The dog was licking their faces. How is that any different to shaking hands etc?
Well if I licked a strangers face rather than shake their hand it would certainly seem different.
Surely 2 weeks quarantine and stringent tracking measures would have addressed this?
I think it is very hard to call. People moved around spreading the virus without knowing or showing any signs. Earlier would always have been better, but it is likely that the importation part would have been here before action could be taken anyway. It does stop re-importation to fire up another wave though.
starting to bring the curve down within 3 weeks of instituting measures?
Earlier lockdown will have helped with importation and definitely the spread. I am sure of that. Decision to lockdown, aka crash the economy, was a tough one to take. In the UK it was probably taken on the strength of seeing Italy accept it. Modelling will have helped, but politically this was most likely the driving force.
but the data from the country I mentioned would be an outlier in relation to that comparison.
That's called statistics 😉 There are always going to be outliers. Just as in law, hard cases make bad laws. One learns from outliers, but they really aren't the norm. Any country that disproportionately spends on testing will probably fare well.
Now Tigers… don’t go sharing them.
Tigers are a more appropriate tea time topic
Well if I licked a strangers face rather than shake their hand it would certainly seem different
As long as you sniff their arse first it’s fine. At least that’s what I understand what the government means.
They can **** him off for a couple of months now and leave the grown ups in charge
It concerns me that you class Raab, Hancock, and Patel as grown-ups.
I'd be happier leaving the country in charge of Larry the Cat and a Magic 8-Ball.
As long as you sniff their arse first it’s fine. At least that’s what I understand what the government means.
I took it as anyone outside the house - bit like hook a duck. Catch em, attach em and dispatch em. Use a broom handle for the appropriate 2m separation. Sniffing works on a not shaking way but it needed to be read with the appropriate separation guidance.
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.
Great to see that amongst our occasionally panicky questions and overreaction, Drac, TiRed and a couple of the others are remaining beacons of common sense and actual knowledge
Cheers it just doesn’t help people putting up daft theories.
Drac
Subscriber
Cheers it just doesn’t help people putting up daft theories.
Agreed, but Johnson & the government (politicians in general) have a credibility problem, even his fans know he's full of it!
https://twitter.com/ToryFibs/status/1198255710875869185?s=19
Which is all fine until a real crisis comes along & it becomes life & death stuff
France staying locked till 11th of May.
Macron saying virus is still months away.
Herd immunity is not going to happen for very long time.
Masks might be necessary in public transport etc...
Macron saying virus is still months away.
Do you mean the end of the first waves main infections?
Sorry meant vaccin.
But yes he also said we need to live with the virus for the foreasanable future and he was honest in saying he didn't have a clue for how long.
The most interesting thing for me was the statement that only a minority of the population has been in contact with the virus, confirmed a few minutes ago by Gilles Bouleau as 6% at most. If confinement is lifted now it'll take off again with so few immune.
Madame is not too happy about the idea off going back to school with the virus still present in May.
Edit: I assume the 6% from the random antibody testing they've been doing and is much lower than estimates linked over the previous pages of 10-15% for Italy and France.
But yes he also said we need to live with the virus for the foreasanable future and he was honest in saying he didn’t have a clue for how long.
Mike Ryan (WHO) said pretty much the same today - social distancing, extra hygiene, possibly masks etc. are all part of life for the foreseeable. Countries can carefully bring bits of society back online IF they are very focussed on containment.
An interesting point made today was it needs to be coordinated and phased across Europe. You can't have countries making decisions in isolation.
Also announced we'd (UK) donated £200M to their COVID effort. I assume in addition to our normal contributions.
Is that so we can get access to their PPE stocks?
TiRed,
Thanks for your response.
I guess it comes down to two different ways of thinking. Better late than never [here], versus the earlier the better [Kenya]. Personally I thought that the herd immunity idea represented an absence of thinking altogether.
In order to have an effective tracking strategy you need to adopt 'the earlier the better' philosophy and that boat sailed for us a long time ago. From a cultural perspective that's much easier to do in Kenya, not so much because they have a stricter / harsher security regimen but more so because they are used to confronting nasty lurgies, [malaria, ebola, aids, cholera etc]. They know their case zero there, a French woman who arrived in Nairobi and knowingly took the virus to Mombassa. This gave them a head start in tracking the spread.
