At some point, when the shit has stopped hitting the fan, I’d like the Labour Party to write the most passive aggressive letter in the history of politics - thanking the government for implementing <insert list here> labour policies amounting to <insert percentage here> of the labour manifesto, and enquiring how her majesty’s loyal opposition could support them to implement the rest of it.
It will achieve nothing. But for 30 seconds I’d feel better about life.
Floridians have been allowed out to the beach, and went there in hordes.
:eyeroll:
I have heard that the virus does not live nearly as long outdoors, especially in sunlight, as it does indoors. If people keep a reasonable distance from each other, I think it's probably all right.
One of the maddening things at this point is that most of what we have to go on is hearsay, some of it contradictory and none of it science-backed, and a large part of it different from one week to the next.
But they won't all keep a reasonable distance from each other. That's not what happens at urban beaches. When it's nice out urban beaches are crowded, and people play games like volleyball that put them into close contact with each other. Here's a picture of the Jacksonville beach on Friday.. They're going to have a repeat of the Florida spring break fiasco, except it's going to be worse because the virus has spread so much more now than it had in March.
Floridians have been allowed out to the beach, and went there in hordes.
:eyeroll:
I have heard that the virus does not live nearly as long outdoors, especially in sunlight, as it does indoors. If people keep a reasonable distance from each other, I think it's probably all right.
Exposure to UV generally degrades the structure of viruses, and early on in this pandemic I recall some discussion as to whether UV lamps could be used to disinfect surfaces ... as I recall, the discussion concluded that the amount of UV you'd need would make this impractical, in particular this would lead to serious health effects if you tried to kill the virus by exposing yourself to UV. A typical response to the idea
The big issue around here is the Liberate Movement--bands of people going to statehouses to push to liberate the state. The deal of it is, this movement is largely neo-nazi and pro (t)Rump in background. The Koch brothers fund these types of movements because it is in their interest to get the economy going again.
Saw a meme today
You can't fix stupid,
Apparently you can't quarantine it either.
The big issue around here is the Liberate Movement--bands of people going to statehouses to push to liberate the state. The deal of it is, this movement is largely neo-nazi and pro (t)Rump in background. The Koch brothers fund these types of movements because it is in their interest to get the economy going again.
There are reports that some of these groups are also getting funding from sources linked to the Secretary of Education and her family (De Vos).
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries sixteen of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Turkey and China.
Chile has joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
The big issue around here is the Liberate Movement--bands of people going to statehouses to push to liberate the state. The deal of it is, this movement is largely neo-nazi and pro (t)Rump in background. The Koch brothers fund these types of movements because it is in their interest to get the economy going again.
There are reports that some of these groups are also getting funding from sources linked to the Secretary of Education and her family (De Vos).
The NZ Prime Minister has just announced that NZ will go down to Alert level 3 on Tuesday 28th of April. This is off the back of random testing being increased to discover whether there was more of the virus in the Community than was thought. No people tested showed signs of the virus. Also the contact tracing of known cases as shown that community transfer has happened mainly through known clusters; a school, a wedding, a couple of workplaces and 2 care homes.
School students whose care givers are working may go back to school , while others must stay home. Forestry, construction and some manufacturers will be able to return to work, but under strict conditions. More retail will be open, but only if they can sell contactlessly ie on line. There are still messages to stay at home, but travel around the region is allowed, surfing and swimming are allowed.
Better still no one has died in the last couple of days, although there are 3 people in ICUs around the country and there may be a few more deaths.
I wonder if the Koch brothers have ever seen the film "Trading Places"...? I know little about the Kochs, but they sound like they could be switched for the two rich brother characters. In which case they *really* need to see and pay attention to the film.
The NZ Prime Minister has just announced that NZ will go down to Alert level 3 on Tuesday 28th of April. This is off the back of random testing being increased to discover whether there was more of the virus in the Community than was thought. No people tested showed signs of the virus. Also the contact tracing of known cases as shown that community transfer has happened mainly through known clusters; a school, a wedding, a couple of workplaces and 2 care homes.
School students whose care givers are working may go back to school , while others must stay home. Forestry, construction and some manufacturers will be able to return to work, but under strict conditions. More retail will be open, but only if they can sell contactlessly ie on line. There are still messages to stay at home, but travel around the region is allowed, surfing and swimming are allowed.
