Coronavirus in the UK - news, lockdown and discussion

[LDC]

FFS.

Hundreds prosecuted for coronavirus-related attacks on emergency workers

DPP says charges covered a total of 660 offences in England and Wales in April

www.theguardian.com

The behaviour of some people during this lock-down really has made me despair sometimes. Went for a run this morning and the bins in the park which had been taped off by the council had huge piles of rubbish almost covering them that the masked and gloved council workers were having to pick up to bag and take away. FFS, people really can be inconsiderate cunts.

 

[The39thStep]

Beaches open on June 6 here in Portugal. Theres going to be an app which if its downloaded enough will say whether the beach has reached its estimated capacity limit and they hope to use it to examine social distancing compliance. The Maritime Police and Councils will enforce and if there are too many on the beaches over a period of days then then they will close it.

 

[Wilf]

Yes one comment in Private Eye this issue was "Stay apart" would have been a lot better than the bloody useless "Stay aware".

The government's PR and communications have been so disastrous, they could really have thought 'stay alert' actually meant something. I'm now edging very slightly towards it being a deliberate and probably key step in their 'let's bin the lockdown and blame the people in the parks for the deaths' strategy.

 

[little_legs]

Beaches open on June 6 here in Portugal. Theres going to be an app which if its downloaded enough will say whether the beach has reached its estimated capacity limit and they hope to use it to examine social distancing compliance. The Maritime Police and Councils will enforce and if there are too many on the beaches over a period of days then then they will close it.

This is way too controlling sensible for the freedom loving country like the UK.

 

[frogwoman]

Epidemics in general could be said to burn themselves out, but mostly the fire never really stops, it just falls to levels which are low enough that people judge things quite differently compared to when the disease was raging.

There can be outbreaks in specific places and moments in time that humans take action on and manage to squash. And there are probably various outbreaks that end up being self-limiting in some way, eg diseases which cross from animals to humans but are only just viable in humans, and dont manage to spread well enough in human populations to be sustained for long. And there are also diseases which end up getting displaced by other versions of themselves, eg various influenza pandemics have often but not always lead to the end of previously dominant influenza strains.

But stuff like smallpox carried on causing misery for years.

I did read an interesting theory that the Russian flu of 1889 which went on to kill about a million people was actually caused by a coronavirus which now only causes colds?

 

[elbows]

Major hospitals have not reported one covid death in the last 48 hours

I ended up resorting to an article in the fucking Sun to see what the Telegraph claim was:

Homerton, University College London, Hillington, North Middlesex, Whittington Health and Guy's and St Thomas' hospitals have recorded no coronavirus deaths in the past 48 hours, an analysis by the University of Oxford for The Daily Telegraph has found.

During the peak of the coronavirus outbreak, the hospitals were recording up to 16 deaths a day and have totalled more than 1,000 since the start the crisis.

For context, one set of official figures shows there were 236 hospital deaths listed for London on the worst day (April 8th) so the hospitals they focussed on hardly tell most of the story.

Anyway it is fair enough for articles to refer to various recent trends in London, I just like to be clear about the detail. They are just looking for other ways to tell the same story I suppose, and being able to say no deaths is more interesting and convenient for them than saying less than 20 or less than 10 deaths.

Since we are well into a period of various numbers dwindling, I will try to take a look at deaths on a per-hospital basis sometime next week to see if there is anything else that becomes apparent from such data. I will start looking today but I dont think I'm in good shape to communicate anything I might spot.

 

[Mation]

The picture as far as density of population is a bit complicated. While it seems likely that Londoners' use of crowded public transport is one thing that would have speeded spread, in lockdown London and other high density areas, people are likely to walk a short distance to do shopping, go to the park etc. In lower density areas, people are likely to drive to big supermarkets, further away. So you have big supermarkets with a large number of people from a wide area, compared to the london situation of smaller shops where the people in them mostly live very locally. You can see how the lower-density situation (once people have stopped using crowded public transport) might be more favourable to the spread of the virus, perhaps contrary to intuition.

This. An example (that's not data, obvs): Since 1 April I've only been a maximum of 0.7 miles in any direction (from fairly central south London); no public transport (because I'm lucky enough to be working from home); only on foot or by cycle.

There have been a couple of really long queues, especially at first, for the supermarket, but once inside, most shops are still very empty. Most streets are quiet. My local park is much much busier this week than last and than the week before, but I can still wander round it at several metres distance from anyone else, as long as I'm prepared to do the weaving around.

Everyone I know who can work from home has been the same.

But... I'm seeing some people I know (housemates) now being prepared to take public transport, masked-up and aiming to do social distancing, but still travelling further afield to see friends. Big groups sitting close together in the park. Construction work on small sites, e.g. several scaffolders setting up in close proximity to each other (as they have to, but unmasked), a few doors down. A pub renovation (!!)

