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We can’t expect you to live in a bubble.
Says someone not on immunosuppressants.
That was a harsh bit of selective quoting and replying. He said he has been cautious. I was making it clear that rest of also have a responsibility in stopping the spread of this virus, it should not just be left to those at most risk to cut themselves off. Yes, there are many people who have to be extra safe and minimise contact, but we can all help them by getting this virus under control.
There is a theme at large that the rest of us should not have to make sacrifices to help protect the vulnerable, and that they should just ‘look after themselves’. At every opportunity I would like to stress that we can only control this virus as a community, by us all acting to stop the spread.
kimbers
Subscribergod this is so depressing
the whole freaking point of a testing programme is that the data is used to help track & treat patients in the community
Instead its simply a number for the minister to waive around at the daily briefing
You'd not be too shocked to find out they'd tested one person 100000 times tbh
the whole freaking point of a testing programme is that the data is used to help track & treat patients in the community
That’s the issue your treating it as a Medical Crisis they’re treating it as a PR one 🙁
It just occurred to me, given the average 5day incubation period, we should start to see a post VE Day upswing in cases soon 🙁
I guess it will take a while for it to filter through though
I would be amazed if we have reached 10% prevalence in the UK. Even 5% would be optimistic outside London.
We are at 50 or 60000 deaths. Which is 1% of 5 or 6 million. Either the death rate is greater than 1% (and you keep telling us you think it will end up at less that 0.5%) or around 10% have had it. Which do you think it is?
Overall IFR of less than 0.5% is getting increasingly hard to reconcile with the evidence. Comparing between areas is hard but Ecuador is an incredibly young country by our standards and they've had over 0.25% *total* mortality in one region, despite a lockdown that helped to suppress the outbreak (probably, herd immunity played a role there too, with a substantial proportion infected).
Of course the health care there was overwhelmed to a greater extent than in the UK. BUt...they have less than half the elderly that we have, proportionally to their population.
BTW those who argue that the NHS coped adequately in the UK should ask themselves how come most of the dying victims didn't get any hospital treatment. Easy enough to avoid being overwhelmed if you just shut your doors.
My initial guesstimate made 6 weeks ago based on a subjective evaluation of the evidence was 0.75±0.25% overall assuming decent healthcare. A new meta-analysis has just come out...and their estimate is....0.75±0.26%. I'll forgive them the extra 0.01%.
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089854v1
I would be amazed if we have reached 10% prevalence in the UK
I would be amazed if it was that low. This is a very contagious virus and people were generally acting with abandon until the lockdown started.
we know the elderly and care homes are being hit hard but just seen a report on BBC of a near threefold increase in the death rate of people with learning disabilities compared to previous years. Those that need the care most are being let down by the system, and those at the top need to be held responsible.
singletrackworld.com/forum/topic/wheres-the-coronavirus-were-all-going-to-die-conspiracy-thread/page/294/#post-11189709
They can’t make more noise now but they can make the same level of permitted noise for longer.
Easy enough to avoid being overwhelmed if you just shut your doors.
Have you a source for that, because I don't recall hearing it either on social media or through friends in the NHS.
If you have no source to back that up, that's a pretty serious allegation to be bandying around, and rather insulting to the work the NHS have put in
Have you a source for that, because I don’t recall hearing it either on social media or through friends in the NHS
It's even in the Telegraph
It's all over the media that care home residents were sent back to die in (and pass on infection) in the care homes. Have you been living under a rock for the past month?
kelvin
It does look that way… keep it spreading at a rate the NHS can deal with, no willingness to try and contain and suppress it.
Northwind
This isn’t a rate the NHS can deal with though. It’s a rate the NHS can deal with while closing down other essential services and burning out staff, which is tolerable for short periods but totally unsustainable. Again because of the high incidence in the population rather than the rate of spread.
Not even ... the NHS has offloaded onto care homes.
