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Maybe the prevalence of single-person households in Sweden influenced their decision to make a rational judgement of what precautions could reasonably be suggested, rather than adopt a draconian lockdown espoused by a ruling class that disregards the rules which it promulugates for the plebs.
Sweden has a very high proportion of single person households.
It’s also not remotely true that we didn’t, or haven’t, implemented social distancing.
And arguably we were told to be alert before it was cool, with information about what alert means.
Ordinarily I would have come into physical contact with people or things people had touched hundreds of times per day. Swedes are (were) as physically tactile as they are socially distant. Since CV I can’t remember the last time I touched another person and have 3 different levels of hand washing depending on the level of CV-risk/dirt.
I read something to the effect that in a poorly ventilated space you’d need >10 minutes of breathing at each other or >5 minutes of talking to make a worse than evens chance of transmission. Outside there is almost no chance of transmission. All the pictures you’re seeing are people outside - and mostly with that great ‘journalistic’ telephoto lens trick.
Something in the stories about Sweden that somehow never makes the news is the change to social security that sick pay (which is nearly 100% salary) is now paid from the first day of illness which means that everyone* can afford to make the right decision about staying out of the workplace if they have symptoms.
Our epidemiologist is the first to critique his own early choices about care homes (where 75% of the deaths have occurred) and crucially the vast majority of the country believe that lessons will be learned for later in this crisis and the next one.
Junior schools are open but most schools are outside most of the day and parents aren’t allowed inside.
My concern now is that Sweden chose such a sustainable ‘lock down’ that we’ve become altogether too comfortable with social distancing and that normal is further away than it will be for countries that went into unsustainable lock down and quickly back to open again.
I probably won’t post again unless I can solve the cookie consent pop up thing.
*Everyone. Always deserves an asterisk.
This tracking app. From what I understand they have been using one in south Korea for weeks and it's open source code. So why the hell do they need to create one from scratch instead of copying it and changing the language.
Same with the ventilators couldn't they have copied an existing design instead of paying 20m to develop something that was never used.
Are we being take for a ride.
Im not sure how Gutpa & Sikora are getting away with posting their theories without having any actual studies to back them up
the studies that have been done seem to say that they are wrong & its a much lower % with immunity
The danger is that people that believe them are going to be spreading it willy nilly, thinking we likely have immunity
Wasn't there supposed to be a quarantine period for arrivals announced this week? Did I miss it?
the studies that have been done seem to say that they are wrong & its a much lower % with immunity
Magic undetectable immunity. The most obvious explanation is obvious and unpalatable To that group. Popper’s philosophy of science was wrong.
Social media makes everyone an armchair epidemiologist and expert in statistics 😀
I know it’s only Oxford, but I doubt they hand out chairs in epidemiology to anyone. Doesn’t mean she’s right of course, but both sides in this discussion seem keen to rubbish any expert that doesn’t agree with them.
By the way, is the shape of the curves for different regions (and different countries) consistent with the idea that lockdown is the main thing reducing spread?
I still don’t understand why London is falling so fast while other parts of the country are not. I hear the argument that those other parts are behind London, but we all went into the same lockdown at the same time. So, if it is lockdown that drives the decline would we not expect all regions to show similar declines?
Could possibly be due to very few people going into London right now and lots of people who live there having bolted to their country houses instead. By all accounts the place is a ghost town so that would really help stop any spread there.
The Gupta thing.
One cast-iron way to see she is talking nonsense is to realise that there are multiple large areas around the world with different demographic and economic structures where the total mortality is already over 0.1% - and that despite disease suppression efforts in these areas.
Guayas in Ecuador. Young population. 0.27% dead.
New York. Lombardy. Even London is close. Madrid.
Anything under 0.4% for a fatality rate is basically out the window.
If London has significantly higher infection rate as per Mancock yesterday that would certainly push their curve down compared to rest of UK. Simple models probably underestimate this effect which I expect to be quite significant at the 17% level as those 17% will tend to be the most socially active and healthcare staff etc who will have very high personal R values. Once they are immune the population average for the rest will drop.
