is it? And was it when these 70+ people were of working age?
Were they when these 70+ people were of working age?
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
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is it? And was it when these 70+ people were of working age?
Were they when these 70+ people were of working age?
weltweit
Well-Known Member
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Nope. The pattern is being repeated across the world. It's probably to do with a sex-based difference wrt immune response. As pointed out before, it's not so unusual for there to be sex-based differences in immune responses. More women than men get MS, for instance, universally across cultures. Wherever a pattern is found to be common across cultures, that points to a cause that is independent of culture, so not smoking or work patterns or anything like that but something directly related to maleness or femaleness.
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cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
I was assuming things would be grim for about 3 months, bit shell-shocked by the government's daily briefing, and the deputy chief medical officer saying it's likely to be 6 months or more. 
I was assuming things would be grim for about 3 months, bit shell-shocked by the government's daily briefing, and the deputy chief medical officer saying it's likely to be 6 months or more.
When they started out with the '21 days' last week, it smelt like a lie. Their whole 'strategy' seems to be drip-feeding information to 'manage expectations'. This, incidentally, is what the government did in the 1660s plague. I've been reading Daniel Defoe's Year of the Plague
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
It'd be incredible if the government's current non-policy survives another three weeks, let alone six months. The deputy CMO appears to be running the government ATM, and has taken no account of the ruinous impact of months of rolling lockdowns and stagnation. If she honestly thinks she can keep Britain under house arrest 'til the Autumn, it makes her bigotry around testing look enlightened.I was assuming things would be grim for about 3 months, bit shell-shocked by the government's daily briefing, and the deputy chief medical officer saying it's likely to be 6 months or more.
If nothing else, the market forces they love so much will be this policy's undoing. See that Ocado's just bought up thousands of tests for its staff, and tests should become cheaper and more available with time. Events are already outpacing them.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
They didn't say it would last 3 weeks, but they would review it in 3 weeks, that was very clear.
That hasn't changed, the deputy chief medical officer has said the same today, it'll be reviewed every 3 weeks.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Expect the govt are, for their many, many sins, desperate to end lockdown ASAP, since every day it runs unnecessarily piles on untold debt and increases risk of a public mutiny. This insane notion of keeping lockdowns running for months, out of a pigheaded refusal to admit you're wrong about testing and contact tracing, looks far likelier to have come from the medical team, and is a perfect illustration of why technocracy's an awful idea.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
But not being a politician, she blurted out her underlying plan, for which we should be grateful.
How does she think Britons will respond to being kept under needless house arrest by a doctor they never voted for while they see surrounding counties implement surveillance and testing regimes and end their lockdowns? Especially as summer arrives.
Even Gove was tapdancing around current testing policy and praising Germany earlier. If she thinks the govt will sit idly by and back her unconditionally while she appoints herself Gaoler in Chief for an entire country, she's in for a rude awakening, and in a lot less than six months.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
So the plan is to keep everyone in through summer until autumn and the start of the next flu season?
bimble
floofy
I’d like to know how contact tracing would actually practically be done here, on a massive scale. I mean who would be doing it, would they try to get in touch with everyone that an infected person had sat near to in the last two weeks before they became ill?
It seems impossible to be honest, or at least incredibly expensive once you’ve recruited an army of tracers.
It seems impossible to be honest, or at least incredibly expensive once you’ve recruited an army of tracers.
Cid
Proper break this time
The problem with test and trace is that the horse has already bolted, to a fairly massive extent. It would be impossible now to do what SK has done... It might be possible after a medium-long period of hard isolation (4 weeks) with extensive, nationwide testing. Also I don't think the existence of a technocratic element is particularly defining. After all it was the technocrats here who initially argued for less lockdown, not months of rolling lockdown. And I'm sure it was the technocrats in SK who argued that building up testing procedures post-SARS was a good idea.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Not as expensive as paying 80 per cent of millions of people's wages for months. China had tens of thousands of people on the case. I don't know the logistics of it but someone does.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Reasons for her publicly going on about 6 months now might include the press repeatedly asking questions about the timescale, despite the obvious answer that they dont know until they evaluate what effect the measures have on the data, and what effect that data has on the modelling.
Sections of the press already soiled themselves in the process of looking for any news, reports, models which could possibly indicate a nice quick exit from this situation. Under those conditions, I too would be forced to go on about some rather long timescales in order to compensate for that.
It also likely reflects the Imperial College suppression idea where all measures dont necessarily stay in place for the entire duration of the main Covid-19 threat, they might turn them on and off over time based on certain indicators such as level of intensive care admissions.
I am not going to freak out about this aspect of the statements made today. Large amounts of the focus has been on testing of various sorts in recent days, that stuff is clearly part of the plan now. It will take them time to get their shit together on that front, and what they plan to do with the tests may still fall well short of the all-out suppression & testing & contact tracing approach. But we wont really know that until an actual opportunity to try that stuff arises again, and I think the government know that they have time to wait and see with that side of things too (in the sense of the contact tracing sort of suppression, cant do it properly in the midst of an epidemic wave). So it just goes into the large pile of issues that are in a state of suspended animation for me. Because I cant take them much further until we have seen the terrible data on hospitalisations and deaths from the first wave, and when and to what extent the lockdown makes a difference. Combine that with a few other things we might learn about the epidemic such as via testing to determine what order of magnitude of people were mild/asymptomatic cases, and it will be much easier to say exactly what the next step should be, and judge whether the government are going to do that or not.