Hello second wave

 

[Sunray]

I was looking for verification of those claims too.

Best I could find was

https://data.london.gov.uk/dataset/coronavirus--covid-19--deaths

which IMO doesn't prove or disprove anything but does show London becoming as coronavirus free as a city with millions of people in can be. Plot out that graph and in two weeks the numbers become zero.

People are still dying, but not too many and given how good modern medicine is, many of the people that sadly die today, fairly safe to say they got very sick a week or two ago.

What would be interesting, I think, is the daily number of people going to the hospital and testing positive for c-19.

 

[frogwoman]

Is the daily rate of positive tests not about 2000 or so?

 

[Mation]

Possibly not with black men being reported as being 4 times more likely to contract coronavirus and have serious problems.

What a choice

 

[frogwoman]

Our Coronavirus Predicament Isn’t All That New

The Russian flu pandemic of 1889 might have actually been caused by a foe that has become all too familiar.

www.bloomberg.com

elbows what do you think of this?

 

[Epona]

I went around four parks today and they were all rammed, with loads of people gathering in big groups. One bloke even thought to start up a big, extra-smokey barbecue in Ruskin Park!

Elsewhere, a Brixton fast food vendor was absolutely jammed full of people inside, with no one making the slightest effort at social distancing. The risk to staff and other customers must have been unacceptably high. It's clearly not good to see this going on, but I'm curious what you lot would do. Would you report it?

(*also posted in the Brixton forum)

No need to call the police - it is a fast food place so as with retail, you can give Trading Standards a ring - they'll pop round and have stern words with the owner. (I don't think they necessarily have any enforcement powers, but they are responsible for covid measures compliance in some instances)

 

[Sue]

The behaviour of some people during this lock-down really has made me despair sometimes. Went for a run this morning and the bins in the park which had been taped off by the council had huge piles of rubbish almost covering them that the masked and gloved council workers were having to pick up to bag and take away. FFS, people really can be inconsiderate cunts.

Same, though was also loads of rubbish strewn all over the grass.

 

[elbows]

Our Coronavirus Predicament Isn’t All That New

The Russian flu pandemic of 1889 might have actually been caused by a foe that has become all too familiar.

www.bloomberg.com

elbows what do you think of this?

I've spoken about that stuff before. eg #6,383

I'm always interested in the topic. Even if we disregard anything to do specifically with other coronaviruses and anything to do with the 1889 pandemic, the idea that a new novel virus that causes a hideous pandemic will eventually sink into the background and not be regarded in the same way, even if the fundamentals of the virus havent changed, is quite common. But this topic quickly ends up overlapping with both herd immunity stuff, and also with certain aspects of attitudes towards 'mild' illness. If the disease is mild in most cases but still kills a few people here and there, do people notice or care much?

Apparently that was my last free Bloomberg article but if this is the quality of their fact checking then I'm glad:

But after the SARS epidemic in 1995 — caused by a coronavirus named SARS-CoV — biologists used modern gene-sequencing methods to begin comparing viruses infecting humans and other animals.

The SARS epidemic was 2002-3. It was identified in 2003.

 

[Sunray]

Is the daily rate of positive tests not about 2000 or so?

In London? Where did you get that number?

 

[Raheem]

The government's PR and communications have been so disastrous, they could really have thought 'stay alert' actually meant something. I'm now edging very slightly towards it being a deliberate and probably key step in their 'let's bin the lockdown and blame the people in the parks for the deaths' strategy.

I expect anyone in Downing Street who considers their profession to be PR or comms will have been close to tears, tbf.

 

[elbows]

Meanwhile the Guardian leads with the ONS saying the number of infections is stable.

Number of people with coronavirus in England remains stable, says ONS

Snapshot finds 137,000 had virus between 4-17 May, slightly down from previous fortnight

www.theguardian.com

I wasnt overly impressed by the ONS pilot survey. I want to see it be quite a bit larger, the small numbers involved dont help my confidence and I want it to be big enough to do regional analysis. The self-swabbing is an obvious limitation. And still no data based on blood tests, its so long ago now that they raised my hopes on that front but have been coy with any results ever since.

Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey pilot - Office for National Statistics

Provisional results from the Coronavirus (COVID-19) Infection Survey for England. This survey is being delivered in partnership with the University of Oxford, the University of Manchester, Public Health England and Wellcome Trust.

www.ons.gov.uk

The main points it makes are one thing, the long list of caveats quite another. Its better than nothing I suppose. Blood is at least mentioned, but it always seems to be just around the corner.

Adults from around 2,000 households will also provide a blood sample taken by a trained nurse, phlebotomist or healthcare assistant. These tests, the results of which are not yet available, will help determine what proportion of the population has developed antibodies to COVID-19.

As the study progresses, we will be able to provide greater detail into the extent of coronavirus (COVID-19) infection, for example, by providing regional breakdowns.