This tracking app. From what I understand they have been using one in south Korea for weeks and it’s open source code. So why the hell do they need to create one from scratch instead of copying it and changing the language.
I’d have to ferret about the code to confirm but from the tech descriptions of it but I think it’s very similar to the nhsx, same sort of ingredients Bluetooth pinging and a fire base back end (Google Cloud stuff)so to me they smell very samey.
The issues with the hardware not the software, although this causes issues on the iOS phones as they helpfully attempt to power save and switch it off,just having your Bluetooth having to pulse continuously nibbles away at the battery life, everything’s a bit of a fudge to not gobble up your battery.
The apps are better than nothing but they’re not magical and if this becomes a thing then we’ll probably see various tech coming out that copes with the pinging requirement.Bigger batteries 🙂
They do seem to have done some interesting tweaks To get around the iOS issues.
To help users keep the app running in the foreground while minimising battery usage, the TraceTogether team included a power saver mode setting in the codebase. If you are an iPhone user, all you have to do is keep TraceTogether open but place the phone upside down in your pocket or face down on the table. That will trigger the power saver mode, allowing the app to regularly scan the environment for other TraceTogether users.
TLDR House is sceptical that it’s any different to ours 🙂
@thecaptain So, Are you saying that the steep falls in London are being driven by immunity rather then the lockdown, which (based on the curves for other areas) only gives you a gentle decline.
I’m not sure how infection-fatality rates are calculated. How do you account for all those people with significant co-morbidities for example? If you count anyone who dies with CV as a death from CV then wouldn’t that affect the infection-mortality rate of all the other things they might have died from? As I say, it’s not my area, but I would have thought that the effect of co-morbidity would be included when they finally calculate the infection-mortality rate for CV so just taking stated deaths in New York for example and dividing by population may not be a very good guide. I’d agree that the good professor seemed to lack a clear answer to that question when it was presented to her though.
If you count anyone who dies with CV as a death from CV then wouldn’t that affect the infection-mortality rate of all the other things they might have died from?
As I understand it, this is why those in the know are looking at total excess deaths from ONS data that is a week or so behind?
As I understand it, this is why those in the know are looking at total excess deaths from ONS data that is a week or so behind?
I am. There was a significant drop in all-cause deaths this week - and the effect is much more sensitive than simply COVID19 deaths. I think it might be a possible barometer to look at changes as we relax lockdown.
My issues with Gupta are largely that in the face of multiple global serology studies finding that the prevalence is 3-10%, rather than accept (as one would for every other viral infection) that this is likely to be the prevalence, the explanation must be that a mythical 40% have not generated antibodies despite having had the infection. She made a prediction (sort of), it has been found wanting.
By contrast, Sweden just said "we were wrong and the assumptions in our models need refinement".
We have also apparently been attributing deaths in the country to COVID more than others. The example I was given yesterday was that we (Sweden) attribute all deaths with a COVID-related cause to COVID and list them as such, whereas other countries have seen a really big spike in pneumonia-related deaths, but very low COVID (*cough* Russia). That is apparently skewing the figures upwards an giving a slightly false impression of infections and deaths.
I really need to read more of the local news sources to get a better idea of what is going on.Sadly, my statistical and immunology Swedish is quite poor.
Are you saying that the steep falls in London
I'm still wondering if London had it a lot earlier than is being shown/we know. Based purely on the fact I went sick and was signed off work for a week in February with a mystery flu like illness, that nobody around me had before or after I did. It last 7+ days and took me 3 weeks to get back to normal.
In January I spent a very significant amount of time travelling around the UK using the Tube and London stations as a Hub, did I catch COVID19? I didn't have more than a very minor cough so probably know, but I did have breathing issues which I attributed to my normal asthma, but you never know.
So what’s the ‘conventional’ view on why that happened. Is there one?
A mate of mine married a Swedish lass last year and moved over there. His take is that Swedish people are more amenable to rules than Brits generally, but also, as above, social distancing is still very much taking place albeit within a more relaxed framework. So cafes are open, but set up with large spaces between tables for example and only one person allowed inside at a time. Shops have perspex shields to reduce risk etc.
