Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

[mrb85]

This is by far the most frustrating anti-restriction argument. It seems to go amiss that 40,000 people died in this country in a matter of weeks, and that number would be up towards 500,000 if we hadn’t done anything. Stop comparing it as near equal to the flu.

I can hardly believe people still believe that 0.5m prediction. How do you explain Sweden's low figures then?
By the way I didn't start the flu comparison, you are right there are significant differences.

 

[bluelife]

I can hardly believe people still believe that 0.5m prediction. How do you explain Sweden's low figures then?
By the way I didn't start the flu comparison, you are right there are significant differences.

With respect, this is the Dunning-Kruger effect in action... why would you think your estimates on viral spread would beat committees of lifelong experts?

 

[bluelife]

I can hardly believe people still believe that 0.5m prediction. How do you explain Sweden's low figures then?
By the way I didn't start the flu comparison, you are right there are significant differences.

With regards to Sweden, it is a much larger country than ours with less than one sixth the population. In fact, if you compare Stockholm’s stats with London’s, taking into account population difference, you will see they are not much different.

 

[JLW]

 

[Toast]

When you have a system where people are on low hourly rates combined with low guaranteed hours and have to rely on overtime, productivity bonuses and other "perks" to bring in a living wage and make ends meet then this is what happens.

Working from home isn't feasible for a huge number of the workforce and most businesses can't, or won't, take the hit of paying people full sick pay for indefinite periods.

Well from 28th September it’s law you need to self isolate if your told to.
How they enforce that, no idea. But had email from work saying it must be done, so I guess we still get paid if told to isolate. I realise many won’t have that opportunity.

 

[summerisle]

Only in America. lol

 

[Brendan Janus]

Kee

Only in America. lol

Top Booty !!

 

[summerisle]

Good luck on that.

 

[ForeverBlue92]

Good luck on that.

FGS let the youngsters live their lives.

 

[ClausThomsen]

Well from 28th September it’s law you need to self isolate if your told to.
How they enforce that, no idea. But had email from work saying it must be done, so I guess we still get paid if told to isolate. I realise many won’t have that opportunity.

As you say, if you're told to. The track & trace and availability of testing doesn't really cut it unfortunately and if someone is thrashing about to keep their head above the water then it's easy to dismiss symptoms as a minor cold and not go out of their way to get a test.

What a respectable multinational company officially says and what an under pressure manager with targets gets told at local level don't always tally!

Especially when it comes to the lower rungs on the ladder. There's been several times at our place over the years where complying with the letter of the law and following proper regs has been described as unofficial / wildcat industrial action or just plain old taking the piss.

 

[Lelouch]

Well this looks thought out properly.

 

[Old Blue 2]

Trying to get an online test on the NHS site, Can you just refresh the page that says sorry try later? or do you have to go through from the beginning each time, apologies if it’s inane.

My 15 year-old grandson lives with me and my wife (for reasons I will not go into). He had a sore throat on Monday and was sent home from school and we were told he could not return until he had passed a Covid test.

So half a dozen times on Monday I tried the NHS site - no luck. Same all through Tuesday.

Wednesday I decided to get on the site early, and bingo! 151 tests available. By the time I had finished filling in all the pages it was down to 138. Anyway got an appointment at a local drive-in that afternoon. Got the result that he was negative this afternoon, so back to school for him tomorrow.

So, it looks like each tranch of available appointments are loaded onto the Gov.uk site first thing every morning, so my advice would be to get on there early and hopefully you will get one.

Hope this helps.

 

[Walken]

Nice little summation of some of the work going on behind the scenes from Dr Fauci, he later lost his patience a little in his daily dealings with dim arrogant republican beauts. I can imagine one of his chief goals must be to help see the world through the pandemic just so he never has to speak to rand paul again

 

[Jebus_lives]

I wouldn't mind that as a conclusion at all -- problem is we're not seeing any such rational comparative investigative analysis. Presumably you're not suggesting we have? Why we're not I don't understand. Why is the fixation with new cases still with us? It's the most meaningless statistic in the whole debate. Why have none of the major TV stations arranged for a full debate on the data? They did so often enough over Brexit; but here we actually have questions that can be answered without comeback on key areas of the debate, based on quantitative analysis, not on opinions and conclusions based on flimsy, untested data, never put to rigorous review - has there ever been a more blatant attempt at swaying minds by scaremongering and abuse of figures than that disgraceful TV appearance on Monday by Whitty and Parlance? No wonder there was no use of Zoom to allow questions to be asked of them; the pair of them would have been pulled apart and quickly shown to be there not to educate but to simply strike more fear (not I suppose that the questions would have been allowed if they'd have possibly shown the presentation for what it was).

PS - You're conclusion to my post suggests you've swallowed one of cop outs to preventing meaningful comparison of inter-country differences in contagion etc by referring to 'social/behaviour of our country'. We have in Europe what are akin to two very different real 'experiments' in how is the best way to proceed. Both need to be thoroughly assessed. As far as I am aware, there is as yet no scientific evidence that would put UK 'behaviours' as a differentiating factor. We really shouldn't be allowing our ruling politicians to get away with that as an excuse for their own failures in the policy fiasco to date.

I can probably summarise a response to all of this by saying 'just because you haven't seen it doesnt mean it doesn't exist'.

P.S behavioural science is included as part of the SAGE meetings, individual areas of the country are monitoring and predicting behaviours and how that might impact spread. To suggest that there are only two methods across the entirety of Europe (UK or Sweden) is bizarre.

 

[Jebus_lives]

Don't I recall that Whitty supported use of the herd immunity as the first line approach -- and that it was Cummins who led the advice not to?
Truth is, there is absolutely no consensus within the medical community and many of the issues and policies. It might seem like there is if all you consider is the Tv and newspaper coverage.

There largely is. Every single pandemic flu or communicable disease outbreak plan will largely describe the same strategies in response to pandemic.

There are certain unknown factors and developing theories, but across most issues there is consensus.