wuz the Sino leather workers of Tuscany wotz to blame' merchants a boot up the hoop while you're at it.
Sounds like stifling something you don't agree with.
There's more than anecdotal evidence that Germany are excluding from their mortality rates anyone who would have died of other causes in the imminent future. I don't entirely blame them but it certainly helps explain the discrepancy.
Looking at the rising number of German deaths (now 159, from 32,991 cases). It seems more likely that the Germans are simply better at testing, and picking up patients earlier in the course of the disease. The Scandinavians too, perhaps. Diagnose it 3 or 4 days earlier, and the fatality rate appears lower.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
No the original Facebook post was about the viral load, it was about reducing the amount of the virus you acquire - and you CAN acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from catching the load from multiple people before your immune system kicks in*, or from the same person repeatedly, which is part of the reason why the NHS is recommending strong precautions against crowds and against sharing a towel etc with someone who is infected.
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
The original Facebook post repeated used the phrase "VIRAL LOAD" (in capitals). It was wrong. The NHS advice is driven by probability of infection - repeated encounters with the virus increase the chance of catching the bug.
FWIW, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. But I have spent 25 years working with, advising and sitting on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I have some familiarity with the basics.
Yes because it was talking about viral load. And I've heard multiple NHS Doctors on the TV and Radio talking about the risk of getting a worse outcome from catching more of the virus.
I think there is misunderstanding between the technical definition of “Viral load” (how much virus you have in your blood - once you’ve had one it will increase - at rate unknown) and a popular understanding of “”Viral load” as “how much virus you are exposed to” - clearly, the more, the higher the chance of infection. Hence the government advice.
Indeed but there is also mounting evidence that higher exposure can cause more viral load which can cause worse symptoms and many doctors are warning about this.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
I think the bigger bonus is that it is going to be far harder to convince anyone in the UK that it is possible to work with someone as unstable and narcissistic as Trump. Good luck with chlorinated chicken after this! A huge downside is that the US is only going to become more isolationist and divided at home. It is hard to see things ending well over there.
Trumps ability to troll the English middle classes makes his re election worthwhile
To be fair to Boris, I think anyone would be a little hesitant given the enormity of the decisions he is making.
True, but you get the impression that it’s all the more painful because it goes against some of his values. He seems to get there in the end, but it takes a bit of extra time, which at the moment isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Good!
When it comes to a government putting in authoritarian restritions I'd far rather a PM who is instinctively against that than one who leaps at the opportunity for a power grab.
I'm glad Theresa May isn't PM now. Not only was she incompetent but she would have ceased authoritarian powers gladly.
The outcome is exactly the same just two days later, not sure what the benefits are. But hey each to their own.
UK - I can't see why a GNU is needed. However as Parliament is being suspended indefinitely there really does need to be some kind of all party star chamber formed (virtually). The government would be unwise to just rule by decree.
USA - I hope that Trump is detaching just enough of his supporters to make his re-election less inevitable than it was. A large part of the question remains who the brains trust at the DNC select. They don't want Sanders and seemed ready to go all in behind Biden despite his obviously not being suitable. Are they going to try and complete the primaries? Suspend? Would Coronavirus be a great excuse to call the whole thing off, go to the brokered convention (virtually) that looked certain a few weeks back and select Cuomo?
You want to beat Trump in a country still reeling from the impact of CV19? Put up Andrew Cuomo - who acted - vs Donald Trump - who play acted.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
In what context ?
You'll find it on catch-up.
No, if you’re going to use a random assertion as an argument, don’t expect me to do your work for you please.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
Would rather hope for a more substantial silver lining, but yes Trump and Boris whilst worryingly close over Brexit have diverged over Coronavirus. Even if you still get the impression that if left alone, Boris’ ideological instincts make his actions sometimes a little hesitant.
To be fair to Boris, I think anyone would be a little hesitant given the enormity of the decisions he is making.
True, but you get the impression that it’s all the more painful because it goes against some of his values. He seems to get there in the end, but it takes a bit of extra time, which at the moment isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Johnson is merely being swept along by events, rather than showing any real leadership. A cork in a river.
He is better than Trump, in that Trump is actively undermining attempts to control the disease.
