Yes it is. Surprised anyone needs telling that. Do you also go round checking that people parking in disabled spaces have a proper disability?
Is it more or less likely a disabled person will kill you or a family member than a non mask wearer in these pandemic times?
Point well and truly missed (although I would be interested to know the answer to your unrelated question)
Thanks @TiRed for the NEJM link (and everything else!) I’ve never read an editorial in a journal so political and damning. Quite something.
It’s a good essential read mikeyp, you can’t quite replace ‘US’ with ‘UK’… but we’ve been very close to failing in the same way. We had advance warning both times here as well. The government here has eroded trust in both science and themselves as well.
Kryton57, non mask wearers could have good reason, you can’t see all disabilities.
I'm not sure what you know about model fitting TiRed but I've been doing it for decades on a professional basis as a widely published scientist and it's clear from my results that I'm better at it than these official sources. Specifically (most recently) in robustly identifying that epidemic growth had started by the start of Aug when SAGE didn't even admit the possibility until near the end of that month and kept on with stupidly small growth rates until mid-September. ONS are doing a good survey but their analysis is a silly spline fit which is epidemiologically meaningless. Last week they said the number of daily infections had actually gone down, today they say it's doubled. Silly whiplash from a noisy unstable fitting method. Same with the REACT fit to short time series. There are standard ways of doing this sort of stuff properly, but it takes a little bit of skill and experience that they don't seem to have.
kelvin, the SAGE numbers are on the web page:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/the-r-number-in-the-uk#history
Their growth rate estimate was wholly negative until the 21st Aug and their best estimate (ie central value) remained negative until September, with an upper bound for daily growth rate of only 1% which gives a 70-day doubling time. By this point the epidemic had already quadrupled from the low point in early July. Their cumulative growth rate estimates over July and August imply it should have been much smaller at that point, rather than larger. Which was the basis for all the modelling of an autumn/winter 2nd wave, which, surprise surprise, has come along much sooner than they expected.
Yeah, their central values were clearly wrong in hindsight, their upper bounds for the month are close enough to say they were wrong, rather than being angry and dismissive about how wrong they were. I do think they are being caught on the hop again now though, and yet again are behind on both growth and R. Time will tell. They’ll look to be estimating slightly slow again in hindsight (I hope, rather than dangerously behind like they were back in Feb and March).
[edit: I agree with you actually, your analysis is spot on, no need for me to quibble, ignore the above]
I’m not sure what you know about model fitting TiRed but I’ve been doing it for decades on a professional basis as a widely published scientist
Snap - it's my day job, together with Statistics and Clincial Pharmacology. Yes I think the spline method is useless - reacts fat to fast to noise. Epidemic models are just sums of expoentials. To a first order, exp(f(x)) ~ exp(f(0) + f'(0) x + f''(0) x^2 + ...), which is far more robust than splines. As I said I don't do R.
Someone on the Coronanomics thread posted about people failing to self-isolate a couple of weeks back, I've been using their post as my reference since despite not being able to find the source of the data. The numbers were what's been published in the Guardian today! :
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/covid-in-england-latest-figures-suggest
I’m looking forward (wrong words) to TiRed’s regional admissions graphs. I wanted to be wrong about this… but it didn’t look good looking at the raw data yesterday… I haven’t looked at the stat today, but people I trust seem very worried…
https://twitter.com/doctor_oxford/status/1314536212191997952?s=21
Given the region's tourist attractions, it was bound to happen sooner or later, but Gwynedd council have requested to be put under local lockdown.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-54484035
They are now at 89 positive cases per 100k, higher than Conwy (80).
Yup that’s about right. It is a slightly unfair comparison in some respects however, in that the exponential rate of increase was much greater then, and our treatment options and general preparedness is probably rather better
I completely agree, but
I'd caveat that with 2 things
We are going into flu season, in a good year NHS ITU beds are borderline at capacity, certainly in the London hospitals I go to, in a bad one its awful
How covid will interact with flu season is anyones guess, have the vulnerable already died? will this years flu vaccine be the right strains? etc
We were also heading into a very warm summer, when lots could be done outside, in beer gardens & cafe outdoor eating areas etc.
Cold weather forces people indoors, where transmission is massively more likely
The virus seems to have done well in cold places: initial outbreaks in ski resorts & chilled meat packing factories have been top of the list for Outbreaks
A cold winter could be a problem
Will be interesting to see if Southern regions keep case numbers down or if they will be where northern cases are now with a few weeks lag
Madrid in quite a long way south. 😉
My hospitals flogged, ED more than struggling and the ICU has used 12% of the country’s remdesivir. Still it’s ok to wait till Monday to announce further measures. Unfortunately we aren’t in London.