Blood samples collected to date are still being analysed by the laboratories, but we hope to start receiving this data soon. Once the Office for National Statistics (ONS) has received sufficient data to calculate good quality estimates of antibodies in the population we will include results in a future publication.

The information on spread of infection will form an important component for estimating the rate of transmission, often referred to as “R”, which is central to planning for easing of lockdown conditions. There are different approaches for estimating R, and the agreement of the most appropriate estimate for any period is the responsibility of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE). They will use information from our study in their deliberations.

 

[HoratioCuthbert]

It didn't happen in Scotland.

Aye it did

And besides it wouldn't necessarily make the news if it did.

 

[little_legs]

The government's PR and communications have been so disastrous, they could really have thought 'stay alert' actually meant something. I'm now edging very slightly towards it being a deliberate and probably key step in their 'let's bin the lockdown and blame the people in the parks for the deaths' strategy.

 

[frogwoman]

In London? Where did you get that number?

In the uk as a whole

 

[David Clapson]

Re the BBC video :


Just did this, and I couldn't copy the actual video either.
But here's a link to the BBC page where you'll find Sikora's 'NHS = last bastion of communism' lunacy-video (2017)

He's in favour of full-on privatisation
The other consultant's video on that page (by Dr. Henry Marsh) is vastly saner ..... both vids about two minutes long.

You can't fault his clinical knowledge. If he says there's a collapse in new cases, there's a collapse in new cases. His analysis and predictions of Covid so far have been very accurate.

 

[William of Walworth]

You can't fault his clinical knowledge. If he says there's a collapse in new cases, there's a collapse in new cases. His analysis and predictions of Covid so far have been very accurate.

I think someone else earlier upthread asked for Sikora's current thoughts on this to be backed up by others now as well, though?

No other scientist that I've seen quoted/that I'm aware of at all, has suggested the same things as Sikora is now suggesting (see further back in the thread for details/links ).

 

[Steel Icarus]

They still lying about number of tests per day?

 

[David Clapson]

The FT are saying we've exceeded 63,000 deaths, Their estimate of unexplained-but-actually-Covid deaths has always been higher than the ONS numbers.

 

[BCBlues]

Revealed: how many Covid and untested hospital patients sent to city care homes Revealed: how many Covid and untested hospital patients sent to city care homes

Some interesting and infuriating stats here from a local rag that normally doesnt know how to get involved but seems annoyed with Bojo and his crew. Thought you might like a look elbows

 

[xenon]

In the uk as a whole

just under 10,000 according to the press conference tonight.
Actually no, forget that, I think that was referring to something else.

 

[zora]

Terrifyingly, the person from the Telegraph and the Tory MP on Question Time just both unchallengedly referred to where we are now as "the end of the pandemic", when actually they were referring to the ending of this first period of lockdown/ coming down from first peak.
Any credible person I have listened to elsewhere so far has been at pains to point out that we are by no means at the end but at the start of the pandemic.
One could argue that it's clear from the context (for example, there is also talk about theatre not coming back fully in its previous form for a long time etc etc) but it's still incredibly sloppy language. :/

 

[David Clapson]

I think someone else earlier upthread asked for Sikora's current thoughts on this to be backed up by others now as well, though?

No other scientist that I've seen quoted/that I'm aware of at all, has suggested the same things as Sikora is now suggesting (see further back in the thread for details/links ).

I've met Sikora a couple of times, to interview him. In 2007 I wrote a gloomy piece about the future cost of cancer treatment and recommended an increase in the average tax burden per household from £20,000 to £23,600. He's motivated by patient outcomes. He has personally seen huge numbers of cancer patients dying unnecessarily...people who would live if they were in many other Euroepean countries. He's frustrated and upset by it and he speaks out and gets a lot of shit for it. I object very strongly to his solution but I think he helps people to comprehend the worth of the NHS by saying very starkly that rich people should have the freedom to pay for a longer life. Sometimes I wonder whether he's saying such horrible things to push society the other way. At any rate it's a discussion we all need to have. Comparing his video with Henry Marsh's one is something everyone needs to do, especially the people thinking of voting Tory.

 

[zora]

Also, Tory man just casually threw in on the topic of the future of theatre, that who knows, now that we have got antibody tests, maybe people who have had it, will be able to go to the theatre come winter...
As if that didn't exactly open the massive can of worms we have already touched on in discussion here (basically a two-tier society and the danger of people wanting to get infected).

 

[William of Walworth]

David Clapson : I'm about to go to bed, so not too much time here just now .......
But just for the record, I did watch both Prof. Sikora's video and Dr. Henry Marsh's video (both 2017, both about two minutes -- my much earlier post linked to the relevant page for both).
I thought Marsh's piece made a vast amount more sense, but in any case, whatever anyone thinks about Sikora's favouring of NHS privatisation, what he's saying about coronavirus now seems hugely out of line with what any other scientists are currently saying about the pandemic.