Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[purenarcotic]

Sorry I don't understand the question. I'm on this thing. Have been for a while. I don't think treelover should worry about this particular instance (though I could be wrong), but I don't think it's wrong to be worried in general about such things, especially as the govt is apparently working on a similar thing of its own.

Do you think from the level of personal info you had to supply that it would be possible for the DWP to trace one particular individual?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

Do you think from the level of personal info you had to supply that it would be possible for the DWP to trace one particular individual?

Oh I see. iirc I gave my postcode, sex and age.

I do tend towards tinfoilhattery wrt data, I admit, although it's not entirely without reason. We know that data about us is collected without our consent all the time.

 

[purenarcotic]

Oh I see. iirc I gave my postcode, sex and age.

I do tend towards tinfoilhattery wrt data, I admit, although it's not entirely without reason. We know that data about us is collected without our consent all the time.

I think because I know so much is collected about me without my knowledge that I tend not to get so worked up as I imagine they have enormous levels of information about me anyway. I probably should get worked up more tbh.

I never give my actual postcode for these things - I use a shop or restaurant / business postcode instead. I know they need the geographical data but that doesn’t mean they need my home details.

 

[Cid]

I think because I know so much is collected about me without my knowledge that I tend not to get so worked up as I imagine they have enormous levels of information about me anyway. I probably should get worked up more tbh.

I never give my actual postcode for these things - I use a shop or restaurant / business postcode instead. I know they need the geographical data but that doesn’t mean they need my home details.

Your postcode usually covers more than just you in any case... mine covers about 45 flats for example. But yeah, could have just used the pub at the bottom of the road, unlikely to make any difference.

 

[crossthebreeze]

Have you downloaded the app to asses the level of personal information it asks you for when you first set it up?

When you set it up it:
Asks you to agree to privacy policy etc
Asks for an email address
Gets you to create a password
Optionally asks for you name and phone number
Are you are part of the Twins UK, UK Biobank, or Guys & St Thomas Hospital Trust poulation studies or organisations
Are you are a healthcare worker )including hospital, elderly care, or in the community)[No/Yes, I currently interact with patients/Yes, but I do not currently interact with patients]
Do you care for multiple people in the community, with direct contact with your parents [No/Yes]
What yearwere you born?
What sex were you assigned at birth? [male/ female/ intersex/ prefer not to say]
What gender do you most identify with? [male/ female/ prefer not to say / other, please specify]
Question on ethnicity with fairly standard tick boxes
Height
Weight
Postcode (first part is sufficient)
Have you EVER been exposed to someone with documented or suspected COVID-19 infection (such as co-workers, family members, or others) [Yes, documented COVID-19 cases only/ Yes, suspected COVID-19 cases only/ Yes both documented and suspected COVID-19 cases/ Not that I know of]
In general, do you have any health problems that require you to stay at home? [No/ Yes]
If you need help, can you count on someone close to you? [No/ Yes]
Do you regularly use a stick, walking frame or wheelchair to get around? [No/Yes]
In general, do you have any health problems that require you to limit your activities? [No/Yes]
Are you pregnant?
Do you have heart disease?
Do you have diabetes?
Do you have lung disease or asthma?
Do you smoke? [Never/ not currently/ yes]
Do you have kidney disease?
Are you living with cancer?
Do you regularly take asprin?
Do you regularly take NSAIDs
Are you regularly taking blood pressure medications?
Have you felt unwell in the month before you started reporting on this app?
Do you think you have already had COVID-19, but wer not tested?
How much have you been self-isolating over the last week [answers as above]
Have you had a test for COVID-19?

 

[editor]

Whilst internet fora undoubtedly provides some intellectual discussion and occasional erudite wit, unfortunately, it also provides a platform to a number of insignificant people who in the real world wouldn't even give one a second glance, never mind confront them with derogatory remarks. These people (I'm being kind in using the word ''people'') spend their entire waking lives flitting between so called ''social media'' sites, hiding behind the cloaks of anonymity for the sole purpose of scribing at best, one liner puerile insults aimed primarily at those who don't happen to concur with their narrow minded beliefs. In some cases, there doesn't even have to be a reason for this type of behaviour pattern, it may be as simple as having being bullied at school, or being an underachiever et al.

