[Petrochemicals (OP)]

Yes, being magnanimous in defeat.
I have to agree with Alan that you have lost all credibility as a reliable judge of reality in this subject.
Others have tried to point out where you are in error

Being as someone locked the thread Colin, I cannot get you to answer this there. https://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=78890.new#new

I was just wondering if you could answer Colin, even copying an answer with credit, as for why sweden who wear no masks is little better than the mask wearing public of Britain and France regarding corona cases and fatalities. I would have expected a result by now.

Plus why do you think lockdowns are worthwhile considering sweden has none and this intermittent lockdown situation could persist for years until everyone is vaccinated. It is putting a terrible toll on people, their lives, their futures.

You cannot say I have lost credibility without giving a answer, I cannot find one in the thread that does satisfactorily answer the above points.

[alancalverd]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9063679/Swedens-king-says-countrys-no-lockdown-coronavirus-approach-failed.html

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9063679/Swedens-king-says-countrys-no-lockdown-coronavirus-approach-failed.html

Queen says "let them eat cake"

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_them_eat_cake

Turned out well.

[acsinuk]

From the beginning we knew the statistical result from the Diamond Princess stats where 3711 passengers and staff mixed together for 2 week before recognising that we had a pandemic flu virus19 on our hands.
Result 13 deaths and 712 infections who all survived out of 3711. So  13/3711x100,000=350 people will die per 100,000 most of them elderly.
Stopping our children going to school is a complete denial of their human rights, a total nonsense which only benefits the test drug manufacturers and does nothing to cure the virus. I.E. A waste of money and resources. People in refugee camps life a freer life than that?

[Bored chemist]

When you say things like "

People in refugee camps life a freer life than that?

you miss the point.
They are not free from covid risk.
It's not a like-for- like comparison.

But let's have a look at the stats

350 people will die per 100,000

3500 per million
There's about 66.7 million in the UK
So, that's a death toll of almost quarter of a million people
The great plague of 1665 which people still talk about today killed 68600 people in the UK

Even Boris wasn't stupid enough to want to go down in history as the man responsible for 3 or 4 times as many deaths as the plague.
Or, if you prefer, roughly as many as the "Spanish Flu" pandemic.
How about 14 times the death toll from HIV?
(Not the UK deaths- the whole world's)

You really need to stop being so careless with other people's lives.

[evan_au]

Stopping our children going to school is a complete denial of their human rights,

I would rather say that "sentencing children to death (and their parents and teachers) is a complete denial of their human rights".

We know that children are very susceptible to influenza, and that they spread it very easily in the playground, and to and from their families. So the right thing to do in a severe influenza outbreak (like the 1917 pandemic) is to shut down schools. That is not a denial of their human rights.

We know that children are not very susceptible to COVID-19, and do not spread it as much as adults.

But venues like pubs with loud music, where adults spend a long time, speak loudly, are unlikely to social distance and cannot wear masks (because they are drinking) are major sites for COVID spread. So shutting pubs (or limiting hours or even limiting them to take-away) is one of the first steps to take.

If you don't take the simple and effective steps early (like shutting pubs and mandating masks), then you are forced to take drastic and ineffective steps later (like shutting schools).

[Bored chemist]

We know that children are not very susceptible to COVID-19, and do not spread it as much as adults.

Well...
"Kids catch and spread coronavirus half as much as adults, Iceland study confirms"
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/2020/12/we-now-know-how-much-children-spread-coronavirus/

A factor of two doesn't seem to me to be enough to make a policy decision on.

Stopping our children going to school is a complete denial of their human rights,

So... we break their human rights 6 times a year for holidays.
It's not as if we are stopping them learning. There's a lot of on-line stuff happening.
It's not as good (and it's really not as good at social development)

But we do know that children who grew up in war zones generally  still do OK.
This is peanuts compared to that.

a total nonsense which only benefits the test drug manufacturers

That doesn't seem to parse.

does nothing to cure the virus.

Nobody ever said it did.

But what really worries me is this

So  13/3711x100,000=350 people will die per 100,000 most of them elderly.

I'm fairly sure the site rules say you are not allowed to slur any particular group of people.
Saying we should let them die seems to be the ultimate slur.
Imagine that it had said
"So  13/3711x100,000=350 people will die per 100,000 most of them  women" or
"most of them  Black people."
ACSinUK would , quite rightly, have been kicked unceremoniously off the site.
Why is he still here?

[Petrochemicals (OP)]

Stopping our children going to school is a complete denial of their human rights,

I would rather say that "sentencing children to death (and their parents and teachers) is a complete denial of their human rights".

Good god, is ebola around? Corona is little threat to children or their parents. Stopping one part of society from doing something for the benefit of another part of society is a denial of human rights. We all have free will and choice, if you do not wish to go out that is up to you. No one stops me jumping off high places, I choose not to myself. Would you spike yourself with a used needle bin?

# swear filter p r I c k with a needle

[alancalverd]

How things have changed. I always regarded school as an imposition rather than a right.

