Coronavirus (OLD)

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Paul

I'm curious why they use 28 days.

The average recovery time is supposed to be 2 weeks, and if you test positive then surely you are alreay in this 2 week period ?

(Isnt this why we have a 14 day self isolation period)

Ultimately if someone puts you on a ventilator they can extend life and treatment. Some will make it and others won’t.

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/l...195-X/fulltext

The maximum incubation period is assumed to be up to 14 days,2 whereas the median time from onset of symptoms to intensive care unit (ICU) admission is around 10 days.3, 4 Recently, WHO reported that the time between symptom onset and death ranged from about 2 weeks to 8 weeks.5

If someone died at the end of this timeline (and weren’t re-tested during it) they’d now no longer be in the figures.

The 28 days is simply a best guess.

---------- Post added at 07:53 ---------- Previous post was at 07:43 ----------

Originally Posted by Pierre

Didn’t say “rely”, said large %. Football has TV/ sponsorship revenue. Stadium revenue ( for PL at least) has long been superfluous to income. It is not known how the how or if the smaller non-league clubs Will fair. Likewise small independent cinemas and theatre are still an unknown. It’s a poor comparison anyway.

For Spain the percentage is about 11%.

These are “poor comparisons” because you don’t like them, not because they are inaccurate. Stadium gate receipts are far from “superfluous” and even if they were there’s hospitality and retail (jobs) built around them in shops, bars, restaurants. Aggregated over hundreds of football matches that’s a lot of money now no longer flowing through the economy.

Independent cinemas and theatres aren’t viable with the virus in circulation. Again these are jobs, and customers in Rishi’s service economy.

To deny that restaurants, Bars, scooter hire that are experiencing a 60-70% drop in footfall won’t be affected is blinkered to say the least.

They may survive, but the comment was based around economic impact and recovery.

Again you’re viewing my post as binary - nobody is disputing it’ll have some effect but you’re overstating it.

It will have an economic impact, and we’ll find out how big it was come November- ish.

It’s not February or March though. It’s August.

You’re assuming the virus will behave differently without mitigation - this is no different from “it’ll burn itself out in the summer”.

We’ll see, as cases continue to stay in the 0.0X % zone, people will more and more question restrictions.

Schools going back is the next big one, if they go back without a jump in infections.

And that’s a big if.

People can question restrictions all they please. When they breach them cases will spike. There’s no science, or even pseudoscience, that I’m aware of that demonstrates this will go away by itself.

You’re also assuming people won’t selectively question restrictions. If the middle class decide they quite like working from home, and going down their local, there are huge parts of the economy in city centres that will never recover.

There’s no return to normal without elimination.

[Sephiroth]

@jfman: I hope you have a life beyond cramming yourself full of all that wisdom you are imparting.

The poor sod’s got to digest all that!

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

@jfman: I hope you have a life beyond cramming yourself full of all that wisdom you are imparting.

The poor sod’s got to digest all that!

I’m working from home so can’t bore my colleagues with said wisdom.

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by jfman

I’m working from home so can’t bore my colleagues with said wisdom.

You've opened yourself up there!

Coronavirus related, as it’s the pandemic that’s causing the issue with Uni Admissions.

A colleague of my daughter (who works in University admissions) wrote this post, and I found it informative and relatively balanced.

I feel for the A Level students, I really do. I have a nephew, Xxx, and a niece, Xxxxxxx, having to suffer this issue with all of their friends, and I also get to see the university side with a government flip-flopping at all the wrong times just to look as though they're listening, but actually making things even more complicated and not necessarily better for the students.

Now, you might think this triple lock business is a win-win for the A Level students hoping to get to their chosen university, but it's not from where I sit.

Take the student point of view. They want to get to the "best" university (whether that's for academic, social, family or whatever combination of factors) for them. That means they have to know they have the best possible grades, but that's in competition with the other students; so if everyone gets a better grade they're no better off...and if it's not even (let's say we have conservative teachers at school A and optimistic students at school B), it's possible to actually be worse off. Just changing the guess-work from the exam board to the teachers doesn't make it necessarily fairer. Nor does the third option (moving it to be an actual exam) as that defers the decision until later, at least delaying application but also potentially pushing the student into having to compete with a bloated cohort of next year's Year 13s plus those who held on.

Then take the university point of view. For those not involved, some of the nuances might not be obvious. What happens at this time of year is that the universities get early sight of the grades (normally - as this year - this is on the Friday before the students get their results) so that they can prepare for both confirming places for those who achieved the offer, agreeing a strategy for those who may have missed (accepting lower grades in some cases, rejecting the application in others) and knowing how to deal with "Clearing". Normally, this means that some very hard work through the weekend means that by the Tuesday, you know (roughly) how many definite students you will have on your books, and how many you might need to pick up through the clearing process.

What you're not expecting is that on Wednesday morning, the government makes an announcement that the grades you've been modelling your acceptance/rejection decisions on are now less than agreed!

