trashpony
Hag
The head has just sent round a follow up email saying that, despite a screenshot doing the rounds on snapchat, the school isn't actually closed for the rest of the week
Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion
- Thread starter Sasaferrato
- Start date
andysays
Love and solidarity
Coronavirus: UK prepares to ask even mildly sick to stay home
I'm genuinely amazed that they're still waiting to do this, rather than introducing this and further measures immediately. Just how bad does it have to be before they take decisive action?
I'm genuinely amazed that they're still waiting to do this, rather than introducing this and further measures immediately. Just how bad does it have to be before they take decisive action?
sheothebudworths
Up the bum - no babies!!!
It's nuts... preparing to prepare...
andysays
Love and solidarity
It's not even that, it's thinking about preparing to do something, possibly...
8ball
Decolonise colons!
It's an established escalation plan, and they're basically saying they're not at the point of thinking it is worth treating every sniffle as a potential case just yet. There are a lot of things to be balanced. I get that it sounds weird, though - it's not like that sniffle will suddenly become a mild C-19 infection based on Government edict.
sheothebudworths
Up the bum - no babies!!!
It's that along with everything else (...that they're NOT doing yet) though and with an approx. timescale set which seems really far ahead in terms of how much things could escalate in that time, when you look at how numbers have risen elsewhere.
Cloo
Banana for scale
Trouble is plenty of people are still going 'Well, God, it's only 0.00X of the population, why all the fuss?' as if it isn't going to increase massively, and will refuse to do anything until it's too late. We're such a massively selfish, individualistic culture. I guess another problem is the government know there are lots of people for whom self-isolating and looking after themselves will be incredibly difficult and there is fuck all infrastructure set up to help them and they don't know how to deal with that.
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
No surprise there then. He's a shameless cunt isn't it.
cupid_stunt
Chief seagull hater & farmerbarleymow's nemesis.
I wish you would sort out your 'thumbs up' avatar, it's not a good look, when you make posts like this.
farmerbarleymow
I'm Petee's spirit animal
Secretly the Grim Reaper.
Numbers
an ting!
elbows
Well-Known Member
It appears to me that they are trying a particular approach to partially deal with a classic issue of bureaucracy.
The system is based on phases. This causes issues because you are flipping from one set of rules and measures to another at some arbitrary moment.
It looks like with this pandemic they are still using that sort of system, but they are trying to add a degree of nuance. This is happening in the form of Chris Whitty telling the press and public things well in advance of them actually formally happening. It already happened when he started describing how we were sort of in between two phases. And now it seems to have happened again quite deliberately with this news about what they are likely to do in a week or two.
Normally I do not think you start telling the public that sort of thing far in advance, if you want to keep the message really simple, and you dont want them to actually switch to those new behaviours yet. So I am inclined to believe they are saying this stuff today because they know some people will start to modify their behaviour on these fronts straight away, rather than wait till the advice is formally changed. A sort of staggered change in behaviours rather than a binary switch.
Thats what I think I am seeing anyway, perhaps I am overthinking it.
Five people have died in the UK, all with underlying health issues; from October 19 - Feb 20 70 died of bog standard flu and over last 5 years it has averaged 17,000 pa. Yes Covid needs to be contained but the actual response economically and socially is way over the top - let's hope we never have a real air borne virus or a variant of so called Spanish flu which killed people in a day because that will be absolute bedlem. Post Covid it will be interesting to see the research completed on societal response - it seems to me we have moved to an era where over-reaction about most things is now the norm.
Supine
Newt Member
You don't understand exponential growth do you. The potential is there for this to be as serious as Spanish flu. It may well not be, that's partly what this thread is about.
elbows
Well-Known Member
If multiple intensive care units in the UK are overwhelmed in the coming weeks, are you ready to modify your stance? Or if not, what would be enough to cause you to reevaluate the severity of this pandemic?
Sorry but it is not a pandemic as it is not prevalent over a whole country or the whole world, and given the rate of spread it is not even an epidemic..it is an outbreak that is spreading and the inaccurate and inflammatory language used to describe what is happening especially by the media as we know does not help.
maomao
普費斯
Every post you make is prefaced with a puerile spoonerism.
Barking_Mad
Non sibi sed omnibus
They made the point during the press conference that they are basing the advice on a statistical model that estimates when the growth of the virus is estimated to take off. The model seems to suggest that it's about to become far more widespread (there may be degrees of relativity to this "spread"). Glad I'm not crunching those numbers! That said as far as infectious diseases are concerned we have some pretty smart people on this.
Fingers crossed.
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elbows
Well-Known Member
Given your view on the seriousness of all this, whats your explanation for the way governments are acting? They are having to contemplate all sorts of measures that dont come naturally to them, that will derail their economies etc.
