existentialist
Tired and unemotional
It all smelled a bit with his earlier posts. Now it stinks like a week-old kipper sewn into the curtains
Wear masks in shops
- Thread starter Celyn
- Start date
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
8ball
1,200 lights
Just after waterloowelshy made his first logical post...oh, hang on
The question about whether the plan was to stay in lockdown forever seemed reasonable (is that the plan?).
And the observation that the lockdown and assorted other measures (not sure whether we are "locked down" or just sort of "tethered" at this point) is killing and will continue to kill a lot of people...
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
I think that there were, in a stopped-clock kind of way, a few occasions when waterloowelshy's broad-brush daubings occasionally crossed over the line of reality, but I suspect that, as the story unfolds, we're going to discover what their full agenda is...and I suspect it's going to be fairly well-aligned with early Johnstonian "herd immunity" thinking, and the whole neolib laissez-faire mindset.
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
Not sure if it's been mentioned yet in this thread, but masks are actually most effective when the people who are doing the infecting are the ones wearing masks. Masks are far better at stopping the moisture from your mouth traveling out into the surrounding area than they are at preventing the ingress of hanging moisture in the air around you - at least at the level of protection where you can still comfortably breathe and move around.
The worst I've seen is all the people who are wearing masks but incorrectly, thinkging they are fine. People with holes cut out of the front of their masks, and even more commonly people with thier noses sticking out are going to cause all manner of trouble, especially since they will probably think they are safe and protected.
The worst I've seen is all the people who are wearing masks but incorrectly, thinkging they are fine. People with holes cut out of the front of their masks, and even more commonly people with thier noses sticking out are going to cause all manner of trouble, especially since they will probably think they are safe and protected.
stuff_it
Too skool for cool
Sick enough to go to hospital, not "sick at all".
8ball
1,200 lights
elbows
Well-Known Member
At the height of the pandemic wave in the UK twice as many people were dying every day compared to normal. This sort of thing underpins the contempt I have for people expressing the sorts of opinions you have been of late. We have to go back to the start of January 1970 to find so many people dying on a single day, most other days since those records started dont come close, with the exception of a couple of nasty flu epidemics. And that 1970 horrible death rate was the result of another pandemic, albeit an influenza one. And all those other rates were in situations where they didnt take such drastic action to try to do something about the epidemics/pandemics, we'll never quite know what rates we would have seen in 2020 if lockdown and other measures never happened.
The idea of deaths having been overestimated applies to one set of figures, and I could tell the opposite story with other data. The sort of story that is the reason why the likes of the Financial Times analysed excess mortality instead of just deaths ascribed to Covid-19. The sort of undercounting that shows up in graphs like this one where the bump in 'Deaths not involving Covid-19' shows the typical signs of deaths that were Covid-related not being counted as such. The same pattern of undercounting is seen in most respiratory viral epidemics and pandemics so we know this happens even when there is not a situation that people could blame on 'deaths related to lockdown'.
As of the most recent ONS report, 3,248 men and 1,698 women aged between 45 and 64 died.
There were 32,783 deaths in hospitals, 15,344 in care homes, 2,429 in private homes, 733 in hospices, 233 in other communal establishemnts and 198 elsewhere.
(from Deaths registered weekly in England and Wales, provisional - Office for National Statistics )
The deaths all matter to me. All of my opinions about how things should be handled in this phase, which are utterly at odds with your stance, are based on an understanding of what proportion of deaths occured in what age groups and in which settings, not the incorrect assumptions about age spread that you suggest are responsible for a public reaction that you otherwise apparently cant understand.
People do dismiss deaths routinely all the time in the manner you are doing, and those sorts of attitudes contribute towards many needless deaths every year. I was pleased to see that this pandemic has ended up being treated with the level of seriousness that it deserves. There will come a point at which this will change, whether by vaccination or greater understanding of where we are at and what the future with this virus means for future deaths rate etc. But now is certainly not the time to leap to the position you've taken, a position which is reckless and that most governments and public health authorities are not going to take until there are actually reasons to have some confidence that such a stance wont end in another mountain of death.
We've had the very occasional idiot here in the past whose confidence that strong measures that affect the whole population were not needed quickly blew up in their face. They were taking the same stance as you before the wave of death arrived in full. First they hung their stance on the idea it was mostly smokers who were at risk, then they moved on and declared that shielding the vulnerable would be a success and all that was really needed. That didnt go very well. After that fiasco they moved on to trying to demonstrate that the wave of death wasnt halted by lockdown, but would have peaked in the same way anyway. They are long gone now. I'm certainly glad I didnt have to waste my time on more of that sort of thing.
If/when the time comes that we really can afford to be more blasé about this virus, I will be there, I will move with the times as appropriate. But I'll never downplay death to do it, and now is most certainly not the time to plan and act based on optimism about the months ahead. If we get through a fair chunk of winter without obvious signs that we are having to battle very hard to prevent grim death rates and hospitalisations then that will be the first sensible opportunity to have a reality check and potential rethink.
8ball
1,200 lights
There is no evidence for that "herd immunity" business in the absence of a highly effective vaccine. And there seems to be no other plan than "open up a bit, close down a bit, open up a bit, hope for a vaccine which may be years away".
I can understand why people go after alternative sources when the official (and zealously enforced) narrative has so many holes in it. And I agree with him that the Government and the media stoked up levels of fear to such a degree that they have painted themselves into a corner.
A friend who works for PHE told me, when I said it looked like the virus was picking up a bit, that this was down to increased targeted testing. Though the 'casedemic' business seemed less convincing when I used lazy tools (such as seeing where it was being reported, looking for citations etc.), but I haven't looked at it closely.