All leaders across the world are increasing approval ratings, as a rally round effect, it really shows nothing in terms of how they actually are functioning.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
Would rather hope for a more substantial silver lining, but yes Trump and Boris whilst worryingly close over Brexit have diverged over Coronavirus. Even if you still get the impression that if left alone, Boris’ ideological instincts make his actions sometimes a little hesitant.
To be fair to Boris, I think anyone would be a little hesitant given the enormity of the decisions he is making.
True, but you get the impression that it’s all the more painful because it goes against some of his values. He seems to get there in the end, but it takes a bit of extra time, which at the moment isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Spot on.
I thought he was good in his address to the nation. Should have made it 3 or 4 weeks earlier but at least he did it and he was statesmanlike.
No way should he bring Labour or LibDems on board. What he SHOULD do is give Dominic Cummings the boot, once and for all. Boris can do this if he has the courage of his convictions.
Tbh I was wondering if Dominic Cummings was vindicated in at least some of his long-standing criticisms, since our response has at times seemed a bit half-cocked: here's an announcement; come back for the details in a day or two. People have been warning of pandemics for some time, even if not *this* pandemic, yet Whitehall (and thus the nation) seems ill-prepared. Where are our supercomputers for the modellers and drug designers? Why the shortages of everything from icu beds to toilet rolls?
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
No but if the likes of Eadric and I can warn people in January why did it take until March for our Gov't to get its act together? Jeremy Hunt knew they were talking bollocks and, gently, said so.
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
Eadric wasn't warning people in January. He wasn't even here in January.
Eadric has never been away
Point taken. Well some of us were alarmed in January at the news emerging. I told my brother not to travel through Hong Kong, I bought my face mask and sanitisers and advised all my friends to get out of the stock market.
Re. the latter, I think the current rise is a blip. The hard reality of this for the world economy will take many months to unravel. I continue to think the markets will not bottom out before November at the earliest.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
No but if the likes of Eadric and I can warn people in January why did it take until March for our Gov't to get its act together? Jeremy Hunt knew they were talking bollocks and, gently, said so.
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
Eadric wasn't warning people in January. He wasn't even here in January.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
No but if the likes of Eadric and I can warn people in January why did it take until March for our Gov't to get its act together? Jeremy Hunt knew they were talking bollocks and, gently, said so.
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
Eadric wasn't warning people in January. He wasn't even here in January.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
No but if the likes of Eadric and I can warn people in January why did it take until March for our Gov't to get its act together? Jeremy Hunt knew they were talking bollocks and, gently, said so.
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
Eadric wasn't warning people in January. He wasn't even here in January.
Johnson is merely being swept along by events, rather than showing any real leadership. A cork in a river.
Clearly, the first reaction to Johnson placing Britain in a form of lockdown on Monday night is: thank heavens he finally did it. It is something that many in the NHS and beyond have been demanding, for a considerable time now. Better late than never, is the message from a huge number of voices in that quarter.
Still, once the giddy welcome of what should long have been the basics – clarity and decisive action – has subsided, we probably have to put Johnson’s address to the nation into perspective. So try and imagine if, for an entire week before his “we shall fight on the beaches” speech, Winston Churchill had been giving rambling press conferences in which he said stuff like: “I want people to be able to visit our great beaches! I want to keep our great beaches open! I have to tell you that, should my beach waffle prove demonstrably unclear to millions, then I may be forced to bring forward measures to lay the ground for some kind of beach-fight….”
As it goes, the classic Churchill speech, made live in the House of Commons, was immediately recognised by political friends, bitter rivals and most of the great diarist chroniclers of the age as a sensational piece of oratory and a true spine-tingler. Johnson’s Monday night pre-record was met largely with relief. Thankfully, his famous smirk had twitched out only one-and-a-half times, reminding us that it isn’t only a tell of his fundamental unseriousness (though it is often that). Sometimes, it is the psychological glitch that occurs when he is being tested far beyond his abilities.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
You do get the impression that there are things to learn from what happened in Asia. But good grief, we are lucky not to have Trump in charge.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
I think I've discovered the silver lining in all this!