There's a tendency in Africa to see any form of virus as the spawn of satan right away so they go after it with pitchforks [bombers]. It's not so difficult for them to bring the public on board with this. it's much harder to do here as we don't have the same experiences to draw upon. There's an inbuilt philosophy there, don't let an outbreak become an epidemic, much less let an epidemic become a pandemic.
There's also the notion that we in the West, despite all the evidence emerging from China, somehow thought it would be different here, without any evidence to the contrary, other than perhaps a sense of ingrained superiority.
Is that so we can get access to their PPE stocks?
I think it goes to help developing countries. WHO and partners are active in those regions assisting where the health services are struggling. Yemen was discussed today. It's in everyone's interest to help - otherwise, the virus spread will continue.
Ed, if you see anything online about French Anti Body testing please post it, I’d be interested to take a look.
kimbers
Subscriber
Is that so we can get access to their PPE stocks?https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/apr/13/medical-unions-warn-uk-supply-of-protective-gowns-is-critically-lowPosted 27 minutes ago
Why don't the BBC report this?
My wife is being forced to re-use a disposal face shield in her hospital.
Channel4 news have been very strong on the PPE issue.
It could be worse. She could be in Scotland.
https://twitter.com/Inverclyde_SNP/status/1249726260965773313?s=20
(Seems genuine?)
..
BBC covered PPE issue well in tonight’s news.
I thought the most significant thing Macron said was that France was unprepared. Refreshing. The duration of the lockdown is a no brainer. Spain looks hasty. We will be following.
The projected peak could run until May. We’re in the middle, but it’s hard to see if it’s up and down BMX spine or a table top. It’s clear that some regions are lagging well behind London. And the epidemic is the sum of the regions.
Key analysis mode 2... The U.K. regions are fantastically homogeneous. Once that lag is factored in, most likely distance from London and Birmingham, they all look the same.
[TL:DR] epidemic has a long way to go yet. Lockdown to mid/end of May (at least).
If other regions are well behind London, but we all locked down at the same time, would you not expect lower numbers elsewhere in the first wave?
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/13/uk-missed-three-chances-to-join-eu-scheme-to-bulk-buy-ppe
/blockquote>"The EU is separately establishing stockpiles within member states, with the first being set up in Romania."
That's nice for the other 168 countries which aren't EU member states.
Still a lack of international solidarity from the EU shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, even at a time of global crises.
Still a lack of international solidarity from the EU shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, even at a time of global crises.
Have a listen to what scotroutes posted up there, no different to what is happening here in the 'United' Kingdom....
BBC covered PPE issue well in tonight’s news.
Yup and many other times. Certainly heard it in the radio enough.
The most interesting thing for me was the statement that only a minority of the population has been in contact with the virus, confirmed a few minutes ago by Gilles Bouleau as 6% at most. If confinement is lifted now it’ll take off again with so few immune.
This is what the UK was trying to avoid hence they delayed lock down. I don’t think there’s a right or wrong just what is best for each country.
Still a lack of international solidarity from the EU shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone, even at a time of global crises.
You know the scheme includes non-EU countries as well, yes?
You also know it’s working hard to get international cooperation despite the push back from elsewhere?
Some reading for you as regards what the EU is doing outside Europe:
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/presscorner/detail/en/qanda_20_606
If other regions are well behind London, but we all locked down at the same time, would you not expect lower numbers elsewhere in the first wave?
Rate of growth is the same everywhere 🙁 There are 150 authorities per timepoint in this plot - 4-fold variablity is not huge.
Epidemics are largely a local thing once seeded. Time to 100 cases has only a 10-day spread. It's easy to think where a ten-day delay for introduction could have come from. So size and duration of each authority sums to give a bigger picture. I've already done that analysis too.
This is what the UK was trying to avoid hence they delayed lock down.
you think they were going for herd immunity by infection?
Hancock denied this was the case
The initial claimed rational for the delay to partial lockdown was two fold:
- slow spread rather than contain the virus (herd immunity feeds into that)
- the population expected to break partial lockdown after a period of time, so later start means a later failure of such measures
Neither were backed up with anything of real substance, other then mention of behaviour based models we can’t see or check for the second, and some old flu based models for first.
Who knows what deliberately letting the virus spread before partial lock down may look like with hindsight in a year’s time… that all depends on how many people we lose, and when measures become available that could have let us battle the virus from a contain rather than slow down position.
