In which case you'll plan too pessimistically, do more economic damage than necessary and impose more restrictions than necessary.
The objectives and alert levels shouldn't be based on ho wmany people are potentially left to infect in the worst case based on flawed antibody terst studies. They should be based on practical pragmatic criteria such as:
How much hospital capacity remains
How many people will end up with long term health issues
How many revolutionaries are throwing paving stones
How many people are falling into poverty
How many businesses are going bankrupt
How many votes at the next election - the alternatives to my current rulers are worrying
And adopting/imposing measures that are the best compromise.
In which case you’ll plan too pessimistically
Yes. You might do. The damage of doing the opposite has been made clear this year. The "pessimist" countries are doing far better in terms of health outcomes and economic outcomes so far.
do more economic damage than necessary
The opposite is also true. It has been seen to be very costly to underestimate the transmission.
and impose more restrictions than necessary
Maybe so. We've had our big "experiments" about how this spreads earlier this year though... let's learn from them and act accordingly... rather than hoping for protection from community immunity levels not yet shown.
I get that the death rate in under 50s with no known health issues is incredibly low. If that's the case then why are they going to vaccinate nhs workers and other key workers under age of 50? If it's deemed enough of a risk to their health then surely it's just as much of a risk to mine in longer term? Sure I might not be exposed to it as quickly (hence why you prioritise), but I can pretty much guarantee as soon as any degree of lock down is ended it'll rip through the population and normal folk will be at just as much risk.
If that’s the case then why are they going to vaccinate nhs workers and other key workers under age of 50?
To stop them spreading it to at risk people in their working lives. And to stop them spreading it more generally. They are in close, intimate, contact with many people in a way few others are. And plenty of under 50s healthworkers have died. They do need more protection then you or I (whatever our ages). The logic for (voluntary) vaccination of them first is sound on all levels.
Or just put a check to use another sheet/file when full? (putting aside the questionable choice of using excel)
It's possible that whoever had custody of the data didn't know about the row limit; 1 million rows are enough for most applications. If you didn't use excel prior to Office 2007 - when the limit was just 65 k or so - then row limits may not be something you're cognizant of.
Swedish GDP has fallen much less than than the European average. Norway ex-oil has done little better than Sweden. Africa -.8% GDP a continent which taken as a whole has done very little to control the virus compared with Europe -12% GDP (figures grabbed for first sources found so an indicator rather than gospel according to Ed)
The outcomes aren't as clear cut as you suggest and it isn't over yet.
Too many old bullshit points in that post... we've covered them all many times. I'm out.
I suppose we should be grateful they aren’t sending handwritten tallies using carrier pigeons. Windows Vista was a big leap forward for the NHS.
this is so true. My partner works for the NHS didn't even have a work laptop until the pandemic. Its stuff like this that makes people realise how horrifically underfunded the NHS are.
Too many old bullshit points in that post… we’ve covered them all many times. I’m out.
Fact checking will prove me right and we certainly haven't covered them before.
We live in a global village so no country is economically immune to Covid even one with zero cases. What a country can do is make objective choices about the effectiveness of measure and their impact on the local economy.
We’ve done how Sweden doesn’t show what you suggest. And the response in African countries.
If I had to bet it would be that we will not have a proven vaccine in the next two years; hope I’m wrong but just because the investment into vaccine development is massive doesn’t mean it will be successful.
AFAIK Phase 1 and 2 were obviously very successful and Phase 3 has been very positive so far and due to end within days (I think). So far no meaningful side effects and works as a vaccine.
NHS, at least locally are gearing up for mass vaccinations. They're aiming to have plans, processes and resources in place in the next 4 weeks or so, that's not to say they will be starting then, that was thought to be the earliest date a vaccine could be ready, and obvs they didn't want to have it ready and no way to administer it.
If that’s the case then why are they going to vaccinate nhs workers and other key workers under age of 50?
To stop them spreading it to at risk people in their working lives. And to stop them spreading it more generally. They are in close, intimate, contact with many people in a way few others are. And plenty of under 50s healthworkers have died. They do need more protection then you or I (whatever our ages). The logic for (voluntary) vaccination of them first is sound on all levels.