Don't take this the wrong way, but if "lower tier" experts on this thread - and most people on the street, to be fair - could see this coming, whyTF did the "top" experts advising the government cock it up? Again?
the government
Monkey tennis.
Madrid in quite a long way south. 😉
Ha I wasn't talking about the temperature difference between North & south, tho that may be a factor
Spain do seem to have mishandled things in a way similar to our own government tho!
One thing that I was wondering about.... given that there was a very low flu season in the Southern Hemisphere due to lockdown, does that make predictions of flu strains for the vaccines harder? Is it more likely than normal we’ll have a bad flu season?
It isn't the experts getting it wrong, its the tossers who pretend to listen to them. Advisers can only advise.
Still it’s ok to wait till Monday to announce further measures.
Which will come into force on Thursday?
At a glance in the north of England we seem to be past the point at which lockdown was initiated last time.
They've ****ed it up again. How predictable.
Both France and Spain are currently coping with the predictable result of saving the tourist season. Locally we were close to elimination then tourists arrived from all over and many of us went on holiday ourselves to high risk areas. The return to school after all that mobility was as predictable as the usual back to school colds, shits etc. Except this time it's Covid which is a little more problematic.
I find it hard to be critical of the decision to let us all have a great Summer. It saved many businesses, and even though the case numbers are higher as a result people are reasonably happy and haven't started a revolution.
In the people around me there's a growing sentiment that people just want to get on with life even if it results in some of us catching the virus. It's become an acceptable risk that people have integrated into their behaviour. we ride horses and mountain bikes, ski mountaineer, wild swim, share roads and live in houses (which is where most people have serious accidents).
Most people are happy to wear a mask and keep their hands clean, but living like monks for an undefined period is off the table, people complied with our confinement with good grace in the public interest, it failed and people want their lives back.
I find it hard to be critical of the decision to let us all have a great Summer
Really?, A great summer at the expense of a long cold dark winter with the death toll measured in the tens of thousands? - really?, but then again given how you’ve posted about your family’s jaunts around the country and beyond over the previous few months i then realise you’re just a shit troll
sorry if this has been posted before....
Marina sticks her stilettos in...
It isn’t the experts getting it wrong, its the tossers who pretend to listen to them
Is their advice still published?
i then realise you’re just a shit troll
Or don't have exactly the same views as you. Look around you, Somafunk, most people are getting on with life. Many don't have much choice in that it's their job. If you're a teacher (which Madame still is) it seems pretty futile hiding yourself away during the holidays when you're surrounded by the virus every working day and the alternative is resigning. 32% of French clusters were in educational establishments by the end of September (les Echos).
Look around you, Somafunk, most people are getting on with life. Many don’t have much choice in that it’s their job.
Massive apologies if I'm speaking out of turn, but you do realise that Somafunk is enormously vulnerable to the disease?
If you’re a teacher (which Madame still is) it seems pretty futile hiding yourself away during the holidays when you’re surrounded by the virus every working day and the alternative is resigning. 32% of French clusters were in educational establishments by the end of September
How about that being all the more reason not to try and gaily spread it around Europe? Or are you only thinking of the risk to yourself?
We scrupulously respected "les gestes barrières" wherever we went and still do. Play by the rules and get on with life. We were the ones putting a mask on going in to buy a kebab in Neukölln (a per regs) sometimes the only people in the queue to do so.
Sentence edited to ignore the provative crap. (tongue out smiley)
Somafunk has nothing to fear from Madame or myself, Richpenny.
Somafunk has nothing to fear from Madame or myself, Richpenny.
In the people around me there’s a growing sentiment that people just want to get on with life even if it results in some of us catching the virus. It’s become an acceptable risk that people have integrated into their behaviour.
This is really the issue Edukator. It's a very uncomfortable truth, but the propagation of that attitude is likely to kill a lot of vulnerable people, or force them and their families into an extremely tough existence. I personally hope that we're not ready to go there yet. But I wouldn't deny that as time goes on it's going to look to an awful lot of people like the least shit option.
The problem with shielding the vulnerable, is that it's really not that easy
At some point they have to interact with the outside world
And then defining vulnerable is huge
So all bame people have to isolate, or is it just by age? 30% of UK population are clinically obese do they have to as well?
If I could like a post Somafunk’s is the one. I’m (Very) fit and healthy with zero risk factors for COVID19, and I was terribly sick in April. But I think my fitness helped keep me out of hospital. Protecting the vulnerable is a worthy aim, but we try that every flu season with varying success.
The country, and many others have yet to find the balance.
