Coronavirus (OLD)

[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

You are speculating yourself, and you are also, as ever, stretching what other people say to suit your strange views of what is happening.

Let's get one thing clear. I am certainly not saying there won't be a second wave. I have merely said that if it is true that if the late lockdown resulted in our reaching the same peak of the virus that we would have reached anyway, we may avoid a second wave anywhere near as extreme as the first one. That makes sense.

However, equally, it may not be so, and in fact although there was no lockdown with the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, there was still a devastating second wave.

I have been consistent in saying that this virus is going nowhere, and if we have not yet reached herd immunity, it will be back, lockdowns or no lockdowns.

Your solution is to lock us all up and hide ourselves away. For years! What kind of nonsense is that? If you want to lock yourself up, be my guest!

[EDIT]
Oh, so now you are not saying that we should lock down until a vaccine is found! I'm glad we've sorted that out.

So, what is your solution to this problem, jfman? If you are not going for the herd immunity solution and you are not going for a long lockdown, then what are you saying?

Again you are misrepresenting my post - nowhere did I say 'until a vaccine is found'.

I think we've fundamentally got to the heart of the problem - you simply read what you want and ignore context, fact and reality to suit your agenda to fully reopen the economy regardless of the impact on human life.

If I trawled the internet seeking to find spurious evidence I could find 'evidence' for almost anything. It doesn't make those positions reality no matter how much you wish them to be. The response to the virus has to be grounded in science and reality.

Good luck in the second wave Old Boy. I hope the stock exchange doesn't fall too much.

---------- Post added at 10:05 ---------- Previous post was at 10:04 ----------

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

I think you are stretching it, Hugh. Ok, it's a theory, but it is still evidence to support what I was saying.

True, the two articles that were produced did not come from me because someone beat me to it, but it was the second of those articles I was referring to in my original post.

Not peer reviewed evidence. Magnificent. Wait there while I go around shaking hands with everyone I meet.

Originally Posted by Hugh

Not from you...

Peer-reviewed papers are "evidence", which this is not - it’s one Prof of Stats views, not backed up by any other papers/research.

From the Bristol Uni web-page



I guess it's 'evidence' if it says what you want it to say...

To be fair, there is a continuum of credibility between red-top conspiracy wailing and a peer reviewed paper, and an academic paper placed on a pre-press server like Arxiv is nearer the latter end of that continuum than the former. Random nut jobs don't get access to such services, and the fact that it's there means it is worth consideration. "one Prof of Stats' views" is unduly dismissive.

[OLD BOY]

Originally Posted by jfman

Again you are misrepresenting my post - nowhere did I say 'until a vaccine is found'.

I think we've fundamentally got to the heart of the problem - you simply read what you want and ignore context, fact and reality to suit your agenda to fully reopen the economy regardless of the impact on human life.

If I trawled the internet seeking to find spurious evidence I could find 'evidence' for almost anything. It doesn't make those positions reality no matter how much you wish them to be. The response to the virus has to be grounded in science and reality.

Good luck in the second wave Old Boy. I hope the stock exchange doesn't fall too much

Oh, really? I'm sure you did, jfman, but I'm not trawling through this whole thread to prove you wrong on that.

So why don't we start over. What are you actually suggesting the government should do that it's not already doing?

Popcorn's at the ready...

---------- Post added at 10:19 ---------- Previous post was at 10:17 ----------

Originally Posted by jfman

Not peer reviewed evidence. Magnificent. Wait there while I go around shaking hands with everyone I meet.

I did not claim it was peer reviewed, and the fact that it wasn't doesn't mean that the theory was without merit.

[Kushan]

The way I see it, there's two schools of thought on where we "are" with the spread of the virus.

If one is right and we're over the worst, then additionl lockdowns/restrictions will cause some loss to the economy.

If the other is right and we don't put measures in place, it'll cause loss of life.

I'll take the opinion that life is more valuable than money any day of the week and err on the side of caution every single time.

[nomadking]

Via the "Search this Thread" option.

Originally Posted by jfman

We didn’t try hard enough for three months evidently. And we tied our hands behind our backs during herd immunity week with exponential growth in cases.

I look forward to further absurd propositions that fundamentally ignore the prime human instinct which is to survive and for their loved ones to survive.

There’s no normal without elimination or a vaccine and there never will be.

Middle class video conferencing users drive the hospitality sector.

