The problem with comparing countries is that we aren’t really comparing like for like
We're not, but the best comparison possible needs to be made at some point when this is over - if country Y has 100 deaths per 100,000 and country X has 50 deaths per 100,000, government Y needs to be seeing what government X did differently, or what societal differences might account for it - less crowded housing, less poverty or whatever
Is any PPE made in the U.K.? Or can it be? Especially the single use stuff, or is there any way of making re-usable/washable/sterilisable replacements ?
Our monitoring and tracing remains appalling - a family friend was on the cruise ship that left Argentina early March and ended up in Florida after healthy passengers were transferred to another ship. (WhyTF 70 year olds decided a cruise at that point was a good idea, I don't know)
Eventually flown back into Heathrow, waved threw and put on the regular bus/Tube whatever to pick up their car to drive 100 miles back home to a rural community with no testing, restrictions or advice. They've chosen to properly self isolate at home for 14 days, but I don't get the government not grasping this much earlier.
Sesomah77
Would be really interesting to see a global animation of the virus traveling around the world and to compare it to main business and tourism routes and things like that just a hunch, but must be some kinda correlation there?
Apols if already posted. Animated map further down the page. Note 'Please be aware that specific inferred transmission patterns are only a hypothesis.'
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?animate=2019-12-08,2020-04-10,0,0,30000
Big one is people looking at the US and tutting their head, well obviously it’s going to have big numbers but they’re are still only at 67 deaths per million. That is significantly better than western europe has done.
What you're missing is that the vast majority of those deaths are concentrated in one major city/state and the US isn't short of those.
Eventually flown back into Heathrow, waved threw and put on the regular bus/Tube whatever to pick up their car to drive 100 miles back home to a rural community with no testing, restrictions or advice.
I really can't understand why this is still happening. They should be segregated on landing and quarantined.
Eventually flown back into Heathrow, waved threw and put on the regular bus/Tube whatever to pick up their car to drive 100 miles back home to a rural community with no testing, restrictions or advice.
I really can’t understand why this is still happening. They should be segregated on landing and quarantined.
We can only guess. Where community spread is already well-established, then not enough benefit from a formal quarantine process?
Seems standard process applies to folks arriving back to the UK...
'When you return to the UK: protect yourself and others
When you return to the UK on a flight from another country, you should follow the government advice that applies to everyone:
go straight home from the airport, avoiding public transport where possible
stay at home and only go outside for food, health reasons, daily exercise or work if you absolutely cannot work from home
if you go out: always stay 2 metres (6 feet) away from other people, do not touch your face, and wash your hands frequently, including as soon as you get home
If you start to have symptoms like a high temperature or frequent cough, go straight home and self-isolate for 7 days. See the guidance for households with a possible infection and call NHS 111 if your symptoms worsen.
For further guidance, visit gov.uk/coronavirus or visit nhs.uk for specialist medical advice.'
What you’re missing is that the vast majority of those deaths are concentrated in one major city/state and the US isn’t short of those
I'm not missing that at all. Was a large part of my point if you read the rest of the post.
oldnpastit
The reasons you give for London being worse hit than other parts of the country are all the reasons why our useless government should have been on top of this from the start.
Instead, they continued to allow people from Lombardy to fly into the country until very recently, and announced they would discuss Covid19 in COBRA – after the weekend.
Johnson was so blasé about it that he managed to catch it himself.
Let’s not make excuses for them, they have been incompetent all the way along, even now
I'm not really giving out reason or defending anyone, just making the point that it's all very complex. And that simplistic analysis isn't really helpful.
Seosamh77,
With regards a global animation of the virus in relation to business and tourism routes, I've seen a few and as you suggest they are interesting, conclusive even.
Ergo my suggestion that the aeroplanes should nave been told to 'stay at home'. would have had a huge impact on both the airline and hotel industries and other businesses related to tourism. Many other industries would have been unaffected. Spend a billion to save a trillion.
The other thread was for 'the political and economic consequences of covid 19.' Issues related to pandemic preparation are causal, not consequential.
Jamze
Subscriber
Sesomah77Apols if already posted. Animated map further down the page. Note ‘Please be aware that specific inferred transmission patterns are only a hypothesis.’
https://nextstrain.org/ncov/global?animate=2019-12-08,2020-04-10,0,0,30000/blockquote >
interesting ta, need to grasp exactly what I'm looking at mind, but ta.
Is any PPE made in the U.K.? Or can it be? Especially the single use stuff, or is there any way of making re-usable/washable/sterilisable replacements ?
To use the gowns as an example, we used to use washable gowns many years ago then moved over to the blue disposable ones you see on the news footage now.
So all the washable gowns are gone. You'd need to set up production of them, distribute them, then have laundry facilities in place to cope with the volume. Our laundry no longer exists in any fit state on site. I used to work there many years ago and would spend hours and hours folding theatre gowns, you'd need a lot of laundry staff to cope with the volume they're going through now!!
Then you'd need capacity in sterile services to cope with autoclaving them all.