Then of course there are the ''Politically Correct'' apparatchiks who police the internet in the vain hope they might find some form of minor indiscretion which they can capitalise on to forward their Orwellian agendas. A typical example falling foul of the aforementioned being the ex Essex cricketer, Don Topley, who was dismissed from the BBC commentary team for reciting a harmless cricketing ode at a ''private'' college after dinner speech. Apparently he had incurred the wrath of some feminist drudge, no man would afford a second glance to, who seized upon the opportunity to grab her 15 mins. of fame by walking out and complaining on Twitter, or some other such media platform.

If its any consolation, I think you're right, I should and will fuck off, if for no other reason, I don't subscribe to Mutual Admiration Societies.

Off you pop then.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

They've changed it since I did it. Definitely don't remember anything like that many questions - wasn't asked about aspirin, for instance, or which gender you most identify with. Or ethinicity, I don't think.

 

[purenarcotic]

When you set it up it:
Asks you to agree to privacy policy etc
Asks for an email address
Gets you to create a password
Optionally asks for you name and phone number
Are you are part of the Twins UK, UK Biobank, or Guys & St Thomas Hospital Trust poulation studies or organisations
Are you are a healthcare worker )including hospital, elderly care, or in the community)[No/Yes, I currently interact with patients/Yes, but I do not currently interact with patients]
Do you care for multiple people in the community, with direct contact with your parents [No/Yes]
What yearwere you born?
What sex were you assigned at birth? [male/ female/ intersex/ prefer not to say]
What gender do you most identify with? [male/ female/ prefer not to say / other, please specify]
Question on ethnicity with fairly standard tick boxes
Height
Weight
Postcode (first part is sufficient)
Have you EVER been exposed to someone with documented or suspected COVID-19 infection (such as co-workers, family members, or others) [Yes, documented COVID-19 cases only/ Yes, suspected COVID-19 cases only/ Yes both documented and suspected COVID-19 cases/ Not that I know of]
In general, do you have any health problems that require you to stay at home? [No/ Yes]
If you need help, can you count on someone close to you? [No/ Yes]
Do you regularly use a stick, walking frame or wheelchair to get around? [No/Yes]
In general, do you have any health problems that require you to limit your activities? [No/Yes]
Are you pregnant?
Do you have heart disease?
Do you have diabetes?
Do you have lung disease or asthma?
Do you smoke? [Never/ not currently/ yes]
Do you have kidney disease?
Are you living with cancer?
Do you regularly take asprin?
Do you regularly take NSAIDs
Are you regularly taking blood pressure medications?
Have you felt unwell in the month before you started reporting on this app?
Do you think you have already had COVID-19, but wer not tested?
How much have you been self-isolating over the last week [answers as above]
Have you had a test for COVID-19?

I feel like I wasn't asked as much when I signed up (literally the day it was released) - possibly they’ve added more as it’s gone on. Or maybe they did and I’ve forgotten. Thanks for sharing.

 

[littlebabyjesus]

I feel like I wasn't asked as much when I signed up (literally the day it was released) - possibly they’ve added more as it’s gone on. Or maybe they did and I’ve forgotten. Thanks for sharing.

They've definitely added a lot more. I would have remembered a few of those questions.

 

[Cid]

I forgot them. Never trust your memory

 

[Taphoi]

The data on hospital deaths is telling a really important story. It looks as though hospital-deaths-per-day peaked at Easter and are starting slowly to decline. This is ENORMOUSLY SIGNIFICANT. A study published in the Lancet (reported here: When will we know if the UK lockdown is working?) shows that there is a 4-week delay between a fatal infection and publication of the resultant fatality as a hospital death (see attached graph). That means the peaking of deaths at Easter CANNOT have been in response to the broad lockdown, because that only happened 3-weeks before Easter. What happened 4-weeks before Easter was the lockdown of high-risk groups ONLY. So it looks as though that measure was already sufficient to bring FATAL infections onto a declining trend line. It achieved this in combination with the early-March government instruction to isolate at home with symptoms, which can also be seen to have induced a slowing in the growth rate of deaths-per-day from around 2nd April. Note that you have to plot the log of deaths per day against the reporting date to see this, as shown in the attached graph of UK Hospital deaths-per-day as published by the Department of Health & Social Care. This is because the rate of spread (e.g. doubling time for deaths-per-day) is proportional to the slope of a straight line fit to the logarithm of deaths-per-day. This suggests that if the broad lockdown were ended today but the high-risk groups continued to isolate AND people with symptoms continued to isolate, deaths-per-day would continue to decline. In fact, we should from April 19th, 4-weeks after the broad lockdown, expect to see an increase in the rate of decline of deaths-per-day, assuming the broad lockdown was effective in respect of the death rate. However, it is possible that the broad lockdown will not have been effective as judged in terms of a further increase in the rate of decline of deaths per day, because we know it omitted to isolate people in care homes, which was probably a more important factor influencing the deaths-per-day figures than locking down low risk people. My guess is therefore that the broad lockdown will only have been slightly effective and the death rate per day will now halve every 6 days, but this could easily be pessimistic.

