Naked Science Forum
Life Sciences => Cells, Microbes & Viruses => Topic started by: Petrochemicals on 13/03/2020 23:07:59
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Quite a simple one this, yes or no ?
If so should we isolate ourselves from others ? Shun mass gatherings, stop trading ?
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Quite a simple one this, yes or no ?
"For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/h_l_mencken_129796
If you think epidemiology is simple, you are mistaken.
There's also an implication that we are panicking.
Some probably are. Most are not.
It's probably fair to say that panic isnever a helpful response, given that we are capable of reasoning.
So, the question makes little sense.
"Is [anything at all] a reason to PANIC ?"
No.
It's not even a reason to USE CAPITAL LETTERS.
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Quite a simple one this, yes or no ?
If so should we isolate ourselves from others ? Shun mass gatherings, stop trading ?
No, but the fact that about 100% of the world population is susceptible, and further that it's killing very roughly 1% of those it infects (so it could be expected to kill very roughly 70 million people, comparable or higher than the 1918 Spanish Flu) is.
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OK, there's a reasonable estimate that,in the UK there are about 10,000 cases (rather more than the official total- because of limited testing.)
And there are roughly 100 million people in the UK
So very roughly 1 in 10,000 has the virus.
So, if I go to a local football match or concert with 10,000 other people, I can expect roughly 1 person there to have the virus.
It's said that it's unlikely to spread more than a metre or two.
So that's a dozen or so people within "range" and, of course, not all of them would actually get infected - I'm guessing 1 in 10.
So I ( as a member of the crowd) have a less than 0.1% chance of being in range and, at a guess, a less than 0.01% chance of getting the virus.
And, if I do, I have a roughly 1% chance of death (I'm fifty-odd years old)
So, my chances of dying from going to a gig or concert is about 1 in a million. For most (young) concert goers, it would be about 10 times less..
Very roughly that's a 0.4 % relative rise in death rate
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Micromort
tells me that background death rates are about 24 in a million per day.
If a typical concert goer travels 10 km by motorbike to the event, they are about 10 times more likely to die in a road accident than from the virus.
(same source)
So, it does not seem to me that we should panic yet.
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I would suggest that there is an optimum amount of panic/concern:
- Organisers of large events (eg > 500 people) should probably cancel them. The Grand Pix was canceled in Australia last week, after several of the competing teams had picked up corona virus on their world travels.
- People should be worried enough to wash their hands thoroughly, and avoid going to large gatherings
- Companies should check out their procedures for teleworking, and permit employees to work remotely (where that is feasible)
- People with colds or coughs should stay home instead of going to work.
+ When corona virus cases are low, the cough probably will be the common cold.
+ But when corona virus cases increase (and I expect they will), there is a reasonable chance that it will be the corona virus, and people should already be in the mindset that they are staying home whenever they have cold symptoms.
+ The point is, the person at home can't distinguish them (without a massive community-wide testing effort)
- The optimum amount of panic will change over time, depending on how many people are infectious, and how many people are immune, whether people are going hungry in their homes, and whether the hospital system will cope in 2 weeks time.
- For areas where there is an outbreak, banning even small meetings (50 people) and closing schools will slow down the spread
- Welding doors shut or shooting people on the street is an excessive level of panic.
So that's a dozen or so people within "range" and, of course, not all of them would actually get infected - I'm guessing 1 in 10.
This is a big increase of the usual R0 of the virus. In the usual home/work environment, R0 for this virus is thought to be around 2-3.
- When you have exponential growth, increasing the exponent even slightly makes a big difference.
The impact here depends on the prevalence in the stadium population.
- If 1 person has it, they might infect 10 at the match
- These 10 will take it to home and work, and infect another 20
- Omitting that 10x multiplier at the football match will really slow down spread of the disease.
Move forward a couple of weeks, and you now have 1% of the people in the ground with the virus - and the next week you now have 10% of the attendees with the virus.
- That is a lot of cases, very quickly; perhaps 1-5% of them will require hospital treatment, and possibly overload the hospital system
It will be a disruption to the normal economics and atmosphere at the stadium, but I suggest that you stay home and watch the game on TV!
- This is only delaying the inevitable...
- Sports competitions will shut down when every team (or their opposing team) has a player with the virus (and the rest of the team has been in contact with the infected player)
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I would suggest that there is an optimum amount of panic/concern:
The optimal level of concern is not panic- more or less by definition of panic.This is a big increase of the usual R0 of the virus. In the usual home/work environment, R0 for this virus is thought to be around 2-3.
- When you have exponential growth, increasing the exponent even slightly makes a big difference.
The impact here depends on the prevalence in the stadium population.
- If 1 person has it, they might infect 10 at the match
Hang on...
What I said was that someone in the crowd exposes about a dozen people round them.
But that of those 12 people, most won't actually be infected- my guess was a tenth of them- roughly one additional person gets infected. An R0 value of 1 over the course of a match
That's very broadly in line with and R0 value of 2 or 3 and, of course, it's very pessimistic.
It's odds on that an asymptomatic, but infected, man at a football match will infect nobody.
If he doesn't go to the match, he's likely to go to the pub, or the library or whatever.
OK if he tends his garden or just watches telly, that actually reduces the odds of transmission.
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The average UK death rate is about 2000 - 2500 per day. Given that a proportion of those deaths attributed to COVID already had an underlying serious illness, it's likely that at least in the early stages of epidemic, it will temporarily accelerate their demise but simultaneously reduce the pool of the most susceptible, so any concern about extermination of the species isn't justified.
The real concern is that after a decade of cutting local authority spending, those who have paid their taxes and ought to have reasonable care at home are left to die in hospitals whilst the infection is spread through schoolkids because everyone must have five GCSEs regardless of the harm done.
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because everyone must have five GCSEs regardless of the harm done.
