Coronavirus

Originally Posted by jfman

I've friends who are teachers and they describe a grim, deteriorating situation. As someone with fond memories of doing no work and watching movies recorded off television on VHS in my last week before Christmas and summer holidays I do have to question if it is worth it vs a week after that would be ramping up work in the new term.

Yup, missus is a primary teacher and amazed at the science that has proven it’s totally safe for teachers, unlike any other adults, to be in a bubble with 20-30 other families....

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Pierre

That’s a misleading headline, they don’t go “through” the shield, they’re not Covid Copperfield viruses.

So all of the 136million articles on face shield effectiveness are misleading?

Originally Posted by Pierre

Wales to go into severe lockdown, because all the previous lockdowns have been so successful?

Lockdown 1 was successful though, it clearly had a halting impact on the virus.

[Carth]

Face mask or plastic face shield, same thing . . . helps to prevent the spread of virus particles in face to face contact.

We use face shields at work, as do many places.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Wales to go into severe lockdown, because all the previous lockdowns have been so successful?

What is the definition of stupidity/ insanity again?

When lockdown doesn’t work, the obvious solution is more lockdown.

It depends what the goal is.

Governments gave up on/abandoned the idea of eliminating the virus as New Zealand and others have deciding summer holidays and the return of schools would be more beneficial.

So the goal is to reduce the number of cases and therefore hospitalisations and deaths, pushing them to the other side of a vaccine rollout. By this measure, which I don't agree with I think they should have pushed for the former, then lockdowns are a resounding success but only a sticking plaster to buy time.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by nomadking

So all of the 136million articles on face shield effectiveness are misleading?

They don’t go through the visor, the visor is a hard barrier, they may then get around the visor and the effectiveness of that can be addressed, but it cannot go “through” the visor that is a physical impossibility.

[1andrew1]

Great and comprehensive FullFact repudiatuion of the lockdown sceptics. This is a small excerpt.

Do lockdowns stop Covid, generally?

In his video of 8 September, Mr [Ivor]Cummins also insists that the spring lockdown did not cause the subsequent fall in deaths or severe illness. In a (now deleted) talkRADIO interview on 6 October with Julia Hartley Brewer, who shared his original video, he said: “Since April the data is pretty clear… This is real world empirical data analysed to check the effect of lockdown, and almost without exception, there is no correlation. And this is published in the Lancet, and there’s five published papers now.

“There’s essentially no substantial connection between lockdown and outcomes of ICU and mortality. That’s a reality.”

Later, he said again: “There is no credible publication post-hoc, or after the event during the summer, that has really claimed that lockdowns are in any way effective.”

This is simply untrue. A research paper published in June in Nature, one of the most prestigious scientific journals in the world, concludes: “Our results show that major non-pharmaceutical interventions—and lockdowns in particular—have had a large effect on reducing transmission.”

Another in Science in July said: “Focusing on COVID-19 spread in Germany, we detected change points in the effective growth rate that correlate well with the times of publicly announced interventions.”

Another in the BMJ said: “Earlier implementation of lockdown was associated with a larger reduction in the incidence of covid-19.”

https://fullfact.org/health/can-we-b...down-sceptics/

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by Carth

Face mask or plastic face shield, same thing . . . helps to prevent the spread of virus particles in face to face contact.

We use face shields at work, as do many places.

Link

Where things get difficult is with what happens to the aerosols when wearing a plastic shield.
“Nearly all of the aerosols were coming around the side of the face shield and reached nearly the same distances as without wearing anything,” says Echternach. These results are still to be published, but Echternach says they should serve as a warning for anyone relying on face shields alone to keep them safe as pandemic lockdowns are eased.
“They are certainly not effective when you are in close contact with someone,” he says.
The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention appears to agree with him – it does not recommend face shields for normal everyday activities or as a substitute for masks. The Swiss health authorities have also warned against using face visors instead of masks after an investigation into an outbreak of Covid-19 at a hotel in the canton of Graubünden revealed all those who were infected had been wearing plastic face shields, while those who avoided infection were in masks.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Wales to go into severe lockdown, because all the previous lockdowns have been so successful?

What is the definition of stupidity/ insanity again?

When lockdown doesn’t work, the obvious solution is more lockdown.

Except lockdowns do work, as linked to above.

Full Fact acknowledges

We must not dismiss the lockdown sceptics’ claims out of hand, just because they sound like something we wish was true, or because they lie outside the mainstream version of events. Mr Hitchens, Mr Cummins and Dr Yeadon all say that we should base our views on evidence, and on that we agree with them.

However, on the overwhelming balance of the evidence, their claims are wrong.

https://fullfact.org/health/can-we-b...down-sceptics/

[daveeb]

Originally Posted by Chris

Yup, missus is a primary teacher and amazed at the science that has proven it’s totally safe for teachers, unlike any other adults, to be in a bubble with 20-30 other families....

Same here, Mrs Daveeb teaches 3 different classes on different days each week as well. I'm amazed she hasn't caught anything yet, thank goodness for that school building conferred immunity.

[Carth]

ha nice link nomadking, can you now recommend where I turn to in order to start legal proceedings against my employers, who so obviously are not providing me (and others) with the adequate protection required to stay open?

let me guess . . . you're an office worker

Well that's an exciting week. Tier one into tier 3 and into tier 4 in less than 2 days. Good job we had absolutely no plans to meet any family.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

Except lockdowns do work, as linked to above.

Full Fact acknowledges

https://fullfact.org/health/can-we-b...down-sceptics/

Yeah, really working for them. The results speak for themselves,

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Yeah, really working for them. The results speak for themselves,

What's the alternative? Let it run wild like Sweden? Those results speak for themselves.

It's somewhat ironic we knocked back the New Zealand option for the sake of international travel when, in all likelihood, international travel restrictions will remain up to and potentially beyond significant amounts of vaccine rollout here. Other sectors like hospitality here have lost out massively, furlough will have undoubtedly cost more.

The New Zealand option was never an option for us. A country of 5 million at the bottom of the world and close to nowhere is no comparison to the UK, which has a massive economy, 12 times the population and a high volume of inbound and outbound travel through one of the busiest international airports in the world. The disruption of a no-deal Brexit will be as nothing compared to the sheer chaos of closing ourselves down completely for long enough to make a difference, yet the mere possibility of No Deal has been raising ever more hysterical objections for many months.