This, FYI NHS workers generally all get Flu vaccines for the same reason.
Sweden economy doing considerably worse than nordic neigbbours
https://www.businessinsider.com/coronavirus-sweden-gdp-falls-8pc-in-q2-worse-nordic-neighbors-2020-8
Unemployment
Well above too
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-53498133
And activity still well down in capital,
https://citymapper.com/cmi/stockholm
they also only kept primaries open secondaries & FE went online
I'm suggesting Sweeden's GDP has fallen less than most of Europe. That's a fact. Sweden hasn't been the free for all some would have us believe and Germany hasn't been the model of perfect measures and compliance either.
I'm stating GDP figures, you need to post something to back this up:
The “pessimist” countries are doing far better in terms of health outcomes and economic outcomes so far.
Because the country I've seen to do most to contain the virus first time around, Spain, is now suffering the worst second wave despite measures that are most definitely at the top of the "pessimist" table. And the economic consequences are severe. I've lived in Spain and have some ideas why the virus is proving hard to contain there, it's not because they are favouring economic activity over containing the virus.
you need to post something to back this up
What I need to do is learn not to engage with you. I’m a slow learner sometimes, my fault, not yours.
Germany hasn’t been the model of perfect measures and compliance either.
Who cares about perfect? Germany has, rather objectively, "done better" so far, perfect or not.
Germany is held up as a good example of how to manage the virus. Having lived there I think the main reason is the fact so many of them live in single-person households. German studies show that the home is where the virus is most transmitted (I linked an article few pages back), and that despite the fact so many live alone:
https://www.nim.org/en/compact/focustopics/german-cities-popular-single-people
Compare that with how many French and Spanish people live in a household. In vertical family groups, in co-rented accomodation (remember the name of the film - auberge espagnol), in bigger groups.
So each country needs to adopt measures that suit their social structure and what works in one place won't necessarily work elsewhere. Lax measure aren't necessarily an economic disaster and tighter measures don't guarantee a country/region/town/village will have less cases.
Perhaps you can share the Swedish GDP comparison figures with us?
And plenty of under 50s healthworkers have died. They do need more protection then you or I (whatever our ages). The logic for (voluntary) vaccination of them first is sound on all levels.
The logic is absolutely sound in getting them vaccinated first. I'm not disputing that for one second.
But as you say yourself plenty of under 50s health workers have died, I'm assuming that most didn't have known underlying health issues (or they wouldn't be on the front line during a pandemic).
And if it's to stop them spreading it to others, surely I'm just as likely to spread it to my 75 year old mum who is in a high risk category. Or is the intention for us to never be able to go back to normal when it comes to interaction with elderly relatives?
Simple fact is the government has spent the last 8 months telling us this is a deadly desease for all ages groups. And there is an abundance of evidence to suggest previously fit and healthy people can be badly affected.
There's some proper spin in those articles, Kelvin, but some truths hidden away. I'll take paragraph:
Despite this, various forecasts predict the Swedish economy will still shrink by about 5% this year. That's less than other countries hit hard by Covid-19 such as Italy, Spain and the UK, but still similar to the rest of Scandinavia. Sweden's unemployment rate of 9% remains the highest in the Nordics, up from 7.1% in March.
Sweden always has been the France/Italy of Scandiavia. Pre-Covid unemployment was higher 7% compared to 5% in Denmark, 4% in Norway but lower than Finland at 8%. Note articel is wrong Sweden didn't have the highest unemployment rate of the Nordics pre-Covid, that was Finland.
Is a 1.5% differnce in GDP decline betwen Norway and Sweden significant when you consider the different reporting methods and the fact one is an oil state but excludes that from its figure?
The consider the make up of the Swedish population which is more cosmopolitain, has housing issues and social issues that I'm sometime amused to see copared with France.
The media have done their utmost to run down Sweden's approach despite the fact it's very similar to the UK or France (eat out to save the country or whatever it was) and death rates ren't so very different.