That doesn't make much sense.
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Sorry, I really should have made it clear that I was on about the 2017-18 flu season where mortality was 1.25 deceaced per million population per day. Terribly tardy of me.
https://www.vox.com/2018/9/27/17910318/flu-deaths-2018-epidemic-outbreak-shot
This was averaged on a population of 350 million, over 180 days.
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If he doesn't go to the match, he's likely to go to the pub, or the library or whatever
If there are local centers that cause a local outbreak (eg the local pub, or the local library), it is easy to slow down the local outbreak by closing local sources.
However, if there is gathering of people from many different areas, that increases the chance that some people willl be there from somewhere that has an outbreak, and that people from the gathering will then take it to additional places, causing additional outbreaks.
- Multiple outbreaks across a wide area is harder to control than fewer, more local outbreaks.
- And it has a larger impact on supply of goods and services (people still want to eat, communicate and watch TV, even if they have the virus...)
So the type of gathering is important...
- A local child-care/early education center with mostly local families, where the children associate with mostly their own age group...
- will have a more limited impact than...
- A city university, where students travel long distances daily, and spend time in multiple lecture theaters with different groups of people, only to travel long distances back to different parts of the city (many traveling via public transport)
- A university town like Cambridge with mostly bicycle transport is partway between these extremes
I'm just suggesting that if there is a way of achieving the goals without a mass gathering, that is a preferred solution.
- Broadcasting football games is an established technology & there is an established economic model supporting it
- For schools that have never had to attempt it, Facebook streaming is available. Chemistry classes would need to focus on the theory (or deliver URLs for Youtube videos of the experiments...)
I suggest that the inconvenience of watching a game on the lounge at home has significant benefits over watching the game in an overcrowded hospital emergency waiting room...
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One of the difference between a chemical poison and a biological agent is that:
- the chemical poison gets more diluted the farther it spreads, so you want to dilute it as much as possible
- Biological agents self-multiply, and they multiply more the farther they spread. So you want to limit the spread (or, in an epidemic situation where everyone will eventually get it, limit the rate at which it spreads, so the hospital, ambulance and morgue facilities can keep up)
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Terribly tardy of me.
I don't think you know what that word means.
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This author strongly recommends shutting everything down now.
One thing he has right is that everyone is surprised by exponential growth.
- He argues that even a 1 day delay in shutdowns will make a significant difference in mortality
- He shows that shutdowns impact the peak infection & death rate
What do you think?
See: https://medium.com/@tomaspueyo/coronavirus-act-today-or-people-will-die-f4d3d9cd99ca
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Nobody seems to recognise the fact that, if you shut everything down, that will also kill people.
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if you shut everything down, that will also kill people.
It will be important to identify critical industries, and to regularly check the people that are moving about to ensure they don't have symptoms.
- As well as emergency services (doctors, nurses, police, ambulance and fire brigade), critical industries would need to include people delivering services like electricity & water, plus those delivering goods like medicines and food
- In some countries, the emergency services may need to be supplemented by national guard or army.
Having an antibody test would assist identifying those who are already immune, and can safely carry out these tasks without spreading the virus further.
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If, as is widely suggested, you close the schools, you close all the industries at random (because employees have to take time off to look after kids)
If you don't close the schools then the kids spread the virus to their classmates, and they take it home to their parents and the outcome is pretty much the same.
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Some corona virus updates today, from a fairly reputable source:
- It appears that although corona virus mostly has a mild impact on children's breathing, some of them have suffered symptoms of diarrhea. Some children continued shedding virus in stool for 3-4 weeks. Since children (and adults!) are not particularly good at hand-washing, this would seem to be a route that will spread the virus widely in schools and homes.
- In Italy, demand for ventilators far outstrips supply. Apparently, if you are over 60 years of age, you don't get the ventilator - they give it to someone who is equally in need - but younger.
- I heard of a case some years ago in Canada where a doctor had to decide between two patients, and was charged with manslaughter.
- Some hospitals in Australia are rewriting their triage procedures with help from military medics. The military is more familiar with situations where the patients far outnumber the medical staff and facilities.
Listen (10 minutes): https://www.abc.net.au/radio/programs/coronacast/what-can-kids-poo-teach-us-about-coronavirus/12061284
Listen (30 minutes) or read the transcript: https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/healthreport/coronavirus-travel-bans-and-intensive-care/12060354
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Here is an interesting simulation showing
Why outbreaks like coronavirus spread exponentially, and how to “flatten the curve”
By Harry Stevens March 14, 2020
https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/world/corona-simulator/
This so-called exponential curve has experts worried. If the number of cases were to continue to double every three days, there would be about a hundred million cases in the United States by May.
That is math, not prophecy. The spread can be slowed, public health professionals say, if people practice “social distancing” by avoiding public spaces and generally limiting their movement.
Still, without any measures to slow it down, covid-19 will continue to spread exponentially for months. To understand why, it is instructive to simulate the spread of a fake disease through a population.
In one crucial respect, though, these simulations are nothing like reality: Unlike simulitis, covid-19 can kill. Though the fatality rate is not precisely known, it is clear that the elderly members of our community are most at risk of dying from covid-19.
“If you want this to be more realistic,” Harris said after seeing a preview of this story, “some of the dots should disappear.”
And here is how slowing down the spread of the disease becomes important.
This One Graph Shows Why 'Flattening The Curve' Is So Critical For COVID-19 Right Now
(https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2020-03/flattencurve_1024.gif)
https://www.sciencealert.com/dragging-out-the-coronavirus-epidemic-is-important-in-saving-lives
Anywhere from 20 percent to 60 percent of the adults around the world may be infected with the new coronavirus SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes the disease COVID-19. That's the estimate from leading epidemiological experts on communicable disease dynamics.
