COVID19

[morepork]

I don't trust shit coming from the government here. They are actively hamstringing scientists and physicians with the CDC. There is officially no Federal safety net here anymore, and that is quite some achievement.

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/earl ... e5793.full

I see wankers gathering en masse calling everything they can't get their head around a hoax. There is no fucking way this is going away any time soon. Who am to rely on for accurate metrics for evidence-based decision making?

This is relevant to your initial query. If mortality : infection is indeed going down, that is great, but how is that measured? Is using a case: fatality measure more accurate given the existence of asymptomatic carriers? More young people are getting infected, but the risk of disease increases greatly with age, meaning it is possible that there could actually be an increase in cases (that is, people that develop symptoms) and maybe mortality also. What is the lag time used to determine symptomatic in the infected population? 1 day, 7, 14, more?

The public in countries that are hot spots are left to blindly navigate massaged, unavailable, or outright fabricated statistics. Good fucking luck. Drink, because you'll need courage. From a US perspective, it is the biggest public health failure I think I will experience in my lifetime.

[Stom]

I don't trust shit coming from the government here. They are actively hamstringing scientists and physicians with the CDC. There is officially no Federal safety net here anymore, and that is quite some achievement.

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/earl ... e5793.full

I see wankers gathering en masse calling everything they can't get their head around a hoax. There is no fucking way this is going away any time soon. Who am to rely on for accurate metrics for evidence-based decision making?

This is relevant to your initial query. If mortality : infection is indeed going down, that is great, but how is that measured? Is using a case: fatality measure more accurate given the existence of asymptomatic carriers? More young people are getting infected, but the risk of disease increases greatly with age, meaning it is possible that there could actually be an increase in cases (that is, people that develop symptoms) and maybe mortality also. What is the lag time used to determine symptomatic in the infected population? 1 day, 7, 14, more?

The public in countries that are hot spots are left to blindly navigate massaged, unavailable, or outright fabricated statistics. Good fucking luck. Drink, because you'll need courage. From a US perspective, it is the biggest public health failure I think I will experience in my lifetime.

Excuse my ignorance but what’s the difference? Here, the cases are records, the deaths are low single figures, and excess deaths are non existent.

The measures are worse than the actual virus here.

[morepork]

I don't trust shit coming from the government here. They are actively hamstringing scientists and physicians with the CDC. There is officially no Federal safety net here anymore, and that is quite some achievement.

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/earl ... e5793.full

I see wankers gathering en masse calling everything they can't get their head around a hoax. There is no fucking way this is going away any time soon. Who am to rely on for accurate metrics for evidence-based decision making?

This is relevant to your initial query. If mortality : infection is indeed going down, that is great, but how is that measured? Is using a case: fatality measure more accurate given the existence of asymptomatic carriers? More young people are getting infected, but the risk of disease increases greatly with age, meaning it is possible that there could actually be an increase in cases (that is, people that develop symptoms) and maybe mortality also. What is the lag time used to determine symptomatic in the infected population? 1 day, 7, 14, more?

The public in countries that are hot spots are left to blindly navigate massaged, unavailable, or outright fabricated statistics. Good fucking luck. Drink, because you'll need courage. From a US perspective, it is the biggest public health failure I think I will experience in my lifetime.

Excuse my ignorance but what’s the difference? Here, the cases are records, the deaths are low single figures, and excess deaths are non existent.

The measures are worse than the actual virus here.

Don't follow you, sorry.

Case = virus positive and symptomatic to the point of disease that needs treatment
Fatality = number of cases that end up terminal
Infection = positive for virus but not necessarily symptomatic or needing treatment


What do you mean by excess deaths?

[Stom]

I don't trust shit coming from the government here. They are actively hamstringing scientists and physicians with the CDC. There is officially no Federal safety net here anymore, and that is quite some achievement.

https://stm.sciencemag.org/content/earl ... e5793.full

I see wankers gathering en masse calling everything they can't get their head around a hoax. There is no fucking way this is going away any time soon. Who am to rely on for accurate metrics for evidence-based decision making?

