Coronavirus - worldwide spread and control

[Sean]

It's been accelerating all along, not just now, and plenty of people have been saying so; just because the actual numbers were smaller to begin with does not change that. Should have listened to people who told them well beforehand that if you double the numbers every few days, then it's not long before those small numbers balloon into very large numbers - need to catch them while they are still small. Being blind so you only see the bigger numbers is bordering on criminal. Choosing to only listen to the experts you choose.

There is a famous talk (available on Youtube) about the failure of the human race to grasp the implications of exponential growth.

Being able to bull s--t relies on "information asymmetry";

Can't bullshit a virus.

 

[Snowdrop]

Just wanted to point out that while I agree with the above quote those aren't my words. Don't know what happened here but I think they may belong to @Barry .

I had a moment there as I wracked my brain thinking did I write that? I remember nothing.

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

"In the UK, this conclusion has only been reached in the last few days," the report explained, due to new data on likely intensive care unit demand based on the experience of Italy and Britain so far.

This really is an extraordinary admission. How come I had worked this out a month ago?

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I wonder if they were simply listening to the wrong people. We've seen how many senior people in health in this country don't seem capable of coherent thinking and will go out of their way to cover for other academics. Perhaps we are suffering from the effect of 'experts' who don't have a clue.

What I find so extraordinary is that it seems that Whitty and Vallance accepted some modelling that clearly had no relation to reality.

So Grant Shapps's 'following the science' is more the blind leading the blind.

 

[FMMM1]

There is a famous talk (available on Youtube) about the failure of the human race to grasp the implications of exponential growth.


Can't bullshit a virus.

To state the obvious, I meant that the Government strategy relied on a populace which was not well informed! The recommendation from WHO is to test, and trace, i.e. to reduce transmission. Failure to reduce transmission overwhelms the health service (ventilators/ICU) as per Italy - and the death toll increases (potentially up to 5X?).

I've still no idea why they haven't delivered large scale testing ---- anyone reading this who can explain/enlighten.

The UK Governments 'Laissez-faire attitude' is challenged here https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51892402

 

[Marco]

But as I have been trying to point out there is no Goldilocks position, unless you want to be socially distancing for ten years, by which time a new generation will have been born to keep the epidemic going!

I'd assumed you were referring to this notion of herd immunity which, despite misleading reports, was never part of the Govt's immediate strategy. I (or they) was referring to delaying lockdown to maintain healthcare capacity until such a stage that it's no longer tenable.

As per this explanation :

Possibly over-simplistic but then I'm no podiatrist.

It seems though that events have now overtaken things. What worries me now is the extent to which citizens are aware that they're on lockdown until they come up with a vaccine?

 

[FMMM1]

This really is an extraordinary admission. How come I had worked this out a month ago?

I talked to a friend (who is a doctor) about a month ago and he explained the difficulty in getting access to ventilators in the UK - having to hand ventillate a patient. There were no ICU beds available in the UK - that was before coronavirus. My friend also explained that about 5%(?) of people, infected with cornovirus, needed to be ventilated. So yes this does not appear to have been news to informed people @Jonathan Edwards , except the Government/it's advisors!

You can see why scientists have been challenging this 'Laissez-faire attitude' https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51892402

 

[Andy]

I'd assumed you were referring to this notion of herd immunity which, despite misleading reports, was never part of the Govt's immediate strategy.

This would seem to clarify that it was part of their strategy.

It was on only Friday that Sir Patrick Vallance, the chief scientific adviser, explained the mitigation plan to the BBC.

He said: "Our aim is to try and reduce the peak, broaden the peak, not suppress it completely.

"Also, because the vast majority of people get a mild illness, to build up some kind of herd immunity so more people are immune to this disease."

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-51915302

 

[Jonathan Edwards]

I'd assumed you were referring to this notion of herd immunity which, despite misleading reports, was never part of the Govt's immediate strategy. I (or they) was referring to delaying lockdown to maintain healthcare capacity until such a stage that it's no longer tenable.

Nothing to do with the herd immunity stuff. I don't understand how delaying lockdown, generating thousands of suchk people, maintains healthcare capacity. One would assume that lockdown would not apply to healthcare professionals. The schools issue is complicated but if they really thought schools were a good place to spread things a bit then that is serious miscalculation. Even by the time they were discussing this enough school staff members had been allowed to mix with infected people for sick rates to be substantial. I get a blow by blow account from my daughter who teaches. She has the additional problem that she caught TB from a school epidemic that was allowed to spread by similar incompetence. The head teacher is still denying that there was ever a real outbreak, despite the molecular biology evidence on DNA isolates!

 

[FMMM1]

I'd assumed you were referring to this notion of herd immunity which, despite misleading reports, was never part of the Govt's immediate strategy. I (or they) was referring to delaying lockdown to maintain healthcare capacity until such a stage that it's no longer tenable.

As per this explanation :

Possibly over-simplistic but then I'm no podiatrist.

It seems though that events have now overtaken things. What worries me now is the extent to which citizens are aware that they're on lockdown until they come up with a vaccine?