Even the best-case scenario using those numbers means nearly 40,000,000 adults will be infected in the United States alone.
Some people may start to feel fatalistic in the face of those kinds of statistics. There are no vaccines and no specific treatments for people who get sick. What's the point of fighting something that's bound to happen anyway? Why not just let the epidemic run its course?
But public health officials and medical professionals have been advocating for rapid and decisive efforts to reduce the transmission of SARS-CoV-2 as much and as early as possible.
The goal is to 'flatten the curve'. Rather than letting the virus quickly rampage through the population and burn itself out fast, the idea is to spread all those infections out over a longer period of time.
Yes, it would potentially prolong the epidemic. But in doing so, public health agencies and the health care infrastructure gain invaluable time to respond to the crisis.
Most importantly, "flattening the curve" provides an opportunity to significantly reduce deaths from COVID-19.
On the steep rise of the epidemic curve, especially when testing capacity is lacking, there is a tremendous burden on health care providers – many of whom will fall ill themselves and be forced to self-isolate, becoming unable to provide care for those in need.
At the same time, there is immense pressure placed on health care facilities where demand for patient care will outpace capacity – things like the number of hospital beds, ventilators and so on – for a significant amount of time.
So yes, even if every person on Earth eventually comes down with COVID-19, there are real benefits to making sure it doesn't all happen in the next few weeks.
How, then, can people 'flatten the curve' via reducing transmission of the coronavirus? At present, with many regions of the United States and other countries seeing community members spreading COVID-19 locally, the world has entered a phase of mitigation to complement efforts to contain its spread.
As a result, we're left with an old but quite effective strategy: social distancing. It means staying out of close contact in crowded public places, avoiding mass gatherings and maintaining space – approximately six feet – between yourself and others when possible.
Social distancing requires changes in how people work, live and interact with each other. It may require canceling or avoiding big events, limiting nonessential travel and rescheduling conferences.
Traditional classroom instruction may have to move to online delivery – already happening in some colleges and universities, though less easy to do for K-12 schools.
To be clear, social distancing comes with a substantial economic cost as people aren't engaged in the same work and life activities that fuel the economy as they were just a month or two ago.
As a result, public health and government officials are faced with balancing the public health push to "flatten the curve" with desires to minimize the impact on the economy.
As the COVID-19 pandemic unfolds, public health experts across the world are collecting data and communicating information as fast as possible in an attempt to provide health care providers, research laboratories, public health agencies and policymakers with the knowledge they need to respond to the emerging threat.
In the meantime, one of the most important things individuals can do for our collective public health is to listen to the experts and follow their advice.
World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom recently commented that "We need to remember that with decisive, early action, we can slow down the virus and prevent infections."
We're not going to stamp out COVID-19. But by not just throwing up our hands and giving up, people can help address the crisis early, preventing COVID-19 from overwhelming the health care system's capacity to respond effectively.
Matthew McQueen, Director, Public Health Program and Associate Professor of Integrative Physiology, University of Colorado Boulder.
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(https://www.sciencealert.com/images/2020-03/flattencurve_1024.gif)
Imagine that graph with 85 as the average, dotted line will be into the 200-300 level. Thats what we delt with a few years ago, or were we not able to deal with it ? Should we have shut down every year ?
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Imagine that graph with 85 as the average, dotted line will be into the 200-300 level. Thats what we delt with a few years ago, or were we not able to deal with it ? Should we have shut down every year ?
The health care system capacity can be temporary increased just like the setup of emergency hospitals in China. When things got under control, they can be dismantled. The need to shut down depends on the severity of the case, but in the end the decision will be made based on cost and benefit analysis of the authorities. Hence electing competent government officials is an important contribution could be made by citizens.
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Let God decide who lives and who dies and pray that panicking politicians will not cause great hardships by increasing unemployment resulting in financial inflation. But do keep clean and away from crowds.
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Let God decide
That's a silly thing to say.
If there's a God then we have no choice but to let Him decide. After all, He's all powerful- what could we do about it?.
If there's no God then clearly He can't decide.
By all means pray if you want, but don't kid yourself that it's something to discuss on a science page.
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A storm descends on a small town, and the downpour soon turns into a flood. As the waters rise, the local preacher kneels in prayer on the church porch, surrounded by water. By and by, one of the townsfolk comes up the street in a canoe.
"Better get in, Preacher. The waters are rising fast."
"No," says the preacher. "I have faith in the Lord. He will save me."
Still the waters rise. Now the preacher is up on the balcony, wringing his hands in supplication, when another guy zips up in a motorboat.
"Come on, Preacher. We need to get you out of here. The levee's gonna break any minute."
Once again, the preacher is unmoved. "I shall remain. The Lord will see me through."
After a while the levee breaks, and the flood rushes over the church until only the steeple remains above water. The preacher is up there, clinging to the cross, when a helicopter descends out of the clouds, and a state trooper calls down to him through a megaphone.
"Grab the ladder, Preacher. This is your last chance."
Once again, the preacher insists the Lord will deliver him.
And, predictably, he drowns.
A pious man, the preacher goes to heaven. After a while he gets an interview with God, and he asks the Almighty, "Lord, I had unwavering faith in you. Why didn't you deliver me from that flood?"
God shakes his head. "What did you want from me? I sent you two boats and a helicopter."
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Imagine that graph with 85 as the average, dotted line will be into the 200-300 level. Thats what we delt with a few years ago, or were we not able to deal with it ? Should we have shut down every year ?
The health care system capacity can be temporary increased just like the setup of emergency hospitals in China. When things got under control, they can be dismantled. The need to shut down depends on the severity of the case, but in the end the decision will be made based on cost and benefit analysis of the authorities. Hence electing competent government officials is an important contribution could be made by citizens.
That is a yes then.