The idea that life is going on as normal there, isn't, according to him, remotely the case, it's more that culturally the population is more inclined to comply with suggested rules and norms without high profile enforcement. That's his take anyway.
I’m not particularly interested in defending Prof Gupta. In fact I’m trying to avoid taking sides at all and listening to as many credible sources as I can. But we know there is a big variability in how people react to infection. Ranging from barely any symptoms through to death. As far as I know, we don’t know what causes that variability (genetic?, previous exposure to something else?). Given that, is it not possible that there is a fraction of the population that are effectively immune despite not showing the specific antibodies that are looked for in these tests? I don’t know, it seems unlikely, but not impossible.
If she is right and these models are just simple compartment models (with the population divided into well mixed compartments, with rate constants defining movement between the compartments and the whole thing described by a load of first order differential equations) then I can we’ll believe that very different solutions give equally good fits to the data. I have some experience of these models in a different context and once you get beyond a couple of compartments you do need very good data or things can get pretty unstable. But she could be wrong on that too, for all I know.
By the way, I’ve not seen anything from the Swedes saying they were wrong, so it would be good to see some links to that. Last I heard they still thought they were on the right track but admitted they hadn’t done enough to project people in care homes.
Given that, is it not possible that there is a fraction of the population that are effectively immune despite not showing the specific antibodies that are looked for in these tests? I don’t know, it seems unlikely, but not impossible.
The seroprevalence antibody tests are consistent with ONS swabbing PCR of 0.1-0.3% having active infection in a two-week sampling period.
Sweden - Tom Britten is doing the modelling
“It means either the calculations made by the agency and myself are quite wrong, which is possible, but if that’s the case it’s surprising they are so wrong,” he told the newspaper Dagens Nyheter. “Or more people have been infected than developed antibodies.”
https://www.dn.se/nyheter/sverige/tester-73-procent-bar-pa-antikroppar-i-stockholm/
Whilst there is some time delay to develop IgG antibodies, Robust models are based on orders of magnitude, not absolute values, so 0.1, 0.3, 1, 3, 10, 30, 100% prevalence. ALL studies suggest the needle is at the 3-10% not the 30-100% that Oxford and Sweden would wish. That's a BIG difference that is not a result of "test inaccuracy".
In exponential land, it's easy to be "quite wrong" 😉
Thanks. Doesn't sound as though he is accepting that they are wrong, just accepting that it is a possibility. But that's a start 🙂
So, am I right in thinking that nobody is seriously suggesting that there could be a fraction of the population who are immune to this disease despite not having contracted it? I thought one of the Swedes was hinting at this (or at least that there may be other forms of immunity that don't show up on these tests) but I can't remember where I saw that.
It is not impossible that past coronavirus infection MAY confer some protection (indeed past SARS-COV-1 infection probably does). Equally, having low levels of antibodies that bind to virus may instead make infections worse (antibodies help shuttle virus into cells).
There are four other circulating human coronaviruses. I doubt this fifth one is particularly different with regards to immunity. One needs some perspective, not just data acquisition bias (looking too hard at THIS virus at the expense of human experience with all other respiratory viruses).
Yes, that’s a fair point. There may be something particularly unusual about this virus, but I wouldn’t bet on it.
There may be something particularly unusual about this virus
There is with regards to innate immune response as I linked yesterday. Really nice paper. There is a lot of "firing from the hip", I've probably been guilty of it at some points, but I always try and ask "How wrong would I have to be to make a wrong decision?". @thecaptain has done the same. And the answer for me is information could not be THAT wrong to interpret the Oxford position.
roverpig, I'm not at all saying that London has reached herd immunity (for normal behaviour), far from it, but if the behavioural changes including lockdown are sufficient to reduce R to about 0.8ish in most of the country, then an immune fraction of 17% of the most active people would potentially cause a significantly more rapid drop in cases in London compared to outside London.
(There is actually some ambiguity in what people mean when they talk about R. From the modelling perspective, it makes most sense IMO to think of it as meaning the number of new cases that would be created per current case in a fully naive population. But some of the estimates are based on the number of new cases that are actually created per current case. I think when SAGE is talking about R being different in London, they mean the latter, not the former.)