This is relevant to your initial query. If mortality : infection is indeed going down, that is great, but how is that measured? Is using a case: fatality measure more accurate given the existence of asymptomatic carriers? More young people are getting infected, but the risk of disease increases greatly with age, meaning it is possible that there could actually be an increase in cases (that is, people that develop symptoms) and maybe mortality also. What is the lag time used to determine symptomatic in the infected population? 1 day, 7, 14, more?

The public in countries that are hot spots are left to blindly navigate massaged, unavailable, or outright fabricated statistics. Good fucking luck. Drink, because you'll need courage. From a US perspective, it is the biggest public health failure I think I will experience in my lifetime.

Excuse my ignorance but what’s the difference? Here, the cases are records, the deaths are low single figures, and excess deaths are non existent.

The measures are worse than the actual virus here.

Don't follow you, sorry.

Case = virus positive and symptomatic to the point of disease that needs treatment
Fatality = number of cases that end up terminal
Infection = positive for virus but not necessarily symptomatic or needing treatment


What do you mean by excess deaths?

Ah, got you now.

Excess deaths is the number of deaths over the 5 year rolling average for that week. Here in Hungary, that number is, well, there isn’t one. Deaths are completely within the normal range and have been all year.

There have been 630ish total deaths where COVID is mentioned. But nearly all of these would have expected to die anyway.

I only have one example, where a tenant of a friend has died and had COVID put on the death certificate. He was an alcoholic and suffered liver failure and kidney failure.

There’s a reason there are so many conspiracy theorists here and when I tell them about the number of deaths in the UK or USA, they’re shocked. It really hasn’t impacted here, except to irritate the hell out of people.

But that is really interesting. Why?

People here are not healthy. The healthcare system is fucked. The population is old.

The only saving graces are population density and pollution levels, which are low.

Why is it so much less deadly or less contagious here?

[Galfon]

Trolley-fall at A&E will reveal where we're at very soon.
We''ve lurched back to hot-spot alert (cases) after the holiday season, return to school and eating/drinking out.
The incidence/mortality rate for Covid is c. 10x that of flu, but this
appears to be of little threat to under 40's ( generally).
Population exposure to the virus here is still only c.10%, miles off the 70% required for herd immunity.
Maybe the virus has morphed and lost it's teeth, or the data is skewed...we're a while off a correctly validated vaccine it seems so given human behaviour traits, we still appear to be in the lap of the gods.

[morepork]

Excuse my ignorance but what’s the difference? Here, the cases are records, the deaths are low single figures, and excess deaths are non existent.

The measures are worse than the actual virus here.

Don't follow you, sorry.

Case = virus positive and symptomatic to the point of disease that needs treatment
Fatality = number of cases that end up terminal
Infection = positive for virus but not necessarily symptomatic or needing treatment


What do you mean by excess deaths?

Ah, got you now.

Excess deaths is the number of deaths over the 5 year rolling average for that week. Here in Hungary, that number is, well, there isn’t one. Deaths are completely within the normal range and have been all year.

There have been 630ish total deaths where COVID is mentioned. But nearly all of these would have expected to die anyway.

I only have one example, where a tenant of a friend has died and had COVID put on the death certificate. He was an alcoholic and suffered liver failure and kidney failure.

There’s a reason there are so many conspiracy theorists here and when I tell them about the number of deaths in the UK or USA, they’re shocked. It really hasn’t impacted here, except to irritate the hell out of people.

But that is really interesting. Why?

People here are not healthy. The healthcare system is fucked. The population is old.

The only saving graces are population density and pollution levels, which are low.

Why is it so much less deadly or less contagious here?

What levels of domestic travel do you have there? Particularly air travel. The US has insane numbers of people traveling by plane, there are no compulsory quarantine procedures and so many holes in restricted international travel that it is completely ineffectual. From what I can see of the UK, they have people jetting around Spain, Italy, and France mere months after these places were hotspots. Its fucking madness.

