Coronavirus (OLD)

I think they got this one wrong.
They should have gone with the Apple/Google solution.
I still think they will end up having to switch from one to the other.

---------- Post added at 20:59 ---------- Previous post was at 20:58 ----------

Originally Posted by jfman

This will be a challenge for non-essential retail, hospitality and other small businesses going forward. Even if a small minority of customers - 5 or 10% - aren't confident enough to go out and purchase then that's profit margins significantly reduced.

Indeed, which is great for the less paranoid.
Hopefully I'll have less of an issue getting to the pub for a meal.

[jfman]

It gets better than just getting a table - a slump in demand of that order would see plenty of good opportunities for those individuals more confident in their position (either through age, health, income). Hotels and flights cut prices to fill rooms/seats and even further a cooling of the house price market and slashed interest rates means there's never been a better time to get a mortgage for those who can.

I was scoping out flights in January to get away into the sun and there's plenty of bargain offers around.

The possible NHS app limitations have been known about for months, if it is that causing delays then there is no excuse.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Damien

The possible NHS app limitations have been known about for months, if it is that causing delays then there is no excuse.

They have been and the thinking was that we could strike a deal with Apple and Google to alter their Bluetooth security protocols.

[tweetiepooh]

In passing saw an article suggesting that asymptomatic "suffers" and not likely to pass on infection. This does not include those who are presymptomatic who can be infectious.

What would be ideal is to have a very fast (minutes) are you infectious test. This would need to have a 100% accurate NO (false positives are less issue)! If that could be done at ingress points to facilities then maybe you can remove some of the other restrictions within that facility. Ah well I can dream!

[1andrew1]

A real shame Boris Johnson got sidetracked by herd immunity.

Professor Neil Ferguson estimates 25,000 lives could have been saved by going into lockdown a week earlier....
He told the House of Commons science committee of MPs: "The epidemic was doubling every three to four days before lockdown interventions were introduced.
"So, had we introduced lockdown measures a week earlier, we would have reduced the final toll by at least a half."

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...rlier-12004222

[nomadking]

Now do people believe me, when I kept saying that the UK's problems were comparatively worse, because more people brought it into the country.
Link

They found the UK's coronavirus epidemic did not have one origin - but at least 1,356 origins. On each of those occasions somebody brought the infection into the UK from abroad and the virus began to spread as a result. "The surprising and exciting conclusion is that we found the UK epidemic has resulted from a very large number of separate importations," said Prof Nick Loman, from Cog-UK and the University of Birmingham.
"It wasn't a patient zero," he added.
The study showed that less than 0.1% of those imported cases came directly from China. Instead the UK's coronavirus epidemic was largely initiated by travel from Italy in late February, Spain in early-to-mid-March and then France in mid-to-late-March.

---------- Post added at 18:28 ---------- Previous post was at 18:23 ----------

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

A real shame Boris Johnson got sidetracked by herd immunity.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...rlier-12004222

Nonsense, it was already here long before then. As the Blood Transfusion Service study found, 1.5% of Londoners were carrying the virus by 1st week of March.

Instead the UK's coronavirus epidemic was largely initiated by travel from Italy in late February, Spain in early-to-mid-March and then France in mid-to-late-March.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by nomadking

Now do people believe me, when I kept saying that the UK's problems were comparatively worse, because more people brought it into the country.
Link

No, because there's no evidence that similar figures didn't enter other European countries. Neither does the evidence suggest they entered simultaneously as you frequently portrayed they describe a window across two months.

What that shows is that if we had implemented airport screening we could have caught 700 of them (give or take). Had we implemented a lockdown sooner, or cancelled major sporting events like Liverpool v Athletico Madrid before thousands came over the impact of the virus would have been reduced.

Surely you must believe these were now errors in retrospect?

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by jfman

No, because there's no evidence that similar figures didn't enter other European countries. Neither does the evidence suggest they entered simultaneously as you frequently portrayed they describe a window across two months.

What that shows is that if we had implemented airport screening we could have caught 700 of them (give or take). Had we implemented a lockdown sooner, or cancelled major sporting events like Liverpool v Athletico Madrid before thousands came over the impact of the virus would have been reduced.

Surely you must believe these were now errors in retrospect?

Yes - but only in retrospect aka hindsight.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by nomadking

Nonsense, it was already here long before then. As the Blood Transfusion Service study found, 1.5% of Londoners were carrying the virus by 1st week of March.

it may of been here long long before then.

Said to have originated from Wuhan, China, in December, a recent study by researchers at University College London and the University of Reunion Island, found COVID-19 may have made the jump from its initial host to humans at some point between October 6 and December 11.

Looking at the Office of National Statistics (ONS) official death figures, Express.co.uk identified what experts have now determined to be a "spike" in fatalities in England and Wales between adults 45-85+ starting on week 45 of 2019 – November 8 – with the same figures being almost 1,000 deaths higher than the previous year and around 200-300 higher than the five-year average.

The ONS confirmed to Express.co.uk that there were 129,821 deaths registered in England between October and December 2019, 6,752 more deaths than the five-year average (2014 to 2018) for this quarter and that age-specific mortality rates significantly increased between this same timeframe for all age groups aged 75 years and over, in comparison to the year before.