Anyway, the law says that children must be offered a free and full education to the extent of their abilities up to whatever age is least embarrassing to the unemployment statistics, after which they must be encouraged to take out a huge loan to keep them out of the way for another 3 years. But the law does not specify that said education must be obtained by sitting in a stuffy classroom with a bunch of disruptive louts and knuckledraggers whose only contribution is to expose you to the prejudices of their worthless parents and steal your lunch money.  There must be a better way.

[alancalverd]

Result 13 deaths and 712 infections who all survived out of 3711. So  13/3711x100,000=350 people will die per 100,000 most of them elderly.

Rubbish. People who aren't infected aren't going to die, or even suffer.

(13/712) x 67,000,000 = 1,223,315 deaths if you allow the virus to infect everyone in the UK. That's a lot of dead people, for no reason at all.

Add to that  13,400,000 acute infections requiring hospital treatment and about 5,000,000 long-term disabled, and you have a seriously damaged political reputation, which is the only thing that really matters, and the post-Thatcher dregs of the economy flushed down the toilet.

Don't criticise Acsin for sacrificing the elderly. IIRC he is about 70 and therefore ready to sacrifice himself for the greater glory of Boris. Perhaps he will be remembered for leading the charge of the New Old Contemptibles.

[Bored chemist]

Don't criticise Acsin for sacrificing the elderly. IIRC he is about 70 and therefore ready to sacrifice himself

I may even think he's  to be commended for sacrificing himself.
But he's not entitled to sacrifice my dad.

Imagine it was a black guy saying

350 people will die per 100,000 most of them elderly black.

Would that be acceptable?

[alancalverd]

If he was discussing an epidemic in Nigeria, he'd be beyond critcism. But the point is whether the number is an acceptable consequence of an entirely avoidable problem, which it obviously isn't.

Still, having changed the subject, you might be amused by the current  obsession of the Institute of Physics, which has just circulated a diversity questionnaire with the covering note "Why are only 10% of our members black?", to which  I replied "because 90%  of the population of the British Isles is white". For chrissake, this must be the most numerate professional body after the Institute of Mathematics, but blind to the obvious.

[acsinuk]

BC Quote  350 people will die per 100,000 thats  3500 per million.
There's about 66.7 million in the UK. So, that's a death toll of almost a quarter of a million people
Yes, 233,450 thousand British people could die of which about a third have already died. So, the quicker  a vaccine can stop the pandemic the better. Next time, we must respond immediately with much faster development and production of an EUA vaccine which could   have protected us all by now.  Testing kids and closing schools is just not the correct answer .

[evan_au]

A factor of two doesn't seem to me to be enough to make a policy decision on.

Thanks for the link, BC - very interesting.

The thing to keep in mind is that the R₀ of SARS-COV2 is around 2.5-3.5 (at least, that is an early estimate that I recall). If we can get it below 1.0, then numbers will decline (and it helps contact tracing if the absolute numbers are low to begin with!).

Infectivity of school-age children
The linked article only quoted the 2:1 ratio in the headline, but then it goes on to talk about two different places that this ratio matters:
- The chance of getting infected
- The chance of passing it on to someone else
- If both of those factors are halved for children, then the total reduction is 4:1, and you have just reduced R₀ below 1.0 for this population sub-group

Add to this a couple of other observations:
- The risk reduction is greater than 2:1 for children under 12. So child-care centers and primary schools could remain open longer
- At my wife's school, they have introduced precautions like:
- It is made very clear to parents that children must not come to school with any cold symptoms
- Parents are no longer able to mingle with each other or other children - the children are dropped off and the parents leave, because parents are a major source of transmission
- Any cold symptoms displayed by children results in isolation and the parents must pick them up immediately
- Teachers eat meals separately, instead of together, as teacher-teacher transmission is more important than child to teacher
- The aim is to ensure that within the school, R₀ stays below 1.0, and (ideally) the absolute number of infections remains at 0
- The article quotes COVID-19 advice from University of Melbourne that “Schools should absolutely be the first priority to open, and the last to close."
- This advice is specific to COVID-19, and is totally different from the situation with Influenza.

Infectivity of Adults
Which brings us back to the locations that should be the first to close:
- Areas populated by adults are a risk
- Anywhere with people speaking loudly or yelling and/or singing - that includes pubs, football matches and choirs
- Areas where people are close together, and physical distancing is not maintained - that includes public transport
- Areas where air circulation is poor - that includes many indoor locations
- Areas where people can't or won't wear masks - like restaurants and pubs
- In these areas, R₀ is well above 3.5, and these areas should be the first to close (or adopt more COVID-safe practices like reducing the people per m², wearing masks, opening windows, watching events on TV rather than attending in-person, ordering take-away instead of table-service at restaurants, tracking attendance to improve contact tracing, etc etc).