[Stom]

Don't follow you, sorry.

Case = virus positive and symptomatic to the point of disease that needs treatment
Fatality = number of cases that end up terminal
Infection = positive for virus but not necessarily symptomatic or needing treatment


What do you mean by excess deaths?

Ah, got you now.

Excess deaths is the number of deaths over the 5 year rolling average for that week. Here in Hungary, that number is, well, there isn’t one. Deaths are completely within the normal range and have been all year.

There have been 630ish total deaths where COVID is mentioned. But nearly all of these would have expected to die anyway.

I only have one example, where a tenant of a friend has died and had COVID put on the death certificate. He was an alcoholic and suffered liver failure and kidney failure.

There’s a reason there are so many conspiracy theorists here and when I tell them about the number of deaths in the UK or USA, they’re shocked. It really hasn’t impacted here, except to irritate the hell out of people.

But that is really interesting. Why?

People here are not healthy. The healthcare system is fucked. The population is old.

The only saving graces are population density and pollution levels, which are low.

Why is it so much less deadly or less contagious here?

What levels of domestic travel do you have there? Particularly air travel. The US has insane numbers of people traveling by plane, there are no compulsory quarantine procedures and so many holes in restricted international travel that it is completely ineffectual. From what I can see of the UK, they have people jetting around Spain, Italy, and France mere months after these places were hotspots. Its fucking madness.

That I agree.

No real air travel, borders are closed, though we were told that we could go on holiday to Croatia, though we shouldn’t, but we could. So half the country did, including all the politicians.

That can explain the spike in cases but death rate is sell low.

[Stom]

Ah, got you now.

Excess deaths is the number of deaths over the 5 year rolling average for that week. Here in Hungary, that number is, well, there isn’t one. Deaths are completely within the normal range and have been all year.

There have been 630ish total deaths where COVID is mentioned. But nearly all of these would have expected to die anyway.

I only have one example, where a tenant of a friend has died and had COVID put on the death certificate. He was an alcoholic and suffered liver failure and kidney failure.

There’s a reason there are so many conspiracy theorists here and when I tell them about the number of deaths in the UK or USA, they’re shocked. It really hasn’t impacted here, except to irritate the hell out of people.

But that is really interesting. Why?

People here are not healthy. The healthcare system is fucked. The population is old.

The only saving graces are population density and pollution levels, which are low.

Why is it so much less deadly or less contagious here?

What levels of domestic travel do you have there? Particularly air travel. The US has insane numbers of people traveling by plane, there are no compulsory quarantine procedures and so many holes in restricted international travel that it is completely ineffectual. From what I can see of the UK, they have people jetting around Spain, Italy, and France mere months after these places were hotspots. Its fucking madness.

That I agree.

No real air travel, borders are closed, though we were told that we could go on holiday to Croatia, though we shouldn’t, but we could. So half the country did, including all the politicians.

That can explain the spike in cases but death rate is sell low.

4 deaths yesterday, 1 had chronic heart disease and was clinically obese, another had heart disease and type 1 diabetes, other 2 both had conditions but I’ll not sure how serious, the government lists them all:

https://koronavirus.gov.hu/elhunytak

[Digby]

The testing backlog I was told earlier has snuck in as a load of those people who were working on doing the tests in the various labs have gone back to their normal jobs, obviously they were qualified for the work but in the main they work in research and whatnot and haven't been kept plugging away just on covid, and in many ways that makes sense, a lot of them might leave if they were told all they'd be doing now was covid tests and anyway it's not like we don't want the other research. And I was also told the government didn't see they as being a problem because they budgeted for case loads to remain at much lower levels than we're actually seeing, and they hadn't allowed for so many test requests from people without symptoms

We are though now at the point where the government is saying testing is in place, and this might mean in practice an institution, say a school, has 2,500 attendees and that site is considered covered by HMG if they have a dozen testing kits available to use when really, really needed. Hancock for the win, again.

