O/T Coronavirus Thread (3)

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Originally Posted by sota

All true CA, I kid you not. Remind me to tell you about the professional mingler bit when you've got a minute :-)

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Come on Sota let’s hear is it :O

There are images on the news this morning of a packed flight between Dublin and the uk
Rather than blame the airline or govt (Irish before the looney left jump all over it), surely everyone has to take responsibility for their own health and safety as most existing H&S regulations stipulate.
What on earth is so urgent that make people put their lives, and the lives of others, at risk

Even using a ferry would afford a better chance of adequate social distancing assuming they are operating

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Originally Posted by KerrAvon

It’s far too early to draw meaningful comparisons. As IBS pointed out over the weekend in one of his more lucid moments, there is no standardised way of recording deaths and there is a difference between dying of Covid-19 and dying with Covid-19. In the UK, we initially measured those dying in hospital with Covid19, but that has now been expanded that to all settings and, as I understand it, we are including people who died with Covid19 symptoms irrespective of whether they have been tested.

As this bloke points out, it will be some time before meaningful comparisons can be made:

https://www.theguardian.com/commenti...ther-countries

My suspicion is that Germany’s high test capacity will prove to have been crucial. The UK’s track and trace phase had to be cut short because of the lack of the same. We may also need to look at behavioural responses within the population and sections of the population.

My understanding is that the availability of ventilators has not proved to be an issue and that medical opinion is tending against invasive ventilation as its effect on outcomes is limited.

My worry is that the scientific investigation of the UK’s response will be overtaken by a political blame game. It already is on here for some posters even though people are still dying.

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It now turns out that someone in France tested positive in late December after being admitted to hospital for pneumonia.

His kids also had symptoms but his wife didn't although they are saying it was probably his wife who contracted it first as she works near the airport.

If this is the case then that puts a massive question mark on the successes/failures of different countries responses as well as their stats.

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Originally Posted by flourbasher

There are images on the news this morning of a packed flight between Dublin and the uk
Rather than blame the airline or govt (Irish before the looney left jump all over it), surely everyone has to take responsibility for their own health and safety as most existing H&S regulations stipulate.
What on earth is so urgent that make people put their lives, and the lives of others, at risk

Even using a ferry would afford a better chance of adequate social distancing assuming they are operating

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That's what I wondered when it was mentioned on here (talk sport hosts moaning). Who are all these people getting flights while we are stuck here in our houses? Why is it so essential that they are on a plane? Again, some people in this country don't want to take responsibility. When they get the virus it will be the government's fault for letting them get on a plane.

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Originally Posted by flourbasher

There are images on the news this morning of a packed flight between Dublin and the uk
Rather than blame the airline or govt (Irish before the looney left jump all over it), surely everyone has to take responsibility for their own health and safety as most existing H&S regulations stipulate.
What on earth is so urgent that make people put their lives, and the lives of others, at risk

Even using a ferry would afford a better chance of adequate social distancing assuming they are operating

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You’d think they would get off when they saw how packed it was but obviously getting to wherever they were going is more important than their/others lives.
Absolute morons

The person taking the photo stayed on I take it then complains when he get off in London ? >:)

One of the things the U/K did wrong, was not cancelling the Cheltenham Festival racing meeting, the government allowed people to mingle & then allow them to spread the coronavirus, if it was present at that time.

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Originally Posted by CAMiller

Washington State here in the US was one of the first impacted and if memory serves me right we went into mandated lock down on the same day as the UK although by that time many large companies were already advising those who could to stay at home and work there. Restrictions are starting to ease but slowly, a 4 phase approach is being touted, each phase of 3 weeks.

With regards population density we are at 103/sq mile compared to the UK's 701/sq mile. Population wise we are 7.5M compared to the UK's 66M. Deaths are around 850 (1 per 9,000 capita) here compared to 29,000 (1 per 2,250 capita) there. So UK has 7x the population density but 4x the death rate. Draw your own conclusions.

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If you look at what has happened in London (population density 4,542 per square km), Madrid (5,400 / sq. km) and New York (10 431/sq. km – seriously?) – all major airline hubs - it’s not hard to see why they have been hit so hard. It’s a matter of maths, not politics.

The above begs the question of why Seoul got off so lightly with a pop density of 17,000 people per square kilometre. My suspicion is that South Korea is a country that learned lessons from the SARS and MERS outbreaks that have hit it in the last twenty years, such that both the government and the public were better able to recognise the risk and deal with it.

As I have said, the interesting comparison is with Germany. I do think their testing capacity will prove to have been important and maybe they had a degree of luck too with the disease not reaching vulnerable areas of society in the way that it did in the UK.

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Originally Posted by Shark27

It now turns out that someone in France tested positive in late December after being admitted to hospital for pneumonia.

His kids also had symptoms but his wife didn't although they are saying it was probably his wife who contracted it first as she works near the airport.

If this is the case then that puts a massive question mark on the successes/failures of different countries responses as well as their stats.

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I saw that. It's very interesting, although I do hope that the French authorities will be investigating whether the sample might have been contaminated prior to testing. The story is that Northern Italy was hit particularly badly because the disease was circulating within the population there for some weeks before it was recognised.

We are only four months on from the disease being identified. There is an awful lot of work still required to fully understand it and plot its spread.

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Originally Posted by Ericsladkilnhurst

One of the things the U/K did wrong, was not cancelling the Cheltenham Festival racing meeting, the government allowed people to mingle & then allow them to spread the coronavirus, if it was present at that time.

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That's why in a crisis such as this you need someone in charge of the country who is not afraid to make unpopular decisions in the national interest .

I don't dispute there wouldn't have been hell on and he would have got pelters for it .

The standard line of course from the government is that we were led by science which appears to be rolled out to cover every controversial aspect of their handling of the pandemic .

The scientific line seems to be along the lines of this is a new virus and we are learning about it all the time .

It's hardly convincing stuff .

I remember at work having conversations with colleagues along the lines that we are amazed this festival is going ahead given the situation was starting to become real in the UK at that time .

Everyone one knows that Cheltenham is attended by 90k punters for four consecutive days with the majority of people watching the event close together .

It also creates a huge amount of revenue , millions of pounds of which taxation gets a slice .

It's one of the things likely to be asked in an inquiry so hopefully an explanation will come out of it .

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Originally Posted by KerrAvon

You correctly raise the issue of a comparison between average number of stories of buildings in London v Auckland, but fail to see that is an indication of population density within those cities.

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Thinking about this... I think I totally didn't explain the point I had been trying to make.

Yes, if you have more stories you get a higher population density.

However, while communal areas do represent an increased risk, the number of people you are in close proximity with does not increase linearly as you get a higher population density from more stories.

You're a lot less likely to catch an illness from someone working on the floor above you than you are from someone on the same floor. Even though a 16 storey building might have 16x the population density of a 1 storey office the risk likely isn't significantly different for the average worker.