---------- Post added at 17:32 ---------- Previous post was at 17:25 ----------



That’s because Oxford are essentially an arm of the British state. If there’s ever a story needed to deflect from Government scandal they will gratefully oblige.

Originally Posted by Chris

To be fair, there is a continuum of credibility between red-top conspiracy wailing and a peer reviewed paper, and an academic paper placed on a pre-press server like Arxiv is nearer the latter end of that continuum than the former. Random nut jobs don't get access to such services, and the fact that it's there means it is worth consideration. "one Prof of Stats' views" is unduly dismissive.

I'm not being dismissive, I'm trying to give it appropriate weight (as opposed to peer-reviewed papers).

However, I don't think people (and by people, I mean the red-tops that reported on the paper), actually read the summary fully - it states

the distribution of times from disease onset to death for fatal cases, to infer the time course of fatal infections from the subsequent death data.

Using the distribution of times from disease onset to death, it is possible to extend the model to infer the time course of fatal infections required to produce the later deaths.

The paper is only discussing infections that lead to deaths, not all infections - as treatment(s) improved and the NHS learned how to cope with the severe effects of the virus, deaths lessened (not overal infection rates).

[jfman]

Originally Posted by nomadking

Via the "Search this Thread" option.

'No normal', is of course not in lockdown forever as Old Boy portrays.

[tweetiepooh]

Interesting that when the trial of vaccine was paused it was "front page news" but the resumption was much less trumpeted. And the pause was just normal process for the situation.

Archery GB has said that with social distancing we can continue to shoot. We are only outdoor at the moment so enjoying the good weather, not so much fun when it's colder and wet and darker earlier - likely to get pneumonia and all the hassles from that.

I don't like masks at all but will wear in shops etc more to get in but also to help others around me some of whom need protection but many just helps them feel safe. It's more a pain that some of the shops I want to visit only allow visits by appointment.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

Oh, really? I'm sure you did, jfman, but I'm not trawling through this whole thread to prove you wrong on that.

So why don't we start over. What are you actually suggesting the government should do that it's not already doing?

Popcorn's at the ready...

Use the search function.

I did not claim it was peer reviewed, and the fact that it wasn't doesn't mean that the theory was without merit.

It doesn't mean it has any genuine scientific merit until it has been.

If you were right we would ease restrictions and numbers wouldn't rise. That's not the reality on the ground and now we've Government threatening a second lockdown unless people adhere to the new restrictions.

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by jfman

'No normal', is of course not in lockdown forever as Old Boy portrays.

Yes it does, seeing as you criticised the timing of the lockdown, indicating that you consider it should've been done earlier.
Then again there's post #5071.

Originally Posted by jfman

It’s not about individual risk - for New Zealand getting it back to zero means businesses open, no distancing, sports stadiums full.

Accepting community transmission means none of these things are long term, realistically viable. The measures you have to introduce to keep it “manageable” are a sizeable part of the way to lockdown and you have no option but to commit to them until there’s a vaccine.

People will say “ah, but tourism”. It’s to that argument what the German cars line is re EU trade. A sizeable irrelevance. Getting the rest of the economy going normally outweighs tourism.

Originally Posted by OLD BOY

You are speculating yourself, and you are also, as ever, stretching what other people say to suit your strange views of what is happening.

Let's get one thing clear. I am certainly not saying there won't be a second wave. I have merely said that if it is true that if the late lockdown resulted in our reaching the same peak of the virus that we would have reached anyway, we may avoid a second wave anywhere near as extreme as the first one. That makes sense.

However, equally, it may not be so, and in fact although there was no lockdown with the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic, there was still a devastating second wave.

I have been consistent in saying that this virus is going nowhere, and if we have not yet reached herd immunity, it will be back, lockdowns or no lockdowns.

Your solution is to lock us all up and hide ourselves away. For years! What kind of nonsense is that? If you want to lock yourself up, be my guest!

[EDIT]
Oh, so now you are not saying that we should lock down until a vaccine is found! I'm glad we've sorted that out.

So, what is your solution to this problem, jfman? If you are not going for the herd immunity solution and you are not going for a long lockdown, then what are you saying?

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/h...c-coronavirus/

(In Philadelphia) Flu cases continued to mount until finally, on October 3, schools, churches, theaters, and public gathering spaces were shut down.

Shortly after health measures were put in place in Philadelphia, a case popped up in St. Louis. Two days later, the city shut down most public gatherings and quarantined victims in their homes.