Better still no one has died in the last couple of days, although there are 3 people in ICUs around the country and there may be a few more deaths.
I wonder if the Koch brothers have ever seen the film "Trading Places"...? I know little about the Kochs, but they sound like they could be switched for the two rich brother characters. In which case they *really* need to see and pay attention to the film.
Great film, great cast (Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Don Ameche, Ralph Bellamy). As for the Koch brothers, at least one of them has gone off to join that great insurrection in the netherworld.
I wonder if the Koch brothers have ever seen the film "Trading Places"...? I know little about the Kochs, but they sound like they could be switched for the two rich brother characters. In which case they *really* need to see and pay attention to the film.
The Koch's upbringing was sufficiently weird that I'm not sure they'd draw the same lessons from that film than another person might.
Hard to be sure because weekend reporting tends to distort figures but there do now appear to be some definite signs of downturn in Western Europe. Not sure about the UK or USA just yet.
But I think Andrew Cuomo is right. What will happen to the graphs looking forward depends a lot on how prudent countries are today. Whatever quality of decision making brought them to this point.
Watching TV coverage from the US, there must be a fair chance of another spike. Ignoring and/or complaining about, social distancing guidelines may assuage cabin fever but it looks pretty foolish to me.
I wonder if the Koch brothers have ever seen the film "Trading Places"...? I know little about the Kochs, but they sound like they could be switched for the two rich brother characters. In which case they *really* need to see and pay attention to the film.
Great film, great cast (Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Don Ameche, Ralph Bellamy). As for the Koch brothers, at least one of them has gone off to join that great insurrection in the netherworld.
It really is. And you didn't even mention Jamie-Lee Curtis. I also love the fact that Randolf and Mortimer have a Cameo in another Murphy film Coming to America.
Hard to be sure because weekend reporting tends to distort figures but there do now appear to be some definite signs of downturn in Western Europe. Not sure about the UK or USA just yet.
But I think Andrew Cuomo is right. What will happen to the graphs looking forward depends a lot on how prudent countries are today. Whatever quality of decision making brought them to this point.
Watching TV coverage from the US, there must be a fair chance of another spike. Ignoring and/or complaining about, social distancing guidelines may assuage cabin fever but it looks pretty foolish to me.
So Denmark is opening up its schools again, but children are to be spaced at least 6 feet apart. There's no mention of having people go back part time, which suggests that spacing children 6 feet apart is actually possible in Danish classrooms.
I don't think any of the classrooms I've ever sat in could accommodate a full class whilst maintaining 6 feet of space between each child. Plenty of classrooms could achieve 6 feet between rows of seats (once you have a bench / table / whatever, and enough space to walk past, you're more or less at 6 feet anyway), but achieving 6 feet between children sat next to each other would leave half the class in the corridor (in a line along the wall at 6 foot intervals, natch).
Even if they are that spacious, how on earth do you keep children 6 feet apart from each other, short of gluing them to the floor?
Quite. I passed a local primary school on my walk today and there were half a dozen children on the play equipment in the playground. They definitely weren't doing social distancing, although there are probably enough actual classrooms for them to have one each. No doubt they were key workers' children - I've no idea what the instructions to the teachers are in these cases.
-The constructed play equipment is all off limits here. Taped off with signs.
-The pedestrian beg lights - the buttons which must be pushed to get a walk signal have been deactivated so that the ped walk lights go automatically (which is as it always should be!)
There's 315 cases all told in a province of 1.1 million (Saskatchewan), with 77 active cases, 3 in hospital. We're told that schools will not open at least until the fall, with the CMO (chief medical officer) stating that we need 2 weeks of consecutive 0 or 1 cases per day before we're out of the 5 people or less, stay at home, only essential businesses open. The talk is all about if we let off restrictions, there could be a rebound and second wave. We've been very lucky with the number of infections here.
Medical colleagues speak of people who hesitate to go to hospital for other concerns, and leaving conditions that could be treated.
Watching TV coverage from the US, there must be a fair chance of another spike. Ignoring and/or complaining about, social distancing guidelines may assuage cabin fever but it looks pretty foolish to me.