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
I think the bigger bonus is that it is going to be far harder to convince anyone in the UK that it is possible to work with someone as unstable and narcissistic as Trump. Good luck with chlorinated chicken after this! A huge downside is that the US is only going to become more isolationist and divided at home. It is hard to see things ending well over there.
Trumps ability to troll the English middle classes makes his re election worthwhile
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
You seem to want to shut down discussion of the best ways of dealing with this virus.
Indeed. A little sinister. And then he gets vitriolic if you disagree, so watch out.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
No the original Facebook post was about the viral load, it was about reducing the amount of the virus you acquire - and you CAN acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from catching the load from multiple people before your immune system kicks in*, or from the same person repeatedly, which is part of the reason why the NHS is recommending strong precautions against crowds and against sharing a towel etc with someone who is infected.
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
The original Facebook post repeated used the phrase "VIRAL LOAD" (in capitals). It was wrong. The NHS advice is driven by probability of infection - repeated encounters with the virus increase the chance of catching the bug.
FWIW, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. But I have spent 25 years working with, advising and sitting on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I have some familiarity with the basics.
Yes because it was talking about viral load. And I've heard multiple NHS Doctors on the TV and Radio talking about the risk of getting a worse outcome from catching more of the virus.
I think there is misunderstanding between the technical definition of “Viral load” (how much virus you have in your blood - once you’ve had one it will increase - at rate unknown) and a popular understanding of “”Viral load” as “how much virus you are exposed to” - clearly, the more, the higher the chance of infection. Hence the government advice.
Indeed but there is also mounting evidence that higher exposure can cause more viral load which can cause worse symptoms and many doctors are warning about this.
I can't understand the science of that comment.
I totally get it that the higher the viral load in the host, the more likely it is that you will catch it. This is why confined spaces and hospitals make it much more likely you will acquire it.
But I can't quite understand the science behind the idea that a higher viral load in the host makes your own acquired virus more severe.
I'm not saying it's wrong. I just don't understand the science of that.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
Great Britain is the 8th largest island in the world, excluding the continental landmasses. What is your threshold for being merely a small island, much less a medium or large one?
Perhaps it's population on said island? The UK population is roughly in the 90th percentile of population by country.
Or is it tiny little because it's home to only the 5th largest (pre covid) economy, rather than the 4th or 3rd?
I'm sure there are plenty of chaps out there endowed with a significantly above average 6-inches who still feel ashamed to drop the towel at the gym. Such is life.
As for the UK response to cv-19, it's a little early to be micro analysing the battle tactics before the enemy's heaviest cannons are yet to even fire.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
And only yesterday the experts were warning of the dangers of comparing the experiences of different countries. But then maybe you don't watch the press conferences.
You seem to want to shut down discussion of the best ways of dealing with this virus.
Indeed. A little sinister. And then he gets vitriolic if you disagree, so watch out.
OMG - my stalker is back.
Nah. You flatter yourself. You are one of the least interesting people on here. Having said that, it's not surprising. There are many brilliant contributors to pb.com
(CNN) At least one person in Kentucky is infected after taking part at a "coronavirus party" with a group of young adults, Gov. Andy Beshear said Tuesday.
The partygoers intentionally got together "thinking they were invincible" and purposely defying state guidance to practice social distancing, Bashear said.
I wonder if that would invalidate their health insurance?
It is actions like these that truly expand the mind on the possibilities of the human condition.
This is the kind of action I'm talking about, but with Singapore-style compulsion, rather than Japan/SK-style recommendation. They're closing bars, shutting down large gatherings, and requiring restaurants to reduce density. You stop the 10% of stuff that gives you maybe 90% of the effect.
If you do things like this before cases get out of hand, that seems to be effective at avoiding the need to shut everything down. In Europe and the US, many countries including Britain did too little too late, and that's why you're no longer allowed to leave your house.
Most likely this is the kind of thing Britain will ultimately be doing when it emerges from the lockdown.
This site is overloaded with fucking experts.
Or alternatively, people with a modicum of common sense who have watched what seems to have worked elsewhere, and learned.
So a bit of google here and there supersedes the wotk of government scientists who have clearly not bothered to look at any data and should bow down to EiT.
