Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[verreauxi]

This is a great summary of a solid study (in my opinion) that shows the effects of indoor sports events and the spread/impact of covid:

Mass gatherings contributed to early COVID-19 mortality: Evidence from US sports

Social distancing is important to slow the community spread of COVID-19. This column studies the banning of mass gatherings, a comparably low-cost intervention. Exploiting exogenous variation in top-flight basketball and ice hockey games in the US, which arise due to the leagues' predetermined...

voxeu.org

 

[verreauxi]

A bit of trivia about steam-heat radiators. And having grown up in an old house outside of Chicago, I can attest that these radiators seriously overheat. This is because they were specifically designed to overheat rooms because they were developed around the 1918 pandemic and...

"Health officials thought (correctly) that fresh air would ward off airborne diseases; then as now, cities rushed to move activities outdoors, from schools to courtrooms. When winter came, the need for fresh air didn’t abate. According to Holohan’s research, the Board of Health in New York City ordered that windows should remain open to provide ventilation, even in cold weather. In response, engineers began devising heating systems with this extreme use case in mind. Steam heating and radiators were designed to heat buildings on the coldest day of the year with all the windows open. Anybody who’s thrown their windows open in January, when their apartment is stifling, is, in an odd way, replicating what engineers hoped would happen a century."

Your Old Radiator Is a Pandemic-Fighting Weapon

Turn-of-the-century faith in ventilation to combat disease pushed engineers to design steam heating systems that still overheat apartments today.

www.bloomberg.com

 

[WA Toffee]

Australia 1st wave deaths 112
Melbourne 2nd wave deaths 244.

...'Unless Community Infection slows, expect lockdown of some sort into 2021' - Victorian Premier.

Edit; Aged Care residents getting the worst of it...it would seem that the way Aged Care Homes are set up does not help matters...alegedlly.

This just shows how easily things can get worse. Australia and NZ both had excellent early responses which allowed us to lift restrictions sooner and with more confidence than most other countries. But as soon as the restrictions are lifted, it increases the risk of a second wave. Melbourne has been hit hardest, Sydney appears to be climbing and Brisbane also having a few issues. Luckily for me Perth is still doing ok, averaging about 1-2 new cases a week, but we do still have our border closed to the rest of the country.

You would hope people in other countries would see this and realise the implications of radically reducing or just ignoring restrictions, but it seems a lot of people just want to get out and will twist whatever statistics they can in order to justify that.

 

[OGG]

I think you're probably right. But unfortunately there's no way of ever knowing, or being able to prove we'd be far better off if we locked down earlier. France locked down earlier and is having a surge in cases right now. Australia is also having a bit of surge in cases too. I'm not sure it's as simple as saying everything would be fine if we locked down quicker.

Airports is the one I still do not understand. Why did we not test people coming in from hotspots, or stop arrivals?

Prove is probably a bit too strong but you sort of can prove it mathematically. We know we had far fewer people infected 10 days before we shut down (according to Neil Ferguson cases were doubling every 3-4 days then so that’s about 8 times more people infected when we actually shut down).

Assuming people complied in the same way as they did during the actual shutdown (big assumption I know but the job of politicians was to get the message across) if we went into a shutdown with (conservatively) only half the number of cases, with R unchanged we would come out of it with only half the number of cases. Deaths would have been considerably lower. It’d have been much easier to track and trace the cases we did have etc.

 

[AUXLEN]

 

[brieverton]

The narrative of "living with the virus" which politicians in a lot of countries now weave into almost every interview is entirely misplaced.

It has become connotated with a continuing and progressive re-opening of society and the economy when the emergence of spikes and increase in case rates show that we are already at the limits of what can be done with re-opening safely, if they have not already been exceeded.

As we head into autumn and the prospect of poorer weather, this is a time for real leadership, and, whether some people like it or not, reinforcement of the basic public health messages and restrictions.

We cannot eliminate the virus, but the only feasible strategy is to reduce its impact to as negligible a degree as possible. There is really no other option unless and untill we get a vaccine.

 

[Deleted member 48881]

 

[zzr45]

The narrative of "living with the virus" which politicians in a lot of countries now weave into almost every interview is entirely misplaced.

It has become connotated with a continuing and progressive re-opening of society and the economy when the emergence of spikes and increase in case rates show that we are already at the limits of what can be done with re-opening safely, if they have not already been exceeded.

As we head into autumn and the prospect of poorer weather, this is a time for real leadership, and, whether some people like it or not, reinforcement of the basic public health messages and restrictions.

We cannot eliminate the virus, but the only feasible strategy is to reduce its impact to as negligible a degree as possible. There is really no other option unless and untill we get a vaccine.

I like how you started by saying what politicians were saying was horseshit, but then essentially using the rest of your post to paraphrase exactly what they’ve said.

There’s also absolutely no evidence of the weather being a determining factor in the spread either. For all we know proper freezing temperatures might kill it dead.

 

[spectateur]

I like how you started by saying what politicians were saying was horseshit, but then essentially using the rest of your post to paraphrase exactly what they’ve said.

There’s also absolutely no evidence of the weather being a determining factor in the spread either. For all we know proper freezing temperatures might kill it dead.

We do know that freezing weather will not kill off the virus. It proliferated in the middle of a central Chinese winter.

 

[brieverton]

I like how you started by saying what politicians were saying was horseshit, but then essentially using the rest of your post to paraphrase exactly what they’ve said.

There’s also absolutely no evidence of the weather being a determining factor in the spread either. For all we know proper freezing temperatures might kill it dead.

I think there has to be a clearer message about the limits of re-opening whilst keeping case rates as low as possible. Most politicians I hear are trying to ride two horses, saying we can continue to achieve moderation with more activity. We cannot.

I should have put it in the proper context the psychological impact of the onset of autumn and winter on people. Many are concerned regardless and activities like work, commuting, and shopping in hours of darkness will add extra pressure to some, whilst there is a pandemic ongoing.

 

[orchard]

I like how you started by saying what politicians were saying was horseshit, but then essentially using the rest of your post to paraphrase exactly what they’ve said.

There’s also absolutely no evidence of the weather being a determining factor in the spread either. For all we know proper freezing temperatures might kill it dead.

Mate. Put your beer down and let's go another pub before it happens again.

 

[Billy Dean]

Apparently where I live this week around 40% of the new recorded infections have come from returning holidaymakers

 

[peteblue]

Why are people shocked at the recession figures. We still haven't opened up large sections of the economy 5 months on. The figures were always going to be horrific.

You can't support continued lockdown restrictions and also be aghast at a deep recession.

This really.....

 

[peteblue]

I see that Flu has been killing 5X more people than Covid in the U.K. for the last 7 or so weeks.....

 

[ForeverBlue92]

This is where we are at...totally normal, run-of-the-mill existence:
View attachment 97459

Is this Covid related though?

Plenty of young people sadly die every day of many other things - I personally know of 2 people from my old school who died under 25 - one of an undiagnosed heart condition and the other septicaemia.