Every solution has it's problems!!
Oh absolutely. I just think there has to be a better more sustainable pathway than millions of throwaway plastic gowns. cost is king.
100% of people infected with the virus are asymptomatic....... until they begin to show symptoms,
20% of people infected with the virus are asymptomatic and never show any symptoms.
Whilst the 20% figure could be variable, the 100% figure isn't
Saying that people don't need to wear a mask in confined public spaces if they are felling well is not just wrong, It's not even wrong.
differences might account for it – less crowded housing, less poverty or whatever
Not counting the same things. Scotland now including care home deaths for example. It will be interesting to see how the split goes between care home and hospital deaths.
BiiMC
Squirellking
More Cash
oldnpastit
+ 1
richardkennerly
+ a very huge 1
Seosamh77
+ 1/2
Re travel into and then on from airports. This question was asked at the April 10 briefing and the reply from Matt Hancock wa:
Matt Hancock: (15:14)
The answer to both questions Ben is the same, which is that we follow the science and we’ve followed the science in terms of international travel all along. And we saw right at the start of this pandemic that the country that the two countries that brought in the most draconian international travel restrictions, the United States and Italy, both of them have now got serious problems themselves. So I think that the science which said that which we followed on international travel has been born out by events.
Well, if that isn’t cherry picking the countries/data that support your position, I don’t know what is.
A good portrayal of deaths/population size averaged out over 7 days.
[url= https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49768815051_fa7d207701_k.jp g" target="_blank">https://live.staticflickr.com/65535/49768815051_fa7d207701_k.jp g"/> [/img][/url][url= https://flic.kr/p/2iPUbN8 ]Screenshot 2020-04-13 at 13.05.20[/url] by [url= https://www.flickr.com/photos/76248110@N06/ ]danthomassw13[/url], on Flickr
A good portrayal of deaths/population size averaged out over 7 days.
I'm not convinced of the value of death/million as a useful metric. In big countries like China or the US different parts may have very little to do with each other so some average doesn't give a good picture of how well mitigation steps are working. Even in Italy there was a big difference between Lombardy and the south, and the London figures are quite different from the rest of the country.
Eventually flown back into Heathrow, waved threw and put on the regular bus/Tube whatever to pick up their car
Mate & his gf got one of last flights from New York to UK , couple of weeks ago, he was shocked to find no checks at Heathrow & everyone just getting on tube, colleagues that went back to Germany & Italy both faced checks & in Italy was quarantined
And both Italy & usa instigated travel bans far too late (Germany started checking incoming passengers in February & mass testing has been good at tracing) USA banned travel from China ,but left Europe open then closed Europe but left UK open...
Population size is a very poor metric and was not significant for prediction of deaths in any model I have analysed to date. ECDC have added it to their dataset, so now it MUST be important. The reason country population is no so important is that the unit of transmission is not the country. It is a city, a region, but not a country - see London, New York, Lombardia, Surrey...
Looking at the UK unitary authorities, for example, there is likely to be little transmission between them (although this does stabilize endemic infections when it might otherwise die out - that's the end game). Variability is VERY low from authority-to-authority - OK London is ahead, but when all are rebased to the same point in their epidemics, they are all basically growing at the same rate and on the very same trajectory. Number of cases varies by less than 4x across 164 authorities! That is seriously low in exponential land. It says that the new cases are coming from within that authority.
Same thing with the country data. What I think we will eventually see is some correlation between OECD healthcare spending and case fatality rate (or more likely death doubling time). I have that data too, but am too busy to play at the moment.
Banning international travel sounds obvious, but the virus is likely transmissible prior to symptom onset,. You get a few more stabs at succesful transmission if you keep the border open longer, but it's not travel that has fueled the epidemic.
[TL:DR] The epidemic is really at a city scale, there isn't evidence of spread from city to city or region to region. The lockdown is having that effect.
Those statements are not contradictory, based on the "needs".
gregsd,
In the US, some media outlets have stopped broadcasting Trumps press briefings because they've realised he's using them as a substitute for his rallies and giving out false information.
I'm starting to think the same of the UK's press briefings as well. I stopped watching the briefings a week ago. The UK briefings have provided no useful information whatsoever, beyond saying 'stay at home' and even that advice has been contradicted by many of those giving it.
I could give an example of a country who stopped the planes coming in and instituted 2 weeks quarantine and tracking when the number of cases was 3 in early March. a country where numbers peaked at 30 per day on the 2nd April. yesterday they had 2 new cases though today they're back up to 6.
The US and Europe didn't even close the stable door once the horses had bolted, they left it ajar.[see More Cash and Squirellkings posts]
Edit:
and kimbers post.
Puts on tin foil hat.
Has Boris got over his brush with death a bit too quickly?
They can **** him off for a couple of months now and leave the grown ups in charge, and at the same time turn him into a martyr (but not a dead one).
Removes tin foil hat.
The US and Europe didn’t even close the stable door once the horses had bolted, they left it ajar.[see More Cash and Squirellkings posts]
Agreed, a ridiculous oversight.