What worries me is:
""It is almost impossible to predict what that will mean in terms of human costs, but we are conservatively looking at tens of thousands of deaths, and possibly at hundreds of thousands of deaths," he said." [Birmingham University's Prof Willem van Schaik - https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-51892402]

5% of "36 million people", needing access to ventillators/ICU, is not a particularly difficult concept it means "hundreds of thousands of deaths".

 

[FMMM1]

I am probably missing something here, but what makes them think the numbers infected will stop at 60%, or 80%, and why?

I don't see any reason why it wouldn't be nearly 100%, only missing those who were, and remain, in isolation when this started in their area. So people doing survivor type tv programs, people living in a tent in the middle of a dessert - that sort of thing.

But if this thing is as infectious as they seem to think, what stops it at 80%?

Check online - search "r naught" basically if your looking at measles, which is highly infectious - 1 infected person infects 18 people (r naught = 18), then you need to vaccinate more than 90% of the population. If you manage 90%+ vaccination for measles then on average an infected person cannot transmit the virus to a person who is not immune and the outbreak dies out. With coronavirus (r naught = 3) if more than 66% of the population are immune then the outbreak will not be sustained.

Problem is if 66% of the population get coronavirus in a short period of time, then you don't have enough ventillators/ICU, and the death rate increases from about 1% (with ventillators/ICU) to possibly 5% (without ventillators/ICU).

Mass testing/contact tracing is the advice from the WHO.

 

[lunarainbows]

Being able to bull s--t relies on "information asymmetry"; however, when folks like you explained the problem with this strategy (not enough ICU beds/respirators) then they may have had to quietly drop it! Thank you for the insight.

South Korea moved to mass testing and contact tracing i.e. to break transmission; does anyone know why the UK has not started mass testing? Is cost/availability of test kits the problem?

Yes, without this we have no absolutely no idea who has the condition.

Then there’s the fact our frontline GP staff, who are coming into contact with people with coronavirus, are not getting tested

I don’t know why this is happening.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2...ts?CMP=share_btn_tw&__twitter_impression=true

Everyone is scared to speak up: doctors on frontline need Covid-19 tests

 

[lunarainbows]

From today's conference and other sources I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the UK approach is one of the few intelligent approaches where politicians are actually listening to the experts rather than 'ooh parents want schools closed and there's an election coming up so ...knee-jerk reaction'.

It's not a matter of 'total lockdown' or 'let it rip' as portrayed in the mainstream media; more a Goldilocks when to apply the lockdown - not too soon and not too late. I'd suggest Italy left it a little too late and Ireland have gone much too soon.

We left it too late. The NHS staff are already coming on the TV and saying they can’t cope. Already.

 

[lunarainbows]

What I find so extraordinary is that it seems that Whitty and Vallance accepted some modelling that clearly had no relation to reality.

So Grant Shapps's 'following the science' is more the blind leading the blind.

I agree. They are now trying to say they are still “using the same model”. Only, the inputs have changed now. So they’ve changed the intensive care number from 15% to 30%. Apparently their old “numbers” were based on influenza and viral pneumonia.

 

[lunarainbows]

I just skim read bits of the imperial paper.

But this jumped out at me:

“The measures used to achieve suppression might also evolve over time. As case numbers fall, it becomes more feasible to adopt intensive testing, contact tracing and quarantine measures akin to the strategies being employed in South Korea today. ”


I think the reason the UK is not testing extensively is because this paper is telling them not to do it yet! As it’s not “feasible”! This is terrible.

In the paper they are pretty obsessed with “mitigation” as a strategy. Even now. Also very keen to defend themselves still, in the paper itself. Which seems weird. I think this Imperial team also ought to go.

 

[lunarainbows]

Oh, and in the imperial paper, they’re still saying mass gatherings don’t have much of an effect.

 

[Roy S]

Trump is finally taking some advice from the right people here instead of his unqualified son in law.

 

[Hoopoe]

The high death rates in northern Italy could also be in part due to high air pollution levels. It's a densely populated and industrialized area.

 

[Joel]

I agree. They are now trying to say they are still “using the same model”. Only, the inputs have changed now. So they’ve changed the intensive care number from 15% to 30%. Apparently their old “numbers” were based on influenza and viral pneumonia.

The old version of the model must have been rubbish, predicting low mortality which surely must have been obviously wrong to anyone who glanced at the numbers from China.

Bear in mind the new model which predicts 260,000 deaths with the mitigate strategy says it is based on the assumption that the NHS somehow treats all the people who need it, while also pointing out that doing so is impossible as demand would be 8 fold higher than capacity. So what would the real mortality number have been, a million?

The original plan was always obviously high risk. Now they want to pretend its the same plan instead of admitting they got it wrong, too many ppl would have died.

 

[lunarainbows]

The old version of the model must have been rubbish, predicting low mortality which surely must have been obviously wrong to anyone who glanced at the numbers from China.

Bear in mind the new model which predicts 260,000 deaths with the mitigate strategy says it is based on the assumption that the NHS somehow treats all the people who need it, while also pointing out that doing so is impossible as demand would be 8 fold higher than capacity. So what would the real mortality number have been, a million?

The original plan was always obviously high risk. Now they want to pretend its the same plan instead of admitting they got it wrong, too many ppl would have died.

That 250,000 is such a big under estimate. But they can’t admit it would have been millions.