O/T Coronavirus Thread (3)

[rolymiller]

Yep good point camiller.

[howdydoo]

Maybe Chinese officials' initial effort to cover up the coronavirus outbreak in Wuhan was an appallingly misguided decision.

[KerrAvon]

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 .

It would be surprising if there wasn’t some spread at Cheltenham and via the Champions League game played at Anfield . I would be surprised if the government doesn’t either agree or is forced to publish the minutes of the SAGE meetings at which decisions upon them were taken so that we can get to see the science and policy behind them.

I don’t envy the government for the task they have at the moment. The fact is that this is a new disease and we don’t know much about it. Another fact is that the government has to balance its actions on the virus against the need to keep the economy running. I know that sort of comment leads to the ‘profits not people’ drivel, that is popular from the Left on Twitter at the moment, but the fact is that people die when the economy tanks.

We heard a lot about confirmation bias on here at the weekend. Other examples of bias are hindsight bias and outcome bias.

[KerrAvon]

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.

If people stay on the same floor of a building permanently then the risk of spread between floors would be almost certainly be zero (subject to there not being a heating system that moved air between floors). The issue is that people don’t permanently stay on the same floor, they use communal areas, including lifts.

[KerrAvon]

Hong Kong and Singapore have similar population densities - not sure the phrase Id use is a 'matter of maths'. Id be more interested to know how they dealt with it. I think we ignored their experience.

The thing that stands out for me is countries which advocate the use of masks seem to have better outcomes. HK announced yesterday it would give every citizen a mask for the next phase when they exit lockdown.

HK, Singapore, South Korea and, dare I say, China all fell back on their experience of MERS and SARS. They know the risks and methods to protect themselves and quickly slip into mode.

They've had procedures in place since the SARS outbreak in 2002. Temperature is tested at airports and border crossings, there is continual advice on washing hands, wearing masks and advise on self isolation if you show symptoms.

At the risk of nit-picking, epidemiology is a matter of maths, in which you can alter the variables by altering behaviours. We should look at how the countries your mentioned coped, but if we are interested in making international comparisons for the UK then Germany is probably a better match in terms of the characteristics of the country.

[KerrAvon]

Im sure it was our initial plan of herd immunity that allowed the virus to run free, in a similar way to Italy. Then, when we changed tack, it was impossible to control.

The herd immunity thing is overrated. I have yet to see any evidence that it was a government policy. It was seen as an outcome of slowing spread to a level that was manageable without a vaccine being available

[KerrAvon]

This is the kind of thing that happens when folks blame the chinese entirely for the pandemic Howdy...

https://news.sky.com/story/coronavir...risis-11979388

So the position is that you are quite happy to criticise the UK government and the US president, but any criticism of China has to be suppressed?

The mind-set that you have displayed there is the same as that which made it impossible for Local Government officials and the police to talk about the abuse of children in Rotherham by men of Pakistani heritage.

The kind of people who carried out the attacks described within the BBC article don't need encouragment. They are addicted to violence and any excuse to indulge will do.

[Shark27]

If it turns out to be correct regarding the case in France in December we could assume that many more people had it. If this guy went to hospital on the 27th Dec he could have contracted it say 10 days before. Could have been similar cases here.

It would have spread like wildfire before Christmas. Look how rammed the pubs are on mad Friday and Christmas/New year's eve, shops are full. Christmas Day, everyone's spreading it to their families.

Quite a few of people I know were badly over Christmas. Couldn't get out of bed. Even more in January.

It will be interesting to see the death rate for January.

We could have already achieved the required herd immunity.

[rolymiller]

Not one bit of criticism of the govt there Kerr. Would it be safe to say if Labour had won the last election and done exactly the same thing that you would have been just as defensive of them. Of course not! Keep towing your party's line you do it better than some tory's mps eg Jeremy hunt...

Not a tory my arse!

[rolymiller]

The herd immunity thing is overrated. I have yet to see any evidence that it was a government policy. It was seen as an outcome of slowing spread to a level that was manageable without a vaccine being available

Load of baloney as usual...stop making things up ya phoney...

They are hardly gonna admit that you plonker. Even you said at the time it wunt be a good idea politically to do it. In fact I seem to remember you saying summat about "political suicide to do it"...yer've more faces....

...and put it this way, if the govts stategy wasn't herd immunity then that article suggests that their policy was all wrong in the first place...hardly a glowing chuffin reference anyway...

https://www.newstatesman.com/politic...-was-abandoned