Coronavirus: what your country is doing, how you feel & general discussion

[rainbowbluebells]

Finally. I can breathe a sigh of relief. It seems the UK govt and Boris Johnson have finally got their act together.
lockdown, no shops except food and chemists, no leisure activities will be open, not going out to see friends etc - can go out once a day for exercise.
Now, need to introduce testing properly again - for doctors and nurses and the community, tracing as the WHO says, and Protective equipment for doctors and nurses.
...and there’s no rules yet on how to reduce crowding in supermarkets/ on the tubes. Although I’m hoping now measures will be taken.

 

[rainbowbluebells]

But also saying the measures may be relaxed in 3 weeks. I think saying that reduces the seriousness of the situation :/ but I still think when the time comes, he will need to continue with the lockdown.
Also, police will enforce.

 

[Rufous McKinney]

Now, need to introduce testing properly again - for doctors and nurses and the community, tracing as the WHO says, and Protective equipment for doctors and nurses.

My 24 year old niece is the ICU Registered nurse on nite shift. Her first job out of school, and this hits.

As she is driving to work (an intense commute on freeways) they call and change the shifts- its chaos there apparently and this has hardly started. No word from my brother on whether she actually HAS any corona cases.

Cripes.

 

[Roy S]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1242194693385043981

 

[andyguitar]

There seems to a lot of confusion about why people are being locked down. In the UK its being done to slow the infection rate so our health service can continue to function. Its not to try to eradicate the virus which some over here believe.

 

[andyguitar]

Also @rainbowbluebells might be interested to know that the 'New Rules' announced by Boris Johnson last night will not become law until thursday at the soonest. Until then the cops have no powers to stop people going out and about.

 

[rainbowbluebells]

There seems to a lot of confusion about why people are being locked down. In the UK its being done to slow the infection rate so our health service can continue to function. Its not to try to eradicate the virus which some over here believe.

Worth knowing that is a political and economic decision taken by the government, not a scientific one. It is certainly possible to eradicate the virus. The reason political and economic factors come into it, is because of the third advisory group in SAGE, the one relating to “behaviours”. This advisory group consistently watered down policies, due to putting economic factors and money, rather than putting saving human lives first. This is the opposite of what many other countries did. This is discussed more on part 2 and 3, and this is some of part 1:

https://bylinetimes.com/2020/03/23/...-to-safeguard-the-economy-over-british-lives/

Unscientific Fatalism

Any model is only as good as the assumptions that go into it and the empirical data it crunches. To get models to work, the assumptions need to be founded as much as possible on what is known. This also means ensuring that the data used to formulate assumptions is based on an appreciation of how multiple complex systems actually interact.

A scientific analysis by the New England Complex Systems Institute at New York University has found the Imperial College model to be deeply flawed. Although the authors praise the Imperial study for recognising the disastrous consequences of the Government’s previous “mitigation” approach, they identify a number of inexplicable failings.
One of the most egregious is the stubborn belief that the outbreak of the virus cannot be stopped. This belief can be traced partly to how the Government interpreted a range of modelling results produced by British scientists advising it, as part of its Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE).

Overlooking the Power of Tests and Tracing

Several models produced by SAGE scientists indicate that using contact tracing to contain the outbreak would be extremely difficult without sufficient speed, but they still emphasised that identifying people infected and isolating them systematically on a mass scale would at least help to reduce or control the epidemic

Independent scientists who have reviewed the SAGE corpus say that it reveals a fatally incompetent scientific process. According to Professor Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh’s Medical School, the SAGE corpus inadvertently revealswhy the UK Government “got it wrong… SAGE analysis was overcomplicated, too academic, relied on incomplete data, overlooked testing and health service capacity. Why didn’t we go fast down the path of test, isolate, trace while delaying spread for health services to prepare?”


“They ignore standard contact tracing allowing isolation of infected prior to symptoms,” they state. “They also ignore door-to-door monitoring to identify cases with symptoms… They ignore the possibility of superspreader events in gatherings by not including the fat tail distribution of contagion in their model. This leads them to deny the importance of banning them, which has been shown to be incorrect, including in South Korea.”
The ‘fat tail’ refers to the existence of small probabilities leading to a much higher probability of extreme outcomes.

South Korea’s pursuit of the method of mass contact tracing has allowed the country to demonstrably contain and reduce the rate of infections without resorting to more draconian lockdowns.

Assuming an Inevitable Disease Rebound

The New York University paper also dismisses the Imperial College study’s insistence that a resurgence of the Coronavirus would be inevitable as soon as interventions are relaxed.
The authors state that the Imperial College team completely ignored the potential impact of widely available testing on empowering authorities to monitor outbreaks and keep the disease suppressed: “Their conclusions that there will be resurgent outbreaks are wrong. After a few weeks of lockdown, almost all infectious people are identified and their contacts are isolated prior to symptoms and cannot infect others. The outbreak can be stopped completely with no resurgence as in China, where new cases were down to one yesterday, after excluding imported international travellers that are quarantined.”

The assumption that the Coronavirus will definitively rise back in an even worse way in winter is also highly speculative and scientists admit that, in reality, right now they just don’t know.

The east Asian experience, the New York University paper points out, demonstrates that rapidly containing and stopping the spread of infection is entirely possible – within a period of six to eight weeks – through national scale public, private and community coordination. After this, selective and careful lifting of restrictions along with extensive monitoring and tracing may enable societies to slowly begin functioning again.

