Current Affairs Coronavirus Thread - Serious stuff !!!

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davids said:
Difficult times for the conspiracy theorists. Not so long ago they were lauding Sweden, Germany, Poland, Slovenia etc for not locking down and still having low contagion figures. And their hero the President of Tanzania didn't fare to well in the end.
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Inter-country comparisons are of course difficult if only because testing levels and how cause of death may be classified differ between countries. Germany for example is much more rigorous when determining cause of death, certainly compared to our own, where we define (at least for the headline count) a Covid death as having occurred when an individual died within 28 days of having had the virus confirmed.
I'm no conspiracy theorist but I think it will be a long time yet before judgement will be able to be passed on which approaches and which actions were effective.
 
mrb85 said:
Inter-country comparisons are of course difficult if only because testing levels and how cause of death may be classified differ between countries. Germany for example is much more rigorous when determining cause of death, certainly compared to our own, where we define (at least for the headline count) a Covid death as having occurred when an individual died within 28 days of having had the virus confirmed.
I'm no conspiracy theorist but I think it will be a long time yet before judgement will be able to be passed on which approaches and which actions were effective.
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Don't see there ever being a definitive number because there are so many people surviving on the edge of cancer,heart disease,COPD and the literally hundreds of other life threatening illnesses. Covid just gives them the nudge. Part of the problem is the devaluation of flu. How often have you had someone in work come back after a couple of days off with the flu? Anyone who's ever had flu will tell you it's far more serious than that. Covid is a variety of the real thing that just happens to be more easily transmitted and doesn't operate on a seasonal calendar.
 
mrb85 said:
What do you mean by the virus having 'embedded itself'. Wouldn't its transmission in these places you refer to be creating natural immunity over time?
Now the old and the vulnerable are close to full vaccination there is little reason not to de-restrict and permit nature to do its job and raise protection via herd immunity? Particularly now that studies are confirming that having already had the virus provides for a longer period of protection than any current vaccination. But so far, large scale vaccination, far from leading us to normality, has somehow led on to even more restrictions and further curtailment of basic freedoms, as the government has become even more risk-averse and continues to test the acquiescence of the population. So much for Hancock's shouts of "freedom" when in December he publicly announced the arrival of vaccines.
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6 months is the average immunity after having Covid19. And the vaccines dont provide complete protection against current variants...and those to come.

I dont know how many times its been said by scientists that herd immunity is a fiction with this virus for it not to be peddled.
 
BlueToff said:
They did lockdown too late and thousands of lives could have been saved.

But it would also be stupid to disregard

- Health
- Ageing population (is not mad that half of the UK adults have already received their first dose but bar key healthcare workers and the odd vulnerable person/carer, we haven't even done the under 50 groups yet?)
- Ethnicity (there's been such a devastating impact on the Asian population, for example - and unfortunately in some areas the uptake for the vaccine has been quite low in these groups too)
- Population (and the strain that has put on healthcare services in some areas compared to others)

It's all one big melting pot. This government didn't act quickly enough or decisively enough - we all know that. Yet it's not deflection tactics to see that there are also some underlying issues why the UK (and indeed Europe) have been badly hit.

Now, the above categories aren't really something we can change in terms of an ageing pop (unless younger people start popping out kids sharpish), or population or the ethnic groups - they're doing nothing wrong by having the grandma live in the same household. The one thing we can tackle is health. There has to be a push towards a healthier way of living. If that's one of the positives to come from lockdown - people being more self aware but maybe also using time they would have spent commuting to work (and that can obviously be extremely fatiguing day-in day-out) to exercise, then that's a good thing.

As a way of dealing with this thing, nearly every country banned exercise, yet didn't ban people from smoking - y'know, something which literally kills you from the inside and attacks your lungs. Bit mad, isn't it, when there's a severe respiratory illness knocking about.

I say all of the above while again reiterating the point that ultimately we can't have the biggest death toll in Europe and not blame the government. They are absolutely to blame for their haphazard approach. Yet, there's also other factors which must be taken into account too.
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I'm not disregarding those fatcors, I'm demoting them to where they should be as an explanation for the horrendous fatality rate in the UK - firmly below the two failures to lockdown early in February 2020 and September 2020.
 
davek said:
I'm not disregarding those fatcors, I'm demoting them to where they should be as an explanation for the horrendous fatality rate in the UK - firmly below the two failures to lockdown early in February 2020 and September 2020.
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I mean it was March. IIRC last Feb you were spouting that it was all a media conspiracy.

They locked down probably 10-14 days too late last year. Maybe even a week would have done it to really help. I remember because around my birthday everything was (relatively) normal - so the 9th of March - other than people being told to wash hands, use sanitizer etc etc (but i remember that kind of stuff with swine flu).

Within 4 days, the PL had shut down and suddenly everything was like, Christ.

By the 16th - I remember going for a coffee and the place was eerily quiet. Obviously a few days later that and everything else was shut.

It was probably that week - 9th to 16th - that was the crucial one. And yeah, a massive failing. Also Valance presenting that chart which forecasted peak deaths to hit in 3 months and they quickly realised how wrong they were. All happened around that week (believe that Valance graph was the Thursday 19th/Friday 20th).
 
@davek obviously in hindsight, if the country had gone into hermit mode in February and banned all travel, then yes, we might have come close to replicating the 'success' (loosely) seen elsewhere.

But last February, it wasn't really even been considered across most western nations it seems. The only major country that managed to time their lockdown right in Europe last year was Germany – Spain and Italy were badly hit. France just about got away with it.
 
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