The government still won't buy the PPE
We are still not testing anywhere near enough
The UK (English) Government inparticular continues to give out misleading, confusing and contradictory "advice" but this also extends to Wales/NI/Scotland to more limited extents and where they do diverge just increases confusion and contradictions.
Take all these together not individually ...
Avoiding pedantry over if a virus is actually "alive" or not this feels like a Jurassic Park moment waiting to happen.
At all levels we seem to be seeing a dangerous combination of this confusion ... and perfectly predictable events surprising us with a rolling 2-3 week "oh well we are where we are".
We can go back to NT free parking.... I'm not blaming the NT, they are not virologists or epidemologists (well some might actually be for animals and plants)...but what part of "free parking this weekend" wasn't predictable?
NO-ONE in government said "nice sentiment but...." so just another "oops", its done now and we won't know the consequences for weeks... instead they just let it happen.
I've already read countless official/semi-official advice that breathing in the same air someone exhaled <1/4 second earlier is "safe". "Ride 2m apart ???"
You can play tennis with someone outside your household... apparently tennis balls are one of those magical items can't carry the virus...?? Our local council having a free paper posted by the mail... specifically at the most vulnerable (because older people don't have the internet) because the virus can't survive on newsprint?? [When I may posted this is specified ... my postie leaves the mail in the plastic box [he's also a post doc researcher in genome sequencing] but they have been specifically instructed to POST the newspaper or hand to a resident when the postbox is boarded up like ours and ignore signs asking otherwise.
The RSPCA is running adverts you can't get CV from your dog or cat... (another magic substance seems to be dog/cat fur/saliva?)
The school sent a government sponsored e-book... apparently you can't die from Covid (but some people can get very sick) and if you cough into your elbow then you can't spread the virus....
Meanwhile some of the most useful advice comers from the most unexpected sources... The bin men are notifying residents theirs could be the 2000th bin they touched that day... the postie is saying the same and adding garden gates, letter boxes etc.
Enough of the essay ....
Have you been living under a rock for the past month?
Safest place!
Early on in the daily press briefings it was being banded about that there were 199, or so empty beds in ICU that day. That figure has stuck in my mind for some reason.
There are 168 hospital trusts with around 1257 hospital in the UK. It doesn’t take a maths genius to work out that critical beds were / are in short supply.
That was a harsh bit of selective quoting and replying
Yes a bit, apologies. Your last point is bang on. My concern is really the edge cases, where someone is vulnerable, and at home with others who are not. I can't see any simple solutions here.
I would be amazed if it was that low. This is a very contagious virus and people were generally acting with abandon until the lockdown started.
The best early seroprevalence data was from screening anonymous blood donations in the Netherlands, and gave value of < 3%, which corroborated with a healthcare worker screening of about 6% infected, mostly from non-hospital contacts. Subsequent mass studies have shown levels of <10% in areas outside of mass transmission.
Kerley there is a very big population of susceptible, so yes it is contagious (not as bad as measles), but we have effectively halted that in its steps. Before mass infection.
or around 10% have had it. Which do you think it is?
The latter 3-10% infected, 2-6M infections - mortality of order 0.1%, but vastly higher in the very elderly.
Here are the numbers:
(Week 18) Excess deaths = 52,000
(Week 18) Excess deaths in >65 = 48,000
(Week 18) Excess deaths in <65 = 4,000 (yes that low)
Ratio of fatality rates is 12x (yes that big)
Proportion of population >65 = 18.4% (2018)
Now assume infections are uniform in the population, but deaths are not, and PREV have been infected:
52,000 = 66,000,000 x PREV x IFR x ((1-0.184) + 0.184 x 12)
52,000 = 66,000,000 x PREV x IFR x 3.024
PREV = 0.03, IFR = 0.008 or 0.8%
PREV = 0.1, IFR = 0.002 or 0.2%
PREV = 0.4 (one can dream), IFR = 0.07%
Hence the IFR is somewhere between 0.2-0.8%
NOTE: this assumes all excess are COVID19 deaths, it is possible that there is an excess due to poor access to healthcare for heart attacks and strokes, also suicides, but there is also a reduction in other reasons such as road accidents and violent crime. Cancer is unlikely to show a contribution over such a short timeframe.