There is quite a significant difference between the IHME Covid-19 model (which is not an epidemiological model - it's a template model using data from the countries that were hit first with covid-19 to build templates, and seems to be the one preferred by the Trump administration) and the various groups building epidemiological SEIR models of Covid-19 (MIT has one; there are others) in terms of how fast the peak will recede.
Were I to be making decisions based on the models, the SEIR models would tell me I need about a month more lockdown than the IHME model says. I think we're going to find out which model is closer to reality.
Is it the case that children are less likely to catch The Plague, although they're tops when it comes to spreading it around to older people?
No, I think it's just that they are less likely to get seriously ill from it.
Ah - I see.
Thx.
This seems to be the case. Children VERY rarely getting ill but definitely can be healthy spreaders.
The biology is not well understood. The following is an educated guess; the virus probably causes very little damage directly. But in some people and not others there is a BIG inflammatory response causing lung fibrosis... (and a lot else going on but basically) quite a lot of us (especially children) get an asymptomatic infection and thus we can very easily share...
The received wisdom here is that children don't spread much.
I am mystified as to where all France's new cases are coming from after more than a month of lockdown. Obviously the lockdown is not total, so some infection is inevitable, but the lack of data as to just how that's happening is anxiety-inducing.
Is it the case that children are less likely to catch The Plague, although they're tops when it comes to spreading it around to older people?
No, I think it's just that they are less likely to get seriously ill from it.
Ah - I see.
Thx.
This seems to be the case. Children VERY rarely getting ill but definitely can be healthy spreaders.
The biology is not well understood. The following is an educated guess; the virus probably causes very little damage directly. But in some people and not others there is a BIG inflammatory response causing lung fibrosis... (and a lot else going on but basically) quite a lot of us (especially children) get an asymptomatic infection and thus we can very easily share...
AFZ
That's precisely the understanding conveyed by @vidoINTERVAC (Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Organization), though, my link below is about different than this.
The news report this morning is that they've detected an immune response in the ferrets they vaccinated, and they will next expose the ferrets to infected ferrets to determine if infection is prevented. I believe, notwithstanding that some private companies have been injecting into people, that all research organizations are at about the same level of development: does the vaccine produce an immune response that is effective in preventing the infection. This is a university-affiliated lab.
A primary school teacher just up the road is teaching children of key workers. She says it’s a losing battle trying to teach social distancing; she carefully plans an activity, spends a minute sorting out a problem with one child and then turns round to see several others are hugging or fighting or otherwise engaged in some form of contact!
Remember the language lab? (That really dates my teaching career, I know.) I used it even for Latin. I used to keep a can of Lysol Spray handy, and would spray the headsets and microphones at each language lab station between classes. I'd also shake the can menacingly at any student who sneezed or coughed without covering. (I'd never actually spray them, though.)
The Oxford epidemiologist Carl Heneghan, sounding bullish on Newsnight, saying that we are over the peak, the lockdown can be lifted soon, etc. I'm wondering if he's an outlier, as he's based in Oxford, which has has different analyses from elsewhere.
Having understood from a family member who lives in Taiwan, there are some procedures that allow riding out a pandemic with safety and do not require lockdown. Note that Taiwan is a very densely populated country. Density is not the key. It's behaviour and being obedient.
First, you have to give up personal freedom with your movements tracked and accounted for. Second you must submit to testing every time you are asked. Third, you do all the necessary behaviours as instructed re masks, where to walk, where to go.
Masks: health cards account for how many you have. You must have the right number each week, and they know in advance where and what you'll be doing.
Cell phone or internet check-in before going any where. Temperature and health questions answered. Includes children. Includes every time you leave home. You may not deviate from the permitted locations when you leave home.
Schools are open with plexiglass barriers. Food serving establishments are generally on the street, barriers. All businesses and offices are open, barriers. Everything that can be touched by multiple people is constantly cleaned. Everyone must behave properly or you'll be punished.
They've about the same number of cases as my province in Canada with 30 times the population.
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries seventeen of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Turkey and Iran.
Saudi Arabia and Ecuador have joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
Having understood from a family member who lives in Taiwan, there are some procedures that allow riding out a pandemic with safety and do not require lockdown. Note that Taiwan is a very densely populated country. Density is not the key. It's behaviour and being obedient.