As he has pointed out before, many of the Asian nations had pandemic preparation plans based on the experience of SARS, and have managed to keep the numbers down (or in the case of Korea get on top of them) in a way we haven’t. Ours was based on flu.
I don’t think I’ve seen any of our ‘government scientists’ argue that Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea have handled things badly.
Should we simply ignore what has obviously happened ?
The UK government response to the crisis has been mainstream European. It has been very different to the way things have been handled in Asia and the US. That, in and of itself, is very notable. The other thing that is noteworthy is how all the arguments are happening around the edges. Everyone accepts the general direction of travel.
I agree with this. Although the Johnson government's approach has been poor in important ways - not using the time from the Hubei outbreak effectively to prepare, a confused policy, and unfocused messaging - other European countries haven't been much better in the round.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
That doesn't really sit happily with the findings, in particular the proportion of those medical staff infected who develop serious symptoms. I believe recent figures were that medical staff account for 8% of Italian infections but 15% of Italian deaths.
Some of this might be down to timing, of course, but I have also seen articles talking about the risks of multiple infection incidences and the amount of virus received.
I would be interested in the source saying that 15% of Italian deaths are Health Care Workers (not medical staff surely?). That would require a very high age for Italian HCW, and also around a thousand dead.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
No but if the likes of Eadric and I can warn people in January why did it take until March for our Gov't to get its act together? Jeremy Hunt knew they were talking bollocks and, gently, said so.
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
Jesus christ, why is it that everything gets blamed on imperial nostalgia?
It exists, but it's far far less prevalent than people act like it is, it's not a catch all explanation for every problem this country faces.
Why the shortages of everything from icu beds to toilet rolls?
On Beds the shortage is government policy. Add huge costs to the NHS with more layers of managerial bullshut (CCGs et al) whilst pulling back on cash available for front line services and declaring war on a significant chunk of your workforce by making morons angry with foreigners.
As for toilet rolls there is't a shortage. A lot of people have a lot of toilet rolls! And a lot of warehouses are sat on a lot of toilet rolls - the shortage is a lack toilet rolls in the right packs and a lack of trucks to shift them.
The Foodservice sector in a desperate attempt to not implode at the overnight 70% reduction in customers is now desperately offering hotel catering and industrial stocks of bog rolls beans and everything else direct to consumers. Go find your nearest one and ring them - they'll sell you whatever you need.
To be fair to Boris, I think anyone would be a little hesitant given the enormity of the decisions he is making.
True, but you get the impression that it’s all the more painful because it goes against some of his values. He seems to get there in the end, but it takes a bit of extra time, which at the moment isn’t necessarily a good thing.
Good!
When it comes to a government putting in authoritarian restritions I'd far rather a PM who is instinctively against that than one who leaps at the opportunity for a power grab.
I'm glad Theresa May isn't PM now. Not only was she incompetent but she would have ceased authoritarian powers gladly.
I know I shouldn’t pick up on typos (my classes know I make enough of my own), but seized and ceased have rather different, if not opposite, meanings. I assume you meant the former.
Edit: Latter! Told you I make plenty of typos myself.
We were mainstream in that we ignored the warnings coming from elsewhere because nothing much had actually happened in the UK (see also Italy, Spain, France, etc), but did then act when it was clear what was going to happen (though more is still needed (see arguing around the edge)).
Those who say we should have closed down the economy sooner need to tell us what they would have done for example when SARS broke out. Should we have closed down all air traffic when we had 4 cases?
No but if the likes of Eadric and I can warn people in January why did it take until March for our Gov't to get its act together? Jeremy Hunt knew they were talking bollocks and, gently, said so.
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
Eadric wasn't warning people in January. He wasn't even here in January.
Eadric must be a mutation. Of a less virulent strain ?
Mr. Observer, what percentage of Tube trains have been cancelled, though?
Mr. kle4, blaming imperial nostalgia is comforting for those so inclined. You can paint your opponents as dinosaurs with a side dish of underlying racism and a failure to understand the modern world. And then you don't have to bother actually engaging with their actual views.
You only have to read the first page with the abstract of their conclusions to see that they are going much further that that.