Of course, getting citizens to comply with such orders is another story: In 1918, a San Francisco health officer shot three people when one refused to wear a mandatory face mask. In Arizona, police handed out $10 fines for those caught without the protective gear. But eventually, the most drastic and sweeping measures paid off. After implementing a multitude of strict closures and controls on public gatherings, St. Louis, San Francisco, Milwaukee, and Kansas City responded fastest and most effectively: Interventions there were credited with cutting transmission rates by 30 to 50 percent. New York City, which reacted earliest to the crisis with mandatory quarantines and staggered business hours, experienced the lowest death rate on the Eastern seaboard.

In 2007, a study in the Journal of the American Medial Association analyzed health data from the U.S. census that experienced the 1918 pandemic, and charted the death rates of 43 U.S. cities. That same year, two studies published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences sought to understand how responses influenced the disease’s spread in different cities. By comparing fatality rates, timing, and public health interventions, they found death rates were around 50 percent lower in cities that implemented preventative measures early on, versus those that did so late or not at all. The most effective efforts had simultaneously closed schools, churches, and theaters, and banned public gatherings. This would allow time for vaccine development (though a flu vaccine was not used until the 1940s) and lessened the strain on health care systems.

The studies reached another important conclusion: That relaxing intervention measures too early could cause an otherwise stabilized city to relapse. St. Louis, for example, was so emboldened by its low death rate that the city lifted restrictions on public gatherings less than two months after the outbreak began. A rash of new cases soon followed. Of the cities that kept interventions in place, none experienced a second wave of high death rates.

[jfman]

Originally Posted by nomadking

Yes it does, seeing as you criticised the timing of the lockdown, indicating that you consider it should've been done earlier.
Then again there's post #5071.

Again this isn't a full lockdown. I know you're penchant for pedantry is a staple of the forum, however this is clearly not Old Boy's claim.

[1andrew1]

A concerning situation especially with the rise in the R-rate and students starting at university.

Government testing laboratories across the UK are facing a backlog of nearly 200,000 Covid-19 tests and are having to send some samples abroad to help reduce the stress on the system, amid growing concern about the lack of a robust test and trace programme.

There was a backlog of 185,000 tests on Friday, according to Department of Health and Social Care documents leaked to The Sunday Times, with some tests being sent to Italy and Germany for processing.

“The technology is there, the testing is there, they’re just not using it,” said Kelly Klifa, co-founder of Testing For All, a not-for-profit company making affordable Covid-19 tests. “Testing centres do have tests, so the bottleneck is the laboratories themselves — tests are being routed to the wrong locations.”

Early in the pandemic, Boris Johnson promised he would deliver a “world-beating” testing strategy, but this arm of the government’s coronavirus response has proved to be one of the most controversial.

https://www.ft.com/content/45a559bd-...5-ac962ba49375

[nomadking]

Originally Posted by jfman

Again this isn't a full lockdown. I know you're penchant for pedantry is a staple of the forum, however this is clearly not Old Boy's claim.

"Sizeable part of the way" is pretty close to a "full" of anything.
From your post #4638

Plan A should have been aiming to eradicate the virus. Plan B a vaccine.

At no stage have I ever suggested locking everyone up forever. As ever, Old Boy, you present the straw man argument.

You continue to be under the flawed logic that no lockdown = economy working as normal. 100% wrong. While I advocated a longer, stronger lockdown, protecting incomes and businesses along the way to get everyone out the other side in much the same position as before.

You however present the incoherent economics of austerity to save us. People lost their jobs. People spend less. More people lose their jobs. More people spend less. Cycle continues. For years.

It's not my fault your ideology makes you incapable of bold thinking, of 'entrepreneurial spirit' I think you call it.

When all is said and done a coherent strategy of eradicating the virus through isolating everyone as much as possible, for as long as possible, while protecting incomes will be proven to be better for public health and the economy.

So how is a "stronger lockdown", not more than a "full lockdown"?

[jfman]

This is a completely seperate point from what Old Boy has made so I refuse to get bogged down in it as you steer the conversation away from the pertinent points at hand. We’re staring down the barrel off a second lockdown and you’re arguing points I made months ago.

The second point relates to getting numbers to, or close to, zero pursuing an elimination strategy. It should not be read as suggesting lockdown until a vaccine.

Nowhere will you find me advocating a lockdown until a vaccine as Old Boy claimed.