And @thecaptain, I wrote my first model fitting code using numerical recipes in Fortran77 to run on a Sun, as we didn’t have a NAG license at the time. Downhill simplex for chisquared likelihood as I recall. Non-linear mixed effects models were still a blink in the eye of Lindstom and Bates (1990).
I’m (Very) fit and healthy with zero risk factors for COVID19, and I was terribly sick in April. But I think my fitness helped keep me out of hospital.
How u feeling now 6 months on? I've heard about so-called long-COVID and it's concerning. It's said that a significant percentage of those who recovered have heart damage.
Not yet recovered. Had a bad week with most likely another infection of something this week. I find that I get flares of inflammation which set off symptoms such as muscle pain, sore chest and cough. I tested negative during one flare. I’m a patient patient though. Work takes my mind off the bikes (a bit). But I could turbo gently I think now.
As I have said many times - death is the hardest endpoint, but we know so little about morbidity of this new pathogen. We will in due course. It will be exciting and novel biology.
Both France and Spain are currently coping with the predictable result of saving the tourist season. Locally we were close to elimination then tourists arrived from all over and many of us went on holiday ourselves to high risk areas. The return to school after all that mobility was as predictable as the usual back to school colds, shits etc. Except this time it’s Covid which is a little more problematic.
I find it hard to be critical of the decision to let us all have a great Summer. It saved many businesses, and even though the case numbers are higher as a result people are reasonably happy and haven’t started a revolution.
In the people around me there’s a growing sentiment that people just want to get on with life even if it results in some of us catching the virus. It’s become an acceptable risk that people have integrated into their behaviour. we ride horses and mountain bikes, ski mountaineer, wild swim, share roads and live in houses (which is where most people have serious accidents).
Most people are happy to wear a mask and keep their hands clean, but living like monks for an undefined period is off the table, people complied with our confinement with good grace in the public interest, it failed and people want their lives back.
This is where I'm at too and the vast majority of people I know of all ages, genders, vulnerabilities such as obese, diabetic elderly relatives, care worker friends, a whole range of the population basically are of this mindset at this stage.
These are intelligent people who have happily complied with lockdown and are happy to continue with the current precautions like masks/sanitizer but are wholly against any further lockdowns or restrictions coming in.
Calling someone a troll for having this view and posting scare stories about tragically sick people is pathetic and just creates a boring eco chamber.
There are so few people posting on this thread now and no wonder as they are immediately shot down and vilified by the vocal bullies who have no interest in seeing things from another perspective.
It’s a very uncomfortable truth, but the propagation of that attitude is likely to kill a lot of vulnerable people, or force them and their families into an extremely tough existence. I personally hope that we’re not ready to go there yet. But I wouldn’t deny that as time goes on it’s going to look to an awful lot of people like the least shit option.
As TiRed keeps saying, we have to find the balance. We can't go back to any sort of "normal" till we do. I know it ****ing sucks but that's the way it is. Not been to a pub for a drink since March, had less than a dozen rides with a close mate I trust all year. Only had a couple of nights away from home all year. Not seen work colleagues more than twice in 6 months.
I'm minimising the contact between me and my "bubbles" and anyone else's "bubbles" as much as I can, to try and ensure my kids can keep going to school and have their "new normal". It's not great for my mental health, but I need to do it.
Watching other people pissing around without masks, piling into pubs and parties without any social distancing, swanning off on holidays and then ignoring the quarantine restrictions that are a consequence of that choice, is really pissing me off.
It will be exciting and novel biology.
That's one way of putting it. May you live in interesting times, etc
Learning to live with it is shorthand for learning to allow people to die or have their long term health wrecked by it.
I was classed as 'extremely vulnerable' in the last wave, have two kids in the sixth form, who have brought home two colds/coughs in the first few weeks of terms. Schools are Covid Secure in the sense that a colander is water secure.
The only thing we can do is try to limit the infectious dose we receive/pass on. No easy task in a small semi. We've made some changes to improve ventilation, step up cleaning etc.
I really would quite like to be shielding again, looking at the figures, but aware of the effect on the children, given that no genuine provision for remote learning has been put in place.
Calling someone a troll for having this view and posting scare stories about tragically sick people is pathetic and just creates a boring eco chamber.
Its hardly scare stories when vulnerable people post that they have a high liklihood of dying of they get it
There's also the real risk of the NHS being overwhelmed, as it often is during winter
One og the issues is that if we just let rip on the second wave then all the nurses & docs in day clinics, oncology, surgery etc , which are currently trying to get through the huge backlog from the first wave, will have to go back into itu & covid wards & shut everything down again
I work with a lot of young doctors who all had to go back into hospital & covid wards, they really are not keen to repeat the experience
Everyone hates the current situation, I'm working daft shifts, barely seeing my kids in the week so we can distance in work,
I'm definitely worried about visiting my parents as they are both very vulnerable
Its not trolling to say that you don't agree with another luckdown
But it's not bullying to say that it's a dangerous thing & will cause 1000s of deaths
Our worldbeating Test & trace was overwhelmed in the summer months, its doing worse now, not much hope as cases increases.
lockdown is the only thing that we have left
"Rock, let me introduce you to my good friend Hard Place".