Can you be more specific? I do not see anything much further. Indeed the first sentence of the "results" section reads:
"Our overall approach rests on the assumption that only a very small proportion of the population is at risk of hospitalisable illness." (emphasis mine)
--AS
What they appear to have done is derived from first principles a model of epidemiological spread, and then run the model with varying assumptions to see which best fit the data we have on numbers of reported infections and deaths in the UK and Italy.
Their conclusion is that the model with the earlier start, relatively widespread infection rates and low rates of need for hospitalisation fits the data the best.
This doesn't, of course, prove anything - although it is a piece of analysis to throw into the mix. It would also explain the apparent levelling off in China and Iran, for which I haven't yet seen other convincing explanations (apart from major data inadequacy or fraud)
That they are doing more than exploring possibilities is very clear from their paper, for example "Importantly, the results we present here suggest the ongoing epidemics in the UK and Italy started at least a month before the first reported death and have already led to the accumulation of significant levels of herd immunity in both countries."
I'm sorry, but this is incorrect. They do not assess which of their assumptions fit the data best. There is simply no such comparison, unless we are reading different papers. They *do* find posteriors for the other parameters, on the assumption of p, but they do not assess different p for fit with the data. Indeed, the scenarios of p=0.001 and p=0.01 both fit the observed death curve about the same, as can be seen from figures 1-3. It's hard to tell from the overlaid plot, but p=0.1 also seems about the same fit in fig 3.
At the most, I could infer some sort of assessment of the different p from the timing: their posteriors for the time of introduction, comparing with the first confirmed case. However, this is critically dependent on the incubation period and time to death, and the sensitivity to these assumptions is not tested. (It also doesn't take into account the quarantine and contact tracing that occurred in the early phase.) The paper doesn't make scientific claims about this, but I would guess that this is the basis of the sentence you quote from the introduction. However, the science (in the paper) doesn't back up that conclusion.
For what it's worth, I don't think this paper will survive peer review in its present form. I fervently hope it is correct that only p=0.001 of cases are severe (with about 1/6 of those leading to death), but as others have pointed out that is incompatible with other pieces of data. It's the fog of war right now, but I don't find this paper to be helpful speculation, certainly not when added to the interview given to the FT.
I do think a national government will be useful when things start fraying, I'm talking of two scenarios
1) The lockdown is extended, far too many people think it will only last 3 weeks or something close to 12 weeks.
2) We really do flatten the curve so people get complacent and want to leave the lockdown quicker than the experts want, or if we need a second lockdown later on this year.
Which is obviously going to happen. The lockdown will end, we'll all go out and party like it's the f*cking millennium, and everyone will catch it. I can't wait to be honest.
If you believe the Oxford report today 50% of the population already has it anyway in some form
I don't believe the 50% have it, and 90% are symptomless, because:
1. We're still getting 70% negatives from the CV-19 tests. Are we really expected to believe that the people being tested are less likely to have the virus than the general population?
2. When one member of a family gets it, one would expect the other members - in most cases - to be symptom-free. If a man has sympotmatic CV-19, then there'd only be a 10% chance that his wife had symptoms. Yet, (anectode alert) I see more like 50%.
Now, if you told me that 15% of London had had CV-19, and that a further 25% of people were genetically predisposed not to get it (genes, blood type, etc.), that would seem very plausible to me.
But the test doesn’t show whether you have had it, merely whether you have it now. As below, Oxford assumes many of us have recovered.
The second point would be dealt with via viral load - if you are living with a carrier you are more likely to be infected over and over, unless you are suitably careful, in a similar way to people on the cruise ship and nurses in the hospitals.
I thought @Charles demolished this 'viral load' theory on here yesterday.
He expressed a view. He didn't demolish it. There were several contrary views.
The original Facebook post confused viral load with viral shedding.
That's a big pointer that it was all a load of bollocks.
No you misunderstood. The point was about the load acquired by the newly infected patient. Shedding is what those who are contagious do.
That's what the discussion developed into, but not the original facebook post.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
No the original Facebook post was about the viral load, it was about reducing the amount of the virus you acquire - and you CAN acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from catching the load from multiple people before your immune system kicks in*, or from the same person repeatedly, which is part of the reason why the NHS is recommending strong precautions against crowds and against sharing a towel etc with someone who is infected.