First, you have to give up personal freedom with your movements tracked and accounted for. Second you must submit to testing every time you are asked. Third, you do all the necessary behaviours as instructed re masks, where to walk, where to go.
Masks: health cards account for how many you have. You must have the right number each week, and they know in advance where and what you'll be doing.
Cell phone or internet check-in before going any where. Temperature and health questions answered. Includes children. Includes every time you leave home. You may not deviate from the permitted locations when you leave home.
Schools are open with plexiglass barriers. Food serving establishments are generally on the street, barriers. All businesses and offices are open, barriers. Everything that can be touched by multiple people is constantly cleaned. Everyone must behave properly or you'll be punished.
They've about the same number of cases as my province in Canada with 30 times the population.
Perhaps culture comes into it, but that sounds more restrictive than what we have here.
I just read something really interesting about COVID and religious practice. I'm not sure on which thread it belongs. I'll be happy to post it elsewhere, but I'm starting here.
This is a very sensitive interview with a women who's a Jehovah's Witness, and how the pandemic has changed her own practice and that of her denomination. Whatever you think of JWs, this woman had a saving experience in her life from joining them--her life was changed for the better, and she grew a lot. She's working her way through, the pandemic crisis experience, like the rest of us, and trying to help, as she understands it.
I'm really impressed with the writing by Dionne Searcey. Worth a read, if you have a few minutes.
Reminds me of a strange experience last week. The door bell rang for the first time in ages, so I opened the door to be confronted by two young men neatly dressed in dark suits. My first thought was "it's the JWs" (we have a Kingdom Hall at the end of the road) followed by "or, maybe Mormons". That was until I spotted one of them carrying a bottle of Bucky (neither JWs or Mormons are known for taking bottles of booze with them when they knock on doors) ... at which point one of them was saying "sorry, we must be at the wrong flat".
They also knocked on my neighbours door (we were talking about it the other day), and I don't know where else. We think they were looking for a wake somewhere, but as there wouldn't have been a funeral/cremation they could have attended didn't have someone to direct them to the wake afterwards. Not that they should have been holding a wake just now anyway.
Thank you for that. Excellent, thought-provoking link. I'll think over where best it belongs and it may be that it deserves a separate thread. Meanwhile I'm leaving it here.
Oh look, the UK government lied about a shipment of PPE.
Pandemic management is difficult. Many mistakes are forgivable. Some are not* but lying to the country right now is deeply sick. As well as being entirely predictable from the feckless incompetents who make up the current cabinet.
AFZ
*mistakes made when decisions are taken in good faith I can accept. Mistakes made by selective bias towards the scientific data and a careless attitude to the consequential risk much less so.
So here's what I know about our situation in France.
The current proportion of the population thought to have been infected with covid-19 is around 6%, which is far too low to provide group immunity.
The current proportion of the population thought to have been exposed to covid-19 is around 12%. This figure is reportedly used to guide public health policy (I read this for the first time today).
So around half the people exposed are infected.
These figures seem to result in numbers of hospitalisations which our system is just about coping with (with big regional variations). (Although in France it seems that if you're hospitalised, you have a much higher chance of dying than in comparable countries, which I suspect means that cases are being detected and treated only once complications have set in).
The numbers of new infections (or more precisely, numbers of people testing positive) are more or less stable.
So my basic question is, in public health terms how can lockdown be reasonably lifted? Surely infection numbers will skyrocket?
A secondary question is that I'm having trouble aligning the infectiousness of the virus with the numbers of new infections. It seems to me that there should actually be a lot more (given that we're not in total lockdown). Or else that there are "super-spreaders" that do most of the infecting. Any thoughts?
Comments
It will achieve nothing. But for 30 seconds I’d feel better about life.
I have heard that the virus does not live nearly as long outdoors, especially in sunlight, as it does indoors. If people keep a reasonable distance from each other, I think it's probably all right.
Heard from where?
Saw a meme today
You can't fix stupid,
Apparently you can't quarantine it either.
There are reports that some of these groups are also getting funding from sources linked to the Secretary of Education and her family (De Vos).
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries sixteen of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Turkey and China.
Chile has joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
DeVos has strong connections to the Koch Bros.