Does your analysis point to how many total infected we will get in this first wave?
When the lockdown started I'm sure that the Scottish CMO stated it would need 12/13 weeks to work.
Am I alone in this recollection of her words?
Thank you for your link to an EU Commission press release kelvin.
There is however an alternative opinion, ie not that of EU Commission, which claims that the EU has not had a good pandemic.
If you use the power of google to search you'll find this alternative opinion is to be found in a wide variety of sources, eg from Yanis Varoufakis to the Financial Times.
And since we're of the subject of international solidarity I think you might find that Italy has found the EU to be wanting. I don't think Spain is overjoyed either.
It was a good concise summary of funding and assistance to non-European countries to help deal with this virus, that’s why I linked to it. The myth that the EU is somehow only inward looking is one I find very tiring.
The EU has made a lot of missteps during this pandemic, for sure, but your claim was that they were only interested in the member states, which is not true.
Closer to home, neighbouring countries were pulled into schemes relating to the pandemic where they were willing. We’ve even belatedly taken up the offer.
An international response is needed to this, and the EU aren’t the ones resisting that approach.
you think they were going for herd immunity by infection?
No, it was about controlling the spread at a level the could control then....
You know what I’m sick of explaining it.
When the lockdown started I’m sure that the Scottish CMO stated it would need 12/13 weeks to work.Am I alone in this recollection of her words?
Scottish CMO had stated it a few times since the start as well.
Takes us to towards mid/late June. Which also More or less correlates with Tireds forecast of 1st wave over by July.
All of which presumes control changes* don’t facilitate another flare up and we have the tools to manage the epidemic beyond the first wave.
*I guess we’re about to see a live experiment elsewhere in Europe.
Re the EU
Isn’t health policy basically not in their remit?
you think they were going for herd immunity by infection?
Judge for yourself:
Vallence was and he was on the right in the briefings for weeks before they thankfully got rid. If there's one person who's realy annoyed me through all this it's Vallence, he should have known better and I'm sure did.
I note Ernie is back to slag of the EU and give us his own very special view of politics as usual. This is a tread about a virus, Ernie.
The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/12/documents-contradict-uk-government-stance-on-covid-19-herd-immunity
The Spectator (back in March)
https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/herd-immunity-might-still-be-key-in-the-fight-against-coronavirus
National Geographic
https://www.nationalgeographic.co.uk/science-and-technology/2020/03/uk-backed-herd-immunity-beat-covid-19-well-ultimately-need-it
Make of this what you will
wasn't one of the chief tenets of the herd immunity policy to protect the vulnerable ?
Sir David Behan, non-executive director of HC-One, Britain’s largest care home operator, said Covid-19 is present in two-thirds of its care homes.
I’m a big Chris Ware fan. He nailed it with this recent cover…
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I have family working in the NHS and nursing in care homes, and they are making sacrifices and taking risks for us. We just need to seriously tighten our belts and accept a bit of boredom. We can do that.
Some degree of herd immunity, by a combination of exposure and, eventually, vaccination, is the inevitable end goal, so that outbreaks in subsequent years can be handled more like seasonal flu. But obviously, just opening the floodgates is not a practical short or medium term goal because of the vast numbers of excess deaths that would cause in the next six months.
The whole point of lockdown and curve flattening is to control the rate at which a significant proportion of the population is exposed to the virus, while maintaining capacity in the NHS to treat those who develop severe illness.
It is pointless to lockdown so early and so hard that virtually no-one gets it, as the wave of infection will come at some point, either now or in three months. All you can do is try to manage the proportion of the population exposed. The problem is that lockdowns are a blunt instrument, and we are still learning about their effectiveness in terms of disease spread and compliance.
The government has accepted the uncompromising strategy that its statisticians and clinical scientists have produced after modelling every scenario, including the 'washover' one, but communicating it directly to the public requires some finesse to avoid sounding callous.
Herd immunity doesn't work in a sensible way unless there is a vaccine in play. It would eventually work without one - probably. But the fatalities in the interim would be a terrible problem.
I am convinced that the major thing 'they' got wrong in the early stages was hugely underestimating R0. That is what made lockdown inevitable.
The R0 of covid-19 means that any vaccine would have to be administered to a huge number of people for herd immunity to be achieved in a sensible way. That is why it is not just the search for a vaccine that is important, but getting it into tens of millions of people.