“Since lockdowns result in exponentially decreasing numbers of cases, a comparatively short amount of time can be sufficient to achieve pathogen extinction, after which relaxing restrictions can be done without resurgence,” the New York University analysts write. “If actions had been taken earlier, successful local lockdowns, as performed in China in Hubei province, would have been possible instead of national lockdowns.”

Inaccurate Modelling

Overall, the New York University study is deeply critical of the modelling approach used in the Imperial College study, for being too narrow and therefore “not well suited for incorporating real world conditions at fine or large scale”. (Read more on the Part 1 link)

Part 2 and 3 of the series examine the government decisions in more detail and would perhaps be of interest to you. Part 2 in particular examines the economic interests that stopped the govt from making decisions that many other countries are making and have made (such as South Korea, China), and part 3 examines herd immunity.

 

[andyguitar]

It is certainly possible to eradicate the virus

Only if every single case in the entire world is snuffed out. As far as I am aware that has only been done with smallpox. Took decades. Other viruses seem to disappear ie Spanish Flu. Sure we still get flu but not that strain. Its gone.

 

[rainbowbluebells]

Only if every single case in the entire world is snuffed out. As far as I am aware that has only been done with smallpox. Took decades. Other viruses seem to disappear ie Spanish Flu. Sure we still get flu but not that strain. Its gone.

Yes - the whole world has to work in tandem.

 

[rainbowbluebells]

Also @rainbowbluebells might be interested to know that the 'New Rules' announced by Boris Johnson last night will not become law until thursday at the soonest. Until then the cops have no powers to stop people going out and about.

Thanks, I didn’t know that. However I did see on news last night that The Met Police were quite scathing because they felt the new laws put them in a “very very difficult position”, and they hadn’t been briefed on anything or how they were meant to enforce these new rules.

 

[andyguitar]

Covid 19 is just one of many viruses that can cause serious health problem and sometimes death. It is impossible to eradicate all of them. Those who have died of covid might have died of another infection if they had'nt got covid.

 

[rainbowbluebells]

Covid 19 is just one of many viruses that can cause serious health problem and sometimes death. It is impossible to eradicate all of them. Those who have died of covid might have died of another infection if they had'nt got covid.

Covid-19 is not just “one of many viruses”. It is particularly lethal and has particular costs on the health system. Your last argument particularly has a fallacy - that can be true of anything. Does that mean we stop treating everything and stop doing medicine altogether? Covid-19 brings down entire health systems. I would challenge you to go to any hospital in London right now, spend a day there, and say what you’ve just said (even when the no of cases were “lower”, at the beginning of the outbreak). But I’m pretty sure though this argument / debate has been got into over the many pages of this thread with me replying to a lot of them, so won’t be going into it anymore.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

Did I read that you first had symptoms around the 10th of March?

Terrific emory, and yes, that was the first day I felt a bit off, without connecting it to COVID ...

I've heard good things about Moducare. I took it several years ago for a while but don't remember how I responded.

Hopeful that means that you didnt react badly enough to remember it .... pine bark has a very beneficial effect o the immune system, among other good works. Give it a look ....

Keep taking good care of yourself, it seems to be working!

So far, so good (said the guy who just fell off the roof of a 75 floor building) ....and back at'cha, jimbo !!!

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1242194693385043981

Totally agree with almost everything posted there about the virus and Dr Fauci, except for the scattered idiots who think we should fire up the economy, and damn the torpedos, full speed ahead.

The gilded turnip uttered the words yesterday that we all know how to interpret: I've heard he's a good guy, I like him ....

Translation: gone in 60 seconds. Or 6 to 10 days.

 

[ljimbo423]

So far, so good (said the guy who just fell off the roof of a 75 floor building) ....and back at'cha, jimbo !!!

My Covid infection broke last night. My chest loosened up and within a half hour or so, I felt 90% better.

I still feel much better today, maybe just a little fatigue. The chest tightness/congestion, almost all of the fatigue, swollen glands under my chin, general feelings of flu and a miserably painful pink eye are all gone!

I'm going to wait a couple more days before I go out in public. I'm following the CDC guidelines for leaving isolation after Covid infection. Got to have food soon though, that's not optional!

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

But also saying the measures may be relaxed in 3 weeks

That's because BoBo is using our administration's playbook. And apparently, hair dresser.

Its not to try to eradicate the virus which some over here believe.

We're not that simple, altho I can full understand why it might seem we are. We do know that the primary focus is to flatten the spike and try to avoid crashing every hospital in the country.

 

[ljimbo423]

Hopeful that means that you didnt react badly enough to remember it .... pine bark has a very beneficial effect o the immune system, among other good works. Give it a look ....

I don't think I reacted badly to it. If I remember right, it was very expensive and my budget back them was very, very tight.

I think the massive amount of herbs and other supplements I take, played a big part in why my symptoms were so mild and only lasted about a week.

 

[YippeeKi YOW !!]

I don't think I reacted badly to it. If I remember right, it was very expensive and my budget back them was very, very tight.

The last ie I ordered it, just before the crackdown at Amazon, it was $37 for 180 caps ....

I think the massive amount of herbs and other supplements I take, played a big part in why my symptoms were so mild and only lasted about a week.

I agree, and ditto ....

 

[rainbowbluebells]

That's because BoBo is using our administration's playbook. And apparently, hair dresser.

Hahaha!

 

[ljimbo423]

That's because BoBo is using our administration's playbook. And apparently, hair dresser.

I've read this 2 different times now and 2 times you had me laughing out loud!! Again!