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Imagine that graph with 85 as the average, dotted line will be into the 200-300 level. Thats what we delt with a few years ago, or were we not able to deal with it ? Should we have shut down every year ?
The health care system capacity can be temporary increased just like the setup of emergency hospitals in China. When things got under control, they can be dismantled. The need to shut down depends on the severity of the case, but in the end the decision will be made based on cost and benefit analysis of the authorities. Hence electing competent government officials is an important contribution could be made by citizens.
That is a yes then.
Which question did you answer?
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Imagine that graph with 85 as the average, dotted line will be into the 200-300 level. Thats what we delt with a few years ago, or were we not able to deal with it ? Should we have shut down every year ?
The health care system capacity can be temporary increased just like the setup of emergency hospitals in China. When things got under control, they can be dismantled. The need to shut down depends on the severity of the case, but in the end the decision will be made based on cost and benefit analysis of the authorities. Hence electing competent government officials is an important contribution could be made by citizens.
That is a yes then.
Which question did you answer?
No, you answered the original question with building of extra hospitals etc. Should this provision be made every year for flu ?
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No, you answered the original question with building of extra hospitals etc. Should this provision be made every year for flu ?
It depends on the severity of the flu strain prominent in each year. But that doesn't mean that we must be panic. What do you think panic people would do?
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Panic is irrational, pretty much by definition. So it's not the right thing to do.
Seeing that many people considered quarantine to be a bank holiday is grounds for rather severe action.
That's not the same thing.
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It depends on the severity of the flu strain prominent in each year. But that doesn't mean that we must be panic. What do you think panic people would do?
Pretty much what they are doing already, especially in britian, low cases in the uk but the shelves in italy are far better stocked due to uk panic buying. 2 years ago the flu went through the country in a slightly less quick but just as lethal form, but for some reason its amatuer dramatics time.
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years ago the flu went through the country
Which country?
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Let God decide
Almost every human endeavour, from cleaning your teeth to eradicating smallpox, is obviously made in defiance of God's Will. The few exceptions include entirely pointless activities such as flying to the moon and inventing string theory.
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Our local church is praying that we will "Let God decide who lives and who dies and pray that panicking politicians will do what is for the common good of the nation."
To keep the life of the nation ticking over we need to give priority to the use the ventilators for those most critical to the economy such as young sewage workers, health care workers etc but not cause great stress and hardships by closing down everything; thus increasing unemployment resulting in financial instability and rampant inflation.
But do please keep away from crowds and the over 70's as they will be low on the list for the use of NHS ventilators if they get covid19 which is why they will most probably choose to self isolate.
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Our local church
crowds and the over 70's
Snap!
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Our local church is praying that we will "Let God decide
And what makes you think that he will listen to you? More to the point, since this is a science forum, how will you know if he does?
Time to repeat a story I've told before in this forum. I recall a speaker giving Witness (I used to sing in a church choir - unusual for a Jewish atheist but they needed a bass, and a gig is a gig). He said that his daughter was dying during the Blitz, so he prayed for one night's silence so she could die in peace. His prayer was answered and no bombs fell on the East End the night she died - the Luftwaffe destroyed Coventry instead.
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with respect to the original question:
https://public.flourish.studio/visualisation/1727839/
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I like that graphic.
There is nothing we can do about deaths from heart disease or cancer - they will still be major killers after COVID-19 has come and gone.
- But the US is spending a $billion every day to treat people with heart disease, if you include the costs of lost productivity
However, we can do something to minimize deaths from COVID-19 - things like social distancing and rapid deployment of therapies which are backed by some evidence.
- Spending $trillions over 6 months does not seem like such a high cost compared to what is being spent on heart disease over a far longer timescale.
I expect that COVID-19 deaths will overtake heart disease deaths - especially in the coming winter.
- But COVID-19 deaths will decline once herd immunity and/or vaccination is achieved
- And then heart disease and cancer will again lead the league tables.
- Ironically (and sadly), COVID-19 will reduce the number of patients with heart disease and cancer.
See: https://www.cdcfoundation.org/pr/2015/heart-disease-and-stroke-cost-america-nearly-1-billion-day-medical-costs-lost-productivity
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One observation on the Naked Reflections podcast was that COVID-19 is exposing the rich western countries to a small taste of conditions faced every day by people in most of the world:
- People suddenly die of disease, and no treatment is available
- People have no jobs
- People are unable to travel or have holidays
- People are short of food
Perhaps it might evoke a bit of international empathy between the "haves" and the "have-nots"?
https://www.thenakedscientists.com/podcasts/naked-reflections/sickness-and-health
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There is nothing we can do about deaths from heart disease or cancer - they will still be major killers after COVID-19 has come and gone.
Not necesarily. There are certainly something we can do about them.
https://www.wired.com/story/meet-jim-allison-the-texan-who-just-won-a-nobel-cancer-breakthrough/
Adapted from the book THE BREAKTHROUGH: Immunotherapy and the Race to Cure Cancer. Copyright (c) 2018 by Charles Graeber.
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Thankfully Covid-19 has finished.
https://friendlyatheist.patheos.com/2020/03/29/scamvangelist-declares-covid-19-finished-after-commanding-god-to-destroy-it/
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Well nearly finished as we will still get little peaks as cities and care homes become infected. But governments must prioritise in doing what is for the common good and support the economy so our standard of living is maintained. Study the government statistics as follows :-
The Office of National Statistics issues figures for deaths in the UK. These show that in March this year 49,723 people died. The number that died in March 2019 was only 43,946 so we can see that some 6,000 extra people died presumably of the Covid19 virus during last month or about 200 per day. Assuming the average stay for Covid19 patients could be around a week for people under retirement age as typified by the PM
NHS sitrep report shows the number of available Intensive care beds in UK for February was 4,122 of which 3,359 were occupied leaving 763 spare which would be sufficient if the government issues an edit stating that people over retirement age should self isolate, as if they fall ill there is no guarantee that a ICU bed will be available as NHS have been instructed to prioritise ICU beds for young and working age patients. So it looks like the Nightingale beds may never need to be used if a vaccine becomes available quickly.