Sections of the press already soiled themselves in the process of looking for any news, reports, models which could possibly indicate a nice quick exit from this situation. Under those conditions, I too would be forced to go on about some rather long timescales in order to compensate for that.
It also likely reflects the Imperial College suppression idea where all measures dont necessarily stay in place for the entire duration of the main Covid-19 threat, they might turn them on and off over time based on certain indicators such as level of intensive care admissions.
I am not going to freak out about this aspect of the statements made today. Large amounts of the focus has been on testing of various sorts in recent days, that stuff is clearly part of the plan now. It will take them time to get their shit together on that front, and what they plan to do with the tests may still fall well short of the all-out suppression & testing & contact tracing approach. But we wont really know that until an actual opportunity to try that stuff arises again, and I think the government know that they have time to wait and see with that side of things too (in the sense of the contact tracing sort of suppression, cant do it properly in the midst of an epidemic wave). So it just goes into the large pile of issues that are in a state of suspended animation for me. Because I cant take them much further until we have seen the terrible data on hospitalisations and deaths from the first wave, and when and to what extent the lockdown makes a difference. Combine that with a few other things we might learn about the epidemic such as via testing to determine what order of magnitude of people were mild/asymptomatic cases, and it will be much easier to say exactly what the next step should be, and judge whether the government are going to do that or not.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Exactly, the more you look, the madder it gets. Unless she's trying to be a politician and intends more than a year of rolling house arrest. And of course, every other political force just rolls over and plays doggo while arbitrary mass detention's imposed. And I thought the attitude to ending this without mass testing was magical thinking!So the plan is to keep everyone in through summer until autumn and the start of the next flu season?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
The thing about test and contact is that it's only needed where you have a very limited testing capability. The game-changer would be a test that can be rolled out to everyone, or at least millions and millions. That makes test and trace redundant. I don't know the likely timeframe for that to be possible.
Cid
Proper break this time
It's worth noting that SK's test and trace policy does also include quite a heavy degree of intrusive tracking. If you have the disease your location is pinned to within 100m, and your previous movements are shown. Everyone near you will get an alert.
Other factors are; extensive availability of hand-cleaning stuff in public spaces. Everyone using masks (these are rationed, my friend already has some, but thinks you can buy 4/week now, was 2/week recently)... I know people think masks are ineffective, but that's mainly as protection. The idea in Asian countries has always featured an element of protecting those around you, which does have more evidence to support it (especially if literally everyone is wearing one).
Other factors are; extensive availability of hand-cleaning stuff in public spaces. Everyone using masks (these are rationed, my friend already has some, but thinks you can buy 4/week now, was 2/week recently)... I know people think masks are ineffective, but that's mainly as protection. The idea in Asian countries has always featured an element of protecting those around you, which does have more evidence to support it (especially if literally everyone is wearing one).
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yep, some didn't realise at first that in East Asia it's the people with colds who wear them, not everyone else. Given how many you see, though, I have to say that it's not a great advert for their general effectiveness. an awful lot of people in East Asia still manage to catch colds.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
It's medically sound, but politicians have embraced it. Jung Eun-kyeong reassures with regular public briefings, hasn't taken it on herself to sentence millions to indefinite house arrest, and the government haven't vanished from the scene due to falling down with the very disease they're supposed to be fighting. Very different situation.
Cid
Proper break this time
Yeah, but they're usually pretty limited in use... In China at least it's not often you'll see men wearing them. From what my friend says in SK at the moment it's literally everyone.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
This is a good point. Thinking about it, I definitely saw more women than men wearing them in Japan. I think it's just considered polite as much as anything else (in non-corona times, that is). That said, in Japan it is considered rude to blow your nose in public, so people will sit there sniffing.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Leading epidemiologists and public health experts (such as Edinburgh's Devi Sridhar and Anthony Costello, formerly of the W.H.O.) don't believe it is, since infection's not uniform across the country, and by keeping people in place, a lockdown buys time to locate infected persons and contact trace, especially when geodata's factored in. If even half the cases are identified, that could massively slow the spread, buying more time to go after the rest. I see no reason to give up without even trying.
Cid
Proper break this time
Yes, that's what I said. If you have an extensive lockdown for a medium-long period of time (4 weeks) alongside nationwide testing, it may be possible.
Cid
Proper break this time
Not really buying this. Much of the initial response here was ideology-led, Whitty seemed to be floundering in the dark a bit, to some extent giving the line the government wanted to hear. I don't think anything about his appearance on the select-committee showed him leading on policy.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Cid
Proper break this time
Yeah, absolutely agree on that. I think we'd still get a month of house arrest for that to be effective, but long-term - unless the Oxford model is right (big fucking risk there) - there don't seem to be any other solutions.
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
Not Whitty, I called him a follower earlier in the thread. From what we can piece together from reporting in Times and elsewhere, herd immunity was initially pushed by a tag-team of Cummings and Vallance, but now it's collapsed as (open) policy, lockdown's all they've got left. Dynamic's also changed now top of govt have fallen ill with Covid-19.
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