 

[ricbake]

Why is there a sixth former on work experience giving the Downing St briefing?

 

[existentialist]

The data on hospital deaths is telling a really important story. It looks as though hospital-deaths-per-day peaked at Easter and are starting slowly to decline. This is ENORMOUSLY SIGNIFICANT. A study published in the Lancet (reported here: When will we know if the UK lockdown is working?) shows that there is a 4-week delay between a fatal infection and publication of the resultant fatality as a hospital death (see attached graph). That means the peaking of deaths at Easter CANNOT have been in response to the broad lockdown, because that only happened 3-weeks before Easter. What happened 4-weeks before Easter was the lockdown of high-risk groups ONLY. So it looks as though that measure was already sufficient to bring FATAL infections onto a declining trend line. It achieved this in combination with the early-March government instruction to isolate at home with symptoms, which can also be seen to have induced a slowing in the growth rate of deaths-per-day from around 2nd April. Note that you have to plot the log of deaths per day against the reporting date to see this, as shown in the attached graph of UK Hospital deaths-per-day as published by the Department of Health & Social Care. This is because the rate of spread (e.g. doubling time for deaths-per-day) is proportional to the slope of a straight line fit to the logarithm of deaths-per-day. This suggests that if the broad lockdown were ended today but the high-risk groups continued to isolate AND people with symptoms continued to isolate, deaths-per-day would continue to decline. In fact, we should from April 19th, 4-weeks after the broad lockdown, expect to see an increase in the rate of decline of deaths-per-day, assuming the broad lockdown was effective in respect of the death rate. However, it is possible that the broad lockdown will not have been effective as judged in terms of a further increase in the rate of decline of deaths per day, because we know it omitted to isolate people in care homes, which was probably a more important factor influencing the deaths-per-day figures than locking down low risk people. My guess is therefore that the broad lockdown will only have been slightly effective and the death rate per day will now halve every 6 days, but this could easily be pessimistic.

Well, that's a big slab of text, and welcome to Urban.

What are you getting at? Are you seriously arguing that lockdown was pointless?

 

[sheothebudworths]

Who is Harries referring to when she says 'we' need to have a more adult conversation re PPE, while she goes on to excuse the shortages. Shush now, children.

Also, Williamson - send us another email, eh?

 

[Marty1]

Whilst internet fora undoubtedly provides some intellectual discussion and occasional erudite wit, unfortunately, it also provides a platform to a number of insignificant people who in the real world wouldn't even give one a second glance, never mind confront them with derogatory remarks. These people (I'm being kind in using the word ''people'') spend their entire waking lives flitting between so called ''social media'' sites, hiding behind the cloaks of anonymity for the sole purpose of scribing at best, one liner puerile insults aimed primarily at those who don't happen to concur with their narrow minded beliefs. In some cases, there doesn't even have to be a reason for this type of behaviour pattern, it may be as simple as having being bullied at school, or being an underachiever et al.

Then of course there are the ''Politically Correct'' apparatchiks who police the internet in the vain hope they might find some form of minor indiscretion which they can capitalise on to forward their Orwellian agendas. A typical example falling foul of the aforementioned being the ex Essex cricketer, Don Topley, who was dismissed from the BBC commentary team for reciting a harmless cricketing ode at a ''private'' college after dinner speech. Apparently he had incurred the wrath of some feminist drudge, no man would afford a second glance to, who seized upon the opportunity to grab her 15 mins. of fame by walking out and complaining on Twitter, or some other such media platform.

If its any consolation, I think you're right, I should and will fuck off, if for no other reason, I don't subscribe to Mutual Admiration Societies.

Tbf, that really is superb.

You are quite the wordsmith and I applaud this post.

 

[purenarcotic]

I find it quite frustrating when they talk about things being complicated in terms of the science - I know it is but could they not make some sort of attempt to explain it? I am fully aware that sometimes what seems x on the surface is actually y but how are we meant to decipher that without having some of it explained to us.

 

[LDC]

The whole tone is patronizing as fuck, Williamson is terrible.

