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

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Inara

Senior Member
Messages
455
rainbowbluebells said:
have Germany closed down schools, stopped gatherings and started working from home?
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Schools are closed, most bigger gatherings are forbidden, some cities closed bars, discos, theaters, museums etc. The government asked employers to make home office possible, but practically I don't see that happen (except for exceptions). But let's see what the next week will bring.

No matter the official numbers, virus spreading works in Germany as everywhere else on the earth. The numbers sound far too low, so I'm not surprised they (as other countries) cheat. What makes me angry, though, is that they will keep on selling the story how great our health system is while it is not.

rainbowbluebells said:
The UK bases it’s decisions on behavioural science:
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That's what I assumed when you said a psychiatrist is counseling your PM. That UK primarily builds on "control of the masses" without using facts. It's like they declared UK a huge experiment.
 
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rainbowbluebells

rainbowbluebells

Senior Member
Messages
248
Hd-x said:
https://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft...rozent-a-4cd8bfae-59be-4c3e-ab4b-a893313b840f
It were 2369 corona infections, but the German politicans still said "only" 1567 cases.
To be exactly, they under reported 802 cases !!!


Nobody has controll over the situation, some German states will close schools - other German states will not close any schools.
This was the only thing they were doing, their primary focus is just to keep the big companies, bussiness and all the work running as usual. They still gaved the "advice" that young ppl. should not visit older people, because older ppl. have higher dead risc.
they said if ppl feel ill, such ppl. should stay at home and call their doctor via phone, but not visit clinics.
Some clinics just only have 2 lung ventilators/airpacks, they cant handle larger number off corona cases.

This is not what I expect as crisis management,
the worst thing by all this is that German ppl. are very naiv folks, most German ppl really think Corona is just a joke. There were corona infected ppl. going out making party in bars as usual and they infected many other ppl, but noone cares and punish them by law.
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I think at some point the govts will have to choose even more strongly between whether they would rather protect the way the economy runs (as it stands in its current form) or its people. Already they’re realising they can’t and most are starting to choose their people I think but not quickly enough. At some point, when things get worse, I think they’ll be forced to choose. I think the WHO got it right yesterday when they said something along the lines of.. act fast. If you don’t go after the virus, it will come after you after you. Have no regrets on what you do

it annoys me too when people don’t take this seriously and are not held to account. It’s very selfish and dangerous of them.
 
rainbowbluebells

rainbowbluebells

Senior Member
Messages
248
KnowledgeItselfIsPower said:
My own view: We, in the UK, and perhaps every other nation, should be putting HUGE resources in to supporting and protecting the 15-20% of the population who are most vulnerable - care workers with protective masks, nursing homes quarantined, carers for people with severe M.E given leave - and simultaneously hugely ramping up the number of High Dependency Beds in hospitals with every pound/dollar we have..
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Yes the govt should be pumping more money into high dependency care beds, protecting the elderly, helping care workers. They should have been doing this a long time ago really but at the very least, they should start now.

But shutting down schools, transport, consumer confidence, most work spaces, gatherings... ? There is, for very many, a real price to pay for that, and one which when you are actually at the hard front line of that producing economy is causing night sweats of worry, and it is not yet scientifically clear that this is medically useful.

Its been said before, but is worth repeating: nearly 90% of deaths occur to the over 70s and the previously sick. Putting the breaks on the entire workforce, bringing the economy to its knees is NOT a very targeted way of helping those who need it.
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I think there is a very real reason the WHO and nearly every country has started doing school closures, moving to remote working, and even in cases shutting down all shops, restaurants. The virus does not pick and choose who it infects, it is indiscriminate and leaves grief and death in its wake. The healthy people who go to work, who go to cinemas; to shops, who mingle with others and socialise - they will pick up and incubate the virus, some of them will die as we are seeing more young people dying in Italy now. Some may have lasting lung damage like we are seeing now too. But more of them will incubate it and spread it - back to the people who they look after in care homes, in hospitals during surgery and appointments, and in GP practices, and just to other healthy people who will then pass it on to vulnerable people they live with and elderly people. Then there’s the fact so many people with pre existing conditions and vulnerabilities are not hidden away, a lot “look” healthy and again would easily pick up the virus from people who don’t know better.

It’s the opposite of the UK approach Infact.!The UK approach was, deliberately infect 60% of the population in order to “protect” (and I say “protect” with huge quotation marks) the vulnerable. Whereas the approach the WHO and other countries are using, is the opposite - to stop the healthy people who are more visible in society getting infected, in order to help to stop vulnerable and elderly people getting infected as well. Those of us who are more vulnerable are only as safe as the healthier people around us. Once the virus gets its foothold, and is allowed to keep its foothold - it’s very dire news for all of us.

