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Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

The home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
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This is the home for all non-political Coronavirus (Covid-19) discussions on The Lemon Fool
bungeejumper
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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333126

Postby bungeejumper » August 14th, 2020, 10:39 am

tjh290633 wrote:For large swathes of the country there is little or no risk of catching the virus, and washing, social distancing and mask wearing where essential are adequate to protect oneself.

.....The country seems to have lost its sense of proportion.

Hmmmm, I can't speak for your own part of the country, but I'm out here in West Wilts (a quiet and generally educated/affluent village of 1,000 people), and all the fresh air you could wish, and five of my very near neighbours (200 metre radius) have had severe Covid-19 infections, of whom one died. :| Nationally, if it's correct that 6 to 7% of the population have already had it at some time, then the stable door would appear to be too wide open for any of us to become complacent?

There seems to be a message going round that unless you live in a major conurbation with high-density housing you don't need to be concerned. The one thing we do know about this virus is that it's unusually contagious, and that it has a multi-pronged multi-organ attack which still isn't properly understood. That alone would be cause for concern, even if the high-speed outbreaks in some pubs after lockdown derestrictions didn't tell its own story.
Long ago, people with contagious diseases were isolated in special hospitals. I fancy that this concept has been forgotten, as those old isolation hospitals have been knocked down, probably to provide some woke form of social therapy.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at there, Terry. Are you saying that we''d be better packing off everyone with Covid symptoms into those overcrowded Victorian piles until half of them died? And what about the majority who develop no symptoms at all? Not the right solution, surely, even if it could be afforded?

BJ

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333128

Postby dealtn » August 14th, 2020, 10:44 am

sg31 wrote:
dealtn wrote:
sg31 wrote: Now we have one of the highest death rates in Europe.



I'm not sure that's true. We did, but "now"?


These are the figures I'm working from. I could have said 'the worst' but I wasn't sure of the updated figures

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavir ... #countries


So if I click on the Europe tab and "yesterday" (as now is unpopulated) UK has new deaths of 18 across a population of 68m. It's certainly not the lowest rate, but it isn't intuitively "one of the highest death rates in Europe" either. There are plenty worse.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333129

Postby swill453 » August 14th, 2020, 10:45 am

swill453 wrote:
Clitheroekid wrote:This supports my theory as mentioned in my last post that CV has caused or contributed to the deaths of some people who were highly vulnerable, but that most of them would have died this year anyway, so that by far the main effect of CV has been to accelerate death rather than cause it.

Well we all die sometime, so that last bit is meaningless. Far from losing just months of life though, I recall reading that the average CV victim dies 12 years early.

Of course I don't have a reference to hand, though I will try and find it, if it exists.

This article from April suggests those dying from Covid-19 lose an average of 13 years of their lives https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/2 ... -study.htm

Scott.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333138

Postby Mike4 » August 14th, 2020, 10:58 am

dealtn wrote:
So if I click on the Europe tab and "yesterday" (as now is unpopulated) UK has new deaths of 18 across a population of 68m. It's certainly not the lowest rate, but it isn't intuitively "one of the highest death rates in Europe" either. There are plenty worse.


Click on the "Deaths per Million of population" column. We are No 5 in the world if you discount San Marino (whose figures are wildly distorted by having a microscopic population of 32,000).

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333139

Postby tjh290633 » August 14th, 2020, 10:58 am

bungeejumper wrote:Hmmmm, I can't speak for your own part of the country, but I'm out here in West Wilts (a quiet and generally educated/affluent village of 1,000 people), and all the fresh air you could wish, and five of my very near neighbours (200 metre radius) have had severe Covid-19 infections, of whom one died. :| Nationally, if it's correct that 6 to 7% of the population have already had it at some time, then the stable door would appear to be too wide open for any of us to become complacent?

There seems to be a message going round that unless you live in a major conurbation with high-density housing you don't need to be concerned. The one thing we do know about this virus is that it's unusually contagious, and that it has a multi-pronged multi-organ attack which still isn't properly understood. That alone would be cause for concern, even if the high-speed outbreaks in some pubs after lockdown derestrictions didn't tell its own story.


Round here I know of nobody who has had the symptoms of C-19, and in our post code area there are two reported deaths, one in a care home.

bungeejumper wrote:
Long ago, people with contagious diseases were isolated in special hospitals. I fancy that this concept has been forgotten, as those old isolation hospitals have been knocked down, probably to provide some woke form of social therapy.

I'm not quite sure what you're getting at there, Terry. Are you saying that we''d be better packing off everyone with Covid symptoms into those overcrowded Victorian piles until half of them died? And what about the majority who develop no symptoms at all? Not the right solution, surely, even if it could be afforded?

BJ

I'm saying that use of the Nightingale Hospitals as Isolation hospitals might have been a better appraoch.

