Generic Virus Thread

[DCJonah]

4 minutes ago, StefanAVFC said:

Why is it being spun that our death rate is a success? It's sickening.

And people will lap it up. 

Hero Boris got us through this. 

[markavfc40]

You can now get the chance to ask a question at the coronavirus daily press conference. 

https://www.gov.uk/ask

I have just submitted mine. I don't hold much hope of being invited to record a video of myself asking it.

Why does the Prime Minister consider over 20,000 hospital deaths and many thousand more care home and community deaths an apparent success?

[VILLAMARV]

On 26/04/2020 at 10:57, Genie said:

Have the government ever shared any data about the occupancy of critical care beds versus capacity? 

Good question, the figures will surely be compiled by individual trusts for the health economists to justify their budgets. Whether they will have ever been compiled on a national level before is another matter. 

In Wales we do. The figures are averages though so the usual long list of caveats applies when using the average. 

https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Health-and-Social-Care/NHS-Hospital-Activity/NHS-Beds/nhsbeds-by-specialty

[Stevo985]

38 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

And people will lap it up. 

Hero Boris got us through this. 

Far be it from me to defend Boris, believe me it’s rare. But whilst I acknowledge the choice of words or tone might not be the best, I think he was talking about “success” in terms of we’ve successfully passed the peak and flattened the curve. 
 

The context was very much whilst we’ve succeeded in getting beyond the peak, we shouldn’t relax social distancing yet. Not that overall this has been a success (although I wouldn’t be surprised to hear him spinning it like that at some point)
 

That’s how I took it anyway. And again I’m sure you know I don’t need much of an excuse to criticise that horrible racist lying word removed. 

Edited April 27, 2020 by Stevo985

[HanoiVillan]

40 minutes ago, Morley_crosses_to_Withe said:

It just gets worse! What the actual **** is this thing!? 

Edit: there was article yesterday in the Washington Post that was saying people in their 30-40s are catching it and dying of strokes!!!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/

 

I saw a chart the other day which showed that excess deaths among <35's is essentially zero, and <49's is very small. Sadly I can't find it now. It's a sad fact that young people do sometimes die of various causes, and it's not clear that coronavirus is killing them at any significantly higher rate than anything else.

The concerns about long-lasting health implications from catching it are more worrying.

[LakotaDakota]

48 minutes ago, Morley_crosses_to_Withe said:

It just gets worse! What the actual **** is this thing!? 

Edit: there was article yesterday in the Washington Post that was saying people in their 30-40s are catching it and dying of strokes!!!

https://www.washingtonpost.com/health/2020/04/24/strokes-coronavirus-young-patients/

 

Think some of this must be heart related. Honestly felt like I was having some sort of heart attack ranging from fairly constant dull ache to shooting pains for nearly a month. At no point did I ever really feel like I was about to immediately keel over but it wasn't fun. Still don't feel 100%  now 6 weeks later but thankfully the main pain seems to have gone for the most part  but god knows what it has done to my insides & until we have gone back to some sort of normal & presumingI am still alive & can actually get seen by a doctor we'll never know I guess.

Edited April 27, 2020 by LakotaDakota

[DCJonah]

12 minutes ago, Stevo985 said:

Far be it from me to defend Boris, believe me it’s rare. But whilst I acknowledge the choice of words or tone might not be the best, I think he was talking about “success” in terms of we’ve successfully passed the peak and flattened the curve. 
 

The context was very much whilst we’ve succeeded in getting beyond the peak, we shouldn’t relax social distancing yet. Not that overall this has been a success (although I wouldn’t be surprised to hear him spinning it like that at some point)
 

That’s how I took it anyway. And again I’m sure you know I don’t need much of an excuse to criticise that horrible racist lying word removed. 

Fair enough. That's a good point. You're probably right actually, thinking about it that context. 

Just the word success doesn't sit right with me in regards to this. 

[Stevo985]

3 minutes ago, DCJonah said:

Fair enough. That's a good point. You're probably right actually, thinking about it that context. 

Just the word success doesn't sit right with me in regards to this. 

Yeah it’s a poor word choice. But I think it sounds much worse out of context. 
 