Thus, the children and working population can return to work but maintain social distancing. To stop overcrowding in the rush hour only shops, businesses and factories that are prepared to adopt a 2 shift system should be allowed to open in town/city centres. By adopting a shift system of 7am to 2pm and 1pm to 8pm we can split the travel peak into 3 parts but probably still insist on the wearing of a mask where passengers are within a metre of someone else,
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So it looks like the Nightingale beds may never need to be used if a vaccine becomes available quickly.
Roughly 40 years of research has yet to come up with an HIV vaccine.
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There's a significant difference between rapid decisive action and panic. Indeed they are polar opposites. An immediate lockdown of all nonessential interaction would have prevented COVID spreading much beyond the initial dozen or so cases in the UK. And it wouldn't have been all that damaging: the economy picks up pretty well after Christmas and New Year when primary and secondary industries effectively close down for 5 - 10 days.
So the trick for future epidemics (and there will be more - nature is indifferent to the fate of humanity) is to determine in advance what activities and industries are essential and how those workers will be segregated into nonoverlapping shifts and squads (the lights don't go out at Christmas), then how a short, sharp lockdown will be policed and essential supplies rationed and distributed. We have had blackout (once) and petrol rationing (a few times) imposed in my lifetime, immediately and at the stroke of a pen. Taxes change overnight and everyone adapts. I've participated in plans, preparations and exercises for a 7 day transition to nuclear war, with a reasonable chance that they would have succeeded in keeping the immediate survivors alive. You get a lot more warning of an epidemic, and if you impose early lockdown and quarantine, it can be contained and eliminated. But it takes long-term commitment and planning, which is anathema to modern government.
This thread began 6 weeks ago with 85 deaths per day. Had we had sensible plans and decisive action, that could have been the peak, but faffing and fumbling about has led to daily totals of hundreds of deaths and thousands of severe infections, massive economic impact, disruption of health and social services, and a probable death toll exceeding 40,000 this year plus maybe a million rendered unemployable. All completely unnecessary, as demonstrated in Korea.
6p - proper planning prevents piss-poor performance!
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If there is a pandemic then the world population will reduce but https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ look at the evidence. We must await a vaccine and wear masks if we are nearer than 2 metres but not wreck our economies. We need to avoid rush hour by working a shift system 7am to 2pm and 1pm till 8pm for shops,stores, warehouses and factories. This will leave school children and city bureaucrats only to travel between 7.30am and 9am in mornings.
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If there is a pandemic then the world population will reduce
No.
It's likely that it will just slow the increase.
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6p - proper planning prevents piss-poor performance!
Not voting for the man who hides in a fridge may also help
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I've participated in plans, preparations and exercises for a 7 day transition to nuclear war,
And there are exercises in how to deal with a pandemic.
We knew how to do it.
But we had a government that refused to do what was needed.
They refused to stockpile things we would (****ing obviously) need like gowns, gloves and masks
As you say
But it takes long-term commitment and planning, which is anathema to modern government.
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I'm worried by the current sideshow of journalists grumbling about the relabelling of PPE that was outside its use-by date.
Dates on passive PPE are required by EU directives and corporate legal arsecovering, not necessarily science. It's the same with Volvic mineral water: the advertising blurb says it is 2000 years old, but the use-by label gives a shelf life of about 2 years. It's more to do with turnover than safety, and I'm sure if you scrapped a million gloves, the same journalists would complain about landfill and wasted money.
That said, it's still a bit odd that there was no proper backup store and stock rotation. Given the enormous number of people involved in drawing up a single purchase contract in the NHS (it has just taken one health authority 3 months to write an "emergency" contract for my services, and I didn't even ask for one: I said "if you are in a hurry, I'll do the work and send you a petty cash invoice". Thank goodness A&E doesn't work like that) I'm sure they could push new stuff in the front of the store and take the old stuff out at the back, like any other business, then all you need to do to build up emergency stocks is to buy more than you need in the good times. It's not as if they are doing anything radically different in hospitals, apart from wearing more HEPA masks than usual, so "epidemic stock" should be passing through the regular warehouses anyway. I smell a committee decision.
Full marks to the Indian cricket team. They are going to take 14 days quarantine on arrival in Australia then play the series as arranged. There being almost no other live sport on TV, they will make a load of money and everyone will be happy. I gather that world championship darts matches are in progress, with players and officials watching each other at home on webcam.
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The news reporting is sensational but not balanced. Only about one person in 10,000 under the age of 55 years according to statistics is going to die. So London has 10 million people so 1000 young people are going to die which in the last 100 days is 10 per day.so why do the media only report on these deaths and not on the 100 that NHS treated and survived.
It would be wonderful to see just how thankful these families were with receiving their love one back and well again. So BBC balance your reporting and show 100 happy families stories to every unfortunate one please, and stop fuelling the panic...
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Age shall not weary them. UK life expectancy in 2019 was about 80 (male) to 84 (female).
Average weekly deaths in April 2019 were about 10,000. In April 2020 the average was just under 20,000. This clearly suggests that something is very wrong.
Celebrating recovery is all very well, but prevention is in every respect better than cure. And having been in touch with a previously hospitalised survivor, I can report that celebrating hospital discharge is, to say the least, premature.
Panic achieves nothing. Complacency is just as dangerous. If we err on the side of caution and anxiety we can save a lot of time, money, aggravation, disruption, chronic illness and death.