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
The original Facebook post repeated used the phrase "VIRAL LOAD" (in capitals). It was wrong. The NHS advice is driven by probability of infection - repeated encounters with the virus increase the chance of catching the bug.
FWIW, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. But I have spent 25 years working with, advising and sitting on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I have some familiarity with the basics.
Yes because it was talking about viral load. And I've heard multiple NHS Doctors on the TV and Radio talking about the risk of getting a worse outcome from catching more of the virus.
I think there is misunderstanding between the technical definition of “Viral load” (how much virus you have in your blood - once you’ve had one it will increase - at rate unknown) and a popular understanding of “”Viral load” as “how much virus you are exposed to” - clearly, the more, the higher the chance of infection. Hence the government advice.
Indeed but there is also mounting evidence that higher exposure can cause more viral load which can cause worse symptoms and many doctors are warning about this.
I can't understand the science of that comment.
I totally get it that the higher the viral load in the host, the more likely it is that you will catch it. This is why confined spaces and hospitals make it much more likely you will acquire it.
But I can't quite understand the science behind the idea that a higher viral load in the host makes your own acquired virus more severe.
I'm not saying it's wrong. I just don't understand the science of that.
Actually the logic is that you will catch it either way if you catch it (more exposure means more likely to catch it) but that by catching only a small amount of the virus your immune it starts multiplying but from a low base and your immune system has a better chance of fighting it.
If you get much more of it at the start you end up with the virus multiplying (from a higher base) within your body faster than your own body can fight it leading to it overwhelming your system and becoming critical.
Consider it the same logic as why we require social distancing but within your own cells rather than within the country. The country can cope with a few cases not multiplying fast, it can't cope with exponential cases from a high base. Your body can fight off a small viral load - get a large viral load exponentially growing within you and your body suffers for it.
Comments
(insert gag about big breaths here)
https://metro.co.uk/2020/03/23/man-licks-toiletries-supermarket-asking-scared-coronavirus-12441271/
Time for Baz Lurman to revisit his classic: "Wear gloves."
But they are full of complete numpties.
If he really is as decrepit as his zimmer-frame court appearances would suggest, you may well be on a winner.
If.
The viral load is the measure of the number of viral particles in the bloodstream. You can't physically acquire a meaningfully different "viral load" from an external infection event.
Setting aside the fact that we can't measure this for coronavirus it's just superficially appealing pseudoscience.
You catch it or you don't catch it. Your body fights it off or it doesn't.
Sitting in a room full of infected people will impact the probability of you getting it, not the likelihood it will be a serious infection.
But I don't want to repeat the discussion again, so if you don't believe me then that's up to you.
Their conclusion is that the model with the earlier start, relatively widespread infection rates and low rates of need for hospitalisation fits the data the best.
This doesn't, of course, prove anything - although it is a piece of analysis to throw into the mix. It would also explain the apparent levelling off in China and Iran, for which I haven't yet seen other convincing explanations (apart from major data inadequacy or fraud)
That they are doing more than exploring possibilities is very clear from their paper, for example "Importantly, the results we present here suggest the ongoing epidemics in the UK and Italy started at least a month before the first reported death and have already led to the accumulation of significant levels of herd immunity in both countries."
The Facebook post advising to follow NHS advice.
* This is said to be why the Chinese doctor who alerted the world to the virus died and why doctors and nurses are at such high risk.
Some of this might be down to timing, of course, but I have also seen articles talking about the risks of multiple infection incidences and the amount of virus received.
I write that a left-leaner.
Perhaps we can use our super power to greater effect, which is the power to challenge, scrutinise and ultimately change the direction of the executive when new facts come to light.
We got there in the end.
Couldn’t run a whelk stall.
There's more than anecdotal evidence that Germany are excluding from their mortality rates anyone who would have died of other causes in the imminent future. I don't entirely blame them but it certainly helps explain the discrepancy.
You seem to want to shut down discussion of the best ways of dealing with this virus.
FWIW, I'm not a scientist or a doctor. But I have spent 25 years working with, advising and sitting on the boards of pharmaceutical and biotech companies. I have some familiarity with the basics.
https://twitter.com/foxinsoxuk/status/1242721870304157697?s=19
You're rather myopic at times, Felix (as well as damned rude but the latter I'm prepared to forgive).