In fact, you may have been expecting to accept (say) 5000 students and reject 2000 which, with a target recruitment of 6000, leaves 1000 students to pick up through clearing. (These are not real numbers, and I've deliberately not chosen ones close to where I work). As of this morning, any one of the 2000 students might have suddenly picked up an extra 8 points and now be a firm acceptance - but you don't know that because you don't have the unfiltered results, so you now don't know whether you have 5000 or 7000 or somewhere in-between. That means you don't know whether you go into clearing or not, and if you do, what is your target.

The problem with that is that you can't over-recruit or under-recruit without a financial penalty, and the lack of certainty means hitting the "right" number is even harder than usual. There is a penalty (financial) for taking on more students than you have been allocated. This is not always enforced, but my understanding is that this year it's been indicated that it will be rigorously enforced to ensure that larger universities don't over-recruit to offset any losses due to the expected loss of overseas income. That means you either have a conservative approach to clearing and run the risk that extra students don't come through and you have a shortfall in students numbers to add to any overseas income losses. Bear in mind, this isn't a one-off loss; while students transfer sometimes, most don't so losing a student one year means a reduced income for the three to four years of the degree programme. The alternative is to be more positive in recruiting through clearing, and overshoot...at which point you end up with too many students creating both a funding headache (because of financial penalties) and a logistical nightmare as you try to deal with oversized cohorts which don't fit into the physical spaces and staff profile you have available.

So, this year students have no certainty and nor have the universities.

In fairness to all involved, there is no "fair" way to give accurate marks without exams. It was always going to have some winners and losers. Once you accept that there is a certain level of unfairness, the key question is "what can be done to be as fair as possible to as many students as possible?". This isn't it. Last minute moving of the goalposts might feel good as a minister trying to show they care, but it is going to create huge problems for both the students and universities.

I feel sorry for the students. They deserve much, much better.

[jfman]

On the other hand less foreign students due to the pandemic could (should) result in more places available on the whole. That said not necessarily for everyone.

Originally Posted by jfman

On the other hand less foreign students due to the pandemic could (should) result in more places available on the whole. That said not necessarily for everyone.

Here in Scotland it should be a positive benefit this year, as EU students starting studies at a Scottish university this September would still be entitled to free tuition.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by Chris

Here in Scotland it should be a positive benefit this year, as EU students starting studies at a Scottish university this September would still be entitled to free tuition.

Positive numbers for the pupils but less so for the Universities.

Unless much has changed the vast majority of foreign students I encountered were non-EU students (mainly Asian countries) and those bring in the big bucks. They’ll be looking for the public sector chequebook to bail them out soon.

[joglynne]

Published to-day by Imperial College London.

Largest study on home coronavirus antibody testing publishes first findings

https://www.imperial.ac.uk/news/2018...ibody-testing/

Originally Posted by jfman

On the other hand less foreign students due to the pandemic could (should) result in more places available on the whole. That said not necessarily for everyone.

Unfortunately, that means a substantial drop in income for the Unis, as the Overseas student fees are substantially higher than Home students (and as they were 20% of total Uni students in the U.K., and 14% of undergrads, that’s a big hole to be filled).

Also, the Uni’s can’t go over the Home student numbers to replace the missing international students - my daughter says they’re allowed X amount of home/EU and Y of international. So might well have vacancies for some courses for international but not home...

[jfman]

There’s no way that’s a sustainable position for Unis to take, in particular if they’re wanting the public purse to make up income shortfalls.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by jfman

There’s no way that’s a sustainable position for Unis to take, in particular if they’re wanting the public purse to make up income shortfalls.

I'm not sure that the public purse will be making up income shortfalls but the Government may encourage mergers to take some of the weaker players out. They believe the sector as a whole is strong financially, but the financial strength is uneven between universities.

Universities may have to re-think the balance of international students, but it's probably too early in the day to assume that international students are not coming this academic year. Other countries are taking similar approaches to ours and if they don't take a course, what will they do instead, given that many countries' job markets are tough right now?

[Hom3r]

Originally Posted by Pierre

And as if by magic, the death toll drops by 5K.

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...unted-12047827

Begs the question what the actual toll is.

I saw something recently ( I’ll have to google it to find a link) that stated that of all the hospital deaths up to the end of July, around 25K, that only 1.5K did not have any pre-existing contributing condition.

The more this drags on, the more I’m of the opinion that it’s time to stop being so over cautious.

At risk groups of course, stay safe, but the general healthy population should just be allowed to go about their business.

It is probably because they took the people who died due to other means, but had the coronavirus as cause of death adjusted. IIRC someone had CV but died after being hit by a bus, the COD was CV. Clearly not the case.

Originally Posted by jfman

There’s no way that’s a sustainable position for Unis to take, in particular if they’re wanting the public purse to make up income shortfalls.

They don’t take that position - it’s the Government funding position...

If the Uni’s take more Home students than the Government limit, they get hit by a double whammy - the Govenment reduces their funding, fines them, and they would have to support more students with less funding.

That’s why the ”Mocks" appeal isn’t going to work - the Uni my daughter works at aren’t actually accepting mock results today - prospective students can phone up and say they’re appealing the results on the basis of mocks but because they’re not verified by UCAS (yet) they don’t have a place; some courses won’t be taking any successful appeals later as they’re already full.

[jfman]

There’s no way that’s a sustainable position for Government to take