The good news is that you now have Prime Ministerial approval to decide whether you are eyesight-fit to drive after a serious illness, by driving your family 60 miles on public roads. This will save NHS GPs, opticians, and DVLA administrators a lot of work, without adding greatly to the work of ambulance crews, A&E staff and undertakers, who will hardly notice another 10,000 calls a week. I have written to the Minister for Transport (who agrees with the PM) asking when the privilege will be extended to pilots. There's nothing quite like an aerobatic display or a sector to Tenerife for checking your fitness to fly.
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The news reporting is sensational but not balanced. Only about one person in 10,000 under the age of 55 years according to statistics is going to die. So London has 10 million people so 1000 young people are going to die which in the last 100 days is 10 per day.so why do the media only report on these deaths and not on the 100 that NHS treated and survived.
It would be wonderful to see just how thankful these families were with receiving their love one back and well again. So BBC balance your reporting and show 100 happy families stories to every unfortunate one please, and stop fuelling the panic...
Given that we now have the world's highest death rate, it might be an idea to increase the population's overall degree of caution, rather than to decrease it.
I can only assume that Cummngs has a copy of the Russian report and is threatening to release it if he is sacked.
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I see that Brazil (population 209 million) is having about 1000 COVID-19 deaths per day.
Converting the units to align with the thread title: that is almost 300 per day per 60 million people (and they haven't reached peak infection rates yet).
But that's no reason to panic: O Presidente says "Go to work as usual!".
https://edition.cnn.com/2020/05/27/americas/coronavirus-brazil-bolsonaro-timeline-intl/index.html
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On average it takes a 100 days fpr the pandemic to develop into a big problem and then 100 days to decline. So Brazil president has reacted and says as Norway and other countries we will not panic but everyone be careful and avoid near contact. At present Brazil is losing 300 people per day which will increase to 600 per day probably for 150 days so total loss of life is 90,000; higher than anywhere else in the world; but overall with a population of 300 million is only 3 in 10,000 of who 90% are already retired and many in retirement homes needing assistance as they already have one foot in the grave.
Just watch the stats on world. https://www.worldometers.info/ Is this pandemic apocalyptic? No,so why panic.??
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On average it takes a 100 days fpr the pandemic to develop into a big problem and then 100 days to decline.
How do you know?
It's not 200 days since it was first reported.
it's also not clear that anyone has seen the back end of it. (Maybe NZ if they simply lock all the doors)
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Stalin said "One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a statistic." Apparently acsin shares his philosophy.
An efficient hospital runs at 85 - 90% occupancy. Likewise a sensible funeral and burial corporation. Anything that increases hospitalisation and death rates by more than 10% for a couple of weeks is a "big problem".
As a 75 year old who has contributed a fortune in taxes, and a professional lifetime, to the provision of acute health services, I've earned the right to choose the time and cause of my death, and it won't be now or respiratory pneumonia. However as the vector for COVID is other people, I don't have much choice in the matter unless government intervenes and restricts their behaviour.
No need for panic. Indeed the only signs of panic are in the responses of inept politicians in the face of reasonable questions. Clear policies and effective decisions are always welcome. Pretending it doesn't matter or will just go away, is bollocks.
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Alan, You are correct; a vaccine could still be a year away. We elders must self isolate but the rest of working age must be allowed to return to work, so they can feed their children and those children must return to school to learn how to be useful contributers to the nation and the economy. The hospitals all have vacant ICU beds, just in case you fall ill; so why wait any longer??
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those children must return to school to learn how to be useful contributers to the nation and the economy.
What are the primary school kids going to learn before the Summer holidays?
Is it really worth driving a coach and horses through the social distancing idea, just to get a small fraction of adults back to work (for as long as it takes for them to become ill and have to leave work again)?so why wait any longer??
Because it will kill people.
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so why wait any longer??
Because R is a function of human behaviour, not an inherent property of the virus. The critical statistic is RN, the product of the average number of people infected by each carrier multiplied by the number of active carriers. Right now, we have very little clue of the value of N, and herding kids together in a school will increase R and thus N. The only control we have of N is continuing separation to minimise R.
A good number of schoolchildren will go on to study politics philosophy and economics, English literature, or media studies. 25% of all present schoolkids will never be gainfully employed. In what way do they become "useful contributors"? Practically all vocational training has been deleted from the national curriculum, and you can't make much of a living by reciting a list of kings and queens.
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you can't make much of a living by reciting a list of kings and queens.
Yes you can. They call it "teaching history".
(Also, you got your Ps muddled.)
http://www.ox.ac.uk/admissions/undergraduate/courses-listing/philosophy-politics-and-economics
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You call that a living?
And how typical of philosophers to pretend that everything else is a subset of philosophy. No wonder Parliament is full of arrogant unemployables.
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Lets be positive and normalise as we now have Nightingale hospitals to save the NHS panicking, but surely this pandemic can teach us something valuable. Like, can we beat the crush-hour??
1. A lot of jobs can be done from home on the internet with only occasional visits to the central offices saving time and fuel.
2. Cycling,scooting or walking to work is healthier than using public transport but we do need to route the cycle-ways away from all main roads by creating new cycle tracks possibly beside railway lines which flyover or underpass main roads and all stations.
3. Introduce a shift system of working for shops, stores, warehouses and factories 7 till 2 and 1 till 8 with no lunch breaks thus spreading the rush-hour out into 6 small peaks instead of the 2 huge peaks at present..
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And how typical of philosophers to pretend that everything else is a subset of philosophy.
I thought that was "people with PhDs".
Never mind.
Lets be positive and normalise as we now have Nightingale hospitals to save the NHS panicking
Priti Patel just stopped us getting the cleaners they will need, and we also don't have enough nurses for them.
Since the rest of your post isn't about kids, I take it you have abandoned your view that we should send them all back to school.
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I thought that was "people with PhDs".