This is not a story of media hyping things up. Its a bad pandemic unfolding before our eyes. The consequences are immense.
Please explain where there is exponential growth in any of the outbreaks ie doubling every set period of time... and what evidence you have that this may happen.
Part of a recent report on China
Chinese hospitals overflowing with COVID-19 patients a few weeks ago now have empty beds. Trials of experimental drugs are having difficulty enrolling enough eligible patients. And the number of new cases reported each day has plummeted the past few weeks. These are some of the startling observations in a report released on 28 February from a mission organized by the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Chinese government that allowed 13 foreigners to join 12 Chinese scientists on a tour of five cities in China to study the state of the COVID-19 epidemic and the effectiveness of the country’s response. The findings surprised several of the visiting scientists. “I thought there was no way those numbers could be real,” says epidemiologist Tim Eckmanns of the Robert Koch Institute, who was part of the mission. But the report is unequivocal. “China’s bold approach to contain the rapid spread of this new respiratory pathogen has changed the course of a rapidly escalating and deadly epidemic,” it says. “This decline in COVID-19 cases across China is real.”
Here is an interesting one (which very few people are aware of and did not cause the panic we are currently seeing) the 2009 H1N1 (influenza) outbreak in the United States affected over 60 million Americans resulting in 274,304 hospitalizations and 12,469 deaths....does anyone think COVID will reach these levels in the US?
sheothebudworths
Up the bum - no babies!!!
Or even, the content of their own post. 
Partly I think they are reacting the way they are as it is a relatively unknown virus, humans have no immunity to it (there is no vaccine), there is rapid transmission especially in close groups but this is not yet understood, similarly the severity is not yet understood but it seems it is more like influenza than SARS. Politically there is rightly serious concern that health systems will not be able to cope with a true epidemic/pandemic so measures are being put in place so that these systems are not tested to breaking point - plus there is a responsibility to ensure that those who need other medical care receive this. I know a paramedic who recently spent 5 hours dealing with one individual who was worried they had COVID and I believe wanted to be tested etc rather than follow the government advice to self isolate - time taken out of dealing with other incidents, which is the sort of pressure being placed on the NHS.
You suggest the media are not hyping this up - I would suggest that the language they are using does not help to calm the situation.
So I am not saying that this isn't serious or that government does not have a duty to put in place procedures to deal with it - it does. But we all have a role in not overplaying what we might think (ie opinion) the consequences may be and present these as so called fact (ie it is a bad pandemic unfolding before our eyes) and reduce the inflammatory/sensationalist language around this as it leads to behaviours that none of us welcome such as the recent attacks on the Asian guys.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Thanks for taking the time to explain your thoughts on those matters, it is appreciated.
I mostly differ because I dont think they want to calm the situation, a sense of huge abnormality is desired in order that people actually modify their behaviour and put up with all the disruption to their lives in the weeks ahead.
I know my choice of language isnt to everyones tastes, but it is my opinion that its a bad pandemic unfolding before our eyes, so I say so. But I know what its like to dislike the language choices of others, eg I hate it when people call it a plague or a killer virus, or give it a name that stigmatises certain ethnic groups or countries. Very early on there was a thread that was all about joking about what we could call it, and one of my suggestions involved China, because I was taking the piss out of the whole 'communism with Chinese characteristics' thing. But then that thread got merged into the main one, and I got more into a proper serious mindset, and regretted my suggestion very much.
I mostly differ because I dont think they want to calm the situation, a sense of huge abnormality is desired in order that people actually modify their behaviour and put up with all the disruption to their lives in the weeks ahead.
I know my choice of language isnt to everyones tastes, but it is my opinion that its a bad pandemic unfolding before our eyes, so I say so. But I know what its like to dislike the language choices of others, eg I hate it when people call it a plague or a killer virus, or give it a name that stigmatises certain ethnic groups or countries. Very early on there was a thread that was all about joking about what we could call it, and one of my suggestions involved China, because I was taking the piss out of the whole 'communism with Chinese characteristics' thing. But then that thread got merged into the main one, and I got more into a proper serious mindset, and regretted my suggestion very much.
I have and the Italian figures are not exponential - they are not doubling daily, whihc is the time being used - so perhaps you need to understand meaning before accusing others of not...and you have not presented any evidence of exponential growth have you? Another question...
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
Perhaps you should remind yourself what exponential means
Sensible discussion and debate with differing POV is what the forum is about isn't it? Time, as always will tell, with the outcome and my take is that we will have a new strain of influenza in the human population ie it will become endemic. Oddly, although not working in this area, I have been interested in viruses for a long time and what does freak me out is an Ebola type virus that is truly airborne - I believe at some point this will happen but probably, or is that hopefully, not in my lifetime. Vruses have been around much longer than we have and some scientists believe they have evolved alongside us - Virolution by Frank Ryan is a good read on this.
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