I don't know whether it is fear or uncertainty which is making posters (usually-sensible ones in some cases) lash out in this way they have done here. It's as if someone had got a mirror out and started saying "Candyman" in primary school.
8ball
1,200 lights
That really doesn't look much like a "flattened curve" to me. It's pretty intense and over a short period. How does it map to places which didn't lock down (obviously that gets tricky because different places did lots of different things).
8ball
1,200 lights
Chocolates. Every time.
elbows
Well-Known Member
Flattening the curve was the original UK plan and it was dead by March 16th, plus they messed up the timing in regards what stage they thought the epidemic was actually at in early March. Thats why all the talk of pushing down on the curve that came out of the mouth of people like Vallance prior to March 16th doesnt have a strong relationship to what actually followed. Not in terms of timing or the shape of the various epidemic curves showing cases, hospitalisations and deaths. The original pushing down thing involved comments like 'pushing the peak into the summer' but our peak actually came on April 8th.
I cannot fully judge lockdowns influence on what happened or come up with meaningful comparison countries because places that locked down very strongly were usually doing so late, and in emergency circumstances. Places that acted differently to that still did some stuff which influenced virus spread, and their timing relative to where their epidemic was at was quite different to ours.
Its not that hard to model the sort of impact they think locking down 1 or 2 weeks earlier would have made. But estimates about what a graph would have looked like without various measures being taken are harder to ascertain. It depends what ceiling there would have been if the epidemic wave was allowed to run its natural coarse, and so nothing is really resolved in terms of this particular disagreement, people who didnt see the point in lockdown can claim a number of things that I cannot utterly disprove at this stage. But there certainly isnt any conclusive proof that the lockdown was so late that it didnt make a difference either.
It all smelled a bit with his earlier posts. Now it stinks like a week-old kipper sewn into the curtains
I think Pickman's model has an alert set up so every time kippers are mentioned, that post gets an automatic like.
(I like Pickman's model and appreciate his posts. But this kipper fixation...?
)
elbows
Well-Known Member
A sensible plan to minimise all sorts of deaths in future involves:
Increased finding for the NHS and maximum effort to restore as many medical services as possible, without compromising infection control efforts within hospitals.
Massive funding for public health in general, including mental health.
A war on inequality.
A balanced approach to managing the pandemic risks. Which includes keeping a careful eye on case numbers and acting when case numbers rise, not waiting till it gets to a level where case rises get out of control and result in a new wave of death. Also includes reopening various things to whatever degree we can actually get away with, which is very much being tried at the moment, and involves a slow learning curve.
Oneeyedjarvis
New Member
People keep on going about "herd immunity" that only works if the immune response lasts a reasonable length of time. All indications suggest that the virus... A: Changes rapidly to circumvent any immune response over a length of time, that is you might be immune to the virus as it was when you caught it, when it hits you again it is effectively a new virus... And B: For some reason the virus can lay low in areas in the body that are not patrolled by immune cells and can effectively "slow burn" leading to chronic symptoms however long those last. That is why mask wearing by those at risk of catching it and those at risk from spreading it, in effect everyone, is essential.
krtek a houby
Kick me again Jesus
More Bollox
existentialist
Tired and unemotional
Dutch govt hasn’t advised the use of face masks either.
Dutch government will not advise public to wear masks - minister
The Dutch government on Wednesday said it will not advise the public to wear masks to slow the spread of coronavirus, asserting that their effectiveness has not been proven.
www.reuters.com
What age group are you in (if you don’t mind me asking?).
(Understand if you don’t wish to disclose).
8ball
1,200 lights
Certainly the ‘nice’ bit.
8ball
1,200 lights
It seems like the main difference between that curve and the “nightmare scenario” curve is one of height, and the main mercy was that the virus was nothing like as dangerous as initial projections.
If it had been, then with our Government it seems likely we would have been looking at millions of deaths (millions more even than early projections).
8ball
1,200 lights
I’m going to say 44. Give or take a year or two.
krtek a houby
Kick me again Jesus
7 years of silence. Then Bollox has his temp ban (before the last farewell) and suddenly, a flurry of posts from waterloo.
I also reckon Bollox moonlighted as obvious troll Scotty1977 with his "dregs of the world" comment.
8ball
1,200 lights
I don’t much care for the game of tracing returners, analysing posting styles, suspecting anyone we find disagreeable of using sockpuppets etc.
It’s deathly dull.
krtek a houby
Kick me again Jesus
Yeah but am no good at guessing their ages.
dessiato
4 years and I still cry sometimes
The main reason masks "haven't worked" here in Spain is the number of people going to bars, nightclubs, family parties etc and not wearing masks. They get drunk and pass the virus around. These hotspots seem to be traceable to these types of events.
It's why night bars and nightclubs are being restricted again.
One upside, for me at least, is that the three bars near me, which pre-covid closed about midnight, but had started opening till 4, are now obliged to close to new customers at 12, and close completely at 1. Quieter nights.
8ball
1,200 lights
Well, the jury’s still out on whether I’m any good at that too tbf.
One thing I notice is that older people and younger people seem on the whole less scared of this virus at this point (there was a time where it looked like “the big one” and I’m sure everyone was pretty nervous for a bit there - I certainly was, though I have a fee health problems and now I think the other things queuing up to kill me are probably in with a better chance)..
It seems to me to be the middle-aged (taking a very broad view of the term, like 29 to 58 ie. dividing up an average lifespan into thirds), who are most spooked.
When you are in your 60’s or 70’s, a year of barely seeing your grandchildren can feel like a substantial chunk of life lost, which has to be gauged against the realistic chances of catching the virus at this time, and the amount of life you have left and the chances of dying of something else.
Youngsters often act like they are immortal, and the old can hear death creeping up on them. I think those of us in the middle phade of life like to think it can be negotiated with.
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