But that’s just how I took it. I may be wrong

[Genie]

29 minutes ago, VILLAMARV said:

Good question, the figures will surely be compiled by individual trusts for the health economists to justify their budgets. Whether they will have ever been compiled on a national level before is another matter. 

In Wales we do. The figures are averages though so the usual long list of caveats applies when using the average. 

https://statswales.gov.wales/Catalogue/Health-and-Social-Care/NHS-Hospital-Activity/NHS-Beds/nhsbeds-by-specialty

I imagine they must have it to have (the MP’s). The decisions about locking down, isolating etc are not based off amount of deaths, it’s based on the NHS ability to cope with cases. They probably have the data updates hourly.

[HanoiVillan]

48 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

You can now get the chance to ask a question at the coronavirus daily press conference. 

https://www.gov.uk/ask

I have just submitted mine. I don't hold much hope of being invited to record a video of myself asking it.

Why does the Prime Minister consider over 20,000 hospital deaths and many thousand more care home and community deaths an apparent success?

Probably better if they don't read it out, as otherwise you will have Paul Staines getting his minions to plaster every possible smear about you over the Internet, and Benjy the Binman rifling through your garbage to sell to the tabloids.

[VILLAMARV]

8 minutes ago, Genie said:

I imagine they must have it to have (the MP’s). The decisions about locking down, isolating etc are not based off amount of deaths, it’s based on the NHS ability to cope with cases. They probably have the data updates hourly.

I wouldn't like to second guess what data the govt does or doesn't have. I would imagine people in the nhs are far too busy to worry that much about hourly updates. But that's mere conjecture on my part.

While it could be easy to imagine a NASA style control centre with screens and staff everywhere where we could log and track data in real-time I think the reality is somewhat different to that and more fragmented. 

There is no reason in today's modern world why that vision couldn't become reality. Even though the obvious concerns around privacy exist. What we are seeing more and more though is google and amazon being given access to our health data.

[LondonLax]

40 minutes ago, HanoiVillan said:

I saw a chart the other day which showed that excess deaths among <35's is essentially zero, and <49's is very small. Sadly I can't find it now. It's a sad fact that young people do sometimes die of various causes, and it's not clear that coronavirus is killing them at any significantly higher rate than anything else.

The concerns about long-lasting health implications from catching it are more worrying.

You can see the breakdown for children in the EuroMOMO website. Deaths amongst children 0-4 and 5-14 are well below average at the moment. Unfortunately they don’t breakdown the adult categories into small enough groups to be able to see what is happening there.

  https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Also, a study from Australia indicates that children do not seem to spread the virus and are far more likely to be asymptomatic. The infection rates in schools are far below the infection rates seen in the general population.

Quote

"Schools are among the safest places that we have," lead investigator Professor Kristine Macartney, of the National Centre for Immunisation Research and Surveillance, told The Sun-Herald.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/safe-as-houses-covid-19-study-clears-nsw-schools-for-student-return-20200425-p54n6i.html

[Genie]

3 minutes ago, VILLAMARV said:

I wouldn't like to second guess what data the govt does or doesn't have. I would imagine people in the nhs are far too busy to worry that much about hourly updates. But that's mere conjecture on my part.

While it could be easy to imagine a NASA style control centre with screens and staff everywhere where we could log and track data in real-time I think the reality is somewhat different to that and more fragmented. 

I agree with all of that but remember this whole exercise is to stop the NHS getting overrun. They absolutely must have the data to show how many beds/ventilators they have available. Maybe hourly was a bit of a stretch but at least daily I’d be expect each trust to be reporting their current capacity to central government who keep a live log.

[bannedfromHandV]

38 minutes ago, Genie said:

I agree with all of that but remember this whole exercise is to stop the NHS getting overrun. They absolutely must have the data to show how many beds/ventilators they have available. Maybe hourly was a bit of a stretch but at least daily I’d be expect each trust to be reporting their current capacity to central government who keep a live log.

They could have real time data analytics if they adopted and invested in a more modern IT setup.

If Sainsburys can monitor stock in real time i’m pretty bloody sure the NHS could achieve similar.