[Son of Mathonwy]

The testing backlog I was told earlier has snuck in as a load of those people who were working on doing the tests in the various labs have gone back to their normal jobs, obviously they were qualified for the work but in the main they work in research and whatnot and haven't been kept plugging away just on covid, and in many ways that makes sense, a lot of them might leave if they were told all they'd be doing now was covid tests and anyway it's not like we don't want the other research. And I was also told the government didn't see they as being a problem because they budgeted for case loads to remain at much lower levels than we're actually seeing, and they hadn't allowed for so many test requests from people without symptoms

We are though now at the point where the government is saying testing is in place, and this might mean in practice an institution, say a school, has 2,500 attendees and that site is considered covered by HMG if they have a dozen testing kits available to use when really, really needed. Hancock for the win, again.

Moonshot needed, target a million billion tests a day.

[paddy no 11]

https://www.pharmaceutical-technology.c ... eclinical/

[Mellsblue]

Good news but it’s from one of those bastard links that won’t let you go back to your previous page.
The more you read the more you hope we can mitigate the worst of any second wave. Fingers crossed.

[Galfon]

Testing times.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Nice to see that Edward Argar, Minister of State for Health, used to work for Serco.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Argar

[Digby]

So today we're to be told we're in the last chance saloon by the scientists, this coming hard on the message of the last few weeks of get your arses back to work, eat out to help out and the like. Government messaging continues to be all over the shop, Charlie used to have more accuracy kicking for England back in the day.

Whilst the scientists are telling us we're about to be fucked the cabinet will be locked in a meeting with Matt Shankedcock arguing for a bigger shutdown, Rishi Sunak arguing any shutdown should be business friendly and Gavin Williamson arguing schools should be kept open unless after the fact that turns out to be wrong.

[Which Tyler]

[Son of Mathonwy]

South Korea, Taiwan etc showed the world how to deal with Covid-19 over 6 months ago. The UK government failed to get on top of the epidemic at the start, but has now had 6 months to replicate successful systems and strategies, primarily an effective test, trace and isolate system.

It's incredible (but, somehow, not totally surprising) that they've failed to do this. Their incompetence has caused great human and economic harm and is about to do so again, in predicted second wave.

[Digby]

One model being increasingly looked at across Europe is Sweden's

[Son of Mathonwy]

One model being increasingly looked at across Europe is Sweden's

Irony?

[Digby]

One model being increasingly looked at across Europe is Sweden's

Irony?

Nope.

Those worried not just about Covid but the impacts elsewhere and thinking some of those impacts the more serious are looking at Sweden and wondering if they can't replicate some of their positives. I'm making no claim about whether those concerns are well placed or not, but I would note Sweden has gotten where they have by a consistency of model and messaging, I certainly don't understand why Cummings and Johnson think they can lurch into copying some of what Sweden's done for maybe a couple of weeks before they change tack again and gain some of the perceived advantages.

[Sandydragon]

One model being increasingly looked at across Europe is Sweden's

Irony?

Nope.

Those worried not just about Covid but the impacts elsewhere and thinking some of those impacts the more serious are looking at Sweden and wondering if they can't replicate some of their positives. I'm making no claim about whether those concerns are well placed or not, but I would note Sweden has gotten where they have by a consistency of model and messaging, I certainly don't understand why Cummings and Johnson think they can lurch into copying some of what Sweden's done for maybe a couple of weeks before they change tack again and gain some of the perceived advantages.

That would please the readership of the Telegraph. Sweden is a bit of an outlier in many ways, but it has some unique differences to us which shouldn’t be ignored and they have higher death rates than other Scandinavian countries.

The longer this goes on the louder the voices will get just to allow the virus to run its course .

[Digby]

Irony?

Nope.

Those worried not just about Covid but the impacts elsewhere and thinking some of those impacts the more serious are looking at Sweden and wondering if they can't replicate some of their positives. I'm making no claim about whether those concerns are well placed or not, but I would note Sweden has gotten where they have by a consistency of model and messaging, I certainly don't understand why Cummings and Johnson think they can lurch into copying some of what Sweden's done for maybe a couple of weeks before they change tack again and gain some of the perceived advantages.