Rather than comparing with the super-rich oil state that is Norway with it's enviable standard of living or or the protestant Danes try comparing with equally gregarious and fun loving French or Brits. Strikes me it isn't as bad as we are led to believe - I changed my mind about Sweden - I thought it would be much worse, it wasn't and frankly -8.6% GDP is enviable from where I'm sitting.
Edit to add as requested by someone too lazy to Google it:
Histric GDPs
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_sovereign_states_in_Europe_by_GDP_(nominal)
and Q2 2020
You'll have to look up the UK yourselves it's no longer in Europe 😉
Note that Spain with all it's strict measures has the worst GDP perforamance and the worst current case levels. And Sweden is one of best in terms of GDP. 🙂
And if it’s to stop them spreading it to others, surely I’m just as likely to spread it to my 75 year old mum who is in a high risk category.
As an example, Care Home/Home Care worker will likely be dealing with dozens of folk every week. It's a different scale of risk.
But as you say yourself plenty of under 50s health workers have died, I’m assuming that most didn’t have known underlying health issues (or they wouldn’t be on the front line during a pandemic).
'Underlying health problems' has been contorted by those who wish to manipulate the stats to mean otherwise fairly trivial diagnoses E.g. hypertension or obesity (E.g. if BMI >30). Those things seem to increase your risk but are also extremely common and probably not seen as a reason to avoid coming to work for a lot of people. So yes, plenty of people who are later deemed to have had 'underlying health issues' have been / are still working on the frontlines.
Healthcare workers are more likely (than non-healthcare workers) to be exposed to the virus. So they're more likely to get ill and that's not really fair for them. They're also likely to be in close proximity to lots of different people, many (most?) who will be higher-risk too, so there's a higher chance they'll A) spread the disease and B) spread to the most vulnerable.
It’s possible that whoever had custody of the data didn’t know about the row limit;
IMHO it seems incredibly sloppy not to check.
This is for all the “the government needs to tell us their plan” people (she supports your ascertain, I think)…
https://twitter.com/bbcnewsnight/status/1306367056766472195?s=21
Prob'ly a dumb question but ...
What do the numbers of infected people quoted in the press mean in terms of the chance of being in a room with an asymptomatic but infectious person?
If it was a room of 500 random people 1 of them likely infected according to ONS
if your room is a meatpacking factory in Cornwall its half the room
https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/conditionsanddiseases/bulletins/coronaviruscovid19infectionsurveypilot/englandwalesandnorthernireland2october2020
if its your university halls in leeds, its most of them etc etc
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-51768274
Not my area, but I think the rule is that you don’t give vaccines to people who don’t benefit from them just to protect other people. We won’t have any evidence of long term effects of any new vaccine so mass vaccination of the young is exposing them to a (theoretical) risk for very little benefit (to them).
If we had a vaccine that was good enough that getting (an attainable)% of thr population vaccinated would provide enough population immunity to severely limit the spread then I think we'd all benefit quite a lot. I'm 44 but I'd definitely consider a decent level of personal immunity to be personally beneficial anyway! I might not be at high risk of death but I really don't fancy long COVID!
If it was a room of 500 random people 1 of them likely infected according to ONS
But of that 1 person, how many are actually infectious, and of the infectious how many are walking around and not home in bed ill ?
You forgot the Imperial REACT study which was 1/188 at the last count. But “slowing”. As for infectiousness - well we don’t know. Assume all as a reasonable worst case scenario.
Wind turbines and rice pudding are today's dead cat on the table... so let's all talk about all that not the now unambiguously rising.... [ cases | admissions | deaths | surveys ]
kelvin
Full Memberrice pudding
Weirdly, when I went to search for "Johnson rice pudding" it tried to autocomplete to "Johnson *r*esignation".
Best case scenario is that everyone who’s carried the virus once can’t do so again (unlikely, but it would be great, wouldn’t it).
At a slight tangent, this is really good on immunity and a good antidote to anyone who thinks antibodies = immunity and no antibodies = no immunity:
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/covid-19-immunity-is-the-pandemics-central-mystery/614956/
Beyond that, on reinfection so far, with over 30 million cases worldwide, a recent estimate was that there were roughly half a dozen confirmed cases of reinfection. The suggestion is that memory T-cells in those who've had the virus react to any new presence by kicking off the production of new antibodies along with killer t-cells. Or something like that. I'm a cyclist not a scientist :-/
Bear in mind that "confirmed" in this sense means that the virus has been sequenced both times to show a different strain. Given the proportion of people who would even get it sequenced once (basically, a handful of research subjects) it's inevitable that it will be rare.