No. A PhD implies that the bearer knows practically everything about almost nothing. Not that the knowledge is entirely pointless. About 40 years ago a colleague actually asked me out of the blue if his problem could be solved by irradiating sodium bromide with electrons, and as a result of 3 years of careful experimentation, I was able to explain exactly why not. What are the chances?
Acsin: the function of a new hospital is not to stop the NHS panicking (you'd need several years of competent government to do that) but to stop people dying. We've been living with rush hours for years, but let's solve the acute problem first.
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Doh!
Bit of a brain fart there.
People with D Phils..
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Alan, You are correct; a vaccine could still be a year away. We elders must self isolate but the rest of working age must be allowed to return to work, so they can feed their children and those children must return to school to learn how to be useful contributers to the nation and the economy. The hospitals all have vacant ICU beds, just in case you fall ill; so why wait any longer??
A vaccine may never happen at all, after a century of trying to cure the common cold we have none.
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The hospitals all have vacant ICU beds, just in case you fall ill; so why wait any longer??
They also have plenty of A&E capacity, so why bother to look before you cross the road?
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Alan, You are correct; a vaccine could still be a year away. We elders must self isolate but the rest of working age must be allowed to return to work, so they can feed their children and those children must return to school to learn how to be useful contributers to the nation and the economy. The hospitals all have vacant ICU beds, just in case you fall ill; so why wait any longer??
A vaccine may never happen at all, after a century of trying to cure the common cold we have none.
That's because the "common cold" is not the result of any single virus. It is a "catch all" phrase for a large number of different viruses. Each time you catch a cold you've contacted a different virus.
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Alan, You are correct; a vaccine could still be a year away. We elders must self isolate but the rest of working age must be allowed to return to work, so they can feed their children and those children must return to school to learn how to be useful contributers to the nation and the economy. The hospitals all have vacant ICU beds, just in case you fall ill; so why wait any longer??
A vaccine may never happen at all, after a century of trying to cure the common cold we have none.
That's because the "common cold" is not the result of any single virus. It is a "catch all" phrase for a large number of different viruses. Each time you catch a cold you've contacted a different virus.
That doesnt really counter my point, it only confuses things. Corona rhino viruses have not been cured.
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Alan, You are correct; a vaccine could still be a year away. We elders must self isolate but the rest of working age must be allowed to return to work, so they can feed their children and those children must return to school to learn how to be useful contributers to the nation and the economy. The hospitals all have vacant ICU beds, just in case you fall ill; so why wait any longer??
A vaccine may never happen at all, after a century of trying to cure the common cold we have none.
That's because the "common cold" is not the result of any single virus. It is a "catch all" phrase for a large number of different viruses. Each time you catch a cold you've contacted a different virus.
To be fair, we haven't found a cure for AIDS yet and that's just 1 virus.
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Alan you state "the function of a new hospital is not to stop the NHS panicking (you'd need several years of competent government to do that) but to stop people dying.". Living is a risk, living excitingly is very risky but living in fear is horrid and boring as hell.
Surely; It is up to God to decide who will live and who will die, not the NHS who can only do their best to cure people with the resources available.
But; it is certainly the job of government to do what is for the common good of the nation and not panic every time some WHO expert or NHS scare monger sneezes.
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But; it is certainly the job of government to do what is for the common good of the nation
So, we try to keep people alive then.
That's good. Nice to see we agree.
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Alan you state "the function of a new hospital is not to stop the NHS panicking (you'd need several years of competent government to do that) but to stop people dying.". Living is a risk, living excitingly is very risky but living in fear is horrid and boring as hell.
Surely; It is up to God to decide who will live and who will die, not the NHS who can only do their best to cure people with the resources available.
But; it is certainly the job of government to do what is for the common good of the nation and not panic every time some WHO expert or NHS scare monger sneezes.
Sweeden has a lower death toll than the uk, and they kept working.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-52903717
Hardly seems like it was worth it
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The virus will affect us all eventually; just like common flu , it could kill anyone who gets pneumonia badly and that's a fact. The latest idea to insist on 14 days self isolation for all visitors and returning residents is too late as we have already peaked. All that needs to be done now is customs officials/medics, should test everyone coming into the country, take the address and Email/phone numbers of those people and get a written signed statement of where they will be at in the next 2 days and if the test proves positive contact them and insist they self isolate for 14 days. Failure to comply IF notified is £1,000 I think the PM said.
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It is up to God to decide who will live and who will die,
Poppycock. There is no evidence of a deity.
living excitingly is very risky but living in fear is horrid and boring as hell.
One should only fear the inevitable or the uncontrollable. Living hygienically is not living in fear, though life would be a lot easier if we could stop people from defecating in the street....oh yes, that's been done, by Victorian governments building sewers and passing "nuisance" laws. What is missing nowadays is a government with a Victorian respect for the bloody obvious rather than the profits of bankers and the drivel of economists.
Where there is a choice between being right and being liked, politicians should remember that nobody likes them anyway, but people have a grudging respect for those who do the right thing.
we have already peaked.
One wave is not a receding tide.
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All that needs to be done
LOL
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All that needs to be done now is customs officials/medics, should test everyone coming into the country, take the address and Email/phone numbers of those people and get a written signed statement of where they will be at in the next 2 days and if the test proves positive contact them and insist they self isolate for 14 days. Failure to comply IF notified is £1,000 I think the PM said.
A half-arsed process will only generate half-arsed results, as we have already seen.
If I travel home from Heathrow by public transport I can infect about 20 people. Within two days each of them will have infected around 40 more in similar journeys, and each of them......so your contact tracer will have to find 32,000 people, with absolutely no information about any of them. If they take another day, we are looking at over half a million possible carriers, none of whom has any symptoms or any reason to believe he has been infected.
You have to begin by isolating everybody who has not been tested and shown to be either immune or uninfected.
panic every time some WHO expert or NHS scare monger sneezes.