I suspect you work close to the Gov't ... am I right?
Fewer trite references to "Boris" being the "British Trump"...
What Charles is pointing out (I think) is that if you do acquire the virus, you acquire the virus. You either get it or you don't. HIV is similar except for one thing. With HIV once your body sero-converts that's it, you've got it for life. (For the smart felix's yes yes I know about 3 cases who have apparently shaken it out entirely). There's one exception with HIV. Sero-conversion means there's a narrow window of 72 hours where if you take PEP (Post-exposure Prophylaxis) which are anti retro-virals you have a very good chance of kicking out the virus from your system. Around 98% if you take it soon after exposure i.e. within 24 hours.
You're missing the sauce for the gander point.
Unsurprisingly.
It said that if you are in a room with a bunch of infected people you are more likely to catch the disease BECAUSE OF THE VIRAL LOAD!! (capitals added in mockery of the original post)
It was wrong. You are more likely to catch the disease because of the increased exposure to viral particles shed by carriers.
But believe a random facebook post if you want. I don't give a flying fuck right now.
Scientists seem to think that there is a good chance of developing a vaccine. Coronaviruses are less prone to mutation than flu viruses, and hopefully a suitable vaccine has now been developed and is in the testing stage. Huge quantities of it will then need to be manufactured so that the UK population can be vaccinated. This could mean that the Brexit transition period has to be extended so that the UK can get quick access to vaccines manufactured in the EU.
I blame Brexit. Not only did it distract us, it helped foster the illusion that we're a great nation. Well we aren't. We're a tiny little island resting on past glories and we need the humility to listen to others and work with them.
Although Parliament is adjourned, a grand select committee has been formed, chaired by the Opposition Leader and with a majority of Opposition MPs.
I thought he was good in his address to the nation. Should have made it 3 or 4 weeks earlier but at least he did it and he was statesmanlike.
No way should he bring Labour or LibDems on board. What he SHOULD do is give Dominic Cummings the boot, once and for all. Boris can do this if he has the courage of his convictions.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-52029581
When it comes to a government putting in authoritarian restritions I'd far rather a PM who is instinctively against that than one who leaps at the opportunity for a power grab.
I'm glad Theresa May isn't PM now. Not only was she incompetent but she would have ceased authoritarian powers gladly.
UK - I can't see why a GNU is needed. However as Parliament is being suspended indefinitely there really does need to be some kind of all party star chamber formed (virtually). The government would be unwise to just rule by decree.
USA - I hope that Trump is detaching just enough of his supporters to make his re-election less inevitable than it was. A large part of the question remains who the brains trust at the DNC select. They don't want Sanders and seemed ready to go all in behind Biden despite his obviously not being suitable. Are they going to try and complete the primaries? Suspend? Would Coronavirus be a great excuse to call the whole thing off, go to the brokered convention (virtually) that looked certain a few weeks back and select Cuomo?
You want to beat Trump in a country still reeling from the impact of CV19? Put up Andrew Cuomo - who acted - vs Donald Trump - who play acted.
He is better than Trump, in that Trump is actively undermining attempts to control the disease.
All leaders across the world are increasing approval ratings, as a rally round effect, it really shows nothing in terms of how they actually are functioning.
Point taken. Well some of us were alarmed in January at the news emerging. I told my brother not to travel through Hong Kong, I bought my face mask and sanitisers and advised all my friends to get out of the stock market.
Re. the latter, I think the current rise is a blip. The hard reality of this for the world economy will take many months to unravel. I continue to think the markets will not bottom out before November at the earliest.
Clearly, the first reaction to Johnson placing Britain in a form of lockdown on Monday night is: thank heavens he finally did it. It is something that many in the NHS and beyond have been demanding, for a considerable time now. Better late than never, is the message from a huge number of voices in that quarter.
