Coronavirus - worldwide breaking news, discussion, stats, updates and more
- Thread starter weltweit
- Start date
little_legs
Поехали!
Nice one.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
The table here shows some big variations. Clearly there are going to be inconsistencies in data gathering, etc, but the figures show huge differences between countries. Germany, for instance, has 19,600 active cases but just 2 serious/critical, while France has more than 1,000 serious/critical out of 10,000 active cases. They're at different stages - Germany only has 180 recovered to France's 1,295, but still the differences are extraordinary even given that. Is Germany in for a rough week?
Coronavirus Update (Live): 274,171 Cases and 11,354 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Outbreak - Worldometer
Can anyone shed more light on the differences between countries? I know S Korea's relatively impressive recovery rate (under 0.5% mortality thus far) is partly explained by their mass testing programme finding more mild cases than, say, the UK has found, but we're set to learn a lot about relative strategies here. Guess we need to reserve judgement over places like Germany or the UK until a significant number have recovered.
Schools have been closed in S Korea and Japan for about three weeks now, and they have got a semblance of control. I guess then the question is: Now what?
Coronavirus Update (Live): 274,171 Cases and 11,354 Deaths from COVID-19 Virus Outbreak - Worldometer
Can anyone shed more light on the differences between countries? I know S Korea's relatively impressive recovery rate (under 0.5% mortality thus far) is partly explained by their mass testing programme finding more mild cases than, say, the UK has found, but we're set to learn a lot about relative strategies here. Guess we need to reserve judgement over places like Germany or the UK until a significant number have recovered.
Schools have been closed in S Korea and Japan for about three weeks now, and they have got a semblance of control. I guess then the question is: Now what?
Greece restricts travel to islands to permanent residents only.
www.keeptalkinggreece.com
Coronavirus: Only permanent residents can travel to Greek islands - Keep Talking Greece
The Greek government decided to ban the move of mainland Greeks to the islands as they thought they
www.keeptalkinggreece.com
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Different countries are doing more or less testing, this affects the number of total cases, so the actual number of cases in their populations will be greater (to a greater or lesser degree) than their reported stats. Deaths is probably more useful as it is less likely they would be as underreported as cases are.
Germany does seem to have fewer fatalities esp when compared to their number of cases but also Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea and others seem to be doing better than Italy, or Spain the current sickest men of Europe.
Sorted by total cases the UK is 10th, but sorted by deaths we are now 7th. Deaths as mentioned are more reliable now because of the differences in testing.
I think for the forseeable future UK testing will be focussed on hospital cases and NHS staff so we won't know about the overall spread until testing capacity is significantly enlarged and made available to the public who have symptoms perhaps more mildly. And of course if an antibody test is made available we could identify people who have had it and are now immune which will have benefits.
Hollis
bloody furious
I guess its complicated - I can think of 4-5 immediate factors: population structure, quality of health services and access, public compliance with measures taken, actual public health measures, and timing of implementation.. I'm sure there are loads more.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Yes.
Interesting though that with a population of only about 60m Italy now has more deaths than China with their population of is it a billion? .. The lockdown in China and their massive medical effort seems to have paid dividends. Who would have thought a month ago that Italy would have more deaths than the whole of China?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
China's a big place, though, with huge variations in infection rates. Coincidentally the population of Hubei is almost identical to that of Italy. When comparing China with the rest of the world, it makes more sense to compare it to the whole of Europe, with Hubei as their 'Italy'.