[Bored chemist]

BC Quote  350 people will die per 100,000 thats  3500 per million.
There's about 66.7 million in the UK. So, that's a death toll of almost a quarter of a million people
Yes, 233,450 thousand British people could die of which about a third have already died. So, the quicker  a vaccine can stop the pandemic the better. Next time, we must respond immediately with much faster development and production of an EUA vaccine which could   have protected us all by now.  Testing kids and closing schools is just not the correct answer .

So, what you are saying is that even Boris' half hearted attempt at a quarantine, implemented badly, and too late. With the implication from ministers and senior advisors that it's not important still saved two thirds.
Just think what doing it properly would achieve.

And yes, it would be better to have vaccines quicker.
All we need is a time machine.
But, in the real world, lets go with restricting the spread of the virus.

I have a nasty feeling that we are about to find out how well closing stuff and reducing travel has worked.
Watch for the new spike in cases when the Xmas/ new year parties have done their bit.

For chrissake, this must be the most numerate professional body after the Institute of Mathematics, but blind to the obvious.

I wonder why they let  you in then.

I replied "because 90%  of the population of the British Isles is white".

But it isn't.
It's about 85% white (records vary)
So roughly 15% of the organisation's members should be from other groups, but only 10% are.
So about a third of them are "missing".
That's a reasonable basis for asking why.

Part of the answer might be white people who refuse to accept that there's a problem.

[Bored chemist]

this ratio matters:
- The chance of getting infected
- The chance of passing it on to someone else
- If both of those factors are halved for children, then the total reduction is 4:1, and you have just reduced R0 below 1.0 for this population sub-group

And if you close the schools, and keep the kids at home then after a short while, you drop the two factors to zero.
Difficult to do any better than that.

I'm not saying we should keep the pubs or churches open.
It's not an either/ or thing.

The further down we can push R the better.
Closing the pubs will do that.
So will closing the schools.
Why not do both?

[alancalverd]

It's about 85% white (records vary)

UK census says 87.5%. The IOP includes the Republic of Ireland which is a bit "whiter". Given the age  distribution of IOP members (lots of pre-Idi Amin dinosaurs and quite a few pre-Windrush amoebae) 90% is about right.

Membership is offered to all new physics graduates. The only qualification is a degree in physics or related subject. Associateship is open to any and all apprentices, trainees and undergraduates.
 

[alancalverd]

BC Quote  350 people will die per 100,000 thats  3500 per million.

Wrong again. Your original hypothesis was incorrect. You said 712 people were infected, not 3711.

The best scientific (i.e. not fudged by a political redefinition of death) figure we have for fatality rate is about 4%.  Multiply by the UK population and you have around 2.7 million additional corpses to bury within 6 months if you ""wait for herd immunity" (i.e. do nothing). The normal rate is about  450,000. 

Meanwhile the population is getting older and there is no evidence of lasting immunity, so we can expect an additional 1 - 2% annual deaths for ever - pretty much doubling the normal death rate.

This will vastly increase the cost of all insurance premiums.

But don't forget the 10% longterm disability, which will reduce the working population and double the exchequer costs of benefits and health services.

The UK generally runs with about 0.2% of the population in hospital at any time. We cannot afford to double that number.

[Bored chemist]

UK census says 87.5%.

What date?

I was looking at this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demography_of_the_United_Kingdom#Ethnicity
92.2% in 2001
87.2% in 2011
and extrapolating
something like 85% in 2021 (which starts in  a couple of weeks)

The point remains.
If it should be 13% and it's 10% then about 1 in 4 is missing.

That's still a problem.
Of course, it might be that the institute is doing a fine job in difficult circumstances.
If it enrols physics graduates and. for example, 95 % are white then getting a membership that's 90% white is progressive.
The real problem is probably largely historical.
Universities were blindingly white until very recently.

But, even pointing that out doesn't absolve the institute of responsibility for looking at the question.
You citing a "reason" that's simplistic and wrong isn't going to help.

we can expect an additional 1 - 2% annual deaths for ever - pretty much doubling the normal death rate.

Really?
The current death rate is (unsurprisingly) quite close to the birth rate.
If you do that then you end up with more people dying than are actually here to die.
I guess it's one way to control the population.

Your analysis of people on the ship

People who aren't infected aren't going to die, or even suffer.

implies that they were there "forever".
It's true that only 712 were infected.
But we simply don't know how many would have been infected if they were stuck on the ship for longer.

So, your analysis is flawed- but your own.
My numbers were flawed; but a quote.  Because it wasn't worth correcting ACS's error.
Even with his optimistic figure the death toll was unacceptable.
The real figure will be worse, but I wasn't going to distracted by an argument about how much worse.

The point remains that he's remarkably careless with other people's lives.

[Kryptid]

most of them elderly.

It sounds like you are implying it's not a big deal that the elderly are the most vulnerable.

Stopping our children going to school is a complete denial of their human rights

You know this is temporary, right? Children typically go to school for 13 years (at least in the United States, and excluding college). Not to mention that they are still distance learning. So what right of theirs is being denied, exactly?

a total nonsense which only benefits the test drug manufacturers

How?

does nothing to cure the virus.

That's not the point of a vaccine.