Dr Jason Oke of the University of Oxford says these deaths need to be studied further to understand their implications.

He told Express.co.uk: “I’m interested in looking at this excess in deaths, but it depends on what you compare to, if you look back at other data, the expectation of what happens is quite variable year-on-year.

“Life expectancy has plateaued now, but it’s been going up for a while, so you would expect, perhaps, fewer deaths in later years.

“I think these comparisons are tricky – it’s very easy to see the effects of COVID, because the jump is so large – there’s no mistaking those because the magnitude is so big.

“But, smaller deviations are a bit more difficult to determine what’s going on, or whether that’s just an artefact.”

Dr Oke said there were no doubts over a significant rise in deaths among the elderly before Christmas, but said it was hard to put a finger on whether they could be attributed to coronavirus without further investigation.

People may of have been dying from it before it was even named. who knows.

I can't wait until anti-body tests are freely available, as I suspect Mrs Pierre had it in December.

[Sephiroth]

If they really want to understand the scale of herd immunity, or rather - herd antibodies, they should offer free tests and provide a means of results sharing with the Guvmin (with a presumption, but an option) of anonymity. Ethicity and age etc would need to be part of the feedback.

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by jfman

No, because there's no evidence that similar figures didn't enter other European countries. Neither does the evidence suggest they entered simultaneously as you frequently portrayed they describe a window across two months.

What that shows is that if we had implemented airport screening we could have caught 700 of them (give or take). Had we implemented a lockdown sooner, or cancelled major sporting events like Liverpool v Athletico Madrid before thousands came over the impact of the virus would have been reduced.

Surely you must believe these were now errors in retrospect?

The study also says the controversial football match between Liverpool and Atletico Madrid, on 11 March, probably had very little impact on bringing the virus into the country.
An estimated 3,000 fans flew in from Spain to watch the game, but there were 20,000 people flying in from Spain every single day in mid-March.
"[It] shows that individual events such as football matches likely made a negligible contribution to the number of imports at that time," the study says.

So how many cases did South Korea detect at their airports?
Chances are that it was a lot less than 1,500 people.
26th March, South Korea, so relatively late on and after UK lockdown.

Korea reported 104 new cases Thursday, bringing total infections to 9,241, according to the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Of the new cases, 39 cases -- 34 citizens and five foreign nationals -- involved travelers arriving in Korea from abroad. Of these imported cases, 25 were from Europe, 11 from America and three from Asia. Some 30 were detected during airport quarantine screening.

That's around a quarter missed via screening.
March 16.

South Korea, which has the highest number of cases in Asia after China, now has a total to 8,162 confirmed infections and 75 deaths, the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said (KCDC).

Most of that 8,162 was down to just ONE infected person that was missed using screening.

---------- Post added at 19:42 ---------- Previous post was at 19:37 ----------

Originally Posted by Pierre

it may of been here long long before then.



People may of have been dying from it before it was even named. who knows.

I can't wait until anti-body tests are freely available, as I suspect Mrs Pierre had it in December.

There were other related bugs also going around at that time.
Link

But others are more sceptical. David Brown, a retired molecular virologist worked on coronaviruses for 20 years.
His wife got pneumonia over Christmas, with an appalling cough and loss of taste and smell.
He thinks she and many others probably had another coronavirus, OC43, which can also cause respiratory illnesses.
"OC43 can be really severe. It can cause recurring infections in your lifetime like other coronaviruses. There's no surveillance of it, and it's impossible to go back and check," he says.
...
But we've got to be really careful that we don't retrofit general winter respiratory symptoms to match Covid-19.
Researchers at the University of Nottingham have begun analysing samples from patients with lung problems going back to January.
Jonathan Ball, professor of molecular virology says: "The earliest point we can detect the virus is about the third week of February.
"One thing that I constantly get told is: 'I must have had Covid in November, December, or January, because my symptoms fit the description.' But that doesn't fit what we've found in samples."

[jfman]

Again Nomadking you are putting forth the straw man that because screening isn’t 100% effective it isn’t a worthwhile tool at all. This leads to the preposterous conclusion that you genuinely believe that having 1400 people enter with the virus is of equal consequence to 700.

This is obviously not true.

---------- Post added at 19:57 ---------- Previous post was at 19:53 ----------

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

Yes - but only in retrospect aka hindsight.

It’s only truly hindsight if there was no alternative opinions available at the time. Something/someone (or multiple people) contributed to our decision making processes at many points against alternative scientific opinion - I’m curious as to the evidence base.

If we are listening to crap scientists then I hope we aren’t listening to them now. If it’s crap politicians the same.

[downquark1]

It's amazing how many people tell me they think they had the virus even though their symptoms don't match at all.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by jfman

It’s only truly hindsight if there was no alternative opinions available at the time. Something/someone (or multiple people) contributed to our decision making processes at many points against alternative scientific opinion - I’m curious as to the evidence base.

If we are listening to crap scientists then I hope we aren’t listening to them now. If it’s crap politicians the same.

This is pertinent and interesting, from Hayley Barlow, Channel 4's Director of Communications

EXCL: Channel 4 News has seen a leaked paper prepared for one of the scientific committees advising the government - which called in the starkest possible way for a lockdown - a full two weeks before the official announcement was made.

https://twitter.com/Hayley_Barlow/st...78122040942597