This was China at the end of Jan.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
That will be true once recovery levels are more similar. As it stands, virtually nobody has been diagnosed and then recovered yet in places like the UK and Germany. Mortality rates will start making more sense then - let's hope the eventual mortality rate everywhere approaches that now found in S Korea when the full picture emerges.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
My understanding is that we can at the moment test 10,000 people per day in the UK and that within weeks we will be able to test 25,000 a day. But apparently we have only tested some 40,000 people in total thus far. I agree that recovered stats are interesting, but I don't know how much I trust them compared to the deaths.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
It's mostly a measure of the stage we're at, I think. The UK and Germany are just a bit behind on the curve, so over the next couple of weeks the 'recovered' numbers will shoot up. We'll see what happens with the deaths numbers then.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
What leaps out from South Korea's stats is <100 deaths now with nearly 2,000 recovered. Whatever they are doing, it's been working better than most.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
A mate of mine in work was saying how in a few years time we'll have learned a shitload about how to control the next pandemic. Think she was looking for a bright side, but also think she has a point.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
My thinking is that they are fully contact tracing and doing massive testing and jumping on every case they find to prevent further transmission. I haven't seen any reports though nor translated any either so I have no idea actually what they are doing or the obedience of their population and or measures their government are undertaking. If anyone knows it would be interesting to hear.
Does anyone know for example what South Korea's health service is like?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Yes, similar to Singapore and Taiwan and Hong Kong. East Asia partly has the jump on us because they have had these scares before, while we haven't. And we kind of ignored the previous scares in East Asia and they went away...
I don't actually want to be too critical - who would want to be a leader right now? But there is a serious game of catch-up being played here, and you've got to look at what's working. It's not like there's a shortage of people with no other work to do if they need a big team of people to do the tracing.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Sorry I am having a mental block deciphering that sentence.
Surely we have 20,000 soldiers at the ready to do whatever is needed and they could be put to work tracing contacts and conducting tests?
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
I was thinking of all the people who have just lost their jobs for the foreseeable future! I would guess it would take more than 20,000, but of course, whoever is available.
weltweit
Well-Known Member
Aha. Yes, good point.
The worst case scenario for Europe was hinted at by a table that elbows posted in the Italy thread which is here il virus: covid-19 in italy which suggests strongly that the UK is 14 days behind Italy, and Germany France and Spain are also a number of days behind Italy also. Being that Italy has now passed China for fatalities, should UK, France, Germany and Spain follow suit, Europe would be in a very bad shape and would have eclipsed China's death toll many times over.
Personally my hope is that somehow our current measures will mean we miss this prediction .. but that is no means certain, and were we to simply follow Italy the situation would be dire.
littlebabyjesus
one of Maxwell's demons
Azrael
circling Airstrip One
We should remember that "recovered" means negative tests, not necessarily gravely ill: a person can be asymptomatic and still not declared recovered. As described in the other thread, I suspect I have it (no tests, but -- mild --symptoms and especially course closely match the criteria), but symptoms mostly resolved yesterday. If it is Covid, I'll be functionally recovered, but since the virus can apparently linger in the throat for weeks, wouldn't be classed as such until all traces were gone.
TheHoodedClaw
acknowledging ur soup leg
Who is going to train the 20,000 soldiers to do that? The military isn't a resource that can be deployed like a magic wand to fix any problem. There's stuff that they can help with quickly: most (all?) of the medics are NHS staff anyway, ATC support maybe, but the most likely to be needed is logistics support. Might be a few field mortuaries if things get real bad.
And shooting people, of course.
8ball
Decolonise colons!
Previous positive swab with later absence of symptoms and negative swab? Presumably neither serological?
ice-is-forming
I was born naked, shameless & fucking outrageous..
The border is closed in Australia now. No one getting in or out. We have 877 confirmed cases and 7 deaths.
platinumsage
HaveMyPassword123
The big thing South Korea have done with contact tracing is make everything public. e.g. Mr X, a 42 year old 5'10" tall man from Busan has tested positive, he sat in seat 4A in this cinema at 14:30 and then was caught on CCTV sneezing on the way out, just before he used his credit card to buy a can of coke from the kiosk opposite the cinema: South Korea is reporting intimate details of COVID-19 cases: has it helped?
Contrast that with here, where we had that super-spreader from the ski resort and PHE were appealing for people who came into contact with him to come forward, despite refusing to reveal any details about him.
Contrast that with here, where we had that super-spreader from the ski resort and PHE were appealing for people who came into contact with him to come forward, despite refusing to reveal any details about him.