On the economy, I think the consensus is human lives come before anything else. The economy is not a fixed thing where only one type of economy works. For example what if the govt brought in a universal basic income and unconditional housing for everyone. What would happen then? I’ve actually done some modelling on this with the citizens income trust and I think people would be surprised by how the results pan out. Really, saving lives is the first priority - what happens next really is up to our governments. How they help people and help them meet rent payments etc. They have a duty to help provide for us and to fix the economy in the long term, and to help hospitals and other things essential for us, in whatever way they can.

It’s also interesting to note that the governments who came down really hard on the disease after they got their act together and decided not to cover it up anymore, to stamp out the disease, like China, have got to a point where they’ve recovered enough to re-open quite a lot of the things they’ve closed, Apple has now re opened there and will be closing in Europe, and they’ve closed the makeshift hospitals they had to set up in Wuhan. So doing that does seem to pay off, even for the economy in its mostly current state.
 
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rainbowbluebells

rainbowbluebells

Senior Member
Messages
248
Inara said:
That's what I assumed when you said a psychiatrist is counseling your PM. That UK primarily builds on "control of the masses" without using facts. It's like they declared UK a huge experiment.
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Yup. It really is an experiment. Still cannot believe that our govt came up with a plan that essentially would let a virus deliberately rampage through and infect 60% of the UKs population at least, which definitely would have hit the most vulnerable too. And all this on the basis of a theory and some modelling which only the UK did, which is based on behavioural science of all things, using models which they will not release to the public, of a new virus, a virus which can kill 15% of elderly people it infects and could cause potential lasting harm even in survivors. Instead of following the WHO’s and the rest of the worlds policies and humane policies of stopping the spread of the virus. And they sold that to the public. The last two days were some of the most bizarre and frankly unsettling days in my life.

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238646050740670465

And the UK just trying to ignore this (vaccines - the real place where herd immunity is used):

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238736314310279168

However even after the govts U turn on mass gatherings, I am not sure whether the govts strategy has changed completely. They may still try to go down the same route. Especially re school closures which they have been very resistant on.

In Germany and in countries with school closures, how are you managing it? I see two issues, 1. What happens to kids when their parents cannot work remotely. Who can look after them? And 2. Some kids who come to school are very poor and need free school meals, sometimes the only meal they get is at school. Some parents wash their children’s clothes at schools as they don’t have water at home. Also rely on food banks. It’s terrible but that’s what deliberate underfunding can do - so in times of crisis like these, it needs to be certain these kids have enough money for food and to live happily.
 
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rainbowbluebells

rainbowbluebells

Senior Member
Messages
248
Inara said:
In Germany, the Health Minister asks people who return from Italy, Switzerland and Austria to stay at home for 2 weeks - voluntarily. :rofl: It's not a must.
Of course, people will stay at home for 2 weeks in quarantine voluntarily...
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Oh gosh not your country too?! In the UK we’ve had that from the beginning too... “self-isolation”... everyone is told to self isolate, and a lot of the time only if they have symptoms! Our whole govts policy is based on self isolation. If you have a continuous cough or a fever stay at home for 7 days. Even after just one day of this policy coming into play, people are talking about how their bosses don’t let them stay off work, how people just go into work anyway... etc
 
I

Inara

Senior Member
Messages
455
rainbowbluebells said:
And 2. Some kids who come to school are very poor and need free school meals, sometimes the only meal they get is at school.
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Again, for me there is no question this is a very difficult, even catastrophic situation. I think such children will hunger, as do other poor people who depend on e.g. "The Tafel" (where you can get food for free) which were closed some days ago. This is scandalous. The entire poverty topic is scandalous if you keep in mind THERE IS ENOUGH for everyone, just some want it all. As always, it is the poor who carry all the consequences of a catastrophe.

Since the government wants production and profit at all cost, the closing of schools is a problem (because parents still have to work - and if they don't, they don't get paid o get sacked). As far as I know a parent is allowed to stay home for some time, but without payment. As @KnowledgeItselfIsPower said this can lead to a dire situation. This could be changed (I think in Germany they're bringing along some laws for this specific situation, but...). In my eyes, these are hollow promises. Again, people are left alone to solve a societal problem.
(I think the easiest could be sick leave...)

For me, what can be seen very clearly, is that the economic system is deeply flawed. The economy should follow the environmental circumstances, not vice versa; as can be seen it doesn't work vice versa.
 