Some evidence on masks:
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-hamster-masks-coronavirus-scientists.html
It's convinced me, I'm gonna start wearing one away from home when other people are about.
Well I guess that's one way to meet a target.
I think when SAGE is talking about R being different in London, they mean the latter, not the former.)
One of the reasons that politicians blathering on about "the R" has annoyed me so much. R₀ and Rₑ are two different things.
R₀ refers to the reproduction in a susceptible population with no immunity - this is a property of the virus and can't be changed. Rₑ is the actual reproduction seen in a particular context and can obviously be changed by the prevalence of immunity and the mitigations taken.
I’m gonna start wearing one away from home when other people are about.
We all will be soon. On my ride yesterday I saw more riders wearing masks than helmets.
The science on their use by us untrained idiots is still wobbly, but as a tool for reassuring people when the time to start mingling again is here, they’ll prove invaluable.
Mrs OTS is making them for us. I'm on version 2 using neck tube material to give some stretch. I do look like Hannibal Lecter in it though.
The science on their use by us untrained idiots is still wobbly,
Some of that seems to be based on the medical profession asserting their right alone to 'do medicine'. I saw one doctor telling people on Facebook not to wear gloves unless they are 'medically trained' for example.
@thecaptain I did carefully avoid using the phrase herd immunity, but thanks for the clarification. As you say adding a bit of immunity to the other measures could make the difference, but I don’t know enough about the models to know if a 17% immunity is enough to explain the difference in the curves between London and elsewhere.
Fully agree about R. I assume most of the numbers bandied about at the moment are Re rather than R0
I saw one doctor telling people on Facebook not to wear gloves unless they are ‘medically trained’ for example.
That’s because, if not trained, the public using gloves is more likely to increase rather than increase spread.
All that really matters is whether Re > 1, = 1 or < 1, and the confidence of that statement. The exact value is immaterial. Modelling has over-sold the utility in trying to explain the assumptions of the model.
Obviously as R comes down, the herd immunity threshold comes down too. But since that is based on behaviors, we know how well reliance on behaviors lasts (third week in January, normally) 🙂 .
Rather than say "don't use gloves", a little instruction is better placed. I learned something.
Indeed. Training. They become an essential tool then. Or two essential tools, if you count like the government.
That’s because, if not trained, the public using gloves is more likely to increase rather than increase spread.
How does that work then?
Multi-centre longditudinal study of the use of hydroxycloroquine etc in Covid. Not exactly a home run for Trump's favourite medicine...to put it mildly.
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)31180-6/fulltext
How does that work then?
The link that Tired provided is a very good starting point if you really want to understand…
How does that work then?
Because member of general public takes off gloves incorrectly, assumes that their hands are 'clean' and then promplty goes around touching stuff with infected hands. simples
That link does not claim what you said about gloves 'increasing the risk of spread' in (or should that be on?) untrained hands.
The argument is not about whether medically trained people can use gloves 'better' but whether Joe average is putting himself and/or others more at risk by wearing gloves.
I can’t understand it for you.
Is there some way of preventing a Second Wave of questions, roughly 6 weeks after the First Wave? 🙂
Because member of general public takes off gloves incorrectly, assumes that their hands are ‘clean’ and then promplty goes around touching stuff with infected hands. simples
You are missing another premise there, perhaps something like non-trained people will wear gloves in lieu of appropriate hand washing? If that is true you may be correct but otoh it could be a prejudiced and unfounded assertion.
Is there some way of preventing a Second Wave of questions, roughly 6 weeks after the First Wave?
I keep resisting posting “read this thread, it’s been covered already”, because that would become tiresome very fast.
It isn't a question of understanding some inferred meaning but statements of facts. If you can link the quote regarding the increased risk of transmission it would be welcome. I can see how you have jumped to that conclusion but it's not actually what it says.
Read this thread, it’s been covered already.
The link first and foremost cautions against public use because the gloves are a scare resource which should be reserved for the health services. In passing it is noted that glove use by the public may increase the risk of transmission based on an assumption about missed opportunities for hygiene. That latter hypothesis is total speculation and pulled out of nowhere apparently. In academia, the use of 'may' indicates the least secure kind of knowledge.