TiRed - interesting insight into population size & transmission. I imagine that a large population with a lesser % infected leaves you much more vulnerable to a second wave.
Whilst I am purely an interested onlooker into all of this, it does strike me that one big difference from the uk to Italy/USA is that we do seem to have a more uniform spread everywhere. Could that be a good thing for an exit strategy?
Even partially shutting our economies down was unthinkable to the western lay-person just a few weeks ago. 70 years of unprecedented and uninterrupted peace, an ideological regime valorising the economy and work, no pandemics in living memory (almost), serious transmittable diseases at a population level seen as a thing of the past, a 'normal' of turbo-capitalism with goods and people free-flowing across borders are several reasons.
TiRed,
you're contributions to this thread have probably been the most valued and informed on a scientific/statistical level so I'm not questioning you, rather I have a couple of questions for you.
You say 'banning international travel sounds obvious, but the virus is likely transmissible prior to symptom onset'. I understand this, thats why I posted earlier that 100% of those infected are asymptomatic until they begin to show symptoms. Surely 2 weeks quarantine and stringent tracking measures would have addressed this?
Secondly, although my observations are heuristic rather than scientific, how would you count for the data from the country I mentioned, which instituted the aforementioned measures had seen the results they have? i.e. starting to bring the curve down within 3 weeks of instituting measures?
Edit:
And thirdly, you mention we are likely to see a correlation between OECD healthcare spending and case fatality rate [I can see that being relevant with regards experiences in Europe} but the data from the country I mentioned would be an outlier in relation to that comparison.
Has Boris got over his brush with death a bit too quickly?
He managed to relocate from Downing Street to Chequers without any of the "second home" controversy. Job done.
Harry_the_Spider
Subscriber
Puts on tin foil hat.Has Boris got over his brush with death a bit too quickly?
They can **** him off for a couple of months now and leave the grown ups in charge, and at the same time turn him into a martyr (but not a dead one).
Removes tin foil hat.
I agree entirely. When I spent a week in intensive care (sepsis not covid 19 admittedly) I had to be wheeled out in a wheelchair and looked like I had spent months in a concentration camp.
He looks remarkably well considering the docs thought he was ill enough to be in ICU for so many days.
Boris was looking ropey before he went to hospital and looked just as ropey in the new broadcast.
His is not the only story of someone going in to hospital, having a couple of days with oxygen, a couple of days recovery and then coming out to recuperate.
If he doesn't rest, he'll be back in hospital in a week
He looks remarkably well considering the docs thought he was ill enough to be in ICU for so many days.
Could he have delivered the speech like that just days out of ICU - I don't know. I guess over the days there will be medics elsewhere who have direct knowledge of C-19 treatment and recovery who have an opinion on that.
If the media rumour mill is to be believed Boris is a hardened bon viveur. He could well be capable of delivering a coherent speech with an ox stopping hang over. We don't know if he gave the speech and then has been wiped out after. It's a critically important speech, establishes his moral authority as a genuine sufferer, getting it right brings benefits in selling policy in the future. Maybe cynical but there is an established modus operandi for team Boris. I did think putting subtitles on was over egging the pudding slightly. He didn't sound much different to his usual spunky normal self - definitely looked more flushed. Anyway that's me making use of the Easter egg wrapping.
He looks remarkably well considering the docs thought he was ill enough to be in ICU for so many days.
He looked bloody awful and if you listen he’s having to breath in quite deeply after a few words. Switch off your idiotic conspiracy head. Not everyone comes out in a wheelchair.
And it’s recorded. Could have had multiple attempts to get through it. Pretty obvious he’s been ill. Why on earth would the NHS staff be involved in a cover up?
The UK briefings have provided no useful information whatsoever,
True, but they have provided some laugh-out-loud moments like Patel's 'seventy trillion' numbers gaff.
Just watched our neighbour let her children play with the next doors dog. They've all just gone for a happy walk around the block with the dog; her and the three children. She works for the NHS. If she doesn't understand, or care about the rules, then what's the point!
Sounds like she understands just fine.
Some staff have kept away from their family, most haven’t, depends on role I suppose.
Dogs aren’t an issue.
Yeah you can exercise other people’s dogs.
Kelvin - not sure I follow you? I understood we were meant to be social distancing, and this includes our pets. They happily passed this dog around between the two families, as it is quite small. The dog was licking their faces. How is that any different to shaking hands etc?
Why on earth would the NHS staff be involved in a cover up?
Could you cover it up - no. Can you rule to Mr Cummings see potential in a situation - no. Ultimately all of the stuff away from the stats is just pub talk. What this shows is when you say something to people there are a lot of different interpretations of what it means.
Aren't dogs the lunch time topic?
Not for me we had lamb.
Aren’t dogs the lunch time topic?
Daily lunch time topic.
Now Tigers… don’t go sharing them.
I understood we were meant to be social distancing, and this includes our pets
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-advice-for-people-with-animals