TJH

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333140

Postby dealtn » August 14th, 2020, 11:01 am

swill453 wrote:
swill453 wrote:
Clitheroekid wrote:This supports my theory as mentioned in my last post that CV has caused or contributed to the deaths of some people who were highly vulnerable, but that most of them would have died this year anyway, so that by far the main effect of CV has been to accelerate death rather than cause it.

Well we all die sometime, so that last bit is meaningless. Far from losing just months of life though, I recall reading that the average CV victim dies 12 years early.

Of course I don't have a reference to hand, though I will try and find it, if it exists.

This article from April suggests those dying from Covid-19 lose an average of 13 years of their lives https://www.sciencetimes.com/articles/2 ... -study.htm

Scott.


it would be good to see the study the article mentions. David McAllister is quoted as the lead researcher, but clicking on the link and the research tab at that destination doesn't provide the study unfortunately, as it would be an interesting read. I will try elsewhere.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333145

Postby dealtn » August 14th, 2020, 11:10 am

Mike4 wrote:
dealtn wrote:
So if I click on the Europe tab and "yesterday" (as now is unpopulated) UK has new deaths of 18 across a population of 68m. It's certainly not the lowest rate, but it isn't intuitively "one of the highest death rates in Europe" either. There are plenty worse.


Click on the "Deaths per Million of population" column. We are No 5 in the world if you discount San Marino (whose figures are wildly distorted by having a microscopic population of 32,000).


Well that isn't what was claimed (and I have no reason to dispute that number you cite).

To be clear what was said was "Now we have one of the highest death rates in Europe". It is entirely possible that something else was meant, and referring to the cumulative number etc. However "Now" and "rate" used in a sentence using the present tense, is referring to what is happening now, or yesterday, or in the last week perhaps depending on how accurate and literal we are talking about.

The claim (appears to be) about how sub-optimal we were, which can of course also be debated, and those claims are all made using the past tense. But the part I questioned was as quoted and is clearly in the present tense.

The present situation (and the future) are, at least to me, much more important concerns about the pandemic than the past. The past can, and I'm sure will, be analysed and quite possible be subject to public enquiry in due course.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333150

Postby Mike4 » August 14th, 2020, 11:21 am

dealtn wrote:To be clear what was said was "Now we have one of the highest death rates in Europe". It is entirely possible that something else was meant, and referring to the cumulative number etc. However "Now" and "rate" used in a sentence using the present tense, is referring to what is happening now, or yesterday, or in the last week perhaps depending on how accurate and literal we are talking about.

The claim (appears to be) about how sub-optimal we were, which can of course also be debated, and those claims are all made using the past tense. But the part I questioned was as quoted and is clearly in the present tense.

The present situation (and the future) are, at least to me, much more important concerns about the pandemic than the past. The past can, and I'm sure will, be analysed and quite possible be subject to public enquiry in due course.


Well "deaths per million of population" could arguably be termed a 'rate', do you not think? I do.

And using that metric, we have the third highest death rate in Europe.

So as often happens, to resolve this we find ourselves arguing semantics, not facts.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333155

Postby bungeejumper » August 14th, 2020, 11:34 am

tjh290633 wrote:
bungeejumper wrote:I'm not quite sure what you're getting at there, Terry. Are you saying that we''d be better packing off everyone with Covid symptoms into those overcrowded Victorian piles until half of them died? And what about the majority who develop no symptoms at all? Not the right solution, surely, even if it could be afforded?

BJ

I'm saying that use of the Nightingale Hospitals as Isolation hospitals might have been a better appraoch.

I'll agree with you there! It's a national scandal that so many cancer treatments and scans were being put on hold in main hospitals while the Nightingales were lying completely empty. A massive failure of government policy that simply boggles the mind. (I lost a post-cancer scheduled scan myself, and no date yet for a new appointment.)

Same question, though. What would a Nightingale hospital be able to do for the majority who were asymptomatic (or who had developed no symptoms yet), but many of whom could still be spreaders?

In the Victorian era you knew pretty quickly if you'd got cholera or smallpox - you didn't hang around with low-level or non-existent symptoms, although I suppose we'd have to make an exception for Typhoid Mary. ;) But tuberculosis was a different thing - it accounted for about one in twelve of all Victorian deaths, but the trouble was that it was 75% asymptomatic, and therefore much more of an epidemiological problem that isolation hospitals couldn't possibly have solved..

I'd say the parallels are there to be seen. But we still know so little.

