Generic Virus Thread

[HanoiVillan]

2 hours ago, blandy said:

Now that's an interesting point. Are you implying that the (in this case) Guardian and Independent newspapers have a duty that their headlines, which are then essentially stolen by Google should be tailored to Google's "market"?

No, I'm not saying that at all (though of course headlines and URLs are optimised for search and sharing, SEO is a real thing). What I'm saying is that they shouldn't print something completely factually incorrect in the headline, especially if they then do not correct it in the body of the story (though frankly either way), during the midst of a public health emergency.

This is probably an agree to disagree.

 

 

[Xela]

10 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

Population density is always going to be a factor.

If you’re using the Central Line there’s more chance of you coming in to contact with someone than if you live in Powys.

But I think it’s one factor from many. Literally just today, Heathrow are thinking they might consider screening air passengers for the virus. We’re just looking at rolling out contact apps. We let Cheltenham Races happen. We treated people in hospitals not knowing if the nurses were contagious. We told people in care homes they would not receive help, they would not be moved to a hospital. 

We had a fairly average hand of cards. We’ve played them quite poorly.

Not shutting the airports was a huge error. Flights coming in from Italy, Spain, China, Iran, and the States daily. 

New Zealand have said they won't have open borders for a long time. That is exactly the right thing to do. No idea why we didn't do similar. 

[Xela]

1 minute ago, Davkaus said:

That is the worst scaling I've ever seen in my life. 1, 73, 160, 455, 21027?!

[chrisp65]

Just now, Xela said:

Not shutting the airports was a huge error. Flights coming in from Italy, Spain, China, Iran, and the States daily. 

New Zealand have said they won't have open borders for a long time. That is exactly the right thing to do. No idea why we didn't do similar. 

In a time where the zeitgeist was all about taking back control, I find it difficult to get my head around it.

[bannedfromHandV]

2 minutes ago, Xela said:

Not shutting the airports was a huge error. Flights coming in from Italy, Spain, China, Iran, and the States daily. 

New Zealand have said they won't have open borders for a long time. That is exactly the right thing to do. No idea why we didn't do similar. 

Yep, we threw away all the advantages we had of being an island.

[terrytini]

2 hours ago, snowychap said:

I continue to be impressed by Lewis Goodall.

As do I, very much so - but my God all he’s needed to do is recognise an open goal to make a name for himself. No competition whatsoever.

Remember when three old people dying in a minibus accident, or one being left alone to die in a hospital corridor,  would’ve got detailed coverage in every news outlet ?

The absence of even the most minimal investigative reporting ( other than by him) into the truly dreadful death and illness in Care Homes is for me Second only to the issue itself in the list of horrors taking place.

I guarantee even the most shocking report about Care Homes ( which, I’m genuinely sickened to say should rightfully now be called Neglect Homes, or even Death Homes) will only be scratching the surface.

 

[terrytini]

2 minutes ago, chrisp65 said:

In a time where the zeitgeist was all about taking back control, I find it difficult to get my head around it.

It’s almost as if it was all bollocks.

[terrytini]

5 minutes ago, Xela said:

Not shutting the airports was a huge error. Flights coming in from Italy, Spain, China, Iran, and the States daily. 

New Zealand have said they won't have open borders for a long time. That is exactly the right thing to do. No idea why we didn't do similar. 

Well, call me crazy, but I’m going for that tried and tested mix of money, ideology, and incompetence.

Honestly if we had a National motto.....

[terrytini]

1 hour ago, blandy said:

Not necessarily myself. Too right! 

The lady didn't attempt to quantify it, she did quantify it (and as we both agree, very wrongly).  But numbers (to me) when understood and used accurately do tell us a great deal, or will do. It's not "hiding" behind the statistics to want to actually make a genuine effort to understand what they tell us. It's for the professionals an extremely important science. The obvious and relevant example of that is in public health. All sorts of activities, habits and diseases lead to and cause death. Understanding how many people statistically die from [smoking, or boozing, or or parachuting or driving at what speed, or when drunk or ....] leads to public health measures, medical provision, development of treatments, laws to require seat belt wearing...all kinds of positive (and sometimes negative) steps.