That would please the readership of the Telegraph. Sweden is a bit of an outlier in many ways, but it has some unique differences to us which shouldn’t be ignored and they have higher death rates than other Scandinavian countries.

The longer this goes on the louder the voices will get just to allow the virus to run its course .

Certainly voices to allow people to manage their own risk, with the proviso we have certain systems in place to protect high or maybe higher risk groups.

I think we're some ways off being able to replicate what Sweden have done and are doing, even if one wanted to which is also questionable, I'm not sure we're that far off claiming we're going to use them as the example to follow. Which also to me suggests we're falling into a classic management mistake of thinking good things will follow a decision being made, because how could a decision be other than good when made by management. Essentially our current plan will fail, an attempt to ape Sweden would fail, and then we'd change again

[Son of Mathonwy]

The UK are deservedly at the bottom of that bunch, although the polls are too generous to Italy and Sweden.

[Son of Mathonwy]

Nope.

Those worried not just about Covid but the impacts elsewhere and thinking some of those impacts the more serious are looking at Sweden and wondering if they can't replicate some of their positives. I'm making no claim about whether those concerns are well placed or not, but I would note Sweden has gotten where they have by a consistency of model and messaging, I certainly don't understand why Cummings and Johnson think they can lurch into copying some of what Sweden's done for maybe a couple of weeks before they change tack again and gain some of the perceived advantages.

That would please the readership of the Telegraph. Sweden is a bit of an outlier in many ways, but it has some unique differences to us which shouldn’t be ignored and they have higher death rates than other Scandinavian countries.

The longer this goes on the louder the voices will get just to allow the virus to run its course .

Certainly voices to allow people to manage their own risk, with the proviso we have certain systems in place to protect high or maybe higher risk groups.

I think we're some ways off being able to replicate what Sweden have done and are doing, even if one wanted to which is also questionable, I'm not sure we're that far off claiming we're going to use them as the example to follow. Which also to me suggests we're falling into a classic management mistake of thinking good things will follow a decision being made, because how could a decision be other than good when made by management. Essentially our current plan will fail, an attempt to ape Sweden would fail, and then we'd change again

If we wanted to follow the science we'd look at the countries that have done the best (eg South Korea*) and replicate their strategies. Anyone looking to one of the worst performers in the world in Sweden must have already chosen their strategy and is trying to justify it.

* or Norway if we are confined to European countries (which we are not).

[Digby]

That would please the readership of the Telegraph. Sweden is a bit of an outlier in many ways, but it has some unique differences to us which shouldn’t be ignored and they have higher death rates than other Scandinavian countries.

The longer this goes on the louder the voices will get just to allow the virus to run its course .

Certainly voices to allow people to manage their own risk, with the proviso we have certain systems in place to protect high or maybe higher risk groups.

I think we're some ways off being able to replicate what Sweden have done and are doing, even if one wanted to which is also questionable, I'm not sure we're that far off claiming we're going to use them as the example to follow. Which also to me suggests we're falling into a classic management mistake of thinking good things will follow a decision being made, because how could a decision be other than good when made by management. Essentially our current plan will fail, an attempt to ape Sweden would fail, and then we'd change again

If we wanted to follow the science we'd look at the countries that have done the best (eg South Korea*) and replicate their strategies. Anyone looking to one of the worst performers in the world in Sweden must have already chosen their strategy and is trying to justify it.

* or Norway if we are confined to European countries (which we are not).

I'm not going to defend the view, or argue against it. I'm just noting where the discussion is going. I think the thing with South Korea is we'd have a rather different take on behaviour across society. We can't even manage to have people travel around correctly wearing masks and not close windows on trains and buses as a for instance.

It's be worth noting a fair chunk of the government's take on social behaviour is their own thinking rather than what they're hearing from behavioural scientists. Yes we get the claim decisions are based on the science, but...