Panic achieves nothing, and inadequate response just wastes money and lives. When an expert shows you the evidence of an easily-transmissible disease which kills 4% of those it infects and has no early symptoms, you should take all necessary precautions to prevent its transmission. Knowing that the only vectors are human beings and non-native bats, the obvious response is to immediately prevent the movement of both for at least the period of incubation to symptoms.
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we have already peaked
You only get to say that when 60-80% of the population is immune: This is the level needed for herd immunity.
-Either through catching it: Current estimates suggest that perhaps 25% of the UK population may have recovered, but we won't know until health authorities do a random sample searching for antibodies
- Or being vaccinated: Trials are only now approaching 1,000 people (0.001%)
See: https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-05-uk-covid-.html
Within two days each of them will have infected around 40 more
The most recent estimates I have heard is that:
- Symptoms appear after 5 days (on average)
- Infected people start spreading virus about 1 day before symptoms appear
So we could expect the delays to be more like 4 days after exposure that people start spreading the virus.
- Packed trains (no social distancing) is likely to be a common route of spreading
Where I live, the government has placed "Do not sit here" labels on half the seats in trains and buses - and told all the school kids to congregate at the back of the bus...
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The WHO expert said 4% of the population could die of covid19. . That prediction caused the panic and Trump is correct to penalise them. They must have known that 80% of the population would not even be infected and that a vaccine could not be developed for possibly years. The peak is over in UK and all we need do is avoid crowded areas, just as a hygienic precaution; not a mandatory requirement. By all means still test and check people at the borders but forget any mandatory 14 day quarantine period unless the traveller proves positive as a carriers
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That prediction caused the panic
What panic?
They must have known that 80% of the population would not even be infected
We don't know that now. You seem to have made it up.
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The peak is over in UK and all we need do is avoid crowded areas,
The parachute has slowed our rate of descent, so we can now remove it.
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The peak is over in UK
Well, the first wave is over.
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The WHO expert said 4% of the population could die of covid19. . That prediction caused the panic and Trump is correct to penalise them.
Herr Fuhrer Trumpf does not understand basic English.
If nobody did anything to prevent it, all the evidence suggests that 4% of any population exposed to COVID 19 will eventually die from it. Compared with, say, swine vesicular disease, fowl plague, or foot and mouth, that's a fairly low mortality rate, but for some reason most people ascribe more importance to human mortality than of other species, and the medium-term morbidity of COVID is a serious embarrassment to employers, economists and politicians, so most sensible people have done something to mitigate its effect.
The figures seem still to be fairly consistent with 2 - 10% of those infected dying from COVID, depending on the age cohort and various other factors, so the WHO statement was absolutely correct.
Trump is a dangerous idiot, a proven coward and draft dodger, and a professional liar. Unfortunately he also happens to be president of a generally lawless state and will say or do anything that appeals to his repulsive electorate.
A precaution is something you do to prevent something bad happening to you - think seat belt. A mandatory requirement is something you do to prevent something bad happening to other people - think speed limit. Only a mandatory requirement can eliminate COVID. Anything else merely extends and delays the epidemic.
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Look at Diamond Princess ship on https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/ We know WHO were totally incorrect in
their prediction by 100 times and have landed us in an economic mess. On the positive side we have enjoyed being quieter and healthier by following outdoor pursuits like cycling and social distancing, Perhaps Boris could prioritise the creation of bike super highways by creating 5 metre wide bikeways along the side existing railway lines. We would need to flyover stations on steel gantries every few kilometers but if we could link these bikeways to our large parks like Hyde park to Richmond park and the Embankment that would relieve the rail network considerably and keep us all healthier.
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We know WHO were totally incorrect in
their prediction by 100 times and have landed us in an economic mess
I wasn't aware that WHO had made a prediction about the fate of the people on that boat.
Can you provide a link please?
Also, can you show that WHO are responsible for any government policies on economics?
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We have not found a cure for HIV but but persons with it in wealthy countries can obtain drugs to prevent it progressing to AIDS
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The WHO expert said 4% of the population could die of covid19. . That prediction caused the panic and Trump is correct to penalise them. They must have known that 80% of the population would not even be infected and that a vaccine could not be developed for possibly years. The peak is over in UK and all we need do is avoid crowded areas, just as a hygienic precaution; not a mandatory requirement. By all means still test and check people at the borders but forget any mandatory 14 day quarantine period unless the traveller proves positive as a carriers
I object to the wording "4 percent dying". Western countries have long sustained their vinerable with flu vaccines etc. Part of the reason people live longer is that they are protected from this sort of virus. Unfortunatley novel virus and no vaccine mean the populace that is protected no longer have the protection to sustain them in their vunerability. Does emphysema kill you or covid ?
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A recurring problem is that COVID is not always reported as the cause of death. CoD is at best an opinion and proof of COVID infection remains difficult.
When the numbers were small enough for hospitals to cope, it was established that 20% of those infected would require hospital treatment, and 20% of those would die in hospital within a few weeks, hence 4% fatality was a scientific fact, and we have no reason to believe otherwise.
Once the numbers exceeded the capacity of the acute hospital service, we know that infective patients were discharged to care homes, where the death rate pretty well doubled, but their CoD was not rigorously tested and thus was recorded as pulmonary infection or something similar. It is also the case that the actual cause of death of many hospital cases was a secondary infection beyond the competence of COVID-impaired lungs, that would otherwise have been survivable.
So the only established fact remains that 4% of those infected with COVID will die prematurely of respiratory disease. It doesn't matter whether you are hit by a car, bus or truck, but standing in the road will lead to an early death. Same with COVID, and the gross statistics bear this out.
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early death
As compared to people who have never seen so much medical treatment as a sticking plaster? Early death as compared to a miner from africa who has not had corona. I really think not.