EDIT PREV is prevalence(%)/100 so a proportion, as is IFR.
Meaning actual mortality of order 1%, if you count the bodies, or 0.1% if the elderly are not worth counting.
Hey, mortality is 0.0% if you don't die! Nothing to worry about!
What is PREV? Those numbers don't appear to make sense. If 10% infected, that's 6.7 million, 52k deaths is 0.8%.
Absolutely!
The scandal in the nursing homes is atrocious. A very early study in Australia gave an IFR of 20% or so. Protect the NHS but Social Care, you're on your own.
If any good comes of this, it should be an integration of health and social care.
There's a worrying trend on social media at the moment saying that we should stop criticising the Government, they're doing their best, we need to get behind them, the press should stop being so harsh on them blah blah.
Really worrying how many people seem to be posting these various memes and examples. Someone on a work video call earlier said it was a good job we didn't have this press during WW2 (this from a guy born in the 60's...)
Almost like these morons have voted for the Tories, have realised what a total mess they're making of everything and suddenly don't want to hear the bad news.
What is PREV? Those numbers don’t appear to make sense. If 10% infected, that’s 6.7 million, 52k deaths is 0.8%.
The calculation has to weight the fact that if you are elderly (18% of the population) you are 12x more likely to die than if you are young. If you know nothing about a case, it's 0.2%, if you are elderly it's 2.4%. The overall IFR is the weighted mean, and that would be 0.8%.
People are desperate to believe that the high number of deaths we have in the UK means that we’re on our way to some kind of herd immunity. We are not. It only takes very simple maths to explain why we are not… but as a nation, we don’t do even simple maths.
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/ijcp.13528?af=R
Link above is to a study reported in the Guardian today suggesting that 29% of the infection may have been infected by the second week of April.
BTW, the real figure is worse than that for the elderly. Of the 52,000 excess deaths, 24,000 are in the >85yo, 15,000 are 75-84yo and 8,000 are in the 65-74 yo age group - due to the way the calculation is done (geometric mean) the sums won't add up exactly to 52.
I plan to standardize the age-specific excess deaths per 100k population, but have yet to do so. hey are truly terrible for the >85yo group.
Almost like these morons have voted for the Tories
weird how everyone who voted conservative is now a moron.. lol.
No, their moron status has been constant .
There’s a worrying trend on social media at the moment saying that we should stop criticising the Government, they’re doing their best, we need to get behind them, the press should stop being so harsh on them blah blah.
Politics aside, the pressure on Johnson as an individual must be huge, imagine taking the abuse & pressure he's getting right now, it'll be worse than that an STW thread!
imagine taking the abuse & pressure he’s getting right now,
The abuse and pressure is largely based on the job he has done. I wonder how much abuse the PM of, for example, New Zealand gets?
weird how everyone who voted conservative is now a moron.. lol.
They were morons then too...
^ this (I mean nickjb's comment)
"be nice to them, it's a difficult job"
It is. Very. Still doesn't excuse the incompetence and the lying.
The abuse and pressure is largely based on the job he has done. I wonder how much abuse the PM of, for example, New Zealand gets?
I know, I'm not arguing the toss. What I'm saying is, take a moment to think about that role on a humane perspective, or if its was you - I doubt its a pleasant place to be. Even if he were doing the job "more correctly" as many of us believe he could, his daily job is ultimately to turn up to an room and be critiqued and question by a person on the other side of the table, with the expectation to know every answer, fact and number, the goings on on every hot and not so hot topic etc. Its a mammoth job I wouldn't want.
No but Johnson did want the job and has made a massive mess of it. No sympathy from me and he's more than welcome to step down and let someone else take the abuse if it's too much for him.
The government are doing their best. That is undeniable.
What they should be doing is the best of someone who know what they are doing and aren't led by a racist, misogynistic, incompetent ****tard who is directed by a eugenicist.