 

 

[HanoiVillan]

30 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

You can see the breakdown for children in the EuroMOMO website. Deaths amongst children 0-4 and 5-14 are well below average at the moment. Unfortunately they don’t breakdown the adult categories into small enough groups to be able to see what is happening there.

  https://www.euromomo.eu/graphs-and-maps/

Thanks for the link. The graph I saw was from the ONS data, which is in a spreadsheet on the site, but I can't be bothered to turn it into graph form

31 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

Also, a study from Australia indicates that children do not seem to spread the virus and are far more likely to be asymptomatic. The infection rates in schools are far below the infection rates seen in the general population.

https://www.smh.com.au/national/safe-as-houses-covid-19-study-clears-nsw-schools-for-student-return-20200425-p54n6i.html

Yeah, one thing I've been noticing is that there hasn't been any reports of teachers dying (not saying it hasn't happened, but I haven't seen it, and I feel confident we would know if it was in large numbers) despite many going into schools and nurseries where social distancing is presumably extremely difficult to maintain. Obviously that's not a scientific observation, though.

[Genie]

8 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

They could have real time data analytics if they adopted and invested in a more modern IT setup.

If Sainsburys can monitor stock in real time i’m pretty bloody sure the NHS could achieve similar.

 

 

Didn't they start such a programme but it was ludicrously expensive and late and ended up collapsing? 

[VILLAMARV]

22 minutes ago, Genie said:

I agree with all of that but remember this whole exercise is to stop the NHS getting overrun. They absolutely must have the data to show how many beds/ventilators they have available. Maybe hourly was a bit of a stretch but at least daily I’d be expect each trust to be reporting their current capacity to central government who keep a live log.

I can go along with this, assuming by live log you mean a minimum wage admin assistant somewhere filling in numbers to columns in a spreadsheet. 

I assume we have posters here who could confirm or deny such things but are contractually obliged not to. (This is not code for me, i'm just an angry tramp)

The point I was making about the data collection being fragmented is visible in the death rates logged with the ons rather publically at the moment, and they have a fairly sophisticated mechanism there, manual not automated, but we can see the complicated issues around collection of one single data point. 

The nhs in Wales, overseen by public health wales, is comprised of hundreds of different organisations. It's more complicated than a simple phone call to the department of health.

[VILLAMARV]

23 hours ago, sidcow said:

My father in law died about a month ago in Nuneaton hospital.  It took just over 3 weeks to get the death certificate issued.  

The Hospital is in absolute chaos and they simply didn't have any doctors available to deal with the paperwork. 

I would have thought they would want to get the paperwork issued quickly and get the body moved away for burial.

I think people just don't realise the absolute disarray the health service is in now, they are barely coping with dealing with what is right in front of them now despite extra resources being thrown in.  

It's no suprise to me that stats and figures are probably impossible to get full stop let alone accurate right now. 

As sidcow said here yesterday the priorities are probably elsewhere right now. 

As odd as that would seem to us folks clamouring for data.

[VILLAMARV]

33 minutes ago, bannedfromHandV said:

They could have real time data analytics if they adopted and invested in a more modern IT setup.

If Sainsburys can monitor stock in real time i’m pretty bloody sure the NHS could achieve similar.

Exactly this. 

My point about the google and amazon link ups is that I suspect, like me, the vast majority of people would prefer this to be in house and bound by law. I suspect the appeal to those in power would be to outsource this function to the private sector. In the name of economic savings and diminished responsibility.

[terrytini]

26 minutes ago, VILLAMARV said:

 

I assume we have posters here who could confirm or deny such things but are contractually obliged not to.

The nhs in Wales, overseen by public health wales, is comprised of hundreds of different organisations. It's more complicated than a simple phone call to the department of health.

I have ( very) close family members in more than one of the Forces and can’t say much. But I can say I know of at least one fairly senior member of the armed forces who does nothing but collate and coordinate such data for an area the size of North Wales. If that helps.

( I say ‘nothing but’.....the data is used for many things, resource planning/ allocation and much more)

Edited April 27, 2020 by terrytini
Added a sentence