MoreCashThanDash +1 It isn’t great but it’s what we have.
It struck me today that my own lack of emotive reaction to the news that Manchester was apparently packed with “one last fling” last night is pretty bad. How easily we accept - because we cannot change - a government with continual late actions, and a public with such blatant disregard to their own health.
I know it’s not everybody, but it saddens me that we are in this repetitive cycle of dismay and incompetence.
As I see it we have 2 options, properly lockdown again to bring the infection rates down, this may be something we then have to do every couple of months indefinitely or let the vulnerable take their own precautions as we do with every other disease.
This current halfway house isn't working, it's destroying livelihoods, promoting poor behaviour, not controlling infection rates and building up resentment which will undermine another lockdown if we ever get to it.
I'm afraid focusing on this at an individual level is emotional and unhelpful way of looking at things. Populations behave differently to individuals, we need to steer behaviour at a population level, not individual. For every person out there still trying their best not to interact, those lucky enough to be still working from home with a job and income, there are many more who've already seen their lives destroyed or will push the regulations.
focusing on this at an individual level is emotional and unhelpful way of looking at things
The alternative is to think of numbers though. 60 thousand dead isn’t something I can picture, so when deciding how to act, hearing stories from the families of bus drivers in their 40s and doctors in their 50s who died last time we let this get out of control helps me to see the point my own small sacrifices. Millions having long term health problems is something else I can’t picture. Hearing from people going through that now helps me appreciate my own health, and perhaps put into context my sense of loss knowing how our pub culture, that I love, is likely to be decimated this winter, no matter what actions we take. As an non medical person, I cannot picture the result of so many non-COVID health issues not being treated because hospitals and staff are reallocated to cope with the high levels of COVID we seem willing to live with, but stories from individuals struggling because they can’t get the more effective cancer treatments, or have their bladder operations, makes the cost of that real to me.
We need individual stories to make sense of this.
Our worldbeating Test & trace was overwhelmed in the summer months, its doing worse now, not much hope as cases increases.
Doesn't matter if the T&T system was at 100% success rate, when people don't adhere to the request it makes it a pointless activity.
Don't get me wrong, I understand why usually honest people would break the quarantine if you show no symptoms yourself and can and have to work to feed your family. £13 a day does not cut it when you're already up against it financially.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/oct/09/covid-in-england-latest-figures-suggest
I’m afraid focusing on this at an individual level is emotional and unhelpful way of looking at things.
That works both ways though, this is ****ing hard for most people. I get that people are desperate to return to some semblance of normality. But am fully with Tired in that we don't know enough about how this might play out in the medium term. For example, if there's a shot at vaccination in 6 months to protect the most vulnerable, are we prepared as a society to sacrifice the freedoms (and lives) of some of us to avoid extra measures. And what you trade for is the health and happiness of the majority. It's an equation with shit on both sides.
I don't want to call anyone a troll or a bully for being on either side. This thread has been really good so far, considering the impact on all of us. There's going to be flashpoints where nerves are struck. It's easy for me to say, for example, shut all hospitality, forgetting that another forum member will have spent decades building a business only to see it crumble in months. I apologise for that, it must appear pretty crass when you're in that situation.
Kelvin, if you're in government trying steer the least worst course you have to think in numbers, and relative numbers as well, not absolutes. 60000 dead is horrific, it's higher the US deaths in Vietnam. But it has to be contrasted withe the number of indirect deaths policy us causing now and in the future.
Thinking at an individual level paralyses decision making as you can't see beyond individual outcomes or worse still you end up with populist decision making. Whilst at an individual level people can make the right decisions, at a population level we cannot, Brexit, rising infection rates and the current lifestyle health crisis all prove this.
The problem with shielding the vulnerable, is that it’s really not that easy
The number I heard was that this is approximately 15,000,000 people - slightly less than 20% of the population. I am not sure of the demographic of that number. Regardless, how do you shield that many? Inevitably, even if you devise a way to shield, I’m sure a significant number will still die (Covid appears to have 3-4% mortality).
The question now is: how much collateral damage is acceptable to protect this segment of the population? I’m sure an actuary somewhere has told the Gov what this number is & it would appear we have yet to reach it.