Going back to Sweden:
Perhaps another explanation is that Sweden has a very different way of perceiving the current crisis. Instead of seeing it as a national emergency or a fight against an “invisible enemy”, there seems to be a tendency to regard coronavirus just as a serious public health problem. It is viewed as something that requires the careful observance of rules set out by health experts, rather than an existential problem that calls for the state to suspend civil liberties for the sake of national security.
From: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/may/22/sweden-u-turn-controversial-covid-19-strategy
The evidence for Vitamin D:
I suspect most STWers are outside all the time and don't need to worry too much about Vitamin D. Certainly I can't imagine I'm lacking Vit D in summer. It's still interesting, there's certainly correlation, maybe there's causality as well.
It is viewed as something that requires the careful observance of rules set out by health experts
I'm starting to think that's where the rest of Europe is going to end up. We're just going to be really careful and follow some rules. (My predictions are always wrong.)
Obviously as R comes down, the herd immunity threshold comes down too. But since that is based on behaviors, we know how well reliance on behaviors lasts (third week in January, normally) 🙂 .
You wouldn't have to do much to make a big difference though.
IR cameras on public transport and airports.
Make sure people wear a mask/stay at home if they're ill.
Perhaps some other easy, cheap measures.
But my prediction is that our government is a bit too dim to do any of these.
antiviral wipe (sorry if it's already done)
On the masks and gloves issue. I agree that there should be some comprehensive advice on how they are best used. Certainly not to do what I saw a guy do in morrisons on Tuesday. He came out of the shop with gloves and mask on. Opened his car and put all of his shopping in the back, pulled down the mask to his throat, got on the front and drove off. All with the gloves still on.
In Italy, where masks are worn as a matter of course in public places, they have tried to introduce a scheme to ensure that the can be bought at no more than 50c each (roughly 45p). Not surprisingly this hasn’t gone well, manufacturers and retailers are not complying and people are reusing disposable masks
I can’t understand it for you.
Well that’s quite defeatist. And therefore not British old chap.
On the masks and gloves issue. I agree that there should be some comprehensive advice on how they are best used. Certainly not to do what I saw a guy do in morrisons on Tuesday. He came out of the shop with gloves and mask on. Opened his car and put all of his shopping in the back, pulled down the mask to his throat, got on the front and drove off. All with the gloves still on.
But is that more likely to lead to transmission than if he didn't wear the gloves.
There is no question that certain practices optimise the benefits of gloves but are gloves by default riskier?
Nice to see Dominic Cummings has been abiding by lockdown- guardian reports the police spoke to him as he left London to visit his folks in Durham while having coved symptoms
I think I'll enjoy seeing how Cummings wheedles out of this one 🙂
Clearly rules is for proles not incredibly important people like Dom.
How did cummings and his wife get from London to Durham? If by car, were they in a fit state to drive? Did they stop en route?
If not by car, how?
Being denied that police talked to him; did they talk to his wife?
Reported by Guardian, Mirror and Laura Kuenssberg that trip was for child care; LK saying that downing st intend to 'tough this out'.
Yet again, do as I (we) say not as I (we) do.
Tomorrow's headlines now being hastily re-written.
There is no question that certain practices optimise the benefits of gloves but are gloves by default riskier?
No, but it's similar to the mask question. False sense of security, incorrect use etc. etc.
YMMV, basically.
I really hope that **** ends up Mussolini'd.
I think I’ll enjoy seeing how Cummings wheedles out of this one 🙂
Could this be their chance to drop the evil overlord?
onewheelgood, I'm going to pick a nit about your assertion that R0 is a property of the virus that can't be changed. It most definitely depends on the behaviour of the population and can vary significantly around the world. As SAGE say "Both the reproduction number and doubling time are dependent on the characteristics of the population so may be different in the UK, and may be different in different groupings within the UK." (the point of comparison here being Wuhan, before it reached us).
Though I suspect the low numbers people calculated for China early in the outbreak were probably just wrong. The doubling time in the deaths didn't seem very different to what we got here. People tried all sorts of fancy stuff with detailed models rather than plotting the numbers and putting a line through them.