Still, once the giddy welcome of what should long have been the basics – clarity and decisive action – has subsided, we probably have to put Johnson’s address to the nation into perspective. So try and imagine if, for an entire week before his “we shall fight on the beaches” speech, Winston Churchill had been giving rambling press conferences in which he said stuff like: “I want people to be able to visit our great beaches! I want to keep our great beaches open! I have to tell you that, should my beach waffle prove demonstrably unclear to millions, then I may be forced to bring forward measures to lay the ground for some kind of beach-fight….”
As it goes, the classic Churchill speech, made live in the House of Commons, was immediately recognised by political friends, bitter rivals and most of the great diarist chroniclers of the age as a sensational piece of oratory and a true spine-tingler. Johnson’s Monday night pre-record was met largely with relief. Thankfully, his famous smirk had twitched out only one-and-a-half times, reminding us that it isn’t only a tell of his fundamental unseriousness (though it is often that). Sometimes, it is the psychological glitch that occurs when he is being tested far beyond his abilities.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/24/johnson-fight-them-on-the-beaches-churchill-address
I totally get it that the higher the viral load in the host, the more likely it is that you will catch it. This is why confined spaces and hospitals make it much more likely you will acquire it.
But I can't quite understand the science behind the idea that a higher viral load in the host makes your own acquired virus more severe.
I'm not saying it's wrong. I just don't understand the science of that.
Perhaps it's population on said island? The UK population is roughly in the 90th percentile of population by country.
Or is it tiny little because it's home to only the 5th largest (pre covid) economy, rather than the 4th or 3rd?
I'm sure there are plenty of chaps out there endowed with a significantly above average 6-inches who still feel ashamed to drop the towel at the gym. Such is life.
As for the UK response to cv-19, it's a little early to be micro analysing the battle tactics before the enemy's heaviest cannons are yet to even fire.
Have a good day folks,
xx
https://twitter.com/wesstreeting/status/1242732573283037186
No Deal Brexit planning will have helped a bit.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8129499/More-2-600-medical-workers-infected-coronavirus-Italy.html
This from 7 days ago
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/03/rising-number-medical-staff-infected-coronavirus-italy-200318183939314.html
some of these deaths are GP's.
It exists, but it's far far less prevalent than people act like it is, it's not a catch all explanation for every problem this country faces.
As for toilet rolls there is't a shortage. A lot of people have a lot of toilet rolls! And a lot of warehouses are sat on a lot of toilet rolls - the shortage is a lack toilet rolls in the right packs and a lack of trucks to shift them.
The Foodservice sector in a desperate attempt to not implode at the overnight 70% reduction in customers is now desperately offering hotel catering and industrial stocks of bog rolls beans and everything else direct to consumers. Go find your nearest one and ring them - they'll sell you whatever you need.
Edit: Latter! Told you I make plenty of typos myself.
Hesitant response to new information
Muddled comms
Reality not living up to the rhetoric
Mr. Observer, what percentage of Tube trains have been cancelled, though?
Mr. kle4, blaming imperial nostalgia is comforting for those so inclined. You can paint your opponents as dinosaurs with a side dish of underlying racism and a failure to understand the modern world. And then you don't have to bother actually engaging with their actual views.
At the most, I could infer some sort of assessment of the different p from the timing: their posteriors for the time of introduction, comparing with the first confirmed case. However, this is critically dependent on the incubation period and time to death, and the sensitivity to these assumptions is not tested. (It also doesn't take into account the quarantine and contact tracing that occurred in the early phase.) The paper doesn't make scientific claims about this, but I would guess that this is the basis of the sentence you quote from the introduction. However, the science (in the paper) doesn't back up that conclusion.
For what it's worth, I don't think this paper will survive peer review in its present form. I fervently hope it is correct that only p=0.001 of cases are severe (with about 1/6 of those leading to death), but as others have pointed out that is incompatible with other pieces of data. It's the fog of war right now, but I don't find this paper to be helpful speculation, certainly not when added to the interview given to the FT.
--AS
If you get much more of it at the start you end up with the virus multiplying (from a higher base) within your body faster than your own body can fight it leading to it overwhelming your system and becoming critical.
Consider it the same logic as why we require social distancing but within your own cells rather than within the country. The country can cope with a few cases not multiplying fast, it can't cope with exponential cases from a high base. Your body can fight off a small viral load - get a large viral load exponentially growing within you and your body suffers for it.