The man represents a party and an ethos that does not particularly shout 'humane'. He knew what he was getting into, he saw the abuse that May earned, and still took the job.
You fly with the crows....
There’s a worrying trend on social media at the moment saying that we should stop criticising the Government, they’re doing their best, we need to get behind them, the press should stop being so harsh on them blah blah.
None of which originated from the propaganda department (which doesn't exist) social media bot farms (that the non-existent department don't fund).
People are desperate to believe that the high number of deaths we have in the UK means that we’re on our way to some kind of herd immunity.
I've been looking for clarification on the figures of near 1% infected 7 weeks ago, at a time the infection rate was doubling every 2-3 days, and the revised figures suggesting we're only at 5-10% now. Interesting that there is a study suggesting it could be 29% or more. It's not wishful thinking, it's trying to ascertain where we are at. I guess the new antibody test might nail this if we can get it out there soon in good volume.
Politics aside this lot are a complete shower of ba5tards who've got where they are by lying, cheating, and stabbing others in the back. Not just Johnson, but all those he surrounds himself with who are on the inside. Half-cock is a disingenuous liar and snivelling shit to boot, Patel is a bully and can't count up to twelfty, and that's just two of them for starters. Give me five minutes.... The material here would be comedy gold if the situation wasn't so bad and the consequences so serious.
Interesting that there is a study suggesting it could be 29% or more
It's based on an estimation of "R" which requires an estimate of generation time. That is the big problem with R. We can estimate rate of change of cases and deaths, but this has to be convolved with a poorly known duration to get R. The modelling groups, keen to get transmission concepts understood, have over-sold the utility of R (above 1 goes up, below 1 goes down), and now the public, and to some extent policy, is focused on this number. Other population surveys come nowhere near 29% in comparable populations.
This analysis factors in test uncertainty appropriately using Bayesian methods
https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.03.20089201v1
The French figure of 6% infected at 11/5 hasn't been revised. Serological testing of a cluster in l'Oise gave 26% and almost everywhere else is likely to be lower. In SW France which has a very low level of infections local television said around 1% have been infected, 1.2% IIRC.
his daily job is ultimately to turn up to an room and be critiqued and question by a person on the other side of the table, with the expectation to know every answer, fact and number, the goings on on every hot and not so hot topic etc
No it isn't - that's a role he's created for himself.
Merkel for example doesn't need to do that, she sticks people who's job it is to ....
It’s based on an estimation of “R” which requires an estimate of generation time. That is the big problem with R. We can estimate rate of change of cases and deaths, but this has to be convolved with a poorly known duration to get R. The modelling groups, keen to get transmission concepts understood, have over-sold the utility of R (above 1 goes up, below 1 goes down), and now the public, and to some extent policy, is focused on this number.
It's rather simpler.... policy is simply leak something and see what the public think.
The biggest hole isn't the bayensian maths or even convolution ... it's public understanding the DURATION part and more subtly the effect of actions on the prediction.
I'm not really surprised TBH, senior managers and tech staff often seem to struggle here... or at least need to be frequently reminded/prompted (as well as the constraints on the model).
It’s rather simpler…. policy is simply leak something and see what the public think.
I can't disagree with that. Crowd-sourcing policy opinion, seems ridiculous to me. Also I've learned with experience that postponing a decision, even an incorrect one, is worse than taking a decision. At least you say you made a wrong choice and correct it.
Avoids all the tedious messing around with focus groups. Just fling it straight out and deny it if it fails. Seems like it might be a popular tactic with anybody who hates all that red tape stuff that government put in the way of people. Trouble is, I just can't think of anyone near the PM with that outlook on life...
On a positive note, have we done:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-52656808
Roche antibody test.
mrmonkfinger
MemberNone of which originated from the propaganda department (which doesn’t exist) social media bot farms (that the non-existent department don’t fund).
Do you seriously not believe the Tory party runs bot farms?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EXB_Am4WkAEbNn5?format=png&name=900x900