You forgot the Imperial REACT study which was 1/188 at the last count. But “slowing”. As for infectiousness – well we don’t know. Assume all as a reasonable worst case scenario.
With quite large regional differences - based on positive tests alone Manchester is 1 in 200
Interesting twitter thread as regards Diabeties:
https://twitter.com/andymoz78/status/1313493956072701953?s=21
Any chance of some regional graphs including today’s figures @TiRed ? Specifically North of England regions? It’s looking worrying at first glance with ignorant eyes. Ta.
My reading today has been on the opportunity costs of Corona virus. I thought back to my economics lectures and "don't forget the opportunity costs" popped into my head. The first one to come to mind was a German article on how the child care issues around Covid are impacting women's careers. That lead me wonder how the idea of a Covid lockdown baby boom were going and after checking a few countries the realisation that the opposite is true. Although the babies haven't been born yet it looks like Covid is exacerbating Europe demographic decay. And an interim conclusion, more babies will not be born due to the Covid crisis than people will die of Covid.
Happy to be proved wrong as usual, just one ageing link in English to et you started:
An out of control outbreak of this virus will cripple hospitals… deal with the opportunity cost of that. An out of control outbreak will result in the schools closures no one wants to see… deal with the opportunity cost of that. Etc.
exacerbating Europe demographic decay
Plenty of young people wanting to join us here.
So measures need to be both effective and cause as little economic disruption as possible. For that you need to have the population as an ally rather than an adversary. Getting heavy is counter productive and having faith in your population more effective in the long term. We spent yesterday discussing correlations between measures taken, deaths and economics and there are as many counter examples as examples.
I propose that one correleation that does hold up is between the public's conviction that measures are fair and justified and worth following, and the success of those measures.
An example is the French contact tracing app, people quickly worked out they had nothing to gain and potentially a lot to lose from down loading it so they didn't, I haven't and nor has Madame.
I’m struggling to understand why you would not use the app. It alerts you that you could be at risk of carrying a virus that will probably make you sick and could kill people you love. Genuine question @edukator why don’t you or your partner download it?
Because it's likely to throw up a false contact with all the constraints that implies but not very likely to throw up a real contact. The app doesn't take into account if I'm wearing a mask - which I always do when I'm in a situation where I could otherwise possibly fulfil the conditons for becoming a contact or infect others. It doesn't take into account physical barriers, it doesn't make a distinction on the level of ventilation.
Only 2.3 million had downloaded it the last time I looked and 72 contact cases since June, of which we have no idea how many were worth following up.
I'm really not interested that the person who put their phone in the locker next to mine at the swimming pool has Covid. 🙂 That a joke right, because obviously if I had the app I'd turn the phone off when I put it in the locker. But equally I'm not interested in knowing if the person sitting next to me in the hospital waiting room with one empty seat between us has Covid, because they were wearing a mask, I was too and even if they popped up as a contact case I'd rather not know.
Madame is a teacher, phones are banned in class which is where she's most likely to catch Covid, ask A-A.
Because it’s likely to throw up a false contact with all the constraints that implies but not very likely to throw up a real contact.
This sort sounds a little selfish, basically I don't want an app that cause an inconvenience to my life for a few weeks. Surly wish a partner whos a teacher you need to do anything that could limit spreading the virus.
Oh dear, here they go with the judgemental character assasination crap again . 😉
I'll repeat for the hard of reading, the only place Madame is going to catch or transmit the virus is in a school where phones are banned.
An out of control outbreak of this virus will cripple hospitals… deal with the opportunity cost of that. An out of control outbreak will result in the schools closures no one wants to see… deal with the opportunity cost of that. Etc.
Or you could have followed a more sensible approach like Sweden has, which will ultimately lead to better results. But then your weird personal obsession with locking down as hard as possible wouldn’t allow that, would it?
JP