If we (hypothetically) discover that the lethality of Covi to people in their last year of life (or as close to knowing that as we can) is very high, then extra steps can be put in place to protect them from it, or to focus drug provision to them, or whatever. If on the other hand, it's equally lethal to all parts and sectors of the population, then prioritisation of limited resources might be focused, if anywhere, at (say) infants, or young children. I don't think many just want to discuss the stats for the sake of it, not even stat geeks. People want to do one of two things - either gain understanding of what they show, or (perhaps like this author) twist them to suit their world view, or their personal experience. or outlook - libertarians might, like climate change deniers wish to "support" a view pro Oil drilling by twisting figures. Other need to understand and have a comprehensive grasp of them in order to prevent the world going down a dangerous path, and to call out the truth twisters. If an element of that, a small part, is broadsheet papers pointing out in their headlines people made ludicrous statement about "2/3rds would have died anyway", or "guzzle harpic", then I'm fine with that.

I’m not, but I find it hard to mount as rational argument to support my view as you’ve done to support yours.

So I’ll have to just stick with “ I’m not”.

[terrytini]

14 minutes ago, Xela said:

Not shutting the airports was a huge error. Flights coming in from Italy, Spain, China, Iran, and the States daily. 

New Zealand have said they won't have open borders for a long time. That is exactly the right thing to do. No idea why we didn't do similar. 

Not disagreeing at all, but would observe that my wife’s currently away, and I forgot to shut her greenhouse door last night.

I considered that a huge error on my part.

Not shutting the airports ? I think we need a new a dictionary in order to be able to properly convey how enormously badly this has been handled.

[LondonLax]

8 minutes ago, terrytini said:

Not disagreeing at all, but would observe that my wife’s currently away, and I forgot to shut her greenhouse door last night.

I considered that a huge error on my part.

Not shutting the airports ? I think we need a new a dictionary in order to be able to properly convey how enormously badly this has been handled.

Most people travelling to the UK will be British citizens listening to the call to return home in a time of global crisis. Even if you restrict immigration to ‘British citizens only’ for a period I read that almost a million British Citizens/residents returned home. It’s not a case of shutting airports as such but instead finding a practical way for people arriving in the country to be isolated from the rest of the population. 

Edited May 6, 2020 by LondonLax

[terrytini]

1 minute ago, LondonLax said:

Most people travelling to the UK will be British citizens listening to the call to return home in a time of global crisis. Even if you restrict immigration to British citizens only for a period I read that almost a million British Citizens/residents returned home. It’s not a case of shutting airports as such but instead finding a practical way for people arriving in the country to be isolated from the rest of the population. 

I agree I take/ mean  “ shutting” airports  as establishing proper control of them.

[markavfc40]

55 minutes ago, LondonLax said:

Most people travelling to the UK will be British citizens listening to the call to return home in a time of global crisis. Even if you restrict immigration to ‘British citizens only’ for a period I read that almost a million British Citizens/residents returned home. It’s not a case of shutting airports as such but instead finding a practical way for people arriving in the country to be isolated from the rest of the population. 

I don't think people are referring to the British citizens returning home over the last 6 or 7 weeks post lock down. The issue was when we still only had cases in the tens/low hundreds and letting every Tom, Dick, Italian, Iranian, China man in (not literally) (and British citizens returning from countries already being impacted far worse than us) and not even checking if they had any symptoms before allowing them to wander off.

Edited May 6, 2020 by markavfc40

[snowychap]

12 minutes ago, markavfc40 said:

 letting every Tom, Dick, Italian, Iranian, China man in

Was that actually happening?

Yes, there may have been no quarantining for those coming in but that may not have amounted to the rather silly (and not very pleasant) line you're running there.

Edited May 6, 2020 by snowychap

[markavfc40]

2 minutes ago, snowychap said:

Was that actually happening?

Yes, there may have been no quarantining for those coming in but that may not have amounted to the rather silly (and not very pleasant) line you're running there.

People were coming in unchecked weren't they, certainly in terms of stopping and asking/checking people to see if they had any symptoms. If that is incorrect then I stand corrected.

[snowychap]

Just now, markavfc40 said:

People were coming in unchecked weren't they, certainly in terms of stopping and asking/checking people to see if they had any symptoms. If that is incorrect then I stand corrected.

'People' may have been.

How many 'people' were 'people'?

[markavfc40]

2 minutes ago, snowychap said:

'People' may have been.

How many 'people' were 'people'?

If you seriously think I was literally suggesting every China man, Italian and Iranian had come into the country , a billion+ people maybe, then I wasn't. If that is how you have taken it then I will edit the post to say not literally so I don't cause any further confusion. Thank you for pulling me up on it.

[chrisp65]

People definitely came in unchecked from Italy and Australia that I can vouch for.

Whether they were native, or Chinese or whatever this country may never know because in both cases they saw nobody official on their way out of the airport. Less checks, well none, and less control than usual.

 

[VILLAMARV]

44 minutes ago, blandy said:

Not necessarily myself. Too right! 