School students whose care givers are working may go back to school , while others must stay home. Forestry, construction and some manufacturers will be able to return to work, but under strict conditions. More retail will be open, but only if they can sell contactlessly ie on line. There are still messages to stay at home, but travel around the region is allowed, surfing and swimming are allowed.
Better still no one has died in the last couple of days, although there are 3 people in ICUs around the country and there may be a few more deaths.
I am cautiously optimistic.
Good-ish news indeed, @Huia.
Great film, great cast (Dan Aykroyd, Eddie Murphy, Don Ameche, Ralph Bellamy). As for the Koch brothers, at least one of them has gone off to join that great insurrection in the netherworld.
The Koch's upbringing was sufficiently weird that I'm not sure they'd draw the same lessons from that film than another person might.
But I think Andrew Cuomo is right. What will happen to the graphs looking forward depends a lot on how prudent countries are today. Whatever quality of decision making brought them to this point.
Watching TV coverage from the US, there must be a fair chance of another spike. Ignoring and/or complaining about, social distancing guidelines may assuage cabin fever but it looks pretty foolish to me.
It really is. And you didn't even mention Jamie-Lee Curtis. I also love the fact that Randolf and Mortimer have a Cameo in another Murphy film Coming to America.
[/tangent]
1000% this.
AFZ
I don't think any of the classrooms I've ever sat in could accommodate a full class whilst maintaining 6 feet of space between each child. Plenty of classrooms could achieve 6 feet between rows of seats (once you have a bench / table / whatever, and enough space to walk past, you're more or less at 6 feet anyway), but achieving 6 feet between children sat next to each other would leave half the class in the corridor (in a line along the wall at 6 foot intervals, natch).
Are Danish schools really that spacious?
Quite. I passed a local primary school on my walk today and there were half a dozen children on the play equipment in the playground. They definitely weren't doing social distancing, although there are probably enough actual classrooms for them to have one each. No doubt they were key workers' children - I've no idea what the instructions to the teachers are in these cases.
-The pedestrian beg lights - the buttons which must be pushed to get a walk signal have been deactivated so that the ped walk lights go automatically (which is as it always should be!)
There's 315 cases all told in a province of 1.1 million (Saskatchewan), with 77 active cases, 3 in hospital. We're told that schools will not open at least until the fall, with the CMO (chief medical officer) stating that we need 2 weeks of consecutive 0 or 1 cases per day before we're out of the 5 people or less, stay at home, only essential businesses open. The talk is all about if we let off restrictions, there could be a rebound and second wave. We've been very lucky with the number of infections here.
Medical colleagues speak of people who hesitate to go to hospital for other concerns, and leaving conditions that could be treated.
Very upset to hear of things like this next door in Alberta: Feeling pressured to work after testing positive. Large corporations have far too much power, both formal and informal.
I'm sure the phrase 'cute little disease vectors' (or words to that effect) has been used on these boards!
No, I think it's just that they are less likely to get seriously ill from it.
There is quite a significant difference between the IHME Covid-19 model (which is not an epidemiological model - it's a template model using data from the countries that were hit first with covid-19 to build templates, and seems to be the one preferred by the Trump administration) and the various groups building epidemiological SEIR models of Covid-19 (MIT has one; there are others) in terms of how fast the peak will recede.
Were I to be making decisions based on the models, the SEIR models would tell me I need about a month more lockdown than the IHME model says. I think we're going to find out which model is closer to reality.
Ah - I see.
Thx.
This seems to be the case. Children VERY rarely getting ill but definitely can be healthy spreaders.
The biology is not well understood. The following is an educated guess; the virus probably causes very little damage directly. But in some people and not others there is a BIG inflammatory response causing lung fibrosis... (and a lot else going on but basically) quite a lot of us (especially children) get an asymptomatic infection and thus we can very easily share...
AFZ
I am mystified as to where all France's new cases are coming from after more than a month of lockdown. Obviously the lockdown is not total, so some infection is inevitable, but the lack of data as to just how that's happening is anxiety-inducing.
That's precisely the understanding conveyed by @vidoINTERVAC (Vaccine and Infectious Diseases Organization), though, my link below is about different than this.