Reported by Guardian, Mirror and Laura Kuenssberg that trip was for child care; LK saying that downing st intend to ‘tough this out’.
'A source close to Mr Cummings defended his actions, saying he made the trip because his parents could help with child care while he and his wife were both ill with symptoms of coronavirus.'
So not essential travel, they didn't isolate as a family, and put parents (in their 70s at a guess) at risk?
That childcare excuse makes it worse in my eyes, there are hundreds of families struggling to deal with balancing work and childcare whose lives would be made a significant amount easier if they could make use of parental help from just down the road but aren't.
People tried all sorts of fancy stuff with detailed models rather than plotting the numbers and putting a line through them.
Not everyone 😉 . But there does appear to have been an academic focus on model first, rather than analyse first and apply models later. My entire premise was that everything looks exponential. I know from hard experience in my day job modelling drugs that you can’t estimate ratios of parameters, but a half-life is a half-life. Currently arguing on lockdown skeptics this point about models
Sadly the slipperiest of worms are the hardest to get on the hook. I hope perseverance pays off.
I have a question about the ability to track and trace 10,000 cases (people?) per day. Is this track and trace all the contacts of 10,000 confirmed cases, or track and trace 10,000 contacts of confirmed cases? These are two very different capacities.
Re the PPE, I've seen it countless times in chemical engineering labs where we're trained to use it. Incorrect wearing, re-use,, not double gloving (supposed to wear thin nitrile first then thicker "marigold" style if handling certain compounds but plenty of people would just use the marigolds. and then they'd take the first glove off and, using their bare hand, take the second glove off, thus transferring all that chemical straight onto bare skin.
And these were people supposedly trained to wear them.
Gloves and masks when worn by untrained people are worse than useless but they fulfil that needd to "feel" safe. Like when you put you seatbelt or helmet on but then drive or ride like a ****.
A couple of weeks ago at the supermarket, I saw a woman wearing gloves and a mask. she was trying to open a new bag for life with one hand (other hand holding shopping to pack), couldn't manage it so she pulled the mask down, licked the end of her gloved finger and used that to prise the bag open. Utter ****ing moron.
I think I’ll enjoy seeing how Cummings wheedles out of this one 🙂
Quite easily. Boris will state he has full confidence in him. The news stories will get muddled and confused deliberately, a few bots will be used to push the supportive messages, it'll all be declared a storm in a teacup and it'll be business as normal. Honestly, the Government long ago gave up even pretending they cared, they're literally just a) making shit up as they go and b) laughing at us proles while voting themselves another payrise.
^ well said
Be interesting to see what my brexit loving parents make of Cummings, my dad thinks he's the messiah
At the same time my mum lives for her grandkids & she's missed 4 of their birthdays since lockdown started & mentally it's been very tough on her
It means, grandparents as carers is ok. For him. Because special.
Be interesting to see what my brexit loving parents make of Cummings, my dad thinks he’s the messiah
At the same time my mum lives for her grandkids
Are your parents are my in-laws!?
He'll get away with it for sure. Will barely register as a problem.
Edit - there you go, that LK tweet explains it. My FIL wioll repeat that without seeing the hypocrisy of us not sending our daughter to them for the past 8 weeks.
It is a storm in a teacup though, po-po had a word, slap on the wrist, job done. If we want normal people involved in politics further down the line, we need to try not to be over dramatic just cause we don't like the panto villain.
Also Laura kuensberg doesn't do journalism. She just does repeating what "an unnamed spokesman" said earlier. In other words, repeating Cummings. No investigation. No holding to account for veracity. No nothing except performing the function of legitimising rumour.
She's not exactly pointing out the glaring disparity of that excuse with the Gov rules he?
Well it is and isn't. The obvious failure to lead by example might not sound important but it kind of is in the end.
You can add Jake Berry Tory MP to the list as well.
https://twitter.com/JakeBerry/status/1242083918280523782
I think from the lay perspective, from the media perspective, etc., the 'model' almost has a fetished kind of value, where you 'go with the model' and your decisions receive some kind of unimpeachable warrant.