Moving on, the recent BBC prog by the Tulleken twins (https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m ... brother-me) is worth a watch. Not because it contains anything startlingly new - apart from the fact that mid-year Covid mortality in intensive care beds was 50% - but because of the quiet and careful way it dealt with the extraordinary job that healthcare professionals are doing. Actually rather inspiring. :)

BJ

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333156

Postby dealtn » August 14th, 2020, 11:34 am

Mike4 wrote:
dealtn wrote:To be clear what was said was "Now we have one of the highest death rates in Europe". It is entirely possible that something else was meant, and referring to the cumulative number etc. However "Now" and "rate" used in a sentence using the present tense, is referring to what is happening now, or yesterday, or in the last week perhaps depending on how accurate and literal we are talking about.

The claim (appears to be) about how sub-optimal we were, which can of course also be debated, and those claims are all made using the past tense. But the part I questioned was as quoted and is clearly in the present tense.

The present situation (and the future) are, at least to me, much more important concerns about the pandemic than the past. The past can, and I'm sure will, be analysed and quite possible be subject to public enquiry in due course.


Well "deaths per million of population" could arguably be termed a 'rate', do you not think? I do.

And using that metric, we have the third highest death rate in Europe.

So as often happens, to resolve this we find ourselves arguing semantics, not facts.


Well I don't think we are arguing semantics, and regardless it was another that made the statement I questioned and provided the data.

Looking at the facts we have one of the highest deaths totals, absolutely, and per million of the population, but we currently don't have a particularly high death rate (which of course can always change for future periods of time).

Now what people want to do with either of those pieces of information is up to them in terms of debate, I was simply trying to establish the facts which it appears we have now done.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333161

Postby servodude » August 14th, 2020, 11:42 am

Mike4 wrote:
dealtn wrote:To be clear what was said was "Now we have one of the highest death rates in Europe". It is entirely possible that something else was meant, and referring to the cumulative number etc. However "Now" and "rate" used in a sentence using the present tense, is referring to what is happening now, or yesterday, or in the last week perhaps depending on how accurate and literal we are talking about.

The claim (appears to be) about how sub-optimal we were, which can of course also be debated, and those claims are all made using the past tense. But the part I questioned was as quoted and is clearly in the present tense.

The present situation (and the future) are, at least to me, much more important concerns about the pandemic than the past. The past can, and I'm sure will, be analysed and quite possible be subject to public enquiry in due course.


Well "deaths per million of population" could arguably be termed a 'rate', do you not think? I do.

And using that metric, we have the third highest death rate in Europe.

So as often happens, to resolve this we find ourselves arguing semantics, not facts.


I agree with both of you here: it gets a bit frustrating when folk use "rate" as an absolute term.
"Deaths per million capita" is ceteribus paribus, an OK comparison metric for how a place behaved over a given period (seriously otherwise deaths per million is one million), I think of it as a ratio more than a rate, but that is likely semantics.
I do think if you're in to that game though, you'd probably want to weight it given the awareness or information available; it would be hard on Italy or Spain or China to not consider they had less warning first time around.

Or you could take the view that it's a global pandemic (semantically pedantically dunt it have to be?) and that kind of metric only shows how badly some area of our planet was affected; and use that info to inform our actions going forward.

Micturition matches about how badly "some other lot" have handled it aren't helpful - but recognising mistakes made anywhere is how we'll all get out the other side of this most quickly.

-sd

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333168

Postby Mike4 » August 14th, 2020, 12:01 pm

servodude wrote:Micturition matches about how badly "some other lot" have handled it aren't helpful - but recognising mistakes made anywhere is how we'll all get out the other side of this most quickly.
-sd


Whilst studiously avoiding getting party political, our politicians had plenty of advance notice and opportunities to learn from the models provided by Italy and China, and of course Exercise Cygnus, but they seemed unable to learn quickly enough to get ahead of the curve, preferring to believe their own blowhard statements about how well they were doing when even at the time they so obviously were not, and still aren't. This is not my idea of "recognising mistakes".

I don't have a solution though. This seems to happen with politicians of any flavour, not just the current lot. It seems to be a characteric of the breed. ISTR much the same happening in the 2008/9 crash. Everyone on TMF saw it coming months in advance and warnings were everywhere but all our hubristic politicians kept parroting was "not our fault, global crash, nobody saw it coming" once it hit.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333170

Postby servodude » August 14th, 2020, 12:14 pm

Mike4 wrote:
servodude wrote:Micturition matches about how badly "some other lot" have handled it aren't helpful - but recognising mistakes made anywhere is how we'll all get out the other side of this most quickly.
-sd


Whilst studiously avoiding getting party political, our politicians had plenty of advance notice and opportunities to learn from the models provided by Italy and China, and of course Exercise Cygnus, but they seemed unable to learn quickly enough to get ahead of the curve, preferring to believe their own blowhard statements about how well they were doing when even at the time they so obviously were not, and still aren't. This is not my idea of "recognising mistakes".