The news report this morning is that they've detected an immune response in the ferrets they vaccinated, and they will next expose the ferrets to infected ferrets to determine if infection is prevented. I believe, notwithstanding that some private companies have been injecting into people, that all research organizations are at about the same level of development: does the vaccine produce an immune response that is effective in preventing the infection. This is a university-affiliated lab.
No, but they're notorious for coughing and sneezing without covering themselves.
I know I used "darling little asymptomatic plague vectors" somewhere...
My daughter (a TA) is going through the same thing now. Kids aren't hygenic.
First, you have to give up personal freedom with your movements tracked and accounted for. Second you must submit to testing every time you are asked. Third, you do all the necessary behaviours as instructed re masks, where to walk, where to go.
Masks: health cards account for how many you have. You must have the right number each week, and they know in advance where and what you'll be doing.
Cell phone or internet check-in before going any where. Temperature and health questions answered. Includes children. Includes every time you leave home. You may not deviate from the permitted locations when you leave home.
Schools are open with plexiglass barriers. Food serving establishments are generally on the street, barriers. All businesses and offices are open, barriers. Everything that can be touched by multiple people is constantly cleaned. Everyone must behave properly or you'll be punished.
They've about the same number of cases as my province in Canada with 30 times the population.
They're not wearing N95 masks.
The listings are in the format:
X. Country - [# of known cases] ([active] / [recovered] / [dead]) [%fatality rate]
Fatality rates are only listed for countries where the number of resolved cases (recovered + dead) exceeds the number of known active cases by a ratio of at least 2:1. Italics indicate authoritarian countries whose official statistics are suspect. Other country's statistics are suspect if their testing regimes are substandard.
If American states were treated as individual countries seventeen of them would be on that list. New York would be ranked at #2, between "everywhere in the U.S. except New York" (#1) and Spain (#3). New Jersey would be between Turkey and Iran.
Saudi Arabia and Ecuador have joined the 10,000 case club since the last compilation.
Perhaps culture comes into it, but that sounds more restrictive than what we have here.
"'People Would Be So Receptive Right Now, and We Can't Knock on Doors.'" (NYT via Yahoo, so no pay wall)
This is a very sensitive interview with a women who's a Jehovah's Witness, and how the pandemic has changed her own practice and that of her denomination. Whatever you think of JWs, this woman had a saving experience in her life from joining them--her life was changed for the better, and she grew a lot. She's working her way through, the pandemic crisis experience, like the rest of us, and trying to help, as she understands it.
I'm really impressed with the writing by Dionne Searcey. Worth a read, if you have a few minutes.
They also knocked on my neighbours door (we were talking about it the other day), and I don't know where else. We think they were looking for a wake somewhere, but as there wouldn't have been a funeral/cremation they could have attended didn't have someone to direct them to the wake afterwards. Not that they should have been holding a wake just now anyway.
Thank you for that. Excellent, thought-provoking link. I'll think over where best it belongs and it may be that it deserves a separate thread. Meanwhile I'm leaving it here.
Barnabas62
Purgatory Host
Pandemic management is difficult. Many mistakes are forgivable. Some are not* but lying to the country right now is deeply sick. As well as being entirely predictable from the feckless incompetents who make up the current cabinet.
AFZ
*mistakes made when decisions are taken in good faith I can accept. Mistakes made by selective bias towards the scientific data and a careless attitude to the consequential risk much less so.
The current proportion of the population thought to have been infected with covid-19 is around 6%, which is far too low to provide group immunity.
The current proportion of the population thought to have been exposed to covid-19 is around 12%. This figure is reportedly used to guide public health policy (I read this for the first time today).
So around half the people exposed are infected.
These figures seem to result in numbers of hospitalisations which our system is just about coping with (with big regional variations). (Although in France it seems that if you're hospitalised, you have a much higher chance of dying than in comparable countries, which I suspect means that cases are being detected and treated only once complications have set in).
The numbers of new infections (or more precisely, numbers of people testing positive) are more or less stable.
So my basic question is, in public health terms how can lockdown be reasonably lifted? Surely infection numbers will skyrocket?
A secondary question is that I'm having trouble aligning the infectiousness of the virus with the numbers of new infections. It seems to me that there should actually be a lot more (given that we're not in total lockdown). Or else that there are "super-spreaders" that do most of the infecting. Any thoughts?