Cool, but people in this thread, rather notably yesterday right?

44 minutes ago, blandy said:

The lady didn't attempt to quantify it, she did quantify it (and as we both agree, very wrongly).  But numbers (to me) when understood and used accurately do tell us a great deal, or will do. It's not "hiding" behind the statistics to want to actually make a genuine effort to understand what they tell us. It's for the professionals an extremely important science.

Agreed.

44 minutes ago, blandy said:

The obvious and relevant example of that is in public health. All sorts of activities, habits and diseases lead to and cause death.

Ok.

44 minutes ago, blandy said:

Understanding how many people statistically die from [smoking, or boozing, or or parachuting or driving at what speed, or when drunk or ....] leads to public health measures, medical provision, development of treatments, laws to require seat belt wearing...all kinds of positive (and sometimes negative) steps.

I see where you're going and I agree with the sentiment, but here's where it gets murky. There are not necessarily figures on how many people die 'from smoking'. Or 'from drinking'. But we all know what you're driving at sure, here at ONS they'll have the wording and the stuff you're referring to. But the definition is everything and it's complicated. 

Quote

Drug use, alcohol and smoking

Smoking and drinking habits in Great Britain, deaths related to drug poisoning and drug misuse, and deaths caused by diseases known to be related to alcohol consumption.

Parachuting and how many people die after crashing a vehicle? Yes, both of these will definitely have their own ICD-10 clinical code as an external cause of injury. So ONS will have access to these figures. And yes, we can use those statistics to help drive policy I agree. (In reality, insurance firms drive a lot of the research terms here) 

44 minutes ago, blandy said:

If we (hypothetically) discover that the lethality of Covi to people in their last year of life (or as close to knowing that as we can)

There's the meat on the bones of what we're driving at here. Who is in their last year of life? How does one go about measuring that? Who would want to? How can ANY number we come up with by whatever definition be considered robust? We cannot predict the future, least of all by attributing it a numerical reference.

That is not to say we cannot look at patterns within large datasets and make meaning from those patterns. 

Statistics, by definition, is precisely that. 

Quote

The practice or science of collecting or analysing numerical data in large quantities, especially for the purposes of inferring proportions in a whole from a representative sample - concise OED.

 

44 minutes ago, blandy said:

is very high, then extra steps can be put in place to protect them from it, or to focus drug provision to them, or whatever. If on the other hand, it's equally lethal to all parts and sectors of the population, then prioritisation of limited resources might be focused, if anywhere, at (say) infants, or young children. I don't think many just want to discuss the stats for the sake of it, not even stat geeks.

And, yep I mostly agree again, this is why we do it right? 

As for the 'lethality' as you put it, well ,the reasons why something external to what is being said may affect things has been covered in this thread by many people I feel. What I'm getting at here is we are not involved in a pure test of covids lethality, the external influences we have already put upon it will already be skewing the figures there. It's not a controlled environment. (There's no control group for comparison). We can collect data on the way we have done things . This is where we cross over into the world of epidemiology. 

What part has lockdown played?, how much of the inference that it is killing more older people affected by not admitting the older people into hospital?

There's no pure test.

44 minutes ago, blandy said:

People want to do one of two things - either gain understanding of what they show, or (perhaps like this author) twist them to suit their world view, or their personal experience. or outlook - libertarians might, like climate change deniers wish to "support" a view pro Oil drilling by twisting figures. Other need to understand and have a comprehensive grasp of them in order to prevent the world going down a dangerous path, and to call out the truth twisters. If an element of that, a small part, is broadsheet papers pointing out in their headlines people made ludicrous statement about "2/3rds would have died anyway", or "guzzle harpic", then I'm fine with that.

Cool. Yep, people use and misuse figures, graphs, data, words, inference and all sorts all the time. And often to embellish a point they want to make. This has been all too evident to the public as this whole thing has unfolded I feel.

You're fine with the independent article, and you're entitled to be if you want. I wasn't aware it was suggesting it's own clickbait headline was ludicrous. 

Breitbart is also a thing. It's a free world right?

[foreveryoung]

2 hours ago, Genie said:

It doesn’t really matter how many tests they promise does it? Is there anybody saying they need/want a test but can’t get one?

Our household could have been tested ages ago but there’s no point.

If they really want to hit the target then they should rock up outside ASDA and test people as they go in.

Maybe it’s a master stroke, with everything that’s going on around the world and at home at the moment the headline on BBC website is 

 

Me an the Mrs went for a 2nd test at Edgbaston Cricket ground Tuesday. There was no one there, an it was 12:30 should have been peak times.