It could be now though?
Plenty of places have shown lockdowns curtail the disease spreading; and we're learning which mitigation factors beyond this help.
Sweden have shown that it's not your people *or* your economy.
We're learning and hopefully that will help us going forward (and we're digging up the stuff we've forgotten since 1919)

Saying that though I literally had to sit in a meeting today where I was told it wasn't Melbourne's stage 4 lockdown that turned its most recent corner because the deaths recorded so far peaked yesterday! So for some twunts there's no learning, who let politics in to science??

-sd

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333183

Postby Mike4 » August 14th, 2020, 1:12 pm

servodude wrote:We're learning and hopefully that will help us going forward (and we're digging up the stuff we've forgotten since 1919)


A friend of mine purchased Taylor's "The Psychology of Pandemics" back in late 2019, serendipitously. She says it's an almost impenetrable read but most of the stuff we are currently 'learning' has already been described and set out in that book, which is a treatise on the lessons available from studying the history of pandemics and how people behave.

I haven't had a look through her copy of the book yet myself, mainly from fear of catching something :D

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Psychology-Pan ... 742&sr=8-2

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333189

Postby johnhemming » August 14th, 2020, 1:40 pm

One of my concerns about the response to the current pandemic is that people will decide at some point that lockdowns were a bad idea (which is true), but if there is a really dangerous virus in the future (like ebola) where a lockdown is a good idea it will be resisted because of the damage done by this one.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333212

Postby scotia » August 14th, 2020, 3:02 pm

johnhemming wrote:One of my concerns about the response to the current pandemic is that people will decide at some point that lockdowns were a bad idea (which is true), but if there is a really dangerous virus in the future (like ebola) where a lockdown is a good idea it will be resisted because of the damage done by this one.

I don't think I can allow your statement ("which is true") to pass without comment. I disagree, and let me counterbalance your assertion. Without the initial lockdown the NHS would have been over-run, and the fatality rate would have been much higher. It is a pity that the initial lockdown was not executed earlier, and that the lockdown policy was very carelessly implemented in care homes. But that does not support your assertion that lockdowns are a bad idea.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333216

Postby 88V8 » August 14th, 2020, 3:18 pm

sg31 wrote: Now we have one of the highest death rates in Europe.

Well, do we?
Or are PHE still exaggerating the number of deaths https://metro.co.uk/2020/07/17/matt-han ... -13002134/ by counting anyone who has ever tested positive as having died of the virus. Even if they put both feet into one trouser leg and fell down the stairs.

V8

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333218

Postby Lootman » August 14th, 2020, 3:22 pm

sg31 wrote:Nearly every country in the world has brought in a lockdown to control the pandemic. In most cases it cut the rate of spread, buying time for doctors to find out the best way of treating the illness and for new treatments to be found. If you want to look at what happens when you let things rip look at America.

Any generalisation about a country as large as the US is going to be suspect. The infection rates vary enormously, both because of the size of the country and because decisions about the degree of lockdowns vary not only by State but also often by county and city.

For example Louisiana has nearly 3,000 cases per 100,000 population whilst Vermont has only 234 cases per 100,000. The differences are sufficiently high that there are internal restrictions on travel from certain areas such as in the tri-State area, and blanket restrictions in Alaska and Hawaii.

And this is what makes the UK's quarantine rules on all arrivals from the US so ridiculous.

More data than you can throw a stick at here:

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-nc ... in-us.html

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333223

Postby johnhemming » August 14th, 2020, 3:28 pm

scotia wrote:Without the initial lockdown the NHS would have been over-run, and the fatality rate would have been much higher.

There is in fact evidence both in terms of hospital admissions and in terms of deaths in hospital from Covid-19 that indicates that the date of the peak infection rate was at least a week before the lockdown. That is because admissions tend to occur 13/14 days after infection at the earliest and deaths 21/23 days.

We have had this issue before. There is little reliable information relating to the virus, but the statistics on admissions and deaths in hospital (by date of death) are reliable.

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Re: Coronavirus - General Chat - No statistics

#333225

Postby bungeejumper » August 14th, 2020, 3:42 pm

Lootman wrote:Any generalisation about a country as large as the US is going to be suspect. The infection rates vary enormously, both because of the size of the country and because decisions about the degree of lockdowns vary not only by State but also often by county and city.

Agreed. But if Texas has less than half the population of the UK (29 million), but it's recording 9,800 cases a day - ten times the UK average - wouldn't you say we should be taking notice of that? Or Alabama, just 5 million people recording 3,000 cases a day?

If I were a UK health official, I'd want to ask how freely a US citizen can hop onto a domestic flight and then travel onward to the UK. (I'm assuming there aren't many controls, but would be grateful for any pointers.) Surely it's up to the US government to reassure the international community that it's got a robust system in place for monitoring and controlling regional access to international flights? Otherwise the rest of the world will simply assume the worst. And Stanley Johnson (UK trip to Greece via Bulgaria, so as to avoid controls) will be laughing his socks off.

BJ


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