 

[existentialist]

I find it quite frustrating when they talk about things being complicated in terms of the science - I know it is but could they not make some sort of attempt to explain it? I am fully aware that sometimes what seems x on the surface is actually y but how are we meant to decipher that without having some of it explained to us.

When people tell you that something is "complicated in terms of the science", they're using science's supposed complexity to cloud the issue. There's always a way to explain the science clearly, provided there's a willingness to do so, and a willingness to listen when they do. Just look at Angela Merkel's clear, unambiguous setting out of the realities as an example.

This shower are more than happy to hide behind the "complicated...science", because it suits their laissez-faire agenda very nicely to do so.

 

[Steel Icarus]

Tbf, that really is superb.

You are quite the wordsmith and I applaud this post.

Of course you do

 

[quimcunx]

Are they not just saying that isolating high risk and symptomatic accounts for the biggest proportion of any reduction in death rates, rather than general lockdown and that the effect of the general lockdown wont look as dramatic as it could because care home deaths have not been so effectively curbed?

E2a Claiming that anyway.

 

[Taphoi]

Well, that's a big slab of text, and welcome to Urban.

What are you getting at? Are you seriously arguing that lockdown was pointless?

I am not making that case and I do expect the broad lockdown to have some additional effect. I am merely showing what the figures show on the basis of Lancet-published data on the delay between infections and death reports. If you think the Lancet author was wrong and infections lead to reported deaths in 3 weeks, then you are free to believe that the main lockdown caused deaths-per-day to peak. But I think the Lancet was right, because it is very hard to see how the timescales could be contracted to get from an initial infection to death being reported by the government in three weeks. And the growth in the death rate slowed considerably at the beginning of April. That must have been due to the instruction to isolate at home with symptoms in early March, tending to confirm the 4-week response time of the death rate to policy measures.

 

[purenarcotic]

When people tell you that something is "complicated in terms of the science", they're using science's supposed complexity to cloud the issue. There's always a way to explain the science clearly, provided there's a willingness to do so, and a willingness to listen when they do. Just look at Angela Merkel's clear, unambiguous setting out of the realities as an example.

This shower are more than happy to hide behind the "complicated...science", because it suits their laissez-faire agenda very nicely to do so.

Indeed. Never since my dad dying has the hole felt greater. He would have explained it so clearly. So frustrating.

 

[Taphoi]

Are they not just saying that isolating high risk and symptomatic accounts for the biggest proportion of any reduction in death rates, rather than general lockdown and that the effect of the general lockdown wont look as dramatic as it could because care home deaths have not been so effectively curbed?

Thanks quimcunx. That is exactly what the figures seem to be saying.

 

[LDC]

Williamson used to be Defence Secretary too, ffs. "Now then General, this is what's called a tank, I'm afraid it's very complicated, but please listen carefully and you might just understand what I'm telling you."

 

[2hats]

A study published in the Lancet (reported here: When will we know if the UK lockdown is working?) shows that there is a 4-week delay between a fatal infection and publication of the resultant fatality as a hospital death (see attached graph).

Which study in The Lancet is that then?

 

[quimcunx]

I find it quite frustrating when they talk about things being complicated in terms of the science - I know it is but could they not make some sort of attempt to explain it? I am fully aware that sometimes what seems x on the surface is actually y but how are we meant to decipher that without having some of it explained to us.

Not without lying more or exposing lies I expect.

 

[philosophical]

Is there any way of finding out the percentage of people hospitalised in the UK because of the virus who eventually get discharged having recovered?

 

[littlebabyjesus]

When people tell you that something is "complicated in terms of the science", they're using science's supposed complexity to cloud the issue. There's always a way to explain the science clearly, provided there's a willingness to do so, and a willingness to listen when they do. Just look at Angela Merkel's clear, unambiguous setting out of the realities as an example.

This shower are more than happy to hide behind the "complicated...science", because it suits their laissez-faire agenda very nicely to do so.

My first thought when I hear that is to translate it to mean 'The science seems complex. I don't understand it.'

Of course, Merkel is herself a scientist, which helps.

 

[sheothebudworths]

'If I happened to be working on the frontline, today...I would need to understand the agreed guidance on PPE...'
'It's actually quite complex, which is why as a professional there is a responsibilty on me to understand that.'... more guilt trips around reusing PPE

She's NOT working on the fucking frontline though, is she?

Shameless.

 

[Taphoi]

Which study in The Lancet is that then?

The link to the BBC News website publication of the 4-week delay is in my post. The BBC's graph cites "The Lancet, PHE" as their source.