Sarah94

Sarah94

Senior Member
Messages
1,087
Location
UK
rainbowbluebells said:
I think it will still take quite a lot of time for the UK to have school closures, though. A headline came out today that closing schools would cost the govt 3% in GDP. So that’s probably a concern of theirs as well...they’ve been very reluctant to close schools.
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There's also the issue of closing schools meaning that healthcare workers who have kids would need to look after their kids rather than going to work.
 
rainbowbluebells

rainbowbluebells

Senior Member
Messages
248
debored13 said:
Here's an interesting piece of info about calculating the true amount of cases based on deaths.
"This is an issue: You only know the official cases, not the true ones. But you need to know the true ones. How can you estimate the true ones? It turns out, there’s a couple of ways. And I have a model for both, so you can play with the numbers too (direct link to copy of the model).
First, through deaths. If you have deaths in your region, you can use that to guess the number of true current cases. We know approximately how long it takes for that person to go from catching the virus to dying on average (17.3 days). That means the person who died on 2/29 in Washington State probably got infected around 2/12.
Then, you know the mortality rate. For this scenario, I’m using 1% (we’ll discuss later the details). That means that, around 2/12, there were already around ~100 cases in the area (of which only one ended up in death 17.3 days later).
Now, use the average doubling time for the coronavirus (time it takes to double cases, on average). It’s 6.2. That means that, in the 17 days it took this person to die, the cases had to multiply by ~8 (=2^(17/6)). That means that, if you are not diagnosing all cases, one death today means 800 true cases today.
Washington state has today 22 deaths. With that quick calculation, you get ~16,000 true coronavirus cases today. As many as the official cases in Italy and Iran combined."
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavi ... d3d9cd99ca
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This must be how our govt got their figure of how many infections there are. We have had 11 deaths here, which may equate to ~8800 cases recently.
 
rainbowbluebells

rainbowbluebells

Senior Member
Messages
248
Latest news, ”herd immunity” strategy still going ahead, only difference right now is mass gatherings not going ahead but NEXT weekend!! Also not because it spreads infections apparently. Only because it frees up public services. And of course companies themselves and sporting have closed by themselves, not on advice of the govt. I hope something changes more on Monday. Feel like I’m living in a dystopian film

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238220483474096128

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238799404540272640

Meanwhile just a short distance away, in Ireland, it’s a completely different policy. I wonder how Northern Ireland and Ireland will reconcile their differences, surely it would be dangerous to have Ireland pursuing a lock down policy while Northern Ireland continue with the UK plan.

Professor at London school of hygiene and tropical medicine

https://twitter.com/i/web/status/1238410276438822913
 
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P

pamojja

Senior Member
Messages
2,477
Location
Austria
debored13 said:
First, through deaths. If you have deaths in your region, you can use that to guess the number of true current cases. We know approximately how long it takes for that person to go from catching the virus to dying on average (17.3 days). That means the person who died on 2/29 in Washington State probably got infected around 2/12.
Then, you know the mortality rate. For this scenario, I’m using 1% (we’ll discuss later the details). That means that, around 2/12, there were already around ~100 cases in the area (of which only one ended up in death 17.3 days later).
Now, use the average doubling time for the coronavirus (time it takes to double cases, on average). It’s 6.2. That means that, in the 17 days it took this person to die, the cases had to multiply by ~8 (=2^(17/6)). That means that, if you are not diagnosing all cases, one death today means 800 true cases today.
Washington state has today 22 deaths. With that quick calculation, you get ~16,000 true coronavirus cases today. As many as the official cases in Italy and Iran combined."
https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavi ... d3d9cd99ca
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South Korea is a very interesting country, in that it had the most freely available testing, and the lowest mortality. Therefore I use them to calculate the most likely real number of infected. As I just posted on an other forum:

South Korea 8086 infected / 72 death = 112,3


Italy 1266 death x 112.3 = 142,172 - 17,660 detected = 124,512 untested potentially infected

Iran 514 death x 112.3 = 57,722 - 11,374 detected = 46,348 untested potentially infected

China 3142 death x 112.3 = 352,847 - 80973 detected = 271,874 untested potentially infected

USA 45 death x 112.3 = 5054 - 2,174 detected = 2,880 untested potentially infected
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The actual numbers might have changed meanwhile again.

I think most people in responsibilty just aren't prepared for such an event. But the whole thing is developing so fast, soon every country in Europe - in a matter of the next few days - will do everything needed and possible to keep mortality as low as South Korea.

The good news come from China:

 
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